She had pinned her hopes on the promise, but it wasn’t Spence who’d showed up with the cell phone and a box of supplies, it was the man called Flynt. “I don’t know how much Spence told you about what’s going on, Ms. Wagner, but it’ll help a whole lot if you can stay here for the next few days. The last thing he needs with things the way they are is to be worried about your safety.”
Ellen had bridled at the implication that she was a drag on anyone, but decided there was no point in taking it up with this man. “A few days?” She knew from past experience that a few days could mean anything from a few hours to a few months. Without having her own transportation, leaving would not be easy. She would have to call a taxi, and she wasn’t even sure how to tell them to find the place.
Besides, she wasn’t at all certain her two watchdogs would allow her to leave. They looked like a couple of harmless old men on a fishing vacation, but looks could be deceiving.
“We’ll be just fine,” she’d assured the handsome, solemn-faced man with the piercing blue eyes. “You can tell Spence that he doesn’t need to worry about us. We’re perfectly capable of looking after ourselves.”
He’d taken a moment to think it over, then shook his head. “One of us will be in touch as soon as anything changes. Meanwhile, if you think of anything you need—anything at all—just ask Beau or Melvin.”
“Frick or Frack.”
It took him a moment, but he’d almost smiled. “Right. Look, you’ve got your cell phone now, and the list of numbers. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call except in case of an emergency. The calls can’t be traced the way landlines can, but with some pretty simple equipment, they can be intercepted.”
Merciful heaven, what on earth had she gotten herself mixed up in? Ellen thought now. She didn’t mind so much for herself—being an army wife had been more than a rude awakening; in the case of a spoiled debutante playing at being a college student, it had been a crash course in reality. But now she had Pete, and if anything happened to him, she would take on the so-called Texas Mafia herself. They didn’t know what trouble was until they ran head-on into a mother’s rage.
In the center of town, three men, two of them wearing headsets, waited in a van walled with electronic equipment. “Anything yet?” Spence whispered tersely. So far they had heard only the sounds of cursing, the scratch of a match, and the opening and closing of a drawer—probably a desk drawer. “Why the hell couldn’t we get three sets of phones?”
“Lucky to get this much,” Tyler muttered. He’d been the one to requisition the van. Tyler’s specialty was disarming bombs, not procuring surveillance equipment. Fortunately, all three men, having been members of Special Forces, knew more than enough to get the job done.
Surveillance required patience, though, and patience at this point was in short supply. They were so close to the end of the game—that is, they were if everything fell into place as expected.
“I wish I knew what the hell we were waiting for,” Tyler muttered.
“I can’t tell you. I’ve been out of the loop too long, but I’ll know it when I hear it.” Occupied with another matter, neither Flynt nor Tyler had been in a position to get a lead on what was happening now that the new D.A. had been appointed.
“Then get on with it while I go get us some coffee and doughnuts.”
Just then Tyler raised a hand for silence and leaned closer to the monitoring device. He ripped off his headset and fiddled with a control as a strident voice filled the overheated space.
“—know why? Because nobody trusts you anymore, that’s why! Me, they can trust! I got a record to back me up. You? All you got is a two-bit contracting company!”
“That’s Del Brio,” Flynt confirmed. Another voice came into play and all three men stiffened.
“That’s Ricky,” Spence whispered. “See if you can bring it in better.”
“Damn freakin’ equipment. I told them I needed—”
“Hush!” Spence moved in closer to the speaker, concentrating on the tinny, static-filled conversation.
“If you’d stayed tight with your buddies, I wouldn’t be in this fix, damn it! I’m working blind here, and you’re not—”
“What the hell did you expect? For all I knew, they were responsible for my sister’s—”
“They got off, didn’t they?”
There was some highly inventive cursing followed by a sound as if one of the men had slammed a drawer shut. Then Del Brio’s distinctive voice was heard again. “Forget Harrison. One way or the other, he’s out of the picture now. Your other two friends are too worried about Callaghan to make trouble now. As for Haley, I been hearing things—”
“What things? Damn it, don’t jerk me around like this, Frankie!”
The mob boss’s voice took on a patently false geniality. “Way I hear it, your sister might still be alive. Now I’m not saying for sure, and I’m not saying I’m still interested in marrying her, I just happened to come into some information—”
“What information? What the hell are you talking about? We both know Haley’s—’
“Take your hands off my shirt, boy.” All signs of geniality, false or otherwise, disappeared. “Now, you want to work with me, or did you just come here to stir up trouble?”
Time passed slowly. At first Ellen was reluctant for Pete to go outside, but after the first few hours, she relented. There was no TV, no books—nothing at all to read other than schoolbooks and the comic books he’d brought with him, a few tattered fishing magazines and a copy of Playboy, which she quickly stashed inside the wood-burning stove.
Schoolbooks, Pete informed her, didn’t count.
“Mom, I’m, hungry again. What are we having for lunch?”
“Let’s see…we have canned corned-beef hash, canned tomatoes, a loaf of bread and some sandwich makings.” Either Spence’s friends were extremely unimaginative or they were unused to buying their own groceries.
