Gone Duck

by L. L. Muir

  Her heart pounded hard enough to shake her shirt. She could feel her skin pulsing against the fabric. She glanced down and to the right, hoping she wouldn't find a policeman headed her way. But from the corner of her eye, all she could see was the red and gold uniform of the doorman hurrying to her with something black in his hand.

  A gun?

  She stepped back, pivoting to face him.

  “It's raining out there. You'll need this.” He held out a small umbrella. “Just push this little button when you get outside.”

  She took the offering and thanked him, then jumped into the moving gap in the revolving door. Once she was free from the confining triangle of space, a gust of wind blew rain beneath the eaves and dampened her shirt, giving her goosebumps. She was almost tempted to go back upstairs and put on another layer, but she felt like she'd already made it through the gauntlet. There was no way she'd go back now.

  Besides, Hot Shawn was far too nervous to let her go out on her own again. Bad omen or not, it was probably her only shot.

  The umbrella, however, was a godsend. If she was nervous about an oncoming car, she turned the edge of the umbrella to shield her face. If the wind got a little chilly, she blocked it. And she was able to do it all and keep the stop-and-go drizzle from drenching her. She was a little worried about the wig and what the humidity would do to it, but if the wind tugged at it, she adjusted the umbrella.

  She ducked into Nordstrom and found a pair of earrings—antiqued silver teardrops with teeny, Nile blue roses. Too expensive, but she bought them anyway. After all, they might be the last pair she would ever buy, she laughed to herself.

  Her attempt to lighten up didn’t last.

  There was a moment of panic when she couldn’t find the cash in her purse but then remembered she’d stashed the bills in her pocket. From then on, shopping lost its luster. Every customer, every employee, made her nervous. And escaping the large store was almost as much a relief as leaving the hotel had been.

  She had gone four and a half blocks from the Davenport when a different type of chill ran up her spine. She got the sense she was being followed, but she didn't know if it was her imagination or not—due to the fact that most things in her life revolved around that imagination and she spent half of her day feeding that monster, urging it to go wild. Unfortunately, that monster didn't do her a lot of good in the real world.

  She thought about Shawn and imagined him coming to look for her at the carousel, disgusted that he'd had to leave Dorothy Jean alone in order to do so. But then she wondered if he might be the one who was following her. Was he so worried he would rather leave Dorothy Jean alone just to shadow her?

  Of course he would.

  Dorothy Jean was so comfortable in the hotel now that she rarely got confused. And if he was more worried about Macey, for the moment at least, then obviously he'd follow her.

  That just pissed her off.

  Her strides grew longer and faster. She hurried along to the park, hoping she would be able to at least see a few things before Shawn decided he’d patronized her enough. Riverside Park lay to her right. She could see the carousel lights—the surrender point. But she wouldn’t surrender! Didn't he understand that he was part of the scenery she was trying to leave behind?

  No!

  She stopped short. She wouldn't allow him to take this time from her. It was her one chance at privacy, albeit in public, and she refused to allow him to ruin it for her. If Lacrosse hadn’t found them by now, they’d done a fine job of losing him. And unless the man was trolling the park, when he expected them to be hiding, she wasn’t in any danger!

  She turned quickly so Shawn wouldn't have a chance to duck out of sight. But fifty yards away, it wasn't Shawn stuttering to a stop on the sidewalk.

  Half a block back, a tall man in a long, black coat stopped and started checking his pockets, eventually pulling out his phone. He looked relieved to have found it, then he tucked it back into his pocket and started walking again. She would have shrugged it off if he hadn't glanced for a split second in her direction.

  She turned around and resumed walking too, like she hadn't been spooked, but inside she was shaking.

  What the hell was Shawn thinking, letting her go out alone?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It was nearly eight at night and getting dark, and she was strolling around the Riverfront? A park? Shawn should have locked her in a closet! And if something happened to her, she was going to lay it all at his feet. Let him just try and get forgiveness for that!

