Silent Rescue

by Melinda Di Lorenzo

  “Don’t make a sound,” the tiny woman warned, her voice low.

  The door thumped, and Brooks’s call carried through again. “Maryse, I’m going to count to three!”

  “He’ll do it,” she whispered, careful to move even an eighth of an inch—she’d seen the slice the blade had made when it nicked the shower curtain.

  “He’ll go away. He thinks you’re in the shower.”

  “He doesn’t care if I’m in the shower.”

  There was a pause. “It’s like that?”

  “Yes.”

  Another bang. “Two!”

  The knife eased just a tiny bit. “Tell him you’re fine. Make him believe it.”

  She let out a breath, then took another and called, “Brooks?”

  “Sweetheart?” His reply was puzzled. “You all right?”

  “Perfect,” she lied. “Just...cleaning up.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Maryse forced a laugh. “Aside from the fact that I’m trying to rinse while talking to you?”

  She could feel his doubt almost as strongly as she could feel the knife. “As long as you’re fine.”

  “I’ll be out soon.” She felt tears sting her eyes as she misled him yet again.

  “All right,” he called back. “Masters is bringing some pizza.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The other side of the door went silent. For several seconds, Dee held still behind her, the knife at her throat. Then she relaxed her hold and stepped back.

  “We’re going to have to go out the window,” she stated.

  “Out?”

  “Did you think we were going to stay here?”

  “I—”

  “You what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Minutes earlier, Maryse had woken with fear gripping her. She’s assumed it had been about Cami. About waking up in a strange place. But as she’d started to sit up, the petite woman had leaned over her. At first glance, Maryse hadn’t even recognized her. The long blond ponytail was gone, and in its place a short, dark bob. The grubby clothes had been traded in, too, for a pair of pin-striped pants and a crisp blouse. The woman had dusted her face with subtle makeup and didn’t look in the slightest like a career criminal.

  Then she’d uttered the first threat, and Maryse knew exactly who she was dealing with. She attempted to fight back with kicks and screams. The effort had earned her a blanket in the mouth and the weapon on her neck. She hadn’t had time to think about what the other woman wanted or what she was going to push her to do.

  But leaving...

  She cast a desperate look toward the door. And Dee caught it right away.

  “I can get to him, too,” she said. “And if that doesn’t motivate you enough, then keep this in mind... I know where they’re holding your daughter and I’m willing to help you get there if you don’t tell Detective Small where we’re going.”

  Maryse’s attention whipped away from the door, her mind stalling, then starting. “What?”

  “Camille. I know where she is. And I’ll take you.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying? Or setting a trap?”

  “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you my story on the drive, and if you don’t believe me, I’ll let you out and you can walk away. I give you my word. One mother to another.”

  “You have kids?”

  “I did,” the woman corrected.

  Oh, God.

  Maryse didn’t like the pointed way she’d said it, and she couldn’t think of a properly sympathetic reply for the woman who’d held her own daughter captive. But Dee didn’t seem to want one anyway.

  “Your boots are there by the sink. All you have to do is put them on and follow me. But we really only have a few minutes,” she said.

  A few minutes until what? Maryse wanted to ask.

  But the other woman was done talking, at least for the moment. She was already tucking the knife into her boot and moving toward the window. And as she climbed onto the toilet, she didn’t even look back. She just slid the window all the way open, clambered up and jumped out. Maryse waited for her to call through the opening. But the only sounds were the continuing rush of the shower and Dee’s boots crunching on the ground outside.

  “Dammit,” she said under her breath.

  It was wrong to leave Brooks. Really, really wrong. She knew it deep down in her gut. But the chance to see Camille—even if it was slim—couldn’t just be put aside. She wished she had a lipstick in her pocket so she could scrawl a note across the mirror. He would understand, if he knew. Subconsciously, she dragged a hand to her pocket. Then she remembered.

  Quickly, she stuck her hand inside and dragged out the passport-sized photograph of her daughter. The one that she’d grabbed from Dee’s house and had been carrying around ever since as some kind of talisman. She squeezed the little photograph for a moment, examining the details of Cami’s solemn face, so unlike her usual smiling self. She traced the outline of her soft, sweet cheek, then lifted the picture up and stuck it to the corner of the mirror.

  Please understand, she said silently as she slipped on her boots and climbed onto the back of the toilet.

  Swallowing a need to look back, she made her way up and out. She landed without much grace—one hand and one knee smacking the ground—on the rocks below the windowsill. She couldn’t quite hold in a pain-filled yelp as a particularly sharp stone dug into her palm. When she lifted it to look, a bruise was already forming around a small puncture.

  Dee’s hand appeared in front of her face, stretched out in an ironic offer of assistance. Maryse took it anyway and let herself be helped up. She was just glad that the safe house happened to be a rancher. If she’d had to jump from a second-story window, she would’ve broken a few bones, she was sure.

