Urgent Vows

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He tamped down firmly on that last thought. A trip down memory lane wouldn’t do either of them much good. He needed to stay focused. “That’s one problem solved. I’ll make sure I’m gone before you resume operations.” Creasing open his wallet, he extracted the piece of paper on which Tom had written the phone number for the pub. Then he punched in the number and passed the phone to Hope. “Ask to speak to Tom and say you’re his wife calling.”

Hope felt her hand shake as she gripped the phone. The precautions Quinn was taking—his talk of installing an alarm system, keeping the children within his sight and a bag packed for quick flight, and now, the cloak-and-dagger stuff with the phone—only increased her fears.

What if the hit man somehow learned Tom was assisting Quinn? The thought didn’t bear thinking about.

Hope heard the sound of a guitar and a smatter of applause in the background as her brother-in-law’s whiskey-smooth voice came on the line. “Hi, honey. Did your company arrive?”

“Yes, they’re here.”

“How are the kids?”

She assured him they were fine. “I’m phoning to tell you that Quinn and I have agreed to be married on Monday. We’ll get the license first thing in the morning.”

“You’re a good person. I just hope you won’t get hurt. Our friend strikes me as being a man of his word. I’ll do my best to protect your interests. But we’ll have to keep this news private. I don’t think we should tell your sister or your parents.”

“Our friend mentioned that. I understand.”

“Good. I’ll meet you Monday at one at the minister’s house. Our friend has the address.”

Hope gestured at Quinn to show her the slip of paper the phone number had been written on. Sure enough, there was an address on it, as well. And thank heavens it wasn’t the same renovated church where she’d planned to marry David.

“Fine. I’ve got it, Tom. We’ll be there.”

Hope punched the end conversation button and raised her eyes to meet Quinn’s steady gaze. Her heart twisted painfully at the thought of how brief he’d implied their marriage could be. Her voice trembled. “It’s all set. We’re getting married Monday at one.”

For the sake of those two precious babies sleeping upstairs, Hope prayed this time she’d actually get to exchange vows with the groom.

Chapter Three

Since toasting their nuptials with champagne hardly seemed appropriate, Hope made a pot of hot coffee. Even though Quinn was obviously exhausted, she had questions, lots of them, and now seemed the best time to ask them. She poured two mugs of coffee and passed one to Quinn, who was seated at the old pine table in her kitchen. “Sorry, there’s no milk. You’ll have to take it black.”

His lean fingers tightened around the handle of the mug. “That’s the way I like it.”

All he wanted was the caffeine to keep him functioning, Hope thought, noting the exhaustion lining his features. She’d offered him something to eat, but he’d told her he’d eaten a hamburger earlier. She sat down across from him. “Do you really think you might have been followed here?”

“The possibility is slim, but police work taught me you live longer if you prepare for every eventuality. Which reminds me,” he opened his wallet and withdrew five one-thousand-dollar bills and several one-hundred-dollar bills and set them in a pile in front of her. “This is for you. I want you to keep it with you on your person. Not in your purse—unless it’s one of those pouches that you keep strapped around your waist at all times. And keep some ID with you, too. If we need to leave, you won’t be able to use credit cards. We’ll each keep a bag packed in the car for ourselves and for the kids with whatever supplies you think we’ll need. The bags will go with us wherever we go.”

“Okay. I’ll do it tonight before I go to bed. I’ll stock up on groceries tomorrow and buy the kids some more clothes.” Hope started making a mental list of things she should pick up.

“There’s one other thing, Hope.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“If something goes wrong, if he somehow manages to find his way here, I’m counting on you to get the children safely away. I’m the one he wants, but if he views you as an obstacle or thinks you can ID him, he’ll kill you, too. And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill the children either.”

A chill clambered up Hope’s spine and spread into her arms, making her fingers tremble. Coffee spilled over the rim of her mug. Quinn’s lean fingers cupped her hands, bolstering her with their warmth and strength. “Get to a safe place. Drive to a police station or a place where there are a lot of people. If you make it to a police station have them contact Detectives Thacker and Beauchamp in the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police’s major crime section. I’ll give you their phone numbers to keep with you. You can also call Tom. He’ll help you.” He gave her fingers another squeeze. “I have no intention of letting this bastard take me down, too, but I’ll put up a much better fight if I know you and the children are out of harm’s way. Promise me.”

“I promise.” Relief flickered in his eyes as he removed his hands. Hope sighed, already missing his touch. “But there must be another way to deal with this. I don’t understand why we don’t all stay in hiding together. Couldn’t these police detectives you mentioned put us in some kind of protective custody until they make an arrest?”

“What if they don’t make an arrest? We’re dealing with a professional killer, not some punk who’s likely to make a stupid mistake. I’ve given the police a list of people who could have hired the hit, but it’s only gut feeling, nothing solid. Do you really want to just walk away from your home and your day care, not to mention sever all your ties with your family?”

