Exit Strategy (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

Day Five—­9:30 p.m.

M
ason gunned his borrowed truck up another hill, going as fast as he dared on the winding road. His own truck was all shot up.

Behind him, Buchanan and Ramsey rode his bumper hard, keeping pace. Thankfully when he’d called them after Sabrina realized where her grandfather was being held, they’d still been close by and had immediately turned around.

Sabrina nervously tapped her shoes on the floorboard. “Can’t you go any faster?”

“If I do I’ll roll us into a ditch. Just hang on. We’re almost there.”

The truck’s tires squealed as Mason steered into another curve. He topped the last hill, and swerved toward the entrance to EXIT’s parking lot.

Sabrina clutched her seat. “Oh my God. Mason, the fire trucks—­”

“I see them.”

He hit the brakes, drastically slowing down to avoid the police cars, and steering toward the far end of the lot, stopping as close as he could to the maintenance building before one of the firemen waved at him to stop.

The light bars on over a dozen police cars flashed red and blue, and the orange lights on the fire trucks added to the chaotic atmosphere. Policemen stood in groups or ran back and forth shouting orders.

“The door’s open on the maintenance building. They’re going into the tunnel.” Sabrina’s voice came out in a choked whisper. She hopped out and started running toward the tunnel entrance.

Mason swore and ran after her. He grabbed her around the waist, lifting her and yanking her behind a tree as Buchanan and Ramsey ran over to them.

“Let me go,” Sabrina yelled. “I have to find my grandfather.”

“Just a minute.” He noted where the policemen were and yanked his T-­shirt out of his jeans, covering the pistol holstered at his waist. Buchanan and Ramsey did the same.

“I don’t see any smoke,” Mason said. “I don’t think there’s a fire. Someone must have pulled the alarm.” He studied Sabrina’s taut face. “I don’t suppose you’ll stay here if I tell you to?”

“Not a chance.”

He gritted his teeth. “All right. Stick by my side and do what I do. Act like you belong here and we’ll probably be able to run right in. Once we slip past any police, I’ll give you my backup gun. Ramsey, Buchanan, there are secondary tunnels off the main. I assume her grandfather will be in one of those. We’ll split up, check every door. Be careful. This has all the hallmarks of one of Ace’s traps.”

“You got it,” Buchanan said.

Sabrina was so nervous she couldn’t keep still. “What are we waiting for?”

Mason grabbed her hand in his, anchoring her to him while he waited for an opening. “Okay, now.” They all took off for the maintenance building that concealed the entrance to the tunnel.

A flash of white just inside the opening had him pulling up short. He jerked Sabrina back just as two firemen jogged past them with a gurney, carrying a body covered with a sheet.

“Oh noooooo,” Sabrina cried. She jerked her hand free from Mason’s and took off running.

“Sabrina, wait. That’s not your grandfather!” Mason yelled. But she must not have heard him and she’d been too distraught to notice the bulge of the pistol holstered at the dead man’s waist. She kept running.

“I’ll watch over her,” Ramsey said. “Find out what’s going on.” He nodded toward the tunnel where another group was hurrying up the slope and took off after Sabrina.

Mason started after him, intent on reaching Sabrina, but he froze when he saw the group of men coming out of the tunnel. Firemen flanked an old man, holding on to his arms as he stepped out into the open. Another fireman followed, dragging an empty stretcher. Judging by the stubborn set of the old man’s shoulders, Mason had no doubt the stretcher was supposed to be for him and he’d refused to be carried.

He was just as stubborn as his granddaughter.

“I’ll be damned,” Devlin said. He looked over to where Ramsey and Sabrina had disappeared into the throng of policemen and firemen on the other side of the parking lot. “Do you think Grandfather Hightower somehow killed Ace? Is that who was on the stretcher?”

Every muscle in Mason’s body went rigid when he saw the man emerging from the tunnel, surrounded by Council members.

Cyprian.

His obsidian gaze met Mason’s, and he stopped a few feet away with his entourage in tow.

