Guilt by Association Read online

  INTRODUCING...DANIELLE ROSS

  and an exciting new mystery series

  by acclaimed author Gilbert Morris

  Young, beautiful, and intelligent, Danielle Ross is a female detective, who along with hired sleuth Ben Savage, takes the world of crime by storm in a new series of novels that offer suspense, intrigue, and romance with a Christian perspective.

  In Guilt by Association, the first of the Danielle Ross Mysteries, Dani’s faith is put to the ultimate test as the threat of death at the hands of a deranged captor looms over her and twelve others. As tensions rise and despair fills the hearts of the prisoners, Dani races against the clock to solve the mystery behind the strange abductions.

  Here is the first in a series of entertaining, unforgettable books that will keep you on the edge of your seat from the first page to the last.

  © 1991 by Gilbert Morris

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3988-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations in this volume are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Scripture quotations identified New International Version are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1979, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  In the life of every writer there is always that one person who gives the first boost that makes the whole thing possible and who’s always there to prop up the ego when things look a bit grim.

  So here’s to a man who is that rare mixture of Christian zeal and scholarly mind, my first booster and my continual propper-upper:

  Wendell Hawley

  Contents

  * * *

  Cover

  Introducing A New Series

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1. Homecoming

  2. Savage

  3. A New Client

  4. The Silo

  5. All the Guilty

  6. The First Confession

  7. “It’s Never Too Late!”

  8. Second Warning

  9. A Glimpse of the World

  10. Inquiry

  11. “Is It Just for Good People?”

  12. A Private Ghost

  13. Candi

  14. Bix’s Plan

  15. Caught in the Act

  16. A Nice, Warm Bath

  17. The Only Hope

  18. Mr. Maxwell Stone

  19. “Maybe We Can Make Something of Each Other!”

  Books by Gilbert Morris

  Back Cover

  1

  Homecoming

  * * *

  Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We’ll be cruising today at thirty-five-thousand feet, en route from Atlanta to New Orleans. Just to give you a brief update on the weather in New Orleans, the temperature is seventy-eight degrees, with clear skies, winds light and variable out of the southeast. Our time en route today is going to be one hour and twelve minutes. We’re expecting a smooth ride, so sit back and let your flight attendant give you our good service.”

  The captain ended his speech, and Danielle Ross settled back in the comfort of her seat in the Delta Boeing 757. Picking up the brochure from the pocket in front of her, she noted that the aircraft held 178 people and wished that the passenger on her right had been assigned to sit by someone else. Even as her thoughts turned to him, the man’s elbow pressed suggestively against her arm. He was a type she had learned to despise—a flashy dresser, crudely good-looking and with the mistaken impression that all he had to do was turn on his charm, and any woman would be captivated. She gave him a quick glance, taking in the cream-colored slacks, the expensive suede jacket, and the ostrich-leather boots. A smooth tan made his teeth look very white as he grinned boyishly at her. Dani wondered who his hairdresser was, for Apollo’s thick, blond hair fell across his brow in studied carelessness.

  His name she knew, for immediately after boarding in Atlanta, he had introduced himself as Lance Apollo. She had nodded, refusing to give her name. Now, however, he seemed determined to bring her around.

  “Say,” he said quickly, leaning close enough so that she could smell the strong odor of his shaving lotion. “I’ve got this deal with the mayor to wind up, but I’ll have it in the bag in a couple of hours.” He leaned closer, pressing his arm against hers, and lowered his voice to what he no doubt considered a sexy tone: “Now, it just so happens that the manager of the Sanger is a friend of mine—owes me a favor. You heard about that hit musical The Phantom of the Opera? Sure you have! Well, I can get a couple of good seats—no problem! Whaddaya say we take it in, then have a late snack at Antoines?”

  The pressure of his arm increased. Dani shook her head firmly. “Sorry, I have some business I have to take care of.”

  Apollo gave her a closer look, then bared his teeth. “Hey, let me guess your line!” He inspected her closely, sweeping her from head to foot.

  What he saw was a tall young woman with a square face, perfect complexion, and fair coloring. He admired the wide mouth and noted the unusual gray-green of her large almond-shaped eyes. Her mouth was too wide and her chin too square and her nose just a trifle short for a beauty. He also noted the small, white scar on her right cheek, below the level of her earlobe. Most dames would have that taken care of with plastic surgery, he thought. Wonder why she never did? A mass of rich auburn hair fell across her shoulders, and one small mole stood out on her right cheek—a beauty mark of sorts. She wore a beige linen suit with a soft pink blouse and matching pink shoes.

  After a careful look he said, “You’re in show biz, I bet.”

  “No.”

  “No? Well—a model then?”

  “No.”

  He ignored her curt answers and shook his head. “Nah—you wouldn’t be a model. They’re all skin and bones. No, you wouldn’t be a model with those curves!” He pressed against her and demanded, “What is your line?”

  “I’m a minister of the gospel.”

