by Paula Graves
"But it was Blevins who arrested you?"
"Yeah, that's how I knew it was a cop who popped that guy."
Maggie flinched at the way he referred to death as if it were just a blip on a video game screen. The monster eats the avatar? No problem. There's always another one.
But in real life, one was all you got. The sooner Remy learned that lesson, the better.
"I been thinkin', Doc—why off the Bakers? Why come after us? All he's gotta say is how he arrested me a month ago and I'm lookin' to burn 'im back. I look like a punk and he walks."
"But you didn't even get booked before they dropped the charges. That's not much to get ticked off about. If I know you, it was probably one big adventure."
He grinned. "Yeah. I never rode a paddy wagon before."
"So what's to hold a grudge about? The D.A. could have nipped that attempt to challenge your testimony without much problem," Maggie pointed out.
"Come on—he's a hurricane hero. Everybody loves the guy." Remy dropped his chin. "I'm so screwed."
Maggie touched his arm gently. "Not if I have anything to say about it. Now, about the actual day of the shooting—"
The phone rang, interrupting her in mid-sentence.
She and Remy looked at each other, unsure what to do. "It could be Jack," Remy said.
Or someone else. Someone none of them wanted to hear from.
"I'll see who it is," she said
She reached the kitchen just as the answering machine picked up. A woman's voice spoke at the sound of the beep. "Jack, it's Laura."
Maggie crossed to the bar and gripped the edge of the countertop, her stomach curled into a painful knot. She recognized the bayou drawl an unwelcome ghost from the distant, bitter past. Laura Sandoval, Jack's old lover.
"I just tried your cell phone but got no connection," Laura's whiskey alto continued. "I've been givin' this thing some thought. The kid's got to be workin' some sort of payback scam against Blevins."
Maggie slumped against the counter. What the hell was Jack doing spilling his guts about Remy's case to Laura Sandoval, of all people?
"I'd keep a real close eye on your . . . contraband. Might turn out a little more dangerous than you think. I'd consider callin' in bigger guns. Talk to you soon."
Maggie stared at the now-silent answering machine. Jack had betrayed them. And to Laura, of all people. Laura, the high-strung bitch who'd treated Jack like crap and Maggie like a bratty little pest trying to pee in her cornflakes.
Could Jack possibly still love Laura after all this time?
Tears stung the back of her eyes, catching her off guard. She shouldn't be hurt, damn it. She should be mad as hell.
She batted the moisture away and stormed from the room, her mind racing. One thing was clear: she and Remy had to get out of here now. Grab what they could and disappear. She had the keys to the borrowed Blazer; they'd have to ditch the SUV soon enough, but they could go a long way before that had to happen.
She gathered their belongings into a couple of pillowcases and went to the den, ripping a piece of paper from a message book on the desk by the bookcase. Forcing herself to calm down, she jotted a note to Jack. More than he deserved, but she couldn't go without letting him know she was okay. Then she headed down the hall to the living room, where she'd left Remy.
He almost collided with her in the doorway. His eyes were wide and dark with fear. "They're here!"
She blinked, surprised. "Who's here?"
"The dudes who wanna pop me!" Remy plucked at her arm. "They're outside, Doc. We gotta hide!"
Remy's panic spread to her own shaky limbs. "Hide where?"
Remy pulled her down the hall, hooked a sharp right into the den and headed for the bookshelves lining the far wall.
Maggie skidded to a stop. "Remy—"
He reached up and pulled out a book on the middle shelf of the bookcase. Maggie stared as the bookshelf started to shimmy and slowly swing inward, revealing a hidden room.
Panic room, she realized. Unbelievable.
Somewhere behind them, a door opened. Maggie's pulse shot to high gear. Snatching up the note she'd left for Jack, she pushed Remy toward the panic room. Remy put the book back on the shelf as they scooted inside, and the bookcase swung silently shut behind them.
