by Pat Warren
“I’m terrific,” she answered. “On top of the world.” It was the longest exchange they’d had since meeting, including his terse commands when they’d been leaving.
For several minutes Luke had been glancing into the mirror, watching her struggling with her restrictions and discomfort. She had to be hurting, scared, probably missing her family. He’d half expected tears, but she’d surprised him.
Terry Ryan was feistier than he’d originally suspected. He’d been impressed that she hadn’t screamed when he’d easily broken into the motel room. He’d been surprised just now when she’d sworn after bumping her head. Studying Bob’s file notes earlier, he’d had her classified as a Catholic school–educated Girl Scout who likely wouldn’t say it if she had a mouthful of it. Maybe he was wrong.
The thing was Luke hadn’t had much experience protecting young women. He’d had several criminal types in the program, being tucked away so they could testify against the kingpin in return for immunity. Unsavory characters he hadn’t trusted. He’d had whole families he’d had to relocate, to set up with new identities since the father in the family was vulnerable because of what he knew. But only once before had he been assigned to watch over a single young woman, and that had turned out badly.
“Why don’t you move up here?” Luke suggested, indicating the single seat to his right. He could gain her cooperation more readily if he got to know her.
Terry wasn’t sure she wanted to sit up front, close to the windshield, where she’d probably relive the accident. Yet she didn’t want to annoy her protector by refusing, either. Somewhat awkwardly, she made her way to the seat and quickly buckled herself in, noticing that Sara slept on.
She could see more clearly out the windshield than through the more heavily darkened side windows. They were on a four-lane divided highway which, she gathered from the occasional road signs, was heading north along the coast of California. There probably was no point in asking Luke exactly where they were going since she doubted he’d tell her. Fog had rolled in from a churning sea and a chilling gray rain had begun to fall. The weather added to the gloomy atmosphere inside the van.
Though he’d invited her up front, it apparently hadn’t been for a chat, Terry thought as she surreptitiously studied Luke’s profile. Grim was the best word she could come up with to describe his closed expression, his hooded eyes. Not a man one would want to run up against in a dark alley. Or one a person might choose to spend weeks with under what amounted to house arrest.
He’d changed from his business attire into jeans and a denim shirt, the sleeves rolled up. He had a leather jacket draped on the seatback and he wore black sneakers. The better to creep around undetected, she imagined.
Terry decided she preferred dull, boring George.
“You fired him, didn’t you?” she asked, still looking at Luke. She needed to talk, if only to occupy her mind.
His eyes on the road, Luke frowned. “Who?”
“George.”
“I don’t have the authority to hire or fire. That’s Deputy Chief Jones’s job.”
“But you told Jones that George wasn’t exactly doing a great job, right?”
Luke let out a long breath. “A federal agent’s responsibility in the program you’re in is to keep you safe from all danger, to remove all potentially harmful obstacles humanly possible. I think George fell considerably short on that.” He sent her a quick, assessing glance. “I take it you prefer to remain alive?”
He had her there. “Yes.” But her sympathetic nature still nudged her. “He’s a nice man.”
“Nice isn’t what this is all about. Nice won’t cut it if the men who are after you find you.” He let that sink in. She had to be made to realize the seriousness of her situation. What she was going to go through before all this was over wasn’t going to be a day at the beach.
Terry sighed. “I don’t suppose you smoke?” She hadn’t smelled cigarettes in the van.
“Not anymore. Do you?”
“I did, before all this.” It’d been awhile now, and the doctor had advised her not to start again. But the craving would hit her at the oddest times. “Right now, I’d kill for a cigarette. But I guess it would be stupid to go back to it.”
“I can get you a pack next time we stop. With all the changes you’ve had to undergo, maybe this isn’t the best time to quit.”
That was the first spurt of human understanding he’d shown. “How long ago did you quit?”
“Six years, five months and… eleven days.”
