Wanted Woman
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B.J. Daniels
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16,7K
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17
Chapter One
Puget Sound, Seattle
The smell of fish and sea rolled up off the dark water on the late-night air. Restless waves from the earlier storm crashed into pilings under the pier and in the distance a horn groaned through the thick fog.
Maggie shut off the motorcycle and coasted through the shadows and damp fog. She couldn’t see a thing. But she figured that was good since he wouldn’t be able to see her. Nor hear her coming.
She’d dressed in her black leathers and boots. Even the bulging bike saddlebag was black as the night. She told herself she was being paranoid as she hid the bike and walked several blocks through the dark old warehouses and fish plants before she started down the long pier.
He would be waiting for her somewhere on the pier. With the dense fog and the crashing surf, she wouldn’t know where until she was practically on top of him. She assured herself that she had taken every precaution—short of bringing a weapon.
But she was no fool. He had the advantage. He’d picked the meeting place. He was expecting her. And because of the fog, she wouldn’t know what was waiting for her at the end of the deserted pier until she reached it.
Fortunately, she was a woman used to taking chances. Except tonight, the stakes were higher than they’d ever been.
The sound of the sea breaking against the pilings grew louder and louder, the wet fog thicker and blinding white. She knew she had to be nearing the end of the pier.
And suddenly Norman Drake materialized out of the fog.
He looked like hell. Like a man who’d been on the run from the police for three days. He looked scared and dangerous—right down to the gun he had clutched in his right hand.
He waved it at her, his pale blue eyes wide with alarm. And she wondered where he’d gotten the gun and if he knew how to use it. He was young and smart and completely out of his league—a tall, thin, bookworm turned law student turned law assistant. She could smell the nervous sweat coming off him, the fear.
“You alone?” he whispered hoarsely.
She nodded.
“You sure you weren’t followed?”
“Positive.”
He exhaled loudly and wiped his free hand over his mouth. “You bring the money?”
She nodded. The ten thousand dollars he’d demanded weighted down the saddlebag. She reached in slowly and held up one bundle. Unmarked, all old, small denomination bills, dozens of bundles making the bag bulge.
It took him a minute to lower the weapon. His hands shook as he shoved it into the front waistband of his wrinkled, soiled slacks. Not a good idea under any circumstances. As nervous as he was, he’d shoot his nuts off.
“I didn’t know who else to call but you,” he said, his gaze jumping back and forth between her and the fogged-in pier behind her. “They killed Iverson and they’ll kill me, too, if I don’t get out of town.”
Clark Iverson, her father’s long-time attorney, had been murdered three days ago. The police had determined that his temporary student legal assistant was in the building at the time. There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. Visitors had to be buzzed in. That’s why the cops were actively looking for Norman.
“You told me on the phone you had important information for me about my father’s plane crash,” she said, keeping her hand clamped on the saddlebag, keeping her tone neutral.
He nodded, a jittery nod that set her teeth on edge. “It wasn’t an accident. The same person who murdered Iverson killed your father.”
She felt shock ricochet through her. Then disbelief. “It was determined an accident. Pilot failure.”
Norman shook his head. “A week before the crash, your father came into the office. He seemed upset. Later, after he left, I overheard Iverson on the phone telling someone he couldn’t talk your dad out of it.”
“That’s not enough evidence—”
“I was there three nights ago, I heard them talking about the plane crash. Iverson had figured out that the plane had gone down to keep your father from talking. He threatened to go to the Feds. I heard them kill him—” Emotion choked off the last of his words.
“You actually heard someone admit to murdering my father?”
He nodded, his Adam’s apple going up and down, up and down. She watched him, shock and pain and anger mixing with the grief of the past two months since the single passenger plane had gone down on a routine business flight. She fought to keep her voice calm. “You said they?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Did I? I only heard one man talk but—” He frowned and looked away. “I remember thinking I heard two people coming down the hall after the elevator opened.” He was lying and doing a poor job of it. Why lie about how many killers there were? “You believe me, don’t you?”
She didn’t know what to believe now. But her father had liked Norman, thought he was going to make a good lawyer someday. Good lawyer, an oxymoron if there ever was one, her father would have joked. “Norman, how did they get in? The building was locked, right?”
He nodded, looking confused. “I guess Iverson buzzed them up. All I know is that I heard the elevator and—” He looked behind her again as if he’d heard something. “I somehow knew not to let them know I was there.”
A foghorn let out a mournful moan from out beyond the city.
“You’re telling me Clark didn’t know you were still in the office?”
Norman fidgeted. “I’d fallen asleep in the library doing some research for him. The door to his office was closed. Earlier, he’d told me to leave, to do the rest in the morning. I guess he thought I’d left by the door to the hallway. The elevator woke me, then I heard voices arguing.”
Just seconds before he’d said he’d heard two sets of footsteps coming down the hall after the elevator opened. No wonder Norman hadn’t gone to the police. His story had so many holes it wouldn’t even make good Swiss cheese.
