Buch lesen: «Christmas On The Run»

ONE

Feet pounding, lungs heaving, sweat dripping down her temples, Carly Rose Kelley raced along the paved path that led deep into Rock Creek Park. Up ahead, an ancient metal bridge traversed the Little Patuxent River, its solid beams rusted red from years exposed to the elements, its joists gleaming dully in the predawn light. The bridge was a remnant of a railroad that had been defunct for decades—tough, old, used up, but somehow still fighting to survive.

Exactly like Carly.

Except she wasn’t old. She’d be thirty-three in five days. And it wasn’t her life she was fighting for. It was Zane’s.

Zane—gift from God. An unexpected one. She and Josh hadn’t wanted kids. They’d both had too much baggage, they’d traveled more than they were home and they’d had goals that hadn’t included slowing down to care for a child.

But Zane had come along anyway.

Carly would do anything for him, but she wouldn’t be blackmailed, she wouldn’t be bullied and she wouldn’t be forced to go against her moral code. She could keep her son safe and still do the right thing. She would keep him safe.

God, please help me keep him safe.

She reached the bridge, the old metal shaking under her feet as she pounded across it. She knew they’d be behind her, that in a minute or two or three, she’d hear metal clanging as they crossed the tributary.

She didn’t look back.

There’d be nothing to see, just a couple of shadowy figures trailing behind her, making sure she knew she was being watched. All day, every day. All night. It seemed that everywhere she went, they were there. Zane was their bargaining chip: Do what we tell you, or he’ll disappear one day and you’ll never see him again. Maybe not tomorrow or next week or even next year, but one day, he’ll leave the house and he won’t come home.

She shuddered, the sick dread she’d been feeling for two months welling up.

Call the police and he dies. Tell anyone, and you’ll never see him again.

Do what we say, and everything will be fine.

She didn’t believe the last part, but she’d been cooperating because of the photos of Zane at day camp, at school, at music lessons. They’d been slipped under her door at work, emailed to her, dropped in the mail slot at the beautiful brownstone she’d bought in DC. She’d installed a security camera, but all she’d caught was the image of a person with a hat pulled low over his eyes, walking up her porch steps like he belonged there.

Yeah. She’d been cooperating, biding her time, trying to come up with a plan that would keep her son safe. After the first phone call, she’d lain in bed every night for nearly three weeks, praying and begging and trying not to cry, because she’d escaped poverty, crime, a heroin-addicted mother and a career-criminal father only to come to another place of danger and insecurity. She’d known that crying wouldn’t help, so she hadn’t shed a tear. She’d focused on solving the problem and escaping the situation. She’d managed it as a teenager. She could manage it now. That was what she’d told herself during the long dark hours before dawn. The way she’d seen things, she’d had only two options to keep her son safe—go to the police and hope for the best, or go into hiding, giving up everything she’d worked so hard for. She’d been leaning toward the latter option, because she’d rather give up everything than risk Zane’s life.

Then she’d remembered the box that she’d carried from one rental house to the next for the past five years. She hadn’t had any use for the stuff inside, but she’d thought that Zane might want it one day. Her husband Josh’s birth certificate. His adoption decree. An antique pendant he’d grabbed from his mother’s jewelry box before he’d left home for good—or, rather, been kicked out because he’d stolen five thousand dollars from his parents to buy drugs and alcohol. He hadn’t been proud of it, but he’d figured it was his parents’ fault. They could have been more patient, more understanding, more aware of how it felt to be an unwanted tween adopted by a couple who’d never had kids.

That was what Josh had said.

Typical of him—he hadn’t taken responsibility for anything.

By the time he and Carly had met, he’d changed his surname back to what it had been before he was adopted, and he’d put that part of his life behind him. He’d wanted nothing to do with his parents, but he’d idolized his older half brother, Dallas. According to Josh, Dallas had made every effort to fit in with his adoptive family. He’d done well in school, gone to college and joined the military. He’d also turned his back on his own blood. The brothers hadn’t had any contact with each other for years, but Josh had followed Dallas through friends. A year before Josh died, Dallas had left the navy and joined an elite private hostage-rescue team called HEART. An old high school friend had told Josh all about it, and Josh had told Carly. He’d also bragged to anyone willing to listen that Dallas was a hero who traveled all over the world to find the missing and to bring victimized people home to their families.

