Desperate Measures

by Fern Michaels

  Maddie bit into the sandwich. “It’s tasty,” she said, washing it down with a swig of ice tea. “Somewhere along the way we both lost sight of how important we are to the authorities. I think we need to fall back and regroup. By that I mean we should decide what we want and what we don’t want. The fact that I managed to get here scares me. I am scared, Janny, make no mistake about that. We’re no match for professionals, and it doesn’t matter how many crime shows you watch. Those programs always ended in sixty minutes and the good guy invariably won. This is real, and that’s why I’m so scared. I know you are too.

  “Now, this is what I want,” Maddie went on. “I want those men to take us to some safe place. I want them to bring Pete to that place. I want to talk to him face-to-face. I want us to be allowed to live someplace where it’s clean, nice, and safe. Someplace where there are people, places, and things for us to do. They need to help us find jobs that pay us a decent amount of money so we can live with some semblance of our old lives. I want my box of treasures. If Pete can’t or won’t join us, that’s okay, I can live with that, but I want to hear him say so. Trials can be postponed for months, years. If we were going to be in hiding for a short while, I’d go with everything they set up. We don’t know for a fact the trial won’t be postponed, and they don’t make promises. Is there anything I said you don’t agree with?”

  “We were scared, Maddie. Those men played on our fear. I think, though, we gave them a run for their money, don’t you?”

  Maddie smiled for the first time in days. “That’s part of it, Janny, we have no control. Our lives are in other people’s hands. Well-meaning, I grant you, but as I said, this program is not geared to people like you and me. Now, what do you want to do?”

  “The same thing as you. I’ll go along with anything you decide. I think you should call Pete again. Late at night, to be sure he’s home.”

  Maddie nodded. “We need to pick a place where we can go now. Someplace where there are a lot of people. I have enough money for us to take a bus to where we decide to go. I have a bad feeling about this place, Janny, and I can’t explain it. I feel like we’ve been here before or we went through all of this before. We keep going . . . and doing what we said we weren’t going to do. We need a firm, hard plan we can stick to. Do you have any ideas?”

  “We need to accept that if we can make a deal and stick with that deal, with the government people, for the short term only, that it will make all the difference to us,” Janny said. “Did what I say make sense?”

  Maddie nodded.

  “It’s that unknown, that time thing, that’s jerking us off. If they would say, ‘Okay, ladies, you’re going to be in this program for twelve months and then you’re free to go once the trial is over,’ I could accept that. No one ever said that to us. We’ve been thinking in forever terms. That’s what’s driving me out of my mind. God, can you picture me living here for the rest of my life?”

  “No. And I’m not going to live this way either. We didn’t do anything wrong. We need to think in terms of supply and demand. They want us because we have what they want. So for them to get us, they have to meet our demands too. I’ve had a taste of being on the run, and I don’t like it. We can’t afford to be on our own. We don’t have to tell them that, though. If you sold Unitec, how much would you have?”

  “Not enough for us to live off for any length of time. Besides, I haven’t received the stock certificate yet. My savings account hasn’t been transferred either.”

  “I guess we have to scratch that idea. I called Nester, but he was on vacation.”

  “why?”

  “I don’t know why,” Maddie said miserably. “If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say I called him because he represented some kind of stability in my mind. Pete’s friend is running Fairy Tales. Pete said she’s very nice. I got angry when I heard her answer the phone at the store. I never met her, but Pete invited her to the wedding. He said he couldn’t get married without his best buddy there to cheer him on.”

  “Are you jealous of her?”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Guess so.”

  “I know Pete’s feelings for her are those for a sister and a close friend, but I don’t know what hers are for him. Everything is suspect these days. I hope we all live to see the day when we can laugh about all of this.”

  Janny cleared the table. “Now what do you want to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s go for a walk. I’ll show you the town. By the time you blink, you’re through it. Twenty-two hundred people are supposed to live here, but I’ll be damned if I know where the houses are. On the outskirts, I suppose.”

  “Do you have a straw bag like this?” Maddie asked.

