Unknown Enemy (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Michelle Karl

  The student was culpable, but naive. Likely the false doctor had been quite convincing. After all, Ginny and the curator had worked with him all week and clearly hadn’t suspected a thing. “Why? Why did he want Ginny?”

  Sam’s mouth opened and closed several times. “Her work. He wants to get rid of her work. I thought it was a covert operation from Amar, like checking up on us and stuff, but I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.”

  Colin released his grip on Sam. “You thought wrong. If anything happens to Ginny...”

  Sam swallowed hard and nodded. “What should we do?”

  “I’m going to start searching for your professor. You’re going to meet those police cars coming up the drive right now and tell them everything you told me. Then go let those people out of the meeting room.”

  Colin left a wide-eyed Sam staring at him in the middle of the doorway and ran outside to the quad. So Ginny hadn’t been killed outright because Hilden wanted to make sure he completely destroyed her credibility. Colin was right—Hilden had been playing a mental game alongside the physical. The man thought ahead, planned for every eventuality. That she still lived meant he likely suspected her of having talked to someone else about her research, or maybe he thought she’d handed it off to someone else.

  Either way, what value would she have after Hilden had eliminated the possibility of other people finding out what she knew? Hilden certainly couldn’t risk her returning to her work afterward. Silencing her temporarily wouldn’t be enough, not after what Colin suspected he’d done to Mr. Wehbe.

  Colin scanned the area around the quad, but the whole campus appeared deserted. From the corner of his eye, he spied a student racing toward the parking lot with a backpack over her shoulder.

  “Hey! Kid!”

  The student slowed and turned around, but continued to move away from Colin, panic clear on her face. “What are you doing here, sir? We gotta go!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Multiple bomb threats! Didn’t you hear the sirens? We gotta clear off until the police check the campus.” The student redirected her focus toward escape and ran flat out toward the parking lot.

  Multiple bomb threats. A simple but ingenious way to use multiple hired thugs to get people out of the way, especially if they believed the police were still tied up at the museum. This little college town had only so many resources to draw on.

  Colin sniffed, the autumn chill causing his nose to feel stuffed up. With the deepening shadows of late afternoon, trusting his senses was getting more and more difficult. He sniffed again and paused at the arrival of a very out-of-place scent.

  It smelled like someone was throwing a bonfire. On campus? That couldn’t be right.

  The scent of smoke grew stronger and stronger as he stood in the quad, trying to identify the direction it came from. Colin spun in a circle, a growing feeling of dread in his stomach.

  And then he saw it. Tendrils of gray smoke, creeping out of the crevices of the library’s upper floor. Colin raced down the path to the library and flew up the steps to the front door. He pulled on the door handle but encountered resistance. Someone had locked the door. How did Hilden get keys? For that matter, how could Hilden have managed even half of the stunts he’d pulled without unfettered access to—and familiarity with—all areas and resources of the school?

  Panic welled up and a buzzing in Colin’s ears threatened to erase all sense of reason. Ginny was in there. He knew, deep inside, that she was in there and she was going to die, and it would be all his fault. He hadn’t protected her. He’d let her out of his sight for a moment, just a moment, despite knowing she was in danger. Why is this happening again, God? What could possibly be your purpose for all of this?

  Colin ran his hands through his hair and tugged on it in frustration. He had to get inside. Immediately.

  Most of the library’s first floor was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows instead of uninviting solid walls, but the glass had to be thick. He’d have trouble breaking it, unless he took a different approach. Firing at the glass would be risky. The library looked abandoned, but there was no way to know for certain.

  Colin ran across the steps to grab the nearest metal trash bin. He dragged it across the ground, bringing it to the center of the window, then stepped a few feet back into a low stance. He tensed and lifted the trash bin, beginning to swing it in a circle around him like a discus thrower making a rotation. At the apex of the rotation he released the metal bin, sending it flying into the glass window, which crunched, cracked and bowed but didn’t shatter. Almost there.

  He backed up a few more paces, and then ran full tilt into the window. At the last moment he twisted to allow his shoulder to make contact with the cracked point on the glass.

  The window shattered on impact. Colin fell into the library with a shout. His shoulder felt as if it had been knocked out of place, an excruciating pain radiating down his arm and side. Here goes nothing, God.

  He stumbled to the nearest bookshelf, took a deep breath and rammed his shoulder into the side of the shelves. After a burst of blinding agony, his shoulder slipped back into place and the pain faded, allowing him to return focus to his surroundings.

  Although he couldn’t see any smoke, he smelled it.

  Colin sprinted to the stairs, yanked on the red fire alarm that he hoped would summon the fire department, then kicked open the door to the stairwell.

  He ran upward, the smell of smoke growing stronger and stronger as he made his way to the fifth floor. At the door, he pulled the bottom of his shirt over his nose, yanked the door open and dived inside as smoke poured into the stairwell.

  The room was hot and noisy. Colin scrambled on his hands and knees toward a window, thinking to open it and gasp in fresh air. When he reached it, he remembered—the library windows didn’t open, because libraries needed complete control over the building’s temperature and humidity to protect the books inside. He had to find Ginny right now, before they both succumbed to smoke inhalation.

