by Aimée Thurlo
He’d want to question the deacon again soon. His gut told him that the allegations of theft made against Hannah were false and part of an elaborate frame. Following his training blindly without listening to his instincts had been wrong before—and on one occasion, years back, the situation had turned lethal because of it.
“My poor uncle must really be worried about me. I should call him, if only to assure him I’m fine.”
“That’s out of the question, Hannah,” he said firmly. “Your uncle was authorized by his church to hire Gray Wolf Investigations, and I was given the job of bringing you in. If either of us alert him that you’re okay, we’ll have to explain what’s going on, and we may end up inadvertently giving information to your enemies. I believe we’re dealing with a conspiracy, and there are people out there determined to silence you. We’d be gambling with your life.”
She seemed to be considering his words, but her thoughtful silence made him uneasy.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m beat,” he said at last. “Let’s go back to the safe house. I’d like to get some shuteye while I can. Wolf and I will take turns sleeping and guarding tonight like we did last night. But until I get used to that schedule, I’m going to take breaks whenever I can. I need to stay sharp.”
“Okay. After you’ve had a chance to rest, we’ll talk.”
HANNAH SAT on the living room couch, leafing through a magazine on fishing. It was seven. Daniel was still asleep, and she was restless. Despite everything Daniel had said, she trusted her uncle and it just didn’t seem right not to let him know that she was okay. Uncle Bob deserved her trust after taking her in when she’d had no one else to turn to but, for now, she’d respect Daniel’s opinion. Still, there were other matters that needed to be handled, calls that had to be made.
She didn’t have her appointment calendar, but knew she’d missed important meetings with four of her top clients. They had no way of knowing what was going on either, because the church and her uncle were keeping her disappearance a secret.
Hannah thought of how hard she’d worked to get her firm off the ground. Now, she was letting her clients down in a major way, and some of them depended on her totally. This mess would jeopardize everything she’d struggled to accomplish.
She really needed to talk to the people she was working for. Even if she couldn’t tell them the truth, she could at least offer them a plausible explanation for her sudden absence.
Hannah stood, her mind made up. She was doing the right thing. Tiptoeing down the hall, she verified that Daniel was still asleep. She could go and return before he ever woke up. All she had to do was walk to the pay phone at the gas station near the highway at the turnoff. It wasn’t much more than a quarter of a mile away and she could be back in a half hour.
Picking up the change that she’d seen on the kitchen counter and in a jelly jar in the cupboard, she headed toward the door. Suddenly Wolf was there, blocking the way.
“Wolf, Daniel’s asleep. Guard him.”
The dog continued to sit in front of her.
She sighed softly. Maybe she needed to try a different approach. “Want to go for a walk, Wolf?”
The animal wagged his tail once.
She opened the door and, as they walked out, the dog positioned himself on her left side, his shoulder in line with her waist. Twice, she nearly tripped over him.
“You do stick close, don’t you?” she said, smiling ruefully down at him.
The dog never looked at her. His gaze was fastened on the area around them. The German shepherd-cross might have looked like someone’s very large pet, but there was no mistaking it. The big dog was on guard duty.
Hannah walked quickly down the gravel lane. It was dark now and she wasn’t worried about anyone seeing her, let alone recognizing her on this moonless night.
Fifteen minutes later, she reached the pay phone she’d seen earlier. Keeping her back to the building’s lights, and her face in the shadows, she made her calls quickly. These were telephone numbers she knew by heart. Wolf sat beside her, warily watching every car that passed by or pulled into the station.
Before long, Hannah headed back. As she’d hoped, Daniel was still asleep when they returned to the house. All in all, she’d been gone only a little over forty minutes. And now she had the peace of mind of knowing that if she ever got out of this mess, she’d still have a business to return to and a way of making a living.
It wasn’t long after she’d returned that she heard an alarm clock go off and Daniel emerged from the bedroom.
“You didn’t sleep very long,” Hannah commented. “It’s only about eight.”
“I seldom sleep much when I’m on the job. But I like to eat regularly and right now I’m really hungry. What do you say we go get a bucket of fried chicken or something like that for dinner? It’ll have to be takeout, but I want something more than a can of beans or a burrito.”
“That’s fine with me.”
Suddenly Wolf ran to the window. His ears were pricked forward as he sniffed the air coming in through the screen. He snarled, a deep, guttural sound that seemed to electrify Daniel.
“Grab your things. We’re leaving right now.”
Within three minutes they were climbing into the SUV. Wolf’s low growl changed to a higher pitch, like someone issuing a warning.
“They’re getting close. Hang on!” Daniel started the engine.
Suddenly she heard what sounded like a backfire in the distance. Although it hadn’t been particularly loud, Hannah’s entire body began to shake and her mouth went dry.
“That was a gunshot. We’re out of here.”
