“Okay. Will do. Thanks Howard. Gotta go.”
Lyle put down the phone and grabbed the binoculars. “It looks like, yeah, one of them is turning off.”
“Which one is it?” Kate said.
“Stark.”
“I think we should follow him.”
“Agreed. Looks like some type of building at the intersection and a paved road to the left.” Lyle kept the glasses focused on Stark’s SUV. “He’s picking up speed.”
When Kate and Lyle reached the intersection, they could see the building was nothing but a derelict, boarded up single-story structure with an equally decomposed single-wide mobile home attached. A weather beaten “for sale” sign stood on the corner. The house looked like it had been for sale since Armstrong walked on the moon. The surrounding desert was empty of everything else, save the road. Barren, rugged mountains, thousands of feet tall, stood as the backdrop.
Kate steered the Mustang into and around the corner. Lyle kept the glasses on the SUV while he filled Kate in about Stark’s criminal past. The cracked road surface didn’t slow Stark’s progress. He raced ahead. After about ten minutes, Lyle saw Stark’s vehicle slow and turn onto a dirt road, kicking up a trail of dust.
Lyle and Kate had not reached the dirt road when Kate’s phone rang.
“Who has your number?” Lyle said.
“No one. Except you--and...” Kate grabbed the phone.
Chapter 57
“I didn’t know you were here,” Nina whispered. “They didn’t tell me.”
Kate strained to hear.
“You were right--about everything,” Nina continued. “I’m sorry--stop. Let go.” Her soft voice turned into a scream. “Let me go!”
Kate looked up at the trail of dust ahead. The SUV must have swerved because the brown cloud expanded into a tall swirl.
Static interrupted the connection. Then Kate heard Stark shrieking, “Get the fuck out.”
“No, that’s my phone,” Nina said. “You can’t leave--”
“We’ll come for you Nina,” Kate said, even as she heard the connection die.
“Rick is kicking Nina out in the desert,” Kate said when the phone went dead. “She called to say she was sorry, she was wrong to trust him.”
Lyle pulled up the binoculars. “I can see where the SUV stopped. Now he’s going ahead, fast.”
Kate asked the Mustang for more speed and it responded, skipping over the uneven pavement.
“We’re coming to the dirt turn off,” Lyle said. “Just ahead.”
Kate searched for the dirt road and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roared, then died. As the car slowed, the power steering stopped and Kate wrestled with the wheel.
“Shit, what happened?”
“Try the ignition.”
Kate tried to restart the car. Silence.
“Kill switch,” Lyle said.
“What?”
“They must have put it in the car when I was in Stark’s dealership. I should have thought of that. They sabotaged my car when they were sabotaging me.” Lyle slammed his hand against the dashboard. “Son of a bitch. That’s how they knew I who I was. They saw my registration when they opened the car.”
“This means they’ve been tracking us all along. They knew we were here.”
“And where are we?”
Although only seconds had passed since the car and the air conditioning quit, the temperature in the Mustang started to rise. The last time Kate looked at the thermometer, the outside temperature read 104 degrees. She picked up the binoculars and got out. Bracing her elbows on the edge of the convertible top, she looked toward Stark’s rooster tail as it faded into the distance. Then she scanned the empty horizon.
“No cell service,” Lyle said looking at his phone. “We might pick up coverage if one of us walks up that hill.” He pointed to a low peak about a mile away.
“You do it. I’m going to get Nina.”
“Out there?”
“Rick took off. She probably doesn’t have water or anything.”
“And she’s your ticket home.”
“She’s a young woman who needs help.”
“Amen.”
Kate pulled her floppy hat out of the back seat and put a water bottle in her purse.
“I hate to abandon the car,” he said. “Maybe I could--”
“You stay here. See if you can get a signal for the phone.”
“Nina could be three miles down. It could take you an hour to get there.”
“Or half that time if she’s walking in our direction.”
Kate had no qualms about a hike. Having Lyle stay with the car made sense. Yeah it was hot, but she’d lived in the desert much of her life. You moved slowly and you just sipped your water. The sun was high, but she could deal with it. Her thick-soled athletic shoes were suitable for the walk. She looped a scarf around her neck to shade it from the sun and rolled down her sleeves. Her makeup, an SPF 52, protected her face, and she’d applied sunscreen to her legs that morning.
