Broken Honor (20 page)

An icy finger ran down her back. “Why didn't he come inside?”

Flaherty came over to her. “He didn't want to know anything.”

“But
can
we leave?”

“The police, you mean?”

She nodded.

“We've been released. Though we've been warned not to leave the area, there are no charges pending. There's really nothing they can do.”

But it would hurt his career. “He thought you should return to duty?”

“He understands why I can't,” Flaherty said, then turned away.

Did he? Or was Irish risking his job for her? As well as his life?

Irish stifled his apprehension as he went next door. They should leave immediately. But one good meal wouldn't hurt. And he would get everything packed while she got dinner ready.

He went outside and unlocked his rental car. He looked around, then reached in the backseat and took out the GPS device that had been planted there. He walked down the rows of cars until he found one with a West Virginia plate. He looked inside the car. It was locked.

Irish continued until he found an unlocked car. Tennessee plates. Good enough. With luck, the driver would be going west toward Tennessee. Their pursuers might believe they were returning to Memphis. He looked around, then quickly opened the back door and tucked the device underneath the seat.

Then he strode to the yellow-taped room. Minutes later, he had packed Amy's laptop and boxes in the trunk of the car. Then he went in to eat.

Irish enjoyed the shrimp, particularly after the junk food they had had for the past several days. They left the rest of the groceries in the unit. It was dusk when they went out to the car.

Irish saw her look at the ocean just before they left. Her face was strained.

He waited for a moment. Then she seemed to stiffen, leaned down and picked up Bo, and followed him out the door. “Where to?”

No complaints. No tears. No questions. She was indeed a trouper.

“Somewhere we can go over those boxes together,” he said.

“What if they find us again?”

“They won't,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“They planted the GPS computer in
my
car. I planted it somewhere else.”

“How did they know you would come after me?”

“I don't know, Amy. Maybe there was one in yours, too.”

“Could there be more of … those devices in the car?”

“I don't think so. I've been all over it.”

“Where is the device now?”

“A car in the parking lot. It has Tennessee plates. It would make sense that you were returning.”

She nodded, but her face looked forlorn. He guessed what she was thinking. When was she going to be able to return?

He wanted to reassure her, but he couldn't. He couldn't lie to her. He still didn't know what was happening, nor why someone was sending professional killers after a college professor. He didn't know, but he sure as hell intended to find out.

fourteen

S
OUTH
C
AROLINA

Irish drove for several hours up to Charleston. They stopped there at a rental car agency and traded in the car for another one. He had no choice but to use his credit card, but at least he knew there wouldn't be any little devices planted in the new rental. He hoped the pursuers, if there were any, were concentrating on the Tennessee car rather than his credit card charges.

They bought food at a convenience mart, then ate it at a rest stop where Amy could walk Bojangles. With the dog resting between them on the front seat, they headed north along I-95. He planned to stop in Myrtle Beach. Plenty of tourists. And plenty of cheap motels, the kind that didn't ask for identification.

Before leaving Jekyll Island, Amy had called her insurance company and arranged for her car to be picked up and repaired when the police finished with it. Since the bad guys obviously knew where she was, all subtlety went by the board.

Everyone also knew the identity she'd been using. That had been a bit of a problem with the police when they discovered she'd registered at the motel under a false name and gave a false license tag number. She had explained somewhat awkwardly that she used a friend's name because of fear.

The police hadn't questioned that, not with the Memphis police backing her story. But Irish had more curiosity about it. Model Citizen Amy Mallory didn't seem the type to have false identities tucked away.

“Did that identification really belong to a friend?” he asked after they'd ridden in silence for an hour.

Amy was still for a moment, and he didn't think she would answer. Then, very softly, she said, “It belonged to my mother. She sometimes traveled with someone wanted by the police. One of them made her this identity. It's been … sitting in a box for years.”

“You surprise me, Dr. Mallory.”

“I learned some unusual things from her and the ‘uncles' who came and went.”

He bet she did. He knew something about her background, but not the details. He wondered what kind of impact it had had on her. She seemed remarkably well-adjusted to him, but he wondered whether beneath that disciplined exterior there weren't some underlying traumas.

And she wasn't always as cool and disciplined as she liked others to believe. He'd had a brief taste of wildness, a passion that had been unbridled. What else was there under her cool exterior?

She was a contradiction. Prim and proper when he'd first met her, but willing to run away with a forged identity, apparently without any compunction. She disabled an armed gunman and cried over a dog. He saw fear in her eyes, but she had never asked him for help.

She was strong and resilient and resourceful. She was also appealingly vulnerable. Now those qualities were running together in an irresistible package.

He wanted to know more about her mother. A general's daughter turned war protester and flower child. Arrested once for drug possession. Put on probation. Then she'd fled the state and changed her name. Her legal name of Mallory hadn't surfaced again until she'd died. That much he knew from his own investigation.

“Tell me about your mother,” he said. She'd talked about her grandfather but had said little about her mother.

“She was very loving,” Amy said, “but not very wise in picking her friends. She often took in … protesters wanted by the police, or drug dealers who used her sympathies to get her help. She would give her last dime to someone she thought needed it more. In fact, if she saw a one-armed person, she would probably cut off her own arm and give it to them. People recognized that. And used it. But she never changed.”

“How did she support you?”

“Usually waitressing. She was also good at crafts. She made dolls and bears, and dresses for both. Happy things. She was the ultimate optimist.”

He considered all that. “And your grandfather? How did she feel about him?”

