But if he bought into Charlie’s theory, if he bought into the whole legend of The Nine, then there was a very good chance at least one prominent member of the FDA hierarchy was involved. That would explain why the notoriously slow-moving agency had moved into Raine’s office at nearly warp speed. And the cops… Max thought of Detective Marcus and how chummy he’d seemed with Agent Bryce.
There was a fine line between conspiracy and paranoia, but he was damned if he knew who to trust at this point. And with more theory than evidence, there was a good chance that Raine would remain the primary suspect in the Thriller deaths.
Hell, they might even find a way to pin Charlie’s murder on her. Reluctantly, he dug into his duffel and pulled out a pair of cheap disposable phones, part of the emergency kit he and William had devised.
He handed one of the phones to Ike and put the other in his jacket pocket. “Take this. It’s programmed with my number, and vice versa. Use it to call me, not your regular phone. If you can’t get me, leave a message on my machine at home.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I’ll explain later. Get me those data ghosts and see what the hell’s on that disk Charlie gave me. Once you have, I’ll tell you what I can.”
“And until then?”
“Do you have the contact info on the victims’ families?” When she dug out a piece of paper, he took it and stuffed it in his pocket alongside the phone. “Raine and I will go talk to them.” It was both a necessary part of the investigation and a good excuse to travel, staying with the theory that it was harder to hit a moving target than a stationary one.
Ike’s expression clouded. “You could leave her with me.”
His lips twisted. “No, I can’t.”
She raised an eyebrow. When he didn’t fill in the gap, she sighed. “I was afraid of that. Watch yourself, Vasek. Don’t make the same mistake a
third
time, for God’s sake.”
“I won’t,” he said, though what he really meant was
I’m trying not to.
“Just be careful,” Ike said. She patted his cheek
again—a gesture she knew darn well he hated—and headed down the corridor.
“You, too,” he said under his breath as the hotel room door opened a final time and Raine stepped through, wearing her long red wool coat and a scared expression.
“Give me your bag.” Cursing himself for having not thought of it sooner, he dumped the contents of her shopping bag into his duffel and zipped it shut. “We’re going to need to move fast. I’ll explain once we’re on the road, okay?”
Face pale, she nodded. “Lead the way.”
“That’s my girl.” He didn’t mean the words as anything more than encouragement, but as she followed him down the hall, the platitude resonated too close for his comfort.
My girl.
They didn’t talk as he led them down a flight of stairs and through a back exit that spit them out in a poorly lit alley on the opposite side from the parking garage.
When he paused before stepping through, Raine whispered, “We’re leaving my SUV, aren’t we?”
The words were more statement than question.
He reached back and gripped her shoulder briefly. “It’ll be safe in the hotel garage for a few days.” He hoped.
“It’s not that.” Her whisper was quiet and a little
sad. “It’s just that I don’t have much left that’s mine. The house is gone. The office is wrecked. Now the car…” She trailed off and then squared her shoulders beneath her long coat. “Never mind. I’m focusing on stupid stuff. Let’s go.”
Part of Max wanted to hug her, to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay.
Self-preservation had him turning away. “Keep your eyes open and your voice down. You got another coat in that bag of yours?”
“No. The red wool is warm enough.”
“It’s also too recognizable.” He glanced along the deserted alleyway. Both ends were open and doors led away at regular intervals. There was no sign of activity. They were safe enough for the moment. “Here.” He shrugged out of his parka, unzipped the fuzzy brown lining and turned it inside out, so it looked like a ratty fake fur coat. “Dump yours and wear this. Let your hair down, too.”
She complied, and within moments looked like a completely different person. Gone was the businesslike, boss-like Raine Montgomery of just a few days earlier. In her place stood a smaller-looking version in jeans and an inexpensive sweater, wearing hiking boots and a shapeless brown jacket that nearly swallowed her whole. With her hair down, she looked younger, more vulnerable, as though changing out of the suit had
stripped her of her tough-gal veneer, leaving only the woman beneath.
