Treacherous Intent (2 page)

Elisabeth moved to the blinds and peeked out. “He’s not alone.” There was a gray Mercedes parked behind an ancient pickup truck she assumed was Liam’s—and three other cars had just pulled up.

The man at the front door looked Filipino, with dusky skin and dark hair, and he waved a shotgun around a bit dramatically. Elisabeth pegged him as a hothead who would shoot first and ask questions later. Behind him, at the base of the porch steps, stood a shorter Filipino man who looked nervous, making Elisabeth wonder if the hothead had been ordered to attack the shelter or if he had done that on his own initiative.

The two security guards had pulled their firearms, but they remained inside the security room. Elisabeth and Liam hovered in the conference room doorway. Her primary weapon was back in the shelter, and she was just about to pull her secondary weapon hidden under her pant leg when the hothead called out, “Where’s Joslyn? I want to see her! Or else bring out that Aday woman!”

A shiver spiked through Elisabeth at the mention of her name. Liam shot her a look of concern.

“That’s it!” The hothead kicked the door open.

Frank, the security guard closest to the door, jerked back as a piece of wood flew at his face. Bill, the younger guard, recklessly rushed the hothead to try to disarm him.

Liam moved to shield Elisabeth with his body just before the shotgun went off, the sound almost masking Bill’s gasp of pain.

Elisabeth peeked out the doorway to see Bill fall to the floor clutching his shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers.

Liam was up from the ground in a flash. Elisabeth followed suit, grabbing her gun from her ankle holster.

Liam elbowed the attacker in the face, making his grip on the shotgun loosen, and then knocked the weapon away. The man threw a punch, but Liam blocked it and grabbed the man in a wrestling move. The two of them spun and staggered in the small entry hallway, thudding against the walls.

The nervous man hesitated at the bottom of the porch stairs. Elisabeth opened the conference room window and fired her pistol into the air. The nervous man ducked and scurried to the open door of the gray Mercedes. “Stay right there,” she called out.

Men had emerged from the other three cars, but at her shot, they backed behind their open doors. She wished there was a way for her to help Liam, but the armed men in front had her full attention.

One Filipino man, dressed in an expensive gray suit, purple silk shirt and purple tie, stood up so that he was only partially covered by the door of the car he’d been driving. “We only want Joslyn.”

“She’s not here. Get in your cars and drive away. No one has to get hurt.”

The man’s handsome, arrogant face creased in a vicious smile. He obviously wanted to hurt someone—probably Joslyn. Elisabeth hadn’t spent much time with the young woman, but she’d been frightened, penniless and alone with the distinctive mark of a man’s fingers around her wrist and a strange-looking cut above her eye that Elisabeth guessed was from a ring.

Elisabeth should know. She herself had a strange-shaped scar above her left cheek.

Had that mark on Joslyn’s face been caused by the flashy gold ring glinting on this man’s finger?

“I’ve already called the police,” yelled Frank’s voice from the other window. He must be like her, crouched at the corner of the open window. Most of the time, Frank and Bill were needed for enraged ex-boyfriends or husbands who came to demand their women back—not standoffs with whole groups of Filipino men in expensive cars and silk shirts. Elisabeth realized that each of them wore something purple and gray.

It would take at least fifteen minutes for a policeman to arrive. Elisabeth hoped they could hold them off for that long—without anyone getting shot. Liam still struggled with the other man.

Suddenly, a body flew down the front porch and landed on the ground. Elisabeth caught a glimpse of dark hair and a purple sock as a pants leg rode up. It was the hothead.

Immediately, Liam was beside her on the other side of the window, holding a firearm—probably Bill’s. His dark blue eyes scanned the scene in front, his mouth tight. “How long before the police can arrive?” he whispered.

“At least fifteen minutes.”

“They won’t stay put forever.”

“We only want Joslyn,” the man with the ring repeated loudly.

“O’Neill was talking to
her.
” It was the nervous man, still huddled behind the Mercedes, speaking to his boss.

Elisabeth tried not to flinch. She had been half hoping the chaos would make the men forget about what Frank had told them. They obviously knew all about Liam being hired to find Joslyn.

