Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: To Honor and To ProtectCorneredUntraceable

by Debra

  She sat down in the oversize chair and was immediately transported back to being a kid. She’d sit in his chair and spin, pretending she was on an amusement park ride. She shifted the seat from side to side and opened the top drawer. The move felt so naughty she only got it out far enough to stare at the pens sitting in the tray.

  That was enough. Snooping was not her style. If Cam needed proof or wanted to talk to Sandy, he could. She was not going to get in the middle of that.

  She walked back to the alarm keypad by the front door. She entered the code and tried a few variations. By the fifth time she had the nerves in her belly jumping around in a chaotic frenzy.

  People could talk about being comfortable at home and not wanting to leave. She got that. But being locked in made her twitchy. If Cam needed her, she couldn’t get there...and that realization set something spinning inside her.

  She went back into the family room and picked up the phone. Cam might jump to the wrong conclusions, but he might have a way to get out other than through an upstairs balcony. When she lifted the receiver she didn’t hear anything on the other end. No dial tone. She hung up and tried again. Then another time.

  By the time she slammed down the phone the last time, she was near frantic. She couldn’t control her breathing or her thoughts. She started jumping to bigger conclusions than Cam had. Then she remembered her cell. She’d left it on the kitchen counter.

  She raced back to the kitchen because plain walking no longer seemed fast enough. She stepped into the doorway and stopped. Sandy had cleaned off the counter after they ate, and the phone was gone.

  She pulled open drawers and looked on every flat surface. She made a run in the bedroom to see if he’d thrown it on the bed. No luck.

  She stood in the middle of the hall and thought it all through. No cell, no landline, no alarm code. No way out.

  Maybe Cam wasn’t so paranoid after all.

  * * *

  CAM TRIED JULIA’S cell for the third time. The phone rang and she didn’t pick up. He wanted to write it off to her being tired and crawling into bed. Maybe she was so wiped out she’d turned off the sound.

  There were a lot of reasonable possibilities. He kept dwelling on the awful, like that something had happened to her and she couldn’t get to the phone.

  The clinic floor was quiet, just as planned. They had the world thinking Ray was on the second floor. He was really on the third. They’d cleared patients out except for a few who couldn’t or refused to be moved.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Holt came up beside him and leaned against the wall in the visitors’ lounge.

  Cam tried to keep the panic out of his voice. The anxiety whipping through him was enough to deal with. “I can’t reach her.”

  Holt made a sound, something like a humph. “Maybe she needs a break.”

  “Didn’t seem like it.” If anything, she’d been trying to get him to commit to something. She’d been pretty unimpressed with his schedule and the danger aspects, probably because he was dragging her through the middle of danger at the time.

  “Is your head in this?” Holt asked as he checked his watch.

  “Yes.”

  Holt nodded and didn’t say anything else on that topic. That was Holt’s style. He didn’t browbeat. He treated everyone like a grown-up, which was quite refreshing. That wasn’t to say he didn’t butt in, because he did. But had an innate sense of when to back down, and he used it now.

  There was a broader principle at work. They had an understanding on the team: if you couldn’t go for the job, for whatever reason, you spoke up. You did not put the other team members in danger. Cam knew the rule and lived by it. He spent almost every day with Holt and Shane. There was no way he was going to put them in a position of having to pick up for him.

  And if he was right and Sandy presented a danger, then he needed to figure this out right now. The longer Julia spent in his house, trusting him while he did whatever he was doing, the worse the end could be. And one day he might decide that she knew too much or knew the wrong people, and then Cam didn’t want to think what would happen.

  But the worst part was they might get this close and not be able to finish this off. That was the line that Holt kept repeating, and he said a version of it here again. “He might not even show.”

  “He will.” Cam knew that Holt, who was usually right about these things—about most things, except women—had this part wrong. Sandy’s personality would not let him stay at home. If he thought he could fix this and save his reputation and all he’d built, he would. A guy who lived in that kind of house liked to send a personal message and would not be content to let that message flash about him being a drug dealer.

  “Yeah, I think so, too.” Holt looked down at his feet. “How are you going to explain that to her?”

  Cam had run through the various options numerous times. It all came down to the same thing. He would have to pull her aside and tell her that the first man she’d ever trusted—one of the few she’d ever trusted—had violated that trust in a serious way. He had no idea how she’d recover from that.

  So, for now, he dodged. “I can only handle one disaster at a time.”

  “That’s not true, but I’ll let you get away with that excuse.”

  * * *

  THE CLINIC HALLWAYS were quiet except for the occasional squawk over the speakers. Emergencies requiring serious care were flown to Seattle. The clinic served all the other needs of the community. Tonight it also acted as the scene for a setup.

  Cam stood in the bathroom of Ray’s reported room. Back at the house Cam had made sure to give the information to Julia in an offhanded way and she’d repeated it in front of Sandy. Cam had witnessed that part.

  With the silence coming from Sandy’s house, Cam wanted to send Holt over, but they needed all three of them there. Cam went back and forth between wanting Sandy to show up and not. He believed to his bones the older man had some side business going on. One that wasn’t legal. He’d love to be wrong, but he didn’t think he was.

