The Target

by Catherine Coulter

  He said quickly, “It’s time we checked out of here. Fifteen minutes okay with everybody? We shop and then we’re heading west.”

  They’d spoken about it briefly that morning when they’d awakened. “It’s just our next destination,” Ramsey had said, “but it gets us closer to my home and my turf.”

  Molly had said quietly, afraid that Emma would awaken, “I know we can’t stay here. Where west do you want to go?”

  “Truckee. I know the area very well. Let’s just get ourselves lost for the time being in the Sierras. I had a friend from college who lived on Lake Tahoe.”

  Molly didn’t say anything more until she got him in the bathroom with the door shut, Emma in the bedroom packing her pillowcase.

  He said, “Anyone with a brain could trace the money withdrawal from AMEX that I used to pay for the Toyota, and I think we’ve got professionals here. So our best bet is to get ourselves lost for the time being. The Sierras are beautiful and out of the way. Any problem with that?”

  “I’ve never been to Lake Tahoe,” she said, fiddling with a towel that was wadded up. She was methodically folding it, arranging it back on the rack.

  “It’s a little town, quaint, all rigged out for the skiers in the winter and the hikers in the summer. Emma’ll like it. It’ll be safe.”

  She looked up at him. “How’s your leg?”

  “Better this morning. You and Emma were both standing over me when I took up the tape and gauze. The skin’s staying together, a good sign. The flesh is pink. Very little swelling. It just aches.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  “Yes, but not about this.”

  “All right. Let’s go.” She turned away, her hand on the bathroom doorknob, and said over her shoulder, “You don’t have to do this, you really don’t. I have money. Not just the cash I showed you. I have lots of money, family money and money from my divorce from Louey. I could get Emma to safety.”

  “Don’t, Molly. I couldn’t leave Emma in danger.”

  She sighed as she twisted a corkscrew curl around her index finger. “I know.”

  She opened the bathroom door and walked out, calling, “Em, love, are you ready? Do you know what? I’m going to buy you a duffel bag, just like mine.”

  “Can it be a Mingus Raiders duffel? Yours looks like a soldier’s.”

  “Okay, Mingus Raiders it is.” She said over her shoulder to Ramsey, “The Mingus cartoon good guys also include Mingus cartoon good girls. They’re hot stuff.”

  THEY drove all that day and night, spelling each other, and reached Truckee the next evening at just after six o’clock. They spent that night at a Best Western Motel.

  The next morning Ramsey went to a local realtor’s office and looked over the rental houses available. They didn’t want a condo, too many people around, they told the woman. They were a family on vacation. They’d saved their money for this and didn’t want to use credit cards.

  If the woman didn’t believe this, she didn’t argue, just showed them properties. Emma fell in love with the third one, a small two-bedroom house that sat off by itself, backed against a forest and fronting a small creek. Tree-covered mountains rose all around it. Lake Tahoe was only about four miles distant. It was safe. Everyone was pleased.

  They paid five hundred for the week, including the security deposit. They stocked up for a week at Food Giant.

  When they returned to Nathan’s Creek, it was well into the afternoon. Emma was asleep in Molly’s arms. Ramsey took her and carried her up to the larger of the two bedrooms.

  When he met Molly downstairs in the kitchen, she handed him a glass of iced mineral water.

  “Come in the living room,” he said. “It’s time.”

  “All right,” she said. “You’re right. It is time. We’ve got to do some talking and some planning.”

  He waited until she sat down in a big recliner that was well worn, a real guy’s chair, then said, “Now, no more stalling. Who are you, Molly? What are you still keeping from me?”

  “I know it’s impossible that Emma’s kidnapping has anything to do with what you don’t know.”

  “Molly, I’m going to throw this water glass at you.”

  “I was Margaret Lord before I married.”

  He just stared at her, then breathed out hard. His leg started hurting.

  “Shit,” he said. “Your daddy is Mason Lord?”

  JOE Elders loved those few precious minutes just before the sun arched up over the low-lying barren hills just a mile or so from his farm. He stood there, breathing in the fifty-degree air, filling his lungs, letting the silence and soft air fill him.

