The Chilling Deception (13 page)

A few minutes later Gannon abruptly turned and started inland. There was a glint of blue steel from the heavy revolver in his hand as he headed through the trees. Apparently he had decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He was going to find Vandyke and force the enemy’s hand.

Zac froze into complete immobility until Gannon was far enough ahead again to make pursuit safe. Then he moved after the other man. There was no telling what Gannon would do when he reached the clearing and discovered that Vandyke was no longer there. The wildness in him made him more than a little unpredictable in some ways—in others it made him entirely predictable, however. Gannon would kill, Zac knew, without a second’s hesitation.

“Damn you, Vandyke!”

Gannon’s roar of rage as he reached the clearing startled Zac. He hadn’t expected the man to lose control so quickly. Cautiously he moved closer. He could see him now, standing at the edge of the clearing, feet spread wide, dark hair whipped by the chill wind. The collar of the flight jacket was standing high around Gannon’s neck. He swung around, crouching, gun steady in his hand, and for an instant Zac thought he’d been seen. Then Gannon continued to move in a circle, crouching low.

“You think you can hide, you bastard? Think that soft executive type you brought along as an assistant is going to help you? No way. I’m going to kill him, Vandyke. But I’m not going to kill you. You get to die the way you thought I’d die. I’m not gonna let you off easy.”

Gannon moved around the perimeter of the clearing, peering into the trees. Zac stayed very still. He was on his stomach now, concealed by a clump of blackberry bushes. He could catch glimpses of movement from Gannon and tracked him until the other man was on the far side of the clearing. If Gannon went back into the trees in that direction he would probably stumble across Vandyke.

Gannon was confident and crazy. That volatile combination of factors was the only edge he’d get, Zac told himself. He inched forward, circling the blackberry bushes. His hand closed over a small rock.

“Give it up, Justis. You’ve got the girl with you. I’ll let her go if you come on out. Hell, I might even let you go. Who knows? All I want is Vandyke dead. Come on, Justis. Take a chance. Make me an offer. I know you’re not armed. Guys like you don’t carry guns, do you? You’re businessmen. Executives. Soft. Just like Vandyke. Bunch of wimps who don’t know how to take care of themselves. You’re easy meat for a man like me, Justis. Your only chance is to come on out and see if you can’t make a bargain.”

Zac waited until Gannon was a little closer. His fingers tightened around the rock. He was only going to get one chance.

“Hey, Vandyke, you awake? You listening to this? Or are you already dead? You’ve gotten soft, Vandyke. You’re fat and soft now. I’ll bet Cathy looks at you in bed and wonders what the hell she married you for. I’ll bet she thinks about me when you try to get it up. You ever tell her why I didn’t come back from that last run, Vandyke? You ever tell her the truth? How you set me up?”

Zac gathered himself. Gannon was only a few yards away and he was watching the trees in the opposite direction from where Zac lay on his stomach. It was now or never. Zac came to his feet in a quick smooth movement that flowed naturally into the throw, putting all his weight behind launching the rock at Gannon’s back.

In the last split second some instinct must have warned the other man. He whirled, gun raised.

The rock caught Gannon solidly on the shoulder, and he stumbled backward, losing his balance on his weak left leg. There was a roar as the revolver in his hand was fired by his reflexive tug on the trigger. The bullet went wild.

Zac was out of the trees and on the other man before Gannon had a chance to recover his balance. With a quick chopping motion he brought the side of his hand down on Gannon’s forearm. The gun fell to the ground. The momentum of Zac’s rush carried both men down beside the weapon.

Guinevere’s head came up with a jerk as she heard the muffled report of the revolver. For an instant she was paralyzed with terror. In her mind’s eye she could already see Zac lying on the cold ground, bleeding to death. Awkwardly she struggled to her feet, her legs cramped and chilled.

A noise from the beach behind her brought her back to her senses. Washburn had apparently been startled by the shot too. Hastily she crouched down again, trying to see the cove through the clutter of rocks.

What she saw was the flash of movement as Washburn hurried along the plane’s floats and jumped ashore. She held her breath as, not more than ten feet away, he dashed past her and into the trees. There was an expression of grim fear on his face. He seemed to be heading toward the clearing from which the sound of the shot had come. And he was waving a gun wildly in his right hand. Guinevere was certain that if Washburn had known how to fly the Cessna he would have had it in the air by now. As it was, he was virtually forced to go to Gannon’s rescue. Gannon was his only sure means of getting off the island.

