Perilous Trust

by Barbara Freethy

  She couldn't teach without using her real identity, her real degrees. She couldn't go on digs without credentials.

  But she could live. And maybe that's all he'd been able to arrange for her.

  She laid the suitcase down flat and opened the lid again, secretly praying she'd imagined the amount of money inside, but she hadn't.

  Pulling out a stack of hundred dollar bills, she counted one hundred bills. And there were at least fifty stacks of bills, maybe more. Her father had probably stashed away half a million dollars in cash.

  She examined the first passport again. He'd used her fake name from the lake—Rebecca Framingham. Her photo looked like it might have been taken recently. Her gaze narrowed as she tried to remember when he'd last taken her picture.

  He'd brought out his camera at Christmas, and, yes, she was wearing the dark red sweater she'd bought for Christmas Eve. Had he been planning this six months ago? The driver's license also matched the passport, and there was a credit card with Rebecca's name on it, too.

  The other trio of passport, driver's license and credit card belonged to a Charlotte Bennett with a different photo of her. In this picture, she'd had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and she'd been wearing a dark-green top. Had he wanted to give her two options of how to look?

  As she studied the IDs, it occurred to her that the address was the same on both—an apartment in Brooklyn. Did the address exist? What was there? Her dad wouldn't put just any address on the ID, would he?

  Her mind grappled with the information. It was possible it was a random address or an empty lot. But was it? And did it matter?

  The garage door opened.

  She dropped the IDs and slammed the lid of the case down. Then she jumped to her feet, relieved to see Damon. She didn't know what she would have done if it had been someone else. She'd been so lost in thought, she'd lost track of where she was.

  "The cleaners are gone," he said. "Looks like they just did a quick dust and a vacuum."

  "And no one saw you?"

  "No. I noticed that they'd damp-mopped the downstairs bathroom, so I figured they were done in there. I hid behind the shower curtain until I heard the door close. Then I turned the alarm off and came to find you."

  "You're good at the secret agent stuff."

  "It's my job. Let's go inside."

  She leaned over and zipped the case back up as Damon came around to take it. "I started counting the money. It might be half a million or more."

  He nodded, his mouth tight. "I figured."

  She noticed he didn't comment on where or how her dad had gotten the money, but she suspected that conversation was coming. She grabbed her purse and followed him out of the garage.

  The house was just as she remembered it: well-decorated with expensive furniture, nice art, and a very formal feeling in the living room and dining room. At one time, she thought there had been more personal items, but those seemed to be gone.

  She insisted on checking every room of the house, even though Damon told her he'd already done that. She had to be sure that they were alone before she could let herself breathe freely again, although after what had happened earlier in the day, that might be optimistic thinking.

  The upstairs bedrooms that had once belonged to Cassie and Jamie tugged at her heart. Even though they were both fairly empty, there were remnants of the past: board games in Cassie's closet, baseball posters of the Mets on Jamie's walls. Damon seemed a little bothered by those posters, too.

  She noticed that when he spoke about Jamie, his jaw turned to rock, his eyes darkened from blue to black, and his voice came out clipped and sharp. She doubted he thought he had any tells, but he did, and over the past several days, she'd watched him closely enough to notice. It was ironic that they'd both loved the same person, and it was that person who had brought them together, but only in death, not in life.

  She felt better when they returned to the first floor where there were less memories, but that good feeling ended when they walked into Vincent's study. While most of the other rooms had been stripped of photographs, this room had not. Along one wall was an enormous built-in bookcase/entertainment center. In addition to a small television, there were a dozen or so framed photographs on the shelves.

  They were mostly family pictures of Vincent and his wife as well as Cassie and Jamie. But there was one that caught her eye and made her heart squeeze tighter once more.

  It was a photograph of her parents with the Rowlands. It had been taken at the lake, and judging by her parents' ages, they'd probably been in their early thirties. Vincent and her father stood near the wheel of a boat while the women were sitting on a bench in the background.

  The men looked handsome and young. Her father wore a short-sleeved shirt hanging open over a pair of swim trunks, his light-brown hair blowing in the wind, his smile lighting up his face. Vincent didn't have a trace of gray in his black hair and no extra weight around the middle, which seemed to have crept on in later years.

  She couldn't see her mom that well, but her blonde hair and blurry smile resembled the hazy image she carried in her head. Jamie's mom had on a big beach hat to cover her red hair and pale complexion.

  "They had no idea," she murmured. "Of what was coming."

  Damon came up next to her to look at the photo. "Good looking group."

  "In this moment, they were happy," she said. "The Rowlands were still together. My mom wasn't sick. My dad was alive." She shook her head, giving Damon a helpless look. "I don't know when it will stop hurting."

  "It hasn't been that long, and it probably won't ever completely go away, Sophie. But you already know that. You've been carrying around your mom's loss for a long time."

  "True."

  "You will find a way to go on, to smile again, to be happy."

  "I want to believe that. It's certainly not easy right now."

  "I know." He put his arm around her shoulders. "Maybe that picture should remind you of what I said earlier."

  "About staying in the moment?"

  "Yes."

