“I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for you. I’ve told you how grateful I am.”
“Not grateful enough to tell me who did that to you.”
“It’s my problem, Devon.” That had been such a close call. One of many since she had escaped from Nicos. It seemed as if he had been on her heels forever. “I wasn’t going to involve you or anyone at the clinic. You got me well again; you gave me a job. I wasn’t going to repay you by heaping that kind of ugliness on you.” She added drily, “But it seems I may have done it anyway. I was hoping that he’d give up the search. It’s been over three years.”
“‘He’?” Devon didn’t wait for an answer that she knew wouldn’t be forthcoming. “Look, if you don’t want to talk to me about it, that’s fine. But I’m going to give you the same advice I gave you two years ago when you came to us. Talk to the police. Or I’ll do it for you.”
“Not an option. But you might make sure that island security is doubled for a while. I don’t believe they’ll bother you again if they think they’ve found out everything you know, but don’t take chances.”
“You’re the one who shouldn’t take chances. Look, I’m sending you a photo of Lassiter that I managed to take before he took off after grilling me. We ran down the name that Gulfstream he was flying was registered under. It was a corporate registration in California. Still under Lassiter. And I notified our security chief, Craig, to run a check on him after he left my office that first day. I wanted to be able to give you the entire background before I called you. I’ll let you know what he finds out.”
“That’s good.” She had a sudden thought. “But I’m getting rid of this phone. I’ll call you with a different number as soon as I buy a new one. How long ago did you find out you were hacked?”
“I just discovered it this afternoon, but I think it must have happened sometime after the break-in. It was very slick. Lassiter didn’t want me to know that he’d managed to do it.”
And that meant that this Lassiter had had more than twenty-four hours to trace her cell phone location. He could be listening now. “I’ll call you,” she said quickly. “Thanks, Devon.” She hung up and drew a deep breath. She could feel her palms damp with sweat.
Close. Nicos hadn’t been this close to her since Santo Domingo. How had he traced her to Summer Island? She’d thought she’d left everyone safe when she’d hopped that flight off the island. She hadn’t even let Devon take her to that hospital in San Juan after she had found her. And she had been very careful not to leave any paperwork that might lead anyone to her since then.
It had happened. Nicos had evidently sent a particularly efficient bloodhound and tracked her down.
Stop worrying about how it happened. Accept it. Do what’s necessary.
Her phone was pinging and she accessed the photo Devon had sent her.
John Lassiter.
He was half turned away, but he was gazing with a faint mocking smile at the camera, as if he’d known Devon was taking the photo.
As if he’d wanted her to take it.
And he appeared to be everything that Devon had said he was.
But she didn’t recognize him, she realized with relief. It wasn’t that he was traveling under a false name; he hadn’t been on Nicos’s island when she’d been there. The relief lasted for only the briefest moment.
That didn’t mean Nicos might not have hired Lassiter after she had escaped from Vadaz Island. Since she had never set eyes on him, he had no other reason that she could see to go after her.
It had to be Stan Nicos. Nicos, with his fat wallet and hideous soul, had found a man as talented and corrupt as himself to hunt her down. Nicos, who controlled the major percentage of drugs and arms that made their way from South America to the rest of the world, wouldn’t have found it that difficult. Just a small job in the scheme of his crime network, but he’d given the order to go and find her.
To bring her back to that house on the hill, as he’d told her he would.
Blood on the black-and-white tiles of the guest house.
“Too late.” Nicos met Margaret’s eyes. “Remember this, Margaret.”
His gun pointed execution-style at Rosa’s head.
“Please, Margaret.” Tears running down the young girl’s cheeks. “Make him stop. I’m begging you. I don’t want to die. He’ll listen to you.”
Blood on the tiles. Blood on the tiles.
* * *
Don’t think of that day. It had taken her years to move beyond it and come to terms. No, that was a lie. She had never come to terms with anything connected to that day or Stan Nicos. It still haunted her dreams and it only took a chilling threat like this to bring the memories flooding back to her.
She swallowed hard. Okay, Lassiter represented a threat and she had to deal with it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had to run from Nicos before. But that had been during the early years, when she had been skipping from island to island in the Caribbean, just trying to stay one step ahead of him. Once she’d managed to come back to the United States, it had been merely a question of, as Eve had said, staying under the radar.
So that’s what she had to do again. Just get out of here and lose herself as she’d done so many times before. Stay away from the friends she had made over these last years to protect them. After a while, maybe she could afford to make contact again.
So text Eve and tell her that she wouldn’t be able to meet her Michael yet. If she didn’t, Eve would start to worry, and that would mean that she would be likely to start a hunt of her own. But not with this phone. She just hoped Lassiter hadn’t been able to tap her calls for the last two days.
Get moving. Time to get out of here.
She turned and headed for her closet across the room. She could be out of here and on the road within thirty minutes. She pulled out her backpack and started stuffing it with clothes from the paper grocery sacks on the floor. It took her only a few moments and then she headed for the bathroom. Toothbrush, comb, hairbrush, soap, washcloth. Anything else she could do without or pick up later. It was amazing what you could live without if you were forced to do it. She had found that out when she had lived those years in the woods. Sometimes it was even emancipating not to be dependent on—
She stopped.
