In Too Deep (19 page)

Go about your normal business,
she had been coached by
Cal months before. Since this whole mess was anything but normal, how in the world was she to do that?

“Just so you know, Lily, Cal is as positive as you are about what Quinn is capable of—only he's drawn a very different conclusion.”

“I'll talk to him,” Lily said, then asked, “Are you okay?”

Hilda's answer was a long time in coming. “Patrick wasn't home when I went by there last night. I keep wondering if I'd tried harder to find him…”

After her voice trailed away, Lily asked, “Do you want me to come to town? I can be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“No. There's nothing you could do right now, anyway.”

“And what is it that I would never?” Quinn asked, moving into the bedroom as Lily hung up the phone.

“Beat Patrick Riggs within an inch of his life.”

“What?”

She related what Hilda had told her, and realized how much had been left out. As if he sensed how much the news had upset her, Quinn sat on the edge of the bed and drew her into his arms. Awful imagines flashed through her head, reinforcing just how foreign violence was to her even though she had once witnessed a cold-blooded execution.

“I should get dressed and go see what I can do to help,” he said. “Since that boy is a student—”

“You feel responsible,” she finished, standing when he did and pulling on her bathrobe.

“I
am
responsible,” he corrected.

“What happened isn't your fault.” When he didn't answer, she said, “I'm going to check on Annmarie.”

Lily pushed open the door to her daughter's bedroom and found her sound asleep. Images from the previous day left Lily gripping the doorjamb. Though it was long past time to get their day under way, she was loathe to wake the child when sleep was what she clearly needed.

She felt Quinn behind her, and his hand came to rest on
her shoulder. He took her hand and led her toward the kitchen.

“Let her sleep,” he said.

“But I know you're going to be antsy until you've checked on Patrick and called his parents.” She went through the automatic motions of making coffee.

“It will have to wait.” He finished buttoning the flannel shirt he had grabbed from the bedroom.

Lily finished making the coffee, thinking about last night and how he'd run. How he had come back when his worry for their safety overrode his fear of letting them get too close.

She walked around the island and pushed him into one of the stools at the breakfast bar, then stepped between his legs.

“Admit it, you're afraid to leave me here alone.”

After a second he nodded, looping his hands at the small of her back.

She made a point of glancing around the kitchen and what was visible from the living room. “I love that you care about me enough to worry about me.”

“You have no wheels and—”

She pressed her fingers against his lips. “You need to go call the university and Patrick's family, right?” When he nodded, she continued, “And the phone numbers are in your desk at work, right?”

Again he nodded.

“And it's making you crazy to sit here.”

He brought her head toward his until their foreheads rested together. “It will make me just as crazy to be gone and worrying about you.”

“I know.” She stepped out of his arms and went back around the island. She opened the cupboard above the coffeemaker and pulled a stainless-steel travel mug from the shelf, which she filled with coffee. “But you need to go. The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back.”

“You're not kicking me out.”

She set the mug next to him on the counter. “Oh, but I am. It's daylight. There are locks on the door and a phone
right over there. Plus, I have that grant proposal I'm working on, so I'll have things to do until Annmarie wakes up.”

“You make it sound too logical,” he said.

“You can't be with me every minute of every day.”

He stood and came toward her. “You're sure about this?”

“Positive.” She wasn't, but she gave him a gentle nudge toward the door, anyway. Besides, Cal would be here soon, and the things she had to tell him had to be done in private. “I can't live my life being afraid,” she said, a pep talk for herself as much as for Quinn.

In the mudroom, he put on his boots, then his jacket, and Lily handed him the cup of coffee.

He gazed down at her a long moment, then finally kissed her. “I'll be back as quick as I can.”

“I know.”

He kissed her again. “Lock up.”

“I will.” She opened the door. “Now go take care of things for Patrick. We're going to be fine.”

He stepped off the porch, aware of her watching him. Without turning around to look at her, he waved. The whole thing felt oddly surreal and totally right. Having someone to kiss as he went out the door in the morning. He liked that. Even if he didn't like leaving her behind. As she had said…the sooner he took care of things, the sooner he could come back.

