Fever

by Joan Swan

  Mitch’s frustrated gaze traveled over the room, paused on the rumpled sheets, dropped to the floor and held. His jaw went hard. His eyes went dark. Alyssa followed his gaze to a torn condom wrapper. Mortification pierced her belly and her eyes fell closed.

  “Did he ... ?” Mitch’s hands closed over her arms. “Did he rape you, Lys? Fuck. We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “Stop.” Alyssa resisted her brother’s attempt to pull her to her feet and grabbed his forearms, squeezing until he met her eyes. The sickness there made her own stomach clench. “He did not rape me.”

  It took Mitch a long moment to absorb the meaning behind her statement. When he did, his eyes narrowed as he dropped his arms and leaned back. “You slept with him? What in the fuck ... ? Jesus Christ, Alyssa, how ... ? What ... ? Why would you put yourself at risk like that?” He squeezed his eyes closed, pushed to his feet and smacked his forehead with his hand. “This is so not like you. He manipulated you when you were at your weakest—”

  Alyssa stood, furious with every man in the universe. “Don’t you dare insult my mental stability. I knew what I was doing. I made the choice. I went after him. If you knew the real man, you’d know why.”

  For a long moment, Mitch didn’t speak, didn’t move. He finally took a deep breath and met her gaze. The disillusionment in his eyes hit her hard, like one of those head butts he used to deliver as a kid when he was losing one of their many wrestling matches.

  “Where is he, Alyssa?”

  “I don’t know.” She crossed her arms against the pain in her torso, this pain originating from her heart, not her wound. “He walked out on me while I was sleeping.”

  His eyes said I told you so, but his lips didn’t move. Finally, he let out a frustrated sigh and closed his arms around her again, kissing her forehead. “You have no idea how worried I’ve been.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s Creek’s.” He pulled back. “When did he leave? And how the fuck did he get out of here? We’ve been watching this place all night.”

  “Watching? What do you mean, watching?”

  “I thought telling him we were here would make him cave, but it only gave him information to escape. Again.”

  “You told him ... ? When, how ... ?”

  “On the phone last night. I called the fax line until he finally picked up.”

  A chill started at the middle of Alyssa’s chest and spread outward. “What time?”

  “He finally answered around midnight.”

  The origin of her chill turned hard and icy. He had been pulling away. Saying goodbye. She’d been right. She’d felt it.

  He’d made love to her, gone to the verge of telling her he loved her, then held back, knowing he would never have to live up to the declaration.

  She lifted her eyes to meet her brother’s. “What did you say to him?”

  “That I knew where he was and that I would represent him if he’d let you go. I gave him until eight a.m.”

  “That you’d ... ? Why?”

  “I knew I recognized his name. He petitioned my office to take his case a little over a year ago. I didn’t take it because I was already swamped. Looks like he found a way to get my attention.”

  All of the air whooshed from her lungs as if she’d been punched. Her mind bounced through the past few days. What had happened to make her believe his claim that he’d kidnapped the wrong woman? Were there signs, in retrospect, that he’d in fact targeted her?

  Listen, Creek, I heard about your appeal, but you’re not out of options, man. You can petition for another one.

  Girl, you are the only thing I really need.

  How does Luke live with you?

  She’s a bargaining chip, nothing more.

  You give me Kat; I give you Hannah. Simple. Easy.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. Alyssa grabbed her head to keep it from exploding. She didn’t know what was real anymore, what was fiction, what were out-and-out lies. Now, with her head pounding, she couldn’t remember if she’d ever actually heard Luke’s voice. Had no idea if Luke was even real.

  Then she thought of Suzanna’s diary. Yes, Luke was indeed real. And only Luke could tell Alyssa if Hannah had been his girlfriend. Only Luke could tell her if Teague had actually made that phone call to him or if it had all been a fabrication.

  She gathered herself and looked at her brother. “What now?”

