by Sandra Cox
“Dammit,” he muttered. He got out of the car and popped the hood.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, his hair falling over his eyes. He combed it back. “Nothing that I can see. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with it. But something is not right. This car is in cherry condition. I just had it checked out two weeks ago. That damn woman is going to rue the day she messed with my car.” He slammed down the hood. “Let’s get in the house.”
“Adam.” She kept her voice calm.
“What?” His gaze had returned to the engine as if willing whatever was wrong to show itself.
“Adam,” she repeated. This time he looked up. “Get in the car.”
He raised an eyebrow, staring at her, then a slow grin spread across his face and he got in.
She stared at the ignition, concentrating. Straight-armed, she pointed at the key. Power surged through her like electricity, down her arm and into the ignition.
The car purred like a kitten.
“I think I’m in love. If singing doesn’t work out, you can always get a job as an ace mechanic.” He reached over, cupped the back of her head and kissed her briefly and hard then let her go. ”Let’s get out of here.”
He reached up and hit the garage remote clipped on the visor but the door didn’t budge. He hit it again. “Goddamn it.” He swore viciously. “That bitch is toying with us. Put your head down and keep that amulet over your head.” He jumped out of the car and ran for the garage door. Bending down, he gave a heave and pushed it up manually, the door groaning a little as it glided on its casters.
He ran back to the car, jumped in, threw it in reverse and punched the pedal. The car went screaming out of the garage. He stomped on the brake, throwing them both forward against their seat belts then hit the gas. The ’Vette went fishtailing down the drive.
Sabina cast one last look in the direction of the yacht. “Adam it’s gone.” Fear warred with the need to do battle inside her, causing her adrenaline to race and her muscles to tense.
“What?” He risked a quick glance at her then turned his attention to the winding lane he was pelting down.
“The boat is gone.”
“Shit. What’s that bitch up to?”
They raced down the mountain at a perilous pace. The trees whizzed by as they traveled a narrow two-lane road. A noise like a distant train grew, gaining in volume, grating against Sabina’s nerves like chalk on a board. What was it?
She looked to her left and saw it. “Oh my gods. Hit the brakes, Adam!”
But he’d already seen the rocks and boulders tumbling down on the road ahead. His brakes screamed and the hot smell of burning rubber filled the car.
After that everything happened in slow motion. She raised her arm to stop the large boulder heading at a runaway pace directly toward the car. She could hardly see for the small pebbles and dirt. With a wild wave of her arm, she halted stones in mid-fall. Sabina stumbled out of the car so she could see to aim the amulet. Boulders and rocks were everywhere.
“Sabina,” Adam called jumping out of the car and racing toward her.
She saw a rock the size of an aerobic workout ball hurling toward him and shot her arm out. It splintered in a thousand pieces.
“Merda!” Another hurtled straight toward her. She made no move to save herself. Her arm trembling, she held it straight out in Adam’s direction to cover him from the falling rocks as he raced toward her, his feet slipping in the gravel. In that moment, she knew she loved him.
Pain engulfed her as the large rocks pummeled her. Above the roar of the rockslide she heard the agony in his voice as he called her name. He does love me, was her last conscious thought.
* * * * *
“Clear away the rubble,” Victoria directed the two burly men with her.
A thin young man dressed in black stood beside her, panting with excitement. “You did it, Victoria.”
“Did you doubt it?”
“Not for a minute,” he said loyally.
“It always pays to have a backup plan.” She walked over and looked at Adam who lay motionless on the ground. Bending down she ran her hands the length of his body. He groaned and shifted away but didn’t regain consciousness. She turned to the young man beside her. “Go to the car and get the rope, Binnie.”
“Why,” the man asked suspiciously.
“That’s really none of your business,” she responded coldly.
“How can you say that? Everything about you is my business,” he cried.
“Only as long as I choose to make it so. Now go to the car.”
His eyebrows came together like thunderbolts but he did as he was told. He scrambled up the mountain like a goat. They’d left the car parked on a back road several hundred feet up the mountain.
