One Foot in the Grave

by Denise Grover Swank

  Paul.

  “How long ago did he drop it by?”

  “Right after you went into the back.”

  Which meant he’d followed Abby.

  “And you haven’t heard from Marco?” I asked.

  “No. What’s goin’ on?” He snatched the letter from my hand and quickly scanned it. “What the fuck?” His face lifted, his eyes wild. “He has Wyatt? Why does he want Abby?”

  “She knows things, and he wants to clean up his mess. He wants to get rid of me and Abby along with Wyatt.” But why hadn’t he asked for Marco? Had our show at the supermarket been that convincing? Or did Paul know something I didn’t? Had someone hurt Marco?

  My heart hammering, I checked the time on the wall clock. Nine thirty. We didn’t have much time, especially since I didn’t have the first idea where Wyatt was.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I need to find Wyatt. Call Lula. Now.”

  Guilt washed over his face.

  “You already know,” I said in a dry voice. The Drummond siblings and their damn secrets. And the answer suddenly occurred to me too. “He’s out at Lula’s shack, isn’t he?”

  He looked surprised.

  “I figured he wasn’t out at Bingham’s place, so Lula’s shack seemed like a logical next choice. Especially since hardly anyone knows about your newfound familial status. Do you know where David Binion lives?”

  “Out toward Lula’s place.”

  “I need to find him. Can you give me directions?”

  “I want to go with you when you get Wyatt.”

  “Then meet us there,” I said. “But make sure to ask Tiny to guard Abby.”

  “I’m not lettin’ you go off by yourself!” he protested.

  “I’m not going alone. I’m finding Marco.”

  “Why does the sheriff’s deputy want Abby?”

  “She knows how Heather died.”

  His mouth dropped open. “Is she willin’ to testify to that?”

  “I think so, but she wants an attorney to work out a plea bargain in case they want to charge her with something. We can’t let anything happen to her.”

  “Tiny will protect her and make sure she stays put.”

  I nodded. “After I find Marco, we’ll meet you at the entrance to Lula’s property.”

  “Don’t go in there alone, Carly.”

  “I won’t. All I have is pepper spray. I’m not stupid enough to think I can take him on. We need Marco.”

  And I also needed to know he was okay. Mitzi had said Paul was out for blood. Oh, God. What if he’d hurt Marco? I tried to quell my rising anxiety. Letting my imagination take over wouldn’t help anything. I needed to be calm and logical.

  Max nodded as though reassuring himself. “Okay.”

  I convinced Abby to stay with Tiny, telling her that Max, Marco, and I were going to take care of Paul. Then I headed out to my car, once again cursing the lack of cell phone reception out here. When this was all said and done, I was getting us both long-range walkie-talkies.

  Following Max’s directions, I headed to David Binion’s house, but Marco’s cruiser wasn’t out front and I hadn’t passed a deputy sheriff on the road. Where was he?

  I parked and walked up to the house. The front door opened before I could get to the porch.

  “What do you want?” bellowed a man holding a shotgun.

  I held my hands up. “I’m looking for Marco Roland.”

  “He ain’t here. He left about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went?”

  “Do I look like his daddy?” the man shouted, then slammed the door shut.

  I could only imagine how well their interview had gone.

  But now I had no idea what to do. I had no way of locating Marco, and it was now 9:50. I’d told Max to meet us outside of Lula’s property so I headed in that direction.

  I was on the county road that led to Lula’s shack when I saw flashing red lights in my rearview mirror.

  Adrenaline rushed through my blood, making me light-headed, and I struggled with what to do. Stop? Keep going? This was a pretty deserted stretch of road. Other than Max, no one would be coming along to help me anytime soon, not that anyone was liable to stop to help a woman who’d been stopped by a sheriff’s deputy.

  I pulled over, hoping and praying it wasn’t Paul, but I wasn’t surprised when I saw him approaching the rear of my car.

  “Come out with your hands up,” he called out.

  I grabbed the pepper spray out of my purse and shoved it into my front jeans pocket before I got out and held up my hands.

