by Kristi Lea
“Right. Thanks Thompson.” Noah clicked off the phone.
He glanced at his passenger.
Her eyes were wide with concern in the dimly lit cabin, and her words were slow and measured. “Was that the LAPD officer who searched my house?”
“Yes. He’s the one who got Lindsay to safety. Call Minnie. She can’t be too far behind.”
The trail of brake lights slowed to a crawl as highway approached an accident scene up ahead. Emergency vehicles swarmed around a jackknifed tractor trailer that blocked parts of both sides of the highway. Orange cones compressed the highway down to lane, and Noah put on his blinker, trying to slowly merge.
Jessica muttered something.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t get through on the phone. Every time I dial, it goes straight to a busy signal.”
Noah shook his head. “With all this traffic, there must be a hundred people trying to make a phone call right now.” He stepped on the brake as the cars in front of him halted again.
They were just coming up on the accident scene. Highway patrol was diverting everyone off on the exit ramp.
Jessica pointed to a green exit sign. “Maybe the phone signal will be better off the road away from all the other drivers? But after this next exit, but the one after that isn’t for another twenty-three miles.”
On the other side of it, the southbound traffic was just as slow as the Northbound had been. It could take an hour or more for them to work their way back.
They pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. The road was jammed with other drivers, some scrambling to find their way back to the freeway and others melting into the cross streets. Jessica handed the phone back to him. “Still no signal. Minnie was behind us, so she must be caught in the same jam, and she will get diverted off right here too. Right?”
“Maybe not. Did you hear that last radio report? They are closing the highway back a couple of miles until they can clear that wreck.” He pulled up his GPS app and scrolled through the maps.
Jessica’s hand drummed on the passenger door armrest as she stared off into the distance.
“Are you okay?” He reached over to take her other hand.
She jumped at his touch and her eyes flew to his, looking slightly unfocused for a moment. Then her shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I just…with the phone not working, and Thompson’s warning…I just…”
“You’re safe, Jessica. Safe with me. If we take the state road, we should be able to make it to our meeting place.”
***
If it weren’t for the popping sound, Jessica would not have opened her eyes to see the oncoming car. One moment, Jessica sat watching the trees whoosh by the car and counting yellow stripes on the pavement. The next thing she knew, she was wide awake, heart shocked into action.
That was gunfire
Noah swore.
The car jerked, the back end spinning toward the trees. Noah jerked the wheel hard, trying to correct, throwing her into the door despite the snug seatbelt. Brakes screeched.
More gunfire.
“Hang on.”
Jess pressed herself back against her seat as visions of the road spun around them.
Trees in the dusk, looming above. Rays of red and purple, swirling. Deep shadows cast by the car headlights. A jerk as the car hit a ditch.
They bumped down the ditch. Jess heard a voice screaming as the car rolled, sending them head over heels, metal crunching and glass shattering. She squeezed her eyes shut. The smell of smoke was the last thing she remembered.
Chapter 26
Noah woke to the metallic taste of blood and a throbbing pain over one temple. Somewhere two people were arguing.
The scene around him made no sense. He was laying down, yet not, in almost total darkness. From somewhere far off, a watery yellow light illuminated the hood of his car. It all looked wrong. Tilted.
The sound of a car engine roaring away brought him more fully awake.
The car lay at a precarious angle on its side, and he was still strapped into the driver's seat in a pool of shattered glass. He lay on his side with the bulk of the car looming above him.
Jessica.
He blinked, trying to focus on where she sat next to him. Above him. Or should have been.
She was gone.
He somehow managed to free himself from the seatbelt and climb out through where the windshield used to be. His hands were cut and bleeding and his throbbing eye began to swell shut. He had to find her. He reached back into the car to find the glove compartment. The angle was awkward, painful, and the door to the box didn't give at first.
With a roar of frustration, he pounded it and the box opened. Noah grabbed his gun and shoulder holster. His cell phone was nowhere to be seen.
