Love Inspired Suspense July 2015 #2 (50 page)

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Another chuckle. “Just stop beating yourself up for decking me back at the motel. Please. We both misunderstood what was going on, you weren't fighting dirty and it's not your fault the rail broke. Any decent guy who I'd respect would've done exactly what you did if they thought someone they cared about was in trouble. They just probably wouldn't have done it anywhere near as well. Besides, you helped me maintain cover, which is important because I'll need this identity intact even after the case is closed. I've been this guy on a couple different operations so far, as he's a handy cover to keep around.”

They kept walking. The ground was slick with mud. Wind buffeted against their bodies. Lightning flashed in the sky above their heads. They started to jog. A tent blew past them, only to get stuck in a tree a few yards away. He could see glimpses of flattened, scattered campsites within the woods. Presumably their occupants had fled to the safety of the motel.

Unbidden, Olivia's face filled his mind. She was like a storm. Beautiful. Powerful. Wild.
If I was strong enough, I'd let myself love her. But she could turn me and my life inside out without even trying.

They reached Rita's trailer. Trent banged on the door. “Hey! It's me. Anyone awake in there?”

Hawk opened the door. He took one glance at Daniel and swore.

“No way.” Hawk slammed the door again. Trent rolled his eyes.

The door was pretty flimsy, Daniel noted. He could probably break in if he needed to. Just hoped he wouldn't have to. “Look,” Daniel said, “I'm not here to cause trouble. I just want to see Sarah.”

“She doesn't want to see you!” Hawk sounded drunk. There was the murmur of voices inside.

Daniel leaned against the trailer wall, feeling suddenly too tired to stand. It had been the longest night of his life. He'd never felt so defeated by circumstances.

You can't control everything, Daniel
. Olivia's words flickered through the back of his mind.
You have such a huge heart... But Sarah's not Mona's little baby anymore... She's going to be whoever she chooses to be, right or wrong, no matter how hard you try to protect her.

Daniel took a deep breath and prayed.
Lord, I'm tired. I'm sore. I'm soaked. All I can think about is the argument I just had with Olivia. I don't have the patience for Hawk right now. Please help me figure out what I can control and what I need to let go.

“Hey, Rita?” he said. “It's Daniel. Look, I know you've never much liked me. To be honest, it's mutual. Definitely, I could've been nicer to you. I'm sorry about that. We both probably made things harder for Sarah sometimes than it needed to be.” Silence fell within the trailer. No response. Hopefully she was listening. “Hopefully we can agree that we both want what's best for Sarah, even if we can't agree on what that is. I don't know if she told you, but someone broke into my house tonight and tried to kill us. I'm worried sick about her. I don't know if she's hurt. I don't know if she managed to call the police before the cell phones went out. Please, Rita. I'm not ordering. I'm asking.”

There was a long pause. The door opened. Rita stood there. There was a scowl on her face, but at least the door was open. Hawk sat behind her at the small plastic table.

“Thank you.” He stepped inside and out of the rain.

“Whatever.” Rita rolled her eyes. She walked down to a closed door at the end of the camper. “You've got five minutes. But she's not going anywhere with you.”

Trent followed them in. He dropped into a seat beside Hawk. “There's a bad storm brewing, you know. You'll all be safer in the motel. You don't want to get flooded out.”

Rita rapped on the door. “Sarah? Baby? Daniel's here. Just wants to make sure you're all right.” She glanced back at Daniel. “She's mad at us. She wanted to go partying with some of the younger guys. But we knew they'd be shooting up. Hawk and I told her we weren't letting her get mixed up with drugs under our watch, and that she had to stay put with us.” She rolled her eyes. “We're not the total monsters you think we are.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, I don't know about the police. I didn't know someone had attacked your place. She didn't tell me what she was doing here and I don't ask questions. She did use my phone to try to call someone, though.” She turned the handle and pushed the door open. “Sarah?”

Rita screamed.

The camper window was open.

The tiny bedroom was empty.

Sarah was gone.

