No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Why would the Russians want simulation technology for operating on wounded soldiers on the battlefield?” I wondered. I took a step back from Mac, looking into those brown eyes. “They’re not at war.”

  “No, but it’s a great bargaining chip when you want to gain some influence with a rogue nation or a group you hope to use to co-opt a government.” He held onto my hands, not letting me go. “A lot of what an intelligence officer does is to persuade the bad guys to play ball, whether by coercion, compliment, or cooperation.”

  “How do you even know all this?” I wanted to know.

  “When you’ve worked overseas as long as I have, you often become a target for spies and bad guys, especially if you work for a big company like KLPG Financial,” he told me, giving me a smile that seemed forced for my benefit. I suddenly wondered why Mac wanted me to believe this was just a normal kind of situation in international business. I was about to raise another question when a buzz from Mac’s cell phone interrupted our conversation.

  “Tweedie,” he announced as he lifted it to his ear. I watched his face grow grim. His eyes caught me and Mac turned away, walking towards the hall. I could hear him talking in hushed tones, so I knew it was serious. I could feel a growing apprehension invading my body, cell by cell, as I thought about Tom. I had had an affair with an impersonator who may or may not be a spy. I tried to think of another reason why Tom was involved. Maybe he worked for Vanguard Advanced and tried to make a buck on the technology by selling it to a competitor. That was also another possibility, wasn’t it? Couldn’t there be a less sinister reason why Tom pretended to be Robacher? As I considered the possibilities, I wondered what his real name was and why he picked me.

  “Kimmy?” Mac was back in the living room. As he stood there, I realized he was bracing for my reaction.

  “You have bad news to tell me.” I studied his face, wondering how bad things really were. Mac’s eyes lit on me and lingered, as if he was hesitating. I watched him take a deep breath.

  “The police went to talk to your former boyfriend at the address he gave you.” He waited a moment, as if stalling.

  “And?” I prompted him.

  “And when they got there, they found his body.”

  “Tom’s dead?” I grabbed the back of the counter stool and sat myself down. “How did he die?”

  “He was murdered. He was shot with his own gun. The cops just found his body. It was still warm.”

  “Tom had a gun?” In all the time we had been together, I had never seen a gun in his possession.

  “There’s more bad news, Kim,” Mac said gently. “Your former boyfriend made some serious enemies. Whoever killed him tortured him first, then set his body on fire. It was still smoldering when the police arrived. You know what that means?”

  I looked at him expectantly. He took my hand, grabbed my laptop and my purse, and led me to the front door.

  “It means we have to get the hell out of here pronto, before the bad guys come back. They’re probably on their way back here now.”

  “Why?” I left the question open, seeking any kind of answers I could find.

  “Tom may not have given them what they wanted. That means they’ll try to go after you next, because you were Tom’s girlfriend. Come on. I’m going to take you to a safe house.”

  “A safe house?”

  “I’m going to protect you, Kim. You have to trust me.” Everything was upside down. Nothing made any sense. Mac opened the passenger door of his silver Lacrosse and nudged me into the seat. He ran around to the other side of the car and slipped into the seat beside me. The car engine roared to life and he quickly backed out of the driveway.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “It’s okay, Kimmy. Just sit there. I’ll look out for you.” Mac reached across me, punched the button for the glove compartment, reached in, and pulled out a handgun. “Here. Hold this.”

  “What?” The shock shot through me, stunning me with a power that left me weak. Mac put the gun in my lap as he raced onto the interstate.

  “The safety’s on, so just hold it. It won’t fire.” Mac was looking in the rearview mirror. He accelerated, his foot pressing the pedal down to the floor. I heard the engine engage and felt the rush as we went from forty to eighty in a few seconds.

  “Crap!” Mac grimaced. “Hold on.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We have a tail. I need to lose it.” The next thing I knew, Mac was hitting the exit at high speed. We were flying down the main street. “They might have put a tracker on my car, so we’ll have to get as far away as possible before we check it. Get out your cell phone.”

