by Pat Warren
He was being deliberately evasive. Fallon’s curiosity was aroused even though she knew this was none of her business. Yet she felt that Michael’s view of Tim’s situation revealed a great deal about himself. “Would I be out of line if I asked what you thought that was?”
Michael let out a huff of air. He hadn’t planned on getting into this, yet maybe it was a good thing. Fallon would undoubtedly get the message, no matter how subtle. “Karen’s father is a small-town justice of the peace. They have seven children in the family, Karen being the oldest. She attends a community college, but when you ask her what her goals are, she smiles, takes Tim’s hand and says that all she wants is to make Tim happy.”
As an independent woman, Fallon had a lot of trouble with women who saw themselves as mere reflections of a man. Yet many did and they had a right to their opinion. However, she thought that Michael’s problem with Karen ran a bit deeper. “You think she’s a gold digger after Tim for his family money?”
“I think it’s as plain as the nose on her face. But I’ve mentioned the possibility to Jonathan and to Tom, as well. Neither agrees with me. So I say, let’s wait and see. If Karen really cares for Tim, she’ll wait until he finishes law school.”
“Test her, you mean?”
He frowned, not pleased with the sound of that. “I wouldn’t call it a test, exactly, unless it’s a test of time. Tim’s known Karen less than a year. Frankly, for most young men, their judgment is often clouded by their hormones and what they label love often turns out to be a trap.” And therein was his real fear. “I just hope he’s smart enough to be careful.”
“You’re thinking of an early pregnancy.” She was watching his face when a thought occurred to her. “Are you thinking Karen might try to trap him?”
The muscle in Michael’s jaw tightened again. “It’s been known to happen.”
Fallon stopped herself from asking who he meant, although she badly wanted to know. This reaction had to come from personal experience. Had someone tried to trap Michael when he was young? Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Perhaps he was just very protective of Tim, who must seem almost like a relative to Michael after having saved his life when the boy was only seven and then having lived so closely with the entire family.
She decided to try to defuse the obvious tension she’d unwittingly created. “Well, Tim’s quite worldly, as you mentioned. Surely he knows all about birth control.”
Michael made a sound that resembled a bitter laugh. “Sometimes knowing isn’t enough.” The rain had picked up. He tapped the brakes as they cleared the top of a rise.
Fallon didn’t know how to answer that so she turned to gaze out the side window. “You know, it rains more here in southern California than it does in Colorado. I thought this was the sunshine state.”
Michael sat up straighter, his hands tightening on the wheel, his body tensing. The brakes weren’t holding. Again he tapped, then pressed all the way to the floor. Nothing: The van was racing down the incline.
Fallon couldn’t help noticing their excessive speed on wet pavement. “Michael, is something wrong? We’re going so fast.”
“The brakes aren’t grabbing hold.”
“What? How can that be?”
Up ahead in their lane, a camper was wheezing along on the sloping pavement. In the passing lane were several cars almost bumper-to-bumper, moving more slowly due to the rain. He had to do something before the gathering momentum would hurl them into another vehicle.
“Brace yourself, Fallon. I’m going to steer us off onto the shoulder.”
“Oh, my God!”
Chapter 9
“Hey, buddy, you were damn lucky,” Charley said as he stepped out from beneath the van suspended up on the hoist in his garage.
Leaning against the doorjamb of the mechanic’s shop, Michael didn’t feel all that lucky. True, they hadn’t hit another person or car. No one had died and, except for his sprained ankle, no one had gotten hurt. But the skid off the highway onto the asphalt shoulder had sent the van banging against the concrete retaining wall several times before Michael was able to get the vehicle under control enough that it rolled to a stop.
“How so?” he asked.
Charley wiped his greasy hands on an equally dirty rag as he shook his head worriedly. “Someone out there doesn’t like you, buddy. I thought you ought to know.”
Seated in the lone chair along the wall, her trembling barely under control after their harrowing incident, Fallon heard the mechanic’s words and walked over. “What do you mean?”
