The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Karen Leabo

  “Mmph?” she answered.

  He came right on in and picked her up as if she were a doll. Her towel was gaping, but to tug at it would give away her true state of alertness.

  Clint’s face, though, was etched with concern, not lust, and she felt a twinge of guilt over misleading him. “C’mon, darlin’,” he said, “let’s get you warm.” He carried her out of the bathroom and over to the bed. The room was warm. It felt great. He laid her gently onto the sheets and stretched the blankets up to her neck. She glanced over at the other bed. Rusty was passed out. He hadn’t even bothered to take off his shoes.

  She thought her plan had worked until Clint quickly, efficiently, reached under the covers and grabbed her right arm, the one closest to the edge of the bed. He pulled it out and efficiently cuffed her to the bed frame with a murmured “sorry.”

  Not half as sorry as she was, she thought, fuming. Clint might be a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She had one defense left, and that was screaming. Maybe someone in a nearby room would hear and come to investigate. One thing was certain. She wasn’t going to lie there passively, waiting for something else horrible to happen.

  Without warning, she opened her mouth and gave a blood-freezing scream. “Help! Help, I’ve been kid—”

  Clint was on her in an instant. He hadn’t merely put his hand over her mouth, he’d practically tackled her. Now not only did she have a large hand half smothering her, but she was being crushed by two hundred pounds of pure male muscle.

  It really wasn’t so bad, having Clint lying on top of her. A series of pictures flashed through her mind, X-rated images of a few other scenarios involving a similar proximity of bodies, hers and Clint’s. Egad, where had that come from?

  She’d stopped screaming the instant Clint made his move. Now she was utterly silent, except for her heart, which was thumping like the march of a very determined soldier.

  “What the hell—” Rusty was off the bed, looking around, confused.

  “Nothing, Rusty,” Clint said calmly. “Just our little hostage, playing games. Making me believe she was sick. Making me worry about her.”

  “Mfmpf,” she said.

  “Not a chance. I don’t want to hear a word you have to say.” He turned back to Rusty. “Find me something to gag her with, will you?”

  “You don’t have to gag her,” Rusty said. “I don’t think there’s anybody else staying at this motel. It’s like a ghost town.”

  That damn Rusty, Marissa thought. For once, he had to be smart. Her screaming had accomplished nothing except to sentence her to a gag.

  “Just find me a sock or something.”

  Before she knew what was happening, Clint was holding a pair of socks over her mouth and was tying them tight with a strip from a torn pillowcase.

  “I hate doing this, you know,” he said. “But I can’t have you calling for help, not now. This won’t last much longer, I promise.”

  Yeah, right. He’d said it would be over before morning. She didn’t know what time it was, but judging from the sunlight filtering in through the drawn curtains, it was morning.

  “Try to get some sleep, will you?”

  Easy for him to say. He didn’t have a pair of socks blocking his mouth. She closed her eyes anyway. Clint sat down on the end of her bed. She felt the mattress give. He must be at least as tired as she was. Would he become more desperate as exhaustion settled in?

  “We need to call Gabriole again,” he announced to Rusty. “Ol’ Jimmy’s had plenty of time to think about his situation.”

  And to call the police, Marissa hoped as she cracked her eyes open to watch. She dreaded the thought of Jimmy trying to handle this on his own or, God forbid, with the help of his friends. Much as she wanted to be free, she couldn’t stand the thought of bloodshed on her behalf. If Jimmy would be patient, Clint would tire of this game and let her go. She was sure of that. He wouldn’t do the things he’d threatened to do with her.

  Clint stood, almost reluctantly it seemed, and reached into his bag for the cellular phone. He raised the antenna, punched in a few numbers, then cursed. “Damn, what else could go wrong?”

  “What?” Rusty asked.

  “The battery’s dead. I put a fresh one in right before I gave the phone to you. What’d you do, call Australia?”

  Clint had apparently guessed right, and Rusty, the idiot, was too dumb to lie his way out of it. “I might have made a few calls. Hell, it was free, and you said it was untraceable. I haven’t called my mom in almost two months, since they disconnected my phone, so I thought—”

  “Never mind. Now I’ll have to find a public phone someplace, and hope to hell Jimmy hasn’t gone to the cops, that he’s not tracing the call.”

