Fugitive

by Shirlee McCoy

  “He’s doing well for himself.” Laney ran her hand over smooth mahogany, probably trailing a hundred fingerprints over the surface of the desk.

  It didn’t matter. Mildred had had plenty of time to tell the police that Laney and Logan were working together. Laney’s fingerprints in Banks’s office would be one small piece of the evidence that would be stacked against her if she was arrested and brought to trial.

  “Very.”

  “If he’s really Mildred’s son, he’s my half brother. That seems so...strange.” She lifted a Rolodex from the desk and thumbed through it, her ponytail falling to the middle of her back. She looked young and vulnerable, the bruises on her skin a reminder of just how close she’d come to dying.

  “Brother or not, he’s going to have to pay if he hired Danvers to come after you.”

  “If he did that, then he did everything else, and he should pay for it. That’s not why I was thinking about the family connection, though.”

  “No?” He opened a drawer, sifted through pens and paperclips and notepads. Nothing.

  “If he and Mildred really did scheme to ruin your life, they’re crazy. If they are—”

  “Don’t.” He cut her off.

  “What?”

  “You are nothing like your mother, and you’re nothing like Banks. You never have been. You never will be. End of story.”

  “Okay.” She smiled, and his heart jumped. The yearning he felt for her was so intense that he had to look away.

  A lifetime ago, Laney had been the sweet little girl he’d wanted desperately to protect. She’d been his reason for shaping up, towing the line. He’d wanted to be a better person for her, and that desire had made him into the man he’d become.

  She wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  That much was for sure, and no matter how many times he’d tried to get her out of his life and to safety, she’d been thrust back into it.

  God knew why. Logan was sure of that. He just wished that he did.

  He yanked open another drawer.

  “There’s nothing in the Rolodex. Anything in the drawers?” She leaned close, strawberries and sunshine in her hair and mountain mist in her eyes, and if they’d been anywhere else, he might have leaned in to taste her lips.

  He jerked his attention back to the drawer filled with boxes of cookies, packages of candy bars and rolls of antacids.

  “Guy likes his snacks,” he mumbled.

  “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack—only even more impossible because we don’t know what we’re looking for.” She smoothed her hair, her shirt sleeve riding up to reveal finger-sized bruises on her wrist.

  “When we find it, we’ll know.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She pulled a trash can out from under the desk, and he yanked at the third desk drawer.

  Locked.

  He took a paper clip from the drawer, unbent it and shoved it into the lock mechanism. He’d done this plenty when he’d been young and stupid. He’d hated the system that had taken him from the aging grandmother who’d been raising him while his father was in jail and his mother snorted coke. Grandma Sandy had been unable to curb his rebellious nature, but she’d loved him. When he’d been taken from her and thrown into a group home, he’d wanted to get at the system and at all the people who’d failed him. He’d found plenty of ways to do it.

  He shoved the memories away, focusing on the lock and his improvised pick. It took longer than he would have liked, but he finally heard a quiet click. The drawer opened, and he smiled at what he found inside.

  “What is it?” Laney asked.

  “Files.” He scanned the names but saw nothing that sparked his interest. “I don’t know if they’ll do us any good, though.”

  “This might.” She handed him a piece of paper, crumbled and ripped. Just a scrap really, with three letters scrawled across it. DAN. Big and bold.

  “Is the rest of it in there?”

  “I haven’t been able to find it, but it’s the first three letters of Danvers name. That seems pretty incriminating, don’t you think?”

  “It’s circumstantial at best.” But he had to admit it was intriguing.

  “I’ll keep looking.” She dumped the contents of the trash can on the floor and started going through them.

  He did the same with the files, lifting them out and carefully setting them on the desk. There had to be something else in the desk. In his time as a police officer, Logan had learned that the smartest criminals often made the biggest mistakes. Mostly because they thought they were too smart to get caught.

  He ran his hands over the wood panel of the drawer, then yanked the entire thing off its tracks. He turned it over. Nothing. He crouched and peered into the cavity, smiling at the envelope taped to the wood, an 8 x 10 manila sealed with a piece of tape.

  “What did you find?” Laney looked up from the pile of trash she was sorting through.

  “I’m not sure.” He slid his finger under the tape, pulled several pages from the envelope and saw his face staring out from a newspaper clipping.

  “Seems Banks was interested in my arrest and trial.” He glanced through the other pages. More of the same. Nothing to link Banks to Danvers, but it did show that he’d been interested in Logan. He’d had no reason to be. He wasn’t a defense lawyer or a prosecutor.

  “Why would he keep those clippings hidden?” Lacey’s shoulder brushed his as she leaned to get a closer look. Her hair tickled his chin, the scent of strawberries drifting through the air.

  She’d been so soft in his arms. So tempting.

  “Good question.” He replaced the drawer and the files and slid the pages back into the folder.

