by Lowe, Shelia
Chapter 29
Annabelle stood silent and sullen between them as they rode the Inclinator to the lobby. Bert kept one hand under his Windbreaker, holding the gun. There was no doubt in Claudia’s mind that he was desperate enough to follow through on his implied threat.
Outside, the early-afternoon sun threw shadows across the pavement as they walked to the parking lot, to the casual observer, an all-American family on vacation. Except that none of them was smiling.
Walking beside him, Claudia spoke quietly. “Think, Bert. Her father will come after you. I guarantee it. You know as well as I do that he’s connected.”
“He wouldn’t care,” Annabelle broke in. “It doesn’t matter to him if I’m dead or alive. He already killed my mother.”
Claudia squeezed her hand. “Hush, he’s doing everything he can to find you.” She touched Bert’s sleeve. “You can let us go. You can walk away, go anywhere in the world right now. I won’t call anyone until tomorrow. I promise. That should give you enough time.”
For a moment his face went still and she could see that he was actually considering her offer. Then he laughed without humor. “Too bad it’s not that easy.”
When they reached the Escalade, Bert pointed the alarm key at the SUV and turned to Claudia. “You drive. Annabelle in the passenger seat up front.”
Claudia held her hand out for the key, but he shook his head. “Keyless ignition. I’ll start the engine. You just drive.”
After watching Claudia and Annabelle climb in, Bert heaved his bulk into the back. Leaning forward, he wrapped his left arm around the driver’s seat. “Don’t forget I’ve got my buddy here.”
“Like I could forget someone’s got a gun stuck in my side,” Claudia retorted, wondering if she was making a big mistake, following his orders. Maybe they would stand a better chance if they refused to go with him.
Bert leaned close to her ear. “If you try anything stupid, I’ll shoot Annabelle,” he said quietly.
She flicked a glance at him through the rearview mirror. His desperate face made her believe he would follow through on his threat. That settled it.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He exhaled loudly and pointed the key fob. The engine turned over. “Just start driving. I need to think about this.”
Claudia took her time to get settled behind the wheel and adjust the seat forward, getting a feel for the cockpit controls. Big and fancy, but it wasn’t a 747. It would be like driving a bus compared to the Jag, but she could do it. Her eyes lit on the navigation system screen, and she was considering how she might use it to her advantage when Bert said, “Annabelle, turn off the GPS.”
Annabelle twisted in the bucket seat to face him. “Fuck you. I’m not doing anything you say.”
Bert narrowed his eyes. “You want Claudia to get hurt?”
“Who’s gonna drive if you hurt her?”
He leaned between the seats and backhanded her across the face. “Shut your smart mouth and turn off the goddamn GPS like I told you to.”
Annabelle recoiled with a gasp. Her hand flew to her cheek. “You asshole!”
He raised his hand again, threatening. “Don’t you touch her again!” Claudia shouted. “Or you can shoot me right here in the parking lot, and where’s that gonna get you? Now leave her the hell alone!”
Bert’s head swiveled from one to the other, like watching a tennis match. “Stop it, both of you!” He sounded frantic. “Claudia, drive out of the lot and turn left. Now!”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy, Bert. This is scary for all of us.”
“Yeah, chill out,” Annabelle said with an echo of her old tartness, glowering as she followed his order to power off the GPS system.
Claudia shifted into reverse and eased her foot onto the accelerator, her mind buzzing in a dozen directions. Bert had murdered Paige because of his jealousy over Cruz, but Cruz was the one who was under arrest for the murder. What did that mean for their chances of a rescue?
“Take the I-15 North,” Bert ordered suddenly as they passed a highway sign.
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just drive.” He leaned down, keeping his eyes toward the front, and felt around under the driver’s seat. Claudia heard the crackle of a paper bag and in the rearview mirror saw that he was holding a liquor bottle. A moment later she caught a whiff of something that made her think of liquid salt—tequila.
