Desperate Measures

by Fern Michaels

  Now she was staring at Fairy Tales from the cab window. She didn’t need to get out to see the double Dutch doors were closed and locked, the bars spread across the window. One woman was jiggling the handle of the door while another was trying to peer through the shutters. “I’ll just be a minute, wait for me,” she said to the driver. She dashed across the street and walked up to the women.

  “I don’t understand,” one of the women said. “The store was open twenty minutes ago.”

  The woman who was peering through the shutters said, “Maybe they’re out of stock. This store was jammed yesterday when I was here. I forgot my credit card and had my things set aside. I said I would pick them up at noon. It’s noon!” she snapped.

  Annie hopped back in the cab and gave Pete’s address for the second time in less than an hour.

  Pete paced his hotel room like a caged animal. He snapped and snarled as he lashed out with his foot, kicking everything in sight. He picked up the phone and roared, “Try that number in New York again. Let it ring until I tell you to stop.” He counted along with the buzzing sounds on the other end. Thirty-three. “All right, operator, never mind, cancel the call.”

  “You have a call, Mr. Sorenson, shall I put it through?”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  “Pete, it’s Annie. The shop is closed. I’m back at your apartment. What do you want me to do now?”

  “I’ve taken up enough of your time, Annie. I’m going to see about changing my plane ticket. I’ll call the police from here. Annie, thanks a million. I owe you. Big-time. I’ll call you when I get back to New York.” There was an edge to his voice when he said, “Don’t forget, you’re coming to the wedding.”

  She didn’t answer this, but said instead, “Look, I’m not going to say don’t worry. Just use your head. Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “ ’Bye, Annie. Thanks again.”

  After he hung up, Pete called the operator again, saying, “I want to make another call to the States. Try both these numbers. Tell whoever answers the phone this is an emergency. I’ll stay on the line.”

  Pete gulped at the scalding coffee in his cup, barely noticing that he was burning his mouth and throat. He continued to pace, the phone receiver glued to his ear. If anyone could get answers, it was his uncle Leo. He was on his third cup of coffee when his uncle’s voice boomed over the wire.

  “Peter, I hope you have good news.”

  “Leo, there’s a problem. Not here, at home.” He told his uncle about Maddie. “I need your help. If you can’t get me some answers, then I’m out of here. You’ll have to get someone else to finalize. Li Yuen is dragging his feet anyway.”

  “Peter, the consortium doesn’t like talk like that. Now, tell me again, everything you know, and let me see if I can make sense of it.”

  After Pete told Leo what he knew, his uncle said, “It occurs to me, Peter, that your fiancee might have cold feet and is taking the easy way out. I’m disappointed, Peter, that you didn’t see fit to tell me about your marriage before. I didn’t even know you were engaged. I thought we were family.”

  “We are. Maddie wanted . . . wants it simple. Just a few close friends. I was going to tell you when I got back.”

  “You’re running four days behind schedule, Peter. You cannot slough off this deal because you’re getting married. You should have allowed for a delay. I don’t think I need to remind you we’re paying you a fortune for this job. You can’t walk out on it. Do we understand each other, Peter?”

  “Maddie is more important to me than this deal. I’ll do my best, but I’m coming home for my wedding, you need to know that.”

  “As you know, Pete, the individuals involved in the consortium are powerful people. They like you, respect your business acumen. They have it within their power to break you if you cross them.”

  “All I do is broker deals,” Pete replied. “Anyone can broker a deal.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out about your fiancée and call you back,” Leo said coldly. “In the meantime I suggest you get on with the business at hand.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Maddie woke with a blinding headache. She rolled over, pulling the pillow on top of her head.

  “I thought you were dead,” Janny grumbled. “You didn’t move at all for the past hour.”

  “Were you going to check on me?” came the muffled response.

  “No, I’m too sick. If you were dead, I was going to kill myself.”

