And a zip-sealed plastic bag containing a white powdery substance.
Nolan’s pulse spiked. “Summer, I think we just hit pay dirt.”
“What did—” She started, then gasped, “Nolan!”
The alarm in her tone shot adrenaline through him, even as a male voice said, “Pay dirt, eh? Too bad it’s the last thing you’ll do.”
Chapter 19
Panic swelled in Summer’s chest as she crab scrambled back from Tom Kain. Before she could do more than shout a warning to Nolan, Kain had jabbed a syringe needle through the leg of Nolan’s jeans and injected him with...something. Nothing good, she imagined.
Nolan groaned and rolled out from under Melody, scrabbling at his waist before his eyes rolled back and his body went limp.
She fumbled for a weapon, but she didn’t even have the screwdriver anymore since passing it to Nolan. The hubcap? It was heavy. Too heavy for her to swing effectively.
“Looks like I left that bogus council meeting just in time.” Kain pocketed the syringe in his jacket and drew out a pistol. “I knew something was up the minute the mayor started reading that rambling proclamation. I know a filibuster tactic when I see one.”
Ice filled Summer’s veins. She sucked in a deep breath to scream for help, and Kain aimed the pistol at Nolan’s heart. “You make a sound, he dies.”
“Nolan?” Summer crawled to him, despite the weapon that was trained on her again. She sent Kain a sharp glare. “What did you give him?”
Kain eyed Nolan with a smarmy grin. “A tranquilizer. Jane promised the stuff was fast acting. She didn’t lie.” He dug in his pants pocket now and pulled out a key fob. With a click, Melody’s doors unlocked. “We need to hurry before anyone sees us.”
Summer tensed. What did he mean by that? Her gaze cut to the front door of the city building. Please, someone come out, someone drive into the lot, someone—
He jerked open the back seat door, growling, “Get in. Now.”
His tone brooked no resistance...and yet she hesitated. She wouldn’t leave Nolan. And she knew, without a doubt, if she got in Kain’s car, she’d be dead within the hour.
When Kain set his weapon aside and grabbed Nolan’s legs, dragging him roughly across the pavement to the back seat door, Summer saw her chance. She tucked her feet beneath her and sprang at Kain, her fingers curled, ready to claw him as he struggled with Nolan’s deadweight. But Kain reacted instantly, dropping Nolan’s legs and backhanding her chin with a powerful blow. Her head snapped back. The impact of the strike sent her reeling, and she stumbled and fell to the pavement with a tooth-rattling thump. As quick as she could, she shook off the stars filling her vision and mounted a fresh attack.
This time when she lunged at Kain, she managed to swipe her fingernails across his cheek, drawing blood.
“Bitch!” he snarled and grabbed her hair. A thousand pinpricks ravaged her scalp as he used her hair to drag her to Melody’s open back door. Though she struggled, kicked and swung at him with closed fists, even her adrenaline-fueled muscles were no match for him. He lifted her like a doll and tossed her into the car. She tumbled in a heap, half on and half off the seat.
Twisting and clambering, she righted herself. She grabbed for the door handle on the opposite side to flee, but something hard cracked against the back of her head.
Her vision narrowed to a small dim circle...then went black.
* * *
Summer’s head throbbed. She groped awkwardly to rub the ache. Found she was slumped in an uncomfortable position. More than her head hurt. Her side ached. Her jaw, too. And she tasted blood. Groggy. So groggy and...sore.
It didn’t help matters that someone was leaning on her, crushing her. Or that she seemed to be bouncing roughly like she was on a carnival ride. Groaning, she cracked open her eyes. Tried to orient herself.
And immediately wished she hadn’t.
She was in a car. Melody. Nolan was slumped, unconscious, on top of her. Her hands were bound with a plastic zip tie. And Tom Kain was behind the wheel, driving them God knows where. To kill them.
Before she could catch it, a whimper of fear squeaked from her throat. A small noise, but enough to alert Kain that she’d roused.