  “Where’s Abby?” he asked, shining a flashlight in my eyes to blind me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s bullshit,” he said, shoving me against the side of the car and patting me down. He found my pepper spray and slowly reached into my pocket to pull it out, lingering just a little too long for comfort. “Such a bad girl, Carly Moore. Now you have to be punished.”

  “Somehow I think you’d take any excuse to punish me. That’s what men like you do, right? Punish women for ridiculous things so you can feel like a man?”

  I wasn’t prepared for the punch to the side of my head and it hurt like hell, but I realized that he’d held back when he hit me. This was about teaching me that he was in charge, not knocking me out. Nevertheless, my knees buckled, and he shoved me face-first on the asphalt as he zip-tied my arms behind my back, then roughly hauled me to my feet.

  “Not so tough now, are you?” he asked with a laugh.

  I didn’t answer, mostly because I was trying to figure out what to do. Max would be here any minute. Would he be able to help me or would I get him killed?

  Paul shoved me into the backseat of his deputy vehicle, and the next thing I knew, he was pulling away from the shoulder and in the direction of Lula’s property.

  When her lane appeared, he turned onto her property, and I started praying that Wyatt really was there because I didn’t want to face this man alone.

  He parked his car in front of the house, next to Wyatt’s truck, then turned off the engine, but I noticed he left his keys in the ignition. He got out and opened the back door, giving me a dark leer. “Time to see your ex.”

  He wrenched me out of the car and led me to the dilapidated shack that looked even more run-down than it had back in December.

  Paul’s foot fell through a floorboard on the porch, and he released his hold on me while he bent down to pry his foot loose.

  I took off running.

  “You won’t get far,” he called out after me, sounding amused, “and the longer it takes me to catch you, the harsher your punishment will be.”

  I heard banging and shouting in the cabin, and for a moment I almost reconsidered my decision to escape—should I try to save Wyatt?—but every instinct I possessed told me to run, which was slowed down by the dark night and my arms bound behind my back.

  Sure enough, Paul caught up with me as I reached the edge of the trees.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?” He gave me a push and I fell, my shoulder colliding with a tree trunk before I hit the ground.

  Laughing, he bent over and grabbed my ankles, then began to drag me out of the trees, the twigs and fallen branches scraping my stomach and face.

  When I was out on clear ground, he rolled me over and loomed over me. “Don’t be difficult.”

  But in placing himself over me, he gave me the perfect opening to deliver a vicious kick to his groin, and I didn’t waste any time. He bent over and I sat up, struggling to get to my feet. I’d just made it to my knees when he straightened and kicked my arm, pushing me over.

  “You bitch!” he shouted. “You want to play rough? I can play rough.” And he gave me a couple more kicks to prove his point.

  He grabbed my arm and jerked me up. “Think you’re clever, huh? We’ll see how clever you are inside.”

  Dragging me back to the shack, he cursed me every which way to Sunday,
then shoved me through the front door.

  I stumbled and fell to my knees, feeling slightly panicked that the room was so dark. I couldn’t see Wyatt, or anything else for that matter.

  “Drummond, you let the lantern go out,” Paul said as he shut the door. Using the flashlight on his phone, he walked over to a table and lit a kerosene lantern, casting an amused glance toward the back corner of the room.

  I looked that way and saw Wyatt was sitting on the floor next to the bed, his ankles bound with a nylon rope, his arms tied behind him.

  Paul turned his attention back to me. “You were supposed to bring that bitch Abby with you. Now where is she?”

  “She’s on her way to the sheriff’s department in Ewing,” I said. “She’s looking for Detective White so she can tell her everything you’ve done.”

  “You lie,” he spat. “If she was going to turn me in, she would have done it already.”

  “She’s tired of living in fear. You’re the reason she came back to Drum, aren’t you?”

  “It was too easy. All I have to do is threaten to tell on her, and she does my bidding.”

  “You really are a psychopath, aren’t you?” I asked in disgust.

