Present Danger by Elizabeth Goddard (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📗

calm, collected, and in control. He was failing miserably.

“She’s awake now. I didn’t need her awake for this, but the more the merrier.” His back against the wall, Marcus Briggs held a gun and pointed it at her grandfather.

“What’s . . . what’s going on?” Terra asked.

“Bringing her here, using her against me like this doesn’t change anything,” Gramps said. “I don’t know where it is.”

“Where what is?” Her words, the rising emotions, were too much, too loud against the constant throbbing in her head. Even as she asked the question, she suspected she knew exactly what Marcus wanted.

“The artifact. I have a buyer, and he’s growing impatient.”

“Why does he think you know where it is?” Terra stared at her grandfather through blurred vision.

The fear in Gramps’s eyes rocked through her.

“He’s a desperate man.” Gramps ground out the words. “I don’t have anything to do with this business.”

If this man was behind the murders, then he would have no problem killing her and her grandfather. But where was Owen? Her heart pounded as fear for her brother, for Gramps, mounted.

Terra found the strength to push from the chair and stand, only to realize her wrists were bound. “You killed Jim and Neva? Or did you make Leif do it? He must have worked for you.”

Marcus pointed his gun at her. “Sit if you want to live. Morrisey didn’t work for me.”

“I don’t understand.” Terra needed to buy time. Get him talking so she could figure a way out of this.

“He was trying to find me so he could kill me, but I found him first.” Marcus aimed the gun at her head. He still stood too far for her to take the gun from him, if she even could with bound wrists. “Now, I need my property.”

“The Janus has many connections, political and social, and probably travels a lot.” Jeremy’s words came back to her.

“You’re . . . you’re the . . . the Janus.”

He laughed. “If that’s what you want to call me. I’ve developed the connections and the reputation. And that reputation is going to receive a big blow if you don’t tell me what you did with it. This is the deal of my life. I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on it.”

“Gramps, please, if you have it, just give it to him.”

“But I don’t have it,” Gramps said. “That’s what was stolen from my safe.”

She gasped. What?

Frown lines grew deeper in his forehead. “Jim came to me. He brought me the package. He was to get the package at the airstrip, but the plane crashed. He retrieved it when he saved the pilot but realized he couldn’t store it at his cabin. He needed to put it somewhere for safekeeping until his meeting to hand it off. But he was scared after he realized what the object was. He’d gotten in too deep and wanted out. He needed time to think about what to do with it.”

“Why did you agree to keep it? You were going to be running for office. Something like this could ruin it all.” And would destroy his chances of election.

“I wanted to give him a chance to do the right thing. I owed him for getting me out of a financially sticky situation. Besides, I could claim that I didn’t realize the item’s provenance. And honestly, I still don’t.”

“I agree. I’d like to know what all the fuss is about.” Keep this guy talking. Find a way out.

She wished that Jack would come looking for her, except why would he? She’d walked out on him, and then put him off again. Jack could very well be giving her the space that she’d asked for.

“There’s something you don’t know,” Gramps said.

Terra was getting the picture that there was a lot she didn’t know.

“We don’t have time for the family reunion.” Marcus kept his distance from Terra as he held the weapon aimed at her head. “Jim brought it to you, Robert. You must still have it. If it was stolen, then that’s all part of your plan and you know where it’s going.”

Terra thought through possible ways to remove the gun from him.

“Step away from her.” A man spoke from behind, his voice menacing.

Marcus’s entire demeanor shifted. Fear crawled over his face as he stared at the new arrival behind Terra. “You can’t shoot me before I kill her.”

“I don’t want to shoot you,” the man said. “I want to negotiate.”

“You’re in no position—”

Terra turned to see who the newcomer was.

The man from the bar? The pilot? She’d never gotten a good look at him. Chance Carter held up a box in one hand—an offering—and pointed a gun at Marcus with the other.

“My deal was to deliver this package—my last delivery. Then my plane went down, and all bets were off when I woke up in the hospital and the package was gone. I knew I had to find it and find you and deliver it to you in person so I could make sure I would never be blackmailed again. Only I didn’t know who was behind the blackmail. But I figured it out.”

Chance lowered the box to the floor while continuing to aim the weapon. Then he held the gun with both hands. “My first clue was when I saw what was inside the box.” His face twisted. “I had to ask myself, what is that golden jeweled crown, a Nimrud artifact looted from the Iraq Museum, doing in Montana? What was I doing delivering the item I had walked away from years ago?”

“Your actions cost me everything,” Marcus said.

“Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this whole time, it was you blackmailing me, Tony. I thought you died in that helicopter crash in Iraq. Instead, you took on a new identity and obviously kept building your trafficking business. You forced me to leave my family to keep them safe. But now I have it in my hands, and I found you. I’m done for good. I just have one question—why me? Why