CHAPTER 16
Ryder pulled up to the newsstand with less than a minute to spare. He double-parked in the street and grabbed the two bags, moving in an all-out sprint. The stand was closed, just as the kidnapper had promised, but a small, side door stood ajar, and he shouldered his way inside.
It was little more than three walls and a roof. The half wall that opened up to the public could be propped overhead like a porch, shading the counter beneath. The concrete sidewalk served as its floor, and Ryder dropped both bags on it with a thump and walked out.
All the way back to the car, he had the impression that he was being watched. He didn’t know whether that came from the Feds who had followed him here, or from the kidnapper waiting for him to leave. When he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car, his instincts kept telling him not to leave—not to leave Casey’s welfare up to kidnappers. But he ignored the urge and drove away, and had never been this afraid in his life—not even the night his plane had crashed—not even when he’d known that Micah was dead. He left with the knowledge that he’d done all he could do. The ransom had been delivered. Hopefully, his next point of contact would be the phone call telling him where to pick up his wife.
As Ryder drove away, Wyandott and his men began to slip into place around the area. A couple of blocks away, Gant watched from his car with binoculars trained on the door through which Ryder had come and gone.
And the wait began.
Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. In spite of the coolness of the evening breeze blowing through his window, Gant was starting to sweat. He could just imagine what was going through Wyandott’s mind. The Feds must have been made. If the kidnappers got spooked and didn’t pick up the ransom, he wouldn’t give a plug nickel for Casey Justice’s chance of survival.
Just when he thought it was over, an old man turned the corner and headed down the street, pulling a little red wagon behind him as he made toward the stand. Gant thought nothing of his presence until the man paused at the door, opened it up and then stepped in, leaving his wagon just outside.
Gant sat straight up in the seat, adjusting his binoculars for a clearer view as the man emerged. But it wasn’t the bags Ryder had put inside that he was carrying out. It was a large black garbage bag. He tossed it into the wagon and started down the street when Wyandott’s men suddenly converged upon him.
Gant threw down his binoculars in disbelief and started his car. In spite of the kidnapper’s instructions, Wyandott was pulling him in. God help them all if this stunt got Casey Justice killed.
* * *
“You’re under arrest!” Wyandott shouted, as two of his agents wrestled the old man to the ground.
The terror on the old fellow’s face seemed sincere. “What did I do? What did I do?”
An agent slapped handcuffs around his wrists while another tore into the bag. But they all stared in disbelief as a cascade of crushed aluminum cans fell onto the street.
“What the hell?” Wyandott muttered.
“They’re mine, fair and square,” the old man cried, as they pulled him to his feet. “Anthony gave them to me.”
Wyandott turned. “Who the hell is Anthony?”
“The man who owns the newsstand. I pick them up once a week, regular as clockwork. Everyone knows. Anthony doesn’t care. He saves them for me.”
A knot was beginning to form in the pit of Wyandott’s belly. He pivoted and pointed toward the stand. “Check it out!” Two of the agents were already running as Gant’s car slid to a halt near the curb.
Gant strode toward Wyandott with murder in his eyes. “Have you lost your mind?”
Wyandott hunched his shoulders and thrust out his jaw. “Mind your own damned business.”
“This is my city. That makes it my business,” Gant yelled. One of the agents came running. “Sir! You’d better come take a look.”
Everyone converged on the stand, leaving the old man handcuffed and alone in the street near his cans.
The bags were gone!
“This is impossible,” Wyandott muttered. “We didn’t take our eyes off of this stand for a second. Not a damned second.”
Gant stepped inside, and, as he did, caught his toe. He staggered, then looked down. A certainty came over him that they’d been lying in wait for nothing. Chances were that the bags had disappeared seconds after Ryder had left
“He didn’t take them out, he took them down,” Gant said, pointing toward the slightly raised edge of a lid covering the opening that led down to the sewers.
Wyandott paled. “Hell.” He grabbed his two-way. “Ambrewster… is that bug sending?”
The radio crackled, and then the man’s voice came over the air loud and clear. “No sir. Everything is status quo.”
Gant was on his knees and pulling at the lid when several of the agents followed his lead and began to help. A flashlight was produced, and even though they were yards above them, and it was black as a devil’s heart down below, there was enough light to see two empty bags lying at the foot of the ladder.
And they had their answer. The signal wasn’t sending because the bags were more or less right where Ryder had left them… minus the three million dollars that had been inside.
The radio crackled again. Wyandott jerked.
