by Lynsay Sands
Leaving the machine open, Jane eased her foot down on the gas pedal. It was time to close some distance between. If at all possible she'd rather try to free Edie while on the highway, maybe while the woman's captors were at a rest stop getting food or something. Jane knew the chances of getting that lucky were slim, but it seemed important that they get an opportunity for a rescue attempt before Edie and her captors reached their final destination.
Jane had considered using the cop finder earlier, but she hadn't been able to come up with a way to explain the contraption to Abel. She sighed now. Things would be so much easier if she could just be straight with the guy about where she worked and what she did. However, B.L.I.S.S. was very strict with their confidentiality clauses, and a friend's life wasn't important enough to them to have that confidentiality broken. Compared to world security, a friend meant nothing.
Jane understood that, but she didn't have to like it.
------
Abel was having an erotic dream. Jane was lying on top of him, planting wet little kisses on his face. Murmuring softly in his sleep, he placed an arm around her to cuddle her close, then stiffened in surprise as she growled at him.
"Jane?" he muttered uncertainly.
"Tinkle," her voice hissed, but from the side rather than from where she lay on his chest. Abel's confusion was enough to force him from sleep. He opened his eyes to find himself nose-to-nose with his furry nemesis. Tinkle growled, and Abel jerked upright in surprise, sending the fur-ball tumbling to the floor. The dog took a moment to growl at him threateningly, then scampered back to leap up on the bench seat beside its sleeping mistress.
"I'm sorry."
Jane's voice drew his attention as she pushed a button on the dashboard. A whirring sound reached his ears as his seat slowly returned to an upright position. Obviously, she'd put his seat down while he'd slept to make him more comfortable.
"I tried to keep Tinkle off of you, but I couldn't drive and grab her at the same time." She shrugged.
Abel grunted and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He glanced around. It was still dim in the van, but the sky was brightening outside. He turned toward the back at another growl from Tinkle, and noted that Jane's grandmother was upright in her seat but sound asleep and snoring like a foghorn. The mutt was baring its teeth at him, looking like a ferocious rat with a bad wig.
Damned mutt, he thought and glanced back at Jane. Though he couldn't see her very well in the gloom, he thought she looked exhausted and had to wonder how long he'd slept. Had they closed any more of the distance between Edie and themselves?
Edie. Fear welled up within him for her and he began to fret over her predicament. Had whoever it was hurt her? Knocked her out? Threatened her somehow to make her go with them? He tried to tell himself they couldn't have hurt her badly. They must have used threats; otherwise they couldn't have got her across the border.
The border. He stiffened. How had they managed to get her across the border? Surely his sister would have tried to signal to the customs guard that she was an unwilling captive.
"How do you think they got her through customs?" he asked. It was out of his mouth before he realized he was going to ask.
Jane glanced at the man next to her. He'd been sleeping for a solid eight hours--much longer than she'd expected, but probably good for him.
It was just past seven in the morning. Thanks to Jane's lead foot, and another stop their quarry had taken, they'd caught up with Edie's captors a little better than an hour ago. The tracker had helped Jane zero in on the exact vehicle and she'd been following it, hoping yet fearing that it might pull over at any time and give them the opportunity to try to free Abel's sister.
Jane had kept her distance, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that they were following the other car as they'd trailed it south onto Route 99 then east on Route 12. It had also been dark then, so she hadn't been able to see it at first as anything more than a dark shape. But the sky lightened as the sun made its appearance, and she'd gotten close enough as they'd turned south onto Route 49 that she'd finally been able to make out what sort of vehicle they followed. Now Tinkle was making a nuisance of herself.
Jane peered at Abel again, wondering whether she dared tell him the truth. She doubted he'd take it well. She wasn't taking it well herself.
"I'm sorry I fell asleep on you," Abel said, then repeated the question he'd asked a moment before. The one she'd hoped he'd forget. "How do you think they got her across the border? She would have said or done something to get help had she been awake," he reasoned. "But she had to be awake. Surely the customs people wouldn't have allowed them to transport an unconscious woman across the border?"
