A Gift of Thought

by Sarah Wynde

  But if Rachel was running away? Sylvie glanced at the clock in the bottom-right corner of the screen. It was already past noon. Rachel had managed to delay a real search for something like fifteen hours. If she’d run away to her mother . . . .

  We need to check plane tickets, Sylvie typed. Ask Lucas for help. Whatever reason Chesney had for not wanting the FBI involved, it was a moot point if Rachel had run away. Sylvie took a deep breath, relief washing through her.

  Rachel was still at risk. A teenage girl crossing the country by herself? That was bad news. But no kidnapper would be cutting off her fingers to prove his possession. And if her mother knew nothing about Rachel’s escapade, as seemed likely, she wouldn’t get into trouble, but she might get to spend a little time with her daughter.

  For a moment, Sylvie considered not saying anything to Chesney right away. It wasn’t the same, she knew, but a few hours with Dillon would have been precious to her.

  Upraised voices caught her attention. Behind the closed office door, Chesney was shouting in Spanish. Sylvie tried to make out the words. “The best defense is offense. We attack them!”

  Sylvie looked back at the computer screen and tried to think. Chesney didn’t want to contact the FBI. He’d come immediately to Florida. He believed he knew who his enemies were and that they had kidnapped Rachel. If he was involved in drug trafficking as well as weapon sales, could he possibly think that his enemies were the drug cartels?

  Sylvie didn’t know much about them, but she knew the Zetas were famous for kidnappings. She’d ruled them out as a threat because of the difficulty of getting into AlecCorp’s party, but Chesney knew more than she did. Maybe he knew that there were others at AlecCorp who were compromised and that he could be vulnerable to attack from within.

  She licked her lips, mouth suddenly dry. Was Chesney planning on attacking the Zetas? That seemed like a very bad idea to her.

  “Lucas,” came a voice from behind her, speaking unaccented English. “Who is this Lucas?”

  Sylvie didn’t quite jump. It was entirely unlike her to not notice someone moving up behind her, but she’d been so focused on her thoughts that she’d blocked everything else out. Rafe stood at her back, reading over her shoulder.

  “A friend,” Sylvie said stiffly, closing the laptop screen. She met his dark eyes with her own steady gaze, telegraphing as strongly as she could her best back-off message. He fell back a step or two, frowning.

  Standing, Sylvie pulled the plug out of the back of the laptop and picked the computer up. She needed to show Chesney the footage and explain to him what she thought it meant. She pushed past the man standing in her way and crossed to the closed office door.

  But she paused before knocking. “I don’t care about the risk,” Chesney was saying. Or maybe that word meant danger? Sylvie wasn’t sure. But as she raised one hand, laptop tucked under the other arm, she heard more. “She’s a stupid little bitch.”

  Sylvie’s fist clenched and she knocked harder than she intended. Was Chesney talking about Rachel or her?

  “She’s your daughter,” the other man said, before adding a sharp, “What is it?” That answered her question, but should Sylvie answer his? Would a response reveal that she understood Spanish?

  She hesitated, then turned the knob and pushed open the door. “I’m sorry for interrupting, sir,” she said to Chesney. “I have some video footage that I think you should see.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d prefer to show it to you and let you draw your own conclusions, sir.” Sylvie glanced around the well-appointed office. To the right, Mateo sat in a comfortable-looking chair behind a wide desk. Two chairs were angled in front of it, but Chesney stood as if he’d been pacing. One wall was lined with bookshelves, but the other held a side table. She gestured to it and looked to the man behind the desk. “May I?”

  He looked to Chesney who waved irritably and said, “Fine, fine.”

  Sylvie crossed to the table and placed the laptop on it. Her back was to the men, but while she opened up the computer, she tried to decide what they were feeling. Chesney was determined with a core of rage, but Mateo felt watchful, worried. She sympathized. She felt worried herself.

  Once opened, the computer screen stayed dark. Sylvie pressed the power button. Nothing happened. Maybe the battery hadn’t charged? “I need the power cord. I’ll be right back.”

