Get Lucky

by Lorie O'Clare

  “Have the valet bring our car around, please,” he drawled, grinning at her.

  “Of course, Mr. VanCooper,” she said, reaching for her phone.

  Marc nodded, walking out the front door to wait for the car. As long as Blondie didn’t fly into the lobby in a mad rage, all he would have to deal with was the pain in his arm. He glanced up and down the curved drive, staring into a dark parking garage and praying the valet service wasn’t backed up.

  There wasn’t anyone else around and Marc knew the kid probably hoped for a good tip when he pulled up in the small dark green Honda Evelyn had stashed underground as her getaway car.

  “Nice evening, isn’t it, Mr. VanCooper?” the valet asked when he strutted around the Honda and handed Marc the keys.

  “It just got a lot nicer,” Marc said, grinning at the kid as he hurried around him and slid into the car. The pain was so bad he prayed he’d be able to navigate his way out of Phoenix. One thing, though, he was sure he’d remember a name as odd as VanCooper. Marc wondered if it was Claude and Evelyn’s real last name.

  Chapter Seventeen

  London squinted against the morning sun and hugged herself against the cold. She went from wanting to help to feeling as if she wasn’t wanted or needed there. Men and women scoured the area, walking over the frozen desert with equipment they were using to search for Marc. Apparently Evelyn VanCooper, Claude’s wife, who was the man London had shot in the office, was also missing. As the sun slowly climbed against the flat, gray sky, more and more police and other officials who weren’t in uniform continued showing up until there was a line of cars parked up and down the two-lane highway.

  “We’re heading out,” her father said, coming up behind her and touching her shoulder. “Your mother has a headache and it’s too cold to stand out here.”

  London nodded, facing both of them. “It was good seeing both of you.” She knew her parents were getting the hell out of Dodge. More than likely they’d answered a few questions, promised to stay in the area to assist with the investigation, and would now disappear while everyone was too busy to notice.

  “You too, baby girl,” her father said, ruffling her hair.

  “Maybe we can get to Aspen sometime soon.” Her mother smiled at London and actually looked like she was serious.

  London nodded, refusing to get her hopes up that she would see either of them again anytime soon. “Take care of yourselves,” she said, her voice cracking. She hugged both of them and pulled away before she made a scene.

  Her parents hurried to a nearby car. London didn’t have a clue who was giving them a ride or where they were taking her parents. She sucked in a ragged breath, filling her lungs with the frigid cold morning air. The two of them climbed into a backseat. She couldn’t see them anymore and was pretty sure neither of them looked back to see her. They were probably busy plotting how they could put all of this behind them and prevent any investigator from digging too deep into their backgrounds. London returned her attention to everyone working around her. She needed to focus on what she should do now, too. Her parents would be fine. That much of her life, at least, was back to normal.

  Marc’s father, Greg King, walked across the field with Jake alongside him. Haley hadn’t returned when her husband did, and London had been told she remained at the hospital in Flagstaff with Natasha. There wasn’t any report on Natasha’s condition.

  “We’re going back into town,” Jake announced, cutting across the field.

  “Okay.” London prayed she didn’t look too lost when Jake’s father moved to stand next to his son. The two men were so big, so tall, their presence overwhelming. She tried to think of something to say.

  “Come on,” Jake said, gesturing with his head. “You’re not staying out here by yourself with no one to give you a ride.”

  She’d come to Flagstaff with Marc and drove down here with Natasha. It hadn’t occurred to London until this moment that she didn’t have a ride. Not that she had anywhere to go. Returning to Aspen didn’t feel like an option.

  “So you’re leaving?” She scanned the field. It wasn’t right leaving without Marc, but this was his family. London wanted to say they should stay put until he was found.

  “London,” Greg said, speaking her name slowly and with a deep, commanding baritone. “Marc isn’t here.”

  She nodded quickly, biting her lower lip. She didn’t lose it when her parents walked away from her; she wouldn’t lose it in front of these two men she barely knew.

  “Let’s get coffee, warm up,” Jake said, holding his arm out and dropping it when she walked alongside him to the line of cars. “We’re going to find him,” he whispered, looking down at her and searching her face when she glanced at him.

  There was dirt stained across his face. His clothes hung on him wrong and were wrinkled as if he’d slept in them for days. Jake had endured an underground jail cell and he was reassuring her.

  She smiled, determined to be strong. “More than likely he’ll find us.”

  “They’ve got Claude VanCooper in the same hospital where Natasha is,” Greg offered when they reached Marc’s Mustang. It was dirty with highway grunge plastered to both sides of it. Greg and Jake didn’t say anything about it, and it was too cold to go to a car wash. London knew Marc would find a way to clean his car. In Aspen, the Mustang had always been immaculately clean. Greg walked around to the driver’s seat, looking over the hood at both of them. “Apparently, when he isn’t throwing a fit demanding to be flown to a hospital suitable for a man of his station, he’s singing like a canary.”

  Jake opened the passenger door and she pushed the front seat forward, climbing into the backseat.

