To Trust a Stranger

by Karen Robards

  “You ought to be on this end.” A second thug, the one with his hands locked under Mac’s armpits, responded feelingly.

  “Boss’s orders.” The third thug had his hand twisted in Julie’s hair and his gun pressed to her neck. Walking easily over the uneven ground, he sounded unsympathetic to the others’ plight. “He said bring ’em to him alive, so that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “Quit your bitchin’, Dye. We’re almost there.” The fourth thug was walking a few steps behind with his gun drawn and aimed at Mac, purely as a precaution, Julie thought.

  Otherwise, there seemed to be no purpose in it. They’d beaten Mac unconscious. There was blood all over his face now, too. He lay limply between the two thugs, his head lolling against the one’s chest, his middle sagging perilously close to the ground as they all, captives and captors, trudged across the moonlit field.

  The killing field. As that thought took possession of her mind, Julie was suddenly so frightened that her legs would barely support her. She would have collapsed, she thought, except for the thug’s hand twisted in her hair. She knew she was walking toward her own death, and she knew equally that there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

  The instant, unwanted image of Sid’s face being blown away made her queasy. Please God, she thought, please God don’t let me die like that. Don’t let Mac die like that. We’ve only just found each other. Please let us live. Please.

  When the flashlight beam had hit them, shining directly through the roots of the sheltering cypress as if the thugs had known exactly where they were hiding, Mac had pushed Julie behind him and opened fire. To Julie’s horror, his gun had made empty clicking sounds. Mac had said Shit, it’s wet and stepped out with his hands up, dropping the gun on command. Then, as the two thugs had looked at Julie, squeezing out through the roots behind him, he’d launched himself at them like a missile.

  Wounded and weak, he’d been beaten to a pulp.

  So here they were, walking across the field, drawing closer to eternity with every step. She was wearing only her skirt and bra, with lots of bare skin on display, but she was covered with so much mud that she might as well have been fully clothed. The mud served another purpose, too: it seemed to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Not that she was going to have to worry about being bitten for very much longer.

  The moonlight was beautiful, soft and white, painting the clearing with an otherworldly glow. It was a night for romance, Julie thought, for walks on the beach, for friends and laughter and love.

  For Sid, and now for her and Mac, it was also a night for dying.

  “Keep going.”

  The hand in her hair tightened painfully as she stumbled. Julie recovered, and they marched past the car where Sid’s body lay. Julie averted her eyes. Her stomach churned. Gorge rose in her throat.

  Sid had deserved a lot of bad things, but not to meet an end like that.

  Several other cars were there, too. Julie did a double take at the big gray BMW parked beside the Lexus. That car was John’s. She would recognize it anywhere. For a moment hope did its eternal thing in her breast again as the thought that her father-in-law might help her popped into her head. Then she remembered that John was part of this, too.

  Did he know Sid was dead? He would grieve.

  It was hard to get her mind around the fact that she shouldn’t care if Sid’s father grieved. She felt as if her whole life had been turned inside out, and everything she had believed to be true suddenly—wasn’t.

  As they passed the cars, she saw something small and white slink out from their shadow and fall in behind them. Josephine, minus her usual happy prance. From her demeanor she was obviously aware something was amiss. Her head was down and her tail drooped. Julie felt a glimmer of joy as she spotted her, which was almost immediately superseded by fear. She would have shooed the little dog away, except she didn’t want to call attention to her.

  This murderous bunch might not bother with killing a dog, but she didn’t want to take that chance. There was no reason for Josephine to die tonight, too.

  The clearing ended in a grassy cliff overlooking a lake, Julie saw as they walked toward it. She was almost sure it was Lake Moultrie. It was north of the city, and she and Sid and Basta had been traveling in that direction.

  Her father had drowned in that lake. The thought made her shiver. Until today, she’d thought it was accidental.

  A man was watching them approach. The moon was big and bright behind him, making him no more than a dark shape. A bulky dark shape. A bulky dark shape with a gun in one hand.

  But Julie didn’t have to see his face to know who he was: Basta.