And now they knew Elisabeth’s name. She was on the shelter’s website on the volunteer page—her picture, her full name, her website link, for anyone wanting to hire a private investigator who volunteered her services for a battered women’s shelter.

Then suddenly Elisabeth heard a faint wailing. A police car, ten minutes sooner than expected. The officer must have already been in the area.

The Filipino men heard it, too. Their leader called, “Let’s go,” to them in Tagalog, and they got back in their cars. Their driving was impeccably organized—within one minute they were heading down the driveway and turning away from the shelter just as a police car shot into view. It pursued them, red lights flashing.

Elisabeth reholstered her firearm, sagging against the wall next to the window.
This
was something she didn’t do every day—have a standoff with eight armed men.

Liam also relaxed, breathing heavily, and lowered his weapon. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Elisabeth studied his tall, muscular frame. He looked like he’d be carrying a few bruises, but thankfully there were no signs of blood.

He turned the full force of those dark blue eyes on her, and she found it hard to breathe. She hadn’t been attracted to any man in so long...ever since Cruise. The name of her ex-boyfriend was like a bucket of cold water, and Liam turned back into just a man—a handsome one, but not one to be trusted.

“I’m sorry.” Liam’s voice was hoarse.

“For almost getting me shot or for ruining my morning?” she quipped. She needed to get some distance from what had just happened. And from the emotional intensity in Liam’s eyes.

“Those men must have followed me. While I was driving, I thought I might have been tailed, but I wasn’t sure.”

“They had four cars here. They might have used a four-car team to tail you, which would have been harder to notice.”

Unease crept into his eyes. “But what’s worse is that they followed me straight to
you.
”

TWO

H
e’d just put an innocent woman in danger.

No, it was even worse than that. He’d put
two
innocent women in danger.

The fact that Liam had practically delivered Elisabeth to those men on a silver platter filled him with guilt as police officers swarmed around the women’s shelter. Some of the residents were outside now, looking fearfully at the broken front door, while police officers ranged around the property, going in and out of the house through side doors.

An ambulance had pulled up front and the injured security guard, Bill, was being patched up from where his shoulder had been grazed. The older security guard was giving Bill an earful about his foolhardy actions.

Detective Carter of the Sonoma Police Department had just arrived. Liam had worked with the man several times over the past few months, contracted by the Sonoma police to track people down.

“Did you catch any of the men who drove away?” he asked Detective Carter as the officer approached.

He shook his head, his thinning red-gold hair glinting in the sunlight. “Officer Fong happened to be nearby when the security guards hit their direct signal to dispatch, but the four cars split up as soon as they left the driveway. Officer Fong followed one of them but lost the car.”

Elisabeth sighed. “I guess it was too much to hope that we got a couple of them for questioning.”

“You don’t know who they were?” Detective Carter asked.

She shook her head. “I think they were Filipino. The leader spoke in Tagalog to his men.”

“What exactly did they want?” Detective Carter asked.

“They demanded that we turn over one of my clients,” Elisabeth said.

“What client?”

“She told me her name was Joslyn Flores.”

“A few days ago, a woman who called herself Patricia hired me to find her sister, Joslyn Bautista,” Liam said. “She’d disappeared a few weeks ago, and her ‘sister’ was worried.”

“Nothing about it seemed unusual?” Detective Carter asked.

Liam grimaced. The detective had often praised Liam’s gut instincts, but they seemed to have failed him this time. “She seemed sincere. It was a little unusual when she paid the deposit in cash, but she said it was because she didn’t want her husband to know because he didn’t believe Joslyn was missing. I ran a cursory background check on her and she seemed to be who she said she was. The records showed that Patricia’s last name had been Bautista before she’d married Henry Santos, and her sister, Joslyn, lived with them in Los Angeles.”

“I know Joslyn didn’t have any sisters,” Elisabeth said. “When I was training her to go off grid, she had to be honest with me about any relatives she might run into. I saw her face. She wasn’t lying to me when she said she didn’t have siblings.”

