by Linda Howard
“Bullshit!”
“Actually, it’s a Sony.” He patted his right pants pocket, where his cell phone made a nice little bulge. “The sound quality is top-notch. Besides, what name would you give the cops?” He made a tsking sound. “You can’t trust anything anyone tells you these days, can you? It’s been fun, gotta go now, won’t be seeing you around. Just remember what I said about the eyeballs. And if you were fooling around, you might want to rethink the routine.” He released her and moved swiftly out of her reach. “Don’t bother getting up,” he said as he went out the door.
She didn’t—or at least, she didn’t bother coming after him, maybe because she was naked. Goss let himself out of the condo and walked down the cracked sidewalk. She had driven them here, so he was temporarily stranded, but he wasn’t perturbed. He had a phone, and he had a card in his pocket with the number of the cab company he’d used earlier. He walked until he came to an intersection where there were street signs, then called for a taxi.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if Deidre-Kami had come speeding down the street in her five-year-old Nissan and tried to run him over, but she had evidently decided not to look for more trouble. Goss didn’t know if she was just some kind of flake who thought it would be funny to pretend she was a psycho serial killer, or if she was a real psycho, but his instincts had been telling him he’d better get his ass out of there. All in all, it was one of his more interesting evenings.
After a fairly reasonable length of time—coming close to what he would consider unreasonable—the cab arrived and he climbed in. Twenty minutes later he was whistling softly as he walked down the hotel hallway toward his room. It was after one AM; he wouldn’t get much sleep, but the evening’s entertainment was worth it.
He showered before climbing into bed, where he slept like a baby until the bedside alarm went off at six. There was nothing like a clear conscience—or, better yet, no conscience—for a good night’s rest.
A box containing their weapons was supposed to be delivered by seven AM, but that time came and went without the delivery. Toxtel got on the phone to Faulkner, who had arranged everything, and then they waited. Goss used the time to order breakfast. Shortly after nine, and half an hour after they were supposed to have been in the air, a bellman brought up a box marked “Printed Material” and sealed with masking tape. Toxtel took the delivery; he looked like some sort of executive, or maybe a salesman, in his suit and tie. Goss had chosen to dress with more comfort, in slacks and a raw silk shirt, no tie. He imagined people who went to B and B inns were there on vacation, not to work, but Toxtel was going to wear his suit and tie regardless of the circumstances.
The handguns inside the box were clean, the registration numbers filed off. Silently they checked the weapons, the routine just that—routine. Goss’s weapon of choice was a Glock, but in situations like this you took what was available on short notice. The two handguns provided were a Beretta and a Taurus, with a box of cartridges for each. Goss had never used a Taurus before but Toxtel had, so Toxtel took it and let Goss have the familiar Beretta. They transferred the weapons to their bags, then called the pilot of their rent-a-plane to tell him they were on the way.
Because they were flying on a private plane, they didn’t have to go through security at the airport. The pilot, a taciturn man with the weathered skin of someone who’d never bought sunscreen, grunted a greeting and that was that. They stowed their own luggage, which was fine, and climbed aboard. The plane was a small Cessna that had seen its best days maybe ten years ago, but it met the two most important qualifications: it flew, and it didn’t need a long runway.
Goss didn’t care for scenery, at least not the country kind. His idea of a good view was one from a penthouse. Still, he had to admit the sparkling, boulder-filled rivers and jagged mountains were pretty, as those things went. They were definitely best viewed from the air, though. That opinion was reinforced when, an hour later, the small plane was set down on a bumpy, dusty strip over which rocky, jagged mountains loomed like malevolent giants. There was no town, only a corrugated tin building; three vehicles sat outside it. One was a nondescript beige sedan, one was a rusty Ford pickup that looked older than Goss, and the last was a gray Chevy Tahoe. “I hope the pickup isn’t our four-wheel-drive,” Goss muttered.
“It won’t be. Faulkner took care of us; you’ll see.”
