Cavanaugh in the Rough

by Marie Ferrarella

  The noise she’d thought she’d heard outside this box-like prison was fading away. Were they leaving her here?

  Suddenly, she felt herself being shifted, moved. What was happening?

  The next second, she realized that whatever she was in was being transported. Because of the angle, she almost felt as if her enclosure had been leaned against something.

  Something with wheels. The swifter movement confirmed her feelings. She was being taken somewhere.

  What was going on? Where was she and who was moving her?

  Her mind, still dull from whatever had been injected into her, struggled to make sense out of what was happening.

  They were moving faster. And the journey was really bumpy and unsettled. And then everything stopped. She’d stopped moving. Had they reached their destination?

  And exactly where was that?

  She emitted an almost animal-like sound through her nose as the dark enclosure she was in hit something hard. Had it been picked up and thrown? That was what it felt like.

  Suzie still couldn’t make sense out of what was going on, but she realized that if she tried hard enough, she could make a sound—a high-pitched, almost unearthly sound. That had to get someone’s attention—if there was someone out there to hear her.

  There just had to be!

  She had to believe that there was someone out there so she continued her own version of screaming, even though her lips were sealed.

  The only problem was she was getting dizzy because of the lack of air inside this prison she was in.

  She hoped someone would hear her before she passed out.

  Or asphyxiated.

  *

  Chris drove like a man possessed, only vaguely aware that he had broken every traffic rule ever written and most likely some that hadn’t been passed yet. Twice he narrowly avoided crashing into another vehicle.

  None of that registered. The only thing that mattered was that he get to the airport before Eldridge’s jet took off.

  Suzie had been right. Damn it, why hadn’t he believed her?

  He had no idea how the man had pulled it off, but he was certain that Eldridge had had one of his assistants send that text about his mother. Most likely in hopes that it would take not just Chris, but Suzie out of his office so that he could get away without any interference. But the billionaire obviously hadn’t counted on Suzie’s stubborn determination to bring him down for what he’d done.

  To be honest, until just now, Chris had thought that she’d focused on Eldridge because she’d become so ultrasensitive about missing what was right out there in front of her. She’d done it once and he knew that she was obsessed about not doing it again. When she examined and reexamined everything the way she had, he’d just thought she was seeing things that weren’t there.

  But he’d been the blind one.

  He’d been the blind one and Warren Eldridge the ultra-clever, ultra-devious one. Philanthropy was just a cover. The man was sicker than anyone ever suspected.

  Why hadn’t he seen it?

  Why hadn’t he realized that he’d left Suzie in the lion’s den like some kind of a sacrificial lamb? And why hadn’t he seen that she actually matched the billionaire’s favored victim of choice?

  Suzie was blonde, willowy and young. Exactly the type Eldridge was attracted to.

  Exactly the type he killed.

  Chris could feel his heart racing, and he sent up a prayer. He had to get to the airport in time. He just had to.

  Within minutes, he was driving onto the property. A chain-link fence ran along the length of it, meant to keep trespassers from accessing the private airfield.

  Chris never hesitated; he drove right through the fence, bringing it down and dragging a section of it before it fell off to the side.

  It never even slowed him down.

  Squinting, he saw Eldridge’s jet. It was still stationary.

  He drove straight for it.

  If he was wrong, if he’d miscalculated and the serial killer wasn’t Eldridge, if the billionaire didn’t have Suzie, it meant the end of his career and most likely his freedom. Not even his family could help him if he was wrong.

  But something in his gut kept telling him that he wasn’t.

  He saw the billionaire’s stretch limo on the field right beside the jet.

  Driving closer, he saw that Eldridge had disembarked and that two of the assistants he had seen dancing to the man’s attendance were struggling to take out the old, banged-up steamer trunk that had been in the man’s office.

  Suzie was nowhere to be seen.

  Had Eldridge already killed her, and had her body disposed of somewhere?

  Rage began to swell up in Chris’s chest. So much so that he was having trouble breathing. He’d never wanted to kill a man before.

  He did now.

  He brought his vehicle to a skidding, screeching stop right in front of the limo.

  Eldridge turned in his direction, his expression more bored than anything. The man was one cool bastard, Chris thought.

  “More questions, Detective?” Eldridge asked him in a disinterested voice.

  He didn’t have time for this charade. “Where is she?” Chris demanded.

  “That young—what did you call her?—investigator?” Eldridge asked, as if he was trying to summon an image to his mind and having trouble doing so. “Why, she left right after you did.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Chris growled. “Where is she?”

  They were standing close together now. Chris was almost the same height as Eldridge, and although at least twenty years older, Eldridge was in good shape and looked as if he could take care of himself if it came to that. Chris could almost taste the blows that could be exchanged.

  Eldridge shrugged, his custom-made jacket moving like a second skin. “I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

  The animal-like noise that came out of the trunk just then immediately drew Chris’s attention. Something inside the large container began to bang against the lid.

  Was she in there?

  “Open the trunk,” Chris ordered the billionaire. He was aware that the man’s two assistants were watching him warily.

