Official Escort. Jean Barrett

it happened. The elevator lurched without warning, dropping another several inches.

      Madeline lost her footing, Angel his grip. With a yell, he plummeted to the floor of the car. The satchel swinging wildly from his shoulder cost him his balance. He went crashing into the steel wall.

      When she’d recovered herself, she went over to check on him. He was huddled tightly in a corner, unconscious, blood seeping from a wound where his head had struck the wall.

      Madeline crouched beside him. The aroma of his cologne was overpowering, sickening. Forget that. Find his gun.

      Her hands were on his coat, ready to search him, when there was a clang of metal from the floor above. She recognized it as the sound of a door scraping open. It was followed by the familiar voice of the small-statured Korean man who was the super for the building, calling down to her.

      “Who is there, please?”

      Madeline got eagerly to her feet. “It’s me, Kim.”

      “You okay, Miss Raeburn?”

      “I’m fine. Just get me out.”

      “Sure. I got a ladder. It’s coming down.”

      By the time he managed to lower the ladder to her through the hatch, Madeline had the precious satchel back in her possession. With a last glance at the still-unconscious Angel, she swarmed up the ladder. The fifth floor, where Kim waited for her, was no more than three feet above the roof of the elevator. He reached down and helped her scramble to safety.

      “You got anyone else down there, Miss Raeburn?”

      “No, Kim, I was all alone on the elevator.”

      He started to mutter about how the tenants would complain again about the car having to be shut down until the engineer came to fix it. Madeline didn’t stop to listen to him. She was already flying toward the stairs.

      Nor did she permit her pace to slacken when she reached the street. She hurried down the hill, the clang of a cable car making her start nervously as she threaded her way through the evening crowds. From time to time she checked over her shoulder, fearing that Angel might be in pursuit again. Or, if not Angel, another enemy sent by Griff to find her. Nowhere in the city was safe for her.

      The police? No, Madeline didn’t trust the police to protect her. Hadn’t she learned firsthand what happened to informers? Griff Matisse was too powerful, had too many friends in high places for her to risk staying here in San Francisco. Damn it, she was scared. All she wanted to do was to lose herself, go far away and hide.

      You’re doing the right thing. They’re dead. You can’t help them now. Stay and testify? Don’t be a fool. He’d never let you survive long enough to mount a witness stand. You were planning to go away, anyway, weren’t you? That’s why you took all your money out of the bank, remember?

      She wouldn’t let herself feel guilty because she was running away. She wouldn’t.

      SCARS, THE RESIDUE of a severe adolescent acne, pitted his jaw. They were the only flaws on Griff Matisse’s handsome face. He permitted nothing else to mar his appearance, which was as immaculate as his tasteful office in the Phoenix on Powell Street. Nor was Matisse willing to tolerate any mistakes from those who served him.

      “I’m not happy,” he coldly informed the man who stood on the other side of his desk. “I think I have every reason to be unhappy, don’t you?”

      Angel, resisting the urge to finger the wound in his scalp, nodded slowly. For a moment the only sound in the office was the muted wail of a saxophone off in the elegant main room of the club.

      “What are we going to do about making me happy again, Angel?”

      “She’s disappeared,” Angel said in his hushed, raspy voice that was almost a whisper. “She could be anywhere.”

      “But she’s somewhere, isn’t she? And wherever that is, and whatever it takes, I want her found and eliminated. We have all the right connections. Use them.”

      Angel didn’t need to be persuaded. He had his own score to settle with Madeline Raeburn.

      Chapter One

      Rural Wisconsin

      Madeline didn’t have a good feeling about this arrangement. Maybe the setting was responsible for that, at least partly. It wasn’t very encouraging, she decided, gazing out the passenger window of the car as it bumped up the long, rutted farm lane.

      It was a bleak situation, the fields brown, the trees leafless. Even the spiky evergreens that studded the hills on all sides were a dull shade of green. Snow would have softened the scene, made it more palatable. But even though it was late December and only a few days before Christmas, the ground was bare, though the gray sky was certainly cold enough to warrant snow.

      The burly man beside her at the wheel, hair grizzled, face lined, must have sensed her anxiety. “We’re doing the right thing,” he reassured her gently.

      He had been particularly kind to her since yesterday. Understandable, considering he had come within millimeters of losing her to an assassin’s bullet.

      Madeline nodded. “This man…you’re sure he’s safe?”

      “I wouldn’t be taking you to him if I wasn’t.”

      But Madeline continued to be uneasy. There was no one and nowhere she really trusted anymore, though this setting certainly seemed isolated enough to provide her with the protection that was so essential now. Funny that it should seem so remote when it was less than fifty miles from Milwaukee.

      That feeling of loneliness was emphasized when they crawled around a bend and came in sight of the old farmhouse. The place had a look of neglect about it. It would have benefited from a fresh coat of paint. The outbuildings were in even sorrier condition, the roofs sagging, the walls weathered to a dismal gray. There was no sign of life.

      “Animals,” Madeline said. “Where are the animals? Farms are supposed to have cows and chickens and horses, at least a dog or a cat.”

      “This isn’t a working farm,” her companion replied. “The owners only use it in the summer on weekends and as a vacation retreat. But, of course, this winter it’s being rented to—” He broke off to negotiate a particularly rough stretch of the driveway.

      Madeline silently finished the explanation for him. The man you’re being taken to. She was beginning to feel like a waif. Dumped for the holidays with whomever would take her. Not very cheerful holidays, either, she thought. She had just observed not only that the farm lacked animals, but that it was missing any evidence of the approaching Christmas. There was no welcoming wreath on the front door, no decorated tree mounted in the bay window. It was probably foolish of her to have expected them. Or, considering her perilous circumstances, to even yearn for them.

      The car rolled to a stop at the edge of the front yard. The man at her side checked the lane behind them, making sure it was deserted. All the way out from Milwaukee, Madeline had watched him repeatedly glance in the rearview mirror to be certain they weren’t followed. Neil Stanek was that sort of cop—conscientious, thorough. And considerate.

      He demonstrated that now by turning to her with a concerned “You all right?”

      He feels guilty, Madeline thought. Blames himself for what happened, even though it wasn’t his fault.

      “I’m fine,” she assured him. She wasn’t, of course, and they both knew that. But it helped to pretend otherwise.

      “You’ll be okay, then, if I leave you here in the car for a few minutes?” he asked, releasing his seat belt and opening the door on his side. “Just long enough for me to explain all the particulars to him.”

      Madeline was suddenly worried. “He is expecting me, isn’t he?”

      “Oh, sure, sure, no problem there. And, like I said, he’s got all the right skills and instincts