Kitabı oku: «Confiscated Conception», sayfa 2

Chapter Two

Jared shot past Miller and Smith and sped along the gravel road in front of the house. His best chance was to make it to the highway and try to outrun the two cops. And maybe, just maybe, those Texas Rangers at the checkpoint wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

Of course, escape from the safe house was just the first hurdle. He didn’t want to speculate how many hurdles they had ahead of them after that.

Or what those hurdles might be.

Even some serious detective work and a fair amount luck might not be enough to help them find the child—and stay ahead of danger.

“Are they following us?” Rachel asked.

Jared glanced in the side and rearview mirrors. “Not yet.”

But he quickly had to amend that. The moment the words left his mouth, he saw the dark gray car barrel out of the garage, coming right after them.

“They’re behind us,” he said. “Stay down. The tires are bullet resistant, but they might try to shoot them out anyway.”

“Oh God.” She mumbled another curse under her breath. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

He was asking himself the same thing. Jared tried not to think beyond saving this child that might be theirs. But even if they managed to get the baby out of harm’s way and put Esterman behind bars, there would be consequences.

Huge ones.

After all, he was essentially kidnapping his soon-to-be ex-wife so he could obstruct justice. The department certainly wasn’t going to see that in a favorable light, no matter how good his intentions. When this was over, he’d have some serious explaining to do.

Jared kept his eyes on the zigzagging road and spotted the Rangers’ checkpoint station just ahead. Both men were there. Waiting. The detectives must have alerted them, because the Rangers had angled their car to create a roadblock.

Without slowing down, Jared veered around them, using every inch of the grassy shoulder, and raced past the checkpoint. As he’d figured they would do, the Rangers jumped into their vehicle and followed in pursuit. They wouldn’t just give up and let him leave the area with Rachel.

“What now?” she asked.

She lifted her head and looked out the side mirror. Jared pushed her right back down. If the officers tried to shoot out the tires and missed, he didn’t want Rachel to become the victim of “friendly” fire.

Rachel didn’t exactly cooperate. The minute his hand was off her shoulder, she slipped right back up in the seat and pinned her gaze to the mirror, and their pursuers. From her soft gasp, she obviously knew things weren’t going well.

He took the next curve, and the other cars made the turn along with him. And worse. Jared saw the detectives drop back so the Rangers could overtake them. One of the Rangers leaned out of the window and aimed his weapon at the tires.

Hell.

Jared pushed Rachel down in the seat again. He definitely didn’t want her to get a good look at that rifle. With her fear of firearms, she might have a panic attack. There wasn’t time for that.

He didn’t slow down. Jared kept the pressure on the accelerator and snaked over both lanes so the tires wouldn’t be such easy targets. Unfortunately, that didn’t protect them from a quick jab of Murphy’s Law.

“Hang on,” Jared warned.

At seemingly a snail’s pace, an old beat-up truck hauling a flatbed of hay pulled out from a side road and directly into their path. He managed to swerve around it. Barely. The car jerked to the right when he clipped the ditch. Jared corrected and then corrected again so he wouldn’t broadside a tree.

He heard the sound of metal scraping and buckling and saw the cause of that noise in his rearview mirror. The Rangers and detectives hadn’t been so lucky in avoiding an accident.

They’d sideswiped each other to avoid the truck, and the impact had sent both cars careering into a waist-high ditch. Everyone looked unharmed, but their vehicles were temporarily out of commission. It’d probably take a tow truck to get them back on the road.

Jared didn’t waste any time. He stomped on the accelerator and got them out of there.

“We can’t follow the highway,” he said.

He sped toward the farm road that he’d already checked out. By his estimation, it would take five minutes to get there and another five minutes to start working their way through the maze of back roads that would eventually lead them to the cabin.

“They’ll set up blocks to find us.”

When she didn’t respond, Jared glanced at her. Rachel was no longer sitting low in the seat. Nor did she have her attention focused on the accident behind them. Rather, she was looking at the envelope and the photograph that had fallen out of his jacket pocket.

“Who is she?” Rachel asked.

The picture lay between them. The gruesome image that he hadn’t wanted Rachel to see.

