Chapter 3 #4
“Ms. Charles is an accountant. She worked for a company…in the south?” He raised his eyebrows slightly.
Ellen nodded shakily. She’d spent a lifetime getting rid of her cracker accent but there was still a southern tilt to her voice, particularly under stress.
Harry Bolt continued. “At a party, a company employee told her that the owner of the company stole a big sum of money from the US government in Afghanistan, back in the day. Forty million dollars.”
Now it was Sam Reston’s turn to raise his black eyebrows.
“That employee died the next day. His forehead met a bullet. Men came for her and she ran. Her boss told the police and the media she’d embezzled a million dollars, maybe killed the guy who talked.”
Her heart ached a little every time she heard that. She’d worked so hard to create a respectable life for herself and it was in shattered shards around her feet.
“I didn’t,” she said quietly.
Sam Reston frowned. “Of course not.”
There was silence in the room.
“Can we know the name of who’s after you?” Reston finally asked. “To help you, we need to know the nature of the threat.”
Could they know the name? Ellen sat, heart thudding. Every cell in her body screamed No! She’d spent the past year never mentioning that name to anyone.
On the other hand, it was entirely possible she was the last person on earth to know that Gerald Montez had stolen forty million dollars from the US Government, and had killed at least one person to keep that secret.
If she died, someone had to have this information.
Ellen didn’t know these two men. But she did know that at least one of them had helped a friend survive violence and build a new life. She wasn’t endangering them. Both of them looked perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.
And…and she’d kept this lonely secret so long. It had shattered her life. Something in her longed to let it out, as if telling them could somehow lift this dark cloud of evil hanging over her, blighting her life.
She pulled in a deep breath and told them a secret she’d nearly died to keep.
“The company’s name is Bearclaw. My former boss’s name is Gerald Montez.”
The air in the room changed, like an electrical charge had been run through it. The two men looked at each other.
It was just a glance, the merest flicker of the eyes, but it touched off a wildfire of panic inside her.
She was used to masking her feelings, so they probably wouldn’t realize that inside she’d just gone into red alert, panic pulsing in her head like the deep siren in submarine movies when a torpedo was heading its way.
Oh God!
They knew Gerald. They knew Bearclaw.
They were probably friends. They were certainly in the same business, probably did business together. Might even have an interest in covering up Gerald’s crimes
In a flash, Ellen realized that she’d been insane to seek protection from men who were exactly like Gerald. A year on the run, and she’d just placed herself in the enemy’s hands.
She could barely breathe, as if a giant hand had squeezed her rib cage. She had to will herself to think straight.
Whether she lived or died depended on her actions in the next minute.
“Here,” she said smoothly, opening her backpack. “I have photos on my cellphone, I can show you—" She stopped, frowning. Not too much, don’t overdo it, just look faintly puzzled. “That’s strange…”
Look up and to the left, trying to remember something. Cool, casual.
“My cellphone isn’t here…Oh!” Eyes wide, remembering. Stand up, moving slowly, even though her body was screaming for escape. “Oh my gosh! It must have dropped out of my purse downstairs when I checked the street number. I’ll be right back.”
Move briskly, don’t run.
She didn’t even give them a chance to react. In a second, she was out into the reception area. She beamed a dazzling smile at the receptionist. “Forgot something,” she trilled. “Be right back!”
In the hallway, the elevator was just closing its doors.
She’d kept herself in shape, doing calesthenics in her run-down apartment every day, and a good thing, too, because she ran and caught the door by a hair, punching the ground floor button so hard it was a miracle she didn’t punch her way through the metal.
It took forever. Finally, the doors dinged and she flew out through the huge glass street doors, blinking in the bright sunlight. And again, the goddess of runaway women was with her, because a cab swerved to the curb and let out a passenger.
She must have looked like a wild woman. The taxi driver threw her a startled look when she flung herself into the back seat and panted out the address of the small hotel where she’d booked for the night. “Double the fare if you can get me there in ten minutes!”
The taxi driver was young, and looked like a college student.
“Yes, ma’am!” he grinned and stood on the accelerator.
There was a squeal of tires and she was pressed against the back of the seat.
Good. As long as the driver didn’t get them killed on the way, the faster she got to her room, the better.
Could they track her down? She thought it over. She hadn’t called the Bird in Flight number from her cellphone but from a payphone at the Greyhound station. The hotel she’d found was only a block from there, though. Would they be able to track her down?
Probably. These guys would have enormous resources at their disposal, including manpower.
And she hadn’t even had a chance to sleep yet. She’d just washed up a bit before going to RBK. So now she’d have to leave, fast, and go…
Her mind pulled a blank.
Go where?
She’d plan that when she got to the hotel. Right now her entire being was panic bolted on top of exhaustion.
God, she was tired. The whole weight of the past three days, of the past year, was settling on her shoulders like a concrete mantle. She was usually pretty good as making snap decisions, but none that made any sense to her were coming at the moment.
Run. Again. But to where?
Georgia, Seattle, San Diego…geographically speaking, her next stop should be in northern New England, even though she hated the cold. Hole up in Maine or Vermont.
And how the hell to get there? Undetected by Harry Bolt and Sam Reston, who scared her almost as much as Gerald Montez? Gerald swaggered around and he was dangerous because he could be unstable and had a violent streak to him.
Harry Bolt in particular struck her as dangerous because she could clearly see the intelligence in his eyes.
Having a violent man after her was scary, having a violent, intelligent man after her was terrifying.
Oh, God.
She closed her eyes, overwhelmed, shaking. What next?
She drew a complete blank. Well, check that her cellphone was off, for one. It was a cheap prepaid throwaway and she made a point of keeping it turned off, using it only when absolutely necessary. RBK Security wouldn’t have it, but you could never be too cautious. Or paranoid.
Ellen scrabbled in her purse and her eyes widened when she realized that she’d told Harry Bolt and Sam Reston the sober truth.
She really had left her cellphone behind. Not outside the building but in the hotel. The hotel she was going to have to leave as fast as possible.
The streets got a little meaner, then meaner still and then the cab pulled up in front of her hotel. Ellen paid and rushed toward the entrance.
A big hand grabbed her and slammed her against the side of a car while someone ran toward her with a gun. Pain streaked through her and she blacked out.