Tempting the Devil

by Potter, Patricia;

  She thought she was prepared. She wasn’t. Still, she parroted the sentence Mason had suggested. “I believe that information is protected under the First Amendment and therefore I cannot answer.”

  “I’m going to ask you again.”

  She repeated the statement.

  “Judge Davenport, I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question.”

  The judge turned to her. “Ms. Stuart, I’m sure you’ve been advised there is no such legal privilege in withholding information. You are directed to answer the question.”

  Robin hoped her voice wouldn’t waver. She believed in what she was saying, what she was doing. Someone trusted her. Regardless of the threats, she was not going to betray that trust.

  She repeated her answer.

  The judge’s gaze bore into her. “Ms. Stuart, you know the penalty if you do not comply. I can find you in contempt of court and send you to prison until you comply.”

  U.S. Attorney Joseph Ames spoke up. “I would recommend to your honor that Miss Stuart be given six days to reconsider her answer.”

  “This grand jury has only seven more days of its term.”

  “Yes, your honor. There’s time. I would rather have an answer from this witness than send her to jail.”

  Robin tried to hide her surprise. And elation. Six days of grace. Six days to discover what Hydra was trying so hard to cover. Maybe all her efforts this morning would bear fruit after all.

  Federal Judge Davenport looked to the foreman of the grand jury, then back to her. “I agree. I don’t enjoy putting reporters in jail. But I will, Ms. Stuart. You have six days to reconsider. You will return here next Monday at nine a.m. Be prepared to go directly into custody if you don’t comply.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Relief flooded her. She didn’t care why Judge Davenport had relented. She only knew she had six days. Six days to find answers. Six days to make the identity of her source irrelevant.

  Now if only her plan would work …

  After the hearing, she went to the newsroom. All the staffers gathered around her to hear what had happened. Though the proceedings were secret, she could tell what she’d said, and what the judge had ordered.

  FBI Agent Bill Maddox had accompanied her there, although the building was well protected and had been since 9/11. Guards checked badges and went through personal belongings as if it were the courthouse.

  Then she and Bob Greene wrote the story of the grand jury session together. When they’d finished, she looked at the clock. Two p.m. Traffic would start to pile up in another hour.

  “I’ll take the story to Mason,” she offered, though it was unnecessary. He could read it on his computer. “I have a few questions,” she added.

  She started for the elevator up to the executive offices. The agent followed her. She shook her head. “I’ll be right back down,” she said.

  “Ben will have my head,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Your choice.”

  Once on the sixth floor, she got out and headed toward the restroom. “I’ll be several minutes. I have to put some makeup on.”

  She saw him eye the men’s room next door. Just as she had hoped. If he hadn’t, she would have had to find another way to escape him.

  “Don’t leave the restroom until I knock on the door,” he warned.

  She agreed and went inside.

  She waited about eight seconds and looked outside. He was gone. The stairs were around the corner. She headed for them and went down to the floor below and hit the “down” button, hoping that the agent had returned to his post outside the restroom.

  He wasn’t on the elevator. She pressed the button for the ground floor, biting her lip while it stopped at two other floors. She wanted to rush out the door, but she didn’t want to draw any attention. Instead, she waved at the building’s guard, who was signing someone in, and walked out onto the street.

  She left the building, went down an alleyway, then into a large bank building and out the back way, exiting on a different street. One more block to go. She walked as quickly as she could, trying to make her stride as normal as possible. She passed two more buildings, then entered the third.

  She called the friend she’d talked to earlier, a member of the Press Club who’d left a competing paper for public relations. “I’m free for six days,” she said. “Were you able to bring some clothes?”

  “I heard. It’s all over the television and radio. Yep. One skirt. Two blouses. Two pairs of jeans. And the other things you asked for. All in a big duffle bag, the one we took rafting that weekend.”

  “Perfect. I’m in the lobby.”

  “I’ll leave it in the second-floor restroom. It’s to the right when you get off the elevator.”

  “You’ll never know how much I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime. You were there when I needed a friend. Just be careful.”

  She took the elevator up and found the restroom. The duffle was in the handicap stall.

  She locked the stall door, then took off the brace. It was a sure way to identify her. She looked at it for a moment. She had less than two weeks to go before removing it. If, the doctor told her, the bones had thoroughly healed. They were. They had to be.

  She removed a long peasant skirt and blouse, then a pair of dark pantyhose and flats from the duffle. A pair of dark glasses. A Braves baseball cap. Patty had done her proud.

  She hurriedly undressed, then pulled on the pantyhose. They would help hide the scars on her legs. Then she buttoned the blouse and slipped on the skirt.

  She put the pants suit in the duffle, along with the brace. She had to work to fit it in but finally she was able to zip it up. She put on the sunglasses and baseball cap, and opened the stall. She looked at herself in the mirror.

  No more businesswoman. She looked like a free spirit in town for a baseball game. Not perfect. But hopefully she’d eluded both the FBI and the bad guys.

