by Alice Sharpe
He’d seen the man that very morning, wearing the same black clothes.
Obviously, the man with the knife had waited somewhere along the way and followed Simon and Ella to this motel. Had he dispatched Carl and was he now hunting Ella? Maybe he’d been trying to kill Carl to get to her that morning.
The questions were immaterial. Whatever this man knew, Simon needed to know. He had to get the jump on him; if Ella was in trouble with the law, so be it. He couldn’t protect her forever if she’d done something terrible, and the sooner it was out in the open, the better. If Carl was dead, which seemed a likely scenario given the big man’s presence at the motel, then it became even more important to make him talk.
Giving the guy a few seconds to get away from the doors, Simon practically slithered around the corner. He peered through the glass inset in the door and saw the big man standing with his back to the motel.
How to get out the door without drawing attention? When he heard raised voices, he realized there must be someone out there with him. The odds had just shifted. Nevertheless, the noise of the argument might cover the sound of him opening the door.
He took a deep breath and pushed on the glass, sliding out and into the shadows as fast as he could. The first place he found shelter was behind an electrical power unit that emitted a hum. As handy as it was for concealment, it was too noisy for eavesdropping.
Another peek revealed the men still talking, but they’d lowered their voices even more as though aware a shouting match after midnight would draw attention. Simon kept low as he moved behind a handy clump of bushes and on to an equipment locker.
It was time to decide what to do. As a police officer in Oregon, he was on duty 24/7, but he wasn’t acting much like a police officer right now. He could arrest the big guy for attacking Carl Baxter, and Ella could verify she’d seen the fight, but without Carl around to prosecute, how far would that go?
Of course, if Carl showed up dead, it would be a whole other matter.
Bottom line: if he used his official standing to try to get the big guy to open up, then he’d also have to be willing to hand Ella over to the authorities if that was appropriate. He needed a nonconfrontational way in which to get the man to talk.
He snuck another look, and this time the big man was pacing, obviously frustrated, grumbling as he walked, his voice spiking every few seconds. The other man suddenly stood up and moved into the light, grabbing the big guy’s shoulder, spinning him around to face him, his back still to Simon. The two men jabbed at each other’s chests, their voices still subdued, but loud enough for Simon to finally get the gist of the problem.
They were arguing about whether they should break down a door and take what they wanted. The big guy was in favor of waiting until morning. He’d tried the door; it was locked; a break-in would just create a scene. The other man said he could get in the room without detection, no problem, he’d done it before. He didn’t want to wait until daylight; too much might go wrong.
There was little doubt in Simon’s mind which door they were talking about and who they wanted to get their hands on.
The smaller man turned around.
Simon blinked a few times, his brain trying to assimilate what he saw and what it meant.
Carl Baxter.
The only reason he’d be here was if he’d joined forces with his adversary way back this morning. The two of them had to be working together, but why the fight, what was the purpose?
Wait, hold on, who cared? The reasons for everything could wait. What he needed right now were answers, and there were the two men who could fill in all the gaps, ripe for the plucking, only twenty feet away. Okay, they were both undoubtedly armed seeing as they were willing to enter a motel room where they must know Simon slept along with Ella. Surely they’d seen his gun that morning.
Could he take them both?
He felt a vibration in his pocket and ignored it for a minute. Voices lowered, the men started toward the far side of the motel where a parallel wing offered additional rooms. They were either refining their game plan or retreating until morning. How to tell?
He could follow them, maybe trap them in their room if indeed that’s where they were headed.
The phone vibrated again. He grabbed it from his pocket and flipped it open to check caller ID. As he did, he heard the bigger man say, “Okay, you win.”
That meant tonight….
He hit the button when he saw it was Virginia. Moving swiftly back toward his own door, he took care to stay covered in case the men turned around. “Ginny?” he whispered. “This isn’t a good time….”
“I just got a call from that doctor I tried to get a hold of earlier today.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” he said, incredulous.
“He called because when I left a message for him, I mentioned Ella’s name. The police had just awoken him. Do you know your little Ella is wanted in connection with a murder back in Blue Mountain?”
“No,” he said, his heart sinking. He looked over his shoulder to see both men entering through the far door. He ducked inside his own wing and walked quickly down the hall as he spoke. “Did you tell them I’m with her and where we are?”
“I don’t know where you are, coz. You’ve been very careful to never tell me an exact location, and for that I thank you. But no, I didn’t tell him about you, I made up something.”
Why hadn’t Devin said anything about this when they talked earlier? Murder? “Who’s dead?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Apparently the dead man was discovered in a vacant lot a couple of days ago, but now the police want to question Ella. I don’t have details, I don’t know how they knew she was in the accident or the hospital, but the other doctor is bound to tell them I was asking questions.”
“Not necessarily, but if they do, tell them the truth, don’t perjure yourself. I have to go.”
