US Marshall 03 - The Rapids (18 page)

“Hang on,” Rob said, rising. He checked the office door. Locked. “Libby? Are you in there?”

But there was no response, and he returned to Franconia, who’d managed to sit up a bit more.

“Can you talk?” Rob asked. “Tell me what happened.”

Franconia couldn’t seem to concentrate. “My wife—Star—”

“Maggie Spencer’s with her. Do you know how long you’ve been in here?”

“Minutes. I don’t know. There was a man….”

“White hair? Looks like an old drunk?”

His eyes flickered. “Yes.”

“Did he do this to you?”

A feeble smile. “Christ, I hope not.”

Rob didn’t blame the guy for wanting his assailant to be tougher-looking and appreciated his humor under stress.

“I—I was hit from behind,” Andrew went on. “It felt like a baseball bat.”

Someone had been busy. Star? Libby? Had Raleigh pulled a fast one and faked an injury? But Rob didn’t believe Raleigh had locked him in the wine cellar or taken a baseball bat to Andrew Franconia. Someone had been hiding, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Andrew was very pale, shivering now.

Rob noticed a handful of dusty wine bottles in the racks. “I wonder if the wine in these bottles is any good.”

His host coughed and moaned, tears of pain more than anguish streaming down his face.

The man needed a doctor.

“Well,” Rob said, “wine or no wine, I don’t intend to stay locked up for long.”

When Maggie reached the kitchen, she found the colander of blueberries in the sink and a radio on, tuned to news on a public station. But there was no Star. The radio hadn’t been on earlier—she must have returned to the kitchen and turned it on, perhaps to settle her nerves, beat back her worries and racing thoughts.

Where was she now?

Maggie checked Libby Smith’s first-floor suite, knocking softly on the door. “Libby? It’s Maggie Spencer. Are you in there?”

But there was no answer. The door was locked.

It was as if the sprawling house had suddenly spit out all its people. Star and Andrew weren’t around. Libby wasn’t around. There were no other guests. As she returned to the kitchen, Maggie noticed that her footsteps echoed on the wood floor, underscoring the emptiness of the place.

She decided to check the cellar, wondering if Libby was down there working on the inventory of her antiques. But the stairwell light wasn’t on—not a promising sign.

As she started to shut the door, Maggie heard a sound from the cellar. Muffled, perhaps just a breeze catching a door.

Had someone left the outside cellar door open? Gone out that way?

For all she knew, the inn had ghosts.

She switched on the light—the Franconias’ renovations didn’t extend to high-wattage bulbs and fancy stairwell lights—and ventured down the steep, old stairs.

The air was cooler, drier, and with the dehumidifier off, the silence was almost complete.

“Star? Libby?” Maggie called. “Anyone down here? Rob?”

No response.

She’d never been one for strange sounds in dark cellars.

She paused at the bottom of the steps, listening,
but there was still no repeat of whatever she’d heard—or imagined—a few minutes ago.

It was a large cellar, with old parts and new parts and too many doors and nooks for her to remember the exact route of her informal tour with Libby and Rob. Maggie had been far more interested in the history of the house, how weird it had to be—despite her cheerfulness—for Libby to be relegated to a small suite and odd jobs in her childhood home. That she was pulling together an antiques business was a rationalization. It had to sting to have lost a home that had been in her family for well over a century.

She’d been in Prague.

She’d arranged for the Franconias to sell Maggie’s father a vase a few months before he was killed.

She lived at the same inn Char Brooker had visited a month before her murder—the same inn Raleigh had found information about in Tom’s apartment the day before
he
was murdered.

As she turned a corner, Maggie noticed an arc of light up ahead. Daylight, she thought. Then someone
had
left the outer door open.

“Anyone down here? Hello? It’s Maggie Spencer.”

Again there was no answer.

