B007GFGTIY EBOK (15 page)

“You lied to me. You’re with him.”

Fuller wrenched his arm free. Hayden lunged for him, but Fuller jerked out of his way. Hayden held his hands up in surrender. He didn’t want to spook him any more than he was already.

“Don’t go,” Rebecca pleaded as Fuller started shrinking away from them. “Malcolm, what’s wrong?”

He wavered for a second, then bolted.

“Shit,” Hayden said.

He and Rebecca chased after Fuller. He checked over his shoulder. No one made a break with them. No shadowy figures. Nothing. His heart sank. Fuller was just as crazy as Shane and Chaudhary. The guy was seeing ghosts. Part of Hayden wanted to let the crazy son of a bitch go. But a stronger part of him knew that, crazy or not, Fuller knew something. For all his ramblings, some of it rang true. That something would give him and Rebecca answers. He wasn’t going to let this guy get away and lose those answers.

Despite Fuller’s flu, he could move. The guy sliced through human traffic like it wasn’t there. He ducked in and out of stalls, disappearing only to reappear twenty feet ahead.

“He really must know this market,” Rebecca said.

Hayden was about to say something in agreement with her when she slammed into a woman pushing a stroller. Rebecca bounced off the woman without knocking her down. Stunned by the impact, the woman said nothing for a second, then launched into a tirade.

Ignoring the woman shouting at her, Rebecca said, “Go. Don’t let him get away. I’ll catch up.”

He nodded and left Rebecca behind. He spotted the engineer, his lead even greater. Hayden was never going to catch him on foot. He needed some help. “Stop him,” Hayden bellowed and pointed at Fuller. “He’s got my wallet.”

This failed to incite a pack of vigilantes willing to chase Fuller down like a runaway wide receiver, but Hayden did get a little cooperation. People stepped aside and called out words of encouragement. He reeled in Fuller a step at a time, his better health coming to his aid, and a smile broke out across his face.

Fuller burst from the farmers’ market and cut through a parking lot toward Fifth Avenue. The parking lot dumped off into an alley. Fuller hit the alley and shot left, disappearing from sight. Hayden feared for a second that Fuller’s superior knowledge would give him the edge he needed to escape, but his fear subsided the moment he reached the alley. Fuller was still in sight and slowing. The flu was eating into his stamina. It was a straight footrace now. Hayden would have him in a couple of blocks.

Fuller came to the end of the alley and ducked right. Hayden caught up with him in time to see him tear across Fifth without even pausing to look. One car skidded to a halt to avoid him. Hayden compounded the driver’s frustration by running out in front of him.

Fuller made for an apartment complex and disappeared among the maze of buildings. Hayden followed him in and hoped Fuller’s stamina would give out soon. He pounded down a walkway, with Fuller nowhere in sight. He cursed and dropped his pace in case Fuller had ducked into one of the apartments.

He was jogging past a trash enclosure when a Dumpster slammed into him. The impact sent him sprawling headfirst into the opposite wall. This, combined with the concussion he’d picked up the day before, sent a wave of nausea crashing over him.

Fuller emerged from behind the Dumpster. “Stay away from me.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Malcolm.”

But he was talking to a shadow. Fuller had already run off.

Hayden couldn’t let him get away. He rolled onto all fours and picked up the chase. His pace wasn’t what it had been and he watched Fuller race over to his car, throw himself behind the wheel, and roar off.

Hayden cursed and leaned against a wall for support.

Rebecca came racing up behind him. “Where is he?”

“He’s gone,” Hayden answered, pointing in the direction of Fuller’s disappearing car.

“No. He couldn’t have gotten away.”

Her reaction seemed excessive considering the circumstances. “What’s wrong?” Hayden asked.

“I saw him.”

“Who?”

“The man following Malcolm. He shadowed you guys. I tried following him, but I lost him.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, athletic. Around forty. Just like Malcolm said. I couldn’t see his face. He was wearing an Angels baseball cap and sunglasses.”

