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Liam winked and smiled at Karine, not wanting her to think any tension between him and Vanessa should worry her. She smiled back at him, albeit timidly.
“I’m going to go drive around for about five minutes, see if we have anybody watching the room.”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and texted Vanessa so she would have his number.
“That’s me.” He nodded in the direction of her phone when it chirped. “You two be ready to go in case I have to come get you in a hurry.”
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Nags Head—really none of the Outer Banks islands—wasn’t big enough for them to escape in a high-speed chase with the police. Their best bet was to get out now while they could.
“Is your car hidden somewhere?” he asked Vanessa.
“No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think I needed to. I didn’t think they would be looking for me so fast.”
“That car right out front is yours?” Liam couldn’t keep the shock from his voice.
She nodded, eyebrow raised, as if daring him to say something further.
At sixteen she’d had a BMW. And now she was driving an early 2000s–model Camry? Not that there was anything wrong with a Camry: safe, dependable, known to last. If she’d had the latest model, he would’ve considered it a wise, mature choice.
But a model that was at least a dozen years old?
The out-of-body experiences just kept on coming.
“Okay, well, just be ready in case you need to drive it. Don’t open the door or peek through the window until you hear from me in case someone is watching the room.”
“Be careful,” Vanessa said. Karine had come to stand right beside her and she slipped an arm around the girl.
“I will. Be ready.”
Liam walked out the door, whistling and tossing his keys. If anyone was watching the room, he wanted it to look as if he was in no hurry, that he was just a happy, sated guy going to grab some coffee.
As he got to his car, which he’d parked toward the front of the lot away from Vanessa’s, he missed the keys he was tossing on purpose so they fell to the ground. As he crouched to get them, he stayed down to fake tying his shoe, taking survey of the parking lot as he did so.
There were two other cars in the lot and both had been there before Liam arrived. One was near the front desk, probably the clerk’s. The other was a few spots down from Vanessa’s Camry, not an optimal place for surveillance, but not terrible.
Liam honestly didn’t think they were watching the hotel yet. No doubt they would be soon after the officer made his report. Liam was willing to bet the young officer probably didn’t know the importance of what he had been tasked to do. He thought he was looking for someone who had last been seen with a teenage, petty burglar. He probably felt he’d drawn the short straw this morning and wouldn’t be in any hurry to report questioning a naked guy that hadn’t resulted in anything useful.
They needed to use that situation to their advantage.
Liam drove slowly out of the parking lot. There were no cars around the streets with anyone sitting in them in stakeout fashion. Nor any vans that could be used for surveillance.
The hotel was clean.
He’d drive around for a few minutes just to make sure. See if anyone followed him. He also needed to figure out a larger game plan now that he was also convinced someone at the sheriff’s office was in on the trafficking ring. Too much time was being placed on finding Karine for him to think otherwise.
He needed to find a safe place to stash both Karine and Vanessa. Nothing that was connected to Vanessa in any way. He knew just the place but he didn’t know if Vanessa would like it.
Too bad.
After driving around the block twice, and turning around and driving a different block in another direction, Liam was sure no one was following him. He stopped at a doughnut shop for coffee and doughnuts, as one last precaution, and because they needed food anyway.
And Vanessa could not survive without coffee.
The thought popped into his head unbidden. But to be honest, Liam wasn’t sure if that was true anymore. He had no idea what was true about Vanessa. He got her coffee anyway.
Right before he left the shop, he texted her to let him know he was coming. ETA five minutes. Watch for me through the peephole and get out fast. Keep K’s head covered.
This was it. Either the hotel was under surveillance or it wasn’t. Regardless, now was when they were going to make their move.
Liam drove back to the hotel as if he wasn’t in any particular hurry. Still no sign of any tail. The moment he pulled up to the hotel, the door to the room opened and Vanessa flew out, her arm around Karine, her jacket draped over the girl’s head. She opened the back door to his SUV and they both piled into the backseat.
Liam was pulling out of the parking spot before Vanessa’s door even closed.
This time he did not drive leisurely. He didn’t drive fast enough to attract attention to them, but he got out of there with purpose.
The problem when trying to lose a tail in the Outer Banks was the lack of main roads. Highway 158 was the main four-lane drag, and that was about it. There was also Highway 12 that ran parallel to 158, but it was a two-lane and much slower. All Liam could do was take the back roads and cut-throughs that he remembered from his youth.
This wasn’t his first time trying to get away from the Outer Banks police without calling attention to himself.
Vanessa and Karine kept crouched in the backseat so it would look as if Liam was driving alone. If they did happen to pass anyone studying the drivers of vehicles, they wouldn’t be looking for him.
“Do you think anyone is following us?” Vanessa asked after a few minutes.
“No, I think we got out in time.” If someone was following them, he’d know it by now. The winding route he’d taken over the past mile would’ve made it obvious.
“What about my car?”
“I think it’s better to leave it there. Maybe it will buy us a few hours’ time if they think we’re still in the room. This car wasn’t parked near you, so hopefully Officer Atwood didn’t notice.”
“Okay. What are we going to do? I’m sure they’re still searching cars, right? We can’t make it off the islands.”
“No leave, Miss Vanessa,” Karine said. “Must help other girls. Must.”
The girl didn’t know a lot of English, but she knew what she wanted.