  He laughed. “If you think you’re insulting me, guess again.”

  His radio squawked, and I heard Marco’s voice. “Where is she?”

  Paul grinned, then pushed his radio button. “Out at the overlook.”

  But as he spoke, I shouted, “Lula’s shack!”

  “Carly?” Marco’s panicked voice cracked over the radio.

  Paul gave me another kick, and Wyatt released a guttural sound.

  “Where are we supposed to meet?” Marco called out.

  Paul pushed me down on the floor and covered my mouth with one hand, reaching for his radio button with the other.

  I chomped down on his fingers, hard enough for him to yelp and pull his hand away, and shouted, “Lula’s shack!”

  Paul turned off his radio and gave me a murderous gaze.

  “Leave her alone, Conrad,” Wyatt said in a bored tone. “She didn’t do anything.”

  “Bullshit. She’s done plenty.” He grabbed a length of rope from the table and dragged me over to a support beam. Placing my back against the beam, he wrapped the rope around my chest several times and tied it off, which proved to be difficult since I fought him every step of the way.

  “Damn,” he grunted. “You’re a hellcat.” He cast a glance at Wyatt. “You like ’em wild, huh? Or maybe not, since you’re not together anymore.” He walked toward the door and glanced back at us. “You two have fun.”

  He shut the door behind him, and we sat in silence for several seconds until we heard his vehicle start. The sound of the engine got fainter as he drove away from the house.

  “Are you okay?” Wyatt asked in a concerned tone.

  I ached all over, and I was tied to a pole. I was far from all right.

  “How did he find you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he followed me after I drove to Ewing to call you earlier. He drove out here around six in his sheriff’s car. I didn’t put up a fight, but instead of arrestin’ me, he knocked me over the head and tied me up.”

  “I only found out were you were after he left a note telling me to bring Abby to where you were hiding. Obviously he thought I knew.”

  “Who told you?” he asked.

  “Max, but I’d pretty much guessed.” I paused. “Do you think Marco heard me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sagging against the bed.

  “Max knows we’re here. He was supposed to wait for me on the county road, but he must have seen my abandoned car. Let’s hope Paul doesn’t catch him.” I told him about Paul pulling me over. “Why not just wait until I pulled down the drive?”

  “To make sure you were really alone? To intimidate you? All of the above?”

  I would have nodded, but my face throbbed too much.

  “Why does he want Abby?”

  “She knows the truth about Heather.” I paused, glancing at him, and added, “She accidently killed her.” I explained what I knew about Heather’s plan A (getting him arrested and blackmailing his parents) and B (setting Bart up in the hopes of a payout).

  “Conrad was one of the deputies who arrested me,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was part of the initial setup.”

  “He’s a cancer.”

  “No argument from me,” he said. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. You know he plans to kill us. I suspect he intends to make it look like a murder suicide.”

  I wasn’t surprised, but I felt a new adrenaline rush. “Then we have to get out of here before he comes back.”

  I’d fought him enough that my ropes weren’t terribly tight. I just needed to figure out a way to free my hands. I lifted my butt and threaded my legs through my arms, which was difficult with my chest tied to the pole. When I finally got them free, I started tugging on the rope around my middle, trying to twist my bound hands so the knot was in front of me.

  “I’m worried about, Max,” I said as I kept fidgeting.

  “Max is pretty scrappy. He can take care of himself.”

  “We haven’t heard any gunshots, so I’m going to take that as a good sign.” Paul had really tightened the knot, so I was struggling to loosen it. “If Marco heard me, he’ll do everything in his power to get here.”

  Wyatt was silent for a moment. “You can break that zip tie, but first you have to tighten it.”

  I glanced up at him. “Tighten it? Are you crazy?”

  “No. It’ll make it easier to break. Tighten it, then lift your arms as high as you can and then swing them down and to the sides, as hard as you can. It should break the lock.”

  I’d heard it was possible, but I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t exceptionally strong.

  “You can do this, Carly,” he cajoled. “You just tried to fight off a violent man. You can definitely defeat a zip tie.”

