Confused by Shadows Read online

  Confused by Shadows

  Geonn Cannon

  Supposed Crimes LLC, Falls Church, Virginia

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright 2013 Geonn Cannon

  Published in the United States

  ISBN: 978-1-938108-24-2

  Prologue At ten minutes past ten in the morning, a black man wearing a three-piece suit, a red neck tie and a backward Kangol cap walked into Hyperion Bank. He stopped at the island between the doors and the teller counters, filled out a deposit slip, and joined the line of customers corralled by velvet ropes.

  Five minutes later, two women entered the bank. They wore suits identical to the first man, the only difference being the color of their ties. The brunette wore blue, the redhead a pearl white. They both wore black patent leather shoes that whispered quietly across the green-and-white marble floor. The main area of the bank—the teller's stations and the deposit slip island—were separated from the bank offices by an L-shaped garden of rubber plants surrounded by a waist-high brick wall. The two women stood in front of the New Accounts office, and the redhead checked her watch.

  The last arrival was a woman wearing a green tie, black sunglasses and a Seattle Seahawks baseball cap. She walked toward the stairs leading up to the second floor and checked her watch before she started up.

  At twenty minutes past ten, just as the man in the red tie reached the front of the line, the front doors swung open to reveal one final man in a suit. His tie was yellow, his face obscured by a plain white mask. A heavy canvas bag was slung over his left shoulder. He pumped the Remington 870 rifle he carried, and the sound echoed through the glass and marble room. "Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention please. This is a bank robbery."

  There were a few gasps of surprise, but no one shouted. The man with the red tie slipped a white mask over his face and rushed the counter. He produced a Glock 17 from the pocket of his jacket and thrust it toward the tellers. "Hands up, back away from the counter, no panic buttons. Don't be stupid."

  The woman in the green tie had reached the second floor landing. She opened the bank manager's office door. The manager, a tall auburn-haired woman with wide green eyes, was just starting around her desk, but she stopped and raised her hands as soon as she saw the gun. "Don't shoot."

  The green-tied woman, her face now covered by a mask like her cohorts, gestured with her gun. The manager did as instructed and hurried past the robber. "Anyone else up here?" the robber asked.

  "No. No, just me."

  The bank manager was led down the stairs and reached the ground floor just as the rest of the robbers were arriving with hostages of their own. The bank manager, the tellers, and the customers unlucky enough to be inside the bank were clustered around the deposit island. The man in the yellow tie walked calmly around the periphery of the group. "Remain calm. Don't make any rash decisions. This is a robbery. I don't want to harm any of you. I just want the money, and I'll be on my way. This is a promise. You help me, I help you, and you all have a fun story to tell when you get home tonight. I won't even make you lay facedown on the floor like you've seen in all the movies. Just have a seat on the floor and stay out of our way and we'll get along fine."

  The man in the red tie and the woman in the pearl tie went behind the counter and began emptying the teller's drawers. The woman in the blue tie went down the hallway toward the vault. Yellow Tie, apparently the leader, turned to the woman in the green tie. "Watch them," he said. She nodded and he walked across the room to the safe deposit vault. He stopped in the doorway, examining the layout before he disappeared inside.

  The bank manager pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knee. She felt a hand on her arm and turned to see one of the tellers, Carey Drake, looking at her with wide, shocked eyes. "Ms. Hodge—"

  "Sh. Just sit still and be quiet. This will all be over in five minutes."

  The woman in the blue tie reappeared, joined now by a man in an orange tie. Ms. Hodge frowned; she didn't remember seeing anyone in an orange tie. The woman in the blue tie scanned the room with her blank, white face and then hurried to the safety deposit vault. "Zeus," she said. She stepped into the room, but Hodge could still hear her voice. "Two minutes. They're on their way."