  As she walked through the living room and into the dining room, she tried to ignore the two men staring at her. Their heads were together, Rafe holding a phone as if they’d been looking at the screen. But their feelings had changed, Sylvie realized. The grim man was now excited, satisfied, while Ari’s mild curiosity had turned to anxiety. By the time she gathered up the cord, Rafe had entered the office and was showing the phone to Mateo and Chesney, talking animatedly. She recognized a few words including Washington Post. He’d recognized her from the article. But so what?

  Sylvie looked for an outlet, found one, plugged the cord in, shifted the computer closer, plugged it in, pressed the on switch, waited, all the while pretending to ignore the men behind her as she felt them react to Rafe’s words. Her hands were trembling, she realized, and she tried to still them. Almost unconsciously, her right hand drifted under the chiffon layers of her dress.

  “Go.” The word was a command from Mateo to Rafe. Sylvie felt Rafe exit the room and heard the door closing behind him.

  “We know the man in this image.” He was speaking to Chesney now, his words slower. “He works for the government. Your woman is a spy.”

  Every cell in Sylvie’s body felt focused on the scene behind her, her senses all poised for the slightest hint of information, even as she stared at the computer screen coming to life.

  Chesney swore, fluently, the angry words almost covering up the sound of a desk drawer opening, but nothing could cover the sense of grim resolve she felt from the man behind the desk. Sylvie shifted position, hand reaching inside the concealed pocket in the leather of her dress, closing firmly around her gun.

  “Not here,” Chesney snapped. “And not that way. It has to look like an accident.”

  Sylvie moved.

  No deep breath, no conscious thought, just movement.

  Gun sliding out, she turned, saw the weapon in the hand of the man behind the desk, fell automatically into a proper shooting stance with both hands on her gun, and fired.

  Once.

  Twice.

  As a pink mist of blood rose around him while a red stain spread across his chest and his eyes opened wide in shock, she flung herself at the door, found the lock, turned it, and backed into the corner of the room, positioning herself so that when the door opened, she’d have a clean shot.

  No more than ten seconds had passed, and the man behind the desk was still gasping out his last breath while Chesney stood, jaw dropped and disbelief freezing him in place.

  “First person through the door dies,” Sylvie shouted over the ringing in her ears. She couldn’t hear her own words, but the men outside would have been farther away from the shot. They should still have some hearing left. “Your boss is dead and I’m calling 911. If you move quickly, you may get away before the police get here.”

  It was a little too soon to say that Mateo was dead—he was trying to lift his hand, the gun held loosely. But it had been two good shots in easy range: he would bleed out long before an ambulance could arrive and aiming the gun and pulling the trigger should be beyond him. Even as she had the thought, his hand dropped and his head fell back, lifeless eyes still open and the feelings she’d had from him—regret and pain, mostly—faded away.

  Sylvie stared at the door, willing it not to move. Locked or not, the men outside could kick it down easily enough. And her Glock 36 held exactly six bullets—four now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chesney take a sidling step toward the desk and Mateo’s weapon. Without moving her feet or changing her semi-crouched posture, she swiveled her hands so that her gun pointed directly at him.

>   “Don’t even think about it.”

  She waited. She could feel the fear and the fury and the indecision from the men outside, and then they were moving out of her range. She took a deep, shuddering breath. It felt like her first in a lifetime.

  Maybe a minute had passed.

  Her heart was pounding, her ears still ringing, and the adrenaline coursing through her system was like ice water cooling her from the inside out.

  She’d just murdered a man.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d fired her gun. She’d shot at people in Iraq. Maybe she’d even killed a few. But not up close. Not like this.

  She turned toward Chesney, keeping her gun aimed at him. He was still angry, she realized, with only a trace of fear under a surface that was trying to look affable and conciliatory. His hands were half up, half making a placating air-patting gesture.

  “What in God’s name did you just do?” he demanded.

  “Killed a man,” Sylvie replied in her execrable Spanish.

