by ML Gamble
When she came out of the bathroom five minutes later, Alec was lying on his side in bed, sound asleep and snoring. She crept toward him and stared. He was gorgeous. There was no getting around that, she thought. His face, even gaunt with fatigue and bruised from the car accident last night, was smooth and full of character and masculine grace.
He was snoring as if he’d been sleeping for hours. She found a surprisingly new blanket on the narrow shelf in the closet and threw it over his long legs. She grabbed some money, flicked off the light and quashed a powerful urge to crawl in next to him as well as another no less powerful inclination to kiss him.
It was insane to have feelings for this man, this stranger, but she felt an irresistible tug of sensual attraction. Chemistry never makes sense, Molly told herself, then slipped soundlessly out the door.
Chapter Nine
The city of Avalon was, as is often the case of towns by the Pacific, settled by sailing men. Hundreds of tiny houses line streets too narrow for any traffic but foot or bicycle. Most buildings are over fifty years old and were constructed with pieces of debris from ships washed ashore or lumber bought and hauled by retired sailors who had once visited Catalina and vowed to return to live out their days there.
Zane Grey, the author famous for his classic Western tales of heroes and villains, had once owned a house on the island. Celebrities of all sorts landed at the tiny mountaintop airport. They walked or rode motor scooters and bought salt-water taffy and postcards of the lovely place memorialized as the island of romance, twenty-six miles across the sea from the mainland.
Molly stood on the pier and watched as night fell over the water and thought how much farther away than those twenty-six miles she felt. Her mind was awhirl with contradicting emotions, all centering on the events that had occurred since she first laid eyes on Alec Steele.
She had agreed to testify to do her civic duty, the same civic duty that had led her to place the call to the police the morning of February 15 after she’d heard the news report.
When she told the detectives that she witnessed Paul Buntz getting into the limo she had been told was Frederick Brooker’s, she had caused quite a commotion. For a while, she felt as if her own rights were being infringed upon while they checked out her story, her job, her credit, everything.
The police finally told her she made a very credible witness and that the district attorney would be in touch. He had been, she had retold the story, and that was that. It never occurred to her to tell them she would refuse to testify as to what she’d seen, but now, twenty-six miles and seven months later, she wondered if she had been naive.
The police hadn’t warned her she could be in danger. They had not revealed that they had an eyewitness.
They certainly hadn’t told her that people close to her could be harmed! And for what?
After all, Molly realized for the first time, she had not actually seen Frederick Brooker the night of the murder. She couldn’t really swear the man who got into the car was Paul Buntz, only that he was carrying a similar orange gym bag.
It had been enough, however, for the district attorney.
Molly wondered, as she blew on her hands and stared at the frenzy of whitecaps whipped up by the breeze, if it was also enough to make Brooker want to kill her.
When two young men jostled her and smiled, Molly pulled the terry-cloth hat she had bought to replace her forgotten scarf, down farther over her ears, wrapped her arms around her to keep warm and decided she would let Alec sleep while she found something to eat.
Molly walked toward the opposite end of the island from the motel and settled for a very busy, loud-music-playing fish house called Smokey’s. She headed for the ladies’ room and found an old-fashioned phone booth in the hallway outside. Seeing this chance to learn a few things, she used Rafe’s card to make several calls. The first was to her own town house.
A male voice answered on the second ring. Molly hung up quickly and stared at the phone as if it were a snake. She glanced outside, as if expecting federal agents to be charging through the kitchen at Smokey’s ready to arrest her.
At least the cops would lock up, she told herself, relieved that her belongings were safe despite her status as a fugitive.
The second call was to Sara Gillem’s home phone. Her clerk picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Sara, it’s me. I can’t tell you where I am, but I’m going to be calling you back with some requests for microfiche records of long-distance calls.”
Sara sucked in a mouthful of air. “Okay. When?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Saturday. Can you get into the office on Saturday morning and wait for my call?”
“Yes. Although the you-know-who might be there, too.”
