Willing Hostage

by Marlys Millhiser

  But Leah, who could be snowed by nature, had been suffocated by people for thirty years. “Does he really think I’m that naive?” she wondered.

  Peter Bradley came out of the tent with one of his sober companions and leaned over to grasp Charlie’s shoulder. “Take it easy now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.” Peter glanced at Leah. “Yes, you do.” He walked to a jeep with his friend and they roared off without looking back.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Into town. He doesn’t want to be responsible. Too high up … you know.” And Charlie’s grin turned sly.

  “Responsible for what?” Leah sensed warning to her nerve ends. Trouble.

  “Well, we’re going to play a game. He doesn’t like games.” He looked at her through grin-slatted eyes and slapped his knee. “I’m glad you wouldn’t do it his way. You know that?” He pushed himself to his feet and walked away to return with his mug and the coffeepot. He refilled her cup and sat cozily beside her. “My way’s a lot more fun than his.”

  “What game?” Leah tasted egg.

  “You can’t blame old Pete … all those congressional investigations, Welker on his tail, you know.”

  “What game?” Leah set down her cup and drew up her knees to encircle them with her arms.

  “I call it the ‘to tell the truth game.’ Or the ‘hang in there game.’ If you don’t, it’ll just kill you.” And Charlie slapped his knee.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Leah clung to the rope ladder with blotched fingers. Rough fibers wore at her skin, burning, searing. She kept her eyes clamped shut and saw red behind her lids.

  The sounds she made, the grunting whimpers, were carried away on swirling air stirred by the giant blades above her and drowned in the bludgeoning noise of the helicopter.

  A long-forgotten nightmare surfaced … the dream of a little girl who clutched a swinging rope hanging from the rigging of a sailing vessel in a storm … and gigantic waves would toss the vessel and tip it and make her swing far, far out on the end of the rope, sometimes touching freezing black water with her feet and then the ship would lean the other way and the child-Leah would be brought back at heart-stopping speed to crash against the wooden side of the vessel and just before she hit she’d awake screaming.…

  It was the sickening uplift in her stomach that brought memory of the child’s nightmare, the cramping in her lower abdomen, the cringing, tingling constriction of her uterus, the tightened terror of muscles. The woman-Leah was reexperiencing all these sensations now. And now she was awake with no wooden vessel to stop her far-flung flight through the air as the ladder swung in broad … swooping … nauseating arches each time the helicopter turned or jagged or increased its speed.

  Leah pressed her forehead against the scratchy rung between her hands and tried to keep her body rigid so that the ladder would stay with her feet. She’d wound her arms through the rope sides between rungs and they cut into the inside of her elbows even through the layers of wool clothing Charlie had dressed her in.

  “Mustn’t let you die of exposure,” Charlie had said. “In case you want to tell us somthing when you come back.”

  One of the last things she’d seen before she’d closed her eyes, was Charlie doubled over in mirth below her and jagged treetops whizzing dangerously near.

  “Do try to come back now,” Charlie had said.…

  They couldn’t kill her. It was her government, too. They’d just scare her a little and then stop this in hopes that she’d tell them something.

  She tried to think of something else but Charlie’s game was working too well. She had to concentrate on holding onto the ladder with hands frozen by panic and protesting with strain. She didn’t dare open her eyes, yet she dreaded crashing into a tree or a rocky mountaintop. She fought for breath. The air, disturbed by the copter’s blades and her swooping, dizzying flight, came thick and crushing and too much one minute. It seemed to be sucked away from her the next so that she existed in a vacuum. Her hair whipped about her face as if intent upon smothering her.

  Leah clung helplessly to her tether. They’d driven her to it by setting the dogs on her. Her whimpers turned into involuntary groans she could feel but couldn’t hear, as icy shudders ran through her body.

  And then her tether jerked crazily. “Mother!” she screamed on gorged air. Her boots lost the swinging ladder.

  All of Leah’s weight pulled at sore hands, arms, and shoulders. As her feet swung out, her head snapped back and her eyes opened involuntarily.