  “You speak Spanish?” Chesney stilled and his fear deepened. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but this is a misunderstanding.”

  Sylvie stared at him, incredulous. He was going to try to brazen it out, she realized, to pretend that he hadn’t just agreed to kill her.

  “I would have stopped him. I wouldn’t have let him harm you,” he continued, words spilling one over another in his haste.

  “The best defense is offense,” Sylvie quoted the words he’d said earlier. Her heart rate was starting to slow, but her breath was quick and shallow, as if she were trying to sprint at the end of a ten-mile run.

  Chesney’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t be wearing a wire. If you were, you wouldn’t have pulled that trigger. Your back-up would be smashing down the doors.”

  Sylvie didn’t answer him. Part of her attention was focused on the room behind her, on making sure that Ari and Rafe weren’t returning, and the continued ringing in her ears made it hard to hear. She wondered if she’d done permanent damage to them, but the thought was fleeting.

  She’d done permanent damage to Mateo. That felt much more important. He’d been going to kill her, but somehow she didn’t hate him for it. Chesney was the one who had brought her here, walked her into this danger, created this ugly situation. Chesney was responsible; Mateo had just paid the price.

  “You can’t prove anything.” Chesney glanced at Mateo’s body, at his blood pooling on the floor beneath him. The fear she’d felt disappeared and he almost smirked. “Maybe I’m here answering a ransom demand. A phone call. No, a note left behind at AlecCorp ordering me to fly down here. Your crazy over-reaction could cost me my daughter.”

  Sylvie stared. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

  He smiled at her. “Your word against mine and who’s going to believe you?”

  “You work for the Mexican drug cartels,” Sylvie told him, almost as if he didn’t know.

  “I deal with the cartels,” he corrected her. “And manage an organization of my own. And you work for the government and can’t prove a thing. So feel free to arrest me. Nothing you’ve got will hold up in court.” He radiated smug confidence.

  “I don’t work for the government.”

  For a moment, he looked startled, and then he shrugged. “Even better. You might as well walk away now. If you try to tell the police or get the FBI involved, I’ll destroy you.”

  He was so calm, Sylvie realized, much calmer than she was. She was a Marine. She’d seen horrifying things in Somalia and Iraq and yet the sight of Mateo’s body, the smell of his blood and waste, sickened her. Chesney was impervious.

  “I work for you,” Sylvie said. A strange numbness was taking over her body, a feeling like she wasn’t really there.

  Chesney blinked and scowled. His emotions felt clearer to her than her own. She didn’t know what she was feeling, but he was irritated. She’d killed a man and his daughter was missing, in grave danger as far as he knew, but his reaction was annoyance at the inconvenience. And then she felt the calculation.

  “Of course you do,” he said smoothly. “So put the gun down and we’ll work this out.”

  God, she wished Lucas was here. If she could read Chesney’s mind, she’d know for sure. But she knew enough. She could see it in the coldness of his eyes.

  “I don’t think so. You hired me to protect your daughter,” Sylvie said, each word sounding as if it came from a far-off distance, but her voice steady. “To keep her safe from anything that threatened her. So I’m going to do my job.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  It was a perfect shot.

  Or it would have been if she’d been aiming at his head instead of his heart. The bullet hole opened, dead center of his forehead, a mist of blood spraying, and he fell backwards.

  “High and right,” Sylvie whispered. “High and right.”

  She felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising. It was what they said in the Marines when a soldier lost control.

  She sat down, hard, on the floor.

  She’d just destroyed her life, she realized. She’d murdered two men. She was going to spend the rest of her days in prison.

  She should—what? What should she do now? She tried to think but a rush of exhaustion swept over her. She should call the police, she realized, and with shaking fingers, she pulled her cell phone out.

  A text message was waiting for her. Rachel’s in Tassamara. Sender Unknown.

  Sylvie looked around her, at the two dead men, at the computer, at the shell casings by her feet. She could try to clean up, erase her presence here. But she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life running and hiding. She’d done what she’d done. She would have to deal with the consequences.