In the orangey sodium lights reflected from the streets on either side, she looked like the Raine he’d first met. The one he’d fallen for, long before he’d known where her priorities lay. The one he’d thought of in the years since.
The one he wanted to hold now. Kiss now. Sink himself in, lose himself in until it didn’t matter that they wanted different things, believed in different things.
But because now wasn’t the time and Raine sure as hell wasn’t the woman, Max busied himself with reversing his parka, taking it from hunter green to tan. He retrieved a battered Patriots cap from the pocket and pulled it low over his eyes.
When he was done, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic a change, but it should be enough to confuse the men who’d killed Charlie, the men he feared might have followed him back to the hotel. Back to Raine.
It would
have
to be enough to fool them because he didn’t have a better plan.
Without another word, he turned and gestured up the alley, toward the brighter gleam of the street beyond.
They’d gone three paces when a door banged behind them.
He heard a
pop,
then a
pzzzt
as something
whizzed past his ear. His body was already moving before his brain caught up with the noise.
Gunshot!
“Go! Run!” He shoved Raine away from the dark figure of a man, who stepped into the alley, raised his silenced weapon.
And fired again.
RAINE BOLTED FOR THE MAIN ROAD. She slipped on a patch of ice and nearly went down, but Max was there, grabbing her upper arm and dragging her along in his wake. “Don’t look back!”
She stumbled at his side. “Why isn’t he shooting?”
“Good question.” He slowed and risked a look back. “Maybe because—oh, hell.”
A dark limousine pulled up at the open end of the alley in front of them. The door opened and a second black-clad figure emerged and drew an identical silenced weapon.
“There!” Raine pointed across the alley, where a rusted door was partially obscured by a Dumpster.
Max needed no further urging. He shoved her behind the Dumpster, took two running steps and slammed into the door shoulder-first. The lock gave way with a crash that was immediately followed by a flurry of pops and pings, by the scattered sounds of running feet and men’s shouts.
“Come on!” Max urged her through the door, pulled a weapon from his coat pocket and fired two shots at their pursuers before following her into the building opposite the hotel.
More relieved than surprised that he was armed, Raine had the quick impression of a neatly ordered storeroom before Max slammed the door, cutting off the outside light. “This way,” she said, striking out for the opposite side of the room without waiting for her eyes to adjust. She tripped and stumbled forward, banging her shin into the edge of something solid and metal. She hissed with pain but kept moving, conscious of the men in the alley, of Max’s harsh breathing at her side.
What the hell was going on here? People were
shooting
at her. After the bombing, she knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but things like this just didn’t
happen
to normal people.
She was in way over her head and didn’t know how to get back up to the surface.
Footsteps drew closer behind them. The door groaned inward, casting diffuse light into the storeroom. Close. The men were too close!
There!
Raine and Max reached for the storeroom door as one, yanking it open and crowding through. They stumbled into a chrome-and-steel space crowded with white-clad bodies and the smells of bread and pastries.
A heavyset man in a bouffant hat yelled, “Hey, where’d you come from? You’re not supposed to be here!”
Neither Max nor Raine bothered to answer. They fled, shoving past a line of cooks and barreling through a set of swinging doors into the front area of the bakery. At nearly four-thirty Thursday morning, the area was crowded with people and boxes and fresh baked goods. Max’s duffel swung off his shoulder and thumped a startled-looking man, who lost control of his full tray of doughnuts. The doughy disks went flying, adding to the chaos.
Workers scattered with a flurry of screams and shouts. A big man wielding a long bread knife stepped into Raine’s path, hands upraised. “Hold it!”
She dodged him as a shot whizzed past her ear and blew out the front window. Max spun and returned fire until his weapon clicked on an empty clip. Bakery employees ran for the exits, clogging the distance that separated the pursued from the pursuers.
Breath sobbing in her lungs, Raine fumbled with the lock and then the door, pushing when she should have pulled. Nearly weeping with exertion, with fear, she got it open and plunged out into the cold night air.
