Narrow Escape Read online

  “They looked through my computer,” Liam said. “They probably would have destroyed it if they’d had time.”

  “They saw everything, then?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. The internet history where Arissa logged in to First Sonoma Bank—it seems like they didn’t even look at it. They probably thought it was mine and didn’t even connect it with Mark. And for my work, I have a lot of different email addresses, so the one of Mark’s that Arissa found got lost among all the others I have.”

  “Could they log in to any of those?”

  “No, the browser is not set to remember user names and passwords. It comes with being a skip tracer—I have to be paranoid or I’m not doing my job.”

  “Could you tell what they might have been looking for? They tore up the bedroom, too.”

  Liam shook his head. “They were pretty violent, makes me think they might have been destructive just to send a message.”

  “So maybe what they want from Charity isn’t an object she inherited?”

  “Can’t say. Don’t make any assumptions.”

  Nathan nodded. He was right. “Did they leave any clue as to how they found your home in the first place?”

  Liam shook his head.

  Nathan exhaled in frustration. “I thought we were being careful.”

  “You were. No one except Dad and Shaun knew I was back in Sonoma. Even Brady didn’t find out until a few days ago, and he knew not to tell anyone.”

  “You’ve never had contact with any LSL gang members, have you?”

  Liam snorted in disbelief. “Of course not.”

  “And Shaun...” Suddenly he remembered. “Last year, Shaun asked me to look into police reports about your sister’s death down in Los Angeles.”

  Liam nodded. “He told me about that.”

  “I asked my friend Steve Thompson to do that for me.”

  Liam’s brows drew together. “The same guy you asked about the LSLs.”

  “He happened to call right after the LSLs attacked us at the rest stop. The timing was suspicious, and it crossed my mind that he might be a mole and checking up on me, but I didn’t say anything to him about Arissa. But if he is in contact with the LSLs, then he already knows the gang is after Arissa and that she’s with me.”

  “And the LSLs know you’re in Sonoma, after you were seen coming back from the bank.”

  “Steve knows I’m friends with Shaun, and that the O’Neills live in Sonoma. Since I’m not at my parents’ house, it wouldn’t be a huge stretch for him to look at any Sonoma properties owned or rented by O’Neills, on the chance I’d be hiding with one of them.” Which he had been.

  “That’s assuming Steve is the mole.”

  “Which I’m not entirely sure about,” Nathan admitted.

  “What about people in Sonoma who might have talked to the LSL guys? They could have been asking around.”

  Nathan remembered seeing the two gang members talking to the migrant workers gathered at the hardware store parking lot. “Maybe. They might have gotten lucky and talked to someone who knows me or my family. But that person would also have to know Shaun and I are friends.”

  “Shaun and I are five years apart so we were never in the same school at the same time, but I don’t remember the two of you being friends back then.”

  “We weren’t. I didn’t actually meet him until we were both working down south—me in the LAPD, him on the border patrol.”

  “So you can probably rule out school friends you haven’t talked to recently.”

  “I don’t exactly tell everyone I see now that I’m friends with Shaun O’Neill. And I don’t know if my parents would have told any of their friends.” Nathan kicked at the grass at his feet. “Is it really possible that the LSL gang members would have somehow managed to speak to someone purely by chance who knew these things about me?”

  “What about someone in Sonoma working for the LSLs?”

  Nathan looked at Liam. “A gang member?”

  “Not necessarily. Could be someone sympathetic with them, trading something for something.”

  “Would the LSLs really have had time to find an ally here in Sonoma between the time Arissa escaped and contacted me?”

  “Mark was here in Sonoma. I know you said that he had the excuse that he was visiting an aunt who lives here, but what if that wasn’t the reason he chose to have a bank account here as opposed to somewhere else?”

  Nathan remembered his conversation with Steve. “Steve mentioned there are rumors the LSLs are moving north, although he didn’t say where. What if they are moving to Sonoma? That wouldn’t explain why Mark was here—after all, he was a mole giving them information from the LAPD, not a captain of the gang in charge of their larger plans. But it would explain if the LSLs do have someone here in Sonoma who’s working for them. That could be how they found us.”

  He and Arissa needed to be doubly careful about where they hid next. He asked Liam, “What are you going to do? Where are you going to go now?”

  Liam smiled at him but didn’t say anything.

  “That’s right. Never mind.” Liam was a skip tracer. He probably already had a safe house set up.

  “Do you have any ideas about where you’ll be next? I can help if you want.”

  “I’m not sure. It needs to be somewhere unconnected with my family so whoever found out we were staying with you can’t find us again.”

  “It’s too bad you don’t know where Mark’s apartment is.”

  “It’s probably been cleaned out and rented to someone else by now.” Nathan dug out the key to look at it. “It might not be an apartment at all.”

  Liam’s brows suddenly drew down. “Can I see that?”

  Nathan passed the key to Liam.

