Payback

by Jasmine Cresswell

  “You don’t have to work so hard to convince me. I don’t want to be alone at night any more until after we’ve found him.” Kate couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.

  Luke noticed, of course. He leaned forward and kissed her. “If by any amazing chance Ron did find his way into our bedroom, he would soon realize he’d made a giant mistake. Because I’d make damn sure he didn’t leave again, except wearing handcuffs and with a police escort.”

  Kate really liked the sound of that.

  Twenty-Two

  T here was so much demanding her attention at the bakery for the few hours she was there that Kate didn’t have time to mull over her father’s threats, the renewal of her relationship with Luke or even the relatively minor problem of whether or not to go to the police with the news that her father was alive and threatening her safety. Rushing to help the apprentice baker prepare some of the day’s more complicated pastries, she worked till the last second and arrived at her mother’s house a few minutes after two.

  Both her uncle and Luke were already there. Her heart gave a little skip when she saw Luke, and then another one when he smiled at her. Avery, insightful as ever, looked from one to the other with sudden alertness. Fortunately, she also remained as tactful as ever and made no personal comments. Her uncle, typical middle-aged male, remained blissfully unaware of any silent undercurrents.

  Avery was an accomplished hostess and the offers of refreshment were dealt with in short order. As soon as they were all sitting down and sipping tea, Kate decided to get the unpleasant chore of telling her mother about Ron Raven’s nighttime visit out of the way.

  She kept her account as dry and factual as possible, a task made easier by the discovery that she could no longer recall exactly what her father had said. She remembered her fear; she clearly recalled the odd sensation of disorientation, a disorientation that went beyond the confusion caused by darkness and the blindfold. But her mental images had become jumbled, like one of those pictures that seem to depict a butterfly until you blink and realize it’s actually two people kissing. Stress had apparently blanked her memory of crucial details, leaving only the bare bones of the event. So much for eyewitness accounts, she reflected. No wonder they often led to accusations against the wrong person.

  When she finished her story, neither her mother nor her uncle spoke for at least thirty seconds. Then Avery got up and enveloped her daughter in a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice crackling with anger. “Kate, I’m so very sorry. There are no excuses I can make. I failed you.”

  “You’re not responsible for his threats, Mom.”

  “But I ought to have seen through his facade. How did I live for almost thirty years with a man I apparently knew nothing about?”

  Paul set his cup on its saucer, making a loud rattle. “My God, this isn’t a time to be worrying about why we never noticed Ron was a criminal lunatic! He’s threatening your life, Katie. Your life! Can we focus on what really matters here?”

  Avery turned white. “You have to move in with me, Kate, at least for a week or two. We simply can’t risk the possibility that your father is serious in his threats.”

  “Kate already agreed to spend the next few nights at my condo.” Luke placed a casually possessive arm around her shoulders, and this time even her uncle looked at the pair of them with suddenly narrowed eyes.

  Luke continued as if he hadn’t noticed the stares. “The entrance to my building is permanently locked and it needs a code or a key card to open it. Plus my condo is on the fifteenth floor. Of course, neither of those things totally guarantees Kate’s safety, but it makes her a lot safer than she would be alone in her house.”

  “Promise me you’ll take care when you go to work, Kate.” Avery’s brows remained drawn together in worry. “You start so early in the morning that it’s still dark when you leave home. Anyone could be lurking in or around your car.”

  “She can keep her car in my garage space,” Luke said. “I’ll escort her down to the garage each morning.”

  Kate was appalled. “Don’t be crazy, Luke. I leave hours before you get up.”

  “Yeah, you do, and I’m going to be cranky as hell.” He grinned. “If you’re a smart woman, you won’t talk to me. I’m definitely not a nice person in the wee hours of the morning.”

  “Luckily for both of us, I won’t be putting your claim to the test, because there’s no reason for you to play bodyguard.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s every reason.” The kiss he dropped on her cheek broadcast the intimacy of their relationship by its very casualness. “This is one argument you’re not going to win, Katie-love, so save your breath. Don’t worry. I plan on going back to bed the moment I know you’re safely in your car and en route to the bakery.”

