by Linda Ladd
Ignoring the porch where he'd sat guard, Booker opened a rear door that exited into a cavern that was pitch black and ten degrees colder. The dim light of the lantern reflected on the vast, empty dome, and Booker's heavy combat boots rang off the stone, echoing eerily as he strode off into the darkness. She could hear the steady drip of water and could smell a miasma of vaporous mineral pools and damp earth.
Kate hesitated, overcome by the most awful sensation. She had to be crazy to follow this stranger down into the dark bowels of the mountain, a man who terrified even the tavern-brawling, gun-toting marijuana suppliers across the river. Pop had known him but she didn't know how well or for how long. What if Booker planned to drag her down a deserted shaft and kill her or God knew what else? He could, and no one would ever know. No one would ever find her or Joey. She clung to her baby, fighting the urge to make a wild dash for freedom and fresh air. Quivering with a new kind of fear, she hovered on the brink of pure panic.
A few yards away, headed down a narrow mineshaft, Booker stopped and held the lantern out toward her. “You coming?"
Kate stared at him, her better judgment telling her to distrust the filthy, unkempt man. Yet he hadn't hurt her and he'd had plenty of opportunity. If he'd wanted to harm them, he'd had ample time to do it when she was tied to the bed at his mercy, could have slit her throat with the big hunting knife he wore on his belt. Kate swallowed hard, trying to use reason to control her quaking knees.
“Yes, I'm coming,” she got out, but her voice was shaky.
The big man took off again with long, swift strides, not looking back or waiting for her to catch up. It didn't seem to make much difference whether she went with him or not. She considered that a good sign. They proceeded in near darkness down the shaft until it veered to the left and took a decided turn deeper into the mountain. In the cold blackness all around her, she could hear the strange, subterranean echoes their shoes made. Hell must be like this, Kate thought, wondering with a shiver if that's where she was heading.
Suddenly she remembered a California case where two psychopaths had lured innocent families to an isolated farm and locked them in buried torture chambers. Was there another man waiting somewhere below with Booker's other victims? No, no, she couldn't think that way. He would've already killed her, if that's what he wanted. He was saving her, doing her a favor, not leading her to doom. She had to believe that. Still, she kept her eyes riveted on his back, ready to run if he made a suspicious move.
Gaseous, sulfuric odors grew stronger during the descent, and Kate worried about timber rattlers and other scuttling creatures and why Booker hadn't just taken them out the front door. Soon, however, the wonderful scent of fresh air came swirling against her face, carried on a cool breeze that smelled of the river. Booker stopped and set down the lantern, and Kate could see that a low opening led outside. She wondered how many escape hatches Booker had, and why he thought he needed them. Who was he really and why did he hide in a cave out in the middle of nowhere? She wasn't sure she could handle the answer, so she didn't ask.
She waited, rocking Joey back and forth while he gooed in good cheer. Her baby boy had nerves of steel. More than his mother did. She smiled down at him, and his dimples deepened. Tears burned, swift, unbidden, and she knew she could never give him up, no matter what the truth was.
Booker was dragging dead branches away, and she was shocked when he uncovered a four-wheel drive, all-terrain vehicle that looked like a wide, customized motorcycle with four oversized wheels. He pushed the four-wheeler outside into the night, and Kate followed, relieved to be out of the damp, cold place. She breathed deeply and welcomed the rustle of wind-stirred leaves. A full moon rode high in the sky, casting a pearly glow and deep shadows all around them.
“Here, put this on. It'll keep you and the kid warm."
Kate took the jacket and slipped her arms into the sleeves, grateful for the extra layer. She felt cold, inside and out. Booker climbed on the seat and looked at her.
“Okay, get on."
Kate obeyed without a word. She buttoned Joey into the front of the coat and clung to the barred rack attached to the seat. Booker fired up the four-wheeler, the roar so sudden and loud that Joey came unhinged, letting out a shriek that proved his lungs worked just fine. She tried to comfort him, as Booker flipped on a single headlamp and took off through moonlit tree trunks. She held on for dear life, hoping to God that John Booker knew a safe place to take them.
