Deceived (Unlikely Heroes Book 3) Read online

  “Whatever.” He waived the Taser at her.

  Having several thousand electrical volts shooting through her body didn’t appeal to Meg. She wouldn’t try to escape. Not yet. But she’d be waiting for the right moment to make her move.

  She was not letting Larry have her. She had to expose him for what he was.

  The deputy motioned for her to come out of the cell. Meg stepped past him and out into the hallway. He kept the Taser pointed at her in warning as they walked down the narrow corridor to the main entrance. But he needn’t have worried. Meg had no intention of giving him a reason to shoot her with his Taser. She would behave…until she found an opportunity to escape.

  No other deputies were around. It appeared he was the only one on duty at the small jail.

  Once outside, he opened the backdoor to a police cruiser and Meg sat down on the backseat. Deputy Bailey closed the door. He walked to the driver’s side, whistling.

  Thinking about how you’re going to spend that ten grand?

  Deputy Bailey was a fool. Larry would never pay him. He’d probably kill the young man as soon as he delivered Meg.

  Meg had no plans of being “delivered.” If she had to kill the deputy to escape, she would. She would do whatever it took.

  The police car pulled out of the station and headed for the main highway. Meg leaned back in the seat to wait. She had about an hour and a half before they reached Spokane. She wondered how the deputy was going to explain this to Sheriff Sullivan. She’d seen the video cameras in the jail and knew everything was recorded. How would the deputy explain taking Meg out?

  “Hey,” she said, and his gaze jerked to hers in the rearview mirror. “I was wondering…How are you going to explain this to the sheriff? I know he didn’t tell you to move me. Those cameras back there captured you taking me out of there. Don’t you think they’re going to question you about it?”

  The young man’s face reddened. He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not coming back here.”

  Meg snorted out a laugh. “How far do you think ten grand will get you?”

  The blood drained out of the deputy’s face. “How did you–”

  “I’m not an idiot. I know there’s a bounty on my head. Believe me, I know Larry better than anyone. He’s not going to pay you, you know. He’ll probably kill you as soon as you deliver me.”

  The deputy sputtered. “He won’t kill me. He promised he’d pay.”

  “Of course he did. He wants to stop me. He wants me so bad he’s willing to pay you to bring me to him. But you know what, I’m never giving up. And Larry won’t allow any witnesses, so you can just forget about collecting on that bounty. He will kill you.” She settled back in the seat to let her words sink in.

  Meg watched the deputy in the mirror, noting the myriad of emotions that crossed his baby face. But he didn’t stop the car. And he didn’t turn around and go back.

  So much for convincing him to let her go. She’d have to come up with another way to escape.

  An hour and a half later, they approached Spokane. Meg tensed in her seat. She still hadn’t come up with an alternate escape plan. She’d been hoping the deputy would either set her free or take her back to the jail. He’d done neither. He was obviously intent on collecting on that reward.

  Larry would want the deputy to take her to a secret location where no one could witness the exchange. An abandoned building or a secluded place where no one would notice a cop handing her over to Larry. How would she escape? Once Larry had her, it was unlikely she would ever get away again.

  The car turned down an alley in a slummier side of town, pulling up behind an ugly gray dumpster. Deputy Bailey got out and headed for a door at the back of the old, abandoned warehouse.

  Just as he reached the door, a tall, slender man wearing a navy blue hoodie leapt out from behind the dumpster. He tackled the deputy, knocking him to the ground. Since Meg was locked in back of the police cruiser, she could do nothing but stare.

  They grappled across the ground for a moment, then the man grabbed the deputy’s Taser off his belt and zapped him with it. Meg watched as the deputy’s body twitched from the electrodes. The stranger yanked open the door to the police cruiser and slid into the driver’s seat. He slammed the car in gear and sped away from the building, leaving the deputy lying on the ground by the dumpster.

  He slipped the hoodie off his head, revealing long silvery blond hair that was pulled back into a ponytail that trailed down his back. His gaze—his familiar blue gaze—met hers in the rearview mirror.

