by Paula Graves
“No, but he could be nearby. The visibility here is bad due to the snow.”
“Stay put,” the dispatcher said bluntly. “I’ve got a cruiser headed your way. Anybody injured? You need medical response?”
“No, we’re okay,” Jim assured her. Even Katie had stopped crying, save for a few soft sniffles now and then.
“I should get her out of the seat, shouldn’t I?” Lacey asked, sounding almost helpless as she looked back at her scared niece.
“No, leave her there. We’re off the road, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. We all need to stay buckled in and alert.” He didn’t add that they also needed to keep their eyes peeled for the truck that had run them off the road. He didn’t think Lacey needed the reminder.
“Was he trying to make us crash?” she asked a few minutes later as the snow started to fall faster than the windshield wipers could brush the flakes away. “Was that the point? If so, why hasn’t he come back for us?”
“I don’t know,” Jim admitted. “Maybe he was surprised you weren’t alone.”
“Then why didn’t he just drive on without bothering us?”
“Maybe it was too tempting a target to resist.” Jim reached across the space between them to cover her hand where it gripped the steering wheel. “The police are on the way. We’re all safe.”
“Do you have your weapon?” she asked quietly, not pulling her hand away from his grasp.
“Yes.”
Her jaw muscle tightened into a knot. “Good.”
Moments later, swirling blue lights bled through the snowy void, and a Ford Taurus police interceptor marked with the Virginia State Police insignia loomed into view. The cruiser pulled up behind the Impala on the shoulder and a large black man in a tall black campaign hat and dark blue jacket over a gray uniform stepped from the driver’s-side door, approaching the car carefully.
He took their information, including their driver’s licenses for routine checks, before he returned to the car and bent to talk to Lacey through the lowered window. “If you think your vehicle can still drive, and you’re up for it, I’ll escort you to your residence to make sure nothing else happens to disturb your drive.”
Jim gave the state policeman a look that didn’t quite hide his surprise. “A personal escort home?”
The policeman met his quizzical look with a grim expression. “We don’t like it when people get murdered in our state. We’re all real sorry for your loss, Ms. Miles. We’d like to make sure you don’t suffer any more, so I’ll be escorting you home myself.”
Jim exchanged a look with Lacey, who smiled at the policeman with genuine gratitude. “Thank you.”
The drive home still took longer than it normally would have, since the snow showed little sign of letting up, but eventually, they turned onto the long driveway to the farmhouse without further incident. To Jim’s surprise, the state policeman followed them up the drive, parking behind them when they pulled the Impala into the gravel area next to the house.
“I thought I’d take a look around inside, just to be sure nobody’s been there while you were gone,” said the policeman, whose name badge identified him as Epps. “If you’d like, you can wait out here until I’m done.”
“No, we’ll come in with you,” Lacey said before Jim could insist on the same thing. Epps had been nothing but helpful, but Jim wasn’t about to outsource his job of protecting Lacey and Katie to the policeman, however nice and helpful he might be.
Epps looked around the first floor, quickly reassuring himself that there were no signs of forced entry. “Mind if I take a look upstairs?”
“Jim will show you,” Lacey said, cuddling Katie close. The little girl was eyeing the big policeman with a combination of wary shyness and curiosity, but she was showing signs of overstimulation, which in Katie led to tantrums. “I’ll settle Katie down to finish her nap.”
Jim left them reluctantly and joined Epps on the stairs. The policeman sidled a look Jim’s way when he encountered the locked door.
“Ms. Miles’s office. She’s working from home these days, and since her reports can often deal in proprietary information...”
“Right,” Epps said, not sounding convinced by Jim’s explanation but apparently deciding it was none of his business. “I don’t know that it’ll help much for you to give your statements on what happened if you didn’t get the license plate of the truck that hit you, but I’ll be happy to file a report, in case we can track down the vehicle.”
“Good idea,” Jim agreed, and when they returned to the first floor, he and Lacey took turns telling Epps what they could remember about the vehicle that had tried to run them off the road.
“Ski mask?” Epps’s dark eyebrows rose when Jim described what he’d seen.
“I know it sounds strange.”
“I reckon strange is a relative thing when someone’s already set a car bomb to take you out.” Epps finished taking the report and got Jim to sign his statement. “We’ll be in touch.”
Jim locked the door behind Epps and headed down the hall to Katie’s room, where he found Lacey rocking her niece slowly in the rocking chair next to the crib. Katie was asleep, but Lacey showed no signs of letting the little girl go.
“It wasn’t the same truck, was it?” she asked as Jim leaned against the door frame.
“I don’t think so,” he admitted. “It didn’t hit me until I was telling Epps about the PIT maneuver. The blue truck we saw in the bomb-scene video had that dent in the driver’s-side front panel. The truck that hit us this afternoon didn’t.”
“Probably does now,” Lacey murmured, bleak humor in her voice. “I’m not sure what it means that it was a different truck. Any thoughts?”
“Maybe he bought a new truck.”