“I want you to listen to reason. This is your career we’re talking about—”
“Ginny? Not now. Thanks for the warning.”
He snapped the cell closed and tapped on the room door. “Ella? It’s me, Simon.”
He heard the rattle of the chain and then the door flew open. Ella took a few hasty steps back into the room. “Did you find out who was out there?”
He locked the door behind him, leaving the chain unhooked this time. If the thugs broke into the room, he didn’t want management alerted. Better they should enter and see the room empty and go away.
“We have to leave,” he said.
“Why? Who was it? That awful man with the knife?”
He started throwing his things into his bag. “Yeah, it was him, all right, but he’s apparently in cahoots with someone else you know. Carl was out there and I think one or the other of them is on his way here.”
Her face drained of color. “I thought the guy with the knife tried to kill Carl.”
“I did, too.”
She shook her head. “Even if they’re cohorts now, why not just cut us off tomorrow? Carl knows where we’re headed. Wait a second, how did either one of them know we were here in this motel?”
“They must have been trailing us all day,” he said, his professional pride taking a hit. He hadn’t detected a tail. He’d never even really thought to look for one. He stuffed Ella’s few belongings into the gift shop bag. “Anything else?” he said, looking around.
“But that man tried to kill Carl.”
“Unless it was staged.”
“Why would they stage—”
“I don’t know,” he snapped, then took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said more calmly, meeting her gaze. “Maybe they had a falling-out, maybe the big guy caught up with Carl and they decided to go in together, I just don’t know.”
“They’re coming after me,” she said, her eyes growing hard. Every once in a while the old Ella showed up, and this time, he welcomed her arrival. “Just let them come,” she said. “You have a gun, you’re a damn policeman, right?”
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“What about your father?”
Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. “You’re right, we can’t risk my not getting to Tampoo, can we?”
“No. That’s why we’re going out the bathroom window.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel and made for the bathroom. He unlocked the window again and slid it open, then threw their belongings outside. Since the drop to the ground was the more difficult part of the escape, Simon went first. Ella managed to get herself through the opening and more or less dropped into his arms, crying out softly when he grabbed her. No doubt he’d touched her hand or one of the other abrasions she’d suffered.
“Where’s the truck?” she asked, looking around the parking area, trying to orientate herself.
“Out front.” He’d been worrying about this since the moment he knew they had to leave. If he were trying to trap someone, he’d send one man to the room and the other to guard the getaway vehicle. Therefore, the best thing to do was abandon the truck.
But he’d signed into this motel using his real name and giving his license number, so it wouldn’t be long before the motel would either tow the truck or have it impounded, and Ella’s wallet was on the passenger-side floor under the seat where he’d put it a few hours before. If things ever got linked together, this would put her in his company.
All this meant it was time to take sides. He was either a lawman or a man dedicated to helping Eleanor Baxter figure things out. A man willing to risk everything for a woman who was probably carrying his baby or a man who threw her to the mercy of the court with the hope she actually wasn’t involved in a murder.
No way. He did not want his baby born in prison and sometimes, as much as he hated to admit it, the law got things wrong.
Or had he got things wrong? Was it possible she carried another man’s child? “We’re walking,” he grumbled.
“All the way to Tampoo?”
“It’s coming up on closing time at the bars.”
“Now you want a drink?” she said, her limp reappearing.
“Stay close to the side of the building,” he cautioned as he pulled her onto the darker half of the sidewalk. “It won’t take them long to figure out we’re gone. I have a feeling the stakes are higher than either one of us can guess.”
She fell silent beside him, her breathing growing strained as he hurried her along.
What had happened to make two men hell-bent on murdering each other this morning join forces now?
One thing was certain. Carl was no doubt at that moment storming their room, risking detection and possible arrest if hotel management got wind of things. That was the act of a reckless man.
And a reckless man was a deadly man.
Chapter Seven
Ella soon discovered closing time at a bar was a great place to catch a taxi. Simon gave directions to head for the nearest town to the north with a bus station.
“There’s a depot right here in Witchit, buddy,” the driver announced.
“I don’t want this one,” Simon insisted.
“It’s your dime,” the driver said, “but just so you know, the next town is about twelve dark miles from here.”
“That’s fine.”
Ella was seated very close to Simon, more or less in the same spot she’d landed upon getting into the cab, too tired and frightened to seek distance. “That’s our plan? We’re taking a bus to Tampoo?”
The light was spare inside the cab, reducing Simon to a shape darker than the shadows around him. He pulled her into his arms and spoke into her ear, his voice a whisper. “Not all the way to Tampoo. Too dangerous. We’ll get off short of the place, rent a car and drive so we’re not stuck when we get there.”
“Good, because the last time we met with one of my father’s contacts, I went off a cliff.”
“Exactly.”