  “Now”—he pushed to his feet, settled his hands at his hips—“we work damage control. I’ve already put wheels in motion. My paralegal is organizing and filing papers for a suit against the hospital—”

  “No.” A few days ago, maybe, but now, everything was different. “I don’t want a lawsuit.”

  “It’s not going to be a real lawsuit. They’ll settle the minute they see the charges. I’ve got suits against Dyne for defamation of character, the hospital for negligence, the Department of Corrections—”

  “No, Mitch. I know you’re trying to help, but—” She shook her head, and rubbed at her eyes. Her head pounded in time with her heart, and both hurt like hell for completely different reasons. “Just, no.”

  Mitch’s arms closed around her shoulders again. Alyssa turned her face into the coarse material against his chest.

  “You’ll not only get your fellowship back, but you’ll get the job you wanted—”

  “I don’t know if I want it anymore. I just want this to be over. I want my name cleared. I don’t want people saying the things they’re saying about me. I don’t want people thinking I’m a criminal.”

  Which made her think of Teague and how he must have suffered.

  “Okay. Fine,” Mitch said. “I’ll keep the lawsuit going against CDC, get the investigators to tear apart the guards’ stories. When Creek is caught, he’ll back up your story and we’ll have them.”

  Alyssa closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “It’s way bigger than that, Mitch. If we don’t find Teague first, he may not live to tell any story.” She dropped her hand and looked at her brother. “That business card I sent you, Vasser? He’s—”

  “Bad news. I know. Real bad news.”

  “He’s been following Teague. All but confessed to killing Desiree and framing Teague. Tried to blackmail me into turning on him.”

  “I had a bad feeling about this from the beginning.” Irritated resignation slid over Mitch’s handsome face as he stood and held out a hand to help Alyssa to her feet. “I’ll get my guys on Creek’s trail while I drop you at Mom and Dad’s—”

  “No. I’m going with you.” Teague wouldn’t get to take the coward’s way out. If he didn’t want her, he would damn well tell her to her face.

  Mitch heaved a breath. “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  “And I know where to start,” she said. “Right here in town. I want you to help me find someone.”

  With a cigarette propped in the corner of his lips, Jason pushed the cheap motel chair back on two legs and balanced there as he dug his pocket knife into the branch he’d found outside his door. He hadn’t carved wood since he’d been a boy in Cub Scouts, but he sure as hell needed more than a smoke to relax him. At this point, he’d try anything.

  “It was a calculated risk, Jocelyn,” he said around the cancer stick. “She was no good to us sitting in a cell.”

  “Well, she sure as shit isn’t any good to us now, is she? And her brother? Her brother? Do you realize what a problem that man is going to be?”

  The knife in Jason’s hand slid through the bark and a wood chip came off in an unsophisticated chunk, flying through the air and hitting the wall with a clunk. A smile curled Jason’s mouth. He knew exactly what a problem Mitch Foster would be. The man was a perfect legacy. An appropriate parting gift. The ultimate payback for Schaffer forcing Jason to take on this shit case in his last weeks on duty.

  “You think I spend all my time thinking of ways to make problems for you, Joce?” he said. “Come on. You’re hot, babe, but,
really—I don’t have that kind of time.”

  “This isn’t funny, Jason.” God, he hated it when she got all intensely stressed and bitchy. “And just how did Foster find them before you did? How do you expect me to explain that to the senator?”

  “Tell the senator Foster has nearly unlimited resources. If the senator would like to stop bitching about my expense reports—”

  “Jason”—Jocelyn bit out his name, then hesitated and cleared her throat. “Along those lines, I’m calling to inform you that I’ve been authorized to provide you with additional resources. Dillon Burton will be joining you until Creek is ... no longer a threat.”

  The knife in Jason’s hand dug into the pale flesh of the tree limb and his hand paused. For a long moment, he couldn’t form words. He’d worked alone for ... as long as he could remember.

