No Safe Place

by Fitzwater, Judy

  “If you’re so anxious to help, why the guns?” Will asked me.

  I slipped mine into the waistband of my jeans. “Because I need you to listen to me. Please sit down.”

  He stood his ground, but Ian pushed him onto the sofa. “Do as the lady says.”

  “I have some bad news, Will. It’s about your mother. I wish there was some other way to tell you.”

  He was totally alert, staring at me, daring me to say what he didn’t want to hear.

  “I’m so sorry, Will. She’s dead.”

  I wished I could have told him some other way, not that there’s any way to prepare someone for news like that, but there simply wasn’t time. Two days had already passed since our encounter with James.

  He blanched and his hand started to shake. “How?”

  I wanted to touch him, this man who suddenly looked so young, but I knew not to. To him, we were part of the problem.

  “We believe she was murdered,” I said. He didn’t need to know the details, the lies about suicide and drugs.

  “Ackerman,” Will uttered, fighting the anger and the grief that distorted his face.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “When?” he asked.

  “A few days ago.”

  “I’ve got to call my father.”

  “That wouldn’t be wise,” Ian said. “You have to stay in hiding. That’s what your father would want.”

  “You don’t know what the hell he would want,” he spat at Ian. “How is he?” he then managed, turning toward me and running his hands through his hair.

  “Worried about you,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Will cursed. “This isn’t right. If my mother was in danger, Stephen was supposed to bring her here. He promised—”

  “Stephen died weeks before your mother,” I explained.

  “Look, I’m out of here.” Will stood and reached for the duffel, pulling it onto his shoulder. “I’m going to see my father. Shoot me if you think that will somehow help you.”

  He might not realize it, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Ian was a hell of a powerful man.

  “Please,” I said. “The men who may have killed your mother and my husband have my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” he repeated, turning back to face me. “The one in the photos?”

  He’d lain in that bed staring at Cara’s face for all those weeks. He must have felt as though he knew her.

  “Yes, but that’s not all. They still want you,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed, his gaze again flitting between Ian and me. “Of course they do. That’s why I intend to get them first.”

  “We’d like to see you do exactly that, preferably without getting yourself killed,” Ian explained.

  “But first we need your help,” I explained. “We want to bring them down as much as you do.”

  “You and the goon here?” Will raised an eyebrow at Ian.

  “Yeah. Me and the goon.” I wondered if Ian found that term half as amusing as I did. “We need you to come back to Denver with us, voluntarily, if possible. We’ll tell them we’re willing to make a trade—you for my daughter and my friend Patrice.”

  He studied us both, his distrust of Ian now spilling in my direction. “You think I’ll let you hand me over to those murderers? What are you? Nuts?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t actually believe we’re stupid enough to think they’d let any of us walk away alive if they have a choice. We’re bringing you, my daughter and Patrice out, but we may need you as bait, willing bait, I hope. And we need you where they won’t find you. You’re no longer safe here.”

  “Right. So you’re taking me to them.”

  He had a point.

  “If you stay here, they will find you,” Ian stated. “Make no mistake about this—they intend to hold you hostage. We could also use an extra pair of hands.”

  “I already told you I’m not staying. Does Cara know that you’re doing this?” he asked.

  So he knew her name. Of course. He would have asked, and Stephen would have told him. I shook my head. “She doesn’t know she’s in danger. She thinks the man holding her is helping her.”

  “You’re sure these are the same cowards who had my mother killed?”

  “No,” Ian broke in. “They are the same paid assassins who killed your mother.”

  “Terrific. So why aren’t we going after Ackerman?”

  Anger had settled in his jaw. It helped him fight back the tears.

  “Because your father is already doing just that. For him to be successful, we have to bring in Ackerman’s henchmen. First we retrieve Cara and Elizabeth’s friend Patrice. Then we can take care of Ackerman,” Ian assured him.

  “What if I say no? What if I choose to go my own way?”

  “Then you’ll die,” Ian said.

  Wrath flared in his eyes.

  “So will Cara and Patrice,” I added calmly. “You trusted Stephen. You can trust me.”

  He seemed to consider that for a moment.

  “Stephen tried to help you and your father,” I reminded him. “He died trying. Help us save his daughter.”

  He stared at me for what seemed like forever. Then he nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was a law student. He knew about compromise. He also knew about using people.

  “Who’s the muscle?” he asked, nodding in Ian’s direction.

  “Ian worked with Stephen.”

  “As soon as we hit stateside, I want you to call James,” Ian told me, shoving his gun into the holster strapped to his chest, “and tell him that we’ll make the exchange at the Denver Mint Monday afternoon.”

  “Why would he agree to that?” I asked.

  “No one can get a weapon into that place,” Will stated, leaning against the wall. “The place has state-of-the-art security.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what’s to make this James think I’ll go with him once we’re all inside?” Will asked.

  “Nothing,” Ian agreed. “But he won’t intend to meet us in the mint. He’ll plan an ambush outside.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “Because I trained him.”

  “You trained him?” Will repeated. “You worked together?”

  “Yes. Until James threw in with Ackerman.”

