Unintended Target (Unintended Series Book 1)

by D. L. Wood

  At the highway she turned south, speeding towards Binghamton with no particular destination in mind. Sobs came uncontrollably as she let herself melt. None of it made any sense! What were they after? What flash drive was Sampson talking about? He’d been ready to torture her, probably kill her for it, and she knew absolutely nothing about it. And Ruby—where was she? And then there was the man in the gully. Nausea set in once more.

  Once downtown she turned off the main road onto dark back streets, making quick turns from the wrong lanes and running red lights, trying to lose anyone that might be following her. But when she passed a patrol car, she slowed down, realizing that erratic driving might get her pulled over, which would likely land her right back with Sampson.

  And that’s when it hit her. There was no one to help her. She couldn’t go to the police for obvious reasons. She couldn’t go to Jack—not after Ruby. Her trembling hands gripped the steering wheel harder.

  What flash drive? Sampson’s words replayed in her mind, scrolling along with the black pavement. Her heart fluttered frantically, and she breathed deeply, unsuccessfully trying to force herself to be calm. Why was he so sure I was playing games with him? Why involve Ruby—

  Suddenly, comprehension struck and she swerved to the curb, screeching to a halt and causing the car behind her to honk in frustration. The envelope Ruby had given her! Whirling towards the passenger seat, she grabbed her bag and raked through it, finally dumping its contents out.

  But the envelope wasn’t there. Chloe threw the bag aside and banged hard on the wheel a couple of times before seizing it, her knuckles white, eyes fixed forward. She closed them and breathed in deeply. Had Sampson or his man found it? She considered this. No. If they had found it they’d have said something.

  She strained, trying to remember. Ruby gave me envelope and I threw it in my bag. I drove to the resort. We ate and then went to the resort shop. Did it fall out in the dressing room? But Chloe didn’t remember ever opening her bag in the shop. She hadn’t even needed her wallet because Jack had paid . . .

  My receipts, she thought. Where are my receipts? She always kept a paper-clipped stack of work receipts in her bag, but she hadn’t seen them when she’d rummaged through it just now. Her eyes shot down to the passenger seat and she took a quick inventory of the bag’s contents. The receipts and Ruby’s envelope weren’t all that was missing. A lipstick and brush were gone, too.

  Chloe’s heart skipped a beat as a wave of understanding passed over her. Cursing herself for not figuring it out sooner, she threw the car into drive, turned it around and zoomed away.

  SIXTEEN

  Jack stepped into the cabin of the 40-foot yacht that served as his home and froze at the sight of shredded upholstery, scattered papers, and glass littering the teak plank floor. Desk drawers had been dumped out, and books swept off their shelves. Senses on overdrive, he stepped cautiously over the rubble to an open closet at the rear. Sports and boating equipment lay in a jumble at its bottom, topped by suitcases that had the lining cut out and ripped back. The locked box where he kept extra cash had been pried open, the bills left scattered around it. And the small gun rack on the back of the door was empty. Jack fished a golf club out of the pile and, brandishing it like a bat, spun into the sleeping quarters.

  No one. But it had been trashed, too. He felt under the mattress. His .45 was gone.

  A docile warbling sounded from his pocket. Watching the door intently, he steadied himself and pulled out his cell phone. “This is Jack.”

  “Oh, thank God you’re there,” Chloe exclaimed, her breathing heavy and rushed. “Listen, I know why I was attacked. It happened again tonight.” The words rushed out without a break between sentences.

  “What? Chloe? What happened?”

  “Jack, just stop talking and listen. I think you’re in danger.”

  Jack’s eyes flitted around the room. “Danger? Look Chloe, what’s going on? I came home and found my boat ransacked.”

  “You’ve got to get out of there right now!”

  “I’m okay. No one’s here.” He paused, her earlier words finally registering, “What do you mean it happened again?”

  “Somebody tried to kidnap me tonight, and I got away but—”

  “What!”