He met her gaze via the rearview mirror. He grunted. “Sorry about the bump on the head, but I only had the one syringe.” He paused as if thinking. “I’d hoped you’d stay out until I finished you two off. It makes it so much simpler.”
His attention returned to his driving, and he added blithely, “Oh well. It gives me the opportunity to cleanse my soul. Purge the wrongs I’ve done through confession.” He raised his gaze to the mirror again, grinning smugly. “Can’t go to a priest, after all. Too likely their conscience would lead them to break the confidentiality of the confessional and turn me in to the cops.” He hummed a note of regret, then added, “But you know who never breaks a confidence?” His face morphed with a sadistic grin. “Dead people.”
Bile rose from her gut, and she had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. She shifted her arms and grabbed Nolan’s sleeve. The handful of fabric wasn’t much, but it was a link to him. She tugged the fabric and tried to jostle Nolan, praying that she could revive him before Kain carried out his plan to murder them. With a bit more struggling, she managed to lever up, such that Nolan’s head was now in her lap. If she’d had a better position, she could have freed her hands. Breaking the zip tie was a matter of the right angle and a lot of force, neither of which she had at the moment.
“When I killed that girl who discovered Melody’s secret stash—Patricia something, I think the newspaper said her name was...”
Anger roiled in Summer’s veins. Not only had Kain murdered the innocent young student, he couldn’t even be bothered to know her name.
Kain was saying, “I told her all about taking out Beau Lemmon.”
Summer jerked her head up, startled. “Rae’s father?”
Kain seemed surprised Summer had spoken. “You know her? Huh. That’s a small town for you. Yeah, well, he’d done a job for me and started growing a conscience over it. I had to neutralize him before he talked.”
Her heart galloped like a wild stallion. Rae’s father... Patrice... The man was truly evil, and she was in no position to stop him, reveal his crimes.
“I guess I should claim Horace Corgan, as well, even though it was Jane that killed him. Pulling his oxygen cannula was a stupid way to kill him, since it was so obvious she’d been the only one with him at the time. But I didn’t pay her for her smarts, just her access to Corgan.” Kain turned his head to look in the back seat, directly at Summer. In the dim glow from Melody’s dash lights, Kain’s chiseled face struck her as frightening and monsterish. She couldn’t believe she’d actually thought him handsome the day they interviewed him at his auto shop.
She saw no remorse in the harsh lines of his face and grim set of his mouth.
She angled her head to try to get a sense of where they were. Wherever he’d taken them, it was dark. Frighteningly dark. No streetlights or business marquees broke the endless black. The night sky was filled with thousands of stars.
The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas. The famous song lyrics she’d sung with the Colton family around summer bonfires popped in her head, and pain lanced her heart. What would she give to go back to those carefree childhood days? Her biggest trouble then had been the biting mosquitoes and a 9:00 p.m. curfew. And her relationship with Nolan had been straightforward and uncomplicated. They’d been best friends, plain and simple. No jobs calling them out of town. No intervening years full of burdensome events and vindictive people. No confusing complications from sex to muck things up. A mistake, Nolan had called it. Damn, that still stung.
A tear leaked from her eye, and with her hands bound as they were, she couldn’t catch it before it dripped onto Nolan’s cheek.
Nola
n’s brow flinched, and, eyelids fluttering, he glanced up at her. Her mouth opened as she sucked in a silent gasp. Quickly, Nolan shook his head, telling her without words not to let on that he was awake.
Glancing to the front seat to make sure Kain wasn’t watching, she gave Nolan a tiny nod of understanding. The element of surprise might be their only weapon against Kain.
Knowing Nolan had revived gave her a thin layer of comfort against the chilling specter of Kain’s plan to kill them. Also of small comfort was knowing she had proof now who had killed Patrice. She’d solved her first big case. Too bad it would also likely be her last case.