“Captain…this is Tucker…come in, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, we’ve been following Marlow as you ordered. He parked his car and went into the courthouse at fourteen hundred hours. We have men stationed at every exit and he has yet to come out.”
Wyandott was starting to worry. He kept thinking of the threat Justice had made to his face. This wasn’t going down as he’d planned.
“I want to know if he’s inside. Look for him, dammit, and don’t stop until you do. He’s mixed up in this somehow, I know it.”
* * *
Ryder turned off of the highway without slowing down and skidded to a halt in front of the mansion. He was out of the car before the dust had time to settle.
But when Roman came around the house on the run, Ryder paused at the front door with his hand on the knob. He could tell by the look on his brother’s face that something had happened.
“What?”
Roman grabbed him by the arm. “Gant just called me. The drop went sour. The kidnapper went underground into the sewers. He’s got the money and all they’ve got left are those damned bags.”
Disbelief, coupled with a pain Ryder couldn’t name, nearly sent him to his knees. It was coming undone.
Roman grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t give out on me now. We’re going to plan B. Come with me. We don’t have much time.”
For the first time since Ryder had exited the car, he became aware of a loud, popping sound, but he was too focused on Roman to consider the source. “Where are we going?”
“Marlow is on the move,” Roman said. “I’ve been tracking him, but he’s moving out of range. You’re going to have to help me, brother, or we’re going to lose our best chance to find your wife.”
They had just cleared the corner of the house in full stride, when Ryder stopped in his tracks.
“Son of a bitch.”
Roman grabbed him by the arm, almost yelling in his face to be heard above the noise. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger, just like the one you have at home.”
“I know what it is,” Ryder said, staring at the helicopter’s spinning rotors. “Where the hell did you get it?”
Roman almost grinned. “I borrowed it, so don’t wreck the damned thing. I have to take it back when we’re through.”
Ryder started to sweat. Wreck? Hell, that meant making it fly first.
Roman grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked. “Are you going to stand there, or are we going to try to save your wife?”
Ryder started to run. “If you stole this, I’ll break your neck.”
“Just shut up and get in,” Roman yelled, as he leaped into the passenger seat and grabbed at a laptop computer he’d laid on the floor.
A strange sensation swept through Ryder’s body as he climbed into the seat. The sounds were familiar, even the feel of the seat at his back and the scent of fuel mixing with the dust and debris flying through the air caused by the rotor’s massive pull.
Then he glanced at his brother and the moving blip on the computer screen in front of him. The tracking devices! Roman had bugged Marlow’s car after all. His pulse surged. “Is that him?”
Roman nodded. “Yes, but I’m losing him. Take her up!”
Ryder stared. That blip kept blinking—blinking—blinking—like a pulse. Like Casey’s pulse. He grabbed the seat belt. It snapped shut with a click he felt rather than heard. He took a deep breath and pushed in on the throttle and it felt as if the helicopter took a deep breath. Ryder glanced at the blip one last time and the guilt he’d been living with for the better part of a year simply disappeared.
“Roman.”
Roman glanced at his brother.
“Buckle up.”
Seconds later, the chopper went straight up in the air, then flew into the setting sun like a hawk flying out of a storm.
* * *
Lash was ecstatic. It had all been too easy. Just this afternoon, he’d driven Fostoria Biggers’s little car to an abandoned garage near the downtown courthouse, then taken a cab back home. A short time later, he got in his own sedan, drove to his office, picked up some legal briefs, then drove to the courthouse and parked in his usual place.
Only when he got into the elevator, he didn’t go up, he went down. Down into the basement. Down through a maze of heating pipes and furnaces, past the janitor’s quarters where he picked up two large bags he’d hidden earlier, as well as a pair of gloves which he immediately put on. He was smarter than Pike. He wasn’t leaving traces of himself anywhere to be found.
Down he went into a shaft leading straight to the sewers beneath the city. Counting tunnels and watching for numbers written on the walls beside the ladders with something akin to delight, Lash knew when he reached number seventy-nine that he was directly beneath the newsstand.
He waited, and minutes later, he heard the echo of boots against metal as Ryder Justice walked across the sewer lid and dropped the bags full of money…his money. A smile broke the concentration on his face. So far, so good.
He knew the bags were bugged. He’d watched the Feds planting the bugs himself. So he transferred the money from their bags into the ones he’d brought, and left the original bags and their bugs right where he knew they would eventually be found.
