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“No!” He almost yelled the word. More softly he repeated, “No. I can fix that. How much is your balance?”
“I don’t know exactly. A couple of thousand.”
“Find another ATM,” he instructed. “I’ll get into your bank’s computer, change the limit to… say, five thousand. Empty out your account, then I’ll change the limit back to the original amount. They’ll never know how it happened, I promise.”
Hope bloomed inside her, a strange sensation after those past nightmare hours. All she had to do was find another ATM, something easier said than done when she was on foot.
“Look in the phone directory,” he was saying. “Every branch of your bank will have an ATM. Pick the closest one and go there.”
Of course. How simple. Normally she would have thought of that herself, and the fact that she hadn’t was a measure of her shock and exhaustion.
“Okay.” Thank heavens, there was still a directory chained to the shelf. She opened the protective cover. Well, there was part of a directory, at least, and it contained the most important part, the Yellow Pages. She thumbed through them until she reached “Banks,” and located her own bank, which had sixteen of those so-called convenient locations.
She estimated it would take her half an hour to get to the nearest one. “I’m going now,” she said. “I’ll be there in thirty to forty-five minutes, unless something happens.” She could be picked up by the police, or mugged again, or Parrish and his goons might be out cruising the city, looking for her. None of the things that could happen to her would be pleasant.
“Call me,” Kristian said urgently. “I’ll get into the bank’s computer now, but call me and let me know if everything went okay.”
“I will,” she promised.
The thirty-minute walk took almost an hour. She was exhausted, and the laptop gained weight with each step she took. She had to hide every time a car went past, and once a patrol car sped through an intersection just ahead of her, lights whirring in eerie silence. The spurt of panic left her weak and shaking, her heart pounding.
Her familiarity with the downtown area was limited to specific destinations. She had lived, gone to scho
ol, and shopped in the suburbs. She took a wrong turn and went several blocks out of her way before she realized what she had done, and had to backtrack. She was acutely aware of the seconds ticking away toward dawn, when people would be getting up and turning on their televisions, and learning about the double murder in her quiet neighborhood. The police would have photographs of her, taken from the house, and her face might be on hundreds of thousands of screens. She needed to be somewhere safe before then.
Finally she reached the branch bank, with the lovely ATM on the front of it, all lit up and watched over by the security camera, so if someone got killed right there they’d have a tape of the murder to show on the evening news.
She was too tired to worry about the camera, or the possibility that another couple of jerks might be watching her. Just let someone else try to mug her. The next time, she would fight; she had nothing to lose, because the money meant her life. She walked right up to the machine, took out her bank card, and followed the instructions, asking for a full two thousand.
The obedient machine began regurgitating twenty-dollar bills. It coughed up a hundred of them before it stopped. Oh, blessed automation!
What with the three hundred she had already withdrawn, she didn’t think there could be much left. She didn’t try to find out the exact amount, not with two thousand dollars in her hand and time pressing hard on her. She darted around the corner and hid herself in the shadows, hunkering down against the wall and hurriedly stuffing bills inside the computer case, in her pockets, in the cups of her bra, inside her shoes. All the while she scanned the area for movement, but the streets were quiet and empty. The night predators would be heading for their lairs now, turning the city back over to the day denizens.
Maybe. She couldn’t afford to take any chances now. She needed some kind of weapon, anything, no matter how primitive, with which she could protect herself. She looked around, hoping to find a sturdy stick, but the only things littering the ground were small pieces of glass and a few rocks.
Well, weapons didn’t get much more primitive than rocks, did they?
She picked up the biggest ones, slipping all but one into her pocket. That one, the biggest one, she kept clutched in her hand. She was aware of how pitiful this defense was, but at the same time she felt oddly comforted. Any defense was better than none.
She had to call Kristian, and she had to get out of Minneapolis. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep, to be able to forget for just a few hours, but the luxury of rest would have to wait. Instead Grace hurried through the streets as the sky began to lighten, and the sun began to rise on her first day as a widow.
Chapter 3
“IT SHOULDN’T BE DIFFICULT TO FIND HER,” PARRISH SAWYER murmured, leaning back in his chair and tapping his immaculately manicured nails against the wooden arm. “I’m sadly disappointed in the Minneapolis Police Department. Little Grace has no car, no survival skills, yet still she’s managed to elude them. That really surprises me; I expected her to run screaming to a neighbor, or to the first policeman she could find, but no, instead she’s gone to earth somewhere. Annoying of her, but all she’s doing is delaying the inevitable. If the police can’t find her, I’m confident you can.”
“Yes,” Conrad said. He didn’t elaborate. He was a man of few words, but over the years Parrish had found him extremely reliable. Conrad could have been either his first or last name; no one knew. He was stocky and muscular and didn’t look very bright; his bullet-shaped head was covered by short dark hair that grew low on his forehead, an unfortunate apelike resemblance that was only heightened by his small dark eyes and prominent brow ridges. His appearance, however, was deceiving. His chunky body could move with amazing speed and finesse, and behind his stolid expression was a brain that was both astute and concise. Best of all, Parrish had never seen Conrad exhibit any distressing signs of conscience. He carried out orders with admirable, machinelike precision, and what he thought of them no one but himself ever knew.
“When you find her,” Parrish continued, “bring the computer and the papers to me immediately.” He didn’t give any instructions on how to deal with Grace St. John; Conrad wouldn’t need direction on anything that simple.
There was a sharp, slight incline of the bullet head, and Conrad silently left the room. Alone, Parrish sighed, his fingers still drumming out his frustration with the situation.
It had turned unaccountably messy. Nothing had gone as planned. They should have been there, all three of them; he had made certain all three vehicles had been present before going in. But Grace hadn’t been there, and neither had her computer or the documents. Moreover, Ford and Bryant had been remarkably good liars; Parrish hadn’t expected it of them, and he didn’t like being surprised. Who would have thought two nerdish archaeologists would have sized up the situation so accurately, and in an instant formulated a very believable lie?
But they had, and he’d made a very bad mistake in believing them. Such gullibility wasn’t at all like him, and the sense of having been made a fool of was irritating.
Unfortunately, it seemed Grace had been just outside the house, watching and listening. That strange little sound he’d heard outside the window had probably been her; leaving a gap in the curtains, even a tiny one, had been another uncharacteristic mistake. Some days were just a bitch.
He and Conrad’s team had quickly withdrawn, leaving no fingerprints or other sign of their presence behind, and the scene in the bedroom had looked pretty much as they had planned. Any cop walking in on that, two men half-naked together in a bedroom, both of them shot in the head, and one’s wife missing—well, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out. Minneapolis’s finest had reacted just as he had expected; they were being circumspect, keeping details from the media, but Grace was their prime suspect.