Charley adjusted his blue baseball cap more comfortably on his dark head. “Someone poked a hole in your brake line.”
Michael straightened, then drew in a sharp breath as his ankle protested the weight shift. In getting out of the van that had ground to a halt at an angle, he’d stepped onto light gravel covering a pothole and sprained his ankle badly. That, it appeared, was the least of his problems. “Are you sure?”
“You bet I am.” Charley ducked his head under the van and pointed upward. “See there? That’s a hole made by something sharp and pointed, like an ice pick or a nail punch.”
Michael stuck his head under and tried to see where the mechanic was pointing. It wasn’t easy to see the line, much less the hole. “Maybe I drove over a rock with a sharp edge,” he offered, unwilling to believe the other scenario.
“Not possible. That would have made a jagged tear.” Charley’s blackened finger pointed to the exact spot. “This here’s a fairly small but deadly round hole, one made deliberately.” He ducked back out and waited until the customer had straightened. “Someone knew what they was doing, too. They made it small so you’d be driving along for several miles with the brake fluid slowly leaking out. You wouldn’t notice it for a while. Then, once the fluid was all gone, the brakes wouldn’t hold. Bingo! Accident.”
Michael saw that Fallon had turned nearly as white as her slacks. He slipped his arm around her waist before turning back to Charley. “I don’t see how this could have happened. I keep the van in top condition. Just had it serviced last week. My regular mechanic didn’t notice anything wrong.”
Charley sent him an impatient look. “You’re not hearing me, buddy. This had to have been punctured a couple of hours ago. Three or four, tops. Otherwise, all the fluid would have slowly dripped out and you would have noticed soon as you touched the brakes first time. When did you start out?”
“Less than an hour ago.”
Charley nodded sagely. “You see? The heat of the engine warms the fluid and it flows faster. Where’d you have it parked? Had to be somewhere where just anyone could get to it real easy.”
Fallon looked up at Michael. “You didn’t pull into the drive last night because Jonathan’s car was there. Did you garage the van after he left?” She remembered that her rental car was still taking up half of the garage space.
Michael shook his head. “The van sat out in front all night.”
“So,” Charley went on, “you want I should call the cops and report this?”
They were halfway between San Juan Capistrano and Lake Elsinore. What good would it do to involve local cops? What could they possibly do but fill out a report? “I don’t think so. How long will it take you to fix it?”
Charley wrinkled up his forehead, calculating. “Depends on how fast I can get the parts. This ain’t exactly a new-model van and we’re not real close to a big city. I gotta call around.”
“Would you, please? We’ll wait over there until you can give us an estimate.” Michael walked Fallon back to the chair, but she wouldn’t sit down.
“Don’t you think you should call Sam Damien, at least?” Her hand gripped his. “Michael, someone put us in jeopardy. They wanted to...to hurt us.”
He pulled her close, wanting to deny the truth for her sake, but needing to face facts. “It does look like that.” Through the open garage doors, he watched the rain splash onto the concrete apron and tried to think. Who would go to so much tr
ouble to cause an accident? And why?
“I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been able to get us stopped before that curve. We could have gone right over and—”
“Stop! It’s not going to do any good to worry about what-ifs.” The car phone hadn’t been damaged and he’d been able to call Information to get a tow in to the nearest two-pump gas station that luckily had a mechanic on duty. “What did Charley say the name of this town is?”
Fallon stepped back from him, realizing her hands were shaking again. How had she gotten into this mess? Bad enough to put herself at risk, but in her zealous search for her sister, she’d somehow managed to endanger Michael’s life.
She studied his face—his strong, handsome face—and noticed his worried frown. She would never forgive herself if something happened to Michael. “This is all my fault. It has to be connected with Laurie and that private investigator or T.J. or one of the others we’ve met since my arrival. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Michael.”
