by Hinze, Vicki
He’d used her as a shield.
A shield.
Why was that significant? It was; she sensed it. But why? Having no idea, she tried to forget it, but the nagging memory wouldn’t go away.
A half hour later, the memory still wouldn’t fade. She dialed Detective Cray. At least taking risks was part of his job.
“Detective Cray.”
“Hi, it’s Della Jackson.”
“Where are you?”
“Paul’s already called, huh?”
“Madison. You’re making our job harder.”
“I’ll make it easy. Don’t look for me. Instead, do me a favor and I’ll come in to you.”
“What favor?”
“Can you get Danny’s file?”
“Your son, Danny?”
“Yes.” Her throat cinched.
“Della, it was a bomb. I don’t think you want to burn those kinds of images into your mind.”
“I don’t want to, but I have to. Something is bothering me, and I—I can’t explain it. I just need to see the forensic photographs in the file.”
“But, Della—”
“Would you trust me?”
“All right—but it’s under protest,” Cray conceded. “If you’d tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll review them.”
“I can’t. I’m not sure exactly. It’s a gut feeling.” He was a cop. He understood a cop’s gut. Computer experts and private investigators had it, too. There was a reason this memory wouldn’t relent. And she didn’t need to be hit with a ball bat to heed it.
“Okay, I’ll make the request.”
“When will you have it?”
“Depends on Tennessee. Could be a couple hours, could be a day or two. I’ll ask them to rush it.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“This is about Jeff, not Danny, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you still doubting he could be your stalker?”
“No, I can’t say I am. But I’m not ready to convict him without indisputable evidence. Something’s off. He divorced me because he blamed me for Danny. So why is he marrying a woman who looks a lot like me?”
“Tell me this request isn’t linked to your emotions, Della. Tell me it’s about the case.”
“It’s definitely about the case,” she assured him, thumbing the lid on her coffee cup. Steam rose out of it and curled toward the roof of the car.
“So, where are you?”
“Starbucks, but I’m leaving.” He was testing her. He’d already traced her call and knew exactly where she was.
“Della, you know he’s going to come for you.”
“Yes.” She cranked the engine. “I’ll call back to see if you’ve got the file.”
“Wait. Della, wait.”
She ended the call and removed the battery, then took off. All she had to do was stay lost awhile and then show up.
Jeff knew exactly where he’d find her.
* * *
He lay flat on his stomach under the cover of the fat bushes at the empty cottage across the street. It had been dark for hours. If she was coming back here, she should be here by now. Probably drove to Destin to avoid the crew at Lost, Inc. They’d checked her cottage a couple of times, and she’d expect that they would.
According to his reconnaissance, everyone except Paul Mason was at Miss Addie’s North Bay Café, debating where to look next to find Della.
They’d be watching the cottage—he looked at the one belonging to the old lady and the kid. No signs of life there and there hadn’t been since he’d taken out Della’s garage. The camera he’d installed aiming at her front door and garage proved there’d been no activity on the premises.
Della wouldn’t run. That much he’d bank on. Sometime before dawn, she’d show up for the confrontation she knew now was inevitable. And where she went, Mason would follow.
Let them come. Especially Mason.
Envy, white-hot and emerald-green, ran through his veins like blood riding an adrenaline tsunami. Interfering jerk had no right to bring her here or to insinuate himself into her life.
Before dawn, he’d regret it.
They’d see that their attempts to stop him were futile and weak. They couldn’t stop him. He was ready. He’d been preparing the cottage for two days....
Mason arrived in Madison McKay’s Jag and parked in a driveway down the street. He checked Della’s cottage, peeking in the windows. Backed away, then walked next door to Miss Addie’s. In short order, he got back in the Jag and took off.
All activity stopped, and night settled in on the quiet street. No sense being in a hurry. The wee hours before dawn always made for the best disasters. When fatigue set in and weariness reigned.
