by Dale Mayer
Noah looked at the manager. “Do you have cameras out here? Maybe you could check and see what and who did this.”
He looked at him, smiled. “I do, indeed,” he said. “Let me go check.” Before he left, the manager looked over at her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think you should be here right now.”
She frowned at him, looked at the flowers, then back at Noah. He was nodding. Her shoulders sagged.
The manager ushered them off the rooftop and headed to the stairs. They followed. He looked at them and said, “Are you coming this way?”
Noah nodded. “Yes, we like to take the stairs when we can.”
“Good, good,” he said. “I’ll go check security.” And he raced down the steps.
Noah turned to Di. “Well, do you want to go for a walk instead? We can sit out in the back of the hotel in the atrium. They also have a rooftop garden as well,” he said.
She shrugged. “Let’s just go back to our room.”
As they headed back to the room, they met two other people from the conference and were invited for drinks in the bar. She hesitated, then looked over at him. He just waited for her to make a decision. Finally she thanked the couple and declined. “I’ll just go back to my room to get some rest,” she said. And, with that, she continued toward her suite.
“Is that really what you want to do?”
“Well, I kept thinking that, if someone decapitated all those flowers as a warning to me,” she said, “I didn’t want to be around anybody else and get them hurt.”
“That’s really a smart way to think of it,” he said, and she felt the intensity of his gaze. “I know this is hard on you. But, even when the chips are down, you’re still thinking of others.”
“Usually I do. It’s harder now, looking for Maxwell everywhere,” she said.
As they reached the suite, Noah grabbed her hand. He put a finger against his lips and pointed, and she stared, seeing that the door was ever-so-slightly ajar. She looked up at Noah, who just shook his head. He waited, tucked her up against the wall, and gently pushed open the door.
She heard no sounds inside as he did so, and she wasn’t sure what he was expecting. If somebody had broken in, chances were they were long gone, and, if they had a visitor in there now, she didn’t know if he would jump out and attack them right at the doorway or not. All she knew was that she wasn’t budging. Noah sent a message to somebody by reaching out and pressing something in his ear; he must still be connected to Rory.
At that, she looked around, wondering if the other men would appear. Sure enough, a few minutes later, while they stood silently at the doorway, Rory showed up. Then the two men—one high, one low—went inside and did a quick search, while she stood in the hallway. They came back almost immediately and ushered her inside. As soon as she stepped inside, she stopped and cried out in shock, “Why? Why all the destruction?”
“Another message,” Noah said quietly.
“Well, I’m getting damn tired of the messages,” she snapped. “And the cryptic nature of it. He might be pissed at Levi, but he doesn’t need to keep hassling me like this.”
“Well, I suggest we make the transfer tonight, unless you have a problem with that.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, as she turned to look at him.
“If you still want to stay here overnight, we’ll have to change rooms,” he said. “The other option is that we go straight to Levi’s tonight.”
“Let’s go to Levi’s tonight,” she said immediately.
He nodded. “And I have to get the manager back up here as well.”
“Oh, great,” she said, sagging down onto the couch, which had only one cushion left. “He’ll probably blame me for this too.”
“I don’t think he blamed you for the flowers,” he said, quietly explaining to Rory what happened. “I don’t think he blamed you. I think he was every bit as shocked and upset by it as we were.”
“That’s true,” she said. “He was obviously very involved in the creation of that garden and was heartbroken at the devastation.”
“And nothing that you saw there pointed to anything?” Rory asked.
“I phoned the manager and stayed with her, instead of looking around,” Noah said, “but I wish I had.”
“Well, you stay here with Di,” Rory said. “I’ll go up and take a look.” With that, he quickly disappeared.
The manager wasn’t long in arriving, and, when he saw the room, he was just as upset as he was about the flower garden. He kept making comments about it, looking at them suspiciously, after yet another incident of destruction of property.
Finally she turned to him and said, “I can’t stay here another night,” she said, her tone stiff. “Your hotel is obviously not safe. The security is dismal.”
He looked at her in shock, then immediately offered excuses and assistance in getting her another room.
“No,” she said, “I can’t do that. I’ve stayed at this hotel chain in various cities over a lot of years,” she said, “and this is the first time I’ve had such trouble.”
“That’s not fair,” he said. “We’ve never had this kind of problem before.”
“Maybe not before,” she said, “but you definitely have a problem now.” She held her ground, and, looking at Noah, she said, “Let’s move to Levi’s tonight.”
He nodded and said, “I’ll make that happen.”
*
Noah made it happen all right. By the time Rory returned from the rooftop deck, his face grim, they were packed up and checking out. She would get a credit for the one night, and the settlement to be done for the damage to her personal items would be handled soon. She couldn’t even tell if anything was missing in all this mess.
Noah looked over at her. “Maybe you can give them an itemized list tomorrow.”
She nodded and looked at the manager. “I really am very upset about this whole thing,” she said, “and I need to leave.”
