Lawman Protection

by Cindi Myers

  He opened his eyes and rolled toward her, only to find her half of the bed empty. He checked the clock, which showed half past nine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept this late, but then again, he couldn’t remember another day as eventful as yesterday. He rose and pulled on his robe, then went in search of Emma.

  The aroma of coffee and the sound of tapping keys led him to his office, where he found Emma at his desk, laptop open in front of her. “Good morning,” she said. Dressed in a blue silk top and jeans, her hair curling around her shoulders, she looked relaxed and content, nothing like a woman who had been knocked out, kidnapped, trapped in an abandoned mine and shot at by fleeing criminals.

  “Good morning.” He bent to kiss her, a long, slow embrace he hoped would persuade her to come back to bed.

  She broke the contact, gently but firmly pushing him away. “You have to see what I’ve found,” she said.

  He recognized the determined gleam in her eyes. She was in work mode and there’d be no distracting her. He might as well shift gears, too. “Let me put on some clothes and grab some coffee and you can share your discovery.”

  “All right, but hurry. This is too good to keep to myself long.”

  Ten minutes later he was back at her side, dressed and caffeinated, feeling slightly less stiff and sore. He pulled a chair alongside her. “What have you got?”

  “I’ve been researching the women in Richard Prentice’s life,” she said.

  “You’re looking for the owner of the cosmetics and other stuff in his guest bathroom.”

  She nodded. “It bugs me that he had the stuff locked away. And when I asked about romantic interests, he was so coy.”

  “I get that you’re curious, but does this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?” he asked.

  “Maybe. I might have ended up at the bottom of that air shaft because Prentice knew I’d found the things locked away in the bathroom. Or, I might have found another angle to explore. Take a look at this.” She indicated a document on the computer screen. “This is the article from a late May issue of the Denver Post. Check out the photo.”

  The photograph that accompanied the article showed the billionaire, dressed in black tie and tails, with his arm around a slender, dark-haired beauty in a red designer gown that left little of her figure to the imagination. “Who is she?” Graham asked.

  “Her name is Valentina Ferrari. According to various gossip columnists, she and Prentice were together a lot after that party.”

  “All right. But why should I be interested?”

  “Her father is Jorge Ferrari, Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, appointed just a few months ago. For some time before that, Venezuela and the US didn’t exchange ambassadors, due to strained relations. Ferrari’s arrival was seen as a step forward in our relations with a country that is said to be sympathetic to terrorists. Another article I read said that Ferrari had pledged his government’s cooperation in fighting suspected terrorists.”

  A cold chill swept through Graham. “Terrorists would love to get their hands on a Hellfire missile.” He studied the photograph of Valentina, Prentice’s arm around her, holding her close. “Maybe Valentina, or her father, has a connection to that missile and Prentice may or may not be in the clear.”

  “She could be serious about him, or she could be using him as a cover,” Emma said. “Or we could be completely wrong.”

  “I’ll put some feelers out and see if anyone in the Bureau has intel on Valentina and her dad.”

  “Do you have any indication Prentice is involved with the terrorists, too?” She frowned. “He didn’t strike me as the type to link up with extremists. He likes to run his own show and, despite all the railing he does against government intrusion, he sees himself as a patriot.”

  “So do some of these jihadists. What else do you know about Valentina? Is there anything in her background to suggest she has extremist views?”

  “Not really. Her mother died several years ago, so she’s served as her father’s official hostess. She’s a part-time fashion model and has a degree in political science from NYU.”

  He tapped the screen. “Print me a copy of this. It may be nothing, but we’ll check it out.”

  “It gets even more interesting.” She scrolled down the page and enlarged a section of text. “Lauren Starling was at this same party. Her name is on a list of other guests, down near the bottom of the article. But it proves Prentice knew her, too.”

  “Maybe. Though it’s possible they were both at the party and never met.”

  “Lauren strikes me as the type who would seek out a news-making billionaire, even if he’d somehow managed to overlook her,” Emma said. “And admit it—Lauren isn’t a woman many men would overlook.”

  The blue-eyed, blonde anchor woman would definitely turn heads, which made her disappearance all the more troubling. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would easily blend into the background.

  “I hadn’t thought of questioning women Prentice might have associated with,” he said. “It’s a good idea. They would know things about him we don’t. Anybody else we should look into?”

  “I didn’t find mention of anyone else since Valentina came onto the scene, but I did find this.” She shrank the news article about the embassy gala and brought up another article, this one a small mention in the local paper. “Jorge Ferrari is coming to Colorado today—and not to Denver, but here, to Montrose.”

  “Why is the ambassador from Venezuela coming here?” The relatively small town wasn’t a center of industry, government or education.

  “The paper says he’s here ‘on business.’ I suppose it’s possible a local company has some sort of trade agreement or something with the Venezuelan government.”

  Graham frowned. “Is his daughter coming with him?”