Molly experienced a rush of guilt. “Sara, if you’re the least bit worried that you might—”
“Stop right there, Boss. Call me Saturday. I’ll say a prayer for you.”
Molly had to wipe away a few tears over Sara’s loyalty. Without dwelling on it, she made the third call to Information in Orange County and got three possible numbers for Sylvester Rojas, the assistant district attorney who had taken all her statements and run through her testimony for the trial.
The first two numbers elicited nonstop voice-mail transfers, but the third produced a real voice.
“Sylvester? I think I just saw him across the hall,” a woman replied. “Can I tell him who is calling?”
Well, here goes nothing, Molly thought. In this era of automatic redial, caller ID, third-party calling, call waiting and speakerphones, she could be walking right into a trap. Taking a breath to steady her nerves, she answered, “Tell him it’s Molly.”
“Molly? Okay, hang on.”
The woman had not sounded suspicious or alarmed. A few seconds later, Sylvester Rojas picked up the phone.
“Hello?” His voice sounded puzzled, as if her name had rung no bells.
“It’s Molly Jakes, Sylvester. Can you talk to me for a minute?”
“Holy cow! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Thanks for asking. Yes, I’m fine.” In a torrent of words, Molly told him the bare bones of what had happened—that Alec had kidnapped her, that he’d been taken captive, tortured and brainwashed, that they had both nearly been killed, that they had left two men tied up on the Geisha Empress. Ninety seconds later she paused to catch her breath. “I can’t tell you where I am, Sylvester. But please tell the district attorney that Alec Steele and I will be in touch. We still plan to testify. If Brooker doesn’t get to us first.”
“This is so incredible, Molly. But you know I must advise you to turn yourselves in. At least in protective custody, you’ll be safe until—”
“I’m going now, Sylvester. Thank you. I’ll call again when I can. Just tell the police the truth. It might help me stay alive.”
Molly slammed down the phone. Her throat was raw, and her knees were shaking. She hurried out into the restaurant, hoping to disappear in a roomful of strange faces.
Grabbing a stool at the bar, she sat right in front of the television and ordered a meal, hoping someone would turn on the news. As if by telepathy, the bartender, a young, pony-tailed redhead with a gold earring in her nose, switched on headline news.
Molly watched the entire broadcast, ate but never tasted a huge plate of shrimp and French fries, and never heard the briefest mention of herself or Alec on the news.
Had he lied to her? she wondered. Or were double murder, kidnapping and all the other crimes such common things, that they were already old news? Suddenly the fatigue, anger and confusion over her physical attraction to the dangerous Mr. Alec Steele, swirled together in an overwhelming mass in her brain.
What was she doing, running off with him anyway? Granted, he’d saved her life at her town house, but how did she know he was right that she was also in danger?
Maybe she had only been in danger because of him!
“Now what?” she whispered, suddenly paranoid over the loud
voices and the eyes of the men and women eating and drinking and enjoying themselves around her.
Molly stood, removed the twenty-dollar bill she’d folded into her sweatshirt pocket, paid for her meal and hurried out of the bar.
* * *
ALEC WOKE WITH A START, grabbing the mattress beneath him as if it were a lifeline which would keep him from falling from the cliff in his dreams. His heart was racing and his whole body ached, especially his neck.
Gingerly he looked around the motel room for Molly. In the dark he saw the bulky shape of a chair, the scuffed table with tape around one leg and the television. A clock, ticking loudly enough for him to hear, read 7:55.
For a moment more, Alec lay still, willing himself to relax, then he rolled off the bed. He went to the door, looked out in both directions and walked outside. A little girl with a pink sundress and bare feet was playing with a ball by the open door of a room four doors away.
Alec went back inside and showered. He was alarmed when he saw that Molly had taken the money, until he realized Rafe’s hundred-dollar bill was still on the bed. Pocketing that, he donned the cowboy hat and one of the sweatshirts she’d packed for him and headed out to find her.
