A Quarter for a Kiss (42 page)

Carefully, I raised up on my elbows and inched forward, both to reach some better cover and to see if I could see anything. I got to the thicker brush and then waved at Tom to do the same, which he did.

Silently, he motioned that he was going to crawl along to the far end and see what he could see. I nodded at him even as my mind screamed at him not to move. As he went I ran my hands along the ground searching for some sort of weapon. The best I could find was a small rock to hold in my fist.

After an excruciating few minutes, Tom crawled back to me. He put two hands over my ear and whispered as quietly as was humanly possible.

“The agent’s unconscious,” he said. “There’s duct tape around his hands and feet—and over his eyes and his mouth.”

My own eyes widened in horror.

“There’s someone here,” he added. “Doing something over in the rubble.”

Together we inched our way along the shrubbery until we could see. We had to look through the branches of a bush, but at least there was one work light still on, behind the person, illuminating him as he worked. I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but it made a fair amount of noise.

I grabbed Tom by the sleeve, pointing to his white shirt and the way it shone in the moonlight. Silently, he pulled it off, revealing a navy blue T-shirt underneath.

He looked at me questioningly, but I shook my head, not knowing what we should do next. I thought about taking the chance of making a call on my cell phone, but then I realized I had left it in the car. I cupped my hands around Tom’s ear and whispered, “Just stay put for now.”

We huddled there in the darkness, side by side, for at least ten minutes. Finally, I chanced sitting up a bit for a better viewpoint, and I realized what we were seeing: It was Zach, clearing away rubble to get to something underneath. With a final clink and then a groan, he seemed to be opening a door from the ground. As it creaked open, voices came spilling out.

They were hushed but angry, and Tom and I watched in amazement as Larry, Earl, and then Dianne came walking up out of the very earth. We couldn’t understand every word of their angry whispers, but we heard enough to know that Zach had waited a bit too long to come and release them from wherever they had been trapped. They were coughing a lot, and I could tell they were having difficulty breathing.

“You knew there would only be five or six hours of air in there because of the power-off dampers,” Dianne cried. “We could’ve asphyxiated!”

“This place has been crawling with federal agents!” Zach snapped back, walking suddenly in our direction. “What was I supposed to do?”

He kicked at the agent on the ground, who must have still been unconscious because he didn’t react.

“Oh, no,” Dianne said, seeing the agent for the first time.

“Hey, at least I got you a new boat like you said. It’s fast and powerful, with plenty of room for the stuff. You’ll be happy with it.”

“You came here on it?” Dianne asked.

“Yeah. It’s tied up at the beach.”

They all stood around and looked down at the agent on the ground.

“If they wake up and hear our voices, they’ll know we’re still alive,” Larry said. “We’ve got to kill them.”

“No!” Dianne cried.

I wasn’t sure if that was her conscience speaking or if she just knew that murdering FBI agents would be a very stupid move.

“Why don’t we just lock ’em up in the back of their van,” Earl said. “Maybe when they wake up, they’ll think it was done by some looters.”

They all seemed to agree, and so together they worked to put all three taped-up agents into the back of the FBI’s van. When they were finished, Zach walked back toward us, through the gate and onto the tennis court.

“I thought you said I’d be able to take the helicopter from here,” he said, furious at the state of the machine that had been dismantled on the pavement. As he walked closer to it to inspect it, I held my breath. We were a mere 10 or 15 feet away, hidden only by the shadows and some shrubbery.

“Let’s go people,” Earl whispered sharply. “We’ve got to get all the paintings down to the boat.”

“I’m not helping you,” Zach said. “I have to put this bird back together again.”

He went to work on the driver’s seat first, putting it into place and then cursing and muttering as he searched for the bolts that would hold it there. At least he seemed to know what he was doing, but my biggest fear was that he would drop a tool and it would roll in our direction.

Behind him Larry, Earl, and Dianne seemed to start an almost assembly line procedure across the wide lawn. We couldn’t see everything that was happening, but it looked as though Dianne was bringing rectangular, handled cases up from the basement where they had been and Earl was taking them from her at the top of the stairs and running them out to Larry. Larry waited until he was completely loaded before starting down the private road to the beach. Zach had come here to get them by boat, and that was how they would leave.

Larry was winded when he came back up, and he walked out to the tennis court to speak to Zach.

“Jodi’s tied up on the boat!” Larry whispered sharply. “Why haven’t you killed her yet?”

“She’s got something I need first. Then I’ll do it.”

“You should’ve killed her when you were supposed to,” Larry snapped. “She’s nothing but a liability.”

“Just bring her with you the next time you come up. We’ll throw her in that back car.”

“Then what?”

“Then when we’re done here, I’ll get the keys off of one those agents and take her home.”

“Home? Are you crazy?”

Zach spun around angrily.

“Look, Larry, we still haven’t found those bearer bonds. I’ll get rid of her as soon as she hands them over.”

“I already searched the house,” Larry said. “I told you, they’re not there!”

“Don’t worry,” Zach replied, “I have ways of getting it out of her. When I’m finished with her, I’ll know
exactly
where she hid them. I’ll kill her as soon as the bonds are in my hands.”

The men laughed.

“No,” Dianne whispered sharply, her hands on her hips. “There’s already been too much killing, too much death. First my two men, then that Sunshine woman—”

“Don’t forget the old guy in Florida,” Zach added.

Dianne gasped.

“What old guy? Who?”

“Eli Gold,” Larry replied. “That private investigator.”

“You
killed
him?” she asked, sounding as if she could hardly catch her breath. “When?”

“Last Friday,” Larry said. “Zach lifted a Bushmaster semiautomatic from a gun store so we could make a long-distance shot.”

