Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Grace stood very still.

“Then, if he’s any good,” Faroe said, “the dude finds somebody in Aruba to bribe. He gets the background of that Aruba corporation. That leads him to the lawyer I used to set up the firewall between me and the world. If the lawyer is as crooked as I think he is, he’ll sell my name the instant the price is right.”

“But-”

Faroe kept talking. “Before you can say ‘shuckey darn,’ the dude on the dock knows you’re talking out of school and hiring a pricey international troubleshooter to help you break your son out of his cozy prison.”

Horrified, Grace stared at Faroe. She wanted to argue, to say it couldn’t be that way.

She couldn’t have signed her son’s death warrant.

But the truth was there in Faroe’s eyes, Lane’s eyes accusing her, her heart beating too fast, her ears ringing, reality a tunnel of light closing down in front of her and darkness roaring around her.

With a muttered word, Faroe shoved Grace onto the banquette seating and forced her head down between her knees.

“You never struck me as the fainting type,” he said roughly. “Breathe, damn it. Living without oxygen is only for Hindu holy men.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, then another one, then another. Her ears stopped ringing, the world stopped wheeling, and light came back. She felt Faroe’s big hands, one holding her head between her knees and the other stroking her spine with a gentleness that was the opposite of his voice.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah? You could have fooled me. When was the last time you slept more than two hours?”

She shrugged.

“And food?” he asked. “Did you forget that, too?”

She swiped her hair back from her face with both hands. “I’m not hungry.”

“Adrenaline wipes out appetite, but it doesn’t wipe out the need for calories. It’s as basic as blood sugar. You burn, you eat to stoke the fire. You stop stoking, you get light-headed.”

He went to the galley refrigerator and came back with a can of Coke. He popped the tab and handed the sugary drink to her.

Grace looked at it.

“I know, I know,” he said before she could, “you’re the diet Coke type. Drink this anyway. Sugar has its uses.”

She took the can and drank a mouthful. Within seconds she felt her body respond. She took another mouthful and shivered, surprised by the physical sensation of sugar hitting her bloodstream.

“I guess…I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday,” she said, thinking back.

“Toast and coffee?”

“Coffee, no toast. I was working late.”

Faroe went to the pantry and came back with a loaf of sourdough bread, a jar of peanut butter, a bread knife, and a table knife. He cut the loaf in half, then sliced one half horizontally. He spread on a thick layer of peanut butter and handed the open-faced sandwich to her.

“Peanut butter and Coke for breakfast,” Grace said. “Add a piece of cold pizza and you’re in Lane heaven.”

“Your kid has good instincts. Eat.”

“Yes, Mother.” Grace took a big gooey bite and had no choice but to shut up and chew.

Faroe went back to the porthole. The man was still in the booth. After a moment, Faroe turned away, pulled a stool out from beneath the chart table, and set it down in front of Grace.

“If we’re going to do this, you have to learn and learn fast,” he said. “First, you live like you’re onstage and it’s opening night. Somebody’s watching you all the time. You just have to figure out who it is and who the watcher is working for.”

Grace reached for the soda to help with the peanut butter clogging her mouth.

“Second, protect yourself because nobody else will,” Faroe said. “Take care of yourself for the same reason. You’re a high-octane woman and you’re under a lot of stress. It’s doubly important for you to eat.”

“Yes, Mother,” Grace mumbled, but there was more peanut butter than sarcasm in her voice.

“Listen up. This is the wrong time to be light-headed from lack of food. Most people, particularly most crooks, make dumb decisions about half the time because they’re drunk or stoned or fucked up one way or another. Being hungry is no different.”

“Such talk, Mother.”

“Another little rule. Don’t let anything shock you. Expect the worst and you won’t have any rude surprises.”

The worst.

Lane’s death.

Grace froze.

“Breathe,” Faroe growled.

She forced herself to. “If I let myself expect the worst…” She couldn’t finish.

“Yeah,” he said. “If you let yourself expect the worst, you’d go postal and start doing really foolish things, instead of only marginally dumb ones.”

“Besides coming to you, what dumb thing have I done?”

“That was enough. Ask Steele for some other St. Kilda consultant. There’s too much baggage between you and me.”

Surprise showed in her eyes. “But you’re the only one I know well enough to trust. Why do you think I’m here? Do you think this is easy for me?”

“Easy or hard, it’s wrong. It was wrong even before I knew we were burned by the dude on the dock.”

“So he’s seen us together. So what?”

“I’ve lost the one advantage an operator has to have-secrecy. He’s going to be poking a proctoscope up my ass until he figures out who I really am.”

“Must you be so graphic?”

“Excuse the hell out of me, Your Honor.” The anger in Faroe’s voice vibrated inside the TAZ. “You’d better get used to the crude things in life because right now you’re lip deep in them and headed for a rude dunking.”

“You sound almost as angry as you did sixteen years ago.” Grace looked at the peanut butter and bread with a complete lack of interest. “That was when you told me to get the hell out of your sight and your life. Is that what you want? Again?”

“You’re a lawyer. You know how emotion clouds professional judgment.”

“I don’t know if I believe that anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I believe in blood ties. My child is in terrible danger, and the moment I realized that, the only person I could think of who might be able to help him was you. Joe Faroe. So I sucked it up and came to you. For Lane.”