  He was right. What was more, I didn’t have much of a choice. I had to do this. I tightened the zip tie with my teeth, then lifted my arms and swung them down with all my strength. To my surprise, the lock flew off, freeing my hands.

  “It would have been a hell of a lot easier to do that than untie knots in a cold shed last December,” I said as I rubbed my wrists.

  “Why were your hands tied?” he asked, his voice sounding strangled.

  Crap. I hadn’t meant to say that. I started picking at the knots securing me to the pole. “It was while I was looking for Lula.”

  “Why were your hands tied?” he repeated.

  “Do you really want to know, Wyatt?” I asked, starting to get pissed.

  His tone equally irritated, he responded, “I asked, didn’t I?”

  I’d kept this from him for so long. I was tired of carrying this burden. “I started out looking for Lula, but I stirred up enough shit that the people who were out to get her kidnapped Greta, thinking she knew where to find Lula. Since her disappearance had more leads, I started looking for her. Then they kidnapped me.”

  “What? Who was lookin’ for Lula? Bingham?”

  “No, Wyatt,” I said in disgust, finally getting the knot a little loose. “Bingham saved me, although I had no delusions that he did it to save me. He wanted Lula, especially after I told him she was pregnant.”

  “So who the hell was it?”

  “Are you telling me that you didn’t find it odd that the funeral home director who had ties to Carson Purdy died around the time Lula went into hiding?”

  He looked shell-shocked. “I…”

  “Lula was running drugs for them. That’s where she went on most of her trips when she took off. Only she didn’t return with their money on her last trip. As you can imagine, they wanted it back.”

  “You’re telling me that Pete Mobley was runnin’ a drug ring? That he wasn’t used by his employees like the sheriff said?”

  “I’m not sure how much authority Mobley had in the r
unning it. He didn’t handle the pressure well, which makes me suspect Carson was in charge, but yeah, he and another guy kept it up after Carson died.” He continued to stare at me in disbelief. “They wanted their money, Wyatt, and they were willing to do whatever they needed to do to get it.”

  “Which included kidnapping you out of the back of the tavern,” he said in a flat voice.

  “He drugged me to get me out. The same drug that killed Hank’s daughter.”

  His face lost color. “Jesus, Carly…”

  “He drugged Greta too, but thankfully she didn’t react as badly as I did. I’d been talking to Bingham about my search for Lula, giving him updates, and when I was kidnapped, Marco humbled himself to ask Bingham for help. Bingham went to Mobley and found out where his partner, Shane Jones, was keeping me and Greta. Sure, he did it because he thought Lula was there too, but he saved us nonetheless.” I finally got the knot worked loose and pulled the rope free. “I would have died if not for Bingham. Twice over. Because if those drugs hadn’t killed me, Shane would have.”

  I got to my feet and headed to the kitchen to look for a knife or scissors to cut his ropes, but it was the barest kitchen I’d ever seen, and I had to open multiple drawers to find a dull butcher knife. “But Bingham refused to let Marco take me to a hospital, probably because he killed Shane Jones too, and there would be too many questions. He sent a medic to stay with me at Marco’s, and they hooked me up to an IV. I was unconscious until Tuesday, and then it took me over a week to recover. So, yes, Bingham saved my life, but it had nothing to do with me being on his payroll.”

  Wyatt watched me walk toward him, regret in his eyes. “Carly…I’m sorry.”

  “I really don’t want to hear it, Wyatt,” I said, my voice tight. “There’s no apology that can make up for the way you treated me.” Purging that out of my system had been cathartic, but also emotional and exhausting. Plus, I was really starting to feel the places where Paul Conrad’s heavy shoe had connected with my ribs.

  “Nevertheless, I’m sorry.”

  Ignoring him, I sawed through the ropes on his legs. He scooted forward a bit, and I worked on his arm restraints, setting the knife on the bed. When he was free, he swung his arms a couple of times, then rubbed them. “Where’s your car?”