Deciding that nothing would be gained by keeping the information to herself, Jane announced bluntly, "They brought Edie through customs in a hearse."
Chapter Six
As she had feared, Abel didn't take the news well. His indrawn breath and the horror on his face were pretty telling. Still, Jane was startled when he bellowed, "She's dead?"
Gran stirred on the seat behind them but managed to sleep through the explosion.
"No. I'm sure she isn't," Jane soothed. "If she were dead, I don't think they'd bother transporting her all the way down here. They'd have dumped the body. I think they must want her alive for something." She allowed that to sink in, then added, "I suspect she's drugged in the back of the hearse and was brought across the border as a supposed corpse."
She gestured to the dark vehicle on the road ahead and Abel stared at it unhappily.
"You mean, she's probably lying unconscious in a coffin in the back of that hearse?"
"Yes," Jane admitted reluctantly. It was something she'd rather not think of: Edie trapped in a coffin. The fact that she was most likely drugged, didn't make it any better, although it would explain why she hadn't used more of her borrowed trackers during the past thirty-eight hours. It might also explain why Edie and her captors had only made it as far as Washington before Jane had thought to check the tracking program. She pointed that out to Abel: "They probably brought her through customs as a dead family member. That would explain why they hadn't got very far when I found them on the tracker. If they took her any time Thursday night, they should have been out of range by the time I looked Friday afternoon," she went on. "But I think perhaps they had to manufacture paperwork and such to get her across the border as a supposed corpse."
"Corpse." Abel winced at the word, then leaned forward in his seat anxiously as the hearse they followed rounded a curve in the road and briefly disappeared from sight. "Speed up. You could lose them," he ordered.
"If I stay too close, they might realize that we're following. I'd rather not get their guard up. Surprise could be very useful in getting your sister back."
When Abel sat, hands fisted, anxiously scanning the way ahead, Jane suggested, "Why don't you get the laptop out? I closed it and set it on the floor once I was sure which vehicle we were following."
He immediately snatched up the laptop and satellite dish.
Jane ran through the instructions to open the tracking program, hoping that being able to see the blinking beacon would make it easier for him when the vehicle was out of sight, but it didn't. Abel stared at the screen for several moments, glanced at the road ahead to see that the hearse still wasn't in sight, and said, "You've been awake an awfully long time. Maybe I should drive for a little bit."
"Just watch the laptop," Jane suggested wearily. She was tired, and she had been driving along time, but she wasn't willing to give him the wheel. She didn't trust him not to ram the vehicle ahead or something else in a mad attempt to retrieve his sister. In her estimation, the man wasn't thinking very clearly at the moment, and she hadn't trailed Edie all the way to California to let him get them all killed.
"Sonora," Maggie Spyrus said sleepily.
"Sonora?" Jane glanced in the rearview mirror to find her grandmother peering around and straightening in her seat.
"That's what the
sign said. Welcome to Sonora," Gran explained. She began digging in her purse. Soon she was poking a comb at her hair and taking out her compact to powder her nose. Gran never looked anything less than presentable.
She wouldn't have been caught dead in ripped jeans and with no makeup.
Jane turned her attention back to the road ahead, surprised to find that the red dirt hills and trees they'd been driving past for the last little while had given way to actual buildings. They'd reached habitation. She very much suspected that meant the vehicle they were following would be stopping soon, but she didn't have a clue what to do about it. She'd thought earlier that if they pulled into a rest stop, she and Abel might manage to spirit Edie away while the kidnappers were using the facilities. But if they'd reached the area of their final destination, Edie's captors probably wouldn't stop; they'd most likely go directly to wherever they were taking her. Someplace that would probably have a lot more people to deal with than one or two fellows who mayor may not be armed.