After ten minutes walking, she turned around and couldn’t see Lyle’s car. The dirt road rose and fell slightly, something you didn’t notice from a distance. She used her scarf to wipe her brow. How did she get dust up there already? She walked easily. Occasionally, she slowed down when one of her shoes sank a few inches into the dust, but she watched the road and stuck to hardpan. Even with a measured pace, her long legs helped her cover the ground efficiently.
Not surprisingly, her purse started to get heavy. She alternated shoulders and sometimes rolled up the strap in her hand. Only twice had she felt the touch of a light breeze. It cooled her face and arms and brought the scent of sage to mix with the constant smell of desert dust. When she reached a relatively high point, Kate stared ahead. She could see only the road and the desert.
Time for a sip of water. Just a sip. As she put the bottle to her lips, she thought of all the dreadful lost-in-the-desert movie scenes she’d watched. She could see people with cracked and bleeding lips stumbling across the sand moaning for water. Not a good image. Think about Nina and what brought her to bail out on Rick--finally. Think about getting everything settled in Reno. Think about how delighted Max would be with their expense accounts. She smiled and walked on.
Dust blanketed her tennis shoes and legs. She looked at her watch and wondered if Nina was indeed walking toward her and not after Rick--in the other direction. She hadn’t seen any birds, but she soon heard a sharp cry, a high-pitched call--Nina, a long way away. Kate waved and picked up her pace.
Nina trudged through the brown powder in sandals, shorts, and a cap-sleeve blouse that exposed her arms. “You were right,” she said. “I was stupid. I so wanted to believe him. He said he needed me. I didn’t know what to do. Shit, damn him. He’s got all my stuff. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Just relax,” Kate said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. He didn’t hit me. But he wanted to.”
Kate offered Nina the water bottle. She took two swallows and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, creating a mud streak across her face.
“I didn’t know you were following us. Thank God, you’re here. He didn’t tell me they had the GPS on you. God I’m sorry. What are you going to do? He’s a killer, all right.”
“Take it slow,” Kate said, “and tell me what happened.” She put the water back in her purse, adjusted her hat to give her the best shade, and pointed Nina down the road to Lyle’s car.
“After you told me about the kill switches, I asked around in the garage. People said Ricky worked on it. Made it better. But I couldn’t believe them. I talked to Ricky. He asked me, he said, would he ever do anything to help Al? So I thought it was okay. Then he called me and said they were going to leave, to sell the antique car. He said he needed me to go with him. Shit, I didn’t know what to do. I left work--said I was sick. I had to think.”
Nina looked up at Kate, her eyes wide in spite of the sun, her brow spotted with sweat and
dust. “Really,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to go with him--and make my decision later.”
“Did he tell you they were going to leave the country?”
“Yeah, yeah, but listen. After we left that gas station, he knew you two were following us. He said you were trying to get him arrested for killing his stepfather. That you were a bitch and needed to be stopped. When I asked him how he knew you were following, he told me about the GPS. He said Alex was tracking you in the other car. Said they were going to kill-switch you out here. Leave you in the desert.”
Kate could hear the rage, the remorse. She just listened.
“‘You don’t know about those switches,’ I said. He said, ‘Bullshit.’ His ideas made money. Stopped people from being deadbeat borrowers. People deserved it.”
Nina started to cry, her tears mixing with perspiration and desert grime. Kate leaned over and hugged her.
“Don’t you see, Kate? My sister’s little boy. It’s his fault, too. I told him he was a murderer. Know what he did? Like he just got quiet for a minute. I thought he was going to hit me, kill me. That’s when I called you.”
“Lyle’s with me,” Kate said. “We’ll be back at the car soon.”
“But it doesn’t run, does it?” Nina sobbed.
Chapter 58
Lyle had been a fan of Ford Mustangs since he was a kid growing up in the shadow of his older brother. His first two cars were clunkers, got him to school and work but nothing to be proud of. In the service, he didn’t really need a car. When he got out, he had new, but inexpensive cars, then a sensible Accord when he got married. Now he had a silver Mustang GT convertible. But it didn’t work.
