No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (21 page)

“Tom had a gun?” In all the
time we had been together, I had never seen a gun in his
possession.

“There’s more bad news,
Kim,” Mac said gently. “Your former boyfriend made some serious
enemies. Whoever killed him tortured him first, then set his body
on fire. It was still smoldering when the police arrived. You know
what that means?”

I looked at him expectantly.
He took my hand, grabbed my laptop and my purse, and led me to the
front door.

“It means we have to get the
hell out of here pronto, before the bad guys come back. They’re
probably on their way back here now.”

“Why?” I left the question
open, seeking any kind of answers I could find.

“Tom may not have given them
what they wanted. That means they’ll try to go after you next,
because you were Tom’s girlfriend. Come on. I’m going to take you
to a safe house.”

“A safe house?”

“I’m going to protect you,
Kim. You have to trust me.” Everything was upside down. Nothing
made any sense. Mac opened the passenger door of his silver
Lacrosse and nudged me into the seat. He ran around to the other
side of the car and slipped into the seat beside me. The car engine
roared to life and he quickly backed out of the
driveway.

“Where are we going?” I
asked.

“It’s okay, Kimmy. Just sit
there. I’ll look out for you.” Mac reached across me, punched the
button for the glove compartment, reached in, and pulled out a
handgun. “Here. Hold this.”

“What?” The shock shot
through me, stunning me with a power that left me weak. Mac put the
gun in my lap as he raced onto the interstate.

“The safety’s on, so just
hold it. It won’t fire.” Mac was looking in the rearview mirror. He
accelerated, his foot pressing the pedal down to the floor. I heard
the engine engage and felt the rush as we went from forty to eighty
in a few seconds.

“Crap!” Mac grimaced. “Hold
on.”

“What? Why?”

“We have a tail. I need to
lose it.” The next thing I knew, Mac was hitting the exit at high
speed. We were flying down the main street. “They might have put a
tracker on my car, so we’ll have to get as far away as possible
before we check it. Get out your cell phone.”

I did as Mac told me. My
fingers trembled.

“We’ve got to turn off your
GPS, in case they’re using that to track us.” Mac went through the
process, directing me through each step. We cut through the town,
traveling down the small, interconnecting roads until we got to the
high school.

“Ready?” Mac asked
me.

“For what?” I wanted to
know.

“I’ll bet you never did this
in high school, Kimmy!” With that, Mac drove through the gates of
Northford High, raced across the front parking lot, braked for the
speed bumps, and made it to the football field with the lights off.
Still cruising at a decent speed, he drove the car onto the grass,
up to the fence, and stopped at the chain link gate. In seconds, he
was out of the car. He pulled something from his pocket, and I saw
a small light come on. Mac held the tiny flashlight in his mouth as
he picked the lock. Once undone, he held onto the padlock, opened
the gate, and came back to the car. Behind the wheel again, he
drove us through, stopped, and got out to relock the
gate.

“Now for some fun.” The next
thing I knew, we were crossing the football field to the second
gate, where Mac once again replaced the padlock when we were on the
other side of the fence. We traveled down the gravel track to the
maintenance garage, and from there, we followed a dirt road that
ended in the woods.

“Hold on, Kimmy.” Mac
navigated the bumpy, narrow trail that hugged the line of trees.
Five minutes later, we came to a clearing and I could see lights
ahead. It looked like the highway.

“How did you know this was
here?” I asked Mac. He gave me a mischievous grin in the
darkness.

“Hometown advantage. We used
to go joy-riding here when they were putting the highway in when I
was a senior. Many is the night I used to cut through like this,
before they fenced in the football field. We used to hold drag
races here on Friday and Saturday nights.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised to
see this side of Mac. “How did you learn to pick a
padlock?”

“That’s another story
altogether,” he told me. “Maybe I’ll get to it one of these days.
Right now, we have to get the hell out of here.”

Mac rolled the car to down
the incline and onto the side of the highway, slowly getting up to
speed. When there was a break in traffic, he hit the accelerator
and pulled into the slow lane.

“Now what?” I
asked.

“We get ourselves to the
airport,” Mac said.

Chapter Nine --

“Why are we going to the
airport?” I asked. Mac was easily doing eighty miles an hour as we
took the exit to pick up 395 going north.

“I need to ditch this car,”
he explained. As we left one highway for the next, completely
changing direction, I noticed Mac was intently watching the rear
view mirror.

“Something wrong?” I
inquired. The gun was still in my hands. It felt warm to the touch
now, and I almost forgot it was there.

“No, I just like to make
sure.”

“You’ve done this
before?”

“Once or twice,” he
acknowledged. Mac seemed electrified by the challenge.

Twenty minutes later, we
pulled into the U-Park-It lot. Mac took a ticket from the
self-serve kiosk, swung to the left, and parked in the closest
empty space he could find.

“I’ll take that,” he said,
indicating the weapon. I put it carefully in his waiting hand.
“Come on. We have to move, Kimmy.”

Mac reached into the glove
compartment and pulled out a holster, which he fastened to his
ankle before inserting the gun. He covered it up with his pant
leg.

“You don’t really think
you’re going to get on an airplane with that, do you?”

“We’re not flying out of
here, Kimmy. We’re driving.”

“Oh.” With that, Mac took my
hand. “Think you can hustle your bustle?”

We took off at a trot, down
Route 10. My pocketbook felt heavy with the laptop tucked inside.
Mac kept up a steady pace. I looked ahead, unsure of where we were
going. We passed restaurants, an off-track betting parlor, a
billiards hall, and a ten-pin bowling alley, before we came to
Ovation Car Rental. We ran through the gates and up to the self
check-in desk. Mac selected his car of choice, ran his credit card
through the scanner, and the receipt popped out seconds later. Then
we made a mad dash to Row 34 to grab the black Jeep
Cherokee.

