by Dale Mayer
“Me too,” Erick said wearily. “Same for Talon and Laszlo.”
“And Geir and Jager?”
“Jager is still dark. Geir is on his way here.”
“Geir is?” Cade straightened, a big grin breaking across his face. “I’m really looking forward to seeing him.”
“He was supposed to be here a couple days ago. But he got sidelined in London.”
Cade frowned. “Something to do with Badger’s issue over there?”
“Maybe. He said he has some more information. He’ll tell us about it when he gets here.”
“Sure wish people would stop doing that. With all the deaths, I don’t think anybody should be withholding information, just in case they never get a chance to share it.”
“I hear you. But Geir will tell us when he finally gets here.”
“Did Laszlo have anything else helpful to add?”
“No. The detective in Norway has done what he can do. He doesn’t have any other lines to tug.”
“Right. So what do you want me to handle next?” As he leaned against his car, he watched a black Lexus pull into the coffee shop parking lot. “I’m not exactly sure what this is,” he said in a low voice, “but a black Lexus with a soft top just pulled in at the other end of the parking lot.”
Cade walked casually past a few vehicles, back to his truck, and then back again as if pacing. He walked a little farther each time, to appear as if he was completely unconcerned about what was going on around him. What he wanted was to check out the license plate.
“Can you see who it is?” Erick asked sharply. “And not be seen doing it?”
Just then somebody tugged on his arm. He turned to see Faith pointing at the vehicle that had just pulled in. He tugged her up close, dropped a kiss on her temple and whispered, “I know. I’m talking to a friend of mine about it.”
She squeezed him and nodded.
But he didn’t let her go. “Erick, Faith is right here beside me.”
“I don’t know what the relationship is between the two of you, buddy, but I don’t think there was anybody in your life when your sister went down. What you don’t want is to give this guy any idea that Faith is part of your world.”
Cade immediately dropped his arm and stepped back. He stared down at her. She frowned and looked up at him, reaching a hand to his cheek, whispering, “What’s the matter?”
Just then the Lexus turned all the way around the parking lot and parked beside Faith’s vehicle. Deliberately Cade turned so his back was to it.
“Faith, is there any way you can take a picture of the driver as he gets out or take a look at him?”
She nodded and deliberately sauntered back to her car and unlocked it, opening the door. She reached in and pulled a Kleenex out from the side. Quietly and very ladylike, she blew her nose. He could see her from the corner of his eye, but not close enough to see if she could view the new arrival.
“Don’t forget. We don’t want this guy to recognize her either. They’ve had a falling out already,” Erick warned.
“I think the guy just went inside. Why would he come back if the food was terrible?”
“Unless he’s waiting for somebody,” Erick suggested. “Who the hell knows what’s going on?”
“Cade,” came the soft whisper.
He spun around to see Faith walking around behind the truck toward him. As she reached him, she murmured, “It’s him.”
He took a deep breath. “Erick, I’ll go in. I need to know who this guy is.”
“You be careful. Wait five minutes for me to send somebody as backup.”
“Nobody’s close, are they?”
“Talon is here, and so is Laszlo. We’ll all be there in ten minutes.”
Cade pocketed the phone and leaned against the hood of his truck, staring down on Faith. “My buddy is coming along with a couple other guys for backup. I don’t know if this guy knows me, but, if he ran down my sister, I suspect it was deliberate, and, therefore, he knows exactly who I am. He may have already seen me here, but I don’t want you getting involved. He’s already had a confrontation with you.”
“Sure he has, but he’s also been at this restaurant where he complained. Why would he come back?”
“It’s hard to say. Maybe he’s had lots of good experiences here, and that was not one of them.”
She groaned. “I don’t even want to leave because that guy is here. And I feel bad for the waitress.”
Cade winced at that. “I know. The waitress is a little bit of a concern.”
Just then he watched her come out of the restaurant and head to a vehicle at the far side of the parking lot and drive away.
“It looks like she just got a lucky break because she’s leaving,” he said quietly, motioning to the woman.
Faith nodded. “But that doesn’t get you or me out of this.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Sweetie, this is what I do. I’m not trying to get out of anything. I’m trying to get in the game. So, I would like you to go home. At least there you’ll be safe.”
She shot him a look. “I would like the same for you,” she said in a dark tone. She headed back toward her car. “Make sure you text me and let me know what happened.”
With a huge sense of relief he watched her back out her vehicle and head home. The last thing he wanted was to have her get any more involved. He reached inside his truck and pulled out his baseball cap, tucked it over the top of his head and walked around to the back of the restaurant. He didn’t want to be recognized, and there was a chance he’d already been spotted. But he did want to take a photo of the Lexus’s license plate. He just wasn’t sure how to do that. He was hoping, if he could get far enough away from the windows at the front of the restaurant, he could take a photo without being seen. He pulled out his phone and set it for Camera and casually walked along the back of the parking lot. As he went by, he checked the numbers on the Lexus and realized both women had been correct. What was missing was an O. But there was no way to take a photo without somebody seeing him.
