Expired Refuge

by Lisa Phillips

  “Her dad heard the whole thing. He’s sure she was taken.”

  Conroy assumed as much at least, even though the last thing he wanted to think about was her being hurt. Or killed.

  “He hauled her out. I caught up to him loading her into the back of his tank.”

  “Tank?”

  “One of those three-row monstrosities.”

  “An SUV.”

  “I guess,” Hudson said.

  “And you didn’t stop him?”

  “I’ll tell you why if you quit asking me dumb questions.”

  Conroy pressed his lips together. He drove through town, headed toward Francesca Drive which ran all the way out to the edge of his jurisdiction. He had time, but not enough to inspire prayer that Anthony Stiles didn’t get her out of his area. He’d have to use his time in pursuit to call state police and the county sheriff.

  What a nightmare that would be.

  “I was too far away to intervene, so I followed. Been behind them since he left your yuppie village.”

  “Great. You get a look at his face?”

  “Your guy....Tony Whatever?”

  “Anthony Stiles.”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Was it him?”

  “Dunno,” Tate said. “Never saw his face. He had his back to me.”

  Normally it didn’t take much for Hudson to want justice. He’d go after the punk who bumped into a kid at an ice cream store and force him to pay for the scoop that wound up on the floor. He was a pain in Conroy’s behind, but he was a man you kept on your side because he came through when it counted. And that was the point.

  “I’m really glad I’m not paying you for this.”

  Tate said, “What’s that?”

  Conroy sighed. “So you’re following him?”

  Tate gave him the location, headed out of town. Close to the library and the community gym. Time was ticking too fast.

  Conroy pressed his foot to the floor. He didn’t care who got woken up by his lights or the siren he had running. Mia’s life was in danger. He couldn’t lose another Tathers sister. “Stay with him.”

  “He clocks me, it’s over,” Tate said. “I’m keeping my distance.”

  “Don’t lose her.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “I know.” Conroy gripped the wheel and listened to Tate sigh through the car’s stereo speakers.

  “I’m on it.”

  Conroy didn’t point out that the man was supposed to have been “on it” this whole time. Enough she didn’t get taken in the first place. Maybe he’d been retired for too long. Gone from whatever his former job had been. The man was past forty-five, so perhaps he just didn’t have that edge anymore.

  “I can hear your disapproval through the phone.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “Hey,” Tate said. “I’m the one who told you she wanted to talk to her sister. Gave you an in, right?”

  “Sure, then my car exploded and Mia got bitten by a dog. I’ve got a dead man in my morgue and Savannah has another open case. You gonna let Mia suffer through a kidnapping now?”

  “Of course not.” Tate pretty much shouted it through the phone line.

  “Good.”

  “That was some pep talk.”

  Conroy said, “I just turned onto Francesca.”

  “He slowed. Cross street is Arrowhead.”

  “Copy that.” Conroy was still two miles behind. It wouldn’t take him long to get there with the full weight of his position behind him.

  If he ever couldn’t leverage everything about who he was and what he did for a living to protect those he cared about? Conroy didn’t even know how he’d deal with that. Tate was a whole lot more…renegade was the only way he could think to describe it. The guy was loose, played loose, but still cared. And it couldn’t be denied he took the time to get answers no one else could. Conroy didn’t work the same way, and never would, but respected Tate Hudson all the same.

  “Hold up.”

  “What is it?” Conroy didn’t lift the pressure of his foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor. He tore down the street past cars that had pulled over in a line because of the sirens. A semi up ahead. Had the guy seen him?

  “Two cars. They were behind me, but now they’re pressing ahead.”

  “Who?”

  “No idea.” Tate paused. “One of them sped around him. He hit his brakes.”

  Conroy felt sick. He wanted to take a moment and deposit his lunch on the passenger side floor mat. He didn’t want to clean that up, though. He rolled the window down enough for the crisp night air to blow on his face and then sucked in a few, clean breaths.

