PhD Protector

by Cindi Myers

  Mark put a restraining hand on her arm. “Is there someplace else in town that might have a phone we could use?” he asked. “Or is there a sheriff’s office or a police department?”

  The woman snorted. “You think the cops will lend you a quarter for the phone?”

  It was Mark’s turn to deliver the silent treatment.

  “We got a deputy who swings through here every once in a while,” she said. “But we don’t get a lot of crime around here, so he doesn’t have cause to be here often. And knowing him, he’s fresh out of quarters.”

  Erin was exhausted, half-starved, frightened and angry and fed up. “Why can’t you just be a decent human being and help us?” she raged. “All we’re asking is to borrow your phone for five minutes to make one lousy phone call. We’ll even call collect. Then you never have to look at us again.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I pay for that phone, and if you want to use it, you have to pay for the privilege.”

  “Fine.” Erin unhooked the gold hoop from one ear and laid it on the counter. “That’s fourteen karat gold. You can sell it in any jewelry store for way more than your phone bill.”

  The woman’s hand shot out and she swept the earring off the counter, then reached under and pulled out an old-fashioned black plastic corded phone. “Five minutes,” she said, and turned away.

  Mark seized the phone and wiped his free hand on his jeans. He punched in his brother’s number, then leaned toward Erin, so that she could listen with him. The phone buzzed three time. Four times. Erin suppressed a moan. What if they had gone through all this and Mark’s brother didn’t answer his phone?

  “Luke Renfro.” The clipped voice on the other end of the line was so like Mark’s that Erin might have imagined the man beside her was speaking.

  “Luke.” The word came out hoarse, more of a croak than speech. Mark cleared his throat and tried again. “Luke, it’s Mark,” he said.

  The man on the other end of the line was silent so long Erin worried he had hung up. “This better not be a joke,” he said.

  “It isn’t a joke. It’s really me,” Mark said. “I need your help, Luke. I’m in a little store in a place called Dolorosa, Colorado. It’s in the mountains. Duane Braeswood and his men kidnapped me and they’ve been holding me hostage. I managed to get away a couple of days ago, but they’re looking for me.”

  “Give me your number so I can call you back.” Erin heard scrabbling noises, as if he was searching for a piece of paper.

  “It’s the phone for the Dolorosa Country Store,” Mark said. “I don’t know the number. The woman behind the counter let us use it to make one call. Please, send someone to get us right away.”

  “Us?”

  “I have Erin Daniels with me. Braeswood kidnapped her, too. She’s his stepdaughter.”

  “We know who Ms. Daniels is.”

  Erin blinked. The FBI knew her? Did they suspect she was in league with Duane? Her stomach flipped at the idea.

  “She helped me escape,” Mark said.

  “Is there somewhere safe you can wait for me?” Luke asked. “It may be a while before I can get to you. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the trouble Duane Braeswood has been causing us, but we’ve got every available agent working overtime on this.”

  “I heard part of a news story,” Mark said. He glanced toward the clerk, who was shuffling her stack of invoices, but clearly listening. “I have some information that can help you with that, but you need to get to us as soon as possible. We’re not safe. And there’s something else.”

  “What else?” Luke asked. “Are you hurt?”

  “I have a gunshot wound that probably needs attention, but that’s not the biggest problem. Before we got away from him, Duane Braeswood wired a bomb to Erin.” He glanced at the display on her collar. “It’s set to go off in a little over twelve hours.”

  “A bomb! You didn’t say anything about a bomb.” The clerk snatched the phone from Mark’s hand. She stared at them, wild-eyed. “I don’t know what kind of crazy you are, but you get out of here right this minute.”

  “Or what?” Mark snapped. “You’ll call the sheriff? Well, go ahead. He’s just the man I’d like to see.”

  “I won’t waste my time with the sheriff.” The woman slammed down the phone, reached under the counter and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. “Get out. Now!”

  Mark raised his hands and backed toward the door. Erin hurried after him. When they were outside, he wrapped his arm around her and they hurried across the road, to a treeless gravel lot where two tractor-trailer rigs and a rusting bulldozer were parked. “That woman is as nasty and crazy as Duane,” Erin said when they were out of sight, and hopefully out of range, of the clerk.

  “She’s definitely not a people person.” Mark leaned back against the bulldozer.

  The snow had stopped but the clouds remained, and the air was icy and heavy with moisture. Erin rubbed her shoulders. “I wish I had one of those blankets now,” she said.

  Mark held out his arms. “Come here,” he said.

  She came to him and let him wrap his arms around her. The solid feel of him made her feel safer and warmer. “Will your brother send help?” she asked.

  “He will.” Mark rested his chin atop her head. “He may not be able to come himself, but he’ll know people in the Bureau’s Denver office, or maybe an office even closer to this part of the state. He’ll send someone.” He hoped the Bureau’s desire to find out everything Mark and Erin knew about Duane would speed them along.

  “Why do you think Luke said he knows me?” she asked. “You don’t think they believe I’m part of Duane’s horrible organization, do you?”

