by Rebecca York
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.” Stepping away from her, he followed the general.
Meg walked stiff-legged after the men, who were now standing in front of the one-way mirror that gave a view of the interrogation room.
Last time she’d been here, Claymore had been browbeating her.
She could see the security chief inside again, his back to the mirror. This time the victim was a young man with short brown hair and angry-looking brown eyes. He was gesturing with one hand while he talked.
When Meg saw that his other wrist was secured to the table by a handcuff, she cringed.
Dorsey motioned Glenn and Meg to stand to the side. Then he knocked on the door before opening it. Claymore stood and came into the hall. The handcuffed man stared intently at the mirror—making it seem as if he could see through the glass. But he couldn’t, she reminded herself as she remembered her own experience.
Claymore looked at Meg. “Do you recognize him?” he asked.
She switched her attention back to the prisoner. “I don’t know. It was dark when the man came after me, and I never saw his face.”
She heard Glenn let out a little breath and knew he’d been waiting for the answer.
“What about from before the other night?” Claymore pressed.
“No!” she said vehemently.
When the security chief continued to look at her, she turned to Glenn. “You had more contact with him than I did. Do you think that’s the man you fought?”
He stared at the prisoner and finally shrugged. “I don’t think so. His body type doesn’t seem right. But I could be wrong.”
“How did you know he was the right man to take into custody?” Meg asked.
The general replied: “Blake let a group of hostile men know he was going out on the grounds alone—to an isolated location where he couldn’t call for help. Then he marched out there and waited for a bullet in the back.”
She could tell from the way he said it that he thought Claymore had done something very brave—and probably very foolish—and that the blame for his desperate behavior rested on her shoulders.
“We’d like his reaction to you,” Dorsey added.
“You don’t have to go into the room with him,” Glenn said quickly. “You could stand in the doorway where he can get a look at you.”
“I didn’t think the victim had to confront the assailant—until he was brought to trial, or something,” she said, watching Sparks, who had slumped in his seat, letting his head roll forward onto his chest.
“I’m not the police. We don’t have to follow any particular procedure,” Claymore answered.
She had the right to refuse. But she could see that everybody else present would think she was dismissing Claymore’s bravery—or worse, canceling the value of his actions.
A giant knot wedged in her throat, yet she managed to say to Claymore, “You and General Dorsey want to know if Sparks and I are working together.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re even thinking that the attack on me could have been staged.”
The security chief didn’t bother to deny it.
Swinging her gaze to Glenn, she saw that he’d been informed of the planned confrontation. So that was why he’d been so stiff with her after the phone call. Did he think she’d been capable of working with a cold-blooded killer?
Claymore studied her. “You want to back out?”
“No.”
“Good. Then I’ll step into the room and get his attention. When I do, you walk to the doorway.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and rejoined the prisoner.
Sparks looked up as Claymore reentered. Then the security chief stepped aside and glanced over his shoulder.
Feeling as if a 500-watt spotlight were focused on her, Meg stiffened her knees and stepped to the door.
Her heart leaped into her throat as the prisoner lunged toward her. Only the handcuff on his wrist kept him from grabbing her.
Glenn stepped behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “That’s enough,” he growled, trying to pull her back.
She leaned on him then, glad of his warmth and the solid feel of his body.
Claymore had a hand on Sparks’s shoulder, pushing him back into his seat.
The prisoner’s eyes never left her. “It’s your fault,” he spat out. “You were the last straw. Things weren’t so bad around here until you showed up.”
“What did I do to you?” she managed to challenge.
“If you don’t know, I’m not going to explain it to you, bitch,” he snarled.
“Did you attack me in the guest quarters?”
“No. But somebody had the right idea. You’re bad news.” He snorted. “You wanted that dog to get Shipley, didn’t you? He was a good guy. Now he’s messed up—because of you.”
“What did I do to the dog?”
“I hear you fed him something to make him go crazy.”
“No,” she insisted, her voice strengthening. Then she tried a question of her own. “Did you?”
“Are you nuts? Why would I do something like that?” he demanded, his voice low and angry. “What are you trying to do? Get me in worse trouble? You’d better stay away from me, because you’re dead meat if I get you alone.”
She recoiled from the words, and from the hatred in his voice. He wasn’t rational, yet she couldn’t help wondering if he knew something about her that she didn’t know herself.
To her relief, Glenn drew her back from the doorway. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.
“I want her to stay,” Dorsey countered. “I want to know for certain what her role in this was.”
Glenn’s gaze drilled into him. “She had no role.”
“Glenn, you’re not—”
“I think you have as much as you’re going to get,” he interrupted. “Maybe Sparks has formed an irrational hatred of her because he needs somebody else to be responsible for his problems. But I think it’s crystal clear that he wasn’t working with her. And neither one of us thinks he’s the man who came after her in the guest quarters. So he may have attacked Blake, but that doesn’t mean he’s the main source of our problems. The way I see it, all you’ve proved is that you’ve got two rotten apples in the barrel—Sparks and some other guy.”