  The gray beast of the helicopter with sled-runner feet swung past her vision to be replaced by a frothy-edged cloud. The pain in her neck revived her and slowly, with an effort that dragged on her jaw muscles and drew her lips apart, she forced her head back. Looking down to try to catch the gyrating ladder with her feet, she saw a mountaintop and far below that a small puddle of water.

  As her feet groped frantically for a rung, the copter hesitated in midair and began to descend. The puddle grew to a lake of cold blue—as cold a blue as Goodyear’s eyes.

  “That bath you wanted last night?” Charlie had said. “We’ll throw that in for chuckles, okay?”

  “Oh, God,” she thought. “He couldn’t have meant that lake.” But her progress toward it continued. The azure color changed subtly to cold green as the lake grew larger and nearer. She stared at it, dangling by her arms, until the whirling blades rippled its surface.

  The end of the ladder slapped against a boot and she found a rung with one foot and then the other, but the child of the nightmare screamed inside Leah as the bottom rung dipped thrashing water. The smell of fish and wet weeds and rot churned on the air around her.

  Leah screamed aloud and tried to climb the unsteady ladder toward the gray monster above. “Mother!”

  The rope in front of her face seemed to whine. Between the rungs she could see a yellow jeep parked on the bank and Charlie watching her through field glasses.

  Water seeped through her boots to her feet, swirled around her calves, and found her knees. It was as cruel and icy as its color. Leah stopped climbing and whimpered in terror. She watched an angry lake reach for her waist Numbing cold washed through her body, threatening to stop her heartbeat.

  And then even Leah’s whimpers died. She stared in silent paralysis at the man on shore as agitated water whipped around her chest. He would just have them dunk her to the neck to frighten her. He wouldn’t let them … she gulped air and closed her eyes as the searing cold enclosed her neck … and then her head. Leah was submerged.

  The shock of the cold on bare skin forced the reservoir of air from her lungs into her throat. Long hair swept like slimy seaweed across her eyes. The lake tugged at it as it lifted, ruffled it out, then billowed it back against her. The helicopter sounded a muffled pounding under water.

  Her body demanded air. A warning, low-pitched buzzing in her ears.… She wanted to scramble up the ladder, but her hands had a helpless frozen hold she couldn’t break. Her torso began the tortured hideous dance of suffocation.

  Leah didn’t realize that she and the ladder were rising until air hit her in the face. Her mouth and nose were suddenly gorged with it Wind, whipped up by the helicopter and blown through her wet clothing and hair, was more chilling than anything underwater. But Leah was almost past caring.

  Waves chopped at her boots as she was dangled toward Charlie. Through her hair and the water streaming down her face, she caught a glimpse of another jeep coming to a stop beside his.

  The helicopter brought her to shore, where Charlie was pulling blankets from the jeep and mouthing shouts at two other men.

  He had to pry her fingers loose one at a time from the ladder as the copter hovered above, still sending wind chill through her sopping clothing.

  Charlie’s grin was gone, his eyes snapped fury. Someone caught her from behind as the last finger came loose.

  Limp and without feeling, Lea
h was carried to the blankets. The helicopter moved away. As the sound of it died, she heard, “… will hear about this!”

  Leah looked up into the face of Joseph Welker.

  “Well, she wouldn’t cooperate,” Charlie answered.

  They stripped off her wet clothing and wrapped her in blankets and shouted threats and insults at each other.

  “She’s ours.…”

  “Don’t say another word to this man, Miss Harper,” Welker ordered.

  Leah was not about to say a word to anybody. She didn’t know if she could even move. She could breathe, swallow, and blink. She didn’t try anything else.

  “I wasn’t going to kill her.”

  “Pneumonia kills people. So does exposure. She looks to be in shock.”

  Welker carried her to his jeep, cuddled her on his lap all the way back to the camp in the meadow while Brian Kruger drove. Leah couldn’t feel the blankets against her skin.