She continued toward the light, recalling that the outer door was near the old wine cellar. The door to Libby’s storage room was unlocked, slightly ajar. Maggie pushed it open wider and realized a dim
light was on inside. She moved past the tumble of pieces Libby had collected, then came to a long antique table neatly stacked with books, files and photo albums. An apple crate on the floor was filled with dust cloths, lemon oil, window cleaner and miscellaneous supplies.

One of the albums was opened to old black-and-white photographs, a series taken in front of the fairy fountain—before it had its nose smashed with a wine bottle. All the photos were of a handsome man who had to be Libby’s grandfather. He looked rich, well dressed and content. If he could see his farm now, he’d probably be pleased it was as beautiful as it was, but shocked to find it in the hands of nonfamily members who’d saved it from certain destruction after his son’s years of neglect.

Next to the album was a little stack of pieces of a color photograph that someone had taken scissors to and hacked into five irregular chunks. Maggie put the pieces together, like a puzzle.

The photo was of Libby Smith and a glassy-eyed wreck of a man, red-faced and clearly drunk—obviously her father. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, smiling, her arm around his waist, probably holding him up for their picture.

They stood in front of the fairy statue, as if to emphasize that the son wasn’t at all like the father.

Drawing her weapon, Maggie wove through the
precariously stacked antiques to a half-open door in the corner of the small, windowless room.

“Maggie…”

William Raleigh crawled on his hands and knees out from the cover of ladder-back chairs stacked on top of a low wooden filing cabinet, all of them encrusted with dust and shrouded with cobwebs.

Maggie dropped down and put her arm around his thin waist. “Raleigh? What the hell is going on? Here, let me help you. Are you hurt?”

Blood dribbled out of the corners of his mouth.

Jesus.

“Libby,” Maggie said. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She’s—”

He slumped, semiconscious.

“Damn, Raleigh. Don’t die on me. I’ll get you to a doctor.”

“Her room…It’s all there….”

As if he were summoning his last shreds of strength, he lifted a hand and pointed to the doorway behind him.

Was Libby in there?

“Hang on, okay?” Maggie said. “I’ll be right back.”

Gun in hand, she ducked through the open door into a suffocatingly tiny room, windowless, a naked bulb providing scant light.

Libby Smith—or someone—was using this closetlike room as some kind of workspace. There was
a second door on the opposite wall—locked. Remembering her tour, Maggie realized it must lead to the adjoining wine cellar.

A laptop was open, powered up on a worktable. A small desk lamp shone brightly on manila file folders neatly laid in a row. Pictures were tacked to corkboard on the wall above the table. Maggie scanned them quickly, her grip tightening on her Glock.

One was of Charlene Brooker, serious, confident, in her army captain’s uniform. A Polaroid shot, taken here in Ravenkill.

There was Raleigh, smoking a cigarette on a European street.

Vladimir Samkevich in London.

And her father, smiling, his eyes crinkling in that familiar way. It was winter wherever he was. He wore a parka, was hatless and gloveless, but Maggie didn’t delude herself into thinking he’d been missing her mother in Boca.

Had there been something between him and Libby Smith?

Before Libby killed him, Maggie thought, knowing she was right—she had Raleigh’s assassin.

She quashed any emotional reaction and hit the space bar on the laptop.

On the screen was a picture of Rob with President John Wesley Poe on the Dunnemores’ dock on the Cumberland River in Night’s Landing, Tennessee.
They were holding fishing poles and grinning at the camera, belying any pretense that they weren’t that close. The picture had run in most of the world’s newspapers in the spring.

Maggie quickly scanned the rest of the claustrophobic room.

Boxes of ammunition.

Pistols.

And bomb-building supplies. Wires, timers, cords, plaster.

Gunpowder. Lighter fluid. Paint thinner.

Did Libby Smith plan to kill Rob?

The president of the United States?

Below their picture were three more pictures.

Rob’s parents, Betsy and Stuart Dunnemore. Sarah Dunnemore. Nate Winter.

