She had already let Scarlet drink, while they were following the creek upstream. When the time came to continue, Scarlet had balked, but thinking of Rebecca, Deirdre had used iron calves to force her to get going again. They’d almost galloped past the skinny trail, but she’d recognized it at the last second and veered off. Now, as they neared the stand of trees that surrounded the clearing, fear gripped her. Whatever was happening to Rebecca, it had something to do with Bartley. His punk-ass kid had led her daughter into danger.
She slipped off Scarlet’s back, took off her cotton shirt, poured some water onto it, and wiped the soot from Scarlet’s eyes and nose with the sleeve. She doused it again and wrapped the whole shirt around her face like a mask, tying the sleeves behind her head. In just her tank top she should have been cooler, but the air was so hot and dry her skin began to sear like a steak on a grill.
As she mounted again she looked up. Ash fell from the sky, coating the oak leaves with sooty goop, like gray snow. Higher in the atmosphere, she could see little molten embers floating like paper lanterns, graceful like fireflies, crimson against the sick brown that covered the heavens. What her plan was, she didn’t know.
Ahead in the clearing, bulldozers and tractors sat like dejected dinosaurs in the gloom. She circled the office trailer warily, not dismounting in case she needed to hightail it out of there. Around the back, she squeezed Scarlet between the dense scrub oak and the siding. There was a bend in one of the mini blinds. She edged Scarlet closer and cupped her hands against the gritty glass.
What was inside made no sense at all. What she’d been expecting to see, what her mind told her should be inside of a construction office trailer—heavy fake wood-patterned formica desks from the seventies, file cabinets, linoleum flooring, ancient CRT computer monitors—was not there. Instead, a gleaming stainless steel counter occupied the middle of the room, on which a contraption resembling an amusement park in miniature stood in pristine glory. As her brain shifted gears from what should have been to what actually was, she recognized chemistry equipment; glassware, bunsen burners, things remembered from long ago high school classes. Stacked neatly along the opposite wall were milk crates full of wrapped packages, a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves tossed casually on top.
No wonder the man had been so protective about keeping her away from here.
There was nothing else inside—no closets, no other rooms. And no Rebecca.
She had to keep going, all the way to the top. She headed for the dirt road leading from the clearing up to the construction site, but just then the front of the green car emerged around the first switchback. Not again. She wheeled Scarlet around and tore into the woods behind her, crashing through the brush in a weird parody of her nighttime terror. But this time she wasn’t scared. The brief fear she felt once she recognized the meth lab had cauterized the last of her nerves. There was only the focus on Rebecca, on getting up to the top to find her.
On the bare hillside where he’d shot at her, she glanced up the nearly vertical side of the mountain, doubting she could hang on even if she could convince Scarlet to climb straight up again. So she went ahead to the stand of trees where the man had emerged that night, pushed Scarlet through the gap, and found a different dirt road, leading around the north side of the peak in one smooth curve. This was how he had gotten to her so fast that night, he’d driven all the way around. She wouldn’t have to repeat their manic hill climb after all.
She sat deep and pushed one heel into Scarlet’s flank, urging her into a canter. Scarlet was balky and skittish, but Deirdre knew this part of the journey to the top was a temporary respite, and used it to try to mentally regroup and form a plan—at least until she noticed that ahead of her, on the flanks that came down like fingers of a hand from Richardson Peak, flames were cresting.
* * *
OUT ON THE HILLSIDE behind the house, smoke blinded and stung, creeping up Rebecca’s nostrils and down her throat. She needed to get help, now. She could get to Del Diablo on foot, to that little bar down there, call the cops, ambulance, whoever. It would take forever, but maybe, just maybe, they would get here before Jeremy died.
A dust devil whipped around her. To the east, something that sounded like a train. The fire, and it was coming for them, barreling straight down on them like a locomotive towards the coast. The whole fucking place was gonna burn.
She started to run.
A bony hand grabbed her upper arm, and she screamed. She whipped around, tearing away from the aggressor, and saw a slim form, a charcoal face, bulging whites of the eyes, stringy ashen hair streaming in the wind.