Jared checked the mirror again to make sure they weren’t being followed. They weren’t, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. He hadn’t intended to get into an explanation like this until they were someplace safe. Of course, he didn’t have a clue when that would be.

He tried to put the picture of the dead woman back into the envelope, but Rachel pushed his hand away.

“Esterman’s people sent this to you, didn’t they.” Rachel’s voice was ragged, laced with nerves and adrenaline, but there was fire there as well.

Jared knew exactly how she felt. He’d had the same reaction the first time he saw it. It wasn’t any easier the second time around. “Yeah. It was in the envelope with the letter and the photo of the baby.”

He debated how much more he should tell her, but the debate didn’t last long. This was a critical piece of information that he couldn’t keep from Rachel. She’d risked as much as he had by leaving the safe house. Besides, he needed her cooperation, and this unfortunately might do it.

“I computer-matched that photo to the one in her police record,” Jared explained. “Her name is Sasha Young. She did time for forgery, and she’s—”

“The surrogate mother,” Rachel finished. “The woman who supposedly gave birth to our child.” She paused and moistened her lips. “They murdered her?”

Oh, man. This wasn’t an easy thing to discuss with Rachel. If the people behind this would kill a young woman, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. But then, Rachel must have come to that same conclusion. If she hadn’t truly thought a child was in danger, she wouldn’t have climbed out that window with him.

“It appears they murdered her,” Jared admitted.

She narrowed her eyes. “Appears? That’s twice you’ve used that word today, and it’s starting to annoy me. Cut the doublespeak, Jared. Is she dead, or is this a doctored photo to scare us into doing what Esterman wants?”

If he hadn’t been so concerned over what they were about to face, he might have smiled. Might have. Here, he’d expected the news to send Rachel into a near panic. And it no doubt had. But even so, she was holding herself together—for now, anyway. However, they weren’t even close to finishing this.

“I don’t know if she’s really dead,” he admitted. “I checked the morgue, and there’s no Jane Doe fitting her description, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could have taken that picture and then disposed of the body so that it wouldn’t be found—ever.”

“Yes.” Rachel took a deep breath, and another, and rested her head against the seat.

“I know this isn’t easy, and I’m sorry.” That picture probably reminded her of her own murdered parents. It was the main reason Jared hadn’t been eager to show it to her.

Her head whipped up. “My God, your mother and your sister. Esterman might go after them—”

“I’ve already taken care of it. I sent Karen and Mom on a little trip out of state this morning. With bodyguards. They’ll be fine.”

At least, Jared hoped they would be. He was thankful that his family had gone willingly into hiding. Of course, he hadn’t given them much of a choice. Jared was sure the only reason Esterman hadn’t thought to use them sooner was that Rachel and he had been separated. If Esterman had believed for one minute that he could get to Rachel through them, they would have become his first choice of targets.

“They must be terrified,” Rachel concluded.

Yep. But Jared wasn’t about to confirm it. It would only push their feelings of panic up a notch. “They know I’ll defuse this situation with Esterman as fast as I can.”

She glanced at him. Not exactly a vote of confidence. Rachel shook her head. “After the cops asked me to spy on Esterman, I learned the horrible things that he’s capable of doing. Well, at least I thought I had. But this…God, this. I didn’t know anyone could come up with something so sinister. And to think I used to work for this man. Heck, I used to believe we were friends.”

Friends. Oh yeah. Jared had caught wind of some of that. When things had been at the worst in their marriage, Rachel had mentioned something about having a few long talks with her boss.

That still didn’t set well with him.

Not just for the obvious personal reasons, either. It likely meant that Esterman knew some of the details of Rachel’s and his breakup. If the man knew that, then he was also aware of how much Rachel desperately wanted a child. Esterman must have used that information when he put this plan together.

And he’d come after her with a vengeance.

“I don’t regret spying on him,” she continued several moments later. “And I don’t regret turning over the information to police. Money laundering. Murder for hire. All under the guise of a respectable accounting firm.” Rachel placed the photo in the envelope and neatly tucked it back into his jacket pocket. “But I do regret that the investigation brought things to this point.”