  The sun struck his eyes with brilliant light and he smiled into it, closing them. He heard Millie moo. She was soon joined by half a dozen of her cousins. It was time to begin his day, and that meant milking his girls. He whistled as he walked to the cow barn, brand-new, just completed a month before, with all the new technology they told him would at least put him in the same ballpark as the big dairy outfits. And he’d had the money to pay for it all. He’d been smart, really smart. They hadn’t taken advantage of him, no they hadn’t. After his deal, he hadn’t had to borrow anything. He paused, sniffing the air.

  He could swear it was the sweet clinging scent of marijuana. He kicked one of the goat’s favorite old chewing gloves out of his path. He cursed. It was pot he smelled. Nancy was smoking and carrying on again, and after she promised him and her mother that she would straighten up. Pot, of all things. She was sixteen years old, popular at school. He hoped she wasn’t that popular. No, she was too young to really have the hots for any of the boys he’d seen around. But pot, hell and damnation.

  He opened the barn door. He was greeted with a chorus of moos, most of them welcoming, a couple pissed, he could tell. They didn’t like all the new equipment that relieved them of their milk.

  Shirley was the one who hated the machines the most. Since she was one of his old girls, he’d decided just the week before to milk her himself. She enjoyed that, turning her head to look at him while he pulled on her teats.

  He got all the other cows set up. It still took him a while. Well, he’d get better and faster at it soon. Then he took his old stool down to where Shirley was standing, still and fat with milk, watching him come closer.

  “Good morning, old girl,” he called out, giving her a wink like the one he’d given her every dawn for the past seven years.

  He began to whistle as he set the stool down beside her. “Now, let’s make you a couple of pounds lighter.”

  He heard a soft whooshing sound. It was close, real close. He wrenched around on the stool. There was a man standing over him. He was black, his eyes hard and wide, his head bald. Joe never even had a chance to ask the man who he was.

  He felt a huge hand on his shoulder, and saw a big hammer part the air. He felt the blow throughout his body, but it wasn’t exactly painful, just a numbing jarring that made his eyes blink once in surprise. The large hand released his shoulder.

  Joe Elders fell beside Shirley’s stool, his eyes staring up at her milk-swelled teats.

  10

  “I JUST HEARD Emma moving around upstairs. We’ve only got a few minutes before she comes down. We’ll get back to your daddy a bit later. Now our immediate problems: We’ve got to assume they’re professionals. And that means we’ve also got to assume they have a backup organization to be on us in a flash if we use credit cards. If we’re careful, your three thousand and my two thousand should last us just fine until this mess is cleaned up.”

  Molly figured she’d been frugal for a total of thirteen months in her life. She’d gone from one wealthy home to taking care of herself, and she’d done it, not that it had lasted long. Then she’d gone to another one. From a rich father to a rich husband. But for the past two years, she’d been on her own again. She loved it. She grinned. Actually, it was the first time she’d smiled in a very long time. “I’m going to go scrub a toilet.”

  “Mama, you
’re joking.”

  Emma had arrived, full of energy. Molly hauled her up in a big hug, kissed her small ear, and said, “No, sweetie, this time I’m not. Well, maybe. I’m thinking that if I can take Ramsey in poker, then he can scrub the john. What do you think?”

  Emma looked very serious, her head cocked to one side. “I think you could beat him in Old Maid. I beat you last time we played poker.”

  “Thanks for the support, kiddo. All right, I’ll think about it. Maybe I can play him to a draw.”

  “That’s chess, Mama.”

  “Yes, but maybe I can figure out how to apply it to poker. Hey, you want some hot dogs for supper?”

  “Oh yes. Ramsey makes the best. We stuck them on coat hangers and held them over the fire in the fireplace.”

  Ramsey was sitting in that big recliner, his hands folded over his stomach, a pillow under his leg. “You’ll have to go a long way to beat my hot dogs, Molly.”

  “I know how to make the secret relish, handed down from my mother’s family in Italy. The relish will make her jump off your bandwagon quick enough.”

