Devil in Disguise (6 page)

When she had the small black suitcase packed and sitting by the door, she went to rouse her mother. Rosemary surprised her by stirring at the first mention of her name.

“Mom, I need you to get up and get dressed. We have to go soon.” Rachel knelt beside her mother and tenderly brushed a strand of hair away from Rosemary’s face as she spoke.

“Did they find her?” Rosemary’s voice sounded painfully vulnerable.

“Maybe. In fact, they could be rescuing her even as we speak. Veronica sent some agents to come pick us up. Maybe they’ll take us to Julia.”

Rosemary nodded, sitting slowly as if to orient herself.

“Mom, if you had to be away for a while but could only take one thing with you, what would it be?”

“Why do I have to go? Where am I going?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. Well, I have an idea, but it could just be my overactive imagination. But Veronica mentioned we might have to leave for a while.”

Rachel couldn’t be sure she was making any sense, but
Rosemary
nodded and rose from the bed, padding over to the closet without hesitation. She pulled out a small box and handed it to Rachel,
nodding once and then moving on to get dressed.

Rachel stared down at the keepsake tin in her hands, running her fingers over the painted peonies. A smile tugged at the corner of
her mouth. She remembered this tin. One of her greatest joys as a child had been sorting through its sacred contents, back in the days
when the
tin had sat on her mother’s makeup table. It had long ago
disappeared – Rachel had thought for good.

She couldn’t help peeking in the box now, noticing that a few more mementos had been added. It still held her grandmother’s ring, her father’s medal of honor, and her grandpa’s harmonica, but now
it also held her parents’ wedding rings and various newspaper
clippings
from Rachel’s career. She replaced the lid before she could be
overcome with emotion.

“I’ll go add this to your luggage.” Rachel excused herself from the room, glad for something to do. If the agent didn’t arrive soon, she’d make herself crazy. She made the rounds through the house, checking to be sure electronics were turned off or unplugged as necessary. Then she checked her phone to be sure it was on and the volume was up. With nothing left to do, she curled up on the couch to stare vacantly out the window.

When a black sedan pulled into the drive, she didn’t expect to see Conrad unfurl from the passenger seat. Rachel flew off the couch
and out the door, stopping just short of his arms, though a part of her wished he would grab her and enfold her into his protective
embrace.

“We got her back,” he answered before she could even ask.
“Let’s
get your mother. I’ll fill you in on the ride to see her. We have to
hurry.”

Rachel didn’t fully understand the urgency, but she trusted Conrad enough not to question it. The FBI agent who’d driven him there had already retrieved Rosemary and was loading the suitcase into the trunk before Rachel even realized he’d gotten out of the car.

Conrad insisted Rosemary take the front seat, even though that meant folding himself in half to curl into the back seat.

“You can put your legs on my side of the seat.” Rachel smiled,
partly in response to his kindness to her mother, partly in
amusement at him trying to fit inside the car. He accepted her offer with as much dignity as he could muster and slid his feet onto her floorboard so he was sitting cattycorner in his seat, but at least his knees were no longer touching his chest.

Rachel had a sudden vision of their first night together in that Louisiana motel. They’d been working to free Neena Russell from a
living nightmare. He was there because Neena was his little sister, Rachel because she wanted to break the story. Circumstance had
thrust
them together; instant chemistry had made it interesting. And on that first night, when they’d caved into the sparks between them, no
one else in the world existed. Right now, she’d give anything to transport herself back to that moment.

Instead, she dealt with the reality of the moment she was in. “How is she?”

“She will be okay,” Conrad answered cautiously.

The emphasis on “will be” wasn’t lost on Rachel. “How is she now?”

“They hurt her,
chère
. The doctors are still assessing whether
there is any permanent damage. She received some pretty heavy doses of narcotics, too.”

Rachel couldn’t bring herself to ask just how they’d hurt Julia. Not yet. She’d fought so hard to save Julia the pain of having her innocence stolen by the string of men in their mother’s life, only to fail her when it really counted.

“Did they catch the bastard who did this?” Rosemary asked, her tone clipped.

“We can’t discuss that at the moment,” the federal agent
interjected, not willing to take a chance on Conrad’s ability to keep quiet.

Conrad brought the conversation back on track. “Right now, the
thing I need you both to focus on is Julia. She was pretty out of it when I left, but the more she comes around, the more she’ll need you. Rachel, Jeff asked if an agent would keep an eye on your family
until it’s clear what the status of the investigation is. Veronica said to hang tight in Julia’s hospital room until she can come update you herself.”

Rachel nodded. “Thank you – for everything.”

Conrad opened his mouth, but no words came. She could see him wrestling with something he wanted to say the rest of the way to the hospital. As they crossed the parking lot, he snagged her hand, holding her back while Rosemary and the agent hurried on.

Conrad glanced around as if to be sure they were alone before pulling Rachel into his arms to envelop her in the embrace she’d been craving.

“I don’t hate you,” he whispered against her hair. “Quite the opposite. I would do anything for you. I’d do anything to be with you. One day, when this is all over, I will explain everything – if
you’re still talking to me, that is. Until then, know that if I’m putting distance between us, it’s only because I love you.”

“You’re leaving? Now?” She pulled away to look him in the eye.

“Your family is in enough danger right now; I’ll only add to it at the moment.”

“Would you stop with this cryptic nonsense?” Her voice inched up in exasperation. “Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Veronica will when she gets here, I promise.”

“No. You tell me now,” she demanded.

“Goodbye, Rachel. Go be with your sister. I’ll find you when it’s safe.”

“No. I refuse to accept your goodbye.” She tugged his hand, determined to drag his stubborn butt up the stairs if necessary. He merely arched his eyebrows and widened his stance, as if daring her to try to budge him. Not one to pass up a challenge, Rachel tugged even
harder on his hand, only to be rewarded by her own grip slipping
loose.
She stumbled backwards and landed on her rump, glaring
mutinously up at Conrad.