Yeah, Josh really had loved his brother.

Too bad he hadn’t loved Carly. He’d cheated on her, lied to her, taken money from their accounts and used it to buy expensive gifts for other women. Those were things she’d found out after he’d died, and they were things she’d never tell Zane. As far as she was concerned, Josh had been as much of a loser as her parents had been. Just another disappointment in a long list of them, but...

He’d left that box with everything she’d need to get in touch with someone who might be able to help her.

Dallas Morgan.

Decorated war veteran.

Hostage-rescue negotiator. Sharpshooter. Sniper.

If she could contact him without setting off an alarm with the people who were manipulating her, she just might be able to stop them.

Please, God, please, she prayed silently as she raced along the path, the antique pendant, Josh’s birth certificate and a handwritten note sealed in a plastic bag and zipped into the small pocket of her running pants. The path veered to the right, and she followed it, catching glimpses of Christmas lights through the trees. This time of year, everything seemed to glow. Houses, stores and streetlights were all decorated for the season.

The beauty of those things always made Carly long for the kind of family she could go home to. The kind of family that exchanged gifts and baked cookies, that sang Christmas carols and attended Christmas Eve service together. This year, more than ever, she wanted that. Not the family she’d grown up with. A family that would stand beside her. One that would be just as determined and desperate to keep Zane safe as she was.

Up ahead, the path was dark, curving through thick tree growth. Dallas’s place was five miles away. If she cut through the woods, she’d get there more quickly and avoid some of the dark stretches, but that would make the people following her suspicious.

She was a creature of habit. She couldn’t deny it. She’d grown up in chaos; now she liked order, predictability and routine. She left for work at the same time every day. She picked Zane up at school at the same time every afternoon. She went to church every Sunday, grocery shopping every Monday, to the library every Tuesday evening, out with friends exactly once every other week. They knew it.

They knew a lot.

But they didn’t know her. If they did, they would have found someone else to do the job, because there was no way she planned to follow through. She had too much integrity, and she was too devoted to the preservation of antique jewelry. Twenty gemstones in four months. That was what they wanted. Polished and cut with antique methods that very few people in the country were familiar with.

Carly was very familiar with them. Some people called her an expert. She called herself a lifelong student. She’d apprenticed under a man who’d made studying and perfecting those methods his life’s work. Now it was hers. Aside from working as a museum conservator, she freelanced as an antique-jewelry restoration specialist. She could fix Great-Grandma’s Victorian earrings, Aunt Marie’s broken mourning ring. She could cut and polish new stones and make them match old ones almost exactly.

She did it to pay the bills and because she hated to see a piece tossed into a drawer or thrown into a scrap pile. With every job she did, she provided documentation that included the date of restoration, the modern gemstones that she’d cut and placed into the piece, and the methods that she’d used. Over the years, she’d worked with high-end jewelry shops and for some very wealthy people. She’d also worked for museums and private collectors. She had a reputation, and that reputation must have put her in the sights of the people who were manipulating her.

But she wasn’t a forger. She would not pass her work off as someone else’s.

She also wouldn’t replace the very expensive and intrinsically valuable gemstones in the Smithsonian collection she was restoring and preserving with her handiwork.

That was what they wanted.

They hadn’t said it, but the stones they’d provided her with, the instructions they’d given her for cutting those stones, made it clear that she was re-creating many of the gemstones from Ida May Babcock’s gift to the Smithsonian. The oil magnate heiress had died six years ago. She’d had no children, no husband, no connections except for a pet cockapoo that had died three years after her. She had had a will and a handful of distant relatives who’d all wanted a piece of her estate. It had taken six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars for her executor to make certain that the will was honored—her wealth and real estate to charities, her art, jewelry and vast collections of antiques to the Smithsonian. Carly had been chosen to itemize the jewelry collection, put together a conservation plan and restore any pieces that needed it.