  He yanked the knife from the wood and chucked the branch at the wall, pushing to his feet at the same time. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Her voice shook. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but Jason did because he’d heard it before. He’d heard it during extreme moments, like when he’d made her climax the fourth time in a row after she’d begged him to stop. “He’ll be at your hotel room tomorrow morning, six sharp. Get this under control, Jason. For your own good.”

  NINETEEN

  Alyssa drove Mitch’s BMW along Route Eighty-nine, listening to her brother relay the information to his investigators over a conference call via his cell phone. The deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe, the majestic pines, needles still sparkling with a fresh dusting of snow tried to steal her attention. But, the scenery couldn’t compete with the thoughts and memories of Teague floating around in her head.

  Mitch disconnected his call, looked down at the file in his lap and started talking to Alyssa. “Looks like Luke Ransom drifted after high school. Spent his summers fighting fires and his winters on ski patrol while getting his associate’s degree at a local junior college. The firebug stuck and he went to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, to get his bachelor’s in Fire Protection Engineering. Graduated in the top ten percent of his class.”

  He flipped to another page. “Spent most of his firefighting career in the Nevada-Placer County of our fine state, while getting his master’s via a correspondence program with University of New Haven. Signed on with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a year ago.”

  Alyssa rubbed at the ache in her head. “So he was a firefighter when his sister committed suicide.”

  “Fire captain,” Mitch murmured, looking directly at her. “And it was his twin sister.”

  “His twin?”

  “Yep.” Mitch returned his attention to the file. “I have to admit, if you’d committed suicide because I thought your husband had neglected you, and I had a niece out there somewhere being cared for by that person, I’d sure as hell fight to get custody of her, too.”

  Mitch’s words created warmth that mingled with hurt and confusion. This situation was so complex, so wrought with emotion and turmoil. She’d been working up a lecture for Luke, filled with guilt-provoking facts. But after seeing it from Mitch’s perspective, she found herself rethinking her whole approach.

  As they neared the outskirts of Truckee, Mitch gave her directions through the business area, and into the narrow side streets making up one of the many residential communities, toward Luke’s home, where they had learned the agencies involved in both the manhunt for Teague and the search for Kat had created their joint command center.

  “Make a left turn,” Mitch said. “It’s up on the right. Drive past and double back to find a place to park.”

  Alyssa glanced in her rearview mirror for the S.W.A.T. guys who’d been following from Fallen Leaf Lake. “What about them?”

  Mitch didn’t bother looking up. “Those guys need no instruction.”

  Something that had been nagging at Alyssa for the last hour came to the surface again. “How are you paying those guys, Mitch? Teague doesn’t have any money, and you know I’ve got student loans I’ll take to my grave.”

  “Not to worry. I called in a few favors.”

  She’d known he would dodge the question. “Mitch—”

  “Alyssa.” He looked at her with that stern expression that conveyed the end of the discussion. “Believe me, I’ve done more for those guys than they could ever repay. Now, you and I can argue about this another time if you insist. But, right now”—he gestured up the street—“we have other problems to take care of.”

  Alyssa followed the direction of his hand toward an area of the street cluttered with knots of vehicles. F.B.I., A.T.F., and sheriff rigs lined the road. Alyssa’s chest tightened, but not in excitement as it had just a few days ago at the prospect of seeing the police. Now she felt like a criminal. Now she feared getting caught and arrested. Now she had a whole new appreciation for what Teague had gone through. Was still going through.

  “Looks like we’ve found the ant hill.” Mitch pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head as Alyssa maneuvered through the tight space. “Better vantage point from the top of the street. Go a couple more blocks, make a U-turn and park.” He pointed through the windshield toward a home whose front yard was a conglomeration of rock. “Behind those honkin’ boulders. And don’t scratch my car.”

  “Shut up. I’ve always been the better driver.”

  “Do I need to remind you how I beat you at the driver’s test?”

  “By one point,” she said.

  “Or how I’ve never been in an accident.”

  “That wasn’t my fault. The other guy hit me.”

  “Or that I’ve never gotten a ticket.”