"I pushed the panic button Jack gave me," Remy told Maggie softly, all signs of belligerent adolescent gone, eclipsed by steely-eyed determination. "He's gonna know to come home."
Come home to what? To killers who wouldn't think twice about killing him where he stood?
The panic button alarm went off as Jack was rounding a curve. He gave a start at the sudden shrill ring, his hand losing its grip on the steering wheel long enough for the Beretta to veer into the next lane. He jerked the wheel, bringing the car back under control, and reached into his pocket, hoping he had accidentally set off the alarm himself. But the flashing remote light on the device confirmed the transmitter he'd left with Remy had set off the alarm.
He gunned the Beretta, trying not to panic over what might await him at home. Maybe it was a false alarm; the kid wasn't exactly the most levelheaded teenager Jack had ever come across. He wouldn't put it past Remy to set off the alarm as a prank. Or it could have been an accident.
He calmed himself with effort. He'd spent the past few days trying to reassure Maggie that she was overreacting to the danger she perceived. He didn't even think that Remy was any real danger to her, despite what Laura had discovered about the boy. So he probably didn't have anything to worry about.
But he put the accelerator to the floor anyway.
"You've been in here before." Maggie kept her voice down as Remy took his seat at a complicated-looking electronics control console and started pushing buttons.
"Once or twice," he admitted in equally hushed tones. He flipped a lever and a row of four monitors set into the back wall flickered to life. The black and white pictures steadied quickly, but it still took Maggie a moment to realize she was looking at camera views of the yard surrounding Jack's house. She finally recognized the house across the street by its distinctive arched awning—the camera was showing a view of the front yard.
"Are there any interior cameras?" she asked.
"I think so." Remy flipped a switch and the pictures on one of the monitors changed. Maggie moved a little closer and recognized Jack's living room. The monitor was small and the picture quality wasn't great, but it was better than not having a clue what was going on outside the panic room.
She gave a little start when two men entered from left of the frame, guns drawn. They wore caps low over their faces, making them impossible to recognize. But there was something a little familiar about the taller man, something in his walk, in his barrel-chested build.
He was one of the two cops who'd been harassing Remy outside the youth center, she realized.
Next to her, Remy uttered a low oath. She echoed the sentiment silently, quelling a rush of panic. She glanced around the cramped room. "Do you see a phone, Remy?"
He looked around and gestured toward a small gray cell phone sitting about halfway up a floor-to-ceiling set of cubbyholes housing a mind-boggling array of gadgetry. Maggie picked up the phone with a sigh of relief. Jack had drilled his cell number into her head all morning before he left. She punched in the numbers quickly and waited.
"The cellular customer you are trying to reach is not available. Please try again later."
"Damn!" She disconnected with a stab of her thumb.
"How about his office?"
She started to dial that number, then stopped. "What if he's not there?"
"You hang up."
"And have somebody check caller I.D. and find out I'm calling from one of Jack's cell phones?"
Remy looked up at her, his earlier bravado cracking to reveal the scared kid underneath. She put a comforting hand on his shoulder and looked up at the monitor. Remy's itchy fingers flicked switches controlling the monitors, keeping pace with the two intruders as
they went room to room, making a quick but thorough search of the house. Maggie chewed her bottom lip, wondering if there was another way to get word to Jack about what was happening.
If he walked in on these guys—
She pushed the horrifying thought out of her mind. "Is there audio?"
Remy looked up at her. "I think so, but if we turn it on, they'll hear us through the bookcase."
Maggie searched the wall of storage compartments. Surely there were—there! She stood on tiptoe and pulled a tangle of headsets from one of the compartments. Untwisting the cords, she handed one set to Remy, keeping another for herself.
Remy plugged the cords into the output sockets. Almost immediately, Maggie heard the crackle of static, then a faint murmur of voices. She gestured for Remy to increase the audio. He turned a knob and she could make out words.
"We know they were here," one of the men said. The video was too fuzzy for Maggie to make out which had spoken.
