In Plain Sight

by Fern Michaels

  “How do you know for certain that the women are gone?” Nikki asked.

  “They didn’t answer their phones. We give all our people special phones, and they know that when they ring, they are to pick up immediately. It’s mandatory to check in once a week. Both 43 and 44 failed to check in. We have strict rules about that. To date, none of our people has failed in that regard. Until now.”

  “Did you go to where they live to check on them?” Alexis asked.

  “I sent one of our people. She said everything looked normal, almost as though 43 and 44 went out for a walk and hadn’t gotten back yet. The phones were in the kitchen on the counter. I will personally go shortly, but my gut is telling me they’re gone,” Pearl said miserably.

  “Isn’t it odd that two women came to you together? Is it a mother and daughter, two sisters, what?” Yoko asked.

  “Yes, odd, but one helped the other, so it was only natural that we had to take them both to prevent any blowback on the helper. We’ve only had one other case like that over the years, and nothing went awry at that time. We really didn’t have a choice,” Pearl said.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Jack said. “Off the top of your head, what do you think? You’ve been doing this for a lot of years, Pearl. What is your gut telling you?”

  Her eyes still wild and unfocused, Pearl looked around at the others and groaned. “My gut is telling me two of my people are in serious trouble, and since I have never had this problem before, I don’t know what to do or think other than that I now realize I can’t do this myself, and I need help.”

  “What do you want us to do, Pearl?” Dennis asked.

  Pearl stared across the table at the young reporter she liked so much and respected. Her thoughts were all over the place. How did she go from being a Supreme Court justice to this place in time? One minute she was applying and interpreting the law, and the next minute she was breaking the law, knowing full well she could go to prison for the rest of her life. She’d done it all for her daughter at first as she tried to save her and her granddaughter from an abusive husband and father, and the whole thing had grown legs. And now she was totally in charge of her underground railroad, saving women’s and children’s lives. Finally, she found her tongue. “Help me. Do whatever you have to do to find out what went wrong. Rescue the women.”

  Kathryn massaged her leg as she listened to Pearl and the others. This weather was killing her, and she was in so much pain with her leg that she wanted to cry. Perhaps another place, another time, she might have held her tongue, but not now.

  “Well, you see, Pearl, here’s the thing. I’m speaking for myself right at this moment, but I can almost guarantee that the others are thinking what I’m going to say. I’m tired of your bullshit with giving your people numbers and not sharing their names with us. This is the second time you’ve come to us to save your sorry ass, and we stepped up to the plate for you. Not this time, Miss Supreme Court Justice. You give us the people’s names and let us decide how to handle it. Secrecy is a wonderful thing, and in your case, I doubly respect it. But there comes a time when that doesn’t work, and that time is now. I am not putting my ass on the line for you again. Either you tell us everything, or I am outta here. As in now.”

  “Kathryn is right,” Nikki said, standing up as Kathryn struggled to get out of her chair. Yoko and Isabelle pushed back their chairs to follow suit. Alexis looked around and did the same thing.

  Annie cleared her throat and pushed out of her chair, followed by Myra.

  “I do believe this is what you call fish or cut bait,” Fergus hissed into Charles’s ear.

  “I do believe you are right, my friend,” Charles hissed in return.

  And then they were all on their feet, ready to leave the war room.

  “Looks to me like you’re on your own, Miss Supreme Court Justice,” Kathryn snapped. “What’s for dinner, Charles?”

  “Dinner! You’re worried about dinner! I can’t believe this!” Pearl screamed.

  Kathryn, always the most outspoken, always the one who moved at the speed of light, whirled around, her face a mask of pain at the quick movement. “Yes, Pearl, I’m worried about my dinner. It doesn’t pay to worry about you because you are a selfish bitch who only thinks of herself. I’m sorry I have to admit I know you. We all came here because you said you needed us. That’s what we do, we help people who can’t help themselves. If you can’t trust us, Pearl, whom can you trust? All you want is someone to save your sorry ass, then to show your appreciation, you throw obstacles in the path of those of us who are trying to help you. Well, screw you and the horse you rode in on!”

