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She was still holding her purse. She thought about her cell phone, then remembered that someone in her family should be calling her soon to check on her. Her fear, momentarily forgotten while they moved the cars, now returned in full force. The man had shown all the tenderness of a wounded lion. He wouldn’t take kindly to any more tricks. Staring at his large form and tough, weary expression, she suddenly realized the truth of the “eighth house.” She should have never come up to the mountains and shown the cabin. It had proven disastrous.
“Do you have to pace like that?” he sniped.
“I’m sorry. The gun makes me nervous,” she confessed.
“I put it away.”
“Yes, but it’s right there, handy. Isn’t it?”
He ignored her, sleeving beads of sweat off his forehead. His wound was getting worse, she realized when she noticed his pain-clouded eyes. Despite her fear and anger, she felt a twinge of pity for him.
“Who shot you?” she repeated. “The police?”
He shook his head. “Not the same police you have in mind. It was federal marshals.”
She halted, shocked into immobility. Federal marshals…his crime or crimes must be serious.
He gave a snort at the look on her face. “If you can’t handle the answers, don’t ask the questions.”
“You needn’t worry about what I can handle.”
She started pacing again.
“Will you please sit the hell down?” he demanded. “I’m getting a crick in my neck watching you.”
“I’ll sit down,” she agreed, doing so. “Now will you please tell me what’s going on, Mr. Loudon?”
For some time he simply ignored her question. Finally he nodded. When he spoke, his voice showed the strain he’d been through lately.
“I’ll leave out the names and just cut to the chase. Basically, I was sent out here from Washington, D.C., to assist on a massive, ongoing investigation into kickback schemes involving the Montana Department of Highways. Or I guess I should say allegedly involving them.”
“I’ve heard the word all my life,” she confessed, “but I’m not exactly sure what a ‘kickback’ is.”
“It just means a slice of the pie. Cost overruns are a venerable part of construction profits. You know, the doubling or even tripling of a project’s estimated price after the work is underway. Most in government understand this and seldom bring indictments over it. But lately there’s been a corps of new, reform-minded attorneys in the Justice Department. We’re trying to change the business-as-usual graft.”
He hesitated, as if trying to gather his thoughts. The front door stood open, the wedge of sky it revealed turning purplish blue in twilight. A breeze wafted, making the candles gutter. For a moment Constance smelled the clean, nose-tickling tang of the evergreens on the lower slopes. It only made her more miserable to be his captive.
“One day last spring,” he resumed, “I had to go see a certain judge in Billings. It was a touchy matter—I had already, under federal guidelines for internal review, subpoenaed certain phone and financial information on some attorneys he knew on a social basis. I’m allowed to do that, without notifying anyone, so long as no charges are filed.”
This time when he hesitated, on a sharp intake of hissing breath, she knew it was his wound.
“Anyway, I intended to ask the judge’s permission to execute a search warrant. I wanted agents to seize the private financial records of a certain state legislator, a guy I suspect is at the heart of the kickback scheme.”
A spasm of pain crossed his face, etching his handsome features even deeper in the candlelight.
“I never did talk to that judge. The county sheriff and I were on the verge of knocking on his office door when we saw the door was open a crack, and the judge was inside with a…ahh, let’s call him an attorney who represents certain road-construction bosses. This attorney was also one of the guys I had been investigating. Right before my ears and eyes—and the sheriff’s—he hands a briefcase stuffed with money to the judge.”
“A bribe?” she encouraged him to continue when he hesitated.
“The wise guys never use that word. It’s usually called a contribution, but damn straight it was a bribe. I knew it and the sheriff knew it. Schra—I mean, this judge regularly rules on cases involving the attorney’s clients.”
He paused, and she watched him touch a dry tongue to chapped lips. “Does that thing work?” he asked her, pointing to the hand pump bolted to the sideboard of the sink.
“I think so. It’s cistern water, but up here it’s safe to drink.”
She resisted the urge to help him when he struggled to his feet. He pumped the air out of the pipes, then waited for the rusty water to run clear. She watched him cup his hand and drink greedily.
“Anyway,” he said, picking up the thread of his story again as he joined her on the floor, “I made one very stupid mistake. I forgot all about the hallway security cameras that are standard equipment now in courthouse buildings. The tapes are routinely reviewed, at fast speed, and any unusual events are reported. So there the sheriff and I were, caught on film outside the judge’s door. And of course the date and time were recorded, too.”
“I see. So the men who were inside had sure knowledge that you came to the door and saw them?”
He nodded, his face morose and pensive in that flickering, yellow-orange light.