  Maddie rolled over again and struggled to a sitting position. She cradled her aching head in her hands. “We can get up, dress, eat breakfast, and walk out of this stupid hotel if we want to. Nester couldn’t do anything to us. So ... this is a new, fresh day, and we have to decide what we’re going to do. And when we make the decision, we have to stick to it. We cannot backwater. Once we sign those papers, we are committed.”

  “I can’t think till I brush my teeth and have coffee. My mouth tastes like three-day-old dead fish,” Janny said inching out of the bed. “I know, I know, we’ll decide. I think we both know we don’t have any other options, but if you want to talk it to death, that’s okay with me.”

  In the doorway to the bathroom Janny turned and said, “Did we really drink that much last night?”

  “Yes,” Maddie said. “I have a very clear recollection of doing that.”

  “Oh God,” Janny said, closing the bathroom door.

  “Yes, oh God, You are the only person—being—who can help us now,” Maddie grated as she got out of bed.

  Later, clean and smelling of hotel shampoo and powder, the two women huddled in the room drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say, Janny, is, I’m going to enter the program if ... if they make us a few promises. Think hard now, what do you want to ask for? I know what I want. I think they’ll make some concessions. If we’re as important to the government as I think we are, I think they’ll bend a little. We certainly have nothing to lose at this point. And we ask to be placed together in the Witness Protection Program.” The program, they’d been told, would protect them up until the trial, issuing them fake names and IDs, and then afterward, if necessary.

  The government people arrived at noon with bulging briefcases. Nester arrived a few minutes later. He looks tired, Maddie thought. She thought she could still see pity in his eyes.

  Marshal Adam Wagoner droned on for forty minutes. Maddie listened intently. William Monroe from the Justice Department added a few words, as did Carl Weinstein from the FBI. When Weinstein finished, he sat back in his chair and motioned to Maddie.

  “We understand,” she said. “Janny and I have agreed that we will enter the program if you meet three of our conditions.”

  “No deal,” Wagoner said coolly.

  Maddie stood up and reached for her purse. “Gentlemen, you need us more than we need you. If we walk out of here now, we won’t come back. Yes, we’ll probably be killed, but we’ll be who we are when we die. Yes, we have the guts to do it, don’t think for one minute we don’t.”

  “You can at least listen,” Nester said quietly, his comment directed toward the marshal.

  “We don’t make deals,” Wagoner repeated.

  “Consider it a request,” Janny snapped.

  The man from Justice said, “Spit it out.”

  “I want your word, Mr. Wagoner, that when my fiance returns home, you will let me speak to him. I know what you said about his uncle. But even if your suspicions are correct, and his uncle is ‘connected,’ as you put it, I don’t believe Pete knows about it. And I’d want to ask him myself anyway. I want to hear it from Pete’s own lips. You can arrange a phone call, he can tell me yes or no.” Maddie held up a hand to forestall interruption. “Then,” she said succinctly, “if Pete wants to join me, you will arrange it.

  “Secondly, Janice wants all her Unitec stock transferred to her new name, whatever it turns out to be. We want it done today before we leave.


  “Third, we want to be located in the same place. Together.”

  “Yes to the first two, no to your last request. Decide now,” Wagoner said, towering over Maddie.

  “But why?” both women cried in unison.

  “It’s too risky. I’m denying this request for your own protection. Is there anything else?”

  “No,” Maddie murmured. Janny shook her head.

  “That’s it, then. Pack your belongings. You’ll be leaving here at dusk, possibly a little later.” He held out his hand. Both women stepped back, refusing to accept his outstretched hand. “Good luck,” he snapped.

  Nester remained behind, the guard outside the door.

  “I guess your promotion is pretty much guaranteed,” Maddie said quietly. He nodded. “Will Wagoner do as he promised?”

  “I have to believe he’s a man of his word. I think you need to prepare yourself for the fact that Mr. Sorenson might not want to give up his life for you. You need to be realistic, Maddie.”

  “I know that. I can accept it if I hear it from him. We’re both going to try very hard to handle this.”

