No Safe Place

by Fitzwater, Judy

  “But why? James has been—”

  “Filling your head with lies,” I finished. “Cara, he’s not trying to help us. He was ready to abandon you and Patrice at the airport. That stupid phrase we used when you were little—”

  “Mom, James knew it.”

  “So did Ian,” I said, still unable to get over my own foolishness. “Your father probably told them one night when he was swimming in his damned scotch. Ian used it on me, too. All James has ever wanted are Will, the code and the code book.”

  “And what does Ian want?” Cara asked.

  “The same thing,” I confessed.

  “What does the code lead to?” Patrice asked.

  “Stephen hid people whose lives had been threatened—including Will. That’s where Stephen was all those days, weeks, months when he told us he was off on digs. The code and the book tell where they were all hidden. How do you think Ian and I found Will? But why they’d care about having it now, I have no idea. Most, if not all, of those people have returned to their lives.”

  “Oh, Lord. I described the book to him.” Cara’s face lost its color.

  “I know,” I told her, pulling her into a hug. “He has a copy. And now—thanks to me—he knows what the code looks like. He’ll find the original in your dad’s belongings. Unless Ian gets it first. Hell. For all I know, he copied the damn code while I was asleep, and he knows exactly what the book looks like. Double damn! How could I have been so stupid?”

  “You weren’t stupid,” Patrice stated. “We’re all here together.”

  I let Cara go, brushing her tears away with the back of my hand.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Patrice is right. I’ve got the two of you back, and we have Will. That’s all that matters.”

  I looked at my daughter’s beautiful face and felt the pressure ease in my chest. Thank God she and Patrice were all right. I wanted to grab them both and disappear just like all those others that Stephen had helped.

  Stephen. He’d sacrificed so much for the safety of others. So had I, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time. I pulled myself up. I’d be damned if I’d let his last sacrifice come to nothing by letting Will fall into Ackerman’s hands.

  “Will, where can we get a phone?” I repeated.

  “Look, I’ve got my own mission—to help my father take down Ackerman.”

  “I know,” I said. “The only way to do that is for you to stay hidden until this trial is over.”

  “We could call the authorities,” Cara suggested.

  “That won’t work,” I insisted. “Ackerman has too much influence. If there’d been a safe way to protect Will within the system, his father would have used it.”

  I studied Will as he weighed my words.

  “Who do you want me to call?” he finally asked.

  “Someone with medical knowledge,” Cara suggested, eyeing Will’s leg through the open window. His wound had pretty much stopped bleeding. The bullet had taken out a chunk of flesh, not too deep, missing any arteries, but infection was a real possibility, one we weren’t equipped to handle. And I was seriously concerned about the blow he’d taken to his head. At the very least, he had to have one hell of a headache.

  “A guy I knew in college is a paramedic here in Denver. I don’t generally call in favors, but he owes me big-time. There should be a house just a little ways up this road. People out here are friendly enough. We should be able to call him from their phone.”

  We found a small place about a half mile up the road. We let Patrice go to the door while Cara and I made sure Will was slouched down sufficiently that his notorious face couldn’t be seen in the car. Patrice told the elderly woman who greeted her that we’d been in an accident and that a young man was hurt. The woman handed her a cordless phone out the door. Patrice brought it back to the car and gave it to Will.

  It took him two calls before he reached Mike Danvers, and ten more minutes to convince him he was actually who he said he was. Mike promised to be there within the hour. No ambulance. No sirens. We thanked the woman and went back down the road, stopping where we’d first pulled off.

  While we waited, I pulled Cara aside.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “Mom, I screwed up. I called Phillip. I thought it would be all right. How could it not? I used a pay phone and a calling card like you told me to.”

  “James must have put a tap on Phillip’s phone. His number would have been in your cell phone.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. She was good at beating herself up. It ran in the family.

  “How long did it take?” I asked.

  Her eyes popped back open. “What do you mean?”

  “Before James showed up.”

  “The morning after we got to Taos Patrice and I went to get a late breakfast at a fast-food drive-through. I planned to find a computer to contact you that afternoon, but when we got back to the hotel—”

  “He was in your room.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “He wouldn’t risk a public confrontation. He had to have you somewhere you were sufficiently isolated so he could make you listen. What lies did he tell you to get you to cooperate?”

  “I don’t know that they were lies.”

  I could tell she wanted this conversation on an equal footing, not parent to child. She was grown; she was smart; and she was right. I didn’t know better than she did, at least not about James. I’d been equally foolish to involve Ian. All I knew was that James had been prepared to leave her while he took me and Will with him. In my book, that automatically made him a bad guy.

  “All he said was that they were there to keep us safe, like Dad had asked him to do. And that he was really worried about you.”

  Ian had used almost those exact same words.

  “How did they treat you?” I asked.

  “Okay. They fed us, brought in movies—”

  “You sounded drugged over the phone.”

  “I was having trouble sleeping. I had some of my pills with me and I took them. Is that so horrible? Why are you so hell-bent on assuming James was going to harm us?”

