by Diane Kelly
The man was going to kill me. I’d been right about that. But at least he hadn’t done it yet, and he didn’t seem to have a definitive plan formulated yet, either.
Little by little, the wooziness oozed out of my brain and I became slowly cognizant of several things. One, I was lying on the cold metal floor of the flower delivery van, which was in motion and contained the cloying scent of various flowers. Two, my wrists and ankles were secured with duct tape, while another strip had been fixed over my mouth. And three, a man and a woman—probably the ones I’d seen at the football stadium and at Neiman Marcus when I’d gone for my fitting—were discussing the options for offing me.
Turds.
The woman made a suggestion to her male counterpart. “She doesn’t weigh much. You could tie her to some cinder blocks and toss her off a bridge. The map on my phone shows two reservoirs within an hour’s drive.”
Though my mind was still horribly foggy, I knew she was right. The Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend Reservoirs were an easy drive from Nacogdoches. As a high school girl, I’d worked at Big Bob’s Bait Bucket and sold all kinds of worms to anglers heading for the water with their boats and fishing poles. But I had no interest in ending up like a worm, as fish food. I also had no interest in drowning.
The man seemed to have no interest in drowning me. No, his preference was something quick and easy. “Let’s just find a big rock, hit her in the head, and leave her body out in the woods. By the time anyone finds her we’ll be long gone.”
Blunt force trauma? Not particularly the cause of death I wanted listed on my death certificate. I’d much prefer it say I’d died of natural causes after reaching my hundredth birthday and being immortalized by Al Roker on the Today show.
“All right,” the woman said. “As long as she’s dead, I don’t care how it happens.”
“We can get on State Highway 94 in Lufkin,” he said. “That’ll take us out to the Davy Crockett National Forest.”
I knew that forest. We’d detoured through it once on our way to a family vacation in Galveston. It was thickly wooded and rarely visited. I could lie there for years before being discovered, or animals could scatter my bones. I might never be found.
Never.
Be.
Found.
As my mind finally cleared from the chloroform or ether, it began to fuzz again with panic. These people are really going to kill me!
Instinct told me to gulp in air, but my law enforcement training told me to slow my breathing. If I panicked, I’d do something stupid and have no chance of escaping this situation. Hell, with my hands and feet bound, I probably had no chance of escaping the situation anyway. But the high chance of failure wasn’t going to stop me from trying.
I could feel my gun on my inner thigh. Good. They hadn’t thought to frisk me. Not that I could really blame them. Who would think a bride would be wearing a holstered gun under her gown?
Immobilized by the tape, I knew I had to be crafty if I’d have any chance of getting out of this situation alive. I also realized I had to be careful, not let them know I was coming around.
My eyelids spread into barely perceptible slits and my gaze followed the voices. I determined that I was lying behind the driver’s seat. The woman was driving. The seatback blocked any view of her. The man who’d come to the door of the church disguised as the florist sat in the passenger seat, occasionally glancing at the driver.
He cut a look her way. “It would’ve been so much easier if we’d been able to get to her at the Cowboys game. With that huge crowd we could’ve disemboweled her and slipped out before she even hit the floor.”
Aha! So I hadn’t been paranoid or crazy. They had been trying to get at me at the stadium.
My eyes moved to the cargo bay. Across from me lay the real delivery driver, a twentyish boy with a light beard. He was also bound and silenced with duct tape. Unlike me, he appeared to still be totally out. Or maybe he was dead. Yikes!
His upper body was bare, my male kidnapper having evidently stolen the shirt of his uniform. I locked my gaze on his belly and thankfully noticed it going up and down. He’s still breathing. Thank God! I would’ve felt horrible if he’d been killed on my account.
While the man in the passenger seat was a complete stranger to me, the woman’s voice sounded vaguely familiar. Still, I couldn’t quite place her. Where had I come across her before?
