Hidden Away (4 page)

“We had someone undercover in Lattimer’s organization,” Resnick said. “We were this close to bringing Lattimer down when he got suspicious and my guy disappeared. I want Lattimer for this. I want him bad. Before he disappeared, my agent relayed information about Sarah. And here’s the thing. Resnick cares about her. He’s extremely protective of her. He’s gone to great lengths to keep his relationship to her secret because he doesn’t want his shit touching her. Remarkable, isn’t it? I’d have laid odds the bastard didn’t have a heart or a conscience.

“We were moving in on Sarah and setting up surveillance. I was in the process of getting wiretaps for her phone when this thing with Cross went down. We were in the same goddamn city as the bastard and he slipped through our fingers.”

Garrett rubbed absently at his shoulder as he let Resnick’s words sink in. Lattimer had a weakness. Weaknesses could be exploited.

“I want in.”

“Wait just a fucking minute, Garrett,” Sam said. “You don’t know what the job is.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I want in.”

Donovan frowned and shook his head “You’re not ready to go back into action yet, man. This isn’t some pansy-ass cake job we’re talking, not to mention this is way too personal for you.”

Resnick cleared his throat. “It’s actually perfect for him. It’s why I came. It’s true I know how much you hate the bastard, Garrett, and I’m certainly not above using that to my advantage. But your injury provides the perfect cover.”

“Get to the point,” Garrett snapped.

“Sarah disappeared after she ran from the building where Cross was killed. It took us a while to find her. She used her real name to hop a flight to Miami but it got a little murky after that. Took some digging, but we found a pilot who took her to Isle de Bijoux. She paid via a wire transfer and used a fake name. Marcus is obviously funding her. She’s currently holed up in a cottage on a remote section of the beach.”

Donovan crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the arm of the couch next to Garrett. “I can already tell I don’t like where this is going.”

“So why aren’t you sending one of your men in?” Sam asked.

“Isle de Bijoux is small, not a lot of tourists. I need someone who’d blend. Someone with a reason for being there. Plus Garrett’s motivated. He hates Lattimer’s guts. And I wanted to give him the opportunity to take him down,” he added in an even voice.

“Blend? You think
he’d
blend?” Donovan asked in amusement.

“He’s perfect,” Resnick said. “He already looks like shit. He needs a shave and a haircut. He’s recovering from an injury. You’d take the beach cottage down from Sarah’s. Do a little fishing. Hang out on the beach. Get some rest. It’d be a mini vacation and all you have to do is keep an eye on Sarah Daniels until Lattimer shows up.”

Garrett stood and began to pace back and forth in front of the couch. His shoulder was aching, but he’d be damned if he gave in to the urge to rub it. Sam and Donovan would be on him about taking it easy, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was take it easy. He was damned tired of being laid up like some invalid. He was itching to get back in the game. Go to work. Even if it was some cake babysitting job. That wasn’t what appealed. Beach and sun and sand did nothing for him. But the opportunity to nail Lattimer? He didn’t give a shit if it meant him going to Bumfuck Africa.

He paused in mid-pace and turned his stare on Resick. “You’re so sure he’s going to show.”

“Yeah. He’ll show. Sarah’s too important to him. She’s the only damn thing he seems to care about in the world. If he doesn’t show, he’ll eventually get her to come to him. Either way, if you’re on her tail, we nail him.”

“So that’s it. I go to this island and I keep an eye on her. Wait for Lattimer to show his hand and nail his ass to the wall.”

Resnick blew out his breath. “Hell, I don’t care if you sleep with her or play priest to her nun. I just need you close enough that you know when she so much as takes a piss. I want to know if Lattimer contacts her or she contacts him. And another thing, Garrett. I don’t want you to lose your goddamn head over this. Do it right. Don’t try to be a hero. If Lattimer shows, don’t try anything stupid. We want him alive.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of backup will he have if things go to shit? I don’t like the idea of sending one man in on any job, no matter how simple it sounds.”

“The full power of my resources,” Resnick said. “Whatever you need.”

