Spencer’s schedule.
Everything in his life was planned out in advance, and no one messed with that plan. He should be in his office, checking on lab results, going through the mountain of paperwork. She could set her clock by Spencer’s schedule.
After several blocks, Spencer zigzagged through an unfamiliar area of Omaha. This was the stupidest thing she’d ever done, and she needed to go home. She hit her turn signal at the next light when the Jaguar shifted lanes and turned into an office complex. Elizabeth eased off the accelerator and followed him through several turns until he parked in front of a two-story stucco building.
Shady Grove Outpatient Surgery Center. And to think she had expected a hotel.
Elizabeth pulled into the spot where she could see the entrance of the center and Spencer’s Jaguar. He opened the passenger door and she stood, placing a hand at his elbow as if he was hers to claim.
“The bitch,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
They rushed up the sidewalk. Spencer drew her against him and kissed her neck as she tried to unlock the door. Elizabeth shut her eyes tight and took in a shaky breath.
“Bastard! That low-life, cheating bastard.” When she opened her eyes, they were gone. She choked down the shock and slammed her fist into the steering wheel.
Time stopped and her ears and eyes seemed to block out everything but the soft breathing of her child. She unclipped her belt and got out of the car. Gently unlatching Erin from the car seat, she hugged her to her chest. Bringing her daughter to confront her cheating husband had to be the lowest on any list. But she couldn’t very well knock on the babysitter’s door and ask her to keep an eye on her daughter while she followed her rat-bastard husband either.
She followed him here, and that had to be the plan forward. Placing one foot in front of the other, she headed toward the double glass entrance door as a thick heaviness settled over her. The large oak tree at the corner of the lot that separated parking between the Outpatient Surgery Center and the Shady Grove Imaging Center next door stood completely still. She searched the sky and spotted thick storm clouds south of the city. It was as if her mood was affecting the weather.
With a shaky hand, she grabbed the door handle and it turned. Easing across the foyer into the plush, cool reception area, she took in a deep breath, held Erin just a little closer to her heart and silently made her way toward the rear of the building. That her sweet baby could sleep through one of the worst moments in Elizabeth’s life was a true blessing.
Should she call out to the cheating pair before they got naked and personal? Or was it better to sneak around like an idiot and catch them in the act? How was this game played? There should be a rulebook on how to discover your spouse committing adultery. He was breaking every damn promise he’d ever made to her.
A hum of voices caught her attention, and she moved to the end of the long hallway. The voices grew angry. Especially her husband’s.
“Why did you bring him here? I told you I couldn’t do this today.”
“Even with a rush transport, we may still not make it in time. I didn’t have a choice.”
“There are always choices, Victor. One of them is to follow my orders to the letter.”
She had never heard that tone of voice from Spencer, nor did she recognize the other man speaking. One thing was obvious, the chill that sliced through her wasn’t the result of seeing her husband with another woman. He might be having an affair, but that wasn’t all that was going on here.
Well, crap, now what? Standing right outside the door, Elizabeth had two choices: walk away or make herself known. Her mother’s famous saying slid across her mind. If you’re going to step in cow manure, better make it worth your while.
Placing her hand on the door, she pushed it open midway. It took a moment for her mind to focus.
God, oh God.
She couldn’t pull away from the gruesome scene in front of her. She had seen surgery performed before. This wasn’t it. This was — blood. The migrant worker they treated at the clinic, unconscious. The ventilator. Spencer’s surgical assistant with his hands covered in blood. The kicker, the one thing that slammed Elizabeth’s heart into her gut, was the familiar white container with the international symbol for live organ donor plastered on all sides.
Spencer was harvesting this man’s organs.
Her arms went around Erin as she backed out of the room. Spencer’s muffled, angry voice called out to the others in the room, but all she could hear was her heart drumming between her ears.
Nothing in Elizabeth’s world made sense. If Spencer was capable of—whatever the hell this was, she had to protect Erin and the new baby.
Keeping an arm over Erin, she sprinted out the entrance and around the side of the building to her car. In record time, she had the infant in her car seat and was backing out of the space as Spencer, still in his surgical garb, raced from the building. The man with him pulled out a handgun and aimed it at her car. Spencer shoved his elbow into the man’s gut before running to his own Jaguar.
Elizabeth didn’t wait around for what happened next, but sped from the lot onto the service road. Erin squirmed. Any minute, she would let loose how she felt about being jarred awake from her nap, making this nightmare even more difficult. Since there was too much traffic coming toward her to return the way she came, she turned south, pressed hard on the accelerator, and drove.
Humming a tune that usually relaxed her daughter, she glared into the rearview mirror as Spencer’s Jaguar pulled behind her. Not waiting for the light to change to green, she spun right again onto a four-lane road. While she did not know where she was going, her strategy was to place as much distance between her and her husband until she could figure out plan B.
The car’s movement rocked Erin asleep. Thank God for small miracles. The four-lane road turned into two lanes at the outskirts of town and they headed out of Omaha. Elizabeth couldn’t decide if she should take the next turnoff and return the way she came or keep driving. Her focus, the man’s body on the table, and her child in the back seat. She treated him for a sprained wrist just days before, his vitals, strong, and the stories of his wife and son, endearing. He worked the farms in the area, saving money to send back to his family. He couldn’t be over twenty-five years old.
