Fatal Secrets

by Barbara Phinney

  Zane reached over and shoved her head down.

  He didn’t want the last thing she saw on this earth to be where her parents lost their lives.

  TEN

  Zane stiffened. Kristin might trust God with her life, but was he willing to face his Maker, too?

  Lord, this is it. I’ve been mad at You for too long. If You care, then save Kristin.

  Please? I want to trust You. I want to love You like Kristin loves You. I want her peace.

  Between the two cars lay the place where Kristin’s parents had died. The break in the trees caused by the accident was clearly visible.

  His foot felt glued to the gas pedal, his hands sealed to the wheel. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

  Beside him, Kristin lifted her head, but he couldn’t shove her back down. He couldn’t move a muscle.

  She cried out something as they raced toward the on-coming car. Somehow, they ended up in the center of the road.

  They were so close. Zane’s shoulders stiffened further.

  The two men were swarthy, angry and obviously arguing. He could see the passenger grab the steering wheel. They were the ones from the Mexican restaurant.

  Zane cut hard to the right, anything to avoid the dark plunge of lake that had killed the Perrys.

  But the other driver didn’t react fast enough, or maybe the passenger’s own grip on the steering wheel was too hard. Whatever it was, at the last minute, they swerved, hard and fast to their right, and in that instance, their car hit a bump, flew over the embankment, over the remains of the look-off station, and down, down toward the lake.

  There was a sickening thud. One tall tree that had survived through the winter unscathed now quivered and shook.

  Then there was a huge splash.

  After racing past, Zane slammed on the brakes. Kristin had wedged herself against the dash with elbows locked, but she was already twisted about, staring over Zane’s shoulder at the wreck site.

  “They went into the water!”

  Slamming to a stop, Zane shoved the shifter into Park. “Call McGraw, Kristin. Tell him someone just tried to kill us, and they’re in the lake.” He disconnected his seat belt.

  “Are you going in after them?”

  “I can’t let them die, as much as they wanted to kill us.”

  Her eyes like watery dinner plates, she bit her lip. Pausing, he slid his hand around her neck to pull her close. “It’s okay. Everything will be fine.”

  “They tried to force us into the water. How did they end up there?”

  “I think the passenger grabbed the wheel.”

  “We could have died, too!”

  “We didn’t.” On an impulse, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers.

  She was soft and warm, and he could feel her hiccup as she tried to keep her fear in check. He pulled away. “Make that call, okay? And then open the trunk. I have dry clothes in there. And there’s a gun under the passenger seat. Get it out.”

  He pushed open the driver’s door and alit. Wasting no time, he peeled off his jacket and sweater and kicked off his shoes as he hurried down the embankment.

  The frigid water stole his breath the second he dove in. He followed the bubbles from a spot several yards out that showed where the car had sunk. He dove down, and he found a door handle. Fighting his own restricting clothing and tightly held breath, he tugged hard on the driver’s door. The pressure of the water kept the door closed. Clamping down on his jaw, he wedged his knee along the car frame and tried one more time before he needed to return to the surface for more air.

  Lord Jesus, I’ve given You my life again. Give me a couple more seconds.

  Zane stared into the car. It was filling fast with water. The passenger window was open, and the two men were beginning to panic. They needed to equalize the pressure inside and act before the door would open. Only a few more moments.

  The door relented, and gave in to his next hard tug. The last air bubble ripped past him on its journey to the surface.

  Zane followed it up for a breath, and then dove down again. The driver had already released his seat belt, and kicked himself to the surface. Zane let him, then reached in to release the passenger’s seat belt. He managed to click it free.

  His lungs screaming for air, he pushed himself backward and then shot up to the surface again. Breaking free of the water, he sucked in air and coughed. Beside him, a moment later, the second man broke free of the water.

  “Get out!”

  Zane blinked up at the shore. Kristin stood on one large rock, her face knotted with determination, and both hands on a gun that she pointed at the water.

