“Understand?”
When she didn’t answer the second time, he put his arm under her waist as though he meant to carry her. “Up!” he said, then pulled her upright and did his best to run with her, but she was a hindrance as she tripped at every step. “Come on, come on,” he said. “What if Smokey saw what a wimp you’ve become?” he taunted when she nearly fell for the third time.
His words had the desired effect as Fiona remembered all that had happened in the last few minutes. Rage put muscle back into her legs, and she straightened out and began to run.
Away from him.
“Damn you!” Ace said as he turned and ran after her, catching her just as she disappeared into the surrounding jungle. Once again, he tried to tackle her, but this time Fiona was ready for him. She hadn’t played years of team sports without having learned a thing or two. She evaded his tackle and kept running as best she could through the tangle of vines and plants.
The next time Ace tried to bring her down, he caught her heel and hung on as though his life depended on it.
Turning over onto her back, her backpack under her, Fiona kicked out and caught him a hard smack on the collarbone. “Let go of me,” she screeched. “I’ll have you arrested.”
Ace was busy holding onto one foot while trying to catch the other that was kicking him. “I’m trying to save your life,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “Don’t you realize that that was a bullet that went past your head?”
That word stopped Fiona’s struggles. But as she looked about her at the mass of vegetation, she thought, Who could get through this? “You’re lying. You’re lying about everything,” she said, meaning about her father, too.
But as she raised her foot to kick out at him again, there was another crack and this time she could feel the heat of a bullet as it went very close to her head.
“He wants you,” Ace said, “not me.”
His words were so chilling that she knew he was telling the truth, and her mind seemed to go blank. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a situation as this.
But Ace didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go,” he said as he rose to a crouch and held out his hand to her.
Fiona took his hand and followed him, this time without stumbling. When he leaped over a fallen log, she leaped with him. When he ran across what looked like a piece of rotten fence over a stagnant pond, she was right behind him, never letting go of his hand. Only once did he let go of her hand and that was when he reached up to grab a horizontal tree branch and swung himself over a nasty-looking bit of mushy sand. She didn’t want to ask if it was quicksand.
“Don’t think,” he said. “Just grab it and swing toward me. I’ll catch you.”
She did take time to give him a look of, Get real; then she grabbed the branch and swung hard—and landed half a yard behind him. “Can stubby little Lisa do that?” she said over her shoulder.
Ace almost smiled; then he grabbed her hand and started running again.
They had run through the wilderness for at least forty minutes when he suddenly plunged into the underbrush and grabbed a huge leaf. Under it was a car door.
“We made a circle!” Fiona cried, half in wonder, half in annoyance. She knew that the car couldn’t be too far from the cabin, which meant that they weren’t far from the cabin.
While she was considering this, Ace had uncovered the other side of the car and was inside it and he’d started the engine. The car was already moving when Fiona threw open the door and jumped inside. “Were you just going to leave me there?” she said as she slammed the door.
“Throw that thing in the back,” he said, referring to her backpack, “and get down on the floor.”
When she bent over in the seat, he yelled at her that he wanted her curled up on the floor and that she was to hold on. She did the best she could to curl her long body into the small space. Fear made her obedient.
She was no more in the small space than Ace hit a bump that would otherwise have sent her through the ceiling. As it was, she hit her head on the underside of the dashboard. “Ow!” she said, rubbing the place and looking up at him as he jerked the wheel first one way then the other, swerving around potholes.
“Is he following us?” she shouted up at him, for the noise of the car and the gravel and crunching plants under the wheels was deafening.
“Yes,” Ace said, and his tone let her know that he needed to concentrate on driving, not on answering questions.
Three times she heard what sounded like a gun going off, but maybe it was the call of a unique and special bird, she told herself as she hugged her legs to her, making herself as small as possible. What had he meant when he’d said, “He wants you?”
If tires could screech on gravel, then Ace would have laid rubber several times. Instead, he seemed to turn in one ninety-degree circle after another until Fiona was as dizzy as she’d ever been on a carnival ride.
Just when it seemed that the harrowing ride was never going to end, Ace pressed the gas pedal to the floor and sent the car flying. It bottomed out when it hit something hard and solid, but it kept going, and Fiona felt the smoothness of asphalt.
“We lost him,” Ace said quietly, and after the noise of the last minutes, the car suddenly seemed almost silent. He held out his hand to help her uncurl from her painful position.
Gingerly, she pulled herself up onto the seat, but not before she looked out the window, almost expecting to see hordes of men with guns, all aimed at her.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” she said, trying to sound brave and strong, but there was a quiver in her voice.
“You have something to drink in that pack of yours? I find that I’m a mite thirsty,” he said.
Bending over the front seat and retrieving her pack gave her time to regain some of her composure.
“I always carry bottled water when I go to the office,” she said, but then she almost lost it, as her hectic office now seemed like a haven of peace and security.
“You did well back there,” Ace said as he took the water bottle from her. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said about your father. It’s been a bad morning, and I took it out on you.”