Toxtel’s stolid confidence in Faulkner never failed to irritate Goss, but he didn’t let it show. For one thing, he didn’t want anyone to have the slightest inkling that he despised Faulkner, but the main reason was Hugh Toxtel was the only one of Faulkner’s stable of hired killers that Goss wouldn’t want to go up against. It wasn’t that Toxtel was a superman or anything; he was just good at what he did—good enough that Goss respected him. And Toxtel had a good ten years of experience that Goss didn’t have, maybe more.
As they climbed out of the plane and began pulling their bags out of the storage compartment, a chunky guy in stained coveralls ambled out of the tin building. “You the guys wanting the rental?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Toxtel said.
“They’ve been waiting for you.”
“They” turned out to be two young guys from the rental company; one had driven the Tahoe out, followed by the other. Evidently patience wasn’t their strong suit, because both of them were irritated by the wait. Toxtel signed some papers; the two guys jumped into the beige sedan and were gone in a cloud of dust.
“Damn kids,” Toxtel groused, glaring after them as he waved the dust out of his face. “They did that on purpose.”
Toxtel and Goss put their things in the back of the Tahoe, then climbed into the big vehicle. There was a map folded on the driver’s seat, with the route to Trail Stop obligingly traced in red and the destination itself circled. After looking at the map, Goss wondered why someone had bothered to circle the name, since the road stopped there and they couldn’t go any farther. Trail Stop—wonder how it got its name, har-dee-har-har.
“Pretty country,” Toxtel offered after a few minutes.
“I guess.” Goss looked out the passenger window at the sheer drop to the bottom of a rocky gorge. Had to be three or four hundred feet straight down, and the road wasn’t the best, a narrow, roughly paved two-lane with battered guardrails at some of the worst parts. The problem was, the places he thought needed guardrails evidently didn’t jibe with what the Idaho department of transportation considered dangerous. The sun was bright, the sky overhead a deep, cloudless blue, but when they passed from a sunny stretch of road to one shadowed by the mountain, he noticed that the temperature on the Tahoe’s gauge dropped a good ten degrees. He’d hate to get caught out in these mountains at night. They hadn’t seen a single structure or another vehicle since leaving the airstrip, and even though they’d been on the road fewer than ten minutes, that just struck Goss as deeply unnatural.
After half an hour they came to an actual small town, population four thousand and something, with streets and traffic lights—a couple of them—and everything, and he relaxed somewhat. At least there were people around.
Then they took a left turn onto the road indicated on the map, and all signs of civilization vanished again.
“Jesus, I don’t know how people live like this,” Goss muttered. “If you run out of milk, it’s a damn day’s expedition to the grocery store.”
“It’s what you get used to,” Toxtel said.
“I think it’s more a case of not knowing anything different. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.” The next turn of the road brought them out into the bright sun again, and the glare on the windshield made him squint his eyes, which made him yawn.
“You shoulda got some sleep last night, instead of going out looking for pussy,” Toxtel observed, a hint of disapproval in his tone.
“I didn’t just look, I found some,” Goss said, and yawned again. “Weird chick. She looked like some small-town poultry queen, or something, but when I told her she shouldn’t take strangers
home with her, it was too dangerous and I could have been some kind of psycho, she said that she might be the psycho. The look in her eyes right then gave me the shivers, like she might really be nuts. I put my clothes on and got out of there.” He left out the part about the struggle, and the fake name.
“You’re gonna get your throat cut one of these days,” Toxtel warned.
Goss shrugged indifferently. “Always possible.”
“You didn’t kill her or anything, did you?” Toxtel asked after another few minutes, and Goss could tell he’d been worried by the thought.
“I’m not stupid. She’s fine.”
“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
“I said, she’s fine. Alive, breathing, unhurt.”
“That’s good. We don’t need any complications. We find what we’re looking for at this place, and we leave. That’s it.”
