“Alex. Please look at me. Please.”
His expression was one of tortured misery and her heart broke even more. “Daniel, I don’t blame you. Really. I don’t.”
“Maybe you should. I’d prefer it to this.”
“To what?”
His hands clenched the wheel. “You’re pulling away from me. Last night it was we have to go on. Today you’re back to doing it all by yourself. Dammit, Alex. I’m here and nothing for me has changed in the last hour. But you’re pulling away from me.” He flinched. “Goddammit,” he swore bitterly and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, sending plastic gloves everywhere. “Vartanian.”
He went still and immediately the car began to slow. “How?” he demanded.
Something was wrong. More wrong, anyway. Daniel pulled to the shoulder as she nervously picked up the scattered gloves, tucking them into her own jacket pocket.
“Where?” he bit out. “No fucking way. I come with backup or I don’t come at all.” His jaw cocked. “No, I don’t guess I do trust you. At one time I did. But not anymore.”
Frank Loomis. Alex leaned closer, trying to overhear. Daniel was patting his pockets. “Can you get me a pen?” he asked, and she dug one from her purse. He pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket. “Where exactly?” He scribbled an address with a frown. “I’d forgotten about that place. That at least makes sense. Okay. I’m coming.” He hesitated. “Thank you.”
He did an abrupt U-turn, making Alex grab for something to hold on to. “What is it?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer.
He flicked on his lights. His speedometer had already climbed to eighty.
“That was Frank. He said he’s found Bailey.”
Alex sucked in a breath. “Alive?”
Daniel’s jaw was taut. “He says so.” He pressed a button on his phone. “Luke, I need you to turn around and meet me at…” He held the phone to Alex. “Tell him the address. Tell him it’s out past the old O’Brien mill. Susannah will know where that is.”
Which had been what “at least made sense.”
Alex did and Daniel took the phone back. “Frank Loomis says he’s found where they’re holding Bailey Crighton. Call Chase, have him send backup. I’m going to call Corchran in Arcadia. I trust him and he’s close by.” He listened and glanced at Alex. “That’s why I’m calling Corchran. He won’t get there too much after us. He can take Alex and Susannah.”
Alex didn’t argue. He looked too intense. Dangerous. She felt no threat to herself, but grim satisfaction that whoever crossed them would be forever sorry.
He hung up and handed her the phone. “Find Corchran’s number in my notebook and dial it, please.” She did and he quickly brought the Arcadia sheriff up to speed and requested his presence. He hung up again and put his phone back in his pocket.
“I thought you and Chase checked out O’Brien’s mill,” she said.
“The new mill, yes. I forgot about the old mill. I haven’t been out there since I was a little kid. It was just a pile of rubble even then.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “When we get there, please stay in the car with your head down.” He looked at her, his gaze sharp and hard. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Friday, February 2, 3:15 p.m.
“It’s done.” Under the cover of the trees, Loomis pocketed his phone. “He’s coming.”
As if there had been any doubt. “Very good.”
“Now let me go. I’ll go pick Bailey and the girl up and take them to the hospital.”
“No. I need you to stay here. In fact, I need you to move.” He gestured with his pistol. “Out in the open.”
Loomis’s face showed his shock. “Why?”
“Because even Judas showed up to the Last Supper.”
Stunned realization dawned in Loomis’s eyes. “You’re going to kill Daniel.”
“Probably not me.” He shrugged. “You made the call to Vartanian. If you’re not here to meet him when he gets here, he’ll leave, and then my fun is spoiled. So move.”
“But Mansfield will see me,” Loomis said, disbelief making his voice high-pitched.
“Exactly.”
“And then he’ll kill me,” Loomis said, tonelessly now.
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“And he’ll kill Daniel. You planned to kill him all along.”
“And everyone took you for just a slack-jawed, hick sheriff. Move.” He waited until Loomis started to creep to the edge of the woods, then gave his silencer a good twist. “And just to make sure you don’t do something stupid like try to run…” He fired once into Loomis’s thigh. With an agonized cry, Loomis sank to the ground. “Get up,” he said coldly. “When you see Vartanian’s car drive up, you walk on out to meet him.”
Friday, February 2, 3:30 p.m.
“We have to go.” The captain of the small boat scanned the landscape nervously. “I’m not waiting for your boss any longer, not while I’m sitting on this kind of cargo.”
Mansfield tried his cell again, with no answer. “He was taking care of the ones who couldn’t travel. Let me go back and find him.” He leaped to the dock.
“Tell your boss I’m waitin’ five more minutes, then I’m gone.”
Mansfield turned, eying the man coldly. “You’ll wait till we get back.”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t take my orders from you. You’re wasting time.”
It was true. Nobody took orders from Mansfield. Not anymore. No thanks to Daniel-fucking-Vartanian. And whoever stirred up all this shit to start with-who, if Daniel had really been as smart as everyone always said he was, should have been caught already. But he wasn’t caught because Daniel was as big a fuck-up as everyone else.
Clenching his teeth, he pushed the heavy door aside and walked down the hall, frowning at the dead girls. What a waste. With a little time, they would have been fit for resale. Now they were useless.
His steps slowed as he approached the cell that had held the chaplain. The door was open, a body slumped over the threshold, but something wasn’t right. He drew his gun and soundlessly moved forward. Fuck. It was one of Harvard’s security guys, not the chaplain, as it should have been. Mansfield rolled him over and grimaced. The man had been ripped open, stem to stern.
Wiping his bloody hands on the guard’s pants, Mansfield checked the next cell. The door was ajar. And the cell was empty. Bailey was gone. He took off at a run, coming to a dead stop as he rounded the corner and nearly tripped over the body crumpled in a heap on the floor. Mansfield dropped to his knees, checking his pulse. Harvard was alive.
“The boat’s leaving in a few minutes. Get up.” Mansfield started to lift him only to have his hand pushed away.
“Bailey got away.” Harvard lifted his head, his eyes bleary. “Where’s Beardsley?”
“Gone.”
“Fuck. They can’t get far. Beardsley has a hole in his gut and Bailey’s shaking so hard she can barely walk. Find them before they bring the cops on our heads.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll live,” he said acidly. “Which is more than I can say for the two of us if we’re found here, with all these bodies.” He struggled to sit up and reached for his gun, but his holster was empty. “Dammit. Beardsley has my gun. Give me your backup.”
Mansfield pulled his pistol from his ankle holster.
“Now move your ass. Find Bailey and Beardsley and kill them.”
Friday, February 2, 3:30 p.m.
Frank was waiting for them outside what looked like a concrete bunker. The perimeter was overgrown with weeds and the road was pitted from disuse. Daniel checked his watch. Luke and Sheriff Corchran should be here any minute.