Emotions aside, the smart thing would have been to trust him. He’d rescued her and she knew he was an investigator. Protecting people was his job. Knowing that didn’t change how she felt. She couldn’t involve him. She didn’t know what she was up against and neither did he. Her father was more than likely dead. The thought of that again brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t jeopardize anyone else no matter who they were or what they did for a living. The only way to stop this was to uncover whatever it was that her father claimed was hidden in the small town where she was headed. She needed to go into her father’s email, which he had shared the password for, just in case. But there’d been little time and no computer easily accessible, at least so she’d thought at the time. Her mind hadn’t been clear then. The email was important, she knew that. It was the first thing she’d check when she arrived.
“Just in case something happens to me,” her father had said after giving her the password to his email.
Something had happened. She wiped away a tear. The only good that had happened in the last hours had been the return of her memory.
“Miss,” an older woman said in a muted, nighttime voice as she stretched her arm across the aisle and held out a small packet of tissue. “You look troubled.”
“I’m fine,” Ava said, glancing briefly at the woman who had gotten on the bus at the last stop over an hour ago. The last thing she needed was attention of any kind.
The woman shook her head as if she were reading between the lines and seeing everything that Ava was trying to hide. “It will get better. No hardship lasts forever. You’ll see.”
“Thank you,” she managed but the woman’s compassion had almost caused her to break. She couldn’t allow that to happen. She had to get it together. It was all on her and in getting to a small town in the middle of nowhere. To save her father’s reputation she needed to be there. But to be any help at all, she needed to get it together as quickly as possible.
Two hours later, she was thanking the Fates that brought strangers into your life. For the woman turned out to be a lifesaver. Her name was Anne Johnson and somehow she made the fear, without ever knowing that it existed, manageable. She talked about her family, of mundane things—her sister who was waiting for her. Her voice was the kind that was soothing, a Southern drawl that was filled with life experience. She spoke briefly of her four grown children.
“All of them older than you,” she said. “Six grandchildren so far.”
The conversation went on—one-sided as it had been from the beginning. Eventually it faded as the night thinned, and as dawn broke they reached the stop that was Anne’s. She felt a sinking feeling in her gut as Anne got up, grabbed her overstuffed flowered carryall and reached over to squeeze Ava’s shoulder. Her smile was wide in her dark, round, rather plain face.
“You’ll be okay,” she assured. “And if you’re not, you know where to find me.”
Where to find me.
The thought that she might have to do that. That she might need Anne’s help. That fear found her and rode with her the last miles until a small town in Texas glimmered in the distance, offering hope with a good dose of fear.
Chapter Fifteen
Faisal put a call in to Aaron Detrick, an undercover operative with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP. He’d gotten to know Aaron when he’d had a case over three years ago that had involved a suspect crossing into Canada. Aaron and he had worked each side of the border to keep his client safe. That work had provided him some insight into the Canadian system and a fantastic contact in law enforcement.
He left a message for Aaron to give him a call.
Ten minutes later the phone rang.
“Aaron,” he said. At any other time he would have been pleased to connect with him again. It was only distance and busy lives that had kept them from becoming better friends.
“You had a request in about Darrell Chan?” Aaron asked after they’d put in an abbreviated version of pleasantries. “I assume this is a secure line,” he said without question.
“You know it,” Faisal replied. “I was wondering if there’s any record on him. Anything at all.”
“Surprised that you ask. We’ve been trying to tag him for a long time. The guy is strange. Not in a personality type of way but in the way he dances between good and bad. He’s made millions in Canadian real estate, is one of those types who’s seen as a good guy, but is actually someone who will kill if you get in his way. The force,” he said, referring to the RCMP, where he served as a detective sergeant, “has been trying to nail him for half a decade now. But he’s slippery. He runs a mega real estate enterprise. He immigrated with money and has made another fortune in Vancouver. I expect you know the details of that.”
“No. Actually, I’m just starting to get an idea of what he’s about,” Faisal replied.
“In the past he’s run into a few glitches in business, shall we say. Deals that aren’t quite what they seem. In two cases that we know of for sure, the people suspected of the crime against him have died. Not at his hands and not by anyone we can pin. There’s a widely held belief within the force that it’s the work of hired killers.”
“Hired by Chan?”
“That’s what I’d like to say we know but there’s no evidence linking the killings to him. The way things came down, when you apply logic—well, in my opinion, it points straight at him. Without evidence, he continues to get away with murder. And he does it by hiring hit men, basically scum, but murderers nonetheless.”
“Dangerous only when crossed.”
“Exactly,” Aaron said. “So what’s going on there?”
Faisal explained what he knew. He told him about the calls that Chan had made to Dan Adams. “There’s no evidence to say there’s any wrongdoing,” he was quick to add.
