Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

She hoped.

The locked door was more stubborn than the handcuffs, but she kept working at it.

If this damned thing would stop slipping, I could... There!

She returned the lock pick to her pocket and carefully eased open the door. She was facing a fairly long hallway that was a solid wall on the other side and on her side boasted only one other room, its open door spilling light. At the end, she thought she could make out stairs leading upward. She was in a basement.

She heard the voices. There were two of them, angry male voices that were a bit muffled. They came from the other room. Her first impulse was to run as fast as she could, her instincts urging her to race from danger, to flee while she had the chance. But intellect prevailed.

She stood a better chance of escaping if she moved cautiously and silently to slip past that open door unnoticed by the men inside.

Hardly breathing, keeping close to the wall and moving with utmost care, Faith eased down the hall toward the lighted doorway. As she neared it, the voices became distinct.

"... You must have been out of your mind to hang around Macgregor and Payne all day!"

There was something familiar about that voice, but before she could probe her memory to identify it, the second man spoke.

"At least I was doing something useful! I wasn't hiding in my nice little lake house praying no one would find me!"

A coldness deeper than anything Faith had ever felt re washed over her, and the dizziness returned far worse than before, forcing her to lean against the wall and close her eyes, to swallow the sick terror welling up from a dark nightmare place inside her.

She remembered the voice from her painfully violent vision: Careful! She can't tell me what I want to know if she's dead.

Faith heard her breath catch, and the tiny sound was just enough to free her from the paralysis of sheer terror. It was him. The man who had lurked in the darkness as Dinah was being tortured, who had ordered the one hurting her to break her fingers or something else, anything else, whatever he had to do to make her talk ... And she had sat in Kane's office with him without recognizing his voice, without realizing that Dinah's tormentor was talking briskly to Kane about structure and construction materials. Max Sanders.

The need to run was overwhelming, but Faith forced herself to move slowly, one step at a time, down the hall. As she crept nearer, the voices grew louder, more distinct.

"I've told you — you're moving too fast, allowing Kane and the police to panic you. If you'd just been willing to sit tight, to keep your mouth shut..."

"I'm not the one who killed Jed, goddammit! What was that if it wasn't panic?"

"It was our only option! It has to look like he was the one blackmailing Cochrane, and that Cochrane found out and killed him."

"That's the only way we'll distract the police and Kane. Once I finish planting evidence for the police to find, it'll be crystal clear that Jed was the blackmailer. Dinah found out some how, and he kidnapped and killed her — in one of Cochrane's warehouses — intending to pin the blame on Cochrane."

"He was my brother!"

"He was a fuck-up and we both know it!"

Brother? Jed and Max were brothers?

There was a moment of tense silence inside the room, and Faith edged closer. Were they facing away from the door? Could she slip past without being seen?

"I had to take the heat off us, Max. You'd done a damned fine job of stirring everybody up until we could hardly breathe, until it was only a matter of time before Kane or one of his bloodhounds figured it all out."

"So I took a chance with the pipe bomb, so what? What was I supposed to do after she hooked up with Kane — ignore it? Sit around like you wanted to, Connie, and wait to see if she got her memory back and spilled everything to Kane?"

Connie. Oh, God ... it is Conrad. That realization stabbed through Faith; she knew how this would hurt Kane.

"You could have waited! For Christ's sake, Max, even an idiot could have realized that every time you went after her and failed, you gave them more reason to look for answers — and more time."

"Look..."

"No, you look. I had to scramble to find evidence to make the story hang together and point away from us. Jed had to be sacrificed. It would have worked, Max. But then you had to blunder in once again, grab the girl from under Kane's nose. And if you don't think he's turning Atlanta upside down right this minute looking for her..."

"So what? He didn't find Dinah, did he?"

"You're a fool," Conrad said.

Faith risked a quick glance into the room and felt her heart sink. They were facing each other no more than a few feet inside the door, and chances were very good that both men would see her if she darted past.

"I just want the box back, Connie, that's all."

"If i she remembered where she'd put it or knew where Dinah put it after that accident, don't you think it would be in the hands of the police by now?"

"She'll remember quick enough once I get my hands on her. She'll talk then."

"Oh? The way Dinah talked?"

"Surely you don't think this one will be that tough? She's no bigger than a minute, and it's easy to see she'd jump out of her skin if anybody yelled boo."

"She survived that car accident, didn't she? She came out of a coma when she should have ended up a vegetable. I wouldn't underestimate her if I were you."

"She'll talk," Max repeated stubbornly. "We'll get the box, and then we'll be safe. If you think it's necessary, we can plant the box so it looks like Jed had it — all that clear evidence of blackmail. He gets the blame for that, Cochrane gets the blame for killing him, and we lay low for a few months."

"And what about Faith Parker? They'll know exactly when she disappeared, Max, and you told me yourself Cochrane's still at the police station being questioned. He has an alibi for the time she vanished."

"You can fix it so it looks like he hired somebody," Max said, impatient. "You've always been able to fix things, Connie, ever since we were kids back in Seattle. Should be easy enough."

Conrad swore viciously. "Easy? Do you realize how many rabbits I've already pulled out of my hat for you? Christ, if you'd just killed her in Seattle or, better yet, hadn't been careless enough to leave that envelope in a secretary with too much curiosity for her own good? Once she saw the note from me to him it was only a matter of time before she figured out the insurance scam. I had to get rid of her."

"But you didn't get rid of her, did you? You didn't even make sure what she looked like, killed the sister instead and the mother with her."

"Look, never mind all that, it's water under the bridge. I've got her now, and I don't intend to stop until she's told me where that god damned box is."

You hid it in the only place you felt really safe. That's why I couldn't tell him. He wouldn't have been able to get into Haven House, and so he would have burned it down to destroy the evidence. They would have been killed, all of them. Karen and Eve, Andrea and little Katie. I couldn't let that happen ...

Faith closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and tried to figure out her options. She had to get past the open door and the men inside the room ... and she had to get out of this house. Unaware of where the windows and doors were, she was bound to make mistakes, especially if she was running. But what choice did she have? She risked another look into the office where she was bound to see it...

"How was I to know Jed had..." Conrad had turned toward a desk against the far wall, and Faith could have laughed aloud when Max turned in the same direction. Both their backs were now to the door.

Now or never.