All Booker had to do was make it to Winona before daylight. He'd visited the small town dozens of times when he picked up supplies at Jumbo's truck stop but never in the dark. Still, he knew the trail by heart and was more concerned about being heard. The four-wheeler gave off a racket that reverberated for miles through the woods. It'd been nearly two hours; they were getting close.
He decided to come out behind the café where Jumbo was likely to be inside alone, preparing for his breakfast crowd. That way no one was likely to see the girl and the baby. If the state police were after them, too, as he suspected, they'd be asking questions in every gas station, restaurant and motel from here to Springfield, a hundred and fifty miles up the road. A lot of highway patrol officers made regular stops for coffee and meals at Jumbo's anyway. But that wasn't Booker's problem. He'd get Kate Reed out of the woods; what she did from there was up to her.
When Jumbo's truck stop loomed into sight—actually café, flea market, motor lodge, gift shop, and gas station—the place was deserted except for a couple of long-distance truck drivers waiting in their cabs for Jumbo to open up for business. Lights glowed at the rear kitchen door and Booker brought the vehicle to a stop there, cut the engine, and climbed off. The girl looked ashen-faced and petrified. He wondered how she looked when she wasn't scared out of her wits. Not likely he'd find out.
“Wait here. If anybody shows up, come inside and get me."
Kate Reed nodded and kept her death clutch on the baby.
Booker wondered how much longer she could take the life-and-death pressure as he opened the door and walked through a hallway to the brightly lit kitchen. His stomach growled in reaction to the mingled aromas of frying bacon, pork sausage and homemade buttermilk biscuits. Jumbo was pulling a long metal baking sheet out of the oven, filled with his famous biscuits the size of saucers.
Jumbo was just shy of three hundred pounds, most of it hard muscle, but the problem was that Jumbo wasn't much over five feet tall. He'd been a fairly good wrestler once, his claim to fame a victory over Gorgeous George in Philadelphia back in the eighties. Now he'd turned his aggression into down-home, country cooking.
When Jumbo saw Booker, his ebony face creased with pleasure and he showed an impressive row of big white teeth. “Well, I'll be damned for a donut, if it ain't John Booker, come to call. What you doin’ back thisaway so soon? It ain't been no month yet, has it, Sarg?"
“Hey, Jumbo. I'm not here for supplies. I got me a problem.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “You alone?"
“Yep, Mavis ain't comin’ in till five thirty or thereabouts. What's up?” The heavy man wiped his hands on a snow-white bib apron about the size of a small pup tent. Booker had no idea where he'd get an apron that huge. He'd never heard of a Big and Tall Shop apron.
“You heard anything about a girl who was supposed to've kidnapped a baby outta St. Louis?"
“Oh, yeah, been playin’ all over the news, every damn channel for two days runnin'. Why? You know her?"
Booker nodded. “She's outside."
That revelation brought Jumbo to attention. He quit slathering globs of butter on the tops of biscuits and stared at him. “Godawmighty, Book, you hankerin’ to go back to prison, or wut?"
“Not anymore than you.” Booker looked through the round window in the swinging door between the kitchen and the restaurant. Through the plate-glass windows fronting the café, he could see two truckers waiting outside the entrance. “You got a couple of customers out there."
“Let ‘em wait. Wut's up
with you and this broad?"
“She says she didn't steal the kid. That it was a legit adoption, all signed and legal. There's some real nasty guys after her, guys with guns, guns with silencers."
Jumbo stared at him a moment, then shook his head. “What you gots to do wit’ all this shit?"
“She was outnumbered."
Jumbo studied him as he wiped both his palms down the back of his white pants. “Like I say, what you gots to do with her shit?"
“C'mon, Jumbo, what'd you expect me to do? Let them kill her right in front of my eyes? There's more to this than a kidnapped baby."
“Turn her over to the cops and let them earn their pay."
“She's Pop Macon's granddaughter, and I owe him a favor."
“Gettin’ kilt over her is a big favor."
Booker remained silent. He probably should contact the police but his gut told him not to. Something about the whole thing smelled, and he didn't want Kate Reed to take the fall for something she didn't do. For Pop's sake, if he had to have a reason.
