Broken Trust

by Shannon Baker

  The motor roared with the sound of a freight train. The overhead light burst on.

  Nora sprinted for the opening, grabbing Petal’s hand on the way. “Come, Abbey!”

  The garage door rose with the speed of a frozen river.

  The kitchen door swung outward. “Hey!” The man shouted at them.

  Nora dove and rolled under the door.

  Petal copied her.

  Abbey ran after them.

  “Stop!” The man yelled.

  “Run!” Nora leapt to her feet, heading toward the Jeep.

  A gunshot exploded from the garage, shattering the wood of the door.

  Petal screamed.

  forty-two

  Nora skidded on the snow in the driveway. “Petal!” Had she been shot?

  She’d barely turned when Petal plowed into her, knocking her on her tailbone.

  Another shot pegged the driveway next to them.

  Nora must have jumped to her feet and dashed across the driveway and street to open the Jeep door, but she didn’t remember it. Now she held the door open for Abbey and Petal to dive into the backseat.

  Abigail gasped. “Whatever is—”

  Nora vaulted into the driver’s seat. “Hang on.” She cranked the key and jammed it into gear.

  “Hurry!” Petal screamed from the backseat.

  Nora peeled away from the curb, the back end slipping in the slush.

  She caught a glimpse of Sylvia’s house in the rearview mirror. The man stood in the light from the garage watching them.

  “What’s happening?” Abigail asked.

  Nora pointed at the phone. “Is that Charlie?”

  “Well, yes, but it’s Cole’s phone because he didn’t char—”

  Nora careened around a corner and gunned it. “Tell him to meet us at Baseline and Foothills. In the Safeway parking lot.”

  Abigail swiveled in her seat and gasped. “Who is that man?”

  “Mother! Tell Charlie.”

  Abigail repeated the instructions into the phone.

  Nora slid around the next corner and ran a red light.

  Abigail pulled the phone away from her ear. “He doesn’t know where that is.”

  Another light at the intersection on Broadway turned from yellow to red. Nora glanced left and right, saw headlights, and slammed on the brakes. Abbey crashed into the back of her seat. “Cole can get him there.”

  Nora waited for the sparse traffic to pass in front of her, and then crossed the intersection despite the red.

  Abigail spoke into the phone and ended the call. She twisted to see into the backseat. “Petal, are you all right?”

  Nora didn’t hear any response. She concentrated on the street. The pavement ran with melted snow and slush. If you headed to the grocery store for milk, it would be a matter of slowing down to be safe; if you were running for your lives, it meant some sliding turns.

  Abigail braced her arms against the dash. “You are going to kill us, Nora.”

  Nora whipped into the Safeway parking lot and slid to a stop behind a bank building.

  “Now, will you tell me what’s going on?” Abigail folded her arms, the slick fabric of Nora’s best ski jacket whizzing in the silence.

  “Sylvia and Daniel killed Mark.”

  “Oh my god!”

  “They plan to send out a beam to cause an earthquake in Ecuador.”

  Abigail’s lips turned down in skepticism. “Well, that’s just silly.”

  Nora didn’t have time to convince Abigail. “I’ve got to stop them. So you and Petal have to stay with Charlie.”

  Abigail held up her phone. “We need to go to the police. I don’t know who that man at Sylvia’s house was, but he shot at you and that’s against the law.”

  “No!” Petal came to life in the backseat.

  Nora and Abigail wrenched around.

  Petal placed her hands on the back of their seats. “I need to go up to the tower. It’s the only way to stop this. I can disable it.”

  “Can’t we stop the beam from the office?” Nora asked.

  “Yes,” Petal squeaked. “But it’s very secure and Sylvia is the only one who knows the codes to get in and cancel the launch. If she’s got it set there’s nothing we can do.”

  Nora straightened and stared ahead. The black Town Car sat at a red light on Baseline.

  Panic shot into her heart.