Halfway to town, he met an oncoming pickup that made no effort to move to one side of the narrow road. Undoubtedly the U.S. Marshal, Quinn decided when he recognized Frank Talbot's truck. Quinn inched his SUV to the side of the road and stopped.

“I've been looking for you,” Springfield said, pulling even.

“You've found me,” Quinn returned. “What's up?”

“Patrick Riggs.”

“I'm on my way to the clinic now.” Quinn motioned down the road. “How about you follow me?”

After a second, Springfield nodded.

Five minutes later Quinn pulled his car to a stop in front of the clinic. He was acutely aware of Springfield following him, but didn't wait. Finding out if there was anything he could do for Patrick was far more important.

He walked through the door and called for Hilda. She answered from the examining room, and he went back.

“Figured you'd show up,” she said. She had a stethoscope to her ears, which she methodically moved across Patrick's bare, battered chest and abdomen. Numerous dark splotches and abrasions marred his skin, especially around his ribs.

Quinn bent over the young man, scarcely recognizing him. Despite being cleaned up, there were still traces of blood in his beard, and his cheeks and nose were scraped and swollen. “Looks like someone took a board to him.”

“That would be my guess.”

Even his arms were bruised. Quinn had been on the receiving end of beatings by a couple of bullies years and years ago, and he recognized the defensive nature of the wounds. Shaking his head, Quinn asked, “How did this happen?”

“That, we don't know. Not yet.”

Her reply was a long ways from the sassy ones she had always given him when he'd been injured. She'd never before struck him as a vulnerable woman, but she did now.

Her gaze focused behind him and Quinn turned around. The marshal stood in the doorway. “His roommates said he never came home last night. One of them heard something outside a couple of hours ago, got up to see what the commotion was, and found him.”

“You've had a long night, then,” Quinn said to Hilda. “First Max. Now this.”

“A regular crime wave.” She pulled the sheet back over Patrick's chest.

“Where is Max?” Quinn asked.

“He helped me with Patrick until about the time I called Lily—broken arm and all. Clearly, a man together enough to help with this kind of emergency situation isn't suffering any lasting effects from a concussion, so I sent him home.”

“That tells us where your handyman spent the night,” Springfield said. “And you say you were at Lily's.”

Quinn stared at the man without answering.

“All night?” the marshal asked.

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “If there's an accusation in there somewhere, spit it out.”

“No accusation. Just trying to get it all straight in my head. It would appear Patrick here is the guy who told the kids about the cat in the cave.”

That news stunned Quinn and he glanced at Hilda, who again shrugged. “It could have been. Thad said it was a guy with a beard and wearing a plaid flannel shirt.”

“That describes most of the men on the island.”

“It's no secret that you had an ax to grind with him,” Springfield continued. “Everybody in town from the skipper on your boat to Patrick's roommates have said you think the kid is a screwup and that you've been riding him hard for weeks.”

Quinn nodded. “Like you said, no secrets. Thinking he's lazy is one thing.” He waved toward the young man's still form. “This is something else, and I didn't do this.”

“I saw your car in front of the Tin Cup last night.”

“You keep acting like I'm a suspect.”

Springfield smiled. “Nope. Just shaking the tree and seeing what falls out.”

“You guys can take this outside,” Hilda said.

“When the plane gets here, I'll come back to help you load up.” Quinn shouldered his way past the Springfield, who followed him out of the clinic. After Quinn reached the street, he faced the marshal. “You're here because there's a threat against Lily, right?”

Springfield's gaze sharpened. “Is that what she told you?”

Quinn snorted. “Since she's not a prisoner waiting for an escort and since she was in protective custody while she was waiting to testify, what else would it be? This isn't exactly brain surgery.”

“Get to the point, if you have one.”

“Maybe you ought to be figuring out if Patrick has an accomplice,” Quinn said. “Did you stop to think how the cat got to the Hollywood Bowl?”

Springfield gazed down the deserted street.

“So instead of accusing me of a crime you known damn well I didn't commit—”

“Like I said, I'm trying to nail down the pieces from last night.”

“Yeah, I went to the Tin Cup,” Quinn said. “Ordered pie and coffee. I didn't finish either one, because I was worrying—”

“About Lily?”