“Hop in,” he directed me. I
stepped up and slid into the seat beside him. “I had hoped I would
never have to tell you this, but circumstances warrant it. Kimmy,
what did Mae tell you about the work I do?”

“Not much,” I admitted.
“Just that you work in finance.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I
do a little more than work in finance.” Mac headed into the city.
We were no longer speeding and I could see that he was less
tense.

“What does that
mean?”

“Promise me you won’t freak
out.”

“Now there’s a guarantee
that I will, if I ever heard one!” I couldn’t imagine what he had
to tell me. He cleared his throat, gave a cough, and dropped a
bombshell on me.

“Tom and I have something in
common. We’re both in the intelligence business.”

“You’re a spy?” Even as I
heard myself say those words, they sounded like something from a
movie.

“Technically, I’m more of a
law enforcement guy. I work for Interpol. But I handle financial
cases.”

“There’s no KLPG
Financial?”

“No, the company exists.
They actually handle international funds. I’m under contract, as
part of my cover. That means I actually handle some accounts, so I
look legitimate.”

“Oh,” I sighed. I felt like
I had been hit by a Mack truck and run over. Everything I believed
was true had been false, right down to the boy I had known all my
life. “Where are we going?”

“To a secure government
building. I want to keep you safe, Kimmy, until the bad guys find
what they’re looking for and leave.”

“You think they’ll
leave?”

“Sure. The only reason they
broke into your home was to find the items Tom had marked. We still
don’t know his real name, by the way.” Mac turned right on Downey
Street. “We think they beat up Jim because they assumed he was
helping you and Tom, so he knew where the items were hidden. We
intercepted the moving van on the highway, examined the items, and
put our guys on the truck. It should pull into Jenkins Beach at
about two today. The men are going to load everything into my
boathouse and take off. We expect the bad guys to just go in and
take what they need. Since we already have the numbers off the
pieces, we’ve already located the bank account in question. It was
just a matter of taking the router number off the charm
bracelet.”

“I don’t understand, Mac.” I
looked at him as he drove. He no longer seemed apprehensive or
nervous.

“The charm bracelet
contained a bank routing number for the account Tom used to get
paid for stealing the simulation training program technology and
other technology thefts. Judging from the amount of money that
seems to be in the account, he’s been paid five times. There is
more than half a million dollars in the account.”

“Holy mother of pearl!” I
was stunned. How could any of this be real? One former boyfriend
was an identity thief, a spy, and a murder victim. My childhood
friend was a secret agent, working for an international law
enforcement agency. I’m a cookbook author, I reminded myself. I
tweak recipes. I cook. I pay my bills on time and I always return
my library books. “Where are we going?”

“Federal
building.”

We spent the next ten
minutes in silence as Mac wove his way through the city. At
Washington, he turned left, went half a block, and pulled up to a
garage that was unmarked. Thirty seconds later, the automatic door
opened and we drove through. Two floors down, Mac parked in a space
by the entrance to the stairwell.

Ten minutes later, we were
in a windowless room, gathered around monitors that were aimed at
Adelaide’s house, Mac’s driveway, and the boathouse in Jenkins
Beach. It was going on three in the morning.

“We don’t expect any action
for several hours,” said an older man in a golf shirt and shorts.
“Why don’t you guys go get some rest. We’ll call you if anything
happens.”

Mac led me down a long
hallway to Room 806. Opening the door, he stepped aside.

“Welcome to the Fed Bed and
Breakfast,” he grinned. “Lumpy beds, coffee that stinks, and stale
donuts, but at least no one will try to kill you while you
sleep.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,”
I told him. My mind was moving at ninety miles an hour, reliving
every minute of the last several hours.

“Come here,” said Mac,
sitting on the edge of one of the bunk beds. “And watch your
head.”

I did, lying back and
letting him hug me as the swirl of conflicting emotions and terror
settled slowly. As we lay on that narrow bed, I listened to the
rhythmic beat of his heart, my ear on his chest. He didn’t speak.
He didn’t try to tell me everything would be okay, that I was safe.
He just held me into I slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Just after nine the next
morning, the door opened and a young woman popped her head into the
room.

“Mr. Tweedie, Mr. Donovan
said to tell you six men arrived at the house in Northford with a
truck. They removed boxes from the house and put them in the truck.
We have a team on the road, so we’ll know where they are at all
times.”

“Thanks,” Mac said, sitting
up on the bunk. “We’ll be there shortly.”

“I’ll tell him.” She shut
the door on her way out.

“They stole my boxes?” I sat
up quickly, outraged. “Why?”

“They’re still looking for
the items with the numbers. Once they unpack them, the chances are
they will either steal them or leave them behind.”

“Why can’t you just arrest
them?” I demanded. “Don’t let them have the
information!”

“Kim, we need them to
complete the transaction. We know something went wrong and they
killed the fake Tom. They have a reason for chasing down the items,
and we need to let it happen.” Mac rubbed my shoulder. It was small
consolation. I felt violated. “Come on. Let’s go have some lousy
coffee and a big sugar rush from the gooey donuts.”

When we got to the
conference room, it was crowded. There were several people sitting
at the table, all working on laptops. There were others, making
phone calls, sitting in chairs in corners. On the center of the
table was a box of coffee and empty paper cups, along with a tray
of bagels and spreads. I poured Mac a cup of coffee and carried it
over to where he was busy with a group working at a board fixed to
the wall. They were diagramming a operational plan.