by Debra Webb
“Sit.”
“What else do you want from me?” she demanded. She started to shake. Panic…adrenaline. She was on the edge, but not quite where he needed her.
“I think you have me confused with some of your longtime associates.”
Her expression turned bewildered but only for a moment, realization dawned. “You’re…” She moistened her lips as if buying time to marshal the additional effort required to utter his name. “You’re Cole Danes.”
“Sit down, Miss Parker.”
She eased down onto the navy slipcovered sofa. From what he knew of her finances the old sofa had likely been covered out of necessity rather than design.
“Three days ago your daughter disappeared, then twenty-four hours later your aunt vanished. I know you were involved with Howard Stephens as far back as two years ago. I also know that the disappearances of the people you care about are connected to him and certain information involving the Colby Agency.” The first glitter of true terror appeared in her eyes. “I already know the worst of what you’ve done, Miss Parker, so start talking and don’t leave anything out.”
Angel had no idea what Cole Danes looked like. But, whoever this man was, he had her gun. Fear knotted in her stomach. Why hadn’t she just shot him?
Because she couldn’t.
The men holding her aunt hostage wanted Cole Danes. If she killed him…God she didn’t even want to think about what they would do to her aunt. What was she thinking? She couldn’t kill anyone.
She clasped her hands in her lap in an effort to disguise their trembling and took a deep breath. The man on the phone had told her to follow Danes’s lead.
Her gaze moved back up to the man standing over her. “If you know so much why do I have to tell you anything?” She didn’t have to make this easy for him. He was her enemy just as much as the other two were. She couldn’t trust anyone. Not even the people Mildred trusted at the Colby Agency. They had sent this man after her.
The Colby Agency couldn’t help her. Not that she could blame Victoria for hating her now. The idea of what her actions had put the woman through…Angel shuddered.
The police couldn’t help her, either.
She was on her own.
“Don’t try my patience, Miss Parker.”
What she saw in his eyes more than the sound of his voice warned her that he was not a man who liked games. The intensity in those blue eyes unnerved her completely. It didn’t help that he had long hair secured in a ponytail and a silver hoop in one earlobe. She shivered. He looked as if he belonged on a seventeenth-century pirate ship rather than in her living room. But she’d seen guys like him in contemporary movies. Always ruthless, always ignoring laws other than their own.
“All right.” She closed her eyes briefly and prayed that those other men wouldn’t storm her house just now and kill them both before she could at least attempt to find her aunt. She had no way of knowing their intentions. She could only do as she was told.
She didn’t know why she bothered, but she decided to tell Mr. Danes the truth to the extent she could. Why add one more transgression to her rising tally of sins to answer for? she reasoned. Right now, she considered morosely, going to hell was the least of her worries.
“Two years ago a man approached me at work and asked for scheduling information regarding Victoria Colby.” She shrugged. “I thought it was some sort of joke until he told me that he had my daughter and that I wouldn’t get her back until he had the information. I argued that I had no way of getting what he wanted and he countered that all I had to do was access the agency’s system through my aunt’s ID.”
God it seemed so long ago now. She shook her head slowly from side to side. “I went to my aunt’s office for lunch that same day and while she was in Victoria’s office, I looked at her computer. Got what they asked for.” She swallowed back a lump of remembered emotion. “They gave me my daughter back and threatened that if I ever told anyone that they would kill her next time.”
“So you told no one,” Danes prompted. “You didn’t trust your aunt enough to tell her.”
Angel glared at him. “Do you think I’d risk my child’s life? I couldn’t take the chance.” She’d done the right thing. Like now, what other choice was there?
“Howard Stephens was the man who came to you for information from time to time?” he asked.
She nodded. “I didn’t know his name for a long time. It was all done anonymously. Once in a while he or one of his men would be waiting at the childcare center where I took my daughter just to prove they could get to her. They even came in my house in the middle of the night. I’d find my baby’s crib empty.” Tears burned her eyes. “I’d search the house frantically only to find her sleeping in her playpen.” She looked up at the man no doubt passing judgment on her at that very moment. “They would do this just to prove they could. To keep me aware of who held all the power.”
“How did you manage to hide your daughter this time?”
A new kind of fear froze in her veins. “I won’t tell you where she is. Even if you torture me, I won’t say.”
Apparently he believed her since he moved on. “Something tipped you off, gave you the opportunity to get one step ahead.”
“Aunt Mildred told me about Victoria Colby’s son.” Colby-Camp, she reminded herself. Victoria was now married to Lucas Camp. “When she explained all that this evil man Leberman had done I realized that his actions in the past two years coincided with information I had given Stephens.” A heavy breath pushed past her lips. She would never forgive herself for what she’d had to do. She certainly didn’t expect God or anyone else to. “I hoped that since Leberman was dead that it was over. I couldn’t imagine any reason his men would continue to haunt my life or Victoria’s.”
