by Cindy Dees
She’d been tricked? Willa took a step away from the door.
“Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast, Willa.” The small black circle of a pistol barrel came into view, pointed directly at her. She stared in horror at the promise of death staring at her. “Get in the van. Now.”
Everyone knew never to get in a car with a criminal. It was infinitely smarter to get shot in a public place where medical help and police would be summoned rapidly than it was to allow oneself to be taken someplace isolated where the kidnapper could torture and kill at their leisure and there was no hope at all of rescue.
Thing was, Gabe didn’t love her. He was going to marry Melinda. This person could still kidnap and kill her students at some later date, and Willa firmly believed the threat. Her or the kids? She had nothing left to live for, and the children had their entire lives in front of them. It was a no-brainer.
“If I go with you, you have to give me your solemn promise that you’ll never hurt any of my students. That you’ll leave them completely alone. Promise?”
“Fine. Whatever. I promise.” The driver looked around outside nervously. “Now get in.”
She stepped off her bike, laid it down on the grass and slid into the passenger seat. The van pulled away from the curb.
Chapter 18
Gabe started when one of Willa’s security guards burst into Melinda’s room. One look at the man’s tense face, and Gabe dumped Melinda unceremoniously on the bed and strode toward the door, ignoring her squawk of outrage.
“What now?” he bit out as he and the guard headed out into the hall.
The guard broke into a run and Gabe’s alarm climbed. This guy panicked was not a good sign. As they raced for the exit, the guard reported in snatches, “She ran. Got a call in her room. Went pale. My guy was suspicious. Doctors came in just then and sent her for an emergency MRI. Guard figured she was sick. She went to the restroom, climbed out the window and disappeared. We need you to go to her house. See if anything’s out of place or missing. Some clue as to where she’s gone.”
“Why her house?” Gabe asked as he jumped in the passenger side of the guy’s black SUV.
The vehicle peeled out of the parking lot in an aggressive move that had him grabbing the armrest as the guard answered, “She was wearing a hospital gown. She needed clothes. If she’s running, she needs money. Women rarely flee without stuff—a change of clothing, makeup, a purse.”
Gabe nodded and didn’t further distract the grim man from concentrating on his driving. The SUV screeched to a halt in Willa’s driveway in about two minutes flat.
“Take the front,” the guard ordered as he tore around back.
Gabe leaped the front steps and pounded on the front door, shouting, “Willa! Let me in!”
Nothing. But a few seconds later, he heard the sound of shattering glass, and moments later the guard let him in the front door. “Not here,” the guy announced. “Hospital gown’s on the floor of her bedroom, so she was here.”
Gabe raced through the house looking for something, anything, that would tell him where Willa had gone. A quick circuit of the cottage brought him back to the living room in frantic frustration. The guard was talking fast into his cell phone. He identified himself as Cade McGrath, the team lead on the Merris job.
Gabe scanned the cozy room. A faint scent of gardenias drifted to him and nearly brought him to his knees. Where the hell was she? What made her run? Fear for her safety roared through him. As sure as he was standing here, something was terribly wrong with her. He felt it in his bones.
His gaze landed on the remote control that turned on her white-noise system. Had the bastards from that secret government program snatched her to silence her about their shenanigans? Icy terror flowed through his veins at the thought of Willa in the hands of cold-blooded killers. She’d been so afraid of them. They’d been tapping her phone, for God’s sake....
He leaped for Willa’s telephone, which lay on the coffee table beside the white-noise controller. He snapped at the guard, “If someone was bugging this phone, would they hear me talking into it if I didn’t dial a number?”
“Probably not,” McGrath answered, frowning. “It would be an automated recording system activated when a call came in or went out. The recordings would typically be reviewed later. If there’s a direct surveillance op running, there may be a couple of guys sitting in a vacant house across the street beside the recording device. In that case, they would listen to the calls in real time.”
Gabe punched in the first phone number he could think of—his apartment. He waited impatiently until his computer picked up. Then he spoke loudly and clearly, “I know you guys are bugging Willa’s phone. The senator has been kidnapped and her life is in danger. If it was not you guys who took her, I need you to pick up this line right now.”
He paused, but no one came on the line. He continued grimly, “If it was you guys who took her, I swear I’m going to blow your little program sky-high. By tonight, I’ll have you sons of bitches splashed all over the national news. Willa told me all about you, and I remember enough names and places of your operations and killings to make your lives a living hell—”
A male voice spoke abruptly in his ear. “Is this Mr. Dawson?”
“Yes, it is. Who is this?”
“We did not kidnap Senator Merris. What do I have to do to convince you not to reveal our existence? I assure you, it’s a matter of national security.”
“Whether or not you add to or take away from national security is a discussion for another time,” Gabe snapped. “What I need right now is for you to tell me if any calls have come in to this phone number in the past half hour.”
“One call, Mr. Dawson.”
“Do you have a recording of it?”
“We do.”
“I need to know who called Willa and exactly what was said.”
“The recording hasn’t been reviewed and transcribed, yet. I will have to pull up the actual recording. This will take a moment.”