He walked all the way to the far side and then headed back around again. This time as he walked past with the phone at his hip, his arm down casually, he clicked the button to snap a photo of the vehicle, taking several photos, just in case the first one didn’t work out, then hopped into his own truck and pulled out to the shopping mall on the opposite side. There he parked and sat in the cab, waiting for his backup to arrive.
Soon Laszlo pulled up in a Jeep to the far side of the coffee shop, driving past the Lexus.
As he parked, Cade called him. “He’s inside,” he said quietly. “Chances are he already knows exactly who we all are.”
“What about Faith? Is she still here?” Laszlo asked.
“No. The waitress is gone on her break, or her shift’s over because she just left too. She knows Faith and me. Plus the hired gunman in there knows Faith and me and probably you too. What we need is somebody to go inside who he doesn’t know.”
“We want to flush him out and get the real identity of this guy. For that we’ll have to take him down.”
“I think we should wait for him and then one of us get into the vehicle with him and see if we can have a talk,” Cade said.
“I’d say kidnap him and take him somewhere so we don’t have to worry about it.”
“We can’t cross the line here,” Cade said. “We don’t have any jurisdiction, and we don’t belong to any military group or law enforcement group that’ll have legal rights to get involved in this.”
“We can hardly just let this guy sit in the coffee shop and then leave.”
“He’s getting company,” Cade said urgently. “I’ll call you back.” Tucking the phone away, he grabbed a jacket.
Cade quickly crossed the road and walked into the back of the coffee shop. With his jacket on and his baseball cap lowered, looking a whole lot older than he had a few years ago, he walked up to the counter and ordered a coffee to go. The two men sat in the far corner. Th
e new arrival was facing Cade, but he didn’t recognize him.
Cade grabbed his coffee and headed outside. As he walked out, he went to the right and headed in Laszlo’s direction. He held out the coffee for him. “Here, you need this.”
“Did you see the new guy?” Laszlo demanded.
“Yes, but I didn’t recognize him.”
“We need to get his license plate number and run him down.”
“I already passed it along to Erick.”
Just then Cade’s phone rang. He put it on Speaker.
“Cade,” Erick said, “I just ran the second license plate. He’s ex-military.”
Cade’s back stiffened. He didn’t like this turn of events. “What’s this got to do with anything? We were assuming all these accidents might have been done by one guy. But what if he hired some of these jobs done?”
“Unfortunately that’s all too possible,” Laszlo added. “We still don’t have a motive. We still don’t have any idea how any of this ties into our land mine explosion.”
“We’re hoping to get a photo ID to confirm who this second man is,” Erick continued. “He was a supply clerk in the military. He was kicked out under suspicion of stealing, but nobody could prove anything.”
“Stealing what?” But Cade knew. Inside he knew.
“Weapons, and that includes antitank land mines.”
“Shit.”
With Laszlo staring at Cade, the two realized they had to capture both men. If there was one thing they needed, it was a chance to talk to this pair of guys, the chance to talk to them when they couldn’t avoid it.
After a moment both men exited the coffee shop in a hurry. They split to the two vehicles they had arrived in and took off, leaving Laszlo and Cade staring after them.
“Something’s up,” Cade said to Erick, still on the phone, as Cade raced toward his truck. “They both just ran off.”
“Can you each tail them?” Erick demanded.
“Yeah, we’re on it.” At least Cade hoped so. But the men already had a head start.
Laszlo pulled past Cade, honked once and took off after the Lexus. The Jeep would give it a good run, but that Lexus could outrun it if they were on a flat surface. But there was a lot of traffic, so chances were he wouldn’t get that opportunity.
Cade threw himself behind his truck’s steering wheel, pulled out behind the BMW the second man had arrived in. It was a rental vehicle. And a high-end one at that. But this guy wouldn’t know the area like the first man did, since he had to rent a car. And he was much slower to pick up and head out. That was good with Cade because he could follow him.
He set the GPS on his phone and told Erick, “The GPS is live. Track us. Laszlo has gone off after the other asshole. Don’t lose these guys.”
“Not an issue. Talon is hopping in his vehicle now too. I’ll direct him to the best point as soon as I bring everyone up on the map. You go easy. No accidents allowed for anyone.”
“I hear you. Let’s make sure we catch these guys.”
He tossed his phone on the seat beside him and took off after the second vehicle.
Chapter 10
Faith really wanted to head home. But knowing this was all going on had left her with an edgy, unsettled feeling. She was in the mall parking lot across the street from the coffee shop when she realized Cade had parked nearby but was no longer visible. She walked up and down the parking lot, watching. She saw the first guy that Cade was tracking come out of the coffee shop with a second guy, and both got in their separate vehicles. Then Cade and Laszlo followed the two vehicles. She wanted in on it but knew she didn’t have the skills or the temperament for something like that. She also had no way, outside of Cade, to contact them. She hoped they caught them. She had no clue what was going on, but the one man she knew for sure definitely needed to be taken down.
Sighing, she turned and walked into the nearby market, picked up a few groceries and headed back to her vehicle. Just as she sat down, there was a text from Mary.
You went to the police?
Faith winced. That wasn’t exactly how she wanted Mary to find out. Laszlo’s detective had probably contacted her. Faith hemmed and hawed over her response, and then sent a text back. I had to know what my rights were.