Without waiting for a response, he moved Meg around the corner and into the corridor.
She waited until they were alone before saying, “After the phone call from Claymore, we talked about what you were thinking. But you didn’t tell me your security chief wanted me down there to get Sparks’s reaction to me. Or that he and the general were hoping their prisoner would give away some secret relationship we had.”
He turned and faced her squarely. “Yes, that was part of the message from Blake. If I’d confided in you, they would have assumed it invalidated the test. I wanted you to prove to them you had nothing to do with him!”
“You were confident of that?”
“Yes,” he growled, then sought her gaze. “What would you have done in my place?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decision.”
Before she could say more, the shooting started.
Chapter Twelve
Glenn pushed Meg to the tile floor, his body coming down on top of hers even as his right hand pulled the gun from his holster. From the depths of the security center, an alarm began to sound, echoing through the building and across the grounds.
Meg froze, expecting a hail of bullets.
When the fighting didn’t move toward them, Glenn sprang up again and headed down the corridor.
Grabbing a handful of his shirt, she tried to restrain him. “Glenn, stay here.”
“I can’t. You get out of the area,” he ordered over his shoulder as he pulled himself from her grasp and crept back the way they’d come, his gun trained on the door to the security center.
Wide-eyed, she watched as he reached the door and pushed it open wi
th his foot, then snapped out of the way, keeping his body to the side. He was greeted by another round of fire and a sharp voice.
“Stay out!”
“Sparks? What’s going on in there?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, sir. My beefs not with you.”
“We can work this out.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Put down your weapon, and everything will be all right,” Glenn soothed.
The man answered with a bark of hysterical laughter. “Sure, and pigs can fly. We both know I’m in deep guano.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I already have.”
How stupid, Meg thought as she pictured bodies sprawled on the floor in the security center. The general was in there. So was Claymore. And Glenn cared about both of them.
Turning to Meg, he motioned frantically for her to return to the protected area around the corner. Knowing she was only adding to his anxiety by sticking close, she backed up, rounded the corner and crouched on the floor, where a low cabinet hid her from view.
“Sparks?” Glenn called.
“Right here, sir. I’m coming out. But we’re going to play this my way.”
“All right,” Glenn agreed.
“I’m taking the general with me. Drop your weapon or I’ll kill him.”
When Glenn hesitated, the order came again, this time edged with fear.
Glenn obeyed.
“Kick the gun out of reach.”
Glenn sent the weapon sliding across the tile floor.
Meg found she couldn’t draw a breath into her lungs. Glenn had just made himself totally vulnerable to an armed madman.
When a figure appeared in the doorway, every muscle in her body clenched.
It was General Dorsey, out of his wheelchair, his fragile form clamped tightly against Sparks, who held his captive with one hand and a gun with the other.
The general’s gait was stiff, and his face was drained of color, but his gaze drilled into Glenn as if he were trying to communicate a vital message through mental telepathy. Glenn didn’t move as his friend shuffled ahead of Sparks.
God, what if the old man stumbled? What if he tried something heroic? Then Glenn would get shot.
Praying that Dorsey could stay on his feet for the next few minutes, Meg watched as Sparks backed up several steps and stopped with his back against the wall.
“Let him go,” Glenn ordered.
“When I get what I want,” Sparks enunciated carefully. “I want off the estate. I want a plane and a pilot.”
“All right,” Glenn said.
Meg was sure he would agree to anything to keep his friend from being killed. Did they really have an airstrip here? She wouldn’t have bet there was enough flat ground for a takeoff and landing.
Her speculation was cut off by Sparks’s next question. “Where’s the bitch who got me in trouble?” he snapped, his eyes darting around the area, and Meg felt herself freeze in place behind the cabinet even as her pulse began to pound in her ears. God, what would he do if he found her here?
“I sent her back to her quarters—under escort,” Glenn answered, his voice carrying a ring of conviction.
“I hope so. I hope you don’t let yourself trust her.”
“Why?”
“She’s trouble.”
“You have inside information?” Glenn inquired.
“No. And I don’t have time for a chat, either. You’ve got a phone in your pocket. Take it out real slow. And don’t try anything funny, because I know how the system works around this place.”
Glenn obeyed, watching the general who was breathing hard with the effort to remain on his feet.
Sparks’s arm tightened across his captive’s chest. “You’d better work fast, ‘cause Dorsey’s getting tired. Call the units. Tell them the emergency’s over and nobody’s supposed to interfere with me.” He paused and looked down at the watch on his wrist. “Tell them to stay exactly where they are until further notice. Nobody should come near this end of the building. Or the airstrip.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Or the access road.”
“All right,” Glenn agreed again, quickly punching in numbers and issuing terse orders. Seconds later, the alarms stopped sounding, and they stood in deafening silence.
