Chapter Nine
“Not a word, sweetheart. Not a single word.” That same smile she remembered, the one she now knew hid rot under the gloss and charm, flashed at her. He took her arm and steered her toward the pickup. Her legs moved obediently despite the fact she couldn’t feel anything below her neck—nothing beyond the minute stabbing of the knifepoint he held there.
He raised his voice. “I’ve just got some paperwork for you to sign, ma’am. No charge, of course, seeing you fixed it yourself.”
The other men had arrayed themselves behind the second SUV and turned their faces away—the better to obscure their identities from a potential witness. There’d be no help from that quarter. He steered her around the far side of the truck and pulled out a clipboard, holding the knife beneath it and pretending to fill it in as he talked.
“So, imagine my surprise when I opened the paper and saw Ms Raina Meadows on the front page all cuddled up with a cop—and with one of my people, no less, who should have been retrieving something that belonged to me. I thought I’d made my point pretty clear about you staying away from the law.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
He didn’t wait for a response, just continued, “Funny thing was, I’d started to suspect I had a mole in my operation.” He kept his attention on the clipboard but flicked his pen at where Hudson was standing with the others. “I thought I had it pegged to the French buffoon, but then you showed up, and it suddenly all became clear. What did you do, follow them around until you could come to the rescue? Or did you sabotage the helicopter yourself?”
He used the pen to push up the brim of his hat, and the smile couldn’t hide the crazy malice in his eyes. “So, tell me, Raina—or should I call you Mia? What brought on this uncharacteristic surge of bravery? You were such a perfect little mouse. Couldn’t do enough for me in the name of saving the habitat of the precious horned whoosit. And so obedient after the fact—except for those few oopsies, but we fixed that, didn’t we?”
She stared at him, mute. He was nuts. Certifiably, diagnosably, nuts. There was a twitchiness to his movements she didn’t remember and a fervour in his eyes that made her stomach clench. Following his men? Sabotaging helicopters? But if she did manage to convince him she’d been caught up in this by accident, she’d be putting the suspicion squarely back on Hudson.
“Answer me!” he hissed at her, and leaned closer, jabbing the clipboard into her ribs until she wrapped her hands around the edges to stop the knife-edge piercing her skin. “And don’t bother to lie. I’ll know.”
Her mind skipped over the thoughts swirling in her brain, looking for something, anything that would satisfy him and set him off the track. “There were no flowers. They stopped coming.” The words fell out of her mouth, sounded flat and flimsy, even to her own ears, but Abe stopped pressing in on her and tapped his pen against his lips.
“Did they indeed? I paid good money to have those deliveries made, and there were still years on the contract. But still, an easy enough fact to check, sweetheart.” He took the clipboard back from her and tossed it on the passenger seat before walking around the hood. “It’s been good to see you. I would have liked to offer you a ride down the mountain.” His lips split in a hard grin. “Damndest thing, that truck of yours starting right up like that. Spoilt our reunion.”
If her engine really had died, she’d have had no logical choice but to accept his offer of a ride. And she never would have reached town alive. Her blood turned to ice.
“Don’t leave town, honey bun. In fact, seeing the meat-head is so keen to spend some time with you, maybe I’ll let him drive you home and keep an eye on you ’til I need you again.”
The thought of Gio in her home, following her into her bedroom, filled her with disgust, but a simmering anger was brewing beneath it, reheating her blood, and she managed to twist up one side of her mouth. “I doubt he could find his dick with a compass and a map.”
Abe’s eyebrow went up. “You may have a point. He’s definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed. Perhaps a different baby-sitter is in order.”
She tried to let a little fear leak through, just a little, but the anger was building. Abe smirked at her and climbed behind the wheel, then started tapping away at his cell phone. “No coverage here, of course, but they’ll get it in a moment or two.”
He motioned her around to the driver’s side. She went. Docile, frightened, just like he expected, and Abe put his hand over hers where she’d rested it over the open window. He pressed down, grinding her palm into the window track. She grimaced and he smiled, satisfied.
“Now here’s what’s going to happen next, Raina. You’re going to get into your truck and go home and wait. You’ve broken my rules and you’re going to have to make that up to me.” He pressed down again with the heel of his hand. “And you are, of course, not going to say a single word about seeing me here. Yes?”
