Extreme Exposure (37 page)

Miguel stared up at him with astonishment. Then his jaw tightened, and for a moment Reece expected to find himself lying on his back in a pool of his own blood taking one last, rattling breath. A nine-millimeter round at close range would make a mess of his anatomy.

But then Miguel’s aim wavered. “I can’t!”

It was the break Reece had been watching for. In one move, he jammed his palm hard against the barrel of the pistol so the slide couldn’t move to fire and clicked the release for the magazine, which fell to the granite floor of the balcony with a heavy clatter.

The gun had been fully loaded.

Miguel dropped it and gaped at him through eyes that held first shock, then deepest torment. He sagged against Reece, his entire body trembling. “
¡Madre de Dios, perdóneme!
Forgive me!”

Fury and pity warred inside Reece. He lowered Miguel into a sitting position, reached automatically for his cell phone, and remembered he’d misplaced it.

Damn it!
If he left Miguel alone, lord knows what he would do. At this point, Reece wouldn’t put it past him to jump himself. And there was the gun. There was probably still one round in the chamber, so Reece didn’t dare leave it with Miguel. Nor did he dare touch it further, or he’d risk ruining the prints. Already under suspicion, he couldn’t afford for anyone to draw the wrong conclusions about what had just happened here.

“I’m going to call for help, Miguel, but I need your cell phone.”

“They’re going to kill me! Or maybe he’ll go after Hilaria and the kids!” Miguel seemed lost in his own misery. “Oh, Christ!”

Reece took the phone from his friend’s pocket, dialed the security desk downstairs, and gave the sergeant-at-arms a
quick rundown. He needed to call Chief Irving, but that could wait until Miguel was indoors again and the gun had been taken into custody.

“It’s over, Miguel. It’s going to be all right. You couldn’t kill me because you’re not a murderer. You were trying to protect your brother, and you got in too deep. But everything’s going to be okay.”

But Miguel shook his head. “No. No, it’s not. Your cell phone—I took it. I gave it to my brother to give to Stanfield.”

“You took my cell phone? But why would—?” Then it hit Reece like a fist.

If Stanfield had his cell phone, he’d have access to Kara.

He grabbed Miguel and shook him. “What are they going to do, Miguel? Goddamn it, tell me!”

K
ARA JABBED
at the veggies in her salad, her frustration at a peak. She’d left two messages for Reece but hadn’t yet reached him. She still hadn’t gotten a hold of the governor, either. Worst of all, Owens’s response to her demand for an interview had been to resign. He’d announced his resignation in a press release Tom had forwarded to her via e-mail.

“Guess he saw the writing on the wall,” Tom had written.

Kara had known from the moment she’d read the press release how the state would play it. Owens had resigned and would take the fall for the governor. The governor would promise an investigation into allegations that Owens had caved to political pressures and gone easy on corporate polluters. But the investigation would, in fact, be a taxpayer-funded whitewash. In the end, the state’s report would conclude that regulations were unclear, records were vague, Owens was understaffed, media reports were inaccurate, memories were unreliable, and nothing illegal had occurred. Then Owens, having been more or less cleared, would resurface in some other government post a few years from now, maybe even run for governor himself.

This was not how it was supposed to work. The innocent were supposed to go free. The guilty were supposed to be held accountable. And above all, the public was supposed to have unhindered access to the truth.

Galen would have made fun of her for her idealism. But not Reece. Not only did he seem to respect her for it, but he was even more idealistic than she was. She supposed it was one of the things that drew her to him. How many politicians ran for office because their students wanted them to?

She jabbed a slice of cucumber. How would Owens react if she showed up at his front door? He’d probably call the cops and accuse her of stalking or trespassing or some damned thing. Still, it was tempting. She could leave the hotel using the stairs, just as Reece had done, and she could prop the stairwell door open so she could get back inside. No one need know she’d gone out.

Even as she worked out the details in her mind, she rejected the plan. She’d promised Chief Irving she’d stay put. She couldn’t lie to him.