  “He restricted your movements.”

  “They were protecting us. For all I know, he was only trying to help you at the airport. James said Ian would kidnap me to get you to cooperate. I believed him. I still believe him.”

  I didn’t believe anyone. I wasn’t sure which of us was better off.

  “Can we talk about this later? I’d like to check on Will,” Cara said.

  I let her go, and Patrice took her place, leaning against the side of the SUV.

  “So which is it?” I asked. “Was James hiding you or holding you hostage?”

  “Damned if I know,” Patrice said. “But if he’s harmed a hair on Odin’s head, I’ll have his on a platter.”

  I noticed her holding her side, and wincing when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  “When did you get hurt?” I asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” I touched her waist, and she jerked back.

  “I think I may have cracked a rib when I fell into the limo,” she confessed.

  It was a miracle we’d come through as unscathed as we had, but Patrice’s injury would have to be dealt with.

  Mike found us in forty minutes, driving his own car just as Will had requested. Will was resting with his back against a tree, Cara sitting next to him, when he arrived. While we’d waited, they’d passed the time talking, Will’s injured leg resting across Cara’s lap.

  Patrice and I had sat watching them from our perch on the front fender of the SUV. It made me wish they’d met under different circumstances. Will seemed a little infatuated with Cara, offering her a shy smile I’d never seen from him—while she was obviously reconciling her impression of him with what she knew through the media.

  “Cute couple,” Patrice offered, reading my mind.

  I smiled at her. She
was keeping it together despite her pain, especially now that she was convinced both Cara and Will were all right. She was even trying to comfort me, but I was having none of it.

  Mike, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with an emblem on his sleeve, got out of his car and went straight to his friend. “Man, you lookin’ good for a corpse.”

  “You don’t look so bad yourself—for an ugly son of a bitch.”

  “You keep sweet-talkin’ me like that and your girlfriend here just might get jealous.”

  Cara blushed but she didn’t move away.

  “Just do your job and skip the commentary,” Will ordered.

  Mike pulled on latex gloves and peeled back the torn cloth matted with blood to expose the wound.

  Will sucked in a breath and I noted the contortion of his jaw. He was definitely in more pain than he’d been letting on.

  “What the hell you been doing?” Mike looked skeptically from one of us to the next.

  “Trying to stay alive,” Will offered.

  The young man nodded. “You about shocked the crap out of me with that phone call. Where you been these last months, bro? You had us all convinced you were dead.”

  “I know. Let’s keep it that way, at least for a while.”

  Mike took a closer look at the lot of us. I was a mess, scrapes and bruises on my arms, my jeans torn, and Cara and Patrice both had blood all over them.

  “Want to introduce me to your friends?” He swabbed Will’s wound.

  I shook my head.

  “Probably better not to,” Will said.

  “Any of that your own blood?” he asked at the rest of us.

  We all shook our heads.

  “I don’t suppose you want to tell me whose it is?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said.

  “We need a place to crash, Mike,” Will said.

  “All four of you?”

  “All of us.”

  “You know, by law, I’m obligated to report a gunshot wound.” Mike applied an antibiotic ointment, and wrapped gauze around Will’s leg.

  Will winced from the pressure.

  “What gunshot wound? I cut myself shaving.”

  “Your leg?”

  “He’s going for that smooth look,” Cara insisted. “No body hair.”

  “Yeah, right. You girls go for that?”

  “Some of us do.”

  “Whatever rings your bell. Seriously, you need to have a doctor take a look,” Mike warned. “You probably need a shot of penicillin and a tetanus inoculation. Maybe some stronger antibiotics.”

  “Take a look at his head,” I added. “He took a blow.”

  Mike changed gloves and started to run his hands over Will’s scalp, but Will let out a loud “Ouch!” and shook him off. “Later. Right now what we need are some clothes, so we don’t look like we’ve come out of a slaughterhouse.”

  Mike frowned at him. “You mean you didn’t? If your headache gets worse—”

  “I don’t have a headache.”

  “Of course you do. If you start to have double vision, get yourself to a doctor right away. Hey, man, I’m sorry about your mother.”

  Will didn’t answer him. His eyes seemed distant and his jaw was clenched tightly. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

  Chapter 28

  Mike must have owed one heck of a debt to Will—something about alcohol poisoning at some frat party their freshman year in college—because he took us back to his patio apartment on the first floor of a large complex and was able to get us inside through the sliding glass doors without arousing too much suspicion.

  We assured him we’d committed no crime, had shot no one. That last part was a little iffy. I thought I’d wounded the guy in the baseball cap, but if I had, it hadn’t slowed him down much.

  Mike left to find clothes to fit the lot of us from a mission that was run to help fire victims. When he got back, he also brought some over-the-counter painkillers that he administered to both Will and Patrice. We were all clean, each having taken a turn in his shower. Jake’s blood mingled with our own as it washed down the drain into Denver’s sewer system. I wished I could wash my confusion away as easily.

