Within Striking Distance

by Ingrid Weaver

  His smile turned lopsided. “Seems like we had this conversation before.”

  “Not exactly, but similar.”

  “Mmm. I can get used to holding you, Becky. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

  She rubbed her heel behind his good leg. This had been such a perfect weekend, she was reluctant to have it end. “I have some plants that need watering, but they’ll keep. What about you?”

  “Right now, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. Well, maybe somewhere more comfortable,” he said, pulling her flush to the front of his body as he leaned back against the door.

  The moment his shoulders touched the frosted glass panel, the door swung inward.

  Jake swore and lurched to the side as he recovered his balance. He quickly set Becky on her feet. “I didn’t turn the key yet,” he muttered. “What the—”

  His words cut off as the door was pulled open completely from inside. A split second later, a stocky, dark-haired man moved into the doorway. Though the light in the corridor was poor, it was enough to reveal the gleam of a knife in his hand.

  Becky cried out a warning but Jake had already shifted sideways and was lifting his forearm to block the attack. In spite of his lame leg, he’d assumed a combat stance. He yelled at her over his shoulder. “Get back! Run!”

  She stumbled back a few feet to give him more space, but she had no intention of running away and leaving Jake here alone.

  The man in the doorway jabbed with his weapon again. Instead of retreating, Jake reached past him to grasp the door. He yanked it toward them hard, smashing it into his assailant’s side.

  The wood shuddered and splintered at the impact. The frosted glass in the upper half shattered, sending shards flying everywhere. Momentarily stunned, the man cursed and slashed wildly at Jake’s face. The blade passed within a hairbreadth of his ear.

  In desperation, Becky glanced around for something she could use as a weapon and spotted Jake’s cane on the floor beside the door frame. She darted forward to pick it up, gripping it like a baseball bat.

  The next thing she knew, she was knocked facedown on the floor with a crushing weight on her back. Pain knifed through her hand. She struggled to draw in a breath but the smell of stale cigarette smoke made her gag.

  “Becky!”

  It was Jake’s voice. She tried to respond but her reply came out as a moan.

  There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Something clattered to the floor and suddenly, the weight on her back disappeared. “Becky! Are you okay?”

  She lifted her head. Jake’s attacker staggered against the side of the corridor. Blood flowed from his nose. The knife he’d been wielding was on the floor at Jake’s feet. She gasped and scrambled to her knees to reach for it.

  Jake glanced at her over his shoulder, his face hard. “Stay back. Don’t touch it.”

  The moment’s distraction was all the other man needed. He shoved himself away from the wall and sprinted for the staircase. Seconds later, his footsteps thudded down the stairs.

  Jake swore under his breath.

  Becky wobbled to her feet. “Are you all right?”

  He spun to face her. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He reached out to run his hands along her arms and over her shoulders. “Are you okay? Does anything hurt?”

  Her chest ached with every breath and her palms stung but her first concern was Jake. She shook her head, her gaze racing over him. There was blood on his shirt. “Oh, my God. You’re bleeding. We have to get you to a hospital.”

  He looked down. “It’s not my blood,” he said. “It’s his.”

  She forced herself to focus. The front of his shirt was covered with dark splatters but the fabric didn’t appear to have been cut.

  Jake pulled her into his arms. For a while, he simply held her, his breathing as ragged as hers. “It’s okay, Becky. It’s over. He’s gone.”

  She nodded against his shoulder. “We have to call the police.”

  “We will.”

  “Who was he? What did he want?”

  Jake smoothed his palm over her hair. “I don’t think he wanted to hurt us.”

  “He had a knife. My God, Jake. He could have killed you.”

  “Not really. He wasn’t very good.”

  She shuddered and lifted her head to look past him. The corridor was still empty. There were no sounds from the stairs, but…“Jake, we can’t stay here!” she said, stepping out of his embrace. “What if he comes back?”

  “That’s unlikely. He had no way of knowing we’d be here tonight so we couldn’t have been his target. He probably just fought because he wanted to get away.”

  On some level, she knew he was making sense, but she was having a hard time calming down enough to listen. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “You’d better sit down.”

  The moment he touched her hand, she cried out. Jake caught both her wrists and turned her palms upward. Blood oozed from the base of her right thumb where an inch-long sliver of glass protruded from her skin.

  “Damn, you must have picked that up when you fell. I’m sorry, Becky.”

  Her stomach rolled threateningly as she looked at her injury. The light in the hall was too dim for her to have noticed it before. She hadn’t felt anything until he’d touched it. She averted her eyes and swallowed hard. “Pull it out.”

  “No, not yet. It could be the reason you’re not bleeding worse. I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  “Why? It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was. I hadn’t known you were behind me when I threw that guy. He landed on top of you.”