  "Easier to say than to do, but I will try. I just need to stop thinking that the good things will last, because they usually don't. Maybe if I were less optimistic, I wouldn't get hit so hard by disappointment."

  "You're an optimist. That's not a bad thing."

  "It is when you're constantly getting hit in the face with reality. I'm like a cartoon character, who keeps taking a pie in the face because she can't seem to figure out when to duck."

  He smiled. "You have been pretty good at ducking. And there's no way you could have predicted all this was going to happen."

  "Is that true?" she challenged. "I'm starting to feel like I missed some big signs, especially where my father is concerned." She stepped away from Damon and returned the photo to the shelf. "However, I don't want to talk about him right now. I know we have to do that eventually, but I'm not ready."

  "Then why don't we go into the kitchen and see what's in the pantry?"

  "I doubt there's much food here. I don't know when anyone was here last. It could have been months."

  "Maybe there are some non-perishable items we can turn into a meal."

  "We should have gotten food when we left the car in that lot."

  "That would have been a good idea. I was more concerned with putting some distance between us and the stolen car."

  "Me, too." She put a hand on his arm as he started to turn away. "Are we staying here, Damon? I thought we were going to take one of the cars and go."

  "That was my original thought, but I think we should stay here tonight. Cassie and Vincent are in Europe. Cassie's mom lives in another state. The housecleaners have already been here. I think we're good for a while."

  "Someone else could come by or see us—a neighbor, a delivery person."

  "Well, I don’t plan on answering the door, and I think if we stay in the back of the house and don't turn on the lights when it gets dark, no one will know we're here. Luckily, the Rowlands enjoy ha
ving privacy from their neighbors."

  He made a good argument, and she wasn't really in the mood to be out on the open road again where anyone could follow them or stop them. "It would be nice to stay here. It's comfortable."

  "And cool," he said with a smile. "Even without the air conditioning on."

  She couldn't help but grin at that remark. "You and heat—it's a love-hate relationship, isn't it?"

  "More like a hate-hate relationship. Everything bad in my life has happened during a heat wave, and this weekend has been no exception."

  "What kind of bad things?" she asked curiously.

  "It's a long story."

  "Give me the short version. You owe me. I have to listen to you complain about the heat every single day."

  He tipped his head. "I will try to do better."

  "Just give me an example."

  He let out a sigh. "Let's see. My dad left my mom on one of the hottest nights of the year. We were living by the beach, but there was no sea breeze and no air conditioning to battle the surprising ninety-degree-plus heat. It was sweltering. My parents started yelling. It was becoming a nightly fight, so I went on the deck and tried not to hear them, but all the windows were open, and I heard every word—every hateful, horrible word. I was happy when he left, because it was quiet again."

  She was surprised by his words, by the image he'd evoked of himself as a young, scared boy. Damon rarely let her see any side of himself that wasn't strong and powerful. "That's awful," she said quietly.

  "It wasn't great."

  "I'm guessing there were more bad, hot nights after that."

  "Between them—yes."

  "And with other people?" she prodded.

  "A few more—some while I was in Afghanistan—which often felt like hell on earth—and the last when Jamie died." He cleared his throat. "And that's all I'm going to say about that for now. Let's go find some food."

  "Okay." With Damon and personal revelations, she felt like it was one step forward, two steps back, and she was learning when to retreat.

  While Damon went into the walk-in pantry, she opened the refrigerator. There was a six-pack of soda there, probably left over from Cassie's last visit. She had had a diet cola habit since she was a teenager. There were condiments: mayo, ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, and salad dressing, but nothing else of note.

  She grabbed two sodas and pulled them out as Damon came out of the pantry with an assortment of items, including soup, rice, canned vegetables, and some potato chips.

  "Score," she said, taking the chip bag out of his hand. "Want a soda?"

  "Sure. I'll get it in a second. We're a little short on fruits and vegetables, but we won't starve," he said.

  "It all looks good to me." She opened the bag of chips and grabbed a couple, happy with the salty flavor. Then she popped open her soda while Damon went back into the pantry to forage for more ingredients. "The soup is probably fine," she said.

  He came out with olive oil and crackers.

  "What are you going to do with those?" she asked.

  "I haven't decided yet, but it's going to be good."

  "And here I thought I was the optimistic one. It looks like olive oil and crackers to me."

  He smiled. "You have a better imagination than that."

  His easy demeanor was starting to take the edge off, but she wondered how he'd gotten to that state so fast. It was taking her a lot longer to decompress.

  "I feel like this day is surreal," she said. "It's weird that it almost feels normal now, when hours ago—"

  He raised his hand, cutting her off. "No thinking about that. Lock it back in its compartment. Hours ago was hours ago."

  "You killed two people and stole a car. I feel like we're Bonnie and Clyde."

  "Only, we're the good guys."

  "Are we?"

  "Yes." He put down the ingredients and grabbed her by the arms. "Those men were going to kill us, Sophie, and if we hadn't stolen that car, the police would have arrested us. We'd be sitting ducks in a jail cell, with no opportunity to figure out who killed your father and who's trying to kill us."

  "Maybe we'd be safer in a jail cell."

