“Everyone who takes a lot of notes ends up inventing his or her own form of shorthand,” Ethan said absently. “But she was careful to spell out all the names, and she took pains with numbers. See? Here’s the number on the plate of that van that Branch was driving.”
“Why would she take down a client’s license plate?”
“I do the same thing. Standard procedure as far as I’m concerned. You can’t have too much information on a client.”
“Now that’s a heartwarming comment.” She perched on the corner of the desk. “If I’d known that when I decided to hire you the first time, I probably would have gone to Radnor, instead.”
“Yeah, but just look at all the great sex you would have missed.”
“Well, there is that.”
After Branch’s name and license, the first thing that caught his attention was the word Fed. It was underlined twice.
“He told her that he was some kind of secret federal agent,” he said. “Probably figured that would keep her from asking too many questions.”
She swallowed. “Do you think it’s possible you’re the target of some kind of federal investigation? Maybe that’s why someone wants you dead. So you can’t talk to the Feds.”
“Relax,” Ethan said. “If that was the case, we would have been buried in Feds by now.” I think, he added silently. He paused to decode a couple more sentences. “Looks like Branch took his time getting around to the reason he wanted to hire her. Feeling her out, making sure he could rely on her to do the job and keep her mouth shut.”
“Appreciate the info, Carl.” One foot resting on the wrought-iron bench, forearm propped on his thigh, Harry watched Arcadia through the shop window while he finished the conversation with his old associate in LA. “Consider that favor we both agreed did not exist to be repaid in full.”
He ended the call, never taking his eyes off Arcadia.
Six weeks ago, before he had come to Whispering Springs to give Truax a hand, he would have laughed at the idea that guys like him could ever get this lucky. A lot of things had changed for him in this town. His life would never be the same.
On the other side of the glass window, Arcadia smiled at a customer. A warmth that was still strange and unfamiliar flowed through him.
He made himself switch his attention to the people milling around the square, scanning for both those who stood out and those who faded into the background a little too easily.
His gaze lingered on a security guard who was about to slip into a narrow passageway between two nearby shops. The back of the man’s jacket was emblazoned with the words “Radnor Security Systems.” He had a cap pulled down low over his eyes.
This was the third time in the past hour that the guard had ducked into that shadowed space.
Security guards made him nervous. It was easy to overlook them, for one thing. For another, most of them walked around with sets of keys.
He glanced once more into the windows of Gallery Euphoria. Satisfied that Arcadia and her assistant were both busy with a crowd of customers, he took his foot down off the bench and strolled toward the entrance to the lane.
The whistle of the miniature train shrieked on his right.
“Coming through.” The conductor was a large man who looked as if he’d been forcibly stuffed into the tiny cab. There was an expression of malignant glee on his broad face. “Make way for the Fountain Square Express.”
Harry stepped back quickly, barely managing to get his left foot out of the path of the oncoming train. The conductor smiled maliciously. The children screeched and clapped.
The conductor blew the whistle in a long, satisfied blast of triumph and drove off in the direction of the fountain. The kids waved at Harry.
When the last car full of laughing, giggling children went past, Harry saw that the security guard had disappeared into the darkness of the small passageway.
Something prickled at the back of his neck.
He went swiftly toward the lane and stopped briefly at the entrance, trying to peer into the unlit shadows. The bright lights that illuminated the square did not penetrate far. For a few seconds, he was almost blind.
Then he saw movement at the end of the lane. The guard’s hand lifted. Harry could just barely distinguish the outline of an object in the man’s hand.
Arcadia heard the phone ring. She glanced at the nearest instrument and saw that it was her private line.
She looked across the room. Molly was involved with a customer. They were discussing the artistic merits of a handcrafted ceramic bowl. Three or four other shoppers were scattered about, waiting their turn.
She smiled at the woman who had just purchased an expensive ring and handed her the distinctive silver-foiled shopping bag.
“Thank you so much,” she murmured. “I know you’ll enjoy wearing it.”
The phone rang again.
“I certainly will,” the woman replied. She took the Gallery Euphoria bag from Arcadia’s hand and went toward the door.
The phone warbled insistently. Very few people had the number of her private line. Zoe was at the top of the list, and Zoe was in Phoenix. Maybe there was news.
She did not want to take the call out there where the customers could overhear her.
Hurrying to the end of the counter, she turned into the short hall and opened the door to her office.
A large palm slapped across her mouth. Simultaneously the barrel of a pistol pressed against her throat.
The man tilted his head slightly and she saw the familiar face beneath the oversized cap. Grant had come for her.
Panic slammed through her, stunning in its intensity. She started to shake.
“Try anything, my dear wife, anything at all, and I’ll shoot the first person who walks through that door.”
She did not doubt him for a moment.
