by Lydia Burke
She froze. "What?"
"Look, we've got a good thing going, don't we? We understand each other now, so why cut it short before we have to?
Don't call it quits until Christmas. I'll be gone after that, anyway."
"Gone? Where?"
"I've been assigned to a survivalist camp about forty miles south of here, and I'll be staying there for an indefinite period—it could be six months to a year."
"Six months to... a year?"
"These things take time. The local cops think the camp is manufacturing methamphetamine and maybe LSD and distributing them to school kids. They need a stranger to infiltrate the operation, so I volunteered. If s what I do, Jess."
Jessie ignored the feint note of entreaty in his last words. "You volunteered."
"Well, yeah. These people have to be stopped."
The fragile hope his last-minute offer had stirred in her breast splintered, and she opened the door.
"No, thanks," she told him. "If s pretty dear where my position is on your list of priorities. I deserve better than that."
Angry tears gathered in her throat. She left quickly before Ben could see them fall.
"Dammit," Ben whispered when the door closed behind her. He heard her footsteps cross the porch and the muted clicking noises of the outside door latch. Then nothing. "Goddammit to hell."
What the hell had happened? An hour ago he'd been looking forward to getting naked and watching Jessie hang on to him as if she never wanted to let him go. Instead she was gone, believing he didn't care about her.
Well, wasn't this what he'd been after? Better that she think him a self-serving bastard than the truth.
It was just that it had happened before he expected. He hadn't prepared himself.
He needed a drink, maybe two, to make the yawning emptiness inside his chest go away. He was in the kitchen pouring whiskey into a tall water glass when he heard her.
"Ben?"
She was back! He hurried to the living room, only to stop short at the sight that greeted him.
Jessie stood inside the door with Ed Brock's aim around her neck in a choke hold, his other hand pointing a .45 semiautomatic pistol at her head. Ed's clothes were rumpled and stained, and it looked as though he hadn't shaved since he'd made off with the journal. But his hand was steady, his voice calm as he nodded and said, "Hello, Ben."
Ben's blood congealed in his veins. "I'm surprised to see you, Ed." He kept his tone cordial. "Leutringer figured your friends had probably spirited you out of the country by now."
"What friends? I'll take care of myself," Ed said. "But first you and Jessie are going to come with me."
"What do you want with us?"
"If s you I want out of the picture for a while, Jessie just happened to get in the way. Though I guess I have her to thank for letting me in here without bells going off."
"Let her go if it's me you want."
"No. Something tells me you'll be a lot easier to handle with this gun pointed right where it is. Do what I tell you and she won't get hurt." He nudged Jessie's temple with his pistol. Her eyes closed tightly.
"You all right, Jess?" Ben asked her softly.
"Yes/' she whispered, opening her eyes. There was fear there, and her face looked pinched, but she appeared to be composed.
Good, Ben thought. Maybe he stood a chance to get her out of this.
Those were the last words their captor allowed either of them for a long time. With the gun never wavering from its point-blank target, he told Ben to get a jacket.
Ben kept watching for an opening, a letdown in Ed's guard, but not for an instant was the deadly hold on Jessie relaxed. He couldn't try anything while she was a split second away from getting her head blown off.
With Ed half pushing, half dragging Jessie in front of him, they all piled into the front of Ben's car. Ed forced Jessie to sit with him in the passenger seat while Ben drove them to a desolate section of town. The deserted, mostly empty warehouses here were homes for vagrants and the occasional drug deal. On Ed's instructions, Ben guided the Trans Am to a ramp behind
one of the larger buildings where a wide, wavy aluminum door stood open,
"Park it in there, and don't turn off the lights," Ed ordered him. When the car was inside the warehouse, he said, "Now get out and dose the big door. There's a catch on the inside."
"What-"
"No talking."
Frustration gnawed at Ben as he did what he was told. Their situation was growing worse and worse, and he was powerless to do anything about it. One after another of his ideas had been abandoned as Ed had foreseen a possible move on his part. His ex-partner was too smart, too experienced to make stupid mistakes.
