Beware (13 page)

The front door swung open. A woman stepped out with a revolver. She was slim, no older than twenty, with black hair cropped short. Though she must have had plenty of time to dress, she wore only a short pink nightgown. Apparently, thought Lacey, she’d been determined to keep them out.

“Put down your guns,” she said.

Dukane nodded to Scott. They set a total of four pistols on the ground: two of their own, plus the two they’d taken from Trankus and his partner.

“They were planning to make off with the truck,” said the other woman, climbing down. “Otherwise, I would’ve let them go.” She was larger than the one in the doorway, with broad hips, and breasts that swung loosely inside her T-shirt.

“What’ll we do?” asked the smaller one.

“Let’s get them inside and call the police.”

“You
do
have a phone,” Dukane said.

“Of course.”

“Okay, inside.”

The small one backed into the house, waving her revolver. The one with the shotgun took up the rear. When they were all inside, she shut the door.

“Okay, Nancy, call the cops.”

“Don’t do that,” Dukane said. “Here, look at my credentials.” He handed his wallet to the girl with the pistol.

She slipped it open and stared. “Says he’s FBI, Jan.”

“Anybody can get a fake ID.”

“We were escorting our prisoner to Tucson when our car broke down.”

“What’s he doing with a shirt on his head?” Jan asked.

“He’s deformed,” Dukane explained. “We put the shirt over him to spare you the sight.”

“Bullshit,” Jan said.

“It’s true,” Lacey told her.

“They covered my head’cause they kidnapped me and don’t want you seeing who they’ve got. They snatched me this morning. I’m Watson Jones, vice president for Wells Fargo…”

“Can it, Hoffman.”

“Let him talk,” said Jan.

“They’re holding me for two million bucks. The three of’em, they’re in it together. Look, get these cuffs off me, huh? Dukane, he’s got a key.”

“Heard about a kidnapping?” Jan asked Nancy.

“No.”

“They ain’t released it to the news.”

With relief, Lacey saw a wry smile on Jan’s face.

“For the vice president of a bank, buster, you ain’t got such good grammar.”

“He’s a rapist and murderer,” Dukane said.

“That’s a con! Get his fuckin’ key before he grabs your guns.”

“Nobody’s going to grab your guns,” Dukane said. “This is your house. Fine with us if you want to hold the artillery. As I said before, we just want the use of your telephone. I need to call headquarters so they can pick us up.”

“We’d better call the cops. Nancy?”

“You don’t want to do that,” Dukane said.

“Yes, I think we do.”

Nancy walked backward across the red ceramic tile of the living room, and lowered herself onto a couch. She reached out for a telephone on the lamp table.

“Where’d she go?” Hoffman blurted. “What’s she doing? Don’t let her call!”

“If you make that call,” Dukane said, “it’s quite possible we’ll all be dead by morning.”

Nancy looked at Jan.

“Explain yourself,” Jan said.

“Our friend here belongs to a certain organization—a cult that wants him back. They have connections inside the Tucson police.”

“Suppose we call the Highway Patrol?”

“They may or may not be infiltrated. I don’t know about that. But I do know this: if you phone in, they’ll dispatch a car to this location by radio. Any joker with a Bearcat scanner will know right where to find us.”

“We’ll be dead meat,” Hoffman said.

“What do you think?” Jan asked her friend.

Nancy shook her head, looking confused.

“It’s all too damned fishy for me. Go ahead and call the Highway Patrol.”

“Don’t,” Dukane warned.

Nancy lifted the receiver and dialed for the operator. “Hello? I’d like the number…”

“Please,” Lacey said, starting forward. “Put it down.”

Jan swung the shotgun toward her. At that instant, Dukane leapt. He caught Jan around the hips, throwing her backward. The shotgun fired.

As its roar stunned Lacey’s ears, she saw the base of the phone jump from the table, exploding, crashing into the lamp behind it. Phone and lamp flew against the blasted wall. Dukane and Jan hit the floor.

Scott rushed Nancy. The girl, frozen by the blast that barely missed her, offered no resistance. She sat on the couch, phone receiver still in her right hand, gazing at the splintered table surface as Scott freed the revolver from her left hand.