  “You okay?” the other woman wanted to know.

  Maryse shot her a look. “Really?”

  At least she looked contrite. “What I meant was...did you hurt yourself?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Dee opened her mouth, closed it, then shook her head and said, “Keep to the edge of the house. I don’t want your boyfriend to look out and decide to perform a rescue mission.”

  “All right.”

  She slunk along beside the diminutive woman, feeling as much like a rat as she must look like one. She kept going anyway, moving along stealthily until her foot smacked into something solid. A quick glance down made her gasp. The object in question was a boot. And the boot was attached to Masters, who was splayed out in the bushes beside the house.

  Alarmed, Maryse lifted her eyes to Dee.

  “Relax,” said the other woman. “He’s alive.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Chloroform.”

  “What?”

  “I just knocked him out. He’ll have a headache, that’s all. Come on.”

  They picked their way along the edge of the yard to the unconscious man’s borrowed taxi, and Dee yanked a set of keys from her pocket, then moved to the driver’s side door, where she paused.

  “Last chance to back out.”

  Maryse met the other woman’s eyes. “You just threatened to kill me, offered to take me to my daughter, and now you’re giving me a chance to back out?”

  “I threatened you, but I didn’t threaten to kill you,” Dee corrected. “But where I’m taking you...your life will definitely be on the line.”

  “Like it hasn’t been on the line for the last day?”

  “This is different.”

  “What about Brooks?”

  “His presence would guarantee your death. So...” Dee gestured toward the car. “It’s up to you.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Good.”
<
br />   Dee motioned for her to climb in. Still leery—and more than a bit confused now—she followed the directions and slid into the passenger seat. Before she even got her seat belt buckled, the car was rolling out of the driveway. For several blocks, they drove in silence. But after a few minutes, Maryse couldn’t keep quiet.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked.

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Toss it.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Toss it.”

  “But...”

  Dee’s hands were practically white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “Listen. You want my help. You need it. And you have no reason to trust me. But if I’m going to tell you anything, I need to do it in a way that puts us both in as little danger as possible.”

  Maryse bit her lip, then reached into her pocket. The phone was a lifeline. But it wasn’t what was going to help her get to Cami. So she rolled down the window, took a breath, then threw the slim device straight out. She pretended that the clatter as it hit the pavement didn’t make her pulse spike.

  “Okay,” said Dee. “I’m going to talk fast because we only have a short drive before we get changed and get into character.”

  “Into character?”

  The other woman ignored her puzzled question. “So the first thing that I should probably tell you is that my name isn’t really Dee White, and I’m not a criminal.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The important thing isn’t who I am. It’s what.”

  “What?” Maryse was starting to feel like a parrot.

  “I’m a fraud investigator.” Dee shook her head. “Or maybe I should say was. Because I sure as hell doubt I’m going to have a job when this is all said and done.”

  Chapter 19

  Dee sped through the streets quickly, her mouth working almost as fast as the wheels beneath them, and Maryse worked to follow along with what she was saying.

  “Before this, I was a bank manager for almost a decade. A few years back, though, my family was targeted. The victims of fraud. We did everything right. Filed all the reports, redid all the paperwork. But somewhere along the line, things got crossed. The person who took our identity was a bad guy, to say the least. But he was involved with some even worse people. Those people got ahold of our address, thinking it was his, and...” Dee lifted a hand to her mouth and chewed on a nail before clearing her throat and going on. “They came to the house. They killed my husband and my son. They would’ve killed me, too, but I happened to be out that night for a girls’ night.”

  For the first time, Maryse softened toward the other woman. She still didn’t trust her—how could she?—but Dee’s carefully schooled expression made her sure that at least some of the story was true.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Every day. And that’s what motivated me to try and find a way to move on. To help other people.”

  “And that’s why you became a fraud investigator?”

  “Yep. I tried to go after a police job at first, but they rejected me. Told me to take some time and figure out if I was just trying to get revenge or if it was a career path I really wanted to follow,” Dee said. “So I spent a year—another year, actually—in therapy, working through things. Nothing changed. I came back to the police. They still sent me away. So I took some courses, became certified and landed a job with a company that works right alongside the police anyway. I stayed behind the scenes for a long time. Then this opportunity came up. The hotel was suspicious of one of their employees. So they set me up at the hotel, tracking this guy.”

  “Greg?”

  “Uh-huh. They couldn’t seem to catch him in the act, and they wanted me to do it. But it was supposed to be simple. Go in, get to know him a bit, figure out what he was up to, then hand over the info to the hotel manager. Turned out to be more complicated than that. It was his brother and his sister-in-law masterminding the whole thing. Moving the stolen IDs across the border. Took me about three months to even get in tight enough that he was willing to let me know what was going on. One day, he invited me to come to a meeting. I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal. I had just about everything I needed from them already, but I went along anyway because I thought they might be suspicious if I didn’t. I guess we were supposed to meet the guy who handled the transport of the physical IDs—passports and driver’s licenses, stuff like that—when all of a sudden this other guy shows up.” Dee tapped the steering wheel and shook her head. “Caleb Nank. It turned out that Greg’s brother had double-crossed him and stolen a bunch of his business. And he really did tell Greg that the kid belonged to him.”