Hayden wanted to believe. He wanted someone to be caught just so this could end. But the man Rebecca had seen might not be Fuller’s stalker. He could be anyone. Maybe he was just some guy checking out the action of one man chasing another. Hayden had to stay grounded. He didn’t want to end up like Shane and Fuller. He’d drive himself crazy to the point where he couldn’t tell up from down. He had to stick to what he knew for sure. Shane had killed himself. Someone had burned down MDE and left him to burn with it. This he believed. Everything else required proof.

A dark blue Dodge Charger slipped from a side street. The driver wore an Angels baseball cap and sunglasses. Hayden’s stomach tightened.

“Rebecca, the Charger. Is that him?”

“Yes, that’s the guy.”

The Charger accelerated up the street in Fuller’s direction.

R
ebecca watched Hayden as he slept. The effects of the fire had caught up with him. He was way under and it would be some time before he surfaced.

She’d put him in the bed she always used when she stayed with Shane and said she’d sleep on the couch. His chivalry protested, but it hadn’t lasted against a much needed night’s sleep. He’d crashed before nine o’clock. When her time came to hit the sack, she’d slipped into bed alongside him. She didn’t want to be alone. She needed the reassurance of being close to someone she cared about—and she cared about Hayden. She’d come so close to losing him in the fire. The thought of losing someone else terrified her.

She’d always had someone in her life who looked out for her. There’d been her parents, then Shane after their deaths, and now Hayden. If Hayden died, there’d be no one. She had good friends in LA, longtime friends, but none of them were like him.

While Hayden slept through the night, she’d lain awake. Tired beyond sleep, she listened to him breathe, slow and even. She watched the glow from the streetlight outside fade and disappear with the morning light, and as it did, another man dominated her thoughts—Malcolm Fuller. Fuller wasn’t some kook. He had a reason to be scared. She’d seen the man stalking him. If the stalker got to him, whatever secrets were locked up inside his head would die with him. Secrets she needed to know. Fuller thought MDE was building a weapon—why? What had he seen? What had Shane known? She knew Hayden didn’t think much of Fuller’s theory, but she was less sure. She couldn’t let Fuller end up like his coworkers.

She slipped from the bed. Hayden stirred but didn’t wake. She tried to wash her sleep deprivation and fears away in the shower. The hot water invigorated her, but it failed to dislodge her thoughts about Fuller. Every minute he continued running, his answers got further away from her. She dressed and retreated to the kitchen.

She made coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with the coffee going cold between her hands. Fuller needed protection. If Santiago believed any of Fuller’s story, she knew she could convince the detective to watch over him.

She left the coffee and went upstairs. She wanted to wake Hayden, but didn’t. He needed the rest. As she thought more about the situation, she realized bringing Hayden with her might not be a good thing. Fuller was jumpy enough already. Hayden’s presence could ruin things. Fuller had sought her out, not Hayden. He’d be more likely to open up with no one else around.

The decision to find Fuller was easier than finding him. She knew nothing about the man and there was no one at MDE to ask. The only person she could approach was Fuller’s wife.

She dug out a phone book, one of the few things Shane hadn’t destroyed in his rampage. She flipped through the pages and found she was in luck. There was one Malcolm Fuller listed. She grabbed the phone and a pen and returned to her tepid coffee in the kitchen. Need overwhelmed her hesitation at invading their privacy, and she dialed.

“Malcolm?” a panicked woman’s voice asked.

“No,” Rebecca answered.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Calm returned to the woman’s tone. “I was expecting a call from someone else.”

“From your husband, Mrs. Fuller?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Rebecca Fallon. My brother worked with your husband. I met him at my brother’s funeral last week.”

“Your brother was the young man who committed suicide, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I only met your brother once, at a Christmas party. He seemed very nice.”

“Thank you. I saw your husband yesterday—”

“You’ve seen Malcolm?”

“Yes. He called me and asked me to meet him.”

“Do you know where he is?” Mrs. Fuller pleaded.

“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m calling you. I wanted to see if you knew. He ran off without finishing our conversation. I want to find him, Mrs. Fuller. He seems very frightened.”

Rebecca knew she was scaring this woman, but she had no choice. She had to find Fuller.

“I haven’t seen him since he ran out of here Saturday. Why did he go to you?” She sobbed.