  “I wish you both the best of everything,” Nester said. “I’ll see you at the trial.”

  “If the trial is successful and you bring down the . . . whatever you call those people, will we be permitted to leave the program? I forgot to ask that question. How could I have forgotten to ask something so important? I need to know that. Janice needs to know.”

  “If the ‘threat area’ is safe, I would think you’re free to do as you please. That’s just my opinion. I wish I could be more help, but the Marshals Service is outside my realm. They don’t take kindly to questions. I can call and ask, and they can say they’ll get back to me, five years from now. Think of it as your light at the end of the tunnel. It will be something for you to hang on to,” Nester said quietly.

  “Detective, what’s your first name? We should know that, don’t you think?”

  The detective shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “Otis,” he mumbled.

  “Otis, if Pete goes to the police and asks questions when he returns, what will he be told?”

  “I don’t know. Orders haven’t come down in regard to Pete Sorenson. I’m not lying, Maddie, I really don’t know.”

  “But you know everything. Can’t you—”

  “No, Maddie, I can’t. Look, I’m not your enemy, neither is the marshal or the Justice man or the guy from the FBI. We’re a network pledged to keep you and Janny safe. We do whatever it takes. I’ll see you around. You ladies are okay.”

  “Thanks, Otis.” Maddie’s hand shot out. Nester’s eyebrows inched upward with the pressure she exerted. There was respect on his face when he left the room.

  “Welcome to the Witness Protection Program, Miss whatever-your-name-is,” Maddie said in a choked voice.

  “I’m going to miss you, Maddie,” Janny sobbed.

  “Me too. I mean I’ll miss you too. Now look at us, our makeup is all smeared.”

  Janny eyed their new police guard. “Is it okay if we go into the bathroom to fix our makeup?” The guard nodded.

  Inside, Maddie ripped at the wrapper from a fresh roll of toilet tissue. She smoothed it out. With a pen from her purse she scrawled a written message: “If things get bad, put a message in the personal column of USA Today. Use the initials FT for Fairy Tales. I’ll do the same. Once a month.” Maddie looked at Janny, who nodded, then she continued writing: “Each time, give a number of your phone number, every Friday, until you give the whole phone number. I’ll do my ad every Thursday until you have mine. After that, once a month.” She looked at Janny again before she ripped off a section, threw the wad of paper in the toilet, and flushed it. She scribbled on the remaining paper: “Scratch everything I just wrote. We need phone numbers at phone booths. Same deal, every Friday for you. I’ll do Thursday. Every Saturday, after we have a full number, you be at your pay phone and I’ll be at mine. Twelve noon.”

  Janny nodded and scribbled: “That’s ten weeks or two and a half months. Let’s do the ad every day.”

  Maddie nodded, turned the paper over and wrote: “Eight hundred numbers mean no charge, no record on a phone bill. How do we pay? They’ll check our mail.” Janny rolled her eyes and shrugged. Maddie wrote: “I have the feeling I’m going to be watched a lot more carefully than you. You pay for both accounts if you can. If I can, I will. If you give them the initials, they’ll know what to look for when we call the ads in. It’s worth a try.” She scrunched up the paper into small, tight balls before she flushed them down the toilet.

  Janny used her index finger to trace words on the mirror. “We’re breaking the rules and we haven’t even started.”

  Maddie nodded. Her finger traced the words “I don’t care.”

  Janny wiped the mirror with a damp washcloth.

  Both women applied a slash of crimson to their mouths before they returned to the sitting room to finish watching “As the World Turns.”

  Hours later, sobbing and crying, hanging on to one another, the women hugged and said their good-byes. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Maddie waved wanly to her best friend as she was led away by four U.S. Marshals at seven o’clock. Twenty minutes later four more U.S. Marshals arrived to take Maddie downstairs and out to the waiting car.