  Brian laid her on a cot in the “command” tent and dressed the open wounds on her palms. “This will hurt,” he apologized in his soft voice.

  But it didn’t hurt.

  He smeared something on her forehead and then held her up to pour hot broth down her throat.

  Joseph Welker commandeered her backpack and all that had been in it, checked through her billfold, and added it to the pile. He wrapped her in dry blankets, then carried her off to the jeep once more, throwing a last threat to a sullen Charlie over his shoulder.

  Leah trembled and knew she was finally warming. She slept cradled in the arms of the FBI and awoke only momentarily when she was transferred to the back seat of a sedan. She had no idea how long she slept or how far they traveled but when the car stopped, it was night Leah was feeling again. She hurt.

  They carried her into a building she couldn’t see clearly and up a flight of stairs.

  “Bring her stuff into Number Five and get some brandy,” Welker snapped at a woman under a light bulb in the narrow hallway, and whisked Leah into a room that smelled of paint.

  He set her down in a deep soft chair next to a moss-rock fireplace that took up most of one wall and then knelt to build a fire. Brian pulled on a handle at the base of an oversized couch and drew it out into a king-sized bed.

  Welker looked over his shoulder as the woman brought in Leah’s luggage. “We found the blue Vega,” he explained. “And I’ve been worried sick about you ever since. This is Julie.”

  Brian spread blankets on the bed. Julie poured brandy into a glass and handed it to her. Leah pushed it away with a mottled bandaged hand.

  “Look, honey, it’ll do you good.”

  “No.” Leah found her voice squeaky but was relieved it still worked. So had her arm when she’d refused the drink. She commanded her toe to wiggle under the blanket. It did.

  “Do yon want a doctor, Miss Harper?” Welker stood over her anxiously. She sensed he didn’t want her to.

  “No. I want a poached-egg-on-milk-toast and a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “Yuk.” Julie grimaced and drank the brandy herself. She left the room to return with an armload of groceries.

  A fancy kitchenette made up one corner of the room. Julie loaded the refrigerator and started an egg to poaching while she made coffee for the rest of them. She was middle-aged and full-bosomed, wearing a smart pantsuit. Her short hair fluffed softly toward her face. The whole effect was very attractive.

  “I managed to cook it but don’t mind if I can’t watch you eat it.” Julie handed the plate to Leah with a kind smile and a penetrating glance.

  The fire, roaring up the chimney draft, was three times as big as any Glade had built. Brian disappeared between curtains to talk to someone outside on a balcony. Leah ate slowly and carefully. It was difficult to balance the plate and keep the blankets around her.

  When Brian returned through sliding-glass doors, wind billowed the curtains into the room and brought the smell of rain.

  “Where am I?” she asked finally, pushing lank, stringy hair from her face and handing the plate to Julie.

  “Steamboat Springs. This is a skiing condominium complex.” Welker sat on the rock shelf that stretched in front of the fireplace. “Feel better?”

  “Did you find Sheila?”

  “Yes.” Pain struggled to surface on his face. “I’m afraid she’s.…”

  “We found her, too. But we couldn’t get her out of the Volks fast enough.”

  “You were there?” He sat up. “Did you see who did it?”

  “No. We heard a scream and a car drive away. The Volks exploded, but Glade carried her out before it went up completely. She died anyway.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She said she didn’t want to die.”

  The pain was back, in eyes framed by old-fashioned horn-rims. The wrinkles deepened on his face and above his collar. There were too many of them for his age. He reached for her hand on the blanket. “I’m very sorry about what happened today, believe me. It was against any regulations in existence. I’ll see that something is done about it. Shelia’s death is an indication of how important it is that we find Glade quickly. You can see that.”

  “I don’t know where he’s heading or what he intends to do with the property or if he has it with him.” She drew her hand away from his. “I do know that I’ve taken all the questioning I can handle for one day.”

  “But you must be debriefed before time erases anything or—”

  “I have nothing to tell you.”

  “You may not realize what you know.”

  “I want to be alone. And now.”