She drove up the ramp onto the I-15 North, noticing from the corner of her eye that Annabelle was looking out the passenger window, scanning the cars as they zipped by.
“Face front, Annabelle,” Bert ordered, noticing, too. “Don’t even think about signaling for help.”
Annabelle flopped back against her seat with a muttered, “Fuck you.”
“Take it easy, Bert,” Claudia said. “How many people do you think would pay attention, anyway?”
Her disgust for him bubbled up and spilled over onto herself. She had made it easy for him, led him to Annabelle as if she were a sacrificial lamb on the altar. She would never forgive herself for that. Assuming she survived to worry about it.
Maybe she could skid off the roadway and make him drop the gun, she considered in desperation, but abandoned the idea as too risky.
Soon after they entered the highway Bert instructed her to exit at Tropicana.
Annabelle pointed to four towers rising in the distance. They appeared to be taller than any of the hotels on the strip. “That’s where I was,” she said. “That’s where I escaped from.”
“You should have stayed put,” Bert said. “It would have been so much easier.”
She ignored him and spoke to Claudia. “I thought it was a hospital. They tied me up in one of those beds like they have in hospitals and kept it dark all the time.”
“What did you do to Henry?” Bert broke in. “How did you get away?”
Claudia snapped her head around. “Who’s Henry?”
“This old dude who was guarding me.”
“What did you do to him?” Bert repeated.
“I stuck him with the needle, like that lady did to me,” Annabelle answered, all defiance.
Claudia’s confusion was growing, and her headache made it worse. “What lady?”
“Some skanky bitch. She was s’posed to be a nurse.” She jerked her chin at Bert in the backseat, not deigning to say his name. “He said she was a nurse. She drugged me with an IV. It made me sleep all the time.”
“How did you get loose?” Bert demanded.
“The old dude messed up the needle and the stuff dripped on the bed. Last night when they left, I called you, Claudia. The old dude left his phone on the chair. When he came back and fell asleep I stuck him with the needle.” She turned and glared at Bert with loathing. “I hope he dies.”
“You’d better hope he doesn’t,” Bert said grimly.
Annabelle squeezed her eyes shut, but tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Why’d you have to do it?” she cried, a torrent of anguish and grief bursting out of her. “Why did you have to kill her?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Bert snapped. He was breathing heavily through his mouth and the sour smell of his fear saturated the cabin of the SUV.
Brusquely, he ordered Claudia to take the gated entrance to a subterranean parking garage and told her to use the key card to open the gate. Slowing to cross the tire shredders she glanced over at Annabelle, and noticed her complexion had turned a shade of green.
“Annabelle, are you okay?”
The girl hunched over in her seat, holding her stomach and moaning. “I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“Park by the elevator,” Bert ordered, grabbing the back of Claudia’s seat. “Hurry! I don’t want her puking in the car.”
“Damn you, Bert,” she snapped, parking the Escalade where he indicated. “You’ve kept her on nothing but IV for days? After what you’ve put her through, no wonder she’s sick. Deal with it.” Glancing in the rearview mirror she could se
e that his face was splotched red and damp with sweat. Now she wished he would have a heart attack. He deserved it, the murdering bastard.
Claudia told Annabelle to put her head between her knees and asked Bert if he kept any water in the vehicle. He came up with a plastic bottle of Penta and passed it between the seats.
“What are we doing here, Bert?” Claudia asked, as Annabelle twisted off the top and took a drink.
“We’re here to follow through on some travel arrangements I made for this young lady before she left us,” he said. The calculating look in his eyes frightened Claudia all over again.
“What travel arrangements? What are you talking about?”
Ignoring her question, Bert touched the girl’s shoulder. “You feeling better, Anna? Let’s go. Remember, I’ve got my eye on you.”
“She needs something to eat,” said Claudia.
“There’s food in the condo.”
“Too bad you didn’t give her any sooner.”
He threw her a dirty look and shut off the engine, then got out of the vehicle.
