Worth the Trip (19 page)

“It was your fault, too,” she muttered, which earned her a scowl from Trip. She stifled the gesture she wanted to make in his direction. Giving him the finger would be rude and childish.

They’d gotten away, hadn’t they? After several hours of trekking through the forest, in the cold, with a wounded leg . . . She winced, imagining how much pain he had to be in. But it didn’t stop him from pacing back and forth across the small motel room, shooting her a look every now and then but keeping his voice down for the most part.

She dumped her bags on the table, one containing a change of clothes down to the skin for each of them, one holding first aid items, the last a white takeout sack from the mom-and-pop place, filled to bursting with food.

Trip came over and pawed through the clothes, pulling out a pair of boxers and holding them up. They were black, dotted with little pink hearts and one big red heart right over the placket in front. “I’m a lover not a fighter?” he read the white lettering on the backside. “Wishful thinking?”

“It was a gift shop. The only underwear they had were novelty ones.” She whipped them out of his hands and tossed them on the table. “Trust me, I didn’t waste my time hoping you wouldn’t give me an earful, so go ahead, get it over with. It’s my fault the boat blew up, it’s my fault you got shot, I can’t follow simple instructions.

“But if I’d taken off on the Harley like you told me to, you’d probably be in really bad shape now, if not dead, and the boat was just as much your fault as it was mine. If you hadn’t tackled me instead of treating me like an intelligent human being—”

“If you warned me before you did things I wouldn’t feel a need to tackle you,” he said, talking over her.

“What was I supposed to do? You had your hands full driving the boat.”

“Maybe you should stop beating yourself up, Norah. Yeah, I’m not happy about how things played out, but we got away and it was because you blew up the boat. The explosion held those guys off and gave us time to make a run for it.”

“But I slowed you down.”

“We were both cold and tired, and running in sand. My getting shot was just bad luck. And you saved my life,” he added, which surprised her—not for the grudging way he said it but because he’d said it at all.

“At last,” Trip said, lowering himself into the nearest chair with an exaggerated sigh, “peace and quiet.”

“And all you had to do was agree with me.” She pulled him to his feet and unsnapped his pants. The thigh of his jeans was stiff with dried blood, the whole thing stuck to his injured leg. She dumped out the first aid supplies and found the small, cheap scissors she’d bought, cutting around the wound. Then she pulled him into the bathroom.

“A bath would be better,” she said, “but there’s no telling what’s in that tub.”

“You, if I’m lucky.”

She might have taken him seriously if he hadn’t been too tired to put much heat behind that suggestion—and if she hadn’t been so freaked out at the idea that he’d actually been shot. She went to gather up the bandages and tape, and by the time she returned he was out of the shower and half-dressed.

Norah pushed him down on the closed toilet and took a good look at the wound, now minus its denim bandage.

“It’s just a graze,” Trip said.

Norah shot him a look, studying the two-inch long furrow on his thigh. It might be a graze, but his face was drawn with pain and he’d lost a fair amount of blood. “It’s pretty clean,” she said. “You could use some stitches, but—”

“There’s a law. They have to report bullet wounds.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with me.” She slathered on antiseptic cream.

He sucked in a breath.

“Sorry,” she muttered, laying gauze over the wound and taping it down on all four sides. “We’ll have to keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

“It’ll be fine.”

She started to get up, saw that big red heart, and smiled.

“Impressive, huh?” Trip said with a ghost of his usual devilment.

“It’s not you, it’s those boxers. I’ll have to use them in my next book.”

“They weren’t my idea,” he reminded her.

They were every man’s idea, Norah thought as she left him to finish dressing. It was an instinctual thing, and that heart sitting right over his testicles said it all. Men reproduced. Women nurtured. Both genders confused sex with love in different ways. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t a condemnation of either men or women, and it wasn’t to say they didn’t love. But those boxers were a pretty spot-on illustration of the differences between them. Nor was it something she should forget. It was too late to keep herself from getting emotionally hooked, but she couldn’t let her emotions put up a smoke screen for her intellect. Trip would go on his way when the loot was found, and while she’d been focusing on what that meant for her father, she needed to remember what it would mean for her.

