“I’m done asking,” he spat, still coming at her.
Amanda considered screaming, but the side street they were on was empty for the moment. She calculated his next charge and made her move. Swirling away from the impetus of his advance, she created a two-step gap between them. Expanding on that infinitesimal separation, she sprang out onto the road. A car turned at the corner, coming at her and screeching on its brakes as her hands slammed down on the hood. She stared through the windshield at the wide-eyed commuter, but took off running towards the blue van, using the car behind her as a temporary obstacle for Willem’s pursuit.
Mule!
She reached the van as she heard the car peel away. The clamor of running steps sounded like the Hounds of Hell on her heels. Pounding the van door, she cried into its windowless siding, “Sam! Sam!”
Stumbling to the driver’s side door, she yanked to no avail.
“Keys for diamonds,” a voice said behind her. His breath was erratic, but he pulled up short, standing a few feet away.
“Show him to me,” she hissed.
Willem swept a hand through his tousled hair. He reached into his pants pocket and produced a key, sliding open the side door of the van.
Amanda nearly dropped to her knees. There was her beloved cousin in his favorite knit sweater, lying on his side with his knees tucked under his chin, and his normally ruddy face now pale in repose.
“Sam!” she cried out.
Spinning around she yelled, “What’s wrong with him?”
Willem shrugged. “Guess the tranquilizers I gave him kicked in. He’ll be fine in an hour or two.”
He took a purposeful step forward. “Now−”
Before he could finish she jabbed her hand into her pocket and extracted the rough stone, holding her palm open so that he could see the hefty-sized diamond.
Willem’s eyes flared. The grin of a madman curved across his face. His chapped lower lip dropped open and the tip of his tongue swept across it. So consumed was he with the sight, he barely had time to register that Amanda had scooped the rock tight and was hurling it with bullet precision at his face.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It took all his restraint not to attack Willem at the bridgeside pub. Ray watched the composure slowly seep away from the olive-skinned man in jeans and a dark green jacket. Each second escalated Amanda’s danger, but Ray was only steps away, relying on his military training to maintain invisibility. Casting a glance around, he identified all the surfaces to protect Amanda from a bullet. Concrete landscaping walls. Steel and brick building foundations. The dense wood of the outdoor bar. Even the engine side of a car parked along the street. These were all barriers he could easily launch her behind if it got out of hand.
Purposefully dressed in a gray sweatshirt and tan cargo pants, he blended with the city streets and cloudy skies. At times Willem had looked directly at him, but still did not see him.
As much as he wanted to go to Amanda. As much as he wanted to take this man down before he ever had a chance to touch her, Ray knew that Sam was still missing. This situation was far from his control. Willem was still calling the shots. Ray was accustomed with hostage situations. To bring in the police now would seal Sam’s fate.
As the tension at the nearby table mounted, so did Ray’s apprehension. Amanda looked so cool and stoic, sitting ramrod straight in the bistro chair. Sleek blonde hair ruffled in the wind coming off the river. She never once glanced around her. She never once relinquished eye contact with the psycho across from her. Hell, he’d hate to see her participate in the SEAL training exercises. She’d crush everyone.
Dammit, Amanda.
He wanted her back in his arms.
Motion at their table caused him to slip back into the nook of an archway. Patrons of the public restroom ambled past him, but they did not distract him from the scene unfolding. He could tell that Willem was becoming unglued. As Amanda stepped off the curb, Ray fell in behind them.
Willem spun his head about, searching the sidewalk. Ray knew that all the man saw were two blokes with cellphones and earplugs. He didn’t detect Ray walking directly behind them.
Glancing down at his phone he confirmed that Amanda’s signal was still going strong. If they were on their way to find Sam then his time to make a move was quickly approaching. Ray could feel the hunt in his bones. Willem was his target. Willem was a dead man if he touched Amanda.