“What happened?” Hoffman yelled. “Somebody take this fuckin’ shirt off my head! Who got shot?”

Dukane, on top of Jan, shoved the shotgun across the floor. She stopped struggling. As he pinned her arms, they both gazed toward Nancy.

“She’s okay,” Dukane said.

“Get off me,” Jan muttered.

He climbed off, and went for the shotgun. Jan hurried to the couch. She sat down and put an arm around the girl. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I almost…” She began to cry. The daze left Nancy’s face. Her chin trembled, and she lay her head against Jan’s breast.

“Why don’t you all just get out of here,” Jan
blurted. “Get the hell out. Take the pickup. Just get out of here.”

“Where are the keys?” Dukane asked, his voice gentle.

“My purse. In the kitchen.”

He went for them, and returned a moment later. “I’ll see that the truck’s returned to you,” he said.

“Just get out.”

“Come on,” he said.

They went outside, leaving the two women on the couch. Dukane lowered the tailgate. He and Scott lifted Hoffman onto the truck bed. “I’ll ride in the back with him,” he said, climbing aboard with the shotgun.

They closed the tailgate. Scott lifted the two attaché cases over the side panel. He took the pistols off the ground, and gave two of them to Dukane.

“You take this,” he said, handing Nancy’s revolver to Lacey.

They climbed into the cab.

As Scott started the truck, Lacey saw Jan gazing out one of the front windows of the house.

“They’ll be all right,” Scott said.

“Now that we’re gone.”

“Yeah.” He pulled the truck away from the house, with the headlights off, and sped up the long, narrow road. The deep blue of the sky was lighter in the east. Lacey wondered at it, for a moment, then realized the night was nearly over.

She leaned back and shut her eyes. She felt weary and sick, but not sleepy. Taking a deep breath, she was nearly overcome by nausea. Her mind whirled
with images of Nancy’s shocked face, the face of the man she had shot, the screams as Hoffman chopped through the crowd at the elevators, little Hamlin Alexander leaping into the packed elevator, the knife plunging into Carl’s throat. She snapped open her eyes. “Oh God,” she muttered.

“It’ll soon be over.” Scott patted her leg.

“All this death…”

“I know.”

And then she saw a dark car ahead of them on the road, its doors open, men crouched behind the doors with guns.

“Down!” Scott yelled, and hit the brakes.

Lacey flung herself sideways as the night exploded. Scott dropped in front of her, his back striking her nose, shoving at her breasts. Dazed, she wondered if he’d been hit. But she felt him moving. Then the truck lurched backward. It gained speed. The rear end swerved and she felt the truck bound off the smoothness of the road. It rose. It pounded down. Through the gunfire and roar of the engine, she heard rapid thunks like a dozen hammers pounding metal. The tail of the truck swung back. She felt the smoothness again.

Raising her head, she saw the blasted windshield and Scott’s hand gripping the side of the steering wheel. As she looked, a bullet blasted through the top of the wheel. She ducked again.

The truck sped wildly, bumped off the other side of the road, swerved back, stayed on the pavement for a while, then lurched off again.

The shooting stopped. She felt Scott raise himself slightly, perhaps enough to peer out. Then he moved higher. He sat up. Lacey lifted her head. The road had turned. The other car was out of sight.

Scott floored the gas pedal.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Sitting up, she realized her nose was bleeding. She licked the blood from her upper lip, wiped it with the back of her hand.

The truck skidded to a stop. They were in front of the house again. Looking down the road, Lacey saw no sign of the car. She jumped from the cab and followed Scott to the house. He unlocked the door. Stepping inside, she scanned the living room. Deserted.

She returned to the truck and grabbed the attaché cases while Scott and Dukane hustled Hoffman to the ground. He fell. As Dukane stood over him, Scott climbed into the pickup. Lacey watched him drive the smoking vehicle along the front of the house and through the cactus garden. At the edge of the slope, he jumped clear. The pickup plunged down. She heard it bang and slam. She expected it to explode, but it didn’t.

“Why’d he do that?” she asked Dukane.

“The truck’s no good. Too shot up. No point giving the bastards any extra cover.”