She glanced at her watch, pushed her half-eaten salad aside, and reached for the phone. Surely the Senate had recessed for lunch by now. She dialed Reece’s number, hoping this time to catch him this time and not his voicemail.

“Hello?” The man’s voice was unfamiliar.

“I’m sorry. I must have dialed the wrong—”

“Ms. McMillan?”

“Yes.”

“This is Mike Stanfield. I’ve been waiting for your call.”

CHAPTER 28

F
OR A
moment Kara was speechless with confusion. What number had she dialed? She glanced at the LCD display on her phone, felt a rush of dread. Her finger flew to the record button. “What are you doing with Reece’s cell?”

His voice was cold, full of anger—like hate on ice. “You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.”

The realization hit her with the force of a body blow, drove the air from her lungs.
They’d taken him! Dear God, they had him!

If she hadn’t already been sitting, she would have sunk to the floor. She fought to regain her breath, to steady her voice, to clear the panicked chaos from her mind. “S-so you’re a kidnapper now in addition to being a murderer?”

“I’m a businessman. And you, Ms. McMillan, are standing between my company and millions of dollars.”

Panic sparked into fury. “Isn’t that just a damned shame?”

“For the two of you it is. My men are waiting in the stairwell for you to come and open the door. If you don’t, pretty boy senator here dies.”

Then in the background she heard him. “Leave her alone, Stanfield!”

Reece!
Anguish like pain sliced through her belly. They truly had him!

But at least he is still alive.

Stanfield’s voice growled in her ear. “And don’t think of trying to hang up on me and calling the police. If any of my men so much as smell a cop, I’ll make certain your lover regrets the day he met you. Of course, he probably already does.”

She barely recognized the menacing voice that came from her throat. “Don’t you dare touch him!”

“I’m giving you thirty seconds to open that door. Twenty-nine . . .”

“You won’t get away with this!”

“I suggest you put down the phone and open the door, or you’ll find out just what I can get away with. Twenty-four, twenty-three.”

Kara dropped the phone, her mind racing, her stomach twisting with fear. She couldn’t secretly dial 911 because Stanfield was on the line. She didn’t have time to send an e-mail. Besides, he would hear her typing. And if she didn’t open the door for his men within the next twenty seconds, Reece would suffer, perhaps die. She couldn’t let them hurt him.

Mentally ticking off the seconds, she ran to the door of her suite, threw it open, and dashed down the hallway. Three men in white work coveralls stood on the other side. One of them she recognized by his resemblance to his brother—Juan de la Peña. She could tell from the look on his face that he considered her a dead woman.

He held up his gloved hands, fingers splayed, then folded his thumb, counting.
Nine. Eight. Seven.

Her mouth went dry. Would they shoot her on the spot?

Five
.
Four
.
Three
.

What if they killed Reece anyway?

Two.

Heart slamming against her chest, Kara opened the door.

R
EECE PUSHED
Miguel’s car up to ninety and flew up the left lane of I-25 toward the exit that would take him to the Northrup plant.

What if he was already too late?

He’d called Chief Irving the moment Miguel had finished outlining what he knew of Stanfield’s plan and related what Miguel had told him. Irving had ordered him to stay at the Capitol and sent two units to see if Kara was still where she was supposed to be and to protect her if she was, promising to call him on Miguel’s cell phone with the news.

But Reece wasn’t about to wait around to find out what his gut already knew. Stanfield had her, and if he wasn’t stopped, he was going to kill her.

Because the cops still had his Jeep for forensic testing, he’d taken Miguel’s keys and burned rubber out of the parking lot. Now he wished he’d taken Miguel’s gun, too, though he doubted the sergeant-at-arms would have let him go charging out of the building with a loaded weapon. He could only hope there was a tire iron in the back. Otherwise he’d be facing Stanfield and his crew of hired thugs empty-handed.

This was his fault. It couldn’t be a coincidence that this was happening the day after he’d been with her. Somehow, he’d given her location away. Goddamn it! If anything happened to her, he’d have the rest of his life to regret it and to hate himself.

Miguel’s cell phone rang. “Sheridan.”