“Shit! Crystal! You scared me to death.” Relieved that someone, anyone, was here with her, she handed Crystal the blame for every crazy thing she had witnessed. It made sense, since it was her family members at the center of all this. “What the hell is going on?”
Crystal didn’t answer. “Where’s Jeremy?” she asked.
“Inside. That scary dude shot him up with something. We have to help him.”
Crystal grabbed her arm and started to drag her back to the house.
“They could come back any minute!” Rebecca protested, pulling back.
Crystal shook her head. “My dad left out the gates, and the dude drove down the hill, that way.” She pointed past the skeletal house. “Come on!”
Back inside the Olive Garden house, the glass on the windows seemed to bend inwards with every strong gust.
“We need to get his arms and legs untied!” Crystal was shouting at her.
Rebecca looked around for something sharp, but the house was empty. Then she remembered Jeremy’s stupid dragon belt buckle with the hidden knife. She popped it out and cut the zip ties in neat little pops.
“You get his feet.” Crystal heaved up on his armpits and Rebecca supported his legs. Crystal duck-walked backwards through the living room, around the big fireplace dividing the space into two, and through the French doors. Outside massive wafts of brown reduced the visibility so that she couldn’t even see the other side of the pool. “Shallow end!” Crystal shouted. When they got there, she stepped backwards down the steps, pulling Jeremy into the ashy water. Rebecca felt useless as she watched her dunk his head under and bring it up then slap his face repeatedly, alternating sides, like a perverse baptism. After a whole lot of slapping, splashing water in his face and yelling in his ear, a hard pinch to his earlobe and an elbow to his sternum, Jeremy’s eyes fluttered, then opened, pointing at the sky. Rebecca sagged with relief, but wondered if he would have brain damage, if he would end up a salivating idiot. More than he already was.
“Did you see any gasoline around?” Crystal asked.
She shook her head.
“Okay. Stay here, will ya? Keep him awake,” Crystal stepped out of the pool in a downpour of chlorine.
“Wait, Crystal—”
“Just keep him awake,” she snapped.
Damn it, why was she leaving her? Jeremy’s weight at least was manageable in the water. But they couldn’t stay here. What if that dude came back? She pulled Jeremy up on the highest step.
“Hey, can you get up?” she yelled in his ear, not bothering to be quiet. It felt and sounded like a furnace out here, wind whipping unpredictably around the contours of the mansion. He nodded, starting to shiver. She helped him to his feet and they moved in awkward tandem. She heaved with the last of her strength, falling behind the air-conditioning unit, as Jeremy’s total body shivering set in. She wrapped her arms and legs around him as far and tight as she could, trying to leach her heat into him, trying to steady his shaking. “Stay awake, stay awake stay awake,” she chanted like a mantra.
He groaned, mumbled and wriggled his body in answer to her. “Where’s Crystal?” he asked finally, through clenched jaws.
“I don’t fucking know!” She took a breath and tried to calm herself. “That dude shot you up with something.”
“Dude’s bad news,” he said, and started to giggle.
“No s
hit,” Rebecca said, feeling utter despair. Look on the bright side, you could be cuddling with a corpse, she told herself. On the other hand, if the guy came back, they’d both be corpses.
“We have to hide. Do you think you can walk?” she asked.
“Nuh-uh,” he said, pulling her closer. He’d stopped shivering, and the wind was so hot that their clothes were already dry.
A distant thud shook the back windows. The front door slamming.
“Well, maybe,” he revised his answer. They wobbled to their feet and tiptoed hand in hand, sneaking around the side of the mansion, ducking under windows as they passed. They peered around the corner. The green car was in the driveway.
A shriek pierced the howling wind. “Shit!” Jeremy pulled her back but she kept watching as the dude walked from the house down the driveway, propelling Crystal by the hair, her kicking like a jackrabbit picked up by the ears, hands wrenched behind her. He threw her into the backseat, got in, started the engine and backed out. With the squeak of tires on newly poured asphalt, they disappeared behind the brown curtain.
Jeremy ran after them and Rebecca followed, not knowing what else to do.