But Ben had been a cop for a long time, and his brains and experience counted for something, too. Ed was human; sooner or later he was bound to slip up. Ben would keep watching and be ieady to do whatever he had to do. Jessie's life depended on it.
He had time to turn slightly at the sound of footsteps behind him as he latched the door, time to hear Ed's voice say, "Sorry, pal." Time to realize he'd been second-guessed again.
But he was too late to deflect the blow that swallowed up the glow from his car's headlights and rendered him unconscious.
Chapter 15
xle came to with the mother of all headaches.
Ben opened his eyes to slits and saw a dirty expanse of dry-wall. Through the throbbing pain in his skull, he took stock warily. He lay on his stomach, his cheek resting on a cold floor, shoulders pressed forward awkwardly. Someone had tied his hands behind his back.
"I think he's coming around. See? I told you he'd be okay/ 9
"No thanks to you."
He knew those voices. The first was masculine and reassuring, the second, feminine and accusing. Ben remembered everything in a sudden rush.
He tried rolling to his side to face Ed and Jessie, but the nucleus of pain behind his ear shot sharp blacks of agony into his teain. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut until the worst of it passed.
"Ben? Are you all right? Ben. Help him, damn you."
"Ease off, Jessie. He's got a headache, that's alL"
Bra's torment settled to an aching tom-tom keeping time with his pulse.
"How do you know? You'ie not a doctor. He could have a concussion, or pressure on his brain. He needs a hospital-emergency care."
"I didn't hit him that hard."
"You shouldn't have hit him at all. Look, he's not moving anymore. Ben?...Ben!"
Jessie's frantic summons gave him the strength to speak. "I'm not dead yet, Jess."
He heard her sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God! Are you in pain? Don't try to move. Can't you do something, Ed?"
He needed to see where he was, Ben thought, and whether there was any way to get him and Jessie out of this mess. That wouldn't be easy. He knew now his feet were bound as tightly as his hands.
"You want to sit up, Ben?"
"I'm not sure," he said sardonically.
He heard Ed's feet approach and stop close to his left shoulder. Strong fingers closed over the biceps of one arm, lifting and turning him onto his side.
"Bend your legs and ease your back up along the wall," Ed said, adding in a warning voice, "and don't try anything dumb."
Sitting up was an ordeal that caused Ben's throat muscles to strain against the demon percussionist in his head, but with Ed's help he managed it. The first thing he saw when he was upright was the dull gleam of a well-tended handgun aimed right at his kneecap.
"For heaven's sake, put that thing away," Jessie protested. "Do you think an injured man with his hands tied behind his back is going to jump you? Two minutes ago he was unconscious."
Her gibe came from Ben's right, but he didn't look over. His gaze was locked with Ed's, probing to find whether his former partner had murder in mind. Ed's eyes were carefully blank.
"I won't shoot to kill," he said as though Ben had asked the question, "but I can slow you down for a long time to come."
Ben heard Jessie draw in a sharp breath.
After making his point, Ed lowered his gun and walked to the other side of the room. There he laid his weapon on one of two
wooden crates positioned close together. He sat down on the other one.
The immediate threat over, Ben checked on Jessie. She sat on the floor, knees up, leaning against the bare wall adjacent to his. Her feet were tied with rags wrapped securely from ankle to midcalf; her arms, like Ben's, were cocked behind her back. Otherwise she seemed to be unharmed.
Her worried eyes met his. "How's your head?"
It was still pounding like a son of a bitch. "Not bad. Did he hurt you?"
"No, I didn't," Ed said with a trace of impatience. "I didn't want her involved at all. How was I to know she'd still be at your place after all this time? Since she was, I had no choice but to bring her along. Believe me, if it had been just you, I wouldn't have knocked you out."
"Oh, so it's her fault I have this lump on my head."
"There was no other way to get you both from the car into this room in the dark. One of you had to be put out of commission for a while, and being a man, you were the obvious candidate."
