No Safe Place

by Fitzwater, Judy

  Josie let out a shocked, “What?”

  I felt my face color. “We had a moment, literally only a moment,” I insisted.

  “Yes, well, call it what you will.”

  “Then you won’t mind filling me in,” Josie said.

  “Later, perhaps, when we have something to actually report,” he said.

  Josie bailed me out, but I knew she’d get me eventually. “So you left the island and followed them back to the house.”

  “Yes,” Ian said. “When I saw you separate from James, I knew he had something else up his sleeve, so I watched him. I’d used a device on Cara’s car to track you when you and Cara went to Patrice’s. He was certain you wouldn’t fall for something quite that obvious again.”

  “I was stupid to fall for it the first time. Nathan swept the Hummer for bugs before we got in it.”

  “Exactly. You say it was in the gun he gave you.”

  “Under the pistol grips,” I said. I felt like a fool and he knew it.

  He shook his head. “You have to trust someone sometime.”

  “Even if it gets you killed like it did Stephen?” I asked.

  He looked at me with solemn eyes.

  “Yes. Even then. It’s what makes us human.”

  Josie had called Nathan on her cell phone to let him know what had happened and that Ian was alive and with us.

  The owners of the B and B had contacted a friend who repaired bicycles. After trying several different patches, he was able to get the tire sufficiently inflated for Nathan to operate the Hummer. James had driven the nail in only far enough to let the air out. Fortunately, no structural damage had been done to the tire itself. He hadn’t dared give himself away by slashing it.

  We’d finished our tea and begun our plans when Nathan, understandably agitated and suspicious, arrived at the cabin an hour later, bringing Cara and Will with him. After Cara had a long, silent moment with James, she and Will went outside and sat on the porch, leaving us at the table. James was lucky we didn’t leave him alone with her.

  “Ackerman will never be convicted of Stephen’s murder,” Ian said, “not with the cover-up I did on Stephen’s death.”

  “It was necessary,” Nathan insisted. “If you hadn’t, you would have blown the whole operation. Jayne Donovan was still alive at the time, and the plan would have gone forward if possible.”

  “Donovan believed you to be innocent of Stephen’s murder,” I said.

  “Yes. He aided in the cover-up, another reason none of this can ever come out. He would face disbarment. He refused, however, to allow Jayne to leave at that point, knowing the organization had been infiltrated.”

  “Did she know Will was safe?” I asked.

  Ian nodded. “She was told when the plan to take her out was finalized.”

  Somehow that gave me comfort.

  “So what do you suggest we do now?” Nathan asked.

  “Oh, I suspect James can be convinced to help us convict Ackerman in the murder of Jayne Donovan,” Ian said, glancing at the door open to the bedroom.

  I could see James’s legs struggling against his bonds. He had to be uncomfortable as hell, but I didn’t feel sorry for him.

  “Where do you think he stashed them?” Nathan asked Ian.

  Josie and I exchanged puzzled looks. They knew James’s modus operandi. She and I could only guess at it.

  “He’ll have recordings of the conversations he held with Ackerman about killing Stephen and Jayne Donovan,” Ian explained. “Never trust a crook. They don’t trust each other. They’re always up for a little blackmail if things go wrong.”

  “My money says they’re digital,” Nathan stated.

  “Could be. Oh, hell. I’m in no mood to search the continent. I say we make it simple.”

  Nathan winked at Ian. “Hey, man, let’s go for it. I’m tired. He either gives it to us or he doesn’t. If we have to look for it on our own, we don’t need to be worrying about what he’s doing in the meantime. We’ve got a lot of wooded land surrounding this place. Nobody’s going to come here looking for a body, and if they do, they’re sure not going to find anything if we bury it six feet down.”

  James’s legs stilled. I didn’t know if Ian and Nathan were serious or not. All that mattered was that James thought they were.

  “If he cooperates, he might even buy his way out of the death penalty,” I suggested. “He’s a young guy. Who knows? He could live long enough to see daylight someday.”

  I walked over to the doorway and stared into the eyes of the man who had caused me so much grief.

  “I won’t save you,” I told James, “if that’s what you’re counting on. Cara would never have been on that island if it hadn’t been for you. Once that tape comes off your mouth, you’ve got half an hour to tell us everything you know.”

  Chapter 36

  It’s true what they say. The sky over Greece is a color unlike anywhere else in the world. The contrast with the white stone of the buildings made it even more breathtaking as I stared out at the blue of the sea and let the warm wind blow my hair about my face. What had surprised me most about my first experience on the islands was that I’d expected to feel drawn into the past, into the glorious history of the place. Instead, I felt as though I’d never before existed so much in the present.

  Ian slipped an arm around my shoulder and I let myself relax into the joy of his touch. We had three more days before my conference began in Athens, and I wanted nothing more than to spend them with Ian under the Grecian sun.

  “I just got off the phone with Will,” he said. “Ackerman has been found guilty of jury tampering and bribery. Judge Donovan imposed the maximum sentence. And the grand jury has indicted him on first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, as well as several lesser crimes. If he miraculously manages to avoid the death penalty when this is all over, he’ll still take his last breath in prison.”

  “Good,” I said. All I wanted was an ending, to know that Nicholas Ackerman would never harm anyone else ever again.

  “Will also said he’d see you in a couple weeks.”

  He was meeting up with Cara and me in Manhattan. Patrice’s pottery would be on exhibit by then in one of the finer galleries, and she wanted me to see it. Odin didn’t much care for the city, but they’d be back in Pennsylvania before long.

  “He’ll only be able to stay a day or two. He filed a multi-million-dollar wrongful death suit against Ackerman half an hour after the verdict came in.”

  I turned to face Ian, and his arms encircled the waist of my sundress. He looked different. Younger. The burden he’d carried around his eyes and jaw was gone.

  “What’s Will need with that money?” I asked.

  “Nothing. He filed it at Peter’s suggestion. His intent is to tie up Nick’s assets, to cripple his network financially and give his law team one more headache. Then the boys—Josie’s sons—can come into their father’s money if they wish to pursue it once Ackerman’s convicted of murder.”

  I suspected no amount of money would tempt them to trade their Estes heritage for Ackerman’s. That the world would never know who their father was would be Ackerman’s final defeat.

  I smiled. The system would finally put an end to the man of my nightmares.

  “Speaking of money, you should be in a fairly good position to retire,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “The million dollars Stephen left you with his insurance policy. Surely you didn’t spend all of it chasing after me.”

  Ian laughed out loud. “Oh, that. I thought you might forget that little detail. Elizabeth, I’m afraid I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

  I stiffened. Could this man who, I believed, had given me the one gift that Stephen had denied me—honesty—be about to take it from me?

  “There was no insurance policy.”

  “But you said—”

  “What made sense to you at the time. Stephen did ask me to watch over you when Peter positioned me in th
e D.C. area after the Donovan operation began. I’ve been half in love with you since the first day I saw you in the halls at Gilman. I could hardly have told you that, now, could I, especially when my kneecap was at stake. I’m afraid it was thoroughly unprofessional of me. I’m incredibly ashamed.”

  Laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep inside of me. I didn’t know where our relationship would take us, but, for the first time since I could remember, I had no fear, not of the future, not of anything. Ian had given that to me. I had my life back. I was free.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5771-3

  NO SAFE PLACE

  Copyright © 2006 by Judy Fitzwater

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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