Part 6 (1/2)
”Friend of yours?”
She glanced up at Roland. ”No, I've never seen him before.” Well, she had bruises around her mouth from Jimbo's hands, and dark circles under her eyes. Small wonder people were staring. ”Shall we go?”
She and Roland left the terminal and joined a queue for taxis. There were over a dozen people ahead of them, and not a cab in sight. Roland grinned and opened his newspaper. ”I guess I should have waited until we got to the train station,” he said. ”I let everyone get ahead of us.”
”I don't mind,” Colleen told him. ”It's nice to be by the ocean.” She left him minding their luggage and holding their place in the line, and walked to the corner of the terminal building. She watched gulls wheel and dive. After a while a horn sounded, and soon she saw the ferry moving away from sh.o.r.e.
She could see the cowboys in a line at the ferry railing and wondered again what brought them to Victoria. A man in a suit had come to meet them, so it had to be something important.
For some reason, the man in the suit bothered her. She thought she remembered him vaguely from the morning's crossing. He'd come across just to meet with the cowboys and bring them back, then. What troubled her? She was sure she'd never seen him before. His face was too distinctive to forget.
She chased the thought in circles, then pushed it from her mind. Her brain would serve up the answer if she gave it a chance. She walked back to rejoin Roland.
”Cor,” said a voice behind her, ”we'll 'ave a 'ard time makin' our reservation now.”
Colleen went cold as the memory came rus.h.i.+ng back. A hotel lobby, the p.r.i.c.k of a knife, and a voice behind her, a cold, clipped British accent. A man in a suit. She'd never seen his face.
”Darling?” Roland's voice was tight with concern. ”What is it?”
She stared at him. ”That man. The round-faced man in the train station. I think he's a member of the cult.”
His eyebrows rose. ”Are you sure?”
She wasn't sure, far from it. She hadn't even heard his voice this time. The suit was similar, and the way he'd stared at her was unsettling. It could be coincidence.
”It doesn't matter,” Roland said, as if she'd spoken aloud. ”There's nothing we can do about it now. He's gone. We're out of it now. Forget him.” And he turned away, calmly scanning the street for a taxi.
Colleen stared at the back of his head, speechless. He wasn't pretending. He honestly didn't care. Colleen was safe. They were leaving. In Roland's mind, nothing else mattered.
She looked toward the ocean, the ferry, and Vancouver Island somewhere just over the horizon. She was safe, but she wasn't the only person involved.
A taxi pulled up and the man in line ahead of them got in. Roland and Colleen were next.
She kept staring after the ferry, thinking about the cowboys. Six men, tough-looking, on their way to Victoria with a cultist. They were reinforcements, she was sure of it. There would be guns in their luggage. And Carter and Chris and Maggie had no idea they were coming.
She looked at Roland, sighing as she realized the dream of safety was going to slip away. If going with him would mean safety. The cult might leave her alone, but she could never be sure. She would be looking over her shoulder for years, scrutinizing every stranger, clinging to Roland and wondering if proximity to her would eventually get him killed.
Some stubborn streak inside of her began to rea.s.sert itself. Even if her friends weren't in deadly danger, she realized she couldn't go with Roland. She wasn't going to live in fear. If the cult was going to terrorize her, she was going to take the fight to them. Again and again, until they were no more threat to her or anyone else.
Another taxi pulled up, and Roland picked up his valise and her suitcase. He smiled at her, then froze as he saw the expression on her face.
”Thank you so much for saving me,” she said. ”Thank you for coming. But I'm not going back with you.”
His jaw dropped. ”What do you mean?”
Colleen stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. ”There's something I have to do,” she said. ”Goodbye.”
Chapter 8 a” Tick Tock.
She left her suitcase in a locker in the ferry terminal. Leaving Roland was harder. She ignored him as he pleaded, demanded, and argued. She walked along the waterfront, talking to boat crews, and he dogged her footsteps, calling her a fool, telling her to stop being childish. He delivered an ultimatum, telling her it was her last chance to be sensible or he'd leave without her. When she ignored that, more ultimatums followed. After the third ultimatum he finally followed through, turned away, flagged a pa.s.sing taxi, and left.
Part of her felt devastated to see him go, but she felt more than a little relief, too. He could be a real pain, she saw, when he didn't get his way.
Fear for her friends overrode every other concern, though. Later she could patch things up with Roland, or try to, or not bother. In the meantime, innocent lives hung in the balance.
She finally found a fis.h.i.+ng boat that was docked waiting for her nets to be repaired. She haggled briefly with the captain, hampered by not knowing what a charter should cost, and by her own sense of urgency. She wrote him a cheque and came on board.
They set out immediately. None of the crew was on board. The captain sat at the wheel, staring placidly at the horizon, showing no interest in conversation. Colleen took a seat at the prow, stared toward Victoria, and willed the boat to move faster.
They arrived after dark, well after the ferry. Colleen dashed ash.o.r.e, looked in vain for a taxi, and ran to the Empress Hotel.
No one was in. She left messages for every member of the team, then took a taxi to the hospital. Jane had checked out. There were different cops outside of Parker's room, a pair of stern broad-shouldered men with cold eyes and hard faces. They refused to let her past, and a nurse nearly as intimidating told her in no uncertain terms that visiting hours were over.
Colleen left the hospital, sick with worry. Parker was safe enough, but where were the others? She trudged back to the hotel, hoping against hope that they had returned.
They had not. Colleen stared around the elegant lobby. It was past midnight. Where would they go, in the dead of night? If the cult had them, where would the cult have taken them? They no longer had a s.h.i.+p. Where else could they be?
She caught another taxi, wincing at the money she was spending. She directed the driver to the outskirts of the city and had him stop under a streetlight a block from her destination.
The driver peered out his window at the surrounding darkness. ”Are you sure, Miss? I don't like to leave a lady alone in a place like this. Are you sure I can't take you to your door?”
”I'll be fine,” she told him. ”Right here is good.”
She crept up to the warehouse on foot, keeping to the shadows, placing each foot carefully so that no rock was sent rolling, no stick broke underfoot. There was a faint glow through the dirty windows. Someone had left a light on inside.
The front door would be her entry of last resort. Instead, she slipped around to the back, hoping to find an unlatched window. Instead she found broken windows and a back door that had been smashed open.
She crept to a window and peeked over the sill, seeing nothing but darkness and shadow. A sound came to her, though, a drawn-out groan, like a man in great pain trying hard not to cry out, and failing.
Colleen moved to the back door, which hung swaying from one hinge. The door frame was a splintered mess. She stared into the darkness beyond, her thoughts racing, fear and prudence warring with concern for her friends. She told herself that the sensible thing to do was flee, run back to town, summon a squad of police. But that would take hours, and what would the team members go through in the meantime?
Another pain-filled groan came echoing through the window, and Colleen abandoned her inner debate, took a deep breath, and stepped through the shattered doorway.
She found herself in a shadowed s.p.a.ce behind a ma.s.s of rusted, filthy machinery. Nothing moved. No one was watching the doorway.
She crept forward, watching where she put her feet, careful not to let detritus or broken gla.s.s crunch under her shoes. She inched her way to where the ma.s.s of machinery ended and peeked around the corner.
The boiler loomed before her, several tool cabinets beside it. Beyond that would be the main workshop area. Colleen crept forward, keeping the cabinets between her and the open area beyond.