So did he. And even after hours of thinking of little else, he just hadn’t come up with a way to fight Esterman. But then, Esterman had had a year to come up with his plan to stop Rachel from testifying. Jared had had just hours, and precious few of those.

Jared turned onto the little-used farm road and checked his mirror again. Still no sign of any Rangers or cops, but they had almost certainly called for backup. By now, peace officers all over the area would be responding. His captain would have been alerted—and maybe even the city officials. It put a hard knot in his stomach to know that for the first time in his life he was on the other side of the law.

“How long do you think we have before they find us?” she asked.

Probably not long enough. But he kept that to himself. Best to dwell on the things they did have some control over.

“I don’t know, but we start by getting out of sight,” he explained. “Then, we find the baby so you can testify. Before I came to get you, I called the prison where Sasha Young was an inmate. The warden’s administrative assistant told me that she had a frequent visitor, a man named Aaron Merkens. I’ve already located him and arranged a meeting for tonight.”

“Tonight,” she repeated on a heavy sigh.

Jared understood that sigh all too well. Tonight was still hours away, and a lot could happen between now and then. The two bodyguards were after them. The Rangers. Maybe even his own fellow officers. Added to that, there was a storm brewing. The thick sludge-colored cloud looked ready to burst wide open, and that would certainly put a damper on his driving like a bat out of hell.

But those things were only part of their problem. He and Rachel couldn’t go far since they needed to be in San Antonio for that meeting with Aaron Merkens. As meetings went, that one was critical. Merkens might be able to tell them the location of the baby. The flip side was that he might lead them straight into a trap.

It was definitely a rock and a hard place kind of situation.

Yet, there was nothing Jared could do about it. He had to meet with the man. He had to figure out where to start looking. But first and foremost, he had to make sure that he and Rachel weren’t captured.

As much as he hated to admit it even to himself, they and they alone were the baby’s only chance for survival.

CLARENCE ESTERMAN CALMLY leaned back in the stiff prison-gray chair and stared through the thick, dingy glass at his employee. Gerald Anderson was on a roll, his words fluid. His voice strong and steady. But Clarence looked past that news-at-five veneer and saw a man who was scared spitless of being the messenger for this particular communiqué.

“I’m listening,” Clarence assured him when Gerald paused and gulped down some water.

But there was no reason for Clarence to listen too carefully. The oily beads of sweat over Gerald’s ample upper lip said it all. Someone had screwed up badly enough that it had warranted a visit from his personal assistant and security specialist.

That did not please him.

There were only two things he hated more than receiving bad news: the stench of the jail and the woman responsible for putting him there. Make that three—he could add yet another thing to his hate list. Lieutenant Jared Dillard.

“Our friend was supposed to have been observed 24/7. No exceptions.” Even though he whispered that little reminder, Clarence enunciated each word into the offensive-smelling phone that he was forced to use. He’d already bribed the guards to make sure the conversation wasn’t being monitored, but he still chose his words carefully. “Please tell me why that didn’t happen.”

Gerald made a vague who-knows motion with his hand. “He managed to, uh, shake the observer. I guess he’s better at that than we thought he’d be.”

“He’s very good at what he does,” Clarence said calmly. “Lots of citations and plaques for his I-love-me wall. But everyone knew that before we ever made him our messenger boy. So, if I take that ‘he’s very good’ information to the most obvious conclusion, then everyone, including you and the observer, should have anticipated that he’d try to stop us from keeping tabs on him.”

No more news-at-five demeanor. The transformation he saw in Gerald was something immediate and akin to a deer crashing straight into the headlights of a fully loaded semi with its pedal to the metal.

“We’ll find him” was Gerald’s comeback after he’d guzzled down more water.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that, not with what I pay you. And when you do locate him, you’ll remind him of the little package we have. That should help him get his priorities back on track. You’ll also inform him that he’s deeply pissed me off with this little evasion tactic.”

Gerald nodded, as Clarence had known he would do. “Absolutely.”

But that wasn’t enough. Not when his freedom and his life were at stake.

“Shake things up a little,” Clarence continued. He ignored the guard’s impatient request for him to hurry his visit. “I want our mutual friend to realize how important it is that we have his cooperation.”

