Finding Kate Huntley (22 page)

A twitch set in Harrison’s jaw. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “Why don’t you have a seat, so we can talk?”

Jack leaned over and lifted the black gym bag from the floor. Jack could hear the kids outside, doing their thing. He set the canvas bag on the chair opposite Harrison and peeked inside. A laptop, cash, batteries, everything he ordered over the phone. “Looks like this is for me.”

Harrison managed a tight smile. “I’d appreciate it if you would please hand over the disc, Jack.”

Leaning closer, Jack stared Harrison down. “Look me in the eyes, boss, and tell me you didn’t set me up.”

Harrison sighed. “You always were too soft, kid. The job entails quick thinking, an extremely high intelligence, and most of all, a flexible nature.”

Jack’s lip twitched. “What about solemnly swearing to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic?”

“Sometimes you have to know when to break the rules, Jack.” Harrison held out his hand and waited for the disc.

“Seven years ago,” Jack said, his chest tight, “I felt honored to stand before you and be sworn in to one of the most revered agencies in the world. I could not have been prouder to know I would be working under a man with strength of character and morals.”

“Never judge a man,” Harrison said, “until you’ve stood in his shoes.”

“Whatever your reasons for turning on your country, sir...I hope it was worth it.”

“Hand over the disc, Jack.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s over, Harrison. I’ve sent copies of the disc to the media. I sent the original to the director himself. You’re finished.”

An older kid, maybe sixteen, holding his skateboard close to his chest, entered the pizza place and looked at Jack.

Jack tipped his baseball cap, a signal for the kid to gather his friends. They were going with Plan B.

Chapter 27

Auntie stepped into the office. “Time to get dressed,” she told Kate. “Our guests will be arriving soon.”

Kate willed her hands to stop shaking as she tried to get the cursor to move to the X in the right-hand corner of the monitor. Auntie was only a few feet away from seeing the picture on the screen. As she focused on moving the cursor, so she could exit out of the damn site, Kate’s heart beat a million miles per second.

Auntie marched forward, intent on pulling her away from the computer. She glanced at the monitor just as Kate clicked the mouse and the screen flashed back to her game of solitaire.

“I’ll never understand how people can waste hours looking into a computer screen,” Auntie said.

Kate struggled to get the cursor to do her bidding again so she could exit out completely.

“Leave it. I’ll have Maria shut it off later. Right now she’s waiting in the other room to help you dress.”

Blown away at the idea of Auntie being one of the bad guys, Kate thought she might be sick. Unsure of what to do next, she obediently stood and followed Dr. Elizabeth Louise Kramer out the door and into the hallway. A familiar hollow, empty feeling washed over her. “I’m a big girl, Auntie. I can dress myself.”

“Humor me, dear, and give Maria something to do.”

As Jack exited the restaurant, a dozen kids piled into the California Pizza Kitchen. “Free pizza for everyone,” Jack told the kids as he pointed to the pizza boxes piled in front of Harrison.

Harrison stood, but the kids had been coached on what to do. There was no way Harrison was going to get by them. Every kid had been paid twenty dollars to annoy the hell out of the man. Jack had two dollars left to his name. That is, until Harrison showed up with cash and a laptop that would hopefully allow him to read the disc.

Outside, Jack looked back at Harrison.

“You’ll never get away,” Harrison said.

“We’ll see about that. If there’s one thing I learned since you promoted me, Harrison, it’s how to be ready for anything.”

Jack headed across the promenade.

The man with the sunhat stood.

Jack cut a sharp left into Macy’s department store and rushed into the men’s dressing room as he’d already done three times this morning. “Are you here, kid?”

The door to the last dressing room came open. A tall, gangly teenager gestured wildly for Jack to hurry. “What took you so long?”

The kid was a junior in high school, but he was a basketball player, and he stood at about six foot four inches.

Jack stripped down to his boxers.

The kid’s baggy pants were too long on Jack, but they would have to do. Jack removed his baseball hat and placed it on the kid’s head. Next, he reached inside the black bag.

“Can I get you any other sizes?” a clerk asked from the other side of the dressing room door.

“No,” they both answered at the same time.

