make her an angel, even if she had the face of one.
“Yeah,” he muttered hoarsely. It was all he could manage by way of acknowledgment. Any further effort would have cost him his self-control. He was already torn up inside—and he meant to keep it there.
Faye, he thought as the light changed and the traffic moved forward again. It was going to kill her to hear about her father. And there were Neil’s friends on the force back in Frisco. The news would be hard on them.
But Mitch knew he had to stop worrying about Neil’s daughter and his friends. Had to put his own grief on hold. All he had time for now was to get them out of this mess.
A PLOW HAD BEEN THROUGH HERE recently, Mitch noticed, so the snow wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. He was able to negotiate the winding lane without difficulty. The lot was understandably empty when they reached it. He parked the pickup facing the lagoon.
On any other occasion Mitch would have admired the setting. The dark waters of the lagoon, which for some reason was still unfrozen, were rimmed with evergreens. Their somber green boughs drooped with snow, making a scene that an artist might have effectively borrowed for a Christmas card.
But all he could appreciate was the seclusion of the place. Nothing stirred in the vicinity of the lagoon or on the equipment of the children’s playground behind them. The park was as deserted as he’d anticipated, offering them a reasonably safe haven. For now, anyway.
Madeline had been silent for most of the drive. But her mind must have been very busy, because the instant he shut off the engine and turned to her, she gave voice to her decision.
“There’s only one thing for me to do. I’m going to turn myself over to the Milwaukee police.”
“And what do you think that’s going to accomplish, except to make you a target?”
“I’ll take my chances on their protecting me, even if one or more of them is in Griff’s pay.”
She was offering to free him of any responsibility for her, giving him the chance to focus all of his energy on clearing himself. So tempting. Only, he couldn’t accept her offer, not when it meant he would be failing Neil. Because whatever else Mitch had either lost or intentionally abandoned after Julie’s death, he was still a man of his word. That much he’d been unable to shed.
“Yeah, why not? It’s your life if you want to risk it. Except a lot of people are counting on you to stay healthy long enough to put Griff Matisse away where he belongs. Neil was one of those people.”
His tactic worked. She was immediately apologetic. “Yes, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Then, what do we do? Go back to your farm?”
Mitch knew that neither of them was happy about that prospect. In any case, returning to the farm was out of the question. Although Neil wouldn’t have shared the existence of the place with any of his colleagues—not when he had chosen it as a sanctuary for Madeline—his daughter knew about the farm. So, perhaps, did his neighbor. And under the circumstances, neither would hesitate to reveal their knowledge.
“No good,” he said. “It’s the first place the cops will look.”
“Then, where or who do we turn to?”
Under other circumstances, that would have been an easy question for Mitch to answer. A single phone call would have provided them with immediate assistance from his family. But Mitch’s family wasn’t available. Every member of the Hawke clan was out of the country on a holiday cruise. He was supposed to have joined them, but he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate anything this year.
“There is no one. Neil was the only contact we could trust, and now that he’s gone, Milwaukee is no longer safe for you.”
She was quiet as she gazed out at the lagoon. Then she said, “There’s something I’ve learned since leaving San Francisco. I’m not really safe anywhere as long as Griff Matisse is free and so powerful that he has connections everywhere. So I might as well return now to San Francisco. At least there the DA’s office wants so badly to put him behind bars that they’ll go to extra lengths to protect me until the trial. Maybe their safe house is ready for me by now.”
Mitch wasn’t happy about that safe house. Neil had explained it as the reason for the delay in San Francisco’s sending an escort to return Madeline to California. But Mitch had sensed all along that something wasn’t right about this explanation. For the moment, though, he was prepared to put that argument aside.
He could see Madeline was determined, that it would be a wasted effort to challenge her decision. He had a better method for handling this situation.
“All right,” he said, “what do you want me to do?”
If she was surprised by his easy compliance, she didn’t say so. “Drive me to the airport and put me on a flight. That’s all I ask.”
“Sounds simple enough. Then, once you’re in the air, I can start clearing myself of Neil’s death.”
“Exactly.”
Mitch made no objection. There would be time enough once they were under way to make her understand that her plan wasn’t going to work. That he had no intention of simply dumping her in Matisse’s backyard and forgetting about her. Oh, she would be flying to San Francisco, all right, providing this weather hadn’t already canceled all flights, but it would be under his terms.
He started the engine. “One thing, though,” he said. “You can’t just land in San Francisco without security of some sort waiting there to meet you. We have to let the DA’s office know you’re coming.”
She thought about that and then nodded. She was being calm about the whole thing, but he knew she had to be scared. What she intended involved considerable risk.
“Look,” he suggested, “I noticed a public phone back there near the picnic shelter.” They would have to use a public phone because, in his hurry to deliver Madeline to Neil, he’d left his cell phone at the farm. “Let me make the call for you. I know the assistant DA, Gloria Rodriguez. She’s a woman I trust, and right now you need someone like that in your corner. Besides, you’ll need to know if that safe house is ready and, if it isn’t, what alternative she has to guarantee that you’re fully protected.”
She considered his offer and apparently saw the advantages of it. “All right.”
Mitch drove them back through the park to the rustic picnic shelter at the side of the lane. When he pulled over and started to slide out of the pickup, she opened her door with the intention of accompanying him.
“What are you doing?”
“I said you could make the call for me. I didn’t say I wouldn’t be listening in on it.”
Damn it, he had counted on her staying in the truck. There were things he hadn’t wanted her to hear until the arrangements were settled, after which it would be too late for her to object. But she wasn’t giving him any choice. Okay, so she’d learn the program now, and whatever her reaction, he would deal with it.
There had been a lull in the snowfall, but now the stuff was coming down again at a furious rate. The phone was located in a glass-walled stall that was open at the front, offering little protection from the weather. Coat collars turned up, shoulders hunched, they were