He came up behind her and reached over her shoulder into her shirt. She smacked his hand away, and not because she thought he was overcome by her charms. He was after the clue.

She collected the new clothes she’d bought for herself and headed for the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower, and I’m keeping this”—she held up the plastic bag they’d retrieved from Waugoshance Lighthouse—“until I’m done. We’ll look at it together.”

“You’re lucky I’m too tired and hungry to take offense.”

She snorted softly. “It’s not like you can chase me down, especially since I have the key to the bike. And your wallet.”

“And I have your dad.”

“He’s not going to tell you anything.”

“He’s not going to tell
you
anything, either, as long as you can’t get to him.”

“So you’ve been holding him all this time in case you needed to keep me in line?”

“No, we’ve kept him in custody according to the terms of his sentence, at a secret location so he’ll be protected while he heals. Using him as blackmail is strictly a bonus.”

“The FBI doesn’t do things by accident.” She closed the bathroom door behind her and shot the bolt home.

“If I wanted to come in there, do you think a locked door would stop me?”

“Not if the loot was in here.”

 

IF HIS LEG HADN’T BEEN THROBBING LIKE THE
heartbeat of Satan, Trip would have been up and pacing the room. Instead, he had to sit there, burning—and not in a good way—as he listened to the water run while Norah showered. He wanted to join her. After last night he wouldn’t have hesitated. If not for her parting shot.

She came out, cool, calm, keeping her distance—despite a T-shirt that read
Too Sexy For My Clothes—
and letting him know it. She’d been holding a part of herself back anyway. He’d resented it even as he’d acknowledged he was doing the same. Now she was back to the woman he’d met a few days ago, not trusting him, although he had to admit she had cause. The FBI would use whoever they wanted by whatever means were handy with no regard for the consequences to anyone but the Bureau.

The part she’d overlooked was that he was a tool, too. Then again, he’d chosen his path. He’d been fine with it, too, until now. Maybe it was the first time he’d been faced with a truly innocent person caught up in a criminal enterprise. Maybe, he allowed, it was Norah.

Trip took that idea out for a spin, looked at it from every angle he could think of, then put it away, into a little box in his mind. A man in his position didn’t have the right to think in emotional terms, and a man who might have to use another person to complete a job had to know he was poisoning the well before he ever dipped into it. She was right to freeze him out. As long as she didn’t shut him out where the Gold Coast Robbery was concerned.

“Let’s get something straight,” he said, “you’re not going to work against me, right?”

“You have my father in custody.” Her voice was even, matter-of-fact, but she wasn’t looking at him.

He couldn’t let it matter. “I’ll tell you where he is right now, if you ask me.”

“Because I’m the key to finding the loot.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes lifted to his. He held her gaze for a moment that felt like an eternity roasting over hot coals. Then she nodded and looked away.

“I appreciate the truth.”

But she didn’t answer his question. She didn’t ask where her father was, either, so Trip decided to take it as progress toward closing his case and getting back to Washington, and eventually moving on to the next job. And if there wasn’t the same sense of anticipation and exhilaration he usually felt, he’d deal with that when he had to.

Norah dug into the food bag, pulling out sandwiches and soup containers and sliding one of each across the table to Trip.

Trip cracked the lid on the soup. The scent of chicken noodle wafted out, lukewarm, but he was starving and hurting, and it was just like Norah to provide the kind of food that would satisfy every kind of hunger, both the physical and the emotional.

She ignored the food altogether and pulled out the clue bag, still pissed but keeping her word. She opened the small plastic bag and pulled out the paper inside. When she unfolded the paper a piece of jade, wafer thin, about three inches long and intricately carved into a flat elephant, fell out, along with some unset gems.