  The man in the yellow tie, Zeus apparently, came out of the vault at a trot. His face was turned toward the group of hostages, and Hodge felt a chill run down her spine. "Who did it?" he asked, brandishing the rifle. He waited for an answer, then stepped forward and grabbed Carey Drake's arm. She shrieked as he hauled her to her feet and pulled her close against his body. "Who punched the silent alarm?" he asked. He nestled the barrel of the gun under Carey's chin, and she began to sob.

  "Where did the man in the orange tie come from?" Hodge asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  Zeus looked at her, and then looked at the man in the orange tie.

  "If he came through the back door," she said, "then he would have set off a silent alarm. No one uses that door, so the security guard hadn't disabled the alarm yet."

  "Jesus Christ," Zeus muttered. He lowered his gun and pushed Carey back to the floor. She scrambled across the floor until she was pressed against Hodge's side. Zeus walked to the front doors of the bank and shoved his way through. There were two sets of doors, separated by a narrow atrium. Both doors had fogged glass, but the hostages could still see his blurry outline as he peered out at the main road.

  The rest of the suited robbers waited. A few seconds later, he came back into the bank. He pushed the glass door closed, twisted the lock, and then said, "Ares, Nemesis, get the windows."

  Red Tie and Blue Tie moved to follow his orders. Zeus waited until the blinds were closed before he took off his mask and stuffed it into a jacket pocket. Hodge was stunned; the man was damned close to being a Greek god. He had curly blond hair, the most intense blue eyes she had ever seen, and a jaw line that begged to be carved from marble. His face was red with anger as he looked over the hostages. "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that this has become a hostage situation."

  There were a few whimpers of fear and dismay as Zeus walked back to the safe deposit vault. He pointed at the hallway that led to the vault. "Artemis, help Morpheus in the vault. Looks like we have all the time in the world to fill those bags now."

  Orange Tie and Green Tie started down the hall.

  Artemis slowed her pace and let Morpheus get ahead of her, then stopped and leaned against the wall. She pulled off her plain white mask, squeezed the bridge of her nose and cursed herself. She knew this would happen. It never went smooth, no matter how well it was planned, no matter how much thought went into it. Something always went wrong. This time, it might cost her everything. She pushed away from the wall and slipped her mask back on.

  The vault was at the end of the hall, and she could already hear Morpheus dumping bricks of cash into the bags they had brought. It was going to be tedious, going through every stack looking for dye packs and trackers, but like Zeus said, they had all the time in the world now.

  With one last check of her ammunition, Claire Lance stuck her Glock into the waistband of her jeans and went to help Morpheus empty the vault.

  #

  Chapter One

  Three Months Earlier

  Claire Lance stopped at a motel on the highway and checked into a room. She had repeated the process so often by now that it was almost second nature. Over two years on the run had taught her little tricks she used to keep from making an impressi
on on the clerks. Just another weary traveler on the road, someone looking for a soft bed and a hot meal. Not worth noticing. A hat pulled low over her eyes, sunglasses, the weary exasperation that came with driving a long distance. It was hardly an act considering how long she had spent on the road. The clerk hardly looked at her face as she took her key.

  She scanned the parking lot as she walked to her room. She was aware of every car, consciously looking for anything that looked like it might belong to law enforcement. A sticker in the window, an excess of antennas on the back window, anything that might be a red flag. There was a police cruiser parked across the street at the Waffle House, but Lance decided to risk it. There would always be cops somewhere; she couldn't turn tail every time one happened to cross her path.

  The hotel room was standard Americana, with all the amenities and—down home—touches she'd come to expect. From Ohio to Washington State, hotel rooms were alike all over. She dumped her duffel bag on the bed and took Elaine's photo from the pocket of her shirt. She put the picture on the nightstand, propped up by a water glass. She didn't bother turning on the lights or undressing before she stretched out on top of the blankets, draping an arm across her face to block out the light from the window.