Tracking them to a side road, he plastered himself against a concrete wall and watched their argument ensue. Each took turns pointing at a blue van parked in an apartment complex lot across the street. When they approached the van he witnessed Amanda’s bereft expression.
Already sprinting towards what he felt was escalating into a violent outcome, Ray was startled by her sudden act of aggression.
***
“Fok!”
Willem grabbed his forehead. He drew his hand back and examined the thin smear of blood on it.
“Fok,” he repeated.
Disregarding the welt that had sprung up on his forehead, Willem dove to the ground, scrambling crablike after the skittering rock.
Amanda used that moment to launch into the open door of the van. She cast a hasty glance at Sam and found him still inert. A raucous noise outside sent her into a panic. Any second now, Willem would dive into the van, and no matter how close Ray was trailing them, he could never reach them in time to stop a gun.
A shout outside the van spurred her into action. She fell into the driver’s seat and grappled with the key she had pulled from the door lock. She stared at it. They still have keys? George had always pointed his keychain at the car to open it, and pushed a button to start it.
Thrusting the key into the ignition under the steering wheel, she twisted and heard the satisfying sound of an engine. The van dipped towards the driver side as she realized someone had climbed in. Cursing the fact that she had never had a chance to get a driver’s license, she improvised with the shift and tested out the clutch, slamming her leather pump against the gas pedal. The vehicle lurched forward as a startled yell drifted away, and the van no longer listed.
She clambered over a curb, straightened out for a few feet and then jostled over the opposite curb. Shouts sounded in the street behind her, but she didn’t look back. Only a hasty glimpse over her shoulder confirmed that Sam was still slumped over on the floor, and there were no unwanted guests aboard.
“Hang on!” she called to the inert form.
Metal screeched hideously as she toyed with the shift again. Dammit, she knew for a fact that the BLUE-LINK Audi didn’t have a shift. The heel of her shoe got caught in a tuft of matted carpeting. Pulling her foot out of the pump, she pressed her stockinged toes to the clutch and felt the sickening tumble of a near stall. Switching pedals she managed to lurch down the road. It probably wasn’t a good sign that cars were coming in her direction, though.
Reaching an intersection, she slammed on the brakes and felt her neck snap unnaturally. A clunk sounded from the rear of the van, and she heard a moan.
“Mule?” she cried.
There was no response, and it was time to jerk her way forward again. She turned the wheel to face a road that didn’t have oncoming cars. Chancing a quick glimpse in the rearview mirror she didn’t notice anyone giving chase, but a horn blaring to her side, hauled her attention back to the road in front.
A STOP sign. STOP signs scared her. There was no time to stop. She had to go−and go fast.
“Bloody hell, can’t you drive?”
“Sam!” She spun around.
“Dammit, Mandy, look at the road, not me!”
The ruffled man tumbled forward, landing ungracefully in the passenger seat beside her. “Lost my bloody cane,” he muttered.
His head snapped as Amanda experimented with the pedals again.
“Oh my GOD. You’re driving!”
“Yes!” she almost beamed until the van was choked of gas and nearly stalled.
“You don’t know h
ow to drive,” he stated, still fuzzy. Swiping a hand over his face, he sobered and clutched the dashboard as a cat ran across the road.
“Not the cat!” he screamed.
Amanda twisted the steering wheel, overcompensating, and miraculously returning them to the wrong side of the road.
“At least I’m going in the right direction this time,” she defended.
He took a deep breath and pounded the ball of his hand against his head a few times. “Alright. I’m not even going to get into the, what happened to me? part right now. I’m just going to concentrate on bringing us to a successful stop on the side of the road.”
“No!” she cried. “We can’t stop. He’s chasing us. He almost climbed into the van when I pulled away.”
“He?” Sam ground both palms in his eyes and shook his head again. “Oh yes. The guy who showed up at the Marquis. He didn’t know the password. I can’t remember much after that.”
They both heaved forward as the van gagged.