“Same as the old truck?”
Jim shook his head. “Not likely, is it?”
“Maybe it’s a different person,” Lacey suggested. “But someone who wants us to think it’s the same blue truck that’s been following me.”
Jim pulled the tufted ottoman that matched the rocker closer to where Lacey sat. His legs were far too long for the small footrest, but he perched there as well as he could and settled his gaze on Lacey and the sleeping child, his heart pounding a little harder at the memory of how close he’d come to losing them both that day.
“What would be the point of making us think it’s the other truck?” he asked softly, unable to keep from reaching out to touch the velvet curve of Katie’s cheek.
“I’m not sure,” Lacey admitted. “Maybe to lead us off track? Misdirection of some sort?”
Jim dropped his hand away from Katie’s face. “Focus us in one direction so we don’t see trouble coming from another one?”
“Maybe.” Lacey’s fingers followed the path Jim’s had traced along Katie’s plump cheek. “There’s a more pertinent question, though.”
He watched the slow glide of her fingers over Katie’s skin, wishing she would reach across the space between them and touch him with that same tenderness.
Not that tenderness was all he wanted from her. Not by a long shot.
But he’d ruined his chances for more. It was time he learned to accept that fact.
“What question?” he asked when Lacey didn’t immediately continue.
“I haven’t told many people about the truck,” she said quietly. “You know, of course, but I don’t think you’d do anything to put Katie—or me—in danger.”
“God, no.”
“Your boss, but the same applies. They’d have no reason to put us in danger that way.”
“Which leaves whom?”
“Detective Bolling at the Arlington County Police Department, and Detective Miller with the DC Metro Police. I told both of them about the truck. But nobody else.”
“What about the cop in Frederick? You t
old me you saw the blue truck following you that day. Did you mention it to that detective?”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t, because I remember thinking later that day that I should have mentioned it, but I didn’t.”
“So you think our copycat truck driver was a cop?”
“Or someone one of those cops told about it.”
Jim frowned, not liking the implications. Protecting Lacey and Katie was hard enough with the cops on his side. But if one of them was working with the enemy...
“This seems like something the Whittiers would pull,” Lacey said bluntly. “Maybe the point is to scare me, keep me so tangled up in the threats against me that I’m not poking my nose into their business.”
“It’s certainly not the sort of thing al Adar would bother with,” Jim agreed. “But compared to a car bomb, what that truck did today is pretty mild.”
“If he’d succeeded in driving us completely off the road, it could have been much worse. We could have been killed.”
“I don’t mean that what he did to us wasn’t dangerous. Of course it was. But it wasn’t a sure thing, the way that bomb was.” He frowned, his mind racing through the possibilities. “If you really think about it, everything that’s happened since the bombing has been weak in comparison. The mugging in Frederick. The truck following you all over DC.”
“Ken Calvert was murdered,” Lacey pointed out. “That’s not exactly a downgrade.”
“If his death was connected to what’s been happening to you,” Jim said. “We don’t know that it was anything more than a mugging gone tragically wrong.”
“It would be a hell of a coincidence.”
“But coincidences do happen.”
Lacey rose from the rocking chair, forcing Jim to rise as well and pull the ottoman out of her way. She carried Katie to the crib and gently laid her on the mattress, stroking Katie’s hair when she stirred until the little girl drifted back to sleep. Putting her finger to her lips, she motioned for Jim to lead the way out of the nursery.
They ended up in the kitchen, facing each other across the table. Outside, artificial twilight had fallen with the snow, reflecting their images back at them in the windowpanes.
“Maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong,” Lacey said, resting her chin on her palm as she gazed wearily across the table at Jim.
“How’s that?”
“We’ve assumed it’s just one person after me. But I had three suspects.”
“One of which we’re pretty sure we eliminated today after talking to the Scanlons.”
“But that still leaves two parties with a reason to want me out of the way.” Lacey rose and crossed to the counter, coming to a stop in front of the coffeemaker. After a brief hesitation, she opened a cabinet, pulled out filters and a can of dark roast, and set about brewing a fresh pot of coffee.
Jim watched her going through the motions, realizing that she was one of those people who thought best when she was in action. He could almost see the wheels turning in her brain, moving in concert with her busy hands.
“I think whoever was driving the original blue truck, the one that showed up at the scene of the car bomb and later followed me to Frederick and then DC, has one agenda. The person in the truck today had another one.” She finished filling the coffeemaker with water and turned to face him, looking as if she’d lost her train of thought when she finished her task of putting on a pot of coffee to brew.
“I agree,” he said, rising to join her at the counter. “You hungry? I could use a snack.”
“I’ll get it,” she said quickly, already heading for the refrigerator. “Cheese and fruit?”
“Perfect.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out a couple of mugs for their coffee. “I’ve been thinking about the suspects on your list, and the ones who make the most sense, in terms of having access to police information and the means by which to produce a nearly identical truck, have to be the Whittiers.”
