You Can't Escape (9781420134650) Read online

  And he was married. Which was just as well, really, because she was not interested in a married man. She only wanted Danziger’s story, and by God, she was going to get it if it killed her. She looked enough like Carmen Danziger to bluff her way inside while everything was in a state of flux. Carmen mostly stayed out of the spotlight, but Jordanna knew she wore her long, brunette hair in a messy bun and that when she did go out, she favored tight dresses and the highest heels imaginable for a woman to still be able to walk. In the few hours since the bombing, Jordanna had purchased both at the nearest mall. She’d damn near broken an ankle hurrying into the hospital, but luckily, no one had noticed.

  “Call him,” Jordanna had urged the receptionist, dabbing at the real tears that formed at the corners of her eyes. Fear. Or excitement. At least it was working for her.

  “Do you have ID?”

  Shit. “I . . .” She pretended confusion, gazing back through the glass double doors to the parking lot.

  At that moment, Officer McDermott himself had stalked through the reception area. She’d seen him on the news earlier and she knew he was part of the investigation. Fully crying, she grabbed his arm. “Please tell me my husband’s alive.”

  He gazed down at her impatiently. “Who is your husband, ma’am?”

  “Jay . . . Jay Danziger? Is he here? Please . . .”

  If Carmen Danziger had actually already been at the hospital, Jordanna would have probably been arrested. She’d been pretty sure she was safe, though, because she’d seen Carmen with a ton of luggage heading to the airport a few days earlier. Jordanna had hoped she was still far, far away and hadn’t returned yet. But Jordanna figured if she was caught in her masquerade, so be it. It was still worth a try. Recklessness had served her well in the past and she wasn’t going to play it safe and miss a golden opportunity.

  “Mrs. Danziger.” McDermott had looked like he wanted to peel her off his arm.

  “Is he here? Is he all right?”

  “He’s still recovering from surgery.”

  She’d pressed a hand to her mouth and shaken her head, letting emotion overcome her.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. We have a lot of injuries. Check with the hospital staff.”

  Jordanna had nodded, releasing him. The bombing had taken place at the Saldanos’ main company headquarters, where, according to general speculation and Jay Danziger’s investigation prior to his being seduced by the family, the Saldanos received and shipped all manner of illegal drugs. Max Saldano and the entire family hotly denied this accusation. They were honest businesspeople involved in importing and exporting commodities from Mexico and Central and South America. They were not criminals.

  More bullshit.

  Danziger was a longtime friend of Max Saldano, the man who had introduced him to his sister, Carmen. Jay and Carmen had already been married by the time Jordanna had begun admiring Danziger’s journalistic style. It was only after the Saldanos came under suspicion of criminal activity, all the while being championed by Jay Danziger, that Jordanna had begun to think her idol had feet of clay. Money involved, Jordanna had told herself darkly. Lots of money. And Jay Danziger had rolled over for it, much like her father had when he’d married into the Markum family after Jordanna’s mother’s death.

  As soon as those thoughts circled her mind again, Jordanna had shut them off, concentrating instead on discovering Danziger’s room, which she’d been unsure how to find until she overheard two nurses talking about him and had followed them to the fourth floor. Her tight green dress and heels had gotten her noticed, but the camouflage had helped connect her as Danziger’s wife. The nurses had believed her when she’d said Officer McDermott, and a doctor she’d seen mentioned on the news, had sent her to the fourth floor. It had been almost too easy, which had struck her as odd. That’s when she’d first thought that Danziger might be in danger. None of the Saldanos had been at their building when it exploded. It had been virtually empty of family members, though a number of employees had been hurt from the fallout. The initial theory was that a rival group had bombed the Saldanos to send a violent message, though the family patriarch, Victor Saldano, had scoffed at the suggestion.

  In her disguise as Carmen, Jordanna had decided to alert Danziger to possible danger. She might not trust his motives any longer, but he’d damn near died because of his association with the Saldanos. That was clear. He’d been the one in the line of fire, not Maxwell, nor his father, nor any other Saldano, for that matter. So, she’d entered his room cautiously, but found him asleep. Uncertain for a moment, she’d decided to sit down and wait to see if he woke up. She’d sat tensely in the chair next to his bed, all the time feeling a ticking clock inside her head, like the countdown to a bomb, warning her that Carmen Saldano Danziger or someone who knew her was bound to show up any time.

  But then Jay Danziger had awoken and she’d just started . . . improvising.

  And so had he.

  She looked at him now. At the handsome face with the two lines of worry etched between his brows even in sleep. She felt an emotional pull inside herself, one she desperately needed to control. Did he understand about the danger? Maybe he knew more about it than she did. He certainly hadn’t argued with her. In fact, he’d put himself in the care of a stranger without a qualm, no questions asked, and she’d committed herself to getting him out of here. With her mind on the old farmstead in Rock Springs where she’d grown up—a place she’d avoided for years—she’d told him she would get him somewhere safe.

  She just hoped to hell she could deliver on that promise.