She’d been thrilled to take the job. Zane was getting older, and her years of traveling the country working contracted jobs had to end. Zane needed stability. He needed neighbors and teachers who knew him from one year to the next. He needed a group of friends that he’d grow up with. He needed everything she’d never had.

But, more than anything, he needed to be safe.

She shuddered, picking up speed as she reached the darkest section of the park. Trees pressed in on either side, the soft rustle of leaves in the winter breeze the only sound.

She ran to the edge of the paved path and turned left onto packed earth. She could hear her feet pounding against the ground, her breath panting out in the same even rhythm. She couldn’t hear her pursuers. That was good. It meant they were keeping their distance. Just like always. She’d use that to her advantage. She didn’t need to focus on the pace of the run or on the rhythm of her steps. She’d been this way dozens of times before. She knew the path and the park. She didn’t know who was following her. That was a question she asked herself every day. Who? Why?

Someone at the museum?

Someone who knew the value of the jewelry she was working with?

Maybe. She didn’t know, and she hadn’t dared try to figure it out. She’d felt hunted for weeks, stalked by a nameless, faceless entity. And she wanted it over. Now. Not tomorrow or next week or next month. If Josh’s brother wouldn’t help, she’d pack her bags and leave in the dead of night. She’d go somewhere she’d never been before, and she’d start a new life doing something that had nothing to do with old jewelry.

Of course, that would mean leaving her life behind.

Leaving Jazz behind.

Jazz. Her best friend from college. The person who’d shown up on her doorstep the day after Josh died and who’d arrived again two weeks before Zane’s birth and announced that she planned to stay until after the baby was born. It had ended up being much longer than that. Jazz had been working on establishing herself as a children’s book author. She’d needed an affordable home, and Carly had needed someone she trusted to watch Zane while she worked. It had been a perfect arrangement. They were as close as sisters. Jazz was the only aunt Zane had ever known and would ever have. The thought of disappearing and never contacting her again was sickening.

But Jazz was getting married on New Year’s Eve. She’d have a great life. Even if Carly and Zane disappeared from it forever.

At least, that was what Carly had been telling herself. It was what she wanted to believe. She couldn’t stomach the thought of Jazz mourning them any more than she could stomach the thought of living life without her best friend.

Carly shoved the thoughts way, forcing herself to sink into the rhythm of the run. Frigid November air seeped through the layers of her running gear, freezing sweat onto her skin and making her shiver. Behind her, a twig snapped, and she almost looked back.

Almost.

She didn’t want them to see her fear, though. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

Her lungs burned, her legs trembled as she sprinted through the park. She’d planned everything, timed it all perfectly. She just had to stick to the plan and keep the goal in mind. She had to focus her energy on getting to Dallas’s house and delivering the message she’d brought for him.

Up ahead, bright lights twinkled through the trees, beckoning her toward the well-established neighborhood Dallas lived in. His house was a 1930s brick bungalow on a double lot just yards from the park. He had a mail slot in the front door, large shrubs blocking the view of the side yards. If she ran fast enough and timed it right, she could be up on his porch, sliding the plastic bag into his house, before the people behind her made it off the path.

If...

That was what scared her. She’d been running for years. She knew how to pace herself, and she knew how to go all out for the finish line. But something could go wrong. Life had taught her that early, and it had taught her well.

She sprinted off the trail and around a small pond, the sun lingering below the horizon, the water glass-like in its stillness. She reached the paved path, ran between old houses that had probably been built long before the park existed, turned onto the road that cut through Dallas’s neighborhood. She glanced back as she reached the edge of Dallas’s yard. The road was empty. Just as she’d known it would be.

Go, go, go!