Even if Zac had escaped that first shot, Guinevere realized in horror, he wouldn’t have much of a chance against a second armed man. Frantically she scrambled out from the clutter of boulders. The only instinct driving her now was the knowledge that she had to do something,
anything
.

She was almost in the trees when she remembered Catherine Vandyke’s comment about Gannon carrying a backup gun hidden under the pilot’s seat.

Was it the weapon he had taken ashore? Or was the gun under the seat considered a spare, something for an emergency? If the gun existed, she must get it. It was the only edge she would have. Guinevere swung around and dashed down the short pebbled beach. Her feet got wet as she scrambled onto one of the floats. Balancing precariously, Guinevere reached for the cabin door on the pilot’s side and yanked it open. The interior of the plane felt a few degrees warmer than the outside air. Guinevere inhaled deeply. She shoved her hand under the seat and fished wildly. Her groping fingers touched a worn leather holster. She closed her eyes in fleeting relief, and pulled it out to find it held a vicious-looking snub-nosed revolver. The metal felt cold in her hand and she was surprised at the weight of the thing.

Clutching it fiercely, Guinevere maneuvered quickly back along the float and leapt for shore, groaning as another lapping wave caught her foot. She started running for the trees. Her feet squished softly in the Nikes but the shoes themselves didn’t make much noise on the rough terrain.

The clearing wasn’t hard to find, the island was so small that anyone who headed for its center was bound to stumble across it. She tried to approach carefully, hoping the running shoes would silence her footsteps. A few minutes later she knew that the man she was chasing had already reached the clearing.

Washburn stood at the edge of the small open space, his gun hand moving frantically back and forth. A second later Guinevere could see why he was so agitated. Zac and Gannon were locked in brutal combat on the ground, their bodies shifting too quickly to enable Washburn to get a clear shot. They were probably not even aware that Washburn was standing there with a gun. Shakily she raised the revolver she had taken from the plane.

“Hold it right there, Washburn. Drop the gun or I’ll shoot. I swear to God, I’ll shoot.”

The older man froze. In that instant there was a heavy thumping sound and the two men on the ground in the clearing also went still.

Everything and everyone seemed to be frozen for a timeless few seconds. Then Zac moved slightly. He was breathing deeply, and there was blood on his face. He got slowly to his feet, his eyes on Washburn. Behind him Gannon lay limp.

“Throw the gun down, Washburn. She can shoot you before you turn around. Come on, throw it! Way over there. Do it now, Washburn!”

Something about the implicit violence in Zac’s voice must have convinced Washburn that the woman behind him really was armed. He swore softly and tossed the gun aside. It fell several feet away. Then he turned slowly to face Guinevere.

Clutching the weapon in both hands, Guinevere held it on her victim as steady as she could, but the sight of Zac’s bloody face unnerved her.

“Zac? Are you all right?”

But Gannon stirred in that moment and Zac turned back before answering. “Stay right where you are, hero. Gwen, don’t let Washburn move an inch. At that distance you can’t miss, and he knows it.”

Washburn was staring at her, fear and impotent rage in his eyes. “Little bitch,” he said through gritted teeth. He spoke over his shoulder to Gannon. “You fool, Cassidy. I knew I should never have listened to you. You’re crazy, you know that? Out of your head, you dumb bastard.”

“Shit,” Gannon muttered, staring at Guinevere. “That’s
my
gun. Get her, Washburn. That damn thing’s not loaded! Take her!”

Washburn hesitated and then panicked, apparently deciding to take the chance. With a roar of outrage he leapt for Guinevere. Zac was on top of him like a ton of bricks before Washburn could reach her.

Guinevere never got a chance to pull the trigger but a shot rang out even as Zac and Washburn hit the ground. Zac pinned Washburn with ease and then glanced around. He saw Guinevere staring in the direction Washburn had tossed his gun.

Vandyke stood clinging with one hand to a low-hanging branch. He still had Zac’s black jacket draped around his shoulders. His face was white with shock, but he clung steadily to the gun he had retrieved from where Washburn had thrown it.

Gannon lay on the ground in an appallingly still sprawl. Vandyke’s shot had caught him halfway across the clearing while he had been trying to get to the revolver he’d lost during the fight.

Once more everything was deathly still. Only the increasing whistle of the wind broke the silence. Zac stretched out a hand to take the weapon Guinevere was still holding. “Here,” he said with surprising gentleness. “Let me have that.”

Mutely she started to give it to him, muzzle first.

