He hurried home. He had told Tara half an hour and it had only been fifteen minutes. He went immediately to the den and checked his computer for the information about Andrew “Pat” Carruthers that Steve Duncan had sent him. He read the pages as they came off the printer. Steve had sent him everything he’d asked for, but it didn’t answer his nagging questions.
Pat was six feet two inches tall and tipped the scales at two hundred and thirty pounds—definitely not a physical description that would suggest he could disguise himself as the woman the neighbors reported seeing at the location of the first death. It was also not a physical description associated with someone who could be easily overpowered by an assailant. So, how did Pat end up as a body in the river with a bullet hole in his forehead?
Brad looked around, the silence inside the town house finally penetrating his consciousness. Hadn’t Tara heard him come in from the garage? He strained to hear any little noise, but there was nothing other than the normal sounds. An adrenaline surge hit him and a nervous jitter settled in the pit of his stomach. He pulled the 9mm handgun from his holster and clicked off the safety.
He moved quietly toward the stairs, pausing at the bottom to once again listen for any untoward sounds. He cautiously ascended one step at a time. With his back pressed against the wall next to the partially opened door, he peered around the corner into the bedroom. Tara was nowhere in sight. He stepped into the bedroom, weapon drawn and at the ready. He took a quick glance behind the door, then checked the closet. He turned toward the bathroom just as the door swung open.
Brad dropped to one knee, gun arm extended toward the door. “Hold it right there!”
The sight that greeted him immediately burned into his memory. Tara stepped into the bedroom. Her long, shapely legs extended from the bottom of the bath towel wrapped around her body. Her tousled hair gave her an appearance of earthy sensuality. His mind leaped to the passion of their shared kisses and the sexual electricity from the previous night. All he could do was stare at the incredible vision. A tightness pulled across his chest and his breathing became labored.
Her startled eyes and the quick look of panic that darted across her face finally brought him back to reality. “I…uh…” Then he realized she was staring at the gun in his hand.
He holstered the weapon, stood up and turned away from her so that he faced the bedroom door. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to break in on you. I didn’t hear you up here…you hadn’t said anything when I arrived…I was concerned…uh…I was afraid something…” He glanced back toward her. The panic disappeared from her features to be replaced by the crimson tinge of embarrassment.
“I must have been in the shower when you arrived. You said half an hour so I hurried, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough.” Her heart still pounded from the sudden jolt of fear when she’d walked out of the bathroom and realized someone was in the bedroom pointing a gun at her. Or perhaps it still pounded as a result of the way his gaze started at the floor and traveled up her legs, her body and finally settled on her face. The look in his eyes brought back the sensation of their shared kisses from the night before…every heated moment that told her Brad Harrison was without a doubt the most desirable man she had ever met. It went far beyond his ability to send her logical and sensible life into a spiral of escalating exhilaration.
“It’s only been about twenty minutes. I’m early.” He finally forced himself to look away again. “I’ll wait downstairs.”
Brad left the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. He had to get control of himself. It had gone so far beyond the physical that he wasn’t sure how to describe it. When he thought she wasn’t there his first reaction had been panic that something had happened to her, not as a witness, not as someone connected to a case, not as someone who was business as usual…but instead as a woman he cared about very much. The thought that she might have left voluntarily hadn’t occurred to him. It was only fear that she had been harmed. It had all become so very personal.
He didn’t know what to think about her. At first she had been angry and suspicious. Then she’d given in to her fears. And finally she seemed to have accepted that she didn’t have any control over her life at the present time. But he knew he couldn’t dismiss the possibility of an ongoing connection between Tara and Danny Vincent, as much as he found that idea distasteful. On an emotional level it was not even a valid consideration, but intellectually…well, he needed to keep things in their proper perspective.
“I guess I’m ready to go.”
Brad whirled around at the sound of Tara’s voice. She was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, but they had obviously been run through the washer and dryer. She held the sack from the store that had become her luggage containing the few possessions available to her.
“I’ve got a spare weekend bag in the closet. I’ll get it for you so you can throw that sack away.”
She held it up and extended a shy smile. “This old thing? I think I’ve become attached to it.”
He grabbed the suitcase from the storage closet. “This should be better. Now, what else do you need for two or three days?”
Apprehension clouded her features as her gaze locked with his. The slight quaver in her voice belied any attempt on her part to put on a brave front. “I don’t know what I’ll need. Where am I going?”
Once again her plight touched him on a very emotional level. He pulled her into his arms and cradled her head against his shoulder. After drawing in a steadying breath, he attempted to soothe her obviously jangled nerves.
“I’m so sorry about all this. I’ve never been in a situation like this before. It probably doesn’t seem like it, but I do know my job and I’m very good at it. This situation is so unique. My normal sources are closed to me until I can at least figure out who’s not involved. Right now there’s only one person I know I can trust and we’ll be seeing him in a couple of hours. In the meantime we’ll get you what you’ll need for a trip out of state. I’ve made arrangements for one of the U.S. Marshals planes.”