“He thinks he’s in danger and that I may be in danger, too. He’s afraid that if they hurt him, they’d hurt his family as well. He’s trying to protect you.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Who is he in danger from?”

“I wish I knew. That’s why I’m trying to find him.”

“I just wish he would come home. He would be safe if he came home.”

It wasn’t the answer Rebecca wanted. “I know, so let me bring him home, Mrs. Fuller. He’ll talk to me. He’ll listen. But I need your help.”

“You have it.”

“Is there any place he would consider a safe hideaway? He’s hiding from the world. He’d go somewhere no one knew. Somewhere safe. Where would that place be? Please try to think, Mrs. Fuller.”

“I don’t know. There isn’t anyone he’d turn to and there’s nowhere he’d…” Mrs. Fuller stopped midsentence. “Wait, there is one place, but I can’t imagine him going there.”

“Where, Mrs. Fuller?” Rebecca urged. “Where would Malcolm go?”

“My grandfather’s farmhouse.”

“Where’s that?”

“But I don’t understand why he would go there.”

Hope burned hot in Rebecca’s chest. “What’s so special about your grandfather’s farmhouse?”

“It’s where we spent our honeymoon, but it fell into disrepair after my grandfather died. The place is in my sister’s name, but she doesn’t use it.”

“Why do you think he might go there?”

“Because we always said we felt a million miles away from the world and its problems whenever we stayed there.”

That was it. It had to be the place where Fuller would hide. She felt it. Believed it.

“Mrs. Fuller, where would I find the farmhouse?”

Rebecca scribbled the directions on the phone-book page listing Fuller’s number. She tore the page out from the book.

She grabbed her car keys and cell phone, then scrawled a note for Hayden and hoped he wouldn’t be too angry with her for going alone. She drove off, her guilt about ditching Hayden riding shotgun. She piled on the miles. Her guilt didn’t subside, but she shelved it. Fuller was all that mattered.

According to Mrs. Fuller’s directions, the farmhouse was northwest of Santa Rosa, in the middle of nowhere. Rebecca pushed her VW hard on US 101. She couldn’t reach the farmhouse quickly enough. She could be on the verge of finding out why Shane died.

What drove these people to suicide? Guilt? Could Malcolm have been right? Could they have been building a weapon?

Rebecca peeled off 101 at Santa Rosa and drove through the town. Once she left the city limits, the landscape turned really rural really fast. The longer she remained on the two-lane road, the less she saw of civilization. Neighborhoods disappeared and her link to the world came to an end. No wonder Malcolm Fuller might have thought this was a good place to hide.

Rebecca’s palms began to sweat. With nothing solid to refer to, she was worried that she didn’t stand a chance of finding the farm. Her only directions were to follow the roads to Fulton, then take River Road west. After four miles, she’d come across a single-track lane on the left that led all the way to Bridgewater Farm, although there would be no sign for the farm now.

Rebecca had zeroed her odometer when she reached River Road. The counter had already clicked up 4.2 miles and she hadn’t seen a left turn for over two miles.

“Please don’t be wrong about your directions, Mrs. Fuller,” she murmured to herself.

There it was. The left turn whizzed past, hidden by overgrown grass. Rebecca screeched to a halt. Luckily, no one was behind to ram her. She jammed the gearshift into reverse and backed up to the turnoff, then found drive and turned onto the single-track lane.

Unkempt grass battered against the car panels and windows like brushes in a car wash. Rebecca ignored the incidental damage, intent on finding the derelict farmhouse. After a mile on the track, she saw a farmhouse standing off in the middle distance. A surge of excitement swept through her and she stood on the gas pedal. She’d found the place. But her excitement ebbed when she reached her destination.

Anything could happen to her here, and no one would know. The farmhouse and barn to its right were the only features on the landscape. The tall grass all around waved in the wind. She certainly felt a million miles away from the world and it problems—and just as far from help.

She drove through the gateway leading to the farmhouse. The gate itself was long gone. She stopped in front of the farmhouse and walked on the loosely cobbled surface that fought valiantly to keep the weeds from totally overrunning the farmyard. The cobbles stretched from the farmhouse to the barn and cut a path back to the single-track lane. The farmhouse was as derelict as Mrs. Fuller had described—busted windowpanes, decayed stucco, and a roof that couldn’t be watertight. Rebecca couldn’t imagine anyone living here. She pushed open a rotten door that hung on by one hinge and it creaked, as she had imagined it would.

