Wanted Woman Page 18

  Her door burst open. Rough hands grabbed her and dragged her out of the pickup. She screamed and fought. A strong hand clamped a cloth down over her mouth. Something nasty-smelling on the cloth. She tried not to breathe, wriggling and fighting to free herself from the unyielding arms that held her.

  She took a breath. It was the last thing she remembered.

  JESSE WOKE to the smell of smoke. His first thought was Maggie. The house was on fire. Get Maggie out.

  Only he wasn’t in the house. He sat up, blinked at the wetness in his right eye. He lifted his hand to his forehead. It came away wet and sticky. Blood?

  He glanced around, confused. He was bleeding and his head was killing him. He was in the pickup, behind the wheel and yet he could smell smoke, feel the heat of the blaze.

  “Maggie?” The pickup was empty, the passenger-side door closed. Maggie was gone. Gone for help? Where—

  He heard the clank of a door sliding closed and looked out through the thickening smoke, through the spiderweb around the bullet hole in the windshield and saw the blue van, glimpsed the familiar logo on the side.

  Panic and pain rocketed him forward. It all came back in a flash. The sound of a shot seconds after the front tire blew. The windshield shattering. Another shot, another tire. Then the ditch. The tree coming up fast. Then blackness.

  He seemed to be moving in slow motion. He unbuckled his seat belt and tried to open his door. Jammed.

  He scrambled across the seat to the passenger-side door and tried to open it, then saw that someone had jammed a tree limb against it. Had jammed both doors he realized, trapping him inside.

  Flames crackled, smoke roiling upward, making it hard to see. Maggie. Whoever was driving that van had Maggie. He felt it at gut level, heart level.

  He managed to get his gun out of the holster, steady it with both hands as he saw a figure shrouded in smoke come around the back of the van toward him.

  He raised a foot, kicked out the already shattered windshield and fired. The figure veered back behind the van, disappearing.

  A whoosh and flames flared in front of him.

  Jesse began to wriggle through the hole where the windshield had been. He heard an engine rev. The van tires squealed on the pavement.

  Sprawled on the hood of the pickup, he raised the gun again but knew he couldn’t fire for fear that he might hit Maggie.

  Flames leaped all around him, the smoke so thick the van seemed to dissolve in it as the vehicle roared away.

  Get out of the pickup. Now!

  He slid off the hood, hitting the ground at a run. Blood ran down into his eyes. His head felt as if it would burst.

  Behind him he heard another whoosh. The explosion, as the gas tank blew on the pickup, knocked him to the ground, knocked the air out of him.

  He rolled over to look back at the pickup. It was a ball of flames. Past it, he saw the gas can at the edge of the woods, saw where the gasoline had been poured around the pickup and set on fire. The killer had planned for him to die in the pickup, burn to death.

  What did the killer have planned for Maggie?

  The thought terrified him. He had to get to her first.

  He had the cell phone out of his pocket. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes and punched Redial. Mitch answered on the first ring.

  RUPERT BLACKMORE left his pickup at the motel and walked downtown. He took the dark side streets, staying to the shadows.

  He was a block and a half away from the Busy Bee when he heard the sound of an engine. He stepped into a doorway, flattening himself to the dark entry.

  As the vehicle passed, he saw that it was a van, dark in color with something printed on the side. All he caught was the word “antiques.”

  The van slowed a good block before the shop, pulled in front of an underground garage. The driver got out and disappeared inside the building.

  Rupert waited only a moment, then moved toward the van.

  MAGGIE WOKE to darkness and the smell of old wood. She tried to move. Couldn’t. Not even a finger. She was lying on her back on something hard and she could tell that there was something around her, close, something solid as if she were in a box.

  The thought filled her with terror. She fought not to breathe too fast for fear she would use up all the oxygen inside the space, but she knew she was failing.

  She couldn’t move her head, but cut her eyes to each side, saw little fissures of light leaking in at the edges of her vision.