  Chapter Two

  Jordanna stood by the northeast-facing window of Jay Danziger’s hospital room, staring through the blinds to the parking lot below. It was actually two separate lots; the one toward the north side was a level lower than the one on the east. The hospital sat on a hillside, and the main entrance and emergency room were on the top level, while most of the parking that surrounded the other three sides of the building step-staired its way down toward the rear of the building.

  If I park back here, I can get away without being seen, she thought. There was no way she was getting Danziger through the main entrance without press and questions and all kinds of commotion. But one of the rear entrances might work for the stealth assignment she’d tasked herself with. Were there security cameras around? Possibly. She couldn’t see any from this angle, but it was amazing how much of today’s world was under surveillance. She would just have to assume cameras were watching, and that their progress to her car would be recorded. If anyone then chose to go so far as to try to find Danziger once he left the hospital, something she sensed could easily happen, the cameras would catch her on video.

  She exhaled a long, soft breath. Some Saldano Industries employees had also been hurt, but none of them had suffered the injuries Danziger had. The bomb had been on the other side of the wall from the entrance where Danziger had been standing. Though others had been hit by flying shrapnel, no one else had been close to the explosion’s source. Jordanna subscribed to the “there are no coincidences” theory, and in her mind that meant the bomb had been meant for Jay Danziger.

  She glanced again toward his unconscious body. He was breathing evenly now, but since she’d been standing vigil, he’d gasped a couple of times in his sleep. Whether this was from an injury or some uncomfortable memory or dream, she couldn’t tell. Either way, every time it happened it caused her breath to catch in her throat and her heart to race.

  She paced to the other side of the room and cautiously peered around the door and into the hallway. A woman’s voice, one of the nurse’s, was complaining from the nurse’s station around the corner. Someone hadn’t done as she’d ordered her and it sounded as if there would be hell to pay. It reminded Jordanna of her aunt Evelyn, who found great joy in recounting every slight and misery she’d been subjected to, whether real or imagined, to anyone with one good ear. She was a grievance collector of the first order.

  Needing to use the r
estroom, Jordanna turned down the hall, teetering a bit on one heel. She had half a mind to take off the shoes. They’d served their purpose and now she needed to walk. Before she could make that decision, however, she heard someone coming from behind and just managed to reach the corner before being seen. Her heart jolted when she looked back and spied two policemen, McDermott and another younger man, entering Jay Danziger’s room, and a cold frisson slid down her back as she considered what would have happened if she’d had to speak to them. She didn’t trust that McDermott would continue to think she was Carmen.

  A bell went off at the nurse’s station up ahead to her left, jarring her nerves further, but Jordanna ducked into the bathroom on the right. Inside, she leaned against the wall beside the door, watching it start to close behind her.

  What the hell are you doing?

  The complaining nurse suddenly snapped, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Then footsteps marched toward her. Jordanna moved quickly away from the door and to the sink, sure her charade was about to be unmasked. She pretended to wash her hands, but no one entered the bathroom. Cocking her head, she tried to listen, but the door was firmly shut now and the bathroom walls apparently too insulated to hear through. In that moment she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and forced herself to clear the lines of anxiety between her brows.

  Gathering her courage, she carefully stepped back into the hallway and hurried back to the corner once again. To her right was the nurse’s section. If she went left, she would reach the branch of the hallway that led to Danziger’s room. Swallowing, she dared a quick look and saw that his door was open. The complaining nurse’s voice suddenly sounded from the direction of the nurse’s station. It was muffled at this distance, but she was plainly still upset.

  “Can I help you?”

  Jordanna just managed to keep from leaping out of her skin at the unexpected female voice. She turned to find a young aide behind her. She’d come from farther down the hall. To Jordanna’s right, another nurse was approaching the nurse’s station with a file in her hands.

  “I’m just debating whether to see my husband again, or let him get some rest,” Jordanna told her, inclining her head toward the branching corridor.

  “There’s a waiting area ahead.” The aide pointed past the turn to Danziger’s room and toward the opposite end of the hall from the nurse’s station. If she chose to go there, Jordanna would have to cross the corridor that led to Danziger’s room, and if the policemen were standing outside his door, it was more than possible one of them might see her. Would they think she was just some other visitor, or would they know how Carmen Danziger dressed?

  “Thank you,” she said to the aide, who smiled and turned toward the nurse’s station. Jordanna stood still for a moment, then held her breath and decided to cross to the waiting area. She moved quickly, forcing herself not to turn her head. In her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of one of the officers still in the hallway, but she kept her pace even, only breathing a sigh of relief when she was safely down the hall and at the small waiting room, which was really an alcove with several brown faux-leather side chairs and a glass table with metal legs. A row of windows gazed down upon the very parking lot where Jordanna was thinking about leaving her car, and she leaned her chin on one hand and calculated the distance from Danziger’s room to the elevator, and then the elevator to the back door....

  The woman’s voice was full of annoyance. “. . . asleep, and when he’s awake, you can question him.”

  A man’s voice answered, implacable and cool. “We’ll wait.”

  “I’ve paged Dr. Cochran,” the woman warned. “Until he arrives, I suggest you wait in the hall.”