Jane found herself tensing more with every mile that passed, considering all the possibilities of what was to come. She very much feared that Abel wouldn't care how many kidnappers there were or whether they were armed. He seemed wound up tight enough to try something foolish that would get him and his sister killed. She began searching her mind for a way to prevent such an occurrence.
Busy thinking up and discarding possible scenarios, Jane was taken by surprise when the hearse she followed suddenly turned to the right and stopped. She nearly drove straight up behind it. Fortunately, at the last moment she regained her wits and continued past down the road.
"A gated community." Abel craned around in his seat to glare at the vehicle she'd passed. It sat before a white metal gate. "Turn around, turn around! They're there!"
Jane ground her teeth and continued on, taking a curve in the road that put them out of sight of the hearse. Only then did she pull into a driveway to turn around.
"Hurry up, hurry up!" Abel cried, craning his neck to look back, though the bend in the road meant he could see nothing.
Jane deliberately took her time backing up. She was hoping that the hearse would be through the gate and beyond their reach by the time they returned. What if Abel tried lunging out of the vehicle and attacking his sister's abductors? The last thing she wanted was to see him killed on a California street.
"Damn it!" Abel cursed as they drove back to find the hearse gone and the gate swinging closed.
"Abel." Jane tried a soothing tone as she pulled up to the gate and stopped, but he wasn't listening. He opened his door.
"I'll have to climb this fence and--"
"You'd better take this," Gran said. Jane glanced back at the same time Abel did. Recognizing the compact her grandmother held and noting the way the woman's lips were rounded in preparation of blowing, Jane instinctively pulled back behind her seat. A puff of powder blew straight into Abel's face.
"Wha--'" He began in confused tones, then slumped forward in his seat. He was turned sideways, held in place thanks only to his seat belt.
Jane caught her laptop before it slid off his limp knees, and turned to glance sharply at her grandmother. "Gran!"
"My, my, my. Your knockout compact works very nicely, doesn't it?" Gran crowed as she closed the container and replaced it in her purse. "And so quickly. You're a brilliant inventor, dear. I could have used that a time or two back in my day."
"Gran," Jane growled, eyeing her grandmother's close-held bag and wondering once again what it contained. Maggie Spyrus was trouble on wheels, and there was no doubting it. Her propensity to steal Jane's inventions from the workroom and "test them out for her"--usually on neighbors--was the reason Jane had hired Jill. It was purely to keep the woman out of trouble. Coming home to find nice old Mrs. Jakobowski asleep on the floor, or old Mr. Flynn dancing around in a tutu singing bawdy sailor tunes, had been disconcerting for Jane to say the least. It had also put her position at risk.
"Well," Jane's gran said mildly in response to her growl, "he was starting to get on my nerves, dear. I understand that he's terribly worried about his sister, but really, he's more likely to get the poor dear killed than to save her the way he was going off half-cocked."
Since that had been her own concern, Jane could hardly argue. Sighing, she peered at the body in the passenger seat.
"How long is he going to be unconscious?" Gran asked with interest.
"It depends on how much powder you blew his way and how much he inhaled," Jane answered. "It looked to me like a good bit."
"Yes, I blew pretty hard," Gran agreed.
Jane pondered. "Okay. He could be out anywhere from thirty minutes to a couple of hours," she decided.
"Hmmm. That will do, I suppose," her gran said.
"So what are you planning?"
"With him?" Jane glanced at her unconscious passenger.
"No. About the gate."
"Oh." Jane glanced at the gate, then at the number pad outside her window, and shifted into park. "I guess I'm going to have to use the calculator."
"Oh, my, yes, that's a good idea," Gran said brightly as Jane climbed out of her seat and slunk toward the back of the van. "I'd forgotten about that. Another very clever invention, my dear. Your genes were proving themselves when you came up with that."
"Thanks, Gran," Jane muttered. She grabbed her briefcase and moved quickly back to her seat.
"Perhaps you should switch on the restraints, Janie dear. Just in case Abel wakes up. He may not have inhaled as much as we hope and could be trouble."