“Odd how every ex-smoker seems to remember that time frame almost to the minute.” He still wasn’t smiling, but with a shared weakness in common, he seemed less formidable somehow. “So now you have no bad habits, I’ll bet.”
He sent her another quick glance, his hard mouth softening. “Absolutely none.”
She checked him out again more thoroughly, noticing his workingman’s hands, scarred and callused, and wondered why a federal agent wouldn’t have smooth, soft skin. “What about your hands? You bite your nails, don’t you?”
“No. I sort of tear them off. Same thing. You caught me.”
His admission relaxed her another fraction. “I’m surprised you don’t have a car phone in here,” she commented, studying the dash. He had every other gadget known to man—a compass, a CB, a fuzzbuster.
“Car phones use the airwaves. Others on the same frequency can listen in. Ham operators can monitor the calls. Too risky.”
Terry was sure he was right. She drew in a deep breath, catching the still-unfamiliar scent of the sea drifting in through the window Luke had cracked a bit. The faint moan of a boat’s foghorn sounded far away. The wind beat against the palms along the left and the rumble of the tide rolling in could be heard vying for attention with the distant thunder. She shivered and pulled her knees up, hugging them.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“No, I’m just not fond of being out in storms.”
“It’s only a little rain.”
She watched the windshield wipers slap back and forth, letting their monotonous rhythm all but hypnotize her. But her mind wouldn’t be still, the memories attacking her awake or sleeping. A loud clap of thunder seemingly just overhead had her jumpy. “When I was a little girl, my father used to tell me that angels in heaven were bowling when it thundered.”
“One just got a strike.” He’d read John Ryan’s profile in the folder Jones had given him. The retired cop hadn’t struck him as a whimsical father, yet the report had indicated that John Ryan was very close to his daughter. In the shadowy light, he noticed that Terry’s skin was nearly as pale as her white bandages. “You miss him a lot, I guess.”
Terry swallowed. “Yeah, a lot.” Keep talking, she told herself. It’s so much better than thinking. “He makes me put a quarter into a Mason jar every time I swear,” she confessed, almost able to smile.
“Then you already owe one. I heard you back there.”
“If you could read my mind, you’d know I owe fa-more.”
Luke slowed as the highway trailed through a small town, one of many along the coastal road. “You’ve had a rough month.” Pretty dumb, stating the obvious, but it was as close as he could come in trying to let her know he understood.
Odd how kindness made her want to cry. Terry touched the scarf she’d taken to wearing over her patchy hair. “This probably sounds stupid, but even my hair hurts.”
“A little nerve damage probably. It’ll go away.” His quick glance took in her appearance. New white tennis shoes, navy sweatshirt and pants, checkered scarf twisted about her head. She’d had no clothes so Sara must have picked out her outfit at a local San Diego store. He had a feeling Terry would have chosen differently. According to her file, it was the cousin who’d died who’d been the conservative one. “Why don’t you take off that scarf? It can’t be real comfortable.”
“Because I look like a scarecrow trying out for Halloween.”
“No one’s staring. Besides,
I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”
“That’s really a comfort.” She might have if George had been the driver, but something about Luke Tanner had her feeling doubly self-conscious.
She shifted her gaze out the window. They were going through a small town with low buildings, a church steeple illuminated on a hillside, the influence of Spanish architecture evident everywhere, not unlike some Phoenix neighborhoods.
The dashboard clock read ten after nine as she listened to her stomach growl. They’d missed dinner.
Luke heard the sound and realized he ought to stop for food. It’d be too late to find anything open by the time they reached their destination. Up ahead, he spotted a sign advertising the golden arches coming up in five miles. “I’ll pull up to the drive-in window and order takeout. What would you like?”
“I’m not hungry,” Terry said, despite her noisy stomach. The problem was that every time she ate, she developed pains shortly after. Chewing made her cheeks ache where delicate stitches had been taken. “Maybe just a milkshake.”