“I know you, Bitch.” He sounded coldly satisfied. “You won’t let some innocent die if you can help it, will you? We’re going out the back.” He slapped a strip of duct tape across her mouth. “Make one sound that brings anyone running and you’ve signed that person’s death warrant. There’s a silencer on the gun, by the way.”
She thought about the pistol she had bought for just such an occasion as this. It was safely locked up at home, right where it could not do her any good.
He shoved her through the back-room door and outside onto the bricked walkway. The path led to a service lane and the employee parking lot. Thickly planted oleander bushes served as a decorative fence between the walk and the lane.
Hope rushed back into the empty places inside her. The service lane was almost never entirely deserted; even at night shop clerks took smoking breaks back there. Some of the teenagers who worked in the fast-food restaurants occasionally met near the cover of the trash containers for purposes that would no doubt horrify their parents. Transients often came there to mine the piles of garbage in the massive dumpsters and drink cheap wine.
She heard low voices coming from the other side of the oleanders and caught the faint scent of marijuana. How did Grant think he could possibly get her out of there unnoticed?
And then she saw the large janitorial cart looming directly in her path. A rack at the front bristled with a variety of brushes, brooms and mops. A cardboard carton stood on a tray attached to one side.
“You’re going to get into the garbage container and you’re going to stay down,” Grant commanded. “I won’t shoot you unless you give me no choice because I’d rather keep you alive so that we can do a deal for that file you hid. But if I run out of options, I’ll kill you, I promise you.”
She forced herself to walk toward the cart, trying desperately to think.
When she got close he yanked a bucket off the front of the cart and turned it over so that it functioned as a step. “Use that. Hurry, damn you.”
She stepped up onto the bucket and looked down. The interior of the trash container was empty. There was just enough room inside to conceal a slender, full-sized adu
lt crouched on her knees.
Despair struck hard. No one would look twice at a janitor and his cart, she thought.
“Get in,” Grant rasped.
She looked at the carton that stood on the side tray. The top had been cut off. She could see several rolls of toilet paper inside.
With a nervous awkwardness that was only partially feigned, she put one leg over the rim of the cart. She staggered a little, as though trying to catch her balance, and drew her other leg up and over the edge.
The toe of her silver sandal bumped forcibly against the carton of toilet paper. The box shot off the tray, spilling the contents. The rolls tumbled out onto the bricks. Several landed in the dirt beneath the oleander bushes.
“Stupid bitch. Get down.” His voice rose. “Do it now.”
He was not as calm as he had seemed, she realized. That shocked her. Grant had always been so sure of himself. But tonight he sounded as if he were teetering on some dangerous psychological precipice.
She lowered herself onto her hands and knees inside the cart. Grant threw a tarp over the top. The darkness closed in around her. The smell of old garbage combined with her fear almost made her gag.
An instant later the cart jolted into motion. A tiny flame of hope burned deep inside. Grant was in a hurry. He could not afford to take the time to retrieve the rolls of toilet paper.
How much longer until Harry came looking?
She heard the voices of two people near the dumpsters in the service lane.
“Better get back to work,” one of them said. The words were faint. “You know how Larry gets when we’re a minute late coming off break.”
The other person answered but she could not make out the response.
The cart jolted onto the service lane pavement.
35
Ethan studied Shelley Russell’s cryptic notes. “She got impatient with all the emphasis on the necessity for extreme secrecy. I can almost see her tapping a toe under the desk while she waited for Branch to get around to telling her exactly what he wanted her to do.”
He flipped to the next page of notes.
A name jumped out at him, stopping him cold. “Oh, shit.”
He yanked his phone out of his pocket and punched in Harry’s number.
“What is it?” Zoe jumped to her feet and hurried around the corner of the desk to read over his shoulder. “Did you find out who hired Branch?”
“No. I found the name of the target.”
“Put it down.” Harry gave the order from the mouth of the alley, using the corner of the building for cover. “Now.”
“Hey, look, mister, I was just havin’ a little drink, thash all.”
The guard sounded drunk but it was easy enough to fake the slurred speech and the whining tone of a man who had been nipping at the bottle for a few hours.
“Put it down and walk out with your hands on your head.”
“Fuck. Are you a cop or something?”
“Or something.”
The guard started forward. “Plainclothes? What’s goin’ on here? You gonna report me to my boss? Man, don’t do that. Please. I really need this job.”
“Drop it.”
“Okay, okay, take it easy. I’m comin’ out like you said.” The guard let the object fall from his hand.
Glass smashed on the paving tiles. The odor of a strong, cloying, heavily fortified wine wafted out of the slim passageway.
“Waste of perfectly good hooch, though,” the security guard said mournfully.
Harry heard the phone ring in his pocket. The prickly sensation got worse. It felt like someone had applied stinging nettles to the back of his neck.
He yanked the phone out of his pocket. Turning away from the confused guard, he started back toward Gallery Euphoria.
“You got Stagg,” he growled into the phone.
“Where are you?”
Harry recognized the flat, too even tone of Ethan’s voice. It meant serious trouble.