  Meg’s eyes widened. Could it be?

  “Curtis?” she whispered, staring at him in shock. “Is that you?”

  * * *

  “How’s it going, Meg?”

  Meg choked out a laugh. “Better,” she admitted. “Now that you saved me. How’d you manage to pull that off?”

  Curtis shrugged. “I overheard Larry telling that guy where to bring you, so I decided to intercept him before Larry got you.”

  “Thanks Curtis.” Meg smiled at him in the mirror. “I owe you, big time.”

  He looked away for a moment, then glanced back at her in the mirror. He held up a hand. “Look, I’m shaking. That’s how scared I was. I’ve never been that brave before. I’ve never been a hero.”

  “You’re my hero,” Meg said. “You’re very brave. Thank you.”

  Curtis lowered his gaze. He cleared his throat. “By the way, I kind of need a place to stay. Larry will figure out soon enough that I was the one who stopped the exchange back there. He’ll be after me now.”

  Meg nodded. “What were you doing with him, anyway?” She’d figured Curtis would have stayed far away from Larry like she had done.

  “I was his informant. He paid me one hundred dollars a week to give him info on certain people. I guess that makes me a spy.”

  Meg lowered her gaze. Which meant Larry had been supporting Curtis’s drug addiction. But she could do nothing about that. Curtis was an adult. He could do as he chose.

  Curtis’s face filled with color. Meg’s heart tugged. Just a bit. As kind hearted as Curtis was, he still had a weakness he was ashamed of.

  He cleared his throat. “So, can I stay with you for a while?”

  Though Meg hadn’t seen him in over five years, had just communicated with him by phone, Curtis had just saved her life. He may be a drug addict, but Curtis was a kind soul and would never intentionally harm anyone. How could she say no?

  “Yes, of course you can stay.” She paused. “On one condition. No drugs.”

  His gaze met hers in the rearview mirror again. “Okay. It’s a deal.”

  Neither spoke for a while after that, each lost in their own thoughts. Then Curtis blurted, “So, what have you been doing the past few years? Anything exciting? I was sorry to hear about Evan. Do you think he’s alive?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I hope he’s okay.” She cleared her throat. “So, how about you? Dating anyone?”

  He made a face. “Ha, like any woman would ever want me. Of course not.”

  An awkward silence fell and Meg wished she hadn’t asked that. Neither of them spoke again until they reached Sandpoint. Meg sat forward in the backseat of the police car. “We need to ditch the car. They’ll be looking for it once that cop wakes up.”

  Curtis met Meg’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Maybe. He might not want anyone to know about it. And if Larry catches him before he wakes up, he might just disappear.”

  Meg held his gaze for a long moment as understanding swept between them. “Maybe so. But once Sheriff Sullivan realizes what happened, he’ll have everyone searching for the car. And me.”

  A look of sympathy crossed Curtis’s lean face. “You’re in deep shit, aren’t you?”

  Meg choked out a humorless laugh. “You don’t know the half of it. I may have killed a man last night.”

  Curtis cocked a blond brow. “No shit? Who was it?”

  She shrugged. “One of Larry’s guys, I’m
sure. He followed me home yesterday and tried to incapacitate me with a Taser, but I hit him in the head with a shovel before he could zap me.” She told him about dumping the man into the river and the cops showing up. She lifted her injured arm for Curtis to see. She told him what had happened with the sheriff, and how the body had shown up on her porch that morning right about the time the sheriff had returned.

  “He tried to get me to admit I’d killed that man, but I don’t think I did. If I’d killed him, how did he crawl up onto my back porch?”

  Curtis mulled that over for a moment. “Good point. Did you tell the sheriff that?”

  Meg lowered her gaze. “No. I didn’t tell him anything.”

  “Your silence makes you look guilty.”

  Meg glared at him. “You don’t think I know that? What if he’s one of them?”

  “You think he’s corrupt?”

