by Pamela Clare
CHAPTER 8
SOPHIE SLID HER pawn forward one space. It seemed a harmless enough move. Then again, she’d never understood the rules of chess no matter how many times her dad and brother had tried to explain them.
David moved one of his pawns, a look of mild amusement on his face.
Having no idea what to do next, her heart not really in the game, she moved another pawn. He moved a knight. Then she moved a castle—and watched him snatch it up with one of his bishops.
“How can you do that? He was all the way over there!”
He rolled his blue eyes, pretending to be annoyed, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Bishops move diagonally any number of spaces, until either they kill something or hit the edge of the board.”
“I think you just make these rules up as you go.” Then Sophie saw her chance. She moved a pawn and captured his bishop. “Ha!”
He raised an eyebrow, picked up his king, and moved it onto the other side of his castle. “Let me know if you need a hint.”
“No hints.” She captured one of his pawns with one of her pawns.
He shook his head and moved his queen halfway across the board.
“I hate her.” Sophie glared at the bit of black plastic, then moved another pawn forward.
He moved his queen again—one space. “Checkmate.”
“Already?” She stared in disbelief. “How can it be checkmate already?”
From the kitchen came the beep of the oven timer—and the delicious scent of their special chipless chocolate chip cookies.
“I’ve never understood how you can be so damn smart and still suck so badly at a simple strategy game.” He stood and walked off toward the kitchen, a smile splitting his face.
“It’s only simple for you because you got Dad’s math brains,” she called after him as he disappeared around the corner.
He was flying back to California tomorrow morning. She didn’t want him to leave. No matter the circumstances, she loved spending time with him. He was her only family, the only person left in the world who shared her memories of Christmas mornings, spring picnics, and lazy summer afternoons spent playing in the backyard.
She couldn’t imagine this past week without David. He’d been her rock, doing all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, insisting that she rest, even contacting her insurance agent about her poor, battered car and picking up her rental. He’d listened when she’d needed to talk, held her when she’d cried, and kept her mind occupied. He’d even given her a Valentine’s card on Valentine’s Day complete with a red rose and chocolate.
When had her little brother become a man?
She could remember the day he’d been born, looking in her four-year-old opinion more like a shriveled potato than a brother. She hadn’t been any more impressed with him a few years later when he’d clunked around the house in cowboy boots that were too big for his feet, a dumb plastic fireman’s helmet on his head. And when he’d gone through his dorky Power Rangers phase, it had been all she could do not to clobber him.
But now he was a good five inches taller than she was, handsome enough to turn women’s heads, and on his way to being a horse obstetrician, not one whiff of dork lingering anywhere around him. It touched her more than she’d ever be able to say that he had flown back to Colorado, dropping everything the moment he’d gotten the news.
Mom and Dad would be proud of him.
She swallowed the lump in her throat, leaned back into the couch cushions, and pulled the blanket tighter around her. The heat in her apartment was cranked up to seventy-five, but it was still hard for her to stay warm. The doctor had told her it sometimes took weeks to recover fully from hypothermia.
The blanket—a silky soft chenille throw—had been a gift from Tessa. Like David, her friends had been there for her, calling to check on her, stopping by her apartment all week to visit, bringing her gifts. Reece was prepping the Legislative Audit Committee for its probe of the DOC. Julian had ordered extra patrols for her street and was coordinating with jurisdictions throughout the state in what was the biggest manhunt in Colorado history. The I-Team had even sent flowers.
“You missed deadline, Alton,” the card read. “Get out of bed, and get in here.’”
She felt loved and protected—and horribly guilty.
Her brother and her friends were doing all they could to watch over her and help her get back on her feet, and she still hadn’t told them the whole truth.
She hadn’t told them about her previous relationship with Hunt. She couldn’t. The night she’d spent with him had been her most treasured memory. Hunt had destroyed it, turning something precious into something painful. Sharing that memory—and admitting what had become of the man who’d been at the heart of it—felt somehow too overwhelming. Besides, nothing had happened at the cabin that would help police catch him. They knew as much about him as she did, maybe more. The fact that she’d had sex with him one night twelve years ago wouldn’t impact their investigation at all.
Nor had she divulged what he’d told her off the record about his sister. She was a journalist. Once she agreed to keep information confidential, she was obliged to honor her word, even in extreme circumstances. She’d heard of journalists who’d gone to jail rather than betray their sources. Of course, Hunt wasn’t the typical source. He’d been holding her hostage when he’d asked her to keep his secrets. For that reason alone, there probably wasn’t a journalist in the country who would condemn her if she went to the police and told them everything.
And that was the crux of it, the reason her conscience wouldn’t leave her alone.
She didn’t want the police to catch him.
What was wrong with her?
One minute she felt depressed, the next irritable, the next anxious, as if something terrible were about to happen. She felt sluggish all day, then lay awake at night remembering the way Hunt had kissed her, thinking through the things he’d told her, worrying about him and Megan. Had he found her? Were they safe? What if he’d frozen to death like police believed? Was someone really after Megan? What if the bad guy found her first?