“All right, Kate. I need you back here. C’mon,” he said to no one.
It hadn’t been too long, but Lyle worried. He sat in the driver’s seat with the door wide open. With the engine off, the windows didn’t work. Heat radiated off every surface inside the car. A penlight on the console and his notepad in his hands, Lyle stared at the dashboard. It must have been his focus inside the car, he told himself later, that made him miss the sight of the man with a gun walking up beside him.
“What is matter, Lyle?” the gunman said. “Did car stop running?”
Lyle recognized the guy as the one he’d kicked over in the pony car office, the one he called Shop Coat. He ordered Lyle out of the car. In a moment, one of the silver SUVs screeched to a stop behind Lyle’s Mustang. It carried the other Eastern Europeans--or Chechens, or whatever the hell they were.
Alex, also holding a gun, got out of the Suburban. Dressed in a black suit, he looked like a mob boss. Poor choice of wardrobe for the Mohave Desert. The semi-automatic pistol in his hand would be little solace in a place where the record temperature was north of 110.
Taking his time, Alex walked up to Lyle. He switched the semi-auto to his left hand. Nose to nose with Lyle, he started to speak, but before any sound came out, he slammed his fist into Lyle’s stomach. Lyle saw it coming and tightened his muscles so the blow didn’t hurt. Much.
Regardless, Lyle doubled over to give Alex satisfaction and possibly head off a follow-up delivery. Alex leaned over and looked in the convertible. “Where is tall woman?”
Lyle shrugged.
Alex hit him across the face with the back of his hand, then jabbed the gun in Lyle’s stomach.
In the meantime, the driver of the SUV got out. He stood a head taller than Alex, probably taller than Kate. He wore jeans, an open-neck shirt, and an antagonistic expression.
“Search the car,” Alex said.
The tall driver, Lyle discovered, was Sergei. The other one, Shop Coat, went through the car. Sergei opened the small travel bag in the Mustang’s back seat and dumped out the contents. Alex backed up so he could see behind the car as the other two popped the trunk and opened all three suitcases inside and rifled the contents.
“Whatcha looking for, Alex?” Lyle said. “Think you need more suitable clothing out here? Hot, isn’t it?”
The other two men walked around outside the car, scanning the ground. They found rocks, sand, and scrub brush. “No gun,” Sergei said.
Alex motioned with his semi-auto for Lyle to back up against the side of his car. Lyle stood with one hand at his side, the other shielding his eyes from the sun. Alex sweated profusely. He loosened his tie and wiped the moisture from his face.
“Okay, where is she?”
“Who?”
Alex motioned for Sergei to step toward their captive. Lyle figured serious pain was about to be visited upon him, so he held up a hand for Sergei to stop.
“She went to a good spot to call the police,” Lyle said.
Alex grunted and said something in Russian. “You really want cops? She is wanted for murder. We know. You full of bullshit.”
“Cops are better than having you shoot us.”
“Why ve shoot you? You get lost here in desert.”
Sergei reached out and grabbed Lyle around the neck with both hands. Lyle felt like Roger Moore as James Bond in the hands of the “Jaws” character. Sergei almost lifted Lyle off the ground, then let go, throwing him back against the car.
“Where is she?” Alex screamed. He raised his hand to hit Lyle, then stopped.
“Alexei,” Shop Coat shouted. He had walked down the paving to where the dirt road began. He pointed at the ground. “Footprints. She go this way, see.”
Alex looked as if he’d like to just shoot Lyle there rather than find Kate and do whatever they had in mind. He glowered at Lyle then finally walked over and looked at Kate’s footprints.
He waved in the direction of Shop Coat, calling him Viktor, and started jogging toward the SUV. “Go,” he said. “You stay here,” he told Sergei, “watch him.”
***
Nina alternately apologized and sobbed as she trudged along the road, filling her sandals with dirt.
“We’ll get him Nina,” Kate said. “The police will arrest him for murder.”