“Damn it, Gwen, be careful.” Hastily he plucked it out of her hand.

She blinked, too overwhelmed by events to think clearly. “Why? It’s not loaded.”

Zac shook his head wearily. “Of course it’s loaded. You think a cowboy like Gannon would ever keep an unloaded gun as a backup? He just wanted Washburn to create a distraction. So he tried to send him charging into you while he made a play for the other gun.”

“Oh my God.” Guinevere started to shiver. She had been very close to pulling that trigger, she realized. And she would have done it, to save Zac and herself. The thought of how she would have felt after shooting a man at point-blank range was enough to make her sick to her stomach. Then she saw Vandyke sagging to the ground.

“Zac,” she whispered, “we’ve got to get him out of here.”

Zac’s mouth crooked wryly as he took in her own stunned and chilled condition. “That’s right,” he said with suspicious mildness. “Let’s take care of the client.”

Chapter Ten

“He thought I’d set him up all those years ago.” Edward Vandyke exhaled slowly. He leaned back in his high-backed padded leather executive chair and looked at his wife across the top of the polished mahogany desk. Behind him the Smith Tower and the Kingdome were visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was raining again.

Sitting beside Zac, Guinevere saw the look that passed between husband and wife. Memories of another time and place and all the shared years in between were in that look. It was a
married
look Guinevere decided, the kind of charged exchange only a husband and wife could have. She wondered fleetingly if she would ever have that sort of exchange with Zac. The mental image of being with Zac ten or fifteen years from now was impossible to conjure clearly, but she found she could make a hazy picture of it.

Guinevere abruptly gave herself a small shake and pulled her attention back to the meeting taking place in Vandyke’s office.

“He was always so wild, so . . . on the edge in some way. I think that in these last few years he must have gone completely over the brink.” Catherine Vandyke waved one hand helplessly. Her delicately shaped artist’s hand was set off by a very expensive diamond-and-emerald ring. She was a lovely woman in her midforties, with high cheekbones, a graceful throat, and hair styled in a very current fashion. Her off-white designer suit must be almost as expensive as the ring. She was also a very gentle woman. Guinevere liked her as much in person as she had on the phone.

Vandyke looked at Zac. “So Washburn was actually working for Gannon?”

“Washburn wouldn’t admit it, but Gannon was the one in charge. We traced Washburn’s financial background. As Toby Springer said, he emerged out of nowhere in the mid seventies, buying and selling land. No one knew where he got his start. Now it’s pretty clear that Gannon financed him. Washburn provided business expertise for Gannon; in exchange he managed the huge sums of cash Gannon was making. In short, Gannon made the money by running drugs and Washburn invested it for him. A nice arrangement for both of them.”

“It makes sense. Gannon never had the interest or the patience it takes to handle money wisely. He got his kicks out of taking risks, and he liked the payoff, but that was all. On the other hand, he was too shrewd to let a fortune melt away because of poor management.” Vandyke smiled a little sadly. “Poor Washburn. Probably never knew what hit him when Gannon picked him out of nowhere, walked into his life, and offered him that kind of deal.”

“Well, apparently Gannon had done some research on Washburn,” Guinevere said. “He must have known his hand-picked financial adviser had a rather shady background in commodities-trading fraud, because he used the information to keep Washburn in line. Washburn told the police that he’d been forced to engineer the deal that set you up this past weekend. The proposal to develop the resort, the competing business presentations—it was all window dressing. The main goal of the weekend was to get you isolated. Gannon had told Washburn he’d rip his new empire to shreds if he didn’t cooperate. By then, of course, Washburn was used to moving in fast circles and he liked the big-time wheeling and dealing. He would have done a lot to protect his new world.”

Vandyke cocked one eyebrow. “And Toby Springer?”

“Just what he claimed,” Zac said mildly. “A young man on the fast track to success, or so he thought. He assumed he’d hitched his wagon to a very bright star when he became Washburn’s personal assistant. My guess is that even now he doesn’t know how close he came to having a fatal accident.”

“An accident?” Mrs. Vandyke looked startled.

Zac nodded. “I doubt Cassidy—I mean, Gannon—would have let him live. Springer knew too much, although he hadn’t yet realized it. He knew about the island, he knew Gannon had flown off with you that morning, and he tended to be talkative. It was an unhealthy combination for him.”

“The island.” Mrs. Vandyke pounced interestedly. “How did you make the connection? What made you realize that was where Gannon had taken my husband?”

