Willing Hostage

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Or buried deep in a file somewhere so that no one is embarrassed by it,” Glade finished the sentence for him.

  “Is that what you’re worried about? What if I give you my word that won’t happen?”

  “Your word doesn’t go high enough and you know it. Your word would get lost in a paper shuffle.”

  “You’ve endangered your own life and that of Miss Harper long enough.” Joseph Welker stood in a TV lawyer’s stance with his hands behind his back, staring at the ceiling, rolling to the balls of his feet and then back onto his heels. “What if I got you the word of someone higher up? Someone like—”

  “Swords,” Glade interrupted and tightened his lips until they turned white.

  “Swords! Harry Swords? Well, I hardly think we need go that—”

  “Harry Swords and Pete Bradshaw or no deal.”

  Welker paced, thought, finally shrugged. “I’ll try.”

  Their eyes locked. “And safe transport to neutral ground.”

  “That, too, with cash to tide you through the investigation and any troubles it might cause. Well?”

  Glade stroked the cat thoughtfully. The room seemed to hold its breath. He looked up at Welker. “Then … I’d listen, anyway.”

  “Good. That’s all I ask. I’ll get on it right away.” Joe Welker left the room in a rush.

  Glade shook his head slowly and sighed. “Babes.”

  “What?” Julie finished her scribbling and looked up.

  “Shouldn’t mess around in the woods,” Glade whispered so softly that Leah barely heard it. He laughed and his arm slipped off the back of the couch as his hand found the back of Julie’s neck.

  The next thing Leah knew, she’d spilled chocolate down her front and Julie had slid sideways, her eyes closed and her mouth open.

  Goodyear hit the floor and Glade Wyndham was across the room to take Leah in his arms. “How many at the doors?”

  “You didn’t kill her, did you?” Leah whispered back.

  “No. How many?” His arms tightened brutally.

  “There’s always one on the balcony. I suppose Brian is in the hall. I don’t know of any others.”

  Glade rummaged through a drawer in the kitchenette and then moved to the balcony doors. “Goodyear stuck to me like glue after we left you,” he said aloud, easing the glass door open. “I’ll bet you’re glad to have him back.”

  “Yes.” Leah knew they were making conversation for the bugs and realized with astonishment that he was making an escape.

  She bent to touch Julie and heard mesh give as he cut the screen. So did the man on the balcony. Shoes sounded on boards just as Glade withdrew his hand from the slit, slid the screen open about two feet, and stepped back so that the drapes hid him from view.

  The guard peered through the opening at Leah, and as he noticed Julie on the couch, he unbuttoned his suit coat.

  Leah had a brief glimpse of a holster under his arm, of Glade’s hand flying out to grab his hair and draw him into the room as the other hand chopped down on his neck.

  Julie murmured. The guard lay sprawled half in the room and half on the balcony. Glade reached under him to remove the weapon from its holster, stepped over the guard, and disappeared. Leah blinked. He hadn’t even offered to take her along.

  He hadn’t even looked back.

  “Welcome to the United States of America,” Leah said shakily as Julie opened her eyes.

  Joseph Welker surveyed the room, thunder on his face. Goodyear sniffed the inert guard. Leah brought Julie a scotch and water.

  Brian leaped over the balcony rail outside and back into the room. “No Wyndham. But I saw another guy I didn’t like the looks of.”

  “Why? Why!” Welker boomed for the tenth time and resumed his pacing.

  Brian dragged the guard into the room and closed the screen, the glass door, and the drapes. “Joe, I think the goons are here.” The baby face had paled.

  Leah had cream of potato soup that night. Julie fried chicken for the rest of them in Leah’s kitchenette. They’d spent the day together, the revived guard guarding the balcony from inside the room, Brian making short forays outside to keep an eye on the suspected goons, Welker making an occasional trip to the apartment next door to use the phone or answer the ring heard clearly through paper walls.

  Julie and Leah were washing the dinner dishes when the CIA arrived, Peter Bradley from the meadow and Charlie from the helicopter and a third man who filled the crowded room to suffocation … and who looked a lot like Glade Wyndham … but who was not.

