The Evasion (10 page)

“Me too.”

So much for magic
. They both left messages then stood on the street staring at each other. Back to plan B that might actually be plan C now.

“We need to find Thelma’s house,” Gabe said.

“Start with Ellie?”

“Or the sheriff.”

Jo scrunched her nose and Gabe laughed. “We’re in it now, honey. Either way, the sheriff is going to find out. Might as well face it.”

Chapter Seven

Of course, because shit luck ran parallel with the Martinson case, the sheriff was, once again, out of the office. They stood on the steps while Jo left a voicemail for him to call her or stop by the hotel ASAP.

“Hopefully, he’ll call soon.”

Ever the optimist, this one
. Her phone—the one that never stopped—rang and she checked it. “It’s my office. Hello?...Hi.” She glanced at Gabe. “It’s good. I’ll fill you in later, but we’re making fantastic progress…The Moore case?...Sure…I think I have a copy on my laptop.
Now?
...Uh, okay. I’ll run back to the hotel and send it to you.” She paused, gritted her teeth and looked up at the sky. “Ten minutes? I haven’t prepared.”

It sounded like this Moore thing was about to bust in on their day. Gabe stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited while Jo smacked her free hand over her head, her universal signal for great or crappy news.

“Okay,” she said. “Give me a few minutes to get to the hotel. Right.” She punched off. “Damn it!”

“What happened?”

“That was
my
boss. I’m helping on a case he’s handling and they want me on a video conference in ten minutes. He knows how important Martinson is and he’s pulling me into a conference? Really?”

Gabe held his hands up. “It’s okay. We’re in stand-by mode anyway until we figure out where Thelma lives. While you’re on your conference, I’ll run over to Ellie’s shop and see if she knows anything.”

Leaving Jo at the hotel alone would suck. Martinson knew they were here. He could be watching and that didn’t sit right. And Gabe couldn’t even ask the sheriff to keep an eye on the hotel because then he’d have to explain why he was trampling all over a case he was supposed to be staying out of.

Shitstorm. He had to do it though. “I’ll only be gone a few minutes, but you gotta lock yourself in that room. Martinson knows we’re here and poking around. Wait’ll he figures out his container was seized. We have to get to Tom and Bev, get them to talk to someone who can release that shipment.”

“Don’t panic. By the time you get back to the hotel, we’ll have heard from Bev or Tom. Hopefully. That’s all we can do. Just keep moving.”

He hesitated.

“Gabe, you’ll be gone fifteen minutes. I’ll be fine.” She tugged on his shirt. “I promise I won’t leave the room.”

As much as he wanted to believe she’d keep that promise, when it came to Martinson, Jo sometimes lost all track of her sanity. If catching Martinson meant breaking promises, she’d do it. He knew this about her. And maybe he hadn’t reconciled that with himself yet, but if nothing else, he understood her passion for the job. He poked his finger at her. “You stay in that room. Door locked.”

She waved him off. “I’ve got it. I said I would and I will.”

“Then let’s roll.”

Five minutes after Gabe left, Jo’s boss called back and told her the client cancelled the video conference.

Seriously? After making her drop everything, they bailed on her. Now she’d be stuck in this room until Gabe returned, because going outside for air would send Mr. August to fits.

She adored the man, but his overprotectiveness made her insane.

The scraping of a key sliding into the door lock drew her gaze. He must have forgotten something. She took two steps.
No
. Gabe would have called out, alerted her. The door swung open, one smooth arc that she tracked until the door bumped the wall.

In front of her stood Donald Martinson. With a shiny silver key in his hand.
Gabe
’s
key?
Something jammed in her throat. No. Couldn’t be. Gabe would pummel the much smaller Martinson. Plus, he was armed with his giant .45mm. Between Gabe and that gun, Martinson didn’t stand a chance.

She glanced at the white key ring she’d never seen before.
Not Gabe’s key
. Bursting air flew from Jo’s mouth, the relief so intense she missed Martinson’s approach, his coal-black eyes on her. Her prey had once again spun things around, made her the vulnerable one.

Get out now
.

She dodged right, swung an elbow and connected with the meaty part of his bicep. He grabbed the back of her shirt, his fingers gouging her skin.

“You’re not going anywhere. I almost got you in the street, but Sergeant Townsend continues to get in my way. Not this time.”

The black truck. Martinson had been driving.
Bastard
.

“That was you in the truck?”

Martinson laughed. “Stupid woman. Your sergeant isn’t the only one with contacts in the police department.”

A leak. As careful as they’d been, someone on Tom’s staff was a traitor. She’d deal with that later. Now, she had to save herself.

“Help!” Jo screamed.

She kept her eyes on the door.
Get there
. Few more steps, that’s all she needed. She swung again, hauled her elbow across his cheek, and the
thunk
of bone against bone echoed in the quiet room.

“Goddammit,” Martinson said. A second man about Gabe’s height appeared in the doorway. In his left hand, he held a gym bag. “Don’t let her out.”

I’m trapped.
The man entered the room, closed and locked the door, then gently set the gym bag down. What was in that damned bag?

Not waiting to find out, Jo backed toward the window and the roll top desk with the ladder-back chair. If she could get to the chair, she’d at least have a weapon. Something to swing. All she’d need was a whip and she could join the circus. God help her. This life.

But Martinson anticipated her move and slid into the corner behind her. Slowly, the two men advanced, sandwiching her between them. She shifted her gaze left and right, searching for any escape. Nowhere to go. Still, she wouldn’t stand there and make it easy.

No chance.

The bed was directly in front of her. It would slow her down, but if she could get there, she’d scramble across it and head to the door.

Do it.
Now
.