  Due to the rain, park-goers were few and far between. If she hollered for help, she'd have to holler damn loud.

  Her sneakers squeaked on the wet sidewalk. And not far off, another pair of shoes squeaked too, but quietly. Was he working for Lacrosse? Except for the men playing SWAT team through her house, Cop Dracula's goons hadn’t worn anything but suits and ties, let alone a black beanie like the guy following her. But if it wasn't Lacrosse's man, who was he? Who else would be looking for her?

  Someone looking to collect the reward?

  Yeah, Shawn didn't think she knew about that. He always had some urgent question for her when Mortimer Coffee updates came on the TV. He thought he was so clever. But she'd known there was a hundred thousand dollars out there for whoever found her and gave her up. A lot of temptation for a city full of people. Too bad she hadn’t been thinking about that when she threw her little cabin-fever tantrum.

  That was so lame. Who offered rewards on people anymore?

  Shawn was right. Lacrosse could do whatever he wanted. And if he needed the entire city of Spokane to hunt for the three of them, Lacrosse had all the money in the world to pay the winner well.

  It was a miracle they hadn’t been turned in by anyone thus far.

  That female cab driver. Why hadn't she turned them in? Didn't she watch the news? Had she told her husband? Maybe he was the guy following her.

  She stopped at the corner and decided to turn left, back into Downtown. The park, at night, was a great idea if you wanted to walk around in the shadows and not be recognized. But all parks had muggers. She hadn't thought it through. It had been a childish idea, to find the giant Radio Flyer wagon and the famous carousel. Instead, she should have gone to the hotel bar and ordered a coke, rebuffed a few drunken lonely salesmen, and gone back to her room.

  She looked back down the sidewalk, presumably to check traffic before crossing the street, and the guy was gone. But since she still felt like she was being followed, she figured he must’ve ducked into the park and was stalking her from the shadows at her back. A shiver racked through her like a private earthquake.

  The light changed and she stepped into the street. A van from the oncoming flow of traffic turned right, and she slowed, waiting for it to pass. But it stopped and the side door slid open in front of her.

  She darted to her right and someone blocked her path. It was the guy in the beanie.

  “Get in,” he said, and pulled a gun partway out of his pocket.

  “No.”

  He shoved the gun back into his coat and tried to grab her with both hands, but she ran quickly backward.

  A car honked.

  “Get in the van,” the guy said through clenched teeth. He pulled the gun out completely and aimed it at her, trying to shield the weapon from other drivers.

  She got to the sidewalk and turned to run back the way she’d come as another guy came around the front of the van to head her off. Shawn’s warning screamed in her head.

  If Lacrosse gets you in a car, you're as good as dead.

  She backed up, facing the van, holding her umbrella out in front of her. It was the old-fashioned kind with a curved handle and a point on the end, so she pulled it closed so it not only appeared more dangerous, it was more dangerous. She could stab one of them, if she stepped into it and did it quickly. When Shawn had warned her she might have to kill someone to survive her little outing, she thought he’d been exaggerating.

  A car came u
p behind the van and laid on the horn, but no one was getting out in the rain. To anyone watching, it should have looked like a crime was about to be committed, but the people of Spokane either didn’t want to get wet, or didn’t want to get shot.

  The two thugs spread out to each side so she couldn't keep her attention on them both. The honking continued. More horns joined it. The guys in beanies didn't care.

  Macey looked back and forth between her assailants and glanced at the van. The driver rolled down his window and pulled the painter’s mask off his face.

  “Macey! Babe! Get in the damned van!”

  The umbrella went slack in her hands. The tip hit the ground. And while she stared in shock at the driver, the other two hurried to grab her arms and hustled her forward. She didn’t remember moving her feet. The door slammed shut and jolted her out of her stupor.

  “Dave?”