  Dani’s broad lips turned up at the corners as Apollo’s face revealed his shock. Sensing a movement on her left, she turned her head to see that the muscular middle-aged man who’d sat wordlessly beside her all the way from Boston had lifted his head from his book and now stared at her with a startled expression in his faded blue eyes.

  Dani spent a great deal of time fending men off, and it had been a relief to make the flight from Boston without a problem. At the same time, this man had puzzled her. Ordinarily, people speak when they are side by side, just inches away, even if only of superficial things—but her companion had nodded slightly as she sat down, then had drawn a cloak of silence around himself. For the first hour, Dani had paid him no attention, yet as she had read the flight magazine, she had studied him without a deliberate effort. Watching people had become second nature to her, and she knew almost at once that this man was troubled. His unsteady hands betrayed him, and instead of reading his book, he stared blankly at the page, not turning it for fifteen minutes. Although she could see only the right side of his face, she noted how the lips would tighten, then droop, lapsing once into a tremble that he shut off by quic
kly biting his lower lip. His eyes were vague, but once, when he turned to take a soft drink from the stewardess, Dani saw fear in his expression, and he blinked too rapidly.

  At once she sensed that her words “I’m a minister of the gospel” had shaken him. As Dani started to speak, from her right, Apollo’s big hand closed on her upper arm, and she was pulled back to face him. Irritated that she had turned from him, Apollo shook his head. “A preacher? Hey, that’s cool!” He had her attention, or so he believed, and she could almost read his thoughts: This broad is a preacher? All right, so that’s what I work on!

  “I’m sort of religious myself. . . .” He nodded, and, holding on to her arm firmly, began telling some story about how he went to church when he was a boy.

  Dani looked at him, wondering how to get free of his attention. Obviously if she was to have any opportunity to speak to the man beside the window, ordinary methods would not work. A thought flashed into her mind. At first she rejected it, but as it came back, her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed.

  “Stewardess?” she called out as a red-haired girl in a wine-colored uniform was approaching. “Could I have a cup of black coffee—a large cup, please?”

  “Surely! I’ll get it right now.”

  As she waited for the drink, doubt flitted through Dani’s mind. Even if he is second cousin to a gorilla, do I have the right, Lord . . . ? After all, I don’t really want to hurt him.

  At that moment Apollo laid a hand upon her knee and accompanied the action with crudely sensual words even a gorilla would know never to apply to a minister of the gospel.

  Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, decided Dani stubbornly. And I’d say this gander has it coming to him.

  The stewardess arrived with the coffee. “Careful—it’s hot!” she warned as she handed it over.

  “Oh, I’ll be careful.” Dani nodded as she took the cup, tasting it carefully. Good, it was scalding hot. Placing the cup on the small fold-down table before her, she half turned in her seat, leaning as close as she could get to the man. Her eyes widened so that they seemed enormous to Apollo, and when she whispered in a throaty voice, “Can you really get tickets for that musical?” he almost jumped out of his skin.

  He grinned, triumph in his greedy eyes, and he lifted his right hand to touch her cheek, saying, “Baby, you’d better believe it! Just you and me, and after the show—Ow—!” Apollo leaped out of his seat, brushing at the front of his slacks, which were stained with the coffee. Dani’s hand had struck the cup as she reached to pick it up.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! Let me help you!” she cried and pulled a tissue out of her bag. “I can’t think how I could be so clumsy!”

  “You dumb broad!” Apollo leaped to his feet, brushing at the front of his trousers, doing a jig in the aisle. His face had turned crimson, and he looked down at the brown stain that spread out over the front of his cream-colored slacks. Moving toward her, he uttered a curse, and for one instant Dani thought he was going to hit her. When she repeated, “I’m so sorry!” he snarled, jerked open the door of the overhead compartment, yanked out his flight bag, and dashed down the aisle toward the rest room, almost upsetting the red-haired stewardess in his blind rage. She regained her balance; a smile creased her lips. She came to stand beside Dani and, looking down, murmured, “Romeo got his ice-cream pants all spoiled?”

  “I’m afraid I was very clumsy!” Dani said with a straight face. She shook her head. “Better stay close to me when he gets back. I may need a bodyguard.”

  “No problem. The copilot of this plane was a wrestling champ at Notre Dame. I’ll put him on the case.”

  As soon as she left and made her way down the aisle, Dani turned to the man beside her, saying, “That was very clumsy of me, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, I guess we all spill things once in a while.” He was in his mid forties, Dani guessed, and his sandy hair was getting thin on top. His clothes were inexpensive, and the heels of his scuffed wingtips were badly run over.

  “My name’s Danielle Ross,” she introduced herself quickly when he turned to stare out the window.

  Encouraged by her attention, he nodded, saying, “I’m Frank Wilson.” He hesitated, and she saw that he was looking at her with interest. “Are you really a minister?” He gave her a slight smile that made him look younger and continued shyly, “You sure don’t look like a preacher?”