“Don’t stay angry with me forever,
ma bichette
.” With that, he turned to walk away, leaving her sitting in the parking lot, fuming so hard she was certain literal smoke was rolling out her ears.

He was halfway to his truck when a beat-up old Buick pulled
alongside him. The car’s passenger leaned out and sprayed
something
in Conrad’s face. Rachel shouted, watching in horror as his giant
frame crumpled to the ground while the Buick sped away.

She scrambled to cover the distance between them, wildly looking about for someone, anyone, to come to her aid. She dropped to her knees at his side, checking for a pulse with one hand even as
the other tried to rouse him. As soon as she found a pulse, she started looking
for other wounds. The back of his head was bleeding from the tumble to the ground, but he didn’t have any other apparent injuries. It was his breathing that scared her; it was shallow, and the air
rattled around in his lungs.

“Come on, baby. Wake up. Please wake up,” she sobbed,
fumbling to get her cell phone out of her pocket. She continued to plead with him, God, and anyone else who would listen while she dialed 911. It took a minute for the operator to understand her, and a minute more for him to understand that she was in the hospital parking lot, but soon the paramedics were there, pushing through the small crowd that had begun to gather and moving her out of the way as they checked Conrad and listened to her recount what had happened.

Rachel had never felt as helpless as she did watching them roll Conrad away. She clutched his shirt to her chest. They’d cut it off in the process of stabilizing him enough to get him the short distance to the emergency room. Rachel inhaled deeply; his scent still clung to
the tattered fabric. Not sure what else to do, she followed the procession across the parking lot. She needed to check on Julia, but she wasn’t leaving Conrad until she knew he was okay. Right now,
more than
anything, she was terrified that she’d seen him smile for the last
time.

The image of that last smile played on repeat in her head as she sat numbly in the trauma waiting room. She had the presence of mind to text her whereabouts to Veronica, but everything else was a blur.

Rachel didn’t know how long she sat there alone before Veronica
appeared in the doorway. “This part’s torture. Pure hell.”

Rachel looked up with questioning eyes.

“The hospital waiting room. A really good friend of mine was
hurt in the first case I worked on. I still have nightmares about sitting in that waiting room, not sure if he was going to make it and
wondering if I could have done something different.”

“I don’t even know what happened.” Rachel’s voice sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

“I haven’t talked to the doctors or anything, but it sounds like
he was poisoned. It’s a pretty classic move for these cockroaches.
They drive by and spray an aerosol poison in someone’s face. It gets rid of them without the mess and media of a drive-by shooting.”

“It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?”

“With these guys, unfortunately, yes. I think they’ve been so
hard to stop because our society just can’t wrap their brains around how soulless traffickers are. They aren’t human. I don’t know how they could be, considering the things they do.”

“Do you think Conrad will die?”

“I can’t say, sweetie—not without talking to the doctors. I do know he’s a big guy. It would take a hell of a lot of an inhaled poison to take him down. That’s got to work in his favor.”

“I shouted at them. I don’t think they saw me before that.”

“Even better. They probably didn’t have time to administer a full dose. He’ll be back to good in no time.”

Rachel was pretty sure Veronica was lying to make her feel better, but she was choosing to believe her. Anything was better than sitting there with the image of him helpless on a gurney seared into her brain.

As Rachel sifted through all that had happened, trying to make
sense of what was going on, a doctor interrupted her thought
process to
confirm what Veronica had already supposed: Conrad had been
sprayed with a poison meant to be inhaled, but the dose hadn’t been enough
to accomplish the intended outcome. There had been some damage to his lungs, but only time would tell how much scarring would remain. He wouldn’t be able talk because of the irritation to his
throat, but they expected that to subside over the next 24 hours.

Rachel took it all in, mentally filing away each piece of
information, determined to do whatever she could to help him mend. Like it or not, Conrad Langston was going to have her by his side every step of his recovery.

“Can I go see him?”

“He’s resting now, but I don’t see why not. I’ll stop by during rounds in the morning,” the doctor promised on his way out the door.

“Do you want to go in alone?” Veronica offered.

“I think I just want to reassure myself he’s still breathing, and then slip over to see Julia while Conrad is still asleep.”

“Go ahead – I’ll catch up with you as soon as I call this in. With a little luck, we’ll be able to get at least one security guard assigned to Conrad in case anybody gets the bright idea to come back to finish what they started.”

Rachel blanched. She hadn’t thought of that one yet. She
ruthlessly
shoved that thought aside and hurried into his room. Seeing him so still and quiet was almost worse than not seeing him at all. She made a beeline for his side, where she tentatively slid her hand into his lifeless
one, willing him to give her even the slightest squeeze of
acknowledgement. He didn’t, and as much as she wanted to stand and watch him breathe just to reassure herself that he could, Rachel still hadn’t seen her little sister.

If seeing Conrad had been hard, seeing Julia ripped her heart out. She looked so very young and broken. One eyelid was purple and swollen shut; the other eye was red. Her head had been shaved, and her arms bore the marks of chains that had been kept too tight.

Before Rachel could even say hello, Julia began to retch.
Rosemary was there in an instant, holding a pink bucket with one hand and rubbing Julia’s back in a soothing gesture with the other.

“Those damn drugs they pumped into her are making her sick. She’s been throwing up so hard she popped a blood vessel in her eye.” Rosemary glanced at Rachel as she spoke. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Conrad was attacked on our way in. I didn’t want to leave him until he was stable.” Rachel didn’t flinch at her mother’s tone; it was a pretty typical Rosemary reaction to crisis.

“Is he going to be okay?”