Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Yes.” She looked pleased. “It will be perfect there.”

  In addition to the boxes and the furniture, there were a roll of heavy-duty sealing tape, a pair of scissors and what was left of the thick plastic that had been used to protect the sofa. Mute evidence of a hasty packing job and a quick departure.

  “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he said. “Looks like you’ve got this whole minimalist-lifestyle thing nailed.”

  Her mouth tightened. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Will you be moving back to California when this is over?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t given it much thought,” she said. “But I like Eclipse Bay. If I can figure out how to make a living there, I may stay.” She paused. “You?”

  “Eclipse Bay works for me,” Jack said. “For now. But I’m mobile.”

  “Same with me.”

  There was a short silence. They both contemplated the plastic-covered sofa. Jack moved toward it and tested the weight by hoisting one end. It was surprisingly light. He wondered if that was indicative of cheap construction but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

  “I can handle the other end,” Winter said quickly.

  She hurried forward to assist him. Together they got the sofa as far as the open door of the storage locker. Jack was preparing to angle his end onto the long carrying arms of the pallet when he heard a door open somewhere in the dimly lit building. Not the loading dock door, he decided. Someone had entered the building using the main entrance, the one nearest the office.

  A bank of fluorescents came on in the far corner of the big building.

  “Sounds like we have company,” Winter said.

  Jack paused. “Yes.”

  He listened for footsteps. Voices. The clatter of a hand truck or the hum of a motorized pallet.

  Silence.

  That bothered him. Sound carried and echoed in the big space. A new arrival intent on accessing one of the lockers should have been making some noise.

  He got a cold, prickly feeling on the back of his neck. He looked at Winter and discovered she was watching him. Everything about her had gone still.

  “What?” she whispered.

  He motioned for her to set down her end of the sofa.

  Together they lowered the love seat to the floor. It came to rest half in and half out of the locker, angled across the threshold.

  A loud clang reverberated throughout the facility. The overhead fixtures illuminating the aisle in front of Winter’s locker went dark, plunging the entire section into deep shadow.

  A woman called from a distant corner of the building.

  “There’s been a power failure. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please make your way toward the main exit.”

  “What in the world—?” Winter said.

  “We may have a problem,” Jack said quietly.

  He unclipped his phone and tapped the flashlight app. Moving quickly, he went to the box of packing materials and grabbed the roll of heavy sealing tape and the scissors.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Winter’s first instinct was to take out her own phone and fire up the flashlight, but before she could do that, Jack handed his phone to her. She realized he wanted to have both hands free.

  She trained the narrow beam of the light on his fingers and watched, bewildered, as he cut a couple of foot-long lengths of the heavy packing tape.

  She started to ask him what he was doing but as if he knew exactly what she was about to say, he shook his head. She got the message.

  The unseen woman spoke again, her voice echoing in the stillness.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” she called. “If you can’t see well enough to get to the loading dock, stay where you are. I have your locker number. I’ll come and get you.”

  Footsteps sounded in the distance. Winter realized that the woman was making her way toward locker C-115. She wondered how the clerk knew exactly which customer was inside the huge building. Then she remembered the security cameras. No need to be alarmed.

  Except that Jack was clearly alarmed and that meant she should be, too. Damn. The deep, slow breathing thing wasn’t a lot of help at a time like this.

  Jack was standing on the platform at the back of the motorized pallet, working on the handlebars. She watched him depress the trigger accelerator and secure it in the On position with one length of the tape. The pallet began to move forward, slowly at first, heading straight down the center of the aisle toward the wall at the far end.

  Jack wrapped the second strip of tape tightly around the accelerator and then jumped off. The heavy pallet rumbled forward, gaining momentum.

  “What are you doing?” the woman called. She sounded closer now. There was an icy note of command in the words. “Answer me.”

  The pallet was moving faster. The motor developed a loud whine. As the device picked up speed, the steering became less stable. The pallet veered to the left. The wheels struck a bumper. The impact jolted the miniature forklift back into the center of the aisle. It continued on its way for a short distance before once again ricocheting off another bumper.

  The pallet had become a semi-guided missile.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  A man’s voice this time.

  “Shit,” the woman said. “They’re heading for the loading dock. They’re going to get away.”

  Two sets of running footsteps sounded in the shadows. They pounded away in the opposite direction, toward the wall where the loading dock was located.

  Jack took the phone out of Winter’s hand and killed the flashlight.

  “Follow me,” he said, speaking directly into her ear. “Try not to make any noise.”

  He started toward the stairwell that led to the upper floor of the warehouse. Winter hurried after him. With luck the loud whine of the speeding pallet combined with the running footsteps of the two people chasing it would camouflage any sound that she and Jack might make.