Once again, he was using the underground sewers of Ruban Crossing as a means by which to travel. With the narrow beam of a small flashlight for guidance, he began to count tunnels and ladders again until he came to ladder number sixty-five. This time he went up, coming out in the alley just outside the abandoned garage where he’d parked Fostoria Biggers’s car.
When he drove out of the city, he was three million dollars to the good. As for the fifty thousand he was supposed to pay Bernie and Skeet, it was unfortunate, but he was going to have to renege.
It wasn’t his fault Bernie had left fingerprints behind when they’d yanked Casey out of her car. Eventually the police would find Bernie Pike. And if they found Bernie, Skeet Wilson would not be far behind. Lash didn’t trust them to keep quiet about his part in the crime. He couldn’t leave witnesses. Not after he’d gone this far.
As he drove, he reached down and felt the outside of his pocket, reassuring himself that his gun was still there. Once or twice, as he pictured pulling the trigger and ending two men’s lives, he came close to rethinking his decision. And then he would remind himself that, for three million dollars, he could live with a little bit of guilt.
All he had to do was walk in the house, pull the trigger two times and they would be out of the picture. At this point, his imagination began to wane. He kept picturing himself opening the door to the room in which Casey was being kept and pointing his gun at her as well. After that, the image faded. Would she beg? Would she cry? Would he be able to kill the woman he once thought he loved?
Fostoria Biggers’s little car fishtailed in loose dirt as Lash sailed down the road toward her home. Only a few more miles.
* * *
“He’s turning south,” Roman said, and held on to his laptop as, moments later, the helicopter took the same turn, yielding to Ryder’s skill.
Roman’s gaze was completely focused on the screen before him. And the farther they flew, the more certain he was of where Lash Marlow was going.
“There’s nothing out here but swamp grass and trees,” Ryder muttered, as he banked the chopper sharp to the right, sometimes skimming so close to the treetops that the skids tore the leaves as they flew by.
Roman frowned, grabbing at the computer and leaning into another sharp turn. “If you were partial to driving there, you should have said so—I’d have gotten one of these things with wheels.”
“Am I still on course?” Ryder asked.
Roman looked down at the screen. “Yes. We can’t be more than a half a mile behind.”
Half a mile. Would that be the difference between Casey’s life—or Casey’s death?
“I don’t like this,” Ryder said, glancing down at the blur of terrain beneath them. “There’s nothing out here but snakes, alligators and wildcats.”
“And the house where Fostoria Biggers was born and raised.”
The helicopter dipped. Not much, but enough to let Roman know Ryder had been startled by what he’d said.
“Who is Fostoria Biggers?”
“One of Marlow’s clients. I thought it was a little too convenient that Marlow has her car and her power of attorney. I checked land records at the courthouse. Would you believe that her house is just a little farther south… in the direction in which Marlow has been driving?”
Ryder looked startled. “How long have you known about this?”
Roman shrugged. “Bits and pieces of it since the first day. But it didn’t all start falling into place until you caught Marlow repeating the kidnapper’s demands, word for word. After that, we didn’t exactly have time to talk. I figured you wouldn’t mind if I took the initiative.”
Ryder’s expression was grim. “I don’t care what you do. But when we get where we’re going, Marlow is mine.”
Roman nodded. That much he understood. He glanced back at the screen. “Read ’em and weep, brother. It looks like our runner is about to stop.”
Ryder’s heart skipped a beat as he looked down at the screen. For the first time since they’d gone airborne, the blip was stationary. He glanced out the windows, searching for a sign of the car and a place to set down.
It was Roman who saw it first. “There!” he shouted. “I see the top of a roof up ahead in that clearing.” He leaned farther forward and pointed across Ryder’s line of vision. “There’s the road, just to your left.”
“I see it,” Ryder drawled. He gave his brother one last glance, and there was a wealth of understanding between them in that single look. “Hang on. We’re going down.”
* * *
It was getting late. Casey could tell by the temperature of the bare wooden floors beneath her feel Every nerve she had was on alert. She’d said her prayers, and such as it was, her little game plan was already in place. The contents of the bottle of lotion she’d found in her purse was in a puddle on the floor just inside her door. Her letter opener was in one hand, held fast at the hilt, and an unopened can of beans was in the other.
Oddly enough, Bernie had had a change of heart, and sneaked them back in to her when Skeet wasn’t looking. From the size of his belly hanging over his belt, she supposed he didn’t think a person should die on an empty stomach. And, she was as ready to die as she would ever be, but not without a fight.
Just as she was about to get herself a drink of water from the bathroom sink, she heard a shout of jubilation outside her door. Her thirst forgotten, she stifled a moan. That could only mean one thing. Lash had arrived. Bernie and Skeet were about to get paid.
