Colder Than Ice. Maggie Shayne
that readiness would make her safer or put her at greater risk remained to be seen.
Beth looked up and down the street, waiting, watching, listening. She didn’t see anyone. Probably, she told herself, the brown car had been nothing more than a sightseer or nature lover. Probably her blood pressure was going through the roof over nothing.
After several minutes she went back inside, hit the release and let the fully loaded clip drop from the hollow butt into her waiting palm. Then she locked the gun in its assigned drawer, next to the tiny derringer. The key was on a chain around her ankle. She returned the clip to the top of a bookshelf, where she could grab it fast but no one else would ever notice it.
Her telephone was ringing. She snatched it up and whispered hello, half-afraid the man she’d been thinking about—Mordecai, not Joshua—would somehow start whispering to her from the other end.
“Hey, Beth. It’s Julie.”
“And Dawn!” Dawn called from somewhere in the background. Not on an extension, though.
Beth closed her eyes against the rush of sheer pleasure hearing her daughter’s voice brought welling up inside her. God, it was heaven to hear her voice. Warm, sweet heaven. The night of that horrible raid, Dawn had been only a baby. Beth had been shot, certain she was dying, when she’d given her daughter to her best friend, begged her to take Dawn out of that place. And Jewel—Julie now—had done it. She’d raised Dawn as her own, believing, as the rest of the world had, that Beth had died in the raid. By the time Beth found them again, Dawn had been happy, thriving, and calling Julie “Mom.”
And yet…. “Are we private?”
“Yeah. Pay phone, outside a convenience store. Nowhere near us. It’s clean, don’t worry. I’ll put Dawny on after we talk.” Her next words were muffled. “Dawny, go grab us a couple of Diet Vanilla Cokes, will you?”
“Sure, Mom. Be right back. Don’t you dare hang up.”
Beth sighed, ignoring the blade she felt twisting in her heart every time she heard her daughter call her best friend “Mom.” She swallowed the pain, kept it hidden from her voice. “It’s not like it matters. Sooner or later, he’s going to find me.”
“Not necessarily,” Julie told her, just as she always did. “Beth, you have a new name, new town—”
“It won’t matter. His gift is genuine, Jewel. Even if his mind is broken, his gift is for real. He’ll track me down.”
“You have some reason to feel like he’s getting close? You sound…shaky.”
Beth swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. I’m probably overreacting.”
“I have never known you to overreact. Maybe it’s time you accept some of the help the government is always offering—the bodyguards, I mean.”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t trust anyone who works for the government. Hell, it was a government man who shot me.” Her and thirty other teenagers, she thought silently, in a riot that should have been avoided. She’d lost everything because of it. Her soul, for a time, as she lingered in a coma. Her memory for years afterward. Her daughter, the only one she would ever have. Her identity, her entire life. Gone, all of it, because of one gung ho soldier with an itchy trigger finger and a lousy aim. “I don’t want another one like him protecting me.”
“Then maybe you should get out of there.”
She pursed her lips. “No, Jewel. Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m just paranoid. Besides, I’m sick of running and hiding.”
“Yeah, and when did you decide that?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a long time coming.” She licked her lips. “When he comes, I’ll be ready. Maybe I should just face him. Only one of us would walk away, but at least the running would be over.”
“You’re scaring me, Beth.”
Beth swallowed hard. “I’m being melodramatic. I’m lonesome. I miss you guys. I miss Dawny.”
“I know. She misses you, too. She’s been begging me to let her come up there for a visit.”
Beth closed her eyes. It was strictly against the government’s rules for her to see her daughter. Then again, according to Arthur Stanton, she wasn’t supposed to communicate with Dawn by phone or e-mail, either. It hadn’t stopped her from doing so. Still…
“It may not be the best time to risk it, Jewel. Try to put her off until I can be sure it’s safe.” She didn’t think Mordecai would harm Dawn, and he probably wouldn’t try to abduct her again now that he’d surrendered his parental rights to her. But given his state of mind, there was no point putting her within his reach.
“Will do. Listen, Beth, I got wind of something at the newsroom. I don’t know if it means anything. In fact it probably doesn’t, but…David Quentin Gray—Mordecai’s ex-lawyer—escaped from Attica last week. They found him dead, shot once in the head, the next day.”
Beth got a chill that didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. “Who shot him?”
“They don’t know.”
Beth sighed. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “He didn’t know anything about me. I mean, how could he?”
“No. It’s nothing. I’m sure of it. I just thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Julie.”
“Here’s your drink,” Dawn said. “Can I talk now?”
“Just a sec, hon. Beth, if you need us, let us know. Sean and I can be there in no time. We love you, you know. And we owe you a hell of a lot.”
“I’m the one who owes you, Jewel. Now put the brat on the phone before she has a fit.”
She heard the telephone move, then Dawn’s voice came on the line, and Beth let it wash over her like rain over a dying flower. Dawn talked about her senior year of high school, her teachers, her classes, her plans for graduation and where she might go to college. She was driving now. Her Jeep had gotten a dent from a kid in the school parking lot, and she was mortified about it, and so on and on and on.
Beth listened, commenting in all the right places, and she somehow managed to keep the tears that were sliding down her cheeks from being evident in her voice.
Chapter Four
It was Lizzie. This was her!
Mordecai’s heart had pounded, and he’d barely been able to catch his breath as he watched her running along the winding country lane. Running. Hands clenched into fists pumping at her sides. As if she were fighting.
And then she slowed and walked right up to the front porch of the very house he’d been watching: the fading, former Blackberry Inn. All night, he’d been parked in his car, keeping the boy under surveillance, just as the guides had told him to do. It had made no sense. He’d been frustrated, thinking it stupid and senseless to sit there, cold and uncomfortable, overnight. He knew where the boy lived now, so what was the point? Even if he was to be Mordecai’s heir…
Now he understood. This was the point. The boy was a beacon, pointing the way to Lizzie. Already he was connected to Mordecai, already aiding him in his work. He had led Mordecai to Lizzie. Obviously he was the one. The boy, Bryan, was the one he’d been waiting for. He should have trusted, had more faith. The guides always had a reason for everything they told him to do.
Mordecai took out his binoculars and watched every move Lizzie made. He watched her sit on the porch, sipping tea with an old woman, watched the looks, the smiles, they exchanged.
They were close. The old woman was important to her.
Then the man came out to join them, and Mordecai’s body went stiff and his nerve endings