Stubbornness pricked her. Damn it, if I’m going down, I’m going to get answers to all the questions this town has been asking. She shoved down the niggle of fear and pinned a hard look on Kain’s profile. “So the rumors about you being a drug supplier and dealer are true, I take it.”
Against her, she could feel Nolan tense, and in the front seat, Kain seemed startled from deep thoughts. He raised his gaze to the rearview mirror again. “The drugs. Yes, they’re very profitable.”
“So how did you avoid detection for so many years? Your place, and surely Melody, was searched more than once, to no avail, I hear.”
Kain smiled proudly. “You heard right. Lucky for me, the police must follow certain rules of law. A warrant, for example. And I have a well-placed snitch at the courthouse on my payroll who tips me off whenever a search warrant for any of my property is applied for. With the heads-up, I’m able to clear any evidence of my side business before the cops show up. A valuable asset, my informant.”
“Then you were behind the drug supply that killed my friend Avery’s brother.”
Kain scowled and scoffed. “Perhaps. I’m just a businessman selling a product. I don’t shoot the stuff into their veins.”
Summer gritted her teeth, wishing she could smack the blithe sneer from his face. “And you’ve manipulated local nurses to help supply addicts with illegal prescription pills, too. Haven’t you? Jane Oliver, for example.”
Kain nodded. “Oh, Miss Jane did more for me than just peddle pills. She proved a key asset when Corgan took ill. I learned things about his killings that helped throw the cops off my trail when I buried Patricia.”
“Patrice...” Summer corrected through clenched teeth.
“Wha—oh, right. Patrice. Pretty girl. Hated to waste her, but when she snooped and found Melody’s secret, she had to be handled. So I acquired an Army button to mislead the cops—you know, just in case—and took advantage of the repairs to the Lone Star Pharma parking lot to hide my transgression.”
The drug lord quieted long enough to consult the map on his phone. “Aw, hell. I missed my turn thanks to your yapping.” He slowed the car and, using the shoulder of the isolated road, made a wide U-turn.
Summer squinted at the glowing phone screen, trying to get some idea where they were. She couldn’t make out any details to orient herself. Other than one green line indicating the road they were on, the map was essentially blank. No landmarks, crossroads or town names. In other words, the boonies. Somewhere in the vast emptiness that Texas had plenty of. The hope of rescue she’d clung to took a nosedive.
A short distance down the dark road, Kain took a left turn onto a rutted lane crowded by scraggly cottonwoods and scrub brush. Branches scraped against the windows and sides of the Mercedes with a macabre screech.
Kain barked a curse. “The damn trees are scratching Melody’s paint!” He turned and looked directly at Summer. “This is your fault. Yours and lover boy’s there.”
“Our fault? We didn’t tell you to drive your precious car out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“When you poked around Melody, you left me no choice. If you’d minded your own business and kept out of mine, Melody wouldn’t be out here.” He turned back to the front, grumbling, “I’ll have to take her to Houston for a custom paint job, and that’ll cost thousands.”
“Oh...boo-hoo.” Summer couldn’t help the sarcastic retort, even knowing her snark would aggravate Kain more. He already planned to kill her. What did she have to lose? But she felt Nolan’s fingers squeeze her wrist, and she took the signal as a warning not to push Kain.
Recalled to the urgency of her situation, she knew she might not get another chance to pump Kain for information. “Do you...” Her voice cracked, and she tried again, “Do you know where Jane Oliver is? Where she went after you paid her for killing Corgan?”
Kain nodded. “Oh, I know where she is. Same as where you’ll be shortly. Out here under the trees. Or under the dirt and rock, really. Unless you’d like me to leave you for the animals to scavenge. Circle of life and all that?”
Summer’s gut curdled. “You killed her, too?”
“She knew too much. Just like you do. And why pay her off when I could kill her off and save the fifty grand I’d promised her?”
She had to take several deep breaths and swallow a few times to keep from throwing up. “You’re a monster. You know that, right?” Her tone was low and menacing, all of her fear and spleen poured into the words.