She wiped her palm across her eyes, clearing away the moisture so she could see. Shit, what was Spencer involved in? The sight of the man she loved churned with the white organ donor case and the man with the gun.
The young immigrant worker’s name, lost in the blood. If they were harvesting his organs, that meant Spencer—the man she fell in love with, had two children with—was a monster.
She choked down a sob as she searched Erin’s diaper bag in the seat next to her for her cell phone. Her father would know what to do.
The last couple of cars turned off and Spencer pulled right behind her again. Bone-deep fear chilled her to the bone as she searched through the front window. Any hope of losing him failed. All signs of the city disappeared as the landscape turned to rolling hills and farmland. Neat rows of corn seemed to go on for miles. While their stalk height obstructed her view from signs of a town in the distance, she couldn’t miss the low, threatening storm clouds right in front of her.
Spencer increased his speed until he was right on her rear bumper. He signaled with his hand for her to pull over. When she ignored him, he tapped her bumper with his car, jerking her forward.
She shot him a glare and shook her head. “Not just no, you sick bastard, but no way in hell am I going to get stuck in the boonies alone with you and your hit man.”
The expression on the face of the man who sat next to Spencer wasn’t hard to read, even at the speed she was driving. If he had his way, she would have never left the parking lot of the outpatient surgery center.
She dug deeper into the bag, but still couldn’t feel her phone. A vivid list of cuss words slid across her tongue. Not knowing what else to do, she pressed the accelerator
and hugged the middle of the road. If she couldn’t hide from him, or outrun him, she could keep him from passing and cutting her off.
As she searched above the corn stalks for signs of another town, the sky turned a grayish black, casting deep shadows over the landscape as a hard gust of wind whipped around her. She clutched the steering wheel with both hands. Jagged lightning bolts stroked the road yards from her. A bulky stalk of corn slammed into her windshield, flying over the hood seconds later. Elizabeth almost lost her breakfast.
“Crap! Now what?”
The sky ripped open and hail pounded her roof.
Spencer blasted his horn at her several times. Her eyes scanned the horizon for the funnel cloud. Living in Tornado Alley all her life, she didn’t ignore the signs.
The wind became so unyielding, she slowed her car and pulled over to the side of the road. With a possible madman behind her and a funnel cloud somewhere above, she had no place to run. But the one thing her father had drilled into his children was to never try to outrun a tornado or find shelter in a car. Both options were death traps.
She swung Erin’s diaper bag over her shoulder and got out of the car. Spencer pulled behind her. Covering her head with one arm to protect against the golf ball-sized hail, she opened the back door and reached for the infant sling, putting it on like a backpack with the pouch in front.
Spencer stepped out of his car. “Elizabeth, what the hell are you—”
The roar of the wind took the rest of the sentence. He ducked down as stalks of corn struck him. She settled Erin in the front pouch and removed the thickest blanket from her bag. Wrapping it around her baby’s head, she raced toward a low-lying ditch across the road.
A new calm settled over her the instant she held her daughter against her. It didn’t matter what Spencer had done or who the man with the gun was. All that mattered at that moment was protecting Erin from the storm that raged overhead. There was only one safety net, and Elizabeth had to find it fast. If this field was anything like her father’s, there would be a narrow dirt road. And where that dirt road intersected the paved road, there should be a storm drain.
As if her very thoughts summoned it to her, her hand landed on a raised mound. She quickly turned and searched the road for Spencer, but the sky opened the floodgates and sheets of rain pounded on top of her. She couldn’t have seen her own hand in front of her face, and the howl of the wind was deafening. With one hand shielding Erin’s head, she felt for the cemented half-circle opening, and crawled into the dark, wet drain. Settling her spine against the side, she removed the soaked blanket and tried to calm her screaming infant.
She didn’t have a clue how long she hid in the storm drain, but one minute, the heavens were raining terror down on her, and the next, everything was completely calm. The wind died down, and the rain turned to a drizzle. She hugged her daughter and slowly eased out of the drain.
She stumbled backward at her first glance at her surroundings. The road was so completely covered in debris, she couldn’t see the asphalt. Rows of corn were flattened to the ground.
She climbed the wet slope to the road. Where was her car? Spencer and his gun-happy friend were nowhere in sight. Taking in a shaky breath, she wrapped both arms around Erin, who had finally stopped screaming.
She remembered every sickening event that led her to this place, but her mind couldn’t focus on what she was supposed to do next. Placing one foot in front of the other, she headed toward the center of the road.
This must be what shock feels like.
Time stilled as she cradled Erin. The closeness seemed to calm both of them. She followed the sounds of sirens that grew louder the closer she got to a small, one-road town. Wandering down the center of what had to be Main Street, she wanted to scream out to turn that siren off, but she couldn’t muster up the energy.