Just after midnight, he heard a car. Della, driving Mason’s SUV. She pulled into the driveway, headed up to the garage and parked the car in the backyard so it wasn’t visible from the street. Making sure if her friends did a drive-by they wouldn’t see it.
No one ever claimed she was stupid—least of all, him.
When she entered the house, he took himself a little nap. Ten minutes was enough to clear the mind and sharpen the senses. If anything disrupted the stillness, he’d know it.
He awakened and ran a neighborhood check. No strange cars, no strange activity. Calm and dead quiet. Even the wind had ceased and settled in. He waited, and waited, and finally checked his watch. 2:30 a.m.
Perfect. He scanned the street. A lamp upstairs in Della’s cottage burned. Miss Addie’s was dark.
No sign of Mason. Still elsewhere or lying low at Addie’s so Della wouldn’t know he was there?
Could be either, but it didn’t matter. There’d be nothing he could do in time to save her.
He ran a final check on the rest of the neighborhood. No signs of anyone from Lost, Inc., or anyone on the street. The lights inside the homes had gone out, one by one. Everyone was down for the night. All systems go....
Removing the last of the surveillance cameras he’d had trained on Addie’s and Della’s, he stowed them in a black utility bag, retrieved the phone from his pocket and dialed the number. The telltale beep sounded. He punched in the code.
Outward, there were no signs anything had changed.
He waited three minutes, then five.
Seven minutes later, he saw the first flame through the window inside Della’s.
“Goodbye, Della Jackson,” he whispered, walking out of the neighborhood. “Have a pleasant death.”
* * *
Something was burning.
Fully dressed on her bed, unaware that she’d drifted off to sleep, Della startled awake. Her hand clipped her cell phone. It crashed against the floor and cracked. Her nose burned. Fire. Definitely fire. She ran to her bedroom door. It was hot, and smoke began pouring into her bedroom under her door.
Second floor. Only way out was the window. She turned for it. Unlocked its latches and heaved.
Someone had nailed it shut.
She grabbed the house phone. Dead. Tried the cell, though she had no hope it was functional. It wasn’t.
Think, Della. Think!
She had to get out. She swept the nightstand bare, lifted it and heaved it against the window. It bounced, but the glass didn’t break.
She touched it—it wasn’t glass. Her window had been replaced with some kind of acrylic. Shatterproof acrylic.
The smoke thickened, burning her eyes, her lungs. She stood on her bed, reached for the ceiling. If she could get into the attic, she might be able to bust through the eaves or even the roof. She stretched, but was too short. Couldn’t reach.
Returning to the window, she banged on it and shouted. Someone would hear her. Someone somewhere had to hear her. “Help! Help!”
* * *
A loud thump sounded.
A ladder appeared against the side of the house. And then Paul’s face appeared at the window. “Move away from the window.”
Never in her life had she been so glad to see anyone. “I can’t get out.�
��
He motioned for her to move.
Della stepped aside, and he rammed a crowbar against the pane. Nothing happened. Quickly assessing, he dragged his fingertips along the edge and began prying out the acrylic sheet. “Jimmy, it’s Plexiglas,” he shouted down the ladder. “Heads up.”
The outer sheet fell to the ground.
Della’s eyes burned, watering so bad everything was blurred. Her throat and lungs ached. She couldn’t think straight, and coughed hard, then harder. Her knees went weak, then gave out. Too weak to catch herself, she slid down to the floor.
Paul watched her sink down out of his view. “Della! Hang on, Della!”
He rammed the inner sheet with his shoulder. Again and again.
The wood beside it cracked and gave. He raised it as a shield against the flames now creeping into her bedroom, stepping over Della, on the floor.
She was unconscious.
Please... Paul gathered her in his arms and made his way down the ladder. Jimmy steadied it from the ground.
Paul ran away from the house and put Della down on the ground in the grass, forced fresh air into her lungs. He pressed his fingertips to her neck. “Get an ambulance.”
“On the way,” Jimmy told him. “Is she okay?”
Paul looked up, his face wet with tears from the stinging fire, from fear of losing Della. “She has a pulse.”
