How many times did I need to be taught that the first story someone tells isn’t always the truth?
“How bad are you hurt?” I asked James.
“I’m all right.” He came around the bed and offered me his hand. “It’s great to see you both again.”
I saw how he looked at Cara. “They’re still in the D.C. area, the ones who took Stephen’s body,” I said.
“Yes, apparently they are.”
“They know about me. And Cara,” I reminded him.
He nodded. “They know you buried him.”
“And now I know about them. But you’re going to have to tell us more,” I said, with a sidelong glance at the gun. “We have to know what Stephen was doing, because they didn’t find what they were looking for on his body or in his things and they may think he told me something. I can’t protect Cara from something I know nothing about.”
Or people I knew nothing about. If James hadn’t died at the airport, someone else had. And that someone had been killed by the man standing in front of me.
Chapter 5
Cara loudly took exception to the idea of my protecting her from anything—known or unknown. I ignored her and made us all some coffee. It was almost 3:40 in the morning, and I needed a clear head.
She found gauze, tape and hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet and dressed James’s wound. It was a long, deep scratch that bled easily. Painful but, fortunately, nothing serious.
When she finished, James caught her hand and thanked her. Then he saw me watching and let her go.
“What really happened at the airport?” I asked, pouring a cup of coffee and setting it in front of him at my kitchen table.
“Some guy jumped me from behind,” James explained. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to defend myself.”
“Who was he?” Cara asked, bringing her own mug and sitting next to him.
“I don’t know. I checked for ID, but he didn’t have any on him. No ticket, either.”
“Apparently he knew you,” I suggested. “They said he was coming from California.”
“I tore my ticket, the part with my name on it, and planted the rest in his pocket.”
I didn’t ask whose weapon had done the killing or what he’d done with it afterward. With the security at the airports, it was a good assumption that James had indeed been jumped since he’d just come off a plane. I doubted he could have gotten a weapon through the security at National.
“Why didn’t you wait for the police?” Cara’s eyes were narrowed. She didn’t have patience for foolishness, even when it came from someone who looked like James. “Maybe the guy was a mugger.”
“Gloves, well-groomed, expensive leather coat. And what idiot would choose to mug someone at the most secure airport in the United States?”
“It can get pretty lonely in those tunnels, and you were well away from the secure area,” she pointed out.
“True, but this guy wasn’t after my wallet. Besides, if I’d let myself get involved with a police investigation, it would have left the two of you vulnerable. I couldn’t let that happen. Your dad made me promise to watch after you.”
“When?” I demanded.
“The week he died.”
“Then he knew…” Cara began.
James shook his head. “If he’d known, he wouldn’t have let it happen.”
“We need to call the police,” Cara insisted again.
“They can’t protect you, Cara. Or your mother. I can’t tell them what we’re up against. Hell, I don’t know what we’re up against.”
“What was Stephen really doing in Colorado?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I sighed. I was so tired of the lies that it didn’t matter if James was one of the good guys or not. Hell, he might not be. I’d always hoped Stephen was, but I had no guarantee.
“If you can’t tell me that, tell me who Stephen was working for.”
“I’ll tell you what I know on the way. It’s too complicated to get into right now. I want us out of here within the next fifteen minutes.” He drained his coffee and checked his watch.
“To where?” I’d been taking care of myself so long, I didn’t like the idea of putting myself in someone else’s hands, especially a man I barely knew and had no particular reason to trust.
“Someplace safe. I don’t want anyone questioning you. I know a woman who has a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley,” James said. “That’s our first stop.”
A safe house. Run by whom? Safe for whom?
“And after that?” I was asking the question while Cara sat silently. The frown I’d rubbed from between her brows was back in place, and she hadn’t touched her coffee.
“We’ll see,” James said. “I’ll have to come back here, go through Stephen’s personal items. See if I can figure out what it is they’re after. But my first priority is to get the two of you away from here.”
The way his eyes shifted I wondered if he was mentally kicking himself for not going through them more carefully before he sent them on. Or if he had and had simply missed something.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea…” he asked. “Did Stephen send you anything? Leave anything with you?”
I shook my head.
“Okay. We can talk about all this on the way,” he said. “Cara, you’re already packed?”
Her bags were sitting by the door. He couldn’t have missed them when he came in.
“For a weekend, not for a week,” she protested.
“It’ll have to do. Elizabeth, can you get your things together?”
“It’ll only take me a few minutes.” I’d packed yesterday evening, but he didn’t have to know that.
Cara threw me a surprised look, but she had the sense not to say anything.
“If you need to leave messages at work, do it now. From this phone.” He pointed to the one hanging on the wall next to the refrigerator.
“I’ve already taken care of that,” Cara assured him.
“Really? Why?” James asked.
“We’re in mourning,” I reminded him. “For the second time.”
