by Jami Alden
The Jeep veered sharply to the right, jerking and bucking as Danny steered it off the road and into the woods.
“Are you insane?” she asked, popping her head up to see nothing but snowdrifts and thick trunks of trees.
“According to the GPS we’ll hook up with a forest service road in 500 meters.”
A tree branch exploded next to her window a millisecond before Caroline heard the crack of the gunshot.
“Get the fuck down!” Danny grabbed her head without taking his eyes off the windshield and shoved her face back to the seat.
Cold air rushed in through the back window of the Jeep and Caroline’s heart threatened to beat through her chest as the Jeep spun and lurched through the snow. There was a loud thump and a scraping sound on her side of the car. She watched veins bulge and sinews flex as Danny shoved at the gear shift.
Any second they were going to hit a tree or slam into a snowdrift. She wondered how fast she’d be able to run in her stupid boots in the knee deep snow.
Caroline heard a crash of metal but was shocked to feel no impact.
“Ha ha!” Danny’s triumphant laugh echoed through the Jeep a second before a series of shots rang out. He ducked low in his seat and floored the accelerator.
The tires whined as they spun against the snow, then suddenly, miraculously, she felt the ground smooth beneath them. She risked a peek over the dash to see they’d hit a road of some type. Though not plowed, it had seen enough recent traffic that the snow was packed down enough for them to pick up speed. The cold air through the back whipped her hair around her face. “Where are they?” She looked through the blown out back window, ready to duck as soon as she caught sight of their pursuer.
“Crunched against a big sequoia, ass deep in snow,” Danny said, satisfaction evident as he navigated the Jeep along the road’s snowpacked surface.
Caroline sat up and leaned her head back against the seat, wrapping her arms around herself as her body started to register the chill. She looked at Danny, who looked like a real-life action star with his dark glasses, square jaw, and full lips hitched to the side in a satisfied smile.
Unable to quell the urge, she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his lean, stubbled cheek. “Nice driving. Remind me never to insult your car again.” She patted the dashboard of the Jeep like it was a faithful dog.
The other corner of Danny’s mouth hitched up.
He drove without stopping, consulting the GPS until he found a route through the forest roads to another spur of the highway. Then he drove another hour south to hook up with another highway in case anyone else was watching their predicted route home. When they finally got to Caroline’s neighborhood six hours later, she was exhausted and chilled to the bone from riding in an open car for so long. They’d stopped briefly so Caroline could put on every extra item of clothing Danny had in his duffel bag. The hat, sweatshirt, sweatpants, and socks were barely enough to keep her from hypothermia.
Caroline was fantasizing about a steam-filled shower before the Jeep came to a complete stop.
“We’re not staying,” Danny said, as though reading her mind. “I want you to go in, pack a bag for the next several days, and we’re out of here.”
She didn’t protest. As they’d discussed in their hours in the car, it didn’t take a genius to see someone didn’t want the truth about Anne Taggart’s and Emily Parrish’s deaths to come out.
“But who?” Caroline had asked, more thinking aloud than expecting Danny to have an answer.
“Someone who was working with James who’s afraid his number is finally up.”
Too bad Caroline had no clue who that was. But until they found out, she was on board with Danny’s plan to clear out of her house.
She handed Danny her key and watched him punch in the alarm code. She scanned the street, wondering if they were watching her. She eased a little closer to Danny and was brought up short by his vicious curse.
Caroline’s mouth fell open in horror as she looked past him into her entryway.
Trashed didn’t even begin to describe it. The little table in the entryway was on its side, the contents of the drawers scattered across the hardwood floor. To the right she could see into the living room. Furniture was smashed, cushions had been sliced open. Numbness overtook her and without thinking she pushed past Danny and rushed headlong up the stairs.
“Wait,” Danny yelled after her. The fine hairs on his neck stood up and he moved to the left. Air whistled in his ear as something—a pipe or a police baton—narrowly missed his head. Danny caught his attacker’s wrist in one hand and jabbed his other fist into his assailant’s elbow. A cry of pain and the snap of bone echoed through Caroline’s entryway. A jab to the man’s face and he was down. Danny quickly frisked the guy, pocketing a switchblade and a small handgun. Then he reached out to rip the ski mask from his attacker’s head.
Caroline’s shriek reverberated from upstairs. Without hesitating Danny charged up the stairs, slipping his glock from his shoulder holster as he went. He burst into Caroline’s bedroom, relief nearly flooring him when he saw her on the floor sitting up and very much alive.
He knelt down next to her. “Are you hurt?” he asked, trying to keep the frantic note out of his voice as he quickly examined her for signs of injury.
“I’m okay,” she said. “He surprised me when I came in and pushed me over, but he went out the window as soon as he heard you coming.” She nodded to the open window that overlooked her backyard.
Danny rushed over to take a look. It was a good drop, about twenty feet, but there was no sign of Caroline’s intruder. “Did you get a look at him?”
She shook her head. “He was wearing a mask.”
“Same as the guy downstairs.”
