She was lying. Those cheeks gave her away. Laying low during the day and traveling at night made it harder for someone to follow you. She was definitely running from something. Hopefully, whatever it was wouldn’t make matters worse.
“When something stinks and the source isn’t evident, you have to check all the corners and look under each and every rock,” he challenged. “I’m just doing my job. Where did you get the gun?”
“From Callaghan. Sometimes a woman needs to be able to protect herself.”
“That’s what self-defense courses are for. Can you really use it?”
She sneered. “Do you want to try your luck and test me?”
“No, thanks.” He chuckled. “I’ll take your word for it—for now. I may not be planning to father children, but I’ve grown quite fond of that part of my anatomy.”
“No doubt, like most men, you think with it, too,” she mumbled.
So, the lady didn’t like men. No doubt some bastard had hurt her, and she was blaming his whole damn gender for it. Well, the last thing he wanted was to get involved with any woman. He had no problem keeping his distance, but if she thought she was going to call the shots . . .
“How did Callaghan die?” she asked.
Where had that come from?
“I told you I don’t know.”
“Not good enough. You know more than you’re saying. I can smell a liar a mile away, and at the moment, you reek.”
“And you always tell the truth?” he asked. She’d lied at least once so far.
She paled. “I try. Now, ignore what you must think of as my delicate sensibilities, Lieutenant, and tell me how Callaghan died.”
“Call me Mike. We’re going to be together for a while.”
Scowling, she shook her head. “I sincerely doubt that.”
He shrugged. “Then you would be wrong. Honestly, no one gave me the actual cause of death,” he admitted. “According to the medical examiner, the man was tortured—his fingertips were cut off and electrodes were attached to his, eh, more sensitive areas.”
Cringing, she nodded.
“I see. I didn’t know the sergeant well. He’d come out to see me once a week to bring food and whatever else I needed. He had a wife and a four-month-old son.”
Mike shook his head. “That’s a shame.” And another reason why he’d never get involved with a woman again. His run-in with Zabat’s boys last week was proof death could come at any time from anywhere, and since he hadn’t seen it coming . . . a solitary life was a lonely one, and he wouldn’t mourn another loved one, just as no one would cry for him.
They finished breakfast without another word, although all she did was drink her tea. Once they were done, Mike carried the bowls to the sink.
“Since you made the meal, I’ll clean up.”
“Thanks. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get showered and dressed. When I get back, we can lay down some ground rules, because like it or not, you will not make any decisions about my welfare without my input. This is my life we’re talking about. I deserve a say.”
“Fair enough,” he answered, despite the fact she was about to be the biggest pain in the ass he’d dealt with in months. “You can have your say, but like it or not, the last word’s going to be mine. Make no mistake. I’m in charge here, and that isn’t going to change.”
Her face crimson, she turned and propelled herself down the hall.
He sighed. This whole damn mess was puzzling. Alexa O’Brien was the key to putting Zabat away for good, and Mike would make damn sure she lived to take the stand whether she liked his methods or not. And if he helped catch Doucet’s mysterious magician as well? That would be a bonus.
Chapter Five
How dare he talk to her like that. This was her life. She’d almost died for her independence, and she would be damned if she would give it up without a fight. He might be bigger and stronger, but he wasn’t going to bully her. She was down at the moment, but she wasn’t out. If she accepted his help, it would be on her terms.
Scowling, mumbling words that would’ve earned her a mouthful of dish soap as a child, Alexa hurried into the master bedroom she’d claimed as her own and closed the door. The white pine room with its matching furniture, gingham curtains, and blue quilt-covered bed had become her haven. She’d convinced herself she was safe here, and all the time, she’d been in the killers’ sights, right smack in the middle of the crosshairs.
When Doucet had called Thursday, he hadn’t mentioned any threats or dangers. He’d simply asked how she and Callaghan were getting along and when she expected him again. She rubbed her temples. Now that she thought about the call, the only one Doucet had made in the four months she’d been here, it had been odd, which meant Mike was probably telling the truth.
