Blind Run Read online

  Marco scanned the room.

  The built-in cabinets didn’t lock, nor did he find anything of interest inside. There were French doors leading out to a side porch, but he didn’t even need to try them to know the keys wouldn’t fit. Next he checked out the closet, which, like the desk, was fastidiously neat with storage shelves from top to bottom.

  He found what he was searching for on the floor.

  Mulligan hadn’t been worried about hiding his papers, he’d just been cautious. The box was made of lead, large enough to hold legal-sized documents, and could be bought in any hardware store for the purpose of protecting its contents from fire.

  Marco smiled, pleased that he’d read Mulligan correctly.

  Squatting down, he tried one of the keys. It fit. Inside, he found all the papers he’d expected to find in Mulligan’s desk: mortgage and loan agreements, car title, Mulligan’s university contract, and, at the bottom, a single unmarked envelope. As he reached for it, voices came toward the room.

  Quickly, he slipped the envelope into his inside jacket pocket and closed the box. Locking it, he pulled it out of the closet and stood just as the detective stepped into the room.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I found these.” Marco dangled the keys from a finger. “And wondered what they opened.” With that, he set the box on the desk. “Looks like I saved you and your men some work.”

  “You have no jurisdiction here, Agent, and you may have contaminated the crime scene.”

  “Don’t worry, Detective, you won’t find any of my prints on anything.” Marco pulled off the gloves with a snap and shoved them into his pocket. “By the way, you might want to have your computer experts check out Dr. Mulligan’s files.”

  “I know my job.”

  “Good for you. Then tell me, did Dr. Mulligan have a silver coin beneath his tongue? Something Spanish?”

  “How did you—?”

  Because they want it to look like I killed him. But instead of saying it, Marco left the detective sputtering with anger and stepped out into the damp night. No doubt the man would now make that call to the FBI field office in Chicago, only to find out they’d never heard of Marco Ramirez. They knew him only as the Spaniard.

  Pausing on Mulligan’s front porch, Marco checked out the remaining bystanders. The rain and lack of further excitement had driven most back to the comfort of their homes, but a few determined sightseers lingered.

  Then he spotted the niños.

  They stood in the shadows of a large ficus hedge across the street. Marco looked harder at the lingering crowd and deeper into the shadows surrounding the children. They were alone.

  Well, now, wasn’t this a coincidence? Just when he thought he’d lost his only connection to them, they show up on Mulligan’s doorstep.

  Marco descended the front steps.

  IT WAS DARK by the time they arrived in Champaign.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and Sydney hoped the children had taken shelter. They weren’t dressed for this kind of weather. Callie didn’t even have her jacket, and Danny was so stubborn and disillusioned with adults, he’d never ask for help. Plus, she was worried about Callie’s cough.

  Ethan stopped at a gas station and got directions to Mulligan’s house. She knew he was concerned about the children as well, but she guessed his fear had more to do with the man or men who’d followed them through the woods.

  As they turned onto Henning Street and saw the blue lights flashing, an all-too-familiar fear knotted her stomach. “Ethan?”

  “I know.” His voice echoed her feelings.

  She reached for the door handle before they came to a full stop, but Ethan grabbed her arm. “Wait. We can’t jump to conclusions.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the policemen and the small crowd milling about the house. It was happening again, just like before.

  “No.” It was as if Ethan had read her mind. “This is nothing like the day Nicky died.”

  Stunned, she looked at him. He must be remembering the same thing. The ambulance and police cars. The bystanders. It would be worse for him, though. He’d been the one who’d found Nicky and dealt with the first rush of emergency workers, police, and onlookers. By the time she’d arrived, he’d been able to shield her from much of it. In the aftermath of his desertion, she’d forgotten that. He’d been so good, so strong in those first hours—hours when she’d wanted to curl up and die.

  “Okay. What do we do?”

  “Just follow my lead.”

  They got out of the car and walked arm in arm up to the small group of people standing outside the house.