Sophie tried to hide it, but, of course, she wasn’t fooling anyone. Tessa and Kara blamed her moodiness on trauma, and she supposed they were at least partly right. The whole hostage ordeal had been terrifying. She didn’t think she’d ever been more afraid in her life. For a time, she’d truly believed he might kill her.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
“Do you want milk?” David called from the kitchen.
“With warm, gooey cookies?” she called back. “Are you kidding?”
If Hunt had just been some random psycho—just some crazed murderer who’d held a gun to her head and dragged her into the mountains—she’d have been able to hate him and forget him. But, sadly, every terrifying moment had been brought to her by a man she’d once adored. A man she somehow still cared about. How else could she explain her reaction to his kiss?
God, she felt used. And stupid. But more than that, she felt…brokenhearted.
What happened to you, Hunt?
His name was Marc, she reminded herself—Marc Hunter.
She’d spent the past two days running it all through her mind again and again, trying to understand, trying to put the pieces together, trying to find a way to think about what Hunt had done that made it less painful. But there was only one thing that could even remotely excuse the hell he’d put her through, and that was if he’d been telling her the truth.
And yet how could she take comfort in that?
If what he’d told her were true, it meant Megan had suffered unimaginable abuse while in state custody—and that her life was now in danger.
Either way, Sophie was going to do everything she could to get to the bottom of it starting Monday morning when she was back in the office.
She glanced at the clock on her DVD player, saw that it was almost ten. She reached for the remote, turned on the television, and surfed to CNN. Julian had promise
d to call her if and when they caught Hunt, but that hadn’t stopped her from obsessing over the news, watching every broadcast and weather report, reading every newspaper online, putting Google on alert for the name Marc Hunter.
David reappeared carrying a tray with two glasses of milk and two plates heaped with cookies. He set the tray down on her coffee table, a frown on his face. “Are you sure that’s good for you? Maybe you shouldn’t watch the news. Give yourself time to recover.”
She looked away from the screen, saw David watching her. She knew what he was seeing—her pale face, the yellowing bruise on her cheek, the dark circles beneath her eyes. She’d seen them herself every time she’d looked in the mirror and had felt like she was looking at a stranger. “Not watching it doesn’t make it go away.”
He sat down beside her and for a moment said nothing, seeming to study the coffee table. “When the police called and told me you’d been taken hostage, I thought it was a joke at first. Then, when I realized it wasn’t…All the way to the airport and on the plane, I kept thinking, ‘What if he rapes her? What if he kills her? What if she’s already dead?’ Jesus!”
Tears blurring her vision, Sophie reached out, took her brother’s hand.
“I lost Mom and Dad.” David looked up at her, his voice breaking. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, too, Sophie.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “You didn’t lose me.”
“Thank God!” He gave her fingers a squeeze. “But it makes me damned angry to think of how badly this bastard frightened you. You’re trying to hide it, but I know you’re afraid. It can’t be good for you to keep watching these news reports.”
“I’m a reporter. How can I avoid the news?”
“By turning your TV off, for starters.” He picked up the remote, and the screen went dark. “I know you’re afraid, but they are going to catch him. I just hope for his sake he has left the state. If your friend Julian finds him, he’ll end up in pieces.”
And then it hit her—a terrible possibility.
Marc and Julian facing one another.
Both armed.
Both trained to kill.
Her blood ran cold.
MARC FOLLOWED HIS quarry through the chilly darkness, stepping into the cover of an alley when the guy stopped to do a deal. A quick conversation, a show of cash—and the exchange was made. The guy moved on down the street, still clearly unaware Marc was tailing him.
Donny Lee Thompson was a hustler, a small-time pusher who sold whatever he didn’t use himself. He was also Emily’s father and Marc’s best lead. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe five-eleven, one-fifty—a skinny son of a bitch. His dirty blond hair was beginning to thin, and his skin had the sallow tone of a habitual drug user. Marc had wondered what Megan could possibly have found attractive about him—and then he’d remembered.
Drugs.
Ahead of him, Donny crossed a small side street, his pace suddenly quickening. For a moment Marc thought the bastard had realized he was being followed—and then he saw it.
A squad car.
A single black-and-white rolled slowly down the side street toward them.
Shit.
But even as adrenaline hit Marc’s bloodstream, urging him to fight or run, some part of him realized they weren’t here for him. They were just here.
He willed his feet to move—one casual step after the next. He’d once been an agent. He knew from his own experience that the best way to attract a cop’s attention was to rabbit. If he just kept walking, they would see what they expected to see—just another pedestrian.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
He crossed the side street, the squad car not ten feet away from him and drawing nearer, its tires crunching heavily in the snow. He hunched his head between his shoulders as if huddled against the wind and kept walking, the Glock heavy in the waistband of his jeans.
If they stopped him, if they searched him…
Red-blue-red-blue-red-blue.
Lights flashed. The siren chirped, then wailed.
He was about to break into a dead run when the car accelerated around the corner—and disappeared down the street behind him.
Breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding left his lungs in a gust, his heart slamming against his ribs.
Jesus Christ!
