The Protector (2003) (40 page)

Cavanaugh continued watching the people on the beach.

"It's just a thought," Jamie said.

"I keep seeing Roberto with his head beaten in ... Duncan with his face full of bullet holes . . . Karen literally scared to death in her wheelchair."

"The government might not be as lenient with Prescott as you think."

Instead of responding, Cavanaugh glanced down at a map of the shops in town. "The big bookstore is in the Carmel Mall. We could keep a watch on the place. Since Prescott likes books, there's a good chance he'd eventually show up there."

"Unless he buys books off the Internet."

"There's nothing like a real bookstore, though."

"In that case, he might decide to make the short drive north to Monterey," Jamie said.

Cavanaugh gave her a look.

"Just trying to investigate alternatives," she said.

"Which brings us back to sitting here on the beach and watching for him."

"Fine with me. I'll get a beach chair and a book. I can use the rest," Jamie said.

"After dark, we'll stake out the best restaurants and see if he shows up."

"I was sort of hoping we could
eat
in those restaurants, not watch them."

"Given how little he's probably eating these days, he'll want the small portions he allows himself to be exquisite. Only the top two or three restaurants in town will be acceptable to him."

"Unless he eats at home."

Cavanaugh gave her another look.

A jogger sprinted to their end of the beach, turned, and ran back in the opposite direction.

"Weight loss," Jamie said.

"You thought of something?"

"I'm going to hate myself for being honest. It'll take more than dieting for Prescott to lose weight fast. He'll need exercise. Hours and hours of it."

Chapter 9.

Cavanaugh waited in an art gallery while Jamie found a break in traffic and crossed to the opposite side, where a walkway led to what their map indicated was a warren of shops in the center of a block. They'd learned that one of the exercise clubs they wanted to check was on the second floor of a building over there, affiliated with a nearby hotel. The time was now 4:30. Although there wasn't any guarantee that Prescott would use an exercise club, let alone that particular club at that particular moment, Cavanaugh couldn't risk entering, just in case Prescott might, in fact, be present. Because Prescott didn't know Jamie existed, the safer course was for her to go in alone and look around. If no one aroused her suspicion, she was to tell an instructor that she was writing a health-magazine article about overweight people who'd lost a remarkable amount of weight in a short time thanks to their determination. Then she'd ask if any of the club's members fit that description.

Pretending to appreciate the gallery's paintings, Cavanaugh often glanced through the front window toward the other side of the street. The late-afternoon sun put some of the doorways in shadow. As tourists went in and out of the mews over there, he checked his watch, then feigned interest in more of the paintings.

Thirty minutes later, he was still pretending to be interested in the paintings.

He stepped outside and crossed the street. Pots of brightly colored flowers flanked the mews's entrance. Beyond them, shifting among tourists, he passed a walkway on his right. According to what he and Jamie had learned, the exercise club would be along the next walkway on the right. He turned a corner, passed more flowers, and came to steps that led up to the second floor. A sign read the fitness clinic.

Upstairs, he scanned the lobby and the long, bright exercise room beyond it. Jamie was nowhere in view. Staying to the side of the lobby, he carefully assessed the people working the various machines. None of them reminded him of Prescott. Amid the hum of treadmills and the clank of weights, he approached a muscular man in tight shorts and a T-shirt who stood behind a counter.

"I'm supposed to meet my wife here, but I'm late," Cavanaugh said. "Do you know if she's still around? Tall, thin, auburn hair. Good-looking."

The instructor frowned. "Is your name Cavanaugh?"

"Why? Is something wrong?"

"Man, I'm real sorry about what happened."

"Sorry?"

"After your wife fainted, her two friends told me she's got some kind of low blood pressure problem."

Cavanaugh's hands and feet felt numb.

"I wanted to call an ambulance," the instructor said, "but they said she'd had fainting spells a couple of times before. Nothing life-threatening. Something about her electrolytes being low."

Cavanaugh's stomach turned to ice.

"So I got them a bottle of Gatorade from the machine over there," the instructor said. "They gave her a couple of sips and helped her stand. She was woozy, but she could walk, sort of, if somebody put an arm around her."

"Friends?" Cavanaugh could barely speak.

"Two women who came in behind her. A good thing there were two of them. The one with the crutches couldn't have handled your wife all by herself."

"Crutches?" The lobby seemed to waver.

"Because of a cast on one leg. She said she knew you'd be worried, so she left a message for you." The instructor reached under the counter and set down an envelope.

Cavanaugh's fingers didn't want to work as he fumbled to open it. The neatly hand-printed note inside made him want to scream.

Tor House. Eight tomorrow morning.

Chapter 10.

