She shuddered.
“I saw that,” Lunkhead said triumphantly. He reached down, grabbed her under her arm, and hauled her roughly upright, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. “Come on, I know you’re awake. Don’t make me hit you.”
That was said so casually that she knew it wasn’t an idle threat. Her eyes flew open, and she sucked in a deep breath as she tried to find her balance. But with her ankles bound and her feet numb, she couldn’t. Her shoes were gone, she realized, as her bare feet made contact with the cold floor. She couldn’t get her feet squarely beneath her, and she had a feeling that, even if she could, they wouldn’t support her weight. Unable to help herself, she sagged heavily against him. He was soft with flab and smelled of cologne. He didn’t feel like her attacker, either.
Unless her senses were deceiving her, the hit man wasn’t in the room.
Not that that meant she was in the clear. It just meant that multiple people seemed to want to do her harm.
“Over to the table.” Lunkhead gripped her tighter and started dragging her in the direction he wanted her to go.
She gave a little hop, then, overbalanced, fell heavily forward onto her knees. Her kneecaps banged into the concrete. It hurt, and she cried out.
“Get up.” Lunkhead loomed over her.
“I—I can’t.”
He kicked her, his shiny black loafer making brutal contact with her thigh. Pain exploded up and down her leg. She yelped, crumpled.
“Now try.” He reached down to drag her upright again.
“My feet ...?”
The disorientation she’d experienced on first regaining consciousness was totally gone now. In its place was pain and a hard cold fear. This guy’s casual brutality told its own tale—he had no qualms about hurting her. He would have no qualms about killing her.
“Oh, jeez, untie her feet. She’s not going anywhere,” the man at the table said.
“Yeah.”
The fingers digging into her arm let go. Maddie hit her knees again, then toppled forward, barely managing to twist enough to smack the concrete with her shoulder rather than her face. She cried out again as pain shot through her knees, her hip, her arm. Then, as she lay, panting, on her side on the concrete, she saw something that made her temporarily forget both pain and fear.
Sam was sprawled on his back on the concrete floor not far from where she lay. His eyes were closed, blood trickled sluggishly from a corner of his mouth and smeared his white shirt, and his arms were stretched over his head. Eyes widening with horror, she saw that he was handcuffed to the truck’s bumper.
“Get up,” Lunkhead said again, and hauled her upright. The rope around her ankles had been cut—she caught a glint of silver as he refolded a serviceable switchblade and stowed it in his pocket—but she had been so focused on Sam that she hadn’t even realized that he was doing it.
Was he badly hurt? That was her first, instinctive thought. Then, as she was forced to walk on her tingling, throbbing feet, she remembered that she hated him.
But not enough for this.
“Sit down,” Fish said when Lunkhead had dragged her, hobbling, to the workbench. It was table-height, made of unfinished planks, with an open toolbox and various tools jumbled together and shoved toward the wall. Fish’s lunch was spread out in front of him on a sandwich wrapper: a half-eaten fish sandwich, a couple of unopened packs of tartar sauce, fries, and a large soft drink with a straw and a lid. Moby Dick’s, Maddie saw from the other small, white bag that waited near the edge of the table with its top rolled shut. This, clearly, was Lunkhead’s meal, which he had not yet had time to eat. Three cheap plastic chairs had been pulled up to the workbench, one at each end and one in the middle. Lunkhead pulled out the chair in the middle and shoved Maddie into it. Fish was to her left, Lunkhead behind her chair. If she glanced sideways, she could see Sam.
She was terrified, she realized—and not just for herself.
A door opened at the rear of the garage, and Zelda, lucky dog, disappeared beneath the truck. A man stood in the opening, scowling at them. He was stocky, bald, and dressed in dark suit pants, a striped dress shirt, and tie. The hit man? She didn’t know. There was no way to tell. But the build was right. Her heart started slamming against her ribs in quick, panicked strokes. Her breathing suspended. Would he come in now and kill her? If he did, there was nothing she could do. No escape ...