Alicia was due to fly in tomorrow. They were to call back tomorrow morning at nine to find out what time the plane she was going to charter would arrive. She was bringing money and some medication she hoped would prove helpful, though she had cautioned him that she had never heard of any therapy that utilized needles of the kind he had described as being imbedded in his skin.
Alec clenched his teeth and moved his head slowly. The pinch wasn’t as bad as it had been. But it still hurt like a blackfly bite. At the corner of Main and Juanita, Alec stopped and looked down the street full of diners and bars.
Molly was nowhere to be seen. He ducked into a bar called The Red Tree and ordered a beer. The television was on, and as he took the mug the bartender handed him and walked around the pool table to grab a chair, the words Special Bulletin popped on the screen.
In what he hoped was a casual manner, he walked back to the bar and grabbed a handful of peanuts. A female broadcaster began to talk, too low for him to hear, but when the background picture changed to a shot of a classic Cheoy Lee yacht, bearing the name Geisha Empress that was burning, he barked, “Can you turn that up?” more loudly than he had intended.
The barkeep obliged and he listened, nearly choking when he tried to swallow the peanuts. They felt like marbles going down his tight throat. The broadcaster’s words rang in his ears “...are speculating that the two federal agents, both shot execution-style, were murdered on the yacht and then the luxury vessel was set afire. No word yet on any witnesses, but authorities are questioning two fishermen who reportedly saw a couple in a dinghy at about the time police estimate the killings took place. Police and the FBI will not comment on the reports that this vessel is owned by Frederick Brooker, the multimillionaire businessman who is set to go on trial Tuesday. More news at eleven.”
Alec finished the beer with one gulp, turned away from the bar and walked outside and into pouring rain. He felt light-headed and made of ice. A pulse point of pain beat in his neck, and he was convinced that he could feel the needles vibrating when a bolt of lightning struck nearby.
A single plan bounced around inside his skull like a ball in a Roadrunner cartoon. Find Molly and hide. Find Molly and hide.
Find Molly.
Hide.
Then a second thought hit, nearly paralyzing him. Did he want to find Molly and hide her? Or did he want to kill her and then hide? With a shudder, Alec took off at a dead run back to the motel.
He was back at the Devil Fish in less than ten minutes. As he hurried by the darkened office, he noticed the neon sign now glowed Evil Fish through the rain.
“I’m coming, Molly,” he murmured under his breath. His heartbeat slowed a bit when he saw that a light was on inside the room. She was back, safe.
Alec stopped outside the door, poised to knock, when a movement to the left made him hesitate. He was hit from behind before he could turn to investigate and fell before he could call out her name.
Chapter Ten
Molly woke, uncomfortably tense and hot in the dark, still room. The light she had left on in the bathroom was out. Her eyes darted to the clock. When she realized it wasn’t working, she relaxed a fraction, comforted that all the electricity was cut, surely by the storm. She glanced at her wristwatch, could not read the dial, but estimated it to be about ten-thirty.
Her body complained that she had not slept long enough.
When she’d arrived back at the motel and found that Alec wasn’t in the room waiting for her, she had paced, but not panicked, reasoning that he had likely been hungry and gone out. When the storm kicked up, she told herself he probably stayed put, assuming she would do the same.
Now she didn’t know what to think.
Listening intently, Molly heard the rain still falling. A second later, lightning flashed, illuminating the shabby room, which was as empty of Alec as before. Two seconds later, an enormous crack of thunder shook the motel room violently.
Rolling off the bed, Molly sighed and pulled off her heavy sweatshirt, then peeked out between the drapes. Without Mother Nature’s strikes of white heat, the sky was impenetrable. When another flash forewarned her, she tensed, but the thunder did not rumble until eight seconds later. “Eight miles away,” she said, remembering her mother’s words that each second counted meant the storm was a mile farther away.
The parking lot was empty except for a single car. The dark sedan was approximately twenty yards from the door. It looked to Molly like something—a bulky shape—was propped inside. Was someone sitting in the car? Molly wondered. Who sat in a car outside a motel room? she asked herself. The answer made her feel weak with fear.