  The driver turned around to give her a quick wink, replaced his painter’s mask, then hit the gas. The horns stopped honking. At least the ones outside her head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Hang on, babe. We'll get you someplace safe and then we'll have a nice little reunion.”

  A guy on Macey’s right reached for her purse. She pulled it back and tucked it tighter under her arm.

  “Don't touch me,” she said as viciously as she could. A hundred percent Morty. A thick layer of bravado shielding a quaking, confused Macey underneath.

  She ignored her fellow passengers and concentrated on what lay outside the dark tinted windows. Out of boredom, she had studied the city maps in the hotel room, making conceptual lists of the things she would’ve liked to have seen as a tourist. So she was able to keep a mental image of where they were taking her. When they drove up Lincoln, she was sure they were headed back to her hotel, but they pulled into an alley before the Davenport block.

  The Hotel Lusso wasn’t nearly as historically impressive as the Davenport across the street, but she didn’t get a good look at the lobby. After they parked, Dave took off his mask, slipped a jacket on over his dark clothes, and walked her into the building, holding her hand. He told the other four to catch the next elevator and he and Macey got on alone. The second the doors closed, he turned to her, put his hands on either side of her face, and kissed her.

  “I’ve been dying to do that for a week.” He smiled into her eyes.

  No one on Earth could resist one of Dave Wells’s smiles. He could be standing next to Lacrosse, holding hands with the man, and pointing a gun at someone’s head, and if Dave smiled, the other person would still smile back. That’s how contagious it was.

  So Macey smiled. “You’re not dead.”

  “No, babe, I’m not.”

  “You know that Shawn thinks you’re dead, right?”

  He glanced away, guilty. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. By the time I was able to try to contact him, he was already on the run.”

  The elevator opened. Dave winked and grabbed her hand again before stepping off. Half way down the hall, he pulled a card from his jacket pocket and let them into a room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out at the Davenport. The Governor’s Suite windows were three stories higher and to the right, and the curtains were open in the dining room. Since she and Shawn and Dorothy Jean never used the dining room during the day, they left those curtains open to allow sunlight into the large room. Apparently, she’d forgotten to close them.

  Judging from the cameras set up on tripods, aimed in their direction, Dave and his buddies had been able to stay entertained.

  “It’s a good thing I don’t leave my bedroom curtains open.” Macey stepped away from the resurrected man and pretended to be interested in the architecture.

  The kiss, the handholding, the glad-to-see-you smile didn’t mean anything, she knew. They hadn’t seen each other for over nine months, since he’d brought her that duck at Christmas time, and even then he hadn’t been as affectionate as he had in the last few minutes. He’d been plenty affectionate while they were dating, of course, but that had been in the fall, nearly a year ago.

  “Oh, but don’t you remember?” He grinned. “You came to the window the other night when the police showed up. I’ll tell you what. I thought Lacrosse was going to kill those cops.”

  “I don’t understand. Why was he mad at the cops?” She walked to the window and looked down at the spot in front of the Davenport, now clearly visible from the Lusso, where the police cars had been parked that night. Her gaze traveled up to her bedroom window and she suppressed a shudder when she imagined how many men might have been watching her.

  “Because they almost blew his cover.” Dave laughed. “They’ve known exactly where you’ve been since almost the beginning. They found the taxi driver. Pretty sloppy for Parker.” He raised his eyebrows twice.

  Macey didn’t know why she felt compelled to defend Shawn, especially to his own friend, but she did.

  “It wasn’t his fault. We had no choice. Mrs. Lyman couldn’t have handled any more drama that night. And changing cabs would have made her more confused than she already was.”

  “So. Dorothy Jean is still alive and kicking. That’s great.” He moved to the wet bar. “What would you like?” He pulled out two glasses and dropped ice in them.

  “Water. Lots of it.” Paranoia apparently made her thirsty.

  He plucked two clear bottles from the fridge with his free hand, and gestured toward the couch, then came to sit next to her. He had poured himself something dark and brown and sipped on it while he watched her down the water and ignore the glass of ice he’d placed on the table for her.