“I’m still at Fountain Square,” he said. “What’s up? Get an ID on the guy who sent Branch after you?”
“I’m not sure what that pool scene was all about but it looks like Arcadia is the target. She has been all along.”
“Shit. Loring.”
“Looks like it.”
Harry was already moving, cutting through the crowds. He could see the front windows of Gallery Euphoria clearly now. Molly was at the counter. There were still two or three customers wandering around the shop, looking at the expensive items on display.
Everything appeared normal.
Then he realized that he could not see Arcadia.
Take it easy. She probably just ducked into her office or the back room for a minute.
“I’ll call you back when I’ve got her,” he said into the phone.
He disconnected and ran toward the boutique.
Molly and the customers looked up in shock when he slammed through the front door.
He concentrated on Molly. “Where is she?”
“Arcadia?” Molly stared at him as though he had changed into some kind of freakish monster. “Uh, she, uh, just went into her office to take a call a few minutes ago. It was her private line and I guess she . . .”
He was no longer listening. He crossed the shop in a few long strides and went down the short hall to the office.
The small room was empty.
For the first time in years, he knew the taste of real fear.
Stop it, he thought. You’re no good to her if you lose it now. She’s only been gone a few minutes, at most.
He pushed through the curtains that led to the back room and flipped on the light. The door that opened onto the service lane was closed but it was no longer locked.
Molly came to stand in the entrance to the back room.
“Is something wrong?” she asked tentatively.
“Yes. Call square security. Tell them we’re looking for a man who has Arcadia with him. Then call the cops.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Get on the damned phone. Now.”
She whirled and dashed into the office.
He went to the back door of the shop, jerked it open and found himself looking at the narrow, empty walk that led to the service lane.
The light coming through the doorway behind him revealed a number of white cylinders on the ground.
Rolls of toilet paper.
No one took much notice of a man in a uniform. If that was true of a shopping mall guard, it was doubly true of a mall janitor.
He raced down the walkway and turned into the service lane. The lighting back there was minimal. A single streetlamp stood guard at the entrance to the employee parking lot.
He heard the distant, muffled rumble of a cart. The rattle of the hard rubber wheels echoed from the parking lot.
He kicked off his loafers, afraid the sound of his footsteps thudding on the pavement would alert Loring.
Barefooted, he ran quietly toward the nearest of the two large garbage bins and halted in the deep shadow it cast.
He could make out a portion of the poorly lit parking lot. A man in a cap pushed a janitorial cart toward a nondescript van.
It had to be Loring. But what if it wasn’t? What if he’d figured wrong? What if this was an honest, hardworking janitor going home after a long night? Maybe a guy with a wife and two or three kids.
He held the gun alongside his leg and moved out from the shadow of the dumpster. He started walking silently toward the van, keeping parked cars between himself and the janitor.
“Loring,” he shouted.
The janitor jerked violently and started to turn, hand lifting. Not necessarily Loring, Harry thought. Anyone who found himself alone in a deserted parking lot would be startled by a stranger calling out a name.
Light glinted on the barrel of the gun in the janitor’s hand.
A tarp flew off the top of the cart. Arcadia rose like an avenging goddess from the depths of the garbage bin.
She made no so
und but Harry could see that she was struggling to hurl the tarp over Loring’s gun arm.
Loring reacted swiftly, wrenching himself to one side. He spun back toward Harry and fired.
Harry heard the shots punch through the metal fender of the pickup on his left.
Now, at last, the world went into slow motion, the way it was supposed to when things got dicey. He no longer felt any emotion—not rage or dread or panic.
Just doing his job.
He raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.
Loring staggered once under the impact and collapsed on the pavement. He did not move again.
36
Forty-eight hours later Ethan rested his forearms on the side rails of the hospital bed and looked down at Shelley Russell. Zoe stood across from him. Harry and Arcadia occupied positions at the foot of the bed.
Considering what Shelley had been through, she was in good shape, he thought. She had told them that she was due to be released in the morning, but she couldn’t wait that long to get the whole story.
Ethan understood. It was a PI thing.
“Loring is dead?” Shelley asked sharply.
“He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Arcadia said quietly. “But he talked to Harry and me in the parking lot while we waited for the medics. He knew he wasn’t going to make it so he had nothing left to lose.”
“How did he find you?”
Arcadia sighed. “Unfortunately, Grant knew more about my personal financial arrangements than I realized. He had the number of one of several accounts that I thought I had hidden from him. He kept an eye on it. A month ago I accessed it for the first time to move some money into another account.”
Shelley nodded. “And Loring pounced.”
“Yes, but Arcadia’s new ID was very good,” Ethan said. “He needed to be certain that he had the right woman before he made his move. He also wanted to get the whole picture of Arcadia’s new life. Friends, business associates, that kind of thing. He didn’t dare show up in her vicinity until he was positive.”
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