I took up the phone and dialed the classics department even though I’d already told everyone I was going out of town. “Jeannie, it’s Elizabeth. I’ve been called out of town on an emergency for a few days. Get Mitch to cover as many of my classes as you can. Thanks.” Then I hung up, not taking my eyes off James. If he felt compelled to give me orders, I thought it best that he think I was following them.
“Okay. Let’s go.” He was on his feet.
“We’ll get our things,” I promised. I grabbed Cara’s hand, pulled her into the bedroom and shut the door.
“What’s up?” she asked. “You’re already packed.”
“I know. You trust me, don’t you?”
“With my life.”
“Good. Don’t let me out of your sight. If I move, you follow me. Understand? No talk, no questions. We’re not to be separated.”
“Mom—”
“Understand?”
“You’re scaring me.” Her eyes were huge.
“That’s what I mean to do. James got in here. We don’t know who might have followed him here from the airport. They could be inside the building. In the parking lot. On the street. Do we understand each other?”
Cara nodded and swallowed hard.
“Good.” I pulled up my shirt and tucked the gun that was still lying on my pillow into the back waistband of my jeans. Then I took the canister of pepper spray out of my purse. “Do you have one of these?” I asked.
“Not with me.”
I shook my head at her. I’d told her never to go out without it. I handed mine to her, then opened the top drawer on my bedside table, scooped up another canister and wedged it into the front pocket of my jeans. I pulled the backpack out from under the bed and stuffed my soft leather purse into it.
“Cara…”
“Yes?”
I almost apologized. For getting her into this situ
ation. For choosing Stephen for her father. For screwing things up with her job and with Phillip. But I didn’t. She needed to be strong and so did I. I hefted the backpack onto my shoulder and gave her a quick hug. “I love you. Now let’s get out of here.”
James was smoking a cigarette when we came out. He took the dead bolt off the door. The security chain had been sliced in two. Looking up and down the corridor, he shuffled us outside. Then we hurried to the elevators, and he pushed the down button, dropping the lit butt onto the hardwood floor and stepping on it. Seconds later, the doors opened and we stepped inside.
The building was quiet and so was the parking lot.
“This way,” he said, leading us to a light-colored SUV shining silver in the lights illuminating the lot. It had tinted windows. I’d thought we’d be taking my car. How had he gotten it into my condo’s parking lot without my being notified?
I had assumed James had ridden the Metro from Reagan National to Bethesda and then walked the two blocks to my place and found a way over the fence or past the guard. When had he rented this vehicle? After he killed the guy at the airport? If so, what had he been doing in a tunnel that led to a parking lot at National Airport? Did he have a car parked there? Why would he? He lived in California.
I looked at the car’s license plate, and I could feel the blood drain from my face. That car wasn’t rented. It had Colorado tags.
I glanced toward the gatehouse but saw nothing, not even the shadow of a movement. Where was Abe, the night guard?
And James’s phone call from California… Caller ID shows the place of registration of a cell phone, not the origin of the call. It could have come from anywhere. Even Maryland or D.C. Even the street outside my condo.
My mind was swamped with questions, and not a one of them did I dare to utter. What was it that Stephen had once called James? I pulled it from the recesses of my memory. A young turk.
I stared at James and then at the open car door. Ringing in my ears was the most important safety lesson I could remember ever being told: once they get you in their car, it’s all over.
I balked. “Cara, I forgot something.”
“Whatever you need, we can get on the way,” James said. He put out a hand for Cara’s bag. She let him take it and he tossed it inside. Then he reached for mine.
“No. I’ll be right back.”
James stuffed another cigarette into his mouth. “Get in, Elizabeth.”
“It’ll only take me a minute. I feel a migraine coming on, and I forgot my medication. It’s prescription and you don’t want to be around me if I don’t have my pills.” I tried to smile, to look casual.
“You don’t…” Cara began.
I stared at her hard. I’d never had a migraine in my life.
“You don’t want to go back into that building by yourself,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
James slammed the door. He looked none too pleased. “Is this really necessary?”
“Mom’s a terror without her medication. Gets sick to her stomach, and riding makes it worse. Believe me, you don’t want to have to stop every five miles for her to hurl.” Cara flashed him one of her dazzlers.
“We won’t be a minute,” I promised.
“Okay, I’ll go with you,” James said.
“No. You start the car and bring it around to the door. We’ll be right out,” I said.
My legs were shaking so hard I didn’t think I’d make it across the parking lot. I hardly breathed until we slipped through the glass doors.
“What the hell was that all about?” she demanded.
“Where’d you park?” I asked her.
“Where you told me to. Outside the fence, in the Burger King lot on the back side of the building.”
I punched the button for the elevator, but once inside I hit the B instead of 15.
“He’ll give us no more than five minutes,” she warned.
“That’s all we’ll need.”
Chapter 6
We took the back roads across Montgomery County, through Potomac. I drove. It was easier than giving directions, and it gave me an excuse to keep my eyes on the road while I explained to Cara why I’d suddenly become so suspicious of James.