  Freedom from the brace felt wonderful. Nothing else did. She was taking chances no reasonable person would. Holding on to the railing, Robin took the stairs going down to the street floor.

  Then she was on the main floor and out the door. She forced herself to stride casually, trying to correct her limping gait. She tried to look like every other woman walking swiftly down Atlanta’s streets.

  She reached the underground parking lot where she’d asked Jack Ross to park the car. She knew the size and model and had memorized the license plate. She wanted nothing in writing.

  Robin found the car. The key was in a magnetic holder on the underside of the car. She unlocked the door and slid inside. Then she sat there for several moments, wanting to make sure she’d not been followed.

  She started the car finally. The parking ticket was in the compartment between the two front seats. She rolled out of the parking facility, paid the parking fee, and turned down the street. Instead of getting on the expressway, she drove two miles east and stopped at a branch of her bank. Ten minutes later she’d taken out six thousand dollars, nearly everything in the account. She didn’t want to use her credit card on this trip.

  By now, Betsy Meeks, who she knew from an animal rescue group, would have picked up Daisy and Damien, and Naomi, her friend from the Food section of the paper, would have purchased a nightgown and other items for Mrs. Jeffers and be making sure she had somewhere nice to live until Robin returned.

  She made her way onto the expressway, and headed south toward Macon and the Georgia coast. If she could find the boat, perhaps she could trace the ownership to Hydra, or to someone who could lead her to Hydra. If the fishing trips were as frequent as Sandy implied, the boat probably had a permanent mooring in Brunswick.

  The car she was driving was a twelve-year-old model but Jack had kept it in excellent shape. He had expected to give it to his grandson when he graduated. Instead, he attended a funeral when his grandson and three other students were killed on their way home from spring break.

  It had been sitting in
Jack Ross’s garage since then.

  She knew about the car because he’d offered it to her after her first accident. She declined because her insurance would replace her vehicle and she knew exactly what she wanted.

  When she had called him this morning, he’d readily agreed to lend it to her. “You know I’ve always liked your instincts,” he said. “But you’re in over your head. I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve already nearly gotten one friend killed and put my sisters in danger. No one else. Just the car. That’s all I need. I know how to dig. You know that.”

  “What if the boat isn’t there?”

  “Then I’ll try the ownership of the beach house, but I expect that, like the property in Meredith, it’ll be owned by some corporation on an island in the Indian Ocean. But if I can find that boat, and hang around, maybe someone will lead me to an actual person.”

  “I don’t think …”

  “I’ve gone over and over it,” she said. “They seem to know everyone I talk to, everywhere I go. My source says law enforcement people are involved, and I have to believe them. I’m using a disposable phone, and I’m in a public restroom with the water running. I know how to avoid them, but I must have a car that’s not traceable.”

  “I still think someone should go with you.”

  “Everyone in Atlanta knows you,” she said. “If you drop out of sight, someone will put two and two together. The only thing that works is if I get a car no one knows about.”

  A pause on the phone. “Okay, baby girl,” he said gruffly, using his nickname for her since the first day she entered the newsroom. “I’ve done stuff that would curl my innards these days. Do you have a weapon?”

  “I will. I have a license.”

  “I don’t want you killed,” he said. “I sure don’t want to contribute to it.”

  “This is the best way I know to keep alive,” she said.

  “There’s no cop you trust?”

  “Even if there was one, he would have to report to his superiors, and I don’t know who there can be trusted.”

  “No one knows where you’re going?”

  “No.”

  “That scares the hell out of me.”

  She made her strongest shot. “You would have gone under the same circumstances. You would have wanted the story.”

  Thank God, he didn’t.

  “I’ll never forgive either of us if anything happens to you,” he said. She knew, though, he’d conceded.

  “I’ll call you.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Call this number,” she said. She gave him the well-memorized number of the attorney in California. “I’ll keep him posted.”

  “Tell me where you want me to leave the car.”

  She told him where she wanted him to park it

  “It’ll be there. For God’s sake, be careful, baby girl.”

  She would have been insulted by that term if anyone else had said it, but Jack, a legend in Georgia newspapering, was a force of his own.

  She looked in the rearview mirror for the umpteenth time but saw nothing familiar, only a constant stream of trucks. An exit was coming up. One that led into a small town called Jackson that had the world’s best barbeque sandwiches.

  Robin twisted around the small town, then stopped for some sandwiches and coffee to go. When she got back into the car, she glanced around. Only local county license plates. She pulled out and took a county road that would eventually hook back up with the interstate ninety miles south.

  It was a road that ran through tiny hamlets, towns left to die when the interstate went through. There was no other traffic.

  She’d traveled it years ago as a rookie reporter covering the local spelling bee contests.

  She stopped at an overgrown roadside park and ate in the car. A lumber truck rambled past, then a pickup. That was all.

  The car clock said eight p.m. It would be dark soon, and she’d never cared about driving in the dark, especially since the accident. She would stop at the next motel.

  On this road, it would probably be the Bates Motel, complete with a resident psychopath. Couldn’t be worse than the passel of psychopaths she was facing now.