“He told me he didn’t want to go to jail. Said I had to help him or he’d get the death penalty.”
Nina’s voice became strained. Kate stopped and offered her more water. “Just tell the cops everything when we get out of here.”
Kate froze when she saw a dust cloud and an approaching car. She grabbed Nina’s shoulder and pulled her off the road to the left. With scant vegetation to hide them, Kate and Nina were forced to crouch in a small ravine that provided little cover. As the silver SUV skidded to a stop, the cloud washed over the vehicle. Only thirty feet off the road, Kate could taste the dust.
Alex jumped out of the car, holding his gun, his tie askew, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. “Come over here. Now. Come here,” he shouted.
Kate saw another man in boots and dark jeans get out of the car. A pistol stuck out of his belt.
Nina held onto Kate and didn’t move. The two men advanced to within twenty feet of them. Alex pointed his gun at Nina.
“We drag you. You not like it.”
Kate figured she might be able to take out at least one of them, but they were too close. Nina would get hurt. Bide your time, she told herself as she and Nina walked slowly through the brush to the road.
“I have great idea for you,” Alex said standing inches from Kate, looking up at her. “You going to be lost in desert. Maybe not found for months.”
Raising the arm that wasn’t holding the gun, Alex started to slap Kate in the face. Before he could reach out, she blocked him with her left arm, and took a step back. She glared at him, daring him to try it again.
He shook his fist in the air in Kate’s direction, then waved his gun, alternating it between Kate and Nina’s face. Nina stood still, staring.
“Okay, Viktor,” Alex said. “Now, ladies, we going to send you out there.” He pointed toward the mountains in the distance. “Walking in desert.”
Viktor said something in Russian.
“Dah, okay,” Alex responded. “Maybe quick fuck.”
&
nbsp; As Viktor walked to the back of the SUV and opened the tailgate, Alex reached out to Nina and grabbed the front of her lightweight blouse, tearing the fabric and ripping the buttons off. Nina’s full breasts, restrained by her designer bra, caught Alex’s attention.
“Bastard,” Kate muttered.
Nina tried to pull her blouse closed, crossing her arms over her chest.
Alex gestured toward Nina with his gun. “You, Viktor,” Alex shouted, “you only can do the little one. Know what I mean? Not big enough.” He let out a raucous laugh that shook his body. And he lowered his gun.
With a determined blow, Kate chopped at his wrist, sending the gun flying. Then she kicked his legs out from under him and he hit the ground, hard.
“C’mon,” Kate said, pushing Nina off the road.
“They’ll shoot us,” Nina protested. Kate pushed her along and they ran farther than before, this time finding a cluster of boulders and a thicket in a depression.
“It’s okay,” Kate said, with a confidence she almost felt.
Before they had time to settle into the gully, bullets bounced off the rocks next to them.
Chapter 59
Lyle didn’t know if Sergei had a gun or not. If he didn’t, maybe Lyle had a chance. But the Chechen stood a half head taller and looked like he had seventy-five pounds on Lyle. He walked slowly over to Sergei. Shit he’s big. But maybe.
Before Lyle came within ten feet of Sergei, the Chechen reached behind him and pulled out a large-caliber semi-auto. Lyle continued his stroll in a large circle, heading back toward the Mustang.
“Okay if I get out of the sun?”
Sergei motioned with the barrel of the gun. The car door was already open. Lyle sat in the driver’s seat and watched through the windshield as Sergei wandered along the road. He turned his back to Lyle, looking off the pavement to the dirt trail.
Lyle reached down, under the dashboard, and felt around for the wires he’d been working on. He twisted two bare wires together then slowly put his hand on the ignition, the key still in place. He turned it hard. As the engine burst into life, Lyle threw the car into gear, crushed the gas pedal, and the car’s nine-inch-wide tires grabbed the pavement. The Mustang sprang forward, the driver’s door slamming shut. Sergei spun around and saw the car racing toward him. He started to bring up the pistol but seemed to realize the car would smash him whether he fired or not. He leaped toward the side of the road, like a base runner diving face-first into home plate. The Mustang’s bumper caught the bottom of his legs and spun him halfway around before he hit the sand.
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