  “Jack, I know this sounds crazy, just listen. Someone tried to kidnap me tonight after I got home. I think it’s the same people who were in my house before, and it’s because of some flash drive they’re after. I think whoever wrecked your boat was looking for it.” She paused. “I think they thought Ruby had it, and now she’s gone. You have to get out of there.”

  “Ruby’s gone?” he asked disbelievingly.

  “I checked myself. Jack, please, I couldn’t live if one more person—”

  “Chloe, who’s after you?”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Not on the . . . what, you think they’re listening in on cell phones?”

  “I don’t know,” she squeaked desperately. “The cops are involved.”

  “The cops? How can you—”

  “One of them was there tonight. He threatened to torture me for information.”

  Jack’s body tightened. “What?” he growled. “This is crazy. I’m coming to get you.”

  “No, listen. You know where we took those pictures? You know where I’m talking about? Meet me there.”

  “Okay,” he agreed quickly. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Drive your Jeep, Jack, okay? Your Jeep.”

  “What else would I—”

  “Hurry, Jack, please,” she begged, then hung up.

  He stared at the cell a moment, thrown by the sudden cut off, then set aside his questions and waded through the flood of belongings to the stairs at the front of the cabin, golf club in hand. He had just set his foot on the first step when a gloved fist smashed into his face, sending him stumbling backwards over the piles on the floor. The club flew from his grasp as he landed hard on his back. Shaking it off, he jumped up, instinctively shifting into defense mode.

  The intruder, a huge, hulking figure dressed in black, charged towards him, raising a Glock 9mm. Jack executed a sweeping kick, knocking the gun from the intruder’s hand to the floor, where it disappeared beneath the clutter. Two more swift kicks to the intruder’s head stunned him long enough for Jack to shove past and run up the stairs. As he landed on the top step, the man’s hand wrapped around Jack’s right ankle, bringing him crashing down on the upper deck. Shaking his leg violently, he freed it from the intruder’s grasp, kicked the man square in the face, and scrambled away.

  Jack scanned the deck for a weapon. His gaze fell on the cockpit, where a flare gun was strapped to the shelf by the radio. He started towards it and heard a silencer-muffled gunshot. Instantaneously, pain seared across the outside of his calf, and he cried out before forcing himself to continue sprinting down the port side. Clambering up the cockpit steps, he caught a peripheral glimpse of another man in the distance headed for the boat dock, gun in hand. Propelling himself inside the cockpit, Jack unstrapped the flare gun, removed it from its holster, and looked up to see the intruder right behind him on the stairs. He fired.

  The flare struck the intruder in the chest, igniting on impact and sending him flying backwards. Jack jumped down to where the man landed. He was unconscious, his Glock resting a few feet away, precariously near the edge of the deck. Jack scooped it up just as he heard footsteps on the opposite side of the yacht.

  Jack flattened himself against the cockpit, crouched down, and considered his options. Committing himself to the best of those, he crawled three feet to the edge of the deck and gently lowered himself down the side of the hull. Without a sound, he slipped like a dart into the water and disappeared while the second intruder boarded from the starboard side and started around.

  Barely half a minute passed before Jack emerged from the black water on the starboard side of the stern, directly behind where the second man had just boarded. He pressed himself a
gainst the hull. Grasping a tethering rope dangling off the side of the boat, he began climbing hand over hand out of the water. When the top of his head was level with the deck, he stopped moving, his fingers on fire as the rope dug deeper into his skin. His biceps bulged as he hung above the water’s surface. He craned his neck until he could see over the edge and looked around. The starboard side was clear.

  Using the side rails, he pulled himself the rest of the way up, swung his legs over, and dropped quietly onto the deck. He crouched, clothes dripping wet and sagging on his frame. Removing the Glock from his waistband, he crept to the cockpit wall. He inhaled deeply, then scooted to the right and peered around to the port side. The second man had moved past his dead counterpart and now stood fifteen feet away, his attention focused on the bow. Jack stepped out into the open and took a firing stance.

  “Turn around slowly,” he barked.