“She’s gone.” It was Chief Irving.

“Goddamn it!” Reece pushed the gas pedal to the floor and kicked the speed back up to ninety, the car’s max.

“There’s no sign of struggle anywhere, no blood, nothing. Everything related to her investigation has disappeared with her—her files, her computer, even the phone.”

“It was equipped to record. Stanfield must have suspected that.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that, because if I find out you compromised her safety in any way, you’re going to find my boot up your senatorial ass.”

And Reece knew he deserved it. “Understood.”

“The last time she made a call was about thirty minutes ago when she dialed your cell number.”

Thirty minutes ago.

Reece had been on the highway for about fifteen minutes, which meant they were about fifteen minutes ahead of him. More than enough time to pull a trigger. “Son of a bitch!”

He spotted the exit just ahead. He threw on the right turn signal, crossed lanes, took the exit doing sixty, then slammed on the brakes and cranked the car, tires shrieking, onto the two-lane county road.

“Please tell me you stayed at the Capitol like I told you to. Those weren’t your tires squealing, were they?”

“Technically, no. I requisitioned the car from Miguel.”

“Damn it, Sheridan! When this is over I’m going to haul your ass in for interfering with police operations, violating a goddamned lawful order, and pissing me off!”

“I don’t think the latter is a crime, but as long as Kara is alive and safe you can do whatever the hell you want with me afterward. Who has jurisdiction out here?”

“The Adams County Sheriff’s Department, and, yes, they’ve already dispatched several units, including the S.W.A.T. team. They’ll get there before you do.”

Ahead in the distance loomed white industrial silos as tall as skyscrapers.

“I wouldn’t bet on that.”

K
ARA SAT
on the floor of the van, her hands bound and her mouth covered with duct tape, her hope waning. She could see the security checkpoint through the windshield and knew they had arrived at Northrup. It seemed a lifetime ago that she and Holly had tricked their way through this same gate.

Juan de la Peña’s fingers bit into her shoulder. In his other hand, he held a gun. He leaned down and whispered, “Are you afraid of what’s going to happen in the next ten minutes?”

And in that instant, she recognized his voice. He was the one. He’d called her late at night, tried to frighten her, just as
he was trying to frighten her now. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, no matter how badly her stomach pitched and rolled. She glared at him.

He gave her a shove and muttered something in Spanish.

God, she was an idiot. There was nothing to stop Stanfield from killing Reece the moment his men had her. Her life was the only bargaining chip she’d had with Stanfield, and she’d already given it away. What would he have done if she’d hung up on him and called the police? Would he have killed Reece outright, knowing that she had all the information the police would need to convict him of murder one? Or would he have released Reece, hopped on his Cessna, and flown for the border?

She would never know. She’d been so terrified that Reece would die because of her that she’d given away the game. But that wasn’t her only regret.

Why hadn’t she called Florida this morning to talk with Connor? The thought of him—the innocence in his big, brown eyes; the smell of baby shampoo in his silky hair; the sound of his laughter—made her heart ache until she thought her chest would split. He was only four. Would he remember her? Would he remember how she’d drawn pictures for him with shaving cream, made him spaghetti, and read to him for hours? Would he remember how much she loved him?

A lump formed in her throat, and tears pricked behind her eyes.

And her mother. She’d take good care of Connor, even if she did get his chakras realigned. But Kara’s death would crush her. Reece had been right. Her mother might be a bit eccentric, but Kara knew her mother loved her. She hoped someone would be there for her.

And Reece. Oh, God, Reece! If she got even one moment in the same room with him, she was going to tell him she loved him. She didn’t care who was watching or listening. She wanted him to know. She wanted at least to give him that much. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter to him now, but she would tell him just the same.

God, let him still be alive!

She’d never given much thought to what it meant to die, had never spent much time wondering if anything came after this life . . . And, damn it, she wasn’t going to waste precious time doing that now! Here she was still alive and breathing, and she had all but resigned herself to being Stanfield’s next murder victim.

Pull yourself together, McMillan!