  She realized she could hear. She opened her mouth and tried to call for help. No sound came out.

  Was she paralyzed? The pickup. She remembered crashing into the tree. Jesse?

  Her pinky finger brushed against something rough. Wood. She heard a sound. Footsteps. A metal door rolled slowly open next to her. Light. Through the crack at each side of her vision, she caught the flicker of a flashlight beam.

  Her body was lead. Only her little finger moved. She tried to scratch the side of her prison but it made only a faint noise.

  She heard the groan of springs, felt herself tilt a little as someone stepped next to her. She was in a vehicle of some sort. The realization surprised her. Also scared her. Was she going to be transported somewhere?

  She heard the soft scrape of something being moved next to the box she was in, felt the vehicle rock again, then smelled it.

  Her heart stopped in her chest and if she could have, she would have cried out. Stale cigar smoke.

  CHARITY WAITED to put down the phone after Mitch so he wouldn’t know she’d been on the line and heard everything. She’d been working in the spare bedroom on this week’s edition but now she went into the living room where Mitch was on the phone to his father.

  “Honey, I’m going to take a shower,” she whispered, pretending she had no idea what was going on.

  He smiled and waved to her in acknowledgement. She headed for the large bathroom he’d added at the back of the house. The one right next to the back door.

  It was crazy. But then she’d done worse for a story. She turned on the shower, then slipped out the back door. She couldn’t very well take her VW. Mitch would hear her start the engine.

  So she walked the three blocks to the Busy Bee. The light was on in the back. She knocked and waited, her hands in her pocket. One gripping her loaded Derringer. The other clutching the small can of pepper spray.

  She hoped Jesse was wrong and that Lydia could explain—

  The door opened. Charity hadn’t even seen Lydia come out of the elevator at the back. Maybe she’d been in the shop. Sitting in the dark?

  A chill rippled over her as Lydia opened the door.

  “Charity! I was just thinking about you,” Lydia said. “Come in. Come in.”

  Charity stepped inside the darkened shop, thinking this was probably the worst idea she’d ever had.

  RUPERT SHONE his penlight into the back of the van. It held a half dozen pieces of furniture, an armoire, a cedar chest, a vanity, a chest of drawers and the most unusual piece of all, an old Chinese coffin by the door.

  He thought he heard a scratching sound like mice. He froze. God, he hated mice. When he was a boy a mouse had run up his pant leg. The memory even after all these years made him break out in a sweat.

  He started to back out, slowly, staying low, keeping the penlight on the floor, just in case one of the mice came after him.

  He was just about to step off onto the loading ramp next to the side door of the van when he heard it.

  Breathing. It was coming from the coffin.

  MAGGIE WAITED for him to open the box and kill her. Instead, she heard him let out a curse, heard the rustle of fabric, then heard him standing over her.

  The lid groaned and something metallic rattled. A padlock. The box was padlocked shut. Her heart raced as she listened to him try to open it. Didn’t he have the key?

  The padlock rattled again. Then silence.

  Her left hand began to tingle as feeling came back into it. She could move her little finger of that
hand now and several more fingers on her right hand but she couldn’t lift her arm.

  He must have given her a drug of some sort that paralyzed her body but not her mind.

  Oh God, what had he done to Jesse?

  Feeling was coming back into her body. She just had to remain calm. Time. She would be able to move if he gave her a little more time.

  He was still standing over her. She could hear him breathing.

  Then she heard another sound. This one in the distance. Footsteps. Someone was coming! Jesse?

  Closer, a metal door slid quietly shut, then movement near her, the sound of furniture being moved, then stillness.

  The footsteps beyond her prison were coming closer. A car door opening. The vehicle rocked and seat springs groaned. A door slammed closed. An instant later, the engine started and she was moving again.

  “WHERE’S ANGUS?” Charity asked as she stepped inside the Busy Bee and the door closed behind her. “I didn’t see the van.”