  “So that story you told us at your house...”

  “Was more or less true. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was in over my head. I wanted to shut it down.”

  “So why didn’t you walk away?” Maryse wondered aloud.

  “Nank. He didn’t trust Greg or his brother. He really didn’t trust the wife. Which meant he didn’t trust me. He had us all tailed, 24/7. And one day, Greg’s sister-in-law didn’t come home. She’d been talking nonstop about going to the police or just plain running.”

  “But you don’t think she did?”

  “Not a chance. We couldn’t prove anything, but we were all sure Nank had her permanently taken care of. You know...there’s just something about the man. He’s smart but cruel, and nothing gets by him. Ever.”

  For a second, Dee sounded almost like she admired the man. But then she shivered, and Maryse remembered that Brooks had said something similar.

  The other woman swallowed, her eyes a little too bright. “I knew if I didn’t want to wind up like Greg’s sister-in-law, I’d either have to go into hiding or I’d have to bust Nank himself. But it was so complicated. He doesn’t live there, and aside from the one visit, he never came back. Just sent his men up to collect the IDs. I didn’t have any cross-border connections, and I couldn’t find a way to get out without getting caught by Nank. God knows I didn’t want to wind up living somewhere in police protection.”

  “So when did my daughter come into the equation?” Maryse made herself ask.

  “About a month ago, Greg came to me and told me he had a way out for the three of us. He didn’t really explain what it was. Just said it would get Nank off our backs permanently. It gave me a bad feeling from the beginning, but I wasn’t expecting Greg to show up with a kid. And when he did...”

  “You panicked.”

  “Understatement of the year. I made the guys leave Camille with me while they searched for an out. I wanted to just bring her home to you.”

  “But they wouldn’t let you?”

  “I wouldn’t let me. If Nank didn’t already know where you lived, he would now. I was sure he was still having us watched. If I sent her back, he’d just find someone else to take her again. Or worse.”

  Dee paused, and Maryse was sure she was thinking of her own child. Her heart squeezed, sympathy taking root, even as she tried to fight it in the name of remaining aloof.

  “Thank you for trying to keep her away from him,” she said softly.

  “I failed,” the other woman said with a headshake. “When Greg called me and said you were at the hotel, I knew we were in trouble. I sent his brother to get you.”

  “But he got shot.”

  “Yes. And then your hero dived onto the scene. I didn’t know he was a cop. God. I don’t even know what I thought. Greg was going nuts, and I just knew I had to get your kid out of there. I started to make the passports. I thought maybe if I could just take her away from the city, I could make sure she was safe. I failed again. When I was getting things ready, Nank’s guys came to the house to take her. I fought them as best as I could, but they knocked me out and left me for dead. The next thing I remember is waking up out
near the garden shed and seeing your cop friend there, sneaking around.”

  “You could’ve said something then.”

  “It was stupid not to. But I was scared,” the other woman said. “I was ashamed. And defensive. I let you—another mom—down completely. Worse than that, even. And I still didn’t know your guy was a cop. But once I ran out and finally calmed down, I realized I’d made an even bigger mistake in not helping you.”

  “So you followed us?”

  “I went and got Greg from the hotel. I talked him into using his resources to track the license plate from the car you guys were in. From there, he figured out that Brooks Small was a detective. He was able to get Brooks’s cell phone number and track the location. That’s how we got to you. I thought our plan was just to find you and tell you everything we knew about Nank.”

  “Until Greg pulled a gun.”

  “I swear I didn’t know about that. I mean, I was obviously aware that his character wasn’t the best to start out with, but I didn’t think he’d go around shooting people. I couldn’t go to the local cops because Nank was still watching. So I contacted Rain Falls PD, where your detective works, and I begged them to pick me up. But Nank figured out that I was coming to town and he beat them to it.”

  Maryse leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure what to make of Dee’s story. She didn’t want to believe it. Not all of it, anyway. But if the woman really did know where Nank was holding Cami, she couldn’t walk away. In fact, she couldn’t even consider it.

  She opened her eyes. “So what now?”

  “Now I take you to him.”

  “To Nank?” Maryse’s heart skittered nervously.

  The other woman inclined her head once. “Nank knows you’re working with Brooks because Greg told him. But the one thing we have going for us is that he doesn’t know who I am. He still thinks I’m just an angry identity thief who was trying to rip him off.”

  “And he thinks you have something to prove.”

  “Actually...he thinks I took you at knifepoint from the safe house and that I’m taking you there now.”