If he were alone, he’d have driven through. Long ago, Luke had disciplined himself to hold off on food in order to get to safety first. He didn’t honestly think anyone had discovered where Terry Ryan was; nor were they being followed. Still, he had to consider the two women in the car, one young and frightened, the other just waking from a nap. If he wanted their voluntary cooperation, that is.
“You have to eat in order to get well.”
The simple, soft-spoken statement was nearly her undoing. She knew he was right, but she was so damn tired—of hurting both physically and inside on a much deeper level. And she was afraid—of more pain, of dying as horribly as Lynn had, of going to sleep because she was sure to relive the nightmare. How could she explain all that to a cop whose main job was to keep her alive, not chase away her fears?
“All right, you order for me and I’ll eat it.”
This concern for someone’s health and well-being was new to him. “Listen, I know what you’re going through. I…”
“No!” Terry gritted her teeth, feeling altogether fed up and frustrated. “I wish everyone would stop saying that. You don’t know how I feel, not any of you. I don’t have a speck of ID, no driver’s license, no money of my own. My purse is gone, all my… my pictures of my family. My best friend is dead and no one I love even knows where I am. Someone tried to kill me and may still succeed. I have peach fuzz for hair and God-only-knows what my face will look like after these bandages come off. How can you possibly know what I’m going through?”
Luke listened, knowing she had every right to feel as she did. To have a close brush with death was a reminder that the next time we might not be so lucky, something the young rarely gave much thought to under normal circumstances. He’d had plenty of close calls and each had made changes in him. He wondered if he could make her see.
“I know because I’ve been where you are. I tangled with one of the men involved. I appreciate your fear and I respect your feelings. You’ve got to trust me. I’ll keep you safe from him and the others, but you’ve got to put your whole trust in me, to do what I ask when I ask.” He shifted into the right lane, then turned into the parking lot, heading for the lane that led to takeout. He glanced over to see her watching him intently. “Do you think you can manage that, Terry?”
It was the first time he’d used her name, giving a more personal slant to their relationship. God knew she wanted to trust him, wanted desperately to turn her worries over to someone else. Maybe he was the one who could end the nightmare and return her to her world. “I’ll try,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I lashed out. It’s just that my life is out of my control and I hate that. I dislike being beholden to strangers for even the toothpaste I use. I’ve been on my own for years and I loathe this dependency.”
“I’m not good at relinquishing control, either. I’ll do everything I can to get your life back for you as quickly as I can.”
Terry sat staring out the window, wishing her emotions weren’t so raw.
Luke pulled the van up to the ordering menu, then swung around toward Sara. “Dinnertime. What’ll you have, ladies?”
In the city of Phoenix, Officer Neil Manning was on night patrol, his squad car assigned to the downtown district frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers. Since his partner, Jerry Foster, had been found dead in an alley several weeks ago, Neil was traveling with a rookie named Pete Hansen, fresh from eight weeks of training after the Academy. The kid was twenty-six and nice enough. But he talked incessantly about his wife and newborn son, things a single guy like Neil couldn’t get into.
He missed Jerry.
“Take a left onto Roosevelt and let’s swing along there, see if there’s any action,” he told Pete.
“Sure thing.” Pete licked his dry lips. “Mind if I pull in over at Circle K and get something to drink? Betsy made fish for dinner tonight—fried perch fillets so tender they melt in your mouth. But man, am I thirsty.”
“Yeah, go ahead.” Neil watched the lanky kid run inside and sighed heavily. Things just weren’t the same. He and Jerry had been friends for a long time, and roommates in an eastside apartment they shared since Jerry’s divorce two years ago. They’d been on the same wavelength in so many ways. Neil just couldn’t figure why someone would off a nice guy like Jerry.
