The Hiding Place (27 page)

Tara pressed her hand to a stitch in her left side, right under her rib cage. She was used to the altitude, but felt as if she couldn’t get a deep breath. The hunter’s cabin lay just ahead. As if the trees had devoured the woman, Marcie had disappeared. Inside? Could it be a trap, or could Tara herself lay one?

She stepped off the path and circled around behind the cabin through the trees. It had rained hard two days ago, and the ground up here was soft.

She halted when she saw a grimy window on the mountain side of the cabin. Perhaps no one could see out, but she couldn’t see in, either. Still, she could throw a shadow; she’d have to duck and get under it fast. If Marcie had not gone inside, she could not afford to let her slip away in a car parked below Big Rock.

Hunched under the window, Tara froze to listen. Thank God, no engine started on the road nearby. She heard the wind soughing through the spikes of pine needles, and her own thudding heart. How long could she stand there, waiting for Marcie or Nick? Nick might have called the cops, though she wished she’d told him to hold off on that until she had some time with Marcie. And would he tell them to come up here or would they just wait at the house?

Again, she had a flashback: she’d called the cops, but not soon enough. Outside his house, Clay came up behind her, stomped on her wrist and sent her cell phone flying. Then he hit her head so hard he knocked a year of life out of her, ruined her chance to know her baby…

Trying to keep so much as a twig from snapping, Tara tiptoed around to the front of the old hunter’s cabin. Just as before, the door was ajar and askew. She was the hunter now, and she had to look in. Lifting a solid branch from the ground for a club, she peeked in the door.

Dirty but deserted. She’d wasted too much time, just the way she’d wasted time trusting Laird, wasted time not knowing she was a mother.

Still holding the branch, she started down toward the road where she and Nick had surmised their stalker had parked, though they’d still thought they were looking for Dietmar Getz then. So misled, but, she was certain, that’s exactly what the Lohans wanted.

Yes, a car was parked there, but not the dark-colored one Marcie had driven to their house the night Rick died. No matter. Money could buy a thousand new cars, a thousand new spies, a thousand new wives for a Lohan.

Could Marcie be up on Big Rock? It made sense, in a way. From that high, open vantage point, she could surely send or receive cell phone messages that crags or outcrops interfered with below.

How long before Nick could get up here? she wondered. Surely he’d know this was where she’d come. She wasn’t sure if he’d use Beamer to track her. It would take him at least twenty-five minutes to get home from Evergreen, and she’d probably been out of the house for at least fifteen now.

Tara quietly climbed the bulbous outcrop that was Big Rock. Careful where she put her feet and the branch she carried, she inched up, trying to avoid so much as a gasped breath. She slipped once, scraping her knuckles and knees, but went on. More sky came into view, then the valley.

And the spiky top of Marcie’s head! She was sitting, facing away, looking out over the vast expanse. She seemed to be on her cell phone. But the wind was wayward, and Tara could not tell what she was saying. She’d have to wait until she was finished, for if she was reporting to someone dangerous, Tara didn’t want her to call for help. Besides, this would give Nick more time to get here.

But it was hard standing half down, half up the steep, smooth slope. Her calves began to cramp. She thought of calling the police from here, but Nick might have done that. Besides, she needed to question Marcie before they read her her Miranda rights and let her call a lawyer, probably funded by a Lohan. She’d never get information out of her then.

Tara ducked when Marcie turned her way, still sitting, talking on her phone. For the first time, her words came clear: “I’m outta here, outta this deal. And don’t think you can risk any more faked suicides. I’ve got enough goods on you, too!”

Marcie evidently ended the call with that. When she stood, almost her whole body popped into view. It was now or never, before Marcie saw her and took off. Tara knew she’d have to block her against the steep drop-off side of the rock to make her stay and answer questions.

“So,” Tara yelled, and scrambled up onto the slightly slanted surface, “how does it feel to be stalked and to have your conversations overheard?”

The shock on the woman’s face showed she had not known she was being followed. Marcie’s wide eyes darted past her, around, down the rock.

“You’re—you’re alone?” she asked, taking a step back. Her shiny black laptop lay on the rock a few feet from her, next to a small gray case. A camera case? No, probably some sort of listening device.

