Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  The statue connected with a dull thud. Boone dropped to the floor. He couldn’t see. His face was battered. He reached out blindly and tried to grab her. She jumped on his knees. He screamed.

  She picked up the desk chair and shoved it under the doorknob. From the hall outside the room, the key rattled in the lock.

  She climbed out the window. The huge old avocado tree that shaded the house was twenty feet along the roof from the windowsill. Petra was halfway there, hands against the shingles, sidestepping toward it.

  Rory hurried. Her running shoes slipped on the shake tiles. “Climb down the tree and we’ll get to my car,” she said.

  She heard the Nightcrawler shout at Boone. “Move the chair.”

  Petra reached the end of the roof. She needed to jump to the tree, and fast, but struggled for balance.

  Rory caught up with her. “Come on.”

  She held tight to Petra’s hand. A large branch was three feet away, but Petra could barely see through her swollen eyes.

  Shaking, she said, “I don’t know if I can.”

  “We jump or get killed,” Rory said.

  Without even a breath Petra threw herself at the tree. The branch shuddered and the leaves shivered and she grabbed hold and shimmied aboard it.

  Rory leaped a moment behind her.

  Back at the window, Boone shouted, “Those bitches.”

  She steadied herself on the swaying branch and shot a glance at the street. Her hopes crashed.

  The Subaru’s hood was up. That had to mean one of Mirkovic’s men had ripped the wires out.

  “Shit.”

  She nodded the other way, toward the orchard behind the house. “We have to run. Hurry.”

  Petra grabbed the trunk of the tree and stepped onto the top of the fence. It creaked and swayed under her weight.

  On the roof, feet scrabbled across the shingles.

  “Go,” Rory said.

  Petra dropped the six feet to the dirt beyond the fence. Rory swung out and threw herself over the fence after her. She landed hard and went down. Her right leg twanged with pain.

  Petra hauled her to her feet. Behind them, they heard the sound of men in pursuit. They ran into the orchard and toward the hills.

  49

  Rory held her arm around Petra and ran across the cool earth beneath the avocado trees. Petra panted and stumbled to keep up. Rory was running as close to flat out as she could but felt Petra dragging, her stride uneven. Petra’s face was battered and she held one arm against her ribs as though she’d been kicked. Hard, and probably repeatedly.

  “Run,” Rory said. “I have you. Just run.”

  Petra nodded. She sounded like she couldn’t get a breath. Shame tightened around Rory’s chest like a chain. Petra had been drawn into this mess because of her. Hurt because of her.

  She chanced a glance back. Across the field, Suit Two was climbing over the fence, headed this way. Distantly she heard an engine rev. It had the heavy rattle of Boone’s wrecker.

  Mirkovic’s men probably didn’t know the terrain. But her cousin certainly knew this orchard went on for half a mile, and that a dirt road bisected it not far ahead.

  She fumbled Boone’s phone from her back pocket. She dialed 9-1-1.

  “I’m in the orchard behind Miravista Road,” she told the dispatcher. “I heard gunshots from the Whistler house. Hurry. Men are chasing two women into the orchard behind it.”

  She didn’t wait for the dispatcher’s reply. She hung up, kept running, and thought, Crap—what’s Seth’s number?

  She punched it in. The display jumped around as she careened over the uneven ground. Petra stumbled and nearly went to her knees. In Rory’s ear, the number began to ring.

  And ring. She pulled Petra along.

  Seth’s voice mail kicked in.

  “Get to my neighborhood,” she cried. “Get the feds. Mirkovic and his men are after me and Petra. Boone too, on wheels. Seth, please…”

  She grimly held the phone. There was something else. She had seen a glance between Mirkovic and the Nightcrawler—when Boone mentioned the baby. It was a quick connection, a message wordlessly understood. They were thinking: Get the kid. If they got little Addie, they would have leverage over Boone and Riss.

  And she’d seen something worse in Mirkovic’s eyes. Something visceral and territorial. The kid. When Boone said Addie’s name, Mirkovic got a look that said, Mine.