  “They probably have profiles on any family members of known terrorists,” Mark said. “That doesn’t mean they think you’re guilty of anything. But they’ll want to find out everything we know about Duane. Maybe our information will help them to track him down and stop him.”

  “When they find Duane, what will happen to my mother?” Erin had never dared voice this question before. Maybe she hadn’t believed anyone, before Mark, would understand her concern.

  “I don’t know the law,” he said. “She might have to go to jail as an accessory, if they believe she has helped him or lied to protect him.”

  Erin nodded, the fabric of his shirt shifting beneath her cheek with the movement. “I tell myself she’s an adult. She made this choice. But I can’t believe she ever condoned the bad things Duane has done. She did what she did out of some misguided idea of love.”

  “Maybe the prosecutors will take that into account. You can speak on her behalf.”

  “At least in jail she’ll be safe from Duane,” Erin said.

  The front door of the store opened and the clerk stepped out and looked around. Mark and Erin shrank farther into the shadows of the machinery. “Maybe she did call the sheriff,” Erin said.

  “I hope she did,” Mark said. “At least in his custody we’ll be safe.”

  “Unless Duane has paid off local officials.”

  “Do you really think he does that?”

  “I’ve learned not to underestimate anything he will do,” she said. “All his money and followers have given him an outsize ambition and an overly positive opinion of himself to go with it.” She closed her eyes and snuggled against Mark. “I just want to have a bath, eat a good meal and get a good night’s sleep. Not necessarily in that order.” She wanted to do all those things with him. And when they woke, she wanted to make love to him slowly and thoroughly, with no worries about being interrupted, and with a whole box of condoms at their disposal.

  Whether he wanted the same thing she couldn’t tell, and she was afraid to ask.

  A white panel van pulled up to the store and a man wearing khakis and a black leather jacket got out and went inside. L
ess than a minute later he came out, got in the van again and backed out of the parking lot.

  Erin closed her eyes again, and was wondering if it was possible to sleep standing up when she felt Mark stiffen. She opened her eyes and pulled away from him. “What’s wrong?”

  “That van is headed this way.” He nodded toward the road, where the van was already turning into the lot. The driver drove slowly until he was almost even with them and stopped, the van blocking their view of the road. The driver’s window rolled down and a middle-aged man with a softly lined faced studied them. “Rosalie tells me you folks need some help,” he said, in a voice that hinted at origins in the South.

  Mark stepped in front of Erin, shielding her with his body. “Thanks, but someone is on the way to help us,” he said.

  The metallic sound of the slide of a pistol being pulled back sent ice through Erin’s veins. She remained frozen in place as the muzzle of the weapon appeared in the window of the van. “Y’all want to come along quietly and there won’t be any trouble,” the driver said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mark wanted to howl in rage or lash out in fury, but such temper would be foolish in the face of the gun. He glanced toward the store across the street, but the parking lot and doorway were vacant. Behind him, Erin stood so close her trembling moved through him. She had been so strong, had been through so much. To have it all end now when they had just found each other engulfed him in a dragging sadness. “How did you find us?” he asked.

  The man with the gun didn’t quite smile. “We have our ways.” He motioned toward the back of the van. “Get in.”

  “Where are you taking us?” Erin asked, as the door opened and a larger man dressed in jeans and a flannel hunting jacket climbed out and took hold of her wrist.

  “Mr. Braeswood wants to see you,” the driver said.

  They climbed into the van, where a third man waited. Outnumbered this way, Mark and Erin would have no chance of overpowering their enemies. Duane might have underestimated them before, but not now.

  Mark had thought their captors might take them back to the cabin, or even into Denver. Instead, the van cruised slowly down Dolorosa’s main street, then stopped in front of a modest house, the kind that might be rented out to vacationing skiers in winter or fishermen in summer. A tattered wreath hung on the front door, the faded red ribbon fluttering in the breeze.

  The front door opened and the driver waited in the van while the two guards escorted Erin and Mark into the house at gunpoint. The door slammed behind them, the sound echoing in the darkened room, which was devoid of furniture.

  “Professor Renfro.”

  Mark turned toward the sound in time to see a wheelchair glide through a doorway to the right, flanked by two more guards. Mark took a step toward them and one of the guards pointed a rifle at him. Duane’s eyes burned the intense blue of a Bunsen burner. “Don’t let my injuries fool you,” he said. “At my word any one of my men would kill for me, though I hope it won’t come to that.”

  Mark waited. Better to say nothing and see if he could figure out what Braeswood wanted from them.

  “I examined that trunk you tried to foist off on my men,” Duane continued, the hiss and click of the oxygen tank punctuating his words. “Very clever.”

  “It’s not real,” Mark said. “You can’t blow up anything with it.”

  Duane’s head bobbed up and down, the oxygen tube jerking with each movement. “Not in the state it was in when you left it, but I have many resources at my disposal.”

  “You couldn’t have armed that thing,” Mark said. “It’s impossible.”

  “Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. The Feds can’t risk the chance that I’m telling the truth, so they’ll give in to my demands.” His lips twisted in a distorted smile. “So you see, even though you didn’t do the job I wanted, you did enough to help carry out my goals.”

