Unintended Target (Unintended Series Book 1) (12 page)

NINETEEN

When Chloe finally stirred the next morning, she had about ten seconds of blissful forgetfulness before everything came rolling back. A burst of panicky nausea punched her in the gut as she rocketed up, expecting to see Jack asleep in the old rattan chair beside the bed. He wasn’t.

“Jack, you in there?” she called out hopefully towards the closed bathroom door. No answer. Throwing herself out of bed, she swept towards the bathroom and swung the door open. Empty. She checked her watch. 7:38 a.m.

Scratching sounded outside the front door. The lock clicked. Someone was turning a key in it.

Chloe dashed to the bed, fumbled amongst the pillows, then snatched up the gun, diving down beside the bed just as the door opened. Peering beneath the bed, she saw a man’s leg in the doorway.

She readied herself to swing her arm over the bed and take aim.

“Chloe?” a familiar voice called out.

Her pounding heart slowed as she exhaled in relief. “Really, Jack? Why didn’t you say who you were?” she groaned, rising to her feet and brandishing the gun in front of her as he locked the door behind him. “I could have shot you.”

“Not with it like that you wouldn’t,” he quipped, nodding at the gun. “Safety’s on.”

She rotated the gun to get a look at the safety mechanism, which sure enough, was still engaged. She could feel heat rising in her face. “I . . . I just woke up, you came in . . . I just grabbed the thing. I wasn’t thinking.”

He raised his eyebrows and smirked. “We’ll have to work on that.”

She didn’t bite. “I woke up alone and thought you . . .” She hesitated, embarrassed now to tell him what her first thought had been.

“You thought I left,” he finished for her. He plopped down on the bed, laid his head back and closed his eyes, releasing a satisfied sigh. Moments later he opened his eyes to find her still standing, looking abashed.

“It’s okay,” he offered. “I would have thought the same thing.” Her shoulders sagged, and she sat down beside him. He closed his eyes again. “You looked so peaceful . . . you needed rest. I didn’t want to wake you. I stayed right in that chair all night,” he said firmly, but reassuringly. “I only left about a half hour ago. Went down to that convenience store off the highway,” he said, tossing a paper bag onto the bed, “picked up a couple things.”

She snatched up the bag and pulled out a couple of Cokes, some bananas, and a box of Pop-Tarts. Jack held out a hand, and she passed one of each to him.

“Sorry about the breakfast. There wasn’t much to choose from.”

“It’s great,” she mumbled, taking a bite of the stale blueberry pastry. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I caught an hour or two.” His eyes flicked open. “But I’m a light sleeper. It was perfectly safe.”

“It’s fine, really. I’m glad you slept. I’m not complaining,” she offered. “Thanks for letting me rest.”

He nodded and pushed himself up, leaning against the rattan headboard. “So, I think we’re okay for now. No traffic. Only a few cars here.”

She popped open the Coke can, took a sip, and set it on the nightstand. She lifted the bag again. “What else is in here?” she asked, rummaging through it. “Tylenol. And bandages, bottled water, and . . .” She stopped short, pulling her hand from the bag to reveal a cheap, flip-style cell phone. “For me?”

Jack nodded, extracting a matching one from his front pocket and wiggling it. “I took the batteries and SIM cards out of ours last night while you were out. On the off chance that Sampson might try to use them to find us.”

She nodded, then pulled from the bag an old box of hair dye so dusty, it must’ve been on the shelf for years. A raven-haired woman sporting a very nineties hairstyle graced the front. Chloe eyed Jack suspiciously. “Really?”

Jack shrugged. “It’s a small island. It can’t hurt. There’s another one in there. Blond. I’ll let you pick—ladies first.”

Her gaze drifted back to the soiled box for a moment, then, very reluctantly, she sighed and nodded.

“There’s some scissors down in there, too.”

Chloe squeezed her eyes, as if shutting out the idea, but after a moment nodded again. “So what next?”