Gerald leaned forward until his nose was practically against the glass. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying…”

Clarence leaned forward as well, but unlike Gerald, he was absolutely certain there wasn’t a trace of fear or concern in his baby blues.

“I merely want him…surprised,” Clarence explained. He wasn’t totally opposed to killing a cop, but he wasn’t giving up on getting Dillard’s help in bringing in Rachel. “Have I mentioned that someone very close to him has a fear of guns? A childhood trauma. Something about witnessing her parents’ murders. Use that.”

Gerald shook his head. “How?”

Clarence slowly brought his teeth together, and it took a moment to unclench them. It was hard to maintain composure when dealing with a certifiable moron. Too bad he needed this particular moron.

For a little while longer, anyway.

“Educate her the hard way, Gerald. Send her running from her estranged husband, and she will run right where we want her.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Clarence didn’t bother answering that. He had no doubt whatsoever that Rachel would cooperate once the truth sank in about the baby. Simply put, the child was what mattered most to her. Not her super-cop estranged husband that she hadn’t bothered to contact in over a year. Not her warped sense of devotion to be a do-gooder for the sake of society.

The baby was Rachel Dillard’s Achilles’ heel.

And he would use it to break her.

Clarence placed the phone back on the wall, knowing that Gerald would do what he had been told. Hopefully, this time he’d manage it without the mistakes. Of course, Clarence did have a margin for error.

All seven pounds and three ounces of him.

It would be interesting to watch Rachel beg for the child’s life.

Chapter Three

Rachel looked out through the rain-streaked windshield and spotted the picturesque log cabin. It was nestled in a thick grove of moss-strewn oaks, making it difficult to see from the road.

Difficult, but certainly not impossible.

And that explained why Jared parked the car at the back of the cabin where it would be out of sight.

“This place belongs to a friend,” Jared explained as they made a dash for the back porch. “We can use it as long as necessary.”

Rachel wondered if the friend was a man or a woman, but she quickly pushed that question aside. His relationships, personal or otherwise, were no longer any of her business. After all, she and Jared had called it quits months ago. He was a healthy, red-blooded, thirty-two-year-old male, and it was likely—very likely—that he’d been seeing other women.

While the rain pelted them and the lightning slashed across the sky, Jared fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. The place was musky but dry, and a lot larger than it looked from the outside.

Well, sort of.

The combined living and kitchen area was large enough to accommodate two people, but what Rachel didn’t see was a separate bedroom. The double bed tucked away in the corner seemed to be the sum total of the sleeping quarters. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to spend the night.

“We’ll be safe here until it’s time to meet Aaron Merkens?” she asked.

“We should be.” After Jared entered the code on the wall pad to disarm the security system, he grabbed a towel from the closet near the door and tossed it to her. “I figure you’re the safest woman in America right now. Esterman will do just about anything to keep you alive. You’re his get-out-jail-free card. Or so he thinks.”

Yes. But her supposed safety came at a huge price. Esterman would only want her alive as long as she could be of service to him.

All bets were off after that.

“I asked if we would be safe,” Rachel clarified. She watched as he lifted a laptop from the top shelf of the closet and set it on the pine table. “That plural pronoun included you.”

With an almost amused look on his face, he brushed past her so he could plug the modem line into the phone jack on the wall. She caught his scent. The wet leather of his jacket. Faint traces of soap.

He still used the same shampoo.

It had always reminded her of the sea. And sex. But then a lot of things about Jared still reminded her of sex.

He was so unlike the other guys she’d dated in college. No comparison really. He was basically a grown-up bad boy who’d won his share of fights, some with his fists. The tiny scar on his chin and the other on the edge of his right eyebrow were evidence of that.

Like the rest of him, his hair was a bit untamed, a little too long—with a natural style that fit his personality to a tee. No glossy polish. No pretenses. Just a man who had a unique way of reminding her that she was very glad indeed to be a woman.

Even now, with all the uncertainty of the moment, she still had the same reaction to Jared that she usually did. Much to her disgust, he pretty much stole her breath. God knows how many times that had happened, so she couldn’t blame it on the adrenaline. All he had to do was walk into a room and she melted into a puddle of…something.