He scrambled back up the sloping ditch toward the roadway, trying to figure out which way the other car—the one he had heard—had gone.
The road wound back toward the highway where he'd exited. If he went that way, he could call for help. But whoever had run them off the road and kidnapped Jess would not have headed back to bright lights and emergency vehicles. He turned away and began walking.
***
Jessica stifled a groan as she came to with a rag in her mouth and the smell of Harry's sour cigarette breath wafting across her nostrils.
“Welcome back.” He smiled, baring teeth that were far too white for a guy with a crooked nose who reeked of boiled garlic.
Jessica shrank back. She was propped upright against some sort of wall, her hands and feet tied together in front of her. The floor seemed to tilt underneath her and her vision fuzzed into stars. He stomach protested and she gagged over the cloth.
Harry stood up and took his stench with him. “I don't believe our guest cares for your yacht.”
Jess blinked as the floor seemed to heave again.
“Shut up, Harry.”
Jess shrank from the familiar woman’s voice. Tallie. She tried to turn her head to really see where she was. A lone yellowish light shone from a table lamp, illuminating what looked like a small efficiency apartment. A wood table and chairs sat against one wall near a stairwell leading up. Next to that was a wall of cabinets with a sink and small stove. High round windows showed a fleeting glimpse of more tepid light from a deck above. The middle of the room held a large sectional couch patterned in a cheery floral chintz. Tallie sat sprawled against one overstuffed arm, her normally pristine hair mussed and her eye makeup dripping from the corners of her eyes like black tears.
She smiled as she met Jessica’s gaze. The smile bared her teeth and drew the skin taut across a wrinkle-free forehead and cheekbones. Facelifts and eye jobs kept the woman looking young enough on camera, but gave the feral gleam in her eyes a new menace.
Jessica shivered, a deep quaking shiver that she couldn’t stifle.
“What, nothing to say? Where’s the surprise? Where’s the indignation? Goodness, Harry, take off her gag and let’s hear what she’s got.” Tallie let her mountain drawl slip into the words.
Jessica cringed as Harry reached over her and yanked through her hair to loosen the knot that held the cloth tight against her lips. She drew in a deep breath as it was removed.
He chucked her under the chin, pushing hard on a tender spot along her jaw.
“Let’s hear it,” Tallie said expectantly.
Jessica tried to lick parched lips, but her tongue felt dry and sticky like a slug.
Tallie uncrossed her legs, plunked her cocktail down on a table and stood, venom spewing from her mouth. “Now’s your chance. Ask me why you’re here. Beg me to let you go. Promise never to tell.”
Jessica knew the type. She’d glimpsed bits of this madness before, in others. Tallie had long since traded love and happiness for the power and financial security of her Senator husband. She hadn’t just forgiven him his transgressions, she had abetted them. And now that the whole scheme had unraveled, the woman needed someone to blame, someone to punish.
; Harry kicked her Jessica in the hip, sending shooting pains down her leg. “Answer the lady.”
She tried to swallow the sound, but a small whimper escaped her lips.
“Go upstairs and get the boat ready, Harry. We need to have a little girl talk.”
Jess watched as her old teacher and friend bore down on her, one swaying step at a time. Tallie stopped just in front of her and perched on the arm of the sectional.
When she started talking, her voice was softer than Jess expected. Kind almost. “This must be how you felt when your Charles died. They killed him today, you know. My husband. When they came to arrest him. Oh, the papers will print that it was a suicide. But he would never have pulled the trigger if they hadn’t backed him into a corner.”
Her voice trailed off and her eyes looked unfocused. Bloodshot. And her words slurred.
“I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I always expected to outlive him, of course. But not like this. Not with the scandal and the cops…” Tallie gave Jessica an assessing glance. “What would you do in my shoes?”
Their gazes held for a long moment before Jessica found her words. “I tried to run away.”