Moving the chair over a few feet, she placed her gun on the nightstand and grabbed the battered doll off the bed, cradling the stuffed toy, the only thing she had left from her father and the happy childhood torn from her when he’d died. Six-year-olds weren’t supposed to be the adults in the family.
She’d thought Benji lost to her when she’d awakened in the hospital, and it had been a wonderful surprise when Sister Gabriella had placed the doll on her bedside table in the convent’s infirmary where she’d been sent to recover. Once she’d agreed to testify, Doucet had taken over. She’d been declared dead and everything she’d had with her had been returned to Richard—her car, her backpack, even “her” ashes, which had actually belonged to a transient who’d died a few weeks before. For some reason, the forensic techs had forgotten to return the doll to the car, and Doucet had opted to send it to her. No doubt he’d expected her to leave it at the convent to be donated to the orphanage, but it was the only thing she had left from a time when life was good and she wouldn’t part with it—not then, not now, not ever. Richard had hated it, claiming a woman her age shouldn’t have dolls. It was probably the only time she’d had the nerve to stand up to him. Of course, she’d kept Benji out of sight just in case.
“Damn it,” she said aloud. “It would be nice to have someone else to talk to for a day or so, but the last thing I need is a guy with a hero complex who insists on being in charge of everything. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’” she mimicked his words. “Sorry, my ass. If he thinks I’ll put up with that, he has another think coming, not me.”
Her voice echoed in the empty room, reminding her she wasn’t alone anymore. The rap on the door made her jump.
“Yes?” she called, huffing out a breath.
“Did you call me?” he asked.
“No. You must be imagining things; I haven’t said a word,” she lied. “Maybe it was the wind. It can sound almost human at times. My Irish grandmother would’ve said you’ve heard the banshees calling.”
“Maybe.” But he didn’t sound convinced. “Listen, I need to go out and check the perimeter. I had a quick look on my way in, but I want to survey the back and see how vulnerable we are here. If you’re decent, can you come out and lock the door behind me, or is there a key I can use?”
Straightening his miniature baseball uniform, she put the doll down on the bed once more and opened the door.
“Callaghan had the only key,” she said, wheeling herself down the hall ahead of Mike.
Ten minutes later, safely locked inside, Alexa returned to her bedroom. Absently, her fingers traced the slim scar on her face. Like it or not, she was stuck with the dictatorial lieutenant until this nightmare was over, but she wasn’t going to take any of his orders lying down. When she’d escaped from Richard, she’d sworn never to let any man run roughshod over her again. If she came off as a bitch for wanting to control her destiny, so be it.
“I’m stronger now . . . not so easy to fool. He won’t push me around. No one will.”
She would stand on her own two feet—well, as well as she could.
Locking her wheelchair, she reached for the closed cuff crutches Callaghan had brought her last month. The forearm crutches had a flexible cuff that ea
sily wrapped around her upper arm and provided more stability than the usual axilla crutches and greater use of her hands when she stood still. With them, she could move much faster than she had before. She wasn’t as helpless as Mike thought she was. While the two of them were like oil and water—he probably wasn’t any happier with her than she was with him—having him around would motivate her to work faster to get back on her feet, if only to get rid of him.
Standing, she moved away from her chair and walked into the modern en suite bathroom, which, like the top-of-the-line physio equipment in the back room, seemed strangely out of place. She removed the heavy housecoat Sister Gabriella had given her, her favorite item of her hand-me-down clothes, and turned on the water in the large walk-in shower. Sitting on the seat inside the glass-enclosed stall, she let the water pound down on her as she shed the shields she’d kept in place since the lieutenant’s arrival.