Something that Rachel quickly pushed aside.

Those days of lust and great sex were over. They were on the brink of a divorce and their lives were in turmoil. This wasn’t the time for the-way-we-were musings.

“I appreciate the plural pronoun, and the concern for my safety,” Jared commented. “But I seriously doubt Esterman wants to tangle with me.”

Rachel wasn’t so sure. Tangling seemed to be something that didn’t intimidate Clarence Esterman, and that was only one of the reasons why the thought of his going free chilled her to the bone.

She checked the time. It was nearly twelve-thirty. In a half an hour she was supposed to be on the stand to testify about all the incriminating documents and memos she’d observed her boss shredding. Since there were no other witnesses, she was essentially the prosecution’s case. Yet, here she was, in a remote cabin at least thirty miles from the courthouse. The district attorney’s office and dozens of other people were probably in an uproar by now.

“I can build a fire if you want to dry off,” Jared offered.

“No thanks.” Despite the rain, the room was muggy and warm, which wasn’t unusual for a Texas spring afternoon. However, that combined with the spent adrenaline was making her feel woozy. She definitely needed a clear head for the things they were about to face. “I’d rather try to figure out how we’re going to find the baby.”

The sooner that happened, the sooner she could take the stand. And the sooner she’d know if the baby was actually their baby. Rachel didn’t want to think beyond that. One step at a time was all she could handle right now.

He draped his jacket over the back of a chair, the drops of rain sliding off it and spattering onto the hardwood floor. “Like I told you in the car, I’m hoping Aaron Merkens can give us a starting point.”

Yes. That would prevent them from having to take the needle-in-a-haystack approach, but it still wasn’t very reassuring. After all, Sasha Young had been in prison, and Merkens was her friend.

“You think you can trust him?”

“No way in hell.”

She almost wished Jared had hesitated. The fact that he hadn’t meant the meeting that was supposed to take place in seven hours might just be a trap.

Maybe Esterman had known they’d find Merkens and try to get information from him. And if Esterman had known that, then he also could have arranged for the cops to be there to take her back into protective custody.

Talk about the ultimate irony. When it came to her testimony, Esterman and the cops were now on the same side. Both would do just about anything to get her to take the stand. One, however, wanted her to lie.

With his back to her, Jared peeled off his wet shirt and hung it over one of the other chairs to dry. “Remember Mason Tanner, the P.I. I’ve used for some of my cases?”

“Sure.” When she and Jared were still together, Turner came to the house a couple of times. “What about him?”

“He’s helping us out. A lot. I’m having him check out the park where we’re meeting Merkens, and he’ll try to make sure it’s safe. I can’t leave you here by yourself. You’ll have to come with me.”

Rachel hadn’t considered staying behind to be an option, anyway. As difficult as it was to be around Jared, it would have been impossible to do this solo.

“What about this leak in the department you mentioned earlier?” she asked, trying not to look directly at him. It seemed a little too intimate to be so close to him while he was half naked. Instead, she straightened the stack of old magazines in the center of the table.

It didn’t help.

Her body still knew he was half naked.

“A couple of weeks ago someone put a tap on my phone at work.” He extracted the envelope from his jacket and tossed it next to the magazines. “Then I caught this officer over in homicide, Sergeant Colby Meredith, trying to access some security files. Files that would have told him the location of the safe house where you were staying.”

“Sweet heaven.” Rachel had never heard Esterman mention this particular person, but he had a lot of people on his payroll. “You confronted Meredith?”

“Sure did. He only recently transferred in from Austin, so he covered for himself by saying he wasn’t familiar with the files and accidentally typed in the wrong code. I didn’t believe him for a minute, so I’ve been watching him. But I figure Esterman put Meredith in place to find you so he could have one of his hired goons personally deliver the news about the baby. When Meredith wasn’t successful, Esterman had no choice but to use me as a middleman.”

Of course. They probably hadn’t wanted to involve Jared since he was a cop, but he was one of the few people who could get to her. That one little detail had embroiled him in all of this.