  Paul’s initial shock had given way to anger. Slamming his clenched fist into the palm of his hand—the equivalent of a wild leap in the air for a less conservative man—he declared his intention of immediately calling the police. As Luke and Kate had suspected, he personally knew one of the precinct captains and he insisted that he would demand instant action to track down Ron Raven, arrest him and put him in prison.

  “They’d better call in the FBI,” he muttered, picking up the phone. “Or they’re going to answer to me, and I’m not going to be listening to any excuses.”

  Kate and Luke had to use all their powers to convince Paul to sit down again and delay calling the police, at least until he heard their plans. He seemed unpersuaded by their argument that Ron might flee to Mexico or Belize the moment he realized that nobody believed anymore that he was dead. He stubbornly insisted that the FBI would put out an all-points bulletin and pick Ron up in a very short time.

  “For heaven’s sake, Paul, I really think you’re exaggerating the powers of the police.” Avery paced, more restless than Kate could remember seeing her. “Some of the criminals on the FBI’s Most Wanted List have been there for ten years! And I imagine Ron is twice as smart as many of the people on that list, so he’s even less likely to get caught than most of them. You need to back off and listen to Kate and Luke.”

  Avery wasn’t in the habit of expressing irritation with her older brother and Paul didn’t look at all pleased by this breach with tradition. Luke came to the rescue. Kate had noticed many times that Luke had a pitch-perfect instinct for working with other people, probably because as one of six siblings he’d learned his compromising and negotiating skills early. He managed to soothe her uncle’s ruffled feelings and distract him from his determination to call the police by the simple device of asking for his help.

  “We urgently need your advice,” Luke said, guiding her uncle toward the table where he’d just finished spreading out printed copies of all the information contained on Ron’s flash drive. “As you can see, Kate’s father is apparently considering signing off on deals with these five different companies. Which of them do you think we should approach for help in smoking him out of hiding?”

  “And we need input about the best techniques for approaching them, too,” Kate said. Her uncle would be much easier to work with if he had the illusion that all the important decisions were his. “We’ll have to tell them at least some part of the truth, don’t you think? I don’t see how else we’ll convince them to help us. What’s your opinion, Uncle Paul?”

  She was sincere in asking for his input, but as she’d expected, the side benefit was that her uncle got so caught up in holding forth that he forgot all about calling the police.

  “Is this everything you collected while you were in Virginia?” Paul asked, adjusting his reading glasses.

  “Yes, and we made those copies for you to keep.”

  Paul murmured thanks. He skimmed through the files, expressing mystification as to why Ron had chosen to use the names of Mayan gods as headers on his accounting sheets and shaking his head as he came to each new photo, with its accompanying fake ID. He paused at the shot of “Raymond Rausch,” visibly wincing as he took in the droopy mustache, ho
rn-rimmed glasses and dark brown hair.

  “He’s laughing at us,” he said tautly, jabbing his finger at the image. “I’m telling you these disguises are nothing more than another of Ron’s sick jokes.”

  Kate wasn’t sure how Paul reached that conclusion, since her father had never expected them to see any of his alter egos. But her uncle was entitled to feel resentment. Rather than dispute the point, she simply shifted the conversation to a discussion of how and where they might be able to tempt Ron into setting up a meeting.

  They were working through a variety of complex plans, not happy with any of them, when Luke suddenly snapped his fingers. “Got it!” He beamed, first at Kate and then at the other two, clearly pleased with himself. “Here’s what we have to do. It’s simple. Kate, you must call each of the companies and pretend to be Ron’s assistant. Tell them Ron’s PalmPilot malfunctioned, or got lost…whatever…and you want to confirm the date of Ron’s next meeting with them. He probably has meetings already scheduled with one or two of these companies, possibly with all five of them. After all, he’s in the middle of negotiating deals with these people.”

  “Hey, that’s brilliant. What did you put in your oatmeal this morning? And you’re right, it’s simple, which is always best.”