  “Ginny!” Colin shouted as loud as he could, but the roar of fire grew louder and tongues of flame lapped out from between the tall bookshelves. He rushed toward flame-covered shelves, trying to squint through the thick haze of smoke to see where the fire was strongest. If Hilden had set this to eliminate Ginny and her work, that’s where he’d find her.

  Between the creak of weakening shelves and crackling flame, the sound of coughing spurred him toward the center of the library floor—and there she was, bound to a chair and surrounded by a stack of books and papers. Flames shot up from the documents and crept toward her shoes and pant legs. Her head lolled forward at a strange angle, but relief flooded Colin when she coughed again and tried to raise her head.

  He shouted her name and their eyes met, her gaze unfocused and confused. “Colin?”

  “I’m coming,” he shouted, but as he made his way toward her, an old wooden bookcase in his path collapsed into a pile of burning planks and pages. His heart constricted as Ginny’s coughing returned—strong at first, but weakening as he tried to pick his way around the wreckage. Adrenaline had taken him this far, but he’d already started to feel his strength waning. Breathing was becoming a chore, but giving up now was not an option.

  Ginny would get out of this alive, even if it took every ounce of strength he had left. And it might. But she would live, because she deserved to. Because he refused to allow the woman he loved to perish, not again. Not this time.

  His confidence waned as the heat intensified. He couldn’t do it alone, couldn’t save her on his own strength. He’d tried it that way before, and where had it gotten him? He’d been too cocky, too self-sure to ask for help, and the result had been tragic.

  God, give me the strength to reach her in time. I know I can’t do this by myself. I need you.

  “Ginny?” He climbed over another
fallen shelving unit to reach her chair, gritting his teeth to hold back a shout of pain from where his hand had landed. Most of the shelving units on this floor were metal, and touching the shelves covered in rows of burning books would leave at minimum a second-degree burn. He willed away the pain as he knelt in front of her, his hands scrabbling around the sides of the chair to loosen the bonds that kept her there. The knot was simple to untie, clearly tied by someone who didn’t expect the hostage to try to escape.

  Ginny stilled and remained unmoving as he lifted her from the chair, clutching her in his arms as he barreled toward the stairwell. He made it five steps forward before it sank in—the exit was too far away. He’d never make it there in time before he collapsed. As it was, he could barely take another breath.

  The sound of shattering glass and sirens drew his attention. Sam must have made it to the patrol cars, who’d called the fire department even before Colin had pulled the alarm. Good kid. Poor decision maker, but he’d come through when they needed it most.

  A bright yellow jacket filled Colin’s narrowing field of vision, and his grip on Ginny slipped.

  “Whoa, I’ve got her,” the man said, reaching for Ginny. Another firefighter gripped Colin’s shoulder and tried to guide him toward the window.

  “I’m not letting go of her again,” Colin tried to yell, coughing as smoke filled his lungs.

  “You have to,” shouted the firefighter who’d tried to take her from his arms. “There’s no time to argue, let’s go!”

  But he couldn’t. Not this time, not again. He stumbled forward to the window where the top of a ladder rested at the ledge. Another firefighter waited to carry her down the ladder, but Colin shouted at the man, determined to do it himself.

  His legs gave out from under him as another shelf came crashing down to his left, the edge of the heavy frame clipping his shoulder.

  He had to trust the firefighters or they’d never make it. But what if they were like the false policemen? What if they took her away again? I trust you, God, he finally prayed, and loosened his grip on the precious woman in his arms.

  The man at the window reached in and drew Ginny toward him, slinging her carefully over his shoulder. Colin crawled to the window’s edge, the last vestiges of his strength slipping away with each movement. He leaned over the lip, keeping one eye on Ginny. The firefighter reached the bottom and whisked her inside an ambulance.

  Safe? Is she safe? Colin needed to crawl down the ladder, too, but darkness overtook him as he reached for the first rung.

  He jolted back to awareness as someone shoved a mask over his face and commanded him to breathe. His eyes began to focus. Aluminum walls. Beeping machinery. Strange faces.

  He yanked the mask off his face. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”

  A gentle touch on his shoulder caused him to whirl around. “I’m right here.”

  He’d never seen a more beautiful sight as he gathered her into his arms and held her tight.

  * * *

  Ginny sat in the back of the ambulance, relieved to have Colin by her side while the paramedics fussed over things like oxygen, checking her vitals and making sure she didn’t have any severe burns needing immediate attention. Truthfully, Colin appeared to have gotten the worst of it. Her head still throbbed from where Dr. Hilden—or whoever he was—had pistol-whipped her twice. The second time had knocked her out and she’d awoken only briefly to find herself tied to the chair and surrounded by a burning pile of her documents and articles before losing consciousness again. Since his earlier plans to kill her hadn’t worked, it had been Hilden’s new end game, his plan B to stop the world from ever finding out what she knew...and to ensure disbelief even if some piece of information fell through the cracks after her passing.

  Ginny thanked God that Colin had arrived in time to prevent that. The man had risked his life to save her, and she felt as if she saw him with new eyes.

