Doranna Durgin - Survival Instinct

France, maybe. Switzerland.

“Miss Brenner?”

Karin looked down at the tiny espresso cup in her hand and the empty dessert plate before her. She tried to recapture the taste of the custard on her tongue and couldn’t. But she smiled at Rucsher and said, “Please. Call me Maia.”

“We seem to have lost your attention,” Longsford said drily.

“Actually, I was pondering what to do about the reception. I don’t have much time to decide whether I should cancel.”

Longsford’s face turned dark. “That’s not terribly subtle.”

Karin laughed. “Subtle? I was clear about the situation when I spoke to you yesterday. Anyway, it’s my problem. You make whatever decision you think is best for you. Honestly, gentlemen, although I do consider you a very good match for this investment, I’m quite sure I can walk away from that reception with a handful of potential buyers. This is how I make my living and, as it happens, I make a very nice living indeed.”

Or she once had. The real question was whether she’d be doing it again-or what she’d be doing at all.

The only thing not in question was the need to stop this man.

Her thoughts caught on the one moment in which Longsford had broken character during lunch, when Rucher had mentioned the building on North West. Only an instant of defensiveness, but significant. Perhaps a weakness she could exploit later.

Yeah. Something to investigate.

Karin licked the last taste from her dessert spoon, watching her mark with a guileless and steady gaze. “Tell you what,” she said. “Think about it. Check out what you’ve learned today, and let’s touch base tomorrow. After that, you lose your exclusive, but you’re certainly still welcome to bid against the others.”

And either way, you’re mine.

Karin sweated out some of her conflicting emotions in the hotel gym, working a stair stepper and cooling down on a treadmill. The shower afterward felt blissful, and she emerged from the hotel dressed down, heading to catch a bus to the library. At the library she went to work narrowing down the building question. North West Street, near the tracks, near an office complex. The city maps gave her the general area, but not potential buildings. Not until a nearby librarian saw her tapping her fingers on the map, pondering her next move, and drew her over to one of the computers.

There, she showed Karin the new Alexandria parcel viewer online. Karin quickly zoomed in on the street in question, enabling the photographic overlay that painted in satellite photography around the big pale brick blocks of buildings. Navigation was a little tricky, but she was able to survey the buildings along the street in question. She hunted for a confluence of railroad tracks, a stand-alone building, and an office-building complex-and when she spotted it, there was no question that she’d found the correct building. Literally jammed in behind a long, complex conglomeration of offices and the railroad tracks, the small factory sat on a tiny lot of scraggly grasses, and had a hard-to-access parking area tucked in behind it. The whole parcel sat plopped on the north end of North West Street.

When queried, the parcel viewer data bank-so eager to give out detailed information about the ownership, various sales prices, taxable value and exact address-told her merely no parcels found. Experimentation with other buildings and even empty lots gave her, at minimum, the current owner and property type. Even if it was vacant land, commercial.

But not this one.

Interesting.

She played with the interface a bit, getting an idea of the area. The offices looked like they’d be nice, and the land just beyond that was in development. Not a bad area at all. She thought Longsford had a good point, that the building would become worth more in the near future. So what was the deal with his defensive behavior?

Or maybe Karin had just misinterpreted his reaction. Maybe he’d just been impatient; Rucsher had obviously lobbied to get rid of the building before. She panned north, hunting an alternate approach by car, and stopped short at the sight of what appeared to be a giant white marshmallow squatting on many legs half a mile from the factory. A giant white-

Water tower.

“Cree-ap,” she breathed. She scrambled in her notes-in Dave’s notes-and confirmed what memory had told her. Rashawn had been found under a water tower. North Payne Street said the notes, and there it was on the map beside the squatting marshmallow. N. PAYNE ST.

She closed the folder, abruptly enough to make the stiff paper slap together. Ignoring the looks she got, she leaned back in her chair and stared blindly at the screen, not seeing the interactive parcel map at all. Seeing Dave’s face when he’d heard about Rashawn. Seeing the inexplicable expression on Longsford’s face when the factory had come up in conversation.

Seeing what she thought could be the answer.

“Hey,” said a guy’s voice from behind her, a challenging greeting. “You done with that or what?”

Done with-? Oh. The computer. “Sure,” she said. She flushed the browser cache and closed out the window, pulling her things together with her thoughts still fogged by what she’d seen. The young man who’d been hovering behind her plopped himself gracelessly in the chair almost before Karin had completely vacated it, but she didn’t offer him so much as the glare he deserved.

Surely it couldn’t be that easy. Surely Dave would have figured it out by now-

Except Dave hadn’t known about the factory. No one had known about the factory. If Karin headed to the courthouse, she had no doubt she’d find the trail that would eventually lead back to Longsford, but until now, no one had known there was any reason even to look.

It might be nothing. It might be absolutely nothing at all.

As Karin passed the front desk on the way out, the librarian smiled at her and asked, “Find what you were looking for?”

Karin didn’t think twice. “Oh, yeah,” she said. Words that had come from that gut instinct of hers. Words that superceded her doubt and told her exactly what she’d be doing the next morning, exactly where she’d be.

Now this was being on the jazz.

She should have been exhausted. She should have been asleep as soon as she turned out the light in her hotel room. There was no way she should be staring at the ceiling in the dark, listening to her neighbors play bump-the-headboard and pondering what next.

It’s not rocket science.

She could tell Dave what she knew and leave it up to him.

I don’t know anything. I’m guessing. Not to mention that she wasn’t ready to call him. Not to talk to him, not to leave him a message. Definitely not to bring him into this game of hers.

She could check out the factory herself, and-if she found anything-delay acting on it until she’d finished out the scam. It was a beautiful scam, fully operational and well on the way to closure. Once she had funds, she’d be out of here. On her way to something new.

No downside there. Bad guy gets caught, smart girl gets away clean…

She could check out the factory, and-if she found anything-give Dave a heads-up on her way out of Alexandria. Shuffle her remaining funds into an account for another persona and start again on a shoestring. Or-and Karin winced, finally facing the inevitability of it-she’d have to sell Ellen’s farm. Start her life again just as she’d always intended, with a new career. Clean.

Too bad there aren’t any more aliases left in the goody bag. But she bet pawn-shop Freddie could help with that. For a price.

“Or,” she told herself out loud, “wait until you reach the factory and see what you find. Might be a big fat zero. Make your decisions then.” Be ready for anything. Motto of all good Boy Scouts and con artists alike.