  His gun, which she’d managed to find pretty quick. He only wished she wouldn’t point it at him with her finger on the trigger.

  “I said, get out of the water! Both of you!”

  On either side of him, the men began to swim to shore. He swam with them, reaching the shore first before pulling himself easily up onto the broken remains of the look-off. He saw that Kristin had removed his dry clothes and dropped them at the edge of the road.

  The men climbed onto the look-off station beside him, both heavyset men in poor shape and wheezing desperately from their unexpected dip. One fell down, and with a hard shove, Zane helped the other to the wooden platform.

  He was freezing, and about to shake violently, but before that, he grabbed the driver’s collar. “What were you doing?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

  The man began a coughing fit as he lay prone on the wood. The other man twisted around to see if Kristin still held the gun, but Zane flipped him back by pressing his knee onto the man’s upper spine. “I asked you a question!”

  “You’re not going to get away with trying to kill us, you know!” the guy snapped back with a wet cough. “We’ll get you!”

  “I just saved your sorry hides. Now, who do you work for?”

  Flexing about, the man swung his fist at him wildly. Zane answered the man with a short punch, which sent the man facedown on the weather-beaten wood.

  He looked up at Kristin. “Did you call McGraw?”

  She nodded. “He said he’ll take care of the men. If you can get them secured somewhere, he’ll send out someone to apprehend them. He sounded like he could make it happen immediately.”

  “Good.” He glanced up the side of the hill across the embankment to the road. The cabin wasn’t that far up, and both men were still conscious enough to climb up there. He jumped across to the road. She turned to him, gun and all.

  He pushed gently on her hand so the weapon faced the two men wheezing on the platform. “I appreciate you helping with that, but be careful. It’s loaded and has no safety.”

  “Oops, sorry. I found it after I called Jackson. Zane, you scared the death out of me jumping in that water! You could have been killed!”

  “And these guys definitely would have been if I hadn’t tried.”

  “Well, don’t do it again, okay? Here are your clothes. You should get out of those wet ones.”

  He scooped them up. “They aren’t for me. These two will have to share them.”

  Turning, gun and all, she gaped at him. “You’re going to let them go?”

  Again he moved her to point the gun at the men. Then, reconsidering, he took the firearm from her. “No. I’m going to tie them up in that little cabin up there, after they get out of their wet clothes, that is. Jackson can find them there. In the trunk are some electrical tie-downs. They look like long pieces of white plastic. I’ll use them for handcuffs. Go up to that cabin and see if it’s unlocked.”

  She nodded and, after finding the ties for him, she went to check the cabin. He pointed the gun at the men. “Get onto the road. You two are going for a little climb.”

  The men struggled to make it to the road. They were shivering and running out of energy fast. By that time, Kristin had already reached the cabin and had slipped inside. A moment later, she returned to the doorway and called down to him. “It’s empty, but
there’s a bench that you can tie these guys to. I think they’ll be okay here for a while.”

  “Good. Come on down and get into the car.”

  She skittered down the short distance to the road. With the gun and holding the clothes and the tie-downs, he ordered the men up the way she’d come. Still wheezing, the two men climbed up ahead of him. Both looked beaten, crushed and freezing cold.

  Once the trio was inside the small cabin, he ordered them to change into whatever dry clothing he had. He was taller and slimmer than both men were, and he doubted the clothes would fit either man properly, but they’d die of hypothermia if they remained wet. Once they were squeezed into his changes of clothes—a pair of old jeans, sweat-pants, a T-shirt and a sweater—Zane ordered the shorter, weaker-looking man to tie the taller man to the bench leg.

  That done, he then knocked the weaker man down to the floor where he quickly tied up that man beside his buddy, and then secured one leg of each man to the other with the remaining tie-down.

  “Last chance to talk,” he told the taller man.

  “Forget it. You’re a dead man.”

  “Gracious as always, I expect. Who do you work for? Martino? Which one?”