“Mason, you’ll be relieved to hear that Mr. High­tower is alive and well.” He waved toward where the firefighters were pulling the older man toward an ambulance. “After hearing all those awful things at this evening’s Council meeting, I suspected that Ace may have been the one behind his disappearance.” He waved at his peers. “We arrived just in time to find Ace pulling Mr. Hightower out of one of the rooms below. It was quite shocking. I’m afraid I was forced to shoot him, to keep him from harming Mr. Hightower.”

“You lying son of a bitch.” Mason slammed his fist into Cyprian’s jaw, flinging him backward onto the ground. He lunged to hit him again but someone grabbed his arms and jerked him back. Buchanan.

“Let me go,” Mason growled.

“For God’s sake, look around you, man. You’re about to get shot.”

The haze of anger clouding Mason’s mind lifted and he realized two policemen were standing off to the side, their pistols trained on him. He slowly straightened and raised his hands in the air.

The councilmen helped Cyprian up and he thanked them, assuring them he was okay as he dusted off his suit and jerked his jacket into place.

“Gentlemen, officers, please, no harm done,” Cyprian assured them. “Mr. Hunt and I have had a . . . disagreement of sorts. I’m sure he regrets his impulsive actions.”

“The hell I do.”

Cyprian’s nostrils flared but he maintained his smile. “Regardless, I’m sure we can clear this up without the intervention of our fine officers.”

The police kept their eyes on Mason, but stepped back.

“Mr. Hunt. A moment?” Cyprian crossed to a spot about twenty feet away from the others and calmly waited, as if they were about to have a board meeting.

“I’m going with you. I don’t trust that bastard,” Buchanan whispered.

Mason nodded and they followed Cyprian, stopping right in front of him. Cyprian aimed a disgruntled look at Buchanan but didn’t say anything to him.

“What kind of game are you playing now, Cyprian?” Mason demanded.

He turned his back to the Council members and his smile vanished. “No games. I don’t want this . . . feud . . . to continue any more than you probably do. It’s dangerous.” He flicked his gaze toward Buchanan. “For all of us.”

“Feud? You call this a feud? You destroyed Sabrina’s family. If you think I buy that bullshit you told the Council about Bishop and Stryker being the bad guys, or that you were forced to kill Ace tonight to protect Hightower, you’re even more deluded than I thought. Everything you did was to protect yourself.”

“Everything I did was to protect my
daughter
,” Cyprian bit out, his eyes flashing. He blinked, as if realizing he’d said too much, and glanced back toward the Council, as if to make sure no one had heard him. “One day, if you’re ever blessed to have children, you’ll understand that a father’s love can make you do anything if it means keeping your children from being harmed. I made a mistake, Mason. And then I lied to cover it up, and then it got out of control.”

“Why did you kill Thomas Hightower?”

Cyprian straightened his shoulders. “I never said that I did.”

“Sure you did. You said you made a mistake, and everything else happened after that. Everything that happened can be traced back to Thomas’s death. The way I figure it, you killed him, or had him killed because he lied about being married and had an affair with your daughter. That’s the mistake you tried to cover up and it snowballed. But what I can’t figure out is why you were so worried about the truth coming out that you kidnapped an old man. Or why you didn’t just kill him outright if you thought he was some kind of threat. Care to share that little nugget?”

His eyes narrowed dangerously.

There were only two reasons to keep a mark alive: either to extract information, or to keep information from coming out if they were killed. Mason cocked his head and studied Cyprian.

“You were afraid to kill him. Because he knew you’d killed Thomas. Ace told Sabrina that, earlier today. Looks like he wasn’t lying. Hightower had you convinced that if you killed him some kind of proof would come to light, something that would destroy you. But after the Council decided to assign an Overseer to watch you, you realized you couldn’t risk holding Hightower anymore. You had to let him go and hope the old man was lying. Am I getting warm?”

“You’re obviously not going to drop this,” Cyprian said. “I don’t know why I bothered to try to reason with you. We’re done here.”

He stepped past Mason, but Mason swung him around. “We’re far from done.”

Cyprian shoved his hand off his shoulder, then walked back to the waiting Council members.

Buchanan stepped in Mason’s way. “There’s nothing you can do about him. Not today, anyway.”