Does she plan to kill them all?

Maggie left everything where it was and returned to the storage room, kneeling next to Raleigh, who was still. “How long have you known Libby’s your assassin?” she asked him.

He was a little more lucid, but still in obvious pain.

“An hour, maybe. Less. I’m sorry. I’ve been so stupid.”

“An antiques dealer who travels the world. Attractive, educated.” Maggie’s voice was tight, controlled. “What a cover.”

Raleigh tried to pull himself up, but gave up,
wincing as he wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. “Janssen hired her to eliminate anyone who could take over his network or who might cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for information.” He spoke haltingly, but his words were clear. “It’s all in that horror of a room. You have to find her, Maggie. You have to stop her before she kills anyone else.”

Maggie nodded and helped him into a sitting position. He had no strength left, his arms flopping aimlessly.

“Did Libby do this to you?”

“I don’t know why she didn’t—” He swallowed painfully. “Like Tom.”

Maggie understood what he was trying to say. He didn’t know why Libby hadn’t put a bullet in the back of his head.

“She must not want you dead from a bullet wound. Where is she now? Do you have any idea?”

He shook his head.

Maggie put her arm around his waist and flopped his arm over her shoulder, getting to her feet with him. “She’s operating from her own agenda.”

“She wants to take over Janssen’s network.”

“Not satisfied being his paid killer, is she?”

His eyes closed, his skin grayish now as he sank against her. “Leave me, Magster. I’ll slow you down.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“She’ll kill Brooker. Dunnemore.” His voice was
weak, and although he was coherent, he sounded as if he was babbling. “They’re next. Rob’s parents. His sister.”

“I know. Come on. Let’s just keep moving.”

Raleigh clutched her sleeve as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “Rob is down here. Libby—I don’t know what she did with him—”

Hell.
“I’ll take care of it.”

He rallied enough to move with her at a half run; she didn’t have to drag or carry him. When they reached the yard, he collapsed onto the grassy slope down to the cellar door.

“Go,” he said. “Find her….”

Maggie nodded and ran back inside, drawing her gun.

Just past Libby’s storage room, a cracking sound—a hiss—stopped her.
What the hell?

Libby. Her bomb-making ingredients.

Maggie dived for the floor even as the blast from the homemade bomb sent her sprawling.

As she hit the concrete floor, she smelled smoke and chemicals. She heard the distinctive sound of a fire spreading.

“Rob!” she called, scrambling to her feet. “Where are you?”

Smoke oozed out of the storage room. She couldn’t risk going back the way she’d come.

She had only one choice. To go up and get out that way.

Covering her mouth with her shirt, she stayed low, under the smoke, and hoped she remembered the route back to the stairs.

J
arred by the explosion, Rob smelled smoke and grabbed Franconia, dragging him to the hall door. “We’re crisps if we don’t get out of here. Don’t move, okay? I’m going to shoot the lock and get us out of here.”

“My wife—”

“We’ll find her.”

Standing to one side of the door, Rob fired twice across his chest, shattering the lock, splintering the wood around it. He helped Franconia to his feet.

Andrew’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Star thinks I love my work more than her—”

“Nah. She knows better.”

He moaned in agony when Rob pulled him into the hall, but at least it shut him up. The cellar was filling up with smoke. He could hear the crackle of flames, lightbulbs breaking with the heat. Staying low, he hoisted Franconia over his shoulder and ran
toward the outer door. When they reached fresh air, Rob kept moving, looking for a tree, a bench, a statue—cover was a necessity when a killer was blowing up things and beating the hell out of people.

Where was Raleigh?

Maggie?

Rob dumped Franconia onto the grass in the shade of a red maple.

It was a damn fine day. A beautiful spot.

Smoke was pouring out the cellar door.

Andrew, coughing and spitting, rolling in the grass in agony, finally noticed, finally let it sink in that his place was on fire. “Christ,” he said. “Oh, Christ. Goddamnit. What—” But he coughed again, sobbing in pain.

