Finders Keepers

by Shirl Henke

  Matt wondered how long he had been out. Judging from the stiffness in his joints, he guessed hours. His bladder suddenly joined the circuit overload and informed him that he needed to take a serious whiz.

  Sam knew he was achy and bruised, not to mention past due for using the bathroom. “You’d better cooperate and climb out of the van like a good boy or I’ll have to apply more persuasion. I know the drug’s worn off. If you want to be comfortable and get rid of the restraints, you have to cooperate. Then I’ll explain everything. Oh, and you can use the convenience, too,” she added as an afterthought.

  Bitch. What choice did he have?

  As if reading his mind, she continued, “Walk for me or I’ll leave you wrapped up in the van while I get a good night’s rest in the motel room.”

  His bladder made the decision for him. He sat forward and gingerly slid from the van to the ground with her guiding him. Maybe she didn’t intend to kill him or turn him over to Renkov. Damn, but he’d never felt so helpless in his life, bound and gagged in pitch darkness. Not to mention the wretched drug hangover enhanced by her skillful application of torture to his jaw. He let her guide him across a sidewalk toward whatever fate she had in store for him.

  Sam checked the parking lot of the Shady Acres Motel, a small sleazy place situated in a nothing burg in southern Utah. No one watched as she led her “patient” toward the door to the dingy room. The desk clerk had barely taken his eyes off a Wheel of Fortune rerun as he processed her credit card and handed her a room key. She was an R.N. transporting a burn patient to a special rehab facility in Salt Lake. Not half as interesting as Vanna White.

  Desert heat seared them as they walked to the room. Sam could tell by his muffled curses that his feet burned through the thin soles of the slippers. He was uncomfortable but there was nothing she could do except hurry him inside. “Here, lean against the wall while I unlock the door,” she commanded.

  A blessedly cool blast of air hit her, never mind that it was dank and reeked of old cigarettes. So much for a nonsmoking room. “Here, let me guide you to the bed,” she said to Granger, who shuffled along, forced to trust her.

  He was the biggest man she’d ever dealt with and, frankly, he made her nervous for more than one reason. The skinny teenagers with shaven heads and body piercings she usually picked up were a piece of cake, mostly because they were usually too high on narcotics or theology to give her much trouble. Even if they tried, hey, there was a reason for those nose rings farmers put on bulls.

  But Matt Granger was another story altogether. He was tall, lean and muscular. Not a thing had been folded, spindled or mutilated on this bod. She’d bet he went two-twenty and all of it was solid muscle. Her old partner Will “Pat” Patowski had asked her to put this guy on ice, but he never warned her she’d have to watch her libido while she worked. She’d deliver Granger safely to Boston or Pat would have her hide. Besides, the fee was too good to screw this up.

  She removed the stun gun from her fanny pack and placed it on the bed opposite Matt’s. Then she began unwinding the wrapping from his head, followed by the blindfold. He blinked several times and she noticed that his eyes were a gorgeous shade of golden brown. Kinda went with the black curly hair and darkly tanned skin.

  Get over it, Ballanger. This is business. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said without further preamble. The tape on his mouth would come off after she’d finished her spiel. Then he could argue. The head cases always did. She was sure this guy would be considerably more convincing. “Your aunt Claudia Witherspoon hired me to retrieve you from the cult you joined in San Diego. Here’s my card.”

  He blinked, trying to get his eyes accustomed to the light in the scrofulous motel room which contained two saggy beds. They were seated on them facing each other. He was still trussed up and couldn’t talk. Might as well read the damn card she was shoving in his face. It said Samantha Ballanger, Retrieval Specialist. How the hell had this dame hooked up with his aunt Claudia? She sounded south Boston while his aunt was a Brahmin from old and serious money. He didn’t like the way this whole mess smelled. Then she started talking again, so he paid attention.

  “I’m taking you back to your aunt. She’s really concerned about your living in a Southern California commune and has the best psychiatric specialists waiting to treat you once you’re safely home. As you can see—” she gestured to the bundle of gauze lying on the bed beside him, then pointed to the robe and slippers she’d dressed him in “—you’re a burn patient and I’m your nurse. I’m transporting you to a rehab facility. At least, that’s what anyone I tell will believe.

