Secret Lover

by Shawna Delacorte

  “I know how easy it is to tap into airline passenger records. We couldn’t take a chance on someone picking up on your travels. Is everything set on your end?”

  “Yes. I need to go over some last-minute details, but all else is in place. What about the money?”

  “I had to spread ten thousand around in dummy packets so that it would look like twenty thousand dollars.”

  Phil stopped walking and turned toward Steve, the surprise on his face obvious. “What twenty thousand dollars? I thought it was supposed to be ten thousand.”

  “It was, then that weasel Benny decided to go into business for himself and he hit Andi up for another ten thousand for the name of someone else besides Durant. Sounds to me like he’s planning to go into hiding as soon as he gets his hands on the cash...assuming that he lives long enough.”

  Steve drove Phil to the motel in San Diego where he had been staying. Not only was it close to Andi’s house and Jim Hollander, it was away from the Los Angeles airport area should anyone attempt a computer check of registered guests. He had made arrangements for a car for Phil, not wanting Phil’s name to show up on any car rental records. Phil took the car and the two men went their separate ways, each to take care of last-minute details. Time was growing short. As Steve had said, everything would soon be all over.

  Steve took care of his loose ends and made it back to Andi’s house by five minutes after four. He was right on schedule. The next step would be tricky, but he considered it necessary. He had to separate Jim and Andi. He took a steadying breath and walked up to the front door. As soon as he stepped up on the porch, the door swung open with Andi standing on the other side.

  “Could you step out here for a moment, Andi? I need to talk to you in private. There’s something I need to have you do for me.”

  Andi cocked her head and leveled a quizzical look at him. She hesitated a moment, then stepped out onto the porch. They walked out into the front yard away from the house.

  “Rollie is flying in to San Diego in connection with this other investigation I’m working on. I was supposed to pick him up at the airport, but Jim’s so concerned about my comings and goings that I thought it might be better if I stayed here until it was time to drive up to Los Angeles for the meeting with Benny. So, I need to have you pick him up for me.”

  “Me?” Her surprise was evident.

  “It’s either you or me, and I think, under the circumstances, that I need to stay where Jim can keep his eye on me. He seems to be very uncomfortable with my absences. You know Rollie and he knows you. He’ll accept your word that I sent you where he wouldn’t give some stranger the time of day. So, unless you want to go through another bout of Jim’s insecurities—” He saw the flicker of anger that darted through her eyes and knew he should not have worded it in that manner.

  “Jim’s insecurities? That’s a rather harsh indictment, wouldn’t you say? I think his anxieties are perfectly understandable and his caution is well-founded.”

  “It was a bad choice of words. Of course he’s entitled to his concerns. But, back to Rollie. His flight lands in an hour and I need for you to rent a motel room for him before that.” Steve took some money from his pocket and handed it to her. “Pay cash for the room for one night and give Rollie this one hundred dollars for expense money. Tell him I’ll see him in the morning.”

  “But what about our meeting with Benny?”

  “You should be back in plenty of time before we need to leave for Los Angeles.” Steve extended a confident smile. “You’d better get going. You know how nervous Rollie gets if things don’t happen the way he’s expecting them to.”

  Andi glanced at her watch. There would be plenty of time. “Okay. I’ll get my car keys.”

  She entered her house with Steve behind her. Jim threw a suspicious look toward Steve, then addressed his comments to Andi. “What’s going on?”

  She reached out for his hand and smiled at him. “It’s nothing. I need to go to the San Diego airport. I’ll be back in a little while. Steve’s going to keep you company while I’m gone.”

  She reached her face up to his and placed a loving kiss on his lips. Her words were soft, intended for Jim’s ears only. “Just a few short hours and all of this will be behind us for good.”

  Jim watched in silence as Andi gathered her keys and purse and walked through the kitchen door into the garage. He heard the garage door open and her car start. A minute later she was gone. A sudden jolt of trepidation hit him, a feeling that he might never see Andi again. A premonition of some sort? Possibly. But exactly who was the person in danger, Andi or himself? He did not know.

