Truth or Dare (28 page)

She looked at the carton that stood on the side tray. The top had been cut off. She could see several rolls of toilet paper inside.

With a nervous awkwardness that was only partially feigned, she put one leg over the rim of the cart. She staggered a little, as though trying to catch her balance, and drew her other leg up and over the edge.

The toe of her silver sandal bumped forcibly against the carton of toilet paper. The box shot off the tray, spilling the contents. The rolls tumbled out onto the bricks. Several landed in the dirt beneath the oleander bushes.

“Stupid bitch.
Get down.
” His voice rose. “Do it now.”

He was not as calm as he had seemed, she realized. That shocked her. Grant had always been so sure of himself. But
tonight he sounded as if he were teetering on some dangerous psychological precipice.

She lowered herself onto her hands and knees inside the cart. Grant threw a tarp over the top. The darkness closed in around her. The smell of old garbage combined with her fear almost made her gag.

An instant later the cart jolted into motion. A tiny flame of hope burned deep inside. Grant was in a hurry. He could not afford to take the time to retrieve the rolls of toilet paper.

How much longer until Harry came looking?

She heard the voices of two people near the dumpsters in the service lane.

“Better get back to work,” one of them said. The words were faint. “You know how Larry gets when we're a minute late coming off break.”

The other person answered but she could not make out the response.

The cart jolted onto the service lane pavement.

35

E
than studied Shelley Russell's cryptic notes. “She got impatient with all the emphasis on the necessity for extreme secrecy. I can almost see her tapping a toe under the desk while she waited for Branch to get around to telling her exactly what he wanted her to do.”

He flipped to the next page of notes.

A name jumped out at him, stopping him cold. “Oh, shit.”

He yanked his phone out of his pocket and punched in Harry's number.

“What is it?” Zoe jumped to her feet and hurried around the corner of the desk to read over his shoulder. “Did you find out who hired Branch?”

“No. I found the name of the target.”

 

“Put it down.” Harry gave the order from the mouth of the alley, using the corner of the building for cover. “Now.”

“Hey, look, mister, I was just havin' a little drink, thash all.”

The guard sounded drunk but it was easy enough to fake the slurred speech and the whining tone of a man who had been nipping at the bottle for a few hours.

“Put it down and walk out with your hands on your head.”

“Fuck. Are you a cop or something?”

“Or something.”

The guard started forward. “Plainclothes? What's goin' on here? You gonna report me to my boss? Man, don't do that. Please. I really need this job.”

“Drop it.”

“Okay, okay, take it easy. I'm comin' out like you said.” The guard let the object fall from his hand.

Glass smashed on the paving tiles. The odor of a strong, cloying, heavily fortified wine wafted out of the slim passageway.

“Waste of perfectly good hooch, though,” the security guard said mournfully.

Harry heard the phone ring in his pocket. The prickly sensation got worse. It felt like someone had applied stinging nettles to the back of his neck.

He yanked the phone out of his pocket. Turning away from the confused guard, he started back toward Gallery Euphoria.

“You got Stagg,” he growled into the phone.

“Where are you?”

Harry recognized the flat, too even tone of Ethan's voice. It meant serious trouble.

“I'm still at Fountain Square,” he said. “What's up? Get an ID on the guy who sent Branch after you?”

“I'm not sure what that pool scene was all about but it looks like Arcadia is the target. She has been all along.”

“Shit. Loring.”

“Looks like it.”

Harry was already moving, cutting through the crowds. He could see the front windows of Gallery Euphoria clearly now. Molly was at the counter. There were still two or three customers wandering around the shop, looking at the expensive items on display.

Everything appeared normal.

Then he realized that he could not see Arcadia.

Take it easy. She probably just ducked into her office or the back room for a minute.

“I'll call you back when I've got her,” he said into the phone.

He disconnected and ran toward the boutique.

Molly and the customers looked up in shock when he slammed through the front door.

He concentrated on Molly. “Where is she?”

“Arcadia?” Molly stared at him as though he had changed into some kind of freakish monster. “Uh, she, uh, just went into her office to take a call a few minutes ago. It was her private line and I guess she . . .”