The kid put on Jack’s shirt while Jack slipped on the kid’s hooded sweatshirt and zipped the front before handing the boy five crisp one hundred dollar bills. “Pull the cap lower when you leave here and then run as fast as you can, right out the front entrance. Whatever you do, don’t stop running. Harrison’s friend means business. He’s the guy with the funny Burberry hat and aviators. His sideburns are too long and he’s wearing a short-sleeved button-up shirt, untucked. He’s probably carrying a gun.”

The kid laughed. “I have a gun.”

“On you?”

“No. Dude, I’m not stupid. But if the dude follows me home, he’s not gonna like my brothers.”

“Just stay safe, will you?”

The boy left without another word. Jack grabbed the black bag and slipped out, too. He needed to get back to Kate before it was too late. Peering out the store window, Jack watched the kid weave his way through the crowd. Sure enough, the man wearing aviators followed the teenager until Harrison showed up and pointed toward the department store. Not good. Both men were headed Jack’s way.

Jack turned around and sprinted back the way he’d come, trying to keep his baggy pants on and knocking into a few shoppers in the process. “Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry.”

The escalator was crowded, too crowded to squeeze his way through to the top. He looked back toward the door. The man with the hat was a big guy, as tall as he was wide, and a lot faster than he looked. Harrison was close behind with gun drawn.

A woman screamed. People panicked the moment they spotted Harrison’s weapon.

Using more force than he intended, Jack decided to push his way through the dense crowd. “Sorry. Man with a gun after me. I need to get through.” That seemed to do the trick and Jack made it to the top before Harrison could do something crazy like fire a shot into the crowd.

At the top of the escalator, Jack cut a sharp right and ran straight ahead, putting him smack dab in the middle of a frenzy of female shoppers. There was a sale going on in the lingerie department. Women of every age sifted through piles of satin and silk. Knowing Harrison and his friend must be close, Jack headed for the dressing rooms. He pushed on dressing room doors as he went, but they were all being used. He got lucky when the second to last door opened.

Unfortunately, the room wasn’t empty.

Before the woman could scream, Jack grabbed her around the waist, put his hand over her mouth, and kicked the door shut.

He caught her angry expression in the mirror.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll be gone in a flash. I’m not going to hurt you.” He looked at her in the mirror. “Do you understand?”

She nodded.

Judging by all the bras she had piled in the dressing room she was having a difficult time finding what she needed. At least she wasn’t braless at the moment.

“Jack, it’s me,” a male voice called out. “Rick Harvey, Criminal Investigative Division.”

Jack grimaced. He liked Rick, and he couldn’t stand the thought of yet another agent being corrupted by Harrison.

The woman’s eyes widened in fear. She pushed away from him and ran out the door.

Jack rolled his eyes. Then he reached into his pocket, stepped out of the dressing room, and promptly put a gun to Rick’s head, surprised to see that Rick Harvey and the guy in the Burberry hat were one and the same. “Put your gun on the ground, Rick.”

Harvey did as he said, and raised his hands to the air. “I sent Harrison the other way,” Rick said, “but he’s going to be here any minute, Jack. I’m on your side. I’m the one who called A.J. and tipped him off, letting him know you were in Vegas. I owed you. If it weren’t for you, my niece would have ended up on a milk carton.”

“If you’re one of the good guys, then why are you here now?”

“I let Harrison think I had been recruited by Conrad and Monahan. We have been watching those two for a while now.”

Jack could hear a woman crying in one of the dressing rooms. Just in case Rick couldn’t be trusted, Jack kicked Rick’s gun toward the room he had exited.

“You better get going,” Rick said. “Make a right after you exit the dressing rooms. At the far left wall you’ll see an emergency exit. I’ll try to detain Harrison for a few more minutes, but you gotta move.”

Jack didn’t know who he could trust any longer, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He took off, knowing he could get shot in the back on his way out. Jack ran out of the dressing area and cut to the right. The lingerie department was now empty. Jack headed for the emergency exit and shot through the doors. Alarms blared. He needed to get back to Kate.

Kate didn’t know what to do. She was dressed to the hilt in a white Oscar de la Renta deep-V dress, and she had no place to go. It was six o’clock. She had put Auntie off for the past thirty minutes, feigning a queasy stomach. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stall for much longer. Did Auntie know that one of her partners was a cold-blooded killer?