  “It’s my mother’s old steamer trunk,” Eldridge told him, making no move to comply. “It’s filled with old bric-a-brac and I take it everywhere I go. If I open it, everything’s going to come spilling out, and I don’t have the time to waste having it gathered up.” He drew himself up imperially, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Chris. “Now unless you want to suddenly find yourself conducting traffic in the middle of downtown Oakland, because I assure you I can make it happen, you will let me get my luggage on board my jet and—”

  Chris didn’t waste his breath arguing. He pulled out his weapon and pointed it at the billionaire. Confronted with this new twist, Elridge’s assistants stepped back, silently indicating that they weren’t part of anything illegal as they nervously looked at the detective.

  “I said open it!” To punctuate his command, he cocked his weapon. “Now!”

  Eldridge stood his ground. “You’re being ridiculous, Detective.”

  Chris fired a shot to the right of the man’s shoulder. Eldridge yelped indignantly.

  “I’m not going to ask you again,” Chris warned.

  “You are going to regret this!” Eldridge swore.

  “Not half as much as you are unless you open that lid,” he told Eldridge, cocking his weapon a second time.

  “All right, all right! I’m opening it.” After unlocking the trunk, Eldridge threw off the latch.

  The next second, the trunk flew open.

  Not waiting for the lid to be pulled off, Suzie had pushed it up with the top of her head. Staggering to her feet now, she drew her right arm back, made a fist and swung at Eldridge’s chin with every fiber of her somewhat limited strength.

  Stunned and completely unprepared for the blow, Eldridge fell, unconscious, to the ground.

  Her hands now free, Suzie yanked the ta
pe off her mouth and threw it angrily on the ground.

  “What kept you?” she demanded, glaring at Chris.

  “Got caught in traffic,” he answered, not trusting his voice for a moment to say anything serious. “You know how it is.”

  Weapon still ready and pointed at the unconscious billionaire, Chris put the other arm around Suzie to help her out of the trunk. She felt as if she was shaking.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Suzie couldn’t take her eyes off the unconscious figure on the ground. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about what had almost happened, or what could have happened. Only about what had just happened. Chris had come for her.

  He’d rescued her.

  “Never better,” she told him.

  He sincerely had his doubts about that. “Your heart is hammering like a hummingbird’s,” he pointed out.

  “That’s just because I’m standing next to you,” she cracked.

  The sound of approaching sirens swelled, growing louder, telling her that they weren’t going to be alone for long.

  So she kissed him.

  And then she almost sank to her knees—and would have, if he hadn’t had his arm around her.

  Chapter 20

  The next moment, squad cars were pulling up, forming what could pass for a circle around the black stretch limousine and Warren Eldridge, as well as his two quaking assistants. Suzie instantly straightened and, grasping Chris’s arm, managed to get back up to her feet.

  If looks could kill, Chris thought, the groggy billionaire would have easily mowed down the police personnel emerging from the cruisers.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Eldridge warned, getting to his feet. His eyes blazed as he issued the edict to the two law enforcement agents who were closest to him.

  “Yeah, we would,” Chris answered. Turning to Suzie, he held out a set of handcuffs. “You want to do the honors?”

  There was no missing the pleasure that came into her eyes. “I’d be thrilled,” she told him.

  Taking them, she circled Eldridge until she was directly behind him. Then, as other officers on the scene trained their weapons at the man, she pulled his hands back and cuffed his wrists.

  And then she said what she’d wanted to say since she had first zeroed in on the billionaire as a suspect. “Warren Eldridge, you’re under arrest for murder.”

  Eldridge surprised them by laughing. “You’ll never prove it!”

  “I wouldn’t go betting your considerable empire on that if I were you,” Suzie said with sheer contempt. She called over the closest uniformed policeman. “Read him his rights and take Mr. Eldridge down to central booking. The charge is murder—multiple murders,” she amended. “I’ll supply the list of names later.”

  The policeman took charge of the prisoner, leading him to a squad car as he said, “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, everything you say can...”

  “You’ll be sorry,” Eldridge called over his shoulder, taunting her.

  “Not a chance,” Suzie retorted.

  She waited until Eldridge was removed from the scene before she turned toward Chris. As satisfying as it was to see the man in handcuffs, she was well aware that this was just the first step.

  “We’re still going to have to get a confession out of him,” she said.

  This was far from being wrapped up with a bow, but at this point, Chris was feeling pretty good about the eventual outcome.

  “I think kidnapping a federal agent and stuffing her into a trunk is a pretty good starting point. Speaking of the steamer trunk, we’re sure to find some interesting DNA there. Guys like Eldridge always trip themselves up one way or another.”

  Suzie looked at the departing squad car with Eldridge in it. “I certainly hope so.”

  Shayla O’Bannon had arrived as part of the backup crew. Since she had been instrumental in calling them together, she temporarily took the lead. Which meant she had to take abbreviated statements from Suzie and Chris on what had gone down prior to the officers’ arrival.

  She made quick notes on her tablet, then closed the lid. “I’ll get the rest when you two make your official reports,” she told them. About to leave, she turned toward her brother. “By the way, I called Ma just to make sure she was okay. She was. How did that creep know to have someone text you about her rig crashing—and pretending to be me, of all things?”