  If the shooter twisted in his seat and surveyed the parking lot, he could spot them hiding behind the bank.

  Abigail’s no-nonsense tone set the course. “The police can take you there.”

  Petal trembled. “They won’t believe me. They’ll waste time and the beam will go off before we can get there.”

  The light turned green and the Town Car eased across Foothills Highway, heading east.

  People live in Ecuador. Cities lie at the base of several volcanoes. An eruption or a high-magnitude earthquake would kill … Nora had no idea how many people. Not to mention the devastation to the rainforest and what long-term, worldwide environmental problems that would create.

  “Petal, Cole will take you to Mount Evans. I’ll go to the office and see if I can cancel the launch.”

  “What am I going to do?” Abigail asked.

  Nora rubbed her forehead. “You stay with Charlie and Abbey. I don’t want to worry about you.”

  Abigail reached for her handbag on the floor of the Jeep. She unzipped a pouch on the bottom of the bag Nora had never noticed and pulled out a small pistol. She held it out to Nora. “You’d better take this.”

  Electricity shot through Nora. “Mother, why are you carrying a gun? Is it loaded?”

  Abigail wore a satisfied smile. “The gun isn’t real, dear. I saw it in SkyMall. It’s an authentic replica designed to scare muggers. You pull that out and they run away.”

  “And this will do me what kind of good?”

  “You didn’t know it was fake. How do you expect Sylvia to know the difference? Wave it around, demand she cancel the death beam, call the cops, save Petal. Easy as pie.”

  Nora doubted it would be that easy.

  Headlights appeared around the west corner of the bank. Cole eased his pickup beside them. Charlie’s door opened and he raced around the front of the Jeep toward Abigail.

  Cole climbed from the driver’s side.

  Nora scanned the intersection of Baseline and Foothills for the Town Car’s return. All clear. She jumped out of the Jeep and stepped in a puddle. She met Cole by the bed of his pickup. “You need to take Petal to Mount Evans.”

  He scowled. “You want me to do you a favor?”

  “It’s not for me. It’s—” She couldn’t explain it all again. There was no time. “Please. Just trust me.”

  He folded his arms. “I’ll do this for you. But this is it. No more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, now damp with falling snow. “I need to get on with my life. Right now, that means going back to the ranch in Wyoming.”

  She didn’t want him to leave. But did that mean she wanted him to stay? She couldn’t deal with this now. “Do what you need to do.” It sounded more harsh than she intended.

  Nora sped back to the Jeep and helped Petal from the backseat. She’d removed the wet socks and was now barefoot. Nora settled her into the passenger side of Cole’s pickup. The heater made it cozy away from the wintery wind. “Be careful. Cole will help you.”

  Petal reached out and hugged Nora. Her voice choked. “Thank you. You’re a good friend.”

  Charlie and Abigail huddled together under the portico of the bank. Their heads bent together in quiet conversation. Abbey sat at their feet.

  When Nora ran to them, Abigail pulled out her phone. “I already called a taxi for us. Get going.”
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  Nora gave her a quick hug. “Take care of her,” she said to Charlie.

  “She is my galaxy,” he said. Crazy old Charlie.

  Nora followed Cole’s pickup out of the parking lot and west on Baseline. At Broadway he turned south toward the mountains and she turned north. Toward …

  She didn’t know.

  forty-three

  Despite the broken boot heel and the snow-dampened hair, Sylvia knew she carried herself with class as she led Daniel through the darkened kitchen to her office suite.

  There, she laid out the maps of Ecuador showing the Cotopaxi volcano and the oil fields in the rainforest. He was suitably impressed by her brilliance.

  At first he acted angry. She assumed that was because he felt inferior to her genius as he struggled to understand the difficult principles behind the plan.

  He studied the maps on the banquet table in front of him. “If you actually make the volcano erupt …”

  She kissed the back of his neck. “Oh, it will.”

  He ducked away from her kiss. “You will kill thousands of people.”