  “One way or the other, we’re driving straight through to Boston. I can get you there the easy way or the hard way. It’s all up to you. I’ll make you as comfortable as possible, but if you try any funny stuff, I’ll have to use this.” She picked up the stun gun from the bed and held it to his thigh. “Sorry about this, but I’ve found that one quick object lesson is worth a thousand warnings.”

  With that she gave the tiniest flick of the trigger mechanism and an incredibly sharp burst of what seemed like living flame shot up and down his leg. He nearly tore the tape loose cursing as she calmly replaced the weapon on the bed beside her.

  “Like I said, sorry. But understand, that little jolt was only a love tap. If you try to jump me, I’ll give you a shot that’ll make you think you French-kissed a wall socket.”

  This broad’s the one who needs “the best psychiatric specialists” in Boston! He glared at her.

  Sam met his eyes. Had he bought her story? He knew he wasn’t a head case living in a commune, but would he believe that she thought so? It would sure make it easier if he did. “Okay, now let me help you out of the jacket and make you comfortable. Then you can talk.”

  When he looked down at the nylon wrapping holding his arms immobilized across his chest, she said, “Yeah, it’s a straitjacket. Custom made for me by an outfit in St. Louis called Leather and Lace. Scoot over to the end of the bed but stay sitting,” she instructed, slipping that vicious stun gun into her waistband.

  He complied, desperate to get the damn tape off so he could ask if she ever planned to let him use the bathroom. Or, maybe the whole shtick was a ruse and she just intended to talk until his bladder exploded. But, she moved behind him and pulled the robe from his shoulders with one hand, then unfastened the straps of the straitjacket.

  One of Matt’s first assignments at the Miami Herald had been to write an exposé on abuses in a Florida mental facility. As he shrugged off the restraint, he knew regular hospital jackets weighed a hell of a lot more than this lightweight job. Leather and Lace. An uneasy thought crossed his mind. He just knew she was into serious S & M when she dangled a pair of handcuffs over his shoulder. When she yanked the tape from his mouth, his lips burned like they’d been basted in jalapeño juice. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Click the cuff on your right wrist,” Sam said, stepping back and moving around to face him again. He was big and angry and his eyes burned into her like lasers. She felt more uncomfortable than she had on her first snatch—hell, even on her first arrest as a rookie cop.

  “You must be that S & M outfit’s best customer. Get a volume discount?” he asked, waiting to see what she’d do. Maybe this would be his chance. Then again, maybe not. He eyed the stun gun held unwaveringly in her hand.

  “I imagine you need to use the facilities,” she said dryly, enticing his cooperation by nodding to the open door of a mold-encrusted bathroom.

  His bladder did a couple of push-ups to remind him of how right-on that was. “Yes, I do,” he said grudgingly, clicking the cuff on his wrist.

  “Get up slowly and walk inside, sit on the stool and attach the other cuff around the pipe beneath the bathroom sink.”

  If he hadn’t had to go damn bad, he wouldn’t have been so cooperative. But he did so he was. She stood in the doorway, watching intently. When he had cuffed himself to the pipe, she continued to check out the small room until he fe
lt on the verge of gargling. “You gonna stand there and watch?”

  Sam finished her inspection of the facilities and regarded the irate man seated on the commode. He really thinks I’m some sort of sex pervert. The idea amused her. She couldn’t suppress a grin. “Water sports aren’t among my favorites, Mr. Granger.” She started to close the door.

  “Turn on the television,” he said.

  “Why should I?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t want you listening.”

  She stared curiously at him. What now? His face was the color of Spanish roof tile. “Listening for what?”

  “Bathroom…noises,” he muttered.

  She couldn’t stop the sudden burst of laugher. Bathroom noises. Jeez!

  Matt became enraged. “You damned pervert! Straitjackets! Handcuffs! Now bathroom bondage.”

  She held up her hands. The guy was serious. Sam didn’t mean to humiliate him any more than essential for security. “All right, all right, I’ll turn on the TV.” She shut the door with good intentions, but then was unable to believe she was saying, “I could play one of my CDs instead—the Chamber Pot Concerto in PP Minor.” She could hear him curse as she turned on the television, then flopped onto the bed and muffled her laughter with a pillow.