She leaped, landed in the middle of the bed and gripped the far edge, pulling herself across. A huge weight bore down on her, not Martinson, the other guy. Something pinched in her ribcage. Jo kicked backward, the heel of her loafer connecting with her attacker’s leg.

“Crazy bitch. Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Help,” she yelled again.

Panic, deep and raw, scraped at her and she clutched the edge of the bed tighter. Where was Mrs. Jenkins? The other guests?

“Don’t bother,” Martinson said. “No one is here and the owner is cooling her jets in her office. We took care of that.”

Oh, no.
All Jo could hope was that they’d confined her and swiped her master key. Anything else would be too horrible to consider.

But Gabe and that man-stopper .45mm would be back any second.
Any second
. Jo focused on breathing, on keeping the panic from flooding her brain.
Work the problem
.

“Help!” Her voice cracked with strain from the ape on top of her.

A screech came from near the window and she swung her head to find Martinson dragging the chair across the hardwood.

He set it next to the bed and smacked the top rung. “We got something special for you, Jo.”

Chapter Eight

Gabe climbed the hotel’s porch, thinking the twenty-minute visit with Ellie was a bust. She’d seen Thelma around town, knew her from their merchandise transactions, but didn’t know where she lived. The sheriff, she’d suggested, he’d know. Sure, if Gabe could find that son of a bitch. For kicks, he stopped at the sheriff’s office on his way back to the hotel. Once again, it was locked. Another voicemail. All he could do.

He supposed he could call 9-1-1, but being an officer, abusing that system wouldn’t fly. Nor did he want it to. Dispatchers and cops got seriously pissed at bogus 9-1-1 calls. Besides, he and Jo were doing just fine in the pissing people off department.

From the street came the sound of a purring engine. A familiar one. He turned back. A black pick-up, suspiciously similar to the one that almost ran Jo down, made a left at the corner. Too bad he wasn’t closer or he’d have chased that bastard.

He turned back and pushed the hotel’s front door open. The bells jangled and he glanced around the parlor. All quiet. No one behind the reception desk either. The very tips of his fingers tingled. He stood for a second, cocked his head, listening. Each time he’d entered the hotel, one of two things generally happened. Either he heard kitchen noises from the back end of the first floor or Mrs. Jenkins entered the reception area from her office.

Gabe waited. No noise. He angled back to the door.
Black pick-up
. More tingles shot down his arms into his hands and he flexed his fingers.
Not right
.

“Mrs. Jenkins?”

He waited another second. No answer.

The entire building was quiet. And it wasn’t normal quiet. This was quiet that came with danger and fear and panic. His body tingled, his senses on full alert.

Jo.

He drew his weapon, sprinted up the stairs, his gaze focused on the upper landing. Clear. At the top, the hallway was empty and he did a visual sweep of the hallway. Nothing out of place. All doors closed and looking unharmed.

Maybe his nerves were fucking with him.
I’m too keyed up
. But something made him stop. Stop and listen.
Nothing
. .45 drawn, he sidestepped to their door and wrapped his hand around the crystal knob, the cold surface a shock against his sweaty palm. He turned it. No movement. Good.

At least she’d locked it.

He slid his key into the lock and turned. Before shoving the door open, he moved to the side, using the wall as cover in case a bullet roared through the opening.

Four, three, two, one. No noise.
Where is she?

“Gabe?”

Jo’s voice. He bent forward, breathed in and out a few times to settle his hyper nerves. What the hell was wrong with him?
Too amped up
. Laughing at himself, he straightened up, threw his shoulders back, stepped into the room and froze.

Jo sat in the desk chair, a thick rope circling her body. Each of her ankles was tied to the chair legs.

“Oh, shit.”

“Gabe?” Her body trembled, a small but deadly motion.

“Don’t move.” He moved closer to inspect the device. A single, six-inch steel pipe with capped ends had been secured to the chair leg on the opposite side of Jo’s leg. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the other components.

In all his training, he and his ESU counterparts had learned one thing: when faced with a bomb, they were to run.

Run fast, run hard, run long.

But this time he couldn’t run. Not with his hopefully future wife—when had he decided that?—tied to a chair with a bomb riding shotgun. No running. He was thoroughly stuck in this Podunk town where the fucking sheriff left his office unmanned and the nearest bomb squad was at least,
at least
an hour away.

I got this
.

“He came here,” Jo said, her voice gruff, shaky. “Martinson. It was him and another guy. The door was locked. I swear I locked it. They had Mrs. Jenkins’s key.”

That explained the quiet. And if they had the woman’s key, they must have gone through her to get it. Jesus, he could have a dead body somewhere.
Later
.

“Okay,” he said. “Stop talking. Let me see what we’re dealing with.”

As if he’d know? He didn’t know jack about bombs. That’s why they had bomb techs.
Run fast, run hard, run long.

He got down on his belly to inspect the device. Most definitely a pipe bomb. The ends had been capped and a wire, along with a trip line, ran from the timer through a hole in one end cap.
Son of a bitch.
He glanced at the timer and the seconds disappeared like ice on a scorching day. Fifty-nine minutes, three seconds.

Not much time for a man who’d never been within two feet of one of these things.
Get her out.
Gabe waited a few seconds, let the whooshing in his head subside while he focused his mind for the task ahead.
Gotta roll here
.
Think, think, think.
When the only sound became the hum of the ceiling fan, no whooshing, no slamming heart, no racing thoughts, he breathed in.
Ready to go.

He scooted backward, got to his feet and found Jo staring up at him. All the time he’d known her, those baby blue eyes always held paralyzing and laser sharp directness. Today, for the first time, he saw none of that.

And he despised it.

“You will walk out of here.”

“He said if I moved, it’ll blow. We have sixty minutes to get his cargo released. If we call the police, he’ll blow it before then. He left a phone on the desk. He’ll call us.”