Quinn nodded. “Tell me what kind of help you need and I'll get it. These accidents targeting Lily have got to stop before somebody gets killed. That's what matters here.”

“We don't get civilians involved.”

“It's a little late for that.”

“Let's suppose for a minute that I believe you—you had nothing to do with that boy's beating.” Springfield met his gaze. “Who are the suspects on your list?”

“Patrick. Will Baker.” Quinn met Springfield's gaze. “You.”

Springfield stared at him, then shook his head. “I'll say one thing for you. You've got nerve.” He headed for his truck, then turned around. “You've heard that thing they always say in the movies. Don't leave town. Don't do anything stupid.” As intimidation went, he had it down pat. “It's good advice, Morrison. Follow it.”

T
he collect call Max had been waiting for came about an hour after he got home from the clinic.

“It's done,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“As soon as it hits the news, I'll make the deposit,” Max said. He disconnected the phone. He allowed himself a moment's satisfaction—Franklin Lawrence was dead and would never again blackmail anyone.

Surprisingly, the feeling that came over him wasn't relief, but worry. For months, he'd had one goal—revenge for the double cross Franklin Lawrence had pulled on him last spring. The mess Max had found himself in with the Jensen sisters all stemmed back to being blackmailed into kidnapping Dahlia Jensen.

Thanks to that, his face and fingerprints were now on file with the FBI, something he'd managed to avoid for more than twenty years. No matter how careful he'd been, there was always the possibility that one of his earlier jobs could now be traced back to him. Even though he had planned to retire, he could no longer do so with the assurance that he
couldn't be tracked down. His younger sister believed he was a man who lived well because he had invested well. Max wanted to keep it that way.

Worse, somewhere along the way, he had grown to care about the two women—first Dahlia, now Lily. Ensuring her well-being had gone beyond a matter of professional pride to caring about her. And she was in far more danger than she imagined.

Thanks to Patrick's whispered confession during the night, Max knew that Will had orchestrated the accidents and that he had stolen Lily's keys so he could get into her house and take the cat. Patrick fulfilled his end of the bargain by luring Annmarie and Thad to the cave. A stupid idea that had damn near worked. That might have been the end of it for Patrick if he hadn't had an attack of conscience. For that he had been beaten and left for dead.

Franklin Lawrence always had a backup plan, and since the planned “accidents” had failed to take Lily's life, a new plan was now in play. Never mind that he was already dead.

Max packed his belongings, a task made more awkward because of the cast on his broken arm. Not that there was much to pack—only what he could carry in a duffel bag. He cleaned and loaded his Glock, and put two extra clips in his vest pockets. Then he systematically wiped down every hard surface in the house where he might have left a fingerprint. He didn't figure anyone would bother to check, but just in case, he wanted to make damn sure there was no connection between Max Johnson and the assassin he had once been— Max Jamison.

 

Will Baker figured this plan had to work. It had to. This was his last chance. It had been made clear to him that he'd suffer Patrick's fate if he failed.

Will double checked the readings on the one pressure tank that had been worrying Morrison. A little more heat and a lot more pressure was the answer, so Will turned up the thermostat well beyond the temperature Lily had said was needed
for the organisms in the tank. Give it a couple of hours and the tank would blow. All Will had to do was to make sure she was here when it happened.

Jimmying the lock on the supply cabinet was easy, and he found the final ingredient for his planned accident—elemental sodium. His favorite experiment in chemistry had involved elemental sodium and water, and he had always wondered what it would be like with gallons of water rather an a few ounces in a beaker. He imagined the direction the water would take when the pressure tank exploded and made sure the sodium was sprinkled in its path out of the lab and into the office area in the front of the building.

He was just finishing when he saw Morrison drive up. Will retreated to the lab, closing the door and turning off lights. To his relief, Morrison didn't come into the lab. After a couple of seconds, Will heard him on the telephone. Quietly he crept across the room and peered through the cracked door. Morrison sat with his back to the lab door, hunched over his desk. He stayed maybe ten minutes, then left. Will breathed a sigh of relief.

Time to go let Lily know there was a big problem that required her immediate attention.

 

“Mom, are you still going to punish me?” Annmarie asked while Lily got dressed. “I sat in the car with Thad for a long, long time. Like a very, very long time-out.”