“Hardly,” Tara brazened. “Your old friend Nick’s down at your car to be sure you don’t get away, and the cops have been called—the same ones who want you for B and E. Soon, I’ll bet, they’ll want you for collusion in a faked suicide.”

“You’re crazy. That’s pure hearsay.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll have an excellent lawyer to object, when I testify against you in court. The best that Lohan money can buy.”

“Whose money? I just—I fell for Nick MacMahon the first minute I saw him and want to get him away from you, that’s all. That kind of stalking, nothing else.”

“Oh, so bugging my office and my PC helps you to keep track of him? Marcie, you’re wanted for stalking, harassment, criminal trespass and burglary, but I won’t testify against you for any of that if you just tell me who hired you, who you were just talking to.”

The woman’s face went whiter than the clumps of clouds behind her. “Get out of my way, Tara. I admit I’ve been distraught since Rick died. I’m not responsible for my actions. I—I couldn’t even bear to go to the funeral home, and I’m sorry for that.”

“But no better time to drug our dog and rip out all evidence of your spying. So, was Jordan Lohan’s initial offer to Rick or to you? However did he find you in the first place?”

“Get out of my w—”

“You’ve been in mine too long! The Lohans are dangerous if you cross them, don’t you realize that? If Rick’s suicide was really murder, they obviously needed him out of the way. You can testify against the Lohans, make a plea deal. Otherwise, don’t you think when they’re done with you, they’ll eliminate you, like they did him? You’re expendable, Marcie! I was a Lohan wife, one who bucked them. I know them. Now answer my questions and then clear out of here fast, because they’ll be after you next.”

When Marcie stooped to grab her laptop and the case—whether to throw them off the rock or at her—Tara rushed her with her wooden weapon raised. She hit her arm. Marcie yelped and drew it back, then tried to race around Tara to get off the rock. Tara swung the branch at her feet and tripped her.

“Answer me!” she shouted, straddling the prone woman as she pressed the end of the branch into her chest.

Tara couldn’t believe the violent surge that rose in her. This woman had answers she wanted and needed. If Marcie or Rick’s illegal actions could be linked to the Lohans, she had some leverage. She would go to Seattle, get Carla Manning’s legal advice, tell the police what had happened and fight to avenge Sarah’s death.

The strange sound was distant, a whining at first, like a buzzing fly, but it quickly got louder, came closer.
Whap-whap-whap.
A helicopter lifted from the valley far below. Oh, thank God, Nick had called the police, and they’d sent a chopper to land up here and arrest Marcie. But she needed answers first. She needed…

The chopper was shiny ebony with a black bulbous window over the cockpit. No police insignia, like she’d seen before. No number on the chopper’s tail, nothing…

As the deafening aircraft hovered lower, the wash from the rotors kicked up dust and skittered tiny rocks into her. Blinded, Tara tried to motion the chopper to back off. Marcie kicked her branch away. The blast of air took Tara to her knees, then flattened her to the ground near where Marcie lay.

But she was gone.

Tara crawled in the direction she was certain the laptop had been, but she must be disoriented. Stop! she told herself. Stop before you roll off the edge of the slanted rock, or before Marcie jumps you or you get blown off.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. But then, through the flying scrim of debris, she saw Marcie scramble for the chopper as it hovered lower like some flying beast coming in for the kill. Its treads were only a few feet from the rock. Marcie was going to climb in! Not the police but a rescue for her? Yes, she passed the black square of her laptop into the plane, then heaved the gray case inside; black-jacketed arms with black gloves reached out for her.

“No-oooo-o!” Tara screamed, but she choked on grit and dust.

She tried to belly crawl backward, in case the chopper tried to knock her off. The rock began to slant down behind her. She scraped her stomach and chin; opening her arms wide, she tried to find something to grab in the hurricane from the chopper. If she wasn’t crawling toward the road, she could slide off the edge to her death below. She was disoriented, so dizzy. Could she have hit her head? No coma, no living death, never again! It terrified her that Claire’s face, Nick’s, her own as a child—Sarah’s—flashed through her brain in that awful second.

And then the chopper lifted and tilted away, taking Marcie with it. Beamer’s distant bark! Nick’s voice called from behind her somewhere…Nick coughing, now kneeling over her, shouting, “Marcie’s car’s on the road below! Where is she?”