  Luke tried to look modest, but then gave a huge grin. “It does seem to answer our problems. If none of the companies already has a meeting scheduled with Ron, we’ll have to think again, of course. But let’s hope we get lucky.”

  Paul voiced a few objections, probably because he was annoyed at not having come up with the plan himself, Kate thought, silently amused by her uncle’s inevitable wish to be seen as the person in charge. Luke politely countered Paul’s objections, one by one, until Avery surprised them all by stepping in to take charge.

  “Enough already, Paul. Kate, you should call Millbank Woodworks first, since everyone seems to agree these are the negotiations that Ron has pursued most actively. That presumably means they provide the highest probability of a face-to-face meeting already being scheduled with Ron.”

  Paul subsided in the face of Luke’s determination, although he didn’t look happy. Kate quickly reread the salient points in the Millbank file. According to his notes, her father had always dealt directly with Ethan Millbank, the young owner who’d recently taken over management of the company, so she would try to talk with Ethan’s assistant. The assistant’s name was Jodie, and Ron had written himself a reminder that Millbank’s phone system was old-fashioned enough that Jodie also acted as the telephonist, a 1980s relic carried into the twenty-first century world of voice mail.

  Drawing a deep breath, trying not to notice that Luke, her mother and Paul were hanging on her every word, Kate dialed Millbank’s number. Her call was answered on the first ring. “Millbank Woodworks, Jodie speaking. How may I direct your call?”

  “Hi, Jodie. This is Raymond Rausch’s assistant, from Rausch Enterprises.”

  “Oh, hi, how are you? But this isn’t Connie, is it?”

  “Er…no. This is Lisa. I’m…um…new to Rausch Enterprises.”

  “Hi, Lisa.” The young woman sounded friendly and not in the least suspicious. “Do you want to speak to Raymond? He’s still walking the factory floor with the boss, but I can connect you.”

  For a split second, Kate’s mind blanked. Then, with a flash of dismay, she realized what Jodie meant. Her father was actually visiting Millbank Woodworks right at this moment! She searched feverishly for an excuse to avoid speaking with him.

  “Hello?” Jodie, not surprisingly, sounded puzzled by the long pause. “Are you still there, Lisa?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” Kate hoped she didn’t sound as panicked as she felt. “Thanks so much for the offer, but I just wanted to check that Raymond hadn’t left already. No problem. I appreciate the help. Talk to you later. Take care now.” She hung up the phone, her palm sweaty with nerves.

  Her mother, uncle and Luke were all staring at her. “What’s going on?” Luke asked. “You look poleaxed.”

  “My father was there—right there on the premises!”

  “At Millbank Woodworks?” Paul sounded suitably appalled.

  “Yes.” Kate gave a laugh that shaded toward the hysterical. “As soon as I said I was Raymond Rausch’s assistant, Jodie asked me if I wanted to be put through to him!”

  “That was a narrow escape,” Paul said grimly. “Good Lord, talk about unfortunate coincidences.”

  “How did Ron get to Virginia already?” Avery asked. “He was invading Kate’s home and threatening her life in the middle of last night. Now he’s at Millbank Woodworks. How did he manage to get back to the Washington area so quickly?”

  “There are plenty of flights between Chicago and Washington, D.C.” Paul sounded more than a little impatient with his sister. “If Ron flew out of O’Hare on the first flight this morning, he’d have landed in Dulles with hours to spare. Millbank Woodworks isn’t more than an hour from Dulles.”

  “At least there’s an upside,” Luke said, once again intervening to soothe the irritation between Avery and her brother. “If Ron is at Millbank Woodworks, he can’t be at any of the other companies.” He gave Kate’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “You’d better place the other four phone calls fast, in case Ron plans to drive straight from Millbank to his next meeting!”

  Her heartbeat finally slowing to normal, Kate made the remaining calls without any mishaps and without, as far as she could tell, arousing any suspicion that she might not be who she claimed to be. At two of the companies, Ron had no meetings currently scheduled. At Innovation Lifestyles, which happened to be located only ten miles away from Millbank Woodworks, he had a meeting scheduled for 8:00 a.m. the next morning. At Focus Health, he had a meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon at two-thirty.