Bitter tears ran down her cheeks, mixing with the hot water. Todd Callaghan had been a decent man, one who didn’t deserve to die in such a horrible fashion. The man had understood her, had never suggested she couldn’t take care of herself. He’d visited every Wednesday, but he was hardly the loquacious type, staying only long enough to unload the groceries and put them away. In the first six weeks, other than showing her quickly how things worked, she doubted he’d said ten words to her. If she asked him about the news, he would say, “More of the same. Nothing to worry about. You need to focus on getting well.” The only time he’d said anything personal was when she’d asked about his Christmas plans and he told her he would be visiting his in-laws with his wife and infant son. He’d never even mentioned their names. That was strange. What father wouldn’t want to brag about his new baby boy?
What if no one had found Callaghan’s body? It wouldn’t have taken her long to run out of wood for the stove, and she was hardly in any shape to chop her own. With the power out, eventually the generator would stop working, and she didn’t even know if there was more propane nearby to refuel it. But the biggest problem would’ve been food and water. The well relied on electric power, but the water wasn’t potable, so she used bottles. Even if she’d managed to get down the stairs on her own, without a vehicle, she wouldn’t have been able to replenish her supplies. As far as having a phone, she could probably make a 9-1-1 call, but since she didn’t know where she was and couldn’t give her name—Alexa O’Brien was dead—she would’ve been well and truly screwed.
For the first time since her escape, the walls were closing in on her.
What she’d believed to be a safe haven was a gilded cage, and she was the bird trapped inside. If she hadn’t realized she was a prisoner here before, she did now. Callaghan hadn’t been her protector; he’d been her jailor, but why would Doucet and the RCMP want to imprison her? Mike’s term handler was the right one. Callaghan had handled her nicely, imprisoning her in a coop of her own choosing.
Running away from Richard hadn’t solved anything. In fact, it had just made things worse. The goddamn godfather, for heaven’s sake. She’d seen enough gangster movies and read enough newspaper articles to know exactly how treacherous those men could be. The image of them standing there, guns pressed against the back of the heads of the men kneeling before them, was clear in her mind.
Zabat? He had to be the one in black, the man with the beard. When he’d looked over his shoulder at her, she’d thought he’d recognized her, but that was impossible. He’d said something in Greek just before she’d been shot. While she could visualize the scene right down to the smells and sounds, she couldn’t recall exactly what he’d said. Why hadn’t the chief inspector told her the truth about those men?
Probably because he was afraid I would turn tail and run.
Knowing what she did now, he would’ve been right.
She sniffled. Crying wouldn’t help now any more than it had in the past. From the looks of him, Mike Delorme wasn’t going to back down, but neither was she. Right now, she needed his help to escape from this prison. For the moment, she would play nice, but once she was safe, it would be adios, amigo.
Feeling a little more in control, she washed her hair, scrubbed her body, and turned off the shower. She would get through this the same way she’d gotten through the last two years—one day at a time.
Twenty minutes later, her long hair held in place by a complicated braid that hid the edge of her face and the scar, she strapped on her bustier TLSO brace and donned her baggy jeans and the navy sweater she’d knitted herself. After spritzing on her favorite perfume from the small atomizer she’d found in the bathroom when she’d arrived, she moistened her lips with petroleum jelly, shoved her gun into the right-hand side of the waistband of her jeans, pulled the sweater down to hide it, and reached for her crutches. She was ready to battle—not that she wanted to spar, but she wasn’t going to let Mike push her around. Leaving her wheelchair behind, she walked slowly but surely back into the chalet’s main room.
She hadn’t been there more than a minute or so when Mike knocked.
“It’s me. We have another Hokey Pokey lesson coming up.”
Unlocking the door, she stepped back to let him enter, watching as he removed the snow-covered jacket and hat. He frowned.
“It’s not any nicer out there, but it doesn’t seem as cold. That could mean this crap will end sooner than expected.”
“Is it necessary to keep using a password?” she asked. Why had she chosen something so juvenile?