* * *
Lash pulled up to the house and put the car into Park, but left it running. This trip was going to be a real hit-and-run. He had to get back into the city and pick up his car at the courthouse. It was the final stage of his plan, and one that would tie up the last loose ends.
He was halfway up the steps when Bernie Pike met him at the door. “Did you get it!?” Bernie asked.
Lash grinned and nodded as he put his hand in his pocket. “Where’s Skeet?” Lash asked. “I want to pay you both at the same time.”
“I’m right here,” Skeet said.
“Hot damn,” Bernie said. “My horoscope said this was my lucky day.”
The gun was in Lash’s hand before either man thought to react. Bernie went down still wearing his smile. Skeet had started to run and then stumbled and fell when Lash’s second shot caught him square in the back. The echo of the gunshots beneath the roof of the old porch were still ringing in Lash’s ears as he nudged each man with the toe of his shoe. Neither moved, nor would they ever again.
While Lash was staring down at their bodies, something fell on his sleeve. He looked down and then shrieked in sudden panic. Frantic, he brushed it off with the butt of the gun, then stomped it flat. What was left of a caterpillar lay squashed on the floor of the porch.
Another worm. A rapid staccato of drumbeats began again, ricocheting through Lash’s mind as he backed away from the worm and into the house with his gun drawn. He was all the way inside and halfway across the floor before he realized he had his back to the door of the room in which Casey was being kept. He crouched and spun. Heart pounding and slightly breathless, he aimed the gun at the middle of the door.
It took a bit for him to calm down. And when he did, he went to the door, rattling the knob just enough to let her know he was coming.
The tone of his voice took on a high, singsong pitch. “Here I come, ready or not.”
He opened the door, saw her standing across the room, and stepped inside, right into the puddle of lotion.
One second Lash was looking at Casey and the next he was staring at the ceiling and struggling to breathe. He clutched his chest with a groan and rolled as air began to fill his deflated lungs.
“Damn you,” he gasped, crawling to his feet just in time to duck an object that came flying through the air. Although he knew it wasn’t Casey, he pulled the trigger in self-defense, then gasped as something splattered all over his face. He looked down at himself in disbelief. Beans? He’d shot a can of beans?
* * *
For Casey, the two shots outside the door were unexpected. But when total silence followed, Casey suspected her worst fears were about to come true. Not only was Lash capable of killing her, but she’d bet her last dollar he’d just done away with Bernie and Skeet. It figured. He wasn’t the kind of man to leave loose ends untied. Lash was nothing if not neat.
She backed against the far wall, and when his voice taunted at her through the door, she traded the dagger in her right hand for the can of beans, then held her breath and waited.
The door opened, and to her undying relief, Lash hit the oil slick of lotion and fell flat on his back. While he was struggling for breath, she hauled back and sent the beans sailing, then ducked when his shot went wild.
While he was still brushing at the thick sauce and beans splattering his coat, she came at him. It was only through an inborn sense of self-preservation that he looked up in time to see her coming, but he didn’t move in time to save himself from the dagger’s sharp thrust.
He swung at her head with the butt of his gun just as the pain began to burn through his chest. Casey went limp, slumping to the floor at his feet as Lash stared at the familiar silver shaft sticking out of his chest.
The drumbeat got louder. He kept thinking of the dagger sticking out of that fat rat’s body, and now it was in him. The analogy was as sickening as the nausea rolling in his belly.
By now, the drumbeat was so loud in his head that he couldn’t hear himself scream. And yet the soft patois of the French-speaking slave, warning—predicting—promising, could still be heard above the drum.
Sharp like a serpent’s tooth, it will spill your blood and your flesh will be eaten by the worms of the earth.
In a wild kind of panic, he yanked at the handle, ignoring the pain, losing sight of the fact that, with Casey Justice unconscious and helpless at his feet, his goal was well within reach. Blood welled then poured out of the wound, and Lash staggered from the shock of seeing his life spilling on Casey’s legs.
And then he heard her groan, and a certainty came upon him. Kill her now, before it’s too late.
He wiped at the sweat beading on his brow and aimed the gun. He had to do it now while she was unconscious. He no longer had the guts to let her witness her own death. Not anymore.
He leaned down, jabbing the barrel of the gun at her head as the room began to spin around him. And then footsteps sounded on the porch outside and he turned and froze. A gourd rattled, like a rattlesnake’s warning, and the drumbeat grew louder, hammering—hammering—in what was left of his mind.