She nodded and snatched her hand away.
He put the truck in gear, reversed enough to give himself room to swing around her truck, then waved his clipboard out the window as he drove past the three men looking anywhere but at the mechanic who could identify them as having been on an access route near where a drug-filled helicopter had crashed. “You all have a good day now!”
#
Hudson lifted a hand to the mechanic as the man called out to them on his way up the muddy logging road, looking for a place wide enough to turn around. Mia was already back at her own vehicle and whistling for Neville, so Hudson nonchalantly brought out the string of condoms and glanced over at Mia. He turned back to Gio and Raj and smiled. “Look like my ride is leaving now, boys. I see you later.”
Gio’s face changed colour again. “That ain’t our orders, man. We all got to go back to the warehouse.”
Hudson winked at him. “Cain’ll understand, right, Raj?”
“Probably so, Remy.” Raj climbed behind the wheel.
Hudson tried to keep his strides loose and even as he hurried over to where Mia had already put her SUV in gear and started to rock herself out of the rut that had formed around her tires during the storm. The passenger side door was locked, so he slapped the palm of his hand against the glass. She jumped and let her foot off the gas, and he had to shuffle backward to avoid a tire backing over his foot. Her hand hovered for a second over the switch panel to her left, but the lock popped and he pulled open the door.
“Okay?” He said it softly, lips barely moving, but she was clearly not okay. Her face was tight and her knuckles were pale where her hands were wrapped around the steering wheel. He needed to get her out of here.
He pulled his head back out of the truck and planted his hands on the doorframe. “Okay, you give ’er gas on three, oui?” He counted, slowly, rocking the vehicle with her, then putting all his weight into it on three. The tires bumped up onto more solid ground, and he twisted and hopped into the passenger seat as she guided the vehicle away from the edge. He held his breath as they slid closer to the steep drop off, but Mia gave it just enough gas and centred them in the narrow road again.
“Why don’t you let me drive?”
She looked stricken, eyes wide, darting around the inside of the truck. She gave him a jerky nod, and he opened his door and walked around the hood as she slid over the console on the inside.
“This isn’t a date, so don’t bother with the sweet talk and the fake English accent, you jerk.”
He paused with the seatbelt halfway across his chest, staring at her, and then it clicked. Who knew how long Gio and Raj had been up here with the vehicle before they made their way back? Mia was right to assume they’d been bugged. He let Remy settle over him again like a blanket, ignoring the gut punch of disappointment that he had to, yet again, put on a character around Mia. He shrugged. Don’t half-ass it. Always full on. That was the rule. Cameras were just as easy to plant as microphones these days.
“Hey, t’at’s what you want, t’at’s what you get. I just t’ought if it was good for you, maybe we can be friends, after.”
“Friends? You drag me up the mountain to find a shipment of drugs, rape me, then tell your friends to have a turn and you think we’re going to be buddies? And your English accent sounds like you learnt it from a cartoon. I want to go home, and then I never want to see you or your friends again.”
He let the corners of his mouth pull down and tilted his head from side to side. “Maybe yes, maybe no. We’ll see what Mr Cain says.” Her head snapped around in his peripheral vision. He probed gently, trying to see what prompted the reaction. “Raj says I might get a promotion. Maybe Mr Cain wants you to stay and you work for me.”
She snorted. “On my knees, no doubt. Not a chance. I don’t care if your ‘Mr Cain’ appeared on this very mountainside and begged me to work for him. I want nothing to do with you.”
Even knowing she was playing a part as much as he was, her words hit a nerve and he blanked his face before he shrugged again. “You’ll change your mind. You women are…’ow you say?”
“Highly intelligent?”
“Non.”
“Not likely to fall for that crap?”
“Non.”
“Masters of their own fate and determined to take their lives back?”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Anger had started to burn through her fear and her cheeks were flushed. He gave the steering wheel a tweak and hit the brakes, then put an arm out when she tipped forward in the seat.
He found her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “Careful,” he said softly.
Her face stiffened. She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Fickle,” he said, and slapped his thigh. “You women are fickle.” He looped a finger in circles near his ear. “Too much thinking, changing minds all the time.”