  “He used your name to make it more believable,” Chris guessed. “No telling what kind of access to information someone of Eldridge’s stature and reputation has.”

  Suzie spoke up. “Eldridge bragged that he did his homework on both of us.”

  “Sounds like his interrogation is going to go on for a long time,” Shayla speculated. “Well, I’d better go read those two butt-kissers their rights before I take them in as accessories,” she added just before she walked away.

  Suzie turned to Chris the second his sister was gone. “I want to be the one to question Eldridge.”

  He understood how she felt, but there was no way anyone was going to let that happen.

  “You know you can’t, Suzie,” he pointed out. “You could have been his next victim.”

  Suzie waved away the possibility of what he was suggesting. “All right, so I can’t interrogate him,” she said, relenting. “But I want to be in the room when you question him.”

  Chris didn’t want to discuss that now. He’d come very close to losing her—losing her after just having realized what she meant to him—and right now, all he cared about was making sure that she was all right. That that psychopath hadn’t hurt her. Because in his opinion, Suzie was looking way too pale.

  Maybe that SOB had done something to her while he was stuffing her into the trunk, Chris thought, worried.

  “You’ll be in a room, all right,” he told her. “A hospital room, getting checked out.”

  Suzie pressed her lips together, struggling to cope with her impatience. She’d gone through a lot just now and she wasn’t about to add poking and prodding to the list. She appreciated that Chris was concerned, but she knew what she needed, and it wasn’t being some doctor’s lab project.

  “I’m fine, O’Bannon,” she insisted.

  “Well, you look like death warmed over,” he informed her.

  That was not what she needed to hear. “Nice to see you, too,” she retorted.

  Putting his hands on her shoulders to anchor her in place, Chris tried to reason with her. “Suzie, he almost killed you.”

  “But he didn’t,” she stated.

  She was missing the point, Chris thought. “If I hadn’t arrived just then—”

  She cut him off again. “But you did, and reality is all that counts here, not ‘maybes’ and ‘could haves,’” she insisted.

  He was trying hard not to lose his temper. Almost losing her had frayed it practically to the breaking point.

  “Look, playing the superheroine is cute up to a point, Suzie Q, but you’re going to the hospital even if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you all the way there.”

  She put her hands up, ready to make him back off. “I’m not as weak as I look, O’Bannon.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m willing to bet that my son’s still stronger than a slip of a girl who probably weighs all of a hundred and ten pounds if she’s carrying rocks in her pockets.”

  Suzie whirled around to find Maeve O’Bannon standing right behind her. Had his entire family decided to show up?

  Chris was the first to put it into words. “Ma, what are you doing here?”

  “When Shayla called, saying strange things about my having been in an accident, I got her to fill me in on what was going on. Naturally, I decided to see who was using my name in vain,” she told her son. “I drove over in the rig just in case you shot the underhanded jackass. Since I don’t see any blood anywhere, why don’t we use my vehicle to take your friend here to the ER?” And then she added, “I overheard,” in case there was some doubt about the reason
behind her offer.

  Now she was going to have to ward off two of them, Suzie thought with an inward sigh. “There’s no need, Mrs. O’Bannon,” she told her as cheerfully as she could. “I’m fine.”

  “It’s Maeve, dear, please,” his mother said. “And put an old woman’s mind to rest,” she requested, putting a hand on Suzie’s shoulder. “It never hurts to get checked out after going through an ordeal.” Her tone was warm, friendly, but there was no mistaking the underlying steel in her words.

  Suzie found herself being directed toward the ambulance. “I’m fine,” she protested again, making one last-ditch effort, even though in her gut she knew it was futile.

  “I know, I know,” Maeve said, placating her, “but I’ll feel much better when someone wearing a stethoscope around their neck tells me that.” She ushered Suzie into her rig. “My brother Sean has glowing words to say about you, claims that you have all this potential. Shame if that potential didn’t get to be realized.”

  Maeve glanced over her shoulder to see that her son was right behind them. She smiled and nodded. “Never could say no to an ambulance ride, could you?”

  Chris helped Suzie into the back of the ambulance, then climbed in himself. “I’m just coming along to make sure she doesn’t escape before you get to the hospital.”

  “I don’t make any stops,” Maeve reminded him. “Not even for the lights.”

  He looked at Suzie. “That wouldn’t stop her.”

  Just what did he take her for? “Quit looking at me that way. I’m not about to leap out of a moving vehicle,” Suzie protested.

  “I know that,” he replied cheerfully. “And I’m coming along to make sure you don’t.”

  She watched as the doors were closed behind her. All she needed was a little rest. Why wouldn’t they believe her? “This isn’t necessary.”

  “You’re outnumbered, Suzie Q. Humor us,” she heard his mother say from the front of the rig, just before she started it up.

  “Is everyone in your family this pushy?” Suzie asked in a low voice, once they were on the road.

  “Not everyone,” he answered. “But you don’t hear much from them,” he added with a grin.