“Okay!” He grabbed the seat belt and latched it across his lap. “New strategy. You’re going to learn how to drive. Left foot on clutch. Switch gear to two. Left foot off clutch and right foot on gas.” The van hesitated. “Faster,” he cried. “You must do the transition faster.”
Amanda slammed her foot on the gas and the motor roared as they jerked forward.
“Again. Same steps. Moving to 3rd gear. Left foot on clutch. Change shift to 3rd. Right foot on gas. Try for a smooth transition.”
“Smooth transition my ass!” Amanda could feel perspiration creep across her forehead.
“You don’t curse, Mandy.” Sam sounded petulant.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m doing a lot of things I don’t normally do.”
In between his helpful orders, which she picked up on quickly, she chanced another glance in the rearview mirror. Her stomach fell. There was a taxi directly behind her, and though she knew taxi drivers to sometimes have enthusiastic skills, this cab was directly on her tail. A closer look at the windshield confirmed her suspicions. Willem was at the wheel.
“Hang on,” she cried and forced the van into fourth gear.
“There is no need for you to go into fourth on these side streets, Amanda. Let’s just safely negotiate the roads until we see a police car−” he added with a mumble, “−or they see us.”
“Mule, we’re being chased. He’s behind us.”
Sam craned his neck and even in her periphery she could see his puffy eyebrows vault up.
“That’s the guy!” he shouted.
“Yeah, that’s the guy.”
“Who is he?”
Such a simple question. In that moment she lost all sound save the pounding in her ears. Around her the street moved in slow motion. A garbage man hesitated before stepping out onto the road. A woman walked two dogs on the sidewalk. A splatter of water hit the windshield from a walking bridge. Boom. Boom. Boom, went the blood.
“He is the man who murdered my parents,” she stated quietly.
Sam stilled.
“Amanda?” his helpless plea said it all.
“Yes. Don’t ask me why after all these years. Okay, yes, ask me. The diamonds,” she spat.
Sam knew of the diamonds. He had been there the day her aunt first collected her off the plane. Aunt Joyce was married once before George. The man passed away at an early age. A few years later she met George and spent the rest of her life with him. George became a surrogate father to both her and Sam. He instructed them as children the importance of keeping any mention of those diamonds within the household.
“Bloody hell,” Sam whispered.
He grabbed the dashboard with one hand and the door handle with the other and shouted, “Step on it, Mandy.”
Curling her toes around the gas pedal, she pushed it down and locked her knuckles around the wide steering wheel. Intersections terrified her−roundabouts, even more. She discovered the horn set in the middle of the wheel and made ample use of it. Vaguely she was aware of gaping mouths on the sidewalks as the two vehicles recklessly plowed through.
“Turn up here.”
Amanda obeyed, and held her breath for a perilous moment as she thought Willem’s black taxi was going to pull up alongside her. Traffic forced him back into submission, but he was directly on her tail. In the distance she heard a police siren, but that was as staple a sound as birds chirping.
“The police have to pull us over eventually,” Sam rubbed his face again. “I mean we’re driving like bloody maniacs.”
“I think I hear them, but a man with a gun is directly behind us, so I’m all for the maniacal driving.” She turned quickly to look at him. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a bus ran over my head, how about you?”
“I’m so sorry, Mule.”
One green eye gaped at her from a mop of rusty hair. “What on Earth for—your driving?”
“That you were hurt because of me−because of your relationship to me. You, and Uncle George. This man could have harmed Uncle George too.” Her hands fisted around the wheel at the thought of it. “Coward,” she cried into the rearview mirror. “You should have just come after me!”
“Oh bah,” Sam cupped his forehead. “No one loves a martyr. Let’s see, I’ve already been shot in the leg while protecting one of your employees. You didn’t see me complaining back then.”
Amanda grew bolder and managed to weave around two cars, hoping for separation, but the black cab was a constant in her mirror.