  A long and painful hour passed with no signs of anything. The world outside the clinic had morphed into night and stretched into the early hours of the morning. The sky remained a dark gray, signaling another rainy day tomorrow.

  Cam leaned his head back against the wall. He was about to call this off and check on Julia when he heard the footsteps. Not sneakers. These were dress shoes. If he guessed right, expensive black dress shoes that he’d already seen.

  Whoever it was got by the guard, which was part of the plan. The guy was to sit there but get up for food and drinks. Set a pattern of not being great about being at the door. It didn’t matter, since Ray wasn’t on this floor. The real guard had strict orders, and after the way the guy got all wide-eyed and panic-stricken talking to Holt, Cam doubted that guard would mess up.

  The footsteps grew louder and there was a muffled sound that Cam now associated with the door opening and closing. The sound of the privacy curtain being peeled back and the way the rings clanked against the bar suggested the guy was moving around. If he came into the bathroom he’d see cabinets and not Cam hiding inside. Out there he’d see a man with Ray’s coloring sleeping on his stomach and all bandaged around the shoulder and stomach.

  The Ray part was tougher to pull off. If Sandy bent down and looked in close, he’d see that the face smashed in the pillow did not belong to Ray. The hope was that he’d buy the room and the clinic and try to do the job fast.

  Cam looked out of the crack in the door to the room beyond. Sandy walked around wearing doctor’s scrubs. It was a nice but unnecessary touch. They’d already covered that with the guard. But now when nurses and other people on the hall ignored him, it wouldn’t seem so odd.

  Sandy slipped around the bed toward the headboard and the beeping equipment. Nothing was actually connected to Shane as he played Ray, but Sandy didn’t need to know that. When Sandy took out a syringe and started filling the tubes he thought led into Ray, Cam felt si
ck. He didn’t even know if Julia would believe him despite the other witnesses.

  Cam slid out as Sandy finished. When he turned to leave he almost walked right into Cam.

  Cam held his gun steady. “You’re a doctor now?”

  “I was... There was... Just checking on him.” Sandy stumbled his way through a sentence that made no sense in light of who he was and his professed lack of knowledge about Ray Miner and who he was.

  “Do you need him to come back to work at the drug-producing plant? Must be hard to find people loyal enough to do that.” Cam almost spat. The guy made him sick.

  Sandy was one of those. He had everything and greed pulled at him until he went out and earned more. And not the legal way. No, he had to move drugs. Cam would bet he was a guy who found drug use to be disgusting yet had no problem pushing it to kids and getting rich off them.

  “What?”

  Sandy was playing dumb and Cam refused to buy it. The blank stare and confusion. He was acting to the wrong audience. “It’s over.”

  “I don’t know what you think you have, but—”

  Cam could almost see the wheels turning in the guy’s head. He was searching for a reasonable explanation and kept coming up blank. Cam almost wished Sandy would come forward and admit it, not hide behind the money he earned from illegal drugs. Just own his behavior.

  “You’re a drug dealer and murderer.” Cam had some other choice words for him but led with those two.

  Sandy starting shaking his head. “You’re passing your mess off on me.”

  “Why do this? Why drugs? I hear it’s a huge operation with great stuff.” Cam had promised he wouldn’t ask, but the question came out.

  He’d heard so many excuses and justifications over the years, most of them not true, that he no longer cared. The fact was, people committed these crimes and then acted shocked when caught. Sandy was the type to play the victim. Poor little millionaire got bored or was in the right place or whatever.

  Cam worked his butt off in his job and paid the bills. He didn’t expect a handout and he sure didn’t understand people who had it all and threw it away in the search for just a little bit more.

  Something came over Sandy. The fake fear in his eyes faded. Now he looked tall and in charge and every bit the crime boss. “Moving the drugs is easy. Growing them is easy. And if you’re really good and have the open land, it can be very lucrative.” He smiled. “Or so I hear. I don’t have personal experience, of course.”

  “Right.” Cam was done playing this game. “Step away from the bed.”

  “Or I could shoot the person in here.” Sandy brought out a gun that had been tucked into the waist of his pants. “Does this person mean anything to you? Actually, it doesn’t matter, because you’re one of those people who believes in others. Very tiresome.”

  Sandy brought the gun around and aimed it at the person in the bed.

  Cam shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that. He gets upset very easily.”

  “Why do I care?”

  “Because he has a grenade.” Cam said the code word for Shane to move.

  He did not waste time. He brought his arm out from under him with the blade arcing through the air. Just as Sandy turned and aimed again, Shane stabbed his knife into Sandy’s thigh.

  The man dropped his gun and let it clank against the floor. He let out an awful scream, one that was almost inhuman in its piercing squeal. Then he bent over, holding the wound.

  Real doctors came running and Holt slipped into the room. When Shane sat up, he looked down and watched Sandy make demands about his leg and a scar. After ripping the fake tubes out, he came to stand with Holt and Cam.

  Sandy rocked back and forth on the floor while Holt grabbed the discarded gun and a nurse tried to stop the bleeding. “You think you won, but I’ll beat this.”