  She'd been driving nonstop since the hotel in Idaho. Her back ached, her legs felt like separate entities tacked onto her body, and her head throbbed with a headache that had been threatening since Moscow, Idaho. A small, quiet voice in her head whispered for her run hard and run fast, get as far from Road Ends, Montana, as possible. So she spent a few days crisscrossing Idaho, tracking all over the state before finally crossing the border into Washington.

  Part of her anxiety was how long she'd spent in Montana waiting for her new ID to arrive. The other part, the larger part, was due to the amount of attention she had drawn to herself there. Her fear of capture was outweighed by the need to help someone in danger. It was the cop in her, the part sworn to protect and serve even if they had taken her badge away. If she simply walked away from Kelsey and Tyler, she would have been giving up one more piece of herself.

  She dropped her arm and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of cars passing on the highway. Her need to get involved was becoming a problem. Over two years on the run, and that need to solve other people's problems had twice led to her nearly getting arrested. First in Texas with Gwen Morse, and then again in Montana. But she couldn't stop. She knew she wouldn't stop, no matter what the risk. Helping people was what she did, who she was. It was maybe the last part of her that was truly Claire Lance. She couldn't use her name, live in a real home, visit her mother, without fear of arrest. If she started to change her personality, then what was the point of continuing on?

  At the moment, her name was Carmen Landry. But at what point did she stop playing a part and actually become Carmen Landry? In the three months since she spent time with anyone who knew her real name, back during her stay with Kelsey and Tyler, the lines were blurring. If everyone in her life saw her as Carmen, who was to say she was still Claire? She took faith in the knowledge that there were people in the world who knew the truth.

  Gwen Morse in Texas, who Lance saved from an abusive husband; Andrea Tyler and Kelsey Quinn, the Montana ranchers whose rivalry with a neighbor had almost cost them both their lives; Her mother, a former police chief who skirted the law to make sure her daughter could keep on running.

  And, of course, former FBI Agent Faye Mallory. Lance knew that Mallory's suspension from the Bureau wouldn't keep her from the trail of her sister's alleged murderer. As long as the threat of Mallory was hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles, she could rest assured that she was, indeed, Claire Lance.

  She wasn't sure when, exactly, she fell asleep, but when she did, her dreams of Chloe Lassiter, Laura Lake, Elaine Lake, and Carmen Landry haunted her. They all wore her face, but none of them were her.

  When she woke the next morning, the sheets were tangled around her legs. She kicked them away, took a quick shower, and headed back out to her Mustang. She scanned the parking lot again as she stuffed the bag into the backseat. No cops at the Waffle House, and only a handful of cars in the hotel parking lot. Satisfied she wasn't being surveilled, Lance got behind the wheel and drove back to the highway.

  The one good thing about being on the run, she decided, was the opportunity to see different parts of the country. Idaho was far more beautiful than she would have expected, and Montana was absolutely gorgeous. But nothing compared to Washington. The mountains, the evergreens, the flowing rivers and streams, the glory of nature called to her. Three months of wandering was more than enough to quiet the warning bells in her head, and the urge to settle down for a breather was too strong to resist.

  Lance drove halfway across the state, over mountains and magnificent bridges, and stopped randomly in a small town called Shepherd. It was surrounded on three sides by an evergreen forest, framed to the north by a postcard-perfect mountain. It was small enough that she didn't have to worry about cameras on street corners, but large enough that she could get lost if necessary.

  She found the Atlas Garage entirely by accident, driving through the streets of her temporary new home. She was figuring out the easiest way to get from point A to point B, the quickest routes out of town, when she saw the Help Wanted sign in the window. The garage was a squat cinder block square wedged between two apartment buildings. The two wide garage doors were fronted by an oval-shaped sea of gravel, which was surrounded by ankle-high grass dotted with weeds. The gravel drive was flanked on both sides by rusted out hulks of old cars, newer cars that had given up the ghost before their time, and muscle cars missing their hoods and engines. It looked abandoned, forgotten, and the perfect place to lay low.