Trip flattened out the white plastic takeout bag, put the jewels and elephant on it, and took out his cell phone. “The jade piece is easily identifiable,” he said as he snapped pictures. “My guess is it will be traced back to the robbery. My handler will verify it.” He sent the pictures to Mike and snapped his phone closed.

“Gems are a compact, easy way to stash money, which means they wouldn’t have been reported, and they were loose in one of the safe-deposit boxes.”

“Are you sure they weren’t broken down from one of the other pieces of jewelry?”

“There wasn’t time.”

“It wouldn’t have taken that long. Gold is pretty soft.”

“There’s a bigger question we need to think about.”

She looked up, both of them speaking at the same time, Norah saying, “There’s a fifth partner.”

“We’re being conned” was Trip’s take on the situation, and then he said, “The FBI would have known if there was another partner.”

“How?” Norah demanded. “Their
shoot first and ask questions later
approach? My father was the only survivor, and he hasn’t exactly been a font of information.”

“Until now. Why do you think that is?”

“He’s not running a con,” Norah insisted. “Not on me.”

“If you don’t believe he’d use you to put one over on the FBI, you’re seriously delusional.”

Norah slapped both hands on the table and got to her feet. “After five minutes with you I can understand what he’s got against the FBI.”

“There’s no reason to make this personal.”

“You just did.”

Trip stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to see around his frustration. “He’s your father, Norah. There’s no way to keep this from being personal to you.”

She sighed and sank back into her chair. “You’re right, and he’s had a long time to resent the FBI. But you don’t know him like I do. He wants to return the stolen items to their rightful owners. He wants to atone for what he did.”

Trip shook his head. “I realize you haven’t had contact with him in fifteen years, but people don’t change that much.”

“Yes, they do. There are actual studies.”

“Like we’ve both pointed out, he’s your father. You can’t help but see his actions through a filter of emotion, but you can’t ignore reality, Norah. Your father is running a con.”

“I’m not ignoring reality. I don’t believe it.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to convince you.”

She thought about that for a minute. “How?”

“Simple,” Trip said, amazed. Not many people were able to face life, especially the unpleasant parts, without flinching. Norah met life head-on, dared it to kick her in the teeth. The problem was, sometimes life wore steel-toed boots. “Puff wasn’t involved in the actual robbery. It only took us a day to get to the lighthouse. He had three days before he was caught.”

“But why would he leave a trail of breadcrumbs for himself?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” He glanced at the note from the clue bag, still lying on Norah’s side of the table.

She opened it, read it, then held it out.

Trip took the note from her, more interested in its content than its style. “
From water to land, ice to sand, tropical, arboreal and seasonal at hand
,” he read out loud.
“Endangered and rare, common and spare, north of the border, your destination’s there.”

He met Norah’s eyes. “The Detroit Zoo.”

“Should you be jumping like that with a leg wound?”

“
Water
,
land
,
arboreal
,” he repeated from the clue, “you’ve got habitats.
Endangered
,
rare
,
common
, you’ve got plants and animals. Has to be a zoo. North of the border. What else could Lucius mean but Detroit?”

“It’s not my father’s handwriting, and it’s definitely not something Lucius would write. He has a contempt for rhymes. He says it’s like putting the imagination in prison. Unless it’s an Irish poet, then he tolerates it.”

“This”—he picked up the elephant and the note—“has Lucius written all over it. The bits of treasure, the possibility there’s a fifth man, the scavenger hunt aspect to keep it entertaining. It’s just enough to whet your appetite and suck you in. You know you’re being conned, but he makes it impossible to walk away.”

“I don’t think I’m being conned,” she reminded him.

“It would be helpful if you kept an open mind.” Not to mention losing the attitude. “We know Lucius left the other conspirators for three days; we know the loot wasn’t at the hideout where they were killed and he was arrested. The assumption has always been that Lucius took the loot and hid it somewhere. You want me to prove I’m right? I say we follow the breadcrumbs and see where they lead us. If we don’t find the main cache in three days we go see your father again.”