  “Sure. I got it at the general store to carry my groceries. Why?”

  “Pack it up and let’s go. We’ll walk as far as we can and then hitchhike. The fine hairs on the back of my neck are starting to bother me. Don’t take more than you’ll need. Wear sneakers. When do you have to call in again?”

  “I called in yesterday. That gives me six days before I have to check in again. They aren’t interested in me, Maddie. It’s you they can’t afford to lose.”

  “It’s hard for me to believe they just plopped you here and left you. You do have freedom. You can go into Provo, you can do pretty much what you want. They’ve been treating me like a criminal. Get your things, Janny. The sooner we get out of here, the better I’ll feel,” Maddie said, an edge to her voice.

  “Maddie, what about my stock certificates and my bank account?”

  “No one else can cash them in. Don’t you have to sign for them when they arrive in the mail?”

  “Yes. They haven’t notified me that my savings account was transferred. Will I lose it all if I leave?” she asked nervously.

  “I wouldn’t think so, Janny, but I’m not sure. If they’re in your new name, you can prove you’re Betty Gill. I would think you could come back anytime and claim what’s yours. You have to decide, Janny, I can’t make the decision for you. As it is, just because you’re my friend, your life . . . You don’t know how sorry I am about all this. I wish it was just me and that you were back in New York setting the financial world on fire.”

  “In your dreams.” Janny guffawed. “I’ll just be a few minutes. The bathroom is off that little hallway by the pantry, in case you want to use it.”

  Maddie was washing her hands in the tiny sink when she heard Janny’s anxious voice in the kitchen. “There’s someone coming up the walk,” she said, running to the bathroom doorway. “I saw him from the bedroom window. He’s coming around the back now. No one has come here since I moved in. What are we going to do, Maddie?”

  Maddie stuffed her hairbrush and comb into the straw bag. “Maybe it’s someone for your landlady,” she said, not believing her own words for a minute.

  “My landlady went to some kind of festival with her sister. I heard her talking about it yesterday. When the kitchen window and door are open, you can hear everything that’s going on. What should we do?”

  “Quick, close the kitchen door and lock it. Is there someplace for me to hide?” she whispered, her eyes rolling back in her head.

  Janny snorted. “Here? A mouse couldn’t hide in this apartment. Wait a minute. Under the sink. Get behind the curtain. You’ll have to crouch down. There’s nothing under there but a bottle of dish detergent. Hurry, Maddie, he’s on the steps, I can hear him.”

  Maddie parted the curtain, tossed in the straw bag, and crawled under the sink. Janny adjusted the curtain just as a knock sounded on the back door.

  “Don’t open it, Janny, talk through the glass. He’ll be able to hear you,” Maddie cautioned. She huddled back, her knees against her chest. God, where was Janny’s straw bag? Did she leave it in her room or was it in the kitchen? Who was at the door?

  “Yes?” Janny said, her voice carrying clearly to Maddie under the sink. She could hear sound from the other side
of the door, but the words weren’t distinguishable.

  “How do I know you’re who you say you are?” Janny said, her voice quivering. “Where’s Mr. Maloy?”

  “He’s at the hospital, his wife is about to have their first child,” the voice on the other side of the door said. He flashed his ID.

  Janny squinted to see the words clearly. The picture matched the face of Marshal Hendriks. “What do you want?”

  “We’re going to move you. We want you to pack your things. You are to come with me. Now.”

  Janny’s heart thumped crazily in her chest. “Oh, no. No, no. I’m not moving again. My stock certificates haven’t arrived and my bank account hasn’t followed me either. I don’t even know you. You tell them . . . tell them I said no. You can’t do this to me. Every time I come in contact with you people, I lose a year off my life. This is hard enough as it is. Your people said when I was relocated it would be until after the trial. You just go back there and tell them I said no. I don’t like it here, but you aren’t going to uproot me again.”

  “Miss Gill, please, open the door and let’s sit down over a glass of lemonade and discuss this. I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to help you.”