“Fickle.” She repeated the word dully. Her hands were pressing lines down her thighs and the hair that had drifted loose from her braid fell forward and hid her face. He opened his mouth, shut it again, tried to think of some way to ask her what was wrong without giving the game away if they were being watched. He reached out instead and turned on the radio, then pressed down on the accelerator. The faster they got off this mountain, the better.
They’d left the logging road for actual asphalt and were approaching the parking lot for a local toboggan hill when the other SUV roared up behind them and flashed its lights. Mia made a strangled noise in the back of her throat and Hudson automatically reached out a hand to her, then converted it at the last second to a rough grab at her arm.
“No-nonsense,” he said.
He pulled off onto the shoulder and stopped, then waited as Raj walked up to the driver’s side window. “Got a message from Cain. He said to give you these.” Two cell phones dropped into Hudson’s hand, Mia’s and a replacement for the one he’d lost in the slide. Raj did a 360 scan of the surrounding area before digging back into his pocket. “This, too.” He lowered Mia’s handgun through the window, but when she reached across Hudson to take it, he jerked it back. “Not you. It’s for Remy.”
“Cain is giving Remy my gun.” Her words were flat and inflectionless, not a question, but a statement.
Raj shrugged. “He didn’t seem to think you’d mind.” He transferred the weapon into Hudson’s hand and rapped his knuckles on the edge of the door panel. “He’s happy with you, man. Wants you to hang out with Raina ’til he calls. Said to wish you ‘bonwee.’”
He held his fist out and Hudson bumped it with his own. “Oui, I’ll be having a good night. You, too, mon ami.” Mia’s face was turning dangerously red, and he reached over and squeezed her thigh. “A real good night.” Mia tried to pry his fingers free as Raj laughed and headed back to the second SUV.
“Give me my gun,” she said quietly as he steered them back out onto the road.
He gave her an incredulous look. “Now why I do that? Maybe you’ll get it back later if you’re good, but for now, it’s mine.” He patted his pocket. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned to look out the passenger-side window. He could feel her frustration building, knew he lost her a little bit more every time he had to play the thug, but there was too much at stake to just throw in the towel now.
And they were so close. So close. All he needed to do was get in touch with his handler and make sure there was enough evidence that could be independently verified, and he was home free. And then he could help her get out from under this Abe character.
Neville whined softly in the back seat and Mia immediately turned, then checked the time display on the dash. “He’s hungry. Pull over and I’ll get him some food.”
“Non, not yet.”
She glared at him and he met her with a level look. He wished he could beam his thoughts into her mind. Just trust me, Mia.
He lifted his hands from the steering wheel, let some exasperation leak from his voice. “I’m hungry, too. Little bit farther and we all get to eat, okay?”
She twisted between the seats to scratch the dog behind the ears, then flopped back in her seat with a huff. “Fine. But you’re paying.”
“’Course I’m paying. I’m a gentleman.” He played it incredulous and raised his eyebrows when he looked at her. When he was sure he had her attention, he crossed his eyes briefly, then returned his attention to the road.
She buried her face in her hands and let out a muffled exclamation. “You’re paying because you are ruining my life despite the fact I’ve saved your ass, found your drugs, and apparently given you my gun. This is not a date, you are not a gentleman, and there is not enough food in the world to make me put out for you.”
He pretended to sulk for a moment, then shrugged. “I buy for the dog, too.”
“Oh, well, that’s different, then.”
He reached over and put his hand on her thigh. “Good different?”
“Absolutely. You buy Neville lunch and he’ll sleep with you for sure.”
#
She stepped out onto the pavement, holding onto the door as she shook out her legs. She was stiff, sore, and still slightly damp, and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath in a very deep tub. Hudson opened the door for Neville and the dog bounded into the landscaping of the faux alpine rest stop. The SUV with Raj and Gio in it zoomed by a few seconds later with a one-finger salute extended out the passenger side.
