Deadly Ties (15 page)

Provided, of course, she lived.

Tack Grady stood at the curb outside the Chessman estate and made his call.

“Hello.” Someone answered but didn’t identify himself.

“Shifter,” Tack said, checking up and down the street. All was calm, still. Quiet.

“Verification code?”

The person’s voice was so muffled he couldn’t tell for sure if it belonged to a woman or a man. He reeled off the code number.

“Go ahead.”

“I need Raven.”

A long moment of dead air and then a response. “Raven. Talk to me.”

“The client is not in Georgia.”

“Where is he?”

“As of five minutes ago, he was parked in front of the old Chessman estate.”

“So the cleaner lied?” Anger deepened her voice.

“I expect the client lied to the cleaner.” That remark might just save Karl Masson’s life, not that he’d know it.

“Is that it?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

The line went dead.

Soon, Tack feared, Dutch Hauk too would be dead.

At 11:30 p.m. Dutch’s phone rang.

He grabbed it from the console and then answered. “Hauk.”

“I just picked up some news on the police scanner I thought you might find of interest.”

Karl Masson
. “What’s that?”

“She’s alive.”

“Good.” Dutch told himself it didn’t matter, but his body betrayed him, quivering with relief. “I understand circumstances have changed with Chessman’s house.”

Masson didn’t answer.

“I want to buy it.”

“I’ll inform the powers that be.”

“I’ll pay double the fair-market value.”

“Why?”

“I want it.” No way was he explaining his reasons to Masson. He was a thug—a high-ranking one in NINA, skilled in murder and making problems disappear, but still a thug. He’d never understand matters of the soul.

“Where are you?”

“Just crossing the tracks. State line is less than ten miles up the road.” The lie rolled easily off his tongue. Across the highway, amber lights shone on the cars parked in the Seagrove Village Community Hospital’s lot. Dutch glanced up at the building where light dotted the windows.

“Nearly there, then.”

“Nearly. Still riding on the spare. Nothing’s open where I can get the flat fixed.” Dutch shifted the topic, worried Masson might pick up on background noise or something else that betrayed Dutch’s true locale. “What about that other business of ours? Is it done?” He avoided using Lisa’s name. Lone Wolf had lost patience with him once on that already. Wouldn’t do to mess up again.

“Occurring as we speak.”

“Excellent. Thanks for the update.” Dutch smiled into the night and hung up the phone.

Annie would be home in no time. She’d never divorce him, but with Lisa out of the way, she’d eagerly stay put. With her weak heart, she’d have no choice. “Well, Lisa, finally you get yours.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and preened a little. “Never mess with Dutch Hauk, little girl. One way or another, you lose.”

In her case, for life.

11

F
ive beds circled the center-hub nurses’ station in the Intensive Care Unit. Only one bed was occupied, and only the steady beep of Annie’s heart monitor broke the still silence.

From her mother’s bedside, Lisa noted Jessie standing at the hub’s edge charting something. Clearly, she was still waiting for lab results and diagnostics.

Be patient, Lisa. Just be patient
.

Soft light shone down on her mother and reflected off the white sheets, making her look more gaunt, her bruises a deeper purple, the swelling more disfiguring and grotesque. Her poor face was scraped from concrete and knuckled fists, her arms were twice the size they should have been, and she had a wicked bruise in her kidney area. Lisa hoped there wasn’t internal bleeding associated with that, but there had to be serious organ bruising.

She glanced over at the monitor, checked her mom’s respiration and oxygenation level. The numbers fell well within the normal range. The steady beep reassured her. The pressure on her mom’s brain had been relieved, and there were no signs of excessive fluid. Emotion welled and overcame Lisa. The back of her throat clenched, her eyes burned.
Please, don’t take her. Not now. Let me be with her just for a while. Please
.

“She okay, Dr. Harper?”

Lisa glanced back at Jessie. “Stable. Results back yet?”

“Not yet.” Jessie returned to her chart.

Lisa bent low and whispered to her mother, “Mom? Mom, please wake up.” Tears blurred Lisa’s eyes. “If you want to live, you have to fight. Please, fight.” Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard.

Nothing. No response, no reaction.

Lisa clasped her mother’s hand and stroked her fingers. “I love you. It’s been so hard being away from you, and I know it’s been hard for you too. We both hated it, but it had to be done.” Careful not to jar the clamp monitoring her oxygenation, Lisa hooked their fingers, pinkie-to-pinkie, as she had when she was little.