“We could eat fish,” Pete offered hopefully.
“So bait up and start fishing.” She figured as long as he was entertained, he wouldn’t worry about Miss Sara and her baby. Although the couple they’d left behind at the ranch had seemed competent enough, things could go wrong even in the best of circumstances.
“Yeah!” Pete shouted softly.
He was being forced to miss school. That put this in the category of a vacation, and vacations were always welcome. If life as an army wife had taught her some basic lessons, being an army brat had been a good learning experience for her son. It had definitely helped make him more adaptable.
Lord, she loved Pete so much it hurt. He was still a child, but he considered himself the man of the family now, and as such, he took his duties seriously. Too seriously, sometimes, but there was nothing she could do about that. For a little while she’d thought that Spence might—
Forget it, she chided silently. Whatever Spence was involved in, it was big. Comparatively speaking, life on a struggling ranch—a horse breeding operation with two mares, two geldings and a bad-tempered stallion—was small. Too small to interest a man with an important position in town, and friends who could call in favors at the drop of a hat.
She could have cried, only it wouldn’t have helped. Besides, Pete would have wanted to know why she was crying, and she could hardly tell an eight-year-old boy that she’d fallen head over heart in love with a man she had pulled out of a ditch.
Thirteen
Pete didn’t catch any fish. If he was disappointed, he didn’t let it show. Neither of them had ever dressed a fish before, but Ellen was sure she could have figured it out. “Maybe tomorrow,” she consoled. “I’ve always heard that fish bite best early in the morning.”
“Yeah, they pro’ly wake up hungry just like I do. Mom, do we have any cookies left?”
Without the regimen of school and chores to shape his days Pete was always hungry. She felt the opposite, having to force herself to eat.
That evening for supper, using two leftover biscuits,
a can of tomatoes and whatever seasoning was on hand, Ellen made tomato pudding, one of her mother’s favorite dishes to serve with the canned corned-beef hash. Her father used to turn up his nose and make some disparaging remark about taking the girl out of the country but not being able to take the country out of the girl.
“This tastes funny,” Pete said.
“Then laugh, but don’t complain unless you’re ready to take over as chef-in-chief.”
“Chef-in-chief, that’s funny!”
She playfully cuffed him on the head. “Everything’s funny to you.”
Pete scraped his plate clean while Ellen told him stories of the people she’d known when she was a little girl, exaggerating facial expressions and accents, shamelessly throwing in outrageous details. By the time she ran out of imagination, he was asleep on the sagging sofa.
She covered him and left him there, then opened the door and stared out at the golden trail across Greasy Pond, compliments of the rising full moon. The scrubby oaks and cottonwoods cast romantic shadows on the row of weathered old shacks, disguising their dilapidated condition. Other than small birds skimming over the water, feeding on insects, nothing stirred.
And that, she supposed, was good.
Sooner or later Spence had to call. She didn’t care if the call could be intercepted or not, she needed to hear his voice. Needed to know he hadn’t forgotten her. Had whatever happened between them been only gratitude on his part for pulling him out of that ditch? Or on hers, for saving her son? She refused to believe that. She knew very well what her own feelings were; it was Spence’s feelings she couldn’t be sure of, didn’t dare allow herself to believe.
Turning back inside, she knew she would never be able to sleep. What on earth was she supposed to do? How long were they going to be stuck there? If she’d had any cleaning supplies, she might even have given the place a thorough scrubbing. Anything was better than waiting and not knowing. Minute by minute, hour by hour, hoping for the best, expecting the worst.
Waiting for a call that didn’t come.
So maybe when this was all over she would go back to Austin for a visit. Her father might even have mellowed with time, and Pete really did need a man in his life. A male role model. Right now all she had to offer was Booker and Clyde, and her father was definitely better than that. It wouldn’t hurt for Pete to be exposed to a little refinement.
Spence’s downtown office had been locked once he’d been declared missing, but not before his files had been searched for anything pertaining to the trial of Alex Black. It had never occurred to him when he’d locked the door behind him that morning nearly three weeks ago, to remove the files directly pertaining to the trial. Malone would have laid claim to all that his first day in office.
As for tangential information that was far more potentially explosive, Spence had his own methods of handling the paper trail that led from certain politicians, plus a few of Mission Creek’s big businessmen, directly to the Texas Mafia. If he’d known he was going to turn up missing, he might have done a better job of securing it, but he was hoping his hide-in-plain-sight method had worked.
Missing. That was the official designation. Pressure would have been brought to bear to declare him not only missing but presumed dead, in which case everything in his office would have been subject to intense scrutiny. Without a body, however, the police were obliged to follow certain procedures. Any cop who tried to rush the process would have tripped too many alarms.
Still, pressure had to have been brought to bear by certain individuals on certain others. Spence knew who had done the applying; that was an open secret. What he couldn’t be sure of, not without further proof, was just where that pressure had been applied. Who had buckled? Had it been a top-down decision, or a bottom-up one?
