by Rebecca York
When he asked for Erin Stone, he was put through quickly.
“Alex,” she said. “I’m so glad everything worked out for you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” he answered, thinking that probably everybody he knew was talking about how he’d gotten arrested for murder. Probably there were guys at Randolph who thought he’d been stupid getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That was another topic he didn’t want to discuss.
“I was hoping you could help me with the case I’m working on.”
“If I can.”
“You remember we talked about an adoption ring that operated in St. Stephens twenty-five to forty years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s a young woman mixed up in the case I’m working on.”
“The Lee Tillman case?”
“Yes,” he acknowledged, thinking that he might as well write an editorial about it for the Baltimore Sun. “I’ve found out that she consulted you.”
“Alex, our records are confidential.”
“I know that, and I wasn’t going to ask you about her, specifically. But I was thinking about when you and Travis exposed that adoption scam. Could you tell me if there was a baby girl put up for adoption through the service in late July 1974?”
“Just a moment.”
He waited for several minutes. Then Erin came on the line again. “There are no records of a girl being born to any of the mothers from Ashwood, the estate where the unwed mothers lived.”
Something about the tone of her voice made him ask, “But?”
“But, um…”
“Erin!”
“Okay. I don’t have any details. But I see that there’s a five-thousand-dollar payment to William DeGeorge, the lawyer who arranged the adoptions.”
“Five thousand dollars,” he repeated.
“That’s well below his usual fee.”
“Do you know who paid him?”
“Alex, I’m skirting the confidentiality rules now. If I had that information, I couldn’t give it to you,” she said quickly.
An idea hit him, and he asked, “Did fathers ever arrange for adoptions?”
“I can’t give out that information.”
He cleared his throat. “I appreciate what you could tell me.”
“It wasn’t much. Take care, Alex.”
“I will.”
He hung up, musing over the conversation and wondering if he was going to end up breaking into the office of Birth Data, Inc. Or maybe there was another approach he could take. Like perhaps having another chat with Sara’s father.
There was an additional piece of business he should take care of. Getting directory information. He called the hotel in Nova Scotia where Lee was supposed to be headed. He hadn’t arrived, but Alex did find out that he wasn’t due for another two days. He should check Lee’s route, too, seeing if he’d registered in any hotels along the way. He turned that job over to Randolph Security, then leaned back in his chair, bonetired. Two sleepless nights in prison suddenly hit him like a hard right to the jaw, and he knew if he didn’t get some quality time in the sack, he wouldn’t be able to function. So he turned off the phone and staggered into the bedroom where he threw off his clothing and crawled under the covers.
Some time later, the ringing phone woke him up.
Hadn’t he turned off the damn phone? Confused, he wondered if he was having auditory hallucinations. Then he realized it was the cell phone in his pants pocket.
He found where he’d thrown the pants and pulled out the instrument, glancing at the window. Dim light filtered through the blinds, informing him he’d slept the clock around.
Shaking his head, he slid his gaze back to the numbers on the display and blinked when he recognized them. Sara.
When he pressed the receive button on the phone, her voice leaped through the receiver.
“Alex, thank God!” she gasped. “I thought…I thought you weren’t going to be there.”
“Sara, what’s wrong?”
Her voice rose an octave. “Dad and I had a fight. So I left.”
“I told you—”
She cut him off before he could finish. “Two of those guys were waiting for me when I got home. I—I jumped in my car and drove away. But they’re following me. What should I do?”
“Keep moving. I’ll get to you as soon as I can.”
“Okay.”
“And keep the line open, even if we’re not talking!”
“Yes,” she answered, a sob of relief in her voice.
It flashed into his mind that he’d gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble a couple of days ago because he’d been carrying a weapon. But there was no question of leaving his piece home now. If the two guys who were after Sara were armed, then going up against them bare was suicidal. Besides, he had a permit to carry.
So he shoved the Glock into his belt. Then he grabbed a baseball cap and pulled it down over his eyes. Still, when he stepped out of the house, a flashbulb went off in his face.
“Get the hell off my property,” he snapped at the persistent guy.
As he stalked toward the man with the camera, the reporter turned and ran.
“Alex?” Sara’s voice came over the phone.
“It’s okay. Another member of the fourth estate coming after me.” Jumping in his SUV, he started the engine. “Where are you?”
“On the Old River Road.”
“They’re following you in a truck?”
“Yes.”
“What color?”
“Green.”
“Stay on the highway. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”
As he roared to the end of the driveway, he thanked Providence that nobody else was lying in wait for him.
“Are these the same guys that have been showing up?” he asked Sara.
“I can’t tell.”
“Baseball caps?”
“Yes.” Her voice rose in panic. “Alex, they keep coming up next to me, trying to push me onto the shoulder.”
He swore as he pressed down on the accelerator. “How far are you from town?”
“I’m near the park.”