  Rory had seen the way Mirkovic reacted to Boone. She felt with nasty certainty what Mirkovic must think: Boone was a loose missile, a heat seeker. Promising Rory to him as a hunting trophy had failed to keep him on their leash. They wanted something to hold over his head until they could dispose of him…and on the phone he’d given them the answer. The baby.

  Riss would be the most potent bargaining chip. But Mirkovic wanted the little girl too.

  “Seth,” she said, her voice rough, “get somebody to Amber’s. One of the kids is Riss and Boone’s little girl. I think Mirkovic’s going to go after her. This whole thing’s coming apart and they’re desperate. They’ll use anything and anybody to get an edge.” She fought for breath. “If Mirkovic can’t get me, maybe he’ll try to use Riss as leverage with Lee. But think what they might do to Lee’s grandchild.”

  Petra stumbled again. She was just about running on empty.

  “And the cops. Xavier’s on the take,” Rory said. “Seth, get help.”

  Petra straightened, limping, her face contorted with pain. “What you said…”

  “It’s all true.” Every awful word.

  Petra slowed. “Go on. Go to your aunt’s house. I can’t go any farther.”

  “No way.” She tightened her grip on Petra’s hand and pulled.

  “Run. Get help. I’ll hide,” Petra said.

  “I can’t leave you here alone.”

  Petra dropped to a walk. She was going with everything she had, but she was at only half strength to begin with, beaten and bruised. “I can’t. You go.”

  Near panic, Rory put her hands on Petra’s shoulders. “They’ll find you. Look around. There’s nobody out here. They’re trained men and they’ll track you and narrow it down until they have you cornered up a tree.”

  Petra’s lip trembled. Rory looked back the way they’d come. She couldn’t see or hear Mirkovic’s thug, but the trees seemed to shudder. He’s there.

  She needed to get to a populated spot. Even Boone wasn’t such a wild dog that he’d kill her in front of an audience. Not before he got the money. They needed a store, a post office, someplace public.

  But Petra looked spent. A sob welled and fell from her lips.

  Rory nearly lost it. “I’m sorry. Oh, honey.”

  She squeezed Petra’s hand and pulled her along. They reached the dirt road that cut through the middle of the orchard. Rory listened, heard no vehicles, slowed, peered right and left.

  Nobody. No help either.

  She paused, looking around. Which way? And then she tried to take an overhead view of the landscape. The orchard, the river…and past it, fields and eventually a shopping mall. A mile, maybe.

  “Give it all you’ve got and we’ll make it to Rock Creek Plaza.”

  They stepped from between the trees onto the dirt road. And Boone’s wrecker turned the corner about a quarter of a mile away and headed toward them.

  Petra jumped. “Oh God.”

  “Run.”

  She didn’t look back, just peeled out, nearly dragging Petra across the road and into the trees on the other side. Boone’s engine gunned, throaty and loud.

  The phone rang in her hand. She was running too hard to get a look at the caller ID. She put it to her ear.

  “Rory? Where are you?”

  It was Seth. Her spirits leaped and her heart beat harder.

  “Orchard behind the house. Heading north. Petra’s hurt. We need help. Now.”

  Petra turned and looked back. Bad idea, Rory thought. Lot’s wife tried the same thing and it went poorly.

 
“Boone’s in his truck, after us,” Rory said. “Closing.”

  Seth sounded like he was driving. “Help’s coming. I’m on my way.”

  “We’ll reach Old Ranch Road in a minute,” she said.

  Petra said, “He’s coming…Oh, Rory…”

  Rory said, “Did you hear that?”

  “Keep going,” Seth said. “Just keep going. I’m coming.”

  Petra said, “No—Boone’s driving off. Where’s he going?”

  Around, Rory thought. Getting out of the orchard so he’d have a clear run at them. He knew they were headed for the road and the safety of civilization on the far side of it. If he could get there first, he’d cut them off. They’d be pinched between him and the suit who was pursuing on foot.

  Ahead, the trees ended. They ducked beneath low-hanging branches and emerged from the orchard onto a wide straight road that ran into the foothills. It was absolutely empty. No traffic, no broken-down cars, no hitchhikers, not even roadkill.

  Nothing but a low, throaty note on the air, the sound of a big engine heading toward them.