Her brain shouted the command to her tired legs. She’d been running at her top speed for too long, trying to keep far enough ahead to finish what she’d begun. Now she was tired, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t quit. She unzipped her pocket as she ran, yanking the bag out with trembling hands. If she were cutting a gemstone, she’d have taken a deep breath, tried to still the shaking before she continued, but she didn’t have time to calm her nerves.

Dallas’s porch light was off. Just like always. One light shone through a window in the upper level. Also just like always. No Christmas lights or decorations. She’d noticed that. Even though all his neighbors had them. Everything was just the way it had been every morning for as long as she’d been running past his place. But something felt off today, the air edged with electricity. She reached the porch stairs, the bag in her hand, her heart beating frantically.

Her watch beeped a warning. One minute gone. She’d practiced this. She knew exactly how long she had before her pursuers arrived, but she’d set her watch anyway. Always thinking ahead. Always planning. Always trying to control things. Josh had told her that hundreds of times. It hadn’t been a compliment. Those things had caused conflict in her marriage, but they’d also gotten her through really difficult situations.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

She darted to the door, shoved the bag through the mail slot and ran back the way she’d come, lungs heaving, sweat cold on her forehead and cheeks. She glanced back at the path. Still nothing. She was almost in the clear. She just had to keep moving.

Across the road, a dark shadow moved out from behind an old tree. Her heart thumped, one hard terrible jolt of acknowledgment. They’d been a step ahead of her after all, and now they knew that she’d tried to pass information to someone.

“What were you doing?” the man said.

Fear shivered through her, made her legs tremble so much she had to stop. Right at the edge of the yard. Nothing separating her from him but a few feet of paved road.

“Back off, buddy.” She bit the words out, making sure they dripped with confidence.

“What were you doing?” he asked again, his tone conversational rather than accusatory.

“Running.” Her watch beeped again, and she jumped.

Two minutes gone.

Not that it mattered. She’d been caught, and now she had to escape.

She dodged to the left, but he must have anticipated the move, because he was there, blocking her path. Taller by nearly a foot. Muscular. Quick.

She’d grown up fighting. She could still fight when she needed to.

She swung hard with a right hook.

He grabbed her wrist, pulling her arm down with so little effort she knew she’d never escape him.

Not before his buddies made it to her place, found a way in and took her son.

She swung again. This time with her left fist, wildly. She had no plan but to free herself. She connected with his shoulder and heard him mutter something before he pulled her right arm up behind her back. Almost to the point of pain—but not quite.

She stepped toward him, using her body as a weapon, her shoulder aimed for his solar plexus as her watch beeped again.

* * *

Dallas Morgan didn’t know who the woman was. He didn’t know what she wanted. He did know that she’d been running past his house every morning for three weeks. He’d seen her on his security monitor, racing along so close to his front yard that the camera, which had been set up to turn on when there was movement at the edge of the grass, caught her grainy image. Twice she’d jogged to his porch and back, always looking at her watch while she did it. The watch that was beeping.

A warning?

He glanced at the front of his house, expecting an explosion, a fire, something that would make any one of his enemies very happy. And he did have enemies, most of them in foreign countries or in prison. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t get to him—maybe the scrawny runner was working for one of them.

“Cool it!” he commanded as she tried to hook a leg around his, pull him off balance and free herself.

“Let me go,” she growled, wrestling against his hold. His instinct was to do what she’d asked. She was shorter, lighter and weaker than he was, and from the age of twelve on, he’d been taught good manners, good morals and fair rules of combat.

Those things flew out the window when it came to protecting family or staying alive. He tightened his grip. Not enough to be painful, but enough to make her think long and hard about continuing the fight.

“Tell me why you’ve been running by my place every morning for three weeks, and I will,” he said, and she stiffened.

“Dallas?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I...am.”

“Because you didn’t expect to be caught?”

“Because things don’t usually turn out that great for me.”

“Me being out here is great?” He released his hold and took a step back, trying to see her face in the predawn light. Gaunt. Deep hollows beneath high cheekbones. Dark shadows beneath light-colored eyes. That was about all he could see.

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“I put something through the mail slot. That will explain.”