  Ethan’s ability to remain calm no longer amazed her as he put on his best smile, the one she remembered from when their lives had been normal. “What’s going on?” he asked a man standing on the fringe of the crowd.

  “Haven’t a clue. I just got here myself.” The man gestured toward the end of the street. “I live down the block and saw the lights when I pulled into my driveway. Thought I’d come have a look.”

  “Mrs. Jennings called the police,” a teenager in front of them said over his shoulder. “She lives next door.” He nodded toward the front porch. “She found the body.”

  “Who lives here?” Sydney asked, surprised that she could even speak, much less ask a coherent question. Evidently lying got easier with practice.

  “Dr. Mulligan. He’s a physics professor over at the U.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Ethan took up the slack for her. “I remember meeting him a couple of months ago.”

  He stopped speaking as two paramedics pulling a gurney exited the house. The body was covered with a white sheet.

  Sydney didn’t think she could get any colder, but she’d been wrong. Thankfully, Ethan slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her tight against his side, and stepped away from the other people.

  “Is it—?” She couldn’t bring herself to look too closely or even finish the question.

  “It’s an adult, Sydney.”

  “Thank God.” Not a child. She felt instantly contrite. How could she be thankful that a man was dead?

  “It’s okay,” Ethan said, again reading her mind. Then he went very still. “Son of a bitch.”

  Sydney followed his gaze to a man stepping out onto the porch. He was tall and smartly dressed in an expensive overcoat. She couldn’t tell much else about him, except that he was dark.

  “Who is it?” She could hardly get the question out because she was afraid she knew the answer.

  “Ramirez.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ETHAN WENT COLD INSIDE.

  Ramirez descended the front steps of Mulligan’s house, and Ethan felt the hate and need for revenge stir within him again. Only this time, he couldn’t afford to give into either.

  “Ethan?”

  He kept his eyes on Ramirez. “Go back to the car, Sydney.”

  “No.”

  “Do it.” He spoke softly, but with undertones of violence, the violence of a man stalking his son’s killer.

  “The children.”

  He saw them, half hidden beside a six-foot hedge across the street. “I’ll get them.”

  Ethan worked his way around the last of the gawkers, his eyes never leaving the assassin, then stepped behind the ambulance. Pulling out the Glock, he checked the clip and held it against his leg, trailing Ramirez through the vehicle’s front windshield.

  He reached the front sidewalk and turned toward Danny and Callie, though no casual observer would notice or think twice about the well-dressed man walking away from the scene. Ethan waited until he’d reached the shadows of the next yard before leaving the shelter of the emergency van to follow Ramirez.

  Fortunately, all Ramirez’s attention seemed focused on the kids. Otherwise he might have noticed Ethan, stealing between parked cars and skirting the lawn to come up from behind, where he pressed the Glock to the small of the assassin’s back.

  Ramirez stiffened and stopp
ed in his tracks.

  “You’re slipping,” Ethan said, conscious of the weapon in his hand, his desire to use it, and the need for restraint. “Allowing an enemy to come up behind you.”

  “But then,” Ramirez said, “you are not just any enemy, amigo. Are you?”

  Ethan’s grip tightened on the Glock. “Nor am I your friend.”

  “Ah, but once . . .”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  Ramirez tilted his head, as if considering Ethan’s command. “I think not. You will not kill me in front of the niños.” The kids stood not more than a dozen strides away, watching with wide eyes. “But if I start walking into the night,” he shrugged, “who knows?”

  “Wait.” Sydney pushed past them and swept Callie into her arms. Then she turned to the boy, removed her jacket, and draped it over his shoulders.

  Ramirez made a tsking sound. “Such a lovely woman. It would be a shame to make her watch as well. I have a feeling she would not understand the kind of man she married.”

  “If she knew the truth, she’d pull the trigger herself.”

  “Would she?”

  “Oh, yeah. But at the moment, I have no intention of killing you. I want something else from you.”

  “Really? What do I have that could possibly interest you?”