  Her stomach tied itself into a pretzel. Her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest.

  “Where’s the boss?” the thug bringing up the rear asked, glancing around.

  “He had to take a leak,” Basta said. He took a step closer, so that Julie could see his face now. The sight of that swollen, discolored nose struck terror into her soul. Her pulse began to race; her breathing quickened. She felt light-headed suddenly, and thought she might be going to hyperventilate. Deliberately she closed her mouth, forcing herself to breathe slowly and evenly through her nose. It was impossible to breathe too hard through her nose, she had found.

  “Hello, Julie.” Basta smiled at her, slowly and terribly. He glanced down at Mac, who now lay sprawled on the ground, then up at the thugs. “He dead?”

  “Nah, but he won’t be going anywhere any time soon. Dye here got to having too much fun back there, and clobbered him over the head a couple of times too many with his gun.”

  “Where’s Stark?” The fourth thug was still looking around.

  “With the boss. What, you think he went to take a leak by himself?” Basta’s eyes narrowed slightly. Julie had seen that expression before, and it made her shiver.

  Stall him.

  Good thought.

  Basta’s gun hand, which had been hanging rather negligently by his side, started to move. The moonlight glinted off the metal barrel of his gun.

  “I know where the thing my father stole is.” Julie almost swallowed her tongue in her haste to get the words out.

  Basta’s gaze swung around to her. The gun stopped its intended trajectory, which seemed to be slightly to her left. Instead it rose to point directly at her.

  “You don’t even know what it is,” he said.

  36

  “I MAY NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS, but I know where it is.” Oh, God, here she was doing her Scheherazade thing again. She hoped it worked out better this time than last.

  Basta looked at her for a moment. Then he glanced at the man holding her by the hair.

  “You guys, you go wait for the boss by the cars. I need to have a little private conversation with the lady here.”

  Julie realized that her hands were shaking. She clasped them together in front of her. Her heart was racing almost as fast as her mind. The thug holding her let go of her hair.

  “You. Sit down,” Basta said to her.

  Julie sat. Her knees had been about to give out anyway, so she practically dropped onto the prickly grass. She was close to Mac, so close she could have stretched out a hand to touch him. His face looked bad, with one eye all swollen shut and blood trickling across his forehead from a cut near his temple. But as she looked at him, she thought she saw his eyelids flicker.

  Wake up, she willed him. Oh, please wake up. Although she didn’t know what she thought he could do.

  Josephine came up out of nowhere and crawled into her lap, distracting her. Julie hugged her close. Making Josephine go away was probably an impossibility, so she wasn’t even going to try. Instead she was going to take what comfort she could get. She hugged the little dog close. Josephine licked her chin.

  “I don’t know,” the fourth thug said uneasily.

  “This is stuff the boss doesn’t want you to know. If you hear it, he’s probably going to have to have me kill you.”

  The thugs looked at each o
ther uneasily. Obviously they knew what Basta was.

  “Uh. Okay.”

  A quick glance over her shoulder told Julie that they were moving back toward the cars. If she ran that way—they would catch or shoot her in a heartbeat.

  Basta looked at Julie again. His gaze flicked down to Josephine and his mouth quirked contemptuously.

  “Where’d she come from?”

  “She was in the jeep when we wrecked.”

  He grunted, dismissing the subject. “So where is it? The thing we were discussing.”

  “I’d have to show you.”

  Basta smiled, and moved his gun in a significant way. Julie’s eyes widened.

  She caught her breath.

  “Really. It—it’s in a place that’s kind of hard to describe.”

  Basta pursed his lips. “Maybe you better try.”

  Uh-oh.

  “If I tell you, will you let me go?” She knew better, but she wanted to keep him talking for as long as she could. Where, oh, where, were the police? Mac had said he’d called them. Of course, if they ever arrived, they’d probably be on the bad guys’ side.

  Her life seemed to be working like that lately.

  Basta smiled. A scary smile. Just looking at him smiling at her like that made her blood run cold.