FIFTEEN

O
livia lay on a vinyl couch in what passed as the living room area of a motel suite. The laptop was curled between her knees. After paying a sizable fee to cover the needed repairs to the door Daniel had damaged, they'd managed to move into a slightly larger, and far more expensive, pair of adjoining rooms farther down the floor.

The sound of the shower filtered in from the adjacent room. Chloe had gone to get changed into something more comfortable than the getup she'd worn as a disguise. Olivia had intended to try to sleep. Instead, she was clicking through photos.

The download was going a lot slower than they'd expected. Apparently the last couple of reporters to use the camera hadn't emptied it and the computer was downloading everything, starting with a few hundred photos of flower shows and arguing politicians.

Finally the photos from Brian's death had started to open. There were thousands of them. The camera had been set to keep clicking ten times a second once her finger had hit the button, and she'd gotten far more pictures than she'd expected.

Funny how the camera also seemed to pick up things she hadn't consciously noticed. First there was Brian coming through a door. He was looking around as if he was expecting to see someone. He'd been expecting company. Then he glanced behind him.
Hang on...
Was that a shadow or had there been a person behind him in the stairwell? Someone tall. Next picture, Brian was looking back again. His mouth was moving.

He was talking to someone.

She sat up and pulled the notebook out of her back pocket. The cover was damp, but the pages were dry. She flipped to a fresh one and started taking notes.

Brian Leslie hadn't been alone when he'd entered that garage. Someone else had come down the stairs with him. Someone who hadn't entered the parking garage. Also, Brian had clearly looked around as though he'd been expecting someone to meet them.

Photos kept downloading. She could see the Faceless Crew enter the frame now. Three figures, all in black, each with the featureless faces like a black fencing mask. A shiver shot through her body.

A doorknob rattled. A hooded face appeared at the window. Her hand rose to her mouth to stifle a scream.

“Olivia? Hey? You in there?” The voice was male, uncertain and familiar.

“Ricky?” She leaped to her feet and threw the door open. The young photographer tumbled in. She shut the door behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm staying here.” The photographer's earnest eyes opened wide. “After I talked to you on the phone, I called my mom and dad to let them know I was still on my way. Mom was all, ‘No, no. It's going to rain a lot. You'd better not drive.' Even then I tried driving a bit, but the road was just a mess and no one was getting anywhere. So I made my way back here. Then I saw you heading up the stairs, and the hotel manager said he thought this was your room. What are you doing here?”

Her mouth opened and then shut again. It was not as if she didn't trust him. The story just felt so long she just didn't know where to start.

“Oh! You found a laptop!” Ricky dashed over to the computer and picked it up. “Whoa! Those are some seriously good pictures there. Wait until Vince gets a load of these! Looks as if you just saved both our jobs.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Only that was a cop's laptop Ricky was now clicking through. But somehow it didn't feel right to blow Trent's cover without asking. “My sister's here, in the other room. That's not my machine. It belongs to the guy she was with.”

He kept skimming through photos. “So is this guy going to email us a copy?”

“I'm sorry, Ricky. We might not get a copy of those pictures. Things got kind of complicated. We might not even be getting a story out of this.”

“But this story was supposed to help us keep our jobs.” His hands tightened on the laptop as if he was ready to clutch it to his chest and run. “I blew off a weekend assignment to come up here and help you land this interview. I lied to Vince because I thought you were going to pull it off. I trusted you.”

“I'm sorry.” She'd suspected he might have skipped a weekend assignment, but had no idea he'd outright lied to Vince. “I should have asked if you had another assignment. In fact, I should have trusted Vince and cleared this with him, instead of being impulsive and reckless and just rushing up here.”

I should have stopped and thought things through. Now, because I didn't, I've potentially hurt Ricky. Maybe even cost him his job.

The door flew open. Daniel ran in. Followed by Trent. Suddenly everyone was talking at once.

“Daniel!” She jumped up. “Where's Sarah?”

“Who's that?” Trent asked. “And why is he touching my computer?”