He sucked in cold air, steadied his step, kept walking.
Get a grip, dumbass!
Marc had been in Denver for almost a week now, the rhythm of the streets slowly working its way back into his feet. He no longer looked over his shoulder at every approaching car, no longer felt quite as exposed, no longer jumped out of his skin every time someone shouted or honked their horn or slammed a door. Still, he couldn’t seem to shake his sense of wariness, the instinct that told him to watch his back, the itchy feeling that never let him rest.
He’d spent every almost every waking hour this past week on the streets looking for information about Megan. So far he hadn’t found anything. Not one damned thing.
Megan wasn’t in any of her old hangouts. She wasn’t in any of the shelters. None of her old friends had seen her, and though some of them knew she’d skipped parole, they claimed to have no idea where she’d gone. They might have been lying, of course, but he didn’t think so. It wasn’t like hard-core addicts to turn down cash, and he’d flashed plenty of it. If anything ought to have made them talk, it was money they didn’t have to steal—or earn on their backs.
His frustration and sense of urgency growing, he’d come back to his motel room each night and logged onto the Internet, first scanning newspapers nationwide for reports of unidentified female bodies or abandoned babies, a knot of dread in his chest. Then, once he was reasonably sure Megan and Emily hadn’t been found dead in a ditch, he’d spent a few hours trying to crack the DOC database. Unfortunately, the latter was far beyond his pathetic IT abilities. He’d looked into hiring a real hacker, but he would’ve had to rob a bank first, and that went beyond his criminal ambitions, at least at this point.
Although he could certainly use his fake ID to request the records under state open-records laws, it would take weeks, maybe months, before he had what he needed. He knew from experience that the only requests the state took seriously were those filed by people with credentials—legislators, police detectives, attorneys, journalists.
Don’t even think about it, Hunter.
He had thought about it, of course. He’d thought a lot about it—about her. But no way was he going to ask Sophie to help him. How could he after what he’d done to her? Besides, he didn’t want her involved in this. He wasn’t even sure what he was up against, and that made it too damned dangerous.
Ahead of him, Thompson turned off East Colfax onto Race Street, heading up the walk of a shabby house halfway down the block on the west side of the street. Marc closed the distance between them. He’d spent the past ten hours tracking Thompson down, following him, waiting for the right moment to hold a little surprise get-together. They were practically family, after all. It was time they got acquainted.
He came up behind Thompson just as Thompson stepped through the doorway.
“Donny Thompson?”
Thompson whirled about. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m looking for Megan Rawlings.”
“Never heard of her. Besides, I don’t talk to narcs.” Thompson tried to slam the door.
Marc forced his way inside and dropped Donny to the floor with an old-fashioned punch in the face—not the most sophisticated move, but satisfying. Then he slammed the door behind him. “I’m not a narc, asshole. I’m Megan’s brother—uncle to the baby you put inside her.”
“Her brother? Oh, man! Fuck!” Donny groaned, sat up, hand on his face. “Like I told the other guys, I don’t know where she went. I haven’t seen her since they arrested her!”
“The other guys?”
“The cops who came looking for her.” Donny rubbed his newly blackened eye. “Man, did you have to hit me like
that?”
“Probably not, but I enjoyed it.” He’d enjoyed it so much he wanted to do it again. “Tell me about these cops who came looking for her.”
“What can I say? They were cops, you know? They asked me if I knew where she was.”
Marc glanced around. Whoever those cops had been—if they really had been cops—they must not have had their eyes open for Thompson to still be roaming the streets. There were signs of drug dealing everywhere. The little mirror and razor blade sitting in the middle of the floor. Plastic sandwich bags strewn out across the sofa. The set of scales on top of the coffee table.
“Mind if I have a look around?”
Donny staggered to his feet. “She’s not here, man. I told you that.”
“I heard you, Donny. I just don’t believe a damned word you say.”
There wasn’t much to the place. The living room. A filthy kitchen piled high with dirty dishes, beer cans, and take-out boxes. A bedroom buried in dirty clothes, drug paraphernalia, and porn magazines. A bathroom that reeked of mildew.
“Jesus, Donny! You need to fire your housekeeper.”
But nowhere did he see any sign of a woman or a baby—no diapers, no bottles or jars of baby food, no women’s clothing.
She wasn’t here.
Marc’s stomach sank. This had been his last remaining lead, and it had gotten him nowhere. Fear for his sister and her baby churned in his gut, making him want to hit something.
Megan, where the hell are you?
If there was no evidence of Megan, there certainly was evidence of the addiction that had ruined her life—used needles and syringes, makeshift tourniquets, blackened cookers. Making an educated guess, Marc entered the bathroom and reached to lift the lid off the toilet tank. From behind him, he heard a little metallic click.
“Get the fuck out of here, asshole!”
He turned to find Thompson holding a knife, a look of fury on his face.
“Is that a switchblade, Donny? You’re boring me.” Marc shook his head, pretended to turn his back on Thompson—then pivoted and aimed his Glock at the bastard’s head. “Get down on the floor! Hands behind your head!”