  “Sure I will. Why not? You know, I never wanted you dead, not personally. Now that Sid’s dead, there’s no reason you have to die. No reason at all. Sid just picked this point in time to get rid of you because he was cheating with a girl you knew and he figured you’d find out and file for divorce. Divorce is a bad thing when you’re in the mob. All those nasty lawyers looking into your finances. No telling what they might find. But with Sid gone now, that reason doesn’t apply.”

  Julie drew a breath. She suddenly felt almost calm, probably because she’d now passed so far beyond fear that she was emotionally numb. A breeze blew in off the lake, making her shiver as if it was suddenly thirty degrees out instead of eighty. All right, she thought as the shiver intensified into a full-blown case of the shakes, so maybe she wasn’t as calm as she’d thought.

  “Is that why Kelly was killed? Because she was going to divorce Sid?”

  Basta shook his head. “Kelly did a bad thing. She thought Sid was cheating on her, too. She left a voice-activated tape recorder in his office one day. She didn’t catch Sid cheating, but she did catch me and Sid and Mr. Carlson discussing something she had no business knowing about.”

  Julie drew in her breath. “What?”

  “A dead person.” His eyes hardened on her face and the gun moved again threateningly. “Just like you’re going to be a dead person if you don’t tell me where the damned tape is. Right now.”

  “It’s—it’s . . .” Julie stuttered, unable to get the words out past her suddenly thickened tongue. Her muscles were tense and she felt light-headed. The wind off the lake was kicking up again and she was freezing, too, so cold her teeth chattered. Or, oh yeah, she’d decided that particular reaction was attributable to fear.

  She’d never been so scared in her life.

  “Where is the tape?” It was a deadly growl.

  “If I tell you, you’ll kill me,” she whispered.

  “Tell me.” He pointed the gun at Mac. “If you don’t, I’m going to shoot little brother here.”

  Julie’s eyes widened with alarm. She glanced over at Mac, to find that he was watching her out of eyes that were open just the tiniest slit.

  Oh, God, she couldn’t let him shoot Mac. But if she told him anything, he would shoot her, too.

  “Last chance,” Basta said.

  “I—I . . .”

  Out of nowhere, a cell phone began to ring, interrupting. The sound was muffled but insistent. Basta, looking startled, reached into his pocket with the hand that was not holding the gun. In Julie’s lap, Josephine stiffened and began to growl. As Julie glanced down at her in surprise, the poodle leaped from her lap like she’d been launched from a catapult and threw herself with all the fury of a rabid badger across three feet of space and onto Basta’s leg.

  “Aiiee!” Basta jumped and howled, performing a frantic one-legged jig in an effort to shake Josephine loose. “Damn dog! Damn dog! Get off me! Get off me, you!”

  For a split second, Julie watched transfixed.

  Run. It was a scream inside her head.

  Oh, yeah. Good plan. She leaped to her feet, tugging on Mac’s bloody shirt as she did.

  “Mac!”

  Mac looked up, and seemed to make a tremendous effort. He surged onto all fours, then onto his feet.

  Julie grabbed his hand.

  Into the lake.

  Her little voice was, as usual, right on. Julie saw instantly that it was the only path of escape. She ran, and Mac ran with her, lurching and limping but nevertheless managing an amazing burst of speed considering the shape he was in.

  “Bad dog!” Basta was still fighting Josephine as the land ran out beneath them. The dark waters of the lake sparkled in the moonlight what looked like a long way below. From the corner of her eye, Julie saw Basta spot them, then free himself from Josephine with a tremendous kick that sent the little dog twisting and yelping through the air. Basta turned, gun raised in a two-handed hold. . . .

  And then she and Mac were leaping out into the darkness. She fell like a stone. As she did, sharp spears of sound whistled past her with a ferocity that seemed to punch holes in the air. She only realized that they were bullets when she saw them strike the water, sending up little white jets.

  Mac gave a hoarse cry, and seemed to stiffen in the air. Oh, God, had he been hit? Then she struck the water and plunged beneath the surface. Mac went down beside her, and she was frantic until he grabbed her hand. At least he was alive, and conscious. . . .