“Mr. Fuller?” she called. “Malcolm, it’s Rebecca Fallon. We met yesterday.” Malcolm Fuller didn’t answer. She wondered if he was there or whether she was talking to herself.

The kitchen had a black hole’s ability to suck in all the light and it was hard to see anything in the gloom. Dirt on the tile floor squeaked under her boot heels. She tried the old-fashioned Bakelite light switch by the door. It didn’t work—the power had long since been disconnected. She doubted whether she’d made the right assumption about Fuller staying here. The place was in no condition for anyone to inhabit, except for rats, maybe.

But someone had been here. She picked up an opened baked beans can on a wooden breakfast table, blackened by damp. The few remaining beans clung to the base of the can in congealed tomato sauce. She sniffed the contents in the can. It smelled relatively fresh, probably no more than a day old. As there was no sign of a camp stove, she assumed the beans had been eaten cold. She wrinkled her nose at the thought and placed the can back on the rotten table.

Rebecca wandered through the rest of the farmhouse, calling Fuller’s name. She found no other signs of human occupation. She wondered where he would have slept, seeing as she couldn’t find a sleeping bag. Finally, she gave up on the farmhouse and returned outside.

She headed for the barn to see if she’d have better luck finding Fuller there. She kicked a wooden plank and it skittered over the cobbles. Bending to pick the plank up, she read the carving in the wood. The paint inlay was virtually lost but still legible. It read, “Bridgewater Farm.” At least she was in the right place. She dropped the sign on the ground. When she straightened, she saw something move in the barn. She broke into goose bumps.

Frightened she might not find whom she was expecting to find in the barn, she didn’t venture any closer. She scanned the building, trying to see through gaps in the doors and holes in the brickwork. She feared finding a pair of eyes meeting her gaze, even if they were Malcolm’s.

“Malcolm, it’s me, Rebecca Fallon. Can we talk?” Rebecca called nervously, more convinced each moment that it wasn’t Fuller in the barn.

Something clattered against the farmhouse from behind Rebecca. She whirled to find the wind had caught the farmhouse door and it was swinging limply from its single hinge like a condemned man from a hangman’s rope.

Rebecca turned back to the barn and saw a figure dart back behind the door. She was being watched.

From the single-track lane, hidden in the overgrown grass, Beckerman watched through his binoculars. He focused on the lovely Rebecca Fallon talking silently to the barn. The look on her face was priceless. She was scared out of her wits by whoever was in there. Malcolm Fuller was no one to be scared of. He wasn’t violent. But the knowledge that he kept in his head was lethal to Lockhart.

He’d seen Fuller come out from the barn when Rebecca went into the farmhouse. He shot back into the barn when she came out.

Beckerman wished he could thank Rebecca. After losing Fuller on Saturday, then again on Sunday, he had no fresh leads to locate him. He knew Fuller was driving a rental car. His credit card records showed that. Christ, didn’t the man have an ounce of common sense to know not to use a credit card?

Credit card records were all well and good, but they didn’t tell you where the person was hiding. Luckily, Rebecca found out for him. The phone tap on her brother’s phone line kept him abreast of any developments. It was a masterstroke when Rebecca got the distraught Mrs. Fuller to open up. He never would have found out about the farm without her help. Thank you, Ms. Fallon.

Suddenly there was action. Rebecca obviously didn’t like what she saw. She bolted for her car. She jumped into the VW and roared out of the farmyard. She rejoined the single-track lane and whistled past him at great speed.

“Bye-bye, Becky,” he said to the speeding car. “See you later.”

Beckerman turned his attention back to the farmyard. Fuller emerged from his barn hideaway and stared back up the road at Rebecca’s car. Christ, he looked like shit. He was still in the clothes Beckerman had seen him wearing on Sunday. He’d certainly been sleeping rough. His fleece was covered in dirt and grime and his hair was plastered to his head. Silently, Fuller sneezed into his handkerchief.