Plain Refuge

by Dana R. Lynn

  “It’s done.” Aiden clipped out, the menace in his tone startling her. Even though she knew he was acting, ice filled her veins.

  What did it do to someone’s mind, to their soul, to have to live that close to evil day after day? To immerse oneself in the world of crime enough to make people like Phillip Larson trust them?

  She sent a brief prayer for him, for all of them, winging up to God. She said a special prayer that her impulsive sister would remember to remain silent. While Celine would never deliberately put them in danger, sometimes she forgot how much her sister was able to hear when she was wearing her processors.

  Then she tuned back in to Aiden’s side of the conversation. He glanced over and caught her glance. After a brief hesitation, he turned the volume up slightly on his phone. Her eyes widened. She could make out her uncle’s smooth voice on the other end of the line. Thankfully, it wasn’t loud enough for Celine to hear what their only living male relative was saying.

  Unfortunately, Sophie was able to hear every single terrifying word.

  THREE

  “Good. I’m glad you were able to complete your errand,” Phillip responded, a slight emphasis on the word errand. The satisfaction oozing through the phone was chilling. The man who was supposed to love them was a creep. She was slightly comforted by the look of pure disgust on Aiden’s face. He appeared to share her opinion. “Were there any issues?”

  “Nope. Everything went smooth.” She shivered. Aiden was a cop, working to bring Phillip down and make him pay for his crimes. She was grateful for the knowledge; otherwise, she would have been scared to death. His stony expression alone would have terrified her.

  No. If he hadn’t been a cop, she would be dead already. What kind of strength did it take to do such a job, day in and day out?

  She leaned in closer as Phillip spoke.

  “Good. Very good. When you get back, I have another job for you.”

  That got a response. Aiden scowled and pulled the phone away to glare at it briefly. None of that was reflected in his voice when he replied.

  “Sure. I just need to get rid of some stuff. My payment for the errand?”

  “It will be processed as soon as you return with a receipt.” Phillip ended the call.

  “Did he say you needed to show him a receipt?” Sophie cringed at her shrill tone. She hadn’t thought she could be any more shocked than she was.

  Celine leaned forward again.

  He nodded. “Yeah, he’s going to want proof. That’s how he works.”

  “What kind of proof would you provide?” Celine asked.

  Sophie held her breath.

  Aiden grimaced. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll figure something out.”

  She wasn’t buying it. He knew. He was being heroic and trying to protect her sister from the grisly details. She appreciated it. Still, knowing what was going on could keep them from making some mistakes.

  Sophie eyed her sister in the mirror. The preteen shrugged and settled down again, returning her attention to her phone.

  “Aiden,” she whispered, checking the mirror to be sure Celine didn’t pick up her voice.

  “Yeah?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “What kind of proof?”

  He stared at her for ten seconds. She bit her lip, waiting. Nodding, he raked his hand through his short dark hair and blew out a breath, hard. “I will show him a picture of your bodies.”

  “Our bodies!” she shrieked.

  Celine’s head shot up. “What’s going on? Sophie?”

  “Sorry. Nothing.” She waited for her sister to insist on knowing what they were talking about. Instead, Celine shrugged and leaned her head against the seat. Within two minutes her eyes were closed.

  “What do you mean, our bodies?” Sophie hissed, keeping her eyes on her sister.

  “We’d fake it, obviously. I’ve never actually killed anyone for him. I’m certainly not about to start now.” He smirked. She felt like an idiot. He straightened and pointed out the window. “Take the next exit and then we’ll head back to my place.”

  “Doesn’t my uncle know where you live?”

  “Yes and no. He knows where Adam supposedly lives. I’m not going back there. Where we’re going is my base for this operation. No one has been there except for me. Only my chief and I know about it. For now. Once I’m found out, Phillip and his henchmen will tear the town apart searching for me.”

  He took her through back roads and alleys. They finally came to a building that had seen better days. It appeared to be an old recreational complex of some sort. Some of the windows were boarded up. Several bare patches on the roof, where shingles had fallen off, were visible from the ground. It was a depressing structure.

  Celine woke up as they parked near the back doorway.

  Aiden opened his door and climbed out. When Sophie opened her door, he whipped his head around and glared. “You should stay here.”

  “Not on your life,” she retorted. “We stick together. If someone came looking for you here, we’d be alone. You have the only gun.”

  She thought he would argue. Celine’s door opened and his jaw snapped shut. “Fine. Keep close.”

  The outside door swung open with a high-pitched creak. Sophie flinched. Aiden didn’t react at all. Holding her breath, she ducked in through the opening and found, to her surprise, that the interior of the building was fairly clean. She’d expected to find dust, debris and cobwebs. While there were a few of the last item, they were surprisingly sparse.

  Aiden began to lead them farther inside the interior. He halted suddenly and held up his hand. When he frantically motioned for them to hide, they rushed to obey, ducking into an old closet. There was a large hole in the wall, allowing Sophie to see out into the room they’d vacated.