  I did as Mac told me. My fingers trembled.

  “We’ve got to turn off your GPS, in case they’re using that to track us.” Mac went through the process, directing me through each step. We cut through the town, traveling down the small, interconnecting roads until we got to the high school.

  “Ready?” Mac asked me.

  “For what?” I wanted to know.

  “I’ll bet you never did this in high school, Kimmy!” With that, Mac drove through the gates of Northford High, raced across the front parking lot, braked for the speed bumps, and made it to the football field with the lights off. Still cruising at a decent speed, he drove the car onto the grass, up to the fence, and stopped at the chain link gate. In seconds, he was out of the car. He pulled something from his pocket, and I saw a small light come on. Mac held the tiny flashlight in his mouth as he picked the lock. Once undone, he held onto the padlock, opened the gate, and came back to the car. Behind the wheel again, he drove us through, stopped, and got out to relock the gate.

  “Now for some fun.” The next thing I knew, we were crossing the football field to the second gate, where Mac once again replaced the padlock when we were on the other side of the fence. We traveled down the gravel track to the maintenance garage, and from there, we followed a dirt road that ended in the woods.

  “Hold on, Kimmy.” Mac navigated the bumpy, narrow trail that hugged the line of trees. Five minutes later, we came to a clearing and I could see lights ahead. It looked like the highway.

  “How did you know this was here?” I asked Mac. He gave me a mischievous grin in the darkness.

  “Hometown advantage. We used to go joy-riding here when they were putting the highway in when I was a senior. Many is the night I used to cut through like this, before they fenced in the football field. We used to hold drag races here on Friday and Saturday nights.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised to see this side of Mac. “How did you learn to pick a padlock?”

  “That’s another story altogether,” he told me. “Maybe I’ll get to it one of these days. Right now, we have to get the hell out of here.”

  Mac rolled the car to down the incline and onto the side of the highway, slowly getting up to speed. When there was a break in traffic, he hit the accelerator and pulled into the slow lane.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “We get ourselves to the airport,” Mac said.

  Chapter Nine —

  “Why are we going to the airport?” I asked. Mac was easily doing eighty miles an hour as we took the exit to pick up 395 going north.

  “I need to ditch this car,” he explained. As we left one highway for the next, completely changing direction, I noticed Mac was intently watching the rear view mirror.

  “Something wrong?” I inquired. The gun was still in my hands. It felt warm to the touch now, and I almost forgot it was there.

  “No, I just like to make sure.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Once or twice,” he acknowledged. Mac seemed electrified by the challenge.

  Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the U-Park-It lot. Mac took a ticket from the self-serve kiosk, swung to the left, and parked in the closest empty space he could find.

  “I’ll take that,” he said, indicating the weapon. I put it carefully in his waiting hand. “Come on. We have to m
ove, Kimmy.”

  Mac reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a holster, which he fastened to his ankle before inserting the gun. He covered it up with his pant leg.

  “You don’t really think you’re going to get on an airplane with that, do you?”

  “We’re not flying out of here, Kimmy. We’re driving.”

  “Oh.” With that, Mac took my hand. “Think you can hustle your bustle?”

  We took off at a trot, down Route 10. My pocketbook felt heavy with the laptop tucked inside. Mac kept up a steady pace. I looked ahead, unsure of where we were going. We passed restaurants, an off-track betting parlor, a billiards hall, and a ten-pin bowling alley, before we came to Ovation Car Rental. We ran through the gates and up to the self checkin desk. Mac selected his car of choice, ran his credit card through the scanner, and the receipt popped out seconds later. Then we made a mad dash to Row 34 to grab the black Jeep Cherokee.

  “Hop in,” he directed me. I stepped up and slid into the seat beside him. “I had hoped I would never have to tell you this, but circumstances warrant it. Kimmy, what did Mae tell you about the work I do?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “Just that you work in finance.”

