Easy to say, she thought as she slowly sat up in bed. How could she help thinking about those poor kids? The events of yesterday were rushing back to her with every sickening detail, clear and dagger sharp.
Like the knife in Chavez’s back.
She shuddered as a chill iced through her. Five lives wasted for no reason other than the desire to draw her to Apache Lake. How could anyone do that?
But he had done it. And he had gotten away with it.
Suddenly the chill was gone, replaced by burning anger.
Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.
No way, you bastard.
13
Sarah, dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt, walked out of the bathroom twenty minutes later.
Galen looked up from the stove at her. “I still have to make the gravy and biscuits.”
“Where’s Logan? I thought he was going to cook breakfast.”
“Get real.” His expression was pained. “Much as I’d like to have Logan wait on me, there’s no way I’d sacrifice my digestive system. Over the years I’ve become accustomed to fine cuisine.”
“So where is Logan?”
“Outside with Monty.”
“I thought Monty would be with Maggie.”
“He’s sulking. He doesn’t like the rapport I’ve developed with his lady friend.”
“What?”
“He’s afraid Maggie likes me best. She totally ignored him when I was changing her bandage and feeding her. Anyone could see she’s besotted with me.” He shook his head as he added a flour mixture to the hot skillet, then he winked at her. “Just joking. It took me a long time to get her to stop howling while you two were gone. I think she’s in a snit and playing hard to get with him. Of course, I could be wrong. My modesty gets in the way at times, and I—” He broke off, studying her. “You look better than you did last night but still pretty grim.”
“I feel pretty grim.”
“Then go talk to Logan. I need calm and good thoughts to reach sublimity in cooking.”
“Did Logan tell you that Smith had been killed?”
“Oh, yes, and I had some grim thoughts myself.” He stirred the gravy. “But after I put some wheels in motion, I felt much better.”
“What wheels?”
“Determining and then verifying who was the logical person with Rudzak at Apache Lake. It’s always necessary to be sure before action is taken.” He opened the oven to check on the biscuits. “It was almost certainly Carl Duggan.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I have great contacts. Everybody loves me. Did I mention that?”
“I got the gist. And what action are you planning on taking?”
He said softly, “Why, an eye for an eye. What else?”
She had a sudden memory of him running through the jungle, as much a predator as Maggie ever could be. She didn’t find the idea repulsive. It would be a clean kill and well deserved. Not like Rudzak, who—
“You’re thinking bad thoughts again.” He clucked reprovingly. “I told you I couldn’t tolerate that. Go out and talk to Logan. I’ll call you when breakfast is ready.”
Logan was leaning against the fence, talking on his phone. He lifted his hand in greeting but kept on talking. Monty was lying at his feet until he saw Sarah, and then he leaped up and bounded toward her, his fluffy tail wagging his whole body in joyful greeting.
“Now you’re happy to see me,” she murmured as she crouched to pet him. “Where were you last night, when I needed you?”
But she had not really needed him. Logan had been there, holding her. Maybe Monty had derived the same comfort from being with Maggie.
“Is breakfast ready?” Logan had hung up his phone and was watching her and Monty.
“Not yet. I was disturbing Galen and he sent me to you.”
“I’m surprised. It takes a lot to disturb Galen. But I’m glad he has his priorities straight.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Lieutenant Carmichael. He’s sending someone to take your statement this afternoon.”
“Any word on Rudzak?”
“No.”
She hadn’t thought there would be. “What about the kids? How did they die?”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“One was shot. The others drowned. They were alive when they went into the water.”
She flinched. “Christ.”
“I told you that you didn’t want to know.”
“I had to know.” She closed her eyes and held tight to Monty. “I have to know everything.”
“Why? So you can tear yourself apart?” he said roughly.
“Because Rudzak hasn’t been real to me. I knew he had killed those people in Colombia, but I couldn’t really make the connection from him to me or my life.” She opened her lids and stared at him with tear-wet eyes. “I’m making the connection now, Logan.”
“And it’s killing you.”
“No, that would mean that Rudzak had won. I won’t let that happen. I won’t let him hurt me.” She rose to her feet. “And I won’t let him hurt anyone else. Not ever.”
His gaze narrowed on her face. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m going to find him before he kills anyone again.”
“And then what?”
“You tell me. You said Rudzak was smart. Even if he’s caught, it doesn’t mean he’d get convicted. And if he was convicted, he got out of prison once. He could do it again, couldn’t he?”
“It would be more difficult.”
“But he could do it.”
“Hell, yes, he could do it. What are you getting at, Sarah?”
“You know what I’m getting at.” Her voice was shaking with rage. “Galen believes in an eye for an eye. You do too.”
“But you don’t. It’s not your nature.”
“How do you know? I’ve never been this angry before.”
“You were angry when Madden took Monty away and you didn’t kill him.”