Tallie smiled, this time wistfully. She nodded her head as though agreeing with a voice that only she could hear. “Yes. Go someplace new. Somewhere that no one knows me. Where no one will whisper behind my back. Or pity me.”
Jess knew. Knew the crushing despair that Tallie must have felt when she heard the news. The sense of floating that would follow. The weeks of agonizing over his last minutes, of questioning every step, every decision. The wondering. The fake platitudes. The reporters. She closed her eyes against the swell of emotions as she relived them. Every one of them.
“Tallie, I—“
Tallie’s eyes narrowed on Jess and came into sharp focus. “You what?”
Jessica shrank back at the snarl in the woman’s voice.
“If it weren’t for you, my husband would be alive. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have to run away. If it weren’t for you, my life would be perfect.” She punctuated each sentence with a menacing prowl forward toward where Jessica lay, bound and helpless, against the wall. “You are the cause of this. And you will pay.”
Abruptly, Tallie whirled on one heel and hurried from the room, leaving Jessica to shiver alone and unguarded.
She pushed herself to her feet, looking frantically for something, anything, to cut the bindings from her hands.
Kitchen. Kitchens had knives.
With her legs bound together she could barely balance, so she leaned her back against the wall and inched along it toward the cabinet drawers that might offer her freedom. The floor swayed again and Jessica could make out the sounds of arguing coming from above. Harry and Tallie. She wondered if anyone else was on board.
She was only about two feet from the corner of the granite counter when the ship lurched to a halt, throwing her forward. She brought her hands up to shield her face, knowing instinctively that she couldn’t catch her fall. Only soften it.
She half-crawled, half-scooted the rest of the distance on the floor and began opening drawers. On the third, she gave a small prayer of thanksgiving. Steak knives. Jess sank to her butt on the floor and sawed at the bindings between her feet. Above her, she heard a loud crack, and shuffling noises.
Her heart raced and her hands sweated with fear, not knowing what was happening.
When the plastic binding around her ankles hung by a thread, she kicked her legs. The binding wrenched and burned as it cut into her skin, but the plastic gave.
Another noise from outside. A buzzing, like a chain saw. Her time was nearly up.
There was no good way to hold a knife and slice at the plastic that held her wrists at the same time. She tucked the handle of the knife between her knees and tried to saw the binding by moving her hands, but the knife kept slipping. Finally, she laid her hands on the ground and positioned the knife between them, serrated edge down. She wriggled until her foot lay on the handle and then pulled upright, leveraging her body weight and the knife edge against the binding.
Again and again she heaved. Her wrists ached. Her fingers tingled. And the plastic barely gave.
She was maybe halfway through when the footsteps descended the stairs.
Tallie’s voice floated down toward her. “You should have run away when you had the chance. Hidden yourself where no one could find you. But you didn’t. You contacted me. Too bad for you.”
Jessica heard a metallic click and felt the barrel of a gun against the back of her head. She froze.
Tallie gave her a shove, slamming Jessica against the wall. The knife tumbled from her hands and the other woman kicked it away.
“Stand up really slow, or this will go badly for you.”
Jessica glanced at her wrists. The plastic was only partially severed and still too strong for her to pull apart herself. She tasted blood where her teeth had crashed into her cheek. She could try to run, but the quarters were close enough that even a drunk Tallie would likely hit her somewhere.
“I don’t think this could go any worse than it already has.” Jess spit out a mouthful of blood.
“Don’t be so sure. Harry, bring the other one down.”
Jess watched in horror as Harry shuffled down the stairs with a dripping wet man. His face was bloodied, his arms wrenched behind his back, and Harry’s gun at his temple.
Noah.
***
It hurt to breathe. Somewhere in the midst of their struggle, one of the bastard’s steel toed boots had collided with Noah’s ribcage.