Silence stretched while Faroe studied Grace. He didn’t doubt that she was telling the truth.

And his gut said she wasn’t telling all of it.

“Sixteen years ago, maybe it would have worked,” he said. “But I’m a different man and you’re a different woman. That’s why you need somebody else. We have too much baggage, the kind that really gets in the way.”

Grace watched him. Her eyes were huge, glittering with tears she wouldn’t allow to fall.

“I’ll call Steele myself,” Faroe said, his voice rough with all that he couldn’t say, shouldn’t think, and didn’t want to remember. “There are two men who are as good as I am at this bloody game. One of them could be here by dawn. You and St. Kilda can start over, without the baggage and without the burn.”

Grace’s eyes dropped to the leather shoulder bag she’d carried aboard. My God, am I going to have to tell him?

“I’ve learned my lesson,” she said quietly. “I won’t move again without checking over my shoulder.”

Faroe let out a rush of breath. “Okay. Good. I’ll call Steele.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. You said in the shadow world, you have to trust your best guess. It’s you or nothing for Lane. It won’t be all that easy for anyone to track down your past. If you’re good at anything, it’s disappearing.”

“A really good operative with the right connections could peel my identity in a few days. A week, max.”

She looked at her watch. “Lane has twenty-six hours.”

“Shit.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” Grace said. “I don’t know why you quit St. Kilda, but I do know you must have had a good reason. And here I am dragging you back where you don’t want to go.”

A good reason.

Faroe tried not to remember the feel of a friend-turned-enemy choking to death in his hands, his eyes pleading friendship and his knife still sliding off Faroe’s body armor.

It had been a near thing for Faroe. It had been a final thing for Bernardo.

Grace looked at Faroe and wondered what he was thinking that had turned his face into a death’s-head. Then he smiled, a smile so cold it made gooseflesh rise on her arms.

“Did Steele tell you?” Faroe asked.

“He said something about you being forced to kill a good man gone bad.”

Abruptly Faroe stood up and reached for a three-foot length of rope that hung from a hook above the chart table. The ceiling of the stateroom was just high enough that he could extend his arms above his head, one hand on either end of the rope. Slowly he rotated his arms behind his head and down his back. The tight muscles of his shoulders screamed in protest, then stretched slowly, releasing the tension that had built in them.

Grace watched with a fascination she didn’t bother to conceal. The Joe Faroe she’d known a long time ago had been whipcord thin and coiled like a spring, always ready for action. This new Joe Faroe was more muscular and yet more flexible.

He’d learned how to handle the destructive tension within himself.

For the first time, she allowed herself to hope. Just a little. Just enough so that her throat wasn’t locked tight against all the screams she’d swallowed.

He tossed the rope back on the table and looked at her with a quiet expression that said he’d made up his mind.

“You sure it’s me or no one?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Two on a tightrope is dangerous, especially when one is an amateur.”

Grace glanced again at the purse that held all the pictures of Lane she owned. She was both relieved and oddly sad that she hadn’t had to use them.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Whatever I say, whenever I say it.”

She told herself the words only had one meaning. She nodded tightly.

Faroe smiled. “Give me your cell phone.”

Without a word she went to her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and handed it to him.

If this was some kind of twisted test, she damn well was going to pass it.

OCEANSIDE

SUNDAY, 10:29 A.M.

FAROE PUNCHED IN THREE digits and hit “send.” Then he handed Grace the phone.

She listened to the ring. “Who am I calling?”

“There are only two three-digit numbers in the phone system. I didn’t call information.”

“You called 911? What am I supposed to say?”

The phone rang a second time.

“Tell them you’re reporting a hot prowl,” Faroe said. “Somebody tried to break into your boat at Slip F-39. He’s up on the dock now.”

A third ring.

“And sound scared,” Faroe added.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”

“I’m at the Oceanside marina,” Grace said hurriedly. “A man just tried to break in and I’m here alone. Please help me!”

“A prowler? What’s your address?”

“Slip F-39 at the marina. He’s gone back up the gangway. He’s in the parking lot right now, in a phone booth and he’s-he’s watching me!”

“Describe him, please.”

“Dark hair, a blue shirt, or maybe a jacket. He has a pair of binoculars. I think he’s been looking at boats to see if anyone’s aboard.”

“Okay, ma’am, we’ll send somebody right away.”

Grace covered the voice pickup and said to Faroe, “They’re sending a car.”

“How long?”

Grace lifted her thumb and spoke into the receiver. “How long until it arrives? I’m alone and-scared.”

The dispatcher hesitated, checking her status board. “Three minutes. You can stay on the line if you want.”

Grace mouthed, Three minutes.

Faroe nodded, took the phone, and ended the call.

“It really lights a fire under them when the phone goes dead in the middle of a prowler call,” he said.

“Clever, but what about me? Doesn’t that dispatcher have my number on caller ID right now?”

“Nope,” Faroe said. “Cell phones don’t trace.” Well, not usually. “Besides, you haven’t done anything wrong. There’s a dude out in the parking lot who shouldn’t be there and you’re nervous.”

“You sure you aren’t a defense lawyer?”

“I’m a good liar, does that count?”

He grabbed his own leather shoulder bag and checked the interior. All Grace saw before he closed it under her nose was a satellite cell phone like the one on Steele’s desk.