  The man hesitated, then in a flurry of motion, whirled towards Jack, his semi-automatic poised to fire. Jack dropped to one knee and fired two shots, striking the man in the arm and chest. The impact spun the intruder around in the opposite direction, slamming him into the railing. He bounced off and dropped to the deck.

  Neck veins bulging, his face hot from the adrenaline-infused blood pumping angrily through him, Jack strode to the fallen man and kicked his weapon away. He kept his gun trained on the man’s chest, where the bullet wound poured red as he struggled for breath against his filling lungs.

  “Who sent you?” Jack growled through clenched teeth.

  The man’s lips moved, but only wet choking noises escaped.

  “Talk to me!” Jack bellowed. The man’s head rolled to one side and the sounds stopped. Jack hunched down and checked for a pulse, but there wasn’t one. A quick search revealed that all that the man carried on him were two ammunition clips. No identification. Jack tucked the clips in his pocket before rolling the corpse into the water. Then Jack moved to check the man’s cohort. After finding no pulse or identification on him either, Jack pushed him in the water too.

  Jack grabbed the second man’s gun off the deck and slipped it into his waistband as he sprinted down the steps into the cabin. Half a minute later he shot back up, stuffing a folded envelope into his waistband and covering it with his shirt as he raced down the dock to his Jeep.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jack ripped into the cliff’s parking lot and headed straight to Chloe’s car on the far end, sitting by itself in the dark. Chloe was at his door before he’d even killed the engine.

  She threw her arms around his neck and pressed the side of her face against his. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered, and began to shake.

  “Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her crying. “Hey, it’s okay.” He pulled back from her and turned her face towards him. “You hear me?” he asked, smiling reassuringly. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Chloe straightened up. “It’s . . . it’s just that this is so . . . insane.” She felt something trickling down her arm and realized she was wet from hugging him. She scanned his soaked body. “What happened to you?”

  “I’ll explain later. Now tell me what happened.”

  The story poured out of her like a verbal deluge, as she told him everything about Ruby and Sampson and her escape. He interrupted only once, when he insisted on examining the vicious red welt on her neck caused by her near strangulation.

  “. . . And so that’s why I needed your Jeep,” she finally finished.

  “Okay,” he said, still confused, as he compliantly unlocked the Jeep’s security compartment. “And why is that?”

  “Because I tossed my bag into your trunk when we walked up the cliff, and then we drove off with it still in there,” she explained, leaning past him to look inside the Jeep. “I think it must’ve slid around on some of those curves . . . yeah, here’s my lipstick,” she announced, pulling it out from underneath a pair of running shoes and handing it to Jack. Her hand dove in again, rummaging through the random clothes, tools, and clutter covering the compartment bottom. “And my receipts, and,” she said, her voice triumphant as she pulled out the manila envelope from where it had slid down behind a gym bag, “my mail.”

  “And you think that’s what they were after?”

  “It’s the only thing connected to Ruby,” she said, turning it over to open it, and finding that the clear tape covering the flap was loose. “It’s loose, but sticky, like someone opened it then sealed it back.” She pulled off the tape, opened the metal brad, and pulled back the flap. It came off too easily. “Somebody’s been through this. Must’ve been Ruby,” she said wistfully.

  She extracted a stack of mail from the envelope and started flipping through it. There was a letter from Tate’s insurance company containing papers to sign, correspondence from Terra Traveler, a couple of sympathy notes from friends, random bills, and then, in the middle, a lightly padded envelope with a return address of Herbert K. Rohrstadt, Esquire, Attorney at Law, 1919 Westwood Avenue, Building 3, Suite J, Miami, Florida.

  She tore the end off the envelope and shook it vigorously. The smallest flash drive she’d ever seen fell into her waiting hand.

  “What’s on that?” Jack remarked, squinting to get a better look.

  Chloe shrugged. “No idea,” she said, handing the empty envelope to Jack. “For Chloe,” was scrawled with a Sharpie on the drive. In Tate’s handwriting.

  “Chloe,” Jack said, pulling a sheet of paper from the envelope and handing it to her. They hovered over it, shoulder to shoulder.

