Pelican Pointe Boxed Set Books 1 - 3 (A Pelican Pointe Novel)

by Vickie McKeehan

Because she’d been too deep in thought about the stupid interview she’d blown not twenty minutes earlier. It was too late now, she realized. No sense beating herself up. But from now on, she planned to be more careful, a lot more careful.

  When the light turned green, she breathed out a ragged breath and pressed down on the accelerator, screeching onto the 55 ramp, gaining some serious speed. She spared a nervous glance in the rearview mirror. It didn’t look as though anyone had followed her, at least, not yet. Since she couldn’t be sure, as soon as she could, she merged into the steady stream of traffic, changing lanes until she’d reached the farthest one.

  And simply drove and drove and drove.

  She wouldn’t be going home. At least not any time soon. They’d be waiting for her. She thought of her cozy little condo she’d owned for four years and how she’d painstakingly picked out every stitch of furniture there one piece at a time. She let out a sigh, knowing how much she’d miss it.

  But it was too dangerous to go back.

  Her mind raced with options. She could head east to New York State where her mother lived. But that was a fairly obvious destination for anyone looking for her. Same with going south to her sister’s in St. Louis.

  She couldn’t go to them; she couldn’t risk putting the people she loved in harm’s way.

  No, she’d already made too many mistakes and bad decisions for that. She could head north to Toronto where an aunt lived. But anyone who knew her might be able to find out about any relatives she’d used on past employment applications for personal references.

  Still gripped by panic, she tried to think.

  She couldn’t stay in Chicago. If she had to, she’d drive clear across the country.

  She knew one thing though. No matter what she’d promised the feds, she couldn’t go through with it, wouldn’t put her family and herself in danger any longer.

  If she’d been worried about testifying, appearing in court before today, before that maniac in the parking garage, she was absolutely terrified now.

  Because she was certain of one thing: Jeremy Dochenko had no intentions of giving up until she was dead.

  Chapter 1 Book 2

  Present day

  Somewhere along the California coast

  Hayden Ryan kept her eyes on the road and her hands firmly locked on the steering wheel in the ten and two position while the rain bashed against the windshield and the wind battered the Mini Cooper as though it were no more than a pesky bug, slapping at it with such force she was afraid she might lose control and end up in a ditch.

  She’d taken a wrong turn sometime after dark, after she’d left the 101 in search of a gas station. She needed to find some place to stop―and soon. But a place to spend the night was starting to sound unlikely.

  If she didn’t find a convenience store that sold gas pretty soon, she’d be forced to pull over and wait out the storm on the side of the road, something she really didn’t want to do.

  As if to prove a point, the Pacific storm threw another blast of water in her path and rocked the Mini. The wind practically tossed the car off the road. She was pretty sure she was somewhere near Santa Cruz, but at this point couldn’t be certain.

  She hadn’t seen a road sign in forever.

  She never should have veered off I-80.

  If she’d gone into the Bay area, she’d be someplace by now, at the very least tucked into a cheap motel room with a bed and bathroom.

  But she’d read about the high cost of living in San Francisco and didn’t think she could pull it off under her current set of circumstances. She’d headed south instead.

  Santa Cruz had sounded a lot more affordable and she hoped would prove to be a decent place to find a job. She wanted to check out the picturesque town, its boardwalk, and the sandy beaches there, and all the points of interest she’d read about on the Internet while sitting in the Denver library.

  Maybe when she got there she’d send out postcards to everyone and let them know she’d reached the Pacific Ocean.

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t practical, but the thought was there.

  She slanted a wary glance at the gas gauge. The Mini got a stingy thirty-seven miles to the gallon, but at the moment, it was woefully hovering close to the E, and had been for miles.

  Running out of gas would leave her stranded and without options.

  Her system jolted at the thought of that.

  Why oh why, had she ever left the interstate? She should have just taken I-5 north and headed straight into Canada. She had a new passport and new ID, why hadn’t she tested both?