Jane debated briefly, then sighed and flipped a switch on the console. Padded metal bands immediately closed over Abel's legs, waist, and shoulders. They were another invention of hers, ones she'd tested in this van but had never really thought to use herself.
She opened her case and retrieved her day planner/wallet. From that she retrieved the calculator that rested in the small front pocket. A handy little deal, Jane often used it while shopping and such, but this would be the first time she'd used the calculator for its original purpose.
Sliding open a panel on the back, she withdrew two clips attached by wires, then unrolled her window so that she could reach the gate's number pad. People who lived inside this gated community likely used this panel to punch in the code to open the gate; visitors buzzed to be let in. Everyone else was supposed to be kept out by it. Jane hooked her B.L.I.S.S. code-breaking calculator up, pushed the clear and division buttons at one time, then waited. The code she needed would soon be shown on the small screen.
She'd come up with this idea after one of her grandmother's stories. Gran's tales of her days in the spy business had led to a lot of Jane's inventions. Maggie would mention a problem she'd encountered, and Jane would find herself trying to come up with ways to overcome such a problem.
"You'd better hurry, dear."
Jane glanced around in question, and her grandmother gestured toward a middle aged woman wearing the most awful yellow day dress she'd ever seen. The woman was walking down the road toward a small set of mailboxes next to the gate. It seemed even the postman wasn't allowed inside this elite community.
Her calculator gave a soft beep, drawing Jane's gaze back. Four numbers appeared on the screen. Jane Quickly unhooked the two clips and set the calculator out of sight on the floor. She punched in the necessary numbers, and was relieved when the gate swung open. Positive the approaching woman hadn't seen her gizmo or its wires, Jane managed a smile and nod when she raised a hand in greeting. She then pushed the button to raise her black-tinted windows, and drove forward.
"What are we going to do?" Gran asked, leaning forward so that her face was next to Jane's.
"I'm not sure. Find out which house Edie's kidnappers went to and then...er, come up with a plan, I guess."
A glance in the rearview mirror showed Gran nodding. "Good thinking," she said. "Plans are important. Good agents never rush in without a plan. Well...rarely."
Jane felt relief flit through he
r. She could handle planning. Might even come up with a good one. Also her relief was because Gran thought there was time for a plan, which meant she didn't think Edie was in immediate danger.
"There it is."
Jane slowed the van. She hadn't been driving fast to begin with as she followed this curving lane past the gate, but she slowed almost to a stop as they passed the driveway where the hearse they'd followed was parked. It sat before a huge house, one of the largest Jane had ever seen. But she paid little attention to the mansion, her attention fixed on the six men standing out front. As she watched, one of them got into the hearse and started the engine, while another walked into a side door of a huge garage. A moment later one of the garage's two main doors opened and the hearse pulled inside. The men all followed. One opened the back door of the vehicle, revealing a dark wooden coffin.
Jane had no doubt that Edie was inside that coffin, and she had the almost overwhelming urge to slam on the brakes and rush out to rescue her. She knew darned well that, if Abel was awake, he'd have already been halfway up the driveway. But even as she pondered, the garage door began to close.
"You'd better speed up, dear. No one appears to have noticed us yet, but I don't think we want them to."
Jane hesitated. "But shouldn't I...?"
"An agent never rushes in, dear. I know you want to help Edie, but you could do more harm than good if you try engaging the enemy now. An agent investigates her situation, learns all there is to know, and determines the best way to handle things."
"I'm not an agent, Gran," Jane said wearily. "I haven't the first clue how to investigate or handle this."
"We'll stake it out, of course."
"How? It's a gated community. There's almost no traffic here. Certainly no vehicles on the road. A van sitting around would draw notice." Even that was an understatement. The van would stand out like a sore thumb. In fact, they were already lucky the men gathered around the hearse had been too distracted to notice them. No doubt their very presence made them stand out on this road, for it led nowhere but circled back to the gate. "It's a shame there isn't a hotel or something nearby."
