The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Pop was career military. Not Department of Defense. Not a politician.

  “Career military? Into classified stuff?” It didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. He stared straight ahead. Saw red in his peripheral vision. The pieces were flying together—but the picture they formed was incomprehensible.

  “Yeah. Great guy, like I said, but kinda weird.”

  “Weird how?” He was speaking normally because he knew nothing. Was having crazy thoughts.

  Rick was suspended in time. In space. Could hardly hear his own thoughts as something pounded at the edge of consciousness.

  “His dress, man. The only thing the guy ever wears is khakis and a black jacket. This is an island. Sea. Sand. But don’t matter how hot it is, or how close to the water he is, I’ve never seen him without that jacket.”

  The glass Rick was gripping broke. Cutting into his hand. He welcomed the pain. It was real. Something he could concentrate on.

  “What the…” Ron grabbed a towel. And reached for Rick’s hand. “You okay, man?”

  Standing, Rick pulled out his wallet. Threw a bloody fifty-dollar bill on the bar and left.

  Just like that, it all came together. The One That Got Away. The Resting Place. The owner of the bar being career military… Black and beige.

  The pieces fit.

  But nothing made sense. Except for one horrible realization.

  Rick had orchestrated his worst nightmare.

  He’d sent a cold-blooded killer to Erin and Steve.

  34

  The road they turned onto was bumpy at best. Every inch jarred the muscles in Erin’s shoulders. After having them held in the same position behind her back for a couple of hours, the pain was excruciating. So much so that she was actually relieved when the truck came to a sudden stop.

  Lurching forward, she almost lost the toast she’d struggled to swallow earlier that evening.

  Had it only been that evening?

  Seemed like she’d been driving through darkness for days. Or a lifetime.

  There were moments she didn’t care what happened to her. She just wanted it over.

  And other times, panic raced through her until she could hardly breathe.

  Her thoughts were all over the place.

  Caylee and Maggie. Kelly. She thought about seeing her dad and Noah again.

  And almost constantly, she thought about Rick. Obviously her abduction had to do with him. She just didn’t understand how. Did he know she’d been taken? Was he behind this?

  As hard as she tried to tell herself that he’d ordered her captivity, she couldn’t believe it. And knew that if Rick was still alive, he’d do everything he could to find her.

  “Wait here.” Until then all she’d heard out of the man was the rough whisper he’d used for his two brief orders at her home. Don’t say a word. And Move. That was after he’d used a nylon rope to tie her hands behind her back.

  With a sweater draped over her shoulders and his body supporting hers, he’d walked her out the front door. She had no idea how he’d gotten into her house to begin with.

  He’d had a gun on her beneath the sweater. That she’d known.

  On her last glimpse back at the living room before her captor had shut the door behind them, she’d seen Boots make a beeline for her bedroom.

  How long would it be before someone realized he was alone and go in to feed him?

  At least she didn’t have to worry about his finding a good home. Noah had given him to her. Any of the Fitzgeralds would be glad to have him.

  The man had exited the truck. Slammed his door. She could hear him doing something in the back of the vehicle. Sounded like he was unlocking something. She heard chains. And thought about running.

  If she could get her hand around the door handle.

  She tried, ignoring the tears that sprang to her eyes. She’d break her damn shoulder if she had to. A shoulder could heal.

  Or she could live without it. She didn’t care if she never moved her arm again—if she could avoid whatever hell was awaiting her.

  She managed to grab the edge of the handle. Pulled. Nothing happened. Because her door was locked. Erin twisted again. Got her finger up to the armrest. Another few inches and she’d have the automatic lock button with in reach.

  How far would she get before his bullet hit her in the back? Or worse, until he caught her. He was only a few feet away.

  But it was dark. He might miss.

  Her door opened suddenly, and she tumbled halfway to the ground.

  “Get out.”

  She didn’t have much choice. If she didn’t comply, he was going to yank her out. She didn’t want him touching her. She scrambled to her feet.

  “Move.” He pushed her shoulder and Erin braced against the pain, blinking back tears.

  Somehow that seemed important. Not letting him see her cry. This was not a man who’d have patience with weakness. Of any sort.

  A grunt sounded. An animalistic growl. And yet unmistakably human. Not from her. Or her captor. Hearing it, Erin stumbled. And received another push for her blunder.

  There was someone up ahead of them. Somewhere. All she could see was blackness.

  Smearing the keys of his new phone with blood, Rick dialed Lakeside as he cased the beach at a trot. His pilot had to be nearby. “Lakeside.”

  “Angela.” He recognized the caregiver’s voice. “Check Steve’s room. Now.”

  “Mr. Thomas? Rick? I was just down his hall five minutes ago. The guard’s outside his door.”

  “Check. Now.” He gritted his teeth to keep from shouting. He had to stay calm. Think. Get his ass off the island and back to Michigan faster than planes could fly.

  “Fine,” Angela said.

  How could he have been so stupid? So trusting?

  “The guard’s sitting there,” she said. Rick didn’t need to hear her, “Oh, my God!” He’d known.

  “He’s…oh, my God!” Angela’s voice was a panicked screech. “Oh, my God! Security!” The woman was holler ing.