She had caught sight of her face in the mirror as she turned to leave the bathroom. Good God, she was a mess. Her lips were tight and the blue eyes looking back at her were wide with strain. She looked pale, tense, and on edge.
No, be honest, she looked scared.
Nicos has made me look like this, she thought with self-disgust. Three years and he could still cause her to feel this fear. She wasn’t that kid any longer; she was over twenty. He shouldn’t still have this effect on her. Three years and he could cause her to run like a rabbit because he’d sent some creep after her who had even been able to intimidate Devon.
Okay, she would run because it was the smart thing to do. But she was no rabbit and she would not abandon the things she had to do before she had to leave. It shouldn’t take that long. Her duties at the zoo could be done by someone else, except for that tiger cub. It had become clear that no one else could do that adjustment but her. She’d stop on the way out of town and spend enough time to try to reconcile the tigress to her cub.
She was already feeling better because of the decision, and the woman in the mirror was no longer looking like someone she wouldn’t want to know.
She tilted her head and made a face at her reflection. Hey, you’ve had it too easy lately. We can get through this. Just stick with me, kid.
She opened the bathroom vanity drawer and took out the small wallet photo album and stuffed it in her pocket. You could do without most things, but memories were important and photos helped. Same for music. She took out her iPod and earphones and jammed them in her other pocket. Then she took the SIM card from her phone and smashed the phone against the porcelain bathroom sink until it was in pieces. She’d pick up her new phone at that shopping center nea
r the zoo. She slipped on her backpack and headed for the door.
As usual, she had left nothing behind that meant anything to her, nothing that could show anyone who she was or where she would go next.
A broken phone, a few dishes in the cabinet, a couple paperback books.
Try to put that together and find me, Lassiter.
She didn’t look back as she slammed the door behind her.
* * *
Lassiter isn’t going to like this, Neal Cambry thought, as he looked around Margaret Douglas’s one-room studio flat. He had orders to locate the woman and not let her get away. But she had clearly abandoned this place. Bite the bullet. Call Lassiter and let him know that Margaret Douglas was in the wind again. He reached for his phone.
“We have a problem,” he said when Lassiter answered. “She’s not here. I talked to her landlord and she slipped an envelope in his mailbox with this week’s rent this morning. No forwarding address.”
Lassiter was cursing. “Of course there’s no forwarding address. She never leaves one. Did you search her apartment?”
“I’m there now. There’s not much to search. It’s pretty basic, a minimum studio apartment. I can’t find any leads.”
“Look harder. I’m on my way there from the airport now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Find something by the time I get there.” He hung up.
Cambry flinched. When Lassiter gave an order, he expected it to be obeyed and the impossible to become possible. And he had only fifteen minutes to make that happen. Ordinarily, he looked upon working for Lassiter as a challenge; the money was excellent and his employer was usually not unreasonable. Besides, they were friends, and he owed him big-time. But usually wasn’t in Lassiter’s vocabulary where this woman was concerned. He was totally committed to finding her and nothing was allowed to get in his way. Lately, Cambry had actually found himself feeling sorry for Margaret Douglas.
But not sorry enough to pit himself against Lassiter unless it was absolutely necessary. They went back a long way and in Afghanistan he’d become fully aware of both his potential and ruthlessness. No way that Cambry would take his money and not turn in full value. That would be most unwise.
So find something that would make Lassiter believe he was earning that money.
Fifteen minutes.
* * *
“She smashed her phone.” Cambry handed Lassiter the remains when he walked into the apartment. “She did a good job. It’ll be hell checking her directory history.”
“I managed to get a lot of info from the tap I put on it after Summer Island. I’ll get my San Francisco office to put it on priority,” Lassiter said. “What else?”
“Just a few paperbacks.” He handed them to Lassiter. “Two mysteries and a how-to manual on how to set up a Wi-Fi system. She bought them at a used-book store in the Gaslamp Quarter.” He hesitated. “That’s how the entire apartment is set up. Everything cheap and secondhand. Her landlord said that she never had visitors and he had no idea where she worked. I asked if he’d made a copy of her driver’s license, so we could at least get her photo, but she told him that she’d lost it and hadn’t gotten her replacement.”
“I have her photo now.” Lassiter handed him a copy of a small faded photo. “I got it from one of the people she worked with on Summer Island. I suppose her landlord didn’t even make her fill out a reference or credit application?”
“How did you know?” Cambry shook his head. “He said that he usually did that, but he kept putting it off. He said he knew that she would pay her rent.” He met Lassiter’s eyes. “He trusted her. He liked her. He said he was sorry to see her go. Kind of a surprise.”
Not to Lassiter. It was the first time Cambry had been directly involved in the hunt, but this was old news to Lassiter. “She manages a great con wherever she goes. I ran into the same thing down in the Caribbean. I couldn’t break through that protective wall she builds around herself.” His lips tightened. “I was forced to take alternate steps.”
