Willing Hostage (19 page)

“Did you find Sheila?”

“Yes.” Pain struggled to surface on his face. “I'm afraid she's.…”

“We found her, too. But we couldn't get her out of the Volks fast enough.”

“You were there?” He sat up. “Did you see who did it?”

“No. We heard a scream and a car drive away. The Volks exploded, but Glade carried her out before it went up completely. She died anyway.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She said she didn't want to die.”

The pain was back, in eyes framed by old-fashioned horn-rims. The wrinkles deepened on his face and above his collar. There were too many of them for his age. He reached for her hand on the blanket. “I'm very sorry about what happened today, believe me. It was against any regulations in existence. I'll see that something is done about it. Shelia's death is an indication of how important it is that we find Glade quickly. You can see that.”

“I don't know where he's heading or what he intends to do with the property or if he has it with him.” She drew her hand away from his. “I do know that I've taken all the questioning I can handle for one day.”

“But you must be debriefed before time erases anything or—”

“I have nothing to tell you.”

“You may not realize what you know.”

“I want to be alone. And now.”

“She's been through a lot, Joe,” Julie reminded him. “I'll move in here for the night and—”

“No. Alone. Or I'll never say another word to any of you.”

Welker, Julie, and Brian fought it out among them. Leah refused any offer of companionship. Finally they left her staring grimly at the fire.

Leah uncurled one stiff leg and then the other. She stood. The blankets dropped to the floor. She grabbed the mantel. When she was steady, she tried a few steps and then bent carefully toward the handle of her beauty case. She hadn't thought to ever see this luggage again.

In the bathroom she avoided the mirror and turned on the shower. She stood under it to wash her hair—three sessions with the shampoo and one with conditioner—gritting her teeth against the ache of muscles in her neck, arms, and shoulders. Wrapping her hair in a towel, Leah took bath oil from her case, ran the tub full of hot water, and removed wet bandages from her hands.

She scrubbed and soaked, her mind a blank. That finished, she went to work on her complexion by feel, with her back to the mirror. Leah sat on the stool lid to file broken nails down to her finger ends, thinking only of what she was doing and nothing else.

Finally, she faced the mirror. Her skin had lost the blotchy look. Sun and windburn had turned into an even tan except for the red scar of a rope burn slashed across her forehead. The eyes under it looked vacant. The shadows under them looked bruised and the lips rigid.

She combed out wet hair and bent closer to the mirror. A tiny spark reflected on one side of the part. Leah reached up to pluck out a short hair and examined it under the light. It was the color of silver and it was stiff and wiry. The stony face in the mirror did not react.

She found her robe, added a log to the fire, and sat on the rock shelf to brush out her hair in the heat. A nervous shudder ran completely through her and was gone. A minute later there was another. Leah tried to ignore them.

When her hair was dry she peered between the curtains to the balcony and saw a flare of light as someone lit a cigarette. She checked the door to the hall and found it locked … from the outside. She was a prisoner.

Leah warmed some milk in the kitchenette and drank it with a piece of dry bread while the shudder spasms repeated themselves at shorter and shorter intervals.

Finally, there was nothing more to do but sit and stare into the leaping flames. Leah doubled over and hid her face in her hands … shadowed eyes and tousled black curls behind her eyelids … the pulsating roar of a helicopter inside her head.…

Chapter Twenty-four

“How did you find him? I mean, how did he act while you were with him?”

“Unpredictable.” Leah sat stiffly on the couch that had been a bed until a few hours ago. It felt strange to be wearing a dress.

“What do you mean by that?” Joseph Welker exchanged a glance with Brian Kruger. Julie sat on the other end of the couch writing down what little Leah was saying.

“One minute he's”—Leah shrugged—“and then … he.…” She shrugged again. Even that hurt her neck.

“You do think he's mentally stable.” Welker paused in his pacing. He didn't look as if he'd slept much, either. “Don't you?”

“I … guess so.”

“And he just laughed when you gave him my message in Oak Creek?”