  In the bathroom Matt thanked God for small favors. At least she wasn’t a nutcase looking for some cheap motel thrills. As he attended to the pressing business at hand—awkward as hell for a guy forced to do it sitting down—he considered his situation. Was she on the level with this “retrieval” stuff? Could he convince her that she had the wrong guy?

  When she opened the bathroom door a quarter hour later, a pizza carton and two cans of Coke were sitting on the chipped particleboard table by the window. “Double cheese, pepperoni. Okay with you?” she asked, tossing the key to him so he could unlock the cuff from the drainpipe.

  Matt sniffed the heavenly aroma of greasy spice and his stomach gave a growl of gratitude. “I’m happy starving your prisoners into submission isn’t your M.O.”

  “You’re aren’t my prisoner, Mr. Granger. Now toss me back the key and take a seat.”

  He eyed the stun gun and held up the dangling handcuff. “Coulda fooled me.” He sat on a rickety orange plastic chair and reached for a slice of gooey pizza.

  “Eh, eh, eh,” she scolded. “First click the cuff to your chair leg.”

  Scowling, he obeyed, then used his left hand to dig into the food. “Sure, I forgot. The handcuffs will keep me from falling off my chair and hurting myself. I’m a patient, not a prisoner. Say, can we talk about that?” he asked around a mouthful of pepperoni.

  “You talk. I’m gonna eat,” she replied, devouring the first food she’d had in well over twelve hours.

  “You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I came to San Diego to research a human interest story. About women hiding from abusive husbands, mothers hiding their kids from fathers trying to kidnap them. That sort of thing. I haven’t joined a commune.” He wasn’t about to mention Renkov and the Russian mob, the real story he was working on.

  “That’s not the picture your aunt Claudia gave me.”

  “Look, my aunt has a photographic memory—but no film. She’s the one who needs a shrink, not me.”

  “I’ll let the two of you work that out with your doctors.”

  “Call the Herald news desk and ask for—”

  “Thought you said you were doing a human interest piece. The story you described is a feature, not news,” she said, wiping her mouth.

  “You have a dual major in jujitsu and journalism?” he asked, sinking his teeth into a slab of pizza and imagining it was Aunt Claudia’s jugular.

  She ignored his outburst. “Look, I’ve heard it all before. Everyone has a reason why I should let them go. Some of them are pretty good.”

  He took a deep breath, then said in his most intimidating tone, “I could sue the socks off you once we get to Boston. Even press criminal charges for kidnapping.”

  Sam remained undaunted. She tossed the paper napkin into the pizza carton, then walked over to her bag and removed a sheath of papers. “Believe me, I checked out your aunt’s story and background quite thoroughly before I took the job. I always do. Read these.” She handed him the papers.

  Matt quickly skimmed down the pages, then crumpled them in outrage. “She swore out a bench warrant on me for stealing Uncle Harvey’s engraved Rolex!”

  Sam just looked at the expensive gold watch on his wrist, saying nothing.

  “For your information, my great-uncle gave me this watch personally while his sister Claudia stood there beaming. It was a college graduation present, for chrissakes!”

  “Something else to settle with your aunt when we get back to Boston. She claims it’s a family heirloom and you had no right to take it.”

  “This is false arrest. I’ll sue you! Hell, I’ll still sue her!”

  “Lots of my retrievals threaten to sue me or have me arrested for kidnapping. Cult members—”

  “Samaritan Haven is not a cult,” he said through gritted teeth. “It isn’t even a commune—at least, not the sort you yank brainwashed kids from. It’s really more of a hiding place where people drop out of sight.” Matt leaned forward on the table and combed his fingers through his hair in utter frustration. “I only moved into the place to check out a lead.”

  He hesitated. How much should he reveal? He couldn’t endanger his source. That might get her and a number of other innocent people killed. Then again, if Samantha Ballanger had been hired by the Russian Mafia, she already knew that her targets were hiding in the complex. Finding them wouldn’t be difficult. He reconsidered. No, if that were true, he’d already be dead. He decided to take a risk.

  “You ever heard of Mikhail Renkov?”