“That’s fine. I understand,” he said. “Contact us tomorrow, and we’ll discuss taking care of your losses.”
She nodded. As they walked down toward the lower level, where the vehicle was parked, she asked Rory, “What did you find upstairs on the roof?”
“What makes you think I found anything?” he said in a cagey voice.
She snorted. “It was pretty evident from the look on your face.”
“Just a message for Levi.”
She groaned. “And we didn’t see it, right?”
“No.”
“What was the message?”
“I’m coming for you.”
“But,” Dianne said, “Levi wasn’t mentioned by name?”
Rory and Noah shared a look.
“Is Levi still in town?” she asked them.
“He was this whole evening,” Rory said. “He was at your workshop.”
She stared at him in shock. “You’re kidding. I didn’t even see him,” she said.
“He was visible but invisible.”
“Jesus, if I didn’t see him, what are the chances that Maxwell did?”
“Oh, I think Maxwell saw Levi,” Noah said, Rory nodding. “Levi didn’t stay all that long. He just put in an appearance, then Stone came to wander around.”
“So, Maxwell should know Levi and Stone are here,” Dianne said. “So the message was about me, not Levi? So Maxwell is still coming after me?”
“That’s a message in itself,” Noah said. “Basically saying, he can do what he wants, whenever he wants to do it.”
“That’s pretty arrogant,” she said.
“Yep. So now we move the fight to Levi’s compound.”
“And are any of Levi’s people still in town Maxwell can come after?”
“Several of them, but it won’t be you.”
From the look on her face, she was sure Noah could read her expression—that she both hated and loved that answer. “I know it’s wrong of me,” she said, “but I’m really happy to hear that.”
“It’
s not wrong of you at all,” Rory exclaimed. “We don’t want you to deal with any more of this.”
“And I don’t want to deal with any more of it either,” she said. “It’s just that this guy is so focused on hurting Levi that he doesn’t care what method he uses.”
“These guys seeking revenge are like that,” Rory said quietly. “They focus on one thing and one thing only, and everything else is collateral damage.”
“Well, I don’t consider myself collateral damage to anybody,” she said in a hard voice. “I still keep thinking of it over and over in my mind, wishing I had done something different or found a way to get back at him. I just—it’s still something I’ll have to deal with.”
“Exactly why we’ll move you to Levi’s now,” Noah said. “You’ve finished up what you needed to do for the conference, so now we’ll get you back there again.”
Rory drove, with Noah sitting in the front passenger seat, as she sat in the back.
“Is there a reason why I’m in the back seat?” she asked in a conversational tone.
“Yes,” Noah said, before Rory had a chance to explain.
“Okay, and what’s that reason?”
“I’m keeping an eye on the vehicle following us.”
She froze.
“And,” he said, “don’t look now.”
“As soon as you say that,” she said in a furious whisper, “all I can think about is turning around.”
“I know,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I want you to.”
“Dammit,” she said, “you can’t just say something like that to somebody. You know what it’s like.”
“I do know what it’s like,” he said in a cheerful voice.
Rory laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about him,” he said to her. “Noah likes to tease.”
“I’ve noticed. He does way too much of it,” she announced.
“Ha,” Rory said. “You’re just as bad.”
She thought about it and then said, “Okay, maybe you’re right there.”
Rory chuckled. “Glad to see you two are getting along so well.”
Noah rolled his eyes at that. “Don’t go there, man.”
“Definitely don’t go there,” she warned.
“Why is that?” Rory asked, looking at her through the rearview mirror.
She groaned. “Because he’s already asked me out on a date.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Or maybe not. Maybe you turned him down, and he’s struggling with rejection.”
“Ha. I doubt he ever gets rejected,” she said.
“I do too,” Noah said, turning to look at her. He studied her to see a worried look in her eyes. Immediately his attitude softened. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
She sagged and looked up at him, and he caught a sheen of tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We were really hoping to keep this ugliness away from you.”
“I think that’s one of the problems in life,” she said. “The more you try to keep somebody from seeing the ugliness, the more the ugliness overwhelms the world, and you have no way to avoid it.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that bad,” he said, “but we’ll be home soon.”
“Except for the fact that whoever is following us is probably coming home with us too.”
She’d sunk down low enough that her head didn’t show above the seat. “Are you trying to hide?”
“What if he’s got a gun?” she countered.
“Good point,” he said. “Glad to see you keeping your head.”
“Not only am I keeping it,” she said, “I want to make sure I’m keeping all of it.”
He blinked at that for a few minutes and then grinned at her. “Got it. Listen. If you want to lie down sideways, we’ve still got another twenty minutes, if not longer, before we get home.”
“Fine,” she muttered and stretched out sideways.
As soon as they hit the long stretch of the more deserted highway about fifteen minutes from the small town outside the compound, a single shot was fired. Noah barely even heard it, but the tire blew almost immediately. The vehicle fishtailed from side to side. He immediately looked for the following vehicle but saw no sign of it. Behind him on the back seat, Di struggled to even stay on the seat. “Are you okay?” he asked her, as Rory got control of the vehicle.