I wasn’t sure, but determining her identity was the least of my problems right now. At the moment, priority one was getting to my gun, and I couldn’t do that with my hands stuck together. I had to get them apart. Fortunately, the kidnappers had taped my hands in front of me rather than behind me. Amateurs. They seemed to be flying by the seat of their pants. They’d have no way of knowing for certain that they’d be able to lure me out alone to the van at the church. They’d gotten lucky. I could only hope that their luck wouldn’t hold out. After all, they might be amateurs, but it didn’t take much skill to kill someone. Hell, people did it all the time, sometimes even by accident.
I could only wonder how long I’d been gone and what was happening back at the church. No doubt my mother was beside herself with worry. Christina, Alicia, Bonnie, and my father, too. Nick would be fearful and furious, ready to beat my abductors within an inch of their lives. Surely they’d put two and two together and realize the man posing as the florist’s delivery driver had snatched me. They must’ve called the police and sheriff’s department and told them to be on the lookout for a van with a florist logo. In fact, was that a siren I heard right now?
Yep. Sure enough, a woo-woo-woo sounded off in the distance, growing closer.
“Dammit!” the man cried. “They’re coming up beside us!”
Thank goodness! I’d be rescued!
“Duck down!” the woman hollered back at the man.
A moment later, the siren sound came from right next to us. But a few seconds later it turned off entirely. The woman laughed a nasty laugh. “You can sit back up now. The deputy just waved to me and drove off.”
Drove off? What the hell?
Looked like I’d have to rescue myself.
Moving my head slowly to avoid detection, I scanned the immediate area looking for something—anything!—I could use to sever the thick tape.
There was an arrangement of long-stemmed roses in a clear glass vase. Unfortunately, the thorns had been clipped from the roses. The thorns probably wouldn’t have been up to the task anyway, even if I’d been able to grab a rose without being spotted.
I could see the roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors on the console between the seats, but if I reached up to grab the scissors there was no doubt one of them would notice. Argh!
But then my eyes spotted something. An exposed bolt on the frame of the driver’s seat, holding the seat to the floor.
That could work.
My eyes spotted something else, too. The driver’s shoes, an expensive pair of Jimmy Choo mock Mary Jane pumps. I’d seen those shoes before. But where? On whose feet? It was hard to think in my anxious state. The one time I’d seen Leah Dodd in person she’d been barefoot. Had she been wearing these shoes in a photograph I’d seen?
Slowly, slowly, I rolled with the movements of the van, shifting position until my body was angled more sideways across the space and my hands were within reach of the bolt. Through my slitted eyes, I saw the man glance back at me and do a double take when he realized I’d moved. I closed my eyes and waited, but he said nothing. Luckily for me, the van was heading south and the afternoon sun was streaming through the window on his side of the van, his seat casting me in a slight shadow, making it more difficult from his vantage point to see that my eyes had been open, though barely.
When I dared to take another peek, he was again facing forward, apparently having satisfied himself that my movements had been caused by the movements of the van as it went around curves on the country road.
I reached my arms over to the bolt and brought the tape down on it, pressing wit
h all my might, hoping the bolt would puncture the tape and give me a starting point for ripping through it. Harder, Tara! I silently encouraged myself. Push harder!
The tape wouldn’t give. It was strong. But not stronger than my will to live.
I lifted my hands and brought the tape down on the bolt again. This time I felt the tape give way. Hooray!
The bolt had made a hole through the tape. Now I just needed to rip it all the way to each edge. I worked my hands back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, keeping an eye on the man and pausing each time he turned to look at the driver or glance back at me.
I had nearly ripped to the edge of the tape when the man gestured at the window. “Lufkin city limits. Ninety-four should be coming up soon.”
“Is there a Starbucks in this town?” the woman asked. “If we’re going to have to drag a body back into the woods I’m going to need some caffeine.”
“I’ll check.” The man tapped some buttons on his cell phone screen. “There’s one off Highway 59 in the south part of town. It’s a little out of the way.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I need an espresso and I need it now.”
