Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: To Honor and To Protect\Cornered\Untraceable (35 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Julia sat curled up on the edge of the sofa in Sandy's impressive family room. The bed called to her, but she wanted to stay up until Cam got back. Something about the idea of snuggling under the covers with him sounded so good. After all they'd endured and survived, she wanted to touch him and kiss him and feel his heat. But he had to get back here first.

Sandy had gone into his home office over an hour ago. She hadn't heard a word since. She thought he'd come out and talk to her, maybe take her mind off everything. Even with Ray caught and Kreider gone, the path of destruction cut through Calapan was hard to ignore. Shattered lives and so many questions.

She got up and walked into the kitchen, thinking a second snack wouldn't be totally out of line. On the way in, the alarm panel in the dining room caught her attention. The red light beamed at her. If she was going to stay here a few days—and that was the plan in light of the questions she needed to answer—she needed to be able to come and go. That meant knowing the security codes. The one she had didn't work, which meant she didn't have access.

With her mind in a whirl she knew the chances of her forgetting were pretty high. She decided to fix the problem now before she was standing out there one day in a rainstorm.

She dumped off the coffee mug and empty water bottle and made her way to the front door. She just wanted to double-check. The alarm pad was all lit up, but the only light that flashed was red. No green light here either, which made sense in light of a drug ring being run right under their noses.

Her feet padded against the hardwood as she went back to Sandy's office. She hated to disturb him, although Cam had raised a good question about Sandy not actually having any work right now.

Still, she was respectful. She held the knob in one hand as she knocked with the other. No one answered. Since she'd seen him go in an hour ago and since there was not a door in and out of there other than the main one into the hall, he had to be in there.

She looked at the knob and knocked again. She'd never burst into this room. She viewed this as his private space and didn't violate that sanctuary.

But something pulled hard at her tonight. She wanted to peek in and see what he did when he was alone and when he worked.

Inhaling a deep breath, she twisted the knob and pushed the door open. She saw the empty chair and the walls lined with bookshelves. But no Sandy. She tried to remember if she'd dozed off and maybe missed him. She doubted it.

She went to the house intercom system and called for him. Nothing there, either.

As she stood there she felt the walls close in. It was an odd sensation and not one based in reality, but she knew the red light meant no way out. She'd have to break a window or risk the alarm. The latter wouldn't be too bad except that the new system actually didn't let you accidentally set off the alarm. If the system was on and you didn't have the code, you were trapped in that room.

That suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. So did the thoughts going through her mind about Sandy's desk. It was right there. She could look through some of the paperwork, if only to let Cam know his initial suspicions were truly wrong.

And she might be able to clear up some of those questions about the shipyard's ownership. She couldn't believe Sandy didn't know. He was a man who knew everything down to the penny. But then, nothing had been normal about the past few days. They all wanted this episode over, except her, who wanted the part with Cam to linger.

She sat down in the oversize chair and was immediately transported back to being a kid. She'd sit in his chair and spin, pretending she was on an amusement park ride. She shifted the seat from side to side and opened the top drawer. The move felt so naughty she only got it out far enough to stare at the pens sitting in the tray.

That was enough. Snooping was not her style. If Cam needed proof or wanted to talk to Sandy, he could. She was not going to get in the middle of that.

She walked back to the alarm keypad by the front door. She entered the code and tried a few variations. By the fifth time she had the nerves in her belly jumping around in a chaotic frenzy.

People could talk about being comfortable at home and not wanting to leave. She got that. But being locked in made her twitchy. If Cam needed her, she couldn't get there...and that realization set something spinning inside her.

She went back into the family room and picked up the phone. Cam might jump to the wrong conclusions, but he might have a way to get out other than through an upstairs balcony. When she lifted the receiver she didn't hear anything on the other end. No dial tone. She hung up and tried again. Then another time.

By the time she slammed down the phone the last time, she was near frantic. She couldn't control her breathing or her thoughts. She started jumping to bigger conclusions than Cam had. Then she remembered her cell. She'd left it on the kitchen counter.

She raced back to the kitchen because plain walking no longer seemed fast enough. She stepped into the doorway and stopped. Sandy had cleaned off the counter after they ate, and the phone was gone.

She pulled open drawers and looked on every flat surface. She made a run in the bedroom to see if he'd thrown it on the bed. No luck.

She stood in the middle of the hall and thought it all through. No cell, no landline, no alarm code. No way out.

Maybe Cam wasn't so paranoid after all.

* * *

C
AM
TRIED
J
ULIA
'
S
cell for the third time. The phone rang and she didn't pick up. He wanted to write it off to her being tired and crawling into bed. Maybe she was so wiped out she'd turned off the sound.

There were a lot of reasonable possibilities. He kept dwelling on the awful, like that something had happened to her and she couldn't get to the phone.

The clinic floor was quiet, just as planned. They had the world thinking Ray was on the second floor. He was really on the third. They'd cleared patients out except for a few who couldn't or refused to be moved.

“What's wrong with you?” Holt came up beside him and leaned against the wall in the visitors' lounge.

Cam tried to keep the panic out of his voice. The anxiety whipping through him was enough to deal with. “I can't reach her.”

Holt made a sound, something like a humph. “Maybe she needs a break.”

“Didn't seem like it.” If anything, she'd been trying to get him to commit to something. She'd been pretty unimpressed with his schedule and the danger aspects, probably because he was dragging her through the middle of danger at the time.

“Is your head in this?” Holt asked as he checked his watch.

“Yes.”

Holt nodded and didn't say anything else on that topic. That was Holt's style. He didn't browbeat. He treated everyone like a grown-up, which was quite refreshing. That wasn't to say he didn't butt in, because he did. But had an innate sense of when to back down, and he used it now.

