Standing Guard

by Valerie Hansen

  Moments later, after he had checked every place anyone could hide, he gave a loud groan. He had failed.

  Lindy was gone.

  And so was James Reed.

  * * *

  An icy wind whipped at her hair as Lindy and Reed left the hospital. She pulled her jacket tighter and held it closed as he shepherded her to his car and ordered, “Get in.”

  Lindy was so frustrated she could hardly think straight, let alone hope to plot an effective escape. Her emotions mirrored the weather that morning—wildly turbulent and getting worse by the minute.

  “Look,” she told her captor, “it’s not going to do you any good to kidnap me like this. Nobody else knows anything about the money you’re looking for, either.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said with a sneer. “What I should have done was get my hands on your kid so you’d be more inclined to cooperate.”

  Eyes wide, head pounding, Lindy gaped at him. He was right. If she had been privy to Ben’s secrets, there was no way she’d have stayed mute knowing Danny was in jeopardy.

  “Let me be perfectly clear,” she said as she labored to keep her tone even. “I do not now, nor have I ever, had any information about my late husband’s business affairs. Whatever Ben did he did on his own. There is absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do to me to make me remember something I never knew in the first place.”

  Reed chuckled. “I’m beginning to believe you don’t realize what you actually do know. There has to be some little detail, some fact you’re overlooking because you don’t see it as important.”

  At the end of her endurance, Lindy screamed, “No! No, no, no. I don’t know a thing.”

  “Calm down. You’ll have plenty of time to sit and think where we’re going.” His voice lowered until it was almost a growl. “And you will stay there until you come up with the answers I need. No matter how long it takes.”

  Lindy had no rebuttal. She was sure Thad or someone else must have missed her by now, but whether or not they had found the cryptic message she’d left on the mirror was another question. And, even if they did see the toothpaste streaks, that didn’t mean they’d understand what she was trying to convey.

  Oh, Father, Lindy prayed, help me. Help us all. I don’t care about the money, I just want to go home to my son and to Thad.

  To Thad? she repeated to herself, already knowing that answer was yes. Thad was now an intrinsic part of her life and would hopefully play an even bigger part in her future. Assuming she had a future.

  “I will,” Lindy murmured under her breath. “I will live through this trial and I will have another chance for happiness.”

  She truly believed that. She had to. Visualizing a different outcome was beyond unacceptable.

  * * *

  Thad had immediately raced to the side entrance of the hospital and scanned the parking lot because he knew he had not passed Lindy or James Reed in the main hallway.

  When he failed to see them driving away, he returned to look for Adelaide and explain to her.

  “How do you know she didn’t leave on her own?” the deputy demanded.

  “Because Lindy wouldn’t do that.” Thad was adamant. “He forced her at gunpoint. I know he did.”

  With her own sidearm drawn, Adelaide searched Lindy’s empty room. “Did you see a gun?”

  “I didn’t have to. Lindy told me that he was armed.”

  “And this Reed guy just let you waltz out of here with the boy after that?”

  Thad could tell from her raised eyebrows that she didn’t believe his story.

  “We communicated without words. But I know exactly what she meant. Once you’d left the doorway unguarded, he was free to just march her out.”

  “I was following orders,” Adelaide insisted. “Boyd had radioed that he was ready to relieve me just before that fight started at the other end of the hospital. I assumed he was right around the corner, so when the call came requesting backup in the lobby, I responded.”

  “Only Boyd did, too?”

  “Yeah.” She pulled a face and holstered her weapon. Thad saw her pausing to look in the mirror over the bathroom sink. At first he thought she was checking her own appearance. Then, she said, “C’mere a sec.”

  “What?”

  The deputy pointed. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  Thad squinted at the bluish smears. “That looks like the letter P, twice. It could mean Pearson Products.”

  “What about this little figure of a man down here? Any idea what that’s supposed to be for?”

  Studying the crude drawing, Thad was struck by the notion that it looked less like a person than it did an airplane. Those two things fit together perfectly. His business bordered the Serenity airport. If Lindy had wanted to leave behind a picture clue, choosing a plane made more sense than trying to draw an obscure kitchen tool.

  Whirling, he headed for the doorway.

  “Hold it. The sheriff will want to talk to you,” the deputy called after him.

  Thad ignored her. He knew exactly where he needed to go and nobody was going to delay him. Not now. Not when Lindy’s very life might hang in the balance.

  Behind him, he heard Adelaide starting to shout. Judging by what she was saying, he figured she was radioing other officers to cut him off and detain him.

  That was not going to happen. He was on a mission. A rescue mission. Probably one of the most important of his entire career.

  He straight-armed the side door, leaned into the increasing wind for balance and raced toward his truck. Thankfully, there had been no empty places close by and he’d had to park out on the fringe, away from the main buildings.