  “Well, here’s the thing. I do a little more than work in finance.” Mac headed into the city. We were no longer speeding and I could see that he was less tense.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Promise me you won’t freak out.”

  “Now there’s a guarantee that I will, if I ever heard one!” I couldn’t imagine what he had to tell me. He cleared his throat, gave a cough, and dropped a bombshell on me.

  “Tom and I have something in common. We’re both in the intelligence business.”

  “You’re a spy?” Even as I heard myself say those words, they sounded like something from a movie.

  “Technically, I’m more of a law enforcement guy. I work for Interpol. But I handle financial cases.”

  “There’s no KLPG Financial?”

  “No, the company exists. They actually handle international funds. I’m under contract, as part of my cover. That means I actually handle some accounts, so I look legitimate.”

  “Oh,” I sighed. I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck and run over. Everything I believed was true had been false, right down to the boy I had known all my life. “Where are we going?”

  “To a secure government building. I want to keep you safe, Kimmy, until the bad guys find what they’re looking for and leave.”

  “You think they’ll leave?”

  “Sure. The only reason they broke into your home was to find the items Tom had marked. We still don’t know his real name, by the way.” Mac turned right on Downey Street. “We think they beat up Jim because they assumed he was helping you and Tom, so he knew where the items were hidden. We intercepted the moving van on the highway, examined the items, and put our guys on the truck. It should pull into Jenkins Beach at about two today. The men are going to load everything into my boathouse and take off. We expect the bad guys to just go in and take what they need. Since we already have the numbers off the pieces, we’ve already located the bank account in question. It was just a matter of taking the router number off the charm bracelet.”

  “I don’t understand, Mac.” I looked at him as he drove. He no longer seemed apprehensive or nervous.

  “The charm bracelet contained a bank routing number for the account Tom used to get paid for stealing the simulation training program technology and other technology thefts. Judging from the amount of money that seems to be in the account, he’s been paid five times. There is more than half a million dollars in the account.”

  “Holy mother of pearl!” I was stunned. How could any of this be real? One former boyfriend was an identity thief, a spy, and a murder victim. My childhood friend was a secret agent, working for an international law enforcement agency. I’m a cookbook author, I reminded myself. I tweak recipes. I cook. I pay my bills on time and I always return my library books. “Where are we going?”

  “Federal building.”

  We spent the next ten minutes in silence as Mac wove his way through the city. At Washington, he turned left, went half a block, and pulled up to a garage that was unmarked. Thirty seconds later, the automatic door opened and we drove through. Two floors down, Mac parked in a space by the entrance to the stairwell.

  Ten minutes later, we were in a windowless room, gathered around monitors that were aimed at Adelaide’s house, Mac’s driveway, and the boathouse in Jenkins Beach. It was going on three in the morning.

  “We don’t expect any action for several hours,” said an older man in a golf shirt and shorts. “Why don’t you guys go get some rest. We’ll call you if anything happens.”

  Mac led me down a long hallway to Room 806. Opening the door, he stepped aside.

  “Welcome to the Fed Bed and Breakfast,” he grinned. “Lumpy beds, coffee that stinks, and stale donuts, but at least no one will try to kill you while you sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” I told him. My mind was moving at ninety miles an hour, reliving every minute of the last several hours.

  “Come here,” said Mac, sitting on the edge of one of the bunk beds. “And watch your head.”

  I did, lying back and letting him hug me as the swirl of conflicting emotions and terror settled slowly. As we lay on that narrow bed, I listened to the rhythmic beat of his heart, my ear on his chest. He didn’t speak. He didn’t try to tell me everything would be okay, that I was safe. He just held me into I slipped into a dreamless sleep.

  Just after nine the next morning, the door opened and a young woman popped her head into the room.

