Читать книгу The Christmas Clue - Delores Fossen - Страница 9

Chapter Three

“Well?” Cass challenged. “Do you finally realize I’m telling the truth?” But she dropped the snarky attitude when Matt groaned, rolled off her and landed on his back on the floor.

“I can’t believe this,” he said. And he kept repeating it, punctuating it with some profanity.

Cass tried to sit up, but he put his arm across her stomach to keep her down. “I know it’s going to take some time to sink in—”

His glare cut her off. “Don’t say anything. Don’t move,” he said, through clenched teeth. “And don’t you dare pull out another weapon.”

“Because you already have enough to deal with. Yes, I understand that.”

Besides, she had no intention of holding him at gunpoint. Not now. That phone call was exactly the impetus that could get Matt Christensen to cooperate with her plan.

Well, maybe.

Maybe he would go in an entirely different direction and try to turn all of this, including her, over to the authorities.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Because with Dominic’s recent pact with the powers-that-be, no one would be looking hard for evidence to exonerate her. Heck, they might even destroy those surveillance tapes to protect the tenuous relationship they had with a man who could help them catch bigger, meaner fish.

“Truth time,” Matt insisted, groaning and turning his head toward her. Unfortunately, that put their faces only a couple of inches apart. Practically eye-to-eye. “Did you doctor that photo?”

“No.”

He studied her a moment. “But you had reason to doctor it.”

“True, but if I hadn’t thought the child was your daughter, I wouldn’t have come here.” Because all that intimate eye contact was starting to distract her again, she looked away. “I figured…hoped,” she said, rethinking, “that you’d want to find Molly.”

“How?” he tossed at her like a gauntlet. “Your plan sucks, and it has crater-size holes in it. For instance, if by some miracle you do get inside Dominic’s estate, what then? Have you even thought beyond that point?”

“You bet I have. The plan is simple—we find the evidence and your daughter, and we take both her and the surveillance disks and get out of there.”

Because he still had his arm slung over her stomach, she felt his muscles tense. “My daughter.” A moment later he hissed out a breath. “If it’s really true, then why wouldn’t Vanessa have told me?”

Cass could think of a reason—maybe the snobbish Vanessa hadn’t wanted her middle-class ex-boyfriend to know because she’d had no plans to keep their child—but Cass didn’t voice that aloud. Judging from his silence and the way his jaw muscles had declared war on each other, Matt had already drawn the same conclusions.

“Look, I know it’ll take you awhile to come to grips with all of this,” she said to him. “But the truth is—we don’t have time to spare. Remember that part about Dominic recycling disks every year. Well, in eight days it’ll be a year since he murdered his business associate and framed me. I have it on good authority that he didn’t bother to erase those disks, probably because he’s too arrogant to believe he could ever get caught. We have eight days at the most to get the evidence, and each and every one of those days means that your little girl is living under the same roof with a man like Dominic.”

His gaze snapped to hers, and his teeth came together. “I don’t need that reminder.”

She wasn’t immune to that emotion she heard in his voice. A father’s concern. Even though she wasn’t a parent, Cass had no trouble imagining how she would feel if their positions were reversed.

“For what it’s worth,” she offered, “Dominic’s sister, Annette, has apparently been taking care of the child since the adoption. In fact, Annette’s the one who wanted a baby, and Dominic adopted Molly for her because she can’t have children of her own.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“It should. Annette’s physically handicapped and overly devoted to Dominic, but from everything I’ve heard about her, she’s also, well, human. And kind. I’ve never met the woman, but I don’t believe she’d hurt your daughter.”

Cass prayed that was true anyway. Dominic was Annette’s baby brother, and Cass figured if it came down to it, Annette would protect Dominic at all cost. Unfortunately, that now involved an innocent baby girl.

She pushed off his arm and got to her feet, not easily. Cass winced at the soreness in her backside and legs. She’d have bruises from their wrestling match, but then Matt likely hadn’t escaped injury, either. “You should probably get dressed so we can start making plans to leave.”

However, the moment the words left her month, a chill went down her spine. Not because of the leaving part—that was a necessity—but because the full impact of that call hit her. She’d let the news distract her, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“Just who was that on the phone anyway?” she asked.

“Ronald McKenzie.” Matt got up from the floor. No wincing for him. He accomplished it quite easily, then put her weapon on the counter next to the tranquilizer gun, picked up his pants and put them on. “He works for the FBI.”

That spine chill got significantly worse. “Oh, mercy.” She stepped in front of him. “Didn’t you hear that part about the leak in official communication’s channels?”

“I heard, but I trust Ronald.”

“Yes, but you can’t trust the people he questioned about your child.”

Matt opened his mouth and closed it. Cass could almost see the thought process happening in his head. But what she couldn’t determine was where exactly those thoughts were leading.

“You need me to get into Dominic’s estate,” she said, in case he was thinking about ditching her. “I’ve been there, and I know the layout. Without me, it’ll take you a lifetime or two just to find your daughter.”

He just stared at her.

“Okay, maybe not a lifetime,” she countered, when that stare crossed over to making her uncomfortable. “But if we do this right, it can be a quick in and out. An extraction, I believe you special agent guys call it. You could bring Molly home where she belongs.”

Matt zipped his pants. “Or I could simply ask Dominic Cordova to hand her over to me.”

It was an angle Cass had already anticipated, and she had a cautionary answer. “You could, but what happens if he refuses? The Justice Department won’t be on your side. You said so yourself. Dominic is their new best friend.”