"Think they're with Bennett?"
"Maybe they're hidin' around here somewhere." This comment was accompanied by a gesture of the shorter man's arm, so Maggie surmised he was the speaker.
"Prob'ly." The other man gave a nod and they moved out of camera range.
Remy grabbed Maggie's arm and pointed.
Maggie followed his worried gaze to the monitor at the far left. The camera shot was a slow pan shot of the street in front of Jack's house. Maggie didn't see anything that would excite Remy's interest; about a half-block down, a jogger was moving in the opposite direction of the house, and about a block down, a car approached the stop sign at the corner, but—
Remy reached out and lifted the earpiece away from Maggie's ear. "It's a Beretta," he whispered.
Maggie's stomach coiled. "Jack."
He was driving straight into an ambush.
Chapter 6
"There's gotta be some way—" Remy flicked another switch.
The two men came on screen on the third monitor, moving into another camera's view. Maggie slipped her headphones back over her ears and peered at the monitor, trying to make out where they were. Her heart skipped a beat as she recognized the study right outside their hiding place.
She felt Remy's fingers curl, claw-like, around her arm.
"They gotta be here," the shorter man drawled. "Or the alarm woulda been set."
Remy and Maggie turned to look at each other. The alarm.
Maggie pulled off the headset and looked frantically around the room for anything that looked like a security alarm panel. Remy grabbed her arm and pointed at the wall next to the bank of monitors. A small keypad was set into the wall.
Please, God, let that be it, Maggie thought, hurrying to the punch pad. There were no instructions, nothing to tell her if she was doing something wrong or right.
She started randomly pushing buttons.
A few seconds later, she hit pay dirt. An earsplitting wail filled the air, stopping the intruders in their tracks. Maggie stepped back and stole a glance at the outside monitor to check the progress of the Beretta. It slowed to a stop and pulled over about halfway down the block.
Maggie held her breath, wondering who'd make the next move.
The blare of the alarm sliced through the midday haze, startling the slim blond jogger and the brindle Sheltie keeping pace at her side. She turned and looked toward the noise, her gaze sliding past Jack's Beretta as it slowed to a stop.
Heart racing, Jack eased the car to the curb, ignoring the curious jogger as he peered up the street. More than one house on this street had alarms installed; he'd installed half of them himself. But instinctively he knew the siren splitting the air of the quiet neighborhood came from his own house.
Movement on his front stoop caught his eye, and his heart lurched Two men trotted down the concrete steps to a dark sedan parked across the street from his house, moving like cops—confident and aggressive, with a minimum of fuss. If not for the wail of the burglar alarm and the caps worn low over their faces, they might be mistaken for a couple of detectives doing routine legwork.
Their nonchalance scared the hell out of Jack.
He slouched low and reached into his glove compartment for his telephoto digital camera. Quelling his rising anxiety, he aimed and focused the high power telephoto lens at the two men, snapping three or four shots before they got into the sedan.
Luck was only partially with him; while they pulled out and headed away from where Jack sat in the idling Beretta, giving him a decent shot of the Louisiana license plate on the back of the sedan, most of the numbers on the plate were obscured by splattered mud. Maybe it would be enough to get an I.D. on the car, but Jack doubted it.
He waited until he no longer saw the sedan's taillights glinting in the sun, then slammed the Chevy into drive and squealed up the street. He swung into the driveway at a drunken angle, barely waiting for the car to jerk into park before he was out of the Beretta, racing up the steps to the front door.
The intruders had had the presence of mind to lock up behind them, he noted with a chill. And somehow, they'd managed to beat even his top-of-the-line deadbolt.
These guys were deadly serious.
He drew the Glock and entered the house. The wail of the alarm was loud enough to make his ears ache; he reached to his left and punched the disarm code into the keypad set into the front wall. The alarm died away, leaving an oppressive silence tempered only by the frantic cadence of Jack's heart.
