Mama Said (18 page)

Suddenly, she spotted a bus station. There had to be twenty buses lined up in an orderly fashion. The three at the beginning of the line looked as if they were about to pull away. After a quick glance behind to insure she could pull it off, she sprinted toward the tangle of students and waiting buses. The bus was halfway out of the lot when she ran around to the front and pounded on the door.

Even though the driver was irate, he stopped to allow her inside. “There’s another one in ten minutes going the same direction,” he grumbled.

Spent and out of breath, she managed to mumble, “Thanks,” as the driver started to pull into traffic.

She slunk down in a seat and peered out the window. Stu was scanning the busses with his binoculars while O’Brien and the other two guys searched the crowd. One of them flashed a badge and got onto one of the buses.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, she drew in a deep breath. As far as she could tell, they had no clue which bus she had gotten on. It would take them a little while to sort it through.

After a circuitous route through the city and several bus transfers, she got the car and headed back to the motel. Every time she even contemplated the fact Shane might be discovered, alone and vulnerable, a shiver of fear stole up her spine, nearly paralyzing her. Her heart seemed to be beating at the back of her throat instead of her chest where it belonged as she sprinted to the room. They couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

“Shane!” She was breathless as she barreled inside. “We need to get out—”

Her words stopped when she tripped over the body sprawled across the floor.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Through some miracle, she held back the scream even though it was clawing like an angry cat at the base of her throat. After her mind registered that the body she’d tripped over wasn’t Shane, she glanced around the room. He sat with his back propped against the wall and his gun trained on the guy lying on the floor.

“We need to tie him up and gag him to give us time.” Shane looked exhausted, as if whatever had transpired in her absence—considering the disastrous state of the room it was quite a bit—had drained every ounce of energy from him.

Instead of asking questions, she continued the job he’d started, tearing the sheet into strips and tying the arms and legs of the beefy guy lying on the floor. The weird part was she didn’t even have to think about complying. It was almost as if she’d somehow morphed into Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde, part blues singer, part criminal, without even batting an eye.

Never in her wildest dreams would she ever have imagined tying up anybody—at least against their will and under these circumstances. If she thought about it too long, it would totally creep her out.

Shane got up off the floor and made his way into the bathroom. He looked deathly pale beneath the bruises. She had to give some serious thought once again to having him checked out medically, despite his wishes to the contrary.

Then again, maybe he was stronger than he appeared. Somehow he’d managed to subdue the oaf of a man lying on the floor. The guy wasn’t dead—she’d felt his pulse—but he was still out.

Shane emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, his head and chest glistening with water as if he’d taken off his shirt and put his head under the faucet. “Do you have anything else for me to wear?”

She scurried to the bag on the floor, pulling out a t-shirt and flannel shirt. He grabbed them and walked toward the window, looking outside as he slipped on the t-shirt.

“Wait a minute.” Despite all the bruises and contusions on his face and chest, she hadn’t thought to check out his back. Just before he pulled on the t-shirt, she’d spotted a deep cut below his right shoulder. She walked over and pulled up the shirt. “You have a nasty cut on your back. I didn’t see it before.” The area around the wound was red and raised. And, unless she was mistaken, there was pus oozing out. “You have an infection.”

“I’ll be fine.” He opened the door slowly, peering into the parking lot.

She snatched the bag filled with their meager belongings and followed right behind, peeking over his shoulder. “You need antibiotics or you’re going to get really sick.”

Without saying a word, he grabbed her hand, pulling her outside. “What took you so long?”

“They came into the library and were chasing me. I had to take a bus to lose them then had to circle back for the car.”

He stopped and grabbed her arm, scrutinizing her from head to toe before speaking. “Who came into the library?”

“O’Brien and a couple other cops, including Stu. They must have tracked us through the cell phone.”

He shook his head and swore. “Get rid of it now.” He didn’t wait for a response, instead stomping on it before throwing it into the nearest trash can.

Despite his show of strength, she knew he must feel awful when he slipped inside the passenger door rather than the driver’s. “Where should we go?”

“It feels like they’ll find us no matter where we end up.”