They left the asphalt, Rebecca almost twisting an ankle, and headed up a slope. This all seemed familiar. Leaping a few sprinkler pipe ditches, she caught up to Jeremy. Pure fear for his sister must be driving him—how else could he function when a few minutes ago he was almost dead?
Just then, another car’s engine sounded. She pulled Jeremy back. They hid around the side of the skeleton house, crouching behind the foundation. The car parked, and she heard voices. Jeremy’s Dad, then the dude, then a kid’s voice. She looked at Jeremy.
Light dawned in his eyes. “He brought Golden Boy here?”
“Get back in the car kiddo,” said Dad, his voice traveling on the wind.
They crept closer, picked up shreds of the conversation. “What the hell is Jeremy’s car doing out there by the gate?” Dad sounded indignant, like he wasn’t being treated properly at the country club. Then, his voice changed direction. “Hey, I told you to wait in the car Brian—”
Then the kid’s voice got louder. “Hey! Hey Dad, it’s Crystal!” question in his little prepube voice, cracking under strain, then “Ow, Owwwww!”
Dude’s voice, low and commanding. She couldn’t make out anything he said, but he talked for a while, then Jeremy’s dad piped up. “Just calm down Hector, calm down. Let him go. He doesn’t know anything.” Dad was negotiating now, bravado gone.
A heavy downslope gust cleared the smoke away, and she could see them all now. The dude had hold of the little boy’s hair and was pointing his gun at Dad. Crystal was sitting up in the backseat, shrieking. The kid was silent, eyes traveling between his dad and Crystal in disbelief.
Dad took a step forward. Dude jerked the gun higher, yanked little guy’s head back. Slowly, he turned the gun and pressed the barrel against the boy’s head. That was when Dad’s face changed. His mouth turned down in a grimace, about to cry. He sank to his knees, folded his hands together like prayer. “Please, please, let him go. Let him go. What do you want?”
“The rest of the money.” It was the first thing Rebecca could understand from the dude. He sounded tired of repeating himself.
Dad responded. “Just wait, the fire will do the job for us—it’ll only take a month or two for the payout…” he trailed off. No answer from the dude. The seconds ticked by.
Just as he started babbling about going home to get some jewelry and cash, she saw movement in the distance, up the slope to the east of the road, but then the smoke covered the hill again.
* * *
AS DEIRDRE CRESTED THE barren ridgeline, she saw the homes of Paraiso below. She slid off Scarlet and crouched in the waist-high chaparral, counting on Scarlet’s red color to blend into the eerie sky, and her ash darkened clothes to keep her hidden while she surveyed the layout.
Down on the plateau, there was one house that was finished and landscaped and had a pool in the backyard—the model home she’d seen on the billboard—and the other house with a steel frame on the very edge of the ridge, three stories tall, cantilevered over the canyon. It hulked there, torn plastic sheeting flapping like the sails of a ghost ship.
Behind her, there was crashing through the bushes and Scarlet whirled, knocking her to the ground. Two deer sprang past her down the hill, away from the fire, towards the coast. Scarlet pranced around her, whites of her eyes showing, but Deirdre held fast to the reins as she got back to her feet. She turned and looked back below, desperately seeking any movement. The houses looked like ones on a model train set from here. Maybe she really did need glasses.
“Here,” a muffled voice beside her said, and she nearly screamed.
It was Vivian, high up on Apache, her face still swathed in the Afghan scarf, holding out a pair binoculars.
“What are you doing here?” she said, heart bounding out of her chest.
Vivian shrugged and pulled down her scarf. “Your friends told me where you went. There’s someone up here I need to save. Besides your sorry ass, that is.”
“Oh please.” Deirdre scoffed, as she raised the binoculars. But smoke engulfed them, and guilt washed over her as she heard the labored breathing of the horses. She pulled her shirt higher up her face, all kinds of questions forming. “How did you find me?” she yelled.
“I didn’t.” Vivian pointed at Apache. “He did.”
“Did you come through the clearing?”
Vivian nodded. “The guy was there when I got to it, but he didn’t see me. He loaded all the drugs in his car, then rigged up a bunch of gas cans. It’s all set to explode.”