“Monty didn’t die. I was able to save him. Rudzak didn’t give me the chance to save those kids. He killed them and then he took me to that spot and let Monty find them. He told me how sorry he was, and all the time he’d put them in that car and sent them—”
“You’re taking this personally, but it was me he was really aiming at.”
“You’re damn right I’m taking this personally. I don’t care if he meant to get at you through me. He used me and he used those kids and Chavez and Smith. He smiled and told me about the dog he’d adopted from the pound, and I liked him. He played me like a—”
“Shh.” He was standing before her, his hands on her shoulders. “You’re scaring me to death, and I’m choosing the wrong words to try to reason with you.”
“How are you going to reason with me? Are you going to tell me I should just forget about that—”
“I’m trying to tell you that this is my battle, not yours. I’ll find a way to get Rudzak.”
“You haven’t found him yet.”
“And you’re going to?”
“I’ll find him.” Her hands clenched into fists. “That’s what I do. I find people. I’ll search him out.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” His hands tightened briefly on her shoulders and then dropped away. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it, am I?”
She shook her head.
“Then I suppose I’d better make the best of it.” He stepped back. “If there is a best. I trust you don’t intend to leave me out of this entirely?”
“How could I? I need you.”
“That’s comforting . . . barely.”
“I don’t intend to be comforting. You’re the one who knows everything about Rudzak. Now I want to know what you know.”
“Can we wait until after breakfast?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He led her toward the bench against the wall. “Sit do
wn and fire away.”
“Why did Rudzak put that comb in my car?”
“Is that going to help you find him?”
“Maybe. It will help me to know him and what he might do.”
He was silent a moment. “He wanted to show me that he was the one who had killed those kids and that he could have killed you too. He gave the comb and several other ancient Egyptian artifacts to Chen Li, and now he’s using them as a kind of signature when he makes a kill.”
“What kind of signature?”
“A symbolic death gift. Egyptian rulers had their treasures entombed with them, and he wants to honor Chen Li’s passing with other deaths.” His lips twisted. “And make a stab at hurting me at the same time.”
“Then all this is about Chen Li? Were they lovers?”
“No, they were half brother and sister.”
She stared at him in shock. “And you had him put in prison?”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“He killed Chen Li.”
“What?”
“He went into her hospital room and he broke her neck. He called it a mercy killing.”
“And what did you call it?”
“Murder. She was in remission and the remission could have lasted.” His lips tightened. “He didn’t give her that chance.”
“Did he know she was in remission?”
“I told him. He didn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me. He’d lost her and he didn’t want her to live if he couldn’t have her.”
“Lost her?”
“He loved her. He wanted to go to bed with her.”
She gasped.
“That’s why he tried to draw her into the Egyptian mystique. It was common then to go to bed with close relatives. He wooed her like a lover and never took a wrong step. But I think she guessed it toward the end and he sensed her revulsion. He couldn’t accept it, so she had to die.”
“And you sent him to prison?”
“If I’d caught him before he ran off to Bangkok, I would have killed him. Instead, I told the authorities in Bangkok when and where they could find the drugs he’d smuggled into the country. Then I bribed the judge at his trial to give him a life sentence in one of the worst prisons in the world. Galen assured me that even the cockroaches bailed out of that place after they got a look around.” His smile was chilling. “That made me very happy.”
“Rudzak smuggled drugs?”
“His father owned an import-export house in Tokyo. Rudzak began by taking advantage of his father’s contacts to do a little art smuggling. That’s where Galen met him and introduced him to me. We did a few runs together and he brought us home to meet his family . . . and Chen Li.”
“You were a smuggler too?”
“I told you my life hasn’t been squeaky clean. I was broke and trying to make a stake. I stopped when I married Chen Li. Rudzak told me he was quitting too, but he just shifted his focus. Galen came to me two years later and told me Rudzak had started smuggling drugs throughout Asia. It was much more profitable but a hell of a lot more dangerous. I knew it would kill Chen Li if she found out, so I tried to convince him to quit. He assured me he’d do it right after the next run.”
“But he didn’t.”
Logan shook his head. “He was making money hand over fist and there was no way he’d stop. So I turned a blind eye and just tried to protect Chen Li. Everything I did at that time was aimed at protecting Chen Li. I’d just found out that she had cancer and I was searching desperately for a cure for her. I was so young, I didn’t believe anything could beat me.”
No, Logan wouldn’t believe anything could beat him, she thought. And as a younger man he must have been even more willful and determined to get his own way.
“So now you know what a bastard Rudzak is and you have a better picture of me too. Why don’t you bow out and let me go after him?”
She shook her head.
“You’re being a fool,” he said roughly. “You’re not equipped to go up against him. He’s studied you. He knows your weakness.”
“What weakness?”
“Humanity. If you’re needed, you’ll go to help. Just as you did at Apache Lake.”