Mia rolled her shoulders a few times, but kept her eyes on the road. What she hadn’t seen was the roadside assistance truck Abe had been driving on the mountain. It hadn’t caught up to them in the brief time they’d been stopped on the toboggan hill and she wasn’t seeing it down the long stretch of road in front of her. Her skin prickled with the memory of the crazy look in his eyes. Had he become addicted to his own product? She was sure it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Neville crossed the parking lot and made a beeline for Hudson, bowing down with his front legs outstretched, then leaping away as the cop reached out to tag him. They made several circuits of the SUV and Mia couldn’t help but smile at their antics. Hudson’s laughter was rich and real—no hint of Remy or the charm slug persona—and Neville whuffled and practically snickered at the man’s feeble attempts to catch him. Finally Nev let Hudson grab him and run his fingers through his coat, combing out grass and twigs. Mia lifted the rear hatch and set out some food and water. Neville jumped back inside, content to eat then settle back down for another nap. Mia’s mind worked furiously. Why hadn’t Hudson and the others recognized the mechanic was Cain? And how had he managed to be there?
There was still no sign of the other pickup truck as they walked into the restaurant. There was only one other customer, a man, maybe mid-thirties, sitting at the far end of the counter and alternating between swivelling his stool to look out the window and staring at his cell phone. He was dressed in grubby jeans and a once-white T-shirt, and his hair was oddly flattened. His hand came up several times as though to rock a cap back on his head and faltered when it encountered only air. He was twitchy and suspicious. Mia nudged Hudson with her foot and then lifted her chin in the man’s direction. Hudson waited for a moment, then artfully knocked his menu to the floor and scanned the corner of the room behind him as he picked it up.
He studied the menu for a second, then lifted his face and raised an eyebrow.
She relaxed a little. If Hudson didn’t see a threat, there probably wasn’t one. She shook her head and chewed at the inside of her lip, and he went back to his menu. What did she tell him? Did she tell him anything? Nothing? Some half version of the truth? She could still run, couldn’t she? Hudson was a cop—a trained, hard-core undercover cop. He’d be able to handle himself if Abe got suspicious when she took off.
Her palms slicked with sweat at the thought of leaving Hudson to Abe’s mercy. She wiped her hands down her thighs. Hudson had chosen the seat with the best view of the restaurant and the parking lot, but Mia could see the place in the wavy reflection in the age-spotted mirror that ran the length of the wall behind the counter. The weather alert had only recently been called off and there wasn’t much traffic on the roads, but she would imagine the rescue effort would soon be underway if the children had not already been brought down safely. There was no real need for her to join the search party. Maybe it would be better for Hudson if she did run. If she timed it right, Abe would think she was the mole all along.
“Do you have a newspaper?” she asked the waitress
The woman nodded and finished pouring their coffee, then detoured to a rack on the wall to collect a pristine paper that she deposited on their table on her way back to the kitchen to place their order.
“What are you looking for?” Hudson’d dropped the accent, but kept his voice soft, despite the lack of customers to overhear.
“I want to see if they got the kids down yet.” She found the front page folded into the middle and shook it out. School pictures of the missing children lined the top fold, with a tie-in story about the storm damage from overnight and some fairly dire predictions about the children’s welfare.
A ringing phone had Mia patting at her pockets before she remembered her phone was still in Hudson’s custody. He shook his head slightly and she switched her attention to the man by the counter, who’d just pressed his phone to his ear.
“Finally. Not cool, man. I agreed to an hour—” Colour leached from the man’s face and he pushed himself off his stool and clutched the edge of the counter. “Fire? What fire?”
Hudson twisted to watch the man, who ran to the window, still with the phone to his ear. “Aw, Jesus, no.” He slumped against the glass and let the phone fall to the floor as he stared at the road beyond. A potent mix of bile and coffee rose in Mia’s throat as she saw the thick plume of smoke rising in the near distance.
The waitress took a few casual steps toward the window, then doubled her pace in the other direction, yelling for someone in the back to call 911. Mia pressed her hand to her mouth. Hudson looked at her, but she shook her head, unable to explain the feeling of trepidation that consumed her. He got to his feet and Mia slid out behind him. She ignored his motion for her to stay back, despite the glare he gave her, and walked with him to the window.
The man was muttering to himself and tugging at his hair. “Boss is gonna kill me. And Hannah, ah, Hannie is gonna flip a switch.” He moaned and banged his head on the glass.