Having relied on caffeine to get me through late-night study sessions in college, the CPA exam, and many a stakeout while at the IRS, I could relate to her need for the performance-enhancing drug. And while I thought it was stupid of her to drag out my murder, her detour for coffee would buy me more time to work through the tape.
A couple minutes and a couple inches of torn duct tape later, I felt the van turn into a parking lot and circle around to the drive-thru. My hands were nearly free.
“Can you believe this line?” the woman said. “Why are all these people going for coffee at three in the afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “Maybe they’ve got people in their trunks that they plan to kill.”
The two shared a laugh.
That’ll be the last laugh they share.
My hands were free, the man had leaned over to look at the menu board, and I seized the opportunity. In a split second, I reached down, lifted the hem of my dress, and pulled my Glock from the holster. My ankles still bound, I rolled to my knees, crouching behind the seat.
“I’ll have a tall flat white with an extra shot,” said the woman.
“Give me a mocha,” the guy said. “Grande size.”
“Will that be all?” called the disembodied voice coming from the speaker.
I stretched up and put my gun to the back of the woman’s head, using my left hand to rip the tape off my mouth. It took my carefully applied lip liner and lipstick with it, as well as my first two layers of skin. Ow! “Turn around and you’re dead.”
Like the woman’s shoes, her hair seemed familiar. It hung over her shoulders in loose coppery curls. The dark hair in the security footage from Neiman Marcus must have been a wig. Is it Leah Dodd? Only one way to know.
My furious eyes met her startled ones in the rearview mirror. But this woman had no lip mole. She wasn’t the pole dancer. She was Marissa Fischer, the ex-wife of disgraced former pastor Noah Fischer. Holy cow. Those social media pics must have been faked, her alleged month-long Mediterranean cruise a ruse to throw me off her trail. The double-Ds she’d sported at Neiman’s must have been faked as well, an attempt to implicate her ex-husband’s illicit lover. Clever.
“Sorry,” came the voice through the speaker. “I couldn’t make out what you were saying.”
I leaned toward the open window. “Add a tall skinny no-whip latte to that order.”
“Got it,” the barista said. “That’ll be $15.63.”
The man in the passenger seat tossed off his seat belt and turned toward his door in an attempt to escape.
“Stay in your seat!” I demanded. “Or I’ll shoot!”
When he ignored my demand and grabbed the door handle, I shot out the window. BLAM! He and Marissa screamed as the sound echoed painfully inside the van and glass rained down on the asphalt outside.
Marissa reflexively floored the gas pedal in an attempt to escape. A dumb move. After all, I was in the van with them. It wasn’t like she could drive away from me.
The front bumper of the van rammed into the back end of the pickup in the drive-thru lane in front of us. Bam! The man at the wheel looked back and raised a palm in a “why the hell did you just do something so stupid?” gesture.
Totally flustered, Marissa threw the gearshift in reverse and slammed back into the car behind us. She then attempted to turn the wheel to the right to exit the drive-thru lane. But with the cars lined up bumper to bumper, there wasn’t enough room to maneuver. She was stuck.
“Turn off the van!” I ordered, nudging her shoulder with the barrel of my gun. “Now! Or I’ll blow your head off!”
I had half a mind to blow her head off, regardless. Try to ruin my wedding day, will you?
She turned the key off, sat still for a moment, then grabbed her door handle and threw the door open, turning to leap out. The joke was on her. In her haste she’d forgotten to undo her seatbelt and was jerked back into place, but not before the door bounced off the stucco wall and tried to shut on her leg. “Ouch!”
“Hands up!” I hollered. “Both of you! Now!”
Realizing I meant business and that I had no intention of letting either of them escape with their lives, they raised their hands.
“Who are you?” I asked the guy.
“Darryl Lundgren,” he muttered.
“Marissa’s new husband? The one from the Do Over TV show?”
“That’s me,” he said resignedly.
No wonder the two had seemed vaguely familiar when I’d seen them at the Cowboys game and Neiman’s. I shook my head. “The things we do for love.” Sheesh.
