by Susan Finlay
Seger’s eyes grew wide and he smiled. “Here you go, buddy.” He handed the file to Lonny.
Lonny opened it and scanned the paper. It was all there. He closed the file, nodded, and pulled a gun out of his coat pocket. Seger looked up from the case full of money in time to see the trigger pull, the bullet smacking into his forehead, and flinging his head into the wall behind him.
Seger’s head rebounded and he toppled over onto his desk face down. Lonny bent down and made sure the idiot was dead, then snatched the briefcase and closed it. He calmly walked down the stairs and to his car. A quick glance at the dumpster, and he smiled, deciding it wasn’t worth going back and dumping the body. Let somebody find him in his sorry ass office.
JOHN WAS GLAD Claire had finally shown up on time to one of the meetings, but it stuck in his craw that she was getting too powerful. Not only was she making progress at that school, but Frank was always coming to her defense, and now she’d latched onto Steve.
He didn’t know what he was going to do about her. She had to go, that he was sure of. Since the school board meeting when Steve had informed him about the marriage, John had thought long and hard about what to do. Before he decided anything, though, he needed to know what was going on in Midland High School. He didn’t want any more surprises.
He got into his car and drove over to Phil Seger’s office. The jackass hadn’t been answering his phone calls.
When he arrived and saw three police cars, lights swirling, and an ambulance, his heart thumped hard.
He parked, approached one of the officers and said, “What’s going on?”
“Who are you and why are you here?”
“John Richmond. I came over to talk to Phil Seger.”
“The Captain is going to want to talk to you. Seger’s been murdered.”
John opened his mouth in disbelief, shocked.
WHEN CLAIRE RETURNED to the school Thursday, she tried to talk to Ron again, but he avoided her all day. At the end of the day, she called him into her office and he stood in the middle of the room, a look of contempt in his eyes. Although she motioned for him to sit down, he stood like a statue with his arms crossed.
“I know you don’t want anything to do with me, but we have to talk. We work together. We’re a team. We need to clear the air. Talk to me. Scream at me. Something.”
“I put in for a transfer this morning.”
“What? I didn’t sign a transfer.”
“I had a long talk with Frank. He signed the request.”
Claire felt as if someone had slapped her in the face, and she wasn’t sure who it was that made her sting more—Ron for abandoning her, or Frank for signing the transfer request without even discussing it with her.
“I get why you’re mad at me, I do. But I need you here. The students need you.”
“Well, you should have thought about that before.”
“Before what? Before I tried to have a life outside of work?”
A frown flitted across his face. “You think I’m mad because you found someone, because you got married?”
“No. Because I kept it from you. I get that. But don’t you see? I’d already laid too many of my problems on you. I didn’t want to involve you in all my problems. And, though Steve and I have worked things out, it was a bumpy road getting there. You didn’t need to go along on that ride.”
“I put my faith in you. I was there for you after the attack and I did everything you asked of me, yet you treat me like an outsider. You expect me to be loyal to you after you lied and kept me in the dark.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
His glance was clearly skeptical. “You didn’t invite me to the wedding. I’m good enough to take you to the hospital, to look after you and cover a crime scene for you, yet you still couldn’t trust me? That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry. You’re right. I should have invited you. You aren’t just my assistant. You’re my friend. We’ve been through a lot together. Can you forgive me? Please?”
“Why should I? You’ve damaged our relationship, you’ve destroyed the trust I thought we had.”
“I trusted you with a lot that got you into trouble, which I regretted. After that, I wanted to protect you from the school board as much as I could. I was afraid that if I told you about Steve and me, and the board found out that you knew, they might accuse you of helping me hide my relationship. I didn’t want to get you fired. I need you.”
His look softened somewhat, but he still frowned.
“Oh, Ron, this is a big misunderstanding. Can’t you see that? Can’t you please forgive me? I don’t want to lose your friendship. If you really want to transfer, I won’t stop you, but please don’t stop being my friend.”
He lowered his arms, slumped his shoulders, and sighed. “I don’t really want to transfer. But promise me you won’t keep me in the dark again. Trust me.”
“I promise. And I do trust you.”
Claire and Ron talked for about an hour, and then they called Nancy into the office and smoothed things over with her, too. After that, they called Frank and cancelled the transfer request.
The next afternoon, Ron and Claire sat in her office. Ron said, “I heard some students talking in the hallway this morning. Seems Jose and the other two gang members who attacked you are plotting something. I don’t know the details and I don’t know if it’s true.”
“They haven’t come back to school, have they?”
“No. But they’ve apparently been in contact with some of the students.”
“Damn.”
Claire’s phone rang.
“Ms. Constantine, this is Janna Collins, the Director at Happy Days Preschool. Sorry to bother you at work. Something came up, and I thought I should check with you. Marcus’s dad picked him up an hour ago. The teacher who signed him out is new. She didn’t know the proper procedures so she didn’t check Marcus’s file. I called you as soon as I found out. She’ll be disciplined for not calling you first, before releasing him to anyone other than you. I’m really sorry.”