He listened for movement. There was nothing.
"Maggie?"
She didn't answer.
Jack swept through the living room, his stomach roiling. "Remy? Maggie?"
He heard a soft scraping sound and raced toward it, his Glock at the ready. Pausing at the doorway to the study, he pressed himself flat and listened for the sound again.
There it was, soft but unmistakable. The door to the hidden security room opening.
"Jack?" Maggie's shaky voice was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.
He released a pent-up breath and swung around to face Maggie and Remy, who stood in the opening of the hidden room, their eyes wide with anxiety. Jack couldn't see anyone else with them, but his training was too thoroughly ingrained to allow him to drop his guard yet. "Are you okay?"
Remy answered. "Yeah, man, but we thought you was a goner for sure!" He swaggered into the middle of the room, a scrawny little rooster pumped up with adrenaline and relief.
Jack spared him a cursory glance before his gaze returned to Maggie, who stood still and silent in the open doorway to the electronics room. He put away his weapon and took a slow, careful step toward her. "How about you? You okay?"
She nodded. "Yes."
Something was wrong, but he had no time to sort it. If he didn't phone in the error code, both his company and the police would be calling any minute to see why the alarm had gone off. He crossed to the phone on the desk and picked up the receiver.
It was dead.
"They must've cut the line." He glanced up at Maggie.
She stared back at him, her murky eyes unreadable.
He moved past her, tempted to reach out and brush his hand across her pale cheek as he did so, but something in her expression quelled the urge. He found the cell phone lying on the electronics console and called in the false alarm to the police, then called his office.
"Tried to call you as soon as the alarm came across," Hank Carr commented, "but we've got a dead line reading."
"Looks like a pine limb snapped, took the phone line with it and set off the sensors. But it's all clear on my end," Jack lied. He disconnected and tucked the cell phone in his jacket pocket. Moving out of the hidden room, he almost tripped on something lying in the floor.
He looked down at the two stuffed pillowcases at his feet, recognizing the clothes he'd bought for Remy and Maggie among the garments spilling out of the makeshift bags.
He looked up at Maggie, his gut clenching.
She met his gaze, her chin jutting. "We can't stay aro
und here anymore. They know where we are. They'll be back." She moved past him and stuffed the spilled clothes back into the bags. She thrust them at Remy. "Go put these in the car, Remy. We're leaving." She gave him a nudge toward the door.
Jack watched Remy leave, frowning. "What's going on?"
Maggie turned to look at him. Her dark eyes were cool and distant. "They know where we are and who we're with. They'll be back, and I intend to be gone before that happens."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. After all he'd done, all the risks he'd taken for her and the boy . . . "Where are you going to go?"
"You don't need to know that." She turned away from him.
Anger bloomed fiery hot in the center of his chest. He caught up with her in the hallway, grabbing her arm. "What the hell do you mean, I don't need to know?"
She jerked her arm away from him. "I'm grateful for your help, Jack, but Remy and I have to go now. There's no need for you to be involved any further."
He followed her down the hall toward the spare bedroom. "What else happened here today, Maggie?"
She barred him from entering the room behind her. "You had misgivings about helping us from the beginning, Jack. I shouldn't have pressed you on it."
Confusion battled with anger. Obviously, something had gone wrong—more than just the intruders. There was no way she could have packed up those pillowcases while the bad guys were in the house. "I'm willing to help you, Maggie, you should know that by now, but you have to tell me what's going on."
Her chin trembled. "I can't tell you anything, Jack. I'm sorry. We'll be out of your hair in a few minutes."
He grabbed her as she turned away from him, drawing her toward him. She stumbled and he caught her up tightly to keep her from falling. Their legs tangled, the point of her hip pressing against his groin. His pulse, which had just begun to settle after the intruder scare, lurched back to full throttle.
"Tell me what's going on," he demanded.
"No." But even as she spoke the denial, she melted against him, her body soft and pliant against his.