  Madelyn Marie Stern and Janice Hobart no longer existed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Peter Sorenson stormed through the lobby of his apartment building. He felt like a wounded bulldog. He had jet lag, was hungry, tired, and needed sleep. He dumped his bags in the foyer of his apartment, ripped at his tie and suit jacket as he made his way through the dining room, living room, hall, and into the bedroom. His clothes, as he shed them, went into a pile in the middle of the floor. Seconds later he was in the shower, lathering up.

  Jesus, he was tired, more tired than he’d ever been in his life. On top of that, he was sick with worry and fear. He was supposed to get married tomorrow. As he shaved he wondered if Maddie had called the minister to cancel the wedding. He’d have to check that out.

  Ten minutes later he was dressed in a cotton Perry Ellis sweater, worn, comfortable jeans, and Dock-Siders. He raged about the apartment for another five minutes before he gathered up his keys, wallet, and headed for the door. His hand was on the phone to call the garage to send up his car when the phone rang, the sound vibrating through his hand. He picked it up on the third ring, hoping it would be Maddie, knowing it was his uncle Leo..

  “When did you get in, Peter?” Leo asked, skipping the amenities.

  “About fifteen minutes ago, and I’m on my way out. You should have the paperwork first thing in the morning. We’ll talk later, Leo. There are no problems.” He replaced the receiver, waited for the dial tone before he called the garage. Leo was probably having an anxiety attack, he thought.

  He was lucky to find a parking spot directly in front of Maddie’s apartment building. His own set of keys in hand, he walked down two steps that led to the building’s entrance. The doorman recognized him and held up his hand. He eyed the keys dangling from Pete’s fingers. “Sir, Miss Stern is gone.”

  “I know. I want to look around the apartment. The rent is paid till the first of the month, a month after that if the security deposit wasn’t refunded. I have a key,” Pete said briskly.

  “I guess I can’t stop you, then,” the doorman said quietly.

  “No, I guess you can’t. Did Miss Stern take her cat?”

  “The cat is gone, sir,” the doorman said. He was remembering the instructions he’d been given by the police. Do not volunteer anything. He liked Miss Stern, liked this man standing in front of him because he was responsible for putting the smile in Miss Stern’s eyes.

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No, sir, she didn’t. People are giving their notice right and left,” he blurted.

  “Oh, why is that?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about this, sir. The management company doesn
’t want me to talk about it either.”

  “Talk about what?” Peter grated.

  “The double murder, sir.”

  “Well you just talked about it, so you might as well tell me the rest. I promise not to tell anyone you spoke with me.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Ky were murdered in their apartment. They own the little store around the corner. Most of the tenants in the building shop in their store. It happened on the sixteenth, I believe. Ten or eleven days ago,” the doorman said, wrinkling his brows as he tried to recall the exact date.

  “Do you think that’s why Miss Stern moved? Did she move or did she go away?”

  “Her phone’s disconnected. Her furniture is still in the apartment. I’m not sure, sir. I haven’t seen her in quite a while.”

  “What about her mail?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir.”

  “Has anyone been around here asking questions about Miss Stern?”

  The doorman thought about the police warning, thought about Miss Stern and her possible involvement with the police. He wanted to tell the nice man with the worried eyes that too many people had been around asking questions, but his tongue wouldn’t work. He shook his head, refusing to make eye contact with the attorney.

  Pete waved airily as he headed for the elevator. When he reached Maddie’s apartment, he looked for the note Annie spoke of. It was gone. He let himself into the apartment. It was cool and dim, musty-smelling. It looked the same, just empty. He recognized a dead basket of flowers as the ones he’d sent the day before he left. There was hard candy—butterscotch, his favorite—in the candy dish. A flat bowl of little colored stones they’d both been picking up these past months sat on the coffee table. Maddie liked odd things, and the colored stones proved to be a conversation gimmick on many occasions.

  The cushions on the sofa had indentations in them. Maddie usually fluffed them up before she went to bed. She must have left in a hurry. Maddie was meticulous about housekeeping. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she was the next best thing to a neat freak. At least compared to his own sloppy habits.