  “James will know what you expect him to do,” I pointed out.

  “Yes. But what he won’t know is that we plan to meet him nowhere near the mint.”

  “When do we leave?” I asked.

  Ian didn’t hesitate. “Now.”

  Chapter 25

  Trust was in short supply. Everything I’d read about Will Donovan suggested he charmed his way through life. He wasn’t used to taking orders, and I suspected he had trouble believing our agenda was necessarily to his advantage. But he gave the appearance of being on board, cooperating fully, which made me even more suspicious.

  The task of watching him fell more to me than to Ian as we retraced our steps out of Canada and back to the small airfield in Seattle where the same plane stood waiting for us. Will needed to feel we’d provide the most expedient way to get back home where he could see his father and hear from someone else exactly what had gone on, where he had resources, where he could regain some control.

  Once we were in the air and on our way to Denver, Ian took a seat next to the pilot, leaving Will and me alone for the first time.

  “How the hell did your buddy Ian let things go so bad?” Will asked, staring out the window at the fields below, dark glasses snug over his eyes, hiding them from me. “If it got worse, Mom was supposed to get out. I never would have left if—”

  “I know,” I said.

  He turned and looked at me, the handsome young man with the once-golden life. “I feel like a damned coward, hiding, out sailing that damned boat while my father…”

  “Stephen and Ian were poised to bring your mother out. They met at a ski lodge to make final arrangements, only—”

  “Someone killed St
ephen.”

  “James.” Even if I wasn’t completely convinced, it was important to keep Will on board. “James was one of their operatives, and I can only assume that, once Stephen was dead, your father realized he didn’t know who to trust and called off the operation. Ian had to take care of Stephen’s body. Then James disappeared, and before Ian managed to convince your father your mother had to make it to safety immediately—”

  “They killed her, too.” Will swore under his breath. “Sorry.”

  “Hey, I’d be saying a whole lot worse than that if I were you.” And had when I’d first heard that Stephen was dead.

  “Your husband was a good man,” he said. “If anyone other than you had come for me, I wouldn’t have gone.”

  I considered that. Both his words and the situation. Was that why Ian had wanted me there?

  “Yes, I believe he was,” I agreed. I could, at last, say that with absolute confidence.

  “He talked about you. About Cara, too.”

  I could see his grief and I shared it. I couldn’t think about Stephen. I couldn’t allow myself to grieve again, for our life together, for what could have been our life together. If I did, I’d want to be dead, too, and I knew I wouldn’t always feel like that. Ian had made me see that.

  “What’s going on between the two of you?” Will asked, nodding toward the cockpit.

  I felt color threaten my cheeks. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve seen him look at you.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” I assured him. Ian hadn’t so much as brushed my arm since Will had joined us.

  “Good. Keep it that way. I don’t want him muddling your mind.”

  I was too stunned by Will’s audacity to reply. Yet I wondered exactly how much influence Ian had had over my thoughts. I’d remained objective. I knew I had. He was a way to get Cara and Patrice back, nothing more.

  I turned to look out the window, wondering if I was only fooling myself, if I’d been able to be truly objective about anything since Stephen’s death.

  About a half hour or so later, Ian joined us in the back of the plane to lay out his plan.

  “We’ll land at a little airport just west of Boulder,” he told us. “I’ve arranged for us to have a ride into town where we’ll pick up a rental car and then drive down to Denver. My calculations put James bringing Cara and Patrice into a certain airport outside of Denver.”

  “How do you know that?” Will asked.

  “It’s the only one in the area that will accommodate the type of craft I know they’ll be flying, something big enough to transport six or more people and still small enough that they won’t have to take it into a major airport where security would be tighter.”

  “Why is it important to know where they’ll land?” I asked.

  “Because that’s where we’ll take them down—before James has an opportunity to separate Cara and Patrice. He’ll want them in two different locations before coming to meet us, so if we manage to find one, he’ll still have the other to bargain with should things not go quite as he plans.”

  “But how do you know when they’ll land?” I asked.

  “I don’t. But James won’t risk having Cara and Patrice in the area longer than is absolutely necessary, so my best guess is no more than a few hours before the arranged meeting. The way to deal with him—and to make certain that we recover both Cara and Patrice—is to surprise them when they touch down.”

  How exactly he planned to do that, he wouldn’t tell us. Then he again joined the pilot in the cockpit.

  Will slouched in his seat, his dark glasses hiding any hint of emotion, and stared straight ahead. “He’s not telling us all he knows.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “You say he was there when Stephen was killed?”

  I nodded.

  “If he knows so much about this James and how he thinks, tell me why he didn’t take him out then and there? Tell me how you know which one of them did the killing? They could be working together—Ian and James. He could be delivering me to him. Then they’d have us all—you, me, Cara.” Will continued to stare straight ahead, his eyes hidden, his voice low. “You can trust him if you want, but until I get a damned good reason, I won’t.”

  I looked at the back of Ian’s head and wondered if I was on a mission to save Cara and Patrice or if I had sealed our fates. The thought made me shudder.