  “Information. Tell me what I want to know, and you’re free to go.”

  “And how can I be sure of that?”

  “You’ll just have to trust me, as I did you.” Ethan glanced at Sydney, fussing over the kids. “Sydney, get them out of here.”

  She straightened. “Come with us.”

  “Let’s go somewhere a little more private,” Ethan said to Ramirez. “Where’s your car?”

  “You ask a lot, amigo.”

  “You’re wrong, you know. If necessary, I’ll kill you right where you stand.” And to hell with the consequences. “Kids or no kids.”

  “Ethan?” Sydney sounded desperate and frightened.

  “We’re just going to have a conversation.” He nudged Ramirez with the gun. “Right, amigo?”

  “It would seem I have no choice,” Ramirez agreed.

  “You got that right. Sydney, take the car and wait for me where we stopped earlier.”

  She looked ready to object. Then Callie started coughing, and Sydney’s attention shifted. The girl sounded bad as she buried her head against Sydney’s side. “Okay,” she said, her concern for Callie winning out. “We’ll wait for you.” She grabbed two small hands. “Hurry, please.”

  As she headed for the Volvo, Ethan patted Ramirez’s sides for weapons, then reached beneath his overcoat and removed a Beretta .22 caliber automatic from its holster. “I’ll take this.”

  “Evidently the trust is not mutual.”

  “Hardly.” Ethan slid the Beretta into his left pocket, the Glock into the right. “Now lead on, and don’t try anything. I really would like to pull this trigger.”

  They moved off together, Ramirez hunched against the rain and Ethan following behind and slightly to the side, with the weapon inside his pocket trained on the assassin. A block over from Mulligan’s house, they stopped beside a black BMW.

  “Still favoring the flashy imports, I see.” Ethan scanned the street. “It’s one of the reasons you’re not worth shit at running a tail.” When he spotted no curious eyes, he nodded toward the backseat. “Get in.”

  They settled into the vehicle’s chilly interior, with the rich smell of expensive leather surrounding them. Ethan put his back to the door and brought out the Glock, keeping it clearly visible and aimed at the other man.

  “What now?” Ramirez asked.

  “You,” Ethan flicked the weapon at him, “need to start talking.”

  “About?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Ramirez. I’d still rather shoot you than look at you. Why are you here?”

  Ramirez tilted his head. “I want the same thing as you. Information.”

  “Is that why you killed Anna, because you wanted information?”

  “Now who is playing games?” Ramirez snorted and looked away. “That was old business.”

  Ethan fought the tremor of anger. “And Mulligan? Was he old business as well?”

  “I had no business with Mulligan.” His voice was flat, noncommital. “You know this, or you would have already pulled that trigger.”

  Ethan kept silent, waiting.

  “Why would I kill the man?” Ramirez asked, annoyance in his voice. “He was nothing to me.”

  “What about Dallas?”

  “I was there, if that is what you are asking.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then you must be referring to the gentleman outside your wife’s apartment.” Ramirez folded his arms. “If I had been on that balcony, she would be dead. Again, you are asking questions when you already know the answers.”

  Ethan ignored Ramirez’s impatience. “Then tell me something I don’t know. How did you track us from Texas to Illinois?”

  “Not you.” Ramirez reached for his jacket.

  Ethan raised the Glock. “Easy.”

  Ramirez opened his palms wide.

  “Left hand only,” Ethan warned.

  Ramirez grinned, opened his coat with two fingers, and removed a white business card from an inside pocket. He offered it to Ethan.

  “Just tell me.”

  “I found this in the Kelsey woman’s bag.” He held up the card, flipping it from one side to the other. It was blank, except for a series of numbers printed in black ink. “It took me a while to figure out exactly what the numbers meant. A bank account, a password of some kind . . .”

  “The point?”

  “It is a telephone number.” He slid the card back into his coat. “Timothy Mulligan’s telephone number.”