He turned to type something on the keyboard, and Rachel saw the scar. An angry slice across his chest, just below his heart. She actually took a step back, to put some distance between her and that brutal reminder of what had happened nearly eighteen months earlier.

“Pretty disgusting, huh?” she heard him say.

Only then did Rachel realize she’d been staring at his chest.

Unable to answer him, she merely shook her head. Disgusting wasn’t the right word. More like distressing. The injury had nearly killed him. In fact, the doctors told her that his heart had stopped beating while he was in surgery.

Jared shrugged and went to the closet. He grabbed two T-shirts off hangers, slipped on one and handed the other one to her. “They tell me it’ll fade with time.”

The scar would, yes. The memory of it wouldn’t. Nor would the rift it had caused between them.

In the end, the event that had caused that scar had also cost them their marriage. For Rachel, it had been easier to fall out of love with Jared than to risk another nightmare like that. She’d had enough nightmares to last a lifetime.

Rachel changed her shirt in the tiny bathroom and hung the other up to dry. She turned to leave, but first made the mistake of glancing in the mirror. No makeup. Her hair was soaking wet. She was much too pale. She looked even worse than she felt—something she hadn’t thought possible.

“We’re connected to the Internet,” Jared called out. “Think you can try to find out some information about Sasha Young’s last known address?”

“I’ll try.” Glad that she could do something to get her mind off their situation, Rachel went back into the room and took the seat in front of the computer.

Jared moved the envelope closer to her, and she noticed the address written on the outside. “I got that from Aaron Merkens,” he explained. “It’s supposedly a rental house on the south side of town, but it could be bogus. There was no phone listing for it. While you’re doing that, I need to call Tanner.”

Jared took out his cell phone and walked into the kitchen to make his call. Rachel didn’t waste any time. She used some of her CPA knowledge and located the real estate tax records for the county. With any luck, the actual owner of the property would be listed.

While she waited for the file to load, she glanced at the envelope. She already knew it contained the photos of the dead woman and the baby, but she was almost afraid to find out what other surprises it held—especially since they were dealing with Esterman here.

Trying to ignore the envelope, Rachel quickly scanned the tax information on the screen, but it wasn’t good news. The owner of the rental property was a corporation. Probably a dummy company at that. If Esterman owned the house, he was too smart not to bury that information under layers of paperwork.

She fed in the next search to try to find out more information about the corporation, while toying with the flap on the envelope. Rachel tried to talk herself out of opening it, but even knowing that the contents could break her heart, she couldn’t stop herself. The first thing she saw when she glanced inside was the photo of the baby.

It took her a moment just to find her breath and longer to steady it. As if it were fragile and might shatter in her hand, she lifted it out and placed it neatly on the table next to the computer. She hadn’t really looked at the image when Jared tried to hand it to her in the bedroom at the safe house, but she studied it now.

The tiny round face was perfect. Beautiful. A delicate mouth. A spattering of bronze-colored hair on his head. The color of Jared’s hair. Of course, that meant nothing. Lots of babies had brown hair.

He could be anyone’s child. Anyone’s. And Esterman could be using him the same way he’d used dozens of other people over the three years she’d worked for him. Still, Rachel couldn’t seem to take her gaze off that precious little face.

His eyes were closed in what appeared to be a peaceful sleep. She prayed that it was indeed peaceful, and that he had no comprehension whatsoever of the danger he was in.

God.

He was in danger because Esterman had chosen to use him as a pawn in a very sick game.

But was this her baby?

Was this the child she’d desperately wanted but had given up hope of ever having?

The memories of her infertility blended together with the tormenting thoughts of the baby. Looking back on it, Jared had never seemed as committed to having a child as she had. He hadn’t objected. Not really. But then, he hadn’t poured his whole heart into it, either. He’d proven that when he refused to let her use the fertilized embryos immediately after they separated. He hadn’t wanted to bring a child into a broken relationship.

Or so he said.

At the time, his steadfast refusal had felt like the ultimate slap in the face. It still did. If she hadn’t gotten involved with the undercover investigation into Esterman’s wrongdoings, she almost certainly would have pursued the issue in court. That was the only reason the embryos still had been in storage. So, in a way it was her fault that Esterman had been able to carry things through to this point.