Wilderness Target

by Sharon Dunn

  Compassion welled up in him as he reached out for her hand. “You’ve been through so much.” He couldn’t read the expression on her face. The brightness of her eyes seemed to dim, and he sensed that she was retreating emotionally.

  She turned her head away. “I don’t want your pity.” She knocked on the door.

  He let out a heavy breath. “It’s not pity. It’s admiration for the person you’ve become despite that.”

  Before she could respond, the door swung open. An older woman with salt-and-pepper hair, a long narrow nose and a soft smile stood on the threshold.

  “Naomi,” said Clarissa.

  The older woman looked at her for a long moment as recognition spread across her face. “Clarissa.” She gathered her into her arms. “My little lost lamb. I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”

  Naomi held her for a long moment, stroking her hair. Finally, Clarissa pulled free of the hug and wiped her eyes.

  Naomi looked at Ezra. “And who is this?”

  Clarissa seemed to be at a loss for words as she glanced at Ezra and then back at Naomi. A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I’m Ezra Jefferson. I’m her...her friend.” He stepped forward. “We don’t want to disrupt your day. We only need to borrow your phone.”

  “Sure, why don’t you come in? The girls are just finishing up breakfast. I can bring you some food if you’d like.”

  “That would be great. We’re famished.” Ezra placed a supportive hand on Clarissa’s back as they stepped inside a large, narrow room with an assortment of couches and chairs that had seen a little wear.

  Naomi pointed to a door off to the side. “You can use my office to make your phone call.”

  She disappeared through another door. The sound of female laughter rose up from a distant room, but was cut off when Naomi shut the door.

  Though she had stopped crying, Clarissa still seemed emotionally wrecked. Ezra opened the door to the office and allowed her to go in first. The room had a desk that was barely visible beneath all the stacks of books, papers in file folders and photo albums. Clarissa slumped down on a couch pushed against the wall opposite the desk.

  He grabbed a box of Kleenex off the desk and sat down beside her. “So this place is stirring up a lot of memories for you, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, wiping her nose with a tissue. “Mostly good ones. They were kind to me here. I made two really good friends.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “Shouldn’t we make that phone call?”

  Seeing her cry caused his own emotions to unravel. “We will do that. I want to make sure you’re okay first.”

  “It’s not something that is going to be okay in ten minutes, Ezra.” She rose to her feet and stared out the window by the desk.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “When I saw Naomi, it brought back the memories of the baby and all the dreams I had. You know, to be married and have a family,” she said.

  “You can still have that.”

  He caught the flash of hurt that crossed her features. She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  He got up from the couch and stood beside her. “What don’t I understand?”

  “Let’s make the phone call, okay?” Her words had a sharp edge to them.

  “What don’t I understand, Clarissa?”

  “Being with you...has changed something for me.” She turned to face him. “For the first time in ten years...I thought maybe I could love someone.” Her eyes searched his. “But you said you weren’t interested in that sort of thing back at the hay field when I asked you.”

  He retreated a step and let go of her arm, running over the conversation in his head and suddenly understanding. “I had a fiancée who said it was either my job or her. My job didn’t have enough status or income for her. Doing these expeditions is like breathing to me. That’s what I was thinking about when you asked me if I would ever get married and have kids. I just kind of let go of the idea after Emma dumped me.”

  Clarissa’s voice softened. “Oh, I thought that dismissal was directed toward me.”

  He shook his head, finally comprehending what she was getting at. “You mean...you saw us...maybe sometime in the future?”

  She turned her back again. “Now I’m embarrassed that I said anything. It doesn’t matter.”

  The hurt and anger he felt over what Emma had done to him was still very raw. He’d closed that door, not wanting to open himself up to the possibility of that kind of pain ever again.

  A gentle knock sounded. Naomi came in with two plates piled high with breakfast food on a tray. “Here you two are.” She set the tray on the desk. “Take as much time as you need.” She pulled out a small pink children’s backpack she had tucked under her arm. “I noticed that pack you are carrying is torn to pieces. I thought you might want a replacement.”

  Clarissa stepped across the room and grasped her hands. “Thank you.”

  “You were always very special to me. I prayed for you every day and wondered what happened to you after you left here so suddenly.” Naomi moved over to her desk and grabbed a photo from a pile. “Other people have wondered about you, too. Do you remember Sarah and Rochelle? The three of you were so close.”

  Clarissa looked at the photograph, and her eyes glazed with tears. “Of course I remember them.”

  “I’m planning a reunion for the girls who were here over that Christmas ten years ago. I hope you’ll come.”

  Clarissa pressed the photo to her chest. “I’d like to.”

  Her voice had such longing in it. Was she thinking about how much they had to overcome to do something as normal as go to a reunion?

  “Maybe I’ll see you there, too, Ezra,” Naomi said.

  Clarissa interjected, “Oh, he’s not my...” She shook her head.