“How will we know where to look? Are you going to say, ‘Where’d you put the stuff that stupid accountant left behind?’”
“Might not be a bad idea. We could say he sent us.”
Goss considered that possibility. “Simple,” he admitted. “Might work.”
The road had so many twists and turns that he began to get nauseated. He let his window down to get some fresh air into the vehicle. There were No Passing signs all along the road. After they went by what seemed like the fiftieth sign, he muttered, “No shit.”
“No shit, what?”
“All these No Passing signs. First, how could you pass anything on this damn road? It’s one curve after another. And second, there’s nothing to pass.”
“City boy,” Toxtel said, grinning.
“Damn straight.” He looked down at the map. “The next turn should be coming up on the right.”
“Coming up” took another long ten minutes. The temperature had dropped another five degrees, and the air felt thin. Goss wondered what the elevation was.
The road they were looking for was marked by a line of thirty or more mailboxes, leaning at all angles like a row of drunken soldiers. There was also a sign that said “Trail Stop,” and an arrow, and just past that a neatly lettered sign that read “Nightingale’s Bed and Breakfast.”
“That’s the place,” Toxtel said. “Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
The road had been steadily climbing, but shortly after they turned onto the narrow, one-lane road, it began winding downhill. The way down was even steeper than going up had been. Toxtel shifted into a lower gear, but still had to ride the brakes.
On one curve, they could see what had to be Trail Stop down below, sitting out on a wide spit of earth with a river roaring down the right side. The number of buildings looked as if it might match the number of mailboxes back on the road.
At the bottom of the mountain they went over a narrow wooden bridge that creaked under the weight of the Tahoe. Goss looked down at the wide, rushing stream coming off the mountain on its way to join the river, the water churned white by the black boulders that jutted above the spray, and a chill went down his spine. The stream wasn’t as rough as the river they’d seen, but something about it spooked him.
“Don’t look now, but I think we’re in Deliverance territory,” he muttered.
“Wrong section of the country,” Toxtel said blithely, not at all perturbed by the wildness around them.
The road curved up and over a small hill, and when they crested it—Goss briefly closed his eyes, in case another vehicle was coming over the hill from the opposite direction—Trail Stop was laid out before them, a cluster of buildings that stretched along either side of the road. There were some houses, most of them small and rundown, a feed store, a hardware store, a general store, another few houses, and at the end on the left was a big Victorian-style house with wide porches, gingerbread trim, and a sign out front proclaiming it to be the bed-and-breakfast. There were two other cars in the side parking area, and one parked in the rear in a separate garage building. The single bay door was open. To the right of the garage door was a regular door. That might be a good place to look for Layton’s stuff, Goss thought.
“Well, you were right,” he said. “The place isn’t hard to find.”
As they parked, a woman came down the steps toward them. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Cate Nightingale. Welcome to Trail Stop.”
Toxtel got out of the SUV first, smiling as he introduced himself and shook hands, then opened the rear door so they could get their luggage. Goss followed more slowly, though he did the smile-and-handshake deal, too. They introduced themselves as Huxley and Mellor—he was Huxley and Toxtel was Mellor. Faulkner had taken care of the bill with a credit card under some generic company name, so they wouldn’t have to show identification.
Goss didn’t attempt to hide the interest in his eyes as he surveyed the bed-and-breakfast’s owner. She was younger than he’d expected, with a lanky build that didn’t lend itself to curves, though she had a nice ass. She didn’t show it off, dressing in black pants and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, but he could tell it was there. Her voice was good, too, warm and friendly. Thick brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her eyes were brown—nothing outstanding there. Her mouth, though, was one of those oddly shaped ones, with the top lip fuller than the lower one. It gave her a soft, sensual look.
“Your rooms are ready,” she said with a friendly smile that completely lacked any response to the interest he’d shown. He checked out her ass as she turned away. He’d been right about its niceness.