  “What is this, an armed camp?” Peter Bradley looked at the guard with drawn gun at the drapes. “There’s a couple of shadows outside that I sure hope are yours, Welker.” He carried a rolled newspaper.

  “Goons.” Joe Welker caught Julie’s eye and pointed at the percolator. “Knowing you guys, I’d half hoped they had connections with you, Bradshaw.”

  “Not our style.” Bradshaw, who had told Leah he was Bradley, sat on the couch and motioned for the man who had to be Glade’s brother to sit beside him. “You got trouble.” He turned to Charlie. “Go out and keep an eye open. And Charlie, that’s all you do.”

  “Go with him, Brian,” Welker ordered.

  Charlie grinned at Leah as he passed.

  “Is this how he’s paying for what he did to me?” she thought and wanted out. Goons or no.

  “This is Joe Welker, FBI, Cal.” Bradshaw folded and unfolded the newspaper. “Cal Wyndham.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Wyndham.” Welker shook hands with Glade’s brother formally, then took his favorite seat on the rock shelf.

  “Understand my brother’s in some kind of trouble.” Cal Wyndham’s dark curls were shorter than Glade’s and tighter to his head, with speckles of gray among them. He was an inch or two shorter, somewhat fuller around the middle, and his voice and eyes were softer than his brother’s. Good humor had permanently pressed lines in the ingrained tan of his face. As much as he resembled Glade, Cal didn’t look like the kind of man who would run off and leave a woman without even a farewell as his brother had that morning.

  “Where is Glade, anyway?” Bradshaw asked.

  “Gone. Slit the screen and took off this morning.”

  “You mean you had him and you let him go?” Bradshaw slapped his leg with the newspaper. “Why are the goons hanging around then?”

  “Apparently they think he’s still here.”

  Cal Wyndham grinned. “Never was any stopping that boy.”

  Bradshaw ignored him. “Then why did you let us come all this way for—”

  “I thought perhaps we could join forces. We’ll never get him in time, working against each other.”

  “You got your orders and I got mine.” Peter Bradshaw removed his tie and stuck it in his pocket. “And I doubt they’re the same, Joe.”

  “My orders are to get the papers.”

  “So are mine. But it’s what’s done with them and the thief that’s different and you know it.” Bradshaw scratched his chin and settled back against the couch. “Of course, if you need reinforcements, I could call in someone from the Denver office.”

  “We have our own Denver office,” Welker snapped.

  “What papers?” Cal asked.

  “Your brother has stolen some papers from his company’s safe, Mr. Wyndham.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Glade, but then I haven’t seen much of him lately.” Cal leaned forward to pet Goodyear, who was sniffing his cowboy boots. “He could have come to me if he needed money. He knew that, too. You sure he stole something?” he asked suspiciously.

  “He’s admitted it, Mr. Wyndham. I had Pete bring you here in hopes that you could talk to him. But.…” Welker shrugged.

  “Seen this?” Peter Bradshaw handed Welker the newspaper, avoiding Leah’s eyes as he took a cup of coffee from her.

  But Cal gave her an appreciative smile as she leaned over to pour for him. “You boys travel in style, don’t you?”

  “I’m s
orry. This is Miss Harper. Your brother’s current.”

  “Well, he always did travel in style. Do you think my brother stole something, Miss Harper?”

  “Not for money. And I’m not his current anything. Cream?”

  “You think Glade leaked this?” Welker looked at Bradshaw and flicked a finger at the newspaper.

  “No. They lifted that out of the Washington Post and it’s all speculative. But this is sure a bad time to have Wyndham on the loose. How the hell did you let him go?”

  “Never mind that now. What’ll we do? We’ve still got Leah Harper. Maybe he’ll come back for her … or.…”

  Bradshaw looked directly at Leah for the first time. “You don’t know Wyndham, Joe. The world’s full of blondes.”

  “I can’t think how that story got started,” a cold voice said drily from the doorway to the hall. “I’m not all that fussy about hair.”