Mason gave him a curt nod. “I know. Tell me, Buchanan, if Sabrina’s grandfather had information that proved Cyprian killed her brother, why would Cyprian care? With the power of EXIT behind him, he could make something like that go away, just like he made Detective Donovan go away.”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. But Cyprian did say that all of this started because he wanted to protect his daughter.”

“That might be how it started,” Mason said, as enlightenment dawned. “But I think it changed into something else entirely. He wasn’t protecting his daughter. He was protecting himself. He doesn’t want her to know that he killed Thomas because she was in love with Thomas, and she’d never forgive her father for that.”

Buchanan crossed his arms and stood beside him as they watched Cyprian and the Council members getting into a limo. “Melissa is his world. I think you might be right.”

“Maybe. Not that it matters. It doesn’t change anything.”

“No. It doesn’t. Not today. But you never know when information like that can prove useful.” He gave Mason a thoughtful look. “But there
is
one good thing to come out of all of this.”

“Yeah? What would that be?”

“You’re looking at her.”

Mason stared at Sabrina, sitting in the back of the ambulance, holding her grandfather’s hand.

“What are you waiting for? It looks like they’re about to close up the ambulance doors.”

Mason shook his head. “She’s better off without me.”

“Don’t you think that’s for her to decide? Looks to me like she’s already decided.”

Sabrina was standing in the back of the ambulance now, waving for Mason to come with her.

He shouldn’t. They’d already said everything that needed to be said. Prolonging their good-­bye would only make it worse. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides as he agonized over the wisdom of joining her.

“Would you just go already?” Buchanan shoved him, hard.

Mason shoved him back, then took off running toward the ambulance, with Buchanan’s laughter ringing in his ears.

A
FTER
A QUICK,
tearful reunion with her grandfather, Sabrina had been relegated to sitting with Mason in the emergency room waiting area. That was two hours ago. They’d finally just been briefed by his doctor. Hightower was dehydrated, slightly malnourished, but other than a few bruises he was going to be fine. He was suffering more from exhaustion than from anything else. He’d be transferred to a hospital room for further observation as soon as a bed became available.

When Sabrina had asked her grandfather what had happened, he’d confirmed what they’d already suspected—­that he’d recognized Melissa Cardenas from Sabrina’s sketch. But what they hadn’t realized was that he suspected Cyprian of having Thomas killed, and deliberately baited him, telling him that he had proof even before he was kidnapped. Ace, however, was the one who’d taken Hightower, and the only one, besides Bishop, he’d ever seen the whole time he was held. So he couldn’t even say for sure if Cyprian had ordered his capture. Once again, Cyprian was getting off on a technicality, the very type of thing that EXIT had been created to prevent.

“Well,” Mason said, still holding Sabrina’s hand as he sat beside her in the waiting room, staring at her reflection in the glass doors. “It’s been a long day. Hell, it’s been a long week.”

“Yep. Looooong day.” She met his gaze in their reflection and blew her bangs out of her eyes. “I forgot to tell you, after I spoke to my grandfather back there, I borrowed a nurse’s phone and called my cousin, Brian, to let him know Grampy was still alive.”

“The same Brian you mentioned when I . . . first met you?”

She smiled at his description of her abduction. “Yeah. The same. All this time I thought he wanted our grandfather declared dead just so he could get his hands on the estate. But I don’t think that’s the case. He totally broke down on the phone. He was shocked, but in a good way. I think Brian just thought I was drawing out his pain over the loss of Grampy by keeping the investigation open. Turns out he’s just as happy as I am that our grandfather is alive and well.”

“Did he change his mind about the felony conviction too?”

“We didn’t talk about that. Maybe that will come in time.” She shrugged. “I’m not too worried about overturning my conviction anymore. It gives me street cred to be a felon, now that I hang out with badasses like you.”

“Badass, huh? Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

“Definitely a compliment.” She laced her fingers with his, enjoying the warmth and strength of his hand on hers. “Brian and my sister-­in-­law, Angela, are booking a flight. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

His smile faded. “Good, good. You’ll have your family again. I should, ah, probably go.”

She shrugged. “If you want a boring life without cornfield sex, be my guest.”

His lips twitched.

“You know they have this new thing that helps with PTSD,” she said, nonchalantly.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“It’s called T-­H-­E-­R-­A-­P-­Y.”