  Could she do what the FBI hadn’t been able to do? Was she tilting at windmills but with a far deadlier consequence than Don Quixote faced?

  chapter twenty-three

  Ben quietly raged inside.

  He never should have suggested someone else handle the surveillance. He’d known how creative she could be. She’d managed to outfox everyone just two nights ago.

  Her seeming acceptance of FBI protection, though, misled the detail. She knew, and they knew, that she was not a suspect, and no restrictions had been placed on her by the federal judge. She probably also knew that if she hadn’t accepted FBI protection, they would have provided surveillance she couldn’t control as well.

  He’d underestimated her resourcefulness several times. He couldn’t blame the agents. He could—and did—blame himself.

  But he’d realized he had to get away from her before he did something really stupid. And in doing that, he’d probably committed the biggest blunder of his life.

  Maddox was both humiliated and defensive. “She wasn’t in custody.”

  “She might have been kidnapped.”

  “No. She meant to lose us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That newspaper building is as tightly secured as ours,” he said. “A guard saw her leave. She was alone. She waved to him.”

  “And you were where?”

  Maddox winced. “Bathroom. She said she would be in the ladies’ room for several moments putting on makeup. I needed to take a leak. I have a wife. I know how long putting on makeup takes.”

  Not Robin Stuart, Ben wanted to say. But Maddox may want to know how he knew that.

  “She has an incredibly creative mind,” he said. “Unfortunately it’s not always tempered by caution. I should have warned you.”

  “You did.”

  “Apparently not enough,” Ben said.

  “I’ll probably be sent to Alaska,” Maddox mused woefully. “My wife will not be happy.”

  “See if you can help find her,” Ben said. “Before the bad guys do. Check with her friends. See if she borrowed a car.”

  Maddox nodded. “You?”

  “I think I should check her house.”

  Maddox started to say something, then snapped his mouth shut. “I’ll question the other Observer staff members.”

  “You do that.”

  Ben drove over to her house. Daisy. She wouldn’t have left Daisy alone, nor Damien. Were they with her? He knew from Maddox that they had been in the house when she’d left this morning. That meant she had to leave a key somewhere for someone to get inside.

  He still didn’t understand what had turned her against him. His attitude? Granted, he’d never been very diplomatic, but for a while he thought they had connected on several levels. He should have known that lawmen and reporters were like oil and water.

  Hell, he had known it.

  He tried to think what she would do. He doubted he could get a search warrant this soon, especially since she left on her own accord. The one thing he did know was she wouldn’t leave the animals alone. Therefore someone would be coming to fetch them.

  He could always plead concern for Mrs. Jeffers’s dog, but he could also claim there was reasonable cause to suspect foul play since she’d been attacked earlier and threats had been made against her. It wasn’t as if he were gathering evidence to use against her.

  Damn it!

  He’d decided not to involve Mahoney. He was willing to risk his own career. He wasn’t going to do the same to Mahoney, who was nearing retirement. Instead, he called his partner and told him what had happened. “Maddox is going to talk to staff members. See if you can get the names of other friends. Talk to them.”

  Then he ignored every traffic law speeding to her house. He supposed that
the agents were still parked in that house down the street. The private investigators, though, were gone, dismissed when the FBI took over.

  Maybe a bad decision.

  They couldn’t do any worse than his own people. Or himself. Maybe he’d sent her running.

  Or maybe she was on the trail of something.

  If so, she was in more danger than before.

  He was going to sift through everything in that house. A name on a pad. Something on her computer.

  To hell with rules.

  When the straight road started wavering, Robin knew she was in trouble.

  Her eyes no longer focused. She pulled off the road and turned on the overhead light to read the map. The road led to a small town. Hopefully there would be a motel. She wished she had bought a couple of bottles of water and a cooler full of ice.

  How much farther could she go without sleep?

  She turned the air conditioner to full force, and the radio to music she hated. No mellow jazz now. More heavy metal. She drove the car back on the road.

  Concentrate!

  How ridiculous if she were to be killed in another auto accident while seeking so desperately to avoid a bunch of interstate killers.

  Finally speed limit signs indicated a town ahead. She slowed, not wanting to capture the attention of any small-town police officers who supported their town with traffic tickets. She didn’t want questions.

  On the outskirts she saw a motel. Old. Half the lights on the sign gone. But it still said “Vacancy.”

  She turned in and went to the office. A teenager manned it.

  He asked her name.

  “Mary Murray,” she said. “I’ll pay cash.”

  He didn’t blink. “Most of our customers do.”

  And she had her room.

  Ben found the key after scouring the front porch. It was hidden in a small metal box and barely concealed under some loose soil. Not the best hiding place.

  He knew he was in the sights of the FBI detail in the house. They most likely assumed he had a right to be there.

  He unlocked the door and went in. Damien greeted him with a frantic bark. Daisy was probably hiding in the laundry room. He leaned down to pet the poodle, wondering whether he should take the animals with him. Unease settled in his gut. He knew she wouldn’t leave them alone. Either she planned to return or …