“It’s okay, Karine.” He glanced back at them in the rearview mirror. “We’re not leaving. We want to help them, too.”
“Can you call your DEA contacts in, Liam?” Vanessa asked. “Or the FBI or whoever handles cases like this? Obviously we don’t know who we can trust with the local police.”
“I’m not actually with the DEA anymore. Haven’t been for the past five years.”
“But I left a message for you with the DEA. How did you get it if you don’t work there?”
He glanced at her again. Confusion was evident on her face.
“I now work for an interagency task force called Omega Sector, in their Critical Response Division. I’m head of the hostage rescue team.”
He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth fell open before turning his gaze back to the road.
“Sounds like you’re pretty qualified to handle what’s going on here, then. You have people you can call in? People with big guns who can shoot the bastards responsible for this?”
Liam rolled his eyes. “Generally we arrest the bad guys unless they shoot at us first, but, yes, I can get a whole team here.”
“Then why haven’t you done that yet? Those girls are somewhere out there, trapped. Hurt and desperate.”
He glanced in the mirror again and saw Karine’s face growing paler. He caught Vanessa’s eye and gestured with his head toward Karine. Vanessa looked down at the girl and immediately slipped an arm around her.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay,” Karine whispered. “They need help.”
“And we will help them. We’ll get Liam’s friends here—people who help others all the time—and we’ll get the other girls out.”
Liam caught Vanessa’s eye in the rearview mirror again. “We’ll talk specifics later.”
She nodded, tugging Karine closer.
“Where are we going right now?” Vanessa asked.
“We’ve got to get off the streets. Once they figure out we’re not in the hotel, they’ll start searching again. I’m going to take you somewhere not related to you at all.”
“Another hotel?”
“No, that will always leave witnesses. A house.”
She shook her head. “A friend’s? Are you positive you can trust the person?”
“No. My grandmother’s house. I still own it.”
That silenced her.
He had a cleaning service come in once a month to clean, keep it in shape and take care of any repairs. He even paid for power and water each month, which wasn’t much because it was so small.
After his grandmother died, he hadn’t been able to sell it. He had said it was because she’d been his last living relative—the only roots he’d ever had—and he didn’t want to part with it if he didn’t have to. But he couldn’t deny the other part of that truth now.
He’d kept the house because it was the first place he and Vanessa had made love.
Chapter Six (#ulink_37ea60b0-671c-5dfb-9bcd-4ab1536b7398)
An hour later they were safely tucked away in Liam’s grandmother’s house. His house now.
They had stopped briefly at a grocery store, Vanessa and Karine tucked low in the backseat as Liam ran in. They had agreed it was better to go to the store now to get what they needed so they were prepared for as long as possible.
In the house of a million memories.
But Vanessa would accept living with the memories, as painful as some were, if it meant they were safe. If it meant Karine could get some real food and the real rest that she needed. If it meant they could figure out where the other girls were being held and do something about it.
She still didn’t understand why Liam hadn’t just called in the SWAT cavalry or whatever. But he had been right; they didn’t need to talk about those details in front of Karine.
Liam had come back to the SUV in less than fifteen minutes. He hadn’t said anything as he opened the hatchback and put the grocery bags inside. Hadn’t hurried around to the driver’s side. Hadn’t done anything that would call attention to himself.
He was good, Vanessa could definitely see that.
He hadn’t talked until he was pulling out of the parking lot.
“You girls okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Any problems?”
“Nope. Got food and even a couple T-shirts and sweatpants. I had to get four different sizes, so I explained it was for my family while we’re visiting.”
“Because you buying a size extra-small pants and shirt might have been memorable.”
“Exactly. All the cloak-and-dagger was probably unnecessary, but always better to be safe.”
He was good. He’d thought of details Vanessa probably would’ve missed.
The drive to his grandmother’s house—his house—took about twenty minutes. They had gone to a grocery store on the opposite side of Nags Head just in case someone remembered seeing him or his car.
But now they were inside, car pulled behind the back, Karine well fed and sleeping in one of the bedrooms.
“She still needs medical and psychological help. Professional help,” Vanessa said. It was probably too late for any sort of assault kit to yield any results, but everything should still be documented.
“Yeah, those bruises on her wrists are pretty bad. And I hate to say this, but I’m sure she was assaulted, right?”
Vanessa rubbed a hand over her eyes. “She won’t talk about any specifics, but, yes, I would say most definitely.”
Liam reached out and pulled her down next to him on the seat at the table.
“She’s a survivor,” he said. “She’s strong.”
“I know. I just can’t bear to think about what she’s been through.”
“We’ll get her a counselor and a doctor. We just have to figure out who we can trust.”
She nodded. “Why haven’t you called in some sort of attack team yet?”
“Because if we send in a blitz attack on the sheriff’s office, not knowing who exactly is involved and to what degree, the first thing the kidnappers will do is kill the remaining girls. They’re liabilities.”
Nausea pooled in Vanessa’s stomach. “I hadn’t thought of that. But you’re right.”
She rested her face in her hands.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to stop them, Nessa. It just means we’re not going to roll in guns blazing.”
He’d called her Nessa. He was the only one who ever had, ever dared. She hadn’t heard that name in eight years.
“Not to mention,” he continued, “it’s the word of one small foreign girl, supposedly wanted by the law, against the word of people who may have lived in this area their whole lives.”