  "Not for a second. We're dealing with organized crime, and probably more than one person working on the inside at the FBI, NYPD, DEA, and who knows where else? We'd never be safe in jail. I'm sorry I had to kill anyone. But I'm not sorry that we're the ones who are still alive."

  "Well, I'm not sorry about that, either. I just never saw someone die before. It was so fast. It didn't seem real, but I know it was." She paused, licking her lips, as she gazed into his eyes. "Damon…"

  "What?"

  "Are we going to make it out of this? Are we going to be okay?" It was silly to ask him for a reassurance that he couldn't give her, but she needed him to say it.

  "I'm sure we will," he said confidently. "But...it might get worse before it gets better, Sophie."

  "Can it get any worse?"

  "That's not a question you want to ask."

  A shiver ran down her spine. He was right. She shouldn't have asked it, because the possibilities sent another wave of fear through her.

  "I promise I will do everything I can to protect you," he added.

  She looked into his deep-blue eyes and saw nothing but truth and purpose. "I know you will." She drew in a deep breath, her body starting to shiver for another reason. Damon must have sensed a mood change, because his gaze darkened, and his fingers tightened on her arms. Then he let go, and stepped back. "I'm going to see what I can make us to eat. If you want to take a shower or lie down…"

  "You want to get rid of me?"

  "I want to focus, and it's difficult to do that when you're close."

  "You're the one who started things up again in the garage." She licked her lips, feeling the reckless feeling come roaring back. "Maybe we should eat later…"

  "No, and that was a mistake," he said with a definitive shake of his head.

  "It didn't feel like a mistake."

  "Well, it was. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."

  "I'm not. I've been wondering if it would feel the same now as it did before."

  She could see him fighting the desire to ask her if she'd gotten the answer to that question.

  "We should not go down this road. Go take a shower, Sophie. It will be safer."

  She found herself smiling at the irony of his words. "Safer? I can't imagine anything we do could make our lives any less safe than they are right now."

  "Let's not find out."

  Fourteen

  Something had happened, Bree thought, as she responded to an all-hands-on-deck call to the large twenty-third floor conference room at the FBI field office just before two. It was standing room only, at least thirty people crowding into the room. She squeezed past another agent to see Peter Hunt and Karen Leigh at the front of the room. Both wore serious expressions and looked like they were about to deliver some very bad news.

  She drew in a nervous breath. She hadn't heard from Damon all day, despite checking the forum several times. She hoped he was still all right.

  "We have new information," Peter said heavily. "This morning in New Haven, Connecticut, a storage unit was robbed, and two men were killed. If you direct your attention to the screen…" He motioned to the large monitor behind him.

  She saw two cars outside of an open storage unit door. There was a sudden burst of fire from inside the unit and out of their range of vision. But at the edge of the frame, she could see someone on the ground. Then a man and a woman came running out of the unit.

  Her heart thudded against her chest.

  Damon!

  He threw a silver suitcase into the back of a vehicle. A blonde woman jumped into the passenger seat, and they sped out of the lot.

  Peter stopped the footage there. "As most of you know, that is Special Agent Damon Wolfe and Sophie Parker, Alan Parker's daughter. There were two deceased males found at the scene."

  Peter hit a button on the com
puter to replace the storage unit security feed on the monitor with photographs of the deceased.

  "The man on the left," Peter said, "has been identified as thirty-two-year-old Carl Rucker from Queens. Rucker has a long record of gang violence and armed robbery. He got out of prison eight months ago, and since then he's been working as an auto mechanic in a garage operated by the Venturi family. The second man's prints are not in the system. He had no identification and we were not able to get facial recognition. As you will note, he has a distinctive tattoo on his neck that our analysts are researching. Both men were wearing ski masks and weapons were found at the scene."

  The fact that Damon had taken both men out and kept Sophie Parker safe was impressive. But she couldn't help wondering where Damon and Sophie were now and how much more trouble they were in.

  "Agent Wolfe and Sophie Parker are in the wind," Alan continued. "Their vehicle was found abandoned in a parking lot several miles away. We have no other information on their current whereabouts." He paused. "This is a department-wide endeavor. As you can imagine, having an agent involved in a double homicide, regardless of the circumstances, is not a position we care to be in. We appreciate those of you in other divisions offering to help with this investigation, and we're going to take you up on it. Karen will be speaking to each of you as to how you can help."

  Peter stepped back, and Karen came forward, giving him a brief nod of thanks as she took his place at the front of the room.

  Karen's position at the Bureau had definitely gone up a notch since Alan had died. Before then, Karen had been seen as Alan's protégée, his rising star, but now she was running his entire division.

  Karen cleared her throat. "Before I get to your assignments, I want to update you on another aspect of our investigation into the Venturi crime family and their possible involvement in the events of the last several days." Karen put a new photo up on the screen—Wyatt!

  Bree was surprised to see Wyatt's official FBI picture. What was Karen thinking? If he hadn't been made before, he was now. It didn't make sense for Karen to out Wyatt in a group that included not just Alan's division but two other divisions as well, but then Karen might now know there was a possible traitor among them. Still, it was a huge risk for her to take.