  Chapter 26

  We pulled our rented SUV off the main highway some twenty or so miles from Denver and stopped just outside the gates of a flat, grassy area with no trees. The landscape was broken by two hangars, a fair-size landing pad, a handful of small twin-engine planes, a couple of cars and a fence that towered some twelve feet into the air. Ian and I watched the sky through binoculars. Only two planes landed and a third took off during the two hours we waited. Traffic in and out of the gates was almost nonexistent.

  “Why did we bring Will to the airport with us?” I asked Ian. “Why not find a safe place and leave him there?”

  Will lay sunning himself, out of earshot, his back against the windshield of the SUV, sunglasses again covering his eyes, his feet crossed at the ankles, his legs resting on the hood.

  Ian swallowed the last bite of his PowerBar. “There are no safe places. Besides, we couldn’t chance his untimely arrival if he took it upon himself to play vigilante. He’s a hothead. No judgment whatsoever.”

  “He doesn’t strike me that way,” I stated.

  “Yes, well, I’ve had enough like him in my classes.”

  “So have I. I like him. If you’d give him some credit, I suspect he might return the favor.”

  Ian scanned the horizon once more.

  A little blue and white Cessna whirred over our heads, and Will raised up, shading his eyes to watch it fly in.

  “Could that be them?” I asked.

  Ian shook his head. “Too small.”

  “You do have a plan,” I said hopefully, crumpling the wrapper of my Snickers bar and stuffing it into my jeans’ back pocket. “It might help if you let me in on it.”

  “All in good time.”

  I found his evasion irritating as hell, but I knew I wouldn’t get any more out of him.

  Traffic on the road was sparse. We both looked up at the sound of a motor, and Ian swung his binoculars in the direction of the noise.

  “On your feet,” he called to Will, motioning both of us to stand ready at the side of the car. Ian offered Will his pistol back.

  “You trust me to use this?” Will asked.

  “Only if you have to,” Ian said.

  Will released the cartridge, checking to see if it was actually loaded. He shoved it back into the gun and cocked it. I wondered what was running through his mind. He’d told me he didn’t trust us. Hell, I didn’t trust us, either.

  “Put it out of sight,” Ian ordered, and Will stuffed it into his waistband.

  Ian had changed into the black suit, black tie and white shirt that had been waiting for him when we arrived at the airport near Boulder. It was a strange outfit for what I suspected was about to go down. Quickly, he pulled on sunglasses, adjusted his cufflinks, and drew on a pair of thin leather driving gloves, the ones he’d worn at Patrice’s. The sight of them made me cringe.

  “You two wait here for my signal. When I call you over, don’t say a word to anyone.” Then he put his hands in his pockets and casually strode toward the gate.

  Will’s hand found his gun. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought he might draw it out and shoot Ian in the back. He offered me a grin. “Not yet. First we take out the other guys.”

  I wanted to say something to Will, but the sound of the motor had drawn closer. A black limo with darkened windows slowed to make the turn into the gate. Ian stood in its path, his hands raised in front of him, holding what looked like a badge. The car stopped. I watched as he went to the driver-side window. The glass slid down and he reached through the opening. Then the driver was out of the car, handing Ian
his hat, which he drew snugly over his hair. Both of them went to the other side of the limo. Ian opened the side door and motioned for us to come as the driver climbed into the back. We piled in after him, and Ian slammed the door shut. The driver scrambled to the seat closest to the front and as far away from the two of us as he could get. Will and I sat one on each side of the door, our guns drawn.

  “Don’t want to get mixed up in no drug bust,” the driver kept repeating, shaking his head, looking us up and down. “I got me a good job. Don’t need this kind of mess. Someone calls to book a limo, we don’t make no background checks. They pay their money, we provide service. I stay up front, keep my nose out of it. Not my fault what they carry back here with them.”

  Will opened his mouth, but I shook my head at him. No talking.

  “Lord o’ mercy, if you shoot up this car, there’ll be hell to pay,” the driver babbled.

  A sudden chill swept over me. I looked at the gun I held and wondered what the hell I was doing. The thought of bullets flying with Cara and Patrice in the middle was more than I could bear. So I handled it the only way I knew how. I put it totally out of my mind. I could only get through this one step at a time. Only by following orders. And praying that Ian knew what he was doing.

  The limo pulled to a stop. Seconds later the door swung open and Ian crooked his finger for the driver to get out.

  “What you gonna do with me?” the man asked, climbing out between us. “You ain’t gonna arrest me, are you?”

  “How many employees inside?” Ian asked, putting an arm around the man’s shoulders.

  “Usually it’s just the two—Hank, who runs the place, and Billy, who does the maintenance.”

  And the guy who had just landed the Cessna and one or two other pilots at the most.

  “Good. You and I are going to go inside. We’re going to tell them that the DEA suspects a cargo of cocaine is coming in. The three of you, plus anyone else who may be inside, are going to lock all the doors, go into the bathroom, get down and stay low until I give you the all clear. Don’t come out no matter what you hear. Understand?”

  “Just what you expectin’ to happen?” the driver asked.