He was no longer listening. He crossed the shop in a few long strides and went down the short hall to the office.

The small room was empty.

For the first time in years, he knew the taste of real fear.

Stop it,
he thought.
You're no good to her if you lose it now. She's only been gone a few minutes, at most.

He pushed through the curtains that led to the back room and flipped on the light. The door that opened onto the service lane was closed but it was no longer locked.

Molly came to stand in the entrance to the back room.

“Is something wrong?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes. Call square security. Tell them we're looking for a man who has Arcadia with him. Then call the cops.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Get on the damned phone. Now.”

She whirled and dashed into the office.

He went to the back door of the shop, jerked it open and found himself looking at the narrow, empty walk that led to the service lane.

The light coming through the doorway behind him revealed a number of white cylinders on the ground.

Rolls of toilet paper.

No one took much notice of a man in a uniform. If that was true of a shopping mall guard, it was doubly true of a mall janitor.

He raced down the walkway and turned into the service lane. The lighting back there was minimal. A single streetlamp stood guard at the entrance to the employee parking lot.

He heard the distant, muffled rumble of a cart. The rattle of the hard rubber wheels echoed from the parking lot.

He kicked off his loafers, afraid the sound of his footsteps thudding on the pavement would alert Loring.

Barefooted, he ran quietly toward the nearest of the two large garbage bins and halted in the deep shadow it cast.

He could make out a portion of the poorly lit parking lot. A man in a cap pushed a janitorial cart toward a nondescript van.

It had to be Loring. But what if it wasn't? What if he'd figured wrong? What if this was an honest, hardworking janitor going home after a long night? Maybe a guy with a wife and two or three kids.

He held the gun alongside his leg and moved out from the shadow of the dumpster. He started walking silently toward the van, keeping parked cars between himself and the janitor.

“Loring,” he shouted.

The janitor jerked violently and started to turn, hand lifting. Not necessarily Loring, Harry thought. Anyone who found himself alone in a deserted parking lot would be startled by a stranger calling out a name.

Light glinted on the barrel of the gun in the janitor's hand.

A tarp flew off the top of the cart. Arcadia rose like an avenging goddess from the depths of the garbage bin.

She made no sound but Harry could see that she was struggling to hurl the tarp over Loring's gun arm.

Loring reacted swiftly, wrenching himself to one side. He spun back toward Harry and fired.

Harry heard the shots punch through the metal fender of the pickup on his left.

Now, at last, the world went into slow motion, the way it was
supposed to when things got dicey. He no longer felt any emotion—not rage or dread or panic.

Just doing his job.

He raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

Loring staggered once under the impact and collapsed on the pavement. He did not move again.

36

F
orty-eight hours later Ethan rested his forearms on the side rails of the hospital bed and looked down at Shelley Russell. Zoe stood across from him. Harry and Arcadia occupied positions at the foot of the bed.

Considering what Shelley had been through, she was in good shape, he thought. She had told them that she was due to be released in the morning, but she couldn't wait that long to get the whole story.

Ethan understood. It was a PI thing.

“Loring is dead?” Shelley asked sharply.

“He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Arcadia said quietly. “But he talked to Harry and me in the parking lot while we waited for the medics. He knew he wasn't going to make it so he had nothing left to lose.”

“How did he find you?”

Arcadia sighed. “Unfortunately, Grant knew more about my personal financial arrangements than I realized. He had the number of one of several accounts that I thought I had hidden from him. He kept an eye on it. A month ago I accessed it for the first time to move some money into another account.”

Shelley nodded. “And Loring pounced.”

“Yes, but Arcadia's new ID was very good,” Ethan said. “He needed to be certain that he had the right woman before he made his move. He also wanted to get the whole picture of Arcadia's new life. Friends, business associates, that kind of thing. He didn't dare show up in her vicinity until he was positive.”

“So he used John Branch to hire me to take the photos.”

“His goal was to keep himself in the shadows until the very last possible moment,” Zoe explained.

“Grant has a lot of old enemies, you see,” Arcadia said. “Including the SEC and the Feds. He didn't want to risk being seen on U.S. soil if he could avoid it.”