The garage was deserted. Claudia’s hopes of getting help from that source went into a free fall. There were security cameras, but by the time all the pieces got put together, she was certain it would be too late for her and Annabelle.
She jumped down from the SUV and went around to the passenger side where Bert was opening the door. Annabelle’s legs wobbled when she got out and Claudia put an arm around her waist, helping her to walk.
Bert also put his arm around Annabelle, who was too weak to protest, and led them to the elevator. There were no buttons to push, just a slot for the key card. Bert took the card from Claudia and slid it into the slot. The doors closed behind them and the elevator ascended rapidly, stopping at the thirty-fifth floor.
When the doors parted they stepped directly into the vestibule of a condo.
Bert walked Annabelle into the great room and parked her on a sofa. “Wait here,” he ordered. He veered off to the right, through the kitchen and along a hallway, calling out, “Henry—hey, Henry!”
It looked as though someone had only half moved in. The great room was partially furnished with a black leather sofa and an Eames lounge chair. On the back wall was a built-in black-and-granite wet bar. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city with a view that reached all the way to the distant mountains. High in the clear Nevada air the sky, empty of clouds, was the blue of eternity.
Claudia left Annabelle lying on the sofa and told her she was going to scrounge up some food. Adrenaline had kept the girl going for the past few hours, but she needed to eat if she was going to be strong enough to make it through whatever was coming next.
She found the kitchen. First things first: Check the drawers and countertops for sharp knives. It didn’t take long for her to conclude that Bert was not stupid enough to leave her unattended if there had been anything she could use as a weapon. Most of the drawers were empty. The cutlery was plastic picnic ware.
Shit!
Feeling beaten down, she checked the refrigerator. It might as well have been empty. It contained a Pizza Hut box with three dried up slices of sausage and mushroom, a couple of Chinese food cartons with contents that looked like something out of a slasher film, and a long out-of-date container of milk.
Claudia sniffed the milk carton and gagged on the sour odor. She emptied the spoiled milk into the sink and dumped the carton into the trash compactor. There was a hanging metal basket with a bunch of overripe bananas, an orange, and a couple of limes, and she resigned herself to the fact that the pickings were slim.
She peeled a banana and the orange and wrapped them in a paper towel, then returned to the great room.
While Annabelle devoured the fruit, Claudia leaned close to her, lowering her voice a whisper. “Don’t let on when you’re feeling better. If he thinks you’re still sick . . .”
“Move away from her, Claudia.” Bert spoke from behind. When she turned around, he had the gun pointed at her. She didn’t know firearms, but to her it looked similar to what Jovanic carried—a nine millimeter. The deadly black hole was pointed directly at her heart. She wondered dismally whether he was a good shot.
Then her mouth dropped open in shock. “You!”
Shuffling along behind Bert was an old man she had seen before. The neighbor with the hedge trimmers from the house next door to where Paige’s body had lain.
He glowered at her. “Trouble-makin’ bitch. I shoulda taken care o’ you back at the house.” Then he caught sight of Annabelle, and his features screwed into hatred. “And you, ya little—”
Annabelle stuck her chin out defiantly as he went for her, his body language promising violence. Bert put out a restraining hand and grabbed the old man.
“Leave it be, Henry. There’s no time.” He stepped in front of him and crossed over to Annabelle, demanding that she return the cell phone she had stolen from Henry.
She took it from her pocket and flung it in the direction of his head.
“Piece of shit doesn’t even work,” she said with contempt.
Bert reached out his hand and caught the phone before it hit him. “You don’t have to use that kind of language,” he said in a stern voice, as he might have had they been at the Sorensen Academy.
“Under the circumstances, I hardly think her language matters,” said Claudia, watching him plug the phone into a charger on the bar. “And you don’t deserve the courtesy.”
“What do you hear from Lainie?” Bert asked Henry.
“You’re all in this together?” Claudia said, figuring Lainie must have been the nurse Annabelle had mentioned.