  “The old guy. He’ll be really proud of us when we’re finished with your girlfriend, pal. Then, he’ll die in peace knowing the woman who ruined his life is dead, too.”

  Ahh, he thought. The old don was dying. That explained plenty. But more important, the guy had just explained something even more crucial. These guys were mistaking Kristin for her mother.

  Improbable, but hey, they’d seen Kristin only from a distance, and even Clay had commented on how much she looked like her mother, even that old photo of her in the Billings newspaper she’d mentioned.

  Back to Billings again. But he needed time to figure that out, something he didn’t have right now. “A tribute killing for Salvatore Martino?” He shook his head. “Look around you, buddy. You’re in no position to be threatening us at all. I’m beginning to regret pulling you morons out of the water.”

  “Then you’re the moron for doing that,” the bigger, more belligerent one slurred back. They looked like fools, sitting on the floor, hands tied behind their backs, half-dressed in ill-fitting, dry clothes, their own in two wet heaps beside Zane. The shorter one was barely conscious, and sported a split eyebrow. “We have friends, and once we get your girlfriend and her daughter, we’ll be back for you. No one messes with the Martinos.”

  “Tell me where Martino is.” Short of telling them he had Kristin Perry, not Eloise, standing down by the road, he didn’t know how to ask about their evidence.

  Neither man answered. The cabin was dimming as the sun had begun its descent behind the mountains. The only window in the place, a small, filthy thing at the back of the cabin, faced east into the dark woods. He wished he knew more about the whole Martino case. He could use it to question these idiots, get the truth from them, instead of listening to their blowhard boasts.

  Forget it, Zane told himself. These two weren’t planning to talk, and frankly, if they belonged to the Martino Mob, they would rather die than talk, because talking usually meant dying, anyway.

  Tearing two strips from one of the men’s wet shirts, he gagged them both, just in case they found the lungs to call out and the person who lived down here was curious or foolish enough to find and release them.

  That done, he shoved his gun into the back of his jeans’ waistband and walked out. The few steps down from the tiny building onto a grassy ledge were battered, and his foot indented a weak stair tread. He yanked off the teetering banister and jammed it through the old-fashioned door handle. At one end, he rammed the whole narrow board between the loose trim and the plank siding. He shoved the other end into the doorjamb. Even if they got free and tried to open the door, it would take some hard pulling to break the board.

  He hurried down the hill to Kristin. She climbed out of the car, and watched him shrug on his jacket and shoes.

  “Give me your cell phone,” he finally said.

  Wordlessly, she handed it to him. He checked the number she’d dialed and hit redial. After a minute, he got Jackson McGraw. He told the deep-voiced man where to find the pair he’d fished out of the lake, taking the opportunity to quote their exact coordinates from the GPS in his car.

  “And,” he added, feeling the irritation of nearly allowing Kristin to be killed, “if and when you get here, we need to talk. Because I’m taking personal offense to the FBI telling Kristin about her mother then not allowing her to find the woman. And then not doing enough to keep her safe while Vincent Martino’s boys are looking to satisfy a deathbed wish to get some idiotic glory.”

  “Zane Black, right?” Jackson gritted out. “We’ll be talking, but I can assure you that I consider Kristin’s safety to be my top priority. I have a team in the area and they’ll be at your location within minutes. Until I can get there, you had better keep her safe, or I will go after you myself.”

  The chest thumping done with, Zane hung up and handed the phone back to Kristin. She snatched it and shoved it into her jacket pocket. Her eyes were watering and her chin wrinkled with barely contained emotion. “How could you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  She shoved him hard and only because he wasn’t expecting it, did he move at all. “You know what I mean! Risk your life by diving in there to save those two men! Then you just tie them up in that hut and expect me to calmly let you call Jackson as if we’ve found some piddly lead in some stupid case! You think that you can say one prayer to the Lord you’ve been shunning for years and then can suddenly be so cavalier with your life?”