“Guess we’re not going back the same way then.”
A helicopter raced over them from behind. Apache half-reared, his eyes wild. Both horses were dancing, barely under control, but Scarlet felt a little more tethered now that Apache was here.
“Jeremy’s down there,” Vivian said, as if it was inconsequential. “With a girl. Maybe yours?” She said it as if it was an affliction, to have a child, but to Deirdre, the only thing that mattered was the word ‘girl.’
“YES! Rebecca? You saw Rebecca?”
“Scrawny little thing? Dark hair? Yep.”
Deirdre renewed her search through the binoculars to no avail. “Where are they?”
“They were in the swimming pool.” Vivian gestured towards the finished house, even though nothing was visible right now. “He didn’t look so hot.” She exhaled shakily, showing the first real hint of distress.
The wind shifted, coming at them from the coast, and the smoke cleared. Deirdre’s eyes stung, aching from looking too hard. She fiddled with the knob on the binoculars, and shifted them to the ghost ship house. They came into focus on the man, his gun pointing at—who was that? “Oh my god, it’s Brian Jr.!” she whimpered.
“Jesus. Is it bring your kid to work day?” said Vivian.
Deirdre panned the binoculars over a tick. Bartley was there, on his knees beside his Porsche, begging. Over in the backseat of the green car, someone was struggling. Was it Rebecca? No. A girl, long hair, silver duct tape on her mouth. She moved the binoculars around, desperately searching for a sign of Rebecca, until her eyeballs ached. Smoke covered the plateau again and she swore.
Then the Porsche’s whiny engine started up and the sound of it traveled slowly down the road to Del Diablo highway.
The smoke cleared again. The Porsche was gone, and the man marched Brian Jr. towards the three-story house, muscles rippling under his white dress shirt.
“Who is that guy?” Deirdre breathed.
“That, my friend, is a sicario, from the Sinaloa cartel to be exact.”
Deirdre lowered the binoculars and glared. “How do you know all this?” She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you Vivian?”
“Too many questions, Deer-druh.” She over-pronounced the name, and Deirdre suddenly wondered if she was drunk. Or, more accurately, how drunk she was. “All I know is B
-Boy is in over his head. I’m just here to get Jeremy out.”
“Why do you care about him so much?” she asked. “This is all his fault!”
“No, it isn’t.” Vivian’s eyes gleamed. Was she crying? “I couldn’t have Laura, but I can help him,” she said softly.
“Have Laura?”
“Help her. I said I couldn’t help her,” Vivian said, loud and annoyed, as she put her swim goggles back on.
The man and Brian Jr. were inside the metal framed house now, moving towards the back deck where it hung over the canyon.
“Okay, what’s our plan?” Vivian asked, but then continued right on without waiting for an answer. “I say we ride down and catch him off guard. Looks like Brian left, the coward. Two of us on horseback against the gangster. We knock him out, get the kids, load ‘em in the car, cut the horses loose, and get out of here. Whaddya say?”
Deirdre’s stomach clenched around the memory of that gaping hole in the front of the gun, but it was better than any plan she had. “What about weapons?”
Vivian jumped off her horse, looked around at the ground, and as if of one mind, they began collecting jagged, iron red fist-sized rocks. She loaded them into her shirt, making a pouch that she tied clumsily around her waist. Vivian dropped her rocks into her saddle bag and leapt back on. Deirdre mounted Scarlet, got pulled off balance by the rocks, and gripped the pommel to steady herself. A cold sweat beaded on her forehead, but she steeled herself, and looked over at her battle partner.
“Let’s ride.”
* * *
REBECCA WATCHED THE DUDE—Hector was his name—duct tape Jeremy’s little brother to one of the uprights on the deck overlooking the canyon. His dad had left, left the kid to fend for himself.
Then the dude began climbing the steel girders, the same way she and Jeremy had climbed that night they came up here together. Her stomach did a flip. That night it was so dark she didn’t know what she was getting into. Now, she could see just how far up the roof was, and how deep the canyon was. She realized she was digging into Jeremy’s shoulder, hard.
October's Fire (Fairy Glen Suspense Book 1) Page 36