  Better.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I had to slow,” Tate said. “They forced him to slow down. One in front and one behind. They boxed him in to a stop. Three guys got out.”

  “Summers?”

  “I didn’t see him. If I don’t get out of here, they’re going to know I was following him. I’ll have to—”

  There was a shuffle, then someone said, “Get outta here.”

  “Sure, man.” That was Tate. “Whatever.” After a moment of quiet, Tate said, “He’s gone.”

  “Recognize him?”

  “No. I’m turning the car around. I’ll double back on foot.”

  “Make it fast.”

  “You coming in hot?” Tate asked. “Might spook them.”

  As opposed to being low key, and allowing Mia to get taken from his house?

  Conroy bit back what he actually wanted to say and asked Tate where he’d leave the car. When Tate told him, he said, “I’ll meet you there in thirty seconds.”

  He took a couple of side streets and came at it from the opposite direction. He cut lights and sirens a ways away, so they wouldn’t hear. Got out. Pocketed his keys. Pulled his gun.

  Tate was at the end of the alley. He spotted Conroy and lifted his chin, his face lined with experience and a wild youth. “They’re getting her out.”

  Conroy peered around him and saw Mia upright. Stumbling. She touched the side of her head.

  “Easy.” Tate tugged on his shoulder.

  Conroy shoved back, pressed Tate against the wall and got in his face. “Easy? You let her get kidnapped. The only reason I’m not about to shoot you is she’s not with the psycho right now.”

  “What psycho?”

  Like there was time to explain that?

  “I’m on point.” Conroy moved out.

  He used a car for cover while he figured out what on earth was going on now. Two men held guns on the driver of the car. The third hauled Mia by her arm, away from the psycho’s vehicle and into their own.

  “Police! Hands up!”

  She wasn’t getting in that car.

  Two men spun. Both fired at him. Conroy dove for cover. The driver, who he assumed was Anthony Stiles, though he couldn’t see the man, never got out of his car. He hit the gas and sped away, sideswiped one of the cars, and fled up the street.

  The men who had Mia kept firing. Tate grunted and landed on the ground beside him. Then he rolled away, came up, and fired twice. Conroy set his arms on the hood of the car and squeezed off two shots.

  Mia was shoved into a vehicle. He heard her squeal, or scream, but it got muffled. All he knew was that she was farther away from him than he wanted, and the chance he would get her back from these guys grew slimmer with every second.

  He tagged one of the guys with a bullet. Just a graze. The buddy dragged him up, and they stumbled into the car.

  Conroy ran out from behind the vehicle he was using for cover and raced after it. License plate. He started from the last digit. Maybe Tate got the first few.

  He pulled his phone and called in the kidnapping. But not kidnapped by the guy they were after, that was a different car. He had to explain it twice before the dispatcher got what he was saying.

  Tate didn’t come out.

  “Hudson!”

  “Yeah.” His v
oice sounded strained.

  Oh no.

  Conroy found him behind the car on his back. “You okay?”

  Tate unzipped his jacket, wincing. A vest covered his T-shirt. In the center was a bullet, embedded in the protective material. He pushed out a breath, then inhaled.

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” Tate said around gritted teeth. “You should call Wilcox. I might need mouth-to-mouth.”

  “Call her yourself. It won’t be good with you this far off your game.”

  Anyway, Conroy had a woman of his own to find.

  Sixteen

  Mia shifted on the hard, bare floor and stared at the blank wall across the room. She didn’t want to see a correlation between this room and her life, but it stared her in the face anyway.

  Her head still pounded from the gunshots, and it had been hours since she’d been hauled away. But she knew what she’d seen. Tate had been shot.

  Mia saw him go down.

  Conroy had been there, too. She wanted to pray that both of them were all right. No, she shouldn’t just “want” to do it. Mia refused to be so stubborn she couldn’t give them that one small bit of grace. Things might be bad right now. Really bad. But they could be a whole lot worse for Conroy and Tate.

  God, help them. They really need you right now.