“Hey, chill, dude.” Ricky raised his hands. “I work for the newspaper, all right?”

Daniel's face was white. His knuckles clenched into two fists at his sides. Instinctively, she ran to him and slid one hand onto his arm. “Daniel, what's going on? Are you okay? Where is Sarah?”

“I don't know.” He threw his hands in the air. “I don't have any idea anymore! Apparently Sarah had some kind of argument with Rita and Hawk and took off. She went to sulk in a back bedroom and sneaked out the window—they didn't even realize she was gone.” He dropped down on the floor against the wall and sat with his head in his hands. “I give up. I don't know what to do. I can't protect her if she runs from me. She could be anywhere now. Out there, in a storm, with I-don't-know-who, doing I-don't-know-what.”

Trent and Ricky were now arguing about the pictures. Something told her the future of her career might hang in the balance. But instead, she tuned them out and sat down on the floor beside Daniel. “It's okay. She's going to be okay.”

“You can't know that.” He looked up at her. “Even if she does turn up safe, just partying in some motel room with someone, next time she runs away I'll have even less ability to stop her. In a few months, my guardianship will be over, and I'll have no control over what she does. I've failed her. I tried so hard to be there for Sarah, just like I tried so hard to love Mona. But I let them down.”

“No, you didn't.” She slid her head onto his shoulder and felt the ruffle of his hair on her cheek. “It doesn't matter how good a carpenter you are. You'll never, ever build a wall safe enough to protect someone who doesn't want to be protected.”

“Olivia?” Chloe's voice cut the air with a steady calm that sent shivers down her sister's spine. “We've got a situation.”

And it was bad. Whatever it was, it was bad. That was Chloe's “there's a gunman behind you or a bear in the campsite” tone of voice.

“What's wrong?” She leaped to her feet. Trent stopped talking midword and shot Ricky a glare that implied if he didn't shut up quick there'd be trouble.

The room fell silent.

Chloe was standing in the doorway between the two rooms, dressed in a tracksuit with her long hair falling wet around her shoulders. Her face was the palest Olivia had ever seen it. Only the anger burning in her eyes gave away her composure. A walkie-talkie crackled in her hand.

Chloe held it out toward her sister. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

Olivia crossed the room, feeling her feet drag like lead with every step. Chloe squeezed her shoulder and put her lips close to her ear, and whispered so faintly she could barely make out the words. “It's going to be okay.”

Chloe held the walkie-talkie up to her sister and pushed the button.

“Hello? It's Olivia. I'm here.”

“Hey, sunshine. So nice to talk to you again.”

Her knees shook. The voice was deep, gravelly and cruel. It was the voice of the man who'd stuck a gun in her face and forced her into a car. It was the voice that had threatened her on the phone at Daniel's. It was the voice she feared would always haunt her nightmares.

She pressed her lips together to keep back the panicked tears that filled her eyes.

Daniel crossed the floor in three strides. His arm slid around her waist. His hand cupped the small of her back, holding her firm. She closed her eyes and drank in the strength of her sister to her right and Daniel on her left.

Her voice was steady. “I said, I'm here. Who are you? What do you want?”

“You have something I want.” The voice crackled. “I have something you want. I think we should meet and make a trade.”

Daniel tightened his grip. Trent gave her a thumbs-up, then rolled his fingers in a “keep going” motion.

“What do you want?”

“You took certain photos I don't think you should have. You're going to give them back to me.”

Her eyes slid to the laptop in Ricky's hands.
He wants the photos?

“There's a little fairground on the very north corner of the property.” The voice kept going. The raspy tone somehow sounded so terrifying despite being obviously faked. “Come through the woods. Stay off the roads. It should take you about half an hour to walk there, if you're good and quick. Meet me there in twenty-five. Don't be late.”

She closed her eyes. “And why should I do that?”

The walkie-talkie crackled again. Then Sarah's panicked voice filled the room. “Olivia? Please. Do what he wants. Or else he's going to kill me.”