Eric was trying to catch up, “But I thought we didn’t want to be found?”
“No, we don’t want them to find us here. So, let’s get found in Canada. Make sure the world knows that’s where we are. Once the story is out there, we’re free to disappear back to our villa on the beach where no one will look for us anymore.”
Eric kissed her quickly. “That’s genius!”
“I thought so, too,” she chuckled.
* * *
Greg was away from the main house, making a phone call. He could hardly wait to share the good news with his boss.
“You were right, Mr. Haydenson. Robert had me book her on a flight already. She’ll be landing in Chicago at 6:55 on Thursday morning. She’s on a connecting flight to Montreal, though. Is that going to be a problem?”
Bryce thought about it. What is she doing in Montreal? He counted on her returning to Chicago. He knew from his own travel experience back and forth that Chicago was her only option for an international flight to the States. He figured she would be going to California from there, but Canada?
When she disappeared a year ago, he suspected she had gone to California to be with Ava and her parents. His men tracked down an address for them; only to find out that they didn’t live there anymore and, in fact, that her parents were dead. He also found out that Abby had a sister, though they were never able to track her down. From what they could tell, she had moved around a bunch after her parents passed away before falling off the map.
He had no idea where Ava was, but had assumed Abby was with her. He and his men were still searching when Abby turned up on national television and put the matter to rest. Up to that point, they had still been combing southern California. Now she’s going to Canada? No matter. The original plan was to grab her in Chicago before she went anywhere else, and that was still the plan.
“No, no problem.” Bryce said. “You said she is going to Montreal. Is she going alone?”
“Yes, as far as I know sir. He said she had some kind of fight with Eric, and he’s staying behind.”
Bryce thought about that. It certainly made things easier. He would quickly place a man on the plane and have a couple of others in the terminal to help take care of things. Without Eric, he could reduce the number of men in the terminal. In his mind, the fewer moving parts the better. Less people meant less that could go wrong.
Greg interrupted his thoughts. “You sure you don’t just want me to grab her, Mr. Haydenson? I can take care of it.”
“No. I’ve got a guy on the main island. He’ll be on the flight with her. Everything is taken care of. Call me if anything changes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Greg, you’ve done good. I’m sorry about tossing you over the side of the boat, but you’ve proved yourself. When you get back here, I’ve got a nice position lined up for you. You’ll get your own crew; be your own man. How does that sound?
Greg was taken back. “That sounds great, sir. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Greg. You earned it, not me. You made a bad situation work for you. That kind of foresight is going to get you places.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After they disconnected their call, Bryce was left alone with his thoughts. Abby was coming back. His boss, Mr. Rosso, was gaining in years, but was still all-powerful in their world. Bryce had tried to murder Abby, and he couldn’t imagine that she didn’t hold a grudge for that.
She was the only person in the world who could truly ruin him. He didn’t know whether she planned to reveal what she knew, but it would be easy enough to do. Every news outlet in America would drop everything to get an interview with her. If she were to reveal what he had done, that would be the end of him. Despite that she thought he was dead, would she still do that out of spite? There was no way Bryce could wait to find out. His mind was made up – Abby had to die and the sooner the better.
* * *
JJ looked up from his sandwich when Robert walked into the kitchen. “So what’s going on?”
Robert looked back and forth from JJ to his brother, Ace. “She’s going to find Ava. You’ve checked it out. Everything is still good there, right?”
“Absolutely. I’ll book the flights, and we’ll be on our way. I’ll get her there, then head home myself.” JJ smiled. The thought of sleeping in his bed back in Boston by the weekend was an exciting one.
Robert shook his head. “No, she doesn’t want an escort. You know her. She’s a headstrong girl. I’m just worried, overprotective. She will be fine, right?”
“I’m sure she will be. She’s gotten along just fine without having anyone watch over her for awhile now.”
“I know.” Robert was nervously tapping his foot, looking out the window toward the boatyard where Bryce had abducted Abby from right under his nose.
Ace looked at JJ, and under his breath said, “She doesn’t have to know we’re there.”
JJ looked at his brother and thought about that for a second before nodding his head. He could tell Robert was nervous and didn’t want Abby on her own yet. He put down his sandwich and stood up close to Robert, speaking in a hushed tone. “Listen, me and Ace, we’ve got to get back to the States anyway, and there’s only one flight out of big island, right?”
Robert nodded his head.
“So, we’ll just follow her. Those jets seat what, four hundred people? She’ll be in first class, and we’ll sit in the back of the plane so she doesn’t see us. Once she gets where she’s going, we’ll be off ourselves. Would that make you feel better?”
“It would. I know Bryce is long dead, but who knows? The people she used to associate with... who knows who else could be out there waiting for her? I’ll have my man book the extra seats.”
“No, I’ll take care of it myself. That way we don’t get any wires crossed.”
Robert clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, JJ.”
Captain Frank poked his head in and looked around at the men.