  “This key is pretty new,” Liam said. “No dings or scratches. Here’s the key to my dad’s house.” Liam fumbled with his key chain and separated his house key, which was covered in scratches and had remnants of tape stuck to one side. “My key looks like it’s been in a bomb blast. Whereas Mark’s doesn’t.”

  “He could have gotten a newer apartment.”

  “Could he really afford it?”

  Nathan thought back to his bank account. “He didn’t have much money when he first started working with the LSLs, but he got more later. I don’t know when he got this apartment. And it could be that the landlord had just replaced the locks with new ones and that’s why his key looks so new.”

  Nathan’s cell phone rang, and he recognized the number as Shaun’s. “Hello?”

  “I can’t believe I keep forgetting to get your number on my cell phone,” Arissa groused. “I had to use Shaun’s phone.”

  He felt a twinge that he hadn’t thought about it earlier. Arissa had mentioned that she hadn’t been able to call his cell phone when she saw Shaun driving to Liam’s house. “Here it is—”

  “Tell me when you get up here to the hospital room.”

  “I’ll be up in a few—”

  “I’d like you to come now, if you can.”

  “Sure. Why?” He rose to his feet and motioned to Liam to join him. They started walking back across the parking lot toward the entrance to the hospital.

  “I think I’ve found a new hideout for us.”

  * * *

  Hideout was right. Arissa squinted through the trees. “I’m not seeing it.” She could barely see the dirt track Nathan drove along through the forest. “I thought Sonoma was all vineyards and rolling foothills.”

  “We’re not in Sonoma anymore.” Nathan paused as the SUV jounced over a rut. “We passed civilization a county ago.”

  “Ha, ha.” Arissa grabbed at the dashboard as the car bounced again. “If Monica wasn’t dating your good friend, I’d suspect her of sending us to get lost in the wo
ods.”

  “How much farther?”

  “The cabin’s supposed to be coming up soon.”

  The words had just left her mouth when they turned and saw the brightness of a clearing through the trees. Another turn and they exited the trees to park in front of a tiny wooden cabin.

  Arissa got out and unbuckled Charity from the new child’s seat they’d had to buy. The SUV, an older model than Nathan’s, had been borrowed from one of Patrick O’Neill’s friends.

  Arissa turned to survey the cabin, which had been Monica Grant’s idea. Made of darkened, weathered wood, it had the distinct air of neglect, as Monica had warned. Her aunt’s cousins rarely used the vacation cabin, for the simple reason that it had spotty cell phone coverage and didn’t have internet access.

  “This isn’t too bad.” Nathan tried to peer into a grimy window. “And it’s not so far from a major road that we can still get to Sonoma within an hour.”

  The front door lock stuck, and Nathan had to strain to open it. It didn’t help that his left arm still hurt him and he couldn’t use it as fully as he’d like. The lock finally slid back and they entered the cabin.

  Dark wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling and glossy wood paneling made the cabin seem a bit like a cave. The effect was enhanced by the dirty windows—only four of them, and small. Arissa eyed the ratty couch, wondering if she had heard a mouse’s squeak from its lumpy depths. Dust coated the oak dining table and the cheap Formica counters in the kitchen, which was open to the living room like Liam’s place had been.

  “How often do Monica’s cousins use this place?”

  “Not her cousins. It belongs to Monica’s aunt Becca’s cousin on her mother’s side. But they don’t use it very often, she said.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s a safe place for us.”

  “It should be. The name on the property is Becca’s cousin, who has a completely different last name from Becca’s.”

  “Let’s start a fire before it gets too cold.”

  Soon Nathan had a wood-burning fire going in the stone fireplace in the living room, and after placing the screen in front of it, Arissa had Charity playing with her dolls by the roaring blaze. Nathan helped her clean the worst of the dirt and dust from the living room and kitchen. He tackled the two small bedrooms and bathroom while she set about heating up some canned soup to go along with the bread they’d also bought.

  She tensed as they sat down to the meal, but she wasn’t about to change her habit of saying grace just because of Nathan’s bitterness toward God. “Let’s pray, nene.”

  Charity immediately folded her hands and bowed her head, and Arissa did also without looking to see what Nathan did. She said a short grace and when she said “Amen,” Nathan surprised her by grunting, “Amen” right after her. Old habits died hard, she supposed.

  “Aunt Rissa, why couldn’t Uncle Liam come with us?” Charity asked.

  “He had a new home to go to.” He’d been as secretive as a CIA agent about it, too.

  “Why did he go to a new home?”

  “His old home got...messy.”

  “I could have helped him clean up.” Charity slurped her soup. “I’m good at helping, right, Uncle Nathan? I helped you with the bedroom.”

  She’d actually only stood in the doorway and watched as Nathan swept the floor, then took the bedcovers stored in the cedar chest outside to shake them out and air them. But he said, “You were a big help.” To Arissa he said, “Good thing Monica remembered to send clean sheets with us. There weren’t any in the bedrooms.”

  “You brought in the towels from the car, right?”

  He nodded and tore off a piece of bread.

  Such a strangely domestic conversation, a marked contrast to the tense last few days. She could almost pretend they were a family sitting down to dinner.