“Yes.” Leah had told him everything she'd told the men in the meadow. She had little to conceal—but Joseph Welker pinned down what she did have quickly.

“That means it isn't money he wants. He wants the information exposed, doesn't he?” He sat down and removed his glasses to rub his eyes. “Damn! He's going to try to get it to the newspapers. I should have known. That could make him a very dangerous man.” He exchanged a glance with Brian that made Leah uneasy. “I wish I could talk to him. He's making an awful mistake. Did he tell you what the property was?”

“No.” Her palms were bleeding again, oozing from cracks and scrapes in skin that tore from its healing process each time she used her hands.

“Let me get something to bandage those up again,” Brian said and left the room. He had a baby face under thin hair and soft eyes that followed Joseph Welker's every move like Mutt's had followed Jason's.

Julie seemed to be a general fetch-it girl and secretary. But all three of them were here for one reason … to work on Leah Harper. Their tactics were different from Charlie's but the object was the same—find Glade Wyndham.

“Hapless little crusade, I'll bet you anything,” Welker mumbled as he pulled a Colorado road map from his jacket pocket. When Brian returned to wrap gauze around Leah's hands, Joe Welker sat in a chair to study the map. “He must have let something slip. You were alone with him for days.”

He rose and started pacing again. “While in the Flat Tops, you were with him every minute?”

“Yes. From the time we left Oak Creek.”

“He couldn't have slipped off and retrieved something without your knowing it?”

“No. And how did you know we were up there anyway?”

“We didn't. We were following the gentlemen you encountered yesterday.”

“How did they know?”

“One of them overheard a camper in a restaurant in Meeker say he'd seen a man, a woman, and a giant Siamese head up the trail to the primitive area at night When I got word of this, I thought it was Sheila with him because I thought she had the cat. It seemed to have an attachment for that Volkswagen of yours and hopped in when we opened the door. Sheila was to be a foil to get the danger off your trail and the cat was an added advantage.”

“Then why did she follow me to Oak Creek? She should have gone in the other direction.”

“That was the plan at first. She was to follow you from Walden and come straight to Steamboat after assuring herself that you turned off at Oak Creek.”

The sliding-glass doors were open and the heavy scent of sun on rain-soaked pine needles came to Leah, bringing memories that she didn't want.

“But she didn't show up here. She called me from Oak Creek that night and said she'd seen you being followed and put herself in the way, hoping to draw the danger off. Apparently she succeeded. She died to save you. Help us?”

“He's trying to shift the blame for Sheila to me,” she thought. Did he really believe Sheila died because of her, not because of a fool order from him?

“If it had been me, Mr. Welker, in that Volkswagen? Who would have been blamed for my death?”

“Your government needs your help, Leah Harper.”

“My government just dangled me from a helicopter!” Her hands tightened around gauze.

“Is that all your government's done for you?” Julie whispered from the other end of the couch.

“Oh, no. It's taxed me silly instead of those who have all the money and it's used me and lied to me, sent people like Glade Wyndham to places like Chile to commit murder in my name …”

“So he told you about that.” Joseph Welker stared at the ceiling. “Leah, did you have to explain to your government why you left Chicago and came to Colorado? Did you have to present your papers at armed checkpoints all along the route or at state lines? Have you ever been visited by secret police in the middle of the night?” He stopped the incessant pacing to whirl around dramatically and face her. “Have enemy soldiers ever attacked your home or molested you? Leah, is there really any other country in this world in which you would rather live the rest of your life—not visit—but live, work, marry? Is there?”

Leah blinked. “No.”

“Then, can you really claim that your government has done nothing for you?”

“It's my country, too. It's my government. You work for me! And the CIA has no right—”

“Would you feel safer in a country—given today's world—that had no CIA or FBI?”