  “At least that makes it simple to decide where we need to intercept him,” Luke said. “The meeting at Innovation Lifestyles is too soon. We couldn’t get there without scrambling like hell and possibly screwing up. So it has to be Focus Health, on Old Ox Road, in Loudon County, Virginia, on Friday afternoon at two-thirty.”

  Kate understood why Luke was repeating the information in such detail. The idea that they could name the date and time at which they would be able to confront her father and demand answers was mind-blowing, even though they’d worked so hard to arrive at this point.

  Avery had retreated to a seat in the corner of the room by the window. She was staring out into the small backyard, seemingly oblivious to the discussion taking place around her. She didn’t look sad, but she looked abstracted, as if her attention were turned inward. Even her exquisite makeup couldn’t hide the fact that she was very pale.

  “Mom, are you okay with all this?” Kate asked, although the question was redundant. Clearly her mother wasn’t okay. As Luke had pointed out earlier, just because her mother was angry with Ron, it didn’t mean she wasn’t also coping with feelings of sadness and loss along with the betrayal. Kate had reached the point where she was more than willing to see her father behind bars, but her mother might well be ambivalent at the prospect of watching Ron face imminent arrest and possible incarceration.

  “What?” With visible effort, Avery turned her attention to her daughter. “Sorry, sweetheart, I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should. Did you ask me something?”

  “I asked if you were okay with the plans we’ve made.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  Paul chuckled as he gave his sister an indulgent, older-brother hug. “Don’t be fooled by Avery’s little show of confusion, Luke. I know my sister well. When she goes off into one of these reveries of hers, she’s plotting something remarkable. You mark my words, she’s about to drop a bombshell.” From his amused tone of voice, Kate assumed her uncle wasn’t taking his own comment seriously.

  “Is he right, Mom? What deep thoughts have you been mulling over in that corner seat of yours?”

  Avery gave herself a shake and her pensiveness
vanished, but she appeared no less worried than before. “I was thinking about your father’s strange visit to you last night and the threats he made,” she said. “That set me to thinking about George Klein. His death haunts me—that poor wife, and those young boys.”

  “George’s death haunts all of us,” Luke said. “It’s a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been troubled for days now about Mr. Klein’s murder….”

  Her voice trailed away and Kate prompted her. “Is there something specific about his death that’s bothering you, Mom?”

  Avery gave a reluctant nod. “I’m afraid so. As soon as I heard the news of his murder, it occurred to me that Mr. Klein’s death was amazingly convenient.”

  “Convenient?” Paul asked, sounding bewildered. “Convenient for whom?”

  “For Ron, of course. Who else? When Kate told us about Ron’s threats against her…Well, it got me thinking. And I began to wonder if Mr. Klein’s death had merely been convenient…or if Ron was responsible.”

  “For killing George Klein?” Kate’s stomach swooped toward her feet. “Mom, you can’t be serious!”

  Paul looked shell-shocked by his sister’s suggestion. “For goodness’ sake, Avery, that’s a bit over-the-top! I know there have been a lot of unpleasant revelations about Ron over the past few months, but surely you don’t believe he’s capable of committing murder?”

  “Ron has threatened to kill his own daughter,” Luke reminded them. “Why are you so sure he couldn’t be responsible for George Klein’s death?”

  “Well, I know Ron has made some outrageous threats, and I realize we have to take precautions to keep Kate safe, but I can’t believe Ron has any real intention of killing his own child.” Paul appeared to have forgotten that earlier he’d been the person warning them to take Ron’s threats seriously.

  “Based on past evidence, I think we can safely assume that Ron doesn’t have the same attitude toward family as the rest of us,” Luke said dryly. “I don’t believe the fact that Kate is his daughter provides her with much protection. We’d be fools not to take Ron at his word. He’s said he’ll kill Kate if she continues to pursue him. For all our sakes, we need to believe he’ll do just that if he gets the chance. Our job is to make sure he doesn’t get the chance.”