  Because when push came to shove she was a big, fat, old chicken. She let out a huge sigh. Indecision wasn’t her friend, couldn’t be. She’d make this work.

  But at this rate she’d be out of gas soon and maybe out of luck. When that happened…no, no, she wouldn’t think like that.

  Hayden might have thought she had put plenty of miles between her and Chicago and the man that wanted her dead, but she wouldn’t risk getting found now. She’d gone through too much, left too much behind to give up now.

  Her mother and sister understood she was on the run and why. Hayden made certain she found a way to call them once a week using a prepaid wireless cell phone she’d purchased just to keep in touch and let them know she was okay.

  But she couldn’t ignore one fact. That night in the parking garage Dochenko’s messenger had made it clear.

  There was no way she could testify against him now no matter how many times the feds promised to keep her safe. She knew they couldn’t. For months now the government had pressured both her mother and her sister. Repeatedly. They had begged and pleaded, cajoled and even threatened her to enter the witness protection program. But the minute she’d discovered what that meant, what doing so entailed, that she would lose all contact with her mother and sister for good, forever, Hayden had turned them down―flat.

  Despite the shows on TV, Hayden knew the feds weren’t infallible. As long as Jeremy’s minions were out there somewhere, she could still be vulnerable. Nothing was foolproof.

  And she would have lost control over her own life. Something she refused to do.

  Instead of all that, Hayden had created her own kind of protection program. She had ceased to exist as Emile Reed.

  It had taken patience and cunning and spending time in places like Sioux City, Iowa, and then Lawton, Oklahoma before moving on to Lincoln, Nebraska, where she’d hung out long enough with a friend from college, Kate Michelson, who also happened to be an attorney.

  Kate had helped her obtain a new social security number right along with a new name. Emile Reed had morphed into Hayden Ryan, a name she’d purposely chosen because, more often than not, it could just as easily belong to a male as a female.

  In Kansas City she had gotten rid of her sporty little BMW and bought a used Mini, opened a checking account using a wire transfer from her mother in upstate New York who had sent it through the aunt in Toronto who had in turn sent it to a friend of the friend in Lincoln before it had made its way to Hayden in the form of a money gram.

  She had stayed just long enough in Denver to turn her platinum hair into a silky shade of black, shorten the length to a straight spiky cut in the back with sides that angled sharply below her chin. That was about the same time she had exchanged her Nebraska driver’s license for a Nevada one and changed the tags on the Mini…yet again.

  So far, she had been living on her savings from the last four years but she was about out of money. She had already decided on taking care of that by trying out her new ID and getting a job once she landed in Santa Cruz.

  Through it all her poor mother had been left to deal with some very angry and upset feds. Hayden was truly sorry about that. Because those same people were no doubt deeply disappointed in Emile Reed’s decision.

  She took heart in the fact that her mother kept reminding the feds that her daughter had every reason to fear Jeremy Dochenko and had gone on the run because of it. Hayden was grateful
that at least her mother had supported her decision.

  At least her loved ones understood the situation.

  After all, the man had killed before, a fact that the feds had a tendency to gloss over. Of course Emile hadn’t known that little tidbit when she’d gone to work for the wealthy Russian stockbroker four years earlier. It certainly hadn’t come up in the interview.

  She remembered being so fresh and green right out of college, hoping to be a part of something grand in the business world that she’d been sucked in by the smooth talking conman.

  How was she supposed to know her boss had been hard at work defrauding and bilking thousands of investors out of billions before she’d ever drawn her first paycheck?

  But it was what went on after she was hired that she had a hard time getting past.

  In four years, Jeremy had been the one who had dealt with the bank officers. Had she known that he was altering the financial statements she so painstakingly handed him each month she would have gone to the authorities herself. Maybe if she had bothered following up with the bank, she would have caught on sooner. Why hadn’t she known he kept a second set of financials for the bank’s eyes only?

