by Anne Stuart
She found herself smiling in the darkened bedroom, and a small part of the clutching around her heart eased a bit. For the first time some of her brother’s noble, infuriating characteristics seemed to have some side benefits. At least they might have made death easier.
She only wished she were blessed with a similar self-absorption. It was always possible that the brakes on the Escort had failed normally. And it was remotely possible the moon was made of green cheese and the astronauts who landed there didn’t happen to notice.
She supposed she ought to be more frightened. If she were alone she would be. But the knowledge that Sandy was beside her, that another living, breathing soul was stuck in the mess along with her, gave her enough courage to face even another case of tampered brakes. If she’d had any plans to sever her relationship with her duplicitous partner, those plans had vanished after their dip in the canal. She needed all the help she could get, and no matter how mad she was, she preferred to have that help from Sandy.
Besides, it was clear Uncle Stephen hadn’t the nerve for a direct attack. He could tamper with someone’s automobile with impunity, and given his background that was understandable. Stephen Tremaine was a self-made man, and he just happened to have paid his way through undergraduate school by working at a local auto repair shop.
In the past thirty years he’d been involved in too many things for Jane to even contemplate, if she had to guess where the next attack might come from. As far as she knew, after college none of his work had been particularly hands-on. Maybe his murderous expertise was limited to cars. They’d better go over the Audi with a fine-tooth comb.
These thoughts weren’t conducive to going back to sleep, she thought, climbing out of bed and pulling back the hideous nylon curtain. The gray-blue light of early dawn bounced off the glaring streetlights, and there was frost on the Audi. Trucks rumbled past on Route One, but the rest of New Jersey was asleep.
She could stay in the room and brood, or she could get her last chance for a little exercise before being cooped up in a car for eight or nine hours, depending on how fast Sandy drove. While she thought jogging was a sign of insanity, she missed her early-morning walks that used to start her day in Baraboo. The parking lot of the motel lacked a certain jungle charm, but it was better than nothing. A little fresh air, even laden with chemicals and exhaust fumes, was better than nothing.
She pulled on Margery’s designer sweat suit, which had to be the most comfortable thing she’d worn in years, slipped on her Nikes, tied her long hair back with a scarf, and stepped outside into the early-morning chill. She closed the door behind her, taking a deep breath and watching the ice crystals on the air as she exhaled. Stuffing the keys in her pocket, she stepped out past the silver Audi, onto the pitted tarmac.
Her only warning was the sound of gravel beneath a noiseless tread. An arm snaked around her neck, a hand clamped over her mouth, shutting her scream off before it got past her throat, and something sharp jabbed into her ribs, something that could only be a knife.
She had a faint, panicked hope that it was Sandy trying to scare her. But the solid body behind her was too tall, even for Sandy, the arm across her throat was too thick and burly, the voice rasping in her ear too hoarse and obscene.
“Shut up,” he hissed in her ear. “You try to scream, lady, and you’ll be dealing with a heart transplant the hard way. Understand?”
She nodded, trying to swallow her terror along with her scream, hoping the pressure of the knife against her ribs would lessen. It didn’t.
The man began dragging her back toward the motel, back into the shadows. She wanted to beg him not to hurt her, but his hand was still tight over her mouth, and it took all her concentration to breathe through her nose, to keep calm, to keep from kicking and screaming and crying in sheer, childish terror.
Was he going to rape her? Kill her? Simply rob her? She’d come out without her wallet, with nothing but the keys to her room. Even if she were able to get away from him, she wouldn’t be able to unlatch the ancient lock on her door before he caught her again. Maybe she could reason with the man.
She felt the sharp point of the knife leave her rib cage, and she breathed a sigh of relief, only to experience the even greater horror of having the cold, sharp steel pressed up against the fragile underside of her jaw, just above the man’s arm.