“What park?”
He heard her gulp. “Muncaster Park, where you and I…you know.”
Yeah, he did know. His memories of that incident were pretty vivid. But up until now, she hadn’t given him any indication that she remembered him.
He might have pursued that startling piece of information if she hadn’t been in the middle of a damn mess. He wanted to yell at her, tell her again that going back to her house had been a bad idea. But there was no point in cursing her out now.
Now he had to get to her—before the guys who were trying to hurt her.
He wanted to speed down the highway at eighty miles an hour, but he was stuck behind a little old geezer going forty-five. A truck was coming in the other direction, but Alex chanced a pass, whipping back into his lane seconds before the big vehicle sped past, the driver honking his horn for all he was worth.
With part of his mind he was thinking that it wouldn’t be a dumb idea to call the cops for backup. But he couldn’t do it without breaking the connection with Sara, and he needed to keep on top of what was going on. That was what he told himself. But he knew he had another reason for doing this his way. It was difficult to picture the cops rushing to his aid after his recent experiences with them.
And there was another factor, too. Sara had called him, when she could have called the law.
He had just made another dangerous pass, when her gasp on the other end of the line riveted his attention.
“What’s happening?”
“They’re forcing me off the road again. This time…I can’t stay on the pavement.”
“How close are you to the park?”
“A quarter of a mile.”
“Turn in to the entrance.”
“But I’ll be trapped.”
“Do it! I’ll get to you,” he promised, praying that it
was true, because if he couldn’t get there in time, he’d made her situation worse.
He heard tires squealing, then the crunch of gravel.
He pictured the access road. At the end of the road a right fork led to a riverside drive, the left fork led to pavement that wound into the woods.
“Turn right as soon as you can.”
“Along the river?”
“Yeah.”
As he passed the sign announcing the park, he took the turn on two tires. Straightening out, he sped down the access road.
“I’m almost there,” he panted, feeling as if he was running a race.
He heard Sara make a small, choked sound.
“What?”
“They’re pushing me toward the water.”
“Hang on.”
“I’m on the sand. Oh God, the pier’s ahead of me. I’m going to hit it.”
He heard brakes squealing.
“Sara! Sara!”
She didn’t answer. “Talk to me, Sara,” he shouted.
There were several moments of silence, during which all he could hear was the blood roaring in his ears. He kept shouting her name, kept racing along the road at dangerous speed, taking the fork she had taken, thinking that if he crashed he wasn’t going to do her much good. But he couldn’t make himself slow down.
The gray water came into view, and the long stretch of sand along the shoreline. Ahead of him he saw the pier and two vehicles.
What had happened was immediately apparent. The driver of the other car had been focused on Sara. When she’d stopped short, he’d kept going and barely missed the pilings.
As he watched, the doors of the green truck flew open. Two guys got out and started heading back toward Sara’s car.
Even at this distance, he recognized one of them, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
It was his brother, Billy.
He growled a curse, his voice filling the inside of the truck as he sped the last hundred yards to the scene and braked to a stop.
The two men were on Sara’s side of the car, facing her, so neither one of them was aware that company had arrived.
Sara’s door must be locked, thank God. He could hear the other guy shouting at her to open up. When she didn’t comply, he pulled a handgun from the waistband of his pants, raised it over his head and brought the butt crashing down against her window.
Alex tossed the cell phone on the seat beside him, then drew his own gun as he leaped from the SUV. “Step away from the car, and leave the lady alone,” he ordered.
Billy and the hothead both whirled to face him, surprise and anger warring on their faces. The latter had been caught holding his gun by the wrong end, since he’d been using it as a club.
“Drop your weapons and step away from the car,” Alex said.
Billy cocked his head to one side, studying him. “What are you going to do, shoot your own brother?”
“If I have to.”
Billy shrugged, but his tone was belligerent as he said, “You got yourself a good lawyer, so you lucked out at the courthouse. You’re going to be back in the slammer if you shoot someone now. So you’d be smart to back off.”
“I wouldn’t test that theory if I were you,” Alex answered, his voice firm and flat.
Billy’s jaw jutted out the way it had when they were kids, squabbling. His eyes narrowed. He wasn’t holding a weapon, but the bulge under his shirt was pretty suggestive.
For a long moment, Alex didn’t know which way it was going to go.
Chapter Nine
Alex saw Sara staring through the network of cracks where the gun butt had crashed against the window. It was safety glass so it hadn’t shattered. But another blow might be enough to cave it in.
She looked scared, but defiant, as if she was going to give the guy some grief if he came in there to get her.
Well, he wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Drop your weapon and step away from the car,” he repeated, wondering if the hothead was stupid enough to try repositioning the gun before shooting at an armed man.
To his vast relief the guy must have calculated his odds and decided that his chances weren’t good. Slowly he stepped away from Sara’s car. When the gun hit the ground, Alex let out the breath that had been frozen in his lungs.