  We ate take-out pizza only because Mike insisted, but we couldn’t play as if we were on holiday for long. After the food, Will was getting antsy. Patrice’s side was hurting more, and she’d gone into the bedroom to lie down. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts off Ian. I wondered if he was dead. Or if he was coming after us. We needed to get moving.

  As Cara cleared away the trash from the pizza, Will pulled me aside and said, “I need to let my father know I’m all right.”

  “He knows,” I assured him.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Ian is in contact with your father. He spoke to him when we were in Denver. Assuming he’s still alive, he’ll let him know.”

  “Even if he’s working against us.”

  “Yes. To blackmail your father, you have to be alive. Ian will tell him to reassure him you’re all right, or to keep the pressure on. They’ll take you as soon as you surface,” I added.

  “At least they don’t need you anymore,” Will said.

  “That’s not true. For some reason they still want Stephen’s code and his key.”

  “From what you said, both Ian and James may already have it. You and Cara need to continue to lie low, let things play themselves out without you.”

  “I’m not particularly fond of the idea of hiding and waiting for someone to come after us,” I said.

  “Am I supposed to be hearing any of this?” Mike asked.

  “No,” Will and I said in unison.

  “All right, then. Guess that means it’s time for a beer run.”

  “Excellent idea,” Cara agreed as she came back into the room drying her hands.

  Mike grabbed his keys and took off again.

  “Let me see the key,” Cara said. “I wonder why James is still interested in it.”

  I dug Stephen’s checkbook out of my back pocket and handed it to her. I explained how it worked as she flipped through it.

  Will took the ledger from Cara. “Let’s try one.”

  Cara grabbed it back and tossed him the pocket atlas. “The entry right before yours is dated November 12.”

  “Who’s it made out to?” I asked.

  “Robert Maynard.”

  “What’s the account number?” Will asked.

  “It’s 226-62D5”

  He looked in the index. “Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. Hey, I say we check it out, go down for a little interview with the guy, assuming he’s still there. A little beach, a little sun and sand…”

  Cara punched his arm, and he let out a loud, fake “Ow.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Cara said. “If this Robert Maynard guy has nothing to do with Ackerman, why would he care? Give me a pen.”

  Will tossed one over to her. She took it and worked backward through the book, jotting something as she went.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Figuring the years. He didn’t put down complete dates, only months and days. I want to see how long Dad was hiding people.” It took her a few minutes. Then she looked up. “Mom, this goes back to shortly before you and Dad were married.”

  “What?” I managed.

  She nodded. “All the way back to July 17 of—”

  “July 17,” I repeated. “You’re certain?”

  “Absolutely. Why?”

  “That’s the day that Josie disappeared.” My God. Stephen, is that when all this started? Did you hide Josie?

  “Mom, are you all right? You’re white as a ghost.”

  “Don’t you see?” My voice cracked. “What if…what if…”

  “Mom, are you saying Aunt Josie might still be alive?”

  I swallowed hard as it all fell into place. Of course. Stephen and Peter knew how much danger Josie was in. They knew Ackerman. He’d been my brother-in-law. I’d told
Stephen that Nick had been abusing Josie, and he’d witnessed his behavior firsthand. The worst part was Nick had money—or at least his family did, lots and lots of money that Nick later inherited. She’d wanted desperately to have a child, and I’d wanted desperately for her to wait. I knew that if there was ever a custody battle, money would determine the outcome. If it had ever come to that. Leaving Nick would have been like signing her own death warrant. She was his chattel, to do with as he pleased.

  I was sitting bolt upright now, every nerve in my body tingling. Ackerman hadn’t killed her. Stephen and Peter might have offered her their help. Stephen had hidden her. Oh, dear God, please let me be right. Please let Josie still be alive.

  “Read me that first entry,” I ordered. “Who was the check made out to?”

  “Alexis Gerhart.”

  “And the account number.”

  “Um, 238-87C2.”

  I didn’t have to look it up. I recognized the number. Josie was in British Columbia where Stephen had taken Will, where he had his cottage, the cottage he’d never taken me to, the cottage that allowed him to check on her. Damn it, Stephen. Why didn’t you trust me? I’d been so close and never once suspected.

  Why hadn’t she come back?

  “I’ve got to go back to British Columbia,” I stated. “I’ve got to warn Josie before they go after her. For some reason Ackerman still wants her. I’ve got to let her know.” I stood, ready to leave, then and there. I had to get to Josie in time.

  “I’ll get our things together,” Cara said.

  “No. You stay here.”

  “Mom, you know me better than that. I’m not about to let you go off by yourself to Canada. If you’re right, James will find the original ledger in Dad’s things and he already has the book. That means Ackerman will have men hot on your heels. They’ll know you figured it out.”

  Patrice’s voice came from the doorway and I looked up. “Ian may have copied the ledger, as well, and he knows what the atlas looks like. Stephen probably confided in him about Josie’s disappearance. So he’ll be there, too. They’ll all be there, and they’ll all know Josie’s alias.”

  I felt like I was being crushed. Just as I’d finally found Josie, so had her enemies.