“That’s right, honey. You know I mean business, don’t you? Jabba told you about Lenny the Rip, didn’t he? But you don’t learn too quickly, do you? First your brother’s car, then yours, and you still go around asking questions, talking to the police. My employer doesn’t like that. He wants you to butt out of his business. You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you?” He gave her a rough little shake, and the tip of the knife grazed her skin. “Just nod if you agree.”
She didn’t have much choice. She nodded, very carefully, so as not to impale herself on the tip of the knife. “So you tell your lawyer friend that you aren’t interested in your brother anymore. That he should go on back to New York, and keep out of places in the East Village where he doesn’t belong. And you go back to Nebraska or wherever it was you came from, and in a few months a nice fat check will arrive. Now isn’t that better than driving a car with crummy brakes? Just nod.”
She nodded, but the knife still bit into the tender skin. “I’m glad we had this little discussion. I’d be more than happy to go into detail, but I think you get my drift. Don’t you, honey?”
Once more she nodded, and she felt her body propelled along the walkway, back toward her room. “Reach in your pocket for the keys, lady,” he said in that same, hoarsely affable voice. “And unlock your door.”
Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely find the keys. Finding the lock without being able to look for it was even harder, but he was still holding her in that vice-like grip, and when she tried to move her head downward the knife jabbed deeper.
“Come on, lady, you can do it without looking, I know you can. A smart girl like you,” he sneered gently.
Getting the key in the lock was only half the battle. The lock was old and rusty and usually required careful handling and just the right amount of jiggling. She wasn’t going to stand and jiggle while her backside was pressed up against someone named Lenny the Rip.
Finally the lock gave, and the door opened in front of her. She didn’t move, terrified to precipitate something she couldn’t fight. Would he follow her in, out of sight of possible witnesses, and make his point more violently and more effectively?
“We’re agreed on this, aren’t we, lady?” he muttered in her ear. “You’re going back to Kansas, right?” He moved his hand a fraction of an inch away from her mouth, ready to slap it down again if she made the wrong sound, and the knife still rested against her throat.
“Right,” she said, her voice a thin croak of sound.
“Good,” he said cheerfully. And then she felt herself propelled forward, sprawling full-length on the seedy carpet, as the door slammed shut behind them.
She lay without moving, shivering in reaction as she listened to the sound of a car gun its engine and tear away. She heard the slamming of doors, the pounding of footsteps, and then her room was flooded with light from the connecting door, and she was no longer alone.
Sandy was on the floor beside her, pulling-her into his arms, his hands gentle, reassuring, as they pushed the hair away from her face. It wasn’t until she felt his arms around her that she started crying, great, gasping sobs of reaction and relief.
He held her tightly, murmuring to her, meaningless words of comfort as he stroked her face. She could see streaks of darkness on his hand, and knew with a sort of benumbed horror that it was her blood on his hand. Instead of calming down, she could feel the tension building inside her, bubbling forth into what might very well turn into hysterics, when she heard Sandy’s prosaic voice in her ear.
“Thank God he left when he did. I was afraid I might have had to rescue you.”
Jane’s tears halted a
bruptly. She stiffened in his arms, pulling back the few inches he’d let her, and stared up into his bland face. “You knew he was attacking me?”
“I could hear every sound you made during the night, every toss and turn. As a matter of fact, I didn’t sleep too well, either. When I heard you get up and go outside I decided to join you. I was just getting my clothes on when I heard Lenny grab you.”
She just stared at him, her hysterics forgotten. “And you didn’t want to step outside without your pants on, is that it?”
“It is cold,” he agreed. “But even more important is the fact that Lenny has had a great deal of experience with that nasty knife of his, and I had no weapon at all. Not to mention the fact that he’s about half a foot taller than I am and a hundred pounds heavier.”
Jane could feel outrage and loathing bubbling up inside her. “But he could have raped me,” she said furiously. “He could have murdered me.”
“Unlikely. Jimmy told me that Lenny’s gay. And he charges too much for murders—I don’t think Tremaine would be willing to pay that much just for an inconvenience like you.”