They were silent for the rest of the ride. Simon paid the driver when he let them off, and though it occurred to Ella that he was going exceptionally far out of his way to help her, she let it go. Time would reveal his real motives; for now she had to trust what he’d told her—he was with her because she needed him. There was absolutely no denying that fact.
“Bus straight through to Seattle leaves at 6:00 a.m.,” the depot manager announced.
“Too long a wait out in the open,” Simon muttered, looking around the deserted building in such a way that Ella shuddered. She expected Carl and the man with the knife to burst through the doors at any moment.
“There’s a puddle jumper comes through in about fifteen minutes, but it won’t get you there any faster,” the manager said, his gaze lingering on Ella’s bandages.
“Did it stop in Witchit?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it take on passengers?”
“How would I know?”
Simon bought the tickets and the two of them moved into the waiting room. Ella was too anxious to sit on the old chairs sprinkled about the area despite her weariness. She leaned against the wall instead.
The bus showed up on schedule. Simon shooed her into the restroom. “You’re not getting on board until I make sure Carl or the big guy isn’t on that bus.”
“Why would they be on the bus?”
“If they figured out how we might leave town without our vehicle, one of them could be on board. I’ll knock on the door, okay?”
She did as he asked. Every minute of the five-minute wait seemed to take an hour before she heard a couple of raps on the door and exited to find Simon standing there. “All clear,” he said.
The bus was mostly empty. Simon guided her to the bench seat in the back. Ella sank onto the worn vinyl gratefully, scooting to the corner where she could rest her head. She closed her eyes, aware of Simon stowing his duffel and her bag in the overhead bin but too tired to care about anything.
Besides, maybe if she slept she would dream, maybe she would see her father again. The first time she’d thought of him, she’d been very small, sitting on his lap while he drank coffee. The second time she’d been a few years older and there had been a little boy there, too. The third time was just that night when Simon woke her up and she could remember none of the details, just that her father had been near her.
But sleep wouldn’t come. The bus stopped too often, the secondary roads it traveled twisted and curved and she was very aware of Simon looking out the back window as though checking for someone following them.
She thought back the four, no, five days now since she’d woken up in the hospital, looked up at Carl and wondered who he was. In the next instant, it had come as a shock to realize she didn’t know who she was.
It had been so frightening at first, so odd to hear people talk about her as though they knew her secrets and she did not. She’d been so frustrated at the curtain of silence that surrounded her, reinforced by Carl. She’d accepted his word that the doctors wanted her kept in the dark until her memories came back on their own, but now she realized she couldn’t take anything about Carl for granted; everything he’d done or said since she’d met him in the hospital had to be reassessed.
She detected one bright light in the dark cavern of her mind; though her memory was still as full of holes as an old boat sitting on the bottom of a lake, she was beginning to gather a sense of self. Was that because she was recalling things on a subliminal level or was it because she’d just gotten used to living in a world less than a week old?
Was that why Simon seemed like a friend?
Was that what he seemed, or was it something a whole lot more and growing exponentially every moment?
“We’re getting off here,” he said suddenly, and she realized she’d been in a state so close to sleep his voice startled her. A glance out the window showed morning had come while she languished in a stupor. The narrow streets of the waterside town through which they traveled appeared all but abandoned.
“This isn’t Seattle, is it?”
“No, but it’s 6:00 a.m. and we just passed a car rental place. L
et’s go.”
They walked the three blocks back to the rental agency, which was just opening for business. “Give me half an hour,” the proprietor pleaded. “I gotta get things straightened away. We don’t usually open until seven.”
Simon looked down at her. “Are you hungry?”
“Sure,” she said.
“There’s a little diner right around the corner,” the rental man offered.
At the door to the diner, Simon put some coins into a newspaper machine and extracted the Portland Oregonian newspaper. He scanned the front page, then tucked it beneath his arm and held the door for her.
The moment the warm, food-laden air hit her nose, Ella’s stomach rolled over like a lazy giant getting out of bed. A giant in a foul mood.
“You okay?” Simon asked as they sat across from each other at a table near the back.
“I thought it was the medicine I take at night that made me nauseated in the morning,” she said, “but I guess not. I didn’t take it last night, so it can’t be that.”
“Maybe it’s your head injury,” he said quickly.
“And this nausea just comes around in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “except that this hasn’t exactly been a normal morning, has it?”
“How do I know? Maybe I run away from thugs and husbands every day of my life.”
A smile tugged his lips. “Do you want to leave?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’ll get a coffee to go.”
“I’ll visit the restroom and see if I can peel off a bandage or two. If my face is the key to people telling me what’s going on with my father, I’d better try to make more of it visible.”
AS SOON AS ELLA DISAPPEARED into the ladies’ room, Simon opened the Oregonian. The front page offered nothing enlightening. He quickly scanned the A section, pausing only to order a large coffee to go.
The story was buried on page seven. The victim’s name was Jerry Bucker, found murdered days earlier in a field Simon knew to be less than a half mile from Ella’s house.