Hudson stopped a foot away and studied the scene up the road for a few seconds before turning to the man. “What happened?”
Mia yanked on the back of his jacket. Her gut was telling her he couldn’t risk sliding out of character. He reached behind and grabbed her hand, but did ease back into a French accent. “What the problem?”
Mia tugged her hand away and stepped closer to the glass. The choking feeling of dread turned into a sour, fatalistic acknowledgement when she saw the pickup in flames near the turnoff. It was a blue-and-white truck, just like the one Abe had been driving on the mountain.
The man wiped his hand over his face and dropped into a seat. “I got a service call this morning out here to this parking lot. When I arrived there was no vehicle, just this guy who offered me five hundred bucks to borrow my uniform and my truck for an hour.” He turned his hands palm up on the table and looked up at Hudson as though pleading with him to understand. “Five hundred is a lot of money. I just got married, still paying off the bills.” He rested his head in his hands. “Buddy said it was just a surprise for an old friend. And now my truck is on fire and I’m dead, man. If my boss doesn’t kill me, my wife will.”
Hudson glanced at Mia, up to the truck, then back at the man. Hudson cleared his throat. “What this guy look like?”
The man gave a strangled laugh, then bent to pick his phone off the ground. “I can show you. Thought I’d play it smart and take a picture of the guy, just to be safe.”
He turned the phone around and held it up. Mia crowded close to Hudson. It was Abe. He’d turned away from the camera and only a sliver of his face was visible between the turned up collar and pulled-down ball cap, but it was definitely Abe.
Hudson frowned and shook his head. “That’s not going to ’elp the cops much.”
The man turned the phone back to look, then tossed it on the table. “Dammit, you’re right. Craziest eyes I ever did see, though. Never should have gone along with it.” His head moved from side to side like a metronome. “Should have listened to my gut. Hannie is gonna kill me.”
Two fire trucks zipped by at full blast. They had the hoses unfurled and the fire knocked down in just a few minutes. The mechanic stood up and shoved his phone into his pocket with a shaking hand. “Time to face the music, go talk to the firefighters, I guess.”
Mia put a hand on his arm, relieved and somewhat amazed to find hers wasn’t shaking as well. “We’ll give you a ride.”
Their plates were on the table and Mia shook off Hudson’s restraining hand and took them up to the counter. The waitress left her spot at the door to dump their meals into boxes for them and ring them up at the cash register. There was a hint of laughter in Hudson’s eyes when Mia pointedly passed him the bill, but his expression was grim again once they reached the SUV.
Mia automatically walked around to the driver’s side door, but obligingly slid in beside Neville when Hudson opened the back door for her. The man climbed in the front passenger seat and nearly jumped right back out again when Neville extended his nose for an introduction.
“Sorry ’bout that. This is Neville.”
Neville held his paw forward, but the man didn’t seem inclined to take it. “That’s a wolf.”
Hudson scoffed. “Don’t be silly, is illegal to keep wolf for pet.”
The mechanic managed to close the door despite being wedged up against it and pressed his back solidly into the side glass.
“Whatever you say.” He stayed crammed in the corner for the short trip and was out and on the pavement nearly before the truck was stopped.
“Hey.” Hudson leaned across and the man pulled the door back open. “This man. ’ give you anything to ’old? To make sure ’e come back?”
The man’s face brightened and he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a paper-wrapped bundle. “Yeah, yeah, he did. He said he’d give me five hun, right? Well, he hands over a thou, says I can keep the extra ’til he brings back the truck.”
He slid the wrapping off the cash and Hudson reached over to rub a bill between his finger and thumb. “Feels real to me.”
The man looked back at his smouldering truck. “Yeah, well, a thou isn’t going to repair that mess, real or not.” He folded the stack of bills and jammed it into his back pocket. He looked down at the paper it had been wrapped in. “Tell you what, if this Raina Meadows is who he was hoping to surprise, I sure hope he never found her.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter if the cops are looking for her or not, no one deserves that psycho on their ass.”
He balled up the paper and tossed it into the grass beside the road. He reached across to shake Hudson’s hand, said “thanks for the ride”, and slammed the door, leaving Mia to stare at Hudson in the rear view mirror.