  “Mr. Tweedie, Mr. Donovan said to tell you six men arrived at the house in Northford with a truck. They removed boxes from the house and put them in the truck. We have a team on the road, so we’ll know where they are at all times.”

  “Thanks,” Mac said, sitting up on the bunk. “We’ll be there shortly.”

  “I’ll tell him.” She shut the door on her way out.

  “They stole my boxes?” I sat up quickly, outraged. “Why?”

  “They’re still looking for the items with the numbers. Once they unpack them, the chances are they will either steal them or leave them behind.”

  “Why can’t you just arrest them?” I demanded. “Don’t let them have the information!”

  “Kim, we need them to complete the transaction. We know something went wrong and they killed the fake Tom. They have a reason for chasing down the items, and we need to let it happen.” Mac rubbed my shoulder. It was small consolation. I felt violated. “Come on. Let’s go have some lousy coffee and a big sugar rush from the gooey donuts.”

  When we got to the conference room, it was crowded. There were several people sitting at the table, all working on laptops. There were others, making phone calls, sitting in chairs in corners. On the center of the table was a box of coffee and empty paper cups, along with a tray of bagels and spreads. I poured Mac a cup of coffee and carried it over to where he was busy with a group working at a board fixed to the wall. They were diagramming a operational plan.

  “Thanks,” he nodded to me. I went back and got myself a blueberry bagel, spread some cream cheese on it, and poured myself some coffee, before sitting down. A young woman approached me.

  “Hi. I’m Julie Amano. I understand you have a list of the contents of your cartons,” said a friendly young woman, taking a seat next to me. “Any chance I can get a copy of that? We’re going to need it when the recovery team goes in.”

  Once I got done with that, I was at loose ends. Julie took me down the hall to an office where an administrative assistant handed me a new toothbrush and travel-size tube of toothpaste.

  Mac checked with me about ten, suggesting that I keep myself busy working on my cookbook. One of the other agents lent me a power cord, so I found myself a quiet corner and, after plugging in my laptop, got to work surfing for recipes. While I was at it,
I decided to do some research on Jenkins Beach. I was surprised when Mac announced that the group was sending out for lunch. I ordered a salad with grilled chicken and an ice tea.

  By one-thirty, the group was on alert, waiting for the truck to arrive at Mac’s house. It was fifteen minutes out when four men arrived in a pair of black SUV’s. They parked down on Acorn Lane and walked the short distance to Mac’s house. Ringing the doorbell several times, they seemed satisfied that no one was home. Disappearing into the bushes around the house, they waited. When the truck arrived, it backed into the driveway. The driver unlocked the boathouse double doors and swung them open. The other two men in the truck jumped down from the cab and all three men made short work of unloading the boxes and furniture Barry sent up from Belle Haven. My sofa and my favorite arm chair were wrapped in plastic. They were carefully tucked into the far corner, along with end tables, my dining room set, and my bedroom set. The boxes were carefully unloaded and stacked in a separate area. It looked to me like the federal agents were trying to make things easy for the bad guys, so as to minimize damage to my possessions. As soon as the last box was off the truck, the driver closed the double doors of the boat house, locked them, and made a big show of striding up to the house and tucking the key under the mat in front of the door. The other two men rolled down the door of the truck and waited in the cab. They were barely out of the driveway before the bad guys were scurrying out into the open.

  An hour later, they had found what they were looking for, and we watched as the doll and the music box were carried away.

  “Here comes the hard part,” Mac said softly into my ear, as the group dispersed. “Where do they go? And will it lead us to the Robacher family?”

  Chapter Ten —

  At six o’clock, a team of investigators found the brutalized bodies of the missing Robachers, under a blue tarp, at an abandoned farm property by the state forest. They had died shortly after they were reported missing. Everyone on the federal task force was grim-faced after the discovery. It appeared that the Robacher children and Bridget were tortured in an effort to force Tom to cooperate. His wife’s body also bore signs of sexual assault, in addition to burns and cuts.