  Sliding behind the wheel he gunned the engine, dropped the pickup in gear and heard its tires whine as they spun in the loose gravel.

  “Quiet. Don’t attract attention,” he muttered to himself, easing up and pulling out into the road. The cops would probably be right behind him, particularly if Adelaide mentioned what they’d discussed about Lindy’s message.

  That was all right with Thad. It might be advantageous to have some backup, especially if they ended up in a shoot-out with Reed or some of his cronies.

  Remembering the noisy altercation in the hospital, Thad decided it must have been staged to cover Reed’s escape. That figured. A guy who was desperate enough to come after Lindy with a gun was probably willing to try almost anything, including enlisting the help of others. The man had used fall guys before and there was no reason to assume he’d changed his methods since.

  The truck slid around a tight corner. Some of the toys that Danny had insisted on bringing along slipped off the seat onto the floor and landed with a plastic-sounding rattle and crash.

  Thad disregarded the mess. If the stuff was broken he’d buy new toys to replace them. He had far more crucial problems at the moment than whether or not the boy’s personal possessions had been damaged.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noted a couple of robot-looking things, an electronic handheld game and the little computer Danny often used for more complicated entertainment. The kid’s hand-eye coordination was already nearly as good as some of the operators who’d handled drones in combat and Thad realized he was as proud of the boy as if he were his own son.

  Could their relationship someday become that? he wondered absently. Were the doctors ever going to tell him it was safe for him to think of starting a family, beginning with making Lindy his wife?

>   That thought was so heartrending it hurt. His hands fisted on the wheel. He had meant it when he’d tried to let her know he loved her and although she hadn’t responded in kind, he wanted to think she would have under other circumstances.

  What he needed to do now was provide the chance for her to admit she loved him, too. And to do that, he had to free her from her captor without endangering her well-being any more than it already was.

  If this had been a combat situation he would have known exactly what to do. He would have had snipers waiting to pick off Reed the instant he dared show his face.

  And now? Thad asked himself.

  Now, all the advantages were on the side of their enemy. He would not only have to face Reed solo, he would have to do it empty-handed.

  But he would triumph. He had to. Lindy’s life depended upon him, and him alone.

  SIXTEEN

  Lindy didn’t want to have anything to do with James Reed, let alone converse with him. However, as they drove toward the airport in his black sedan, a few elements of her dilemma puzzled her enough to trigger questions.

  Licking her parched lips and fighting to appear normal when she was actually scared to death, she asked, “What about all those letters?”

  “What letters?” His head snapped around.

  “The ones in Ben’s handwriting. You kept leaving them where I could find them.”

  His thick eyebrows knit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have anything Ben wrote. What did these letters look like?”

  “They were scribbled messages on his letterhead. Old ones, obviously. But they all mentioned money so I figured they came from you.”

  “Not from me.” The frown deepened. “I suppose the criminals Ben got mixed up with could have saved them. Who were they addressed to?”

  “Nobody. They were more like a shopping list or a memo. You know. Informal.”

  “Interesting.”

  Lindy actually believed his denial. “Okay. If you weren’t responsible for the messages, then who was?”

  “I wish I knew.” His glance kept darting from the road ahead to the side and rear mirrors as if he expected to spot the police on his trail any second.

  “Care to guess?”

  Reed huffed. “It beats me. Considering all the different people who know about Ben’s secret, it could be almost anybody.”

  “Such as?” The way Lindy saw her situation, the more facts she had to work with, the more likely she’d be able to triumph. Eventually.

  Punctuating his answer with muttered cursing, Reed finally said, “I came into this mess late, okay? I had no idea that your dear departed husband was dirty, not until the drug cops started poking around the office and asking questions. At that time, I figured I was doing well to keep my own neck out of the noose.”

  “So, what changed?”

  “I told you. I found out about the secret accounts Ben had established for skimming a bigger cut for himself. I really did start out by hoping to earn a finder’s fee. But then I got to thinking. Why shouldn’t I have it all?”

  “You mean to tell me that the men you hired to ransack my house weren’t from Ben’s past?”

  “Ransack? All I did was pay a couple guys to break in and hack your computer so I could have a copy of all your files.”

  Totally confused, Lindy rubbed her temples where a headache had already taken hold. “Then you gave that information to the DEA? Why?”

  “To prove I was on the side of law and order and collect a finder’s fee.” Reed chuckled wryly. “And because I couldn’t find what I was looking for and wanted to see if they could.” His humor waned. “I told them I’d stumbled on that info in Ben’s files, but it didn’t help. They apparently didn’t have any better luck than I did.”