She ran her fingers lightly through Adam’s dusty hair. “If the gods hadn’t wanted me to have you they would have killed you.”
She waited impatiently then stood as Binnie came scrambling back over the rocks, breathing hard. The armpits of his shirt wet with sweat despite the chill in the air.
“Tie him up.”
“Why?”
“You dare question me? Tie him up then have Hans,” she pointed at one of the burly men removing rocks from Sabina, “carry him to the car.”
For one moment, it looked like the young man would argue. Frowning, he did as he’d been told.
Victoria walked over and looked at Sabina’s crushed body. “Get the rocks off her arm,” she directed feeling the light of eagerness shining out of her eyes. “Take them all off. We’ll see how the little songbird withstood the force of nature.”
The singer’s face was miraculously unscathed but her body was mangled. Victoria bent down, picked up her wrist and felt for a pulse. “Oh goodie, you’re alive. That means you’ll suffer, alone, without Adam or your amulet.” She jerked the amulet off Sabina’s arm and let the singer’s arm fall against the rubble.
She put it on her forearm then closed her eyes as ecstasy coursed through her. Smiling, she opened them and looked toward the sky, throwing her arms wide. “I’ve got it, Daddy. I’ve got it.”
She laughed at the men watching her uneasily. “Now let’s see if this works.” Victoria stretched out her arm, as she remembered Bella Tremaine doing at a previous encounter she’d had with the three women. The boulders rolled off the road and bounced down the mountainside.
She looked again at the men. All three were white as sheets. “I’m sorry to have to do this. You have been very loyal but I can’t have any witnesses to my power.”
“Please no,” one of the big men said. “We won’t say anything.”
“Of course you won’t.” She shot out her arm and the man went hurtling backward over the cliff, screaming all the way down.
“Please,” the other huge man begged, trembling. Victoria touched her lips with her long blood red nail considering. “You could be of use to me, yet.” She shot out her arm in his direction.
His eyes widened.
“Say something.”
He opened his mouth and grabbed his throat. No sound came out.
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” She laughed hysterically, the sound bouncing off the mountains and echoing like a cougar’s scream. Then with a dismissive wave she pointed at Adam. “Take him to the car. And don’t try to run away. Because when I find you, you’ll lose more than your voice.”
He bobbed his head up and down, still clutching his throat the whites of his eyes showing.
She waved her arm dismissively. “Binnie, go with him.”
The two men dragged Adam to the car hidden in the trees.
She looked down at the unconscious form of Sabina. “Just one last thing to do.” She tapped her finger against her cheekbone. “Hmm. Now who shall it be the Southern bitch—if she’s still alive—or the Northern witch.” She giggled at her humor. “The bitch I think.”
She pulled her cell out of tight fitting black jeans and dialed.
Bella answer
ed her phone. “Hello.”
“Oh, dear and here I thought you’d be dead. Remember me?” Victoria breathed.
There was silence for a moment on the line before Bella answered. “Well shoot, sugar, I was sure hoping you’d met with an accident…a fatal one.”
Victoria burst into fresh peals of laughter. “Funny you should mention accident. I haven’t but your friend the songbird has.”
Bella’s quick exhale of breath hissed through the phone line.
“She’s alive, barely but I don’t expect her to be by the time you find her. Oh and rest assured, you will be next.”
Chapter Ten
Bella dropped the phone from her nerveless fingers. She fought back the nausea trying to crawl up her throat as the white walls of the hotel loomed and receded then loomed again. I will not faint. I will not faint. She repeated it like a mantra as waves of heat washed over her replaced by icy cold.
“Bella, what’s wrong?” Maureen’s voice came from a great distance.
She forced her neck to turn and stared at her friend unable to speak.
Maureen reached over and shook her. “Don’t make me slap you,” she warned.
“Good one,” Bella replied. Gales of laughter erupted out of her and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t stop.