  A few seconds later the pallet crashed into the loading dock door with a shrill screech of metal on metal. A burglar alarm shrieked.

  “They’re going to get away,” the woman shouted to her companion.

  “No, it’s a diversion,” the man said. “They’re hiding in the locker.”

  “The cops will be here soon.”

  “It will take them a while to respond,” the man assured her. “We’ve got time to finish this.”

  Jack reached the stairwell. Winter was so close behind that she bumped into him. He paused long enough to break the glass in a small box and pull the red lever.

  The shrill screech of the fire alarm combined with the clang of the burglar alarm was incredibly disorienting. Winter put her fingers in her ears and followed Jack into the stairwell.

  Shots roared in the shadows. The noise boomed and echoed throughout the space.

  Winter made it to the second floor, right behind Jack. He closed the door behind them, grabbed the nearest large object—a sturdy hand truck—and wedged the carrying edge under the doorjamb. It wouldn’t be impossible to open the door, Winter thought, but it would take some effort and some time.

  When he was finished with the door, Jack stepped into the open elevator and pushed the lock button so that it would not descend.

  “They can’t get to us up here,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the level of the alarms.

  He, too, shoved his fingers in his ears.

  It seemed like forever before the first faint wails of the responding emergency vehicles sounded in the distance.

  The sudden silence when the alarms were shut off felt odd. Winter shook her head in an effort to clear the ringing in her ears.

  “The shooters got away, didn’t they?” she said.

  “Assuming they have some sense of self-preservation, yes,” Jack said
. “Probably better if you let me talk to the cops. I’ve talked to a lot of them in my time. I know cop speak.”

  “Fine by me,” she said.

  She realized she was shivering. She wondered if she was going to have a panic attack. She had every right.

  But when she tried to analyze her reaction, she realized that what she was feeling wasn’t panic. It was fury.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Cassidy Springs police detective introduced himself as Nichols. He was middle-aged with a stocky build and thinning hair.

  “There were two of them,” he said. “Miller, the real clerk, heard them talking. Looks like you and Ms. Meadows had the very bad luck to interrupt a drug heist gone bad. The pair that tried to take you out came here to find a stash of heroin that they assumed was hidden in one of the lockers. The clerk said it sounded like they thought you and Ms. Meadows were the competition.”

  “We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, is that it?” Jack asked.

  “That’s what it looks like. I’ll talk to the clerk again when he calms down but the bottom line is that, aside from a brief look at the man with the gun, who was evidently wearing a wig and a pair of large sunglasses, he didn’t see much.”

  The responding officers had discovered the badly shaken but otherwise unharmed clerk bound and blindfolded in the small employee bathroom.

  “I heard what he told you,” Jack said.

  “You’ve got to admit, it’s a reasonable explanation for what happened here.” Nichols glanced at his notes. “The man in the wig and glasses entered the office first, pulled a gun and ordered Miller to get down on the floor. Then the woman entered, wrapped some duct tape around the clerk’s wrists, blindfolded him and marched him into the bathroom. They locked the door.”

  “Interesting that they didn’t kill him,” Jack said, thinking about it.

  “Back at the start of the robbery they probably saw no reason to risk a murder charge,” Nichols said. “Why add that complication to their plans if it wasn’t necessary? They knew the clerk could not identify them. A simple robbery at a storage locker would not generate an extensive investigation. Homicide is a whole other matter.”

  “They didn’t have any problem with the idea of killing Ms. Meadows and me,” Jack pointed out.

  “Like I said, they figured you two were after the same stash.”

  Jack glanced out the window of the office. A short time ago Winter had given her statement to Nichols in short, terse sentences. As soon as she was finished, she had hurried away and disappeared inside the locker building.

  He was starting to get more than a little worried about her. He reminded himself that she was probably in shock. People who had been through a violent event did not always act in a predictable fashion and Winter had survived two potentially lethal situations in a little less than forty-eight hours.

  “It was an ambush, Nichols,” he said quietly.

  Nichols’ jaw hardened. “I need a motive.”

  The Quinton Zane conspiracy theory was not going to fly in this situation, Jack thought.

  “The fact that an obsessed stalker tried to murder Ms. Meadows the night before last doesn’t make you curious?” he said. “Or are you a fan of amazing coincidences?”

  Nichols exhaled heavily. “I’m listening.”

  Jack did a fast calculation. He needed the police to keep looking into both attacks, because they had resources that he and the small investigation firm of Cutler, Sutter & Salinas lacked. There was always the possibility that the authorities might turn up a lead to Zane without realizing what they had. He had to keep the lines of communication open.