"How chivalrous," Jessie muttered.
"To tell you the truth," said Ben, "I'm having trouble making sense out of your bringing either one of us here. Just what are you trying to accomplish?"
"Maybe it's for nothing, but I had to be sure."
"Sure about what?"
"Donno told me you saw him and Rory Douglas in his truck tonight."
"Donno...?" Ben's puzzled voice trailed off. Eyes glaring at him from a ferretlike face hunched over a steering wheel flashed in his memory. The face clicked into place. No wonder the man he'd seen speeding away outside the convenience store had looked familiar. He was Ed's snitch Donno Carr, the guy who'd given Ed the first hints about Mai's operation in Port Mangus. Ben hadn't recognized the informant immediately because they'd never met. Donno was a petty criminal, and Ben's only introduction to him had been via a mug shot Ed had once pointed out.
"So? I still don't—wait, did you say be was with Rory Douglas?" Ben had been vaguely aware of a passenger in the truck, but only as a shadowy figure in the background.
"You didn't know. Dammit." Ed breathed a resigned sigh. "Well, what's done is done. I'm going to play this thing out now, regardless."
"I don't understand," Jessie said.
Ben didn't understand, either, exacdy, but he was getting some ideas. There had to be good reason why a man like Douglas, who prided himself on his class, would fraternize with a street slug lite Donno.
Ed turned his head Jessie's way, his worn-out face looking old by the light of the camp lantern sharing space with his gun on the makeshift table. Automatically Ben's mind recorded the battery-operated lamp and Ed's dose position to the pistol. He also made a mental note of the keys to his Trans Am resting near the base of the lantern. He'd have to grab those if they managed to escape.
The room itself was small and relatively barren. A portable kerosene heater with tiny yellow ventilator holes near the top was placed close to a rumpled pallet in the comer to Ed's right. A gasoline can took up another corner and presumably held fuel for the heater. There were no windows in the room, and the single door was closed and padlocked from the inside. Their prison was obviously Ed's hideout, probably an old office in the warehouse he'd brought them to.
"I guess it doesn't matter if I tell you," Ed said to Jessie. "You can't do anything about it until I'm long gone, anyway. Donno's been working for me ever since the night I took the journal. I ran into him by chance while looking for a spot to lose myself for a while. He found me this place to stay."
"Isn't it nice to have friends?" Ben said snidely.
Ed barked a short, humorless laugh. "You know, I underestimated that little weasel, Ben. He's been slipping me tiny crumbs of information for years, and I was proud of the way I'd played him into a solid source for the bureau. If I'd had any idea of the things and people he knows... well, let's just say things are different now that I'm on this side of the fence."
He shook his head, whether in wonder or regret, Ben couldn't tell.
"'Course, with Donno, you don't get chicken crap unless there's something in it for him. He's helping me because he figures he's on to a real windfall."
"How so?"
Ben was less concerned about Donno than in keeping Ed talking. He needed time. He'd come to the conclusion that their only hope of escape was to overpower the ex-agent He couldn't do that with his hands tied, and so far he couldn't see a damned thing in the whole room, let alone within his reach, that he could use to cut through the restricting rags around his wrists. Somehow he had to find a way....
"He has inside information, what else?" Ed answered. "He knows I'm coming into some money shortly. Matter of fact, since I have to keep a low profile these days, he's acting as a kind of broker for the deal."
"Let me guess. He's dealing with Rory Douglas."
"Yup. Douglas's people want that journal real bad."
"I'm surprised you'd trust Donno. He's not exactly a candidate for sainthood."
"Yeah, well, I can hardly be choosy, can I? But I'm no fool, either. I don't trust him any more than I trust the mob. I've told Donno only what he needs to know to be my messenger, and bought his loyalty with the promise of a hefty bonus when all this is over. As for Douglas and his bunch, they're aware that if they're stupid enough to do away with me, Leutzinger himself will be reading Mai's journal before my body gets cold."