“I understand why he sent me to get the photos in Whispering Springs,” Shelley said slowly. “He had to be sure you really were his wife. But why send Branch to take you out, Truax?”

“Loring's original plan called for Branch to grab Arcadia,” Harry said. “But after you brought back those photos of the gang in Whispering Springs he started to worry that Truax here might be a potential problem.”

“Being a problem is one of Ethan's many professional skills,” Zoe said proudly.

Ethan shrugged modestly.

Arcadia cleared her throat. “After researching Ethan, Grant
decided to redo his plans. He was always very good at making strategic adjustments on the fly. He figured that getting rid of Ethan would resolve two issues. It would not only remove the one person he thought might come looking for him in the event I were to disappear, it would also refocus everyone's attention in another, entirely different direction and thus give him even more cover.”

“What's with Branch?” Shelley demanded.

“He came out of his coma this morning,” Harry said. “At first he would only give his name, rank and serial number. But eventually Detective Ramirez convinced him that he was in serious trouble and Branch started to babble. Seems he really did think he was working for a super-secret government agency. Never got past the fact that he washed out of that elite military unit he tried to join. He was obsessed with proving that he could handle his mission.”

“Grant planned to get rid of both you and Branch to cover his tracks, Shelley,” Arcadia said.

“Well, he damned near succeeded in my case.” Shelley made a face. “The doctors finally concluded that someone emptied one of my pill capsules and refilled it with a hefty dose of some fancy designer drugs. Combined with all my other meds, it would have done me in if Zoe and Truax here hadn't found me when they did.”

Zoe patted her hand.

Shelley looked at Zoe's fingers touching hers. She frowned again, thoughtful now. “I have this weird memory of a dream I must have had while I was out of it. Someone kept calling my name, over and over. Telling me that I had to hold on.”

“That would be Zoe,” Ethan said.

He looked at her across the bed. He could see that the strain of being inside the hospital was starting to take its toll. There was a tightness at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He had to get her out of there soon.

Shelley peered at Arcadia. “What are you going to do with that file you hid? Sounds like it could still be dangerous.”

Harry snorted softly. “She turned it over to the Feds first thing this morning.”

“Harry thought it would be the best way to neutralize the situation,” Arcadia added. “My goal was to use it as insurance to protect myself from Grant in case he was still alive. Now that he's gone, there's no reason to hang on to it. I've got some legal maneuvering to do in order to reclaim some old assets, and the IRS has a few questions for me, but that's about all I have to worry about.”

“Nothing we can't make go away with the help of a good lawyer,” Harry said easily.

“Glad to hear it.” Shelley sighed. “Sorry about my part in this mess. I damn near got you killed, Truax.”

“Bottom line is that it was your notes that helped save Arcadia's life,” Ethan said.

“Just wish I'd put it all together a little quicker than I did. In the old days I wouldn't have been so easily dazzled by the phony government ID.”

“When did you get suspicious?” Zoe asked.

“Branch made me a little uneasy right from the start, to tell you the truth. Sometimes you get a feeling about a client.” Shelley appealed to Ethan. “Know what I mean?”

“Sure. Something just didn't look right.”

“Yep. Anyhow, when I learned that Branch was in a coma in a Whispering Springs hospital after being electrocuted in your pool, I knew I had a big problem. I was getting ready to contact you when I started feeling real sick.”

“Did you realize that you had been poisoned?” Harry asked.

“I wasn't sure what the hell was happening at first, but I figured that was a possibility, yeah.”

“So you hid your notebook,” Ethan said. “Nice move, Russell.”

A man and a woman came through the door at that moment. Both glared at the group gathered around Shelley's bed.

“What are you all doing in here?” the woman demanded. “Mother is supposed to be resting.”

The man scowled at Ethan. “The sign outside says that she is allowed only two visitors at a time.”

“Meet my daughter, Julie, and my son, Craig,” Shelley rasped. “They think I should retire.”

Ethan looked at Julie and Craig. “I sure hope she doesn't get out of the business. I could use a reliable contact here in Phoenix, and your mother is one hell of a pro.”

Shelley grinned. “Takes one to know one.”