Justified Means (Book One) (The Agency Files) (36 page)

“Karen, can you come in here?”

She pushed open the door, nearly hitting Claire with it. “Oh, sorry.”

“Excuse me.” Keith’s cousin hurried from the room wiping tears from her eyes.

Glancing after her, Mark shook his head. “We need to start a rumor about a dying grandmother or something. She’s going to cause too much curiosity. I think, somewhere beneath the emotional layers, she has what it takes, but if we can’t teach her to control the emotions, she can’t stay. It’d be a waste. She has excellent instincts.”

“I’ll help her.”

“I knew I could count on you.” Mark glanced at his cell phone before he asked, “Do you know if she has anyone close to her? A really close best friend, boyfriend, something like that?”

A lump rose in her throat, but Karen forced it back down. “I don’t know, but I can find out.”

“Do it. We need to know if that’s going to be an issue. It’s the one reason I don’t object to agents dating. There isn’t a security issue. I usually check those things, but we were in a bit of a rush. I know she did have a guy, but there were rumors about him taking off with the best friend. I need to know if it’s true. I hope so.”

“I bet you do.” Shock flooded Karen’s face as she realized she spoke aloud.

Mark’s eyes searched her face for a moment and then shook his head. “If by that, you meant that I would be personally happy to hear she is single, you’d be wrong. Brian would be good for her.”

“It’s none of my business, Mark. You just seemed interested, and I found it amusing.”

“She’s too young for me. I’m more comfortable with women who—with other types of women.”

Something in his voice made Karen snap her head up and draw her eyebrows together. The words were innocuous enough, but the tone—the tone was something else—almost hinting. Mark’s eyes never wavered. Not ready to face the possibility of disappointment or worse, the mortification of revealing interest she’d kept so carefully hidden, she shrugged. “Aren’t we all?” She choked a bit as she realized how her words sounded. “Interested in other—anyway. Did you say there was something else?”

Clearly ready to change the subject, Mark passed a dossier across the desk. “I got a call from a DA in Colorado. He says this man, Leo Hasaert, is likely going to need an extraction. He’ll resist.”

“The DA or Leo?”

“Leo.”

Karen picked up the dossier. “He’s one scary looking dude. He’s the one we need to protect?”

“Possibly. We have to be ready. I’ll have to go in with you if we go. Brian is on the Devore case and Keith is in jail. Anthony is dead and well, need I go on?”

“Yeah, with a man,” Karen agreed, “I’m gonna need help. I can’t possibly do that by myself—not with a man that built.” She read farther. “Whoa. Bike gang? Murder?”

“He’s not a threat. From what I’ve gathered from his boss, his preacher—”

“Preacher! Oh, don’t tell me, he gets caught, pretends to get religion—”

“No, Karen.” Mark’s interruption normally would have annoyed her, but there was that tone again—the one that caught her unaware every time. “He became a Christian, spoke to his pastor or minister or whatever, and upon the advice the man gave, went to the DA with his information. He gave it freely. The appointed lawyer got him probation and community service for turning evidence.”

“Well, it’d be awfully convenient if whoever wants him dead would wait to move until we’ve taken care of Helen Franklin.”

“Don’t want to have to rely on me for backup, eh?”

Karen shook her head. “Quite the contrary. You don’t want to have to rely on me. One look at that spider web in person and I might just run.”

The concrete slab wasn’t much more comfortable with the addition of the thin mattress. Keith shuddered at the thought of all the bacteria and the probable critters living in it. He spent most of his time standing or leaning against the wall, but at last was forced to sit. Desperate to avoid the probability of lice or bedbugs, he folded the thin mat in half and shoved it to one end of the “bed.”

Prayer was his only comfort. This was the worst part of the plan—the hours that he couldn’t see, hear, or even ask if Erika was all right. Keith tried to trust that she was protected in a building surrounded by policemen, but people died in custody every year; why not her?

A drunk in the next cell railed out against the police, his girlfriend, and God—not necessarily in that order. For a while, the temptation to start singing “Amazing Grace” or “It Is Well with My Soul” niggled at him, but Keith resisted. There was no reason to torture anyone, even a mean drunk, with his voice. Had he thought he could get away with it, he’d have whistled, but it seemed like a great way to irritate the guard, so he didn’t.

As the night wore on, the cells filled. Domestic violence, a few more drunks, a few assaults, and an attempted murder all filed in and occupied cells on the small block. If they filled too quickly, he could be let go with just an order to appear. That would be terrible. He’d have to throw a punch or something if that happened.

How was Erika doing? Was she as terrified as he imagined, or had she moved into fury? He hoped she was good and ticked. It’d get her through the next few hours. Leaving was the worst part of the ordeal. Once they got past getting out of the courthouse where Mark and Karen would be waiting, they’d be good, but getting to there wasn’t as easy as it looked.

He’d made it sound so simple—almost as if it were failsafe. Keith felt like a liar. He had no scruples about telling a client anything he had to say to keep the person trusting and listening, but this time it felt wrong. She’d gone from being an abductee to a willing participant in their charade to capture her pursuer. It wasn’t the same.