  It was no surprise that Anna had access to information about Mulligan. Danny would have told her the same story he’d told Ethan and Sydney. But it did surprise him that she’d taken the trouble to find and keep Mulligan’s number. Maybe she had planned to contact him as she’d promised Danny.

  “After that,” Ramirez said, “it was a simple matter to locate this Mulligan.”

  “And kill him?”

  Ramirez laughed abruptly and shook his head. “He was dead when I got here, though they will say it was my work. Like they are claiming those two police officers are yours.”

  Even if Ramirez was telling the truth, it didn’t tell Ethan jack about his interest in Danny and Callie, or why he’d bothered to find Mulligan. “So what’s your stake in all this? If you didn’t kill Mulligan, what are you doing here?”

  “I told you, I want answers.” He brushed nonexistent lint from his sleeve. “And I thought Anna Kelsey, those niños, or maybe this Mulligan could provide them.”

  “What kind of answers?”

  Ramirez met his gaze then, his eyes cold. And hard. Reminding Ethan that an assassin lived behind the cool civility and manners. “There is a connection here, between this man Mulligan, those niños . . .” He hesitated, his lips curving upward, but not in anything resembling a smile. “And your orders to kill me three years ago.”

  It felt like a sucker punch, straight to the gut.

  “So,” Ramirez said, “this is something else you did not already know.”

  A part of Ethan wanted to stop this conversation right now. The raid on Ramirez’s cabin was something he’d like to forget, a time and place he’d rather not revisit. But he knew he could no longer run from his past. “Go on.”

  Ramirez didn’t say anything right away. And for several long moments, the only sound was the rain, which had picked up, beating steadily against the roof.

  “My last target for the Agency was a man by the name of George Taleb,” Ramirez said, finally. “About four weeks before you and your team tried to kill me.”

  Ethan kept his expression carefully blank. The events of that night three years ago were something he’d carry with him forever, a sin he’d never redeem. But he couldn�
�t believe Ramirez was innocent in that, or in the deaths that followed.

  “It was a straightforward hit, nothing difficult.” Ramirez turned to the window, where rivulets of water streaked the glass. He traced one with his finger. “The man—”

  “Just give me the highlights.”

  Ramirez faced him. “The highlights, you say? Well, I would not like to bore you with too many details.” Hate brimmed in his eyes. “After the Agency ordered my termination, I wanted to know why. So I investigated, starting with Taleb. Only I found nothing. The man did not exist, no driver’s license, no birth certificate, no employment or school records. Nothing.”

  “One of ours?”

  “Possibly, though it did not explain why I had become a target.” He focused again on the damp night beyond the window. “So I kept searching. Then six months ago, my sources led me to that island.” His voice took on an edge of anger. “For three years I have been hunting for answers, and that is what I found. Taleb was running from an island of children.”

  “And you killed him.”

  He dismissed the statement with a flick of his wrist. “The Agency ordered it.” He focused again on Ethan. “Then they sent you. I got too close to something when Taleb died, something they did not want me to know.”

  “What?”

  “That is the question. An old man, looking to live out his life in peace? A bunch of niños on an island. You tell me, amigo.”

  “And you believe the Agency ordered your death.”

  “Not only mine.” Ramirez’s eyes took on a deadly glint, not lost on Ethan. The old business between them was not finished, despite this momentary truce. “The child you killed that night in my cabin . . .”

  Ethan flinched.

  “She, too, was running from Haven Island.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SYDNEY WAITED FOR ETHAN.

  She’d driven the children back to the convenience store where she and Ethan had stopped earlier. For a while, she’d occupied her thoughts with Callie. The cough she’d been fighting for the last couple of days had fully developed, accompanied by a low-grade fever. And for the first time, she’d complained of a sore throat and headache. Sydney had done what she could without knowing exactly what she was treating. Because of their conversation at Laurel Lodge, she feared the girl’s symptoms were more than those of a simple flu or cold. Plus, Sydney couldn’t rid herself of the nagging fear that something else was going on here, something connected to the children’s island home. She was beginning to think Callie belonged in a hospital.