  She watched him too, though she tried to be a bit slyer about it. Apparently he’d been a little shaken up by their reunion as well. There was just something…odd and heartfelt…about the way he drank the liquid. When he swallowed, he blinked just a little longer than usual, like he was savoring it. She didn’t remember him being a big drinker when they dated.

  She was halfway through the second water when her thirst backed off. She replaced the cap and set it aside.

  Dave faced her and threw an arm casually behind the couch. “I’m sorry about the duck. One of my guys on the inside told us what Lacrosse had learned from the Idaho trooper. And when I say I’m sorry about the duck, what I really mean is to say I’m sorry I gave it to you in the first place.”

  She nodded, not quite willing to forgive him for that. At least not yet. Maybe if she was still alive when it was over, she’d feel a lot more generous.

  “And there’s one more thing I’m sorry for, babe. You’re going to have to go back.”

  Back? Are you kidding me?

  Though her first reaction was denial, she realized quickly that she was actually dying to get back where she belonged—with Shawn—even if Lacrosse was onto them.

  “I’m sorry, babe. If you don’t go back, they’ll suspect something is wrong.” Dave misunderstood her silence, but she wasn’t going to correct him. “They’ll suspect we’ve found you, and they’ll move in and grab Dorothy and probably kill Shawn.”

  She gave him her bullshit look. “That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they have already done that? And if they were watching the hotel, they would’ve followed me too. They would already know you have me.” Her panic came from the idea of not being able to get back to Shawn. She couldn’t help it, but she could hide it. “You shouldn’t have taken me.”

  Dave shook his head and finally put down his empty glass. “They don’t know anything. Two men were following you. They were conveniently distracted in Nordstrom and started following another woman with a Davenport umbrella and gray slacks.”

  “Okay. First of all, it really disturbs me that I didn’t know I was being followed in the store. But mostly, I’m concerned with your logic. If you sent a decoy to get them away from me, they’re going to know it was on purpose. They’ll know they’ve been duped when the see they’re following the wrong woman.”

  “They never tried to stop her. They followed
her back to the Davenport. She got on the elevator. They dropped back.”

  “How do you know?”

  He smiled and tapped a piece of plastic in his ear.

  “Great. But now I can’t go back,” she said calmly. For some reason, she didn’t want Dave to know just how she felt about his best friend. It wasn’t because she wanted to lead the guy on, it was more a matter of trust. Until Shawn gave the all clear, Macey couldn’t completely trust Dave, even if it was simply due to the company he kept.

  “Sure you can go back. Maid’s outfit. Longer wig. We’ll cause a little ruckus in the lobby if we need to.”

  “Fine. So I go back. But you still haven’t explained why Lacrosse hasn’t moved in and killed us already. It’s not like he’s waiting for the news to die down or something. It looks more like he’s egging the media on.”

  Dave shook his head and gave her a sad smile. “Ah, babe. This is much bigger than three of you, I’m afraid. Yes, they want Dorothy back and they want Shawn dead, but they also want us.” He twirled a finger to encompass the room, the telescopes and cameras. “They’re using you as bait, waiting for my organization to come for you so they can nab all of us. That’s why they’ve been careful to keep the cops away from your hotel, why they haven’t been going door to door at the Davenport. They’ve been beating the bushes everywhere else, trying to keep Shawn hunkered down where he thinks he’s safe.”

  She almost laughed. “Shawn never feels safe.” No matter how relaxed things were in the Governor’s Suite, his eyes were always darting to the door. He was always putting his arm behind him, pretending to stretch, but he was always touching his gun, making sure it was there. “So we’re not the only threat. That kind of makes me feel better. I’d like to imagine Lacrosse as nervous as we are.”

  “You have no idea. And he’s just the security. There are four administrators giving him assignments between putting out his own fires.”

  “So stopping Lacrosse won’t shut down WHOSO?”