Listening to them, I realized they didn’t know Eli had survived their attempt at murder. Dianne’s hands flew to her chest, and I thought she might faint. She staggered and Larry stepped forward to support her.

“Come on, Mom, get over it. You said he was digging around where he shouldn’t have been, that his digging might tip off Rushkin. It seemed the quickest way to solve the problem.”

“No,” Dianne cried. “I brought you to Florida with me so you could search his house for any notes or photos of me that he might have. We never spoke of killing!”

“So what’s the big deal?” Larry asked. “He was a nobody.”

“You don’t understand,” Dianne sobbed, shaking her head from side to side. “He wasn’t a ‘nobody.’”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Larry,” Dianne said, putting a hand to her son’s cheek. “Eli was your father.”

Forty-Six

Eli had a son.

Larry was Dianne and Eli’s son.

Tom pulled at my sleeve and, reluctantly, I followed, crawling backward from the brush and toward the side of the cliff.

“Eli has a son!” I whispered.

“I heard. Focus, Callie. We’ve got to move
now
.”

I nodded, trying to pay attention as Tom said that the only way one of us could leave without being seen was to go straight down the rock wall.

“I’m going to climb down and swim around the point and go for help,” Tom whispered. “You’ve got to promise me, Callie, that you’ll stay where they won’t see you. You’re dead if they spot you.”

“Tom, there’s no way you can make it down this wall with those hands.”

“Sure I can,” he said, hoisting himself over the side. “Now go. Get over there.
Now
.”

My mind still in a fog, I ran to the bank of trees. Squeezing between them, I felt fairly certain I wouldn’t be spotted. I couldn’t see much of what was going on with the gang on the tennis court, but at least I could watch Tom as he worked his way, spiderlike, down the wall.

He seemed to do okay at first. Then, about ten feet down, he faltered, losing his grip. My heart in my throat, I watched as he found another hold then, suddenly, started slipping from that one as well.

Quickly, without taking the time to think, I ran to the rock wall and started down myself. I knew if I focused on all I had learned, on all he had taught me about rock climbing, that I could do this. My injured toe was throbbing, but otherwise, at least, the rocks were good and rough with plenty of crags and crevices. When I reached Tom, he was frozen, using his elbows to form a brace against a rock.

“It’s the blood,” he whispered frantically. “I can’t stop slipping.”

Looking at him, I realized his hands were now bleeding profusely. The bandages were soaked.

“Can you go back up?” I asked, clutching the wall, trying to ignore the fact that this was the first time I had ever climbed without a harness and a safety rope.

“No, I don’t think so. We’ll have to keep going down.”

“We can do this,” I said, trying to sound confident while lying through my teeth. “Let’s just overlap a bit. Here.”

I inched sideways and then reached across his left arm to grab a hold in front of his face.

“Now dry your right hand on your shirt and go for a lower grip,” I directed.

He did as I said, then together we took it down a step. He dried his left hand and put it in a lower spot, then I crossed over it again with mine. When I felt his hand start to slip, I pressed myself against the rocks, pinning his arm to the wall.

“Again,” he said, and in tandem we went down another step. It was working.

“
Mai pen rai
, baby,” I whispered.

Without thinking how hard it was, without thinking how frightened I was, without thinking how far we had to go, we made our way down the side of the wall until we were close enough to jump the rest of the way down to the sand.

Once there, we simply embraced, holding on to one another tightly. It had taken so long to get down that I was terrified Jodi was gone by now, already being driven down the road to her imminent torture and death.

Tom and I crouched down behind the biggest rock, daring to look around the corner at the private beach at the bottom of the estate.

The boat was still there! Hopefully, that meant Jodi was still alive.

It was a big craft, but low to the water with a sleek profile. I had no doubt that once they had it loaded, they would fly out of there at top speed, never to be seen again.

“I’ll have to do the swimming,” I whispered, gesturing toward Tom’s hands. “You know you can’t go in the water bleeding like that. You’ll draw sharks for sure.”

He nodded reluctantly.

“I’ll wait until the boat leaves,” he said, “then I can run back up the trail and free the FBI agents.”

“Just make sure you don’t run into Zach up there,” I said. “Look to see if that car is gone before you go out in the open.”

My sweater was covered with Tom’s blood, so I stripped it off and handed it to him. I didn’t dare hug him at the risk of getting more blood on me, so I simply leaned over and kissed him hard on the forehead.

Then I gritted my teeth and slipped into the sea, swimming in the opposite direction from the beach, swimming around Turtle Point.

Except for the chilliness of the water, it wasn’t bad at first. The hardest part was the darkness, the not knowing what was under me or around me. I stayed fairly close to shore, finding a rhythm that let me keep up a steady pace without wearing myself out too soon. As I rounded the point, however, I felt a stronger current tugging at me, and it was a struggle after that. I kicked off my shoes and then my pants, as the weight of them was dragging me down. In the distance, I could see the public beach, and that was what I aimed for. Making a direct line across the water, I pretended that it was daytime and that I was just out for a nice midday swim. My pretense didn’t last all that long, but finally, just when I thought I couldn’t swim another stroke, I paused to catch my breath and my feet touched the sand.

I walked the rest of the way out, praying I wouldn’t step on a stingray or a sea urchin. When the water was to my waist, I stopped and gasped. In front of me, just below the surface, swam an octopus. Remembering that they liked to come out at night, I watched it go by in the moonlight, feeling awed and terrified all at the same time.

When I reached the road, I looked both ways, finally spotting the flashing lights of the police car at the end of Dianne’s driveway, off to the left. The pavement was rough but I moved quickly toward them, wishing I hadn’t needed to ditch my shoes in the water—or my pants, for that matter. A least my shirt was long enough to keep me from being completely indecent.