Hannah had just fastened her seat belt with a shaking hand when Daniel floored the vehicle. Before she could even draw in a breath, they were racing back toward the highway in total darkness.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t until they were at least ten miles from the house, and he was certain that no one was on their tail, that Daniel finally slowed down to the speed limit. “How the hell did they find us? I just don’t get it!”
Hannah said nothing, but sank into her seat. Wolf lay down in the back.
Daniel glanced at her, then at the dog in the rearview mirror. “You two know something about this, don’t you?” he said, his voice ominously soft.
“Look, I’m sure I wasn’t followed…”
“What?” The carefully enunciated one word question had been almost a whisper, but there was nothing insignificant about the anger or challenge behind it.
“I took a little walk while you were asleep,” she mumbled.
“And the mutt let you go?” His voice rose only slightly, but it held an unmistakable edge.
“Well, no, he went with me. You hadn’t taken him out, and it was obvious to me he needed a walk.”
“Where exactly did you go? It couldn’t have been just around the yard.” He paused then added, “Tell me you didn’t call your uncle.”
“I didn’t. But I did make a few calls at the gas station beside the highway.”
His hand tightened around the wheel. “To whom?”
“My biggest clients. I had to tell them something, Daniel. They count on me, and I’d just disappeared without warning. One’s about to be audited, too. I couldn’t just leave him hanging like that.”
“We’ll figure out how they tracked us later. But, for now, I want your word that you’ll never pull a stunt like that again,” he said darkly. “No, on second thought, forget it. I’ve got a better idea. From now on when I go to sleep, you’ll be handcuffed to me.”
“Now see here—”
“Trouble follows closely whenever I trust you. It’s happened twice now, and I have no intention of making it three out of three. We might not be as lucky next time.”
“You’re talking about when I tried to sneak out of the clinic? But that was entirely different. Don’t you see? I wasn’t trying to get away this time. I came back on my own.”
“All I know, lady, is that from now on
I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
They rode in silence for another ten minutes and, to his surprise, Hannah didn’t attempt to talk to him. Although his mood was decidedly dark, he was still hungry, so he stopped for fried chicken in Shiprock, then pulled into an infrequently traveled side road a few miles northwest of town. Wolf was drooling on the back of the seat by the time Daniel opened the first box of food.
“Wolf, sit!” he ordered. “You’ll get your share in a minute.”
“I thought dogs couldn’t have chicken.”
“They can have chicken, just not the bones, and admittedly, a dish full of that dog food in the back would be far better for him—”
Wolf growled.
“But I didn’t think he’d take to logic very kindly. He loves this stuff. Besides, I don’t want kibble all over the seats.” Daniel stripped off the meat from two large chicken breasts, then placing it in an empty box along with the crunchy breading and a roll, he set it on the back seat in front of the animal. “Here, mutt. You saved our skins. Enjoy.”
“On that basis, does that mean I don’t get any dinner?” she joked.
He looked at her consideringly. “You have a point.”
“Now wait one second—”
“Never mind. You’ll need to eat to stay fit. I don’t want a fainting female on my hands.”
“You’re acting like a macho pig.”
“I’ve been called worse,” he said with a shrug. “But for the record, I’m not cutting you any slack from this point on.”
Hannah closed her eyes, then opened them again. “If my life gets any worse, I’m going to call hell and see about booking a vacation.”
He handed her one of the two remaining dinners and a plastic wrapped set of utensils. “Here. Eat.”
“Something’s taken away my appetite,” she said sourly.
“It wasn’t a request.” He opened his own container of chicken, rolls and potato salad.
She didn’t argue, mostly because she was hungry.
“Let’s bring our thoughts back to business,” he said after they’d been eating for a while. “How many clients did you call?”
“Four.”
“Then that means it could be one of them. Either that, or someone bugged one or all of those phones. Or it’s possible they had an accomplice in one of your clients’ offices, and they just lifted the number and location from a caller ID.”
“It’s also possible that someone saw the SUV at your friend’s house. Or maybe they spotted me using the phone at the gas station, and followed Wolf and me back.”
“Not likely. What are the odds that they’d find us among hundreds of square miles by just driving around and checking cars and gas stations? I don’t buy that. Now tell me about your clients. You said that one of them was being audited.”
She nodded. “Norm Gless. He owns a big copy shop. But it’s just a routine audit by the franchise owner, not a federal tax audit. And I really doubt he would have told anyone that I’d called him. He’s a very private, closemouthed man.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The same thing I told the others. That I’d had a personal emergency and that I’d be back as soon as possible. In the meantime, just in case of a crisis, I gave them each a password they can use to get into my computer and access their account files by modem. Each account file has a different password, so I wasn’t worried about confidentiality. I’m the only one with a password that gives me access to anything in the hard drive. But I cautioned them against downloading anything directly, because I’ve been having some problems with my computer. And if the problem is a software bug, it could act like a virus and mess up their system.”
“Anything else?”
“I recommended a bookkeeping firm in town that could take over for me if they needed an accountant right away.” Hannah paused, then added, “And that last part hurt. I’ve worked too hard to just hand over my business to another company.”