She couldn’t agree more. It was as if they were one step ahead. “Then I say we go straight back to where we came from. They can’t expect that.” The thought had come to her like a light bulb lighting up. Since they probably expected them to run farther and farther away, why not do the exact opposite?

“Sounds like as good a plan as any.” He drew in a deep, long breath and readjusted the gun in his lap. “You know how to shoot a gun?”

“My brother taught me the basics. I wouldn’t trust my aim, but I’m not going to shoot myself or you by mistake, if that’s what you’re asking.” At least she hoped not.

“Good enough. I hope it doesn’t come to that.” He readjusted himself in the seat as if trying to find a comfortable position. “What did you get at the library?”

“Most of what you told me to. There were a couple of e-mails from Vince, but I didn’t get a chance to read them or print them out since that was when I spotted the cops. I shoved what I had, along with the flash drive, into my backpack and ran.” She headed onto the highway, feeling more than a little guilty she hadn’t gotten to those two e-mails from Vince.

When he reached in back to retrieve her backpack, he winced, reminding her they had to do something about his shoulder. “Did you see any e-mails from H. Mann?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I wasn’t looking for that name. Who is it?”

“I didn’t think of it until after you left. It’s the first client Garrett and I worked with Vince on. He always said if he was worried about anything, he’d send it under that name from a remote location.”

“I can’t remember.” She searched for a snippet of memory, but when she couldn’t seem to focus, she returned to the present. “I need to put some antibiotic cream on your shoulder. I’m pretty sure I have some in the bag.”

“Let’s get a little further down the highway.” He began to examine the papers as best he could, spreading them out on his lap.

She was with him on that. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to stop. As it was, her heart was still beating at least a million beats per minute every time she thought about her close encounter in the library and the subsequent chase through campus.

“Have you ever seen that guy? The one I tied up in the hotel room?” As she asked the question, she swallowed back the fear that stole through her body. Being that close to somebody who wanted to kill them was very scary. She hoped to never have that experience again but somehow didn’t think she’d be that lucky.

Shane shook his head. “Nope. Could be a cop. Could be some kind of hired thug.”

“What happened?” She was still trying to put the pieces together in her head. How many men were looking for them in Madison?

“He must have gone from motel to motel in town talking to the managers, giving them a picture or description of us. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. The manager must have remembered you.” He glanced through a few more papers and shook his head. “I heard somebody outside the door. We struggled. Luckily I ended up on the good end of that deal.”

“You’ll have to show me some of those top secret Special Forces moves. The way my life’s been headed lately, they might come in handy.”

He stopped and looked at her. “We need to go to the airport and book you on the next flight out of here.”

“They have my name and a picture of me. Even if, by some miracle, I make it out of town, they’ll track me down, and that won’t be good. Like it or not, I’m in this until it’s finished.”

Guilt played on his features as he rubbed his hand along his chin. “One way or another we’ve got to figure this out before it’s too late.”

* * *

Instead of taking I-94 back through Milwaukee, she headed directly south, finally stopping in Beloit and checking into a small motel. Shane looked feverish again, even though he’d taken some aspirin only about an hour ago.

“I need to look at that cut on your back. Do you know how you got it?”

He shook his head. “Maybe from the bottle they hit me with, or maybe I scraped it on the side of the dumpster when I was trying to get inside.”

“There might be glass or metal in there. Could be why it looks so red.”

“It will be fine.”

“Your mom was a nurse. You know better. Don’t be such a chicken. Let me have a good look.” Truth was, she knew it was bad. She could feel it down in her belly. The way he didn’t want to eat, the sudden flush to his face, the elevated temperature of his skin.

He grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt, yanking it over his head in one swift movement, causing him to wince.

She turned him so she could see his back. “Come into the bathroom. There’s better light.”

She was no expert, but it looked awful. Poking at the skin around the cut, she hoped to uncover the glass or metal causing the problem. Despite how easy they made it look on TV medical shows, it was impossible for her to detect anything foreign.

After wetting a washcloth and adding some soap, she pressed it against his skin, trying to loosen up the crusting blood and pus clinging to the top layer.

He wiggled his shoulder up and down as if to prove he was fine. “This is ridiculous. It’s a cut. My guts were hanging outside of my body and I survived. A little nick isn’t going to kill me.”