  “You say. Hrumph,” Janny snorted. “Furthermore, you don’t give me enough money to buy lemons, I have to drink ice tea because tea bags stretch further. I’m not interested in discussing anything with you. I checked in yesterday with Mr. Maloy. Until next week I am free to do as I please, and it does not please me to open my door to you. Annnnnd,” she said stretching out the word, “you have not told me why you want to move me. Your organization is beginning to sound more and more like a Mickey Mouse operation. You people haven’t followed through on anything you promised. That’s not fair. You have two sets of rules, one for you and one for people like me. I don’t like double standards. Now, are you going to tell me why you want to move me?”

  Janny sucked in her breath when the marshal said, “Your friend left the program. We think she might be trying to find you.”

  “And because of that you want to move me!” Janny shrieked. “You’re nuts! She walked out on you and you lost her. That’s why you’re here,” she continued to shriek. “Get off my porch, now, do you hear me? I’ll open this door and slam you over the railing. You lost my best friend in the whole world. If Maddie left, she left for a reason. You don’t keep your promises. I told you to get out. I mean it, I’ll slam you right over the railing!” She made a move to unlock and open the door. She knew in that one instant she would have pushed the marshal over the railing if he hadn’t stepped down onto the first step.

  When Janny was satisfied the marshal was indeed leaving, she opened the door and screamed, “How can Maddie find me, she doesn’t know where I am, you people took care of that! Oh God!” she cried dramatically. “Now the case goes down the toilet!” She scurried back up the steps and into the kitchen, slamming and locking the door behind her.

  Janny yanked at the curtain stretched around the sink before she dropped to her knees. “I’m sure you heard all that. You can come out now. Maddie, what’s wrong with you? Maddie, look at me!”

  Maddie was curled in the fetal position in the corner, her eyes glazed and blank. She shrank back from Janny’s outstretched arms. “Maddie, you’re scaring me,” Janny said. “What’s wrong? He went away. I told him I wasn’t moving. He knows you left and thinks you’re trying to find me. He’s stupid. Maddie, please, come out of there. Let me help you. Maddie, we have to ... God, we have to leave, go somewhere. Maddie, you were always the thinker, the one who solved our problems. Don’t . . . don’t quit on me now. Maddie, look at me,” she wailed.

  Janny sat back on her haunches. She tried a new tack. “Maddie, we have to call Pete. Pete will know what to do. Maddie, I need you to make some decisions here. That man said he was a marshal. He showed me ID. It could be phony, but I don’t know that for a fact. It doesn’t make sense to me that they would want to move me if they thought you were trying to find me. They should . . . wouldn’t it make more sense to stake out this house and snatch you when you showed up? None of this makes any sense. They did lose you. Somehow you eluded them. Maddie, please, look at me. I don’t make good decisions, I need your input. Damn it, Maddie, you’re scaring me. Come on now, come out of there. We have to call Pete.”

  Janny’s hands went to her temples. She rubbed at them furiously. Common sense said you didn’t run from the good guys. She hunkered down again and pleaded with her friend. “Maddie, I think we should leave here. There’s a cellar to this house, and Mrs. Isaacson never keeps anything locked. We can go there and hide until we get in touch with Pete, but you’re going to have to help me. There’s a phone in the cellar and one in Mrs. Isaacson’s kitchen. She went to some festival with her sister and won’t be back for three days. He’s going to come back, I know it. You said they were going to tie you up and sedate you. What if they come back and do that to both of us? Maddie, what’s wrong with you?”

  Maddie was slobbering, her knuckles kneading her lips. Tears splashed from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “It was all for nothing,” she singsonged. “I was stupid. I always do stupid things. You never do anything stupid,” she continued to say in a singsong voice.

  “That’s because you don’t let me do anything stupid. You’ve always been there for me, Maddie. And it wasn’t all for nothing. How can you say that? We’re together. That’s the most important thing of all. There’s strength in numbers. You penetrated the Witness Protection Program. It’s never been done before. They told us it could never happen, but you proved them wrong. You did it. You found me.”

  “Because we broke the rules after we agreed not to.”