At that Fiona looked out the car window and took a deep breath. They were on a highway, which highway she didn’t know, and where they were going she didn’t know, but she knew that “bad morning” in their situation was very bad. Very.
“All right, tell me,” she said as she took the water from him and drank from the bottle. “What’s happened now?”
“I called my brother. Eric was killed.”
She didn’t understand. “But isn’t that good? He’s the only one who says that you and I killed Roy. If Eric is dead, that means there are no eyewitnesses.”
Ace kept his eyes on the road. “He was killed while he was in the hospital under a full police guard. And they have two eyewitnesses who say they saw you and me in the hospital.”
“But we were here in the swamps. We weren’t anywhere near the hospital.”
“And who saw you? Or me? Think the state trooper is going to identify us? Me with skin much darker and you with just your eyes showing? The distinguishing characteristic of the two of us is your height. Any dark-haired six-footer is going to be taken for you.”
“Thanks a lot. You make me sound like a freak.”
“No, just easily recognized and easily impersonated.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he withdrew a round plastic object and handed it to her.
“What’s this?” she said, then drew in her breath because she knew what it was. “It’s a bug, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It can be bought in any of those spy stores that are in the malls all over America.”
She held the thing but didn’t want to. “Where did you find it?”
“After I talked to my brother and found out about Eric, I got suspicious. I couldn’t get over the feeling that someone was outside last night, so this morning I started looking around. I found this in the kitchen stuck
under the table.”
“But it looks new. It couldn’t have been there for very long, and how did the killer know that’s where we’d be?” she asked; then her eyes widened. “It wasn’t put there before we arrived. It was put there …”
“Last night while we were both sleeping the sleep of the dead. I think a shotgun could have gone off and I wouldn’t have awakened.”
“So much for my sex appeal,” she said under her breath, then was rewarded by a huge grin from Ace.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
“So where are we going now?”
“It’s a long shot, but Smokey had a house about twenty miles from here and—”
At the mention of the name, Fiona turned her head away to look out the window. She wasn’t saying anything, but her body was rigid and her hands were gripping the seat so hard that her knuckles were white.
“I want you to listen to me,” Ace said softly. “I said that Smokey knew people. He did. He knew everyone: senators to drug dealers. He had a way about him that enabled him to work with anyone. I don’t know anything about map making, but I know that he was a sort of liaison person between—”
“The underworld and good, respectable people like you,” she spat at him.
“I never said that. As far as I know, Smokey never took a drug, never sold one. He just … I don’t know exactly what he did. He just used to say that he had an …” Abruptly he stopped and glanced at her; then his voice lowered. “He said that he had an angel to support.”
Fiona threw up her hands. “Great. Now I am the cause of my father having to deal with criminals. No doubt it’s one of the jailbirds on parole who killed Roy, killed Eric. I wonder what he thinks my father did to him?”
“Do you think your father was capable of what you seem to think that I told you that he did?” he said loudly; then when Fiona looked at him in question, he smiled. “Okay, so maybe I don’t make any sense. Truth is, I don’t know anything about your father. I met him only once. I had the problem with the loans that my uncle had taken out on the park. Truthfully, I was afraid that those men had killed my uncle. I asked someone what I should do, and I was told to ask Smokey, so I did. He gave me excellent advice, I slipped him a hundred, and that was that.”
Fiona cocked her head to one side. “So what did he tell you to do?”
Ace hesitated before answering, and she was sure she saw a bit of a blush on his neck. “He, uh, told me to go to a bank and get a loan and pay off the sharks.”
Fiona blinked at him. “But that’s what anyone would tell you to do. Why didn’t you think of that yourself ?”
“Youth. Grief over my uncle’s death. Too many gangster movies. When I look back on it, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“So why didn’t your uncle go to a bank in the first place and not the sharks?”
For a split second, Ace looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and she knew that he was hiding something. She had just touched on something that he didn’t want her to know about his life.
“My uncle had major personal debts from a divorce. No bank was going to lend him more. The sharks didn’t care about his lack of assets. As they say, He had knees. But I had no debts, and as far as the bank knew, Kendrick Park was unencumbered, since the sharks didn’t have any paperwork on the money they had given my uncle.”
“So they gave you the loan,” she said, then looked away. His answer had been simple and easily believable, but he wasn’t telling her all of it. She could sense that he was holding something back, hiding something.
“So how are you feeling?” he said in a false voice, obviously attempting to lighten the mood.
“Dirty,” she said instantly. “My hair is dirty, my nails are ragged, even my toenails feel as though they haven’t been trimmed in years. And I have hair on my legs and my under—”
“How about some music?” Ace said as he switched on the radio so he wouldn’t be able to hear the rest of her feminine complaints. But he didn’t get music.
“… notorious John Burkenhalter, aka ‘Smokey’—” Ace turned off the radio.
Fiona closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “I’ve destroyed my father’s name. Before this happened everyone thought my father was wonderful. I thought he was wonderful.”