  By the time she had started to question the client accounts, by the time she realized Jeremy’s “investment” acumen was one big lie, the SEC was already knocking on the door. They’d stepped in to investigate, which left the justice department not far behind in prosecuting him.

  She might’ve worked diligently on a daily basis, even avoided taking vacations, but she had to admit now, she’d been a bit full of herself back then. She’d put her all-important job ahead of everything else including personal relationships.

  Even though she’d done absolutely nothing illegal, she felt guilty. How could she not have realized what Jeremy had been doing? If nothing else, she obviously hadn’t followed through enough to catch on sooner. She might even be guilty of sloppy oversight, and remiss in her fiduciary duties.

  So when the government knocked, she had cooperated fully, agreed to testify in detail to Jeremy’s business practices and his schemes, even going so far as to explain how he had managed to cover his tracks for so many years without getting caught. But all that was before the judge had allowed Jeremy to post bail, before he had vanished, disappeared like the snake he was and before that thug had attacked her in the parking garage.

  To Emile, the in-your-face attempt on her life had changed everything.

  Emile Reed’s life had died four months ago, shred by Dochenko’s greed. So Hayden Ryan had come into existence and with it, a chance to put everything behind her.

  But every now and then she thought about that time immediately after losing her job. She’d tried to make the transition work. She’d never been without a job before even in high school. She had been in the process of hunting for another one, going out on interview after interview. But she hadn’t counted on the fact that no one wanted to hire an accountant who had ties to the likes of Dochenko.

  Okay, so that part hadn’t exactly worked out. That day in the parking garage, she had been coming from yet another job interview where it had gone downhill the minute they had discovered the depth of her association with the con man and his fraudulent past.

  Then the swine had shown up in the parking garage, brandishing a knife, making it clear what Jeremy wanted, clear what Emile Reed’s options were. As long as she lived, she’d be able to testify against Jeremy at his trial and might be the difference between his spending a lot of years behind bars or whether he got off scot-free.

  Either way, it wasn’t her responsibility, losing her life wasn’t part of the bargain. She knew very well there were other ways the government could make their case. Because she refused to accept life in a witness protection program that meant she had to give up her mother and sister. There was no way she would put her life in the hands of the government when they obviously couldn’t guarantee her family’s safety, or hers.

  Just this week, the last time she’d talked to her mother, she had reminded Hayden that Jeremy’s business partner had already turned up dead. Just a day before the attack in the parking garage, a co-worker had been found shot to death in his high-rise condo off the downtown Loop with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. The newspapers had called it an execution style slaying. Of course, no one could prove Jeremy had anything to do with that death, either. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out why his partner had ended up dead. He’d known too much just like she had.

  The feds had also promised to protect Saul Raymond. And look how that had turned out.

  So much for keeping one of their key witnesses safe and sound, thought Hayden. More than once she had counted herself lucky that the man in the parking garage that night had carried a knife rather than a gun. If he had, she didn’t doubt for a minute she’d be dead by now with a bullet to the brain.

  With that image in her head, she shivered and turned the heater up a notch. To get her mind back on the situation at hand, she fidgeted with the CD player and concentrated on Eddie Vedder’s voice extolling the fact he was still alive.

  In a very real way, she could relate, couldn’t she? Even if she had been forced to take matters into her own hands to make it happen.

  If she ever found the 101 again, she swore she’d kiss the pavement. Right now though, she was grateful there wasn’t much traffic. She hadn’t seen another car in over an hour, which did not bode well in her favor. No traffic meant she was probably on a back road somewhere which meant no chance for a gas station or a convenience store or food or a damned restroom for that matter.

  Her bladder was starting to give off the warning signs that soon she’d have to pee. Her stomach joined in with a rumble or two to let her know it was time to eat. Absently, she wondered if she had any more power bars left in her backpack for dinner. She sighed. Her fuel wasn’t going to last much longer either.