She let go a weary breath. “But about a week ago Aunt Mildred told me about the investigation and that there might be a leak at the agency. I knew then it wasn’t over.”
“Get up.”
His command startled her. “What?”
“Get up.”
She pushed to her feet, uncertain whether he intended to kill her or…some part of her brain wondered if Stephens’s men had anticipated this move. Did Victoria Colby-Camp want revenge for what Angel had done? Angel could scarcely blame her. But she hadn’t known Victoria’s missing child was related to those evil men…hadn’t been able to do anything else.
“You have five minutes to pack whatever you think you need.”
She blinked, confused all over again. So he wasn’t going to kill her?
But where was he taking her? Would those men be watching? Was this part of their plan?
She shoved her hair behind her ears and reached for some semblance of composure. Didn’t matter. She had her instructions.
She grabbed her purse from the floor and made her way to the bedroom. Cole Danes stayed right behind her, his weapon carefully trained on her back. She didn’t have to look to know, she could feel it.
Somewhere she had an overnight bag. She prowled through the closet until she found it. A nightshirt, a couple of changes of undergarments, sweaters and jeans. Oh, yeah, and socks. Too cold to go without them. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Antiperspirant. She couldn’t think of anything else.
“Get your coat and let’s go.”
She faced him, the weight of her bag dragging at her right shoulder. “Where are we going?” Surely he wouldn’t turn her in to the police. Lord, she hadn’t thought of that until that very second. What she had done was criminal. She could go to prison. Her aunt would die and her child would be raised by strangers. All of which, she admitted, a new flood of oppression washing over her, would likely happen anyway.
“No questions.”
She resisted when he took her arm and would have ushered her from the room. The other man, the one who worked for Howard Stephens, had said those same words. No questions.
How could she be sure this was Cole Danes? What if she went with this man and it was a mistake?
He reached into his jacket with his free hand and withdrew a leather case. “Be my guest.”
She took the case from him and opened it. The picture on the credentials was this man all right. Six-two, one hundred seventy pounds. Forty. That surprised her. He didn’t look more than thirty-five. Lived in Washington D.C. She handed the case back to him. She didn’t want to know anything else.
“Convinced?”
“I suppose.” Credentials could be forged. She didn’t see the point in bringing that to his attention. He would likely know.
He slipped the case back into his interior pocket then motioned to the door with his gun. She reached for a jacket in her closet and tugged it on.
“Back door,” he said when she would have turned toward the living room.
Angel drew in a long, deep breath of cool night air as Danes hustled her across her neighbor’s backyard. The moon did little to light their path but he apparently knew where he wanted to go. He moved in the night like most people did in the daylight, without hesitation or conscious thought. Even she didn’t know her neighbor’s yard so well.
When they’d crossed to the opposite side of the street, he waited beneath the shadow of a copse of trees before resuming the journey to wherever he’d parked.
A dark sedan eased up to the curb in front of her house. Angel peered through the darkness and tried to see who got out. Two people. Tall. Male, she decided, after surveying their bulky frames.
Stephens’s men.
One moved stealthily toward her front door while the other crossed the street and searched a car parked there.
More lights came on inside her house.
The guy at the car swore hotly then moved quickly to join his friend in her house.
“What—”
The rest of her query died in her throat as Danes’s hand closed over her mouth. When she struggled his arm clamped around her waist and hauled her against him. His body felt hard against her backside. His arm a band of unyielding steel.
The two men suddenly burst out through her front door and rushed to the car they had arrived in. She couldn’t make out their gruff dialogues before they’d piled into the vehicle and sped away.
The man who’d called had told her to follow Danes’s lead. Was she supposed to have kept him at her house until they arrived? Had she somehow made a mistake?
Fear exploded inside her. Would they kill her aunt now? Start the search for her child? No. No! Please, God. No.
Danes released her. Her knees gave way beneath her.
All that kept her from an up-close encounter with the ground was his swift reaction. He had her back in his powerful arms in the nick of time. Her mind whirled with more questions…mounting fear. What did she do now?
“Can you walk?” He shook her when she didn’t respond. “I said, can you walk?”
She nodded and grappled to regain her equilibrium. “Yes.”
He took her bag, draped it over his own shoulder and then she was suddenly moving forward…through the dark, through more yards that weren’t her own. His punishing grip on her wrist lugging her in his path.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut up.”
He had to know something she didn’t, knew those men would be out looking for them. “Are they searching for us now?”
He halted abruptly and his face was suddenly right in front of hers. His grip had somehow relocated from her wrist to her chin. “If you want to live, shut up.”
She trembled. Bit down on her lower lip to hold back a pained yelp. His fingers tightened. “No more talking.”
He started forward again, his viselike grip on her wrist once more. She thought about the gun she’d bought. The advice the man at the pawnshop had given her. Why hadn’t she shot him when he told her to turn on the light? Why had she let him take her gun away?