“Why don’t we—”
“What?!” she half shouted, and she could hear the hysteria in her voice. “What can we do? Check in to a hotel? Have a nice dinner and a rest? Or better yet, why don’t we just get on a plane and get out of this mess?”
Leaning forward, she snapped the radio back on.
Immediately the announcer’s voice came on. “It was announced today that Fiona Burkenhalter has been discharged from her job at Davidson Toys. The owner of Davidson Toys, James Garrett, said that he knew something was wrong when Burkenhalter refused to leave New York to go to Florida during the winter. ‘I had to threaten her to make her go,’ Garrett is quoted as saying in a press conference this afternoon. He went on to say that Burkenhalter had been relieved of all her duties at Davidson Toys. As is known by every little girl in the country by now, Burkenhalter was the creator of Kimberly.”
It was Ace who switched off the radio; then he pulled the car off the highway and onto a side road. During the time it took to do this, Fiona didn’t move so much as a muscle. She just sat there, staring out the window, not moving. When he looked at her, as he did every few seconds, she appeared to be relaxed. Her hands were lying limp by her sides, and her face was smooth, undistorted by the anger he would have expected to see.
He would have thought she was unaffected by what she’d just heard except that there were tears running down her face. Slow, silent tears just flowing out of her eyes and running, unchecked, down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them away. In fact, she didn’t seem to be aware that they were there.
When he stopped the car and turned the engine off, he leaned over her. “Are you all right?”
“Sure. Fine. Why shouldn’t I be? It was just a job. I’ll get another one, and they should fire someone accused of murder, shouldn’t they? Especially when you work for a toy company. Children are involved with toys, you know. And they look up to the people who create for them. If I were Garrett, I’d fire me. I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d fire me right away. I’d take Kimberly away from me too. Children look up to us. We have a responsibility to the children. That’s important in a toy company. We—”
“Sssssh, be quiet,” Ace said as he smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll take care of it all, trust me.”
“Gerald can take care of Kimberly. He’s wanted to for a long time. The children will be all right. Garrett will figure out something to tell them.”
Ace got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, and pulled Fiona out; then he helped her into the backseat. “I want you to lie down,” he said gently. “I want you to rest while I make a phone call.”
“You know what’s funny? Kimberly is going to work with a cartographer. I used my father’s maps. Isn’t that a good joke? Do you think I’ll be arrested for using the maps of a criminal? But then I am a criminal too. Like father like daughter. Isn’t this just the greatest joke you’ve ever heard?”
Ace got a blanket out of the trunk and spread it over her; then he rummaged in her backpack until he found the borrowed cell phone. “Be quiet now,” he said. “Just close your eyes and be quiet.”
“Might as well,” she said. “Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No one needs me anymore.”
Ace stepped away from the car and punched the buttons of a number he knew well.
“How bad is it?” he said as soon as the familiar voice of his cousin Michael Taggert answered.
“Oh, God, Ace, am I glad to hear from you! It’s real bad, but Frank has lawyers working and they all think you two should turn yourselves in. The lawyers will be with you every step of the way.”
“Right,” Ace said. “And will the lawyers be there w
hen she’s fingerprinted and they take her mug shot?”
Michael was silent for a moment. “What about you? You’ll be taken into custody too.”
“I can take it, but she’s beginning to crack up.” Holding the phone to his ear, Ace looked in the backseat of the car, where Fiona was curled, the blanket held to her tightly. She looked like a frightened three-year-old, he thought. He turned his attention back to the phone. “We stayed at Uncle Gil’s place, and—”
“Everyone knows that!” Michael snapped. “Aren’t you listening to the news?”
“No. Every time we turn it on, something new and horrible is reported and she nearly comes apart. She’s had a tough life. A lonely life, but she doesn’t know that. The only relative she’s ever had has been her father, and he was—”
“An underworld character.”
“He was not!” Ace snapped.
“I’m just quoting what the media is saying. You two have a powerful enemy out there. Someone knows a great deal about you two.”
“And he’s taken years to set this up against us.”
Michael hesitated. “Actually, it’s not you, it’s her. I think she’s the target, not you.” When Ace didn’t say anything, Michael continued. “And you agree, don’t you?”
“That information’s from the lawyers, isn’t it? They can get me off because of my family name, right?” There was anger and even bitterness in his voice.
“Yeah, they can get you off. Your father can prove—”
“And what am I to do, leave her? Abandon her? Say, ‘Nice knowin’ you, babe, but I’m outta here’?”
“Calm down; I’m not the enemy. I just need to know what you want to do.”
“I want to know who’s behind this. Why is there an advantage to her being killed?”
“Killed? I thought she was being accused as the killer.”
“This morning someone was shooting at her. Not at me, at her.”
“You think it was the police?” Michael asked. “Or maybe someone looking to be a hero by bringing in the two most-wanted …” He broke off as though he’d thought better of finishing that sentence. “What do you think?”