“Mom, please don’t leave me.” She let the tears flow down her cheeks unchecked. “Not when we can finally be together again.” She swallowed a sob. “It—it’s my fault. I should have done something else. Something faster. I shouldn’t have become a doctor. It took so long. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry I didn’t get you away from him right after high school. If I’d known your agreement then—”

“Dr. Harper?”

Startled by a strange and deep male voice, Lisa glared back. Two men in white lab coats stood behind her. She sniffed and swiped at her eyes. “Yes?”

The older one spoke, his balding pate shiny in the light. “I’m Dr. Edmunds and this is Dr. Powell. We’re consulting on your mother’s case.”

Harvey must have called them
. Powell was gray haired, wore glasses, and had two chins. “You’ve gotten the test results?” Lisa cleared her throat.

“Yes.” He swiveled to Annie, then refocused on Lisa. “We need to speak with you privately.”

That was never a harbinger of good news. Good news, he would share bedside. Bad news, he didn’t want her mother to hear. Lisa didn’t want to hear it either, but she had no choice. “Okay.” She released her mother’s finger and turned for the door that led back to the waiting room. The private office for family-member consults was right beside it. She braced herself, glad Mark would be close by, and started toward the door.

“No.” Powell clasped her arm, led her in the opposite direction. “This way.”

“But that’s a restricted area, just for doctors.”

Dr. Edmunds smiled. “You have hospital privileges here now, Dr. Harper.”

Being on staff at Crossroads, she did apply for and get hospital privileges. “Jessie, I’ll be right back. If there’s any change at all, page me.”

She nodded, casting a quizzical look at the two doctors. One of them must have bathed in cologne. The sickly sweet smell was overpowering.

“I’ll tell Rose. She’s on her way up,” Jessie said. “I’m done for the day—unless you want me to stay.”

“No, you go on home.” Jessie had two kids waiting for her, and the administrator already had called her in early. A lot of the staff was out with the flu. Everyone was pulling extra hours and shifts. “Tell Rose, then.”

Lisa walked out into the hallway. Dr. Edmunds followed her and then Dr. Powell. The door closed and locked.

How had they gotten into the unit? She didn’t have a key. As far as she knew, no one had a key to enter through the back hall. Yet to walk up on her unnoticed as they had, they couldn’t have entered through the main door.

An alarm went off inside Lisa. “This is obviously going to be hard to hear. Let me run get Mark, and we’ll meet you in the consult room across—”

Edmunds shoved the nose of a handgun into her side. “No, Dr. Harper. No running anywhere to get anyone.”

Lisa instinctively jerked back, tried to throw her weight to bang against the door. Powell shifted, blocking her. She tried to run.

Edmunds grabbed her, spun her around. “Stop.”

The warning in his eyes terrified her. She’d seen it before. In Dutch, the night she’d left home.

“One way or another, you’re coming with us.” Powell glared at her over the top of his glasses.

“No, I’m not.” Who were these people, and what made them think she’d go anywhere with them with her mother at death’s door? Where did they want her to go, anyway?

“Yes, you are.”

“Edmunds, don’t argue.” Powell stepped forward. “Come with us without incident, and I won’t kill your mother. Fight us and she dies. Make the call, Dr. Harper.”

Lisa stared at him a long moment. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. And he didn’t waver.

Frantic, she searched for an alternate solution but slammed into the same dead ends. There was no way to contact Mark for help. No way out of this predicament that would end without her mother being murdered.

God, please. I don’t understand. I don’t understand
.

But she did understand. Once again, she had been sacrificed. Yet at least this time it was for her mother.

The worst of it was in not knowing why. Who were these men? Why were they doing this? Did they even know her mother?

They know enough to be willing to kill her
.

But killing her wasn’t their objective. Getting Lisa to go with them was their objective. Which meant only one person could be behind this.

Dutch
.

Every muscle in her body tensed. Her nemesis, of course, causing her still more challenges and trials—and this time doing it with hired gunmen. She swallowed hard. “I won’t give you any trouble, provided you leave my mother alone.”

“Fair enough. I’m glad to see your black belt in karate isn’t choking off your sense.” Powell linked arms with Lisa and they began walking.