Maureen let go of her, hurried away and came back a moment later with a glass of water. Bella held up her hands to ward her off but couldn’t stop laughing.
A determined expression on her beautiful features, Maureen launched the water. It arced through the air like wet crystals and landed with a glorious whoosh in Bella’s face. Bella sputtered the laughter catching in her throat. She swallowed it down and ran a hand over her face.
“I’m sorry, Bella but I couldn’t hit you.” Maureen touched her arm. “What’s wrong? Who was on the phone?”
Bella’s legs folded. She collapsed on the couch behind her. “Victoria Price.”
“What!” Bella looked up at her friend. Maureen’s honeyed complexion blanched, her expression stricken. Bella straightened her spine, despising herself for falling apart. She shot up from the couch and ran to the bedroom and grabbed her cell out of her purse and dialed Sabina’s number. All she got was a recording.
“Bella?” Maureen stood in the doorway watching her.
Bella shook her head and dialed Adam’s number. It was answered promptly by Victoria. “Something I can help you with, Ms. Tremaine? Oh excuse me. It’s McHenry now isn’t it? How is that tall drink of water you married?”
Bella took a deep breath, drawing air into her belly then let it out. “Let me talk to Adam.”
“No can do. You see he’s all tied up.” Victoria’s crazy laughter erupted through the lines.
“Where is Sabina?” she asked through clenched teeth, her hand tightening painfully on the phone.
“Under a pile of rock. There was a little rockslide on the mountain.”
Bella began to tremble. Gods was this maniac telling her the truth?
“But being the kind soul that I am, I had my men dig her out. Not that it’s going to matter, she’s mangled. And by now probably dead.”
Bella forced herself to remain calm. She pried open her rigid jaws. “And where was this little rockslide?”
“Now, now, how many clues do you want? And, Ms. Tremaine-McHenry, you had better have eyes in the back of your head,” Victoria said her voice sharpening to a razor edge, “because you’re next. You’re awfully hard to kill but I swear you’re going to die.”
The phone clicked off. Bella pulled it away from her ear and stood staring at it, her chest heaving as she tried to breath. She bit her lips together. “Think, think, Bella.” A haze seemed to have penetrated her brain. She touched her amulet and snapped back to reality. “I-40. It’s got to be off I-40. Adam said his uncle’s cabin, where he was staying, isn’t far from Asheville.”
“Bella, what’s happened?” Maureen was also fingering the amethyst on her amulet, seeking its serenity and calm.
Bella took a deep breath, lifted her chin and said as calmly as she could, “If Victoria is to be believed and I’m very much afraid she is, there’s been a landslide and Sabina is buried underneath it.”
“Oh my gods.” Maureen pressed hard against her amulet her eyes widening. She straightened, looked at Bella and said her voice calm, “You think it happened on I-40?”
Bella looked at Maureen and knew fear and hysteria lurked just beneath the calming influence of Maureen’s amulet.
“Yes. Or one of those narrow little roads off of it. ” She grabbed her keys off the coffee table. “Let’s go.”
They rushed through the hotel and into the parking garage. Climbing into the Lamborghini, Bella barely gave Maureen time to shut her door before she revved the engine and zoomed out of the garage cutting off a delivery truck. The driver honked loudly as she squeaked by him merging into traffic.
She noticed Maureen kept her hand firmly on her amulet as Bella zoomed in and out of traffic, cutting off a car here, zipping in front of a truck there, always weaving, looking for the fastest lane.
She merged on to 321 and her foot trod on the pedal. The needle flew to a hundred and kept climbing as she whizzed by traffic, passing everything in sight.
“Tell me exactly what Victoria said,” Maureen commanded, her hand still wrapped around her amulet.
“She said Sabina was buried under a pile of rock. That she had her men dig her out. That Sabina was alive but mangled.” Bella never took her eyes off the road, which flew by in a gray blur. Her hands clasped around the white leather casing on the steering wheel were so rigid she doubted she could unclasp them if she wanted to. I’m so tense turning the wheel is difficult.
