Sweet Fortune (30 page)

“I think I get the point.” Hatch's brow rose. “A little too honest, Jessie?”

“I simply told them the truth about the products they were buying and sent a few of them who looked particularly ill to a doctor. That's all,” Jessie stated.

“It was enough to butcher my bottom line within a month,” Mavis confided to Hatch. “She was so nice, and such an enthusiastic person, though. I really hated to let her go, but business is business.”

Hatch nodded in complete understanding. “Believe me, I know the feeling, Mavis. Business is business.”

For some reason that struck Jessie as funny. She started laughing and could not stop. Hatch smiled in quiet satisfaction.

The next morning Jessie walked into the small building housing Valentine Consultations with a sense of impending disaster weighing on her. As soon as she opened the front door of the building she saw the green glow seeping out from the cracked doorway of Alex's office. She pushed open the door and glanced inside.

The place was in its usual state of disarray. Alex, his head cradled on his folded arms, was fast asleep amid the clutter of empty soda cans and pizza cartons. He stirred as Jessie stepped into the room.

“Did you spend the whole night here, Alex?”

“Hi.” He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and reached for his glasses. “Yeah. I was here all night. Started talking to Susan. After she went off-line, I fell asleep.”

“You contacted Susan again? Is she all right?”

“She's starting to sound real scared, Jessie. Said she thinks she's being watched. I told her that I'd get her off that island anytime she wants.”

“No kidding?” Jessie sat down in the chair next to his. “What did she say to that?”

“She panicked. Said absolutely no police.”

“Hmmm.” Jessie glanced at the screen and saw the words that had appeared on the top half. “Is that her last message?”

Alex frowned. “No, I cleared the screen after her last one. Holy shit.” He leaned closer, alarmed. “That's a new one. She must have sent it to me while I was asleep.”

Jessie leaned forward to read. It was the longest message she had yet seen from Susan Attwood.

I'm really getting scared, Green. I want out of here. I think I saw data I shouldn't have seen. Please come and get me. The cove on the eastern side of the island. There's a buoy marking it. Please be there in a boat at midnight tonight. Green? Green, are you still there? I hope you get this last message. I've got to get out of here. Good-bye, Green. Please, no cops. I'm so afraid. I just want to get away from here. I hope you're still there, Green
.

“Holy shit,” Alex said again. He surged up out of the chair. “We've got to rescue her.”

“Of course we do.” Jessie glanced at her watch. “We'll have to get moving. It'll take time to get to the islands and arrange to rent a boat. Do you know how to operate one?”

“No. Damn.” Alex swung around, his eyes frantic. “We've got to find someone who knows how to pilot a boat. Someone who can keep his mouth shut.”

Jessie thought for a moment. “My cousin, David, spent a few months on a fishing boat up in Alaska. He knows about boats.”

“Think he'd help us?”

“I think so. I'll call him.” Jessie reached for the phone.

“After you get hold of him, you'd better call Hatch,” Alex said.

Jessie winced. “He's going to explode when he hears what we're planning to do.”

*  *  *

She was right. Hatch exploded.

“I don't know how I let you three talk me into this. I must be going crazy.” Hatch stood at the helm of the small cruiser as David let it drift silently toward the buoy that marked the small cove. The heavily forested island rose like a great black blot against the starry sky.

It was close to midnight and there was a moon. The night air was crisp and there was no fog. When they had gotten near the island David had shut off the running lights, eased back the throttle, and used the lights from the mansion as a guide. The buoy had been right where Susan Attwood had said it would be. A good twenty-minute walk from the house. Maybe longer, given the rough terrain.

Hatch had been uneasy since Jessie had phoned him that morning. If he had not known better, he'd have thought he'd developed a few psychic abilities himself lately. But it was nothing that fancy or complicated. Just his common sense trying frantically to reassert itself.

“We couldn't call the cops in on this,” Alex said from the back of the boat, where he sat beside Jessie. “I promised Susan.”

“He's right, Hatch. She seemed to think she would be in even more danger if we called in the authorities,” Jessie said. “She just wants off that island.”

“What can go wrong?” David asked in reasonable tones, his attention on the entrance to the cove. “We just go in, pick her up, and leave. Piece of cake.”

