Free Vendetta by Fern Michaels

shoulders sagged as he went through Myra’s things, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to find anything.
    Back on the first floor, he called Mark again to report on his lack of success. He expected some kind of harangue and was surprised to hear him say, “Think about it, Jack. Don’t you find that weird? Where is his personal stuff? Put yourself in his place. Where would you stash your past life? It’s a given that you wouldn’t totally discard it. I suppose he might keep things in a safe deposit box, but for some reason I don’t think so. A man like him, with his past, he’d want to keep it close to his chest. My advice is to keep looking and watch the time. Is there an office anywhere in the house?”
    “No, but there’s a library. No desk, though. Which makes me wonder where they sit down to pay their bills.”
    “They probably do it electronically. Keep looking, Jack. ’Bye.”
    Jack prowled and paced, banging walls, kicking furniture, and cursing. He dropped to his knees and crawled around the rooms to check the baseboards, lifted area carpets looking for a trapdoor. He went to the kitchen to look through the drawers in the hope of finding a magnifying glass. He found a small one and was again on his knees inspecting the rosettes on the carved mantel when his cellphone chirped. He clicked it on as he pressed the magnifying glass to his eye. He saw the button at the same instant that Conway barked, “Get your ass outta there, Jack. Company. The man with the dogs. You got two minutes to get that fence back on and outta there. Go, Jack!”
    “Son of a bitch!” Jack raced through the house, set the alarm in the kitchen, barreled through the door and out to the gates where he held up the gray box. He watched as the gates sizzled to life. In the time it took his heart to beat five times, he raced across the driveway and threw himself over the chain-link fence. Disoriented by his fall, he staggered off. He had no idea where he was in relation to Conway until he heard him.
    “Over here, drop down, Jack,” Conway hissed. Jack dropped and crawled through the brush.
    “Those dogs have your scent, Jack. Jesus, will you listen to them? Shit, man, they’re up on the stoop and the trainer is looking around. They know. Come on, Jack, we need to haul ass.”
    They were clear of the property in less than eight minutes. “I gotta get my car outta there. Check out that guy, can you see anything with those binoculars?”
    “No, too much brush. Don’t even think about asking me to climb another tree. We have to get out of here.”
    “I can’t leave my car there. I want to wait till the trainer leaves. I don’t think he called the police. He’s probably checking everything outside. For all he knows a stray cat or even a fox could have gotten in. He’s not going to want to make waves with the cops over something like that. Shhh, I hear a car engine.”
    A black Lincoln Navigator crawled down the driveway, the driver scanning both sides of the road. In the dense underbrush, Jack’s heart pumped furiously. His sigh of relief when the Navigator passed was so loud that Conway clamped his hand over Jack’s mouth.
    Within minutes, Jack had the evergreens thrown aside and was behind the wheel. He backed out to the gravel road and then got out of the car. He looked down at his license plate, gave a mighty tug, and the screws came loose. He threw the plate in the back seat and barreled down the road.
    He saw the Navigator just as the driver spotted him. Jack backed up, thanking God they were the only two vehicles on the road, and stormed away in the opposite direction. The Navigator gave chase but Jack had taken more than one defensive driving course during his stint with the prosecutor’s office. He lost the huge SUV within ten miles by peeling off and going down secondary roads to meet roads that were little more than paths. He was back out on the highway, headed in the opposite direction, before the guy in the