Had Mark been able to arrange for Judge Bleakman to preside over the hearing? With Bleakman, they’d get off with a fine and community service, which Bleakman would sign off on thirty days later. It’d be simple. Mark had considered bringing Constance Jamison into the loop. She was known to be hard on prostitution, so this might be the case to do that if she was on the bench, but anyone else would mean trouble. He doubted he’d be sentenced to jail. Anthony had once. He swallowed hard at the memory of teasing Anthony. That would never happen again.

Erika had managed to kick one of the more easily influenced men on the force. Karen would be able to convince him that it had been the flail of a struggling, terrified woman rather than a deliberate connection of foot to shin.

The walls seemed to close in on him the longer he sat there. Tired, miserable, and concerned for Erika’s safety, Keith just wanted the ordeal to end so they could get onto more important things. They had Helen to stop on several fronts—starting with Erika, of course.

Being arrested was truly the most humiliating experience of Erika’s life. The search was mortifying, the photographing and fingerprinting degrading, but nothing felt worse than hearing the clink of the metal bars connecting with the latch on the other side. She was alone in her block of cells.

The room was narrow with only a nod at privacy for the toilet. Painted cinderblocks and a concrete ledge that masqueraded as a bed meant it was easy to hose down to clean. One look at the thin mat on the ledge and she shuddered. She’d always had a hard enough time relaxing in a hotel room; this was ten times worse—a hundred.

I wonder what he’s doing. Is his block empty too
? Her thoughts ran wild with ideas. What if Helen got herself locked up too? Could she somehow kill Erika as she passed to her own cell? Did she want her dead enough to make it obvious that she’d been the killer, or did it have to be covert?
What have I done anyway? I’ve never given her any reason to see me as a threat!

She discarded her ideas nearly as quickly as they flitted through her mind. Each seemed more ludicrous than the last. It had to be drugs or stolen art. Nothing else made any sense. Erika tried to picture the plants in the back yard, but she didn’t remember any of dubious origins. The house seemed free of anything of real value. The art on the walls were cheap posters framed at a craft store. There were no vases, no sculptures—nothing that would make someone suspicious.

It seemed insane that now that she knew who wanted her dead, she couldn’t know why, but Keith had been adamant. If anyone suspected, she could be a target of a faceless foe. The whole thing seemed so melodramatic, but no one could doubt the seriousness on Karen’s and Keith’s faces. She even tried not to think about it as a gesture of trust and respect, but her naturally curious nature refused to be so easily appeased.

Just as she draped her mat over the half wall that semi-hid the toilet bowl, a new, terrifying thought came to her. Her picture was likely plastered all over the news—first as the kidnapped daughter of Tom Polowski, and possibly as the woman who had fled the scene of the accident. She’d given her name as Erin Polk, but how long would it be before they found that her fingerprints matched the driver’s license of Erika Polowski? This was very bad. Giving a fake name had seemed smart at the time, but now...

Less than two hours after she’d been locked into the cell, Erika found herself led from it and into an interrogation room. Her hands shook, her knees wobbled, but at the sight of her parents, she threw herself into her father’s arms. “Daddy!”

Voices, all speaking at once, rose to such a crescendo that Erika found herself whistling to silence everyone. “Officer, can I speak to my father for five minutes alone?”

It took some convincing, but at last, the room emptied of all but Erika and her father. The moment the door shut behind the officer, Tom spoke. “Are you all right? When we got the news—”

The word news was all she needed. Pulling him close, she whispered in his ear. “Don’t talk out loud, just listen. The guy I came in with—he isn’t the one who kidnapped me. You’ve got to help me get him out, and we can’t let it get on the news that I’ve been found or the real kidnappers will find me and kill both of us—maybe even you and mom.”

“What are you talk—”

She clamped her hand over her father’s mouth and used her eyes to try to impart some sense of the seriousness of the situation. “Shh! I’m not being dramatic, Dad. I’m serious. We’ve got to do something.”

“Is this some kind of Stockholm thing?”

Erika sighed in relief. At least he was whispering. That could mean he was also listening. “No, Dad. I gave them a fake name and refused to talk. I bet Keith did too. Just help us, or someone else is going to get hurt.” Then, as if they hadn’t spent the last minute in hushed whispers that she hoped couldn’t be recorded and amplified, Erika spoke aloud. “So what happens next?”

“Well, they said you assaulted an officer. Considering the circumstances, I think the judge will dismiss the charges, but you have to see him.”

She nodded, mouthing the word “good.” “What about Keith?”

“Well, he tried to evade the police, and he did have you in the car. You’ve been reported as kidnapped.”

“I figured you’d do that.”

“So, did he take you or someone else?”

Her mind whirled. Should she name the real villain, or was that too dangerous
? She opted for ambiguity. “I didn’t see who kidnapped me. Keith helped me escape at a gas station and we hid for a few days, working our way back to Rockland.”

“Where were you?”