  But first, she was going to find Rachel.

  Someone had to tell her that her father was dead, and Sylvie should be the one to do it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Dillon?” Rachel whispered, barely moving her lips. “What do I do now? We didn’t talk about this.” She looked pale and stiff, standing upright as if her tension were pulling her spine into a perfectly straight line.

  Dillon looked up and down the street, feeling a mix of desperate relief and frantic worry. Where the hell was his grandpa? He’d trusted Max to meet them. The bus had dropped Rachel off on the corner of Millard and Kerr, right in front of the gas station. Akira’s house was only about four blocks away—an easy walk, but Dillon had no way to give Rachel directions. And he’d promised not to leave her.

  Besides, he didn’t want to see Akira yet. He knew that the moment she discovered Rachel had run away, she’d be on the phone to Washington. He’d texted Sylvie once Rachel was safely on the bus, but even if his mom caught the next flight, the earliest she could get to Tassamara would be evening. He didn’t want Rachel sent home before then. And Akira wouldn’t understand. She’d assume that Rachel’s dad would be frantic about Rachel’s disappearance and that telling him that Rachel was safe as quickly as possible would be the compassionate thing to do, as well as the responsible thing to do.

  Of course, maybe he was and maybe it was. Guilt swamped Dillon and he closed his eyes. He should never have talked Rachel into this. He’d relaxed when the bus arrived and Rachel boarded, leaving the creepy guy behind, but what now?

  “Oh, dear, did I miss the bus?” The voice behind him was as familiar as the sound of a summer rain on his tree house roof.

  Dillon whirled. “Grandpa!” His hug passed right through the older man, of course, but Dillon barely cared. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  “I’m afraid so,” Rachel answered politely.

  “Ah, well. Just by a minute or so. I suppose it won’t have had time to go far.” Max looked up and down the street, his blue eyes sharp with interest, and then taking a step forward, toward the road, cleared his throat and said to the empty air in front of him, “On behalf of my grandson, I’d like to welcome you to Tassamara.”

  “Um, Grandpa? Who are you talking to?
” Dillon glanced out into the street, trying to follow Max’s gaze. What did Max see?

  “I’ll do my best to ensure that your stay is comfortable. Please accompany me to Maggie’s place. That’s the restaurant about half a block that way.” Max pointed toward the bistro, and began walking, leaving Rachel behind.

  Rachel’s eyebrows had drawn together in a slight frown and she was watching Max. Dillon shook his head. What was his grandpa doing?

  “I suppose that you’re here to talk to Akira?” Max continued. “It’s the only reason I can think of that you might want to come to Tassamara. Not that it’s not a nice little town, of course. I’ve lived here for years and love it dearly.”

  A slight smile started to play around Rachel’s lips and she hurried to catch up to Max, falling into step behind him but close enough to hear him as he talked. Dillon sighed and followed, concentrating on sending a text to Max.

  “I’m not sure how helpful Akira will be. My daughter Grace tried to get her to go see a ghost last week and Akira got a bit snappy, and said that she wasn’t running a telephone service to another plane of existence. But perhaps Dillon can talk her into it. Unfortunately, she and my son are off on some sort of manatee-watching trip today.”

  Max’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket, stopping so abruptly that Rachel nearly walked right into him. He read the message—R behind u, Dillon knew it said—and then turned.

  “Oh!” he said, pulling back and looking startled at the sight of the young girl. “Are you—did you—excuse me, this might be an odd question, but—”

  “Dillon told me to come here,” Rachel interrupted him. The tension in her posture was gone and she smiled at Max with genuine warmth.

  “You—but you—” Max looked taken aback. He scratched his head and then ran his hand down the back, smoothing his hair, before finally stroking his chin. Uh-oh. Dillon recognized those moves. They were Max delaying while he decided whether or not he was supposed to be angry.

  “Is he here?” Max finally asked. “Dillon, I mean.”

  Rachel glanced at the phone, still clutched in Max’s left hand. “I think so?”