  Then Nathan happened to look up at her and meet her eyes. His gaze slid away immediately.

  Not quite a family. No, they would probably never be a family. Not with the way Nathan felt about her brother, her faith. What a complete change from three years ago, when Nathan and Mark had been such good friends, when he’d been a strong Christian. It seemed her entire world had turned upside down.

  They cleaned up the supper dishes, paired Nathan’s new prepaid phone to the wireless hub, and connected the laptop to the internet. Arissa looked at his phone. “Cell coverage is pretty poor.”

  “As long as it’s not nonexistent, I’m fine. Let me check my email...” He grunted.

  “What is it?”

  “I got an email from Steve Thompson. He said he tried calling my cell phone, but since we got new ones and dumped the old ones, his call didn’t go through. He asked me to call him tonight because he has news about the LSLs.”

  She frowned. “He has impeccable timing.”

  Nathan exhaled a long, slow breath. “I’m not sure if I should call him.”

  “He can find your new phone number if you call him, right?”

  “That’s not a problem. If I keep the call short and shut the phone off after I use it, he can’t use its GPS chip to track us.” He paused before adding, “Assuming he’s a mole for the LSL gang.”

  “He seems to always call after something significant happens—after we were attacked at the rest stop, after we’d escaped the gang members at the storage facility and now that we’re in a new hiding place.”

  “But what if it’s important information? He did tell us about the LSL gang moving north, which might be a significant reason for Mark to have been in Sonoma.”

  Arissa bit her lip. “If you want to call him, I can take Charity to the other room. The door doesn’t close all the way, but I can keep her quiet.”

  He absently swept his hand over the keyboard without depressing any of the keys. “Okay, I’ll give him a call.” He retrieved his cell phone while Arissa talked to Charity about being very quiet for a few minutes as she carried her to the bedroom. Her niece tended to be quiet anyway, but Arissa didn’t want any sudden outbursts while Nathan was on the phone, especially because the warped bedroom door didn’t close properly.

  He put the phone on Speaker and dialed. “Hey, Steve, it’s Nathan.” Arissa knew he put it on speaker so she could listen in.

  “Got a new cell phone?”

  “Yeah, I dropped my old one while fishing on the lake.”

  “Oh, sucks for you, buddy.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “You know how I told you about Malaya and Arissa?”

  “Did the detective in charge ever find Arissa to ask her about her cell phone?”

  “No, not as far as I know. But things are looking worse for her.”

  Arissa tensed.

  “How?” Nathan asked, an edge to his voice.

  “Malaya’s dead.”

  Malaya? No! Arissa fought to keep in the cries threatening to burst from her.

  “She was found this morning. Looked like she’d been tortured.” Steve’s voice dropped at the end.

  Arissa squeezed her eyes shut. Tortured to give the LSLs information about her car.

  Then a tiny voice at her ear, “Aunt—”

  She immediately wrapped her arms around Charity to muffle her words. She’d let her tension affect her niece, and she couldn’t let Steve know they were with Nathan. She bent her head close to whisper, “Remember, we need to be quiet, nene.”

  The little girl nodded against her shoulder, and Arissa released her.

  Steve was continuing, “Body was found in LSL territory, so the detective in charge is looking into the gang—the torture looks like their work, anyway.”

  Arissa cringed at his heartless words, but she had to remember that he didn’t know she was listening. Steve thought he was simply talking to a fellow detective about som
eone neither of them knew.

  “But the detective wants to follow up on Arissa’s cell phone that was found in Malaya’s apartment, since an LSL member had been the last call she received.”

  “When was the time of death?” Nathan asked.

  “She’d been dead at least twenty-four hours. Medical examiner still hasn’t made an official report.”

  “I can’t believe that of Arissa,” he told Steve in a neutral voice.

  “Have you spoken to her recently?”

  Nathan regarded the phone with a narrow gaze as he said, “I reported her brother to IA, remember? I haven’t talked to her family since Mark died.”

  “No, of course. I forgot.”

  Nathan cleared his throat. “Thanks for telling me, Steve.”

  “I figured you’d want to know, it being Mark’s sister and all. And because you recently saw those LSL gang members. See any more?”

  “Nope, just those two.”

  “If you do, give me a call to let me know. After hearing those rumors, it might be worth it to call in some favors from NorCal law enforcement.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Okay.” Nathan’s voice was light. Arissa couldn’t understand how he could manage to sound so casual for Steve’s benefit.

  “Well, say hi to your parents for me.”

  Nathan paused a split second before correcting him, “Just my mom’s here with me. Dad’s with a church group.”

  “What a good son you are.” Steve chuckled.

  “See ya.”

  “Bye.” Nathan heard a dial tone as Steve hung up the phone.

  Arissa didn’t understand why, but only when Nathan disconnected the call did her body begin to tremble violently. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. She had to be strong for Charity’s sake. They were still in danger. She couldn’t let the news about Malaya break her.

  “You did very well, nene,” she said weakly to her niece. “Good job staying quiet.”