Inside the house, he saw a teddy bear lying outside a room, indicating the presence of a child. That might mean Mr. Nightingale was in residence, too. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band, though; he’d noticed that when he’d shaken her hand. Goss glanced at Toxtel and saw that he, too, had spotted the teddy bear.
She stopped at a desk in the hallway, positioned against the side of the staircase, and picked up two keys. “I’ve put you in rooms three and five,” she said as she led the way upstairs. “Each room has its own bathroom, and good views from the windows. I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
“I’m sure we will,” Toxtel said politely.
She gave him room number 3, and Goss got room number 5. Looking around, Goss saw two rooms to the right, on the front of the house, and four more doors to their left. Considering the vehicles in the parking area, at least two of those rooms were occupied, maybe more, depending on how many people had been in each car. Searching the place might not be as easy as they’d hoped.
On the other hand, Goss thought with a smile as he unpacked his things, knowing there was a kid in the place opened up some interesting possibilities.
8
CATE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON, BUT SHE SUSPECTED that the man who had called late yesterday afternoon to book rooms for Messrs. Huxley and Mellor was the same man who had called earlier, pretending to be someone working at the car rental agency and asking about Jeffrey Layton. She couldn’t be certain, and if she hadn’t already been suspicious, the possibility would never have occurred to her, but both the accent and the voice had seemed familiar and after she’d hung up the phone the familiarity worried at her subconscious until she made the connection.
The two men were obviously looking for Layton, which was also suspicious. If they’d been worried about him because he’d disappeared, obviously they would have said so at the beginning, told her they were looking for their friend and asked questions about the morning he’d left. That they hadn’t done so told her they weren’t worried about his well-being at all. Mr. Layton was in trouble, and these two men were part of that trouble.
She shouldn’t have let them stay here. She knew that now. If she had recognized the voice on the phone in time, she would have told him she didn’t have any rooms available—not that she could have stopped the men from coming to Trail Stop, but at least they wouldn’t be staying here in this house with her and the boys. A chill went down her back at the thought of the kids, and her mother, and even the three young men who h
ad arrived yesterday afternoon for a couple of days of rock climbing. Had she inadvertently put them all in danger?
At least Mimi and the boys were out of the house right now. She had taken Tucker and Tanner for a walk, telling them that she was giving them another chance to prove they knew how to behave, and if they let her down this time…Of course, her mother never finished that line, but as a child Cate had imagined that letting her mother down a second time would come close to causing the end of the world. Tucker and Tanner had looked suitably grave. Cate just hoped the walk was a long one.
There was the possibility that these two men had no connection with Jeffrey Layton at all. Cate couldn’t completely dismiss the idea that her imagination was running away with her. The voices on the phone had been similar, but that didn’t mean the calls had come from the same person—though Caller ID had once again shown no number in the phone window. She felt silly for letting herself think something sinister was going on, but at the same time she was alarmed.
The two men had been perfectly polite. The older one, Mellor, looked out of place in his suit and tie, but that in itself didn’t mean anything. Maybe he’d been to a business meeting, flew in, and hadn’t had a chance to change into more casual clothing. The other one, Huxley, was tall and handsome, and on the make. He’d checked her out, but she hadn’t responded and he’d let it go instead of pushing. Maybe they had a perfectly innocent reason for being here—
That was where her thoughts turned back on themselves. Trail Stop wasn’t on the main route; people had to deliberately come here; they didn’t stop by on their way to somewhere else. If Huxley and Mellor weren’t here to look for Jeffrey Layton, then why were they here? Her usual guests were vacationing families, hikers, couples on romantic getaways, fishermen, hunters, and rock climbers. She’d bet the house that neither of these men fished, hunted, or climbed, because they hadn’t brought along any equipment or gear. Neither were they lovers—not after the way Huxley had been looking at her. Hikers, maybe, but she doubted it. She hadn’t seen them carry in any hiking boots, walking sticks, backpacks, or any of the other paraphernalia serious hikers carried when they were going into remote areas.