  He caught her wrists as she tried once more to shove him, and pinned them down at her sides. “I trusted God. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I want to wait on the Lord!”

  “Well, I don’t, and I don’t think He wants us to wait, either. That’s a cop-out, an excuse, and I took a chance that God wanted me to do something in faith first!”

  She yanked back her arms. “I suppose you prayed down there in the water, too?”

  “I did.” Suddenly, he found himself annoyed by her question. “And you know what? I gave my life back to Him, fully expecting Him to take it, even though I asked Him not to. But He spared it. And you know what else? God may want us to wait sometimes, but He wasn’t waiting for me. He’s been after me for years. Only after I met you, did I realize that He’s been planning my life, forcing me to notice Him!” He dropped his voice and pulled her close, knowing he needed to calm them both down.

  He took a deep breath and relaxed. “I’m sorry if this all has to take place where your parents were killed. It must be hard.”

  She softened and shook her head. “Actually, no, it’s not. To be honest, seeing this place was easier than I thought it would be. Nevertheless, to know that those men were saved, when my father and mother weren’t, that’s hard. And the thought that you nearly died, too.”

  He released her. Of course she’d heard him yelling at Jackson. “I’m sorry. And I just found out from those goons that they think you are Eloise.”

  “But Jackson thought that they were after me personally.”

  “They still are, according to those guys. But these guys think you’re Eloise. It’s hard to believe that they would make that kind of mistake, unless they are getting desperate. But Salvatore is dying, and they may only have a few days. So they’re trying to kill both of you as soon as possible.”

  With a shaky sigh, she wiped her eyes and added, “Did they say anything else to you?”

  “Nothing worth repeating.”

  “And you just let them sit up there out of the wind, in dry clothes while you’re freezing to death here?”

  “Kristin,” he whispered against the wind as he caught her arm. In truth, he was very cold and turning numb. “I’m sorry. I wanted facts from those morons. I had no idea how my actions would affect you.”

  She lowered her head. With one finger,
one of them that still ached from hitting that guy in the cabin, and was now stiff with cold, he lifted her chin, and then, feeling his heart pound inside him, he hauled her in closer.

  And kissed her.

  She gripped him back, holding him tightly as he pressed his lips hard against hers. She was warm, and though he knew he was probably chilling her to the bone, it felt so wonderful to hold her and to feel how much she cared for him after so many years of not having anyone who cared about him.

  But he had a brother out there. A family of his own. And she needed to find her own family. Once she found hers, she’d be gone maybe into hiding again, and who knew where his search would take him? They were just passing through each other’s lives.

  Hating how that painful thought cut into his kiss, he gently set her away from him. She swept her hair from where it dropped into her eyes, and looked everywhere but at him. “Jackson said he was going to send some people to pick these guys up. He said they were in the area.”

  “He said something similar to me, too. In that case, I don’t want those two in the cabin to get another look at you when they bring him out, so we should get out of here before they come. Did Jackson say why his associates were in the area?”

  “No. But it sounded like they are really close.” She peeked up the hill at the cabin again. “Will those guys be all right?”

  “They’ll be fine. I, however, am freezing.”

  “I imagine. I’m freezing and you just got the front of me wet. Let’s go back to that rest stop for a coffee.”

  Zane would rather not stop there, but he needed a hot drink and a change of clothes immediately. He’d begun to shiver hard and was in danger of losing precious body heat. The rest stop sold sweat suits and T-shirts in its tiny gift shop. Maybe he’d find something in his size.

  Quickly, they climbed into the car and drove off. Less than half an hour later, he pulled out onto the highway. As he turned left, he saw a large, nondescript silver car approach Lindbergh Lake Road.

  Through the windshield, Zane recognized the occupants from those who had stopped at the rest stop. Beside the blond driver was the black woman also seen at the restaurant. The tinted windows wouldn’t allow him a view of the backseat, but Zane bet that other man was with them, too.