“Except for the fact that Dan Adams is missing. Of course, that’s not saying anything,” Aaron said. “I ran a CPIC on Chan, like you asked, and it came up clean,” he said. He referred to the Canadian Police Information Centre’s database. The database held criminal record information on Canadian citizens. This wasn’t the first time that Faisal had asked for such a favor.
A few minutes later, he hung up.
Later with the lights of Fort Lauderdale spread out like a rich blanket beneath him, in another penthouse suite much like the one he left in Miami, Faisal checked the weather report. That’s when things went from bad to worse. For now it appeared that the coast of Florida might get the brunt of Hurricane Dexter.
* * *
Tuesday, June 14—6:30 a.m.
AVA TOOK A deep breath as the bus passed the sign for Tristan, Texas, population 2,001. It would be a relief to get off the bus. But arriving at her destination was overwhelming. Her stomach heaved as she faced what felt like the moment of truth. She tried a trick she’d learned a long time ago, diverting her thoughts to something inane. She wondered who the “one” in the population sign was. Was it the most recent birth in town, maybe the only one this year? But the lighthearted thought didn’t change her mood or the dark reason she was here. Once the bus came to a stop, she stood up, feeling underdressed and underprepared. She was darn close to helpless. This was the last place she knew her father planned to visit before he left for that fateful yacht trip that... She wiped the corner of her eye with her forefinger. She couldn’t think of the fact that her father had more than likely died at sea and his reputation was about to be destroyed if she wasn’t successful. It all seemed so surreal, everything that had happened these last few days. She felt like she had been moving in a cloud.
She remembered what her father had said on the yacht about Ben. He’d told her how he had backed Ben financially in a bid to help him get a footing in a real estate business. Ben was a man he’d met through his church, a man who was down on his luck or so he’d thought until he’d discovered that Ben was l
ying to him.
She grabbed her bag and dispensed with her thoughts. She needed to focus as she took her first look at her new temporary residence. The bus depot at Tristan was nothing like the one in Miami or any of those that had followed. It was small and worn, the paint peeling from the wall of the waiting area. As Ava stepped off the bus, the first thing that hit her was the heat. The temperature had soared since yesterday. Barren land with scrub brush stretched out to the north and south. In front of her were the worn edges of Tristan. The sign for a Flying J truck stop was visible about a half block away, along with a couple of motel signs. When she looked behind her, she could see a stretch of dry, desert-like prairie. She knew that the answer to what had happened on that yacht lay in this little community in a faraway corner of Texas.
She needed money. What Faisal had given her, what she’d taken—guilt made her pause—was almost gone. She needed more. This time she’d acquire it through a job. That meant short-term, menial labor.
She swung the mostly empty canvas bag over her shoulder and stepped out of the station. She blinked as the sun beat down on the blacktop. Her view of the town from here wasn’t much. Trailers crowded together on one side. Commercial buildings with wire-fenced yards, cars in one, tires in the other. A number of motels just ahead, all low-rise, peeling paint, low-end. It was exactly what she needed. She headed toward the last in the row.
“This isn’t going to be the Marriott,” she murmured to herself as she remembered vacations her father had taken her on. He’d always been generous that way, taking her on no-expense-spared holidays throughout her life. She shook her head. She lengthened her stride. The sooner she got settled, the sooner she could help her father. Hopefully save him, she thought, clinging to the hope that he lived. But the odds of that were slim. Now there might well be only her and Ben, the man who wanted her dead. If she wanted to live, she had to find the evidence that he’d kill to hide.
Chapter Sixteen
Tristan, Texas
Tuesday, June 14—9:30 a.m.
As Ava stepped into the quiet confines of Tristan’s only library, she was hit by the haunting edge of nostalgia. The smell of books reminded her of academia and her career that had yet to begin. It reminded her of her past studies, of everything that in the last few days had seemed lost. In fact, in the face of her new reality, they were lost. There was only the nightmare that she somehow had to wade through without getting anyone else hurt. Despite that thought there was something...someone, actually, who emerged out of the ashes of pain—Faisal. Ironically, now when she needed him most, she’d turned her back on him. But she’d had no choice. She’d cared about him too much. She’d thought about him too often through the last years when school had occupied her life in a way she knew few other periods of her life could. It was strange how psychology had turned her into an old soul with a knowledge that someone her age should not have. Again, she was diverting herself and her thoughts, and ultimately her need for Faisal. She’d never forgotten him and now she’d run, leaving him behind in the hopes of keeping him safe.
She pulled her thoughts from the past and from Faisal with difficulty. She had to face the present and the unknown if she were to stop whatever evil had taken out her father and could very well hurt others she loved. She had two names. She knew Ben Whyte had tried to kill her father. She also knew that the evidence for the land deal that implicated her father was filed here in Tristan—at least that’s what her father had told her. The second name was Darrell Chan; she knew nothing about the man, except that her father had said in the event of tragedy to tell the authorities about him. She had—she’d told Faisal. She regretted that. It endangered him by giving him another degree of involvement.