  Meg looked away. “Actually, no, I don’t. I think he’s a good guy.” Her heart thumped crazily at that thought. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the sheriff since last night. Why couldn’t she get the man out of her head?

  But he’d once worked for Larry. She couldn’t trust Sheriff Sullivan no matter how much she wanted to.

  Curtis let out a loud sigh. “So you’re not only in trouble with Larry and his corrupt cops, you’re also in trouble with the real law.”

  Met let out a snort. “Yeah. But you know as well as I do that the rest of the world thinks Larry is the real law.”

  Curtis shook his head sadly. “You’ll get him someday, Meg. I have faith in you.” He paused. “Okay, so we ditch the car. But we’ll need another ride.”

  “I have an idea,” she said. “I need to change my appearance again to throw Larry off for awhile. Let’s stop at the Wal-Mart outside of Sandpoint. It’s only about fifteen or twenty minutes from my house. You can park clear out at the back of the lot, away from the security cameras. You go in and get me some new hair color. I’ll wait out here. Then we can take a cab to my place. You have money on you, right?”

  At Curtis’s hesitation, Meg said, “I’ll pay you back as soon as we get to my place. I don’t have my purse on me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Ten minutes later they pulled into the Super Wal-Mart. Curtis parked the car clear out at the end of the lot. Pulling the hoodie over his head, he slipped out, keeping his head bent, and opened the back door for Meg.

  Meg scrambled out of the car, careful not to bump her injured arm. She hunkered down behind the vehicle while Curtis strode toward the building.

  About fifteen minutes later he returned with a plastic sack that he thrust into her arms. “Cab’s on its way. I told the guy to meet us by the entrance to the parking lot.”

  Trying to act as nonchalant as possible, they headed for the entrance and waited by the light pole on the corner until the cab arrived.

  A little while later, they were safely at Meg’s little cabin in the woods. She asked the cab driver to wait while she went in to retrieve some cash from her purse. Once she’d paid the driver and the cab was heading back out to the highway, Meg glanced down the road toward the sheriff’s house. There was a large moving van parked out on the road. She caught a glimpse of two burly men hauling what looked like a large piece of furniture out of the van.

  The sheriff was moving in. How long would it take him to come question her again?

  Hurrying back into the house, she headed for the bathroom to change her hair color once again. She drew the box of hair color from the bag, scowling at the color Curtis had chosen. Black. Though it wasn’t her first choice, it would have to do. It had to look better than the ugly purplish-orange color she had now.

  Some food and a pain pill were next on her list.

  Meg didn’t know how long it would take the sheriff to discover she was gone, but once he viewed the security cameras, he’d see she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She had a feeling he’d be showing up soon.

  And when he did, she planned to be ready for him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By late afternoon, the movers had unloaded the last of Zach’s belongings from the moving van and into his new house. Closing on a Friday morning had worked out well, for it gave Zach the entire weekend to get unpacked and settled in before work on Monday. He’d had to leave for an hour to pick Kristen up from school and bring her home. While at the school, he’d notified the transportation department of the move so Kristen would be put on the proper bus for next week. His daughter now sat on the freshly unwrapped leather couch in the living room, watching as the movers gathered up the moving blankets and headed for the door. Her school backpack containing her homework sat on the couch next to her. Untouched.

  Zach thanked the movers and walked them to the door. Once they were gone, he turned back to his daughter, a girl he hadn’t even known about until a few months ago. She was the product of a one-night stand he’d engaged in with a young woman he’d met the night of his brother’s funeral. He’d been stationed at the Marine Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California at the time. Zach had been given an emergency seven-day leave to come home for the funeral when he’d received a call from his parents that his brother had died in a hit and run accident. The driver had been drunk and was later found and arrested. Zach had never been much of a drinker, but that night he’d found himself at a local bar, getting plastered, missing his brother and needing to wallow in misery.

  He barely recalled the woman now, except that she’d been friendly and pretty.