“His father picked him up? Did he give a name?”
“Uh, no. I checked. He signed the log, but I can’t read it. The employee doesn’t think he gave his name verbally.”
“Oh my God! I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She tried to hang up the phone, but her hands were shaking and it took three tries.
Ron said, “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is it something to do with Jose?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know yet.” She grabbed her handbag from a desk drawer. As she started to stand up, she thought of Steve. She reached for the phone again, her hands still shaking, and managed to dial Steve’s mobile phone number. One ring, two rings, three, and he finally picked up.
“Where are you? Did you pick up Marcus at preschool?”
“What? No, why would I do that? I’m still at work?”
“No, oh God no.”
“What the hell is going on? Something’s happened to Marcus?”
“Yes. I have to go to the preschool.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Claire stood up, red faced and eyes suddenly teary, then looked at Ron who was staring at her.
“What’s going on?”
“I have a family emergency. If I don’t come back, please continue all the work we’ve been doing to make the school better, okay? Will you promise me that? Don’t let the school revert back to the way it was.”
Ron looked as if he thought she’d gone overboard. He finally said, “Let me know if you need me to do anything. I’m here for you.”
“Thank you.” She grabbed her coat and dashed out of her office. She sped along the snow-covered streets, driving as fast as she dared, until she got stuck behind a snowplow. She moved slightly to the left, hoping she could pass him, but pulled back into place. Traffic was already heavy, though it wasn’t quite rush hour yet. Adding to her frustration, the traffic light wasn’t working righ
t, flashing red, causing everyone to treat the intersection up ahead as a four-way stop.
She glanced at the car’s clock, and smacked the steering wheel. Don’t panic, she told herself. That was easier said than done. Marcus was missing. WITSEC would have to move them now, no matter what the outcome.
When she arrived at the preschool, she jumped out of her car and dashed across the parking lot, narrowly avoiding a slip on some ice. She rushed inside and looked around for the preschool’s director.
Janna Collins came forward and said, “Again, I’m really sorry about the mix-up. I know the employee should have called you first.”
“I need to talk to the employee who saw him,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll get her.”
By the time Janna returned with the employee, Steve was rushing through the doors, bringing with him the cold air from outside. He put his arm around Claire’s shoulders.
“This is my husband, Steve. He’s Marcus’s father. I need to know who picked up Marcus. Describe him to us.” The director blanched, realizing the situation unfolding.
“He was tall, probably six feet,” the young woman said. “He had short-cropped brown hair and green eyes.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Yes. English, or maybe Australian. I don’t know. Could have been Irish. I’m not good at identifying accents.”
“What time was he here?”
Janna brought the sign-out log over quickly and showed it to Claire. The time logged out was ‘3:10 P.M.’ and the name was unreadable, but the signature looked like Callum’s and the description fit him perfectly.
Claire’s mind was whirling and she was confused, and angry at Janna for her shoddy security. How had Callum found them and why had he taken Marcus?
She turned and whispered to Steve, “We need to call Leo.”
They left and Steve said, “Let’s go to my car. You can call him from there, and find out what we’re supposed to do.”
She followed him and they both got into Steve’s car. Pulling out her mobile phone with shaking hands, she autodialed Leo’s phone number and told him what had happened.
“Don’t call the police,” he said. “I’ll handle it. Go home and wait for me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CLAIRE SHOOK AND cried as she hung up the phone after talking with Leo. Steve pulled her into his arms, and when she calmed down a bit, he asked, “Do you want to leave your car here? You can ride home with me and we’ll pick up your car later.”
She shook her head, and got out of his car. Steve followed her home and they walked into the house together.
Once inside, Claire broke-down, collapsed to the floor next to the sofa, and sobbed. Steve pulled her onto the sofa and held her tight until she quieted. They sat in the living room, waiting to hear from Leo for three-quarters of an hour, neither of them speaking, while the clock on a nearby shelf ticked like a metronome.
Breaking the silence, Claire asked, “What if they can’t find Marcus and Callum? Callum’s managed to avoid capture all this time. He could be on a flight to another state. He might even be in another state by now.”
“Don’t let your mind go there, Claire. They’ll find him. Yeah, he’s avoided the police, but he’s traveling with a child now. That will slow him down. It will make it harder for him to run and to hide.”
She nodded, wiping fresh tears from her eyes. They talked about the watcher—the private investigator John had hired. Then she told Steve about Brad and about her meeting with Leo. “Do you think Leo is really doing anything to get Marcus back? It worries me that I don’t know anything about him. He could just be blowing it off, like both he and Brad did when I told them about the watcher.”
“I’m sure he is,” Steve said, trying to assure Claire, but she could see the worry lines on his forehead. “Even though you barely know the guy, it’s encouraging that he has a local office. That’s at least one promising thing.”
“I’m not sure if he’s still here, though. He said it was only a temporary office and that he’d be back in Virginia soon.”