Grace,

Cavanaugh thought. He struggled to keep control. Despite the weakness in his legs and arms, he drove at random through the area, going around blocks, making U-turns and heading back in the direction from which he'd just come. He timed traffic lights so he got through them just before they turned red, using every technique he could think of to make sure he wasn't followed. Cursing, he realized that Grace had made the connection between A Summer
Place
and Carmel. With no other direction in which to go, she was searching the area as he and Jamie had been doing. Sometime during the day, their paths had crossed. Perhaps at Tor House. Grace didn't know about Prescott's fascination with Robinson Jeffers, but that didn't matter. Tor House was one of the local attractions and had to be investigated. Perhaps Grace had been approaching it when she'd seen Cavanaugh and Jamie get in their car and drive away. That would explain Grace's choice for a meeting place tomorrow. Or had it been on 17-Mile Drive or at Pebble Beach's lodge, or had Grace seen Cavanaugh through binoculars while she scanned Carmel's beach? This much was certain: Grace had followed him, had taken her chance to grab Jamie, and was probably following Cavanaugh now. Inhaling sharply, he realized that while he'd been away from the Taurus, Grace might have planted a location transmitter in the car, making it easy for her to follow at a distance. Cavanaugh immediately stopped at a gas station and checked the obvious hiding places in and under the car. He used a pay phone to call information and get the numbers for Radio Shack stores in the area. One--to the north, in Monterey--was open until nine o'clock, he discovered. After asking directions about how to get there, he drove the seven miles along Highway 1 as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit. Using an FM receiver that he purchased at the store, he walked around the Taurus several times, slowly changing stations, waiting to hear the
beep . . . beep . . . beep
of the location transmitter. It would be set to one of the unused FM bands in the area. On Grace's end, the loudness or softness of the signal would tell her if Cavanaugh was near or far. But if Grace had managed to get something more sophisticated, something that used ultrasonic transmissions, Cavanaugh couldn't hope to find a comparably sophisticated device at Radio Shack to detect it.

After an hour in which he failed to discover a transmitter, he got back in the Taurus and resumed his evasive driving, frequently checking his rearview mirror to see if any headlights took the same direction he did. At last, fatigue and frustration wore him down. He returned to the motel room that he and Jamie had rented. Grace might use chemicals to make Jamie tell her the name of the place, but as much as Cavanaugh was tempted to spend the night somewhere else, he couldn't let himself. If Jamie escaped, she would phone the room or return to it, looking for him. He kept the lights out, wedged the bureau against the door, and sat on the floor in the corner next to the front window, his knees drawn to his chest, his pistol in his hand, not daring to sleep, ready to shoot if anybody crashed through.

Chapter 11.

Fog made the morning like twilight. Arriving at 7:00 a.m., an hour early, he parked a block away from Tor House. He shut off the headlights, the windshield wipers, and the engine, then stepped out into the fog. The car's heater had done little to warm him. Now the chill dampness made him tremble. Wanting to button his sport coat against the cold but needing to keep it open so he could draw his pistol, he forced himself to move. The fog thickened, shadows deepening. The echo of his footsteps made him shift to the side of the road, where fallen pine needles provided a cushion.

As he approached the street on which Tor House was located, he wasn't sure what he hoped to accomplish by arriving early. The fog prevented him from identifying any ambush sites. What am I supposed to do when Grace shows up? he wondered. Shoot? Hope to wound her? Try to force her to tell me where Jamie is? Grace won't let it be that easy, and if this is an ambush, she could just as easily shoot me.

Pausing, trying to assess the shadows of trees, shrubs, and houses before him, Cavanaugh realized that he should have listened to Jamie and not gone after Prescott. Then she wouldn't be missing and he wouldn't be standing here in the fog, as afraid as he'd ever been in his life.

No longer afraid for himself. Afraid for Jamie.

He had difficulty making his legs work. If, in the past weeks, anger had helped him to offset fear, the need to protect Jamie now proved to be an even greater force. During the night, he'd considered doing what Jamie had wanted and asking the FBI for help, but with no time to coordinate a plan, with the risk of a hastily assembled hostage-rescue team giving itself away, there was every chance that Grace would have sensed the danger and not shown up, destroying Cavanaugh's potentially single chance to save Jamie.

As he passed murky trees and spectral homes, shifting closer to where he estimated Tor House was, the fog chilled him to the core, a sensation he would not have thought possible, given the searing heat in his stomach. Because no one lived in Tor House, he was tempted to hide somewhere on the grounds, possibly in Hawk Tower, and hope that the fog would thin in an hour, allowing him to watch Grace's approach.

For all I know, Grace is already hiding on the grounds, he thought. Maybe she's in the tower.

Bup-bup.

The sound made Cavanaugh's heart lurch. He stopped halfway through the fog-shrouded intersection.

Bup-bup.

The sound came closer.

Bup-bup.

Seeing motion in the fog, Cavanaugh drew his pistol.

Bup-bup.

A silhouette appeared at the edge of the fog. The noises stopped.

In the distance, the surf pounded.

"You got here an hour early, huh?" a voice asked. Grace's. "Trying for an advantage. How come I'm not surprised?"

Cavanaugh couldn't speak.

"I'm stepping closer," Grace said. "I'd appreciate it if you don't shoot me again."

Bup-bup.

Grace's tall, trim silhouette emerged from the fog. Again, she had a pseudomilitary look: khaki pants, a matching tuck-in sweater, and a photographer's jacket, the kind with numerous loops and pockets, good for concealing a weapon.

But what Cavanaugh noticed most were the crutches she held under her armpits. The rubber pads on the bottom accounted for the noise he'd heard on the pavement. A cast covered her lower left leg.

"A good thing it's the left one. Otherwise, I'd have trouble driving. Care to autograph the cast? X marks the spot where you shot me?"

Again, Cavanaugh couldn't answer.

"Maybe later," Grace said. "After we finish our business." The fog drifted around her short blond hair, creating the illusion that the fog emanated from it. Her high-cheekboned face might have been attractive if her expression hadn't been so disagreeable.

She frowned at the Beretta in Cavanaugh's hand.

He holstered it.