With Max at her heels, she dashed across the
sidewalk and darted between two parked cars, but a double-parked vehicle blocked the way.
A big, dark limousine with tinted windows.
“Oh, no!” Raine skidded to a halt and tried to backpedal as a rear door swung open and a man emerged. Raine had a fleeting impression of silver hair, a long, dark coat and polished shoes.
Max slammed into her, then grabbed her when she would have lurched forward. “This way!” he shouted, and pulled her away from the limo and the silver-haired man.
Then they were running, skidding across the icy street in a crazy zigzag pattern. Two shots glanced off a storefront window. A third bullet cracked the safety glass. Max took one look at the window display, where photographs of glittering diamonds flanked empty velvet-covered stands.
Without slackening speed, he ran at the window, slamming his shoulder directly beside the crack.
The safety glass groaned. Sagged. Gave way beneath him.
And all holy hell broke loose. Lights erupted and sirens whooped shrill alien screams.
“Come on!” Max grabbed her hand and practically dragged her over the waist-high wall and into the jewelry store.
“What are you doing?” She had to yell to be heard over the din.
“Attracting attention. Get down.” He pushed her head below window level, waited a moment and then inched up for a look. “Bingo.”
He helped Raine up.
The street was empty. The limo had gone.
“We can’t trust the cops right now, but we
can
trust that the men who’re after you don’t want to attract too much attention,” Max said with some satisfaction. Then he hefted the duffel that contained his clothing and the sum total of her possessions. “Come on.”
This time Raine balked. “Where are we going? And why can’t we trust the cops?”
“We’re getting the hell out of here so we’re not arrested for breaking and entering,” he said, boosting her over the wall and following her back onto the street. Then he took her hand and towed her along as he walked briskly down the street. “As for the rest, I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”
She nearly had to jog to keep up, but the faint sound of police sirens over the jewelry store alarms had her quickening her steps. “At the risk of repeating myself, where the hell are we going?”
“Philadelphia. We need to talk to Cari Summerton’s widower.”
Chapter Nine
But once they were in a taxi headed for the airport, Max swore bitterly. “I’m an idiot. We can’t fly. They’ll be tracking our credit cards and ID.” He leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. When the man had removed his thoroughly illegal headphones, Max said, “Change of plans. Take us to the Amtrak terminal.”
Raine wanted to protest, to scream, to demand an explanation. Who were
they?
But the draining adrenaline left her shaky and numb, made her feel as if she were acting rather than reacting. So she let her head drop back on the seat. “We’ll need ID to take the train, too.”
“That’s the plan.”
Sure enough, when they got to the train station, which was just opening at 5:00 a.m., he bought two tickets to Boston on his credit card. Then he
pocketed the tickets and took her arm. “Come on. There’s a car rental place down the street.”
There, he rented a high-end sedan using a fake ID and matching credit card, both in the name Mike Walsh. He talked loudly about seeing the Connecticut beaches, asked for directions to the Mystic Seaport, and cuddled close to Raine when the desk clerk was watching.
She remained virtually unresponsive, but inside, the numbness was giving way to a quiet burn of anger.
“Come on, pumpkin. I promised you breakfast by the water, didn’t I?” He took her hand and laced his fingers through hers, giving them a squeeze for the benefit of their audience.
She batted her eyelashes and faked a simper, but her voice held an edge when she said, “You certainly did,
honey bear.
Let’s hit the road.”
The moment they were on I-95 south, headed for Philadelphia, she turned to him.
Before she could speak, he held up a hand. “I owe you some explanations.”
“Yes, you do. And we’ll get to them in a minute. But before that, I have something to say.” Raine took a deep breath, wanting to get this right. “I’m not a victim, Max, and I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m a grown-up and a businesswoman. Maybe when you first got to know me I was someone
else, someone I’m not very proud of anymore, but that’s not who I really am.”
He gave the rearview mirror a long look before he glanced at her. “Let me guess. Ike told you about my Damsel In Distress Syndrome. Did she also tell you about Charlotte?”