After thinking about the situation yesterday, Robert had a proposal for Frank and convinced him to spend the night in one of the guest villas so they could talk about it. Robert thought it was a pretty good plan. Frank needed money, and needed a change. Robert needed his silence, but also wanted to keep an eye on him. He would offer him a job working for the production company. He could courier supplies around in his plane and make the occasional run to the big island if they needed to pick someone up. In exchange, he would be paid very well and given room and board in a guesthouse. After hearing about Frank’s situation, and having him stay the night, Robert doubted he would say no.
“Frank,” Robert said, “how did you find the accommodations?”
Frank smiled. “First class, sir. Really, you’ve got a beautiful place here.”
“Thank you, Frank. I was actually going to come find you in a little while so we could chat, but let’s talk now.”
Frank swallowed. “Actually, sir...”
“Frank, please call me Robert.”
He smiled. “OK, Robert. I was actually hoping to chat with Ace for a minute, if that’s alright.”
“No problem. You and I will catch up a little later. I’ve got some work to do. Come find me in my office, alright?”
“Yes, sir... err, Robert.”
Captain Frank nodded his head toward the door and Ace followed him out. Ace had been the one to threaten Frank’s life back on the island before they took off. Frank knew that he was not a man to trifle with. Now that they were on the same side, it seemed to Frank that while he didn’t know much about Ace, he had a better feel for him than his brother. He had to get something off his chest, but it seemed ridiculous, and he didn’t know who else to tell.
“What’s up, Frank?”
The pilot looked around to make sure no one was nearby. “I remember what you said, back on the island, about taking care of Abby. Obviously, you’re some sort of bodyguard, so I figured I should tell you about something.”
Ace leaned in,
suddenly interested. “What’s that?”
“Yesterday, after we landed. I had lunch with one of Robert’s security guys. Greg, I think his name was. It’s just... he seemed a little odd.”
“Odd? How?”
“He had a million questions about Abby. Wondered where she had been hiding, if I knew what her plans were now that she was back, stuff like that. I didn’t know the answers to any of it, but I was thinking that as one of Robert’s guys he should have already known, don’t you think?”
Ace shook his head. “No, Robert is playing Abby very close to the vest. I can’t tell you what’s going on, but let’s just say that she’s not ready to put herself in the public eye again. She definitely doesn’t want her story out there. Have you heard why they’re looking for her?”
“Well, I know she was married to some mob guy that got killed a few months ago. That’s what the investigator said they wanted to interview her about.”
“That’s part of it. It’s not a stretch to think that there are some rather unscrupulous people out there who would like to know where she is. That’s why she’s hiding.”
Captain Frank nodded. “That makes sense. This guy, Greg, he just rubbed me the wrong way.” He reached into his pocket. “This morning I saw him snooping around my plane. I went down to check it out after he left, and I found this.” He pulled a device out of his pocket. It was a small plastic cylinder, no larger than a quarter, and about half an inch thick. On top was a small button inset. “I think it’s some kind of magnet. It was stuck under the tail end of the plane. I pressed the button a few times, but it didn’t do anything. What do you think it is? And why would he put it there?”
Ace took the device from him and looked it over. “Did you tell him anything, when you were talking?”
“No. What could I tell him? All I know is Abby found me in a bar, and I gave her a ride. I have no idea where she came from or where she’s going.”
“Good. Let me know if he approaches you again. I’ll keep an eye on him, too.”
“Sure thing,” Frank said. He pointed to the device Ace was holding. “What about that?”
Ace smiled. “I put it there. Back on the island before you took off. It’s a tracking device.”
Frank shook his head. “You didn’t trust me. Makes sense.”
Ace put his arm around Frank’s shoulder, “You seem like an OK guy, and like you said, you don’t know much of anything anyway. I don’t think we need this anymore.” He used his thumb to click the button on the device. He clicked it three times, paused, clicked it twice, paused again, then clicked it four times and hurled it off in the distance toward the empty beach as hard as he could. Halfway through its flight, the device exploded into a small fireball, and any trace of it disappeared.
“Holy shit!” Frank screamed, as Robert and JJ came running out of the house at the sound of the explosion.
Ace was laughing. “I told you I would kill you if you crossed me. You think I was kidding?”
“What was that?” JJ shouted.
“He found the tracking device I stuck on his plane, so I was just getting rid of it.”
JJ shook his head as he and Robert went back into the house, literally bumping into Robert’s security detail that was hustling out the door as they were trying to go back in.
“It’s fine,” JJ told them. “Just my brother being an asshole.”
As Frank’s pulse returned to normal, he smiled at Ace. “I sure am glad we’re on the same team.”
22
SOMEWHERE OVER the Rocky Mountains, a brief bout of turbulence shook Abby awake. She sat up, startled, and it took a moment to remember where she was, who she was, and what she was doing.
Unconsciously, her right hand reached down to her thigh, only to find it empty. She had left her knife back on the island with Robert for safekeeping. She wanted to travel quickly and light and really didn’t have much in the way of possessions to speak of. She had a small carry-on with just a few items, and knew full well that a hunting knife capable of gutting a wild boar would never make it through security in her carryon, and she wasn’t about to check a bag solely to bring it with her. The knife was a safety blanket. She wanted to believe that she was out of the woods now and no longer needed it, but she knew that might not be the entire truth and didn’t want to get used to the idea.