  “It almost seems like he was fixated on you.”

  “Did you find anything else in the trash can?” He booted up Banks’s computer.

  “No. Just a few candy wrappers and a couple of crumbled-up papers that didn’t say anything important.” She put the trash can back under the desk.

  “How about you go check the receptionist’s desk and trash can? The rest of that page may be there.”

  “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” She hesitated at the threshold of the room, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers.

  “We have three minutes.” And every one of them mattered. “Go check the other trash cans.”

  “Right.” She pivoted and left the room.

  Good. He needed to focus, and she was a distraction. More of one than he’d ever imagined sweet little Laney Mackey could be. When they were young, he’d never seen her as anything more than the little girl he had to protect. Even as she’d grown into a teenager, he’d only noticed in a perfunctory way. Little Laney. That’s how he’d always thought of her.

  He didn’t seem to be thinking of her that way anymore.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  Numb maybe, but that’s the way he’d been feeling about most things since Amanda’s death. His arrest and incarceration hadn’t changed it. As a matter of fact, there’d been a part of him that had almost felt as if he’d deserved the trouble he’d found himself in. Going on with his life, living while Amanda was dead—it had seemed inconceivable and somehow wrong.

  It had taken him a year to work through that.

  He didn’t want to go there again. He didn’t want to be sitting in jail picturing Laney doing the same. And not just Laney. Three other people also would go down if they got caught in Banks’s office.

  He rifled through the desk drawers, found a letter opener and used it to unscrew the back off of the computer’s hard drive. There wasn’t time to try to guess Banks’s password, but there was plenty of time to remove the computer’s memory card.

  “We’re out of time,” Taryn called from the doorway, and Logan shoved the mem
ory card into his pocket and screwed the hard drive cover back into place.

  There’d be something on the memory card.

  There had to be.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Time to get out of here, kid.” Stan tapped Laney’s shoulder, and she looked up from the pile of trash she’d dumped on the floor. She didn’t want to stop searching through the junk. Doing so felt too much like giving up.

  All she needed was to find Danvers’s name on a document with the office’s letterhead. If she could find that, she was sure the police would listen. Unfortunately, she kept coming up empty. As far as she could tell, they’d searched the place for fifteen minutes and found nothing that would help prove Logan’s innocence.

  “I guess this was a waste of time.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Seth walked out of Brinkman’s office, a file folder in his hand.

  “What’d you find, rookie?” Stan asked, and Seth scowled.

  “There’ll be time to discuss it after we get out of here,” Logan said, grabbing Laney’s hand and pulling her to the door.

  “I can’t leave a pile of trash on the floor. Even if the office is closed for the day, a cleaning crew might come in and get suspicious.”

  “Taryn and I will take care of it. You get out of here.” Logan nudged her into the hall.

  “But—”

  “Seth, you want to get Stan and Laney moving?”

  “No problem. Let’s go.” He took the keys that Taryn handed him and ushered Stan to the door.

  “I don—”

  “Too bad.” Seth snagged Laney’s elbow and dragged her toward the stairs. She tugged against his hold, but his fingers were like silken vices. Not painful, but he sure wasn’t letting go.

  “We can’t leave them up there,” she panted as they ran down the first flight of stairs.

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “I won’t be if we don’t slow down,” Stan called from the landing above.

  Seth didn’t slow down.

  He dragged Laney down another flight and another, never even glancing up to see if Stan was following.

  Stone cold. That’s the expression that Seth wore. He didn’t seem at all concerned about Stan falling farther and farther behind. He didn’t seem concerned about Logan or Taryn either. Laney wasn’t all that sure that he was concerned about his own safety because he seemed bent on breaking his neck and hers.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as Seth dragged her down the last flight and to the service door at the back.

  “Just a feeling.”

  “Maybe you should have told everyone else about your feeling. Then maybe all five of us would be making our escape instead of just the two of us.”

  “Logan and Taryn will be fine. If we have to leave them behind, they’ll make their way back to the safe house and meet up with us there.”

  “With what car?”

  “Taryn is creative. She’ll come up with something.”

  “What about Stan?”

  “If he makes it down in time, I’ll give him a ride. If he doesn’t, he’s on his own.”

  “I don’t like this plan.”

  “I don’t remember asking if you did.” He shoved the door open and peered into the parking lot. Laney edged in close, catching a glimpse of watery sunlight and a few cars.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing that I’m worried about.”

  “But?”

  “I still have a feeling. Stay here. I’ll get the truck and pull it up to the door. You see anything concerning, take off. Otherwise, be ready to get out of here.”

  Take off where?

  That’s what she wanted to ask, but Seth disappeared, and she was left standing in the doorway, her heart hammering, her pulse racing. Footsteps pounded on the stairs above her. Stan or someone else?

  She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t know if she should run out into the parking lot or run farther into the building. Maybe she should go out a front door and into another parking lot or hide in an office somewhere until the danger passed.