“I will be,” she said, as the big truck slowed and rolled to a stop on the side of the road. “I guess we didn’t expect that to happen.”
“It’s not so much expected, but you have to be prepared for the unexpected,” he said. “We’ve already radioed to the compound, and we have help coming.”
She nodded slowly. “But that doesn’t mean it’ll be in time.”
Just then, a second shot rang out, and, hitting the driver’s window, it bounced off.
She stared at him.
“Remember? That’s why we took this vehicle. Bulletproof glass.”
She took a long slow deep breath. “You could have told me that before I laid down back here.”
“No,” he said, “it made you feel that much safer.”
She nodded. “It did, but, if I’d realized it was bulletproof glass, it would have felt that much safer still.”
“I told you earlier.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know if you believed me.”
“No,” she said, “I just didn’t remember.”
“Well, we just reminded you again.”
She groaned. “Are you always this difficult?”
“Are you?”
At that, Rory was chuckling again, even as he pulled a handgun from the glove box. “Do we have anything longer?”
“Not here,” Noah said, “coming though.”
“Good,” he said. “What about you?”
“Just a handgun.”
“But,” Dianne added, “Ice can fly her chopper here faster than anybody can drive here.” She got excited at that prospect.
Noah and Rory both shook their heads. “The sniper can hear the chopper long before it shows up, and so he’ll be on the move.”
“And then we’re just waiting? Is that all we’ll do?”
“Nope,” Rory said. “Ice has other toys, like a drone if needed. But remember, we are also hooked up to satellite feeds, so she and Stone will track down the shooter and will relay that to the guys on the ground. In the meantime, I’ll get out and disappear into the woods, track this guy on foot.”
“There are no woods,” she said franticly. “News flash, there’re no woods in this area.”
He looked at her, grinned, and said, “No, that’s very true,” he said, “but there are lots of shadows.” And, with that, he disappeared.
She stared after him. “Why didn’t the shooter shoot him?”
“The only time he could have got him was when the door opened. Beyond that, Rory is incredibly stealthy.”
“And we’re now just sitting ducks.”
“Well, the vehicle is locked, and we’re inside bulletproof glass, and we have help coming.”
She kept shaking her head. “That’s not good enough.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to leave,” she said, her voice serious and low.
He looked at her and said, “Where would you like to go?”
“Out of the vehicle.”
He thought about it and said, “Okay, we can do that. Some taller grass is over there, if you want. We won’t hide very much though.”
“No,” she said, “like I want to be out of the way, out of sight, and safe.”
“I got it,” he said, “but we are seriously in the best position we can be in out here in this stretch of flat ground.”
“Not if he’s got something bigger than a handgun or a rifle,” she whispered.
He looked at her, and she was dead serious, probably thinking of her all-too-recent attack in that rental car. “We can leave,” he said, “and I can take you into the shadows and keep you safe, if that’ll make you feel bet
ter.”
She immediately nodded. “It really would,” she said. “I’m starting to panic in here. It feels like a coffin, not a safe place.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll come around to get you on this side of the vehicle, since the last shot hit the driver’s side.” He quickly unlocked the front door and then added, “Now I want you to stay as low as you can, and we’ll run up behind that little rise over there. The shot came from the far side, but we can’t be sure he’s still there. So get ready.” At her silent nod, he slipped out on his side, closing the door quietly, none of the interior lights turning on with the door opening, and he pulled her out of the back seat. He whispered, “Three, two, go.” And the two of them raced, bent over, as fast as they could, until they came to the small hillock, where they both threw themselves to the ground.
He cursed softly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lost my Bluetooth.”
“Uh-oh. You’re not connected to Rory any longer?”
“Nope. Gotta wing it for now.”
She lay here gasping, rolled over onto her back. “I don’t know if leaving the truck and running here was a stupid thing or a smart thing to do.”
“Well, it’ll be a fifty-fifty decision,” he said, “depending on what’s happening now.”
“Yet you let me make that decision. Why?”
“Because I felt uneasy too,” he said. “Instinct was telling me to run, and sometimes you just have to listen to that.” As they sat here together, staring up at the stars, the silence around them was eerie.
“It feels …” And then she couldn’t even get the words out.
“I know.” He reached across, grabbed her fingers, and said, “Just hang on. We have help coming. Remember that.”
“I know,” she said. “I just have that horrible sense that something’s about to happen.”
Boom! The vehicle exploded right in front of them. She went to sit up, but he pushed his arm across her chest and held her down.
“You need to say down, especially right now,” he said. “That’s likely to bring all kinds of people here, and they’ll be looking for movement.”
“Unless they think we’re still in the vehicle.”
“We want the bad guys to think we’re in the vehicle. So let’s not do anything to show them that we’re not.”