“Actually, you did,” she pointed out. “Quite often. You wanted to run the Marquis. You wanted to be the man. You had to keep your proximity to the woman in apartment C, who−” she pointed her thumb at him, while still holding the wheel, “−happened to be the one to alert us that you’d gone missing. She sounded very concerned.”
Sam leaned forward to look at her face. “No way.”
“Way,” Amanda nodded. “I’m thinking you might even get a hug when you return tonight.”
“Aww, bloody hell, let’s lose this guy right now!”
Indeed.
Traffic lightened up as they made their way out of the city. That was unfortunate. It offered Willem an opportunity to maneuver around her, matching the van’s speed so that he could peer through the passenger window at her. What she saw scared her. She saw the muzzle of a gun pointed at her. Even worse, he began inching his cab into her path, forcing her towards the choppy asphalt shoulder.
Not savvy enough to fend off the aggression, she cried out, “Sam, what do I do?”
“Crap!” He yelled. “How do I know? Turn your wheel against him.”
She tried but Willem jarred hard against the van and the wheel involuntarily slipped through her fingers. She felt the sickening rumble of tires on gravel, and then the force of the right front tire collapsing into a rut. Hitting the embankment straight on was not an option. She conceded with a tap on the brake.
Sam quickly unbuckled his belt and climbed awkwardly to the back of the van.
“I’ll look for a weapon of some sort. Keep him busy.”
“Sam, no.” Her voice was calm. “Just lay down. Pretend you’re still out. It’s safest for you that way.”
“Mandy−”
It was too late to say anymore. Willem was circling the front of the cab and approaching her door. She tried to open it, but the cab was in tight enough that she could only manage an inch or two.
Cars passed by on the highway. None of them stopped.
Willem stood with his feet planted slightly apart, his arms raised with both hands on the gun that was pointed through the windshield at her. Dried blood painted a lightning bolt between his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose. There was an unusual swelling to his cheek, and blood at the corner of his mouth. These details faded at the sight of his eyes. Even at this distance and with the barrier of glass she could see the hatred and lust in them.
“You got your damn diamond,” she yelled through the windshield. “What do you want?
”
“No, I don’t.” he said, stepping forward, the gun still raised. “But you have another, and I want it.”
He cocked his head and looked at the van. A peculiar grin scarred his face. “And so fate has come full circle for you, Amanda. You’re back on the side of the road, and this time I will shoot you and take the diamond from your corpse.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ray bolted across the street just as Amanda slipped inside the blue van. He reached for Willem’s collar, hauling him from the open door just as Amanda pulled off the curb. Ray yelled for her to stop, but she was all over the road, the grating screech of a misused gear filling the air. Fearful that she might crash, but relieved that she was getting away, he nonetheless had to return his focus to the man that was about to punch him.
One deft move deflected the oncoming blow. Rage over this man’s handling of Amanda consumed Ray. His fist struck out like a cinderblock. It cracked against Willem’s cheekbone, pitching the man onto the sidewalk, and knocked something loose from his hand. He clawed blindly for it, while yanking a gun from his jacket.
Ray placed his foot over the tossed rock, securing it as Willem flipped onto his back and hoisted the gun to point at Ray. Playing it cool, knowing an opportunity would present itself again, Ray lifted his hands in submission.
Vaulting to his feet, waving the gun maniacally, and drawing the wary observation of a nearby dog-walker, Willem charged into the street, halting an oncoming cab. Pointing his gun into the driver’s window, he waved the bewildered man out of the vehicle and jumped into the driver’s seat. He took off, following Amanda’s path of destruction.
The taxi driver turned to stare wide-eyed at Ray.
“My cab!” he cried. “I will be fired for this.”
“I work for someone with high connections,” Ray assured. “I can see to it that the situation is explained, and that your boss will understand.
The man nodded, but his distress did not lessen.
“Now, if you can just help me flag down a car so I can pursue that criminal.”
Dusk Page 17