  “No, we did that before we signed their damn paper. We made a plan and we stuck to it. They screwed up. They lied to us. For our own safety, but it was still a lie. I’m piss-ass scared, Maddie. I really am.” Janny cried hysterically.

  Maddie ignored her, her eyes still glazed and blank.

  “I’m going downstairs. I’ll be right back.”

  Janny hurried down the back stairway to Mrs. Isaacson’s kitchen door. She tried it, found it unlocked. She loped through the kitchen to the stairway that led to the cellar. Why couldn’t they hide out here for a day or so until they got in touch with Pete? No reason at all. And by doing so, they were leaving the program. Well, she could live with that. Anything had to be better than living the way she’d been living since entering the program. It was better for Maddie too.

  Janny surveyed the cellar with the aid of a dim forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. The small windows were painted black, fine wire was tacked over them. The outside door was steel, and locked from the inside with a two-by-four that fit across two heavy-gauge-steel brackets. She struggled on the moss-covered steps, in the near dark, to slide the piece of wood firmly into place. If she could get Maddie to the cellar, no one would ever know they were here. She could bring down some food, a large wattage bulb, open up the rusty aluminum chairs, and voilà, all the comforts of home. Temporarily. Until Pete could get here and make things right.

  Satisfied with the condition of the cellar, Janny raced upstairs to Mrs. Isaacson’s kitchen, where she rummaged for paper and pencil. She scribbled off a note, signed Mrs. Isaacson’s name to it, and slid it under the lid of the milk box. If anyone came snooping around, they would see the note, read it, and not bother with the rest of the house. They’d go through her own apartment, though, so she had to make it look as if she’d left in a hurry.

  She checked on Maddie, who was still curled in a fetal position under the sink. In her room, Janny pulled out her suitcase and scattered her clothes about. She folded a few shirts neatly and placed them inside the suitcase.

  In the. kitchen she filled a paper sack with food, which she carried down to the basement along with hers and Maddie’s straw bags. She returned to the kitchen, dropped to her knees. “You have to come out now, Maddie. If you don’t, I’m leaving. You can stay here and t
ake your chances. At best, I think you have about an hour. Right now that man who was here is probably talking to everyone in town, and the waitress at Dumfey’s is telling him we were there. He’s making calls and he’s coming back, Maddie. I won’t say they’re going to harm us, but they’ll try to split us up again, and God knows where either of us will end up. They know we know they lied to us. So, my thinking is they’ll promise us anything to get us to go along with them. I’m going, are you coming?” Maddie didn’t stir. Words like shock, comatose, withdrawn, filtered through Janny’s brain. Angrily she reached out, grabbed Maddie under the arm and pulled her out onto the kitchen floor, where they both landed with a thump. Maddie immediately curled into her position again.

  “Suck your thumb, damn you,” Janny hissed. “That will make this all just perfect. When I call Pete, I’ll tell him you reduced yourself to a vegetative status and don’t want to go on with life. If you aren’t killed, they’ll lock you up somewhere and throw away the key.” When there was no response from her friend, Janny said, “Oh, damn you, Maddie. Talk to me. Okay, you asked for it. Don’t blame me when I finally get you to the cellar and you won’t have an inch of skin on your ass.” Her words were razor sharp, startling her, but they had no effect on Maddie.

  Using all her strength, Janny dragged Maddie under the arms, out through the doorway and to the top of the steps. She propped her up against the post as though she were a rag doll. Maddie’s blank stare petrified her.

  Each time Maddie’s rump hit the wooden step, Janny winced. Her friend’s tush was going to be black and blue for months to come. Janny could hardly breathe when she leaned up against the wall at the bottom of the steps. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Maddie move, struggle to a sitting position. “Are you trying to kill me?” she barked.

  “Yes,” Janny barked back. “You scared the daylights out of me. You’ve been out of it for almost an hour. Look, I’m sorry about your rear end, but it was all I could think of. Can you get up? We have to get inside. I don’t think we have a whole lot of time. I’ll explain when we’re safe inside. Can you walk?”