“She oughtta be hittin’ the state line pretty soon,” Henry said, ignoring her. “You hear anything from her yet?”
“She called earlier,” Bert replied. “But I don’t want anything discussed on a cell phone. You never know who might be listening.”
As if on cue, the 007 James Bond theme sounded. Claudia had assigned it to Jovanic’s phone number as a joke. All eyes turned to the phone clipped to her belt.
“My boyfriend. He knows I’m expecting this call,” she lied, struggling to keep the hope out of her voice. “If I don’t answer it, he’ll know something’s wrong.”
“Okay, answer it,” Bert said. “But you’d better watch what you say.”
I certainly will, she thought, turning her back on him. She took a deep breath in an effort to quell the fear she was feeling and flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby,” Jovanic said. “I’m at your place. Where are you?”
The sound of his voice made her want to cry. How could she tell him how much she needed him, with Bert’s gun pointed at her back?
“I—I—er, I had to go out of town suddenly.”
“Out of town?”
“I’m with Annabelle. She’s—” She broke off as the jab of the gun stopped her from going down that path. In a flash of memory, she recalled that she had printed a copy of her Southwest Airlines itinerary to Las Vegas. It was on her desk from booking that morning’s flight. “Hey, uh, Joey, I, uh, there’s a . . . er, phone message for you on my desk.”
“Joey? What’s going on, Claudia? Who would call me at your number?”
“Uh-huh.”
His detective’s ear, or maybe his lover’s ear, connected with the distress in her voice. “You can’t talk?”
“Boy, is that the truth.”
“Okay, I’m on my way upstairs. Are you in trouble?”
“Yeah. I . . .”
“Hang up,” Bert demanded in a loud whisper. “Hang up now.”
“Uh, honey, I have to go now . . .”
Annabelle jumped up and screamed, “We’re in Las Vegas!”
Henry reached over and slapped her hard across the face. Then he grabbed her by the hair, snapping her head backward. She fell back against the sofa with a cry as blood blossomed from her lip.
At the same instant, Bert snatched the cell phone out of Claudia’s hand an
d ended the call. In a rush of panic, she watched him hurl it to the floor and grind her only connection to the outside world into a useless piece of trash.
All at once, the smoldering fear and anger that Claudia had been holding in exploded into a solid ball of fury. She didn’t spare a thought for the fact that he was holding a gun, nor that the old man, his ally, was a few feet away. Her hand clenched into a fist and slammed overhand into Bert’s chest with all the force she could muster.
“You goddamn bastard!” she cried, breathless with anger as she struck him over and over. He was a large target and taller than Claudia by several inches. The gun went thudding to the floor while Bert just stood there, looking stunned, doing nothing to stop her blows.
All at once, Henry, Annabelle, and Bert burst into action, the three of them scrambling for the weapon.
Claudia turned away, shaking all over. There was yelling behind her, then something heavy struck the back of her head and she pitched forward, knees sagging. Her vision went dark as she hit the floor.
Chapter 30
The first thing Claudia became aware of as she regained consciousness was the sound of a kitten mewing near her ear. No, that wasn’t it. Someone was crying. Who . . . ?
“Claudia—Claudia,” Annabelle sobbed, shaking her by the shoulders, patting her face. “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Wake up. Please, wake up!”
Groaning, Claudia slowly opened her eyes, squinting against the throbbing at the base of her skull. She was facedown on beige carpeting that smelled new. Its fibers tickled her cheek and made it itch. Her head felt too heavy to lift. She put her hand up and tentatively probed the back of her head. Her fingertips met an egg-size lump. It felt as if the moorings of her brain had come loose, but her fingers came away clean; the skin wasn’t broken.
She pushed herself onto her back with effort, flinching as her head made contact with the floor. “I’m not dead . . . yet . . .I think,” she gasped. Staring up at the vaulted ceiling, she noticed that everything seemed fuzzy and slightly off-kilter. Concussion, she decided, making an attempt to get her bearings.