He repeated that into his phone, then asked, “Her lungs? Are they burned?”
“I don’t know. I think I got to her in time. I just don’t know.”
He kept breathing for her. “Della, please don’t leave me, too. Please, don’t you leave me, too.”
* * *
Della sputtered and coughed.
Her eyes burned, stung. “Paul?”
“Right here, honey.” He clasped her hand. “You’re okay. You’re in an ambulance. There was a fire.”
“I remember. The windows...” Her voice was thick and raspy, and her throat felt raw. “I can’t see. Everything is blurry.”
“There’s salve in your eyes to protect them. You’ll be okay.”
“I couldn’t get out.”
He pressed his face to their clasped hands. “You’re out now. Everything is going to be fine.”
“Fine?” Worry rippled through her voice.
“Not fine,” he quickly amended. “Great. It’s all going to be great.” He shouted at the driver, “How much longer?”
“Two minutes.”
Della went statue still. She’d know that voice anywhere. Oh, no. No.
“I’m going to give you a shot to help with the pain, Miss Jackson.” A female attendant wearing an awful blond wig that half hid her face filled a syringe.
“No. I don’t want it.”
“It’ll help your body heal, not to have to fight the pain.”
“No.” Della felt the IV in her arm. “Take it out, Paul. I want it out. Right now.”
“Della, you need fluids.” He seemed totally oblivious. “Let me talk to her,” he told the female attendant. “She’s disoriented.”
“Just for a minute. She’s going to need this when we move her.”
Paul leaned low, whispered, “What’s wrong?”
She drew on his hand. J. E. F. F.
“You want Jeff?”
She pressed a fingertip to her lips, mouthed, Jeff is driving.
Paul nodded, adjusted the IV, removed the needle and repaired the dressing, burying it so it appeared that the needle was still inserted in her vein.
“Okay,” the female EMT said. “We really can’t wait any longer.”
Finally he’d gotten a good look at the EMT. It was the woman who’d posed as Della and shipped the package from Panama City. “No problem,” Paul said, thinking on his feet. “She’s ready now, right?”
“It doesn’t hurt, but okay.”
Tamela injected something into the IV line, emptied the syringe.
Della reached for Paul. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.” He stroked her arm. “Trust me.”
The ambulance stopped at a traffic light. Its red lights whipped circles into the darkness and its siren blared. The driver honked at the cars ahead, signaling them to get out of his way.
Paul seized his preoccupation, elbowed the attendant—Tamela in a wig—knocked her out, then positioned her so that the top half of her body was hidden from the driver’s view, and it appeared that she was bent over Della.
Ready? he mouthed.
Della nodded.
He grabbed her, shoved open the back door and jumped through, tugged her into his arms, then took off running with her down the street.
Madison honked. “Get in. Get in!”
Paul dumped Della into the backseat, then slid into the passenger’s seat, banging his knee on the dash. Pain shot up his leg. “Go. Go!”
Madison stomped the accelerator, made a U-turn and sped down the street. “Cray, hold on,” she said into her phone. “I don’t know what’s going on. Paul will explain.” Madison thrust the phone at him.
Paul seated it at his ear. “Jeff Jackson’s driving the ambulance. Tamela Baker’s playing the EMT. Della recognized his voice. Tamela tried to give her a shot of something, so check the syringe.” He quickly explained the rest. He turned to look at Della. “Don’t touch the bandages. Cray wants to analyze them.”
“Okay.”
“You all right, Della?” Madison spoke softly.
“Yeah, I am. I think I really am.”
“Thank God,” Paul said. “Finally some good news. Let me know when you have him. Yeah, call Madison’s cell.” Paul disconnected, told Della and Madison, “They’ve intercepted the ambulance. Tamela’s in custody. She says Jeff took off on foot when we escaped. Officers haven’t spotted him yet, but if he’s on foot, it shouldn’t be long until they have him in custody.”
Tears slid down Della’s cheeks. “They have to find him first.”