  “We’ll see about that. I’ve got secret other things, like good cheap yellow mustard.” He said to Emma, “How come you know about draws and chess?”

  “My boyfriend taught me.”

  “You’ve got a boyfriend, Emma?”

  “His name’s Jake. He’s my nerd boyfriend.”

  Ramsey rolled his eyes. “You also got a jock boyfriend?”

  “Oh no, Ramsey, they’re gross.”

  “Hey now, I was once a jock and I wasn’t gross. Well, maybe I was for a while, when I was real young.”

  “Young as me?”

  He stared down into that small intent upturned face. “No, Em, I was never as young as you.”

  She giggled, actually giggled. It warmed him to his toes. Molly looked up, smiling. Emma said, “I’m just glad you’re not as young as me right now.” She lightly touched her palm to the wound in his thigh. “It’s not warm anymore.”

  “Nope, all of me is at room temperature again.”

  She patted him, then skipped off to the small kitchen to help her mother.

  It was an easy evening, with no talk at all about the sword of Damocles that was hanging over their heads, no talk just yet about Molly’s criminal father. They played word games, then Ramsey gave Emma a reading lesson using the sets of letters and numbers he’d bought at the bookstore in Dillinger.

  The kid was smart and fast. She was writing his name in full sentences, along with her name and her mother’s by nine o’clock. “You put the best teacher in the world with the smartest kid in the world, and just look what you’ve got.” He leaned down to stare at the last word Emma had printed: john.

  Both of them tucked her up in the small single twin bed.

  “You want a night-light on, Em?”

  “No, Mama. Are you going to sleep with me again?”

  “Yes,” Molly said easily. “If Ramsey wakes up and gets lonesome, he can talk to us through the wall.”

  Emma was smiling even as her eyes closed. They stood looking down at her, this child who had changed both their lives.

  “She wrote my name,” Ramsey said. “It was legible. She wrote it in a whole sentence. Amazing.”

  “She’s got her mother’s brains.” Molly grinned up at him. “My Ramsey is smart. Yep, that has a real ring to it. Can you believe she spelled john?”

  “And she did it well. It made her laugh, Molly. Where’d she get the hair?”

  “Her father.” Her voice was clipped. She didn’t say anything else. Why hadn’t he come back here after Emma had been kidnapped? He’d teased himself with that question at least half a dozen times now. He simply couldn’t imagine any father not being frantic about his child. That the parents were divorced made no difference. He said, “Let’s go downstairs. Now that Emma’s in bed, I want you to tell me everything about Daddy.”

  “I should call Detective Mecklin and Agent Anchor first. I forgot.”

  “No, you didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s do it. Who knows, maybe they’ve got something.”

  “Don’t bet your gym socks on it.”

  She asked for Detective Mecklin and got put on hold. She stared down at the phone, then suddenly banged down the receiver. “They were trying to trace the call,” she said. “I know it. The bastards.”

  “You’re probably right. Let’s call in the morning. They didn’t have enough time. Don’t worry.”

  “I guess you’d know all about that.”

  “Enough. It’s not as if we really have to hide from the cops, Molly.”

  “I don’t want to let them near Emma. Don’t you see? They might take her away and give her over to a battery of doctors, strangers, all of them. She’s doing so well. I can’t take that risk. You didn’t want to do it either. Just leave it alone.”

  “All right. Tell you what. Let me call Dillon Savich, my friend in Washington, D.C. See if he knows what’s going on.”

  “Who is this friend, exactly?”

  “He’s a computer expert who happens to be an FBI agent. Trust me on this, he’s not like Agent Anchor. Actually, he and his partner—who’s now his wife, Sherlock—were the ones who broke The Toaster case in Chicago. Do you remember that?”

  “That was the young guy who’d killed those families?”

  “Yeah. Russell Bent.”

  “They won’t ever let him out, will they?”

  “Trust the system on this one, Molly. Russell will be in a psychiatric hospital until he dies.”

