You Can't Escape (4 page)

“That’s bullshit conjecture. You’re just making up dangerous accusations.”

“You want to talk about dangerous?” she challenged. “I was there. Across the street when the explosion happened. If it wasn’t a bomb, it was a gas leak, something big. You’re damn lucky to be alive.”

“You were there? Following me?”

“You know something about the Saldanos, and you’re a threat to them.”

“You don’t know anything,” he snarled, dropping back against the pillows.

“Your life’s in danger.
You
know why, but I just know it’s true.”

“And you’ve come to save me?” He allowed wry disbelief to enter his tone.

“Yeah.” She wouldn’t back down an inch. “You still with me?”

The truth of it was, she wasn’t wrong. He had doubts of his own about the family he’d married into . . . and there was the audiotape . . . the reason for his dread.

“Yeah,” he rasped. “I’m still with you.”

She gazed at him through sober, hazel eyes fringed with dark lashes, then threw a glance at the closed door to his room. “Then, I’m gonna go now and make plans for us. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

“Jordanna . . .” She looked back at him. “Be careful,” he said, and he thought he saw the faintest of smiles touch the corners of her mouth.

“Nothing I do seems to be careful,” was her answer.

They assessed each other for a moment. Then Dance exhaled heavily and said, “Park about a half mile away and walk to the hospital, so the license plate doesn’t show up on any cameras.”

“Half a mile? You can’t walk that far.”

She was right. “Find a safe place to take off the plates just before you get here. Come back inside and pick me up. We’ll head out, and then put the plates back on as soon as we can.”

“As long as I don’t get stopped by the police,” she pointed out.

“Then don’t get stopped by the police,” he ordered.

She nodded and headed for the door, peering into the hallway, then looking back at him for a moment. “You’re just gonna walk out of this place whether you’re released or not?”

“Oh, I’m going to get the doctor’s release.”

“You look like hell. If I were your doctor, I’d keep you in here.”

“I’m not a prisoner.”

“No, but you’re a patient and frankly, I’m not sure you have the strength to get to my car.”

“You just bring the car. I’ll do the rest.”

“Okay.”

He closed his eyes, but the vision of her seemed imprinted on his lids. She was a very pretty woman, prettier than Carmen in ways, although his ex was pretty, too. She was also reckless in a way he understood. A reporter . . . damn . . . it made sense.

He must have fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes again, she was gone and a nurse was in his room, checking his vitals. The battle-ax from earlier. When he requested the paperwork to be released, she fell back on her earlier threat to call Dr. Cochran. “Call him all you want,” he told the woman. “I’m going, whether you have all the forms you need signed or not.”

Jordanna drove with controlled speed back to her apartment. She was only loosely affiliated with the
Laurelton Register
and the
Lake Chinook Review.
They took some of her stories, paid her a pittance, and treated her like she was totally expendable, which she was. Neither was any kind of regular gig, so they weren’t going to be looking for her if she dropped out for a while, or maybe even forever. Her apartment was paid up for two months because she paid in advance whenever she had the money, just in case she didn’t later. She could do the same with the utilities, guesstimating what they would be and paying online.

Are you really doing this?

“You’d better believe it,” she muttered as she took the steps to her second-floor unit two at a time. The place was nothing to write home about, but it served her purposes. She had yet to make a meal or use the range top apart from heating a teapot for hot water when her microwave went on the fritz. She had a new microwave now, purchased at Target, and it was the first thing she grabbed as soon as she entered the front door, unplugging it from the wall. Where they were going, they wouldn’t have many conveniences and she wasn’t about to give up her morning coffee unless she absolutely, positively had to. After the microwave, she added a blow-up mattress with pump, bedding, and towels.

She made a series of trips to her car, until the ten-year-old Toyota RAV4 was filled to bursting. She had just enough room for a few bags of groceries, and she dug into her Special Emergency Fund account to take along for unforeseen expenditures: Zip-loced stacks of cash that she kept between her mattress and springs. She took out three of the plastic bags, then looked long and hard at the other three before taking them, too. She had her laptop and an iPad and half the clothes she possessed, the only ones she actually wore.