To keep her mind from focusing on the nastiness of the task, she decided to keep him talking. “You kind of glossed over how that happened. Was it a knife?” She continued to work at loosening the gunk around the oozing sore, but more seemed to be hiding inside. Worse yet, there was a nasty smell coming from the area. That couldn’t be good.

“A woman went after Garrett. I stepped in the way.” His shoulders flexed as he shrugged. “No big deal.”

“Who went after Garrett?” She figured the longer she kept him talking, the longer he’d be distracted enough to let her poke around.

“One of the women we were working with turned on us. That kind of stuff happens all the time when you’re working covert operations, so it’s not as if we weren’t prepared. But she took it one step further than usual and went after Garrett. I intervened and got the bad end of a knife.”

“It must have been some knife.” The scar down his middle was huge.

He nodded. “And she was good.” He winced when she pressed at the skin, trying to get more of that disgusting stuff to come out. Unfortunately, it only oozed out in tiny droplets.

“Why did you do it? Step in front of Garrett?”

“He wasn’t expecting it. Besides, he had a family who loved him. I had nobody. I’d be damned if I’d let him die.”

His words tore through her in a hard, swift torrent. A tortured soul, he couldn’t stop blaming himself for being without a family. Why hadn’t she seen that before? All his macho bravado was one big act to cover up the scared little boy he was inside. For a few seconds she felt terrible about all the grief she’d given him initially. But then she remembered all the crap he’d given her, and harnessed the remorse.

“What happened then?”

“I don’t remember much. Garrett wrapped me up in some kind of cloth so my insides stayed where they were supposed to be. We were in the middle of nowhere, so it took about two hours to get to the hospital. I kept passing out from the pain, which was probably a good thing.”

Gabriella couldn’t envision that kind of—excuse the expression—intestinal fortitude. Since Shane obviously had such a high pain threshold, God only knew how much he’d been suffering over the last day or two. He was lucky she wasn’t the one injured. She would have been screaming and crying until he’d probably want to knock her out to put her out of her misery.

“This cut isn’t big, but it sure is infected. You need antibiotics.” While she tried to minimize, she also tried to get her point across.

“We’ll get nabbed right away if I go into a clinic or hospital. I still look like I got the hell beat out of me.”

She chewed on the corner of her lip trying to think of a way out. “Maybe it’s worth the risk. If it seems fishy, we could leave and be on our way.”

“Too risky.”

“Point taken.” She finished with the cut as best she could, and slathered half a tube of the antibiotic cream over the wound. Next, she scrounged around in the bag and found a bandage big enough to cover it.

They went into the other room and plopped down onto the bed. Shane positioned the gun on the nightstand within his reach while she un-stuffed papers from the backpack, spreading them out on the bed between them. He didn’t put his shirt back on, but she tried not to be too distracted.

Instead, she focused on the seriousness of the situation. That was so unlike her it was kind of scary. “You said something about Tony knowing something, and then he got attacked in prison. Do you know if he’s still alive?”

“Not sure. But if he came around, maybe he passed the information on to Vince and Vince sent it to me.”

“Would he risk putting it in an e-mail? And what about the video they were looking for?” It was kind of scary that these questions were popping into her head like tiny bubbles of thought. “Why are you so sure Tony’s innocent?”

“Marcos isn’t an honor roll kid. He’s been in and out of juvie so many times, I gave up trying to count. But he shouldn’t go down for something he didn’t do. He was in Cleveland at the time the robbery went down. His alibi was solid.”

“So why pin it on him?”

“Don’t you get that cops don’t care?”

“Stop with that bull. You know that’s not true. I’ll admit there are some dirty cops out there just like there are dirty lawyers and dirty private detectives. Stop letting your own prejudice interfere with reason.” Her nerves were frazzled beyond belief. She needed him to shake free from this cloud of paranoia and think straight.

He started to run his fingers through his hair before he remembered he had none, then grimaced. “What if Tony got mixed up in this because of something else. I don’t know, maybe he overheard something, or saw something that he could use as leverage. Maybe it worked for a while. Maybe he was even making some money on the side through blackmail.” He shrugged. “I told you he’s not a saint. Maybe whoever he was blackmailing, if he was, decided to screw him over and send him away big time.”