“And what am I supposed to do? Just sit here?”
“Would that be so bad? It won’t be for long. He’s evidently done his homework and he’ll be on the move now. Things will be moving fast.”
“What homework?”
“We think he’s found out about Dodsworth. Galen planted a man at the courthouse and he says someone’s been nosing around the records.”
“Dodsworth?”
“That’s my medical research facility in North Dakota. It’s been doing less sensitive work than Santo Camaro. As soon as Bassett gets his notes in order, he’ll be going up there to complete the project with that team.”
“You never explained how Rudzak found out about Santo Camaro. If it was top secret, how did he do it?”
“Money. He zeroed in on someone and bribed him for information.”
“Who?”
“Castleton.”
She stiffened in shock. “Castleton? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She thought about her meeting with Castleton and couldn’t recall anything suspicious about him. But looking back and knowing Logan as she did now, she could see there had been something in his attitude that wasn’t quite right. “You knew that evening we arrived.”
“Yes.”
“And you let him go?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “No.”
After all she’d learned about Logan, she wasn’t even surprised. “Because you were afraid he’d tell Rudzak about Monty and me and spoil the surprise attack?”
“Partly. But I’d have done it anyway. He’d betrayed those people at the facility. He was responsible for their deaths. An eye for an eye. Remember?”
She slowly nodded. “Then that’s how Rudzak knows about Dodsworth?”
“What Castleton knew, Rudzak knows. The first thing I did was increase the security in all my plants and research facilities.”
“All of them? But you think he’ll target Dodsworth.”
“Probably. But who’s to say that’s the only one he’ll pick? I can’t take a chance. Besides, we know he bought enough explosives to blow up a small town.”
“Explosives,” she whispered.
“You were at Oklahoma City. You know what explosives can do.”
She knew very well. She had helped take out those pitiful babies from the wreckage. “You can’t let it happen. Why haven’t you notified ATF?”
“I have notified them and the FBI.”
“Did you tell them about Dodsworth?” She could see the answer in his face. “You didn’t tell them.”
“Not yet.”
“Call them.”
“No one will be hurt at Dodsworth.”
“How can you say that?” She could still see the tragedy at Oklahoma City before her. “You just said Rudzak has explosives.”
He shook his head. “It’s the first time we’ve had an inkling where Rudzak may strike. We may have a chance to trap him.”
“It’s too big a risk. Let ATF trap him.”
“There can’t be an obvious official presence at Dodsworth if I want to draw him. He’d regard my security people as a challenge, not a deterrent. But security is as tight as a drum there. No one could get through.”
“Call them.”
“Not yet. Not until I’m sure it’s necessary. Not until I’m certain we can’t stop him. Trust me. I’ll act if I have to.”
“How many people do you have in that installation?”
“Fifty-seven.”
“And do they know what danger they’re in?”
“Yes. I told the head of the project to tell everyone what happened at Santo Camaro and that they might be next. I gave them the option of staying or leaving. Six left. The rest stayed.”
“You should shut down the f
acility.”
“Rudzak would just change his target.” He stood up. “If you want ATF called, do it yourself.”
“I will.”
“But be sure you’re ready to accept the responsibility of another Kai Chi.”
She could feel the blood drain from her face. “Kai Chi?”
“That was Rudzak. A tribute to Chen Li. Do you want another Kai Chi or do you want a chance to catch the bastard?”
“Kai Chi.” She stared at him in horror. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d look at me as you’re doing now and run to the opposite end of the earth. You don’t understand anyone who would kill five hundred people to make a sick statement.”
“Do you?”
“No, but I’m part of the problem, and every time you look at me, you’ll see Kai Chi.”
“Please, call ATF,” she whispered. “You saw the baby who died in Taiwan. It’s nothing compared to what a bomb did to the children in Oklahoma.”
He was silent for a moment, a multitude of emotions crossing his face. Then he shook his head. “I’ll give you anything else in the whole world, but I can’t give you this, Sarah. I have to have a chance of catching him.”
“It’s wrong, Logan.”
“Then make the call. No one’s stopping you.” He started into the house. “But think long and hard about it. And remember Kai Chi. It could happen again.”
No one was stopping her? The hell no one was stopping her.
Oklahoma City. Oh, God, she couldn’t stand to be responsible for another disaster like that.
Kai Chi.
If Logan was right, could she bear being responsible for the death of even more people than those at Dodsworth?
She had to have an answer and soon.
Monty whimpered and put his head on her knee.
“It’s okay.” She stroked his head. “Go on back to Maggie.”
He didn’t move. He was there giving her comfort and companionship as Logan had done the night before. But in the morning Logan had offered nothing except loneliness and despair.
Sarah tried to ignore the pain. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. She had told him she expected nothing but sexual pleasure. It was too bad she had let him slip beneath her defenses. But it would be okay. She had been alone most of her life and she had made out fine.