  After Naomi left, Clarissa handed him a plate of food. Hunger had been gnawing at his stomach for hours. He shoveled one forkful after another of scrambled eggs into his mouth.

  As he ate, he picked up on Clarissa’s nervous glances in his direction. He wasn’t sure how to respond to what she’d said. She liked him and it seemed that she wished there could be more between them.

  But would her feelings last when they were no longer forced together by circumstances? Was her attraction born out of a need for someone to cling to because they’d been in such a desperate situation? Or was there something deeper between them? He scraped his fork across the nearly empty plate and cleared his throat. He couldn’t answer that question with any clarity, and he sure didn’t want to feel the kind of pain Emma had caused him ever again. “I think I’ll call my partner first, find out if the others made it off the mountain.”

  Clarissa gathered up the dishes and placed them back on the tray. “Yes, that’s been bothering me, too.”

  He could hear the tension in her voice. The implications of what she had said lay between them, unresolved.

  “And then it might take me a couple of tries to remember Officer Pitman’s number. I wish I had my phone with me. The number is in my contacts list. I haven’t memorized it,” Ezra said.

  He walked over to the desk and picked up the phone while Clarissa sat on the couch, looking at him in earnest. He took in a deep breath and dialed the number.

  * * *

  Clarissa could feel the heat rise up in her cheeks when Ezra looked directly at her. She was embarrassed by what she’d said. Of course someone like Ezra wouldn’t be interested in someone like her.

  Her stomach tied in knots as she listened to the phone ringing.

  Ezra pulled the phone away from his ear. “What day is it?”

  Clarissa drew a blank. She’d lost track of how much time had gone by while they were in the wilderness. Day had poured into night and night into day. They hadn’t had a full nig
ht’s sleep in days.

  She shot to her feet and looked at the calendar Naomi had posted on her wall. “I think it must be Wednesday.”

  Ezra clicked the phone off. “Jack won’t be reachable. He’s out on another short expedition with a new group.”

  “If they made it back, we can call them directly. We can call Leonard or Jan,” Clarissa said.

  “I don’t know their numbers off the top of my head. I need my phone.”

  “That would mean we’d have to go back to the office?”

  “It’s at my house,” he said.

  “Do you think Max would have figured out where you live, and assigned someone to watch that place, too?”

  He rose to his feet and dropped his hands onto his hips. “It’s no secret where I live. They could find out easily enough.”

  Clarissa’s throat went tight with fear. There had to be another way besides going to a place that was so high risk. Ezra stood before her, the look on his face pensive. Why was he even trying to help her at this point?

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she told him. “You got me back to town. This really is my problem. They’re not after you unless you’re with me.”

  “What kind of man would I be if I walked out of here and left you high and dry? We’ve seen this through this far. Let’s finish it.”

  The weight of the gratitude she felt made her knees wobble. Even if he never wanted to see her again after all this was over, she admired him more than any man she’d ever known. He wasn’t going to leave her when she needed him the most. “Thank you.”

  She shuffled through a stack of books until she retrieved a phone directory. “What if we called the police station directly and asked for the officer you trust? If he’s there, he might be able to help us.”

  Ezra flipped through the phone book. “It’s worth a try.” He found the non-emergency number for the police and dialed it. A crisp sounding voice came across the line.

  “Hello, can I please speak to Officer Pitman?” Ezra asked. A moment later he gave Clarissa a thumbs-up, indicating that his friend was at the station.

  She relaxed a little, enough to grab her beat-up backpack and start transferring things into the new pink backpack Naomi had given her.

  “Hey, Grant, I’m here with a woman named Clarissa Jones....”

  She listened as Ezra explained what had happened, and then gave one-and two-word responses to what the officer was saying. His expression grew grimmer. He cast a wary glance toward Clarissa and then he turned his back and lowered his voice.

  Perspiration formed on Clarissa’s forehead as she wrung her hands together. What had Max told the police?

  Finally, Ezra hung up the phone. He continued to stare out the window.

  “Ezra, what did he say?”

  He turned to face her. “You were right. Max did come into town claiming that you stole from him and that you jumped bail. The police department has orders to pick you up if they see you. One of Max’s henchmen must have posed as a bounty hunter. If the police caught you, you would have been turned over to him.”

  “None of it is true. I didn’t steal from Max.”

  “I know that, but we have to be able to prove it,” he said.

  “Did he know anything about Leonard or the others?”

  “There have been no reports—either of them coming out of the woods or of people being found dead. They must have at least made it out of the lodge. Another group would have gone through there by now.”

  “That’s a good sign, I guess. What do we do now?”

  “We’ve got to go to the police with something solid, otherwise they would be obligated to turn you back over to the state of California.”

  “I didn’t take anything from him. He took everything from me, and now he wants me dead and I don’t know why.” Frustration laced her voice.

  Ezra grabbed her hands. “That’s what we have to figure out. I need you to tell me everything.”

  “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “You said that there was something off about the bank deposits for house sales.”