“They will.” Paul looked beyond her, checking behind them.
“Doc has a hotel room he wants us to see.” Madison looked back at Della in the rearview. “Do you need the hospital?”
“No, no hospital. The oxygen was real and my eyes are clearing.” She shoved her hair back from her face. “What happened to the real EMTs?” Chills ripped up Della’s back. “You don’t think he’s hurt—”
“Cray doesn’t think anyone was involved. Tamela says Jeff stole the empty ambulance from the drive at the hospital and was waiting to rush in—if Della made it out, that is. Cray’s verifying things now.”
Della squeezed her eyes shut, hoping no one was hurt.
“You’re sure you’re okay? What about your breathing?” Paul asked. “Any burning or pain when you breathe deep?”
He was worried about her lungs. “A little heavy, but no scorched taste in my mouth, and none of the other indications. A little scratchy throat, but it’s already feeling better. I’m okay.”
“Good.” Madison passed back an evidence bag. “Put that IV dressing in this.”
Paul gently removed the IV dressing and dropped it all into the bag, sealed it then passed it back to Madison.
Madison caught Della’s gaze in the rearview. “Are you up to seeing whatever it is Doc wants us to see?”
Paul checked the side mirrors, then scanned the street out the back windshield, making sure they weren’t being followed. Diligent. What a blessing he’d been nearby. She’d needed him many times in the past three years, but never more than tonight. “Yeah, I’m up to it.” Adrenaline still surged through her body. The sooner this was resolved, the better. “Where’s this hotel?”
“Delta Pointe,” Madison said. “We found the one Jeff stayed in with his family—the one he didn’t want to leave. Apparently a couple homes were taken out in Hurricane Opal. The land sat vacant for a couple years, and then a developer bought it, razed it and built a hotel where it used to be. Doc’s there now.”
It was undoubtedly close enough to possibly be Jeff-related. He
r stomach pitched. “Has he called Cray?”
Madison tilted her head. “Actually, Cray contacted Doc after hotel management called the police.”
“Why did the hotel call the police?” Paul asked.
Della braced for the worst.
“I don’t know.” Madison smoothed a hand down her slim black skirt. “Doc didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.”
Della looked at Paul. The concern in Madison’s voice didn’t begin to convey the worry so evident in his eyes.
TWELVE
Madison parked at Delta Pointe.
The sky-blue clapboard hotel stretched four stories high and for all intents appeared to be a large home with a half dozen white wicker rockers on a front porch that stretched all the way across its width. “It’s room 205,” she told Della, glancing through the car window at her.
Paul climbed out, his cell phone at his ear, and then opened the door for Della. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “No, it’s not good news. Let us know if you spot him.”
Della stepped out of Madison’s car. The salty tang of gulf breeze blew in her face and filled her senses, but the calm that usually came with it eluded her. “Was that Cray calling?” Fear burned in her stomach.
“Yeah, he’ll be here shortly. He was detained.”
“Bad news obviously.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to decipher Paul’s tone or expression. Add what she’d overheard of their conversation, and the truth was evident. “Jeff got away, didn’t he?”
The stiff breeze tugged at his hair. Paul bit down on his lips. “For now.”
She wanted to cry. Her nose burned and her eyes stung.
“Cray’s got every available officer on it and he’s issued an APB. Okaloosa and Walton counties are on alert.”
She nodded, too well aware there were a million ways to slip through the net, especially by cutting through all the reservation land. He’d been on a four-wheeler at the ranch, so he had the means to do it. Definitely not good news. “Can’t anything break our way? Just one thing?”
“A lot has.” Madison gripped her hair in a bunch at her neck to keep it from flying in her face.
“Like what?”
“Well, you’re not dead. Neither explosion got you, and the attempted ones failed to go off. And you escaped from the fire. That’s a lot of big breaks right there.” Madison sighed. “Look, don’t get discouraged, Della. You know how these things go. He’ll mess up and we’ll get him. They always mess up, and you always get them.”
