by Rebecca York
In the TV show, Meg would be playing the unsuspecting first victim of some unseen menace. In real life, there were plenty of reasons why the analogy didn’t quite work. She wasn’t an innocent victim. She knew what she was getting into. And now that she was having second thoughts, it was too late to back out.
“Damn Glenn Bridgman’s hide!” she muttered under her breath as she hunched over the wheel, straining her eyes to see the road ahead. Maybe he hadn’t arranged the nightmare driving conditions, but he’d chosen to live in the back of beyond, fifty miles from the nearest town and a couple of well-placed steps from hell. Which was where she hoped to send him, if she ever made it to the front gate of his estate—and managed to talk her way inside.
The car rounded a rock outcropping, dipped into a small valley where the pavement was covered with water, and went into a skid. Meg fought to keep the car from sliding into the wall of rock hemming the right-hand shoulder of the road.
From the trunk of the car she heard a muffled sound like a couple of sacks of oranges rolling around. But she wasn’t carrying a shipment of citrus fruit to Mr. Bridgman.
The tires spun on gravel as she surged back onto the road. Breathing a little sigh of relief, she deliberately slowed the heavy car, then glanced at the glowing green numbers of the dashboard clock. Ten after eleven. Probably she should have taken a motel room when she’d had the chance and started fresh in the morning.
She’d voiced that observation to Mr. Johnson, after he’d blinked his lights and led her onto the old logging road where they’d agreed to exchange cars. But he’d told her in his gravelly voice that they’d lose the element of surprise if she stopped overnight. So she slid behind the wheel of her borrowed vehicle with its special cargo hidden in the trunk. Then Johnson had driven off in her car, leaving her on her own.
Nervous energy and fear had kept her going for the past fifty miles. Not fear for herself—but for Tommy.
Thinking about her brother made her eyes mist. She managed to fight back the tears, but she couldn’t wipe away the mental image of his haunted face, sunken cheeks, and trembling hands. He was going downhill fast—thanks to Glenn Bridgman.
She’d made the mistake of delivering that opinion to Tommy, and the old spark had ignited in his hazel eyes. For a moment she’d been glad that he was still capable of showing some spirit. Then he’d started defending Bridgman, warning her that he didn’t want to hear a negative word about the man, since every member of the team had known what they were getting into.
Seeing that the heated defense was draining Tommy’s strength, she’d clamped her mouth shut and gone into the kitchen to fix sloppy-joe sandwiches—one of Tommy’s all-time-favorite meals. But even her home cooking hadn’t tempted him to eat more than a few bites.
She’d left his small apartment a half hour later, choked with despair and simmering with anger. Over the next few days, the anger had grown into a roiling cauldron of emotions that had left her vulnerable to a devil’s proposition. A man named “Mr. Johnson” had been playing the devil. He’d shown up at her Light Street office a week after her visit to Tommy, taken her out to dinner, and made her an offer so tempting, that her mouth had gone dry.
Still, she’d politely refused. No way was she getting into anything illegal, immoral, and insane.
He’d kept talking—knocking down her objections one by one, making it sound like it was her patriotic duty to give Glenn Bridgman what he deserved. Even then, she might have gotten up from the table, until he’d pointed out how far a million dollars could go toward defraying Tommy’s medical costs. A million dollars. That was a lot of money—enough to start Meg’s brain spinning.
Johnson must have sensed the moment when she’d gone from confirmed skeptic to would-be convert, and he’d started talking faster. Before she’d quite known what was happening, she’d agreed to sign on to his Mission Impossible team.
According to instructions, she’d told her friends she was just going off on a much-needed vacation. Which meant nobody knew where she was or what she was doing, she reminded herself with a sudden chill as a gust of wind whipped clouds of mist into her path like a fog machine on a Hollywood set. Still, she caught a glimpse of a diamond-shaped yellow sign that read Falling Rock Area.
Great!
For the hundredth time since the nightmare ride had begun, she glanced at the odometer. Only five more miles. Then came the real fun. First she’d have to confront the armed guards. Then, if she were lucky, she’d get an audience with the Big B., as she’d started calling Bridgman in her mind. Some luck!
She’d seen a couple of pictures of him. He was tall and dark-haired, with icy, shuttered eyes—the kind of man you’d hate to face in a high-stakes poker game. Unfortunately, that was pretty close to what she was going to be doing.
Mentally she reviewed her prep sessions with Johnson and his staff—all the things she was supposed to say in answer to Bridgman’s inevitable questions.
Her mind was focused on the confrontations, so that it was several seconds before she realized she was hearing a rumbling noise above her. In the next moment, a trash-can-size boulder came hurtling down the cliff to her left, crashing through the underbrush and landing with a thud several yards in front of the car. Jamming her foot on the brake, she managed to avoid the obstruction. Unfortunately, it was only the first of several falling rocks that came hurtling down, slamming like cannonballs into the side and back of the car and straight toward the window beside her head.
A scream tore from her throat. The last conscious thought she had was that she’d bartered her soul to the devil—and he was going to collect on the deal a lot sooner than she’d anticipated.
Don’t miss this next 43 Light Street
tale—#534 MIDNIGHT CALLER—
coming to you in October 1999. Only from
Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York
and Harlequin Intrigue!
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5112-0
SHATTERED LULLABY
Copyright © 1999 by Ruth Glick
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