“No … but—”

“All right. I'll grant you that Charlie, in his fervor, made a ghastly mistake yesterday, for which he will pay. But Glade Wyndham is also making a mistake and it's up to you and to me to persuade him otherwise, Miss Harper. This country you own as yours so fondly can only take so much and it has had enough of scandal and insecurity—”

“It can take the truth, Mr. Welker,” she spat out quickly so that she could finish the sentence.

“Do you know for a fact that what Glade wants to make public is the truth?”

“I don't know anything for a fact because I'm given none. I am expected to take you on faith because of who you are, presumably. I'm expected to make grandiose judgments on your word for things and on the basis of emotional patriotism and then risk my life because someone else decides it's necessary.… Don't ask me to make decisions on something I don't know anything about!”

“All right, I'll tell you what I know. We'll take a walk and let you get some fresh air. But first let's have lunch.”

Juie heated canned soup in the kitchenette.

Welker studied the map while they ate. “He's heading generally west … now why?”

“Heard any more from Meeker?” Brian asked, with the expression of respect he reserved for Joseph Welker.

“No. Everybody's got Meeker covered. Goons'll pick him up for sure if he gets anywhere near.”

“What's Meeker?” Leah said.

“His brother's ranch is outside a town called Meeker. Take a look at the map, Leah. Starting at Ted's Place where you first saw him, I've drawn a line following his course. He's moved haphazardly, but generally west. Did he mention any names of the towns you see west of the Flat Tops, like Grand Junction or Craig?”

She studied the map. If she and Glade had continued down the road from Oak Creek instead of taking the turn-off to Trapper's Lake and the Flat Tops, they would have ended up in Meeker … where goons and everyone else awaited them. She hoped Glade hadn't continued in that direction when he left her. He'd been dangerously close the way it was. Had he abandoned Goodyear?

“Miss Harper? You're not listening.”

“Hum? Oh. No, he didn't mention any towns. There aren't many that far west, are there?” Most of the towns seemed to be bunched along the eastern approach to the mountains. “Maybe he's heading for Utah.”

“Did he mention Utah?”

“No. But there's a lot of open country between here and Utah to hide something in. Why do you need a town?”

“You could be right. We've searched that ranch he lived on. He didn't have the papers with him when Charlie picked him up. Well, let's take that walk.”

Leah slipped into her tennis shoes. “I'm not up to much of a hike but it would be nice to get out in the sun.”

“We'll just stroll.” He held the door for her and Brian went on ahead.

From the number of doors in the short hall upstairs and the identical hall below, Leah guessed that there were eight apartments in the building, four above and four below.

She slid on her sunglasses the minute they stepped outside. Other buildings in the complex lined up beneath the ridge to their left, white stucco with wooden trim and balconies painted brown. Stacks of cut firewood were piled in the corner of each balcony. Concrete steps led to a sparsely populated parking lot on top of the ridge. Brian waited for them there, looking silly in coat and tie.

The sun was high and warm, the air thin on oxygen and rich with odors of pine and earth. With all her aches, Leah felt good to be out again. “It's funny, after all that time in the wilderness when I dreamed of bathtubs and soft beds and luxury …” she thought aloud.

“Well, you can hardly claim we've housed you in squalor.” He pointed the way to Brian who turned to walk a good twenty yards ahead of them along the crest of the ridge.

“No. That apartment is luxurious enough, but … empty. I hated that trudge through the Flat Tops while I was there but—”

“Maybe it was the company you had that brings back fond memories, Leah. For all his mistreatment of you, you have a soft spot for Glade Wyndham, don't you?” Welker walked leisurely beside her with his hands in his pockets. “I've known Glade for some years.” He smiled down at her and shook his head. “He could make the dungeons of a castle half flooded with water seem romantic—”

“Romantic! He's a beast.”

“Some women find beasts romantic and Glade's been known to switch tactics to suit the occasion. He knows his way around women.”

“That's what Charlie said.”

“If he didn't have those papers on him when Charlie picked him up, he either got to them later or is on his way to them now. He'll have to get to a telephone to contact a reporter. Did he mention any names? You must have talked about something all that time.”