  He turned his attention to Steve. “What’s this little errand you have Andi doing?”

  “Nothing that has anything to do with this. It’s that other investigation I mentioned earlier. She’s just doing an errand, then she’ll meet us at the location where we’re meeting Benny.” He waited for what he knew would be an adverse reaction from Jim.

  “She’s going to meet us there?” Jim definitely did not like the sound of that. “I thought you said it was a quick errand. It’s only four-thirty and we aren’t due to be there until tonight.”

  “Not exactly...” Steve shifted his weight from one foot to the other. This was going to take all of his persuasive powers. “The meeting has been moved up to eight o’clock. What with the traffic, we need to leave here in the next ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Jim leveled a hard look at Steve. “We’re leaving before Andi gets back?” He tried to hold down his anger, but it was not working. “What are you trying to pull? What’s really going on here?”

  Steve paused for a moment, as if turning something over in his mind. “All right, here’s the deal. Milo Buchanan himself is going to be there.” He saw the look of shock dart across Jim’s face. “This is our one and only chance to get him into a compromising position and nail him with personal involvement.”

  Total disbelief colored Jim’s tone of voice. “Are you trying to tell me that Milo Buchanan is actually getting on a plane and leaving Chicago to fly to Los Angeles for the purpose of meeting in some dark alley by the airport?” Jim spit out the words. “Give it a rest, Steve. You don’t really expect me to buy that, do you?”

  Jim made a quick move toward the bedroom and emerged with his suitcase in his hand. The hint of surprise that crossed Steve’s face in response to his already-packed suitcase provided a bit of self-satisfaction for Jim, but he did not allow it to show. He was pleased to have found at least one thing that Steve did not already know about. “You’ve been running me around in circles from day one. I don’t know what your game is—”

  Jim paused a moment as he looked curiously at Steve. “Maybe you’re the one who has the ties to Buchanan. You say good ol’ Milo is going to be here personally? I guess he insisted on looking me over himself to make sure it’s really me, something you can’t guarantee him because you’ve never met the real Jim Hollander. Is that it, Steve?”

  Steve’s face was set in grim determination. Gone was the nondescript expression and the easily forgettable persona. His eyes darkened and conveyed a hard look. His tone of voice became intense, his words emphatic. “I want this guy. I wanted him five years ago and I want him now. Milo Buchanan has to pay for all the damage he’s done and all the lives he’s endangered. I was hoping to get him back into court on the original charges, but now that I know about that second attempt on your life I think we can get him on the much more serious charge of conspiracy to commit murder, even without Ross Durant.”

  Jim was not exactly sure how to respond to what he had just seen and heard. He did not like the Steve Westerfall he had known over the past few days. And now he had been given an unexpected glimpse into the real character of this top investigative reporter. As much as he did not want to, he had to reluctantly admit that he was impressed. It was not so much what he had said or his obvious change in demeanor, but the dedication attached to the way he had said it.

  Steve opene
d the door and stepped out onto the porch. “Let’s go. We have a date with destiny.” He gave a self-conscious chuckle and added, “If that doesn’t sound too cornball.” The two men walked to Steve’s car and a minute later were headed toward the freeway. It was not quite five o’clock.

  They rode along for a while in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts. It was Jim who broke the silence.

  “Why are you so intent on putting Buchanan behind bars? You made it sound almost as if it were a personal vendetta of some sort rather than something for the good of the community in general or an attempt to right a wrong, or even just a good news story.”

  “Why am I so set on nailing Buchanan, no matter what? Well...I guess personal vendetta is as good a description as any. It has to do with my nephew.” Steve took a steadying breath. He did not like telling the story, but he felt it necessary under the circumstances.