“I won’t ask you what they were,” Cambry said with a grimace. “But any con she’s working evidently isn’t bringing her any money.” He was looking down at the photo of the fair-haired girl in jeans, sandals, and blue chambray shirt. “This is Margaret Douglas? She’s not much more than a kid. She looks like some fresh-faced college girl. She kind of … glows, doesn’t she?”
That had been Lassiter’s first thought, too, and he had tried to dismiss it immediately. He’d been having enough trouble keeping his perspective in the past months. He’d seen photos of Margaret before while he’d been on the hunt for her, but they’d all been scratchy, out of focus, and faded. He knew Margaret Douglas didn’t like her photo taken. This one that he’d talked Judy Wong into giving him was … different. As Cambry had said, her blue eyes were shining with humor and she looked tanned and glowing, as if lit from within. Her smile was luminous. Even her pale brown hair was sun-streaked and seemed to glow. “It was taken three years ago.”
“She doesn’t look more than eighteen or nineteen. That means she was even younger when she was living with Stan Nicos.”
“He has a reputation for liking them young. The son of a bitch has whores imported from bordellos in Bogotá who are much younger than that. And she must have been very satisfying. He kept her for nine months and he’s been searching for her ever since she left him.”
Cambry slowly shook his head. “If she was only a kid, maybe she had a reason to want to start a new life. Why else would she have been running all this time?”
“I don’t know and I can’t let it matter. He wants her back. That’s what I have to concentrate on. She’s the key, the only one I’ve found. That’s what you have to concentrate on.”
“I believe in new starts, Lassiter. You gave me one.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that. “Drop it, Cambry,” he said. “The circumstances were different with you. In this life we have to pick and choose. And I can’t afford to choose Margaret Douglas this time. Decisions always have repercussions. She’ll have to live with the decision she made when she went to live with Nicos all those years ago. He probably dangled a few expensive baubles and she—”
“‘Expensive baubles’?” Cambry chuckled. “Look at this place. I’ve seen better apartments in the L.A. housing development where I grew up. She sure isn’t into luxury.”
“No?” Lassiter’s lips twisted. “You should have seen the guesthouse where Nicos was putting her up before she decided to part company with him. It was very impressive.” He looked around the flat. Cambry was right. It was clean but shabby and completely without personality. That very lack of comfort made him more frustrated. He had spent the last year trying to track down Margaret Douglas, but she had been like a ghost. She had carefully erased her presence wherever she had traveled. In a world that ran on bureaucracy and documents, he had been able to find only the flimsiest of paperwork pertaining to Douglas. A few photos. No fingerprints. He had traced her movements through five towns in the Caribbean, and it was only when he reached Summer Island that he’d found anything concrete to use to find her. “Okay, I admit she’s clearly trying not to do anything that will draw Nicos’s attention to her again.”
“Then why not try something else?” Cambry said quietly. “I’ve never seen you like this before. I thought you’d give up when you couldn’t locate Margaret Douglas after you checked out Santo Domingo and Curaçao. But you just went on and on, until it became an obsession. Why, Lassiter?”
“You know why.”
“I thought I did when it started. Somehow I became lost along the way.”
“Too bad. Because I can’t afford to stop now. Time’s running out and she’s the only card I have left to play. Do you think I’ve been focusing solely on Margaret Douglas while I’ve been searching for her? I’ve contacted everyone I could, pulled every string, but I’ve come up zero. It has to be her.” He looked him in the eye. “Do you want to back out?”
Cambry shook hi
s head. “I wouldn’t do that. I owe you too much. I just don’t want anyone hurt who shouldn’t be hurt.”
“It will be up to her. I’ll work with her, if she’ll work with me.”
“But you don’t think she’ll agree to work with you?”
After months of hunting and investigating everything about her, Lassiter knew that she wouldn’t. “Maybe you can change her mind. I’ll let you try, Cambry. She’s been on the run for over three years. It’s not likely she’ll stop.” He went to the window and looked down at the street. “And, as I said, time’s running out.”
“I know.” Cambry sighed. “I might give it a whirl, but you’d have a better chance.” He suddenly grinned. “And you were talking about cons? Who’s better at it or has more experience than you? Besides, you seem to know her inside and out.”
Inside and out, Lassiter thought wryly. Sometimes he thought that was true. After all the people he’d talked to about her, all the apartments and flats where he’d searched and tried to build a picture of the person who was Margaret Douglas. He knew her favorite pieces of music, he knew she liked comedy and adventure movies and shied away from anything sad. He knew she could drive a car but seldom did because she needed a license, and that required documents. He knew that she drew people to her but was wary about taking lovers.
And he knew a few other rather bizarre and interesting things about her that he had not shared with Cambry.
He knew all those things, but he’d never heard her voice and only recently had seen a decent photo of what she actually looked like.
“It won’t work,” he said. “I want it too much and I’ve waited too long. I’m past the point of persuasion where she’s concerned.” He shook his head. “And if she doesn’t agree, then I’ll use her anyway. I’ve gotten this close and I’m not letting her skip away into the sunset again.” He turned and strode toward the door. “She’s mine.”
“Not if we’ve lost her again,” Cambry said.