“I did some thinking while you were getting your beauty sleep,” he said, “and I think our best bet is to get in touch with the U.S. authorities. We can’t trust anybody down here.”

“That, I totally agree with,” Chloe said without hesitation.

“Well, don’t get too excited. I’m not sure it’ll do much good. There’s no U.S. presence here. No embassy. So the best we can do is a phone call to the closest one. We’ll have to check that when we get to a computer. And even if we get through to someone who matters, I’m not sure what they’ll be able to do down here. But we’ve got to get help from somewhere. Maybe they can smooth our way out of here and back home.”

“Sampson will be watching the airports.”

He nodded. “That’s why we need the help,” he said, pushing out of the chair. “But we’ve got to be able to back up what we’re saying. Before we do anything, we’ve got to get a look at that flash drive and figure out what and who we’re dealing with. I checked up front. They’ve got nothing we can borrow. Just an ancient desktop—doesn’t even have a USB port. Anyway, they’d be standing over us the whole time.” Jack checked his watch.

“So, what, we head to, some place with public access to computers? Like a copy shop or library . . . or, hey, there’s a cyber café near the airport.”

He shook his head. “Too obvious. I think we have to assume they knew the flash drive was in the envelope and that they might be expecting us to try to get a look at what’s on it. This isn’t New York. There’s only a couple of ‘office away from the office’ shops here. They’d be watching them. The library too. And I don’t think we should get anywhere near the airport.” He paused. “I tried calling a guy earlier—”

“I thought we agreed not to involve any more friends,” she interrupted, looking surprised.

“Well, he’s not a friend, exactly. He’s, well, it’s sort of hard to explain, but trust me, he wouldn’t mind. And he owes me a favor.” He held up a hand to hold her off when it looked like she was going to protest again. “It doesn’t matter anyway. He didn’t answer. And we can’t wait on him. Sometimes he’s out of pocket for a while.”

“Okay, so what else?”

“We could try picking one up at a pawn shop, but I don’t think we should chance running a credit card. I’ve got about two hundred cash, but we’re gonna need that—”

“Hotels.”

His eyes flicked to hers and doubt creased his mouth. “Hotels?”

“We just worm our way into one of those complimentary business offices at the hotels. Most of the larger ones have them now, or at least a couple of computers available for airline bookings. There are dozens and dozens of hotels just on this side of the island alone. They can’t possibly watch them all.”

He nodded. “Okay. Yeah, that could work. We’d have to snag a room key.”

“Not necessarily. When I first got here I toured dozens of hotels as part of researching my article. Some of them had business centers just off the lobby, no room key needed.”

Jack considered that. “Sampson might have notified the hotels to watch for us. We still might be spotted.”

“Well,” she said, tapping the box of darker dye, “we won’t look the same, and if we do it right, they won’t even notice us. But if you’ve got a better idea . . .”

Jack inhaled deeply and shook his head. “No. But if we do this, we wait a couple hours. It’s still too early. We need lots of people out and about. It’ll make it easier to blend in.” He glanced at the bathroom. “I’m gonna shower, try to re-energize and,” he said snatching the blond hair dye out of the bag, “give this stuff a shot. Meanwhile, why don’t you try to come up with a couple of good hotel options?”

Minutes later, with the sound of steady streams of water in the background, Chloe flipped through the ragged phone book, checking it against her memory of the hotels with computer access. Using the dingy hotel notepad to make a list, she finally settled on the LeClaire Resort, a hotel complex on the opposite side of the island from Binghamton, on a strip of beach with several other resorts. She’d checked it out soon after arriving on St. Gideon and remembered the lobby being pretty busy. You didn’t need a room key to get in the “business office,” which was really just one computer in a room off the lobby. And one computer meant no one would be looking over their shoulders. Satisfied, she set down the pen, and more out of habit than anything, flipped on the television.