“Sad. But she didn't trust him. She was afraid he would try to take me away from her. One time, she said it might be better for me if he did.” Her hands nervously stroked Bo. “I never thought so. I always wanted to be with her.” Her voice faded.

Irish was fascinated. There was more to the story. A lot more. “Why didn't she trust him?”

She was silent for a moment. “She had thought she was in love. She was seventeen, and he was twenty-two and a Vietnam war protester. My grandfather had him arrested for statutory rape.”

She hadn't told him that before when she'd talked about her grandfather. How many other secrets were there? But he'd learned that silence was the best prompter. He waited.

“The man died in jail. I never knew exactly how or why. I tried to find out. The newspaper account said he was beaten by other inmates. That's when my mother ran away. My grandfather didn't know, but she was pregnant then; she was afraid he would force her to get an abortion or give up the baby.”

“You were the child.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “My mother could no more kill a child of hers than accept the injustice of what happened to the man she loved. But she didn't have good care when I was born, and she couldn't have other children. I think that's one reason we lived as we did, even when the antiwar movement was over and other people moved on. She always wanted to be around children. When people drifted away from communes, she usually found someone for us to bunk with, or them with us. She needed to be needed, even if sometimes she was more child than adult.”

“It takes strength to live that kind of life,” he said. “To be true to your own values.”

She looked surprised. “I suppose in some ways she was,” she said. “In other ways, very naive. She accepted anyone who had any kind of cause, and that often got her in trouble. She just wanted to see good in everyone.”

“Except your grandfather?”

“Oh, even him, I think. She didn't tell me everything that had happened between him and my father. She told me part of the story—that my father was unjustly imprisoned and killed, and that she left home to take care of me. My grandfather told me the rest of it; he'd never forgiven himself for what happened.”

“But she never contacted him?”

“I think she was afraid he would try to take me and raise me ‘properly.'”

“Would he have?”

“I think he would have tried at one time. He hadn't known she was pregnant. I showed up on his doorstep as a distinct surprise.” She hesitated. “I hated him for a long time. He had a big house and a lot of money, and I remembered what a hard time my mother and I often had. I thought she would have lived longer if she'd had good medical care.

“It took me a long time to realize that it was the life she chose. And I can never say she was unhappy with it. She marched to a different drummer. She didn't care about money or possessions. Only causes. She attended nearly every demonstration in town. I grew up carrying signs.”

“But you didn't keep carrying them?”

“No. I suppose I had too much of my grandfather in me. Although I loved my mother, I always longed for a home and security. I wanted to be good at what I chose to do. But I have a bit of her passion for justice, even if I didn't agree with all her causes.”

“And she's why your field is protest movements?”

“Sometimes I knew more than I wanted to know,” she said. “But yes, I suppose I was drawn to what had drawn her.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Fifteen. She was ill for several months. Most of her friends had disappeared or died or gone to jail. She made me promise to contact my grandfather.”

He allowed her to talk at her own speed. He had put the car on cruise control, and he stretched out his legs, trying to relax his aching body.

But she didn't continue, and he didn't push.

Instead she leaned against the door and looked at him. He didn't take his eyes from the road, but he could feel the intensity of her gaze. He felt himself growing warm, but not because of lust. Instead it was the intimacy that bounced around inside the car.

Words would have shattered it. They were bound together by her earlier comments, ones he suspected she had seldom uttered before. And bound by violence and danger, and a baffling mystery.

And now she trusted him. If not completely, then more than anyone else at the moment. He was damned determined to fulfill that trust.

The question had been where to go. He had only a little money and his credit cards, and he wouldn't be surprised that whoever was after Amy had the resources to trace any credit purchases he—or she—made.

He'd thought about contacting some of his friends, but all of them were either military or law enforcement. He didn't want to get them involved in something that might well hurt their careers. Not unless he had to. He still felt guilty about Doug, and the position he'd put him in.

Irish had never felt comfortable about asking for favors.

After looking at the map, he'd confirmed his thoughts on Myrtle Beach. He'd sensed how much Amy liked the beach and the ocean, and they needed a couple of days both to relax and to go over her grandfather's papers. It was a resort area, filled with tourists, and that was another plus.

The problem, of course, was renting a place without giving identification. It would have to be less than the finest accommodations. But at the moment, any bed would look good to him.

He looked at the clock. Four in the morning. The last road sign said thirty miles. He started looking for the type of motel that expected more John Does than not.

The smell of ocean was back with them. Amy had rolled down her window and leaned her head back. She must be exhausted. Neither of them had had much sleep in the pasty forty-eight hours.

Another twenty miles, and he saw row after row of motels. He picked one—obviously an independent—with a vacancy sign and drove to the office. They would look for something else tomorrow.

Surprisingly, Amy was wide awake. She'd said nothing for the last hour.

“Stay here,” he said. He half expected a protest, but none came, only a soft sigh.

Irish paid cash for a double room with two beds. He hesitated before doing it, but two rooms required two names, and perhaps questions. And he wanted to keep an eye on her. He scribbled John Huey on the registration card. It was a byline he remembered from some newspaper and thought it far better than John Doe. He added a fictitious license tag number.

Amy raised an eyebrow after he drove to a room and led her to it.

“We're sharing,” he said. “I'm not taking my eyes off you for the next several days.”

She didn't protest. She didn't agree. He wondered whether she had reached the limit of her strength. Hell, no one had a better right.

Dark. Hands. Reaching for her. Terror. She tried to hide under the cover like a hermit crab retreating into its shell. Please. Please. Go away. Then she was screaming
.…