  Kristen’s mother had died last winter, leaving Kristen with no living relatives except Zach. He hadn’t even known of her existence until he received the letter from an attorney stating that if he didn’t claim her, she’d be sent into foster care and the state would then collect child support from him. Not one to squelch his responsibilities, Zach had immediately gone to collect his daughter. He’d wondered often over the past few months why the girl’s mother had never told him about her. But he couldn’t question a dead person, so he’d finally let it go and just accepted what was.

  He and Kristen were still trying to get used to each other.

  Zach cleared his throat. “Well, what do you think? You like it?” He motioned around him.

  Kristen shrugged in a typical uncaring fourteen-year-old way. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  Zach raised a brow. “Just okay?”

  She shrugged again. “It’s nice and big. Lots of room. But it’s so far out here in the middle of the woods. What am I going to do all day during the summer?”

  “You should find plenty to do. You’re a resourceful girl. What did you do at your mother’s?” As soon as he asked the question, he regretted it. The girl didn’t need a reminder that her mother was gone.

  “We lived in the city, as you already know, where there’s lots of things to do.”

  Lots of bad things, he was certain. One of the reasons he’d bought this house was because it was so far away from “trouble.” There wasn’t much trouble Kristen could get into out here, unlike at her mother’s in Spokane, where she’d been a juvenile delinquent. As long as Zach could help it, Kristen would never be a juvenile delinquent again. He wouldn’t let her.

  “For now, you can help me unpack boxes and put things away. I’ll let you wait to do your homework until Sunday.”

  She perked up at that. Anything to get out of doing her homework.

  Zach didn’t know much about kids, but he was learning. Kristen was not only sassy and quick witted, but also independent, strong willed and stubborn. He’d attended several parenting classes soon after Kristen had come to live with him. Though the classes helped to some extent, they didn’t teach him how to deal with everything. Fourteen-year-old girls were not easy to raise. What the girl needed was her mother. But all she had was Zach.

  The poor kid was doomed.

  Zach turned toward a stack of boxes to his right that were labeled, “kitchen.”

  “Here, start with
these.”

  His radio went off before he could say anymore. Though he was off duty today, he’d told the department to contact him if they needed anything.

  “Yeah, go ahead.” Zach spoke into the radio, watching as Kristen rose from the couch and sliced through the tape with one of the utility knifes he’d set on the counter. She pulled open the lid and removed paper-wrapped plates. She began unwrapping them and stacking them on the countertop behind her. Her movements were intentionally slow, like everything else she didn’t want to do. Zach fought the urge to roll his eyes.

  “Uh, sorry to bother you, Sheriff, but we’ve got a situation down here at the jail. Deputy Bailey was supposed to be on duty until four, but he’s not here and no one can get a hold of him. So we reviewed the video cameras and saw him leaving with a woman prisoner this morning around ten thirty.”

  What the hell? Zach’s stomach dropped. He knew he shouldn’t have let that woman out of his sight. “Did she steal his gun or Taser or something? How did she escape?”

  “Uh—” There was a pause as Carlson, the deputy on jail duty, cleared his throat. “The prisoner didn’t have any weapons, Sheriff. The camera clearly shows Deputy Bailey letting her out of her cell and leading her out the door with the Taser pointed at her.”

  Zach was stunned into temporary speechlessness. “You’re kidding me,” he said at last into the radio. “He let her out? Why? Where did he take her?”

  “Don’t know, sir. The parking lot camera shows him putting her into the back of a patrol car and leaving. We haven’t been able to get a hold of him. He’s not answering his radio or his cellphone. Should we put out a BOLO on the county vehicle?”

  Kristen eyed him across the room with wide, interested eyes. Zach turned his back to her and moved into the hallway where it would be harder for her to overhear.

  “Yeah. And keep trying to get a hold of Bailey. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When Zach came back into the living room, Kristen had finished unpacking the first box and moved on to the next one.

  “I have to go into the jail for a bit. I won’t be more than an hour or two. You want me to bring back a pizza for dinner?”