“If it’s not on I-40 do we backtrack to where Adam was staying? Do you know how to get there?”
“Yes. And the more I think about it, the chances are it’s on one of the back roads. We take I-240 then 53-B then make two lefts.” Bella swerved around a semi.
Up ahead two cars drove side by side. She hit her horn, flashed her lights and kept coming.
Maureen grabbed the dash. “Good gods, Bella.”
She was inches from the back bumper when the driver shot forward and jerked his car into the right lane barely missing the car next to him.
“He just gave us the finger. At least, I think he did,” Maureen amended. “At the speed we are traveling the drivers are a bit blurred.”
A red light flashed and a siren sounded as they flew around a state trooper.
“Oh dear.” Maureen looked back at the squad car.
“I don’t have time to stop,” Bella said in a calm voice and pressed down on the pedal.
The trooper was soon lost from view.
“I hope he didn’t get your license.”
“If he did we’ll just deal with it later.” The words were barely out of Bella’s mouth when another flashing red light came off an exit ramp onto the highway.
“Shit,” Bella said as they flew past it. “Call Tony Cardoza. Surely, he knows someone in North Carolina who could call off the troopers. Or better yet, call Johnny Morelly.”
“What!”
“I’m betting that in spite of Adam’s assurances that he’s legit Johnny’s got some cops on the payroll.”
“Do you have his number?”
“Of course.” She flashed Maureen a grin.
“Watch the road for the gods’ sakes,” Maureen yelled, panicked as they swerved into the right lane then back into their own.
“My cell’s in my purse. It’s on speed dial. You just never know when it will come in handy.”
“What do I tell him?”
“That there’s been trouble and Adam appears to be smack dab in the middle of it and can he call off the state troopers.”
Maureen picked up Bella’s tiny black clasp purse with a cat sporting a diamond necklace on it. Diverted she asked, “Are these real diamonds?”
“Yes, shug, now please make that call. I can see three state t
roopers a ways back.”
Maureen dug out the phone and hit speed dial then grimaced. “Ah, Mr. Morelly. This is Maureen Wolfe. Bella Tremaine asked me to call you. Yes, yes, she’s fine but we have a small problem that we need some help with. We got a call from Victoria Price saying that Sabina Comti was buried in a landslide. Adam had taken her to your cabin in the mountains. I think Victoria may have kidnapped him.” Maureen grimaced again. “Yes, sir. We take full responsibility. But in the meantime can you make a phone call. We’ve got state troopers on our ass. We’re driving pretty fast and collecting quite an entourage. We’re on I-40.
“The license plate? PUSSPUSS.”
Maureen’s face turned scarlet. “Yes, I know how that sounds. It’s the name of her cat. Oh you’ve met the cat.” For a brief minute Maureen grinned.
The smile left her face and she ran a shaky hand over her forehead. “Yes, sir. I’ll remember, sir.”
She clicked the phone shut took a deep breath and twisted in her seat toward Bella. “The old adage about killing the messenger is alive and well. If anything happens to Adam our bodies will be found in a flattened car in a metal foundry.”
“Don’t worry about it, shug. We’ll get Adam back safe and sound, right after we get Sabina.”
She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh dear there’s four now.” A whirring sound made her look up. “A helicopter? That’s how they are spending taxpayers’ money now, on high-speed car chases?” She shook her head. “I hope Johnny makes that call quickly before we end up on the five o’clock news. What time is it by the way?”
“Five after twelve.”
The helicopter hovered and a voice spoke through a bullhorn, “Pull over now.”
“Crap.” Maureen chewed on her fingernail.
“Got that right, shug.”
Another police car came barreling off an exit ramp in front of her and slowed. Bella swung into the passing lane and flew by him.
“That makes five,” Maureen said, her back pressed against the seat, her shoulders rigid.
“I can count, shug,” Bella said between clenched teeth. “Our exit is only ten miles further.”
“Great. We should be there in about two minutes.” Maureen closed her eyes and moved her lips as if praying.