  “I thought you might have needed my help…” She didn’t try explaining any further. Jake hadn’t needed her help. If she’d been thinking straight she would have remembered that he’d been trained by the Special Forces. If she’d stayed out of the way as he’d wanted her to, she wouldn’t have been hurt and Jake would probably have been able to restrain the man. She blew out a shaky breath. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Yeah. Sneak attacks usually do.” He retrieved his cane and led her past the wood splinters and broken glass on the floor to guide her to one of the armchairs in his office. As soon as he was assured that she was comfortable, he turned on his desk lamp and grabbed his phone. His call to the police was brief. Becky started to protest when she heard him request an ambulance but the look he gave her was so intense she fell silent.

  Now that the shock was wearing off, her aches felt worse. So did her sense of uneasiness. It was true that the attack had happened quickly. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. Yet now every vivid, terrifying detail replayed in her mind, as if in slow motion. She cradled her hand on her lap and anchored herself by keeping her focus on Jake. He retrieved a clean towel from his gym bag and wrapped it gently around her glass sliver to immobilize it. He knew what he was doing. They were both safe. That’s what mattered. Still, Becky had the niggling feeling that she was missing something important.

  JAKE MOVED into the corridor, too wired to remain still. He’d done his best to minimize the incident for Becky’s sake, but he was worried. The man with the knife hadn’t been large enough or skilled enough to pose much difficulty for Jake, but he’d been desperate, and desperate people were always the most dangerous. They didn’t behave rationally. So it was with some relief that Jake saw Lieutenant Denning had arrived and was speaking with one of the uniformed policemen who had been the first on the scene. Positioning himself near the remains of the office door so that he could keep an eye on Becky, Jake waved Len over.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Jake said.

  Len suppressed a yawn. He looked like an unmade bed, but then, that’s probably where he’d been when he’d received Jake’s call. “No problem. You sounded in rough shape.”

  “I’m fine. It could have been a lot worse. Did you see the blade?”

  “One of the uniforms collected it. You told him no
one else had touched it, is that right?”

  “Yeah. You should get a few good prints.”

  “So, what happened?”

  Jake glanced at Becky to check the paramedic’s progress and saw that her wound was already being bandaged. They had deemed it too minor to warrant moving her to a hospital, which agreed with what she’d told Jake, but he’d wanted to be sure. Any wound not properly tended could get infected and scar. That could prove a problem in Becky’s line of work.

  Who was he kidding? It wasn’t her livelihood that concerned him, it was her life. Just the thought of her having been exposed to this level of danger was making him crazy.

  “Buddy, are you still with me?”

  Jake returned his attention to Len and gave him a detailed summary of the attack.

  “What’s your take on this?” Len asked when Jake had finished. “Burglary gone wrong?”

  Jake shook his head. “If I’d thought that’s all it was, I wouldn’t have phoned you. I would have let the uniforms handle it.”

  Len twisted to look at the door beside Jake’s office. “I don’t know, Jake. The drugs that would be in that dentist’s office and the electronic equipment in yours would look pretty attractive to a thief.”

  “I’ve gone through my office. Nothing’s missing.”

  “You interrupted him.”

  “Obviously. I think he was after information.”

  “Any idea what?”

  Jake looked at Becky again. The paramedic had finished his work. Becky turned her wrist from one side to the other as if testing the movement. The bandage had been wrapped across her palm and around her hand, but it didn’t appear to be causing her any discomfort.

  “Am I boring you? Maybe you’d prefer to go give your friend a kiss and make it better.”

  Jake jerked his gaze back to Len. “That’s Becky Peters. Her adoptive father is Floyd Peters.”

  “Peters? Right, the punk with the assault record you asked me about. Do you think he did this?”

  “No. He lives in Australia, and I’ve seen pictures of him. It definitely wasn’t him. But I’d bet money that this is connected with the Gina Grosso case. None of my other open cases would inspire someone to take a risk like this.”

  “Maybe Peters hired him.”

  “That’s a possibility. But I don’t believe Peters would have wanted Becky to get hurt.”

  “That doesn’t rule him out. From what you told me, she was collateral damage.”

  Jake saw that the paramedic was gathering his supplies and repacking his case. Becky had already stood and was moving toward the door. He held out his free arm as she approached. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “And your hand?”

  “The gash is clean and taped closed. It wasn’t that deep. Are you okay?”

  He nodded as he studied her face. Now that the surge of adrenaline from the attack had worn off, she was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. He draped his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side before he introduced her to Len. “Could you let me know if you come up with anything on those prints?” he asked.

  “Sure thing.” Len suppressed another yawn. “It still could be you’re making too much of this. The perp might have been high and mistook your office for the dentist’s next door.”

  Becky stiffened. “The dentist,” she said. “That man.”

  Jake looked at her. “What is it?”

  “Now I remember. He smelled like cigarettes. I saw him before.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. The day before I left for Italy. He was waiting outside your office but he left as soon as I spoke to him. I’d thought he was waiting for the dentist and had changed his mind.”

  Jake firmed his hold on Becky and exchanged a look with Len. His friend nodded, obviously grasping the significance of what Becky had said. The break-in hadn’t been random. Whoever had done it had known exactly which office he’d wanted to target.