He turned to her and stroked her cheek. “We don’t know that for sure. In any case, I’m the one who insisted on going along. Besides, I’ve made a few enemies in working with runaways. It could have been anyone.”
Only he didn’t believe it was. He remembered the Cadillac that had passed them in such a hell of a hurry when they’d first gotten on Interstate 5. He’d caught only a glimpse of the driver, a bearded man. Sherlock had told them that Raymond Hopkins, the private investigator, had a dark beard and had driven up in a big old Cadillac. And that same bearded man had asked Rollie what kind of vehicle Michael drove and where Michael’s House was located.
Coincidence? Highly doubtful. Had Hopkins tailed them, playing tag with the van, believing himself to be anonymous, then waited for the crash from a safe distance? A chilling thought.
Yet if that was the case, why did this P.I. hired by Roy Gifford want to kill or frighten him, knowing full well he would be with Fallon most of the time? Surely her stepfather didn’t want to harm Fallon. Or did he? Was it possible that they were getting too close to some real answers, answers that would somehow incriminate Roy in something shady? Like paying a chunk of money to his other stepdaughter to disappear without his wife’s knowledge, then paying Hopkins to cause an accident and he would be rid of Fallon, too?
But why?
Surely peace of mind—if that was what he was after, since the two sisters seemed to rankle him—wasn’t worth committing murder. Despite Fallon’s protests, Michael still hadn’t dismissed the idea that Roy might have molested Laurie. During her brief visit to Michael’s House, the girl had had such a haunted look about her.
Perhaps Roy was worried that Fallon would locate Laurie who might break down and reveal his rotten side. He had a fairly important position with the IRS, according to Fallon, and such a revelation would cause him to lose his job, plus his retirement pension, and certainly his wife’s devotion. The more Michael thought about it, the more he believed that his theory wasn’t all that far-fetched. And he was beginning to think that Roy was a whole lot more dangerous than Fallon thought him to be.
“What are you thinking?” Fallon asked, wondering at his lengthy silence. “If you want to return to San Diego and drop the whole thing, I’ll understand. You have your own obligations and I’ve dragged you away from them long enough. I’ll just pick up my Mustang and go look for Niko on my own. I appreciate all you’ve done so far and—”
“What makes you think I’d let you go on alone, especially after this?” His voice was low, his eyes serious. “Do I strike you as the sort of man who doesn’t finish what he starts, who walks out on someone he promises to help when the going gets a little tough? Is that what you think of me?”
“No, of course not. But you certainly didn’t bargain for this—someone deliberately sabotaging your van.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. And neither did you. But I think I’m far more prepared to handle someone who wants to play rough than you are.” Michael frowned thoughtfully, wishing he knew for sure that his theory was right. He needed some answers. Stepping aside, intending to pace, he felt a sharp pain spiral up from his ankle. Damn inconvenient to have this sprain right now, he thought with annoyance.
“Maybe we should reconsider and call Sergeant Damien,” Fallon suggested again, at a loss as to what avenue to try next.
“What good would that do, Fallon? All right, so this mechanic says someone deliberately put a hole in our brake line. What proof do we have that it wasn’t done by some kid who’s been turned out of Michael’s House for not following the rules? Or someone who lives in the neighborhood and doesn’t like a home for runaways nearby, so he thought he’d give me a scare, a warning? Sam’s too busy to deal with what-ifs. When we can give him something concrete to work with, then we’ll call.”
Fallon brushed back her damp hair. “I suppose you’re right.” She saw him take a few tentative steps, favoring his right foot. “I hope you haven’t broken any bones. Maybe we should get your ankle X-rayed.”
Irritated by the suggestion as well as the plight of his van, Michael realized his tone was harsher than he’d intended. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Squaring his shoulders against the pain, he limped over to where Charley was hanging up the phone. “What have you found out?”
“Maybe by tomorrow, the next day for sure,” Charley answered. “Best I could do. You want I should go ahead?”