Del Brio’s first act on taking over as the new mob boss had been to ramrod his man into the position of acting D.A. to rush through the trial before new evidence could be admitted. Shortly before he’d gone missing, Spence had been close to compiling enough evidence to rock a few well-placed citizens off their perches. He’d wanted that deposition for a turnkey job, but even without that he had enough to hand over to the feds. Let the attorney general’s office take over. The evidence he’d compiled, if it was still where he’d left it in his office, was enough to build a solid case, even without the coup de grace.
Spence had wanted to go directly to his apartment after leaving Ellen and Pete in safe hands. He’d wanted to change into his own clothes, his own boots.
But in case the place was being watched, he’d sent Tyler in with a list.
Flynt drove him to a rundown motel out near the rodeo arena, where he registered using the name Jason Hale.
“ID?” the sleepy-eyed clerk had mumbled.
“Sorry. My wallet got lifted. I borrowed enough from a friend to live on for a few days, though.”
“Be forty-five a day in advance, sign here.”
Spence signed, using a slashing backhand. He counted out enough for three days, not that he intended to stay that long, but he’d just as soon not have to spend much time in the lobby. Considering the seedy clientele, it was just the sort of place where he might come face to face with Peaches and Silent Sal.
Inside the room, Flynt glanced around and said, “Did that clerk say forty-five a night or four-fifty an hour?”
“Go to hell,” Spence retorted, a tired grin removing the bite from the words.
“Look, I’ll have a driver’s license for you in a few hours. Sure Jason Hale suits you?”
“Yeah, I’ll stick with it until this mess is cleared up. I’m going to need wheels. It’ll be a while before I can get in touch with my insurance company.”
“I’ll have a rental outside your door as soon as we get you documented.”
“Tinted glass.”
“You got it. But watch out, okay? We don’t know how many people are still looking for you.”
Spence stroked his bristly jaw. He’d gone without shaving since yesterday. Another couple of days and it would take a Weed Eater to mow his beard.
Seeing the gesture, Flynt warned him not to shave. “You’re looking just crummy enough to escape notice.”
“Thanks,” Spence said dryly, and of all things, he thought of Ellen. Of the carefully controlled look on her face when she’d brought him her husband’s shaving gear. Had he read more into the simple gesture than she’d intended? At the time he’d still been pretty groggy.
He had some unfinished business to deal with where Ellen Wagner was concerned, but before he could do anything about it, he had to wind up what he’d started here in town. What happened after that would be up to her. And Pete.
He knew what he wanted to happen.
For the next few hours, holed up in a crummy little motel room with mustard-yellow walls, a rose-colored bedspread and a few faded rodeo posters, Spence wrote down every scrap of information he could remember, including where the hard evidence was located, its source and how it all tied together. He drew diagrams. It helped him to think more clearly—helped to prevent him from busting out, heading downtown and making a royal ass of himself. And in the process, ruining whatever chance he had of pulling this case together in time to hand it off to the FBI. Alex Black was going to take the fall—there wasn’t much he could do about that now, but hell, the guy had pulled the trigger. Judge Bridges hadn’t been his first hit. As young as he was, Black had been no amateur.
Only if Spence could make his case tight enough and hand it off to the feds would all the dominoes come tumbling down. Justice would be served in the long run—or as much of it as any man could expect.
God, he sounded jaded. Time he got out of this rat race.
He had his own ranch—had he thought to tell Ellen? Not that he’d had much time even to visit for the past couple of years. Hers was small; his was even smaller, but his was a lot better managed. Maybe something could be worked out between them, although they were separated by practically the entire width of Lone
Star County.
From time to time, to ease the tension gathering at the base of his neck, he flopped back on the sagging mattress and stared at the stained acoustical-tiled ceiling. He pictured another bedroom—paneled walls, white cotton curtains—nothing fancy, but clean and comfortable and somehow just right.
He pictured a woman standing beside the bed in a white chenille bathrobe with the sash pulled tight, revealing the flare of her hips, the narrowness of her waist. Fresh from her bath, her face would be flushed, her hair tousled and still damp. “Ellen, Ellen,” he murmured. “What are we going to do? How the devil are we going to work things out?”
They met at the courthouse. Spence had set the time for three hours past midnight, knowing that traffic would be practically nonexistent, security at its most lax. At this point, he couldn’t afford to trust even the cleaning crew. While Tyler distracted the lone security guard, the other two men slipped up the back stairway and into the office that still bore Spence’s name in gold letters on the pebbled-glass door. Thank God they hadn’t yet got around to declaring him officially out of the picture or the locks would have been changed, his office space reassigned.
“I hear Malone got the big corner office,” Tyler said quietly, referring to the newly appointed district attorney.
“Southwestern exposure. Once he finds out the place is an oven eight months out of the year he might change his mind. Look in the top file drawer under Insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“What, you expected a folder labeled Corruption In Internal Affairs And Business Ties To The Mob?”
Flynt pulled the thick file while Tyler cleared a working space, then the two men began scanning the contents. The papers at the front and the back of the folder concerned insurance. The rest did not.
“Damn, just look at this,” Tyler said softly.
Flynt glanced up from his own stack of paper—more interesting reading—then glanced over his shoulder to where Spence sat hunched over his desktop computer.
The Quiet Seduction Page 17