“That wasn't a time-out.” Lily zipped up the jeans and pulled a sweater over her head. “As for your punishment, I'm still thinking about it.” She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter, rubbing their foreheads together. “Unless you want me to think of something awful right now.”

Annmarie giggled. “What if I promise to be very good?”

“Hmm.”

“I'll make my bed every day,” she said, “and help you empty the dishwasher and feed the cat and keep my toys picked up and—”

“Bribes might work.” Lily gave her a smacking kiss on her cheek. “Let me finish getting dressed.”

“Okay.” Annmarie ran out of the room and a moment later Lily heard the chorus of a children's song on CD-player in the living room, Annmarie's voice singing along.

Lily went into the bathroom to give her hair a quick brush, her survey of herself in the mirror critical. This day she had given up her tailored clothes for jeans and a burgundy sweater. Practical, she told herself, for whatever might happen later. Never mind that she was really proud she looked good thanks to the ten pounds she had lost over the past few months. She absolutely was not dressing to look good for Quinn when he returned.
Liar.

The decisions she had to make washed through her and she stared into the mirror. It was so easy to forget her vow, to pretend the biggest worry on her mind was whether Quinn liked her as much as she liked him.

Her temporary good mood squashed, she dialed Cal's number once more, and once again there was no answer. If Hilda hadn't said that she had talked to him, Lily would have been tempted to think the man had left. He had said he was on the way out here—so where was he?

“Can I have some cheese?” Annmarie asked a few minutes later, poking her head into the bedroom.

“Sure,” Lily responded.

“Good.” Annmarie ran back toward the kitchen and Lily could hear the refrigerator door opening. She grinned. Slices of cheese for breakfast wouldn't have been her first choice, but at least Annmarie was hungry enough to eat this morning.

Shoes in hand, Lily headed for the kitchen. When she didn't see her daughter, she called, “Annmarie?”

There was no answer, and from the living room, a familiar song played.

“You didn't take food into your bedroom, did you?”

Still no answer. Lily sat at the table and put on her shoes. She was heading back toward the hallway when movement outside the huge living room window caught her eye—a
skunk followed along by several of her kittens. In the next instant she realized she was looking at a small—very small—black and white dog and her puppies. Annmarie was outside with them, kneeling down and holding out a piece of cheese.

Had it been any other day, Lily wouldn't have questioned the need to rescue the animals. Instead fear wound through her in the scant second she took to scan the copse of trees that surrounded the house. She rapped on the window. Annmarie looked up with a grin, and the dog ran.

“No. Come back.” Lily couldn't hear the words, but she could read her daughter's lips. Annmarie ran after them, the mother dog leading the way and the pups strung out behind her.

Lily rushed to the mudroom. She flung open the door to the porch. “Annmarie!”

The child didn't answer.

Her heart in her throat, Lily yanked her keys off the hook and pulled the door shut behind her. She automatically locked the door and dropped the keys into her pocket, then took off at a run after her daughter.

An overriding fear rode her. What if the dog was a lure to get her and Annmarie out of the house? If she called to her daughter, “they” would know they had succeeded. So, Lily didn't call out like the panic in her chest demanded.

The undergrowth of the forest grew exponentially thicker the farther away from the house Lily got. Her mind went wild and her hands went cold and her chest went tight and she couldn't hear anything except the warning bells clamoring in her head.

A bright blue flutter caught Lily's eye—the same fabric as Annmarie's jacket. Fear overrode caution. “Annmarie.”

The only answer was her own thundering heartbeat.

Finally she heard Annmarie somewhere ahead of her, calling to the dog.

Sure that every snap of a branch meant that someone was after them, Lily plunged headlong through the forest, following the sound of her daughter's voice. At last, there she was.

“Annmarie,” Lily called.

The child immediately stopped and waited for her. “Oh, Mom, you should see the babies and the mommy.”

“You should have waited for me.” Lily dropped to one knee and pulled her daughter close, hugging her hard.

Lily scanned the forest around them expecting to see some nightmarish abductor pop from behind a tree.

“But, Mom.”