She started jogging, heading away from the house. He could have let her go, but there was something about her that worried him, a kind of desperate energy he often saw in clients who were looking for help.

He snagged the back of her running vest, pulling her to a stop. “Save me a trip to the house. Tell me now.”

“I’m Carly Rose,” she said, as if the name should mean something to him.

“If this is a test, I’m going to fail it, because I’ve never heard the name before.” He cut to the chase. She obviously knew him. She’d obviously been casing his house. He wanted to know why. He wanted to know who had sent her. He wanted to move on with his day, because he had a boatload of physical therapy to get through before he returned to HEART. Five weeks recovering from a torn meniscus, and he was almost cleared to return to work.

He was counting the days, because the house was too quiet, the days too long, the nights even longer with nothing to occupy him.

“Kelley,” she added, then he knew, and a half dozen memories of his brother filled his mind.

“Josh’s widow,” she continued, as if he might be too dense to put it all together.

“I get it.” He released her vest, stepped back. She wasn’t anything like what he’d have expected. Josh had always gone for blonde, voluptuous. Fake. “What do you want?”

“To leave.” She glanced toward the dead-end street. He’d chosen the house because of the privacy and the park that butted up against the yard. Plenty of room to run, hike and bike.

“You looked me up for a reason.”

“I...need your help, but I can’t explain. There isn’t time.” Her watch beeped again, and she took off, sprinting into the street and heading toward the end of the road.

He should let her go. Josh had only ever been trouble. Even before they’d entered foster care, before they’d been adopted, before he’d stolen from the only two people who had ever loved them, Josh had been all about getting what he could however he could from whomever he could. Dallas had some regrets about their relationship, but not enough to make him want to connect with his widow.

So, yeah, he should let Carly Rose Kelley go, but he was at loose ends, and Christmas was coming. His parents did their best to get his mind off the season. For the past six years, they’d invited friends and family over to their place for a loud and loving Christmas exchange. Dallas always attended, and then he’d return home to his silent, empty house that should have been filled with the excited squeals of the twins, his wife, maybe another child or two.

Lila had wanted a big family.

He liked to pretend he’d have agreed to that. He wasn’t sure, though. He’d never thought he’d be that great of a husband or father. He hadn’t planned to be, either, but then he’d met her, and he’d fallen hard and fast. They’d married four months after they’d met, and she’d been pregnant three months later.

If they’d lived, the twins would be turning seven on Christmas Eve.

He shoved the thought and the memories away. He needed distractions this time of year. Carly was the perfect one.

He could still see her, slowing as she reached the end of the street, apparently less frantic now that she’d put some distance between them. There was another entrance to the park in that direction. Maybe she was heading there.

Whatever the case, he planned to follow. At his own pace, because even if he lost sight of her, he could find her again.

That was what he’d spent the past several years doing—finding people, helping them, bringing them home. Something moved in his periphery, and he swung around, saw a guy walking toward him, coming from the same direction Carly had, sauntering like he had nothing but time on his hands. Except he looked sweaty, his hair plastered to his head.

“Morning,” he said as he passed, without looking in Dallas’s direction. He also stayed near the center of the street, far enough from the houses to keep motion-detecting security lights from being triggered. And he seemed to be following the same path as Carly. Minus the trip to Dallas’s porch.

“Cold morning for a walk,” Dallas said, and the man stiffened.

“Yeah. It is.” He put on a little speed, increasing his pace just enough for it to be noticeable.

“You going anywhere interesting?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just thinking that if you’re following the lady, you might want to stop.”

“Mind your own business, buddy,” the guy growled.

“It’s my business when a woman is running alone and she’s being followed,” he responded.

“You want trouble?” The guy turned, his eyes blazing. The sun had finally drifted above the horizon, the gold-gray light glancing off mud-brown hair and dull blue eyes.

“I’m not going to walk away from it if it comes calling,” Dallas replied. Poking the pig. That was what his father called it. It was something Dallas always seemed compelled to do. Something that had gotten him into trouble more times than he could count.