  Someone came running. Angela was trying to be coherent. “Call the police,” a muffled voice said.

  “Angela,” Rick yelled into the phone, earning him dirty looks from tourists on the beach. “Angela,” he called again, uncaring of the response around him.

  “He’s dead! The guard’s dead.” Angela’s words came in spurts. “I have no idea how long he’s been sitting there dead! And Steve…he’s gone. I don’t know when. Oh, my God, Rick, he’s gone!”

  Blood dripped from Rick’s hand and he tore off the bottom of his shirt, wrapping the cuts without missing a beat. He had glass in his flesh. Something he’d deal with later. If he got the chance.

  An excruciating half hour later, he found his pilot. About one drink short of too drunk to fly. Buying a drink-holder filled with coffee cups, he corralled the man back to the road, plying him with coffee. He could fly the damn plane, but he needed the pilot to clear them through at the airport.

  Twenty minutes later, they were in the air.

  He wasn’t sure it mattered.

  He’d tried Erin twice.

  She hadn’t picked up.

  They’d come to a cliff.

  He was going to push her over. Into the lake she could hear sloshing against the rocks below. She wanted to think that it was her lake down there. The same waters that were, right then, gently caressing the rocks under her living room window. But she knew that wasn’t possible. They’d driven northeast. It was Lake Huron’s frigid waters crashing beneath them.

  “Move.” The voice again. Directly behind her. “Go.”

  He expected her to jump? Just like that?

  Would she die on the way down? Or feel her body ripped apart by the force of the water?

  Fifty degrees felt like thirty below. And a hundred above. This was it. She was going to die. All her worries about ethics and losing herself, her fears of forfeiting her place in the Fitzgerald family, her pleasure in finding a friend in Kelly—it
was all for nothing.

  And Rick.

  Now she’d never—

  “Go! Don’t piss me off.” The hand at her shoulder shoved again, and Erin almost threw up. She stumbled. And was still alive, her foot on solid ground.

  There was a path. A steep one. But a path. He wanted her to take it.

  Thankful to be alive, Erin took a step. And then another. The animal sounds were louder now. A combination of deep howls and childlike whining. Erin moved toward it. Thinking of helping this person in pain, of offering comfort, gave her strength. As though even in the face of her own mortality, being needed was something that mattered.

  The way was steep. Erin slipped and fell, her chin colliding with the ground. A rock cut her cheek. And then her captor’s fingers were digging into her arm as he hauled her back to her feet.

  She didn’t fall again. Erin had taken two steps on flat ground before she saw the boat. A small, obviously old cabin cruiser.

  “Get on.”

  She’d have to walk through a couple of feet of icy water to get there.

  And then she’d be on a boat.

  Erin loved the water. Loved listening to it. Respected its merciless power.

  But she never, ever went in it.

  She couldn’t swim.

  The gun jammed into her spine, breaking the skin.

  Erin fell to her knees in the water. It was cold. Half submerged, she gasped. She had to get out. Had to breathe.

  And the only dry place ahead was the boat.

  She heard a sob and moved toward it. She wanted to call out that everything was going to be okay, but she didn’t have enough air.

  And it wasn’t going to be okay.

  She just wanted to believe it could be. Had to believe it could be.

  Slipping on the ladder, partially because she didn’t have the use of her hands, Erin cried out. Her captor’s hands were splayed across her butt, shoving her up and onto the boat.

  And that was when she saw the huddled body chained to a captain’s chair across from the driver’s seat.

  “Steve!” Erin moved to the man instinctively. He reeked of urine. “It’s okay, Steve. It’s Erin. Remember me?”

  The man didn’t look up. Burying his head farther into his arms, he shuddered. “I’m going to take care of you now, okay?” She kept talking somehow. Just kept talking.

  The boat’s engine roared to life. She could feel the water’s resistance against the boat as they sped away from shore.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” she said. “I promise.”

  Steve moaned, and she wondered if he was in pain. Wondered if the fiend who’d kidnapped a handicapped man had done more than just terrify him. If he’d wounded the man. And she wondered if Steve even knew she was there.

  Sitting down next to him, she pushed her body close to his. “You aren’t alone anymore,” she told him. “I’m right here beside you.”

  And she was going to stay there until Rick found them. She was going to protect Steve for him. She had a purpose. Something she had to do.

  And she would.

  Because Rick was coming for them.

  She needed to believe that.

  The boat stopped and Erin glanced around them, seeing nothing. The man who’d taken them prisoner got up and pocketed the boat’s key. Throwing an anchor over the side, he came toward them. Erin sat up straighter, sheltering Steve’s huddled form. The black-jacketed man grabbed her ankle, locking a thick metal cuff around it. Their kidnapper attached a chain to the cuff and the other end to the boat’s steering column. A second chain was already locked there. Steve’s. The man opened a door that led below and walked over to where they’d boarded the boat.

  “There’s a bathroom and some food down below. Your chains will reach that far. There’s a bomb fastened to the hull. I have the detonator. If Thomas manages to live through the next twenty-four hours, which he won’t, and then gets lucky enough to find you, you might survive. If not, by this time tomorrow night, you’ll both be dead.”