Crazed with pain and the impending vision of his own mortality, he lifted his gun, his wild gaze drawn to the shadow crossing the floor ahead of the man coming in.
* * *
When the first two shots came within seconds of each other, Ryder panicked. He tightened his grip on the gun Roman had given him and picked up his pace as he moved through the marsh beyond the old house. Brush caught on his blue jeans and tore at his shirt. Limbs slapped at his face and stung his eyelids and eyes. Water splashed up his legs to the tops of his knees and he kept on running, assuming that whatever was in his path would have to move of its own accord. His focus was on the house just visible in the distance, and the small white car parked nearby.
A hundred yards from the house, he saw the bodies of two men sprawled upon the porch and fear lent fresh speed to his steps. That explained the two shots. Water splashed a bit to his right and he knew that Roman was there on his heels as they ran out of the marsh and into the clearing.
Another shot rang out and Ryder almost stumbled. Dear God, it wasn’t possible that they’d come this far just to be too late. He couldn’t let himself believe that God would do that to him… not twice.
Two seconds, then ten seconds, and Ryder was up on the porch. He cleared Bernie Pike’s body in a smooth, single leap and came in the front door on the run.
“Dammit, Ryder, look out.”
Roman’s warning came late, but it would not have slowed his intent He kept thinking of that blip on the computer screen.
Had his wife’s heart stopped when it had, too?
He saw them both at the same time. Marlow was straddling Casey’s body with his gun aimed at Ryder’s heart. And the knowledge that he’d come too late filled his soul. Despair shattered his focus. Rage clouded any caution he might have used. His mind was screaming out her name as he pointed the gun at Marlow’s chest.
“You lying son of a bitch.”
They were the last words Lash Marlow would hear as Ryder pulled the trigger.
Lash’s shot went wild as Ryder’s bullet struck Marlow in the chest. He bucked upon impact, and Ryder fired again, then emptied his gun in him just to see him dance.
Roman was only seconds behind. He came through the door with his gun ready, the echo of Ryder’s last shot roaring in his ears. But hope died as he saw the woman on the floor and Marlow lying nearby. It looked as if Ryder would have his revenge, but little else.
Ryder’s gun was clicking on empty chambers when Roman took it out of his hand. Ryder jerked, then groaned and let it go. The pain in his chest was spilling out into his legs and into his mind. He couldn’t think past the sight of her battered and broken body lying still upon the floor.
Roman started toward the two bodies but Ryder stopped him. With tears streaming down his face, he grabbed his brother’s arm. “No. Let me.”
Roman ached for his brother’s pain as he stepped aside, and Ryder walked into the room, absorbing the filth and degradation of the place in which she’d been kept. Dropping to his knees, he lifted her from the filth on the floor and into his arms.
Blood ran down her legs as her head lolled against his shoulder, and then he couldn’t see her face for his tears. His heart broke as he cradled her against his chest.
His voice broke along with his heart. “No more! No more!” Laying his head near her cheek, he choked on a cry. “Ah God, I can’t take anymore!”
His shoulders hunched as he bent from the burden of living when those he loved kept dying around him.
Roman knelt at his side, sharing his brother’s pain. He glanced at the woman in Ryder’s arms. Even through the bruises and dirt, her beauty was plain to see. Years ago, he’d shut himself off from this kind of loss. He’d seen so much death and too much misery to let himself be hurt by it anymore, but this was too close to home. This woman, Ryder’s wife, was gone too soon. He reached out, lifted her hair from the blood on her face, and as he did, his finger brushed the curve of her neck.
His eyes widened as he tensed and shoved Ryder’s hand aside. When he felt the pulse beating strong and sure, he rocked back on his heels. A miracle! That’s what it was. A heaven-sent miracle.
Ryder choked on a sob. “Don’t, Roman. Just leave us alone.”
Roman grabbed his brother’s hand, his voice shaking as he pressed it at the pulse point on Casey’s neck. “She’s alive, Ryder. I swear to God, your wife is alive!”
* * *
At that same moment in the Ruban household many miles away, Matilda Bass heard a whisper. She froze, and then tilted her head, straining to hear. As suddenly as the whisper had come, it was gone, and Tilly’s body went limp. She leaned against the cabinet as the bowl she was holding slipped out of her hands and onto the floor, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, just like the weight that had been on her heart.
Joshua spun, wide-eyed and startled. And then he saw her face.
“Tilly?”
“They found her, they found her. My baby girl is alive.”