Hatch heard the thread of excitement in David's voice and groaned. “Haven't you three learned yet that anything that can go wrong
will
go wrong?”

“Come on, Hatch,” Jessie said in bracing tones. “Don't be such a spoilsport. David's right. We just get in and get out. No problem.”

“I'll remember that.” Hatch looked at her. All four of them were wearing dark clothes, on his instructions. But the attire definitely did the most for Jessie. She looked like a sexy little cat burglar in her tight black pullover sweater and black jeans. He suddenly wished she were anywhere but here, somewhere
safe
.

“Ready?” asked David. “Here we go.”

“No.” Hatch gazed at the cove, straining to see something, anything, in the thick darkness ahead of him. The sense of wrongness was heavier than ever. “Not here. It's just a little too damn obvious. Let's put in somewhere else along the shore.”

“But this is the spot, I'm sure of it,” David said.

Hatch nodded. “I know it is. But let's see if there's another place we can go in. We can hike back overland to the cove and see if she's waiting where she's supposed to be waiting.”

Alex left his seat and rushed forward. “We're wasting time. Susan will be scared and cold. We've got to get her out of there.”

“If she's there, we'll find her,” Hatch assured him. “Sit down, Robin. Let's go, David.”

David shrugged and fed the engines a bit more power. The boat churned quietly through the cold black water. A few minutes later they were out of sight of the cove.

“What about here?” David asked, indicating another small indentation in the shoreline that was just barely visible in the moonlight. “We can tie up to those rocks and walk back to the cove.”

Hatch studied the natural jetty formed by a rocky out-cropping. “All right. Let's try it.”

David eased the craft slowly and carefully toward the rocks. He called out soft directions to Alex and Jessie, who scurried to obey.

A few minutes later the boat was bobbing gently next to the jetty. Alex jumped out to secure it with a line.

David turned to Hatch. “Okay, boss. We're all set.”

Hatch set his jaw. Now came the hard part. He turned to Jessie. “Alex, David, and I will go ashore and find Susan. Jessie, you will stay here with the boat.”

The mutiny was immediate and expected.

“No way,” Jessie snapped. “I'm coming with the rest of you.”

“I want you to stay here,” Hatch said in his most reasonable tones. “That way, if something happens, you can go for help.”

“Nothing's going to happen. We're just going to get Susan and leave.”

“Leaving you behind is what's known as Plan B,” Hatch said.

“I'm the one who organized Plan A. I have a right to be a part of it.” Jessie looked at the other two men. “I'm going with you.”

David glanced swiftly at Hatch and then shook his head at Jessie. “He's right, Jess. Somebody should stay here.”

“Yeah,” said Alex, nodding in agreement. “Makes sense.”

“Then one of you stay here,” she retorted. “You're trying to leave me behind because I'm the only female in the crowd, and I won't have it.”

Hatch got out of the boat. “We're wasting time. You're staying here, Jessie. If we're not back in fifteen minutes, you radio for help.”

“I don't know how to use the radio.”

“Show her how to call for help, David.”

David nodded and began giving concise instructions. Jessie listened but she looked distinctly annoyed. When she finally muttered reluctantly that she understood, David leapt out of the boat to join Alex and Hatch. They all stood there gazing down at her, a united masculine front.

Jessie scowled up at them, her hands on her hips. “This is my big case and you three are taking over. It's not fair.”

Hatch felt a pang of guilt that lasted no more than two seconds. “They also serve who only sit and wait,” he reminded her.

“Get out of here before I fire the lot of you.”

“Right. We're on our way.” Hatch started off immediately, followed by the other two.

The night breeze rustled overhead in the boughs of the trees. Water slapped softly at the rocky shoreline. The soft sounds muffled their footsteps. Hatch glanced back once or twice, making certain Jessie had obeyed orders. She and the boat were soon out of sight as the three men moved into the thickly wooded landscape.

It did not take long to reach the cove. Hatch put out a hand, silently halting the others as they reached the point where the trees thinned out. Not caring for the sparse cover in that region, he motioned Alex and David toward a jumble of tree-shrouded boulders. There they crouched, concealed amidst the drooping branches and disordered rocks, and scanned the beach.