  “What are your demands?” Erin asked.

  Duane shifted cold eyes to her. “I’m demanding the immediate resignation of the president and his cabinet. I will replace them with persons handpicked for the job—men who share my vision for steering the country on the correct course once more.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” Mark said. “They’ll never believe the bomb is real. It’s impossible.”

  “They’ll believe me when I tell them the esteemed nuclear physicist Mark Renfro created the device for me. I have pictures of you working in your secluded lab to show them. Your fingerprints are on the device. Your DNA is in it, in a matter of speaking. When they learn such a reputable scientist is behind the project, they’ll have no choice but to believe.”

  “No!” Mark’s vision misted with rage. “I had nothing to do with the kind of evil you’re perpetrating.”

  “But now your name will be associated with it forever,” Duane said. “When people think of you in the future, they’ll remember a terrorist. Your daughter will be ashamed to tell anyone that you were her father.”

  Mark lunged toward the man in the wheelchair, but before he had moved six inches he was knocked to the floor by one of the bodyguards. He lay there, lip bleeding, staring up at Duane. He had thought he could never despise anyone more than he had despised this man, but Duane had found a way to increase his hatred. “I hope you burn in hell,” Mark said. “If I ever find a way, I’ll send you there myself.”

  “There is a way you could save your reputation,” Duane said. “Or rather, avoid it being tarnished in the press.”

  “What is it?” Mark hated how quickly he took Duane’s bait, but thoughts of his daughter growing up with her reputation tarnished because she shared his name—possibly even growing to hate him because of it—drove him.

  “You were clever enough that I can see you are very close to creating the weapon I’m looking for,” Duane said. “A few more weeks, maybe months, and you would have built a working nuclear weapon. I want you to come back to a new lab I’ll build for you and finish the job.”

  “Never!” Mark said. “I won’t be any part of that kind of evil.”

  Duane made a wheezing sound that might have been a chuckle. “Not interested?” He subsided into a fit of coughing. One of the guards stepped toward him, but Duane waved him away. When the coughing ceased, he wiped a tear from his eye and grinned at Mark. “Maybe I can change your mind about that.”

  He turned to look across the room. The door opened and a little girl edged into the room. Light brown curls formed a halo around her face and thick dark lashes framed sky-blue eyes. She clutched a stuffed elephant to her chest and looked around, cheeks flushed, lips trembling. At last her gaze came to rest on Mark. “Daddy?” she whispered.

  * * *

  ERIN STARED AT the girl, then the man. Mark had struggled to his feet, but now all the color drained from his face. He swayed, then sank to his knees. “Mandy,” he sobbed.

  The little girl ran to him and threw her arms around him. He held her tightly against him and buried his face in her hair, tears streaming down his cheeks. Erin wiped tears from her own eyes and sniffed.

  “A touching scene, isn’t it?”

  She stiffened, and turned to find that Duane had glided his chair alongside her. “That might have been you and I under different circumstances.”

  “That could never have been you and me.”

  “Only because you weren’t willing to listen to the wisdom I had to share. You always insisted on going your own way.”

  “Because your way is crazy,” she said. “You enjoy torturing and manipulating people for your own twisted ends. Do you know how sick that is?”

  His expression hardened. “It’s very easy for people to dismiss things they don’t understand as madness,” he said. “Despite what you wish to believe, it isn’t mental illness that drives me, but a clear determination to do whatever is necessary to
make this country great once more. The reason we have fallen so far from our ideals is that so few people are willing to do what is necessary to restore greatness. As the good book reminds us, we must separate the wheat from the chaff, and the sheep from the goats.”

  “Why do you get to decide the definition of greatness?” she asked.

  “Again, because I am one of the few people with the ability to see things as they should be, and the courage to take action.” He gave her a coy smile. “Did you like the little gift I gave you?”

  “What gift? I don’t want any gifts from you.”

  “The necklace, of course. Very haute couture, don’t you think? I even went to the trouble to gold plate it, in case you suffer from an allergy to base metals.”

  “What do you think it’s going to do to my mother if you blow me up?” Erin asked, resisting the urge to tug at the neckband.

  “When she sees what I’m willing to do to those who cross me, Helen will never think of leaving me again.”

  The coldness in his eyes made her shiver. But she forced herself to meet his gaze. “Let Mark and his daughter go,” she said. “Find another scientist to make your bomb—one who actually believes in your cause.”

  “So, you’ve developed feelings for my scientist,” he said. “And here I was beginning to think you were incapable of normal womanly affection. A female eunuch, as it were.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she said.

  “I know everything about you.” His voice grew harsher. “You may have thought you were out of my reach, but I have made it my business to know what you were up to at all times. Not many women your age have never had a successful relationship with a man—or a woman.”

  “You’re the reason I never had a relationship,” she said. “I never wanted to put anyone else in danger from you.”

  He laughed. “And now you’ve gone and fallen for the professor who is, after all, already under my control.”

  “Let him go,” she said again, not caring if he laughed at her affections. If she had to die, at least she could know she had saved Mark and his little girl.