She pushed the thought from her mind. On a back table a stack of books sat beside a thin, gray-haired woman who glanced up once from the computer terminal and then returned her attention to the computer.
“Can I help you?” The librarian smiled and Ava tried not to stare at the woman’s thin lips, which were generously coated with red lipstick and stood out like a slap in the face. Her hair, bobbed at the ears, was a no-nonsense cut. That look clashed with the lipstick’s attempt at glamour but her blue eyes smiled with a vibrant youthfulness.
If her problems had been simpler, the look and the attitude would have made Ava feel at home. As it was, she was on edge, well aware that she had little time. There was so much to do and it was already midmorning. She still had to find a job. The twenty-five dollars she had left weren’t going to carry her far and she needed to eat. Her stomach growled as she thought of food. She’d had little of that. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter had been her only purchase this morning and the groceries were tucked in the canvas bag over her arm.
Ava Adams had disappeared in favor of Anne Brown. It was a plain name that suited her current situation and had been inspired by the woman who had been so kind to her on the bus.
“I’d like to buy some computer time.”
“No charge,” the librarian said. “The town is trying to get more people online. The locals are notoriously cheap and sometimes I think that half of them might really believe in the rise of the machine. The Terminator, loved that movie,” she said in response to what Ava knew was a slightly blank look. “Look, sorry, too much information.” She gestured to two terminals, one that was occupied, the other free. “Help yourself. Call me if you need assistance.”
“I will, thank you,” Ava said. She went to the terminal, which was in a far corner of the library away from both the librarian and the woman who seemed to be the only other patron in the library.
She pretty much knew that she was fishing in the dark. But she had nothing else but the knowledge that this place was the beginning of it all. What beginning that might be she didn’t know. Hopefully, there was some clue to it all in her father’s affairs. She opened his private email account. She’d told her father often enough to kick the email and move into more secure messaging methods but he’d been old-school that way.
He’d hinted that he was ready to take her advice two weeks ago. That was when he’d given his account password to her. It had been a casual mention, as though saying nothing would ever happen but he wanted to tell her anyway. He’d said that if something happened to him, she should access his email. At the time she’d thought that it was only because he was close to hitting a landmark birthday, shortly after hers, and he was feeling his own mortality. Now it meant so much more.
As she clicked through the various emails, she felt less like she was intruding into her father’s private life than she’d thought she would. There were more business-related than private emails. They were emails concerning various meeting results, a response from a birthday greeting to a woman she knew had acted as his assistant.
Five minutes in she was frowning as a name kept reappearing. Darrell Chan had sent her father a number of emails in regard to ranch land he had purchased in the area.
The correspondence was antagonistic, about a complaint that didn’t seem quite clear. They were messages that seemed mired in secrecy as if there was a code being used. None of it, including the land mentioned, made any sense. Her father was a man who had been involved in a variety of businesses in his day. But he’d always had a particular loathing for real estate ventures. It had something to do with his own childhood growing up with a father who was what he liked to call a slumlord. As a result, or so he claimed, he had no use for investing in real estate. Therefore, land transactions weren’t something her father would be involved in—until now, apparently.
A shiver of foreboding ran down her spine. She’d never felt so alone. And for a second and then two she let her mind wander to a place of safety and that took her immediately to Faisal. She wished she could talk to him. More than that, despite her actions, she wished he were here. She remembered the way he had looked at her the last time she’d seen him. She could have melted into
his arms but she hadn’t acted on that or even admitted it. In truth, she hadn’t been in any condition to act on such feelings. She pushed the thoughts from her mind. What she felt for Faisal had no place here.
She opened another email. There Darrell clearly stated that he wanted his money back. It seemed that he was beginning to believe that he’d been duped. She scrolled down. There was nothing else, no further correspondence. Nothing sent by her father, nothing received. And the date of the last email was the same as that fateful night on the yacht.
“What did you get involved in, Dad?” she whispered. Whatever it was, Ben Whyte and that ill-fated night on the yacht were now looking like they might be the climax of a deal gone terribly wrong.
A few minutes later she closed the account and after asking the librarian where land deeds were registered, she was directed to a small office down the street. A half hour later she left that office realizing that this was much worse than she imagined.
“Fai, what would you do?” she murmured as if he were by her side. Her father’s name was signed on the transfer of the very land that Chan had insisted he’d been sold. Worse, the signature in her father’s name was not his, it was forged. She was sure of that. She’d seen her father’s signature often enough. Now, she clutched the copies of two land transactions that the clerk had given her. She was exhausted and she still had to fulfill her last promise to her father—to stay alive.
Chapter Seventeen
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Tuesday, June 14—11:00 a.m.
Faisal’s phone buzzed.
“I’ve been digging into land deals in rural Texas,” Barb said. “Like you asked.”
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