  “There wasn’t anything illegal about it, so far as I could tell. It was just that there would be a deposit for me to take to the bank, and then I’d get the paperwork for the sale of a property a week after that. It seemed backward to me. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Max juggles a lot of properties. He’s not an organized person. He’s a salesman. That’s why he had an assistant. I just figured he was mixed up about which chunk of money belonged to which property.”

  Ezra shifted his weight. “So you didn’t say anything to Max about how odd that was?”

  She shook her head. “The one time I brought it up was when he said a deposit was for a piece of property that I knew was not our listing anymore. I drove by that house every day on my way to work. I saw the sign for a different Realtor in the yard and figured the home owner must have dropped us for somebody else.”

  “And what did Max say when you pointed that out to him?”

  “He shrugged and said he’d have to look into it.” She thought for a moment. “Shortly after that, he came on to me...that was a few days after Sondra was fired.” Clarissa took the money Max’s wife had given her out of the backpack and stared at it.

  Ezra moved toward her and pointed at the money. “What if the reason the deposits didn’t match the date of sale for the properties was because the money wasn’t coming from the property sales?”

  “You mean that Max was counterfeiting or laundering money?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But his wife gave me this money and I don’t think she was in on anything,” Clarissa said.

  “Maybe his wife didn’t realize the money was dirty. Think carefully about the sequence of events. Max sent his henchmen to the airport to get you after you had the money, right? Up to that point, his actions kind of implied he was trying to run you out of town rather than kill you.”

  “But Max thought I knew more than I did when I brought up the thing about the deposits and the properties. Or he was afraid I’d figure it out. That’s when he came on to me. Maybe he thought he could get me on his side.” Clarissa took in a breath as a realization came to her. “What if Max suspected Sondra was snooping in his office? Or that she saw something, but he wasn’t sure, so he fired her?”

  “Max saw you two talking a lot, right? He might have thought you were working together or that your loyalty would be to Sondra because you were close. Then when you had that money, he concluded you had it figured out. And if the money really is counterfeit, then you could use it as hard evidence against him. That was when he switched strategies from discrediting you to taking you out entirely.”

  Ezra paced. “I know one thing. This is not a local police problem. We need to talk to the FBI.” He flipped through the phone book. “We’ll need a car to get to their offices. I don’t think this is a conversation that should take place over the phone.”

  “Naomi might have something we can borrow.”

  Ten minutes later, they were headed across town. The FBI office was in a nondescript building that also housed offices for a chiropractor and a water quality inspector.

  They took the elevator up to the third floor. Anxiety plagued Clarissa. What if Max had gotten to these guys, too? They stepped out into a carpeted hallway. Ezra found the right door and knocked. He offered her an encouraging smile and squeezed her hand. “This is going to work.”

  “I hope so.”

  A woman with short red hair, wearing a white shirt and navy skirt, opened the door.

  “We need to talk to an FBI agent,” Ezra said.

  “I’m Agent Lewis.” She stepped aside so they could enter the office. A second male agent sat behind a desk staring at a computer. “That’s Agent Mayer.”
/>
  “We think we may have evidence of a money laundering or counterfeiting operation taking place.”

  “Why don’t you two take a seat and tell me what you know,” said Agent Lewis.

  Clarissa and Ezra settled in the hard plastic chairs while Agent Lewis sat in front of her laptop. She clicked through a few commands and kept her fingers on the keyboard.

  Clarissa took the money out of the pink backpack. “This is Ezra Jefferson and my name is Clarissa Jones.”

  The agent jerked her fingers off the keyboard. Her face blanched, and she shot a glance toward Agent Mayer, who pushed his chair away from the desk. “Please excuse me for a moment while I make a call.” She picked up her phone and stepped into an adjoining room. The male agent got up and left the room, as well.

  Clarissa watched the clock as ten minutes passed. She could hear the muffled tones of the agent talking on the phone in the next room. Clarissa gripped the pink backpack. “I don’t think we should stay here. Did you see the look on her face when I said our names? I think Max got to them, too.”

  Ezra rose to his feet. “You might be right.”

  They slipped through the office and down the hallway to stand by the elevator. She watched the numbers click by.

  Agent Lewis came out of her office just as the elevator doors opened. “Hey.” She ran toward them.

  Ezra pulled Clarissa into the elevator. Reaching the ground floor, they raced across the lobby and out into the parking lot. Ezra searched for the car keys. Another car pulled into the lot, but not into a parking space.

  “Ezra, hurry.” Clarissa’s heart raced.

  The driver’s door on the other car opened. Ezra found the keys and unlocked their car. As Clarissa pulled open her door, a voice shouted her name. She looked up, not immediately recognizing the person in front of her.

  “I thought you were dead,” Clarissa whispered.

  Sondra walked toward her. “Clarissa.” Her face was bright and welcoming.

  Clarissa shook her head in disbelief. “But I saw the newspaper.”

  “We planted the story,” Sondra said.

  Clarissa took a step back, still shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”