  The guy fought to the end. Cam guessed a part of him should admire that, but it was hard to after hearing that squeal. “Good luck wasting your money doing that.”

  Sandy’s head whipped up and he pinned Cam with an intense stare. “And in the meantime you lose Julia.”

  “She loves you.” Cam wasn’t clear why at the moment. “Why would you do this to her?”

  Sandy’s rage spilled out of him now. There was nothing fatherly or caring about the guy huddled on the floor in a sitting position. “I am convenient to her. I did everything for her and she left. She was as useless as her father and look what happened to him.”

  Cam remembered the story. “He fell.”

  “Fell. Sure.” Sandy laughed.

  Everything inside Cam went cold. He heard Holt swear under his breath and saw Shane take a step back while he shook his head. “You’re saying that you—”

  “You might want to get to my house.” Sandy clenched his teeth as the nurse continued to work on his leg. “No phone. No way out. Julia could be on the edge right now.”

  Cam imagined her trying to get out of the house. All frantic and confused and winding up. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because for once I needed her to listen and do what she was told.”

  The comment was so cold, so awful, that Cam knew he couldn’t repeat it. Sandy had belittled her and expressed disappointment. And unless Cam misheard, Sandy had also admitted to doing something to Julia’s drunken father.

  “So you hate women,” Shane said.

  Sandy scoffed. “I hate weakness, and she and her father are all about weakness.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Right there was where Cam wrote the guy off. He couldn’t speak to Julia’s father, but he did know all about her. “She’s stronger than both of us.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Julia couldn’t take the confinement one more second. She stood at the bank of glass doors that ran along the back of the house and stared into the lit yard beyond. The security lights plunged the patio and pool into a burst of white. She wasn’t much of a swimmer, but right now she wanted to run out there and jump in. Cold or not, didn’t matter.

  Her insides jumped and tingled. Every nerve seemed to be on fire or ready to burst. She’d never thought of herself as nervous or anxious, but being locked in, penned against her will and unable to contact anyone, had her walking around and dreaming up crazy ways to get out.

  She’d paced so much she’d broken out in a sweat. The landline phone lay on the floor. No dial tone. A laptop was open and the television was on. Nothing got her access to the world beyond the walls. It didn’t even matter that these were pretty well-decorated walls. Prison was prison.

  Her footsteps thundered as she ran up to Sandy’s bedroom again. She’d made this journey twice already. She’d seen how Cam got them out. Just tie the sheets and jump. But without him here she didn’t trust herself to go. She did trust Cam.

  He’d been right about Sandy. She didn’t know what was going on, but what was happening now was so odd. She couldn’t wrap her brain around it. Didn’t believe she’d be okay without him.

  She heard a pounding. At first she thought it was wishful thinking or her brain playing tricks. Then the doorbell began to ring. Over and over. Chiming until she felt it inside her head.

  She ran downstairs, looking first at the front door. As soon as she appeared in the small window next to the double door, Shane waved and pointed toward the back of the house.

  She should have been angry, but all she felt was relief. It almost knocked the legs out from under her. She spun around on her heel and got to the glass doors again. Holt and Cam stood out there, looking as if they were locked in deep thought. Holt held a gun but Cam shook his head.

  Cam glanced up and smiled. A warmth filled her when she saw that face. He was fine and here and everything would be okay. Even if she never got out of this house again.

  “The alarm is in shutdown.” She yelled the words because she knew the glass would muffle them.

  For some reason he seemed to know. He nodded and bent down. When he stood up again he had a planter in his arms, and not a small one
. This thing could break glass and bones.

  The first hit bounced off the glass, but her belief never wavered. He might talk about not caring about a woman and keeping things light, but that look of determination did not say acquaintance to her. The second hit landed square against the glass and a huge cracking sound split the night. She waited for the glass to fall. He stood on the other side looking as if he was trying to will it to fall.

  Finally he motioned her back and lifted his leg. As Holt yelled something, Cam kicked. The glass exploded. It shattered into pieces, breaking off into slivers as it crashed over the dining room table and pinged in what looked like a million tiny cubes against the hardwood floor.

  Then he was there. He had her wrapped in his arms and was kissing her hair. He said something about trust, but she didn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear anything over the frantic beating of her heart.

  The night was a blur, but he was solid. She ran her hands over him and tugged him in close. Her last thought was relief.

  Then the world went dark.

  * * *

  CAM SAT BY Julia’s bedside at the clinic and willed her to wake up. The doctor had chalked her reaction up to anxiety and shock. Cam didn’t like either answer. Also hated that she still hadn’t opened her eyes.

  He put her hand between both of his and rubbed. The heat had slowly returned to her body. When she first passed out she’d felt like ice. Her skin had actually been cold to the touch.

  “How are we doing?” Holt asked as he opened the door and came in.

  Shane followed. “Looks like she’s not ready to wake up yet.”

  The doctor had said the same thing. Cam now hated that phrase.

  He glanced at her, saw her hair on the white pillow and the slow rise and fall of her chest. “Apparently.”

  Shane walked around the bed, looking at her. Whatever he was looking for he must have found, because he stopped at the end of her bed and stood there. “What are you going to tell her when she wakes up?”