“I just hope you’re right,” was all she said. Then she added, “I’m sorry, Mom. If we’d left when you’d wanted to—”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” I told her.
My guess was James had been watching the condo, maybe for hours, waiting for us either to go to bed or to come down before he made his move. When the lights went out and we didn’t show, he waited a little while and then came up.
A wispy fog turned the road a glossy black in the head lights. There was no one behind us. No headlights as far back as I could see in the Cherokee’s rearview mirror. I was on my home territory, and James wasn’t. We wouldn’t hit a major highway until we got to Frederick, and he had no reason to believe we’d be heading north.
I began to breathe again.
It wasn’t like Cara to be quiet. I knew the conflict was coming, but first she had a battle or two to resolve in her own mind, one that I suspected centered around James Lowell.
“What would James or anyone else want with us?” she finally asked. “What do we know that could be of value to anyone?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m not about to let anyone ask us face-to-face.”
She’d ask again, I knew that for certain, but for now she let it go.
“How’d you find that exit in the basement?” she asked.
“Your dad,” I told her. “When I moved in, he went over every inch of that building, dragging me along.”
It was a maintenance exit, a solid door with a bar-activated latch, always locked from the outside, never from the inside. It opened beyond the fence, on the back side of the building.
“He wanted you to be safe, Mom.”
Then he should have occupied his time with safe activities.
“Damn,” she said for probably the fifth time and shifted in her seat. “I shouldn’t have let James take my bag. I don’t even have anything to put my contacts in. No eyeliner. Crap. He got my cell phone.”
“You did exactly the right thing. If you hadn’t left the bag, he wouldn’t have let us go. Put your seat back. Sleep if you can,” I told her.
“Not bloody likely. Want to fill me in on where we’re going? Please tell me you have a plan, one that doesn’t include Great-Aunt Rachel and Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.”
“We’re heading for York, Pennsylvania. I’ve got directions in my purse, but we won’t need them for another hour. I can get us to the outskirts.” I pushed my hair off my forehead. The humidity had made it frizz out of control.
“Why there?”
“Because I’ve known Patrice Hudson more than half my life, and I haven’t seen her but twice in the past ten years. What’s more, she’s the only one I know who will understand.”
“You must be high on something if you think anybody’s going to understand what’s going on. I was at your condo, and I sure as hell don’t understand. Who is this Patrice? Wasn’t she a friend of yours from college?” Cara asked.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road. Driving was horrendous. “It will take them a long time to find her, and by the time they do—if they do—we’ll be gone and all trace that we were ever there will be gone, too.”
“What about her family? Won’t they resent us barging in on them?”
“Patrice is twice divorced. Her only son died in a boating accident in New York Harbor. His boat capsized. His body was never found.”
“No.” The word was uttered so low, I almost didn’t catch it. I stole a glance at Cara. For all her bravado, she was tender-hearted, moved to tears at even the thought of another person’s pain.
“After it happened, Patrice moved to York from Manhattan. She withdrew from the world. No TV. No newspaper. No computer. She actually writes letters.”
“Does she have a telephone?”
Her only answer was a sigh, her signal she’d had more than enough of my “precautions.”
“You’ll like Patrice,” I offered.
“Mom, I have a life. Friends. A job. Maybe not the most prestigious job, but one that includes children who need my help. And a cat who depends on me to feed it and change its water and its litter. Tickets to see Pearl Jam next Friday night. Oh, damn! They were in my bag. I should have let Kristi hold them. She’s going to have one super hissy fit. We’ve waited over a year for them to play in D.C.”
I threw her a sidelong glance and found her hand with my own. “I’ll make it up to you,” I promised. I didn’t believe my words any more than she did. She drew back her hand.
I was doing one heck of a good job screwing up my kid’s life.
“You’ll get your life back. Pearl Jam will be back, too,” I promised.
She slumped down in her seat, turned away and stared out the window into the darkness. I’d had years to adjust to the idea that our lives were fragile, that they could change at any moment. She’d had less than a day to consider it. I suspected she was crying, not sleeping.
For the next hour and a half she didn’t speak.
The yard was lit up with security lights. I drove the Jeep past a mailbox marked with a large 913 and into a gravel driveway. An old VW Vanagon was parked under the carport.
The house was a modest little rancher, probably fifty or so years old with a siding-and-brick front, located off a two-lane road eight miles west of York. It had belonged to Patrice’s parents. They’d died and she’d held on to the property. When her world had fallen apart, she’d come home.
I counted two outbuildings. The one not far to the left of the drive had a large door and looked like a garage of sorts. Good. We could put the Cherokee in that. I pulled past it and around to its side so that no one could see the Jeep from the road.
The other building, which looked like a converted small barn and stood a good twenty yards to the back, must be Patrice’s pottery studio. I wondered if she missed the glamor of the city, the art shows, the noise. As far as I knew, she’d never been back.
No Safe Place Page 4