A minute later Jack stepped back into the room. “So apparently I’ve got to leave this stuff in for—” He stopped short, her ashen face and gaping mouth cutting off the rest of his sentence. “Chloe?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, tears filling her eyes, staring at the television. “I can’t believe it,” she said quietly.

“What?” he asked, moving to where he could see. A photograph of each of them was displayed in the top right of the screen, while the main view was of a rocky beach and a body bag being loaded into an ambulance.

“
. . . According to police sources, Kreinberg’s body shows unmistakable signs of foul play. Police would not speculate on motive, but did confirm that nearly $8,000 U.S. dollars’ worth of jewelry and cash was missing from Kreinberg’s residence, suggesting a robbery gone wrong. McConnaughey, Kreinberg’s neighbor, and her companion, Collings, are wanted for questioning. Police would not comment on whether there is evidence linking the two to Kreinberg’s death, but did insist that the two should not be approached. Rather, anyone with information should contact the Binghamton police immediately. Now, turning to the weather . . .”

“Chloe,” Jack started gently, putting his hand on her shoulder as he sat down beside her. “I’m so sorry.”

She stared straight ahead, tears now trickling down. “She didn’t deserve this,” she said swiping roughly at the wetness. “She just made the wrong friend.” She swallowed, sniffing back more threatening tears, an angry determination clouding her face. “He didn’t have to kill her. She’s not part of this.”

“He must have thought she knew something. You thought she’d read the mail too.”

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, forcing more tears down her cheeks, and in condemnation whispered harshly, “Tate.”

Jack rose, and slowly began pacing. “This changes things. Now the whole island will be looking for us. And there’ll be no flying out of here. We’ll definitely be on some kind of no-exit list. Probably at the ports, too. And making us out to be involved, but not necessarily suspects, was a great move on his part. Since we’re only wanted for questioning Sampson can blow it off once he gets his hands on us. He doesn’t have to hold us. So—”

“So nobody’s going to be looking too closely. If he brings us in, he can say we didn’t have any information after all and that he let us go—”

“But he won’t. He’ll hand us straight up to his boss. Not to mention that he just undercut our credibility with the U.S. authorities. Now it just looks like we’re running from potential charges here. And if it comes to it, he can probably stick us with the murder charge just to keep us here.”

Chloe’s voice trembled. “I was all over her house, Jack. My fingerprints will be everywhere.” Her eyes widened even more. “A knife was missing at my house—” She gasped. “You don’t think . . . they used it to . . . ” She let the sentence hang, unable to finish.

Jack grimaced. “I don’t know. Maybe. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that cash and jewelry conveniently turned up somewhere incriminating—my boat, my work locker, your house . . .”

It was all too much. She buried her face in her hands, then ran them over her head, as if to clear it. If she could just crawl back in the bed, close her eyes . . . it already felt like she’d been up for hours. She dragged her gaze up to Jack’s. “So . . . what now?”

He sat back down beside her. “I think that we still have to know what’s on that flash drive before we do anything. But after that—”

“There’s no way we can just call a nearby embassy, or whatever, now,” she parried, taking a few strained steps from the bed, turning to face him as she moved. Her tightly drawn expression was fearful. “Jack, come on. I watch the movies. You know what happens when a ‘wanted’ person goes to the authorities for help?” She waved him in animatedly, as if directing him to come closer. “They say ‘sure, come on in,’ then they turn you over to whoever you were running from in the first place. Or they tell you to ‘come in and we’ll protect you,’ and somebody on the bad guys’ payroll blows your head off on the way to the courthouse.”

“Chloe—”

“We can’t call anybody now, Jack.” She dropped onto the bed. “We’ve got no proof that our story is true, and they’ll have every reason to believe Sampson. It’s just his word against mine.”

“And my word—”

“Yeah, your word—the word of a guy with two dead bodies floating under his boat.”

“You know, maybe that’ll actually help us. A planned assault by trained men? Come on. That doesn’t just happen. It supports our side of things. They can’t just dismiss that. Somebody will have to listen. We just have to get to the right people.”