She had gathered a bunch of grapes, a small bag of cherries and a couple of navel oranges from the refrigerator and deposited them on the counter by the sink. “They’d definitely have the means to come up with a blue pickup,” she agreed as she started washing the fruit. “But that also suggests maybe they’re not the ones who arranged for the bomb in my car, doesn’t it?”
“Because of the de-escalation of attacks?”
“Exactly. The first strike was a deadly car bomb that would have killed me had I been driving that night.” Her hands faltered as she pulled a clean cloth from a nearby drawer and laid the freshly washed fruit on the cloth to dry. “But the things that happened after that seem more like attempts to scare me rather than kill me. Like the mugger that day in Frederick. He could have shot me rather than tried to grab me. I had thought maybe he wanted to get me alone and start asking me questions, and maybe he did. But even that could have been meant to scare me.”
“Maybe the blue truck that followed you that day really did have nothing to do with the mugger.”
She retrieved a block of Havarti cheese from the crisper, carried it to the counter and started slicing. “Maybe not.” She put down her knife suddenly, turning to look at him. “But if the guy in the blue truck set the bomb that killed Marianne and Toby, why hasn’t he made another real attempt on my life?”
Chapter Thirteen
“How did you get these?” Lacey looked with skepticism at the pair of Quik-Trak train tickets Jim had set on the kitchen table at breakfast the next morning.
“Quinn had someone drop them by last night. You were already asleep.”
She frowned. “Why does he think we should go to Connecticut? What will it accomplish?”
Jim sat beside Katie’s high chair, retrieving a piece of orange that had escaped the baby’s sticky grasp and landed on the table. “If nothing else, it’ll change the paradigm.”
“What does that even mean?” Lacey picked up the tickets and read the details. “Jim, this train leaves before seven tomorrow morning.”
“I know. We need to start packing.”
She felt rebellion rising in her chest. This was happening too fast and was completely out of her control. A man named Alexander Quinn had decided a trip to Connecticut to meet with the elusive Whittier brothers was in order, and suddenly she was holding two tickets on the train from Union Station to the station in Stamford, Connecticut, which was the closest town to the coastal Whittier family compound. “I need to think about this, Jim.”
“I know I’ve just thrown this at you without any notice, but I think Quinn is right. We’re sitting ducks out here, waiting for things to happen to us.” He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. She felt a warm shock, as if he’d touched a live wire to her skin. Her fingers tingled in response, even though she knew the electric sensation was all in her head. “That’s not the way I like to live my life. I don’t think that’s the way you like to live yours, either.”
She wanted to argue with him, but on that subject, at least, he was right. She was a risk taker, an envelope pusher. She made things happen rather than waiting for things to happen to her.
“How are we supposed to convince the Whittiers to talk to us?”
“Quinn said he was working on that.”
“So we go there without any plan?”
“It’s better than sitting here twiddling our thumbs.”
“What about Katie?” She forced herself to pull her hand from his warm, gentle grasp. She was letting herself get too close to him again, letting herself feel more than she wanted to, more than was safe.
“Remember the family I worked for, the Becketts? They’ve agreed to come out here to the farm for a couple of days to take care of Katie. They have a six-year-old daughter named Samantha, who will love spending a couple of days with Katie.”
“I don’t kno
w these people.”
“But I do.” He leaned closer to her, capturing her gaze. “I would never do anything to put Katie in danger. I know you don’t trust me anymore, and maybe you never will again. But you have to know at least that much about me. Don’t you?”
His gaze ensnared her, blazing with the truth. He might have lied to her about who he really was and why he was there at the farmhouse with her and Katie, but she believed with every fiber of her being that he would take a bullet for her or Katie. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt her,” she admitted softly.
“Cade Beckett is a retired Navy SEAL with more awards and commendations than you could fit on the wall of your office upstairs. His wife, Julie, was an FBI agent before she decided she was missing too much of her daughter’s life and decided to take a consulting job with the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation so she could stay home with Samantha.”
“They’re willing to drop everything for a couple of days to babysit Katie?”
“Cade works for Campbell Cove Security. Coming here to stay with Katie is sort of his job. Julie works from home via computer, which she can do just as easily from here, as long as the Wi-Fi holds up. And she homeschools Samantha.”
She looked at him through narrowed eyes, wondering if she was being played a little bit. “You have this all figured out.”
“It wasn’t my idea. That was all Quinn. But the more I think about it, the better I like it. I’m not sure it’s good for Katie to be stuck out here with only us for companionship. Having Samantha around to play with her for a couple of days could be a good thing for Katie, as well.”
“And meanwhile, we’re standing at the gates of the Whittier compound yelling Here we are, come get us?”
“That’s not exactly how I’d put it,” Jim protested.
“But it’s pretty close to how it will be, isn’t it?” she asked, automatically picking up a napkin to wipe the orange juice from Katie’s fingers before the little girl started to rub her drooping eyes. Funny, she realized, how she’d somehow transitioned from hapless aunt to practiced mother figure without even noticing it had happened.