“Exactly. At first I thought it was just the security cameras that might have them worried. Us standing outside the door when the bribe came down. But now the sheriff’s missing. And I realize they must know, or at least suspect, that I’ve been building a case against them. They’ve turned my own game against me.”
“How do you know?”
His voice was sharp with bitter resentment. “The sheriff was just a good old boy retired from the fed that I knew and liked. We had lunch whenever we both had to go to the courthouse. He had nothing to do with the situation, just the wrong place, wrong time. Now he’s missing.” He stared at her, his eyes dark and sunken in his pain-filled face. “When they realized what we saw they knew it’d be damn hard to off an assistant U.S. Attorney in the middle of an investigation, but Cod—I mean, the sheriff, he was a piece of cake. They made him disappear, then they set about turning all the evidence against me, even that tape. You see, I was carrying a briefcase, too. So it was totally logical to simply suggest that I had come by that day to bribe the judge. Then, seeing he was with someone, I supposedly changed my mind and left without knocking.”
“But how could they prove such a charge from that tape?” she asked, incredulous.
“They couldn’t, of course. But the judge swore out a deposition that I tried to bribe him soon after that. So the tape became corroborative evidence, one more nail in my coffin. And believe me, they’ve planted far more incriminating evidence against me since then. The newfound cash in my apartment in Washington was why I had to escape today.”
He fell silent, evidently exhausted by the effort to tell her all this. Then Constance noticed the fresh bloodstain growing under his leg. His wound was bleeding again.
Looking at his haggard features, it occurred to her for the first time. He just might not make it.
It might mean her own salvation. If he died, she could escape.
But gazing closer into his pain-filmed eyes, she felt a deep sympathy well up inside her. Despite his holding a gun on her, despite everything she’d suffered because of Doug’s treachery, Loudon made her want to believe him. He had an earnestness that was hard to look away from, and his story was related in such a fashion that it didn’t make sense to her he’d use his last strength to tell her lies. There was no purpose to any lies now. She was still his unwilling prisoner.
However, neither could she forget Hazel’s remark about Doug: Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
His voice suddenly sliced into her thoughts.
“Here,” he told her, handing her a black leather wallet.
The wallet was opened to a photo ID that bore the official seal of the U.S. Justice Department. It identified Quinn Loudon as an assistant U.S. Attorney.
“I believe who and what you are,” she told him carefully, handing it back.
“But anyone can turn rotten, right? Is that what you’re implying?”
“You’re bleeding,” she pointed out, sidestepping his question. But in fact he’d hit the proverbial nail right on the head—“good guys” were not guaranteed by badges and IDs. The headlines proved, every day, that good guys became bad guys for the right price.
Loudon pulled his shirttails out and ripped off a strip of the material. Quickly he folded it into a makeshift bandage.
“Turn your head,” he ordered her.
When she hesitated, he simply shrugged. “Suit yourself, I’m not bashful.”
When she heard his belt buckle clinking and realized he was lowering his trousers, she did quickly turn away while he tied the cloth around his wound.
“All right,” he told her a few moments later. “Peep show’s over.”
“You’ve got to get to a doctor,” she told him. “That wound could infect.”
“Nix on that. By law doctors have to report every gunshot wound. I’ve already figured out what I need to do first. I’ve got one possible ace in the hole, but I’ll need to drive to Billings if I mean to play it.”
“That’s a 400-mile drive,” she reminded him. “You’ll never make it.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “That’s why you’re going to take me. And we’ll have to use your vehicle. By now mine has to be the object of a state-wide search.”
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid. I…your story is quite convincing. But it’s only your word. Besides, even if I chose to believe you—this is obviously a very serious situation. I just…I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m just too afraid.”
“I don’t recall asking you,” he reminded her, and a sinister tone of menace had entered his voice—or so it seemed to her in her fright.
“I can’t,” she insisted.
“Yes, you can.”
“All right then, I won’t.”
“Actually, it’s best that you refuse. That way you don’t become an accessory or get charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive. It’s this that will force you, and that’s what you’ll tell the authorities later.”
His hand slipped inside his suit jacket and emerged with the gun. Again he didn’t aim it at her—but he held it in plain view as a reminder.
“You will drive me to Billings, Miss Adams.” His stare pierced her. “End of discussion.”
I’m in deep, thought Quinn, and going deeper.
Despite the long drink in the cabin, the inside of his mouth tasted as dry and stale as the last cracker at the bottom of the barrel. He hadn’t eaten all day, and his pinched stomach felt like it had been pumped.
Additionally, even the black plastic bag covering the smashed window didn’t entirely keep out the cold. Constance Adams’s Jeep did not ride nearly so smoothly as his Lexus. Each time it bounced over a hole or rut on Old Mill Road, pain exploded in his thigh. But even at its worst, the physical pain was nothing compared to his inner turmoil.