Assured Caroline was unharmed, Danny let his fear morph into fury at her carelessness. He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What were you thinking, running into the house like that? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”
Her eyes went wide in her pale face and her throat convulsed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking—”
“Damn right you weren’t. From now on, you follow my lead, no matter what. I don’t want you to so much as sneeze without my say-so!”
“Don’t yell at me!” Her shaky tone snapped Danny from his temper, forcing him to take a good look at her. So pale she was almost gray, her lips blue and quivering as shock threatened to set in.
His anger fled as quickly as it had surged and he pulled her against his chest. “Just promise you’ll be more careful, okay?” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, closing his eyes against the images of what could have happened to her if the guy downstairs had managed to get the jump on him.
He eased back and cupped her cheek, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. He was relieved to see a little splash of pink warming her face as her panic abated. “I need to take a look around, and I want you to stay right behind me.”
Caroline’s fingers were icy as they wrapped around his, but she nodded and let him pull her to her feet.
Danny quickly dialed 911 and started a sweep of the house. He would have preferred to look around without Caroline glued to his back, but he wasn’t about to leave her alone until he knew no one else was in the house.
And judging from her fast, agitated breath in his ear as she trailed him through every room, up the stairs and down the halls, she wasn’t in any hurry to go off by herself.
The guy who had tried to jump Danny was long gone, of course, and no one else seemed to be waiting in the shadows.
“We’re all clear,” he said in the most reassuring tone that he could muster. Caroline nodded, her face white, her eyes dilated with fear. Still he had to give it to her. She was remarkably calm, considering what had just happened.
Seemed the resilient core he’d always admired hadn’t completely disappeared during her years as a trophy wife.
“Why would someone do this?” Caroline asked as she looked aro
und the master bedroom, seeming to take in its condition for the first time. It was in the same shape as the rest of the house. The king size mattress was on the floor and slashed open. The drawers of the nightstands were upended, the contents strewn across the floor. Clothes from both closets were all over the place, the dressers in both hers and James’s closets pulled out from the wall, emptied of their drawers, and turned on their sides.
“Is anything missing?” Danny asked after he’d satisfied himself that they were alone in the house.
Caroline’s fingers only shook a little as she sifted through the piles of clothes, shoes and purses littering the floor of her closet. “My jewelry’s gone.” She walked through the adjoining bathroom into what had been James’s closet. “And James’s watch. But there’s so much stuff they could have taken.” She picked up a high-end digital camera from the corner where it had been tossed. “But we surprised them. Maybe they didn’t have time…” her voice trailed off.
But they’d had plenty of time to tear the place apart. Plenty of time to load things like a flat screen TV or a computer into a waiting car. No, the robbery was incidental, a smokescreen to cover up their search.
Caroline was a smart woman. Danny didn’t need to spell it out for her. “Do you think they found what they were looking for?” A police siren sounded in the distance and she let out a peal of semi-hysterical laughter. “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe they got what they needed and now they’ll leave me alone.”
A knock sounded on the front door and he reached out to guide her out of the room and down the stairs. “I suppose that’s in the realm of possibility, but I wouldn’t bank on it. In the meantime, as far as the police are concerned, this is a standard B&E. Don’t tell them anything about what we’ve been working on.”
Caroline nodded. “No reason to lay all our cards out, right?”
“Right.”
The officer was in and out in a little over an hour. Danny handed over the knife and the gun he’d taken off his attacker and told the officer they should be looking for a guy with a badly broken arm, not that he thought it would help much. The officer took Caroline’s report, left her a copy for her insurance, and left to canvass the neighbors. “In this economy we’re seeing a lot more property crimes,” he said as he left. “You should really look into upgrading your security system.”
Danny didn’t bother pointing out that whoever had done this either had enough skill to circumvent the alarm system, or was familiar enough with Caroline’s house to know the weak spots. “Who knew where we were yesterday? Who knew you were leaving town?”
Caroline pulled her dazed stare from the pile of wood, upholstery and stuffing that in no way resembled a couch. “No one. Well, I called Kate yesterday to tell her I was okay but she would never—”
“Are you sure?”
Her mouth drew tight with irritation and she folded her arm across her chest. “You asked about her before, and my answer is still the same. No way would she do this.”
“But would she tell anyone? Maybe inadvertently? Mention it in passing to someone not realizing who she’s talking to?”
Caroline let out a frustrated sigh and went down the hall to James’s office. The locked desk drawers had been pried open. A sea of papers and file folders carpeted the room, topped by a mountain of books that had been pulled from the shelves. “I don’t know. I can’t even think right now.”
He backed off, for the time being anyway.
“I’ve been over and over every inch of this house, gone through every single bit of data on the computers and I never found anything until Kate brought over that stupid box. I can’t imagine what they thought they would find.” Caroline’s voice was low, defeated, and she wavered on her feet as her unfocused gaze drifted across the room. Danny knew she was starting to shut down, her body and brain unable to deal with one more ounce of stress.
“Come on,” he said, as gently as he could given his current level of frustration. “We don’t need to do this right now. You need a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.”