She felt good in his arms. He ran his fingers through the silky strands of her hair, then lifted her chin so he could see her face. “All I can do is ask you to trust me. We’ll get through this.”
Her soft voice attested to her emotional state. “My father deserted us when I was a child. My mother only cared about how things affected her and what she could get. Danny wanted control of everything and everyone, he wanted a dutiful wife who would live in his shadow. I’ve never trusted anyone before, never completely…but I do trust you.”
It was a confession that had come from a place so deep inside her that she wasn’t even sure exactly where it had originated. All she knew was that it had been the truth. She did trust Brad, more than she had ever trusted anyone in her life. And right now he was the most important person in her life. Not just because he was working to protect her from harm, but because she had never cared as much about someone as she did about him. She drew in a steadying breath to calm her nerves. “What do you want me to do?”
Her confession did more than touch him. It burrowed deep inside him and became part of him on his most personal emotional level. For Brad, his relationship with Tara had moved far beyond that of a protector guarding the safety of someone in danger. But how much farther it had progressed was something he didn’t want to deal with. He lowered his head and placed a tender kiss on her lips. “Time’s wasting. We need to hurry.”
Tara transferred her few things from the store sack to Brad’s suitcase, then they left. After making a stop at a store to buy some needed items, they continued to Ken Walsh’s house.
Brad addressed his comments to Ken. “This is the woman the identification is for.” Ken and Tara nodded acknowledgment of each other’s presence, neither registering any surprise that Brad had not introduced them by name.
Brad turned immediately to the business at hand. “Is it ready?”
“Yes. I decided to
go with Canadian identification to put her one more step farther removed from the U.S. and from the availability of quickly checking out her ID. I have a driver’s license, a library card and a Canadian health card—all in the name of Alice Denton from Victoria, British Columbia.”
Brad inspected the documents. “These look terrific.” He handed them to Tara, who slipped them into her purse.
Ken glanced at Tara, then turned to Brad. “I had to really call in some favors to get these for you so quickly. Can you at least tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s better if I don’t. What you don’t know can’t come back and bite me in the ass.”
Ken’s expression grew somber, his tone of voice very serious. “Whatever it is you’re doing, be careful. The waters are full of sharks.”
Brad nodded his head. “I’ll be in touch.”
As soon as they had driven around the corner out of sight of Ken’s house, Tara turned in the seat toward Brad. “What did he mean by the waters being full of sharks? That sounds very ominous.”
“He just meant for me to be very careful and watch my back.”
She stared at the road in front of them as they drove along in silence. Any thoughts of her troubles being settled sometime soon had long been abandoned. Brad was sending her on a plane to some unknown place where she would be all alone, probably confined to another motel room, without anyone to talk to…and where she wouldn’t be seeing Brad for a while. And that was what bothered her the most. She took a quick sideways peek at him as he drove. In only a few days, this virtual stranger had become so important to her. The fact amazed her.
He turned off the interstate close to the airport, circling to the far side away from the main passenger terminal and the freight terminal, headed toward an isolated area.
A large dump truck filled with sand idled in the turnout at the side of the road. The reality hit him at about the same time as the truck lurched across the road in front of his car.
“Hang on!” Brad jerked the steering wheel around. He expertly worked the brake and gas pedal. His reflex actions moved faster than his thoughts. His body strained against the seat belt. The car slid sideways in a tightly controlled maneuver. The dump truck rumbled by, narrowly missing them. It ran through a chain-link fence and finally came to rest in a ditch.
Brad slammed the transmission into park as he barked out an order. “Stay here!” He jumped out of the car and charged across the road toward the now-disabled truck. He unzipped his jacket as he ran and reached for his holster. His heart pounded in his chest. The adrenaline pumped through his body. Crouching as he neared the truck, he yanked open the driver’s door.
He stared into the empty truck cab. The steering wheel had been tied off so that the truck would maintain a straight course. A large rock rested on the gas pedal. The rig-up was crude, very basic…and quite effective.
The sound of screeching tires grabbed his attention. He spun just in time to see Tara jump out of the car and run toward a concrete-block wall. A hard lump formed in his throat, threatening to choke off his breathing. Near panic twisted inside him as she disappeared from his sight, then a moment later a black car sped away from behind the wall. He raced across the open field at a full run. Uncertainty rampaged through his consciousness. He rounded the corner of the wall, his nervous tension assuaged only when he saw that Tara was apparently all right.
Brad grabbed her arm and spun her around, his voice telling of his relief even though his words spit out his irritation. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I told you to stay put.”
She jerked her arm from his grasp. “You’re always telling me. Has it ever occurred to you to ask for a change?”
He ignored her question. “We have to get out of here. This was not an accident. Someone rigged the truck to slam into us, most likely the driver of that black car. I wish I had gotten a better look at it.”