Gabe waited impatiently and caught the thunderstruck look Cade McGrath was throwing him. He murmured at the guard, “Have you got weapons in your vehicle?”
“Of course.”
Gabe nodded, and the anonymous voice was back in his ear. “It’ll be quickest if I play the recording for you.”
Gabe put the receiver on speakerphone so McGrath could hear, too. They listened in dismay at the electronically altered voice. A child had been kidnapped to force her cooperation? No surprise, Willa was throwing herself on her sword to save the kid. Then the caller mentioned the Vacarro Field. Gabe and McGrath looked at each other in relief. That was where they’d find Willa. If they were in time.
“Let’s go,” Gabe bit out.
* * *
Willa looked over at James Ward, who was staring grimly at the winding road ahead through a pounding rain. His route today was slightly different than hers yesterday, but the road was still steep and winding, made even more treacherous by the rain. He was driving like a madman through the arroyos and canyons where he’d nearly succeeded in killing her last night.
Oh, wait. He was a madman.
Lord, Willa must be terrified. To have the horror repeat itself like this, for her attacker to get hold of her again—it must be every victim’s worst nightmare.
* * *
“James, do you want me to drop the charges against you? Is that what this is all about? Because if you want, I’ll do it. My life has moved on, and I’ve gotten past what happened between us.”
“You think dropping the charges removes the stain on my reputation?” he snarled.
“If you’re worried about your reputation, why are you kidnapping me? This won’t help matters, you know,” she said reasonably. “Why don’t we just go back to town, get a cup of coffee and talk this over?”
He glanced over at her, and she recoiled from the flat, blank, almost reptilian quality to his eyes. She asked carefully, “How are you feeling, James?”
“Head hurts,”
he whined in a weirdly childlike voice. “Pain won’t stop. Brain’s exploding from the inside out. Keep telling them. But they won’t believe me. Damned head’s splitting in two.”
“Do you want to pull over and rest a little? I can drive you to a drugstore. Get you some pain relievers.”
“All your fault,” he mumbled. The van swerved dangerously close to the edge of a steep drop-off and she let out a little squeal of fear as he jerked the van back onto the road.
She thought fast. Headaches. Stress, maybe? Lack of sleep? Were they associated with mental illness, maybe? She had to keep him talking. Get him to reveal what was really going on with him. Figure out a way to diffuse his unreasoning rage.
He drove on in silence. His foot must be mashed down on the accelerator all the way to the floor. The only thing keeping them from tearing along this road like a bat out of hell was undoubtedly the steepness of the grade and the van’s underpowered engine. But as it was, they careened around every curve, and it felt like they were going to skid out and plunge over the edge of the road to their deaths at any second.
Terrified beyond the ability to speak, Willa clung to the armrest and braced her feet against the floorboards, praying for all she was worth just to make it to the Vacarro Field alive.
Finally, they topped the highest of the ridges and the road began to go downhill. Thankfully, on this side of the canyon, the road’s curves were gentler and finally straightened out completely. The van picked up speed and tore along the asphalt road at nearly a hundred miles per hour.
When her heart came down out of her throat enough to speak, she asked, “What’s so significant about the Vacarro Field to you?”
He glanced over, and the van careened to the right. “Eyes on the road!” she blurted.
He sneered. “Damned schoolteacher. So self-righteous. Willa Merris, goody two-shoes. So charitable and noble. Giving up wealth to teach goddamned brats.”
“I don’t teach because it’s noble. I do it because I love kids. I love teaching.”
“Bitch.”
“We were talking about the Vacarro Field,” she prompted, trying to steer his erratic thoughts back to the topic at hand.
“Son of a bitch thought he’d screw us good, didn’t he?”
“My father?” she guessed. Most times when someone got called an SOB around her, he’d been the recipient of the epithet.
“Tried to buy us out. Rob us blind. And my old man was gonna do it, too. But my mother wouldn’t let him. Good thing, or the bastard would have succeeded.”
“My father tried to buy the Ward interest in the Vacarro wells?” This was the first she’d heard of that.
“Tried to steal ’em, more like.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Offered about a tenth of what they’re worth.” He mumbled incoherently under his breath for a few seconds and then his words became clear again. “Gotta have that money. Save my ass. Debts. Bad investments. Not my fault. Who’d a’ thunk those calls would get exercised. Damned bankers...”
She frowned, confused. “If you were in financial trouble, why didn’t your family take my father’s offer and pay off your debts?”
“Oh, that’s what you’d have liked, isn’t it?” James exploded. “Screw us when we’re down. That’s how you Merrises operate. But I screwed you, instead!” He laughed wildly, and Willa recoiled from him. Well, at least she knew now why James had raped her. He was getting even with her father. She supposed that was better than James having actually had it in for her.
“God, that smell...” James said in a singsong voice that trailed off like an old woman drifting off to sleep midsentence.
Startled, she glanced over at him. “What smell?”
“Sweet. Ahh, God. My head,” he moaned. He took both hands off the steering wheel to grasp his head in both hands. Willa dived across the space between them to grab the wheel as the van drifted left out of its lane and toward the opposite shoulder of the road at a hundred miles per hour.