  Even if they were fine, she still figured they needed His help to find her. Assuming they were looking. Maybe they weren’t. They probably had no idea what was even happening. She’d had hours to figure it out and could still barely make sense of it. Anthony Stiles? Maybe. But she couldn’t see who’d been driving the car because she’d been forced into the trunk. And if Stiles had been driving, would he have been so compliant to lose her to a second set of kidnappers? She didn’t think so.

  If there was one thing she was sure of, though, it hadn’t been Stiles who took her from Conroy’s house. It had been someone else. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a guy there to do his dirty work for him. Could be this wasn’t related to Anthony Stiles at all, but that theory was becoming less and less plausible as time went on.

  Mia stared at the empty room and tried to figure out how she was going to get out of here. That might be an easier problem to solve.

  They’d locked the door after unceremoniously shoving her in so hard she fell. Probably should have tied her up. Then again, her arm didn’t feel good at all.

  She held it against her front and stood, walking on shaky legs to look out the window.

  Morning had risen, the sun muted behind gray clouds over the fresh layer of snow. She was in a neighborhood. The back yard of this one-story house was small. Overgrown dead grass, and pallets stacked to make a fire. A tree that probably needed cutting down.

  Mia touched the heating vent on the floor. Stone cold.

  She shivered, moving around the room for warmth. She stomped her feet to try and get her blood flowing. She needed to be warm. She also needed a pain pill. She’d probably missed two doses now and things were getting real. No more inducing sleep by disguising her pain with medicine.

  Instead, she’d sat in the corner all night and stared at the dark while she wondered where Conroy was.

  A door slammed across the house. Mia spun around but no one came in. She hissed out a breath and leaned back against the wall. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up much longer, but she intended to meet this new threat standing up.

  Voices on the other side of the door. A man, and then a woman.

  The door was unlocked and she stepped inside.

  “Meena.”

  Her sister wore expensive jeans and high-heeled boots. A blue chambray shirt that draped on her under a black leather jacket with silver zippers and buckles. Her hair was a huge mass of dark curls that hung over her shoulders. Her makeup was way too heavy, designed to make a statement.

  She set her hand on her hip. “You’re really back.”

  “This was all you?” Mia asked. “A delightful one-night stay in these five-star accommodations?”

  Her sister’s makeup seemed to sparkle, but in a way that hid the slight droop in the skin beneath her eyes. Too light, the corners that should be shadowed beside her nose. She didn’t smile. Her face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl, giving her lines between her thick brows that she probably hated.

  She looked older than Mia, despite the fact she was three years younger.

  Meena rolled her eyes. That was something Mia remembered. The familiarity of it rushed back like the smell of store-bought muffins on Christmas morning. There had been a couple of years where the roll of eyes was almost constant. Which made Mia force herself not to do it at fifteen, even when she’d wanted to. Apparently, despite appearances, her sister hadn’t changed all that much.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Meena said. “And you should be thanking me, since I probably saved you from that guy everyone’s looking for. Who is he, anyway?”

  “Anthony Stiles? He wasn’t there.” Mia said it as a statement, hoping to get Meena to give up what she knew.

  She shot Mia a look, like that statement was so dumb it was obvious. “Who is he?”

  Mia tried to look like this was no big deal. Everything was fine. No pain. No fuss. “I killed his brother.”

  Meena’s thick eyebrows rose. “Didn’t know you had that in you. I’m almost proud of you.”

  Mia said nothing.

  “Word on the street is he’s asking about you. No one knows anything, since you don’t live here. And they wouldn’t give up anything about a townie anyway, even if they did.” Meena’s lips curled up. “Hiding at Conroy’s was a nice touch.”

  Mia really didn’t want to get dragged into a conversation about Conroy. She wanted to talk to Meena about what Meena was doing—the reason she’d asked Tate Hudson to find her in the first place.

  “Guess it didn’t keep that Stiles guy from finding you, though. Even with Conroy’s security system.” Meena shrugged one shoulder. “Wonder why it wasn’t working?”