There was a broader principle at work. They had an understanding on the team: if you couldn't go for the job, for whatever reason, you spoke up. You did not put the other team members in danger. Cam knew the rule and lived by it. He spent almost every day with Holt and Shane. There was no way he was going to put them in a position of having to pick up for him.

And if he was right and Sandy presented a danger, then he needed to figure this out right now. The longer Julia spent in his house, trusting him while he did whatever he was doing, the worse the end could be. And one day he might decide that she knew too much or knew the wrong people, and then Cam didn't want to think what would happen.

But the worst part was they might get this close and not be able to finish this off. That was the line that Holt kept repeating, and he said a version of it here again. “He might not even show.”

“He will.” Cam knew that Holt, who was usually right about these things—about most things, except women—had this part wrong. Sandy's personality would not let him stay at home. If he thought he could fix this and save his reputation and all he'd built, he would. A guy who lived in that kind of house liked to send a personal message and would not be content to let that message flash about him being a drug dealer.

“Yeah, I think so, too.” Holt looked down at his feet. “How are you going to explain that to her?”

Cam had run through the various options numerous times. It all came down to the same thing. He would have to pull her aside and tell her that the first man she'd ever trusted—one of the few she'd ever trusted—had violated that trust in a serious way. He had no idea how she'd recover from that.

So, for now, he dodged. “I can only handle one disaster at a time.”

“That's not true, but I'll let you get away with that excuse.”

* * *

T
HE
CLINIC
HALLWAYS
were quiet except for the occasional squawk over the speakers. Emergencies requiring serious care were flown to Seattle. The clinic served all the other needs of the community. Tonight it also acted as the scene for a setup.

Cam stood in the bathroom of Ray's reported room. Back at the house Cam had made sure to give the information to Julia in an offhanded way and she'd repeated it in front of Sandy. Cam had witnessed that part.

With the silence coming from Sandy's house, Cam wanted to send Holt over, but they needed all three of them there. Cam went back and forth between wanting Sandy to show up and not. He believed to his bones the older man had some side business going on. One that wasn't legal. He'd love to be wrong, but he didn't think he was.

A long and painful hour passed with no signs of anything. The world outside the clinic had morphed into night and stretched into the early hours of the morning. The sky remained a dark gray, signaling another rainy day tomorrow.

Cam leaned his head back against the wall. He was about to call this off and check on Julia when he heard the footsteps. Not sneakers. These were dress shoes. If he guessed right, expensive black dress shoes that he'd already seen.

Whoever it was got by the guard, which was part of the plan. The guy was to sit there but get up for food and drinks. Set a pattern of not being great about being at the door. It didn't matter, since Ray wasn't on this floor. The real guard had strict orders, and after the way the guy got all wide-eyed and panic-stricken talking to Holt, Cam doubted that guard would mess up.

The footsteps grew louder and there was a muffled sound that Cam now associated with the door opening and closing. The sound of the privacy curtain being peeled back and the way the rings clanked against the bar suggested the guy was moving around. If he came into the bathroom he'd see cabinets and not Cam hiding inside. Out there he'd see a man with Ray's coloring sleeping on his stomach and all bandaged around the shoulder and stomach.

The Ray part was tougher to pull off. If Sandy bent down and looked in close, he'd see that the face smashed in the pillow did not belong to Ray. The hope was that he'd buy the room and the clinic and try to do the job fast.

Cam looked out of the crack in the door to the room beyond. Sandy walked around wearing doctor's scrubs. It was a nice but unnecessary touch. They'd already covered that with the guard. But now when nurses and other people on the hall ignored him, it wouldn't seem so odd.

Sandy slipped around the bed toward the headboard and the beeping equipment. Nothing was actually connected to Shane as he played Ray, but Sandy didn't need to know that. When Sandy took out a syringe and started filling the tubes he thought led into Ray, Cam felt sick. He didn't even know if Julia would believe him despite the other witnesses.

Cam slid out as Sandy finished. When he turned to leave he almost walked right into Cam.

Cam held his gun steady. “You're a doctor now?”

“I was... There was... Just checking on him.” Sandy stumbled his way through a sentence that made no sense in light of who he was and his professed lack of knowledge about Ray Miner and who he was.

“Do you need him to come back to work at the drug-producing plant? Must be hard to find people loyal enough to do that.” Cam almost spat. The guy made him sick.

Sandy was one of those. He had everything and greed pulled at him until he went out and earned more. And not the legal way. No, he had to move drugs. Cam would bet he was a guy who found drug use to be disgusting yet had no problem pushing it to kids and getting rich off them.

“What?”

Sandy was playing dumb and Cam refused to buy it. The blank stare and confusion. He was acting to the wrong audience. “It's over.”

“I don't know what you think you have, but—”

Cam could almost see the wheels turning in the guy's head. He was searching for a reasonable explanation and kept coming up blank. Cam almost wished Sandy would come forward and admit it, not hide behind the money he earned from illegal drugs. Just own his behavior.

“You're a drug dealer and murderer.” Cam had some other choice words for him but led with those two.

Sandy starting shaking his head. “You're passing your mess off on me.”

“Why do this? Why drugs? I hear it's a huge operation with great stuff.” Cam had promised he wouldn't ask, but the question came out.

He'd heard so many excuses and justifications over the years, most of them not true, that he no longer cared. The fact was, people committed these crimes and then acted shocked when caught. Sandy was the type to play the victim. Poor little millionaire got bored or was in the right place or whatever.

Cam worked his butt off in his job and paid the bills. He didn't expect a handout and he sure didn't understand people who had it all and threw it away in the search for
just a little bit more
.