  “The paper doesn’t mention it. Here, I printed you a copy of that article, too.” She handed him a sheaf of papers, then pushed back her chair. “I think I’ll head out to the airport and ask the ambassador a few questions.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” he said. “Until we know who attacked you, and why, you should stay here.” He wanted her safe and out of sight.

  “I’ll be careful.” She stood and slung her purse over one shoulder. “I had the rental car company drop off a new ride for me this morning. I’m going to stop in town and get a new phone and I’ll be all set.”

  He rose, also. “Emma, don’t be foolish,” he said. “We still don’t know who kidnapped you. You could still be in danger.”

  She set her mouth in a stubborn line he was all too familiar with. “Whoever attacked me yesterday wants me to be timid and afraid,” she said. “If I stay here, hiding, I’m doing what they want. I can’t let them have that kind of power over me.”

  “Emma, please.” He tried to reign in his exasperation, but couldn’t keep the edge from his voice. “I can’t do my job if I’m worried about you. Whatever you have to do, it can wait until we’ve cleared this case and you’re out of danger.”

  “I can’t put my life on hold until you decide it’s safe for me to go out!”

  “And I can’t let you risk your life foolishly.” His voice rose to match hers.

  “You can’t stop me, either.” She headed for the door.

  “Emma, wait!”

  “No, Graham. I won’t wait. And you don’t have any right to ask me to.” She left, slamming the door behind her.

  He glared at the closed door, wanting to run after her and drag her back, but knowing that would only make her angrier. Maybe he didn’t have a right to ask her to stay here, where she’d be safe. But didn’t the love they shared entitle him to some consideration? Was she so independent that she couldn’t consider his feelings at all? Or was being independent more important than her feelings for him?

 
Chapter Seventeen

  Fighting with Graham made Emma feel sick to her stomach. He wasn’t the type to cower inside when someone was after him, so why should he expect that of her? Even if he only wanted to protect her, the best way to do that was for both of them to work toward finding out who was responsible for harassing her. Since the only two stories she’d been working on when the threats started were Bobby’s Pace’s murder and Lauren Starling’s disappearance, solving those two mysteries should give them the answers they needed.

  After a quick stop to buy a new cell phone and restore all her contacts, she drove to the airport, checking her mirrors often to make sure no one was following her. She saw nothing suspicious, and by the time she reached the airport, most of her usual confidence had returned. She’d purposely arrived earlier than the ambassador, in order to stake out a prime location and to do a little background research. She headed for Fixed Base Operations and greeted the group of men gathered in the pilot’s lounge. “I hope you gentlemen can help me,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” A stocky older man stepped out from behind the counter at one end of the room and offered his hand. “Eddie Silvada, Fixed Base Operations. What can we do for you?”

  “She was talking to us, Eddie,” a wiry man at the table said.

  “I’m sure you can all help.” She took the photo of Valentina from the paper and laid it on the table. “Have any of you seen this woman here at the airport in the last week or two? Or anytime, really?”

  They passed the picture around, most shaking their heads. “I think I’d remember her,” the wiry man said.

  “I don’t remember her,” Eddie said.

  The man at the far end of the table, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, took a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on. He scrutinized the picture. “She wasn’t this dressed up when I saw her, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same woman. She was in here a couple of weeks ago. She wanted to hire a pilot.”

  Emma’s heart sped up. “Did she give you a name?”

  “She called herself Val. Sounded foreign, maybe Mexican or Spanish? She offered to pay cash, so I didn’t ask too many questions.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police about this when they were here?” she asked.

  “They wanted to know about Bobby Pace,” he said. “Nobody asked if a gorgeous woman stopped by, wanting to hire a pilot.”

  “Where was I when this was going on?” Eddie asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you were in the bathroom.”

  “Did she hire Bobby Pace?” Emma asked.

  “No,” the man with the ponytail said. “She hired Fred Gaskin.”

  So much for thinking she finally had the answer she needed. “Who’s Fred Gaskin?” she asked.

  “He was here a little while ago.” Eddie looked around, as if Fred might pop out from behind the vending machines.

  “I think he’s out by his plane.” A younger man turned in his chair and pointed out the window, toward the airfield. “Look for a red-and-white Beechcraft, parked on the west side. Fred’s got red hair—you can’t miss him.”

  She thanked them, and hurried out the door and across the tarmac toward the line of small planes tethered a short distance from the runway. The red-and-white Beechcraft was third in line, and a lanky man with fading red hair looked up from the engine cowling at her approach. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Are you Fred?” She offered her hand. “I’m Emma.”

  He wiped his hand on his jeans before shaking hers. “What can I do for you?”

  “I understand this woman hired you to fly her a couple of weeks ago.” She showed him the picture of Valentina.

  He studied the picture, then shook his head. “No, ma’am. You must have the wrong guy. I’ve never seen her before.”

  “But a man in there, with a gray ponytail, said she hired you.” Why hadn’t she stopped to get the man’s name?

  “Tony said that?”