  A second later she understood why they’d hidden. Two men crashed down the stairs, arms heavy and loaded down. She could see wires sticking out of one of the boxes.

  Phillip’s men had raided Aiden’s base. He was so tense she could see his jaw clenched in the dim closet.

  The men departed through a different door than Aiden, Sophie and Celine had entered a few moments earlier. If they had all used the same door... Sophie shivered to realize how close they had come to being discovered.

  They waited five minutes, the silence broken only by their breathing. Sophie’s breath came in short bursts, her heart thudding in her ears.

  When she felt she’d scream if they didn’t move, Aiden reached past her and pushed the door open. Without a word, he led them up the stairs into the room on the left. She gasped. When she peered at him, the absolute devastation she saw on his face shocked her.

  The room was in shambles. The mattress was shredded. Papers were strewn across the floor. A laptop lay shattered on the floor.

  There were wires lying loose. The technology they’d powered was gone.

  Sophie had seen some of that technology being carried out of the building.

  “We need to go, now!” he ground out. “They’ll be expecting me to come back. They won’t hesitate to shoot me or anyone with me.”

  Sophie didn’t need to hear more. She grabbed Celine’s hand and they ran. When Aiden beat her to the driver’s side, she veered to the passenger side with no question. He knew the men they were up against. If they were going to escape with their lives, they needed to move efficiently.

  Celine slid into the back seat and Sophie buckled herself in beside Aiden. He was in Reverse and then careening out of the parking lot before her belt had clicked in place.

  “How did they know so fast?” Sophie asked after they’d gone five miles. No cars had followed them so far. Hopefully, they had made a clean escape.

  “I don’t know.” His mouth was set in a grim line. “What I do know is every scrap of the evidence I’ve been collecting for six months is gone. There’s still my eye
witness account, but the hard evidence, stuff that would have helped me put Larson away for life, is gone.”

  * * *

  All his hard work. All his research and digging—lost. Anything that tied Phillip Larson to Tim’s death.

  And there was no way to go back. Larson would be cautious now. Aiden knew that he was now on the other man’s hit list. Along with the beautiful woman sitting beside him and, no doubt, her little sister. Cute kid. Seemed to have a bit of an attitude. Reminded him of his own kid sister.

  The man he’d worked for wanted them both dead. He felt dirty from the association, regardless of the honorable reasons behind his connection.

  Aiden curled his lip at the thought of his “boss.” Yeah, right. He wanted nothing more than to see the man handcuffed and unable to harm anyone else. Life in prison was exactly what the man deserved, and Aiden prayed he’d get exactly that. More, he prayed that he’d be the one to snap the cuffs in place.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  He kept his eyes forward. His gut burned with anger. “I don’t know. Your uncle is a bad man. He killed my partner, but I’ll never be able to prove it now. And there’s no possible way for me to go back in and get the hard evidence I need for a conviction. Or even for an arrest.”

  He turned his head and met Sophie’s horrified gaze before meeting Celine’s fascinated one in the mirror. He’d said too much. Certainly more than he’d planned to.

  “At least there’s no one behind us,” he muttered.

  “Will they catch up?”

  He wouldn’t lie to her, no matter how scary the answer was. “They won’t stop trying, that you can count on. Until they are behind bars, they’ll hunt us down.” A high-pitched ding caught his attention. He glanced down at the panel. He’d forgotten about the low-fuel light coming on. Perfect. They were running on fumes. “We gotta stop for gas. Keep an eye out for a station.”

  Sophie nodded, but didn’t say anything. Her face was pale and drawn. She understood the precariousness of their situation. Within a few minutes, they saw signs for a gas station and pulled over.

  “Keep low in the car.” He turned off the engine. “We don’t want anyone to remember seeing you here.”

  He could see that Celine wanted to argue. Thankfully, she followed her sister’s lead. He felt bad for the kid. It wasn’t her fault she was messed up in this. Phillip Larson probably knew that Aiden hadn’t killed Sophie and Celine. His men would be searching for two red-haired females. Not to mention that Celine’s hearing devices—he wasn’t sure what they were called—were unique enough to draw unwanted attention. He put the nozzle into the tank and waited, drumming his fingers on the roof of the car. He was tempted to fill up only partially but didn’t give in. They needed to go far enough to reach safety, and he had no real idea yet where that safety was.

  When the tank reached capacity, he jerked the nozzle out and replaced it on the pump. A discreet glance into the vehicle confirmed that the sisters were keeping low. He used cash to pay. It wouldn’t be good to leave any kind of digital trail. He strode back to the car, deliberately neither talking to Sophie nor looking at either of the sisters until they had pulled out.

  “You can sit up now.”

  Sophie sat up immediately and signed something to her sister. Celine plopped back into her seat with an exaggerated huff. Poor kid. From what he’d heard, he knew that their parents and brother had recently died, leaving the sisters alone.

  Matt and Sarah. Those were the names of Sophie’s parents. And her brother had been named Brian.