His criminal actions earlier today, in Kalispell, while certainly censurable could at least be partially defended. They had caught him completely flat-footed, unprepared, and he simply reacted in a panic. After all, his freedom was on the line. He had been fighting the threat of wrongful imprisonment as well as ensuring his ability to disprove the phony charges against him.
But now…now it was a whole new criminal ball game. He had taken a hostage under the implied threat of violence. Only sheer desperation could have driven him to such an action. “Beyond the pale” hardly described his conduct now.
The heater was blowing, and he wasn’t shivering now. He opened the passenger’s window to let the cold night air revive him a bit. A sliver of nascent moon hung over the serrated mountain peaks, golden against a blue-black evening sky.
Constance Adams had said nothing during the ride back down to the valley floor and the interstate highway. Now she finally spoke up.
“Mr. Loudon? If you really are innocent, as you say, you should easily be able to clear yourself, shouldn’t you? Won’t your actions now just make things needlessly worse for you?”
“Easily? Believe me, given the men I’m up against, it would be easier to write my name on water.”
There was so much more to it, he thought in a welter of despair and misery, that she just couldn’t understand from outside the situation. The money planted in his apartment back east, for example. He realized now that this scam involved more players than just Whitaker and Schrader. Others were involved, and there was some sort of sub-rosa accord between them.
Quinn wished he could make her understand the enormity and complexity of his situation. He hardly knew the woman, but something about her made him believe she could be a strong ally if he could somehow win her trust.
Something else suddenly occurred to him, and a prickle of alarm moved down his spine.
“Do you have a road map of Montana?” he demanded.
“In the glovebox, I think. But we won’t need it. I’ve driven to Billings plenty of times.”
“Yeah, on the interstate,” he replied as he opened the accordion folds of the map. “But do you know the back roads?”
“You mean all the way to Billings? No. Why take back roads? We aren’t in your car.”
He flicked on the dome light to study the map. “I just realized there’ll probably be an APB out on me. Checkpoints will be set up along the main routes. I can’t risk it.”
“You really think it’s that important to the police?”
“You kidding? I fired on federal agents. They’ll raise six sorts of hell.”
“You fired at them?”
“What, you think they shot me because they don’t like my face?”
“You didn’t tell me…I mean….”
She trailed off, too taken aback to speak. He could feel a new level of tension in the Jeep.
“If it makes any difference,” he told her, “I didn’t exactly fire at them. I fired deliberately high to miss them.”
While the overhead light was on, he felt her glance keep touching him, then quickly sliding away. Even mired in pain and worry, he couldn’t help appreciating her good looks. Understandably, this latest revelation had left her somewhat whey-faced. But she had stunning amber eyes and medium-length hair the color of burnt sienna. The only feature even slightly out of harmony with the serenity of her face were her somewhat witchy eyebrows. But he liked them. Liked them a lot. She was the kind of woman who looked liked she could play angel or devil depending on her mood. In truth, if they’d met under any other circumstances, he’d have let her known without a doubt he was attracted to her.
But he had other worries now. Big ones. He quickly worked out a route, along secondary roads, that would be safer but considerably longer. He turned the light out just before Old Mill Road—smooth blacktop now—leveled out on the floor of Mystery Valley.
“Just go on past the interstate,” he directed her. “Take County Line Road east.”
He sat back in the seat and allowed his ruminations to turn toward the situation at hand. Despite all that had happened to him, Quinn couldn’t really say he was surprised by what Schrader and Whitaker were up to. They were corrupt, and greed was a powerful motivator.
He wasn’t sure, however, about prosecutor Dolph Merriday. True, the man had real facility with a cliché—scratch a federal prosecutor and you’ll find an ambitious politician. But something bothered Quinn about the man. Above all, prosecutors were negotiators. But his unyielding stance…
Constance Adams abruptly interrupted his ruminations.
“Mr. Loudon?” She looked at him from the wheel, hesitating, thinking, her pretty lips curved down. “If—if your story is true, then I know you don’t want to become a real criminal by kidnapping me. There’s a state-trooper post ahead at Oxbow. You can turn yourself in there, and if you do, I promise you I’ll press no charges. We’ll call this a lift.”
He greeted her suggestion with a harsh bark of laughter. “And will you give me a lollipop, too, Miss Goody Two-Shoes?”
After that dig, he could almost whiff the anger coming off her.
“Why is it such a joke?” she demanded. “You could avoid kidnapping charges—”
“I can’t,” he cut her off tersely. “You’ve watched too many crime shows on TV where crusading lawyers always ensure that justice prevails. In real life innocent people are framed all the time.”