“You heard them arguing?” she asked.
He nodded. “Then I heard this like…grunt and glass breaking—” He closed his eyes as if imagining Clark Iverson’s body, the lamp he’d grabbed as he went down shattered on the floor next to him, his eyes open staring blindly upward, a knife sticking out of his chest at heart level, just as he’d looked when his secretary and Maggie had found him the next morning. Just as he must have looked when Norman saw him.
“You didn’t see the killer.”
“No, I told you, I just ran.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” It was the same question the cops wanted to ask him.
Norman closed his eyes tightly as if in pain. “After they killed him, they rummaged around in his desk drawers, in his file cabinets. I could hear them. I was afraid that at any minute they’d come into the library and find me.” Another look away, another lie. “I just ran. I took the stairs, let myself out the back way and I’ve been running ever since. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”
“Did you recognize the one voice you heard?”
He shook his head.
“But you heard what were they arguing about.”
“Iverson said the secret wasn’t worth killing people over.”
“What secret?”
Norman squirmed, his gaze flicking past her. “An illegal adoption.”
She felt a chill come off the ocean as if she already knew what his next words would be.
“You were the baby,” Norman said, the words tumbling over themselves in their struggle to get out. “Iverson wanted to tell you the truth. That’s why they killed him. He said your father had found out and was going to tell you.”
“Found out what?” So her parents hadn’t gone through the proper channels. So what? “I’m twenty-seven years old. Why would anyone kill over my adoption no matter how it went down?”
“It was the way you were…acquired,” Norman said. “Your father had found out that you were kidnapped.”
Kidnapped? She’d always known she was adopted and that was the reason she looked nothing like her parents. Nor was anything like them.
Mildred and Paul Randolph had always seemed a little surprised by their only child, a little leery. Maggie had come into their life after they’d tried numerous adoption agencies, they’d told her. She’d been a miracle, they’d said. A gift from God.
Maybe not quite.
Although well-off financially, her parents weren’t the ideal adoptive candidates. Her mother had been confined to a wheelchair since childhood polio and her father was considered too old. He’d been fifty when Maggie had come along. But, according to both Mildred and Paul, they’d finally found an agency that understood how desperately they wanted a child and had given Maggie to them to love.
No child could have asked for more loving parents. But they’d been horribly overprotective, so afraid something would happen to her, that Maggie had become fearless in self-defense. By the age of twenty-seven, she’d tried everything from skydiving and bungie jumping to motorcross, heli-skiing and speedboat racing.
Her parents had been terrified. Now she realized they’d been afraid long before their only child had become a thrill-seeker. Now she knew why she’d seen fear in her father’s eyes all of her life. He’d been waiting all these years for the other shoe to drop.
It had finally dropped. He’d found out she was kidnapped and couldn’t live with the knowledge.
She heard a board creak behind her, heavy with a tentative step. “Norman, you have to tell the police what you told me. They’ll protect you.”
“Are you nuts? You can’t trust anyone. These people have already killed twice to keep their secret. Who knows how influential they are or what connections they might have.”
He’d seen the killer and knew something he wasn’t telling her. That’s why he was so afraid. Well, maybe the cops could get the truth out of him. “Norman, I called the detective on the case after I talked to you. Detective Blackmore.”
“What?” He looked around wildly. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” He grabbed for the saddlebag. “Give me the money. I have to get out of here. Quick. He’ll kill us both if—” Norman broke off, his gaze riveted on something just over her left shoulder, eyes widening in horror.
She heard the soft pop, didn’t recognize the sound until she saw blood bloom across the shoulder of Norman’s jacket. The second shot—right on the heels of the first—caught him in the chest, dead-on.
His grip on the saddlebag pulled her down with him as he fell to the weathered boards, dropping her to her knees beside him.
“Oh, Norman. Oh, God.” Her mind reeled. The police wouldn’t have shot him. Not without a warning first. But who else had known about their meeting?
The third shot sent a shaft of pain tearing through her left arm as she tried to free herself of the saddlebag strap and Norman’s death grip.
“Timber Falls,” he whispered, blood running from the corner of his mouth as his fingers released the bag of money and her. “That’s where they got you.” Adding on his last breath, “Run.”
But there was no place to run. She was trapped. Behind her, she heard the groan of a board, caught the scent of the killer on the breeze, a nauseating mix of perspiration, cheap cologne and stale cigar smoke.
She had only one choice. She fell over Norman, rolling him with her, using his body as a shield as a fourth shot thudded into his dead body.
As she fell, she looked up, saw the man with the gun come out of the fog. Shock paralyzed her as her eyes met his and she realized she knew him.
She let out a cry as he raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Two more shots thudded into Norman’s riddled body as she rolled off the end of the pier taking Norman and the saddlebag with her, dropping for what seemed an eternity before plunging into the cold, dark roiling water below.