  “Even if he is, you can get away from the phone booth in plenty of time to avoid being nabbed,” Rusty pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Clint reluctantly agreed. “But it’s not the way I planned on handling this thing.”

  “So? Why’s that different than anything else about this job?” Rusty laughed. The sound sent shivers right to Marissa’s bones.

  “You got a point. I’ll be gone maybe half an hour, if all goes well. Just keep an eye on her.” He nodded toward Marissa. “Make sure she doesn’t get loose. Make sure she’s breathing. And for God’s sake, don’t touch her otherwise. Leave her alone.”

  “You got it, boss,” Rusty said with a mock salute.

  Looking not very reassured, Clint left the motel room.

  Marissa immediately felt more uneasy, if that was possible. She definitely did not like being left alone with Rusty the Giggle Man. He was a couple of bricks short of a load.

  Rusty watched out a crack in the curtain for several tense seconds. Then he turned toward Marissa. “Man, I thought he’d never leave. Are you okay? Jimmy the Gab would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you. Sorry I had to talk so rough to you earlier. That was just an act to convince Clint.”

  Jimmy the what?

  “Ah, I see you don’t quite get it yet, do you? I’m on your side, sweet cakes. This is all a setup. Clint’s precious Rachelle is alive and well, probably lying in Eddie’s bed and snorting coke this very minute. I talked to her last night. She said her job was to flush Clint out and force him into a desperate move. And now I’m gonna nail him. If this doesn’t earn me a top spot in the organization, I don’t know what will.”

  Marissa’s head swam. Rusty worked for Eddie Constantine? Rachelle hadn’t really disappeared? And what exactly did Rusty mean by “nail him”?

  “Man, listen to me, blathering on and leaving you all trussed up. Here, let’s get that gag off of you. You’re okay, right? You won’t scream no more or nothing, right? ’Cause I’m on your side. As soon as I finish my business here, we’ll go call Eddie and Jimmy, or anyone else you want, and you can go home. This nightmare will be over.”

  She felt a momentary burst of relief at having the gag removed. And the thought of calling Jimmy, of telling him she was safe … But what was this “business” of Rusty’s?

  She licked her lips. Her best bet was to play along until she could figure out what was going on and formulate another plan. “Thanks,” she said, rubbing her face with her free hand. “What about the handcuffs?”

  “Oh, uh, I’m afraid Clint must have taken the key with him. But we’ll get it soon as he comes back. You know, I tried to get rid of him on the boat. Why’d you go and throw him the rope? Sure would have been cleaner if he’d drowned.”

  Marissa stifled a gasp. She was beginning to get the picture, and it was an ugly one. “Clint was the only one among us who could navigate,” Marissa said. “Unless you were hiding some sailing skills.”

  “Hah, not that that mattered in the end. It’s okay, though. He might have survived, if we’d let him drift away from the boat. A bullet in the brain, though, that’s a sure thing.” He giggled.

  Marissa felt herself going dizzy. He talked about cold-blooded murder as casually as if he were discussing f
ixing a leaky gasket on his car.

  Rusty went to the zippered case and dug around inside. “Yeah, I knew ol’ Clint wouldn’t be able to leave my piece behind.” He pulled out a gun—a big, black revolver—then checked the cylinder. “Damn, he unloaded it.”

  Marissa’s hopes soared until she realized Rusty had found the bullets. He pushed them into the cylinder one by one, then snapped the gun closed. “Ready for takeoff.”

  Marissa felt as if she might throw up. Obviously Rusty assumed that both she and Jimmy operated in the same sick world as Eddie and Rachelle and himself—and Clint, for that matter.

  “What about the motel clerk?” Marissa asked. “After they find Clint’s b-body …” She faltered a bit on that word. “… won’t he or she be able to identify you?”

  “Nah. When I went in, no one was behind the front desk, so I just liberated a key. No one saw a thing.”