Those men wanted him. They were angry that they’d missed him. Somehow she had made a mistake, was supposed to have kept him occupied until they arrived.
Wait.
Her frantic thoughts jarred to a stop.
They wanted to teach Danes a lesson first. He’d said that. She remembered now. Maybe this was part of the lesson—a sick game of some sort. But how was that possible? It felt wrong. As if Danes was in control. She’d heard the man who’d checked the car swear. He’d been furious. If things had gone as he’d planned why would he be angry?
Danes suddenly stopped.
He opened the passenger-side door of a black SUV. Did it belong to him? If so, why had the other man thought the car parked across the street from her house belonged to Danes? Had he thought that at all? She couldn’t be sure. She’d assumed. None of this made sense now.
“Get in.”
“Is this your car?” She shook her head. “What about the car parked across the street from my house?”
“Pay attention,” he growled as he pulled her intimidatingly near. “Get in.”
He’d told her to shut up. Her skin still burned where he’d held her chin. She nodded and climbed into the seat. He leaned in over her. She sank as far into the leather seat as possible, but it wasn’t enough. His scent, something too subtle to distinguish, invaded her senses. The hard feel of his shoulder as she braced her hand against it in an effort to push him away, but he was far too strong. He withdrew something from his pocket and moved it over her purse. Small, black. A red light flashed on the small object.
He opened her purse and rifled through the contents.
“What’re you doing?” she demanded when he pulled out the lipstick she carried. She didn’t know why she bothered carrying it, she never used it.
He tossed the lipstick then moved his hand down the length of her legs, over her torso. Even in the sparse moonlight the intensity in his eyes unsettled her all the more. He checked her overnight bag in the same manner.
When he was satisfied he closed her door, swiftly skirted the hood, tossed her bag into the back seat and slid behind the steering wheel.
He’d driven to the end of the block and turned onto the main thoroughfare before he switched on the headlights. Angel tugged her seat belt into place and bit back the questions that rushed into her throat. She’d watched movies where devices were used to track the movement of vehicles and people. Is that why that red light had flashed on her purse and then he’d tossed her lipstick? She didn’t dare ask.
This couldn’t be happening. She rubbed at her eyes. Tried to think. Her hands shook so badly. She clasped them together and reached for a calm she knew she would not find.
Pay attention.
He’d told her to pay attention. That’s what she needed to do. Where were they going? He took one turn after the other. Taking his time, moving forward a few blocks and then to the left. A right, then forward through a couple of intersections. He made it difficult to follow but she finally decided that the interstate was his destination though she couldn’t be absolutely certain until he’d taken the turn.
I-94 South.
Chicago.
Fear crashed into her. Was he taking her to the Colby Agency? Maybe he did intend to turn her over to the authorities.
To her surprise, once on the interstate, he took the first exit that came into view. Her heart pounded hard against her sternum. Where was he going now? She tried to think what was on this exit. He wheeled into the parking lot of a small motel and drove all the way to the back of the parking lot. Her fear mounted.
He got out, reached in the back seat for her bag then flashed her a look that told her in no uncertain terms to get out. At the front of the vehicle he latched on to her arm again and led her to a lower-level room. When he jammed the keycard into the lock she couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“What are we doing here?”
He ushered her inside and locked the do
or.
After a survey of the room with the same device he’d used on her purse he dropped her bag on the floor and shouldered out of his jacket. He tossed it onto the foot of the bed as if he intended to stay awhile.
“Enough.” She’d had it. “What the hell are you doing? Why did you bring me here?”
He simply stared at her.
She hugged her arms around her middle. “They’re going to kill my aunt,” she said, her voice lacking enough strength to actually call her words a successful plea. It was too late…she knew it. She’d screwed up somehow.
He moved closer, that intense gaze searching her face. Maybe he would feel sorry for her and help her. She didn’t care if he saved her…if he would only help her aunt, protect her child.
“Please,” she murmured, desperation urging her to act. “You have to help her.”
He moved so suddenly, so lightning fast that he’d pinned her against the wall before she’d realized he’d moved at all. The air rushed out of her lungs more from the intensity of his eyes than the impact. “Don’t presume that we’re on the same side,” he whispered fiercely, his face so close to hers she could feel his breath on her lips.
A new kind of fear synapsed in her brain, igniting every cell in its path with sheer terror.
“When I told you to talk, I wanted everything. Clearly, you left out a few details.”
He knew.
How could he know?
Oh, dear God. He’d tapped her phone. He had to have heard the conversation…but then why ask?
“I know they contacted you earlier this evening.”
Was it her imagination or had the pressure of his touch eased slightly? The fear throbbing inside her made it difficult to judge.
“Yes,” she relented. She had to breathe, once, twice. “One of them called.”
His hold relaxed. “What were his instructions?”
He didn’t know. Relief trickled into the mix of churning emotions. He might have been listening but somehow he hadn’t been able to hear…to understand…Something.