  “Yeah, but I also remember the killer in Boston who escaped when the judge ordered that he be let out of restraints while he was being evaluated by the psychiatrists. The String Killer, wasn’t that the moniker the press gave him?”

  “Yes, that’s what happened.”

  She gave him a long look. “Some system.”

  “You know, Molly, our legal system works well most of the time. Since people run it, sure there are screwups now and again. You need to be a bit more objective.”

  Molly sighed, then rose and walked to the French windows that looked out over a small sloping lawn to Nathan’s Creek, full and rushing from melting mountain snow. The half-moon made the snow glisten. “This is a beautiful place. Aren’t you going to call Dillon Savich?”

  “Yep. You got me sidetracked. I want to tell him what’s going on. I want to tell him who you are. He won’t do anything unless I ask him to. All right?”

  Molly nodded.

  He used the house phone and punched the speaker button. The phone was picked up on the third ring in Washington, D.C. Ramsey identified himself.

  A very alert Savich said, “You know it’s one A.M. here? Never mind. Where are you? You’ve got the speaker on. Are you finally ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “You know about that kidnapping case in Denver? Emma Santera?”

  “Yes. Wait, don’t tell me. You’re somehow involved in that?”

  Ramsey gave him an unedited version of what had happened until they’d arrived in California. “We’re all right, hopefully, safely hidden. Mrs. Santera doesn’t want anyone to know exactly where we are.”

  “Including the FBI? Including the cops? This is all very strange, Ramsey.”

  “Yeah, I know. Bear with me. Can you tell me what’s happening there? Has an Agent Anchor said anything that’s filtered back?”

  Savich laughed. “Has Bud said anything? He’s been yelling his head off, claiming he’s going to bring in Mrs. Santera for hampering his investigation. It’s going to be hard to keep my mouth shut, Ramsey, but I will until you give me the ‘go’ signal. Can you begin to imagine what folks here would say if they knew you were a part of this and you were getting inside information from me?”

  “What about the owner of the truck? We gave the Denver PD and Agent Anchor the three names and license numbers you gave me.”

  “The truck was reported stolen last month from a dairy farmer in Loveland, Colorado. The w
ife reported it. Then the husband said it hadn’t been stolen, he’d sold it, and hadn’t told his wife. Who knows? Did he sell it to the kidnappers? That plays for me.”

  “Yeah, it does for me too.” Ramsey sighed.

  “You might consider coming in now. Any more attempts to get the kid?”

  “Not since we’ve come to our new location.”

  “Come in, Ramsey. It sounds dicey. I agree that this isn’t just a simple kidnapping. You got any ideas?”

  “Maybe. Look, Savich, let me keep us hidden awhile longer. I’ll check in on Friday unless something happens sooner. Listen, thanks. I owe you.”

  “You can bet on it.”

  “Is that Sherlock I hear? Give her a kiss for me.”

  “Not on your life. You’re too much like the kind of man she likes, all hard and tough. Given your macho demonstration a while back in your courtroom, I’d be hard-pressed to keep her away from you, especially if she’s having a bad day and not thinking clearly. No, all kisses are from me. Take care of yourself, Ramsey, and call if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thanks, Savich.” Ramsey slowly hung up the phone. “You heard everything?”

  She nodded.

  “Now, no more procrastinating. It’s time. On to Daddy.”

  She started shaking her head.

  “Listen, Molly, your father is Mason Lord. It’s time we thought about him. I don’t think it’s possible he could be involved directly in any of this, but it’s very possible that from what we’ve seen, just maybe some of your father’s enemies had Emma kidnapped to use as leverage against your father.”

  She didn’t turn, just ran her fingers over the thick fabric of the light tan drapes. “I think he would have warned me if someone he was dealing with might consider such a thing.”

  “Yes, he probably would have, if he’d had warning. Do you agree that perhaps some of his enemies are involved up to their gum lines to get leverage on him, to milk him? You wondered about all the guys who seemed to be involved in this, so far. Well, that could be our answer.”

  She still didn’t turn around. Slowly, she pulled the drapes shut over the French windows and just stood there, head down, saying nothing.