“James!” she cried. “Focus.”
He inhaled loudly and deeply through his nose as she lay half across him, frantically steering the vehicle. This time his voice was a preternaturally deep growl. “Gonna make you bleed. Peel you like a grape. Make you scream.”
What the heck was going on with him? It was as if he was inhabited by two people. And right now the crazy, violent one had firm control of him. He shoved her away and took the wheel once more. She sat up cautiously, watching him like a hawk. He seemed to be in control of himself and the vehicle once more.
“Have you ever been diagnosed as schizophrenic?” she asked conversationally.
He snorted with laughter. “Think I’m crazy? Yeah. Me, too. Been telling them something’s wrong with my head. Mommy dearest says it’s stress. That you damned Merrises are out to wreck my life. Maybe she’s right...” He trailed off into another bout of mumbling.
Oh, yeah. He was off his rocker, all right.
She leaned forward ostensibly to retie her shoe, but out of the corner of her eye, she tried to spot his gun. There. Holster on his left hip. A surreptitious glance over her shoulder into the back of the van revealed a big assault rifle with a sniper’s scope attached, a shotgun and at least thirty boxes of ammunition. It looked like he was planning for the last stand of the Alamo. A large nylon gym bag bulged in the back, too. No telling what was inside that puppy. Maybe his tools of torture. Her flesh cringed at what he might have in mind to do to her this time.
And this time Gabe wouldn’t be coming to her rescue. He’d made his choice, and it had not been her. She was on her own. A sense of futility and hopelessness swept over her. What did it matter what James did to her? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she died. It wasn’t like anyone would miss her.
Her chest felt like it had a big empty hole in it where her heart had been. The grief of losing the first and only man she’d ever loved was simply too much to bear. Maybe her last thoughts would be of him. Of how happy he’d made her when she’d thought they were together. It would be a nice way to go out. She made a silent promise to herself to keep him in mind when the end came.
She wondered idly what her father’s last thought had been. She blurted abruptly, “Did you kill my father?”
“No!”
His answer was quick and startled. Spontaneous. He wasn’t lying. Purely to make conversation and keep that maniacal emptiness from creeping back into James’s eyes, she asked, “Who do you suppose did kill my father?”
He shrugged and she continued, “I could see my dad being in cahoots with Sheriff Burris over something, and the two of them getting themselves killed together. But that third victim. The young guy from out of state. I just can’t see how he fits in with the other two murders.”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Just glad the bastard’s dead.” His voice slipped a notch into madness. “I hope he suffered a lot.”
“You mentioned the animals in my mother’s garden. Do you rip their heads off?” she asked on a hunch.
He looked away guiltily. “Don’t know nothin’. Don’t know how I got there. Don’t remember...”
Was he having blackouts? Committing violent acts while out of his right mind? Maybe suffering from a multiple-personality disorder?
She subsided, out of ideas for what to talk about with him for the moment.
“You’re going to suffer, you know,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sins of the father, and all. You get to pay. My head’s going to start hurting and you’ll end up just like those critters.”
With her head torn off? Horror filled her throat with acid bile. “So this is all about my father?” she forced herself to ask calmly. “You’re admitting that I never did anything to you?”
“Hah! Uppity bitch. Always so perfect and unattainable. No one was good enough to kiss the bottoms of your shoes. Spurned us all. Nobody in Vengeance good enough for Miss High-and-Mighty.”
What? She was nothing of the sort. She was shy and awkward and unco
mfortable in her own skin. “Is that how everyone saw me?” she asked him in surprise.
“We called you the ice princess.”
“And there I was, hoping it was just that everyone was scared to death of my father,” she replied wryly.
James looked over at her, and she thought she saw...something...in his pale gaze. A hint of sanity. For just an instant. Maybe there was hope for reaching him yet.
The van began to slow and she looked up to see the distinctive shape of an oil derrick interrupting the flat line of the open plain on their left. The Vacarro Field. It stretched across thousands of acres of prime oil land, and this was just the first corner of it. There was an entire airfield tucked in the middle of the property, in fact. No less than twenty massive oil-drilling platforms spread across the property in an east-west line that followed the oil below.
James turned the van onto a dirt road winding into the property. A trail of dust marked their passage. It hadn’t rained out here.
They approached the first towering steel structure. The huge, rotating hammer head of the pump was parked at the four-o’clock position.
“How come the well’s not pumping?” James asked.
“I have no idea. Maybe it’s down for maintenance.”
The road led them another mile or so to another well, which also was still and silent. “What the hell?” James growled. “You shut the field down to squeeze my family dry, didn’t you? Bitch!” he exclaimed.
The van picked up speed and bumped across the rough track, deeper into the massive isolation of the Texas plains. The road ended at the airfield, which sported a half-dozen large hangars. Willa didn’t remember those from the last time she’d been out here. But then, it had been years since she’d visited the oil field with her father. He’d been on a press junket, as she recalled. Trotting journalists out here to crow about domestic oil production being the future of America.