Zac smiled bleakly. “We weren’t sure. It was part hunch and part guesswork based on what we’d been able to piece together about Gannon. We knew Gannon had ditched the plane near an uninhabited island in the Caribbean several years ago. A place called Raton. He must have managed to swim to shore. We also suspected he had survived, although no one seemed to think so, including his ex-partner.” Zac glanced briefly at Vandyke, who said nothing. “Thanks to chatty Toby, Guinevere had learned that Washburn and Gannon had taken a couple of trips to a deserted hunk of rock up in the San Juans, supposedly with a view toward purchasing it. Springer also told us that Washburn thought Gannon was hung up on that island. You gave us another clue when you said on the phone you thought Gannon might be not only dangerous but a little crazy. If he was out for revenge after all this time and if he’d gone to the trouble of setting up such an elaborate trap then it made sense he’d want the final scene to be equally bizarre. We took a chance and decided to try the island. Besides”—Zac shrugged—“at that point we didn’t have anyplace else to look. If Gannon hadn’t taken your husband to the island we would really have been back at square one. We probably couldn’t have convinced the police there’d been a kidnapping at that point. Nothing terribly suspicious had really occurred. No one was officially missing.”

“How did you guess Gannon was still alive?” Mrs. Vandyke asked, her gentle eyes curious.

Guinevere cleared her throat delicately. “Zac made an inspired guess.”

“The hell I did,” Zac said bluntly. “I saw the page out of Gannon’s logbook, the one that had information filled in on a flight that had taken place
after
the flight during which Gannon was supposedly killed. A friend of mine in the Caribbean gave me the details.” He looked at Vandyke. “I opened the briefcase that first evening.”

Vandyke smiled. “I’m glad you did. Sorry I was so obtuse about your offers of help, but to tell you the truth I wasn’t sure what was going on myself. I got that page out of Gannon’s logbook several weeks ago and I didn’t know what the hell to make of it. It just arrived in the day’s mail with no return address. I realized it meant he might still be alive and that he might be coming after me, but I didn’t know what to expect. He must have sent it as an act of terrorism. Until he made a move, I was walking on eggs.” He glanced at his wife. “It occurred to me that he was out for revenge. I wanted you out of the way.”

“And that’s why you became so difficult? So many excuses, so many suggestions that I go visit my relatives.” Catherine Vandyke shook her head ruefully. “I thought you were having an affair. Going through the male midlife crisis or something. I was frantic and furious. You should have told me, Ed. And later, at the resort, when Mr. Justis here tried to offer help you should have told him exactly what sort of help you needed! When I think of how close you came to getting killed . . .”

“As it is it’s going to be quite a while before I play golf,” Vandyke drawled. His hand moved under his desk to gently massage his left knee.

“I’ve been wondering about that left knee,” Guinevere said determinedly. “I take it Gannon was shot in the same place? That’s the reason for the limp?”

Vandyke nodded. “That’s what he told me when he kidnapped me and flew me to the island. Said he wanted everything to be the same as it had been for him. He dragged me to that clearing and casually put a bullet in my leg. Then he left.”

Guinevere frowned. “But what did he mean?”

“About having everything the same?” Vandyke sighed. “He was in trouble with the people he was working with all those years ago. He’d been playing both ends against the middle, I guess, and had managed to make both his South American contacts and his Florida buyers angry. Gannon assumed he could outmaneuver everyone, but someone apparently realized he was skimming, keeping some of the stuff he was supposed to be ferrying from South America to the States.”

“And after all these years he decided you’d betrayed him?” Zac asked.

Vandyke nodded. “As I said, he was really far-gone there at the end. The truth is I had begun to suspect he was involving our charter service in drug running. I was getting nervous. If he went too far he could have gotten all of us killed.” He shot a quick glance at his wife. “I confronted him with my suspicions and told him he’d better quit, or else I intended to fold the business. Gannon could never have run the charter service on his own. He knew nothing about running a business. He just wanted to fly. He was enraged. There were other things going on at the time, personal matters that—”

“I told Gwen that you and I had decided to marry just before Gannon took that last flight,” Catherine Vandyke interrupted calmly. “I mentioned that in his usual egotistical fashion Gannon had taken offense.”

“Yes, well, all in all Gannon was in a foul temper before he left on that last flight. When he kidnapped me a few days ago he told me there had been an ambush set at his rendezvous point. He’d been shot in the leg but he managed to get the plane back off the ground. Whoever was waiting for him apparently made a few direct hits on the aircraft, however. Got the fuel lines. At any rate, Gannon lost power near a small chunk of rock called Raton Island. He barely made it out of the plane, and when he did he found himself wounded and stranded on an uninhabited island.”