The scuttlebutt around the station was making him fighting mad. Some guys were saying Jerry had been on the take and that he’d been eliminated because he’d been about to spill the beans. Neil didn’t believe the gossip for a minute. Jerry had complained a lot after his divorce, saying he was being sucked dry by his ex over child support, but he’d kept up his payments. He’d even managed lately to buy some spiffy clothes and a new Buick. The two of them had put in a lot of overtime and Jerry had learned to handle his money better, that was all. Apparently there were guys at the station who were jealous. Just yesterday, Neil had almost come to blows with Fred Harmon, a loudmouth who suggested Neil didn’t know his partner’s secret life.
That was crazy. Neil knew everything there was to know about Jerry Foster. Hell, his mother, a widow who’d been blind for years, was depending on Neil to settle her son’s financial affairs. He’d even made the funeral arrangements. It was the least he could do.
Pete pulled open the door and got in, drinking through a straw stuck in a huge plastic container.
“How can you drink that sugary garbage?” Neil asked crossly.
“Sugar’s energy, my friend,” Pete said, backing up, then pulling into traffic.
You aren’t my friend, Neil thought sadly. Never will be.
The stucco house painted a desert brown was so well camouflaged by the surrounding shrubs and trees that a passerby might well miss it, Terry thought as she peered out through the windshield. In the headlights of the van, she could see that the structure was two stories high backing up to a rising hill, the property completely enclosed by a chain-link fence. Luke had jumped out and opened the padlocked gate with a key from his pocket, then hurried back to drive through before relocking the fence.
“Who owns this place?” she asked as he climbed back in.
“The Bureau. Confiscated a while back during a drug bust.”
Staring out at the overgrown bushes trailing onto the pebble drive, Terry frowned. “It looks neglected.”
“They deliberately keep the yard this way. It discourages visitors.” Luke pulled the van close up to the attached garage door. “You two sit tight while I have a look around.” Taking his high-beam flashlight, he stepped out into a light drizzle. Once in the yard, he reached for his .38 before disappearing around back.
“He’s the most cautious man I’ve ever met,” Terry said to Sara.
“Honey, that kind of caution will keep you alive.” Sara stretched her long legs. “I think we’ll all be glad to get into a real bed.”
Terry felt tired and stiff, but not necessarily sleepy. She’d watched the storm blow off to sea and settle into a light rainfall
as they passed through the coastal towns. After they’d eaten, Sara had dozed, but Terry’d been too curious to drop off. She’d asked only one question of Luke, why he wasn’t taking the highway instead of the slower inland route. He’d explained that it was more difficult to follow them through the rural roads where there were always plenty of turnoffs. She figured he probably was right.
She’d seen the sign indicating that they were on the outskirts of Carmel, and had sat up straighter when Luke had told her they were almost at their destination. With Lynn, she’d visited the small artists’ colony last summer, and they’d both loved the town. Never had she dreamed that one day she’d be hiding out from a killer in the same peaceful area.
“No one asks too many questions around here,” Luke had volunteered when he’d seen her interested look. “It’s sort of an unspoken rule that people here believe in live and let live, respecting one another’s privacy. That’s one reason I use this safe house whenever I can.”
They passed an ice-cream parlor and an arcade of shops. “I don’t suppose we’ll be able to come into town?” she’d asked hopefully.
“We’ll see,” he’d answered in the maddening tone a father might use on a pesky child.
Suddenly floodlights illuminated the yard just before Luke stepped out of the front door. Terry saw that heavy black wrought iron shielded each window and nearly groaned aloud. While the practical side of her knew that made the house even safer, she hated the prisonlike feel of protected windows.
Luke opened her door and helped her down while Sara climbed out of the van’s sliding door. He turned on lights inside, then went back out to bring in their luggage. Terry stretched her sore muscles before taking a look around.
It was a surprise to find that the place, though quite old, was far cozier than she’d expected. A stone fireplace in the corner of the living room, a long corduroy couch, deep comfortable chairs, a cluttered bookcase, and several colorful pillows. A narrow archway led into a dining room with a wooden table, and past that she could see the kitchen. The colors were golds and browns with a touch of orange, circa 1970. The only criticism she might have were the heavy drapes covering all the windows. For security reasons, no doubt, she decided.