She shook her head and dropped to her knees. She gathered papers in her hand, lining their edges and stacking them carefully. “I need to clean this up. I can’t leave the house like this—”
He knelt down beside her and placed his hands over hers. “We’ll come back tomorrow and put the house back together.” His voice was soft but his tone was steeped in authority.
Like all the green recruits Danny had trained over the years, she nodded without protest.
She let go of the papers and sat back on her heels, shoulders slumped. Exhausted. Dejected. It made him want to wrap his arms around those fragile shoulders, pull her into his lap, and promise he would make everything okay.
He shoved the thought away as he stood and guided her to her feet with a firm hand on her wrist. It wasn’t his job to give her reassurance and a shoulder to cry on.
Even when they’d been together, Caroline had stood firmly on her own two feet. She’d taken care of herself and her family and never asked him for anything. Self-sufficient, and unlike his mother, not too emotionally needy.
Not until the end, anyway. He watched her walk down the hall and climb the stairs to the bedroom, trying not to focus on the sway of her round ass in her tight jeans. Trying to remind himself of all the reasons it was good she’d dumped him a hundred years ago when he’d made it clear he wasn’t the kind of guy who dealt well with a lot of sharing and needing and all that other emotionally contrived bullshit.
“There’s a leather wheeled suitcase in James’s closet if you can find it in that mess,” she said wearily as she entered her own. He heard the shift of fabric and the thump of shoes dropping as she went through the piles on the floor. Even he, with his untrained eye, knew Caroline probably had tens of thousands of dollars worth of designer goods in there. Most women would be throwing a hissy fit seeing them thrown to the floor, stomped on, and in some cases, torn apart. Caroline simply picked up each piece, hung it carefully on a hanger, and placed it back in its designated spot.
Danny kicked piles of clothes and shoes out of the way until he found the suitcase Caroline was talking about. There was a deep slash in the leather and the inner lining was torn out, but it would still hold her belongings and survive a ride across the bay. Danny moved an empty dresser drawer aside and pulled the suitcase to the door.
Something caught his eye, so small he wasn’t sure he saw it at first. He backed away so his shadow didn’t fall over the section of the hardwood floor he was studying. He bent down and squinted for a closer look, then cleared the area of scattered clothes. He ran a fingertip across the wood floor panel. Right there in the middle, lost in the graininess of the oak, was a crack.
Or was it a seam?
He traced the crack with his finger. Thin and remarkably straight, it ran midway through the panel next to it.
Definitely a seam. Another ran perpendicular from the corner, crossed five panels, then turned again to run parallel, then back up, forming a rectangle about ten by twenty inches in size. He pulled his Randall Knife out of the sheath strapped to his calf and slid the tip in one of the seams. The panel came up without resistance.
“Like they didn’t do enough damage? Why are you tearing up my floor?”
He looked up to see Caroline staring down at him, hands on her hips, and an expression that said she thought he’d lost his mind. From her angle he was blocking her view of what was under the panel.
He moved back so she could see the metal door embedded into the floor.
“You think anyone else knows about James’s floor safe?”
Caroline braced herself with one hand on his shoulder as she leaned down to look. He heard her breath catch in her chest. “I had no idea that existed.”
“No reason you would. It’s one of the better jobs I’ve seen. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone not trained to look for it.”
“Like you.”
He shrugged. “Even I wouldn’t have noticed it if
the dresser hadn’t been shoved aside.” When he’d searched Caroline’s house before, the dresser had been flush with the corner, totally obscuring the panel. He gave himself a mental kick for not being more thorough in his initial searches.
“Can you open it?” Her voice was breathy with anticipation.
He nodded. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s possible whoever was here already cleaned it out.”
She nodded. “Open it,” she repeated.
It took him a few minutes to bypass the code, then the lock slid free with a metallic snick. Danny flipped the door open and peered inside.
Not empty.
His mouth pulled into a grin.
He reached in and pulled out a DVD, a thick sheaf of papers, and a computer flash drive.
CHAPTER 14
“These look like bank statements, numbered accounts,” Caroline called over the wind whipping through the battered Jeep.
“Put those away,” Danny barked. “That’s all we need is for them to blow away.”
She rolled her eyes, but obediently tucked them back in Danny’s computer bag, then tucked the bag under the seat for good measure. After all that, the last thing she wanted was for the contents of the safe to go blowing across Highway 80.
A floor safe. How could she have been so clueless? Granted, it must have been installed well before she married James and was damn well hidden. But still. After all that time, the truth about James’s death had been right there under the floor of his walk-in closet.
Maybe. Danny cautioned her repeatedly not to get her hopes up.
Too late. Caroline had been nearly crushed with defeat when she’d walked into her house to find it trashed. Any last shred of security or sanity to be found in her home was gone. She just wanted all of it to be over.
But she was flying high on a second wind. Squirming like a puppy to find out what was in those bank records, what was on that flash drive, convinced they held the key to the hell her life had become over the past year.
She managed to make it to Danny’s house without badgering him to death. She knew he was as eager to look into the evidence as she was, but was more concerned with getting her somewhere safe first.