Be calm, she told herself. Focus. Behind the new arrival, she could see the outdoors: a strip of concrete and, beyond it, grass and the crowded trunks of a stand of skinny pines. Where were they? Impossible to tell.
Zelda, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
“You know what we just heard on the police scanner, shit-for-brains?” the guy in the door demanded. “An APB for the fed. What the hell did you have to dick around with him for?”
“I told you, we didn’t have any choice,” Lunkhead said. “He came around the side of the truck just as I was throwing the dog in. He saw me. He was going for his gun.”
“If I hadn’t been right there to clobber him with that tire iron, he would’ve had us. I didn’t even have time to pull out my stun gun,” Fish chimed in.
“Yeah, we weren’t expecting him. Had her, had the dog—then here he came. What are you gonna do?” Lunkhead shook his head and shrugged.
“Well, idiots, you just escalated our problems, big-time. They wouldn’t have looked that hard for her. They’ll look like hell for him, and now we got no choice but to kill him. Just make sure, when you do it, that you get rid of the body someplace where it’s not gonna be found. Chop it up or something and bury the parts separately. Got it?”
Maddie went all light-headed.
“Yeah,” Fish said.
The man in the doorway turned his head sharply, as if he heard something. Then he disappeared from view, leaving the door ajar. The light outside had the mellow, golden quality common to a summer evening. The trees cast long shadows toward the east, which told her that sundown was nearing. The meal Fish was eating and Lunkhead wasn’t must be supper.
The terrible thing was, freedom was less than twenty feet away. It might as well have been a thousand miles. Two men inside, undoubtedly armed and clearly ready, willing, and able to kill her. At least one man outside, and probably more.
And handcuffed to a truck, one man whom, Maddie realized, she wasn’t willing to leave behind even if she should somehow get the opportunity to run.
“He’s pissed,” Lunkhead said to Fish, sounding glum.
“Yeah. Well, we better be getting them what they need, then.” Fish looked at Maddie. His eyes were cold now, and hard. Fear tightened her stomach, dried her mouth. He could kill her, she realized, and go right back to eating his fish sandwich. “This is all your damned fault,” he said to her. “Why the hell didn’t you just stay off TV?”
Maddie was so surprised by his comment that she forgot, for a moment, to be afraid. “What?”
“TV. What kind of stupid person who’s on the run goes on TV? You got us all in trouble here.” He looked at Lunkhead. “Cut her hands free.”
Maddie felt her stomach clench. Why does this not sound like good news?
“What? What?” she said, as much to keep them talking as for any other reason. Lunkhead was using his knife on the rope that bound her wrists. She could hear the sawing sound it made, feel a painful increase in pressure as the rope dug tighter into her skin. “What are you talking about? I never went on TV.”
Fish looked at her with disgust. “You got some big business award. Velasco saw it on the news. He’s one of our guys now, but he used to live in Baltimore and he recognized you. Said he remembered you because you were such hot stuff. Only you had some trouble, and you were supposed to be dead. He kept wondering about it, and finally he gave the guys in Baltimore a buzz. Then all hell broke loose.”
Her hands were free now. The blood flowing back into them made her fingers tingle and throb painfully. She scarcely noticed. All this—all this—because
they’d run a clip of her receiving the Chamber of Commerce award on the evening news?
Talk about your butterfly effect. She would’ve had to laugh if she hadn’t felt so much like crying.
Fish grabbed hold of her wrist and put her hand down on the table. Maddie was still looking at her outstretched fingers in surprise when he picked up a hammer and brought it down hard on her pinkie.
She screamed, snatching her hand away. Smirking, he let it go. The pain was blinding, intense, made even more horrible because it was so unexpected. Her stomach turned inside out. She went all woozy. If Lunkhead hadn’t been behind her, holding on to her shoulders, she would have fallen sideways out of the chair.
“That’s just a sample of what’s going to happen if you give us any problems,” Fish said. He’d already put down the hammer, Maddie saw, as her vision cleared enough for her to be able to see again, and was taking another hungry bite out of his sandwich. The pain, coupled with the smell, made her want to vomit. “That stuff you said you had—I want to know where it is.”