  The room and the mood turned ugly, as everyone started to talk at once. Dennis West moved closer to Harry, his idol and protector. He was almost certain the next step would be bloodshed, and he didn’t want to be the one doing the shedding.

  Tears rolling down her cheeks, Pearl knew she was beaten. Either she gave up her secrets or she would be left alone to deal with the immediate crisis. “All right. All right! Please, all of you, sit down, and I’ll tell you who . . . who the women are.” She closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross on her chest, and let loose with a huge sigh.

  “Her name is Amalie Laurent. The other woman’s name is Rosalee Muno.”

  The women, the guys as well, stared at each other, then at Pearl. “Are those names supposed to strike fear in our hearts? I never heard of either one of them,” Isabelle said.

  “Who the hell are Amalie Laurent and Rosalee Muno?” Abner Tookus demanded. The others shrugged, not recognizing either name.

  “The name sounds kind of familiar. Are those maiden names or married names?” Maggie asked. She looked at Ted. “Did we ever do a story on either woman, an interview?”

  Ted frowned. “Sounds familiar. I’d say yes, but I can’t recall specifically.” He looked at Espinosa, who just shook his head that he didn’t remember either.

  Dennis was already tapping in the names for a Google search. A moment later he said, “Laurent is the face of a French cosmetic company. La Natural. She’s married to . . . holy shit, she’s married to Lincoln Moss. Everyone in the entire universe knows who Lincoln Moss is. La Natural is the crown jewel of the man’s holdings.” He held up his iPhone so the others could see what he’d just seen. “There is nothing on the Muno woman.”

  One by one, everyone returned to their seat and stared at Pearl. “Talk!” Annie demanded in a voice that left no room for silence.

  Pearl swiped at her tears. “Five years ago, Rosalee Muno sought us out. We had helped a cousin of hers a while back. She talked to one of our people and said she needed help for her employer, who was afraid to come forward. She explained that Amalie was married to Lincoln Moss, and as Dennis said, everyone in the world knows who Lincoln Moss is. He had, according to Rosalee, been beating and abusing Amalie for years. She said Moss would never let Amalie out of his sight, and there was always security around her. There was no way for her to get away. Rosalee said she was worried that Amalie was going to do something to herself because she’d finally given up.

  “It wasn’t easy, and I can give you the details later, but we managed to get her and Rosalee to safety. Rosalee didn’t want to go into the program, but we convinced her, knowing what we all do about Lincoln Moss, that it was in her best interest to go with Amalie.

  “Right off the bat, we moved both women to Boise, Idaho, by way of our underground railroad. They stayed there decompressing for eight months. Over the next four months we transported them through four different states, and they stayed one month in each state, so we could monitor Moss’s activities—which, by the way, were none. A year to the day, both women signed in to the Good Samaritan Clinic for just enough surgery to alter their appearances. Amalie was particularly hard because she is so beautiful. She is still beautiful, but she no longer looks as she did when she lived with Lincoln Moss. Rosalee was easy. Over the course of the year, she dropped thirty-five pounds. She was a bit . . .
ah . . . overweight when she came to us. We changed their hairstyles, hair color, the usual. Add giving them colored contact lenses, which doesn’t sound like much, but factor in the minor surgery, and you’re looking at entirely different individuals.

  “During all of that time, we had speech therapists working with Amalie so she could rid herself of her French accent. She now speaks English better than any of us. But . . . if she stresses out, she reverts to French, which is not a good thing. She loves American slang and excels at it. Rosalee was no problem even though she’s of Mexican descent. She was born here, and English is her natural voice.”

  “After the surgery, where did you put them?” Myra asked.