“Well—” she held up a small notebook, ripped out the top page and handed it to him “—do you think the make of car and license number would be helpful?” She leveled a steady gaze at him, almost like a challenge, while waiting for his response to this turn of events.
He took the paper from her, glanced at it, then back at her. He tried to suppress a grin and maintain a stern attitude, but it didn’t quite work. “I don’t suppose you were able to see the driver, maybe identify who it was?”
She stared at him for a moment before speaking, her voice a combination of teasing and sarcasm. “Well, thank you, Tara…nice work…very helpful…how astute of you to have spotted the car and realized that there might be a connection, and then on top of that to have acted quickly enough to actually get the license number.”
She turned her back on him. As she walked toward his car she muttered just loud enough for him to hear. “Oh, well, I guess what the hell do you think you’re doing probably means the same thing.”
Brad stood there dumbfounded for a moment, not sure what to say in response to her unexpected comments…unexpected but true, he reluctantly admitted. He ran a couple of steps to catch up with her. He tried to remain neutral in his outer manner, but wasn’t successful in hiding his admiration for her quick thinking.
“And with all this astute observation of yours, did you happen to notice the driver?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t make out anything. The windows had a dark tint and whoever it was wore a hat and had a jacket collar pulled up. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a man or a woman.”
“Damn…this is even worse than I thought. Someone found out about a flight that I scheduled only a few hours ago. Somehow the flight schedule information has been accessed…” Brad scrunched his face into a scowl and muttered under his breath. “Or else someone overheard me making the arrangements.”
He raked his gaze across the open field, along the road, then froze on a couple of small buildings. Parked between them, nearly out of sight, was what appeared to be the same black car. He turned to Tara, forcing a calm to his voice as he spoke in slow measured words that could not hide the seriousness of the moment.
“Our assailant hasn’t gone very far. It looks like the same car parked between a couple of buildings waiting for us. We need to get out of here…now.” He grabbed her hand and raced toward his car. This was as close as he had come to whomever had been trying to kill Tara, as close as he had been to being able to actually engage in a showdown with the culprit. Only there was nothing he could do but run…and try to get Tara to safety.
Chapter Nine
Tara ran to keep up with Brad while glancing over her shoulder in an attempt to locate what had caught his attention. There was no mistaking the sense of urgency surrounding his words. She hurried toward his car without questioning his orders.
Brad headed the car back in the direction they had come from. She swiveled in the seat until she could see out the back window. The black car pulled out from between the buildings and followed them. A moment later it put on a burst of speed. The immediacy of the danger swept through her. She fought down the panic. She had to keep her head and wits together if she was going to be a help to Brad rather than a hindrance. She hoped the fear didn’t show in her voice.
“The black car is behind us and it’s gaining.”
Brad glanced in the rearview mirror again. “Yeah, I know. Hang on.” He tromped on the accelerator. His car lurched ahead, quickly picking up speed. If there was one part of the city that he knew well, it was the side roads and industrial areas surrounding the airport.
He pulled a hard left turn around the corner of a warehouse, throwing Tara against the car door. A second later he took a sharp right and screeched to a halt behind a row of Dumpsters. With it being lunchtime, the activity around the warehouses was minimal. He wasn’t sure if that was an advantage or a detriment. The tension churned through his body. He waited, barely breathing, as he listened for the black car…the same sound he had heard earlier, a loud noise that sounded like a broken muffler.
“What do we—”
<
br /> “Shh!” He strained to listen. “Hear that? The car’s moving away—slowly, but it’s going.”
“We’ve fooled him?”
“For the moment, but whoever it is won’t be fooled for long. The plane is out of the question. We’ve got to get out of here now.” Brad put the car in gear and cautiously edged forward, carefully surveying the area for any sign of the return of the black car. Avoiding the primary road in the area, he drove through alleys and parking lots until he came to a truck delivery gate. He exited the industrial area and was back on the city streets.
Brad made a quick determination of the options available to them, then decided on a plan. He grabbed his cell phone and jabbed in a number. Impatience churned inside him as he waited for someone to answer the phone.
He almost shouted the words. “I need to talk to Lieutenant Duncan.” He motioned for Tara to hand him the information she’d jotted down about the black car.
“Steve…it’s Brad. I’ve got a Washington license plate I need to have you run. Tell the computer that the car was found abandoned in downtown Portland and you need the name and address of the registered owner. I’m in my car headed north. I’ll hang on here while you make the request. And Steve, see if you can put some sort of emergency status on it.”
He turned onto the interstate and headed north as he waited for Steve to come back on the line.
“Yeah, I’m still here. What did you come up with?” Brad listened for a moment. “Stolen? I’m not surprised. Where was it stolen from?” He concluded his conversation with Steve, then returned the cell phone to his inside jacket pocket.
He shot a quick sideways glance at Tara. “I’m going to owe Steve a heap of favors by the time this thing is over.”
“He told you the car had been stolen?”
In His Safekeeping Page 13