  Across the road, a hundred yards away, was Ransom River. The caged section of concrete and cyclone fencing that ran toward the long and dark storm drain.

  “We’ll cross the river,” Rory said.

  “How?”

  “We’ll climb the fence and ford it. Petra, the fence runs for two miles. They can’t get across it in vehicles. If we hurry, we can lose them. We can even hide in the storm drain—they won’t know where we’ve gone.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Dead serious.” She put the phone to her ear. The line was still open. “Seth, are you listening?”

  “It’s a risk,” he said. “I’m still a mile away.”

  Petra looked close to crying but nodded. Rory stuck the phone in her pocket. They ran to the fence, grabbed hold, and pulled themselves up, digging the toes of their shoes through the diamond mesh. The steel pressed painfully into Rory’s fingers.

  The noise of Boone’s rattling engine grew louder. The suit stepped from the trees and walked toward them, as calmly as a man processing to Communion.

  50

  Rory balanced unsteadily on top of the chain-link fence. Below, the river was running fast. Already swollen from the autumn rains, it was choppy and several feet deep. And the overnight downpour had worsened it. She blanched.

  Petra nearly gasped. “It’s dangerous.”

  Rory looked back. The suit walked toward them at a measured, inexorable pace.

  “So’s he.”

  They jumped like they’d been juiced with high voltage and landed on the concrete riverbank.

  In the distance, Boone’s wrecker appeared.

  Rory and Petra scurried down the steep slope of the riverbank. At the edge of the water a rusted tricycle lay upside down, wheels clawing the air. Near the storm drain, a shopping cart seemed to be fording the river. White plastic bags clung to it like wet ghosts. They ran to the lip of the concrete. The water gushed past.

  This ain’t no swimming pool, Rory thought.

  Across the river, up an even steeper concrete bank, another high fence waited. But beyond it, beyond the gravel frontage road that paralleled it, were fields, and beyond the fields was hope: Rock Creek Plaza.

  Rory stepped off the concrete lip into the river.

  The current grabbed at her legs. The cold bit. She braced herself.

  “It’s manageable. We can do it.”

  Petra grabbed her hand. Beneath the cuts and bruises her face was pale. They forged into the river. It swiftly covered their knees and whitecapped off their thighs.

  Behind them, the wrecker whined up and ground to a halt. The door slammed. Rory glanced back. Boone ran to the fence and glared down at her. His face was strawberry red, his eyes slitty from the alcohol fire. The suit loomed beside him.

  Rory got Boone’s phone. The call to Seth was still active. “We’re crossing the river a hundred yards upstream from the storm drain.”

  “I’m close. I’m driving up the frontage road on the far side. I’ll get there.”

  She felt the two men behind her. Two, not four. Mirkovic and the Nightcrawler hadn’t come. Addie, she thought.

  Boone rattled the fence as he started to climb. He yelled and dropped back to the ground, swearing and shaking his hands. He shouted, “Seth ain’t gonna save you, Rory.”

  Petra said, “He didn’t hop the fence.”

  “His hands are burned.” The diamond mesh must have hurt him too much.

  The door to the wrecker slammed shut. The truck’s gears ground and the engine whined.

  Rory struggled to keep her feet beneath her in the brown churn of the river. She stuck the phone in her pocket. The concrete was slippery. The current forced them gradually downstream, but they didn’t fight it.

  Downstream, the storm drain swallowed the river. Rory got a good look at it: three culverts, eight feet high, a line of concrete tunnels that dropped from bright sunlight and frothing water to rough echoes and blackness. The river funneled into the drain in a roil of white water.

  She leaned forward. Her pulse throbbed in her temples. Don’t lose your footing. Fall, and you’ll be swept away.

  She looked over her shoulder. Boone was backing the wrecker up.

  Petra slipped. Her feet tangled with Rory’s. Rory slid to her knees. Reflexively she put her hands out to brace herself. The water, cold and powerful, sloshed over her.

  “God,” Petra cried.

  Torn loose from Rory, she fishtailed away in the current. She splashed and spun and gasped into the water, instantly taken.

  The river swept her toward the storm drain.