  Not for the first time, he wondered if their deaths had been an accident. He knew for a fact that Phillip had not mourned the loss. Oh, he’d been the perfect grieving brother out in public, but in private, Aiden had heard enough to know that Matt had been a problem for Phillip. In fact, Phillip had appeared to take some sort of satisfaction from his brother’s passing.

  Had Phillip planned his brother’s death? It wouldn’t be the first death that he’d caused. Phillip Larson was a cold-blooded killer.

  Aiden had been ordered to kill Sophie and Celine, hadn’t he? But again, there was no physical evidence. Nothing other than his word. Phillip had never actually said to kill them. A skilled defense attorney could argue that his words had been misunderstood.

  Now was not the time to worry over it. He needed to get Sophie and her sister to safety. Again he checked the rearview mirror, which he had not adjusted. Reaching up, he gave the mirror a slight tug, moving it only slightly. Come to think of it, he hadn’t needed to really adjust the seat, either, which was unusual for him. He was just under six feet. Sophie was fairly tall herself. Maybe five foot nine.

  “Where can we go?”

  That was a good question. “Let me think.”

  She was silent while he considered his options.

  “I have a good buddy, Levi, a couple hours from here. We were in the military together. I think we can probably stop off at his place for the night.”

  “You’ll stay with us, right?” She bit her lip. “I mean, you won’t drop us off and head back to your precinct.”

  Slightly insulted that she’d think he would abandon them, he scowled at her.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Even if I were the kind of jerk who’d dump you somewhere, I don’t think I can. The fewer people who know that you two are still alive, or your location, the better. As I said earlier, we don’t know who or where the information leak is coming from.”

  He let the words settle between them.

  He needed to be ready. Later, he’d risk one more call in to his chief. Hopefully, he’d be able to make it to Levi’s house before Phillip’s men caught up to them. He needed to cut his hair. Change his appearance so that he wouldn’t be recognized on sight. He knew how to blend in. That was one thing that had made him ideal for undercover work. As a kid, he’d lived in a dysfunctional family where standing out often led to an unpleasant, frequently painful situation. He’d learned well the art of going unnoticed. Now he used those skills and the features God had given him to do his job. Brown hair, brown eyes, no noteworthy tattoos or scars that people would recall later.

  At least no scars on the outside. He kicked the thought out as soon as it entered his mind.

  If only the women he was with would blend in, as well. He sent a sidelong look at Sophie. She was tall, and she had fiery red hair grazing her shoulders without a hint of curl. She was worth a second look. Or a third. Celine had the same red hair and the same fair complexion. Nope, the two girls would stand out in a crowd. Plus, Celine’s hearing devices. He had no idea how much she could hear without them. As visible as they were, he believed asking her to not wear them would be putting them more at risk. If she took them off, he was pretty sure that she’d need to rely on sign language. It was a gorgeous sight, he admitted to himself, watching the sisters converse silently, but it was conspicuous. They couldn’t afford that. He turned to merge onto the toll road.

  There was nothing he could do about it. He drove up to the tollbooth.

  He grabbed a ticket at the tollbooth and headed east.

  It was almost an hour later when he realized they were in trouble.

  “Get down,” he ordered Sophie.

  She signed something to her sister. The girl gasped and ducked down. Sophie slid lower as much as she could.

  “Aiden?”

  He checked the rearview mirror. His hands tightened reflexively on the wheel. Experimentally, he sped up. The car behind them also increased speed.

  The buffer he’d hoped to put between them and Phillip’s men was gone.

  “We’re being followed.”

  The blood drained from Sophie’s already pale face.

  Were these the same men from his base? Or had Phillip called in more of his people for an all-out search? The pit dropped out of his stomach. He ignored it. Reflexively, his left hand
slid down to his side to touch the revolver strapped there. He was armed, but probably not enough to withstand an assault from multiple attackers. If his vehicle was disabled and they needed to go on foot, they would be at a definite disadvantage.

  He glanced into the mirror again. The car was still on his tail. Another one joined it.

  They needed a way out—fast.

  FOUR

  Aiden pushed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The sedan shot forward. A glance in the mirror was all it took to prove that, yes, they were in fact being followed. The van tailing them sped up, keeping pace with them. When he switched lanes, it followed suit, cutting off other cars without hesitation. The second vehicle remained in the other lane, moving faster now. It was going to cut them off.

  Aiden clenched his teeth. They were traveling at the maximum speed.

  This was not a good situation.

  “How did they know?” Sophie said, her voice a tight whisper. “How did they find where we were going?”

  He shrugged, but tension was gnawing away at him. He needed to keep these two women safe. That was all that mattered now. But the question of how they were found so fast wouldn’t leave him alone. “It must be your car. Phillip must have known what you drive. He would have seen me leave in your vehicle. I arrived on a motorcycle.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now? We have to find a way to lose them. I can’t do anything while they’re after us. I definitely can’t take you to my buddy’s house. Not with a tail.”

  “How do you plan on doing that? Losing them, I mean.”

  He’d known what she meant. He just wasn’t sure he knew the answer to her question.