At the grocery store, she bought bread, peanut butter, cheese, salad in a bag, apples, salt, pepper, mayonnaise, sliced pickles, barbecue sauce, and canned chicken. She wasn’t certain what she would find at the old farmhouse, so she added plastic forks, knives, and spoons, paper plates and bowls. She hoped to God there was still an operating refrigerator, but she hadn’t been there for years. Though she purposely stayed out of contact with her father, her sister, Kara, was in sporadic contact with him and his wife, and kept Jordanna somewhat abreast of what was happening in Rock Springs, whether she wanted to know or not.

“I still can’t believe he married Jennie,” Kara had said the last time they’d spoken.

“She’s the right age for him,” Jordanna had clipped back. “And she’s Chief Markum’s daughter.”

“Is that what it’s about?” she’d murmured, sounding disappointed. She’d always believed in their father more than Jordanna had.

Jennie Markum, now Winters, was the daughter of the police chief, Greer Markum, and a registered nurse who just happened to be an ex-classmate of Jordanna’s older sister, Emily. Jordanna had first learned of their nuptials through the
Rock Springs Pioneer
, which had extolled the much-anticipated wedding, which had taken place the summer before at the outdoor chapel on the bluff above Fool’s Falls, with Reverend Miles of the Green Pastures Church in attendance. The weather had been exceptionally beautiful and the backdrop of blue sky and rushing water had only added to the perfection of the scene as Rock Springs’ beloved GP and his radiant bride said their vows.

“If Jennie keeps our father away from other young women, they have my blessing,” she’d told Kara.

“Dad isn’t the problem,” Kara had said, like she always did.

“Then what is?” Jordanna had demanded, like she always did.

“If I knew, I’d tell you, but you and I both know there’s something rotten in Rock Springs and that’s why we left.”

“It has a name: Dayton Winters.”

“No . . . it’s something else. I can feel it like a suffocating shroud whenever I’m there. Makes me claustrophobic.”

Kara always spoke in quasi-mystical terms that irked Jordanna, who had a very sensitive bullshit meter. “Like what killed our sister?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Jordanna had started to argue with her, but she hadn’t wanted to alienate the only family member she still cared about, so she’d managed to swallow back further smart comments and settle for “Hmmm” noises instead.

“I’m going to be gone for a while,” Kara had said when she’d ended that last conversation. “I’ve always wanted to see the Himalayas. I think I could mountain climb. Maybe not Everest, but the mountains are the one thing I miss about Rock Springs.”

“The Cascades are a far cry from the Himalayas,” Jordanna couldn’t help pointing out.

“I know. But the mountains are where my soul flies free. Emily felt that, too. But you don’t, do you?”

Jordanna had let that go and asked instead, “You have enough funds?”

“Oh, I’ll work for a while.” Kara waitressed and did odd jobs and just kind of floated. Jordanna made just enough money to get by, and she sometimes wondered how Kara managed it all.

That had been the extent of their last conversation and, as ever, it had left Jordanna feeling like an outsider to her own family. Not that she wanted to be closer to her father, but she would have liked to have Kara more accessible. And Jordanna didn’t believe for one minute that her father had given up his sick ways just because he’d married Jennie, but since no one had believed her accusations then, there was little she could do about it now. At the time, Jordanna had been ordered to seek counseling and had managed to sit through ten sessions with a psychologist recommended by her father’s good friend, Chief Markum. Anna Eggers had been nice enough, but totally clueless in Jordanna’s biased opinion. The only useful thing she’d learned was that Dr. Eggers felt the Treadwells’ genetic affliction was a myth.

“Mental function alters with age,” she’d told Jordanna toward the end of their sessions, when Jordanna had felt safe enough to bring up the curse. “It happens to a lot of people.”

“Young people?” Jordanna asked. “My mother got this in her thirties.”

“Sometimes.”

“You don’t believe in any of it?” Jordanna had pressed.

“I think there’s been a gross exaggeration around here of possible genetically linked mental illness. Your family has gotten a bad rap for a long time.”