“That’s better. Now call the hangar, and tell them to get the Cessna ready. And have a jeep waiting for us at the door. Tell the garage I don’t want a driver. He should park the vehicle next to the door and leave the engine running. You’ll drive.”
The man might be desperate, but he was thinking through each step, Meg saw, planning all the details.
Glenn dialed another number and spoke into the phone. “The jeep will be waiting when we get there,” he said.
Sparks nodded toward the phone. “Set it on the table. I’m not taking a chance on your activating some secret code while my back is turned.”
Glenn gave a tight nod and complied. When he had gone back to his original position, the fugitive eased forward and asked the general to retrieve the phone.
Dorsey grimaced but obeyed, his gnarled hand shaking. Only when the instrument was in Sparks’s pocket did some of the tension leave his face. “Let’s go,” he said to Glenn. “You first. Then the general and me.”
They moved down the hall, Glenn half turning as he stopped to see if the general and his captor were keeping up.
“I’ll worry about Dorsey,” Sparks snapped. “You make sure that nobody tries anything stupid.”
Glenn nodded, and they all disappeared around a bend in the corridor.
Meg waited with her heart pounding, knowing that if she moved too soon she could get the hostages killed. Staring in the direction they’d disappeared, she forced herself to stay where she was like a kid playing hide-and-seek, while she counted slowly under her breath. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand…With each number, her tension mounted as she waited for guards to come running around the corner or for Sparks to dart back into view minus his two prisoners. When she reached twentyfive hundred, she found it almost impossible to keep her position. But she managed it for another ten numbers. Then she stood and began sliding along the wall toward the security center. Slipping inside, she gasped in a choking breath, then let it out as she forced herself to look around the room.
It was empty. Her heart threatened to pound its way through the wall of her chest as she took one step and then another farther into the facility.
The first body was lying in a heap in the hallway. It was one of the guards, and she knew by the bullet holes in his back and the blood pooled on the floor that he couldn’t possibly be alive. His partner was a little farther on, in even worse condition.
The victim’s holster was empty, and Meg was pretty sure that Sparks must have gotten his gun, shot him and laid down a hail of gunfire. In the interrogation room, Sparks had also been handcuffed. Either they’d made the mistake of taking his cuffs off, or he’d forced them to do it when he got control of the situation.
Stepping carefully around the man, Meg moved farther back, peering into the little room. It was empty.
So were the rest of the rooms along the corridor. When she opened a steel door and stepped through into the cellblock area, she found Claymore. He was locked in a cell, sprawled on a narrow bunk. Again she saw blood, and drew in a quick breath. Then she saw his chest was rising and falling.
The door was locked, and she knelt near the bunk, stretching her hand toward him through the bars, but it was too far to reach.
FROM HIS VANTAGE POINT on the cliff above Castle Phoenix, another man watched the jeep pull away from the building. He guessed it was headed in the direction of the airstrip. He confirmed the guess when the vehicle took the right-hand fork in the road.
Bridgman was driving. Another man was sitting in the back—with a gun trained on General Dorsey. Early this morning, the same guy had been brought in under armed guard. Now it looked as if he was calling the shots.
Very
interesting.
When the alarm had gone off, he’d thought that they’d somehow discovered his location on the estate. Now he knew that the crisis had nothing to do with him—yet
He waited, expected to see troops moving quickly to head off the jeep. But the place was buttoned down tight.
The watcher’s lips curved into a satisfied smile. He’d gotten onto the estate and he’d avoided capture. But he’d been forced to switch from plan A to plan B and then to C.
Now he was back to A again—and it looked as if he had just been handed the perfect opportunity.
Pushing himself up, he began to move cautiously toward the castle—toward the stairway where he knew he’d find the secure lab.
“CLAYMORE. BLAKE. CAN you hear me?” Meg called, trying to rouse the unconscious man.
At first there was no response. Finally, the security chief stirred, his eyes blinking open. When he tried to sit up, pain contorted his face. “Glenn? Hal?” he asked in a rough voice.
“Sparks took them as hostages. Where are the keys?” she asked.
“In a desk near the door. Top right-hand drawer.”
She hurried back the way she’d come, found the desk and located a ring of keys. Then she began trying them in the lock.
“I don’t know why he didn’t kill me when he had the chance,” Claymore growled. “That’s what he started out to do.”
“Maybe he thought two men were enough. Maybe he didn’t want to take the time.”
“Yeah. Or maybe he figured that humiliation was better than death.” He writhed in discomfort. “Get me out of here!”
The way he gave the order made her realize she had a choice. He was her enemy, and she could simply walk out of the cell block and leave him there. Instead she said, “I’m trying.”
“What happened out there?” he demanded, sitting up and gingerly touching the back of his head.
As Meg worked, she related the encounter between Glenn and the fugitive. It was punctuated by a sharp curse when she said that Sparks had Glenn’s phone.
“Of course!” he raged. “The son of a bitch knows our procedures. If he’s working for the enemy, we’ve had it. I’ve got to send someone after him.”