  This guy was serious. He was going to kill Clint in cold blood—and, she realized with a start, she was the only person who could prevent it.

  FIVE

  Rusty reclaimed his bed, lying on top of the covers, his head propped up by two pillows, his feet crossed negligently at the ankles. He had the gun in his hand, resting against his stomach.

  “I’m gonna get some more sleep. You holler if you hear the man coming, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I can’t sleep, anyway.” Marissa tried to sound nonchalant, though her heart was racing. Maybe Rusty would be asleep when Clint returned, and she could warn Clint—no, that wouldn’t work. Rusty had the only room key. She’d seen him pocket it after opening the door. Clint would have to knock to get into the room.

  She had to either get to the phone, get to the gun—or disable Rusty. Her third option was the most distasteful, but unfortunately the most likely to meet with success. The phone was across the room, well out of her reach; any attempt she made to take the gun might result in his waking and shooting her. At any rate, he would know they weren’t on the same side.

  So she had to disable him. And try not to kill him in the process.

  She waited until she heard him softly snoring, then began experimenting. She had little mobility with her hand cuffed to the metal bed frame. But she could maneuver herself out of bed, and she had one free hand and two free feet to work with. However, there were a limited number of things she could reach—pillows and blankets, a telephone book, a lamp.

  A lamp. As a weapon it lacked subtlety, but it would have to do. She reached behind the nightstand as quietly as possible and unplugged the lamp. It was a heavy ceramic number, with cacti and sunburst patterns on it.

  She took off the shade, then hefted the base experimentally with her left arm. She didn’t have much control. But if she grabbed the lamp by the harp, with the bottom part over her head, then all she would need to do was lean it in the right direction. Gravity would do a lot of the work.

  She couldn’t believe it. She, Marissa Gabriole, who had deplored and shunned violence for the last twenty years, was about to bash in a man’s head—while he was sleeping and defenseless. Well, not quite defenseless, she reasoned. There was the gun.

  She had no choice, she reminded herself. She was saving Clint’s life—whether it deserved saving or not. She didn’t need to kill Rusty, just stun him long enough to allow her to get that gun away. She would have to keep the gun under her control too. It shamed her to remember how easily Clint had disarmed her.

  The longer she delayed, the worse her chances of success got. Rusty could wake up any time. Clint could return. She gritted her teeth, begged God’s forgiveness, and with all her strength heaved the lamp at Rusty’s head.

  The lamp shattered. Rusty made a surprised grunt, then fell silent. Marissa grabbed the gun, then jumped back, ready for anything. She pointed the revolver toward Rusty’s limp form. Nothing. Oh, dear God, what if she’d killed him?

  She stuck the gun under her pillow and began pulling pieces of the lamp away from Rusty’s face. A trickle of blood stained his forehead, but he looked otherwise intact, and he was breathing.

  She’d just released her own pent-up breath when a knock sounded on the door. “Rusty, it’s me. Open up!”

  Clint! What was she going to tell him? He’d probably never believe her story. “Clint?” she called to him. “You’ll have to break the door. Rusty’s unconscious, and I can’t reach the lock.”

  “What?” Rusty unconscious? Just when Clint was beginning to think he was making progress. He felt the first stirrings of panic. Was Rusty having some delayed reaction to the previous night’s trauma? Had he hit his head? Was he merely exhausted?

  Without further delay, Clint placed a series of well-aimed kicks to the door. The cheap particleboard gave way as if it were balsa wood. He burst into the room … and for the second time in twenty-four hours, he came upon Marissa Gabriole holding a gun pointed at him.

  “That’s far enough,” she said. “Don’t think I’ll be stupid enough to surrender a gun to you a second time. If I’d had any idea what you were planning to put me through, I’d have shot you when I first laid eyes on you.”

  “What the hell happened?” was all Clint could think of to ask. Man, he leaves for fifteen minutes, and all hell breaks loose.

  “I saved your miserable life, that’s what happened,” she said, confusing him even further. “You’ve got the handcuff key. Toss it over here.”