  “He’s blaming the whole thing on his wife,” Greg continued, turning on the car and adjusting heat vents, although between him and Jake the two men were so large not much heat blew back to her. “Claude is denying any knowledge of a game, or abducting any of us with intentions of forcing us into some kind of war activity.”

  “He’s lying.” Jake stared straight ahead, leaning back in his seat and looking exhausted. He sounded mad, though. “We all heard him and the guards. We can testify.”

  “This won’t go to court,” Greg stated, shooting a hard glance at his son. “You can bet my word on that. I’m willing to wager it will all disappear, without any of us being contacted for any further questioning.”

  London wanted to ask why, but she felt she was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Neither one of them glanced back at her, but they continued discussing what had happened to them while they were underground and what they’d seen. They’d been through a horrendous experience.

  “You’re going to document everything you remember,” Greg told Jake. “Write all of it down. Your mother and I are going to do the same. This is the second time we’ve been pulled into this game, and I’m going to find out what it’s all about.”

  “Do you think someone will come after us again?” Jake didn’t sound scared but more curious when he leaned his head back on the seat, closing his eyes.

  “We’re high profile.” Greg relaxed one hand on the steering wheel and stared ahead of him at the two-lane highway they were taking back into Flagstaff. “Natasha did the right thing closing down the office to come out here and I’m not going to hold it against her. But word will spread quickly that we shut down at the same time Claude VanCooper went down. It might take a while to get back to us, but in the right circle word will spread and put us even more in the spotlight.”

  “Sounds like we need to figure out where that right circle is,” Jake said.

  London wondered if Marc was already in that circle.

  *

  They checked into the Embassy Suites, and although Greg started to get London her own room, she refused. Jake backed her quickly.

  “London doesn’t want, or need, to be alone right now. Get two rooms for now, Dad.” Jake looked at her, the flirt she’d met now completely gone. Either he was behaving in front of his father or Jak
e was too exhausted to remember he was a player. “I promise to behave,” he added, winking at her, although he looked more harmless than she’d ever seen any man his size ever look.

  “I can’t see you ever doing anything behind your brother’s back,” she told him, although if he tried London would kick his ass, no matter how big he was.

  Greg signed for the rooms and handed a room card key to her. “You know my boys pretty well. I’ll have to give my son hell for not letting us know about you.”

  “We haven’t known each other that long,” she admitted.

  “Two weeks for Marc is a long time,” Jake muttered.

  “Very true,” Greg agreed.

  Her thoughts were torn as they rode the elevator in silence. Greg muttered something about a shower before disappearing into the suite across the hall from theirs. There wasn’t any luggage and Jake paused at the bathroom door when they entered long enough to ask if she needed to use it.

  “Go shower.” She waved her hand at him, walking farther into the room.

  Standing and staring out the window at the city of Flagstaff, she wondered again if she should be here. Maybe she needed to return to Aspen. It seemed wrong, if not impossible, to twist her brain around, returning to the life she’d been so in love with up until meeting Marc.

  He’d not only swept her off her feet but also forced her to take a good look at how she was leading her life. Where once she would have sworn she was making all the right choices and living her life to the fullest, now as she pictured her home and a job where she worked well over forty hours a week, it all seemed empty and meaningless.

  She’d told Marc his life wasn’t for her. London didn’t want to think about having a gun in her hand or worrying about when someone would come along and create full chaos in her life. That was until he disappeared. She’d wrapped her fingers around a gun as if she’d done it every day. All the chaos thrown at her she’d stormed through, not giving a thought to losing her own life or what insane monster might be around the next corner. It was all about doing the right thing. Not only did she risk her life, but London also stood in the middle of a hotel room feeling antsy and anxious to hurry out the door and run to where Marc might be. The danger surrounding all of it no longer seemed to matter.

  So what happened to change her mind? Was she falling in love with Marc? Or was it something less glamorous and more realistic, like the urge for adventure had been simmering in her blood all along and she’d spent years trying to ignore it?

  Her father had beamed with pride once she’d rescued all of them. London wouldn’t have been able to do it without Natasha but her father hadn’t seemed to care when she’d told him that. Jonnie Brooke bragged that she had it in her blood. Her mother had been harder to read. Was it that Ruby never could connect with her daughter? Or possibly Ruby knew how hard her life was, always running and never being able to stay anywhere long enough to lay down roots and make a house into a home. She might not want that for her daughter.

  London wasn’t breaking the law when she gripped that gun and rushed into that underground jail cell, though. She knew she was doing the right thing and would do it again in a second. Would she do it again for someone else if they were in trouble? Because that was what Marc did all the time.

  Someone knocked on the door and London stared at it, hearing the shower running and knowing Jake would probably be in there awhile. There wasn’t anything to worry about, though. For her, the nightmare was over. Marc was still out there somewhere, but he wouldn’t be knocking on her hotel room door. Nor would whoever had him. She walked to the door calmly, taking time to look through the peephole.

  “Natasha is fine,” Haley announced when London opened the door, grinning broadly as she passed London, letting herself into the room. “She’s in stable condition and resting. It will take her a while with physical therapy. She took a bullet in the shoulder. But she’s going to be fine.”