She did allow herself a smile at the thought that she was no longer running through trees from the bad guys, or having to look over her shoulder waiting for the wrong person to show up. Robert had forewarned her that although she had been blissfully unaware, she remained a pretty big news story. While at the moment she did not want to be found, once they were in Canada and the timing was right, she certainly hoped Robert was right and the whole world would take notice of where they were.
Abby had been confident that she wasn’t particularly recognizable. Since the show had ended she had put on about ten pounds; the public would remember her being smaller. She had also straightened her long, loose brunette curls, dyed them blonde and chopped them just below her shoulders. To round out her incognito look, she wore dark-framed glasses to distract from her signature light amber eyes, and a baseball cap with her ponytail pulled through the back.
Sighing, she looked at the GPS map on the seatback in front of her. They were cruising at just under forty thousand feet, going five hundred and fifty-eight miles per hour, and about to pass north of Denver, Colorado. The map indicated they were about nine hundred miles from Chicago. She raised the shade on the window to see nothing but blackness outside. The sun wouldn’t be up for a couple more hours.
Doing some quick math in her head, she figured they would land in just under two hours. After her layover, she would take a two-hour flight to Montreal, connect with Eric, and then catch a cab to her sister’s home about forty minutes north of the city.
She smiled at that thought. She would be reunited with her little Ava by that afternoon.
It was tough sitting alone in first class, knowing that Eric was fifty feet behind her in coach. What will our new life be like? She wondered.
She had spent a great deal of time over the past fourteen or so hours on the aircraft, processing exactly where her life stood. She was a single mom, rich now, but separated from her daughter for a year. Aside from Eric and Robert, she didn’t have a friend in the world. Thinking back on the past ten years, she’d really had no friends to speak of in a very long time.
She thought about the girls that she had lived with in that shitty motel behind the strip club. Calling them friends would have been a stretch. They were in the same hellish predicament together, but none of them were in any condition to maintain what a normal person would call friendship. Most of them are probably dead by now. Abby shook off that thought and decided not to think about the fact that she could have very easily been one of them.
Looking back on it, it had certainly been Bryce’s intention to keep her distant from anyone, never letting her make any human connections without him present, forcing her to rely on him and only him. She hated herself for allowing that to happen.
Abby thought back to the night she met Rick, her pot-distributer boyfriend, at her friend’s house all those years ago. It was such a small moment. Had she stayed home that night, or had he not shown up, where would her life be now?
A name suddenly popped into her head – Donny. She felt a twinge of guilt for having forgotten him. Without his friendship, she wouldn’t be sitting where she was today. He was the one who took care of smuggling Ava out of the country. He was the one who used his connections to get Abby a shot at Trial Island. He was the one who sat with her in the conference room with the network attorneys and signed away all of Bryce’s rights with a fake ID and a cheap ballpoint pen.
Without him I’d be either crazy or dead. She remembered when they went their separate ways after leaving that conference room. They had held each other tight, and Donny made no effort to mask his affection for Abby, a woman he had loved at arm’s length for ye
ars and would never see again except on the television screen.
He stood by the door as Abby was taken by the producers off into the world of Trial Island. She would be isolated from everything for months during training before being dropped off on the island. Donny... I wonder where he wound up? He promised he wasn’t going back to Chicago. Nothing was traceable as far as getting Ava out of the country, but with Abby having disappeared, Bryce was going to go nuts, and he would almost certainly find out about Donny’s involvement.
His vague plan had been to move to some obscure town in Montana and start an honest life, with a completely fake identity, of course. Bryce owned Chicago, and Donny knew he could never go back. As she daydreamed about what his life might be like now, Abby wondered if she would ever see him again.
* * *
Connor Jackson was in the business of doing messy work for bad people as long as the money was right. In another life, he had been an undercover police officer, infiltrating the organized crime scene in the Midwest. That was nearly a decade ago. The problem he ran into was that once he was undercover, he didn’t want to get out. The money was easy, and much more plentiful than the pittance of a paycheck he received bi-weekly for putting his life on the line.
He had gone through some dark times and had his share of blood on his hands. He wasn’t in the killing business anymore. He was mainly in the collection business. As a young man, during a more honest life, his broad shoulders and quick hands earned him respect on the amateur boxing circuit. These days, he used his fists to deliver messages when he had to. The men he worked for had money owed to them, and Connor saw to it that they got paid.
He had spent the past few months on an extended vacation at the request of his employer, mostly relaxing and waiting for a phone call. That call came yesterday. Today, he was not a collection man. Today, he was a delivery man.
It was a massive aircraft, with seating for over four hundred passengers, yet it was still a very full flight. He had purchased his airline ticket at the last minute, and was happy to pay the exorbitant cost for extra legroom at the very front of business class. He wasn’t paying, anyway – his employer was. From his vantage point on the left-side aisle of the plane, he could keep the occasional eye on the blonde-haired package sitting in first class – the package he was to deliver in just a few short hours. Abby occupied a seat not twenty feet from Connor.
Escape, the Complete Trilogy Page 41