  He wasn’t about to. In her current state, she couldn’t chase him if he resorted to fleeing. “First, explain how it is you think you saved my life.”

  “It’s your so-called partner,” she said, nodding toward Rusty. “Apparently Eddie Constantine is tired of you picking on him, and he wants you dead. Rusty was planning to earn some brownie points by doing the deed.”

  This made no sense at all. “And leave his sister spinning in the wind? I don’t think so.”

  “His sister—Rachelle, right?”

  Clint nodded.

  “He says Rachelle is safe. Her disappearance was a setup to flush you out. You’re getting too close to something. I think Rachelle must have told Rusty about it last night, when they talked.”

  Clint rolled his eyes, though Marissa’s words made him feel distinctly uneasy. “Why would I believe a cock-amamy story like that?”

  “That’s why he took out the gun,” she said, sounding a little desperate. “He was lying on the bed, waiting for you, and he fell asleep. I had to do something—I couldn’t let him shoot you down in cold blood. So I hit him with the lamp.”

  “Why not let him kill me?” Clint asked, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. He inched closer to her. “You’re ready to do it yourself, right? That’s what you were saying.”

  Panic registered in her dark eyes. She wiggled the gun. “I will too. You stop right there. Don’t you come any closer!”

  He took another step.

  She pulled the trigger. The explosion of sound was deafening.

  “Jeez Louise!” Clint did a fast-forward tap dance before he realized she’d missed. The bullet had landed behind him somewhere. “Okay, I’m staying way back, all right?”

  But she wasn’t listening to him. She was staring at the gun in her left hand. “Oh, my God, what have I done?” She dropped the gun onto the bed as if it were a snake. “Take it, just take the damn thing. Shoot me, I don’t care.”

  Relief coursed through Clint’s body, followed quickly by sympathy as he saw the stricken look on Marissa’s face. He’d driven her to this, just as Gabriole had driven Clint to kidnapping and hijacking.

  Hardening his heart against her, he stepped forward and took the gun. It was warm. He quickly emptied it of its remaining cartridges, threw it into his bag, then stepped into the bathroom and one by one dropped the bullets into the open sink drain. He should have thrown the gun overboard when he had the chance.

  When he returned to the room, he found Marissa sitting on the edge of the bed, crying softly. The sound of her tears dug at his hard heart. He couldn’t help himself. He s
at down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, trying not to notice how bare they were. That scanty towel was the only thing covering Marissa’s favors. One good tug—

  He closed his mind to that.

  “It’ll be okay, Marissa,” he said. “Things are looking up. This’ll all be over in a couple of hours. I spoke to your brother, and we’re working things out.”

  She shook off his arm, scooted away from him. “Your partner is half dead over there. How can you say things are looking up?”

  Hell, he’d almost forgotten about poor Rusty in all the confusion. He went over to the bed, checked the young man’s pulse, his breathing. He lifted the eyelids. Both pupils contracted to the light. There was blood on his forehead from a small cut there, and a raised lump, but it didn’t appear as if anything was broken.

  “He’s out cold, all right. You did this to him?” His admiration for her inched up another notch. She was one gutsy lady.

  “You make me sick!” Marissa cried. “You claim to be trying to help your friend, who’s disappeared. You have contempt for my brother because you think he did something to this … Rachelle. Well, my brother is ten times the man you are, Clint whatever-your-name-is. He might not always be inside the strict limits of the law, but he doesn’t go around abducting people. He respects women.”

  “Is that so?” Clint couldn’t help smiling at her naïveté. “Is that why he owns a strip club?”

  “What are you talking about? He doesn’t own any strip club.”

  Clint went into the bathroom to get a cold washcloth. When he returned to the room, he asked, “What do you call the Foxhunt?” He placed the cool, wet rag on Rusty’s forehead. Rusty stirred and mumbled something.

  “It’s a—it’s a restaurant,” Marissa said, though she didn’t sound very sure of herself. “I did a Schedule C for the Foxhunt.”

  “But have you ever been there?” He looked over his shoulder at her.

  She shook her head, not meeting his gaze.

  “You might be able to order food there, but the waitresses are all topless.”