Not see her family? Hope’s throat ached. Her mother had been so disappointed when Hope had told her she wouldn’t be home for Easter dinner this year. Hope had made an excuse about visiting a girlfriend in Halifax and had planned to surprise her family by showing up with David and announcing their marriage. She couldn’t imagine missing her family’s noisy Christmases or her nieces’ and nephews’ birthday celebrations. “I admit I’d miss my family terribly, but we could find a way to keep in touch with them,” she insisted. “I could live anywhere. Work anywhere.”

“Well, I can’t. I’ve got a partner and clients who count on me. Cases that I’m currently investigating. Court appearances that need to be made or the bad guys go free. I’m not willing to turn my back on those responsibilities.”

“Well, couldn’t you continue to do the same thing, but under a different name?”

“Not without major plastic surgery. A select group of people have my level of training and skills. Achieving some form of anonymity or working under another name would be impossible. Besides, we can’t live in fear for the rest of our lives.”

Hope pushed her mug away, unable to stomach the strong brew any more than she could stomach his line of reasoning. “That’s the whole point, Quinn. Your remaining alive. I think you’d do more for the children by being with them than by abandoning them with me. Isn’t that what you told me you hated most about your father? That he was always gone? That his career in the military was more important to him than his family?”

His lips stretched thin. “I’m not abandoning them. I’m protecting them. Can you honestly tell me they’ll be in any better hands than yours while I’m trying to find the bastard who killed their parents? The hit man will be back. I’m expecting him to track me down like a bloodhound after a wounded fox, and I’ll be ready for him, second-guessing his every move. My partner Oliver is already planting video cameras at our office—and making some adjustments to our security system. He’s also planting cameras in my condo and at our lab. Though we doubt he’ll find the lab. We go to great pains to keep its location hidden. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch the hit man on tape and be able to identify him. If not, we’ll come up with some other way to entrap him—even if I have to stage a funeral to lure him out into the open. He might consider that an irresistible opportunity to take a shot at me.”

Appalled, Hope glared at him. “Why on earth would you want to make yourself a target?”

“Because it may be the only feasible way to catch him. I won’t take unnecessary risks. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

Trust him? To do what? Get himself killed? Hope fought the anger that flared in her. Since his plan involved marrying her, she was certain that with her luck, the worst could, and probably would, happen. But she wasn’t about to confide to Quinn that he’d not only jinxed her heart, but every relationship she’d had since. “Trust is a two-way street,” she reminded him. “If you want me to trust you again, then I expect to be fully involved in any decision making that affects our lives as a family. And that includes telling me who you think may have reason to hire someone to kill you. I want to know what we’re up against.”

Quinn didn’t miss her emphasis on the word again. He sipped his coffee, grateful for the hot liquid burning a path to his gut and reluctantly admitted to himself that she was right. The more she knew, the more care she’d take to follow his security precautions.

“At the top of my list is an Asian syndicate operating out of Hong Kong. A financial institution hired me in January to investigate some counterfeit credit cards that had circulated over the holidays. Typically, the phony blank credit cards are manufactured in one location, then sold or passed on to another location where they are personalized with stolen names and information. In this case, the cards were being encoded with customer information passed to them from an employee in the bank. It took me a couple of months to pinpoint the employee. The syndicate had coerced him into cooperating by threatening to harm his family. He died violently before we were able to get any names out of him and I could identify the principals and whether they were manufacturing the cards or had purchased them.”

“Violently?”

“Believe me, you don’t want to know what they did to him. The syndicate may have figured out I was heading up the investigation and ordered a hit on me.”

Hope’s golden eyes were wide with alarm. “Go on.”

Quinn rolled his shoulders to ease the tension gathering there. Discussing his cases in Hope’s cozy kitchen, with its windows and refrigerator covered with the artwork of children, somehow seemed sacrilegious. “Hugh Simons ranks pretty high on the list, too,” he continued matter-of-factly. “Simons is the mastermind behind an organized corporate check-counterfeiting ring that I nailed eight weeks ago. A British Columbia pulp mill hired me to find out who was counterfeiting their corporate checks after a local bank refused to honor any more of their checks—legitimate or otherwise. The pulp mill didn’t want to make the situation public out of concern that other banks and businesses would stop honoring their checks, as well. I was able to ascertain that the original check used to make the counterfeit checks had been issued to one secretary—a new employee who claimed she’d been approached in a bar and offered twenty-five hundred dollars for her nine-hundred dollar paycheck and her employee ID. In order to counterfeit something, you need an original to duplicate. And if you know what to look for when you’re examining a counterfeit document, you can always determine the original document that was used in its manufacturing.”

“Why would they buy her employee ID?” Hope asked.