“What stuff?” Maddie cradled her injured hand close to her chest. She was nauseated, dizzy. The end of her pinkie was purplish and already starting to swell, and blood welled into a small cut beside the nail. Maggie realized it was where her skin had split, and felt cold sweat begin to ooze from her pores.
“Don’t play dumb.” Fish was eating his sandwich as though this was the most ordinary of conversations. “The stuff you told Mikey you had. When you called him.”
“When I called ...” Mikey being Bob Johnson, of course. It wasn’t so much that Maddie was slow on the uptake, although pain and fear certainly were having some mind-clouding effects. It was that she could see where this was going all too clearly. If she didn’t tell them what they wanted to know, they’d continue causing her pain until she did. If she did tell them, she would die.
Fish put down his sandwich and reached for her hand again.
“No,” she gasped, cold sweat drenching her in waves. She cradled her hand tighter against her chest while Lunkhead, behind her, bore down harder on her shoulders. “It—I’m just not thinking so clearly because—because you hurt my hand. I know what call you mean. A-One Plastics. When I called them, right?”
“That’s right,” Lunkhead said behind her. “You shouldn’t go around threatening people, you know. Nobody likes that.”
“Shut up, would you?” Fish growled, shooting Lunkhead a look. Then, to Maddie, “I’m gonna ask you one more time, nice, then I’m gonna smash another finger. Where’s all that evidence you said your dad took?”
Maddie’s stomach cramped. Ice-cold terror shot through her veins. But terror wouldn’t help her. Calm, clear thinking probably wouldn’t, either. But it was all she had, so she fought back the terror and went with the calm-and-clear thing. They were in a garage, which was obviously attached to a house. The door the man had left open led to a parking area. Beyond it was—someplace better than here. If she wanted to survive, what she had to do was make it to the door and run.
They were armed, she was almost positive. They’d shoot her in the back if she was able to outrun them. But she’d rather die trying to escape than be tortured until they killed her.
Sam. She couldn’t leave Sam. Glancing sideways, she discovered to her surprise that his posture had changed. His body was in the same position as before, but his muscles seemed to have tensed. And she couldn’t be sure—his lashes still fanned his cheeks—but she was almost positive that he was looking at her.
“What, do you think we’ve got all night here? Time’s up.” Fish grabbed her wrist with one hand and the hammer with the other. Maddie screamed, resisting his attempts to lay her hand on the table.
“No, no, I was just thinking ...” she babbled. “I’ll tell you, okay? I’ll tell you.”
She drew a deep, sobbing breath, thinking furiously all the while. He let go of her wrist and put the hammer back down. Sam was watching her, she was almost sure of it now. She was positive he’d stiffened when she screamed. But there was nothing he could do. He was as helpless as she. Zelda, equally useless, was close, too. Maddie could feel the little dog snuffling around her ankles.
Probably she was smelling food, and hoping for a hand-out from the table.
“You’re stalling.” Fish grabbed for her hand again.
“The evidence is in a strongbox near where we used to live in Baltimore,” Maddie gasped, jerking her hand back and, in the course of the small struggle that ensued, managing to knock the bag containing Lunkhead’s food on the floor.
“Yo, that’s my ...” Lunkhead began, letting go of her shoulders to retrieve it.
Then, just as Maddie had prayed she might, Zelda popped out from under the workbench, grabbed the bag in her teeth, and trotted away.
“Hey, that’s my dinner,” Lunkhead said, sounding more surprised than anything as he lunged after her. Zelda saw him coming and, bless her gluttonous little soul, put the pedal to the metal, scuttling across the floor with a really impressive burst of speed and racing out the door, bag and all.
“Goddamn dog! Come back here with that!” Lunkhead roared, giving chase.
She, Fish, and, she thought, Sam, too, were all so surprised that all they could do was stare after Lunkhead as he pelted through the door. But, since it was more or less what she’d kind of planned, Maddie recovered fastest.