Rob knew he had to think. “If Raleigh didn’t lock us in the wine cellar, who the hell did? If he’s a good guy and you’re a good guy and Star’s a good guy and Maggie’s a good guy—” He stared down at Franconia. “I think your pal Libby wants us dead.”

“I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying. You just feel like you’re dying.”

Rob scanned the immediate area and spotted Raleigh prone on the slope about five yards away, and ran to him. “Maggie,” Rob said. “Where is she?”

But Raleigh couldn’t answer, could barely move, and Rob swore. Libby Smith had already beaten the
hell out of two men. If she found them, she’d have two hostages.

Rob couldn’t leave Raleigh and Franconia for her.

Maggie was on her own.

Quashing any panic—any sense of exhilaration—Libby focused on the task at hand.

She had to get out of the house before she ended up dead herself.

She was almost there, almost to the porch door.

Her first-floor suite was on fire. She’d set a second explosive device there. The cellar had to be fully engaged now. Investigators would figure out it was arson—she didn’t have the time, or even the skills, to make the fire look like an accident.

But she hadn’t used bullets or poison to kill Dunnemore and Raleigh or Andrew if he ended up dead, too. He and Star were stretched thin financially and emotionally—investigators would suspect them first. By the time the authorities got around to her, Libby thought, she’d be gone, working her way down Nick Janssen’s target list, solidifying her own position.

She had a contingency plan of her own. A new identity—a new life—waiting for her.

All she had to do was get out of the goddamn house before she collapsed of smoke inhalation.

Star seemed to materialize in front of her.

What?

Her arms were flapping at her sides, and she was screaming incoherently. Libby managed to make out “my house” and “Andrew.”

Libby shoved her back out onto the porch. “Go,” she said. “Get to the barn. Call 911.
Hurry.
I’ll find Andrew.”

With any luck, he was dead in the wine cellar with Rob Dunnemore.

“I can’t—”

But Libby kept moving forward, all but pushing Star, in a panic, sputtering, down the porch steps to the stone path, repeating her instructions.
Barn. 911. Barn. 911.
She’d be out of the way. She wouldn’t suspect Libby of any involvement in the fire—which would further delay the police from looking in her direction.

When they reached the barn, Libby promised again to find Andrew. Star nodded, white-faced, in shock.

Libby left her.

And she ran, heading for Ravenkill Creek and freedom.

Ethan charged up a narrow path toward the apple orchard and the Old Stone Hollow Inn, Deputy Longstreet a step behind him with her Glock in hand. Not for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, he wished he hadn’t been so scrupulous about getting her into trouble and had scored a couple of guns for himself.

They’d been on their way down to Ravenkill Creek when they’d heard something in the distance—a crack, a rumble. Whatever it was, it wasn’t normal.

Then they’d seen the black smoke rising above the trees.

“Christ,” Juliet had breathed next to him. “What the hell’s going on?”

Now they were on their way to find out.

Ethan wasn’t accustomed to sneaking around places that were as posh as Ravenkill. His old haunts at West Point were just across the Hudson, but he hadn’t been back there in years.

He wasn’t law enforcement. He was military.

Or he had been. He didn’t know what the hell he was now. Wanted by the marshals, probably. Juliet had made calls on the way up to Ravenkill, explaining what she was up to.

A cloud of mosquitoes followed them into the orchard. Juliet didn’t seem to notice. She went at a loping run, finally overtaking him. Ethan’s head was pounding. Given his injuries, he supposed he might not be moving as fast as he thought he was.

He could smell the smoke now. The ground was soft, the grass wet against his lower legs. Up ahead, the Old Stone Hollow Inn was on fire.

With her free hand Juliet pulled out her cell phone and, as she and Ethan ran toward the burning house, called for reinforcement.