“But he survived,” Guinevere said softly.

“Gannon was good at surviving.” Vandyke flattened his palms on his desk and stared briefly at his fingertips. “He assumed that under the same circumstances I couldn’t have survived. He always said I was soft.”

“Hardly the same circumstances,” Zac pointed out. “An island in the sunny Caribbean isn’t exactly the same proposition as an island in the San Juans in winter. On Raton, at least, he didn’t have to worry about dying of hypothermia. How did he get off Raton, by the way? Did he tell you?”

“He got lucky after a few days—Gannon usually did get lucky. He built a fire with the cigarette lighter he had in his pocket when he ditched the plane. It caught the attention of a yacht that happened to be in the vicinity.” Vandyke winced. “He made sure I didn’t have anything with which to build a fire. And he seemed to know a lot about the effects of exposure. Figured I wouldn’t last twenty-four hours.”

“Where has he been all these years?” Mrs. Vandyke asked wonderingly.

“Playing games in the South Pacific,” Zac responded. “The police checked. Apparently he was still running drugs, but not under his old name. When he got back from Raton he discovered he was presumed dead by everyone, including the drug dealers he’d tried to cheat. He decided to take advantage of the fact to start over. Took a new name, moved to another part of the world, built up new identification. Found a new business partner, who didn’t have as many scruples as Vandyke had.”

“How did he get that DEA identification?” Guinevere asked.

“That was phony. He must have had it made up. Probably figured that in his line of work it might someday come in useful to bluff his way out of a sticky situation with the authorities. I imagine a lot of local cops on backwater islands in the South Pacific would have been just as impressed as you were with the DEA papers.”

Guinevere wrinkled her nose. “I resent that. I only got a very quick look at it, you know. Hardly enough time to tell whether or not it was genuine.”

Zac’s mouth crooked. “I doubt that you would have been able to tell even if you’d had more of an opportunity to examine it. It was a good forgery.”

Mrs. Vandyke shook her head sadly. “Imagine spending all these years plotting revenge. It must have eaten away at his soul.”

Vandyke frowned thoughtfully. “I got the feeling from what he said that he didn’t start thinking in terms of revenge against me until a couple of years ago. That’s probably about the time when he really started to slip off into a world of his own. Until then I think he assumed the truth—his drug-running friends were on to him—and he was most concerned with what to do about it. But about eighteen months ago he began thinking about the old days, he told me. His mind started gnawing away at what had happened, and he suddenly decided I must have been behind the setup that nearly got him killed.”

“I’m sure a psychiatrist would have something interesting to say about what happened inside Gannon’s head eighteen months ago,” Guinevere murmured.

“Probably even more to say about me, for being crazy enough to think I could handle this mess on my own,” Vandyke said. “I must admit, Zac, that when Miss Jones insisted I bring someone along to keep an eye on the proposal documents, I began thinking it would be reassuring to have someone around who knew what he was doing in a touchy situation. I really wasn’t all that worried about the documents, but Miss Jones made it sound as if you might be useful in other ways, so I let her talk me into hiring you. I want you to know how grateful I am to Free Enterprise Security. Needless to say, there will be a bonus in addition to your normal fee.”

“That’s not necessary,” Zac said in a businesslike tone. “My normal fee includes all extracurricular activities. Besides—I, uh, had my own reasons for taking the job.”

“I see. Well, I can only thank you once again. And you, too, Miss Jones. If it hadn’t been for your suggestion—”

“I was wondering,” Guinevere said brightly, “if I could show Zac the washroom.”

Vandyke looked momentarily blank. “The washroom?”

“She means the executive washroom.” Catherine Vandyke laughed in delight. “That ridiculous indoor marble-and-mauve outhouse you had put in last year.”

Vandyke grinned in sudden understanding. “Pretty classy, huh? Impresses the hell out of my visitors. Go ahead and have a look, Zac.”

“It’s not really necessary,” Zac began awkwardly. There was a trace of red on his cheekbones. But Guinevere was already tugging him to his feet and leading him down the short corridor to the executive washroom. “For Pete’s sake, Gwen, this is embarrassing.”

“This is incredible,” she corrected, flinging open the door.

“Good lord.” Zac stared in amazement at the gleaming black marble and gold fixtures. “You’re right. It’s incredible.”