Michael scrubbed a hand over the face he hadn’t taken the time to shave this morning. Two days, shot. He knew that Fallon wanted to check out Niko’s and see if Laurie was there. He also knew he could call Donovan and have him bring up Fallon’s car or he could rent one somewhere in this small lake town. Or a call to Jonathan would have someone there with any vehicle he wanted in under two hours.
But his ankle was hurting like hell, and despite his protests to Fallon, it was raining and he didn’t feel like going on the chase today. Still, it was her sister in danger and so he had to offer her a choice.
“Okay, order the parts,” he told Charley, since either way, he would have to have the van repaired. He hobbled back to Fallon and carefully outlined their options.
Her eyes studied his as he talked. Sometimes they spoke more loudly than his words. “We’ve waited this long, I don’t think a short delay will matter that much.” She truly didn’t want to continue without him, not after what had just happened, and she could see he wasn’t up to continuing today. While it was true that she felt a restless urgency to get going, her empathy for Michael in pain was greater. “Why don’t we find a place to stay and wait for the van to be repaired?”
He was amazed at how well she’d read him without his having to actually ask. He called to Charley over his shoulder. “Do you know of a hotel or motel around here where we could wait for the van to be ready?” While not exactly in the middle of nowhere, they were on a side road off a two-lane highway. He hoped there was something not too far away.
Charley removed his cap and scratched his head thoughtfully. “There’s a motel off the highway about five miles north, a Best Western, I think. Or you could try Perkins Bed and Breakfast up in the mountains, about ten miles inland. If you call them, Old Man Perkins will come get you. The place is family owned, kind of private. I hear tell the food’s like down home.”
Michael let out a tired sigh. “Sounds perfect.”
Perkins B and B was up a winding road and almost hidden by thick foliage and dense trees. It was a two-story house with a vaulted-ceilinged attic room that had its own bath, which turned out to be vacant and their first choice. Stretching out on the large pine four-poster bed, Michael listened to the rain dancing on the slanted roof just overhead and sighed. Folded at the foot of the bed was a goose-down comforter for chilly nights, and a beehive fireplace occupied one corner for the really cold spells. Michael found himself wishing the rain would turn to snow and they would be marooned for a month, although he knew the thought was foolish.
He listened to Fallon turn off t
he shower and glanced down at his right ankle wearing an ice bag and propped up on two pillows. She’d insisted on taking care of him even before changing out of her damp clothes. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had fussed over him—certainly, no one since he’d reached adulthood. When he’d moved in with Jonathan, the Redfield housekeeper had tried when Michael had gotten the occasional cold, but he’d discouraged her every attempt. Michael smiled, remembering that he’d thought himself too macho to accept help, coming off the streets as he had.
His mother had been the last one to tuck him in, to put a cold cloth on his head when he’d had one of his bad headaches, to bring him herbal tea when he’d had the flu in winter. The memory of her lovely face—her beautiful smile, her dark eyes—floated into his mind, and his own smile was tinged with sadness. Here he was, a grown man of thirty-two, a successful man by most standards, and yet he still missed his mother.
Freud would have a field day with that, Michael decided.
Probably his reluctance to accept female fussing had a lot to do with his difficulty in trusting. Trust was something he was very sparing with. Give it freely, Michael felt, and you were bound to get burned.
At first when he was on the street on his own, he’d trusted with the innocence of youth. But he’d learned quickly that people weren’t always what they seemed. He’d been lied to, stolen from, beaten up. So, yes, he supposed he was jaded, but a man had to protect himself.
He’d worked hard to make himself into the sort of man he would respect and admire. Now, when he looked in the mirror, he saw the man he’d made himself from the raw material of an orphaned boy who’d run from the law, cheated and stolen to survive. But he had survived and become educated, responsible, sought after.
Yet occasionally, he still caught glimpses of the frightened teenager he’d been, hidden behind the confident facade the world viewed now. And he wondered who else saw what he did.