Where were they so eager to take her? She had no idea, but it was away from her mother. That’s what mattered. She’d get an opportunity to defend herself. Mark would discover she was missing and come after her, and his team would help him. Provided these thugs didn’t drive to the nearest patch of woods and shoot her in the head, she had a chance of survival
if
she got them away from her mother.

How much of a chance?

Not knowing, she waited until they took the elevator down. When they stepped out into the hallway, she asked, “So are you planning on killing me or what?”

Edmunds grunted.

Powell glanced her way as they moved down the hall toward the outside exit. “That too is your choice.”

A man came bolting out of the lab pushing a cart of blood vials and zoomed toward them. “Sorry.”

Red hair, early twenties—Lisa didn’t recognize him. Must be the new guy.
What is his name? Dan? Denny?
“No problem, Don.” Maybe since she responded, he would remember seeing her later.

Edmunds spoke softly. “Another word to anyone, and you won’t live to see the far end of the parking lot.”

Jessie’s strange look at these two flashed through Lisa’s mind, and now it made sense. She had assumed Lisa summoned them. Lisa assumed Harvey brought them in on a consult.

They both had been wrong.

Lisa hoped she didn’t have to pay for that mistake with her life. “I know these people. If I don’t acknowledge them, they’re going to think that’s strange.”

“Far end of the parking lot,” he repeated. “Your choice.”

“My choice?” She leveled a frown on Powell. “Sorry, but with your gun in my back, I don’t have much of a choice about anything.” She couldn’t let them get her into a car. If she did, odds were astronomical that she’d end up dead.

“I suppose you don’t.” He shoved a hand into his pocket. “How’s this? Unless you get out of hand, you will live. The plan isn’t to kill you, Lisa.”

Truth or lie?
Powell’s body language said he was telling her the truth, but Harvey and Peggy were better at spotting liars than Lisa. Should she trust her own judgment? “What is the plan?”

“I have no idea. I only know we’re not to kill you unless you’re uncooperative.”

“What does that mean? You’re passing me off to someone else?”

They stepped outside, into the inky black night. A white box truck pulled up to the curb and stopped. The driver jumped out and opened the back end.

Her heart beat hard and fast.
Oh no. No. Three of them?
There was no way—and they’d brought the vehicle to her. No chance to lose them in the parking lot.

Powell grabbed Lisa’s arm, dragged her in that direction.

“I am not getting in that truck!”
God, help me. Please, help me. Don’t leave me in this tunnel
. “Let go of me.” She screamed and kept screaming.

They tussled and Powell grabbed her left arm. She spun and popped him hard in the knee. He doubled over, dropped down. Lisa broke free, turned to run for it—and rushed straight into Edmunds’s flying fist.

Pain exploded in her jaw, radiated down her neck and up her face to her eye. Reeling, she fought to regain her balance. He slammed the butt of the gun against her skull. Stars floated in white spots before her eyes. She rocked and swayed and went down on one knee.

All three men attacked full force.
Too fast. Too fast. Too many of them
. She couldn’t fight them all at once. Her only option was flight. She had to somehow get away.

Looking for an opening, she saw the glimmer of one and prepared, but Edmunds feinted left and landed a solid punch to her stomach. It took her breath away. All three moved in close. She folded over, head spinning, staggering, totally unable to defend against the constant barrage.

Edmunds grabbed the back of her dress, jerked her off her feet, and tossed her into the truck.

She landed with a hard thud against the wooden subfloor.

Pain pounded through her body; she fought to stay conscious.
Don’t black out. If they close that door, your odds of surviving are cut in half
.

In her mind she sang the 4-H song. Bizarre; she’d never been a member of 4-H. But she started singing it when her mom told her that her dad had died, and ever since, when hyperstressed, she went back to it.

She slid over the plywood truck bed on her stomach, too weak to lift herself. The door was too far away.

The man who’d jumped out of the truck slapped a metal cuff on her wrist and snapped it shut. “Got her.”

She collapsed and stared at it. A computer chip? What was that thing? Fear proved stronger than her leaden arms. She shoved and rolled toward the door. The man who had cuffed her jumped out and grabbed the left door.

Too late
. She rolled right, thrust toward the opening. The hinges creaked, and a rush of air whistled past. The door smacked against her shoulder, and she fell onto her back.

It slammed shut.

The sound reverberated, echoed inside the truck, inside the chambers of her mind. Darkness and still air settled over her. Lisa stared sightlessly, helpless and hopeless.