  Whatever the danger was.

  Seth hadn’t been very specific about his feeling.

  And it was taking him an awfully long time to get in the truck and drive around to pick her up.

  She peered out the door but was afraid to open it too widely. For all she knew, a police officer was standing right on the other side of it.

  That was the problem. She wasn’t meant for this kind of drama. As a matter of fact, she’d have been content to spend her entire life sitting in front of swatches of fabric and piles of paint samples or walking through quiet antique stores choosing furnishings to refurbish for her clients.

  The footsteps grew louder, and she backed away from the door, glancing up the stairwell. Her heart jumped as she met Stan’s eyes. Two flights up and staring straight down at her, his cheeks were flushed and the tufts of his hair stood up on his glossy head. He looked frantic, exhausted and oddly exhilarated, his eyes gleaming with excitement and, maybe, amusement.

  “You go on without me, kid. I’ll be fine,” he called as the door flew open and Seth barreled in.

  “I told you to be ready!” He grabbed her hand and started pulling her to the door.

  “We can’t leave Stan. He’s almost here.”

  “I just saw a police car pull into the parking lot. You want to be in here when the police arrive?”

  “No, but I don’t want Stan to be here either. Or Taryn. Or Logan.” Please, God, don’t let Logan get caught. Of all of them, he had the most to lose and the most evidence stacked up against him.

  “You think I do? We can all go down, or some of us can. The ones left standing will be the ones who eventually pick their fallen comrades up.” He opened the door and shoved her into the truck.

  “What about no man getting left behind? What about that?” She shifted, staring at the door to the building, willing it to open and Stan to walk out. Willing Logan and Taryn to be right behind him.

  “That doesn’t hold true unless you’re in the military.” He slammed her door, went back to the building and disappeared inside.

  Seconds later, he was back out, Stan slung over his shoulder in a fireman carry.

  “Put me down!” Stan sputtered as he was thrust into the truck.

  “Gladly!” Then the engine roared, the truck took off and the door to the building flew open.

  Not Logan.

  Not Taryn.

  A uniformed police officer, his hand on his gun holster.

  “Step on the gas, rookie!” Stan shouted, and for once Seth didn’t argue.

  The truck peeled around the side of the building and swerved toward a police car parked near the main entrance.

  “What are you doing?” Laney’s heart beat so hard, she thought it would fly out of her chest.

  “Giving them something to think about.” He accelerated, the truck bouncing over a sidewalk and onto the street.

  “Good plan. Now, how about you stop playing games and get us out of here?” Stan barked.

  Seconds later, they were speeding down the highway, weaving in and out of traffic. Sirens screamed in the distance.

  Seth didn’t seem worried. He cut through a neighborhood and took a few side streets. If he cared that he’d left a coworker behind, he didn’t show it. If he was worried that they could be surrounded by police cars at any moment, Laney couldn’t tell.

  She cared, though, and she was worried. She wanted to jump out of the truck and go back to the building to find Logan and Taryn and make sure they were okay.

  Please, let them be okay.

  “He’ll be fine, kid,” Stan said, smoothing down his hair and glancing out the back window.

  “It’s not just Logan that I�
��m worried about. Taryn is back there, too.”

  “You have a soft spot for him, though, right?”

  “No.”

  “Ha!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked because she knew he expected her to. She didn’t really have the heart for the conversation, though.

  “It means that you two have a deep connection. I’d venture to say that you’re even in love.”

  “Not even close.”

  “I know love when I see it, kid. I lived with the love of my life for forty years. She and I had a way of knowing when another couple had the kind of love that we shared. Even without her, I know forever love when I see it. You and Logan have it.”

  “We were friends as kids, Stan. That’s all.”

  Seth snorted but didn’t comment.

  Good. The last thing Laney felt like doing was arguing with both men about something so ridiculous.

  She and Logan in love?

  She didn’t even know what the word meant.

  At least not when it referred to what she’d read about in books when she was a teenager—the kind of love that knocked the air from a woman’s lungs and made her heart overflow with longing. That kind of love was the kind that could get a woman in trouble. The kind that could make her forget all the reasons why she needed to hold on to a little piece of her heart.

  Not something that Laney had ever wanted.

  All she’d wanted was the easy affection that she’d had for William. The undemanding acceptance that they’d had for each other. They’d been friends first, and they’d built a strong foundation from that. She’d believed with all her heart that it could sustain their marriage for a lifetime.

  Maybe it would have.

  Of course, it would have.

  She’d chosen well, and if William hadn’t gotten sick, she’d be living in their brownstone, content and happy to be his wife.

  Wouldn’t she?

  “Did it work?” Stan whispered close to her ear.

  “What?”

  “My attempt to distract you?”

  “If you were hoping that irritating me would distract me, then yes.”