  “Duh! That’s because there was nothing to find,” she insisted. “When is everybody going to figure that out?”

  Although he didn’t reply for several minutes, Lindy could tell that her captor was considering her conclusion. There was no way she could make anybody believe her, of course, because it was impossible to prove a negative. In a way, she wished she did have something to reveal so everyone would leave her alone.

  Sighing, she sank back against the plush leather seat of the car. That was when it dawned on her that he couldn’t have driven to Serenity and also have flown.

  “Wait a second. If you flew up from Little Rock, how did your car get here?”

  “I drove. My pilot followed with the plane.”

  Terrific. Now she had two men to worry about eluding.

  “You’ll never get away with this, you know,” Lindy told him. “Thad knows you were in my room and so does the deputy you had to pass to deliver the flowers. Plus, when you abandon this car at the airport, they’ll be sure it was really you.”

  He cackled. “I love the way your devious mind works. Haven’t you figured it out yet? I don’t care who knows I was involved. You and I will be out of U.S. jurisdiction long before anybody comes after us.”

  “Wait a second. You can’t take me out of the country. I don’t even have a passport.”

  That triggered genuine laughter and rankled her all the way to the soles of her sneakers. He thought ruining her life was funny? Well, she sure didn’t.

  The more she contemplated the developing situation the madder she got. This was more than unfair—it was totally unacceptable.

  “I am not going to get in any airplane with you,” Lindy vowed. “I’m no good to you dead so you won’t shoot me.”

  “No, but I can tie you up and load you like baggage,” Reed countered. “Now shut up and let me think.”

  Lindy continued to monitor his changing expressions. If he’d had everything well planned out, he wouldn’t need to do more thinking. Therefore, he had to be making this up as he went along, at least in part. That was a good sign.

  Now, all she had to do was figure out how to take advantage of it.

  The black sedan slued around the final corner and headed for the airstrip. A red-and-white twin-engine plane waited on the tarmac. It was bigger than she’d expected and looked fast and sleek enough to carry them across the Gulf of Mexico as Reed had promised. Her chances of escape were looking slimmer and slimmer.

  She made him literally drag her from the car, then threw her full weight against his pull as the increasingly strong wind blew her hair wildly and made the edges of her jacket flap.

  Her resistance slowed his pace but didn’t stop it.

  A man in a tan jumpsuit climbed out of the plane and came to Reed’s aid by taking hold of her free arm.

  “You ready?” Reed shouted over her head.

  “The weather’s getting worse pretty fast, sir. I think we should abort the flight.”

  “We’re going. Period.” He gestured with the gun. “You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Continuing to struggle, Lindy would have screamed if she’d thought it would help but, as Danny had reminded her, it was Saturday. Nobody was working in the warehouse today and no one lived nearby enough to hear her. There was no use wasting her breath.

  The loud roar of a motor and the squeal of sliding tires drew everyone’s attention.

  The men who had been tugging Lindy along froze.

  Seeing the approach of Thad’s old, blue truck, she wasn’t sure whether to be glad he’d come or to wish he’d stayed away for his own safety. Even if he happened to be armed, which she doubted, one against two
was hardly a fair fight.

  She flipped her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head so she could watch.

  Thad’s truck skidded to a stop, and through the windshield she saw him lean over for a second, then straighten.

  She was holding her breath and trembling when he opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out.

  * * *

  Choosing to grab the child’s netbook off the floor of his truck and use it as a decoy had been an afterthought.

  Thad didn’t know if his ruse would work. At that point, he was so low on options he figured anything was worth a try.

  With his hands raised, he waved the one containing the small, portable computer. It had hit the floor when all the toys had slid off the seat. He sure hoped the cracking sound he’d heard had come from some other source because if this device wasn’t working enough to at least display a picture, he was toast.

  “Stay where you are,” Reed shouted above the rising roar of the wind. “Don’t try to stop us.”

  Thad shrugged and paused. “Fine with me. If you don’t want the keys to Ben’s offshore accounts, that’s not my problem.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Thad gave another wave with the rectangular object. “This. We all overlooked it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Danny’s games. What better place to hide something than in plain sight?”

  He saw Lindy’s jaw drop and hoped she would have sense enough to play along.

  “Bring it over here,” Reed ordered.

  “Let her go first.”

  “Not on your life. Not until I see that you’re telling the truth.”

  “Hey, I’m no computer expert. I’m just the delivery guy.”

  “Then how do you know the account numbers are on there?”

  “They have to be. Think about it. Southerland was smart enough to skim from drug gangs, launder their money through a hedge fund and hide a fortune from everybody, even the feds. Where would you stash those numbers if you were him, especially if you thought you might be killed?” He spared a quick glance for Lindy and added, “Sorry.”