Star ran around in circles in front of the barn like a two-year-old having a tantrum, her arms flapping at her sides as she screamed. She had her portable phone clutched in one hand. Maggie caught the frightened woman by both arms and held them still. “Star. Get hold of yourself and listen to me.”

“Andrew—”

“He’s safe. He’s with Rob. I just saw them.” And Raleigh, half-dead, she thought; she’d waved to Rob that she was okay and had gone to grab Star, in hysterics by the barn. “Did you call 911?”

“No. I can’t. My phone—” She squeezed her eyes shut, then flung the phone to the ground. “It’s
dead.
”

If he could get through, Rob would have called for help by now, but Maggie wasn’t sure how much he knew—if he’d figured out for himself or if Raleigh had managed to tell him that Libby was their killer. She squeezed gently on Star’s arms. “Listen to me, Star. Libby—”

“She’s gone.” Crying, Star withdrew one hand from Maggie’s grasp and waved toward the cornfield and the apple orchard. “Running—she’s scared—”

No,
Maggie thought.
She’s getting away.

“I need to go after her,” Maggie said, dropping Star’s other hand, trying to penetrate the woman’s fear and panic. “I want you to go stay with Rob. He’s getting your husband and another man away from
the fire. He’ll see you coming—you’ll be fine. You can help him.”

The frenetic pacing and flapping stopped, and Star stared at Maggie, expressionless. “The marshal?” She seemed to struggle to stay focused on what she was saying. “He has Andrew?”

“Yes.” Maggie touched Star gently on the shoulder. “Tell Rob I’ve gone after Libby Smith. Tell him she’s our assassin.”

“What?”

But Maggie knew Star had understood her. “Can you do that for me?”

She nodded.

“Libby’s going to try to kill more people. She has a long list. Tell Rob he needs to get his family into protective custody.” Maggie paused a moment, but Star didn’t switch back into panic mode. “I’ve got to go before Libby gets too far ahead of me.”

“I can do this,” she said.

Maggie tried to smile. “I know you can.”

She waited as long as she could to make sure Star was okay as she staggered down the stone path toward her burning inn. Then, staying within the cover of the trees as best she could, Maggie went after Libby Smith.

Nate was at home preparing for a noon meeting when Mike Rivera called with the news from Ravenkill, giving it in an efficient staccato that nonetheless relayed his urgency in no uncertain terms.

“Libby Smith hasn’t had time to get to New York, never mind D.C.,” Rivera said. “We’ll catch her. But I thought you’d want to know.”

That he and his future wife and her family were targets of a hired killer? Yeah. He wanted to know. “Rob?”

“Alive, last we heard.”

After Rivera hung up, Nate walked across the lawn in the hot sunshine to the small dump that Sarah had carefully marked off for her archaeological dig. Some days she worked with college and high school students, showing them how it was done, teaching them about the history found in mundane objects—but, thankfully, not today.

When she looked up at him from her pile of dirt, her face transformed from eager welcome to concern and dread. “Where’s Rob?”

In hell, Nate thought.

But it wasn’t what he told Rob’s twin sister. “He’s fine right now, but you need to come inside.”

“I’ve got work—”

“It can wait.”

She remained calm, brushing off her overalls as she stood up, but Nate knew the realization that her brother was in danger—that she, potentially, was in danger—had hit her.

“My parents?” she asked.

“Mike Rivera just told me that two deputies from the Nashville office are on the way to Night’s Landing.”

“Nick Janssen? He wants us all dead?”

Nate nodded, and she took his hand and walked back across the lawn with him.

Rob grabbed Star before she collapsed and got her to the shade of a huge maple, where he’d managed to drag both injured men, well clear of the burning house. The roof was engulfed now. It would be a total loss.

Star was shaking badly, her skin cold to the touch, but she clawed at Rob. “My husband—”

“He’s hurt, but I think he’ll be all right. Ambulance is on the way.”