His arms were still around her. She whirled out of them, scrambling across the floor out of reach as the words tumbled forth, epithets she hadn’t used since she was fourteen and on the tough girls’ softball team. “You rotten, degenerate, low-living coward,” she snarled. “You self-centered, dishonorable, lily-livered, chicken-hearted pig. You...”
“Chicken-hearted pig?” Sandy echoed, unmoved by her fury. “Aren’t you getting your metaphors mixed? And I’m not the slightest bit degenerate, as you should know by now. I’m very healthy in my wants and desires. And I may be a coward, but I’m not stupid. It didn’t make any sense to make a heroic stand and risk getting myself knifed if there was no need to.”
She could feel the warm, sticky dampness of blood on her neck. “So instead you let me get knifed,” she said, her voice very quiet.
“Don’t be melodramatic, Jane,” Sandy said wearily. “He didn’t knife you. Lenny’s too smart for that.”
“What’s that on your hand, then? Ketchup?”
He froze. He stood up with one swift movement, and turned on the dim bedside light.
If Jane had been surreptitiously proud of her cursing a few moments earlier, it was nothing compared to Sandy. She didn’t even have time to duck before he swooped down on her, scooping her up in his arms and heading for the door.
“Put me down, dammit,” she demanded, squirming fruitlessly. She hadn’t realized Sandy was quite so strong. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“It’s not that bad. He only scratched me.” Sandy was fumbling with the lock, and she decided it was time for more forceful action. She didn’t want to go to an emergency room and have to answer a lot of unfortunate questions, she wanted to get out of New Jersey.
She rammed her elbow into Sandy’s unprotected stomach. He dropped her with a thud, doubling over in pain as he tried to catch his breath. She tried not to feel guilty as she dashed across the shadowy room for the bathroom. “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she said as she switched on the fluorescent light and stared at her pale, bloody reflection. “It’s not nearly as bad as it looks, and I always hated Princeton Hospital ever since I had my tonsils out.” She began daubing at her bloody neck with a wet washcloth, wincing slightly as she cleaned it. There were two long, shallow scratches, and the bleeding had slowed down to a mere trickle.
Sandy pulled himself to his feet, staggered across the room and collapsed on her unmade bed. “You could have said something,” he groaned, still clutching his belly like a man in mortal pain. She hadn’t elbowed him that hard, she thought, grimacing at his reflection in the mirror.
“I believe I did,” she said. “Consider it my thanks for so gallantly coming to my rescue.” The bleeding had stopped, and now that the first stages of reaction had passed she was no longer hysterical, she was blazingly mad.
“Sorry,” Sandy said, sliding up and propping himself on her pillows. “Next time I’ll be more than happy to be virgin sacrifice for your bloodthirsty visitors.”
“It’s a little late for the virgin part, isn’t it?” She came and leaned in the bathroom doorway.
“You should know the answer to that as well as I do.” Suddenly he dropped his indolent air. “If I’d known he was hurting you I would have stopped him.”
She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. The gesture was a mistake, causing her to wince in pain, but she did her best to cover her flinching. As usual, nothing escaped Sandy. “If you’d done anything he might very well have killed me,” she said. “It’s probably just as well you waited. What it lacks in romance it makes up for in common sense. I’d rather be mad and have a tiny scratch on my neck than be lying in Intensive Care right now.”
“I guess I can’t be your knight in shining armor.”
“I wasn’t looking for one.”
He sat up, looking suddenly cheerful. “True enough. You were looking for a cowardly sleaze. Maybe you didn’t do so badly after all.”
She looked at him for a long, thoughtful moment. His long, lean body was stretched out on her bed, his hands were still stained with her blood, his face, despite the jaunty grin, showed that he’d been far from untouched by Lenny’s attack. Even she wasn’t too self-absorbed to see the guilt and worry shadowing his eyes. It was dangerous, but she couldn’t resist it.
“Maybe I didn’t,” she said softly. And quickly closed herself in the bathroom before he could react. “It’s getting close to six,” she called out, reaching for the bloody washcloth and rinsing it in the sink. “Are you almost ready to leave?”