  “One of Buchanan’s dump sites was a creek that ran through a wooded area next to a new housing development where my sister and her family lived. They had just moved in and Johnny was exploring through the woods behind the house. He found the little creek and thought it would be a great place to play. He was eight years old. It was two years later when you blew the whistle on Buchanan. A year and a half after that Johnny was dead from cancer caused by the toxic witch’s brew that Buchanan had dumped into that creek. Johnny was just a couple of months away from his twelfth birthday when he died.”

  Jim had not known what to expect, but this certainly was not it. Steve’s eyes seemed to be focused on some place far away, but his pain still showed. Jim’s words were soft and sincere. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Five years ago, when you disappeared and Milo Buchanan went free, you shot up to the top of my hit list with only Buchanan ahead of you. My first thought, my only thought about it, was that you had been bought off. I wanted you almost as bad as I wanted Buchanan.”

  Jim stiffened to attention. “Wait just a damn minute. No way—”

  “Settle down. Now that I know what happened, I can honestly say I’d have done the same thing you did.” Steve paused again in an attempt to force a sense of calm. “And now things have come full circle. Tonight we nail Buchanan and see that he’s put away this time. It may have taken five years, but it’ll be done. He won’t get away from us—I promise you.”

  Jim leaned back in the bucket seat as he assimilated what he had just heard. He slowly nodded as he allowed a bittersweet smile, everything now making sense. “And I’m your bait. The only thing important enough to get Milo Buchanan to tip his hand and become personally involved is the opportunity for him to get at me...an opportunity he can’t afford to pass up no matter how risky. Since he had allowed underlings to handle it before with unsatisfactory results, this time he would insist on overseeing things in person. I must say, you seem to have done a masterful job of manipulating everything and everyone.”

  Suddenly his heart felt very heavy. His voice filled with the despair that flooded through his reality. “And what was Andi’s part in all of this? Was she responsible for seeing that I’d stay put so I’d be here when you needed me?”

  Steve did not answer his question. Both men lapsed into silence.

  ANDI HAD ONLY GOTTEN about ten minutes away from home on her trip to the San Diego airport. Thoughts kept running through her mind, things that did not fit together. Something was wrong, very wrong. Why would Steve have Rollie fly out to California? In fact, the more she thought about it, she seemed to remember Steve telling her that one of the conditions of Rollie’s parole was that he could not leave the state of New York. And even if she was mistaken about that, why have him fly into San Diego the same evening that Steve would be right next to the Los Angeles airport?

  A sudden surge of panic jabbed her. It was a ruse. For some reason Steve had sent her on a wild-goose chase. But why? Her car tires squealed as she expertly spun the car around in a U-turn. She shoved her foot against the accelerator and sped back to her house. She charged into her driveway and screeched to a halt just short of hitting the garage door. Steve’s car was gone. She ran up the porch steps, unlocked the front door and burst into the living room.

  “Jim...are you here?” She rushed to the back and threw open the French doors. “Jim...are you out here?” She raced across the yard and looked down at the beach, calling out his name one more time. No response... nothing. She returned to the house. What had happened? Had Jim and Steve gone somewhere together? A note...he probably left her a note.

  Andi froze in her tracks when she spotted the man standing just inside her front door. A twinge of foreboding shivered across her nape as her heart pounded. She swallowed down her fear and took a step backward, feeling behind her for the handle to the French door.

  “Don’t be alarmed, Miss Sinclair. You’re not in any danger.”

  She tried to force a confident tone to her words. “Who are you? How did you know my name?”

  “Steve Westerfall put my partner and me here. He had us rent the house across the street so we could keep an eye on things and make sure everyone was safe.”

  Her anxieties lessened a little, but she remained on alert and did not move away from her avenue of escape. “Where are Steve and Jim?”

  “Steve left right after you did. He said he’d be back in a couple of hours and wanted you to wait for him. I’m not sure about Jim. We asked him to stay in the house, but he said he wanted to go for a walk along the beach. Apparently that’s what he decided to do. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “Well...okay. Thanks for letting me know.” She remained by the French doors.