  Maybe she should pull over and hope the rain let up.

  On impulse, she eased the car to the shoulder. At least she thought it was a shoulder. Hayden could see nothing but rain and darkness outside the car’s windows.

  Reluctantly, she killed the engine to save her precious gas fumes and grabbed her fleece lined jacket from the backseat. After shrugging to get it on, she dug into her backpack. Hoping to find a too-skinny protein bar that would have to last until morning, she realized she should’ve bought more at her last stop. If only she had a cup of hot coffee or tea to wash it down. She reluctantly picked up the cup that held the soda she’d bought at the same time as the bar and now held nothing but caramel-colored water. She sucked a disgusting sip through the straw. It was better than nothing. She should’ve bought more water for the road, too.

  Hunger had her biting into the chewy concoction with gusto. Sitting there in the dark, it didn’t take long for exhaustion to overtake her and she soon drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain still pummeling the car.

  Ethan Cody had seen better nights. Not only was he hungry and tired, but the September storm was wreaking havoc with what should have been his night off.

  It had already washed out a bridge near San Sebastian causing several accidents, which in turn, had forced him to play traffic cop for damn near two hours clearing up the mess. Then he’d decided to stay until Caltrans showed up to close off the bridge and set up a detour.

  After that, he had been asked to take an elderly woman whose power had gone out over to Watsonville to spend the night with her sister.

  That was before he’d gotten drenched to the bone when he’d had to get out in the downpour again helping old man Taggart jump-start his truck, which had given out in the middle of Main Street, loaded down with organic produce.

  It was all in a day’s work for a deputy sheriff, he supposed. Despite the fact Ethan worked for his brother, Brent, who had been elected county sheriff four years earlier, he enjoyed the work, most times, except on nights like tonight when people didn’t have the good sense to come in out of the rain.

  An
d now, some poor idiot schmuck had left his car parked practically in the middle of the road making it a damned road hazard. What was it about rain that deadened people’s brains and left them without the ability to drive on a slick street? he wondered as he hit his emergency flashers and the overhead lights for the fourth time in as many hours.

  Resentful about the situation before he even crawled out of his truck, he decided to ticket the driver no matter what his excuse just to make a point. Out of habit, Ethan ran the Nevada plates, waited until he got the results. For some reason he pictured the driver of the little car squirming at the prospect of law enforcement sitting behind him for so long.

  Reluctant to crawl back out into the freaking weather, he listened as the radio crackled to life and the dispatcher told him, “Plates are clean. Car’s registered to a Hayden Ryan.”

  Okay, that’s a start, thought Ethan. When his headlights revealed movement inside the car, he decided Mr. Hayden Ryan was about to get a very unwelcome-to-California memento to go with his out-of-state plates.

  Hayden woke to flashing lights in her rearview mirror. Damn. Despite the fact she’d done nothing wrong and knew for a fact her registration would come up clean, a fist of fear clogged her throat at the prospect of dealing with law enforcement.

  It was the first time she’d encountered a cop since leaving Chicago, which was a miracle in itself considering how many miles she’d covered. As she sat there waiting for him to crawl out of his vehicle, she wondered what was taking him so damn long. She pulled out her registration from the glove box, dug in her wallet for her driver’s license. And waited. What felt like five minutes ticked by before she watched the truck door finally open and a rain soaked man dressed in a yellow vinyl slicker step out onto the road and make his way up to the driver’s side window.

  She waited for him to tap on the glass.

  When he did, she rolled the window down no more than three inches because of the pouring rain and cold wind.

  Ethan peered into the car. His first surprise came in the form of a female driver with huge, wary green eyes. Those green pools pulled him in. But then, the letters ER flashed at him like a neon sign, making him think this might be an emergency situation. She might be experiencing more than car trouble. Maybe she had taken ill behind the wheel and that’s why she was blocking the road.