“You remember the rules.” Fear still riding her hard, she resisted the urge to shout at Annmarie for scaring her so.

“Put on my shoes before going outside.” She stuck out a foot for inspection. “I did. My coat, too. See?” This time an arm went out, the sleeve missing the ragged tear that Lily clutched in her palm.

“What else?” When Annmarie didn't answer, Lily said, “What about staying in the yard?”

“I forgot.”

“No running off on your own,” Lily added. “Not even for a dog and her puppies.” Lily's grip around her daughter's shoulders tightened. “What if you had fallen down and hurt yourself?” Lily waved at the brush around them. “How would I find you?”

“I don't know.”

Lily glanced around the underbrush. “Which way is home?”

Annmarie pointed behind her, then frowned and turned in another direction.

Lily pressed a hand against her chest, willing her heart to stop racing. “That's the most important reason why you can't run off like this. You don't want to be lost, do you?”

Annmarie shook her head. “But what about the mommy dog and her babies?”

“They'll manage on their own.” Lily glanced around the brush, then said softly to Annmarie, “See that log right over there? We're going to go sit there for a minute. Then, we're going to listen to the sounds of the forest.”

Annmarie smiled. “I remember this game. Then I tell you what I heard.”

“That's right.” The log was mostly concealed from view and deep within shadows. A plus if you wanted to hide. And Lily did. They sat behind a log as deep within the shadows as Lily could manage, which was only a little damp from the previous night's rain.

Every time Annmarie started to speak, Lily touched her fingers to her mouth and shook her head. She listened. Little by little, she heard the sounds of the forest around them. The occasional chirp of birds and the more distinctive call of a blue jay. No sounds of anyone moving through the forest. Not that she necessarily trusted that. Her uncle Ross had been able to move through the forest like a shadow.

“Are we done yet?” Annmarie whispered.

Lily nodded.

“I heard birds,” Annmarie said. “And the wind and a boat. And, Mom, I heard the puppies, too.” She took Lily by the hand. “Can't we go find them?”

“Not right now,” Lily said firmly, standing and heading back through the brush toward the house. She had also heard everything Annmarie named, except the puppies.

As they got to the edge of the woods, Lily heard the rumble of an engine—one that belonged to an ATV or a motorcycle rather than a car. Still worried the dog had simply been a mechanism to lure them outside, Lily motioned for Annmarie to be quiet and led the way around the yard, well within the shadows of the trees. When she could finally see all the yard from the driveway where it came out of the woods to the porch, she stopped cold.

A battered all-terrain vehicle was parked near the porch. In the next instant, she saw Will Baker. Thinking that Quinn might have sent him because she hadn't answered the phone, she was about to call out to him when Will casually put a rock through the window of the mudroom door, reached inside and unlocked it. Lily covered her mouth to stifle the gasp that sounded as loud as an eagle's cry to her. Pulling
her daughter deeper into the shadows, Lily watched as he walked into the house.

“Mom, that's a man from your work. What is he doing?”

“I don't know, sweetie.” A part of her wanted to believe that he was looking for her out of concern. But she didn't trust that enough to come out of the shadow of the trees.

Wishing there was some way of knowing Will's intentions for sure, Lily knelt and pulled Annmarie farther into the underbrush with her.

“Mom, it's wet in here.”

“I know.” Lily squeezed Annmarie's shoulder. “We've got to be very quiet for a minute.”

“Okay,” she whispered back. “I know how to do this 'cause this is what happened when the bad mens came to Aunt Rosie's house. Remember?”

Lily did remember. Though it had been weeks after the fact when she learned about it, she had been terrified her plan to remove Annmarie from harm's way had backfired. Rosie and Ian had literally been chased from Rosie's house, and they had taken Annmarie into hiding until after Lily had testified. Looking back, she was positive that she would have succumbed to the pressure if she had realized how great a danger she had put the members of her family in.

And here they were again.

Moments later Will came back outside and stood on the porch looking around. He pulled a hand-held radio from his belt, and began talking into it. She couldn't make out the words. Was he talking to Quinn or someone else? She wished she knew. A second later he clipped the unit back to his belt and stalked toward the boathouse. It was also locked, and he was close enough that Lily could see he was irritated.