“You too, Billy,” he ordered.
His brother gave him a scathing look as he reached under his shirt, slowly pulled out an automatic and dropped it beside the one already on the sand.
“Walk to the river,” Alex said.
“What are you going to do?”
“The river!” he snapped.
After several moments’ hesitation, they looked at each other and started for the water. Billy did the same.
“Wade in.”
The two men stepped cautiously as the water lapped at their ankles and then their knees.
“Keep going. Move it.”
They followed orders, wading farther and farther into the gray river until the waves swallowed their thighs, then their waists.
Alex turned his head and motioned to Sara. She eased the door of her car open, then crossed to him.
“Get into my truck,” he said quietly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
He expected her to do what he told her to do. Instead, she coolly picked up a kitchen knife that must have been on the seat beside her. She hadn’t exactly mentioned that detail.
As he watched, she marched toward the green truck, bent and ripped at the side of the left front tire, slashing through the wall. When the air began to leak out, she moved to the rear of the vehicle and repeated the process.
“Two is enough,” he called out. “They’re probably not carrying around two spare tires.”
“Okay.”
At the sound of Alex’s voice, his brother’s partner half turned. “Hey, what the hell are you doing to my tires?” he shouted.
“Let’s get out of here,” Alex told Sara.
They got into the SUV and as he made a quick U-turn, he saw the two men in the water struggling awkwardly toward the shore.
He drove back the way he’d come, toward the fork where the two roads branched off.
When he was out of sight of the river, he turned to Sara. She was huddled in her seat, shivering.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The road behind them was clear. He didn’t expect Billy and his friend to get their vehicle going any time soon. And Sara’s car was too new to be hot-wired. They might have a cell phone, however, to call for reinforcements. If they did, Alex didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity.
He exited the park, drove down the highway at a moderately fast pace and took a road that led to a development of large homes built along a golf course.
Pulling to the shoulder under the overhanging branches of some trees, he cut the engine and swung toward Sara.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Thank God you came.”
“Thank God you kept your head,” he answered, then asked the question that had been in his mind earlier. “Why didn’t you call the cops? Were you still worried about your dad?”
Her eyes widened. “I—I didn’t think about the cops. I thought about you. Just you,” she added in a whisper. “You talked me through the terror, but I dropped my phone when I slammed on the brakes.”
“So that’s why I couldn’t get you!”
“I could hear you shouting at me. You were still there.”
“Well, you were the one who held them off long enough for me to get to you. And then you slashed the hell out of their tires. Where did you get the knife?”
“Your kitchen. I left your house with it.”
He laughed. So it was his kitchen knife. He sobered as he reached for her, pulled her toward him, and she came into his arms with a small sound.
“Why did you go home?” he demanded.
“I was at my dad’s. He let it slip that you’d called, and he hadn’t let me talk to you. I was so angry with him that I
had to get out of there.” In response to his strangled exclamation, she went on quickly, “You don’t have to tell me again. Going home was a bad idea. But I wasn’t planning to stay there. A friend of mine is away in Europe and I have the key to her condo so I can water her plants. I was going there as soon as I picked up some clean clothes.”
Mollified, he nodded.
“I was worried about you, too,” she murmured. “I mean, after you called me from the state police.”
“I’m back safe and sound.”
“Thank God for that. I knew you didn’t do it.”
“How?”
“I just knew!”
There was an unaccustomed clarity to the scene. The sunlight beyond the trees, the dappled shade where the truck was parked, the mixture of relief and joy on Sara’s face as she looked up at him.
He saw her eyes drift shut just as his lips met hers.
He felt a melting sensation, as though his mouth was flowing against hers, his body melding to hers, absorbing the feel of her, the taste, the wonderful scent of her.
The events of the past few days swirled in his head. He’d been in custody less than forty-eight hours, but he felt as if he’d been away from her for an eternity. And then their first contact had been a cry for help.
Thank God she’d had a cell phone. Thank God he’d been out of jail and able to come when she called. Thank God she was in his arms now—and that she seemed as eager for his kisses as he was to give them.
He was lost in the reality of her. Of them. It flitted through his mind that this was meant to be all along. And the years without her had only been an unfortunate interruption.
She moaned into his mouth.
There were no words to express the depth and breadth of his emotions. All he could do was shut out the world and move his mouth over hers, move his hands over her back, into her hair.
“Alex.” His name sighed out of her like a prayer of thanks.
“I’m here. Right here,” he answered, easing her lips apart so that he could taste her more fully.
He sipped from her, nibbled, devoured, until he was shaking with the strength of his response. He wanted to slip his hands under her shirt and splay them against the warm skin of her back. He wanted to slide them around and cup her breasts, tease her nipples. But he was already in danger of taking this too far out here on a public road, with the bad guys somewhere behind them.