  She cared for him, far more deeply than she’d ever thought she could. But was she too late? Had he saved her only out of his protector’s instinct? Maybe he still saw her as an assignment, doing his duty by saving her.

  Deep down, she knew this couldn’t be true. They both felt something, but now was not the time. They had to finish this first.

  “He’s still out there,” Ginny said, drawing Colin’s attention from where he argued with a nurse about whether a nasty red burn on his hand needed a bandage or not. “If we don’t catch him now, Empress Oil will get away with this. Someone from that company hired him, and they need to be held accountable.”

  Colin sat next to her, tugging at a tensor bandage wrapped around his shoulder. “Agreed, but I get the sense that it’s going to be difficult to extricate ourselves from the paramedics’ clutches. Plus, we’re back to square one. We have no idea where he went, and without this false Hilden as evidence, accusing Empress Oil of blackmail and murder isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Ginny and Colin both startled to see Sam standing outside the ambulance doors, plane tickets clutched in his hands. Ginny’s shoulders tensed, remembering the moment when she’d realized Sam was in on Hilden’s scheme.

  Colin leaned forward and flicked his chin at the student. “Start talking, kid.”

  Sam held out his plane tickets and Colin took them, paging through the small packet. “I think he’s planning to go back to Amar. I don’t know for sure, but I do know that before Professor Anderson arrived, he said something about wanting to finish the job today so he could get paid. I assume that means going back to Amar, right?”

  Ginny shook her head. “Empress is an American company. Why would he go back to Amar?”

  Colin’s attention snapped to her in an instant. “Because the rules are different over there. Like you said before.”

  “You don’t think he’d go to their headquarters here in the United States?”

  “We’d track and catch him there easily, and he’s smart enough to plan for any eventualities. We know he’s quite intelligent, based on all the interactions we’ve had with him. You worked together for almost an entire week and were convinced of his expertise in Amaran history. Plus, he’s been trying to keep himself out of harm’s way as much as possible, using hired hands to do most of his dirty work. Why would he risk being followed by the police on the off chance that he’d left a clue that leads to Empress Oil?”

  Ginny rubbed her eyes with her palms, earning a scolding from a nearby paramedic. Apparently she risked scratching her eyes with any debris that might remain in or around her face. She apologized and laid a hand on Colin’s knee. “But he can’t just fly back to Amar from the airport, can he? We know he’s not the real Hilden, so his ID can be flagged at any major airport.”

  “He’ll have other identification. He’ll be flying under his real name, most likely.”

  “But we’ll have images of him from campus security cameras, right?” She glanced at Sam. “Can we get that?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t know how long footage is kept around. And there’s no one left on campus right now due to the fake bomb threats, so it’ll take a while to get the footage and, uh, isolate his image. If we even have it. It’d probably come from the library anyway, and that’s kind of on fire.”

  Colin punched the ambulance wall in frustration, then winced in pain as the same paramedic ran over and no longer gave him a choice of whether to get bandaged up or not. “That’ll be too late. Far too late.” He held out Sam’s plane tickets. “Buenos Aires? Really?”

  Sam shrugged. “I didn’t have a lot of choice. I was going to use the money he gave me to pay off my tuition and finish the degree through Distance Education.”

  Distance Ed? Ginny regarded her student, normally such an intelligent and hardworking person. How had he been so easily duped? “Sam, how did he initially get in contact with you? How did yo
u know what to do and where to go, that kind of thing?”

  Sam reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “He left notes in my box in the office. Like I said, I didn’t know anyone was going to get hurt. I was just as surprised as you were that he had a gun this afternoon.”

  Ginny took the note and unfolded it. Shock and surprise rippled through her from head to toe. Unlike the typed-up notes she’d received with the blackmail requests, this sheet was about the size of an index card and the message was handwritten. She’d seen that handwriting before, on the little notes Donna had shown her—notes that had come from Roger, the custodian.

  That didn’t make sense. Ginny had spoken to Roger in person before and handed off messages from Donna to him. She’d have known if Roger and the false Dr. Hilden were the same person...wouldn’t she? “But the custodian has a moustache and beard, and his skin is a darker complexion. And he’s always wearing a ball cap, and never seems to really look me in the eye. He’s always been really focused on the task at hand.” And he had an American accent. Dr. Hilden hadn’t had an American accent until this afternoon in the lab.

  Colin waved a hand in front of her face. “Hello? What are you talking about?”

  Ginny shook the paper at Sam. “Had you ever met Hilden before today?” Sam shook his head and the pieces began to fall into place. “That’s how he had access to the school, how he knew about all my research and how he knew exactly when and where to demand the drop-offs.”

  “Still not following.” Colin stood and stretched his arms. “But if you want to fill me in, I’d appreciate it.”

  Ginny stood, too, grateful for the good work of the paramedics. Her headache was subsiding, and though her lungs still didn’t feel totally right, she was ready for this nightmare to be over. The sooner they caught the false Dr. Hilden, the sooner there’d be justice for all the people he’d injured and killed for the sake of money. How could anyone at Empress Oil put a price on a human life? It made her sick to her stomach to think of it.