A tiny, blond figure dressed in jeans and a sweater huddled near the water's edge. She carried a computer-printout-size folder under her arm. Her back was to them as she anxiously searched the dark horizon.

“There she is,” Alex said triumphantly. “
Susan
. Over here.”

“Shut up”, Hatch snarled softly, making a grab for Alex's arm. But Alex eluded him. He broke out of the trees and raced toward the figure.

The blond whirled around. She was wearing glasses. Definitely Susan Attwood.

“Green? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it's me. Green. I mean, Alex.”

“Dammit, Robin, come back here, you ass,” Hatch muttered under his breath, knowing that it was too late to stop the younger man.

“I think he's in love,” David murmured. “Kind of touching, isn't it?”

“Kind of stupid, is what it is.” Hatch watched as the pair on the beach dashed toward each other, arms outstretched. “Looks like something out of a television commercial. All we can do now is hope Susan is here alone.”

“Hey, you don't think this is some sort of setup, do you?” David asked.

“How should I know? I'm in the nuts-and-bolts business. This isn't exactly my field of expertise.” But he'd seen enough street fighting, both in and out of the corporate world, to know that it always paid to keep an ace in the hole.

The couple on the beach were embracing now. Hatch could not hear what was being said but he was relieved when Alex turned Susan toward the trees and started forward.

“Here they come,” David observed, drawing back deeper into the shadows. “We'll be out of here in a couple more minutes.”

But at that instant a dark figure stepped out of the trees on the far side of the cove. He had his arm extended and there was no mistaking the object in his first. The gun glinted in the moonlight.

“That's far enough, you two,” Rick Landis announced. “Hold it right there.”

“Damn,” Hatch whispered. He felt David freeze beside him.

“Christ, who's that?” David asked in the softest of voices.

“One of Bright's people. A guy named Landis. I had a feeling he was more than a tour guide.” Hatch watched intently as Landies moved closer to his captives. “I knew this was not a good idea. Why in hell did I let Jessie talk me into this?”

“Don't feel too bad about it,” David said consolingly. “Jessie can be very persuasive.”

“Yeah, I know. Come on.”

“What are we going to do? Go for help?” David followed as Hatch faded back into the forest.

“I have a nasty feeling that by the time we got the authorities here, Susan and Robin would have disappeared.”

“So what do we do?”

Hatch made an executive decision. “Something simple and straightforward, I think. This is the shortest route back toward the mansion. We wait until they go past us and then one of us jumps down on top of Landis and bashes his head in.”

David considered that. “Who does the bashing?”

Hatch shot his companion a sidelong glance and made another executive decision. “You're the one who studied karate.”

“Damn.” David sounded both thrilled and appalled. “I sure as hell never tried to use it on anybody.”

“Did you learn enough to drop that guy?”

“Well, yeah. Maybe. Theoretically. Under the right circumstances. Like I said, I've never been in a real fight.”

“This won't be a real fight. If we do this right, Landis won't know you're on top of him until it's all over.”

“What are you going to do?” David asked softly.

“What I do best: supervise. And keep an eye out for a guy named Hoffman.”

“Who's he?”

“Someone who reminded me a lot of Landis. Quiet.”

“Come on, you two,” Landis was saying in a loud voice. “Let's move. We haven't got all night.”

Susan's response was soft and tearful on the night air. “Please let us go. I won't tell anyone a thing. I promise. I just want to get away from here.”

“Too late for that now, you stupid little bitch. You should have stuck to inputting the data and not gone snooping.”

“Stop threatening her,” Alex said fiercely, placing himself squarely in front of Susan.

“You must be the famous Green, huh? We figured you had to be a hacker. Nobody else could have gotten into that data base. Bright was worried for a while that you might be someone dangerous. But when Susan here started making arrangements for the dramatic rescue at midnight, we knew we weren't dealing with the cops. Just an amateur.”

Hatch prayed Alex would have the sense not to mention the fact that he had not come here alone tonight.

“What are you going to do with us?” Alex demanded.

“The boss has a few questions to ask you. After that, I think it's safe to say we won't need either of you around anymore.”