“I’m really glad you didn’t try to call your uncle,” he said. “He’s one of the people who hired me to find you and once he finds out that I have, he’ll demand I bring you in. The problem is that I can’t give him any explanations without putting him in danger—not until I know what’s going on.”
“I told you I wouldn’t call my uncle, so I didn’t, but it was really tempting. You see, he’s got a direct stake in what’s happening. If there’s money missing and people believe I took it, he’s being victimized as much as I am. Sooner or later people will start wondering if he knew what I was up to. And even if he manages to convince everyone that he didn’t, it won’t help him for long. They’ll soon start blaming him for not knowing.”
“Judging from the construction plans in his office, your uncle is a man of some importance. He’s in charge of the building fund, right?”
“Yes, along with the finance committee,” she reminded him.
“But the records are in his computer?”
She nodded. “He does the bookkeeping for that.”
“So he would be in a position to doctor the books.”
“I’ve already told you, he wouldn’t do that.”
“What if his back was to the wall? Do you know what his financial situation is?”
This time she didn’t answer right away, using the plastic forklike spoon to scoop out a mouthful of coleslaw. Then she took a bite of potato salad.
“I’ve struck a nerve, haven’t I?” Daniel observed. “Is he in financial trouble right now?”
“I think so, but I don’t know for sure,” she replied hesitantly. “You see, I found out in such a roundabout way…”
“Talk to me. I need to know everything.”
She nodded slowly. “It’ll stay confidential?”
“As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening to you,” Daniel asserted.
Hannah took another bite of potato salad, then at last nodded. “It started about a month ago. I was having horrendous problems with my computer. I’d update a client’s cash receipts journal, for example, and everything would look fine on the screen. But when I printed out the work, entries would appear out of nowhere, and nothing would balance. The entire printout would be riddled with incomplete and inaccurate entries I knew I hadn’t typed in. It was making me crazy. I tried everything, including consulting computer experts, but no one could figure out what was going on. My reputation started to suffer, as you can imagine, because I was missing deadlines. I was working impossibly long hours, but I was still way behind. Since I donate my services to the church, I gave priority to my paying clients, and the church’s accounts fell behind. When my uncle found out, he had a fit.”
“Exactly what happened between you two?”
“He suggested I close my firm, farm out my clients and get a job working for an established company. He said that someone with a history of emotional problems should have never taken on something as stressful as starting up their own business.”
Hannah stopped and took a deep breath. “That made me very angry. It was a really cheap shot, as far as I was concerned, and I said so. Our argument escalated into a terrible fight. Of course he used that against me, too, and said that my emotional outburst proved what he was saying—that I couldn’t handle things.”
“Looking back, do you think he may have been right?”
She didn’t look directly at him, but Wolf, sensing her frustration, poked his nose between them and rested his chin on the side of her cushion. She stroked him absently. “I was upset, and I shouldn’t have lost my temper with him, he was right about that. But everyone gets angry. The only difference is that whenever I get angry, he never stops to think that maybe I had a good reason for it. To him, it’s always proof that I’m too emotional and a bit unstable.”
“What happens when you get angry?” he asked offhandedly. “Do you throw things, or kick the wall, or something like that?”
The question had been phrased casually, but when he saw the wariness that sudden
ly filled her eyes, he knew he wasn’t fooling her at all.
“I’m not prone to violence. I’ve never struck anyone in my life—though believe me, I’ve been tempted.” Hannah scowled, looking him straight in the eyes.
He didn’t smile. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“When I’m angry, I tend to yell, and that’s about it. Not exactly earth-shattering, is it?”
He shrugged. “Not really. So how does the argument you two had tie in to what you found out about his finances?”
“While we were arguing, I noticed an overdraft form sitting on his desk. It was from his personal account. He saw me looking at it, so he stuck it in his pocket. I suggested that maybe he was in no position to judge my ability to run a business since he was obviously having trouble managing his own money. He stormed out, and didn’t speak to me for nearly a week.”
“About this church building account he handles… Any idea how much money is in there?”
“These days I think it’s a little over one hundred thousand dollars. An elderly parishioner passed away recently and left the church some property which we, in turn, sold. That amount came to nearly eighty-five thousand, and I believe we had close to twenty thousand before that.”
Daniel put his empty food containers into a paper sack, set it on the floorboards beside Hannah’s feet, then switched on the ignition. “Now that’s the kind of money someone might want to steal and be willing to kill for. I’m beginning to wonder if the church people might have lied to the agency about which fund is missing.”
“No one could possibly believe that I’d steal that much money. I live a very simple life, and I like it that way. And, besides, I don’t have access to that account. That’s in the hands of the finance committee and the records are in my uncle’s computer.”
“But church money is missing, you do a lot of work with computers, and you did go on the run,” Daniel pointed out. “That’s bound to mislead a lot of people.”
“Including you?”
“I know only one side of you, and neither one of us has a clue about what happened during those hours you can’t recall.”