  Alyssa set the brake, turned off the engine and looked at her brother. He was smiling at her from the passenger’s seat with that got-you smirk. And, God, it felt good.

  “That,” Alyssa said, enjoying the familiar banter, “was a parking ticket.”

  “Facts are facts. So let’s find a few more that can help us here.” With a flick of his wrist, he opened a new folder. “I think you were right about waiting until Ransom broke from the group before we approach him. If we called him out, he’d bring muscle, even if we told him not to. Stupid cops never listen. They’re like insecure two-year-olds—can’t go anywhere alone.”

  Movement down an adjoining street caught Alyssa’s eye. The black sedan the S.W.A.T. guys had been driving pulled alongside the road in view of Mitch’s BMW and parked.

  “Isn’t he more of a fireman than a cop?” Alyssa asked, turning her attention to a few men milling outside the white craftsman-style building that was Luke’s home.

  “He’s a fire cop. A cop is a cop is a cop, as far as I’m concerned.”

  As the group of officials mingled and shifted location, another figure came into view.

  “There he is,” Alyssa said, pointing at Vasser, dressed almost exactly as he had been the day before at the shopping center. “Just like he said he’d be.”

  Mitch’s attention veered from a computer-generated list in his hands to the crowd. “I thought he worked alone.”

  “What? Yes, he does. I mean, he did. I mean ...” Confused, Alyssa frowned at her brother. “How do you know this stuff? I never told you that, but yeah, every time we’ve seen him, he’s been alone.”

  Mitch tapped his temple with one finger, a sign he used to indicate what he humbly referred to as his stellar brain. “He’s got a friend with him today.”

  Alyssa’s gaze scanned the group again and paused on another man in plain clothes, no emblem on his Navy Windbreaker. Tall, hefty, mid-thirties, dark complexion. “Do you know him?”

  Mitch aimed his iPhone at the man through the windshield, manipulating the photo until he had an amazingly clear close-up of the guy. “What, you think I know every spy in the business?”

  “Yes.” She tapped his temple.

  A big, boyish grin transformed Mitch’s face into the one Alyssa knew and loved with all her heart. He looked at her with those sparki
ng green eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me in years.”

  She lifted her chin to the image on his phone as he clicked a still. “That’s some camera.”

  “They say it’s not the equipment, it’s all in how you use it. But we know that’s bullshit. I’ll send this off and have this guy’s whereabouts since birth in a couple hours.”

  “When this is all over, you and I need to sit down and have a heart-to-heart about who you’re working with nowadays.”

  He slid her a look. “Uh-huh. That’ll happen.”

  “Like that.” She pointed to the papers in the folder he’d been looking at. “Ransom’s bank account records? How could you possibly have obtained those legally?”

  The Cheshire cat grin was back. “That’s what investigators are for. Important stuff here. Tells me he’s a caffeine addict and he’ll be needing a hit soon.”

  Alyssa closed her eyes and laid her head on the seat. “This is so messed up. I really don’t want you—”

  His hand landed on her shoulder, and squeezed. “Alyssa. Stop. I’ve been doing this a long time. I can sure as hell take care of myself.” He released her shoulder. “Well, look who’s decided to show his beautiful face.”

  Alyssa opened her eyes, and focused on the house. A man came out onto the porch, dropping into conversation with a group of others. She’d seen a few older pictures of Luke from Teague’s memorabilia, but nothing recent. Because of the porch overhang and the distance, all she could distinguish about the man who’d come outside was that he was taller than average, about Teague’s height, wore a navy blazer and had blond hair.

  “How do you know it’s him?” she asked, waiting for the group to shift so she could get a better look at his face.

  Mitch flipped another page in the folder and lifted it for Alyssa to see. “Here’s his most recent photo. Can’t be too many guys who look like that around.”

  Alyssa turned her attention to the picture, an eight-by-ten headshot of Luke that appeared to be some type of work-related photo. He wore a navy uniform with the badges on his chest shining bright gold, both of which accentuated his light, wheat-colored hair and deep blue eyes.