There was a long silence. “Give me ten minutes,” he said finally. And she could hear the connecting door shut quietly.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her brown hair was a witchy mass around her pale face, her eyes were huge and shadowed, her mouth pale and tremulous. Maybe once she put on makeup, wound her hair back in a bun and found her glasses she’d look more normal. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to wipe away the truth.
Margery Caldicott was right. Jane was in love with her partner in crime. And all her own common sense, all the common sense in the world couldn’t talk her out of it.
They were on the road in fifteen minutes, stopping at McDonald’s for a fast-food breakfast and three cups of coffee each before heading up the turnpike. The weather stayed cool and crisp, and Sandy kept the heater on low and the tape player on medium. “You sure you don’t want to tell the police?” he asked for the final time as they were heading over the George Washington Bridge.
“Positive,” she said sleepily, curled up against the leather-lined door. “They’d only hold us up. We don’t know where Stephen is right now, but I bet if he isn’t heading for Vermont already, he’ll be there soon enough. You pointed it out yourself, we don’t have any proof, just suspicions.”
“We might be heading into more danger,” he felt compelled to point out. Guilt was still riding him hard—every time he saw the long, shallow scratches on Jane’s neck his hands would clench around the steering wheel.
“I know,” she murmured.
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Nope.” She gave him a sleepy smile. “You’ll keep the bad guys at bay. You’ve got enough guilt to keep you on your toes for the next ten years.”
“It shows that bad, eh?”
“Sure does. And you deserve every rotten pang of it.”
“Jane,” he said sweetly, “that’s what I love about you. Your generous, forgiving nature.”
“Drive on, Sandy,” she said, closing her eyes again. “And remember, next time you’re attacked by Elinor Peabody don’t look to me to save you.”
“Promises, promises,” he muttered. But Jane was already sound asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
The weather, already a bit brisk in New Jersey, turned sharply colder by the time they re
ached Connecticut. A cold hard drizzle was falling by the Vermont border, and the road grew slick and icy as the sun began to sink.
All the glorious color of Vermont in autumn was long past. The trees were bare, the ground brown and hard, the sky and the mountains bleak and gray. The Audi shook a bit as the wind buffeted it along the deserted highways, and Jane shivered as she thought about her grandmother’s old house on the lake.
“I hope you brought some warm clothes,” she said, breaking one of the long silences that were surprisingly comfortable.
He turned to look at her. “That sounds ominous. Doesn’t your grandmother’s heating system work very well?”
“My grandmother’s cottage doesn’t have a heating system.”
“Oh, God.”
“Was that a curse or a prayer?”
“A little bit of both. I hope there are motels in Newfield, Vermont.”
“Nary a one. Don’t worry, though. Nana’s cottage has a huge fieldstone fireplace. If we just put our sleeping bags on the floor in front of it we should do all right.”
“Sleeping bags?” Sandy’s voice was rich with horror. “You’re asking me to sleep in a sleeping bag? Inside?”
“Nana’s cottage won’t feel much like inside this time of year,” Jane assured him.
“Small comfort.”
“In more ways than one.”
“I don’t suppose I get to share my sleeping bag?” Sandy asked in a hopeful tone.
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “sometimes squirrels get in and make their nests in the house. You could always ask one of them.”
“Thanks, I think I’ll pass. I presume you can provide the sleeping bags?” He sounded resigned but gloomy.
She thought about the big brass bed up under the eaves, piled high with quilts and hand-woven coverlets, and sighed. She had to gather her self-preservation about her, not give in to her baser instincts. “I can provide the sleeping bags.”
The snow started some fifteen miles south of Newfield, in the slightly larger town of Hardwick. Jane wasn’t surprised. If the weather was going to be bad, it was going to be worse heading out of Hardwick toward Newfield. The steep hill out of the bustling little village was already slick with sleet, and by the time they reached the first dip in the road the sleet had turned into hard white pellets, halfway between snow and ice.
