Carrie's Protector. Rebecca York
and her eyes snapped to him, seeing him looking around and getting his bearings.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Okay.”
Probably it was a lie—designed to reassure her. How could he feel okay after getting shot?
He shook his head and started to stretch, then stopped abruptly, undoubtedly because the pain in his arm had hit him. He dragged in a breath and let it out.
“How long was I sleeping?”
“A half hour.”
“How close are we to Columbia?”
“We’re here, but I don’t know where to find a motel. They built the place so you can’t find anything.”
He laughed. “It was the original plan not to spoil the view with big signs. Then they realized that they needed to make the commercial areas more obvious.” He looked around. “Head down Route 108, then turn at the Palace Nine shopping center. You’ll find the right kind of motels along 100 Parkway.”
She took his advice, stopping at a chain that advertised breakfast along with a room for less than a hundred bucks a night.
“You stay here. I’ll check in,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want the clerk to see a man and a woman together and remember the two of us if anyone comes asking questions. And a lone male is less suspicious than a lone female.”
She nodded and pulled into a parking space near the door. When he got out, she watched him steady himself against the car door, then square his shoulders.
She gave him a critical inspection as he headed for the lobby. He looked like a guy who wasn’t feeling 100 percent, but there was no way to know that he’d been shot a little more than an hour ago.
She glanced around, glad to see that nobody was paying her any particular attention.
PATRICK HARRISON STRUGGLED not to let his taut nerves overwhelm him. He spared a quick glance at his watch. It had been two hours since he and Carrie’s father had heard the news of the attack in Washington, D.C., and he felt the tension humming around the comfortable, wood-paneled home office.
He sat in one of the leather guest chairs. Douglas Mitchell sat behind his broad rosewood desk. They were both staring at a flat-screen television tuned to CNN. There had been nothing new to report for the past hour and a half, but the commentators were attempting to fill the air. At the moment the network was running a background piece on the Mitchell family, discussing the way Douglas Mitchell had taken the twenty million dollars he’d inherited from his father and turned it into over a billion—by buying up companies in distress and gutting them. The tactic had made him popular with the investment group he’d formed but not so much with the men and women who’d lost their jobs under his tender loving care.
Next came candid shots of Carrie as a teenager riding in horse shows and more shots of her all grown up and out on dates in D.C. with various eligible bachelors. She was also shown with her father on a trip to Europe they’d taken two years ago. There were no shots of Patrick, of course. He was invisible as far as the family history was concerned.
Next were some of the nature pictures Carrie had taken close to home and across the U.S. Patrick realized that if she survived this ordeal, her career was going to get a big boost. Or if she died, perhaps her pictures would sell for hundreds of dollars more than they had the day before.
Patrick shot a glance at Douglas’s rigid profile. The man had one hand pressed to his forehead as though trying to ward off a headache.
Patrick tried to make his voice reassuring. “Carrie’s in good hands. I’m sure she got away.”
Douglas whirled around in his swivel chair, his eyes fierce. “I’m not interested in your half-assed opinion. You don’t have any more information than I do.” He was as wired as a cat caught in a clothes dryer. Of course, he had a right to be. Since the moment his daughter had come home to the Mitchell estate to tell him about overhearing a terrorist plot, he’d been sick with worry about her.
Not that you could tell what he was feeling, unless you knew him well enough to see below the surface of his bluff exterior.
His attitude came across as annoyance and anger, but Patrick had been with him long enough to understand the old man’s anxiety. His daughter had come forward to testify against a gang of domestic terrorists, putting herself in immediate danger. She’d been hiding out for a week, and she’d gone downtown to meet with the Federal prosecutor. Unfortunately, the terrorists had been waiting for her and her bodyguard, Wyatt Hawk.
From the news accounts, it seemed that Hawk had gotten her out of the building. But where were they now?
Patrick took a calming breath. He’d known Carrie all his life, and he hated feeling as though there was nothing he could do, but he didn’t see any effective course of action open to him.
The old man picked up his phone and punched in Hawk’s cell number once again. The results were the same as every other time Douglas had tried to make the call. There was no answer.
“Damn him!” the elder Mitchell growled. For a moment, it looked as if he would throw the phone across the room.
“Remember your blood pressure,” Patrick murmured.
“I don’t need your damn advice,” Mitchell shot back, slapping his hand against the desk. After a moment, he took a breath and said, “Sorry. I’m on edge. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“I understand.”
“But I need to know what’s going on.” This time he dialed the safe house where Carrie had been staying for the past week. The results were the same.
“What can I do to help?” Patrick asked.
“Bring me a scotch and soda.”
“Is that wise?”
“Don’t question me.”
Patrick sighed and got up. Again he sneaked a glance at his watch. How long was this ordeal going to last?
Maybe he could have a drink, too. And maybe he’d have another discussion with Douglas about hiring security for himself, although the man was firm in his conviction that he didn’t need it.
He had just crossed the thick carpet to the bar when a noise alerted him that something was wrong. He whipped around to see two men standing in the office doorway. They wore ski masks over their faces and carried automatic weapons.
Patrick leaped toward the desk, putting himself between Douglas and the two men.
“What the hell?” Douglas turned.
“Out of the way.” One of the men charged toward Patrick and hit him on the side of the head with the butt of a gun. He cried out in pain and went down, struggling to cling to consciousness.
While he was on the floor, the other intruder crossed to Douglas Mitchell. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“You’ll find out.” The man grabbed Douglas by the arms and hustled him toward the door. When Douglas struggled, the man shoved a gun into the older man’s back. “Cooperate, or you’re going to get killed.”
The man turned to address Patrick. “Tell Carrie Mitchell that if she doesn’t turn herself in, her father’s dead.”
“We…we haven’t heard from her,” he managed to say.
“Well, you’d better hope she calls. And oh, yeah, if you contact the cops, you can kiss Mitchell’s ass goodbye.”
THE LONGER CARRIE waited for Wyatt to come out of the motel office, the more her tension grew. So many bad things had happened in the past few hours that she couldn’t stop herself from waiting for the next one.
To