  The man did not seem to be quite sure about what to do next. He shuffled his feet awkwardly for a moment. “Uh...I’m just across the street at the house with the motor home parked in the driveway. If you need anything, just signal, I’ll be watching.” He left the house and went back across the street.

  Andi rushed to the front door and slammed it shut. She leaned back against it as she assimilated this new bit of information. So, Steve had not left them unprotected after all. She felt a little better, however it did not explain where Jim had gone. She looked for a note, but did not find one. Something was still wrong. She went outside, crossed the lawn and opened the back gate. She stood at the top of the steps and looked up and down the beach, straining to see if she could find him. Then it hit her. The tide had recently gone out. The sand was wet within a few feet of the bottom of the steps. There were no footprints. No one had been on the beach.

  Whoever that man was, he had lied to her. Had he really been sent by Steve? She ran through the house and out to the front yard. Her gaze raked up and down the street until she spotted what she hoped she would find—Nick’s car. She raced toward it.

  Her urgency sounded as loudly as her words. “Nick, how long have you been here?”

  Concern quickly darted across his features. “I arrived just as you were driving down the street. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m sure...I’m not sure. Did you see Steve leave?”

  “Yes. He and that other guy left together in Steve’s car about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Steve and Jim left together?” She was not sure what she felt—anger, concern, confusion or relief—but whatever it was she did not like it. She turned around and stared toward the rental house, trying to will her gaze to penetrate through the wall so she could see what was going on inside.

  Nick’s voice took on an added edge of distress. “Is everything okay? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Damn!” A total realization of what had happened exploded in her mind with amazing clarity. They had gone to Los Angeles to meet with Benny. Somehow Steve had managed to move up the time and had sent her in the opposite direction while they headed north. Jim was unprotected. She did not know what Steve was up to or even what good she could do, but she suddenly felt very afraid for Jim.

  She returned to her house, grabbed her car keys and purse and ran b
ack out, slamming the door behind her. She shot one more quick glance toward the rental house with the motor home in the driveway. Had they been following Steve’s instructions? Telling her to just wait until everyone came back? Well, she was not buying it. Hopefully Steve had not changed the location of the meet.

  She had to set her anxieties and anger aside, they would only cloud her thinking. She jumped in her car and drove down the street toward the freeway. They did not have that much of a head start on her. For most of the way she would be going the opposite direction of the main traffic flow for that time of evening. If she hit it lucky, she could be there in a couple of hours.

  THE THREE PASSENGERS exited the nonstop Chicago to Los Angeles flight. Gordon went first, his large size easily clearing a way for the two people following him. They picked up their rental car, checked into a hotel by the airport, then sat down to plan the evening’s work.

  Milo Buchanan lit one of his cigars. “I’m unhappy with the phone call I received from Benny right before we left for the airport. This moving up of the meeting time at the last minute...I’m very concerned about what it could mean. Benny didn’t seem to have any specific information about it, just that if we wanted to see Hollander that’s when we needed to be there. You put that together with the other last-minute phone call from the mysterious stranger who claimed Hollander had plastic surgery and was leaving the country...well, I don’t like it. Something strange is going on here that I don’t know about.”

  Gordon tried to answer his boss’s concerns. “Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Buchanan. Do you think Benny was giving us some bad stuff? He’s played pretty straight with me in the past. Of course, this was kind of different from what we usually have him do.”

  “I think it would be wise if you had a little chat with him, Gordon. Make sure he understands our philosophy of doing business, especially if he wants to do any business with us in the future...assuming that he has a future.”

  The third member of the group finally voiced some personal concerns. “For crying out loud, Milo. You can’t go around bashing everyone who annoys you. I don’t even know why we’re here. You want to eliminate Hollander? Why couldn’t you just have Gordon here do it, or better yet hire it out to someone local? I think this is much too great a risk, you and I here at all, let alone together. What if someone spots us? In fact, I don’t know why you need me here at all. There’s nothing I can contribute to this little endeavor of yours.”