  “In plain sight, in Arlington, Virginia. We had a little house we rented for the two of them. We got both of them part-time jobs, so they would blend in with the neighborhood. They drive ten-year-old Honda Civics. Rosalee works at the Home Builders Depot part-time, and Amalie works in the local library part-time, in the reference department. They never go out to eat or to the movies or anyplace where they can be scrutinized. No one really pays attention to salespeople or librarians. In their spare time, they do a lot of gardening, raise some vegetables, grow a lot of flowers. They painted and decorated the little cottage to meet their needs. They were happy. Truly happy. Rosalee even had a boyfriend of sorts, a young man she met at her place of work. Nothing romantic, just good friends. Yes, the young man was vetted up one side and down the other, and he is exactly who he says he is, a college student working during the summer to help with his tuition.

  “There is no computer at the cottage. We explained that the temptation was too great, that Amalie might want to contact her family, what’s left of it, back in France, even though she said she wouldn’t. She swore to us on her mother’s soul that she would not use the computers at the library. We lied and told her we would be able to tell if she did. As far as I know, she honored the promises she made to us.

  “They attend church services every Sunday and blend in well in the little community they live in.”

  “I guess you gave them new identities,” Harry said. “What are their new names?”

  Pearl swallowed hard. When Kathryn banged her fist on the table, Pearl almost jumped out of her skin. “Amalie is now Patricia Olsen. Everyone calls her Patty. Rosalee is Emily Appleton. Before you can ask, the young man she is seeing is Jason Woods. He is studying to be an engineer and works part-time at the Home Builders Depot. He’ll graduate next spring, possibly as early as December of this year. Now you know as much as I know.” Pearl sagged in her chair as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. No one rushed to comfort her.

  “Is there a landline at the cottage?” Charles asked.

  “No. They just have the special cells we gave them, and they are monitored. I haven’t had a chance to check with our people. This all happened so quick, and the top priority was to clear the clinic. No one is going to talk, I can guarantee that.”

  Kathryn leaned across the table. “Now how hard was that?”

  “Let me tell you something, Kathryn, it was damn hard. I feel like I betrayed my own mother. I gave my word; I took an oath to all the people I try to protect. With my life if I have to. Don’t you dare judge me. Don’t you dare!”

  “I would never judge you, Pearl. That’s for you to do yourself. By not talking, you are the one who is putting the lives of your people in danger. We were not asking you to announce anything to the world at large, just to the people you came to for help. You did the right thing by telling us what we need to know,” Kathryn said. Then, because Kathryn was Kathryn, she had to add, “Besides, it was time for you to come off that high horse you rode in here on.”

  Pearl didn’t trust herself to say anything, so she kept quiet and simply nodded. She did, however, reach across the table to shake Kathryn’s hand.

  “Charles, for the third time, what’s for dinner?” Kathryn demanded.

  “Ah, yes, dinner. How does spaghetti and meatballs sound? Fergus made bread this morning, that crusty Italian you love so much, Kathryn. And fresh peach ice cream. I was up early this morning and at the farmers’ market for the first load of peaches. I’m not going to guarantee the spaghetti and meatballs because Annie and Myra called in their order a little late in the day. I do guarantee that it will be tasty, though.”

  He looked at his watch, and said, “Fergus and I will go topside and you all can stay here and strategize if you like. Dinner will be in an hour.”

  The others looked at one another and by nods agreed to stay in the war room to talk and try to work out a plan.

  Dennis West whispered in Harry’s ear. “Harry, what do you think about Lincoln Moss?”

  “What I think, kid, is the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I think too. Oh, boy, this promises to be a thrill a minute, don’t you agree, Harry?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Harry drawled.

  Chapter 3

  Charles looked across the room at the bank of clocks that gave the time all over the world. It was 6:00 A.M. in Virginia. He was tired, but it was a good kind of tired. He and Fergus had worked through the night, with only two short breaks up in the kitchen for coffee, just to stay awake.

  “I think we’re done here, Fergus. We need to decompress, shower, snatch a few hours of sleep, eat something, and be back down here by ten. Does that work for you?”