He paused a moment and then shook his head. “You’re asking the impossible. I can’t break the law. I’ve sworn—”

“I know.” Best to nip the doubt before it could grow into a full-blown argument. “But if we think this through, we may be able to skip anything illegal. For starters, I know the head groundskeeper at the estate. He’s a semifriend, and he can hire us as part of the crew who’ll be decorating the estate for Christmas. That way we wouldn’t technically be breaking and entering.”

“No. We’d only be stealing. Last time I checked that was still a crime even for former debutantes.”

She hated that label and hated even more that it bugged her. And he knew it bugged her.

“You have a right to your daughter,” she reminded him. “And Dominic obviously isn’t planning on just handing her over, or he would have already done it. If he didn’t know beforehand, he certainly suspects now that the adoption was illegal. It was all over the news, and the lawyer who handled Molly’s adoption was arrested.”

“All of that could mean nothing.” But his body language told her that Matt knew she was right.

Cass pushed a little harder. “Here’s my suggestion. You ask for some vacation time. If your boss wants to know why, you can say it’s some sort of family emergency. Which it is. Then, you borrow the jamming equipment, and we can leave immediately. If all goes well, you could be back as soon as the day after tomorrow—with your little girl.”

“No,” he said, buttoning his shirt.

Stunned, Cass replayed that one word, hoping she’d heard him wrong. “No? To what part of the plan?”

“To all of it.”

She replayed that, as well, and it didn’t sound any better the fifth time around. “But what about Molly?”

He shrugged. “That’s what official channels are for.”

Cass could have pointed out all the pitfalls associated with official channels, especially since Dominic was now part of those channels. However, Matt Christensen knew what was at stake here. He knew that Dominic could hide the child so that no one could get to her—ever. He knew what could go wrong, and yet he was obviously willing to risk doing this the official way.

“Okay,” Cass mumbled. She took a deep breath and pushed her hair away from her forehead. “So, I guess this is goodbye. No hard feelings, I hope.”

With that, she started for the door.

She didn’t get far.

He snagged her by the arm. “You think you’re leaving?”

Since that sounded like a challenge, her chin came up. “I am leaving.” She tried not to sound hesitant.

But she was. Heaven help her, she was.

Special Agent Matt Christensen had been her best shot at clearing her name. Without him, she didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of doing that.

“It’d be suicide for you to try to break into Dominic’s estate alone,” he pointed out.

“I have insider help, remember?”

“Yeah, and if that were enough, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

Touché.

Yes, she had an insider, Hollis Becker, Dominic’s head groundskeeper and the man in charge of external security for the estate. Because she was paying him well, he was good at eavesdropping, keeping track of Dominic and taking the occasional picture for her. But Hollis wouldn’t be able to get her past the internal security system there. No, the best he could do was get her a fake job as a seasonal helper, give her a temporary place to stay and tidbits of information as to Dominic’s immediate whereabouts. That would give her, perhaps, an opportunity to sneak inside the basement of Dominic’s estate.

Cass tried to move out of his grip, but he held on, latching on to her other arm as well. She really hated the idea of kneeing him in the groin, but if it came down to it, she would. If she stayed, she’d end up in jail and therefore, dead.

“Once I’m inside the estate, I’ll do everything within my power to get your daughter out of there,” she explained, even though it was hard to deliver a calm explanation with her emotions doing a foot race inside her.

He blinked. “You’d actually try to get the baby out?”

“Of course.” Cass watched the surprise on his face. No, not just surprise. Shock. She frowned. “What, you think I’d leave a child there with Dominic if I had a chance to save her? You must really believe I’m a selfish bimbo.”

The hold he had on her melted away, and he groaned and dropped back a step. Cass took it as the gift that it was. She retrieved both of her weapons, and she headed for the back door.

She made it two steps.

“Wait,” he said.

Cass stopped. Held her breath. And prayed. Because even though she’d been willing to walk out that door, she knew without his help, she’d fail. Slowly she turned back around to face him.

He opened his mouth to say something. What, she didn’t know. And she didn’t get a chance to learn because the phone rang again.

Like before, he didn’t answer it. He stood there. Waiting. It didn’t take long for the answering machine to kick in.

“Matt, it’s me, Ronald,” the voice said. She recognized it as the man who’d called earlier. Except his voice was a little different now. Not sleepy. Frantic. “I hope to hell you’re there listening to this. And I hope to hell I’m wrong.”

Matt reached over and hit the speaker function on the phone. “What’s going on?” he asked the caller.

“I don’t know exactly, but five minutes ago the communications guys at the central command post intercepted a Level Red threat.”

Cass looked at Matt, silently requesting an explanation.

He didn’t provide one.

“I take it this Level Red has something to do with me?” Matt asked his friend.

“It has everything to do with you. Your name is on it. So is a fugitive—Cassandra Harrison. They believe she’s there with you.”

That caused Matt to curse.

“What’s wrong?” Cass mouthed.

Again he didn’t answer.

“My advice is to get out of there fast,” Ronald McKenzie continued. “We’ve got backup on the way, but it doesn’t look like we’ll make it in time. These guys are five to ten minutes ahead of us.”

With that ominous-sounding warning, Ronald McKenzie hung up.

Matt didn’t waste any time. He snatched his weapon from the fridge.

“What’s wrong?” Cass demanded. “What does Level Red mean?” And she held her breath because she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

Matt Christensen latched on to her arm and got her moving toward the kitchen door. “It means we leave now. Someone sent assassins to kill us.”