  Dani smiled and shook her head. “Tell me about it!” A sober look swept across her face, and she added ruefully, “I used to think about all the problems I’d have if I ever went into the ministry—but the one thing that never occurred to me was that I’d have trouble convincing people that I actually was a minister.” A thoughtful look crossed her face, and she added, “To tell the truth, I felt out of place at the seminary. I really want to go as a missionary to Africa. I felt so—so unfitted for the job that I decided to go get some training. I could never really be a pastor or anything like that.”

  “Guess most of us never saw a preacher who looked so good.” He stopped abruptly, a slight tinge of red touching his cheeks, and he said hurriedly, “I don’t mean—!”

  “Oh, that’s all right—” The plane took a sudden dip into an air pocket, and both of them grabbed at their armrests and gave a little involuntary gasp. “Wow! I never get used to that!” she said with a nervous laugh. “I think, every time it happens, Well, this is it, Dani! Get ready to meet the Lord!”

  Wilson smiled, then sobered instantly. “I guess that wouldn’t be so bad for some people.” He looked down at his hands, appearing to study them as if they were some strange, wonderful objects he was pricing for a sale. When he spoke, it was in a whisper so faint that she almost missed it. “There are worse things than going out in a crash.”

  Dani waited, but a sudden convulsion swept his pale face, and he abruptly swiveled his head away from her. Quietly she asked, “You have some big trouble, don’t you, Mr. Wilson?”

  For an instant she didn’t think he had heard her. He sat beside her, his head rigidly set, his hands twitching in his lap. Then he made fists of them and turned to face her. His moist eyes filled with fear as he whispered, “I’m going to die. That’s what the doctors said. I’m going to die.” An involuntary shiver drew his heavy shoulders together; then he reached back and hauled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes with it. Blowing his nose, he deposited the handkerchief back in his pocket and attempted a smile that was a failure. “Sorry to be such a crybaby, Miss Ross—but it’s so—well, I’m just not—”

  Dani said, “Will you tell me about it?”

  He began to speak haltingly, telling her the story—how he’d gone to see the doctor about what he’d thought was a minor problem and discovered that it was the most major of all physical problems. “That was only last week,” he said jerkily. “My wife made me get a second opinion, so I did. The new doctor told me the same thing, but he said I needed to get the best there was—so he sent me to the Mayo Clinic. That’s where I’ve been.” He clasped his hands in an attempt to control them; then he looked at her with such fear in his eyes that meeting them was painful. “They said I only had one chance in a hundred.”

  The jet engines droned, and strips of cloud flew by as Dani sat there, looking into his eyes. Then he said, “I’d never been much for church, miss. Looks like that’s been a bad mistake.”

  He stopped, but she knew this was a cry for help, for comfort, for a soul in agony.

  As he waited for her response the hope in his eyes began to dull. Desperately Dani searched for an answer, frantically reviewing the long hours of seminary lectures, given by some of the world’s most distinguished professors of theology—but nothing surfaced.

  Then came just a wisp of memory. When it first touched her consciousness, she reject it summarily, but it returned like a ghostly hand.

  On a cold, blustery day in downtown Boston, icicles had hung from the eaves of the shops, like glittering daggers. She had emerged from shopping at Jordan Marsh, meet
ing with bitter gusts that sucked her breath from her. Turning to the right to make her way to her car, she had found a small cordon of people blocking her way. They were listening to a man dressed in a thin, worn overcoat, and she had grimaced with irritation as she realized he was preaching in a loud voice. One glance revealed the rough boots with thick soles, the brown toboggan cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and the worn knees of a pair of khaki pants. The broad face was raw with the cold. She had swiftly turned to press her way through the small crowd. But she could not avoid the carrying voice. Poor grammar, yes, but he had that forceful intensity that makes it seem of little importance. As she walked rapidly away his words had followed her: “Look unto me and be ye saved. . . . Jesus is the way the truth and the life!”

  Dani relived that moment in one instant, and she thought, with a sudden flash of bitter impatience at herself, That poor man probably never saw the inside of a high school—but he’d know what to say to a dying man like this one—and here I am, with all my seminary training, shaking like a leaf!

  She was trembling, but this inward battle had not been observed by Frank Wilson, though he had kept his eyes fixed on hers. Taking a deep breath, she threw out all her academic training in one sudden flash of determination. Unconsciously she drew instead on the years she’d spent listening to sermons by her childhood pastor. He had been such a plain man—so basic that unconsciously, at seminary, she’d come to look down on him as being simplistic—the worst charge one could make at Hayworth Divinity School! But his fundamental approach had rooted itself in Dani more deeply than she’d thought. Suddenly she pulled the Bible out of her purse and with one quick, silent prayer began speaking simply.

  “I’m so sorry all this has come on you, Mr. Wilson. And I wish there were some sort of magic formula I could give you to make everything all right. But we both know that it’s not quite like that, don’t we?”