heard a voice from someone else talking inside the vehicle they were driving as they tailed the guy they’d seen at Lillian Davies’s apartment. But that other man speaking wasn’t close enough to the cell phone to be understood.
“What?” he asked impatiently.
He hated this, hated not knowing what the hell was going on. And most of all, he hated not knowing where the hell she was and if she had that damn flash drive with her.
Maybe she was more like her notorious family than the naive young girl he’d thought she was.
“He was armed,” the man replied. “Wilson saw a holster under his coat.”
Who the hell was this guy? Some Rambo wannabe?
Tom cursed. Who else was looking for Lillian Davies and why? Maybe the authorities were already involved and looking for her. After all, when she hadn’t shown up in court, she had jumped bail.
So maybe this guy was a bounty hunter.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said. Especially now. Voices rose behind the door as his guests milled around the estate that also belonged to his wife and father-in-law. Tom was pretty much just a damn guest, too. But he’d started to turn that around when he’d taken all that money.
Pretty soon he would have more than they had. And he would no longer need either of them.
Laughter rang out. People were close. His wife was probably showing guests around the house. She wouldn’t hesitate to barge into his den, even though it was the one part of the house that was supposed to be his alone.
He lowered his voice and spoke quickly but succinctly into the phone. “Lillian Davies needs to be found and eliminated. Now.”
Before she could turn over that flash drive—if it actually existed—to the authorities.
“What about the big guy?” his man asked, and there was a faint crackle of nerves in his voice. Or maybe it had just been the phone.
There were seven or eight of them. They couldn’t be afraid of one man. And if they were, Tom needed to hire tougher guys. At least these weren’t the only men he had working on this special assignment.
“If he gets in the way,” Tom said, “eliminate him, too.” He didn’t care who the hell he was. Tom had come too far to go back now. He was too close to pulling off the plan.
Jake was so close. He dragged in a deep breath and could smell her scent yet inside the cottage. It was like flowers and grass after a summer rain—fresh and new. She had been here recently, maybe just moments ago.
How the hell had he missed her?
He’d parked down the block at the empty lot for the beach access. But it was after dark, so nobody else had been there. Nobody was here, either.
After seeing those old letters from her grandmother, he’d realized this was where she’d be. And he’d found the little yellow cottage easily because he’d been here before, that day they’d taken those photos in the booth on the beach. He’d been pressing her to introduce him to her family. So she’d brought him to meet her elderly grandmother.
It hadn’t been what he’d had in mind, but he’d certainly enjoyed meeting her grandmother more than he had any of the rest of her family. Gran wasn’t a Davies and had had less use for the family her now-deceased daughter had married into than even Jake had. While she loved her grandsons, too, the only one she trusted and respected was her granddaughter.
Where was Gran?
He couldn’t believe the octogenarian would have willingly left her house. Maybe finding out that her precious granddaughter was no different than the other Davies had killed her, because the old woman had told him the only way she’d leave this place was in a pine box.
And he hadn’t blamed her. The cottage had access to and a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan with its gorgeous sunsets.
Was that where Lillian had gone? Down to the beach? He started toward the door when he heard the knob rattle. He’d turned on no lights so he wouldn’t alert her to his presence. He had also locked the door behind him for the same reason.
Of course, he’d remembered where the hide-a-key was kept, too—in the little birdhouse, which was an exact replica of the yellow cottage her grandfather had made for her grandmother. Lillian had wistfully remarked how she envied their love and wanted one like that for herself someday. Then she’d looked at him—with those ocean-blue eyes of hers—and something had shifted inside his chest.
It must have been fear—because he felt it now when the door blasted open and gunfire erupted. He ducked and drew his weapon.
What the hell?
Where had they come from? There was more than one shooter. Glass shattered as the windows were shot out. Wood chipped off the bead-board cabinets and the shabby-chic furniture. Jake raised his weapon and returned fire.
Unless they’d gotten a hell of a lot more zealous than they’d been before, these were not the O’Hanigans. Even they wouldn’t have gone to these extremes to bring back a jumper for a bounty.
Lillian wasn’t wanted dead or alive, at least not by the law. So who the hell else was after her? And why were they so willing to take him out along with her?
* * *
The gunfire erupted, shattering the silence of the summer night. Lillian could see the flashes of the shots inside the dark cabin. She could also see glass exploding from the windows and bullets ripping through the walls. She gasped in shock and horror.
Gran’s little haven was being destroyed. Because of Lillian...
They had to be after her. Had they gone inside and just started shooting up the place?
Were they that determined to kill her?
Lillian needed to get the hell out of there. Her hands shaking, she reached for the keys dangling from the ignition. She turned them but the ignition just clicked. The engine didn’t turn over; it didn’t even rumble. And she remembered that it had sounded funny before she’d heard her cell ringing. She’d shut it off and coasted to a stop on the road just a few yards from the cottage.
The gas gauge proclaimed it had half of a tank. But it had been stuck there since she’d started using it, and she’d driven it all the way into the city to her lawyer’s office building. Oh, no, the gauge was probably broken. She had no gas. No way of escaping.
While she’d been working up the nerve to go inside the cottage and retrieve Gran’s gun and her clothes, she’d seen a van pull in to the short driveway. At least half a dozen men, maybe more, had jumped out and headed for the cottage. She should have run then.
She needed to run now. She threw open the door and headed toward the lot down at the beach. Someone might have left a vehicle there. Sometimes people walked the beach at night, despite it being closed after dark. Tools clanged inside her big purse. She didn’t have the gun. But she had other weapons she could use.