The few people in the street had the same dazed looks on their faces Elizabeth assumed was on hers. The tornado had done a number on the buildings. Very few stood upright. Fragments of the drywall, glass, twisted metal, and debris covered the road and sidewalks.
A woman approached. “Dear, are you okay?”
She wasn’t sure how she found her voice, but Elizabeth answered. “Yes, ma’am. My daughter and I are fine.”
The woman glanced around her. “It came up out of nowhere. I was in my garden and barely had time to get to the basement.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, she asked the only question on her mind. “How close is the interstate from here?” She didn’t care where she was, only how to get home.
The stranger placed a hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “It’s about three miles down the road. I need to go check on my husband. He runs the boot shop there,” she said, pointing across the street. Her voice cracked as she said, “You are welcome to wait on my porch. My home, by God’s grace, wasn’t hit.”
Elizabeth nodded her thanks and watched as the woman made her way to her husband. Instead of settling on the porch, however, she headed toward the car in the driveway. It hadn’t been touched either. Looking inside the driver’s side window, she spotted the keys in the ignition. Before she could talk herself out of what would be the second stupidest thing she did that day, she opened the car door and got behind the wheel. Forgive me!
She wrapped the seat belt around her and Erin, turned the key and pulled out of the driveway. She took a quick glance in the direction the woman walked before placing the gear in reverse. With her eyes straight ahead, she drove out of town. Exactly three miles up the road, she turned onto the ramp of the interstate toward Omaha.
Elizabeth had a choice to make. She could take the beltway around the city and head due east toward her childhood home. Her parents would be there, and she had never needed them more than at that moment. But at the turnoff, instead of taking the exit east, the fear of bringing this nightmare to her parents’ door compelled her to take the exit for downtown instead. She drove several blocks and slowed when she reached a ten-story white brick building. Entering the short driveway, she drove up to the guarded gate. Behind the iron gates was a large insignia that hung on the side of the building: Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Elizabeth turned off the car and unbuckled her seatbelt. Glancing down at her soiled, wet clothing, she ran a hand over her hair and tried not to look like she felt: unbalanced. The guard approached her as she got out of the car.
“Ma’am, you need to stay in the car.”
She cleared her throat as she zoomed in on the guard’s hand moving toward the handgun at his side. “Tornado… not sure where,” she blared out in a strained whisper. “I had to borrow this car. It’s not mine. I don’t know what happened to my car.”
“Ma’am, are you hurt? The baby you’re holding…?”
Elizabeth touched her lips to the top of her child’s head. “Erin’s my daughter. I need to talk to someone. There’s been a murder.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I think it’s a murder, not sure… I’m not sure of anything.”
* * *
Chapter Two
* * *
Fells Point, Baltimore
Thirteen years later
* * *
How did he always get himself drawn into other people’s messes? Noah McNeil had his own, and this wasn’t one of them. If thirteen-year-old Danny Merlot was acting out, Elizabeth Merlot was quite capable dealing with her own child.
While that logic made perfect sense to him, his sister-in-law had other ideas. All Jennie McKenzie McNeil, his twin brother Jared’s wife, had to do was put on that schoolteacher face, promise Noah a batch of homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and he was her puppet. Today, she wanted him to check on one of her former students. And since he and Danny had a brief history, maybe Danny would open up to Noah when he didn’t seem to talk to anyone else.
Danny Merlot was a McNeil family concern. It had been over three years since Elías Mendoza’s enforcer kidnapped Danny from the elementary school. Mendoza’s personal vendetta against Jennie an
d the McNeil family should have never landed on Danny’s young shoulders. Mendoza chose Danny out of Jennie’s students because Jennie had a soft spot in her heart for the boy—the perfect leverage.
Noah leaned his long frame against the side of his truck and scanned the block. Fells Point was Jennie’s neighborhood. She taught fifth grade at an elementary school four blocks to his north. Three nights a week and weekends, she was the music minister at St. Luke’s Catholic Church located three blocks east. The brownstone across the street used to be her apartment before she married Jared. Noah spent more time here than his own place.
He glanced at his watch. An instant later, St. Luke’s church bells echoed throughout the neighborhood. The bells were followed by his stomach grumbling.
“Hey, amigo. Are you going to lean there all afternoon holding up your truck, or are you coming in?” Raúl Ibarra yelled from the doorway of his flower shop.
Noah couldn’t help smiling at one of his best friends. Raúl Ibarra had semi-retired from the FBI three years ago and bought Louise Cunningham’s brownstone, turning it into a flower shop. He spent years working undercover as one of Mendoza’s top lieutenants. When Danny disappeared, he broke cover and tried to protect the kid. His sacrifice failed. He was captured and tortured. Even from where Noah stood, he could make out the deep facial scars carved into Raúl’s skin. There were others beneath his T-shirt, the same scars Jared carried with him. Danny had his own scars, but those were too deep to be seen. Where that would lead him, only time would tell. Danny made it clear he didn’t want Noah in his life. Maybe that was just the unleashed anger of a young teen talking.
Noah relaxed his fisted hands and strolled across the street. “I was trying to figure out something.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Raúl asked, shaking Noah’s hand.
In the Shadow of Pride Book 4 Page 20