You have no rights. She’s my sister.
She’s also my friend, and I care about what happens to her.
If you care about her, stay on your side of the ocean came back the snappy retort.
Frustrated and angry, Faith tossed the phone in her open purse beside her and slowly drove home. She didn’t know what was going on in Norway—or even here in Santa Fe—but her world had suddenly flipped. It was more than unsettled and unpleasant. She wanted it all to return to normal, where she could pick up the phone and call Elizabeth, and they could laugh away the hours.
But she couldn’t talk to Elizabeth. Mary was making sure of that. Faith was doing her best to give Mary the benefit of a doubt, but Mary was making that harder and harder to come by. And Faith didn’t want to have these negative thoughts rebounding in her head all day long. She had to stop the Repeat action of Mary’s message playing over and over.
Shaking her head, parked at her apartment now, she pulled the groceries out of her vehicle, locked up the car and headed inside. As she crossed the parking lot toward the main entrance to the complex, a black vehicle raced past her, coming a little too close for comfort. She had been distracted by Mary’s words still in her head, but Faith had dashed the last few feet to get away, shouting, “Watch your speed, idiot.”
Too bad she didn’t get another look at the vehicle, but it was long gone now. She let herself into the apartment building and upstairs to her third-floor apartment. She couldn’t afford much more than this one cost, plus hadn’t decided where she wanted to live. She hadn’t even chosen what city she would like to live in. The world was wide open for her. The last thing she wanted to do was buy into a real estate area that she would end up hating.
She dumped her groceries on the kitchen counter and started to put them away. Her phone rang. She knew who it was. “Cade, what happened after I left?”
“Was that you dashing out of the way in the parking lot?” His voice was terse.
She spun around to look at her front door. “Did you see that? Who just tried to run me down?”
“The guy Laszlo is tailing. He called to say he saw you as he went past.”
“I assumed it was an accident.”
“I don’t think anything’s an accident anymore,” he said grimly.
“Coincidence?” she offered.
“I’m afraid it was more a case of, I can get to her any time I want to.”
She gasped and froze. “Are you saying that was a deliberate attempt to hit me?”
“That was a little too close for comfort. My comfort.”
“Well, it was a hell of a lot too close for my comfort too,” she declared. “Could you guys take out these assholes, please? They’re really mucking up my life.”
He gave a surprised laugh. “That’s the spirit.” And he hung up.
She frowned and put down the phone. It was hardly anything to laugh about. This was just plain ugly. She didn’t have anything to do with Cade’s nightmare. Although Cade had interfered into hers in a nice enough way, although Mary obviously was pretty pissed off about the whole deal.
Faith put on a small pot of coffee, even though she didn’t really want any. She wanted a warm drink, the comfort of the routine. Walking over to her laptop, she turned it on. When it booted up, she checked her emails. There was one from Mary. In it was a long explanation of why she felt Elizabeth was much better off without Faith. The trouble was, it read like an eight-year-old’s temper tantrum.
She responded in kind.
Just because you’re jealous of the relationship the two of us had and obviously prefer a world where your sister isn’t in it, that’s no reason to actively hurt other people. Elizabeth and I have always been friends. That has never encroached o
n your relationship with her. She’s a beautiful woman who deserves a chance to live. And, if sitting at her bedside brought her any measure of comfort, I was happy to do it. Being forced away from her room because of your jealousy is madness.
She knew she shouldn’t hit Send, but she did anyway. There were some times one should walk away, but there were also times when one needed to make one’s position clear. In this case, Faith was worried about Elizabeth’s safety in the hands of Mary and their mother. Plus Mary had seriously pissed off Faith.
She got a response a few minutes later and read it.
That’s just mean. She’s my sister, and I love her. She never understood me, and I never understood her, but our love was always underneath there.
Obviously Mary wouldn’t get it anytime soon. Faith typed up her reply email.
So then why would you choose for Elizabeth to not have her best friend there? I wasn’t hurting her. Even the doctor said she was more at peace when I was there. So, unless you’re helping your sister to an early grave in the hopes of getting her assets or at least your mother’s undivided love or some other twisted reason, I suggest you take a very good look at what you created here.
The back and forth continued. According to Mary, it was a kindness, and, according to Faith, it was a travesty. But still Faith could do nothing about it. Mary had set this in motion, and there was no stopping this travesty, unless Elizabeth woke up, or Mary changed her mind. The chances of the latter happening weren’t very good. All Faith could do was hope Elizabeth healed enough to come out of the coma on her own.
The longer she stayed under, the harder recovery she would have, and the more time she would need to get back to normal. Depressed, Faith thought about going out for a walk, but remembering that vehicle almost hitting her, she realized there was a good chance somebody was after her. And yet, why? Because she’d seen Cade once or twice? That made no sense. And that just showed how truly psychotic the mess Cade was involved in. And she didn’t want any part of it. She was afraid it was already too late. If what Cade had said was true, the serial killer was just proving he could get at Faith anytime he wanted to. Whether she was in the parking lot or not, he knew where she lived.