Rob released her, and she sank beside Andrew, lowering her head to his chest and sobbing. He tried to stroke her hair, but he didn’t have the energy, his arm falling to his side.

Star looked up at Rob, her eyes wide and sunken with shock and fear. “Agent Spencer’s gone after Libby. Toward Ravenkill Creek.”

Rob acknowledged Star’s words with a nod.

“You’re not going after her?”

“I can’t leave you all here alone.”

Raleigh stirred. “Give me a goddamn gun,” he mumbled. “Or a kitchen knife. I can do a lot of damage with a kitchen knife.”

Rob had to give the old guy credit. “Maggie can handle herself.”

“I should have known it was Libby. Crazy bitch.”
He moaned softly, his color better than it was. “In my younger days—”

“You managed to keep her from beating Andrew to death with her baseball bat.”

“Then she turned her damn bat on me,” Raleigh said with a bit more energy. “Beat the living daylights out of me.”

From what Rob had pieced together from the mutterings of the two semiconscious men, Andrew had realized Libby hadn’t been around over the weekend and had checked the cellar, where she spent a lot of time, discovering a treasure trove of incriminating evidence. He and Star had prided themselves on respecting Libby’s privacy and the fact that the inn had been in her family for so long.

Rob heard the blare of sirens. Star jumped, startled, shaking hard.

Raleigh sat up, blood on the side of his mouth from a cut lip, not, Rob thought, internal injuries. “Go after Maggie,” he told Rob. “Don’t leave her to that woman. Libby would kill Maggie the same way she’d kill a cockroach. Without hesitation, without remorse. You know she would. It’s how she killed Tom Kopac.”

Rob was tempted, but he knew he wasn’t leaving Raleigh and the Franconias until help got there. Then he spotted Juliet and Brooker on the stone path and signaled to them. They waved, picking up their pace as they pounded through a flower bed and ducked
under a low-hanging branch, then joined him in the shade.

Rob quickly filled them in.

“It’s your call, Dunnemore,” Juliet said. “Do you want to go after your DS agent and assassin or shall I?”

“I’ll go.”

She managed a wink. “Thought so.”

But first he turned to Brooker. “Talk to Raleigh. Your wife stayed here a month before she was killed.”

Brooker had no visible reaction. “I’m going with you.”

“Uh-uh,” Juliet said. “You’ve got a concussion, Brooker, and Dunnemore here’s a triathlete. You’ll just slow him down.”

But Rob was already on his way.

Maggie ran through tall ferns and brush in the woods below the orchard and cornfield. There was no path. She could hear the creek just below her, tumbling over rocks, almost drowning out the sounds of the sirens of the onslaught of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars.

The riverbank was steep, covered in slippery pine mulch and exposed tree roots, but she made sure she didn’t trip. She couldn’t risk giving Libby any advantage.

When she reached the river, Maggie stayed within the cover of a white pine as she scanned the banks.

The water, deeper here, was high from last night’s rain, crashing over a mix of rounded and jagged gray boulders, forming a stretch of whitewater rapids.

Libby stood on a rock, maybe a yard into the river.

“Drop your weapon,” Maggie called from behind her tree, her Glock trained on the assassin. Tom’s killer. Her father’s killer. “Do it now.”

Without a word, Libby released her Beretta and let it fall into the water.

What the hell was she up to?
Maggie stayed where she was. “Keep your hands up where I can see them.”

Libby smiled in her direction. “You won’t kill me. You want your answers.”

And she stepped off her rock into the river, as if she were walking over a threshold. When she hit the water feetfirst, she went under, her arms flailing, but the current was too strong and dragged her downstream, smashing her against a boulder.

Maggie ran down to the water’s edge, Libby a couple of yards into the river. Blood flowed down the right side of her face. She tried to hold on to the rock, but lost her grip and fell back into the water, going under again. She managed to lurch up and wrap both arms around another rock, only her head above the rapids.