  Seth drove with his foot to the firewall and the wheel jolting back and forth in his hands. The truck bounced over the rough gravel road that ran along the chain-link fence above Ransom River.

  The truck bucked over a rise, and four hundred yards upriver, there it was. Seth gunned the truck through dust and kicking gravel to the entrance of the storm drain. The water gushed into it, at least waist high. It was muddy brown. He saw debris bobbing on the current. But he didn’t see Rory.

  Fishtailing to a halt, he put the truck in park. He flipped the tail of his shirt over the Glock, threw open the door, and stood on the frame of the truck. And he saw Rory on her knees, half-submerged, struggling to her feet. Near her, splashing, caught in the current, he saw Petra.

  “Jesus, no.”

  Rory got her feet under her and splashed toward Petra, seeing the maw of the drain, hearing a roar. They’d come almost a hundred yards downriver in just a few seconds.

  Boone’s wrecker dropped into gear. The engine gunned.

  Petra fought the current, swimming, almost clawing the water, trying to stand. The culverts seemed to suck her toward them. Rory ran, but the river outdistanced her. Breathless, she watched Petra recede toward the storm drain.

  And hit the rusted shopping cart.

  She crashed into it and got snagged between the basket and wheels, as if wedged in its jaws.

  And Rory heard another sound: an engine. She looked up. On the far side of the river, on the frontage road, Seth’s truck had stopped on the gravel in a storm of dust. In a second, he was out of the cab and over the fence and careening down the slope.

  Upriver, the wrecker rammed the fence. Its big push bumper smashed down a ten-foot section of chain link with a bang and clatter. The suit climbed through the gap.

  Petra’s face was just above the water. Rory splashed to the cart and tried to pull her out. The current gushed like a broken fire hydrant. If she didn’t get a good grip, Petra would slip from her hands like a fish and be gone again in an instant. She slogged to the downstream side of the cart as a backstop. Seth jumped into the river and forged to her side. Together they slid Petra free. Rory braced her against the force of the water.

  Seth hauled Petra to her feet. “Go.”

  Rory put an arm around Petra’s waist and together they battled toward th
e far side of the river. Seth followed, a hand on Rory’s back. Rory helped Petra onto the concrete bank. It was slick and as steep as a playground slide. Petra scrambled up the slippery slope on all fours.

  Seth said, “Up, Rory. Run.”

  He turned, putting himself between her and the suit. Mirkovic’s man was jogging along the far slope, heavy and relentless. Rory climbed onto the bank.

  Boone shouted something. Seth said, “Hurry.”

  Petra reached the top of the fence and tumbled over.

  The sound of gunfire was deep and shocking. Rory gasped and threw herself down against the concrete. The crack of the gun had sounded bigger than a handgun.

  Upriver, coming down the far bank, was Boone. He had a matte-black shotgun in his hands. He raised it and fired again.

  The shot hit the culvert. Concrete chipped and flew. Seth stood in the river facing him.

  Rory got to her feet. “Seth…”

  Boone pumped the action with one hand and leveled the gun again.

  Seth shouted, “Stop, Boone. F—”

  He fell before she heard the gunshot.

  Seth took the round in the chest, buckled like he’d been hit with a swinging log, and went down. The crack of the gunshot reached her, like a whiplash. Seth fell back into the water. The splash swallowed him.

  Rory slid down the concrete and leaped back into the river and flailed toward him. Seth surfaced, his head back, arms outstretched, and the water took him into the culvert. Fast, like night dropping, he disappeared.

  Off balance, she careered toward the spot in the river where he had been standing.

  Petra shouted, “No—Rory, no.”

  She kept running.

  Behind her, Boone shouted, “Stop.”

  The water gushed into the culvert, choppy and brown. Rory didn’t seem to be breathing. Chunks of concrete blew from the side of the culvert. Another gunshot pocked the air. Rory jumped sideways, flinching, hands covering her head.

  “Stop,” Boone shouted.

  She stopped, thigh deep in the river, and slowly turned. Thirty yards away, on its trash-strewn banks, Boone stood facing her. He held the shotgun level and steady.

  “Petra, go,” she said.