  And he’d probably done it before, Jake thought. The man could have been following his progress for weeks. If Floyd Peters was behind it, Jake had badly underestimated him. How far would Peters and his accomplice go to keep Becky’s origins a secret?

  As it turned out, Jake got his answer sooner than he’d expected. The radios of both the police officer down the hall and the paramedic in the office crackled to life within seconds of each other. Jake couldn’t make out what was said, but whatever it was sent both of them racing for the staircase. Moments later, Len’s cell phone trilled.

  “What’s going on?” Jake demanded.

  Len said a few words into his phone and flipped it shut. “Four-alarm fire in the hospital zone.”

  “My God,” Becky said. “All those people…”

  “The fire hasn’t reached the hospital itself yet,” Len said. “It’s centered in an analytical laboratory.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JAKE PUT THE PHONE on his desk and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the kink in the back of his neck. His body was screaming for rest, but apart from the two hours he’d snatched at his apartment after he’d driven Becky home early this morning, it had been more than a day since he’d slept. The way things were shaping up, it might be another day before he did again.

  According to what the fire department had just told him, the preliminary investigation of the blaze in the laboratory confirmed it had been deliberately set. All of the analyses that had been in progress had been destroyed, including the DNA samples that Nicole had sent there the previous week. It hadn’t been the fire alone that had ruined them. The arsonist had taken the time to trash the place before he’d poured gasoline over everything.

  The arson occurring so soon after the break-in here couldn’t have been a coincidence. The receipt for the DNA test, which had the lab’s address printed on it, was missing from Becky’s file. Someone wanted to keep the truth from coming out.

  Yet destroying the test samples was only a temporary solution. It would be easy to arrange for a second test.

  Jake leaned back in his chair, his gaze going to the sheet of plywood that was serving as a temporary door. Was Peters really behind what had happened here and at the lab? Destroying the lab had involved a level of violence far beyond break-and-enter and would carry a heavier penalty. Peters had been a hothead when he’d been a kid, but he’d been clean since he’d married Lizzie. None of his early brushes with the law had involved anything premeditated. Still, it might be possible he’d know how to contact the kind of lowlife who wouldn’t have hesitated to do both crimes.

  It all depended on how desperate Peters was. He had good reason to be concerned about possible abduction charges, since the FBI had reopened the Gina Grosso kidnapping case. Yet Jake had been hired to find Gina, not to bring her abductors to justice. The Grossos weren’t interested in vengeance. They simply wanted to be reunited with their lost child. When they’d approached him about taking the case, they had already had their fill of legal proceedings because they’d been dealing with the murder of their friend…

  The hair at the back of Jake’s neck stood up. He sucked in his breath. The murder of Alan Cargill last December had appeared to be a crime of opportunity rather than premeditation. At first it had seemed like a mugging, but then suspicions had arisen that Alan’s death had been tied to an old scandal about cheating in NASCAR. So far, no proof of any link to the cheating scandal had been found.

  Were the police looking in the wrong direction? The allegations about Gina being alive had surfaced around the same time that Alan had been killed. Had the timing of that been merely coincidence?

  Alan Cargill had been stabbed to death.

  The man who had been spying on Jake had wielded a knife.

  Was that a coincidence, too?

  Maybe the fire in the lab hadn’t been intended as a solution. It could have been meant as a warning.

  Jake rocked forward to yank open the top drawer of his desk. He grabbed his Rolodex and flipped through the c
ards until he found Lucas Haines’s number.

  The New York detective answered on the second ring. “Haines.”

  “Lucas, it’s Jake McMasters.”

  “Hey, Jake. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m calling about the Alan Cargill case. Are you any closer to an arrest yet?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Seems I get a lead only to find something to rule it out.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “I take it there’s a reason you’re asking.”

  “There have been some developments here in Charlotte I believe you should know about.”

  “I thought you were looking into the Grosso kidnapping.”

  “I am. The two crimes might be related.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Jake gave Lucas a rundown of his progress on the Grosso case as well as a summary of the events of the previous night. Only then did he detail his suspicions. He finished by giving Lucas Len’s phone number. “Lieutenant Denning is having the knife tested for prints,” Jake said. “He told me he’ll know later today whether or not he gets a hit on them. I’ll ask him to call you.”

  “Good. Thanks.” Lucas was silent for a moment. “Wait a minute.” There was the sound of papers being shuffled in the background. “Gina starts with a G.”

  “Right. Why?”

  “Cargill made an entry in his electronic organizer the night he died. ‘Ask D. about G.’”

  Jake’s hand tightened around the phone. “The G could stand for Gina.”

  “There was no reason for me to consider it before. Dean Grosso had told me that during their last conversation, Cargill had asked him about GranolaPlus. It’s a cereal company that was interested in sponsoring Kent. I’d concluded that D referred to Dean and G meant GranolaPlus. That explained the BlackBerry entry on your electronic organizer.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe not,” Lucas repeated. “Jake, I appreciate your cooperation. If you find anything else that might help, call me.”

  “Count on it.”

  “And, Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Until we sort this out, you might want to exercise some extra caution.”