  When she would have surfaced, he began to swim underwater, pulling her along with him. They swam that way until they had to surface for air.

  “Were you hit?” It was the first thing she asked him, voice frantic.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.” She would have worried a lot less if his voice hadn’t been tight with pain.

  More bullets whistled around them. Julie’s face was showered with spray. She gasped and dived, grabbing at Mac’s arm as she went under. Mac was already with her, and they swam without surfacing for as long as they could. Julie hung on to his hand for dear life, terrified that he might lose consciousness. If he did, he might very well drown. She didn’t know if she could keep him afloat. He was heavy, and she wasn’t that strong a swimmer.

  When they came up a second time, gasping, treading water, Mac was beside her and the cliff was a good distance away.

  “You don’t feel light-headed or anything, do you?” The darkness kept her from seeing much of his expression, so it was hard to judge the exact shape he was in. But he was breathing hard, panting really, and—was he lower in the water than he should have been?

  “Don’t worry, I won’t faint.” The faint dryness of that reassured her slightly.

  “Where are you hit?”

  “Left leg. Leave it till we get out of the water.” He added this last and jerked the limb out of reach as she instinctively ran a hand down his leg.

  They were well out from shore, probably, or so Julie hoped, beyond the reach of bullets. Plus, they had the darkness to protect them. Julie doubted that anyone could see them now from the shore. Anyway, the shooting seemed to have stopped. But their position had a major drawback: if Mac were to be incapacitated, Julie wasn’t sure she could get him safely to land.

  The water was cool, but not cold. Mac turned onto his back, floating, moving slowly toward the distant tree line of the eastern shore. Julie paddled anxiously beside him, listening to his breathing. It sounded labored, and his movements seemed frighteningly weak.

  “I’m okay,” Mac said, forcefully enough to reassure her to a certain extent. “Just stay beside me, and we’ll get out of this yet.”

  Without warning, a helicopter swooped into view, its
searchlight illuminating the lake, catching them in its beam. In the distance, from the direction of the clearing, Julie heard sirens and slamming doors and shouts of “Freeze! Police!”

  “Police!” It was shouted over a bullhorn as the chopper came in low over the lake, its blades churning the water into froth, the searchlight never leaving them. Then, seconds later, still over the bullhorn, “This is Greg Rice. Mac, is that you down there?”

  “About fricking time,” Mac shouted back.

  Then two life preservers hit the water. As Julie snagged one, she realized that they were, finally, safe.

  37

  BY THE TIME HE WAS IN THE AMBULANCE on his way to the hospital, Mac was feeling pretty rough until the pain medication kicked in. Then he felt more on the order of doped-up, which he didn’t ordinarily like but, under these particular conditions, worked for him. They had hooked him up to an IV, which swayed precariously on its hook with every bump and sway of the shock-challenged vehicle. The siren blared importantly, practically deafening him.

  There was, however, an upside to his present situation, he reflected. Actually, three upsides, or maybe one three-parted upside. Whatever.

  The first upside was that Julie, wet and bedragggled but unharmed, dressed in a shirt loaned to her by one of the cops, was sitting beside him in the ambulance holding his hand. Josephine was huddled at her feet. How Julie had finagled that Mac couldn’t even begin to guess, because animals normally were verboten in ambulances, but the dog was unharmed as well, and he supposed he now counted that as an upside, too.

  Tonight Josephine had made up for all the bad things she had done since he had acquired her in spades. Never again would he think of doggy shelters in connection with her. She had earned herself a permanent place in his family.

  Julie had, too. He just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it to her yet.

  The second upside was that Greg Rice had told him that, thanks to his and Hinkle’s work, the biggest organized-crime network in the Southeast had been cracked wide open. They could have their careers in police work back, if they wanted them—Mac was going to have to think about that; the private investigator thing had proven interesting, if nothing else—as well as apologies all around. In addition, no charges would be filed because he had beaten the bejesus out of two of the city’s finest. Fortunately for him, Dorsey and Nichols were, indeed, dirty cops, and for that allowances would be made.