Garrett glanced first at Sam, who didn’t look thrilled, and then to Donovan who simply looked worried. Then he looked back at Resnick. “Do you have a file on Sarah? Photos? Age? Habits?”

Resnick’s eye twitched and he reached for his cigarette again. “Of course.” He reached into his suit and pulled out a folder. He thrust it at Garrett who took it and flipped it open. Paper clipped to the first page was a photo.

Sarah was beautiful. Not classical and elegant like Rachel or cute and sweet looking like Sophie, but a quiet beauty that didn’t jump off the page at you but rather settled in nice and comfortably.

She had long chestnut hair, a light dusting of freckles over her nose and deep green eyes. She wasn’t smiling in the picture but he’d bet his last dollar that when she did smile, it lit up her entire face.

He thumbed through her information, glancing at her job. She was an administrative assistant. She’d taken the job as Allen Cross’s executive assistant eighteen months prior. That had only lasted six months. She hadn’t taken a job since. He raised an eyebrow at that. Maybe her brother was footing her bills.

She lived in Boston but had been born and raised in Alabama. No siblings—officially. No parents. According to her records, she’d been raised in foster care for most of her childhood. He frowned. If she was Lattimer’s half sister, then why the hell had she been raised in foster care when he’d grown up with a silver spoon?

She had an apartment in a modest area of Boston. Lived alone. She had acquaintances, but no apparent close friends. She seemed to have lost touch with people she’d formerly hung out with after she’d quit her job with Cross.

He traced the outline of her face on the picture. So she was a loner. Probably what she was used to. In another life, Garrett imagined he was a hermit, and if his overbearing family would allow it, he’d be a total cave dweller now.

Garrett rubbed his neck and then glanced back at Resnick. “You aren’t holding out any other information from me, are you? This is it? I stick to Sarah Daniels and nail Lattimer when the time comes.”

“In a nutshell, yeah. Think of it as paid vacation. With a pretty woman at that.”

Garrett blew out his breath. “Okay, when do you want me down there?”

Resnick shot him a rueful glance. “Try yesterday.”

PARADISE
had become hell. Despite the beauty of her surroundings, Sarah Daniels spent every minute of every day looking over her shoulder and waiting. Waiting to be discovered. After her arrival on the island, she’d spent the entire first week holed up in the tiny cottage she’d rented, barely able to sleep for fear of discovery.

Marcus had always been determined to take care of her. It frustrated him that she wouldn’t accept his lavish gifts, his money or his offer to buy her a house complete with staff to see to her every need. What he had done was set up a bank account and deposited sums at intervals until a hefty balance had accumulated. As much as she’d been determined not to draw on those reserves, she was grateful now that he’d done it.

She’d use the money to protect him, just as he’d protected her.

Demons past and present haunted her dreams until she was exhausted and worn thin. On the eighth day of her self-imposed solitude, she’d risen at dawn and watched the first fingers of the sun spread over the deep blue water. Watched as the waves gently foamed onto the sand, reaching and then retreating.

Drawn to the peace it seemingly offered, she’d walked barefoot onto the sand and stood at the water’s edge, face turned up into the sun. Here, her past didn’t matter. It was a chance to be reborn. She just had to take it. She had to believe in it.

Though the sun warmed her skin, she was still cold on the inside. She was in survival mode. Everything was locked down. She didn’t feel. She
couldn’t
feel.

Gradually she ventured out to buy groceries, figuring she’d gain more suspicion by never leaving her cottage than if she mingled with the locals. The island was a fascinating mix of cultures, and people from all over the globe seemed to have traveled to this place for a new beginning.

Tourists hadn’t yet found the island. It was inhabited largely by year-rounders, corporate people who’d left the rat race, artists seeking inspiration and loners like herself who sought refuge in a sparsely populated island where everyone pretty much kept to themselves.

Today she left her cottage wearing a tank top and casual trousers. Flip-flops and slides were the shoes of choice and she’d purchased a few pair days earlier in her attempt to blend in with the local scenery. Her destination was the coffee shop perched haphazardly on a beach overlook a mile from the cottage. It was a popular haunt. The coffee was good and they served a variety of sandwiches and croissants. It also had free Wi-Fi.