“Why would Callum come looking for his son?” Steve asked. “It doesn’t make sense to try to take a little boy on the run with him.”
“I know. It’s driving me crazy. I keep thinking it wasn’t really him. Maybe the private investigator is impersonating Callum to scare me into paying him to keep him quiet.”
“I suppose that’s a possibility.”
Claire began crying again, and leaned against Steve who stroked her hair and whispered in her ear, “It’ll be okay. They’ll find him.”
She remembered the gun she’d brought home from the school. After she and Marcus had moved into Steve’s house, she’d locked it inside a drawer of the desk Steve had bought for her. She got up and retrieved it. Steve’s eyebrows shot up when she walked back into the living room and handed him the gun.
“Where did you get this?”
She explained how she’d come to have it in her possession.
“You should have turned it over to the police. It could be stolen for all you know.”
“Oh, I guess so. Sorry.”
“Well, we should leave it out for now, considering the situation, but we’ll take it to the police after this is over.” He set it on the coffee table in front of where they were sitting.
Late that night, Claire was curled up on the sofa, her head on Steve’s lap. Both were trying to sleep and neither was having any luck. A loud knock on the front door startled them. Claire jumped up and ran to the door.
She unlocked and opened it, hoping to see Leo and Marcus, but gasped as she stared into the face of Jose Rodriguez. She caught something—a movement—out of the corner of her eye. Her attention shift down to his hand and saw a shiny knife, probably the same one he’d used when he and the others had attacked her in her office. She screamed, and tried to close the door. It wouldn’t move. Confused, she instinctively turned her head to see what was stopping it.
Steve. He had grabbed hold of the door. He pulled the door out of her grasp, opening it wider, holding up the gun she’d left on the coffee table. Before he had the chance to shoot, the boy crumpled.
“What the hell?” Steve said. He looked around, but finding no initial answer there, bent down to better see the boy.
Claire stepped onto the porch and bent forward to get a look. Blood was oozing out of the boy.
“He’s been shot. Go back in the house, Claire.”
A loud noise across the street caught their attention and they both looked up. A car was parked alongside the road across the street from their house, with a man slumped over in the driver’s seat. Another man was standing next to the car.
“Oh, my God,” Claire said. “That’s Leo standing by the car.” Moments later, several uniformed agents appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Within a couple of minutes, police cars and emergency vehicles began arriving, swarming the neighborhood and filling the night with sirens and flashing lights.
Leo came to their door step and said, “We need to talk in private.”
Claire introduced him to Steve. Leo frowned.
After they all went inside the house and sat down in the living room, Leo immediately said, “You should have called me and told me you’d gotten married and moved.”
“I guess I should have told you but, honestly, it didn’t occur to me. I mean, why would you need to know that?”
“Why? I’ll tell you why, damn it. We need you alert and clearheaded, not all wrapped up in love, thinking nothing else matters. It makes people do stupid things.”
“You don’t have other married witnesses?”
“Of course we do. Just not newlyweds,” he said. “And especially not before a trial. Even during trial we discourage any romantic entanglements. Once everything is done, case closed, and everything has cooled down, then it’s safe for witnesses to do what they want. That was a really stupid thing you did.” He paused, then continued. “Did you at least tell him you’re in WITSEC?”<
br />
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with you, Claire. You know the rules.”
She looked at him, her pent up anger finally bursting the dam. “No matter what I do, handlers are always on my case for what I say or don’t say. I’m like a puppet. Why don’t you just give me a script? Maybe then I could get it right.”
He looked surprised for a moment, then seemed to reconsider. “Well, it’s done. “
Everyone was silent for a few moments. Then Claire pointed her head toward the door and asked, “What is going on out there? You obviously withheld information from me, too.”
“I couldn’t tell you. It was all part of the investigation. When I took over as your handler, I did some checking into this watcher you’d told Brad about. I sat in front of your condo building and saw the guy. Took a few pictures, showed them to my boss. From that point, we brought in watchers of our own and planted some information, hoping to catch some of the syndicate members.”
“You mean you used me as bait in a sting operation?”
“Something like that. The private investigator who was tailing you is known as a man who plays dirty. We figured he would sell your information.”
“He threatened to do that if I didn’t pay him.”
“Well, he did sell it.”
“How did he know how to find the people who wanted the information?”
“He’s an investigator. He’s a criminal but he’s good at his job, just stupid. After he contacted them, the syndicate hired a hit man to retrieve the information on you. He killed that PI for it. The hit man is in the car across the street wounded, and he’s already beginning to talk to the agents questioning him right now.”
“I can’t believe you put Claire at risk like that?” Steve said, his anger evident.
“It isn’t our normal policy but sometimes you have to take some risks. She wasn’t in any real danger. Not after I joined the case. I don’t leave my charges hanging out to dry like Brad did. “
“I don’t understand,” Claire said. “When I first met you, you said that you follow the rules and Brad didn’t. Now you’re saying you took risks and did something that isn’t WITSEC’s normal procedure?”