Hammer-time.
Lunging across the table, she snatched up the hammer. Even as Fish reacted, milliseconds too late to do any good, she slammed it down on his head with every last bit of strength she had left. The resulting thunk was almost as satisfying as watching his eyes roll back in his head before he collapsed sideways onto the floor.
Take that, you creep, Maddie thought exultantly, and gave herself a mental high-five as she sprang away from the table and her gaze swung around to Sam. His eyes were open. He was struggling to sit up.
“In his left front pants pocket. The keys to the handcuffs are in his left front pants pocket,” Sam said urgently, as her gaze locked with his.
Jesus, God, and every other heavenly being, let Lunkhead not come back.
Heart pounding, operating on adrenaline now, Maddie stuck her hand into Fish’s pocket and, since it was the only thing in it, came up with the key at once. Then, with one wary eye on the door, she darted to Sam.
“Hurry,” he said.
No shit, Sherlock, was the rejoinder that popped into her head, but she was too busy sweating bullets and trying to fit the teeny, tiny key into the teeny, tiny lock to answer. Shaking, panting, one eye on the door, she finally got it in there and turned it.
That was all it took. Jerking free of the bumper as the cuffs dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter, Sam scrambled to his feet and headed for Fish, who was beginning to stir.
“What are you doing?” Maddie was already racing for the door.
“If he’s got a gun, I want it,” Sam said, leaning over Fish. Maddie was treated to the gratifying sight of him slamming his fist hard into Fish’s jaw. As Fish went limp again, Sam patted him down.
“Shit.”
Maddie took that to mean no gun.
“Come on.” As far as she could tell, the coast was clear, but it was unlikely to stay that way for long. There were two cars in the paved area beyond the garage—and a garbage truck.
Maddie had an instant epiphany: The bad guys had been in the garbage truck.
Then she saw something that completely erased everything else from her mind. Like a boomerang, Zelda was returning. Leash flapping behind her, she raced back toward the open garage door with the bag still in her mouth and Lunkhead in hot pursuit.
“Oh, no!” Heart pounding, panic clutching at her stomach, Maddie jumped back from the door and looked at Sam, who was straightening away from a now limp and supine Fish. “He’s coming back. Lunkhead’s coming back.”
“Get in the truck.”
As he said it, Sam was already leaping for the garage door directly behind it. The do
or was metal, and looked to be heavy-duty. Not the kind of garage door even a Ford F-150 could just burst through.
“Sam ...”
“Here. They were in the slimeball’s other pocket. If we run out of time, if something happens, you go.” He tossed her the keys. She caught them instinctively.
“But ...”
Leave him if necessary, he meant, which wasn’t happening. But she wasn’t going to argue about it at the moment. She scrambled behind the wheel. He turned the lock with a sound so loud it made her jump, and bent down to drag up the garage door.
Fish was moving again.
Then three things happened simultaneously.
Handicapped by her throbbing finger, Maddie fumbled with the keys, found the right one, thrust it into the ignition, and turned the engine over.
The garage door went rattling up.
And Zelda, with panic in her eyes, burst through the open door.
She’d saved them, so saving her back was nothing short of quid pro quo. And she was cute, kind of, when she wasn’t being a pain in the ass. And there was the Brehmer account. Not that Maggie was probably ever going to have to worry about it again, but ...
“Zelda,” Maddie cried, opening the truck door and wrenching at the gearshift at the same time. Seeing Maddie, Zelda scrambled toward the truck and took a flying leap that landed her almost on Maddie’s lap. Maddie grabbed her collar and hauled her the rest of the way on board.
“Hit it.” Sam dove into the passenger seat beside her. The transmission locked into reverse ...
“Now,” Sam yelled, slamming his door, and Maddie hit it, slamming her door and elbowing Zelda to the middle at the same time as she stomped on the gas.
“What the—?” Lunkhead burst through the door just as the truck shot backward out of the garage. He ran into the space they’d just vacated, fumbling behind his back for what Maddie assumed was a gun.
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