“Am I?” He screwed his face up as if considering it. “That sounds rather harsh. I have secrets. I’ve done things that most people call sins. But I believe those things will be weighed against the nice things I’ve done, and I’ll be okay in the end.”
“Nice things?” Summer couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
The car bumped hard over a pothole, but once they hit smoother ground, Kain glanced back at her again. “I did tell you about my contributions to local charities and the town library when you stopped by my shop the other day, didn’t I?”
“You think you can buy your way out of all the evil you’ve done?” She scoffed, aghast at his hubris.
“Not entirely. That’s why I’ve spent all this time confessing to you. I tell you everything, clear my conscience, get forgiven and move on with my life.”
Summer couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I don’t think that’s how it works. If you’re looking for forgiveness from me, you won’t get it. And God only forgives those who are truly repentant.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see one day. Huh?” He lifted a corner of his mouth in a grin that made her skin crawl. “You sooner than me, of course.” He glanced to the left out his side window. “In fact, here we are now. The official middle of nowhere.”
Though Summer wanted to ask what made this remote spot any more officially isolated than any other, her anxiety choked her.
Kain parked Melody and cut the engine.
Summer listened for clues to where they were—the sound of water would mean a river or stream, road noise might mean a highway was close by—but the pounding of her pulse in her ears made it hard to hear anything but the snick of the driver’s door as Kain climbed out. The thunk as he closed the door.
In the two seconds it took Kain to move to the back door and yank it open, Nolan whispered, “Follow my lead.”
Then the car door at Nolan’s feet opened, and Kain peered in. “Welcome to your final resting spot.”
Chapter 20
Nolan had been fighting the lingering effects of whatever drug Kain had shot him up with, trying to clear his mind and focus his limited energy. But when the car stopped and Kain opened the back door, a spike of adrenaline helped fuel his muscles. He swung his foot up, into the drug dealer’s chin, sending him staggering back a step.
Behind him, Summer gave a startled yelp. Kain recovered his balance within seconds and bared his teeth as he gave an ominous growl.
Having used his element of surprise, he prayed he could, at the least, muster the strength to keep Summer safe. Nolan groped at his waist for his weapon.
“Looking for this?” Kain asked, pointing Nolan’s gun at him.
Nolan’s heart plummeted to his stomach. Without his weapon and with his muscles still we
ak from the sedative, he stood little chance of overpowering their kidnapper. While he didn’t like the idea of dying tonight, he hated the thought of Summer being murdered because he couldn’t protect her.
“Come on, man,” Kain said, rubbing his sore jaw with one hand while extending the gun with the other. “You didn’t think I was stupid enough to knock you both out and load you in my car without also searching you for wires, cell phones and weapons, did you? Your phones were left crushed back in the parking lot, but I figured this might come in handy.” He waggled the weapon and motioned it toward them. “Get out. Both of you.”
Nolan set his teeth, glaring at his opponent as he calculated strategy, weighed options.
Summer’s hands were bound with a zip tie, but she scooted her arms close enough to grab a handful of his sleeve.
“Hurry up!” Kain barked, motioning with the gun. “Out!”
Shaking his head, Nolan settled back against the seat. “Don’t think so. I’m good here.”
“Nolan?” Summer whispered, her voice rife with terror.
“Fine.” Kain gripped the gun with both hands and aimed at Nolan’s head. “I’ll shoot you where you are.”
Summer sucked in a sharp breath, and his heart squeezed, wishing he could do more to allay her fear.
“I don’t think you will,” he told the drug dealer, “’Cause I don’t think you want my blood and gore all over Melody’s nice seats and floors.”
Kain blinked, and his mouth compressed in an angry line. His nostrils flared as he huffed a few heavy breaths. Then, cursing under his breath, he lowered the gun and stalked around to the opposite side of the Mercedes. Jerking open the other back door, he reached in and grabbed a handful of Summer’s jacket.
Colton 911--Deadly Texas Reunion Page 20