  “It’s his day off,” Lydia said. “He went to a movie in Eugene, but he didn’t take the van. It should be parked in the garage. Why don’t you keep me company until he returns. I just put on a pot of tea and I have cookies. I thought you might be stopping by.”

  Charity followed Lydia to the elevator, telling herself that Jesse had been mistaken about the van he’d seen. Or someone had stolen it. Or—or it wasn’t really in the garage and Lydia was lying.

  The elevator opened on the second floor directly into Lydia’s beautifully furnished apartment.

  Like a sleepwalker, Charity followed the older woman as she zipped in the wheelchair through the living room to the kitchen and large dining room.

  The teapot was whistling as they entered the warm kitchen. A plate of cookies had been put out. Lydia proceeded to pour them both a cup of tea.

  Charity watched her closely, afraid she might put something in her tea. But Lydia made the tea just as she always had and smiled as she handed Charity a cup.

  Charity took the seat at the table Lydia indicated and set down her tea.

  “Here dear, have a cookie. I know you can’t resist my cookies.”

  JESSE SAW lights coming up the highway, recognized his father’s pickup and rushed up the road to meet him.

  “My God, son,” Lee said, as Jesse climbed in.

  “The Busy Bee,” Jesse said. “Take me to the Busy Bee. Hurry.”

  His father spun the pickup around in the highway and took off toward town. Jesse filled him in.

  “Mitch said Lydia should be alone at the apartment. It’s Angus’s day off. He always goes into Eugene on his day off,” Lee told him.

  “In the van?”

  Lee shook his head. “Usually that BMW Lydia bought him.”

  “Then who has the van?”

  Lee shook his head. “They probably leave the keys in it. You know how people are in Timber Falls.”

  He knew.

  “What do you want me to do?” Lee asked.

  “Drop me off. I’ll take the back. You watch the front. Don’t come in unless you hear gunfire.”

  Lee nodded as he neared Timber Falls. “I love you, son,” he said as he slowed and Jesse jumped out, running down the street to the back of the Busy Bee.

  Jesse was almost there when he saw the van up the street. The taillights flashed. It was leaving!

  The van started to back up. But then as if the driver had spotted Jesse, the van pulled forward.

  Jesse started to grab for the cell phone in his pocket to call his dad when he saw where the van was going.

  RUPERT COULDN’T SEE the driver. He’d hidden behind a large piece of the furniture that blocked him from the driver’s view, as well.

  He thought the driver would leave town. Maybe take Margaret Randolph somewhere out in the woods to kill her. But he heard a large garage door clank open and when the van moved, it didn’t move far. The garage door clanked down and Rupert realized the driver had pulled into the underground garage. That was odd.

  The engine shut off.

  Rupert held his breath as he slipped the gun from his pocket to his palm. He was wedged behind the armoire. While he hadn’t been able to see the driver, he could see the antique coffin and he could hear breathing still coming from inside. Just like the scratching noise he’d heard.

  He waited.

  The side door of the van slid open. He felt the van rock as someone stepped in. A man. Large from the way he rocked the vehicle.

  He felt rather than saw the man bend over the coffin and worked a key into the padlock.

  Rupert waited for the click of the padlock opening. Waited for the man to slip the padlock from the hasp.

  Click. Click.

  Silence. He heard the man rise slowly, warily, and knew he’d either been spotted or sensed. Either way, he had to move. And quickly.

  MAGGIE LISTENED as someone bent over the box she was in. The padlock rattled. She could hear him breathing. Jesse!

  No, not Jesse, she realized with a sinking heart as she heard the person insert a key into the padlock. It was whoever had put her in here.

  She prepared herself for when the lid opened, willing her arms to work enough that she could fight him off. But first she would lie perfectly still. Let him think the drug was still working. That she was no danger to him.

  The lock clicked open. Her heart leaped to her throat. Light. Air. Out of this horrible box.

  That’s when she heard the first gunshot. A boom that echoed like a cannon blast in the small space almost deafening her.

  With all her might, she shoved at the lid of the box, flinging it open.