  “Ma’am, we’ve spoken with Dr. Cochran and he knows we’re here.”

  “Even if that’s true, patient health is Laurelton General’s first responsibility,” she responded crisply, undaunted. “Please wait in the hall until Mr. Danziger awakens.”

  Silence. Dance pictured a glare-off between the man and woman. Even in his dull state, he had a pretty good idea that the man was a police officer. There was just something authoritative in his tone. And they would be wanting to question him. They would want to know if he knew anything about the explosion. Dr. Cochran had basically released him, so they wouldn’t miss this opportunity while he was still at the hospital.

  He toyed with the idea of letting the nurse duke it out with the officers; there were at least two of them or the man wouldn’t have been speaking in plurals.

  But Dance didn’t see how that was going to help him. He sensed he was in trouble, either a target of the bombing or someone who’d merely gotten in the way. What that meant, he wasn’t sure. His head felt stuffed with cotton; it hurt to think. Either way, he wanted to get the hell away from the hospital, where he felt like a sitting duck. If this Jordanna person could spring him, he was going to go with her.

  She could be in on it.

  He opened his eyes.

  Two people were in the room, and he sensed another standing just outside the door. The iron-jawed, middle-aged nurse with the glare was just as he’d expected. The fifty-ish man with clipped gray hair gazed calmly back at her and wore a policeman’s uniform. The third person was outside his line of sight.

  It was the nurse who saw him first. Her eyes momentarily flicked his way, but returned to the police officer without letting him know Dance was awake. But then the officer in the hallway suddenly entered and his gaze collided with Dance’s.

  “His eyes are open,” he said, effectively breaking the glare-off between the other two.

  “Mr. Danziger,” the nurse said, bustling over to his bedside officiously. “How are you feeling? Can you talk? These policemen wish to speak with you, but you do not have to right now.”

  “I can talk,” Dance rasped.

  Her lips tightened. “I’ve paged Dr. Cochran, and—”

  “No, I’ll talk,” he said again, clearing his throat. “I want to.”

  She inhaled a breath, hesitated a moment, then said, “If you’re sure,” in a tone that said there was no way he could be.

  “Mr. Danziger,” the policeman greeted him, ignoring the nurse and gazing at Dance through flinty eyes. “If you’re feeling up to it, we’d like your account of the accident.”

  “Was it a bombing?” Dance asked him.

  The older officer—McDermott, by his name tag—glanced at the nurse, who tried to ignore his pointed stare before bustling out of the room in a flurry of indignation.

  Once she was gone, McDermott turned his attention back to Dance. “It appears to have been.”

  The younger officer, whose name tag read BILLINGS, kept silent, clearly leaving the questions to his more experienced partner.

  “We’ve been waiting to interview you,” McDermott explained. “You feel up to it?”

  Dance kind of figured the interview was coming at him regardless, but he managed a careful nod.

  “Do you mind telling us what you were doing at Saldano Industries?” the older officer asked.

  “I was meeting Maxwell Saldano there.”

  “A business meeting?”

  “We were planning to play golf,” Dance said, sidestepping the question. “I was meeting Max at his office.”

  “Maxwell Saldano is your brother-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your wife was here earlier . . . ?” McDermott frowned and looked back toward the door as if he was wondering what had become of her.

  Dance was wondering the same thing, except his thoughts were on the woman named Jordanna. Was she getting ready to take him out of here? He hoped to hell she stayed away while the police were here, although why he trusted her like a lifelong friend and not the police was a question he couldn’t quite answer. He didn’t mistrust the officers exactly, but he was in something deep that he didn’t completely remember at the moment. He understood he was lucky to be alive. And he wanted out of the hospital.

  You don’t know this Jordanna. She coul
d be part of the setup.

  Setup? Was this a setup? His brain suddenly offered up a memory. The audiotapes . . .

  “Mr. Saldano wasn’t at the company building when the explosion happened,” McDermott said.

  “He was late,” Dance said, tired all over. Maybe his injuries were worse than he’d thought, but he didn’t care. He was leaving today, no matter what Cochran said.

  The drugs were making it impossible to think straight. The bombing couldn’t have been about him. No one was after him. No one knew about the tapes except Max.

  And Max wasn’t there....

  Dance licked dry lips and asked, “Have you talked to Max?”

  “One of our detectives has spoken to Mr. Saldano, and she would like to talk to you, too.”

  “She?”

  “Detective Rafferty.”

  He sensed underlying disapproval in the man’s voice. Because she was a woman? Or because she was a detective? Or both? Deciding to twist the knife a bit, he asked, “This Rafferty’s the boss, huh?”

  “No,” McDermott snapped back, unable to help himself, his lips tight. The younger officer looked uncomfortable. Dance had done enough reports on crime and dealt with enough police to know there was often a wall between the uniformed officer and the detectives. The detective being a “she” was bound to pour salt in the wound, especially since there was something about McDermott, nothing definable . . . call it a reporter’s nose . . . that smacked already of misogyny. Or, he supposed it could be simple envy, but whatever it was, Dance was pretty sure McDermott had stepped out of his job description to interview him.