  “Wait…” He didn’t even hesitate as he dropped over the side of the cabin cruiser. A couple of minutes later she heard rowing sounds in the water. He was leaving them out in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night. With a bomb attached to their boat.

  It was sometime after midnight, by her best guess. She’d taken off her watch for her bath. She wasn’t going to be able to figure out where they were, or hope to see anything that would help them, until morning.

  The temperature was dropping by the minute.

  “Steve? We have to get downstairs.” Could the man even walk? As big as he was, Erin didn’t have much chance of bearing his weight with her arms free, let alone with them tied behind her back. Her hands had gone numb.

  “Steve,” she said again, a mix of panic and authority in her voice. “We have to go downstairs. Now.”

  The man raised his head. Stared at her. And she smiled.

  “Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”

  Steve nodded, shuddered and lowered his head again.

  Nudging him with her elbow, Erin said, “No, Steve, don’t do that. Look at me. Please.”

  The man looked, his eyes swollen. He’d been crying. Had he also been hit? She had no idea how long Steve had been held in captivity. Hours. Or longer? Rick had been gone for two days.

  “You’re safe,” she said, keeping her tone even. “The bad man’s gone. Rick is on his way to get us. He wants us to go downstairs where it’s warmer and wait for him. Do you understand?”

  With a hiccup, Steve nodded.

  “Can you stand up?”

  He moved his legs. And started to cry, shaking his head.

  “Yes, you can, Steve. Rick wants you to be strong,” she said. If ever she’d needed the ability to convince someone to believe her, it was now. “Come on. I’m going to stand first, and then you have to stand, too. It’ll be a game. Like Simon Says. I do it and then you do it.”

  “Do I get to be Simon, too?” The question was asked with childlike innocence in that deep male voice.

  “Yes. As soon as we get downstairs.”

  It took him two tries, but Steve made it to his feet. He pushed up against her and every time she moved, he did as well.

  Holding her elbow against Steve’s arm, and with their chains clanking behind them, Erin led the way down the four stairs to the area below. A small light was on over the tiniest sink she’d ever seen. The space measured maybe six by six with a kitchenette on one side and a blue padded bench on the other. A table was folded against the wall. Feeling claustrophobic, she left it where it was. A door on the far end opened to a two-by-two square with a toilet. Their chains stretched the length of the room, but there wasn’t space for them to pass each other on the way.

  “I gotta pee.”

  Judging by the stains on his pants and the smell that was sickeningly stronger now that they were in the confined space, he’d already done so repeatedly.

  “Okay, hold on,” Erin said. This wasn’t a time for modesty. Or delicate sensibilities. Turning her back so she could reach his fly, she winced at the pain in her fingers as she struggled to unhook the button on his jeans and then unzip them. With his arms strapped behind him, Steve couldn’t help. He stood completely still while she worked his pants and then his briefs down his body.

  “Okay, go ahead,” she said, pointing at the toilet room. “You’ll have to sit down.”

  He didn’t close the door.

  Erin busied herself backing up to the cupboards and drawers she could reach, searching for a change of clothes.

  She found a pair of drawstring sailor pants. They were probably too short, but they’d have to do. Steve’s pants and underwear had to go. Thank God her clothes were mostly dry.

  She had to use the toilet, too, but was planning to hold it as long as she could. At least until after they’d had time to work on each other’s knots. That was their next activity. Whether Simon said so or not.

  She was ab
solutely not going to die with her hands tied behind her back.

  35

  Rick had lost a precious five hours by the time he was belted into his seat on the flight from Miami International to Grand Rapids.

  And he was facing dawn when he drove his truck out of the Grand Rapids airport garage. He made it to Erin’s house before eight. She didn’t answer his knock. And when he pulled a tool from the kit he’d removed from the storage bin in his truck and unlocked her back door, he found exactly what he’d known he would—an empty house.

  Nothing was disturbed. No sign of forced entry. But then there wouldn’t be. Sarge was the best of the best. A real pro.

  Rick ought to know. The older man had taught him everything. Sarge understood how Rick thought because he’d taught him to think.

  He’d know what Rick would do next. And the move after that. He could predict every reaction. Every option Rick would come up with.

  And he’d have a plan to thwart them all.

  Rick had to focus. To think. But that meant he’d be walking into sure death. Every instinct he had, every nerve that had kept him alive for fifteen years of covert operations, was all a detriment to him now.

  How did he outthink his own thoughts? Outmaneuver a man who’d controlled his mind for almost two decades?

  He didn’t even stop to wonder why Sarge was doing this. Didn’t matter. Saving Erin and Steve mattered.

  Nothing else did.

  He tried to decide what to do. His internal radar pushed him toward the water. Water left no trace. Sarge knew Rick would expect him to go to the water, that it was the first place he’d look.

  So did Sarge take them somewhere else? To thwart him yet again? Or was he sitting on the water with them, waiting for Rick?

  Did Sarge even know that Rick was on to him?

  He’d thought about calling from the island. And again from Miami. But he didn’t want Sarge to know he was on his trail just yet. He had to find Erin and Steve first.

  Steve had to be scared to death. Pissing himself.