“I should have dug deeper. A hacker could have created a credible background for Patricia,” Liam said. “Patricia said that Joslyn may have been traveling under a different last name. I followed a few leads that pointed to Ms. Aday.” Liam nodded to Elisabeth. “That’s why I came here today, to ask her if she’d helped Joslyn.”

“Did you tell Patricia you were coming here today?” Detective Carter asked.

“No. When I was driving here, I thought I might have been tailed but I couldn’t be sure. The men came in four cars, so they might have traded off tailing me.”

“Hiring a hacker and using a four-car tail?” Detective Carter frowned. “This isn’t some small operation. These guys are organized and have money.”

Liam told him about speaking to Elisabeth and being interrupted by the man at the front door who claimed he was with Liam. “The guard let slip that I was with Elisabeth. He mentioned her by name.” If only he’d been a second faster, he could have prevented that guard from saying anything.

Detective Carter looked sharply at them both. “So if he didn’t know who you’d come to see, he does now.”

Liam explained about the man shooting the door and rushing in, about Bill jumping him and Liam struggling with him. It had been a lot harder than he’d expected because his injured shoulder had flared up. He rubbed it, still feeling the ache.

Detective Carter noticed. “Your shoulder still okay?”

“It’s fine.”

The detective shook his head. “I want you to see the paramedic when we’re done here.”

“Detective—”

“Injuries like that are always bad.” The detective’s gray eyes on Liam were steely but concerned. “You don’t want to learn you’ve made things worse when you’re in the middle of chasing someone and you find you can’t pull yourself over a fence.”

Liam put his hands up in mock surrender. “Fine.”

“What injury?” Elisabeth asked.

“Shoulder wound. Afghanistan,” Liam said. It was bad enough his injury had worried his dad. Now even Detective Carter was interrupting taking their statements to worry about him. Liam couldn’t have that.

Elisabeth studied his face for a moment, and surprisingly she seemed to understand his reluctance to draw attention to his shoulder. She turned back to Detective Carter. “I tried to see the license plate but didn’t have a good enough angle.”

“I only saw a partial as they got away,” Liam said. “Three-T-something.”

Detective Carter noted it down in his notebook.

She explained the rest of what happened. Liam winced again when she mentioned how the man had told his boss that she was talking to Liam.

Detective Carter’s expression was alert. “They only got your last name?”

“But I’m on the shelter website. Full name, photograph and my professional contact info. The men only needed to use a smartphone to check the website to find me.”

“And you have no idea who they were and why they wanted Joslyn?” Detective Carter asked.

“Four cars seems excessive for an angry ex-boyfriend who wants her back,” Liam said.

“She never mentioned anything about her ex,” Elisabeth said. “She was scared and penniless. Luckily she didn’t need medical attention when she arrived. She left as soon as she could.”

“That seems unusual,” the detective said.

“It is. Most women are relieved to find somewhere safe. They’re not yet thinking about the future. Joslyn was grateful to the shelter, but she was still anxious to move on. She took off early one morning and no one saw her leave.”

“Ms. Aday, you’re in danger if they think you know where Joslyn is,” Detective Carter said.

“They don’t know for sure that she’s not at the shelter,” Elisabeth pointed out.

“I don’t know how long that’ll keep them from trying to find you,” Liam said. He saw the shiver that passed over her.

“I’ll post an officer here to make sure the shelter’s safe from any other attacks,” the detective said. “But I’m afraid we’re stretched pretty thin. Unless you’re directly threatened, I don’t believe I can get authorization for a protective detail on either of you.”

Elisabeth said, “Don’t worry, I can take care of myself,” at the same time that Liam said, “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’re both pretty competent, but just be careful.” He nodded to them and went to talk to one of the other officers nearby.

“You need some type of protection,” Liam blurted out. “Let me help you. It’s my fault they’re after you now. I led them here.”

She blinked in surprise, and he thought he saw a hint of warmth in her hazel eyes at his concern for her. But then she lifted her chin. “I’m a licensed private investigator with advanced tactical and defensive handgun training. I think I’ll be okay.”

He was impressed. Still... “No one can be completely safe on their own. Personally, I know I wouldn’t stand a chance against eight men. The two of us could help each other out.”