“She good-lookin’ by the by, Book? Is that what's got you so soft and fuzzy and turned your brains to mush?"
“I need a room. Any of the tepees empty?"
“All of them's empty. Nobody comes round much since they opened that damned sissy Honeysuckle Inn up the road. Nobody goes in for genuwine, authentic Shoshone tepees, no mo'. All they care about is havin’ a fuckin’ Jacuzzi bathtub and a G.E. coffeemaker in the room with lots of them packets of sugar and cream to go in it. Bunch of shit's all ‘is, if you askin’ me."
“The Honeysuckle doesn't have your biscuits."
“That's right. Nobody makes ‘em like me.” Jumbo grinned, nodding his head. He was famous in the Ozarks for his mouthwatering biscuits.
“I'll take the one down in the woods. Do you still let people park out front and sell out of their trunks?"
“Yeah, most of ‘em come in at daylight and pull out by noon. Watcha need?"
“Some clothes for her and the kid."
“Just got in lots of stuff like that for the gift shop. Plannin’ to set up housekeepin’ with this chick, huh, Sarg?"
Booker had to grin at his old friend. Jumbo's life revolved around women, like most guys. “You know I leave the ladies to you."
“That's right, you just do that. I'll take as many as I can git hold of."
“Mavis still putting up with you?"
Jumbo nodded, teeth showing again. “Yeah, but she got mad when I hired on Lisa. Said I just hired her cause she's gotta pair on her the size of cantaloupe melons."
Probably true, Booker thought. After Jumbo's biscuits, the built waitresses he hired was his restaurant's biggest draw. “How ‘bout fixing me up a couple of breakfasts to go, the works, and some milk for the kid?"
“Comin’ right up. Over easy, just the way you like ‘em, and a couple more scrambled with butter."
Outside, faintly, he could hear the baby crying. He needed to get them out of sight, the sooner, the better. “I'm gonna take them out to the tepee, then come back for the food. Make the coffee nice and strong."
“You got it, Sarg."
Booker watched his old friend slap down half a pound of bacon on the grill, then turned and headed for the back. He wasn't worried about Jumbo telling anybody about Kate Reed; the two of them went too far back for that. He'd trust Jumbo with his life.
Seventeen
IN A THICK COPSE of pine trees behind the truck stop, Kate climbed off the four-wheeler. Joey was still cranky and crying, and she patted his back soothingly as she stared at a fifteen-foot concrete tepee. Painted blinding scarlet, it made her want to shield her eyes. Three low concrete steps led up to the front door, and several round windows, interspersed with hand-painted running buffalo, rising suns and crescent moons decorated the circular base. The porthole beside the door was set inside a bald eagle with outspread wings and dangling talons. The miniature air-conditioning unit somewhat ruined the effect.
The other tepees they'd passed were equally garish in mustard, chartreuse, and electric blue. Kate had never seen anything quite like Jumbo's Authentic Indian Lodges, even out West where entrepreneurs took full advantage of Indian motif. She wondered why Jumbo didn't just paint them rawhide brown.
“They're all vacant but us. But you still better stay out of sight."
Booker glanced at her as he unlocked the door and shoved it open. That was his longest speech of the day. He wasn't a chatterbox, that was for sure, but it was just as well. She didn't know what to say to him either. She had a terrible feeling he was going to take off, wash his hands of her and Joey, right now, once and for all, before he got shot at. He didn't mind setting her up in a red tepee, but then he'd hightail it back to his cave. She watched him walk back and swing into the seat of the four-wheeler.
He said, “There's a lock on the door. Use it."
“Are you leaving me here alone? I mean, are you coming back?” she asked, trying not to sound as needy and frightened as she was.
Booker stared at her a moment, then said, “I'm going back to the café to get us some breakfast. Go on inside and wait for me. There's a bathtub, if you want to clean up. Don't open the door to anyone but me."
“Don't worry."
The man studied her face, ever serious, and she wondered how long it'd taken him to grow a beard that long and yucky. It straggled to his waist, matted and dirty. And why he wanted to. It did look intimidating with his long hair and intense eyes. No wonder the Joneses were afraid of him. He looked like Rasputin. Or Charles Manson sans the swastika carved into his forehead. For a minute she thought he was going to say something else, maybe warn her again about showing herself, but he just fired up the engine and wheeled onto the road. She watched until he disappeared from sight.