  Mia bit the inside of her lip. She hadn’t been hung out as bait just so Stiles would go after her again. She knew that, because it hadn’t worked. If she’d been a key player in the trap to catch him, then that trap would have been sprung a whole lot earlier. Anthony Stiles would have been caught. Multiple cops, lights and sirens. Roadblocks. The whole deal.

  He’d have been tossed and cuffed and thrown in jail.

  Instead, it hadn’t been him at all. And the driver had gotten away because Meena sent men to retrieve her from Anthony Stiles’ clutches.

  “Is Tate Hudson okay?”

  Meena said, “How would I know?”

  Because he’d been shot?

  “Maybe you could answer a different question.” Since she had her sister here, she might as well ask what she wanted to ask. She might not get another chance.

  Meena shrugged.

  “What are you doing with Ed Summers?”

  “Wow, judgy much?” Meena made a nonchalant face Mia didn’t all the way believe.

  Mia shifted her weight, trying not to look like she was in as much pain as she actually was.

  Meena seemed to be waiting for her to say something. After a minute of quiet, Meena said, “We have an arrangement.”

  Mia wasn’t sure that was true. “He killed Mara.”

  Eye roll. “In a car accident.”

  “He was drunk.” The result had been a tragedy that tore wide the rift that had already existed in their family.

  “You’re still hung up on that?”

  Mia said, “I can’t believe you’d associate with a man like him.”

  “Gotta make money somehow.”

  “So you’ll sell your soul for a dollar to the man who killed your sister.”

  “You haven’t been here,” Meena argued. “You have no idea what it’s like trying to make it in this town.” She pulled out her phone and swore. “Speak of the devil.” She typed at a furious pace with her thumbs. “Geez, he’s pissed. Ed is on a rampage.” She looked up at Mia. “Li
ke I was gonna let that guy turn you over to Stiles so he could do whatever to you?”

  Okay, so there was a lot there. “He was going to hand me over?”

  “Uh…duh.” She typed furiously with her thumbs. “Why do you think I saved you?”

  Was Mia supposed to say, ‘thank you’? She wasn’t sure what Meena expected. “Great. You got me away from him. Now I’m leaving.”

  Mia crossed the room and pulled the door open. A huge guy in a denim shirt and heavy brown jacket stood there. He had no hair on his head, but two eyebrow piercings and what looked like a tattoo on his neck that disappeared below his collar. A spider web, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Meena said, “Not so fast.”

  Mia turned back to her sister. “What?”

  “You don’t just leave. That’s not how this works.”

  “No?”

  Eye roll.

  “There’s no reason to keep me here. It’s been long enough, but eventually you’ll need to realize that I’m a federal agent. Kidnapping me and detaining me against my will isn’t going to go well for you.”

  “There’s the big sister I remember. Up in my face, thinking she knows everything.”

  “If you want to do federal time, that’s up to you.” Mia shrugged. Her sister wasn’t the only one who could act nonchalant. Whatever game this was, there were two players here. Not counting the brute in the hall. The one who’d shut the door again, leaving Meena and Mia alone. Was he guarding the door?

  “If you’re such a hot commodity—” Meena waved at Mia and smirked. “—then where’s the cavalry, huh? I don’t see no team of ATF heroes here to save you.”

  “They’re not going to get in the middle of a family squabble.”

  Meena’s phone screen flashed, but she didn’t look at it. Didn’t want to be told off again? Perhaps things with Ed Summers weren’t as “arranged” as she’d thought.

  “Do you really want to be with Ed Summers?”

  “Trying to rescue me?” Meena smirked. “I never needed saving, and I don’t need it now. I run my life. I make my own choices. Not no one tells me what to do.”

  Mia wondered if that was true.

  Meena looked at her phone and blanched. “He told Conroy where we are. Guess the cavalry is coming, after all.” She strode to the door and pulled it open, so she could tell the big guy, “Head out. I’ll catch up.”