“I think it is. We know someone’s on his or her way here. No sense in letting our guard down.”
“Her way?” Alexa knew her eyes were the size of quarters. “The killer could be a woman?”
“Why not? Throughout history, there have been any number of female assassins. It was a woman who brought down Marat, the leader of the French Revolution, and if I remember correctly, a woman hanged in connection with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I’ve met more than one woman working undercover that I wouldn’t turn my back on, but it might not be a bad idea to change the password. Any ideas?”
She shook her head. “I was a kindergarten teacher. Cloak and dagger isn’t really my style. What would you suggest?”
He walked over to the bookcase, grabbed a French-English dictionary off the shelf, and flipped through the pages. “What about this?” He pointed to the word chaud, which meant “hot.”
“I gather you don’t speak much French, but this shouldn’t be too hard to remember. I’ll say il fait chaud. Given the weather out there, no one would expect to hear that today.”
She nodded and yelped when the lights went out, plunging the room into an eerie grayness despite the fact it wasn’t yet noon.
“Maudite merde. Sorry. Gut reaction. I guess the power’s out,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Frankly, I’m surprised you had any. The snow’s wet and heavy, and with that wind . . . It was just a matter of time before the lines came down.”
“The telephone died yesterday afternoon before the snow even started. The panel over there has the switch for the generator. It’s propane powered, and since the tank was filled in November and I haven’t used it, we should be fine until we’re ready to leave. Do you really think Zabat would send a woman after me?” The idea bothered her far more than it should. Not trusting men was second nature to her, but if she had to worry about women, too, she’d never stop looking over her shoulder.
“When I was undercover, he didn’t have a woman working for him in that capacity, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t hire one if he wanted to, and if he isn’t the one in charge of this . . . ”
He walked over to the panel and flipped the switch. Almost instantly, the lights were on again, but the gloomy, tense atmosphere persevered, and she shivered.
Half an hour later, Alexa tried to focus on her drawing of the buntings who fed from the fruit on the crab apple tree beside the house while Mike walked around the room, checking out the various decorative items in the chalet, growing more agitated by the minute. Th
at didn’t help her own disquiet. In fact, it grated on her nerves.
“I’ve never seen crutches like these,” he said, reaching for one of them.
If this was the olive branch he was offering to ease the tension, she would accept it.
She shrugged. “I have the other kind, too, but these are much better. In time, I’ll probably only need one—eventually, none.”
He removed the elastic holding his hair back and ran his hands through his loosened hair. “Still have a bit of a headache—a remnant of the fight I lost.” He rubbed his temples. “This place is in fantastic shape, but it’s a frigging museum. Doesn’t it creep you out? I keep expecting some old woman to offer me tea.” He grimaced and scratched his head. “That didn’t come out right.”
“I know what you mean. When I first got here, I found it strange, but I’ve grown used to it.”
“Seriously? That phone’s got to be seventy-five years old. It’s hard to believe it still works, and a VHS player? I haven’t seen one of those in at least fifteen years. It’s like stepping back in time. I was looking for a radio, but I can’t find one. Is it in your room?”
“There’s one, but it doesn’t work,” she answered, focusing on her sketch and not the man pacing the floor. Was he always this unsettled? “It functions as an alarm clock but can’t pick up any stations. I’ve tried.”
“What about an iPod or even a CD player?” he asked, his eyebrows creased. “Right now, you’ve got the wind, not that it’s in the least bit comforting, but the rest of the time, it has to be as silent as a grave. That would drive me insane.”
“I’ve gotten used to it, I guess. There are some jazz tapes over there.” She indicated the shelf in the corner.
Richard loved jazz, and while she preferred anything else but rap, since it was all she had, she’d grown to enjoy it—well, most of it. There was still a song or two that set her teeth on edge. She wouldn’t admit it, but sometimes the quiet did get to her. That was probably why she spoke to herself so much. Even the sound of her own voice was better than nothing.
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