"But what about when you turn the journal over to them? What's to stop them from leaving you with a bullet between the eyes instead of a satchel of money?"
"I thought of that," Ed said grimly. "Thaf s why I didn't set up the exchange that way. There is no satchel of money—just a nice, discreet deposit wired into a numbered bank account in the Caymans that the feds can't get access to. When I meet with Douglas in a few hours, he'll give me a faxed copy of that deposit, and I'll take him to get the journal. He and his gang will have what they want, and since they won't have any way to get back their payoff, they'll have no reason to kill me. It'll be a straightforward business deal, and we can all go our merry ways."
Ben had to admit it was a reasonable plan that had a good chance of succeeding. The banking system in the Caymans, a small group of islands in the Caribbean, was well known for its unquestioning acceptance of funds and rigorous confidentiality, much like the system in Switzerland.
"And you'll just fade into the sunset, right?" he said. "With never a second thought about aiding and abetting crooks like the ones you spent almost a whole lifetime trying to bring down."
His derision had little effect on the ex-agent. Ed lifted his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. "I had it aU worked out to a tee, until you came along tonight. Just my bad luck—and yours—that you were in that neighborhood. When Donno told me you'd seen him and Douglas together, I had to make sure you couldn't get to Leutzinger before my meeting with Douglas. After that it won't matter—I'll be outta here."
"What are you going to do with us?" Jessie asked.
Ben heard an edge of anger in her voice. He didn't blame her. She hadn't asked for any of this.
A pang of emotions—part regret, part guilt, part need-bolted through his heart as he remembered the moment she had walked out of his house. Talk about bad luck. If Ed had waited just fifteen minutes before making his move, she would have been safely away—forever.
Somehow I'll get you out of this, Jess, he vowed silently.
"Nothing'll happen to you—or Ben—as long as you don't give me any trouble," Ed told her. "I'm just gonna leave you here. Then after I'm too far away for Leutzinger's watchdogs to find me, which shouldn't take more than a day, I'll make an anonymous phone call to the newspapers to let someone know you're here. In the meantime, you two may get hungry and uncomfortable, but otherwise you'll be okay."
"You know you won't get away with this, Ed," Ben said. "Why d
on't you let us go now, give me the journal and put yourself in my custody? Jessie and I'll put in a good word for you, and it won't go too hard on you."
"Forget it. You and I both know I've come too far for it to go easy on me. If I have to face prison, I'm going to make damned sure I get something out of it. And dirty money spends
just as easy as the other kind. For a change I'll be the one flashing the bucks."
Ben turned his head away in disgust.
"Don't be so damned righteous!" Ed snapped. "Do you know how old I am? Fifty-four years old. And I gave twenty-five of those years to the bureau. For twenty-five long years I told myself working for the government was a high calling, a noble cause—that patriotic duty came before anything or anybody else. And what did I get out of those years of dedication? Alimony payments. Fifteen years of alimony payments, and no wife to come home to."
The anger seemed to drain out of his face, and he leaned forward earnestly. "Zilch, Ben, a big z-e-r-o, that's what I got If I could look back and see I've made the world a better place, it might be worth it, but you and I both know not a damned thing I did in all that time made a rat's ass bit of difference in the long run."
"You're breaking my heart," Ben said unsympathetically.
"Ah, what the hell. Why am I trying to explain? I can't expect a young man like you to understand what if s like. I don't even care. Understanding won't make up for all those wasted years. Money will, though, and the only way I'm going to get it is to sell that journal."
"You're taking a big chance, dealing with the mob," Ben reminded him.
"I told you, I've covered all my bases. Nobody knows where the journal is but me and Marie, and if Douglas tries any funny business, Marie fixed it with a lawyer so the FBI will get it instead of the mob."
"You involved your wife?"
"Don't worry, she knows even less than Donno about whaf s going on. I needed somebody I could trust to help me, and now that I'm through with the bureau and soon to be a rich man, she's decided to come back to me. Finally I'll be able to give her all the things she always wanted."