  “She’s been through a lot, Joe,” Julie reminded him. “I’ll move in here for the night and—”

  “No. Alone. Or I’ll never say another word to any of you.”

  Welker, Julie, and Brian fought it out among them. Leah refused any offer of companionship. Finally they left her staring grimly at the fire.

  Leah uncurled one stiff leg and then the other. She stood. The blankets dropped to the floor. She grabbed the mantel. When she was steady, she tried a few steps and then bent carefully toward the handle of her beauty case. She hadn’t thought to ever see this luggage again.

  In the bathroom she avoided the mirror and turned on the shower. She stood under it to wash her hair—three sessions with the shampoo and one with conditioner—gritting her teeth against the ache of muscles in her neck, arms, and shoulders. Wrapping her hair in a towel, Leah took bath oil from her case, ran the tub full of hot water, and removed wet bandages from her hands.

  She scrubbed and soaked, her mind a blank. That finished, she went to work on her complexion by feel, with her back to the mirror. Leah sat on the stool lid to file broken nails down to her finger ends, thinking only of what she was doing and nothing else.

  Finally, she faced the mirror. Her skin had lost the blotchy look. Sun and windburn had turned into an even tan except for the red scar of a rope burn slashed across her forehead. The eyes under it looked vacant. The shadows under them looked bruised and the lips rigid.

  She combed out wet hair and bent closer to the mirror. A tiny spark reflected on one side of the part. Leah reached up to pluck out a short hair and examined it under the light. It was the color of silver and it was stiff and wiry. The stony face in the mirror did not react.

  She found her robe, added a log to the fire, and sat on the rock shelf to brush out her hair in the heat. A nervous shudder ran completely through her and was gone. A minute later there was another. Leah tried to ignore them.

  When her hair was dry she peered between the curtains to the balcony and saw a flare of light as someone lit a cigarette. She checked the door to the hall and found it locked … from the outside. She was a prisoner.

  Leah warmed some milk in the kitchenette and drank it with a piece of dry bread while the shudder spasms repeated themselves at shorter and shorter intervals.

  Finally, there was nothing more to do but sit and stare into the leaping flames. Leah doubled over and hid her f
ace in her hands … shadowed eyes and tousled black curls behind her eyelids … the pulsating roar of a helicopter inside her head.…

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “How did you find him? I mean, how did he act while you were with him?”

  “Unpredictable.” Leah sat stiffly on the couch that had been a bed until a few hours ago. It felt strange to be wearing a dress.

  “What do you mean by that?” Joseph Welker exchanged a glance with Brian Kruger. Julie sat on the other end of the couch writing down what little Leah was saying.

  “One minute he’s”—Leah shrugged—“and then … he.…” She shrugged again. Even that hurt her neck.

  “You do think he’s mentally stable.” Welker paused in his pacing. He didn’t look as if he’d slept much, either. “Don’t you?”

  “I … guess so.”

  “And he just laughed when you gave him my message in Oak Creek?”

  “Yes.” Leah had told him everything she’d told the men in the meadow. She had little to conceal—but Joseph Welker pinned down what she did have quickly.

  “That means it isn’t money he wants. He wants the information exposed, doesn’t he?” He sat down and removed his glasses to rub his eyes. “Damn! He’s going to try to get it to the newspapers. I should have known. That could make him a very dangerous man.” He exchanged a glance with Brian that made Leah uneasy. “I wish I could talk to him. He’s making an awful mistake. Did he tell you what the property was?”

  “No.” Her palms were bleeding again, oozing from cracks and scrapes in skin that tore from its healing process each time she used her hands.

  “Let me get something to bandage those up again,” Brian said and left the room. He had a baby face under thin hair and soft eyes that followed Joseph Welker’s every move like Mutt’s had followed Jason’s.

  Julie seemed to be a general fetch-it girl and secretary. But all three of them were here for one reason … to work on Leah Harper. Their tactics were different from Charlie’s but the object was the same—find Glade Wyndham.