  They weren’t the kind of people who mattered, but it was better to accentuate the positive. “But the Cubrero family will be rich. We can have whatever we want, whenever we want it.”

  He walked to her desk where her monitor showed a diagram of the tower on Mount Evans and the angle of refraction of the beam that would send it directly into the volcano. “When will this event occur?”

  She ran her hands through her hair, pulling her arm back to give him a view of her breast outlined through her cashmere sweater. She sauntered to where he leaned over the monitor and hiked a hip on the desk. “It’s scheduled to activate at dawn. About three hours from now.”

  He stepped back from the screen and paced across the office. “And you are the only one who knows of this?”

  He was starting to understand how special she was. “I designed it. I set it in motion. Yes, my love, it is all mine.”

  “My father paid for all of this and yet does not know about the dawn launch?”

  She sprang to her feet. “Eduardo! He’s so unreasonable, you know. I tried to tell him but he hung up on me. Hung up!”

  “And sent Juan.”

  She purred. “But you saved me.”

  Daniel frowned. “If you’re doing my father’s bidding, why does he want you dead?”

  She couldn’t stay still and strode across the office. Her skin suddenly felt too small. “He’s irrational. He thinks I killed Darla as well as Mark and that I stole Trust money. And when last night’s launch misdirected and killed birds, he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  His face froze and he stared at her. “You killed Mark? And you are behind the birds dying?”

  She hurried to him and slid an arm around his neck. She snuggled her cheek into the warm spot where she felt his heart beating. “But you can talk to him. You can tell him about our love and how I am doing what he wants.”

  “Can you stop this beam or whatever it is?” He lifted her hand from his neck and stepped back.

  “Of course I can, but why would I?” She couldn’t stop it, though.

  He ran a hand back from his forehead across his short, black curls. “What if someone tampers with the tower?”

  She waved her hand toward the window. “It’s snowing. Petal was up there earlier today and it’s working correctly. Believe me, it’s safe.”

  “Does Petal know of your plan?”

  She tickled his chest just above the button of his shirt. “She might suspect something but she’s not bright enough to figure it out.”

  “But she could be out there now.”

  A warning flashed in Sylvia’s brain. “Petal. You’re right. She hates me. She and Nora are out to get me.”

  Daniel grabbed her arms. “Why does Petal hate you?”

  “Because I won’t give her mother unlimited money. Because she thinks I stole her ideas. She thinks she deserved the credit at HAARP for taking Tesla’s technology forward. But she worked for me. She couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t nurtured her. If I hadn’t given her the opportunity.”

  He glared at her. “Petal developed this?”

  No. He would not dismiss her the same way they did at HAARP. “No. I did it. I’m the one.”

  He spun toward the door and strode into the kitchen. “I’ve got to stop her.”

  Sylvia ran after him, tripping on her broken heel. “Yes. Go. Don’t let her destroy my tower.”

  She hurried after him from the kitchen to the dark lobby. She bumped into his back. “What?”

  Daniel stood motionless.

  Sylvia shoved him to send him to the mountain. But he wouldn’t move.

  Sylvia stepped around to pull him forward and she suddenly understood what stopped him.

  Nora Abbott stood just inside the front door, pointing a gun at them.

  forty-four

  Great. Now that Nora was pointing Abigail’s gun at Daniel, she didn’t know what to do. Fake gun, fake bullets, fake courage. “You aren’t going anywhere.” She sounded a lot tougher than she felt.

  Sylvia whirled around and raced through the kitchen.

  Daniel backed up, keeping his eyes on Nora. “Why are you here?”

  Good question. “To stop you.”

  Daniel held his palms out. “You don’t understand, Nora. I’m not the bad guy.”

  Was Sylvia getting a gun? A butcher knife? Nora was out-numbered, out-experienced, and—wielding a SkyMall Special—out-gunned. With Sylvia probably on her way back with a Katyusha rocket—or just a real gun—Nora had to come up with something.

