She was already shuffling back. Fischer had his back turned to her. He hadn’t seen her, but all his companion had to do was turn his head and he would.
The inquiries clerk, a pretty blonde in her early forties, lifted a brow and mouthed, Someone you don’t want to see?
As understatements went, that one was huge. She had dated Fischer; she had slept with him. She had wanted more, but it was now clear that Fischer never had.
Despite Burdett’s extra precautions, Fischer and his friend had followed her from Wilmington. They had kept her under surveillance. Fischer had even gone as far as moving into her place of work and renting a house just down the road.
Not all of the facts stacked up. The attempt on her life didn’t fit with Fischer taking the time to get close to her. If he had been paid to kill her, the equation was as simple as it had been in D.C.: one good shot and problem solved. If he had wanted information, he could have made his move weeks ago.
Only one thing was certain—whoever Fischer worked for, and whatever he was doing in Cold Peak, he wasn’t here for the rock climbing.
She met the woman’s concerned face. “He’s an ex-boyfriend. He doesn’t like taking no for an answer.”
The woman was careful not to look at the two men, who must have still been in plain view. “Do you want to call the police?”
The thought was tempting but dangerous when her first, last and only priority had to be to get out of town. By now Muir would have found Hansen. When dispatch replayed the tape of her phone call, he would recognize her voice. His next move would be to find her. “It’s okay, he’s not violent, just persistent.”
Fischer and his friend would have been caught on the bank’s security cameras. All she had to do was advise Burdett and he could pick them up, although she was aware that it wouldn’t be that easy. Fischer and his buddy were professionals. Once they realized she had left town, they wouldn’t stay in Cold Peak long. “Is there a back door I can use?”
“Sorry. That’s off-limits to everyone but staff.” The woman walked around from behind her desk, opened the door to an interview room and peered inside. “There’s no one in here. If you want, you can sit down for a few minutes and I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”
Taylor set down her bag, took a chair and checked her watch, her urgency to leave town mounting. By now Muir would have discovered that she wasn’t at work. He could even have put an APB out on her car, which meant she needed to be gone. It would take her twenty minutes to make it to the nearest town large enough to have an ATM and a rental-car agency so she could ditch the SUV. It would take a further hour to hit a city with a large enough population that she could disappear. Vermont was pretty, but it was definitely rural, a perfect place to be trapped on narrow country lanes.
She checked her watch again. It didn’t make the time go any faster, but it helped keep her mind off the mind-numbing emptiness of the mistake she’d made in sleeping with Fischer.
It was a fact that Fischer had followed her and watched her. Now she had to consider that he had murdered both Letty and Hansen, and stolen her computer. His sidekick had probably broken into her house and taken the computer while they were at the shooting range.
The logic was inescapable. Even the timing of the gunshot that had narrowly missed her made sense. They had had the computer and the disks, therefore she was now expendable.
It seemed fair to assume the shooter had been the guy with the glasses. Fischer had probably phoned him while he was out of Taylor’s hearing, made sure he had the disks and given him their current location at the shooting range.
The reason he hadn’t removed the clip from the Bernadelli now also made sense. At the time she had thought he was on edge because of the possible threat to her, but it was more straightforward than that. There was no way a trained professional like Fischer would disarm himself while traveling in the presence of someone who was armed.
The door opened and the woman popped her head inside. “I checked down the street. They’re both gone.”
Taylor let out a breath. “Thanks. You saved my life.”
Twenty minutes out of town, she turned down a side road and pulled over in a shady spot where her vehicle wouldn’t be visible from the highway.
She picked up her cell phone, found the speed dial for Dana’s number, and stopped. She needed to calm down, to think.
Dana wasn’t safe. Taylor needed to talk to her, to get her out of San Francisco as soon as possible, but she had to assume that Lopez had both Dana’s cell phone and her home and work numbers tapped. After what had happened in Cold Peak, he would also have Taylor’s under active surveillance. She couldn’t afford to call Dana.
They would be waiting for her to do just that.
She turned the cell phone off, put the car in gear and headed back toward the highway.
She would buy another cell phone when she changed vehicles, but even then she couldn’t afford to make the call herself. She would have to find another way.