  Fergus sighed. Charles would get no argument from him. He was bone tired. He’d had no real idea until now how Charles and the Vigilantes worked. Now he knew what went into a mission, and he was glad to be a part of it. He crossed his fingers, the way he had when he was a child, that he could keep up. He stapled the last packet he’d just taken out of the printer and slipped it into a bright blue folder. They were ready to be handed out to the girls once the morning meeting got under way.

  “You going home or staying here, Fergus?” Charles asked, as they mounted the moss-covered steps that let them out of the dungeon and up to the main part of the house.

  “I’m going home. Annie went back home last night because she said she had a lot of thinking to do and wanted to sleep in her own bed. I’ll come back with her for the meeting.

  “Charles, do you think Pearl can hold it together. She seemed pretty fragile to me last evening.”

  Charles looked at his old friend, concern on his face. “I am . . . not exactly worried, but I must admit that I am concerned. If anyone can shake Pearl out of it, Annie and Myra can. What really concerns me is that everything is in Pearl’s head. If anything were to happen to her, all her hard work would collapse, and I don’t even want to think about what would happen then. I told Myra to try to convince her to call Lizzie Fox. Pearl trusts Lizzie. There has to be a legend so that down the road, if the unthinkable happens, the railroad and the people are protected.

  “Pearl does not want to give that up. I get that, but right now, she is not thinking clearly. If we’re successful in this mission, then I think there is a very good possibility that Pearl will allow Lizzie to document everything. That’s just my opinion, Fergus.”

  Fergus rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks as he stared out at the approaching dawn. “I know that Annie is worried. She was mumbling something about first it was Nellie, and now it’s Pearl. You know Annie; when those bees in her bonnet start to swarm, you never can figure out what’s going to happen. If she gets ticked off enough, she might shoot her.”

  Charles laughed.

  “So, on that note, I will now take my leave. See you around ten. Don’t start without us.” Charles waved good-bye.

  Feeling a nudge to his leg he looked down to see Lady, who was inching him toward the door. Her pups were right behind her. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to go outside with the dogs, but he did it anyway. All he wanted to do was sleep. “Make it quick, okay?”

  The dogs were back inside within minutes, waiting for breakfast even if it was two hours early. Outside to pee meant you came in and got fed
. The dogs sat on their haunches and waited expectantly as Charles sighed and did what he had to do. He then bolted up the back staircase and headed for the shower. Myra could clean up the bowls.

  Charles’s last conscious thought as his head hit the pillow was that perhaps this mission was not going to be the slam dunk he had originally thought it would be. When you take on a man like Lincoln Moss, all you could hope for was a lot of luck.

  The July sun was bright at ten o’clock in the morning as the gang arrived almost simultaneously. They greeted each other in the parking area, then moved on to the back door, which Myra was holding open. More conversation ensued about the rain’s finally being over, how everything looked so scrubbed and clean the way only Mother Nature could do it. The flowers looked perky, according to Yoko, and she bent down to snap off a bright yellow Gerbera daisy that she immediately stuck behind her ear. Harry grinned.

  “Coffee, anyone? We have a little time before we have to be downstairs. Just so you know, Charles and Fergus worked through the night, snatched a few hours of sleep, and are hard at it again.”

  Annie poured coffee as the gang milled around. “I don’t see Pearl,” Kathryn said. “Is she coming? Please, stop looking at me like that. I just said what had to be said yesterday instead of pussyfooting around. If you’re upset with me, I can leave right now.” She waited until everyone assured her that they agreed with her, at which point Lady barked, announcing Pearl’s arrival.

  By ten thirty, all the sisters and their counterparts were seated at the new table, which now accommodated all of them. Everyone appeared bright-eyed and expectant. Even Pearl looked refreshed, which was a relief to everyone in the room.

  Charles and Fergus, his new right hand, were on the dais. The large screen came to life as Lady Justice beamed down on the occupants. For some reason, the women always smiled when she took over the room. Kathryn always saluted her, a crisp, no-nonsense salute that would have been the envy of any military officer had one been there to see it.