  “The only solid connection between the attack on Ms. Meadows in Oregon and what happened here today is the Cassidy Springs Wellness Spa,” he said. “Winter and I paid a visit there earlier today. While we were at the spa, Winter mentioned to a couple of her former colleagues that we would be coming here this afternoon to empty her storage locker.”

  “Go on.”

  “The man who attacked Winter in Eclipse Bay was a client at the spa.”

  “But he’s dead,” Nichols pointed out. “That doesn’t leave me much to work with.”

  “It’s all I’ve got at the moment.” Which was pretty damn close to the truth, Jack thought. “How long was the clerk locked up in the bathroom?”

  Nichols consulted his notes. “About an hour.”

  “And during that time he overheard them talking about stealing a cache of drugs but he never got a good description of either the man or the woman.”

  “That’s right.” Nichols looked at his notes again. “They discussed disabling the security cameras. They talked about how they would search for the drugs.”

  “They didn’t have a locker number?”

  “No. The clerk said he heard them talking about some of the customer files. He said it sounded like they weren’t sure what name they were searching for. At one point the gunman spoke to the clerk through the door. He wanted to know the location of the master light switch box inside the locker facility and then he demanded to know how to lock the front gates.” Nichols paused. “At no time did the clerk hear the robbers talk about setting up an ambush. When you arrived, they were alarmed. He said they were sure you were after the drugs.”

  “It was all about stealing drugs.”

  “Right.”

  Jack thought about dumping the Quinton Zane conspiracy theory on Nichols after all but decided against it. Nichols’s first move would be to research the old cult fire case. What followed would be all too predictable. Nichols would learn that Zane had been declared dead a couple of decades earlier. At that point the detective would start to question Jack’s mental stability. He would conclude that Jack was an obsessed conspiracy buff or that he was suffering from some form of PTSD dating back to the cult fire.

  No good ever came of talking about Quinton Zane to law enforcement. Doing so was, in fact, a surefire way to destroy a career that depended, in part, on professional relationships with cops. Cutler, Sutter & Salinas needed to cultivate those connections.

  But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea to have someone start poking around the Cassidy Springs Wellness Spa. At the very least it might convince whoever was watching that at this point they still believed the threat was coming from that direction.

  “Maybe I’m overreacting,” he said finally.

  Nichols cocked a brow. “Don’t worry about it. Tends to happen when someone tries to kill you. Tell you what, I’ll talk to some folks at the spa and see if anything pings.”

  “Do me a favor,” Jack said. “Keep me in the loop if you find anything interesting.”

  “I’ll do that.” Nichols closed his notebook. He was clearly intent on heading for the door but he stopped and took out a business card. “If you think of something else I should know, give me a call, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Jack took the card and waited for Nichols to walk out the door. But Nichols was not quite finished. He stopped again, this time with his hand on the door handle.

  “My boss called me a while ago,” he said. “He told me that you have something of a reputation for digging into cold cases. He also said you’ve had no law enforcement training and that from time to time you’ve managed to piss off a few people. You were a professor or something.”

  “You’re going to warn me not to try to run my own amateur investigation,” Jack said.

  “My advice is to stay out of this, Lancaster. I still think this is a drug case. People who deal drugs are dangerous.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Jack said.

  Nichols went out the door and walked toward a small cluster of uniformed officers.

  Jack left the office and went through the open gate. He crossed the yard that surrounded the locker building and walked into the caver
nous space.

  He found Winter in the aisle in front of her locker. Her back was toward him. Her arms were folded very tightly beneath her breasts.

  He knew she had heard him coming up behind her but she did not turn around. He halted and looked past her. She had removed several layers of plastic to reveal a number of bullet holes in the red sofa.

  He wasn’t sure of her mood and he had no idea what to say so he put his hand on her shoulder. She gave a soft, anguished cry and spun around. She buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed.

  He put both arms around her and held her while she cried. She was soft and delicate and surprisingly vulnerable. He wanted to kill the two people who had reduced her to tears.

  She did not cry for very long. When she regained her composure she stepped back, sniffling a little, and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  She grimaced and went to where her tote bag sat on the floor of the locker. He watched her unzip the bag and retrieve some tissues. She blotted up the last of the tears, took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

  “I was doing all right until I saw the bullet holes in my sofa,” she said.

  “I understand.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She gave him a watery smile.

  “For what?”

  “For not reminding me that it’s just a sofa and that it can be replaced and that I should be grateful we’re still alive. Blah, blah, blah. It’s all true but thanks for not saying it anyway.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “They thought we were hiding inside the locker, didn’t they?” she said.

  “That’s what it looks like,” Jack said. “They sprayed the interior, hoping to take us out before they ran.”

  “They came here to kill us.”

  “Well, that’s definitely my theory but it’s only fair to tell you that the cops have a slightly different take.”

  She spread her hands. “What other take is there?”