  There was enough relief in Haley’s voice to show how much she cared about her niece. London had liked Natasha immediately. The news took a large weight off her shoulders. She could have taken that bullet instead of Natasha.

  “That’s such good news.” London grinned at Haley, although she must not have been able to hide the emotional roller coaster she’d been enduring while standing in the room alone.

  “We’re going to find Marc,” Haley told her, putting down a couple shopping bags and grabbing London’s arms. Then, without asking, Haley pulled her into a hug. “You’re making yourself nuts pacing in here alone worrying about him. Come on over and hang out with me. Jake paced that cell the entire time he was in there like a caged animal. He’ll shower and probably crash.” Haley let go of London but held her hands in hers. “I bought him some clothes. He won’t want to put the clothes he was wearing back on.”

  Haley dumped jeans, socks, boxers, and a T-shirt out of the bag. “I spotted a Large-And-Tall store after leaving the hospital and stopped and grabbed clothes for the men. Fortunately, it was close to a Walmart, and I bought new clothes for me, too. Greg and I thought we were going out to a movie, not being hauled across the state line and dumped in an underground cage. We’ve been in the same clothes for the past couple days,” she told London as she walked to the bathroom door and looked at her, grinning, as if it were all in a day’s work, before opening the bathroom door without knocking and announcing to her son he had clean clothes.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” Haley gestured for London to follow her when she walked to the door. “Let’s get to know each other. Natasha had all kinds of good things to say about you.”

  “She did?”

  London followed Haley into the hallway but stopped when two men paused, looking at the hotel room doors and then at both of them.

  “Haley King?” one of the men asked. He wore a brown suit, and his gray hair added to his official appearance.

  “Yes,” Haley said. “I’m Haley.”

  “I’m Detective Torrance. This is Detective Murray. We’d like to speak to you and your husband if you have a minute?”

  “Yes,” Haley said, sounding excited. “Of course.” She hurried to her hotel room door and fumbled with her card key until she opened the door. “Greg is in the shower, but please, come in. Do you have news of Marc?” she demanded the moment the door was closed.

  The detectives entered the room and London brought up the rear, her stomach twisting in knots. Detectives didn’t show up at someone’s door with good news. Haley seemed so excited to see them and faced them now, her eyes wide and her expression flushed as she stared at the two men expectantly. She didn’t look as if she expected them to give her bad news.

  “Ma’am,” Detective Torrance began, glancing around the hotel room that looked just like London’s except everything was opposite. “We were down at Canyon Diablo this morning.” He glanced at London. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to introduce ourselves.”

  Haley took the hint. “This is London Brooke. She’s Marc’s girlfriend. And I’m Marc’s mother. His father, Greg King, is in the shower. I’ll introduce you as soon as he comes out.”

  The detective nodded. “We’ve also been over to the hospital and have interviewed Claude VanCooper. Natasha King didn’t have a lot to share with us, but she was also very tired. We’ll visit with her further when she is feeling better.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be very willing to speak with you once she’s recuperated more,” Haley said, gesturing to the round table in the kitchenette part of the suite. “Please come sit down. I just came from the hospital myself or I’d have coffee made, but it won’t take but a minute.” She hurried around the table, patting the backs of the chairs indicating that they all sit, before moving to the small counter and sink in the corner of the suite. “Please, tell us why you’re here,” she insisted, filling the small coffeepot with water and ripping open a package of coffee.

  “Claude VanCooper told us about a car that was hidden half a mile from the facility under Canyon Diablo.” Torrance sat at
one of the chairs and pulled out a small spiral notebook that he flipped open so he could refer to his notes. “He informed us it was a green Honda Civic that he remembered being an early-2000s model.”

  London slid into the seat opposite the detective, staring at his stern expression as he referred to his notebook. She wanted to yell at him, demand he say why he was here. If he had news of Marc, she’d waited long enough to hear it.

  “We investigated his allegations and found a ramp that had little to no dirt or snow on it, as if it had recently been raised from the ground.”

  “Does this have something to do with Marc?” Haley demanded, obviously as anxious to know the truth as London was.

  Torrance held his hand up. “We’re not sure, ma’am. After investigating the ramp, we established that it did lower into the ground and could have held a car and kept it hidden from view.”

  “So Marc took the car and escaped?” London asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Torrance said again. “There is still a lot we don’t know yet. It takes time to piece an investigation like this together. And this one is a doozy; I don’t have to tell either of you that.”

  Haley sighed, coming to the table. “You’re right. And I do know that all too well. So we now know how Marc got away. But how would he have found that car? It was under the ground a mile from the facility? Do you think Evelyn VanCooper took him to the car?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Torrance said, changing the variation of his answer but not its meaning. “Before we left the hospital we got a call from highway patrol. We’d already put out an APB on the green Honda, which we also knew was registered in the state of New York.”

  “Highway patrol?” Haley pressed, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. She looked ready to leap over the table and grab the detective so he’d spill what he knew faster.

  “A late-model green Honda with New York tags was found out on Interstate Seventeen.” He paused, looking over his notes.

  Haley jumped from her seat. London couldn’t stay seated, either. What were the odds? Sure, Hondas were a dime a dozen, but one with New York tags in Arizona? How many could there be?