The road from the car accident had led to a small dock with slips for half a dozen boats. A strip of sandy beach and a bait shop, closed for the night, completed the picture of a tidy vacation spot for fishermen and vacationers. In the parking lot sat an SUV with Tennessee plates, still warm. Two ships in for the night were closed up tight, but another was maybe a few hundred yards from shore, heading out to sea.
The motorboat emblazoned with the bait shop’s telephone number hadn’t been locked down for the night.
Hope and terror had swelled in Noah as he neared the slow-moving yacht. He saw no signs of anyone on board. Maybe it wasn’t too late. He killed the motor to his small vessel and swam for the edge, knowing that his gun, wet, would be all but useless.
It was on the last rung of the side ladder where Noah realized that he was wrong about there being no one on board. A beefy arm punched him in the face, knocking his jaw sideways before hauling him the rest of the way on the boat. The details of the fight were pretty fuzzy, but he was pretty sure he had landed a few good punches before a particularly vicious shove sent him sprawling on the deck, followed by that kick to his ribs.
Consciousness floated in and out as the senator’s wife appeared from below decks to scream at her henchman. Then he was marched down the stairs and back up again with Jessica. Tallie Wilson and a man she called Harry tied Noah and Jess together, back-to-back onto a flagpole in the center of the rear deck, next to a stack of wooden lounge chairs.
“Noah. Wake up damn you. You have to help me. Please. You can’t die like this. I won’t let you die like this.” Jessica’s voice sounded far away, like the gulls and the slurping of blood in his ears. No, that wasn’t blood. It was water. Waves rocked the ship. The engine had been shut off.
Noah shook his head trying to clear it, but the action sent a fresh band of stars scurrying across his vision. He heard a familiar buzzing sound, but couldn’t quite place it.
“Noah. Noah.”
Jessica’s elbow found the tender spot in Noah’s ribs.
“Please. See if you can break my hands free. Keep your eyes open, or we’re both going to die.”
Something in that last plea cleared some of the fuzz from his brain. He tried to ignore the pains that came from various parts of his body as he focused on where he was and what he was doing. She shoved her elbow in his ribcage again.
“Ow. Stop. I’m awake.”<
br />
“Hurry, can you break these.” She shoved her hands toward him again.
Tallie and Harry hadn’t taken the time to tie his hands. Instead they had hurriedly wrapped a length of plastic-y rope around their shoulders. “I think so. Hang on.”
He took her hands in his and felt for the plastic ties. She cringed as he pulled and the plastic gave way with a snap. “Sorry”
“That’s OK. Don’t you dare black out again. We have to get off this boat. Now.”
She shifted around and soon the ties that bound their shoulders slackened as Jessica ducked out from under them. In a moment, she was hauling him to his feet.
Something exploded behind them, knocking him back to the deck. A wave of heat rushed overhead. Fire.
Noah scrambled to his hands and knees toward the railing. There was a round life preserver tied there, the sort that folks used as decoration on the walls of their homes. He freed the clips that held it, and turned to take Jessica's hand.
She smiled at him and took his hand. The ship was in flames behind her, glowing like an angry halo behind her hair. He tried to offer her the floatation ring but she shoved it away. “I can swim. You need it more than I do.”
“Ready?” he asked, knowing that they had no choice.
She nodded.
“Now jump.”
***
They crawled on shore, breathless and bedraggled and cold. Salt stung Jessica's eyes and her lungs felt like they would explode. Noah lay in the wet sand beside her, face pillowed on the life preserver, letting the waves wash over his feet.
She was more of a dog paddler than a swimmer, but that was enough to get her safely to the shore. Thank heaven it was enough. Noah seemed strong, but he kept threatening to slip into unconsciousness. Without the floatation device and her urging, she wasn't sure he would have made it.
Just as the last remnants of Tallie's yacht disappeared beneath the water, searchlights appeared, their high beams slicing across the darkness. A Coast Guard ship trawled the deeper water and a voice growled across a bullhorn. Sirens blared. They were searching for survivors.