  Dear Ms. McConnaughey,

  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get this to you. I’ve been out of the country for the last month, and only just learned of Tate’s passing. I send my deepest sympathies.

  Tate left instructions with me to forward the enclosed to you should anything happen to him. As such, I have done so. I was further instructed to tell you that this is for your eyes only and that not even I have reviewed it.

  If there is anything I can do to assist you with his affairs here in Miami, please let me know. Again, please accept my deepest condolences.

  Sincerely,

  /s/ Herb Rohrstadt

  Herbert K. Rohrstadt

  Attorney at Law

  The letter was dated thirteen days before.

  Chloe squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head. “No. No. No.” She sucked in a breath. “Please, please don’t let Tate be involved in this thing.”

  “Do you know this Herbert—Herb Rohrstadt?”

  She shook her head, choking back the threatening tears.

  “You sure this is what they were after?”

  “It has to be.” She flipped through the remaining envelopes. “There’s nothing else here.” Pain crossed her face as her thumb ran over her name printed on the flash drive. “They did something to Ruby because of this thing,” she said quietly, her voice starting to tremble. “I just know it. She was just trying to be nice. Holding my mail. What if . . . Jack, what if they knew she was a little nosy . . . what if she really did open this and they found out . . .” Eyes filled to the brim with tears met Jack’s. “If something’s happened to her . . . it’s Tate fault!”

  Jack bent down so his green eyes were level with hers and covered her hand holding the flash drive with his. “First thing we have to do is get somewhere safe, see what’s on this thing,” he squeezed her hand, “and figure out our options. You up for that?”

  Clamping her lips together determinedly, she nodded.

  “You didn’t happen to bring a laptop?” he asked hopefully.

  Her face fell. “No. I should have. I just didn’t think about it. I was in such a hurry to leave. It’s at the cottage, but—”

  “There’s no going back there,” Jack interrupted. She nodded her agreement. “Mine’s on the boat. Or at least it was. We can’t go there either, though. We’ll have to try somewhere in the morning. One of those office-type copy shops or maybe a hotel.”
<
br />   “What about Ruby?”

  “If you’re sure she’s not in the house, I don’t think there’s anything we can do until morning. We’ll have to drive to another part of the island. Try to talk to some other authorities—somebody not connected to Sampson.”

  Chloe started to reach for a curl to twist between her shaking fingers, then realized he still had her hand. She gently drew it from his grip and ran it through her hair. Tears dribbled from the corner of her eye. “Look, I’m really sorry, Jack. I didn’t want to involve you. I just wanted to get my stuff out of your trunk. You can go, they don’t want you. If I’d known that any of this—”

  “I’m already in this. They searched my boat looking for that thing,” he said, nodding in the flash drive’s direction. “Besides, I couldn’t leave you alone now anyway. And you don’t have anything to apologize for. It’s not your fault.”

  “No, it’s Tate’s. Again. Even from the grave he’s ruining everything.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe he was just—”

  “He was just being Tate. But it doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, feeling that familiar, cold knot of exasperation that Tate had so often engendered tightening around her heart. She wasn’t willing to hear excuses for him. Not now. Sniffing, she felt her resolve swell, grateful to the anger for that at least. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

  Jack exhaled deeply. “I think I have an idea.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The motel was about half a mile inland in an undeveloped patch of the island, just outside Binghamton. They pulled into the parking lot in Jack’s Jeep, having already dumped Chloe’s car in a gully down one of the side roads leading into the woods. They’d camouflaged it with brush, hoping to buy a little time.

  The long, narrow building hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in decades, its whitened wood peeling back where water and wind had tortured it regularly. A weathered wooden sign mounted on the roof read “Shores Motel.” Painted above the faded, royal blue letters were dancing, happy-faced starfish, one of which was missing from the middle. Two dozen private rooms stretched down the motel, with the lobby at the end closest to the road. Wild foliage, growing as high and as thick as it cared to, separated the edge of the property from the deep woods that stretched behind it.