Her voice came out in a rasp. She coughed and hacked as the chopper climbed the face of Black Mountain. She pointed toward it, choking out, “That—rescued her when I—had her cornered. It came fast, just after she threatened—whoever sent it—and I—know who—did.”

“Jordan? She threatened him about what?”

“She—didn’t say his name. Said she’d tell about Rick’s—fake suicide. But if she thinks she’s safe…”

They gasped in unison as, kneeling and hugging on the hard face of Big Rock, they watched in horror as a small, blond figure cartwheeled from the chopper and fell into the jagged mountains far below.

E
very time Tara closed her eyes, she saw Marcie dropping through the clear Colorado sky to her death. After searching from the air for hours, the local Civilian Air Patrol and a Denver Police helicopter still had not located her body. The police said that in that rough terrain, they might never. It was as if she had disappeared into oblivion, just as Tara’s own little Sarah had.

“Nick?” Tara murmured.

“Hmm? What?”

They lay side by side on the long couch as daylight dusted through the darkness outside. Neither of them had gone to their beds last night, but had been talking, planning, until they had fallen asleep here.

“Even if they found her body and located the black chopper,” Tara said, picking up where they’d left off, “and it led straight to the Lohans, they’d just claim she was despondent and had jumped. Of course, they’d say they tried to save her, like they tried to save my baby. They’d be so sad—what a shame.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Marcie told me she wasn’t herself and couldn’t face the funeral. I think she was lying, but I’d have to testify to what she’d said. They’d get away with murder again. They’d haul in made-to-order doctors claiming she was of unsound mind—unsound mind, just like me.”

“You can’t let this keep eating at you. The Lohans are not invincible,” he insisted, sitting up and rubbing his bloodshot eyes with a thumb and index finger.

“In other words, you think I’m turning into one of those crazy conspiracy freaks.”

“I didn’t say that, but Jordan’s got to make a mistake sooner or later. Your ex and his bride may have already made one, if they didn’t take all precautions when you had your baby. You said you were going to try again to track down the specialist who attended you and see if you could get him deposed by a lawyer over there in Europe.”

“Yes, but I’ve got another rock around here to overturn to see what’s under it first.”

“I don’t see what a photographer’s going to get you, now that you already know Laird married Jen. She’s in the photos, so they hid them.” He stretched his arms high over his head. “I’m going to make some coffee and feed Beamer. At least it’s Saturday, and we don’t have to let Claire out of our sight, even at school.” He hugged her once hard and got to his feet.

“I do feel safer now that Marcie’s not lurking outside,” she admitted, rising, too, and following him out to the kitchen. The clock on the oven said 8:04 a.m.; that meant they’d had about four hours’ sleep. She felt as if she hadn’t slept forever. But she had things to do, including dropping in on the Lohan photographer in Evergreen at ten this morning.

Nick was right—that lead was a long shot. But the fact that both her former sister-in-law and father-in-law had hidden pictures from her—even, in Jordan’s case,
after
she knew about Laird and Jen and
after
she knew she’d had a baby—indicated something important was in those latest photos. She knew better than to think it was just that they wanted to protect her feelings. They were only into protecting Lohans.

After her escape from the clinic, at a nearby gas station restroom, Veronica had changed into a set of clothes Rita had brought, then she’d driven her rental car out of the Denver area like a woman possessed.

Hours later, she had stopped at a McDonald’s to eat an early breakfast. Imagine Veronica Lohan changing clothes in a dirty gas station restroom and eating an Egg McMuffin at Mickey D’s. Well, she’d better get used to it, but then, as generous as Laird had been with Tara, surely Jordan would not dare to cut off his wife of so many years with a mere pittance. He might be furious, but he wouldn’t want outsiders to know anything that could sully his philanthropic reputation. Even his sons might draw the loyalty line at Jordan cutting her off financially.

Exhausted, she stopped at an out-of-the-way motel, slept the sleep of the dead—but without clinic pills and shots in her blood—then pushed on at mid-morning. Weekend traffic was heavy. As usual, not only tourists but the natives were heading for the hills to hike or bike.