Someone watching a room. Waiting. Waiting for her? Forcing herself to breathe evenly, Molly moved quickly to the door, turned the dead bolt and engaged the chain. She had foolishly left them off because she had assumed Alec would be back any second.
Maybe it was Alec in the car. The thought unnerved her further. Where would he get a car? Why would he be outside?
If it wasn’t Alec, then where the devil was he?
Maybe Alicia Chen had wired him some money, she told herself, knowing she was losing control of her usual ability to reason. Her mind stayed on the same track. So if Alec had rented a car... Had he had another attack and passed out? There was no getting around it, Molly realized. She had to go outside if she was going to get a better look. With more bravado than she felt, she threw the sweatshirt around her shoulders, stuck the hat on her head and unlocked the door. Tentatively, she opened it a crack.
The rain fell steadily, a silver gray curtain of drops. She stepped outside and was immediately drenched. Running quickly, she reached the end of the walkway before the next bolt of lightning flashed. Hiding behind a round concrete pillar, she tried to ascertain if there actually was someone in the car opposite the motel’s small front office.
From this angle, she couldn’t see as well as from her room, but it still looked like a person was in the front seat, slumped down as if asleep. Did she dare approach the car to see if it was Alec?
Thinking of every bad horror movie she’d ever seen, she realized the only sensible answer was no. It was too much to risk.
Exasperated, Molly decided to go back to the room and try the phone. She would call the office and ask the desk clerk to send someone out to check the car. But what if the motel called the police?
That thought made her heart pump faster. It was tough getting used to being a citizen who wanted to avoid the police, she realized. As a matter of fact, she cautioned herself, even though the motel seemed deserted except for her, she’d better watch her step—or someone else she hadn’t seen would be calling the office about her.
With self-concealment foremost in her mind, Molly hugged the rear wall of the walkway, and slowly moved backward in the dark,
letting her fingers feel for the open door. The rough, thick plaster of the outer wall met her blindly groping hand. She moved steadily, inch by inch, her gaze riveted on the sedan. Finally her fingers felt the smooth, painted wood door behind her, cracked open an inch.
With a brief, darting look around, she slipped into the room, locked the door and collapsed on the floor, only to be startled enough to cry out when the antique air-conditioning unit kicked in with a roar.
A half second later, a light, not in the bathroom, but on the table beside the bed, clicked on. The electricity was restored. Gratefully, Molly turned toward the light, and from the outermost edge of her consciousness, a warning bell sounded. The bed hadn’t been slept in. The black leather jacket lying on the chair was not hers, or Alec’s.
Nor was the small silver gun glowing on the floor, near an opened box of bullets.
She was in the wrong room! With her legs shaking and her vision blurring from the horror of her mistake, Molly scrambled to her knees and grabbed for the doorknob. Just then, a tiny click signaled that someone outside, an inch away from her, was about to enter.
* * *
ALEC HUNKERED DOWN in the rain beside the sedan, trying to see the man standing at the door of the room next to his and Molly’s. He didn’t have a clue whether it was one of his attackers or not. He hadn’t got a look at them until he woke up, and then it was only at the backs of their heads.
They both had worn long trench coats and rain hats. One was a small guy, the second a burly six-footer. An older fellow, Alec had judged by catching the briefest of looks at his profile. They had knocked him out, dragged him to the car and left him tied up inside, where he watched his pair of attackers disappear on foot, headed toward the center of town.
For the past hour, he had struggled to free himself from the ropes around his wrists, managing it a few seconds ago, just in time to see this new stranger walk up to the room next to the one he hoped Molly was still locked inside.
During the physically taxing past hour, Alec wrestled with explanations as to why his abductors had tied him up and left him in the car. He thought they had given him some kind of drug, for he felt drowsy and nauseated, and he couldn’t feel the pinch in his neck. But what it all meant he did not know.