  Nora spotted the old-school landline on a side table. She walked to it, keeping the gun pointed at Daniel. She picked it up and pushed 9, heading for the 1. She took her eyes off Daniel for the splittest of seconds.

  He charged. He rammed into her with all of his sexy muscle, sending her flying several feet.

  She cracked a hip and her elbow when she landed against the fireplace and slid to the floor. Blood filled her mouth where she bit her tongue on impact. Amazingly, she still gripped the gun.

  He came at her again and she raised it as if taking aim. “I’ll shoot!”

  It didn’t faze him. Maybe he suspected she’d never fire on him. Or maybe he wasn’t afraid of a toy gun.

  He dove on top of her and clawed for the gun. She raised it above her head and he boosted himself across her with his knees to reach for it.

  “Uff.” It felt as though his knees pushed all her organs out of the way and ground her spine into the floor. His hand closed on the wrist that held the gun.

  Nora twisted beneath him. She pushed off with one foot and kicked the knee of her other leg. She knocked him in the back, causing him to lose balance and tip to the side, slipping off her.

  She rose to her hands and knees and scrambled to get away.

  He grabbed her ankle and fell on her again.

  This time he grabbed her gun hand with both of his. He slammed her hand onto the ground and wrested the gun from her grip. Pain shot through her forefinger as though he’d snapped it from her hand.

  He sprang to his feet, waving the gun at her. Abigail’s fake-out fooled him.

  What did it matter if the gun could kill her or not? Even without a weapon Daniel was bigger, stronger, and more lethal than Nora.

  He stood above her, hesitating. Nora readied herself to jump up, grab his ankles, tackle him to the floor. And then?

  She might bring him down but Sylvia would show up to kill her any minute. Nora anticipated the bullet ripping into her, shredding her kidneys, mangling her guts. Blood would splatter across the fireplace and soak into the carpet.

  The sound of a gunshot tore open the night.

  Bullets didn’t shred Nora.

  Abigail said it was
a fake gun but that was a real gunshot. Nora rolled to the right before Daniel could fire again.

  But the shot hadn’t come from Daniel’s gun. She realized the sound hadn’t even come from this room.

  Daniel’s head jerked toward the kitchen. He hesitated only a second then he sprinted to the front door, yanked it open, and dashed into the night.

  The old farmhouse fell silent. Nora lay still, straining to hear Sylvia rushing from the kitchen ready to fire off more shots. This time, the bullets would find Nora.

  Nothing.

  forty-five

  Nora got to her knees and pushed herself up. Someone had stolen her femurs and her legs wobbled. She considered following Daniel out the door and heading directly to the police station.

  Instead, she tiptoed to the kitchen. The back door stood open allowing flakes to blow into the narrow passage. The brisk air washed away the smell of burnt toast.

  With careful steps she snuck past the door heading toward the light spilling from Sylvia’s office. Her footsteps caused the old floors to creak. She inched closer to the lighted office. She didn’t want to see inside.

  But she had to.

  A smell like spent firecrackers and hot oil hung in the air and Nora froze. She listened to the nothingness around her.

  A bang-whoosh-groan made her jerk and catch her breath. The heater kicked to life in answer to the open kitchen door.

  Nora focused on the office door hoping to hear something, anything, moving inside. She slid her foot forward and leaned toward the door. She eased around the doorjamb and surveyed the room.

  The office appeared empty. The overhead light glared, reflecting on the maps spread on the table. The computer monitor on Sylvia’s desk cast a faint glow as if she’d been working. Petal’s chair snugged up to her desk and the lamp with the pink silk scarf was off. The papers stacked neatly on Petal’s desk. Nora stepped into the room and moved tentatively toward the desk. Something creeping along the floor caught her eye. She narrowed her gaze to the floor in front of Sylvia’s desk.

  Not creeping. Leaking. Deep crimson, it spread like gruesome syrup, dripping from the edge of the plastic chair runner and soaking into the thin carpet.