Escape with Me

He attempted to turn them off, though. He was here only because he had a hunch that as soon as Lana arrived in the Outer Banks, she would be followed. The only way to find the person potentially trailing her was to be with her as much as possible. He had to be extremely observant, which meant he couldn’t allow emotions to cloud his mind or judgment.

“That’s odd,” Lana commented as she handed him back his driver’s license. “Dad didn’t mention you the last time we talked. How long have you been working with him on this documentary?”

Ten smiled warmly. “Actually, he hasn’t signed on the dotted line yet. I went to see your father, explained what I wanted to do, he then passed out and I took him directly to the emergency room.”

Lana stared up at him, startled. “We’re wasting time. There’s still a two-hour drive to Kitty Hawk!”

She sprinted from the terminal with Ten close behind, shouting, “He told me to tell you not to worry. Wait, don’t you have any luggage?”

Lana didn’t slow down in her headlong rush. “No, no luggage. I was in a hurry. Where’s your car?” She didn’t have time to explain to this stranger that she had a closet full of clothes in her old bedroom at her dad’s house. It saved her from having to pack for her frequent trips home.

Ten got in front, and then reached back for her hand. “If you’ll allow me?”

They jogged hand in hand to the black SUV that was waiting in visitor parking. Ten helped her inside, then went around to the driver’s side and got in.

He turned to her as he started the engine. “There’s no need to panic. I overheard the doctor telling him he has a little arrhythmia. Nothing he can’t live with for a very long time.”

That was news to Lana. Her father didn’t have any health problems that she knew of. He was sixty-two and he still ran practically every day. He’d never smoked and he drank in moderation. The only vice he had was too much shellfish, which could be high in cholesterol. The man loved shrimp and lobster; he could devour steamed soft-shell crabs by the bucketful.

* * *

As he drove out of the parking lot, Ten noticed a short dark-skinned man with thick dreadlocks surreptitiously snap a photo of them with his cell phone. He smiled with satisfaction. Earlier, while he was waiting for Lana to arrive, he had seen the same man rubbernecking when the passengers from Lana’s flight were disembarking. The guy had obviously been waiting for someone and, when his gaze had fallen on Lana, he’d taken a couple of photos of her. Ten had then immediately taken photos of him.

“Did you see that?” Lana asked.

“See what?” Ten casually said.

“That guy just took our picture. Why would he do that?” The picture-snapper was dressed shabbily in dirty jeans, stained white athletic shoes and a faded long-sleeved shirt. Not the basic attire of a reporter. And Lana didn’t believe she was gossip-worthy enough for grungy paparazzi to have any interest in her. Besides, wouldn’t they use professional-quality cameras instead of a cell-phone camera?

“Have you ever seen him before?” Ten wanted to know. He watched as the guy got into a late-model Toyota Corolla. He made a mental note of the car’s tag number.

“No,” Lana responded tiredly.

* * *

“Are you a celebrity or something?” she asked, looking sideways at him.

Ten laughed. “In no way, shape or form,” he said. “I work behind the camera. Are you?”

Lana gave him a suspicious look. If he’d done his homework on her father before approaching him about doing a documentary on him, wouldn’t he have found out that Aaron Braithwaite’s only child was married to one of the most notorious frauds of the century? Or maybe she was giving Jeremy too much credit. Yes, he was public enemy number one in San Francisco but how many people had ever heard of him on a global scale?

“I would have to say no to that,” she said dryly.

“Maybe he just likes taking photos of beautiful women,” Ten said, smiling at her.

Lana laughed. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Beautiful and modest, too,” Ten said admiringly.

“Just keep your eyes on the road, buster,” Lana jokingly told him. But his compliment had relaxed her and made her laugh. God knew she could use a good laugh.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ten good-naturedly, focusing on his driving.

The traffic from the airport was congested but once they got on the interstate, driving was a cinch. They made small talk all the way to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where Aaron had been admitted into the hospital.

“Nice little town,” Ten said. “There’s no traffic to speak of.”

“Your first time here?” asked Lana, peering at him with a small smile on her lips.

“Your dad and I have had many conversations over the phone but this is my first visit to the Outer Banks,” Ten told her.

“Oh, then I should at least give you a little background on Kitty Hawk,” Lana offered pleasantly. “The town’s best known for being the site of the Wright brothers’ test ground for their first controlled airplane flights. Although that was misinformation because the actual site’s about four miles from Kitty Hawk in sand dunes the locals refer to as Kill Devil Hills. Kitty Hawk today is a pleasant town with a population of about 3300 residents. It gets its fair share of visitors, though, especially in the warmer months. The beaches here are very pristine.”

“You could probably say that about all of the beaches in the Outer Banks,” Ten ventured. “This area looks like it’s washed clean by Mother Nature on a regular basis.”

Lana laughed softly. “That’s a nice way to put it. A lot of people out here have very strong feelings about keeping the Outer Banks as close to the way nature made it as possible. So when developers start making noise about building huge resorts to attract more tourists, and so forth, you can bet you’re going to get some opposition. Then, too, nature has a way of keeping the Outer Banks pure. We build roads, nature floods them. We build bridges and the ocean erodes them. Sometimes it can be a hard life, but like Dad says, you’ve got to be tough to be an Outer Banker.”

Ten noted the fond tone in her voice. How her smile never wavered as she talked of her beloved home. If she loved it so much, what had kept her away for so long?

Why had it taken scheming from the FBI and her father to get her back here?

“Your father said you live in San Francisco,” he said, instead of asking her what he really wanted to ask her.

“Yeah, my hus... I mean, I’ve lived there for about a decade now.” She suddenly focused on something outside of the window.

They rode in silence. Ten let the husband comment slip. It wasn’t his place to pry any further into her private life than he had to in order to get the job done. He felt acutely sympathetic toward her. Now that he’d met her, he believed more than ever that she had not been privy to Jeremy Corday’s illegal business dealings.

Once they were in the city of Kitty Hawk, the trip through town and out to North Croatan Highway where Albemarle Health’s Regional Medical Center was located took only fifteen minutes. Ten pulled up to the entrance.

“Go on in,” he said. “I’ll find a parking space and meet you inside.”

She looked at him with those beautiful brown eyes and he fairly melted. “Thank you, Mr. West, but if you have someplace else to be I can get home from here.”

“On the contrary, Mrs. Corday,” he told her calmly, “it would be my pleasure to wait and drive you home. I promised your father I’d look after you and I always keep my promises.”

Lana didn’t know what to say to that. A helpful man who always kept his promises?

She didn’t have time to argue the point with him. Her father needed her.

“Okay then,” she relented with a smile. She got out, closed the door and hurried inside. Ten watched her for a moment as she gracefully walked toward the steel-framed glass wall that encased the automatic doors. His heart was still thudding from the impact of her smile.

He blew air between full lips as he drove away to locate a parking spot. “Lord, this is not going to be an easy assignment.”

* * *

“Keep running,” Dr. Sanjay Khan said to Aaron, his lilting voice kind. “Just don’t overdo it. At your age a couple of miles a day is enough. I’m not even going to prescribe any medication because your arrhythmia doesn’t call for it. I do want you on the aspirin regimen and you need to watch your cholesterol more closely.”

Aaron, lying in bed, one arm behind his head as he sat propped up on pillows, laughed softly. “Doc, you’re not going to take my butter away, are you? What am I going to dip my lobster in?”