“If you’re going to pass off counterfeit checks as genuine you need ID to prove you’re the person the check is made out to. So they print out X number of checks and corresponding IDs. But Simons was more clever than that. He and his accomplices used the phony ID to open up bank accounts at several different banks. Then they printed up a lot of fake paychecks. On the company’s payday, they used ATMs to deposit the fake checks in the accounts they’d set up and then made the maximum cash withdrawal allowed. They netted a hundred thousand dollars in one night. I nicknamed them the Payday Ring.

“Anyway, getting back to the secretary, I had a feeling she might be more involved than she claimed, but I couldn’t make any connection until I discovered that several other large companies in different areas of the province had fallen victim to the same scam. When I started digging deeper, I found out that one of the other companies had gone to the police, who’d investigated and gotten as far as determining that the counterfeit checks were copied from a female employee’s paycheck—a fairly recent employee who’d quit before the police could question her. The police sent me a picture of the woman. She was the same woman who was employed as a secretary in the pulp mill. She was Simons’s girlfriend, Connie Franklin. It turned out there were three other members of the ring, as well. They were all arrested and charged, but the matter hasn’t gone to trial yet. The preliminary hearing is in a few weeks.” Quinn shook his head. “Simons had more fake IDs than a bar full of underage kids. Boxes full of them.”

“So you think Simons ordered the hit so you won’t testify against him?”

“Possibly. He had a lucrative thing going and I blew him out of the water. If Simons wanted me dead, he’d want it done now before I testify at the hearing. Once I’ve given testimony in a pretrial hearing, my testimony would still stand at the trial if I suddenly departed this earth.”

“Which makes Simons an obvious suspect timing-wise,” Hope said.

“Timing-wise,” Quinn agreed. “But the prison sentences for counterfeiting vary from as little as one year to fourteen years in Canada. It’s a paper crime— and nobody really gets too upset when a corporation loses money—except the owners of the corporation. Now, defraud some elderly people or prove the bad guy used documents to lie to the income tax department and he’d be facing stiffer prison sentences and hefty fines. It’s just as likely that whoever ordered the hit was motivated by revenge rather than by a need to evade criminal prosecution. Some people don’t take kindly to having their reputations damaged and their livelihoods destroyed by the revelation that they’re crooks.”

Hope’s face was white and disapproving. “Boy, you keep good company. Asian syndicates, crime rings, hit men. I can hardly wait to hear about these other suspects. What are they—drug dealers?”

Quinn refrained from reminding her that she was the one who’d insisted on knowing details. And now probably wasn’t the time to confide that more than one drug courier had contacted his company and fabricated a story designed to have him or Oliver check their traveling documents to see if the alterations done to a stolen passport or a counterfeit passport they’d purchased would pass inspection by customs officials. “Actually, one is a wealthy doctor in the Dominican Republic, one is the son of one of Canada’s wealthiest families, and the other was the secretary of a New England coin-collecting society.”

“What was the doctor doing…counterfeiting prescription forms?”

Quinn didn’t miss the caustic bite of her question. This was not the type of conversation Hope would want served up daily around a family meal. But at least she was entering this marriage with her eyes wide open. She wouldn’t expect more than he could give. “Actually, Dr. Chavez had counterfeited the medical diplomas that lined his office walls. Somehow he got his hands on some original diplomas and he fabricated his medical schooling and training. He’d never even been to medical school. There are a lot of phony certificates floating around—especially in undeveloped countries where much of the population is illiterate. The Dominican Republic police asked us to assist them with their investigation after they received a number of complaints from families who’d lost someone under Juan Chavez’s care.”

“That’s terrible.”

“If that’s not bad enough, Chavez has so much money and influence that he’s been able to delay the proceedings a number of times. I’m supposed to testify for the prosecution in mid-May. It could be he’s angry he’ll actually go to trial, and he doesn’t like the idea of me explaining to a packed courtroom how he counterfeited those diplomas.” Quinn’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug. “People will go to extreme measures to save face, which is why I told the police that Ross Linville might bear a grudge against me worth killing over.”

“You were involved in that? It was all over the news and in the papers—the fall of the house of Linville. Toronto old money and all those department stores his family owns across the country. I remember it was some big bank-loan scandal. Aren’t the police looking for him? He skipped bail or something?”

“That’s right. His case was supposed to go to trial on Monday—that’s one of the reasons I happened to be in town this week, but he skipped bail and disappeared. The police suspect he’s somewhere in the Caribbean, but that could just be a rumor.”

“But what does a counterfeit specialist have to do with bank loans?” Hope asked, a frown inching across her forehead.

“Well, his family might have money, but Linville had made some bad investments, and his personal coffers were running dry, so he counterfeited some stock certificates and used them as collateral to obtain a bank loan fraudulently to keep his life-style afloat. The bank got suspicious and hired me to examine the stock certificates to make sure they were genuine. They weren’t. The bank decided to contact the police and go public with the information.”