  Glade Wyndham closed the door and walked into the room. He was alone and he carried Leah’s nail file in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The guard turned his gun in Glade’s direction.

  Welker and Bradshaw jumped to their feet and simultaneously started a barrage of questions.

  Glade greeted his brother and sat on the floor next to him, ignoring the guard and everyone else. He began to discuss the fine points of Goodyear’s size and coat with Cal. The cat was on Cal’s lap, trying to chew off one of the buttons on his plaid shirt.

  Leah retreated to the kitchenette, where Julie had dropped the percolator when Glade made his silly dramatic entrance. In intervals between mopping up coffee grounds with paper towels, Leah peered at the men and seethed at the one she’d been so glad to see because he appeared not to notice her. He’d noticed her last night.

  “Don’t you know there are men out there waiting to kill you?”

  “Can’t be pure Siamese with that heavy bone structure and weight.”

  “Where’s Brian and Charlie?”

  “Why did you sneak out of here?”

  “They tell me you stole some papers from your company, little brother.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “Leah”—Julie, on her hands and knees, looked up from the floor—“do you have any idea what’s going on? I mean, off the cuff?”

  “There’s goons out there, Wyndham.…”

  Welker shoved the newspaper between Glade and his brother. “And what’s this all about?”

  Glade read it through slowly. “Looks like things are rolling without me, doesn’t it?” he said softly and then looked up with a smile. “I’m here to make you a deal, gentlemen.”

  Leah stood, startled and disappointed, a stained paper towel dripping coffee through her fingers. After all he had put her through and himself as well for what Welker had called a hapless little crusade.…

  “‘What do you mean … deal?” Bradshaw reached under his coat. “What do we need with a deal now that we’ve got you?” he asked, pointing his gun at Glade.

  Cal Wyndham’s face turned as hard and watchful as his brother’s. “Put that thing away. What are you all, a bunch of John Waynes?”

  “But you don’t have the papers, do you, Pete?” Glade asked in a whisper.

  The phone range next door and Julie left to answer it.

  “How do you plan to deal with the CIA and the FBI all at one time, Wyndham?”

  “Jesus God, Peter, can’t you at least hear what the man has to say?” Welker exploded.

  “Stay out of this, Joe. He is, after all, our man.”

  “He’s in our territory. And so are you.”

  “Joe?” Julie called from the doorway. “It’s Swords. He wants to talk to Glade.”

  “Swords! What the hell’s he doing in on this?” Bradshaw slapped his forehead and backed into his corner of the couch.

  “I’m making my deal with him, too,” Glade said quietly and walked to the door.

  Cal and Leah were left alone with the guard, listening to voices in the next apartment, without quite being able to untangle the words, and listening to Goodyear purr.

  “He sounds like a pump I had once.” Cal smiled at her.

  Leah leaned her head back in the chair and considered taking a tranquilizer. The conversation next door went on and on.

  Cal Wyndham kept looking over his shoulder to the silent guard by the drapes and shifting his position uneasily. “Ought to be weapons-control legislation for government employees.”

  Leah had to laugh. “I agree. Would you like a drink?”

  He followed her to the sink to select from the assortment of bottles that had wandered in before dinner. “How long have you known my brother?”

  “Off and on for about two weeks. But I don’t really know him.”

  “I thought I did. But I never thought he’d steal anything.”

  “And I never thought he’d make a deal. Shows how little one person knows another, doesn’t it?” she said bitterly.

  “Always had it figured that he worked for the government secretlike while he was doing his other work.” He looked down into her face questioningly.

  “He did until ten months ago when he stole those papers. He was supposed to photograph them for the CIA, but instead he took them.”

  “But why?”

  “He didn’t like what was in them. He decided finally to turn them over to the press … some kind of scandal involving oil shale.”