  Lance wasn't exactly qualified to be a mechanic, but she knew her way around an engine. A year earlier the Mustang broke down, and she was forced to leave it at a garage. The consequences of that seemingly innocent decision led to her meeting Gwen Morse, killing Roy Morse, and running as fast as she could while killers and FBI agents swarmed toward her.

  While she was happy to have helped Gwen, she never wanted to be that helpless ever again. Whenever she had a spare moment, she taught herself what she needed to know about cars and their engines. Whether or not she was actually hired depended on how desperate they were for help. She had credentials; a fake social security card and a driver's license with the name Carmen Landry. They would stand up to a quick scan, but further investigation would damn her.

  She pulled into the gravel lot and parked next to a husk of a car that was missing all four doors. The front door of the garage was open, but the office was stifling hot. She stepped inside and let her eyes adjust the relative darkness, blinking until things began to come into focus. An overweight redhead was perched on a stool behind the counter, reading a newspaper through a pair of bifocals. Pictures on the wall showed the same redhead standing next to a various dead animals, smiling and brandishing a rifle.

  Lance stepped up to the counter, which was decorated with a bumper sticker that proclaimed, "I'm Pro-Gun, and I Vote." Lance took in all the gun paraphernalia and an idea began to form in her head. The clerk lowered the paper just enough to look at Lance and then went back to reading. "Yeah? What do you want?"

  "The Help Wanted sign. I'm not exactly a licensed mechanic, but I can turn a wrench or tighten a hose with the best of them."

  The woman took off her eyeglasses and considered Lance for a moment. "Drugs?"

  "No," Lance said. Not intentionally, anyway. She tried to put on a meek façade, bringing her right hand up to rub her left arm, shrinking in on herself. "But I was wondering if there was any way we could sort of make this an under the table sort of deal."

  The woman narrowed her eyes. "You in some kind of trouble?"

  "No, ma'am," Lance said without blinking. "I'm just trying to start a life here. I don't have a lot of cash to begin with, and I doubt the pay here will be very much. No offense. I'd just like the opportunity
to build up some savings without the government getting their hands on it."

  The woman smiled a bit. "Always gotta get their piece of the pie, right? We can figure something out. You ever done any kind of work on cars?"

  "Just my own," Lance said. "The Mustang out there."

  The woman peered past Lance and nodded. "Well, okay." She took a set of keys off the pegboard and slid off her stool. "I got a car out here now you can use for a trial run. I'm Daphne."

  "Carmen," Lance said. She extended her hand, and Daphne took it. "Carmen Landry."

  They went out into the garage and Lance saw the legs of another mechanic sticking out from beneath a truck. Daphne kicked the foot as she went by and said, "You can take your break early, Calico. Got a potential back-up mechanic for you."

  Lance followed Daphne to a parked Camry, and Daphne unlocked the doors. She slid behind the wheel and popped the hood. "Engine keeps overheating. Simple enough fix. Go to it."

  "Okay," Lance said, praying she could pull off the bluff. She walked around the front of the car and peered into the engine block. It looked so much more complicated than her Mustang. Still, she needed the money. She rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

  She had just finished examining the cooling fan when a woman behind her said, "I'll be back late from lunch."

  Daphne leaned out of the car. "Take your time, Calico."

  Lance turned to look over her shoulder in time to see the dark haired mechanic disappear into the office.

  Daphne saw her looking and said, "You're graded on how long it takes, too. Just so you know."

  "Right," Lance said. "Sorry."

  #

  Daphne examined the engine like an art patron taking in a Michelangelo. Finally, she straightened, put her hands on her hips, and said, "All right. You're a little sloppy, but you get the job done. We'll whip that outta ya soon enough. Come on." She led Lance into the garage to a stand of lockers near the back door. She popped one open and pulled out a uniform. "This is your uniform. I'll get you one that's in your size when I know you'll be here more than a week." She tilted her head to the side and scrutinized Lance for a long minute. "I trust you're not on drugs. I've seen enough junkies to know the look. But I'm still curious why you're running."