  “He said she came by, looking for a pilot, and he referred her to you.”

  He bobbed his head up and down. “I remember now. I never actually saw her—she called me on the phone. Said she needed somebody to fly her to Rhode Island for a quick trip. The plan was to stop there overnight, then come back here. You a friend of hers?”

  “More of an acquaintance. When was this?”

  “Hang on and I’ll tell you.” He walked around to the other side of the plane, leaned into the cockpit and pulled out a brown vinyl-covered day planner. He flipped through the dog-eared pages. “I talked to her on Thursday. We were supposed to fly out Saturday and come back the next day, the twentieth.”

  The coroner had estimated that Bobby had died on the twenty-first. If he and Val had left Montrose as planned, on Saturday the nineteenth, it was possible they’d been delayed in Newport. Or maybe they hadn’t flown out until Sunday. “You said ‘supposed to.’ Did things not work out that way?”

  “I ended up in the hospital on Friday with acute appendicitis.” He made a rueful face. “I sure hated to miss out on the money, but no way could I make the trip.”

  “How much was she offering to pay you?”

  He rubbed his hand across his jaw. “I don’t know if I should say.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might put me in a bad light. Let’s just say it was a lot. More than I usually get from tourists who want a quick look around, or businessmen who need to get from one place to another in a hurry. What’s it to you, anyway?”

  “I’m trying to find her, that’s all. Was it enough money that you thought maybe she was doing something illegal?”

  “The thought did cross my mind. She said we’d be picking up a crate with some tractor parts her cousin in Durango needed right away.”

  “But you didn’t really think it was tractor parts?”

  He shrugged. “Who offers ten thousand dollars plus expenses to fly tractor parts? Then again, what else are you gonna buy in Rhode Island?”

  The smallest state in the union didn’t strike Emma as a hotbed of terrorist activity, but Rhode Island was home to a major port. “When your appendix went bad, what did you do?” she asked.

  “I called the number she’d given me and told her the trip was a no go. She was pretty upset. She rattled off a bunch of words in Spanish and from her tone of voice I gathered some of them weren’t that nice. I gave her the numbers of some other pilots she could call who might do the work, though.”

  “Did one of those numbers belong to Bobby Pace?”

  “Yeah.” He let out a sigh. “When I heard Bobby had been shot, I wondered if it had anything to do with her.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” If he had, he might have saved them all a lot of trouble and heartache.

  He held up both hands in a defensive gesture. “It wasn’t really any of my business. Besides, if she was cold-blooded enough to shoot Bobby, she wouldn’t think too long and hard about coming after me if she thought I’d betrayed her.”

  Plus, he might not get any more lucrative but possibly illegal flying jobs if word got around that he went running to the cops. “What was this woman’s name?”

  “All I know is Val. And before you ask, I threw away the number she gave me. Who are you, anyway? Are you a cop?”

  “No. I’m a writer.” But she knew a cop who would be very interested in talking to Fred. “I may need to make a quick trip to Denver soon,” she said. “Do you have a card so I can get in touch with you about flying down there?”

  He hesitated, then pulled a card from a pocket in the front of the day planner. “Call me. I’ll give you a good rate.”

  “Thanks, Fred. I—”

  But the rest of her words were cut off by the arrival of a sleek jet. The gleaming white fuselage dwarfed the two-and four-seat pr
ivate planes tethered in sight of the runway, like an elite racing greyhound mingling with mongrels. The aircraft taxied to the end of the runway and came to a halt in front of the terminal. “Somebody with money,” Fred said, raising his voice to be heard above the whine of the jet’s engines. “Foreign, from the looks of that emblem on the tail.”

  Emma squinted at the red, blue and gold flag on the tail of the jet. She was no expert on foreign geography, but she was pretty sure the emblem indicated the plane was from Venezuela. A door to the rear of the aircraft opened and lowered to form steps leading to the tarmac. A swarthy man in a crisp navy suit and blue tie stepped out, followed by a red-faced, balding man Emma recognized from many television news stories and press conferences.

  She grabbed her recorder and her notebook from her purse and raced toward the arriving dignitaries. “Ambassador Ferrari, why are you in Montrose?” she asked the darker man.

  The ambassador looked down his long nose at her. “Who are you?”

  “Emma Wade, with the Denver Post.” She waved her library card in his direction. Her legitimate press pass had been destroyed in the fire at her house, but the library had been happy to issue her a new card on the spot yesterday morning when she stopped by on her way to Richard Prentice’s ranch. “Do you have business locally?”

  “The ambassador’s business is none of your business.” Senator Peter Mattheson stepped up as if to block the ambassador from Emma’s view.

  “Why are you traveling with the ambassador, Senator?” Emma asked.

  “That’s none of your business, either.”

  Fine. She didn’t care about the blowhard senator, anyway. She turned once more to his finely dressed companion. “Ambassador Ferrari, can you tell me about your daughter’s relationship with Mr. Prentice?”