Laurie picked up her duffle bag with stiff, wooden movements.
Dante put his arm around her waist and led her out of the room.
Dean ran up to him in the hallway.
“Boss, the detective is saying no one can leave until they’ve—” Dean handed Dante his gun from the truck.
“I don’t care what the detective has to say.” Dante pulled Laurie past Dean.
Dante continued out to his truck. His stride was resolute.
John and Jason were standing by the truck with another man.
Dante guided Laurie around the group to the passenger side door. The detective pounced on them.
“Mr. Stark, I can’t clear you to leave the scene.” The detective put his hand on the hood of the truck.
“I don’t care. I’m getting my witness out of here. Now.” Dante spared him a glance.
He opened Laurie’s door and handed her into the vehicle. Then he slammed it shut, making the mirror and windows rattle.
“Mr. Stark—” the detective said.
“It’s Marshal Stark, and I’m leaving with my witness.” Dante turned on the man. Dante felt a pre-emptive strike was necessary. He had to get Laurie out of here.
“My men have my statement and my firearm. My witness’ bloody clothes are in the bathroom where I had to remove them from her because she’s so scared she can hardly move. This is the third attack on her life. The second while she’s been in a safe house under protection. So either you shoot me, or I leave with my witness.”
Dante stared the detective down.
The detective took a step back, his eyes shifted to Laurie who sat in the truck, pale and staring off into the distance. Then the detective nodded and took another step back.
Dante walked past him, around to the other side of the truck.
“One of you call Rick and tell him what’s happened.” He threw the comment over his shoulder at his men.
He started the truck’s engine. Without a pause, he put the truck in reverse and peeled out of the driveway, just missing a parked police cruiser. Then he put the truck in drive, and sped off down the street.
Dante started thinking of everything he had to do. He had made up his mind as soon as he realized how Kaimi must have gotten the safe house location.
He drove straight into town, stopping at a small strip-mall. He had Laurie get out with him. They went into a cell phone store. Glass cases ran most of its length in a U-shape. Cell phones were jammed into the case, alongside perfumes, jewelry, athletic clothes, and watches. Two beefy islanders sat on stools at the back. Dante bought a pay-per-minute phone from them, paying for it in cash.
Laurie said nothing, but when they got back into the truck, Laurie turned to him.
“What’s the phone for?”
“I have to get rid of mine.” He drove up toward Highway 19.
“Why?”
“Laurie, how do you think they knew where you were?”
Laurie’s forehead creased into lines of confusion. She looked at Dante like he’d lost his mind. She sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you think they knew where the safe room was? How to open the door?”
“I have no idea.”
“The Marshals Service has a mole.”
Her head tilted back as though an invisible hand struck her. She looked out the windshield toward the stretch of highway before them. Her hands clenched together in her lap.
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Every attack on you could have been carried out with information from the service. The first one in your hotel room I credited to Kaimi’s informants. He saw you at the hotel, he knew your name. A little sniffing around would have led them straight to your window. The second one had to come from someone who knew where the safe house was. I thought they followed Evan James. That was logical. However, no one could have carried out this attack today unless they got information from inside the agency. Another Marshal, an analyst. Someone who had information on what house you would be in, where the safe room was, and how to open it. The Marshals Service has a mole.”
As he spoke it aloud, his conclusion sank in. It hurt, he realized. He’d been betrayed. His men had all been betrayed. It steeled his resolve. He didn’t want to do what he had planned, but there was no other choice.
“What are we going to do?”
“Get you somewhere safe.”
Her brow furrowed, but Laurie didn’t question him further.
Dante drove up toward the Kona airport. He pulled onto a road leading toward the ocean. He pulled up to a small beach he had come to sometimes to sit, think, and watch the planes take off and land. The noise of their engines soothed him somehow. Dante parked the truck as close to the beach as he could get. He pulled out a random piece of paper from his console. He hastily scribbled a note on it:
I ’ll bring her back when the mole is in custody and it’s safe—Dante
Then Dante took out another piece of paper and wrote down several numbers he would need from his cell phone. He got out of his truck. He pulled off the GPS tag. He wrapped his work phone and the GPS tag in the note. Then he dropped it by the garbage can, where no one else would pick it up. They would find it.
He got back into his truck. He drove for half an hour, toward Hilo, using backroads. He stopped at a gas station when he was halfway there. He sat for a minute, working up some courage. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He knew he didn’t have much time to work with, so he broke open the burner phone. He turned it on and took out the piece of paper with numbers from his cell phone. He dialed one number he hadn’t touched in years. It rang several times, then went to a machine, just as Dante knew it would.
“Dad.” His voice faltered.
“Dad, I need your help. There’s a mole in the Marshals Service and I have to get a witness off the island. I hate to ask this of you, but I need to come stay with you and Mom for a little while. Call me back at…” Dante looked at the phone’s instructions, reading off the phone number. “It’s a burner, paid for in cash. Hurry.”
He hung up the phone.
“We’re going to stay with your parents?”
Dante shrugged.
Laurie looked at him like he’d gone mental.
Perhaps he was. Dante pulled over to a gas pump to fill up the tank.
Laurie sat in the truck, watching him.
When Dante got back in and began to pull away from the gas station, his new phone rang. His heart stopped. He almost dropped the phone as he fumbled to pick it up. He opened it slowly.
“Dad?”
“What airport will you be near?” asked the gruff voice on the other end.
Dante breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m headed toward Hilo on the big island. I’m near Kona now.”
“Neither. Go to Bradshaw. Is your witness male or female?”
“Female. Laurie Shelton.”
“Give me until tomorrow morning. Can you find some place safe for tonight?”
“Yeah. I was en-route to a little campground I know of, but I’ve never been there. They won’t know me.”
“Good. I’ll have you out of there by tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Dad.”
His father hung up without a word. Dante expected as much.
“What did he say?” Laurie asked when he closed the phone. He looked over at her.
“We’re going to a campground for tonight. In the morning, we’ll fly out of Bradshaw Army Airfield.” He pulled out of the gas station.
“To where? Dante, will you please tell me what’s going on? You’re not answering my questions. I can’t take much more of this.”
“Laurie, my father knows a lot of very powerful people. He has many friends. He also has a lot of enemies. He is the only person who can get us off the island without being detected by anyone in the police department or the Marshals Service.”
“Where do your parents live? Where are we going?”
Dante glanced at her, then looked away. His face tightened. A tense muscle in his jaw twitched.