Kate hugged Joey closer. It was very quiet. The sun was rising over the trees, and she could see a patch of blue in the sky. A few bird whistles, the sound of a transport truck grinding through its gears somewhere far away on the roadway. What highway was it anyway? 60 West, perhaps? She'd been up this way a few times, but not often. She certainly hadn't known about Jumbo's Authentic Indian Lodges.
Suddenly she felt utterly exhausted. She'd been awake so long she couldn't remember how it felt to lie down in a bed and drift off to sleep. Her mind wasn't functioning so well either. She couldn't last much longer; she was running on adrenaline. She wished she could go back home to Pop's cabin where Joey had his little room with the rainbow on the ceiling and the yellow crib with navy plaid bumpers, where she could stretch out on the hammock on the back deck with him in her arms and sway in the breeze and listen to the rush of the currents and feel safe.
She wondered if she would ever go home again. What would she do if John Booker didn't come back? And why should he? He didn't know her from a hole in the ground. He didn't owe her a damn thing. And if he did hang around, he had an excellent chance of getting shot at or thrown into jail, if not simply murdered in cold blood, like Michael.
The idea of Dmitri coming after her sent her scurrying inside. She twisted the lock and hooked the security chain. There was a light switch beside the door but she didn't touch it. She'd become nocturnal, afraid of the light, afraid of being seen. Like a bat. Or a vampire. Or a zombie.
The dim room seemed filled with gray gauze, but the interior wasn't as gaudy as the outside. The cabin was divided into a bathroom and bedroom, each a half-moon shape, the bedroom part larger. She could see a sink with a round mirror above it through the open bathroom door. There were two full beds, and the carpet was gold and green shag, vintage Beatlemania—the first one when Ringo and company emerged out of Liverpool in the sixties, before her time at any rate. The bedspreads were red-and-black-checked buffalo blankets, neatly tucked in all around, and there were plenty more cowboy influences in keeping with Jumbo's Wild West theme.
There was a desk beside the door, two bedside tables with matching reading lamps—wranglers on bucking broncos waving ten-gallon hats and hanging on fo
r dear life as they held up fringed tan lampshades. There was a mirrored dresser, and she hardly recognized the poor bruised figure with the frightened eyes staring back at her.
She was tired, that's all. If she could just get some rest, she could start dealing with things again. Even if Booker didn't come back, she'd find a way to get Joey out of this. Gus. Yes, that's who she'd have to go to. Gus was her only hope. If she could get hold of him, he'd intercede with the state police, find out if Joey had really been kidnapped. He was the sheriff, for God's sake; surely they'd listen to him.
More hopeful, she looked for a telephone. There wasn't one. But there was a thirteen-inch television, an old RCA black-and-white job. She flipped it on. A sunrise religious program slowly materialized on the screen. A man was leaning on a lectern talking about the Sermon on the Mount and how the meek would inherit the earth. There was a beautiful blue lake behind him, the sun just coming up behind it with a glory of jagged rays. It looked like Lake Taneycomo near Springfield. That was the only channel.
Kate sat on the bed, staring at the nice calm lake, holding Joey who had finally gone to sleep. She ought to take Booker's advice, draw a bath, give the baby a good scrub, too. She felt filthy and nasty, her mouth stale and sticky. She hadn't brushed her teeth since she'd been chased out of her home. Somehow, that made her want to cry. How stupid. She was going crazy, she thought; the whole world was.
Kate was still sitting on the bed, staring dully at the television when she heard a key scrape in the lock. She jumped up and hid behind the door until the chain caught. She was afraid to say anything, in case it wasn't Booker. She wilted with relief when she heard his deep voice. Thank God, he wasn't going to leave her alone, not yet.
“Open up."
Rattling the chain off, she let it fall, then stepped back. It swung back and forth with a scraping sound as Booker came in with a couple of plastic grocery bags in one hand and some white take-out sacks in the other. He immediately secured the lock and chain. He looked at her.