Jordanna had felt immense relief at her words, but it had been short-lived as Dr. Eggers’s opinion was not shared by Aunt Evelyn, who’d told her that Anna Eggers’s father was a Benchley and Benchleys and Treadwells had intermingled for years, to the detriment of both. “Of course she’s going to say that,” Aunt Evelyn had sniffed. “She doesn’t want to admit she could be afflicted, and she’s got ties to both families. I’ve been so, so lucky myself. God is merciful. You know, I pray every day for you, my dear, just like I pray for your mother’s soul.”

Aunt Evelyn Treadwell was ten years older than her sister, Jordanna’s mother, and had been spared the affliction, apparently, but fear of it was the reason she’d never married nor had children. Jordanna wanted to believe the whole thing was bunk, but she remembered her mother’s spells and ravings, and her split with reality.

Aunt Evelyn had added, “I wish you were seeing someone who might actually be able to help you. Your erratic behavior is very concerning. Your father is a wonderful man who put up with an awful lot from Gayle. I don’t know another man who would have been as patient.”

Jordanna was appalled. “My mother was sick.”

“She didn’t go to church.” The last comment was ripped from Aunt Evelyn’s bosom, a scourge against the sister who’d been loved despite her illness. Before Jordanna could defend her mother again, Evelyn had finished with, “Putting yourself in God’s hands is the road to salvation. You need to start now, Jordanna, before you really hurt someone.” In her aunt’s eyes, she was to blame, the ungrateful, possibly mentally unstable daughter who’d tried to blacken the revered Dr. Winters’s good name.

Well, fine. She didn’t need Aunt Evelyn and she didn’t need Kara, and she certainly didn’t need her father. She’d learned to live with the way things were, and these years away had helped harden her to the unjust way she’d been treated. Most of the time, she just thought what the hell, it was over. She didn’t live in Rock Springs any longer, and never planned to again, so what did it matter?

Except now she was heading back there with Jay Danziger in tow.

Jay Danziger . . .

Her heart fluttered and she snorted out a laugh. What she was doing was crazy, no doubt about it. Maybe all the tongue-waggers and finger-pointers in Rock Springs had reason to worry about her. And though she truly believed he was in danger, a part of her was almost giddy with the rush of being in league with her onetime idol. He was damnably attractive. Even with the bruising and bandages, he made her pulse race a little. She could feel herself shut down around him; a necessary defense mechanism. He already knew she was a reporter, so he could just keep thinking this rescue was all for a story. And yes, it was, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She’d chosen him as her unwitting mentor, and then had fallen for him in a very feminine way. Hero worship at its worst.

But it was all an illusion. She wasn’t crazy enough to think otherwise, no matter what people thought.

Back at her apartment, Jordanna gave a quick recheck of her Carmen Danziger clothes and makeup then locked up the apartment, got back in the RAV, and turned out of the parking lot. She drove east toward Portland, but took the exit off Sunset onto the access road to Laurelton General, slowing near a series of office buildings that fed into the hospital. She pulled around the back to a near-empty lot, then looked around surreptitiously, her engine still running. There didn’t appear to be anyone about, so she pulled out the crescent wrench she’d slipped into her purse, then climbed from the car. Her pulse raced and her hands shook a little as she bent in front of the car and quickly removed the license plate. Then she circled to the back, taking off that one, too. Momentarily, she thought about stealing one from another car, but gave that idea up immediately. No license plate she could maybe explain, if she were unlucky enough in the quarter mile to the hospital to encounter a cop, but if somehow this was all traced back to her, stealing a license plate would be a crime.

Throwing the plates into the backseat, she jumped back in the black SUV and wheeled from the back parking lot and onto the street. Her knuckles ached from the tight grip on the wheel as she drove toward the hospital.

“Please, please, please . . .” she murmured.

She was afraid to let out her breath when she pulled into the hospital’s rear lot without incident. She parked near the back door, then glanced up, counting the windows until she found Danziger’s room.

Walking quickly to the rear entrance, she noticed a posted warning that said the doors would be locked to visitors after 7:00
PM
. That should give her just enough time. It was May and there would still be hours of light as they headed toward Rock Springs.

Drawing a sharp breath, she reached for the door handle and slipped inside the hospital.