Kate sat on the edge of the bed. Of course she knew. Seeing those pictures on the Internet had put every nerve ending in her body on red alert. Ben Sheldon, aka Benjamin Greene, had been in every picture with Auntie, smiling and enjoying his good fortune, his arm draped casually around Dr. Elizabeth Louise Kramer’s shoulders.
Louise
.

Jack was right. Auntie couldn’t be trusted. CFAF, the organization that had raised millions of dollars for AIDS research, was not what it seemed.

The picture that startled Kate most was the photo of three of them on the yacht: Ben Sheldon, Auntie, and a man whose grey eyes and serpent tattoo had haunted her every night for the past ten years: Roger Cott.

Behind the three people in the picture, the water sparkled in the background. The sun’s rays made the eyes of the serpent tattoo across Roger Cott’s bare chest look as if they were winking at her.

She brought her fingertips to her throat. She felt as if she was suffocating. She had to get out of here. But how?

A tap on the window cut into her thoughts, drawing her to the window. On the lawn, bending low next to a neatly cut hedge was Jack readying to throw another stick. She’d never been so relieved to see anyone in her life, even if he was dressed in clothes three sizes too big.

She unlatched the lock, slid the window open, and leaned out. “What took you so long? And whose clothes are you wearing?”

“After meeting with Harrison I had some business in Ventura to take care of.” He looked at his baggy pants. “It’s a long story.”

A knock sounded at the bedroom door. She put a finger to her lips before turning away from Jack. “Who is it?” she called out.

“It’s Maria. Dr. Kramer asked me to escort you to the living room where a few of her close friends are waiting to meet you.”

“Tell her I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“But child—”

“Maria! Go tell her now or I will make sure she knows that I am not happy with my hair.” She listened to the retreating sounds of Maria’s sturdy heels as the maid marched off.

Kate ran back to the window and leaned as far out as she could manage. “Jack,” she said, waving him closer. “You were right about Auntie. She lied about so many things.”

“You have to get out of there Kate. She’s not who you think.”

A key rattled in the door and when Kate glanced over her shoulder, Auntie entered the room with a gun in hand. She kept it aimed at Kate.

“I’ve called the police,” Kate lied, hoping Jack had done exactly that. “They’ll be here any minute.”

Auntie smiled. “Silly fool. They’ll have no choice but to lock your misguided friend behind bars for a very long time.”

“The disc will prove him innocent,” Kate said, panic lining her voice.

Auntie shook her head. “The disc has been destroyed.”

“Lou,” a man called from the front of the house as he approached. “Do you need any help?”

“Lou,” Kate said, her voice filled with disbelief. Not only was her Auntie working on the wrong side of the tracks, she was the leader of the pack? The person she’d been searching for all along. “You’re Lou?”

Before Auntie could react, Ben Sheldon/Greene appeared. He wore a cast on one arm and his eyes gleamed with pleasure when he spotted Kate.

“I have things under control,” Auntie told him. “Her boyfriend, Jack, is running around outside. Could you take care of him? I don’t need a wanted man running around the neighborhood making the neighbors nervous.”

Sheldon nodded and left the room.

Kate met Auntie’s gaze. Bile rose to her throat. “You can’t be Lou.”

Dr. Kramer arched an impassive brow.

Kate’s stomach turned as she thought of her father and how the woman he’d loved like a sister had betrayed him. “Why?”

Dr. Kramer huffed. “Do you have any idea how many people would be out of a job if your father or Dr. Forstin had found a cure for AIDS?”

“This isn’t about people losing their jobs,” Kate said as she took a step toward the woman, her chest painfully tight. “Is it?”

Auntie remained silent.

“You killed my father...your friend...for this?” Kate lifted her hands toward the gilded frames, porcelain vases, and expensive paintings. “I thought you wanted to save lives.”

“We all did at first. But things change. All your father had to do was keep quiet.”

Her words hit Kate like a slap to the face. “He knew what you were up to, didn’t he? My father knew your family business was in trouble. He must have known you and your partners were stealing from the organization. I didn’t believe it, but it’s true. Jack was right. This is about money and greed.”

Auntie’s eyes flashed, but it wasn’t remorse Kate saw in her eyes. It was anger. Greed, money, and power were all that mattered. Auntie backed away from the door and motioned for Kate to lead the way. “Go. I’ll follow.”

“What are you going to do? Kill me, too?”