Escape Out of Darkness (Maggie Bennett 1)

two

“You want me to drive?” Mack paused by the big white American car parked down below the cabin.

“Later. Driving will keep me awake long enough to get out of here. Once we’ve been on the road for a few hundred miles and I’m sure we’re not being followed, I’ll let you take over.” She gave him a disparaging glance. “Maybe.”

“Do I get the impression your heart isn’t in this particular job?” He climbed in beside her, tossing his battered leather suitcase behind them and leaning back with a weary sigh. He’d grabbed a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the way out and a battered old hat, and he looked tired, grubby, and dangerous. “Or is my paranoia acting up?”

“You’re right. I don’t like drug cases, and I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I can’t imagine you’re in any danger—Peter doesn’t do anything halfway. He wouldn’t have left you out there if it wasn’t safe. If anyone has the faintest idea where you are, it would surprise me greatly. I think I’m doing make-work when I’ve more than earned a vacation, and I …” She let her voice trail off, flushing slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice more composed. “I don’t usually whine. I’m just damned tired.”

Mack pushed his shades down on his imposing broken nose, peering at her over them. There was no disapproval, no judgment in his hazel eyes. “No offense taken,” he said in his sexy rough voice.

Silence reigned in the air-conditioned confines of the rental car as Maggie piloted it down out of the hills and into the scraggly town of Moab. But it was a comfortable silence. Maybe the trip to Houston wouldn’t be as awful as she’d imagined.

They were heading out Route 191 when she spoke again. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“About why you’re on the run. The details in the folder Peter gave me are sketchy, to say the least, and my contact in Washington wasn’t much help either.”

“What do you know? I’ll fill in the gaps.”

“You’re a record producer in New York, with Horizon Records. You were working on a recording session with a rock group when you went outside during a break and walked in on a drug deal. Am I right so far?”

“Completely.”

“Okay. So you recognized someone you shouldn’t, and you took off. That leaves a lot of holes.”

Mack slid down farther in the seat, stretching his legs out in front of him. “So ask me some questions.”

“How long have you been in the recording business?”

The rusty sound coming from him might have been a laugh. “About eighteen years.”

Maggie took her gaze off the road for a moment to stare at him in surprise. “Well, then, you must have been around drugs before. You couldn’t have been in the business all those years without bumping into drug deals.”

“Sure, I’ve bumped into drug deals before.”

“Maybe been involved in a few yourself?” she hazarded.

There was a long, dead silence. “Maybe been involved in a few myself,” he agreed finally, his ragged voice flat and unemotional.

“Then what makes this so different? Who did you see, the President deliver coke or something?”

His mouth curved in a grim smile. “Something like that. I better explain something, Maggie. In my past I had more than a passing acquaintance with drugs. That was a lifetime ago, and I’ve been clean for a long time. The people I work with know I don’t like drugs, and they keep them out of my sight. There’s no way I can stop someone from getting high during a session, but I don’t want to witness it. I figure what I don’t know won’t hurt me.”

He reached forward and turned the blasting air-conditioning down a notch before continuing. “Three weeks ago I went outside during a break in a recording session and saw one of the musicians, a guy I used to work with, buying a very large quantity of cocaine. He was buying it from someone I’d run into years ago, a man who’s become very powerful in organized crime. At first I couldn’t believe Mancini would be there doing the actual dirty work until I recognized who was with him. I’d seen the second man on Dan Rather just three weeks ago. He was one of the leaders of the rebels fighting the leftist government down there. The U.S.-backed rebels, I might add. It appeared they’d found a new way of financing their revolution.”

“Not a good idea,” Maggie said mildly.

Mack grinned. “Not a good idea at all. Mancini recognized me immediately, of course. He’s got a good memory, and I played a pivotal part in his rise to power in the early seventies. I took off, planning to hide out until I decided what to do about the situation. I spent the night with a friend, and when I got back to my apartment the next day a bomb had removed the top floor of my building. It also removed three people living in the other apartments.”

“And that’s when you went to Peter?”

“That’s when I went to find the musician who was the buyer in the drug deal. There wasn’t much left of him, I’m afraid. It was pretty effective as far as warnings go.”

“So you went to Peter?” she persisted.

“I went to Jeffrey Van Zandt.”