  “Shale?” He combed his fingers through the tight curls in a gesture reminiscent of his brother and added water to the whiskey in his glass. “I wonder if it has anything to do with … did he tell you I sold my ranch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glade got real sore about it, thought I should save it for Jerry. He’s my son. He’s in medical school in Denver,” Cal said proudly. “Jerry was miffed, too. Not that he wanted to be a rancher but him and his uncle had fits about mining shale. But I had to sell out. I’d ’a been surrounded by shale operations and tons of people and no water. I’m still living in the buildings but I sold the cattle. I thought Glade’d be glad I sold to the company he worked for—”

  “What company is it?”

  “Enveco.”

  “The Environmental Energy Corporation.” Leah thought of the credit card in her purse and the serene heron and … Sheila. “Hard to believe somehow.…”

  “People that make up advertising slogans don’t have nothing to do with the people that decide what to do. They’re just hired from the outside to tell the public what they think it wants to hear.”

  Still the low murmur of male voices on the other side of the wall, with an occasional heated outburst.

  Leah resumed her seat by the fire and picked up the newspaper that Welker had left on the rock shelf. It was a copy of the Denver Post, OIL SHALE SWINDLE RUMORED, the headline read and below that, ANOTHER RIP-OFF SUSPECTED.…

  The Washington Post reported today that widespread rumors of collusion between government and industry to defraud the American public in the leasing of public lands, rich in oil shale deposits, may have some basis in truth. Industry bidding on these lands fell off when studies showed the economic waste and geographic destruction involved in mining shale and when Arab-American relations eased. Rising tensions in the Middle East have revived interest in the bidding, sources say. Post reporters claim to have information suggesting the leak of bidding information so that a few of the larger oil companies can gain control of these lands.

  When asked for comment, White House press secretary Norm Walters said, “Of course, we’re looking into this. But I must say how disappointed I am in the Washington Post. After the fine work it did on the Watergate coverup, to insist upon raking the gutters for fresh scandal just to keep up its subscription lists … well, I’m just disappointed, that’s all.”

  “Instead of putting our dollars into research to harness the sun and wind,” says prominent environmentalist Dr. Paul W. Wingless, “… it looks as though we are once again being forced to decide whether to r
uin the seas in offshore oil drilling or ruin the land in mining oil shale. Either way is suicidal and it will eventually be necessary to do both if we are to retain our reliance on an oil-based economy. And all because of major industries organized around the exploitation of a fast-depleting oil source. Shall we put off the dislocation and crisis of switching now when it is painful until later when it will be catastrophic?” asks Dr. Wingless.

  “I can’t make that kind of a decision,” Leah sputtered to a surprised Cal.

  They both jumped when Brian burst into the room. “We’ve lost the goons. Can’t see them anywhere. You seen anything?”

  The guard flipped his cigarette butt into the fireplace. “No.”

  “Well there’s a window broken downstairs. Where’s Joe?”

  “Next door with Glade Wyndham and everybody else.”

  “Wyndham? Who brought him in? We didn’t see—”

  “Came in by himself. Probably through your broken window. He’s on the phone to Swords.…”

  But Brian was on his way out, swearing softly.

  Goodyear stretched and sharpened his claws on the couch. He disappeared into the kitchenette and it wasn’t long before something crashed to the floor. The guard and his gun swung around.

  “Take it easy. It’s just the cat.” Leah didn’t know who was more dangerous, the FBI or the goons. But she, too, was uneasy at the thought of Sheila’s murderers in the building.

  In the kitchenette, Leah found the wastebasket overturned and chicken bones all over the floor. Goodyear disappeared into the bathroom with what was left of a wing.

  “Damn you, blimp, I’m tired of cleaning up floors!” But Leah was doing just that when the men returned.

  “I don’t like this, Swords or not,” Pete Bradshaw snapped.

  “What’s this, Joe? Have you got Leah working as cleaning woman now?”

  Leah gave him a dirty look, threw the last handful of bones at the basket, and stood to wash her hands at the sink.

  He reached around her to pick up the scotch bottle. “Stay cool,” he said under his breath and moved away.

  “When do we leave?” Joe Welker asked.

  “Tomorrow. And I go alone.” Glade took a tray of ice from the refrigerator.