She tucked her laptop into her bag and then felt inside the pocket of her pants for the paper with the instructions on how to check the email account she communicated with Marcus from. Even though it had been her and Marcus’s primary method of communication for a few years now, she hadn’t yet committed the intricate steps to memory. Marcus had despaired of her, exasperated by the fact she made lists and notes for everything. He preached to her about paper trails, but she’d never considered his grumblings. Never considered that she’d be in a position to actually worry about such a thing.

She’d made a mistake already. She’d used her real name. Her passport. Like an idiot. She’d left Boston in such a rush that she hadn’t really thought about the potential pitfalls of the very thing Marcus feared. A paper trail. Even her destination hadn’t been planned. At the ticket counter in the airport, she’d plunked down her credit card and asked for the first available flight out of Boston. It just happened to be going to Miami. On the plane, she’d sat by an elderly couple whose final destination was Isle de Bijoux. It sounded perfect. By the time she landed in Miami, she’d had time to actually think about what she was doing, so from there, she chartered a private Cessna to the island, used a fake name and paid via wire transfer from the account Marcus has set up for her. The pilot probably thought she was a drug dealer, but he hadn’t turned down the money she offered.

Then she’d booked another commercial flight to Los Angeles, though if anyone really looked hard, they’d know she never got on that flight. And it wasn’t as if she’d made it difficult for anyone to track her to Miami. Still, she felt some sense of satisfaction that with as little experience as she had with subterfuge, she’d managed to get to the island and not stick out like a sore thumb. But the stress of not knowing if she was being hunted—by the authorities or Stanley Cross—had worn away at her already frayed mental state.

So one of the first things she’d done was to weigh her options and plan an escape route. It amused her that she was acting like a character in some ridiculous spy movie. She’d flown here, and flying back out in a hurry simply wasn’t an option. If she ever had to bolt, her best avenue of escape would be by sea.

Instead of looking up the two larger charter services, she’d instead opted for a small, hole-in-the wall, one-boat operation that looked as though it was usually passed over for the two other services. She gave the owner a ridiculous story about how she was an author doing research and writing a crime novel and that she wanted to arrange for him to be on call to pick her up on the western tip of the island and take her to the neighboring island.

To his further amusement, she made him do a test run. He probably couldn’t care less about why she was acting so ridiculous as long as she paid him, and she made sure it was worth his while, but she remained in character, even bringing a notebook where she pretended to take copious notes while they rode the two hours to the next island.

To her delight, there were a few charter services to choose from there, but she nearly did a victory dance when she found out that one of them made routine flights to Mexico to deliver goods to a retail store. After again spinning a yarn about researching a thriller, she convinced the pilot to allow her to hitch a ride when she got ready. She didn’t bother to tell him that she preferred never to be ready, but at least she had a viable and somewhat secure escape route from her island should the need arise.

All the way back to the island aboard the small boat, she’d patted herself on the back and asserted that while she was a decided amateur at matters of deception, she wasn’t a complete idiot. Then she’d spent an afternoon in the coffee shop researching her options in Mexico.

She’d come a long way from the spineless coward she’d been after Allen Cross raped her. So she’d changed one hiding place for another, but she was far more in control of her destiny here than she’d been in Boston. And she wasn’t about to let go of the reins again.

After three weeks on the island, she settled into a routine, but she didn’t dare let her guard down. Mistakes could get her killed. Only a fool became complacent. But she did allow herself a few simple pleasures. Such as coffee at the shop in town and occasional trips to the market to see what struck her fancy.

She barely remembered the walk to the coffee shop, so deep was her concentration on her circumstances. She stayed on the narrow beach path rather than take the winding, pothole-riddled main road that that ended just a few hundred yards beyond her cottage. When she reached the crumbling stone steps that led up to the ramshackle hut, she paused to look around. Satisfied that nothing seemed amiss, she hurried up the path to the rear entrance of the shop.