  Sam nodded carefully. “The KGB guy who defected to the West in the last days of the Cold War? A big feather in the CIA’s hat, as I recall. Now he’s some sort of import-export millionaire, isn’t he?” Play dumb, Ballanger.

  He nodded approvingly. “You read the newspapers. What they haven’t said, yet, is that he hasn’t exactly broken all his ties to Mother Russia. He’s up to his eyeballs in all sorts of illegal stuff—playing footsie with the Russian mob, even dealing with Colombian drug cartels—and I bet he has some pals inside the Company or even in State who’re turning a blind eye.”

  “Hang on, Mel,” she interrupted, putting a hand up in dismissal. “Conspiracy Theory was a great movie—”

  “And the nutcase Gibson played was right in the end, wasn’t he? Just let me finish. Remember reading about Renkov’s son buying the farm last month?”

  “Alexi, the golf pro? Yeah, he was killed in a car bombing. Cops suspect the wife did it—to keep him from divorcing her and running off with his starlet bimbo of the month. Mrs. Renkov dropped out of sight and they’re looking for her.”

  “Yeah, the car bomb was her final project to get her electrical engineering degree. Come on, a woman car-bomber? Tess Renkov didn’t kill her husband.”

  Sam shrugged. In her checkered career she’d been a cop, paramedic and even moonlighted running down bail jumpers. What he said about the Renkov case could be true. All Pat had told her was that Granger was getting too close to a joint PD-FBI investigation of Mikhail Renkov and they wanted the reporter out of their hair.

  “Look, if a bad actor like old Mikhail thought you’d killed his only son, would you stick around and chat?” he argued doggedly. “I think his golden boy was killed by daddy’s enemies. What we have here is a turf war with billions in Eastern Bloc cash at stake.”

  “Don’t forget the drug cartels. They have lots of dough, too. But they’re not paying me. Aunt Claudia is. Maybe you can convince her about all this—after I collect my fee.” She shoved the key to the cuffs across the table so he could free his right arm from the chair.

  “A one-track mind,” he said with a sigh of resignation. Convincing this dame was as likely as riding a zebra.

&
nbsp; Sam watched him unlock the cuff, then took back the key and motioned him to sit on the bed. She knew he was getting tired of taking orders, but he was too sharp to try and jump her—at least just yet. He did as she asked resentfully, then watched as she smoothed out the legal papers he’d crumpled and replaced them in the bag she’d brought from the van.

  Stubborn as a stump in hard clay but one fine-looking woman, he thought. Under different circumstances… Forget it, Granger. Remember how that stun gun smarts. Then again, if he could soften her up…so to speak. What the hell, worth a try. It wasn’t as if she was a dog or anything close. In fact, she was a looker. He’d only be doing what came naturally. And so would she, if her earlier reactions to him had meant anything. Usually he read women pretty well.

  Sam approached him, holding a set of pajamas she’d taken from the bag. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as she said, “Strip and put these on.”

  He cocked his head and grinned, tsking. “With you watching, Ms. Ballanger? You adding voyeurism to bondage?”

  “I’m a trained medical professional,” she said coolly. A little bit too coolly. Her indifference to the visions of Matt Granger’s naked body was pure bravado. Sam tightened her grip on the weapon as she tossed the pj’s at him. She was finding that pimply kids spaced out on cosmic visions were a lot easier to handle than one smart-mouthed newsman with a body to die for.

  He caught the pajamas deftly, then extended the upper garment back to her. “I’ve always been a bottoms guy myself. Want the top?”

  She could feel his eyes on her suddenly hardened nipples as surely as if he had X-ray vision. “No thanks. Never liked The Pajama Game. Just put on both pieces,” she said with satisfaction when readily visible evidence of his reaction started to grow in his jeans.

  “Well, what the hell, Ms. Medical Professional, you like ‘The Bondage Game’ well enough. And apparently the Chippendales.”

  He gave her another of those infuriating grins and kicked off the slippers, then pulled his shirt over his head…very slowly. She could see every muscle flexing. Tossing it carelessly to the floor between the beds, he started to remove his jeans. She was pleased when he paid careful attention to unzipping his fly. It must have been uncomfortable as hell, she thought smugly, but when he dropped the jeans to his ankles and kicked them away, her mouth was dry. Other places on her body weren’t.