As if my words had given him an idea, he cried, “Marissa made me do this! It’s all her fault!”
“That’s a lie!” Marissa screeched back, spittle spewing from her lips. “This was all Darryl’s idea!”
The young man lying beside me squirmed, issued a cough and sneeze, and looked up at me, his bleary eyes slowly widening.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m a federal agent. You’re safe now.”
He wriggled into a sitting position, leaning back against the side of the van, blinking and taking deep breaths, trying to clear his head.
I held up the scissors in my left hand. “Hold out your wrists.”
When he reached his hands toward me, I snipped at the tape, having a bit of a hard time given that I was using my nondominant hand. But I wasn’t about to take my gun off Marissa and her cohort. I didn’t trust them one bit.
I eventually cut all the way through and the boy pulled the tape from his wrists, tossing it aside. He pulled the tape from his mouth, his mustache and part of his beard coming off with it. “Shit! That hurts!”
I gestured to Darryl and Marissa with my gun. “What happened with these two? How’d you end up back here?”
“I was on my way to make deliveries,” the boy said. “I stopped at a red light and an SUV pulled up next to me.” He pointed to Darryl. “He got out and came to my window, and when I rolled it down he told me he had a gun and that I better do what he said or he’d shoot me. He told me to let him in and next thing I knew he’d taken my shirt and hat and taped me up. Then he shoved a stinky towel in my face.”
No doubt that towel had been doused with the same chemical agent Darryl had used in my bouquet.
I handed the boy the scissors. “Get the tape off my ankles,” I told him.
When he’d cut the tape off my legs, I glanced down. Luckily, the tape hadn’t snagged my pretty stockings.
I turned to Darryl. “Where’s your gun?”
“In Marissa’s purse.”
I grabbed her purse off the console and unzipped it, taking a peek inside. Sure enough, there was a handgun lying inside. I retrieved the roll of duct tape. “Lean forward,” I told Marissa. “And put your hands behind you.” When she did so, I told the boy to
tape her wrists together. Let’s see how you like it, bitch. When he finished with Marissa, I directed him to do the same with the man in the passenger seat.
Marissa’s and Darryl’s hands now secured, I jerked my head to indicate the back of the van. “Open the doors, please.”
“Okay.” The delivery boy made his way to the back to open them.
Once the doors were open, I backed out, keeping my eyes and gun trained on Marissa and her coconspirator. My appearance surprised the driver behind us, who screamed and ducked down behind her wheel for safety when she spotted my gun.
I hopped out of the back of the van. “It’s all right!” I called to her. “I’m a cop!” It wasn’t the exact truth, but it was close-enough shorthand. I didn’t have time to explain that I was a criminal investigator for the IRS. All I knew is that with all of the concealed-carry permits and the state law allowing people to carry guns in their cars, I needed to make sure everyone in the vicinity realized I was the good guy before they whipped out their weapons and smoked me right here in the drive-thru lane.
I glanced down at the front end of her car. The bumper had been knocked in on one side and sat askew, but it could have been worse.
I motioned for the boy to step out of the cargo bay with me. Once he had, I told our two kidnappers to get their butts into the back of the van and lie facedown. Marissa struggled to release her seat belt but finally managed. When the two were finally ass-up among the flowers, I turned to the delivery boy again. “Tape their ankles and mouths.”
He climbed into the van and did as he’d been told. The gleam in his eye told me he enjoyed giving our two captors a taste of their own medicine. Heck, so did I.
When he finished, I said, “Take the wheel. I’m late for my wedding.”
chapter thirty
Wedding Bells
As I circled around the outside of the van, I noticed that the florist’s logo had been covered with a large magnetic sign that read FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH. No wonder the deputy had abandoned his pursuit. He’d thought he had the wrong van.
A glance ahead told me the pickup had driven off. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gunfire tends to make people scatter. Surely he’d contact the police and would be able to get Marissa’s auto insurance information once everything was settled.