  Another gunshot. Something large fell, rocking the vehicle. She heard a curse and a groan. Then the lid of the box was slammed shut again as something heavy fell against it.

  RUPERT HAD stepped out from behind the armoire and seen the man turn. Something metallic flickered in the man’s hand.

  Rupert had been struck by the fact that he’d never seen the man before. Somehow he’d expected his blackmailer to be someone he knew.

  That instant of surprise was his first mistake. Not pulling the trigger more quickly was his second.

  The knife blade glimmered in the dull light. Long and slim. As it shot through the air and buried itself to the hilt in his chest.

  Rupert had gotten off two shots.

  And then as he fell forward, he saw Teresa in his mind coming toward him, toward the aquamarine pool next to their RV. She had a cocktail in both hands and she was smiling.

  “Everything is going to be all right now that you’ve retired,” he heard her say. “Didn’t I tell you you would love Arizona?”

  THE BUILDING was an old warehouse with a loading dock and underground garage. Jesse thought it was empty, abandoned. All the windows were covered with weathered sheets of plywood crudely painted with No Trespassing.

  But as Jesse pried a piece of plywood from one of the windows, he saw that someone had been using the place and for some time.

  The first floor was filled with antiques. Good stuff. Tons of it. He slipped in, dropping to the floor and moved as quietly as possible through the pieces to the stairs that led to the parking garage.

  That’s when he heard the shots.

  CHARITY TOOK one of the cookies, but didn’t take a bite. “Lydia, I know you were at the house the night Angela was kidnapped.”

  Lydia looked up in surprise. “Who told you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s true. A while back you told me the nanny overheard Wade and Daisy arguing. But it was you. What about the baby? Did you go up to her room?”

  Lydia looked down into her cup. “It was a horrible row just like I told you. Wade and Daisy thought I’d left, thought Angus had already picked me up. I knew Daisy had been having an affair. I didn’t want my real niece growing up with some bastard’s child.” She met Charity’s gaze.

  “What did you do, Lydia?” Charity whispered, her hand dropping to the pepper spray in her pocket.

 
“You haven’t eaten your cookie, dear. Angus made them especially for you.” Lydia’s hands had been on her lap. Now she produced a gun from under the knitted throw draped over her lap. “I’ve always told people how you can’t resist my cookies. You wouldn’t want to make a liar out of me, would you?”

  AT THE SOUND of the gunshots, Jesse rushed down the stairs into the underground garage. The blue van was parked just inside, the side door open.

  At first all he saw inside were more antiques. There had to be a small fortune in antiques in this warehouse. What the hell?

  Then he saw Blackmore lying at the back of the van, his chest a red bloom of blood, his eyes wide and dead.

  An armoire had been knocked over. Jesse straightened it to get to Blackmore, pushing it off the coffin. To his amazement and horror, the lid of an antique Chinese coffin began to rise and there was Maggie.

  “Jesse,” she whispered, the word barely audible.

  He shoved back the lid of the coffin. Her movements were jerky and she couldn’t seem to use her legs. Oh God. He swept her up out of the coffin and carried her around to open the door and placed her in the front seat of the van.

  “Baby, are you all right?” he cried.

  Maggie nodded, her head jerky, her body awkward, at odds with itself. “Drugged. Wearing off,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, her throat hurt. She managed a smile and she thought he would break down and cry as he rocked her in his arms. She looked over his shoulder, suddenly afraid. “Where—”

  “Blackmore’s dead in the back of the van.” He pulled away to look at her. “How did you—”

  She was shaking her head. Or at least she thought she was. “Not Blackmore. Someone else.”

  He tensed. “Who?”

  She shook her head and then her eyes widened in alarm as she caught the glitter of steel. “Knife!”

  Jesse spun around, using the van door as a shield. The knife hit the door and clattered to the concrete floor.

  He had his weapon drawn again but he could see nothing in the dark corners of the garage. He glanced up, saw the large overhead light. If he could get to the switch.