“At least we don’t have the ladies to contend with,” Scott said as he returned. “They high tailed it. I saw’em out there, running like a couple of jackrabbits.”

“They’re best out of it,” Dukane said.

He and Dukane grabbed Hoffman and dragged him into the house. Lacey shut the door, locked it.

“Get the lights,” Dukane said.

Lacey switched off the outside light, then stepped to the near end of the couch and turned off the remaining lamp. Darkness filled the room.

“Watch out the window, Lacey. Scott, give me a hand. We’d better secure our friend.”

They pulled Hoffman to his feet and led him out of the living room.

Moving a rocker away, Lacey knelt at a front window. The road was deserted. In the east, the sky was a pale blue. She took a deep, shaky breath, and touched the skin beneath her nostrils. The bleeding had stopped. She folded her arms on the windowsill, and rested her chin on her hands.

She thought of Jan and Nancy running through the desert, and wished she were with them. Running. Leaving all this behind. But she couldn’t leave Scott. She would stick this out with him, see it through to the end.

She thought of the old movie,
Bonnie and Clyde
—the ambush, bullets ripping into Warren Beattie and Faye Dunaway, making their bodies dance and writhe as if in a horrible orgasm.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much. You must go into shock right away. And then it’s over.

The glow of the sun reached over the horizon, casting gold across the desert. She lay her forehead down on her folded hands, and wept.

“It’s all right,” said a voice behind her. Scott’s voice. His hands slipped under her armpits, and he lifted her. He turned her around to face him. “It’s all right,” he said, more softly. His fingertips brushed tears from her cheeks.

“I don’t want us to die.”

“ ‘We owe God a death, ’ as Falstaff says.” He kissed her. “But it’s not due yet.”

She put her arms around him, and held him tightly. She pressed her face to the warm curve of his neck. He rubbed her back, her shoulders. Then he eased her away and led her past Dukane.

“I’ll tuck her in,” he said.

Dukane nodded.

Scott guided her to a bed of cushions and blankets prepared in a short hallway. The nearby doors were closed.

“Where’s Hoffman?” Lacey whispered.

“The bathroom. We cuffed him to the base of the sink. He can’t get loose.”

“Can we use the bedroom?”

“Safer here. No windows.”

He lay down beside her, and held her gently.

Closing her eyes, Lacey felt his mouth on her open lips. His hand stroked her belly and slowly, so slowly, inched upward. Fingers glided over her breast as if seeking out its shape and texture through the fabric of her shirt. She lifted the shirt, and moaned as he touched her bare skin. His fingertips moved lightly, teasing like feathers, making her squirm with pleasure as they brushed circles around one nipple, then the other.

His mouth went away briefly. Then it took a breast, sucking gently, the tongue probing and flicking.

This is how it should be, she thought. Gentle and slow and loving, the desire almost painful, wanting him so badly that nothing else matters. For an instant, she thought of Hoffman cuffed inside the bathroom, only a few yards away, but the image was washed away with a thrilled tremor as Scott’s hand slipped under the waistband of her shorts. A finger traced her pan ties’ elastic strip, moving slowly from side to side, lightly scraping her skin, toying with the band.

Lacey pushed a trembling hand down the front of his pants. Sliding it inside his shorts, she felt his hot erection. As she curled her fingers around it, she felt Scott’s hand slip into her pan ties. She gasped as he found her opening. While she stroked his thick shaft, his fingers glided against her, slipped into her, probing and pushing. Her own hand explored Scott, wanting his penis inside her. He eased away. Kneeling beside her, he tugged her pants down. She kicked them off, reached out for him, and opened his trousers. She pulled them down, freed his erection, fondled it, held its burning flesh as he climbed onto her, then guided it between her spread legs.

It sunk into her, filling her, gently pushing deeper and deeper.

“Oh dear God,” she sighed. “Dear Scott.”

Dukane knelt alone at the window, staring through its open louvers at the area in front of the house. The low, morning sun made his eyes burn. An effect of going too long without sleep. He closed them. The lids shut out the sunlight, felt soothing on the raw tissue.

He saw Nancy. She winked at him, and lifted her pink nightgown. He expected bare skin, a thatch of pubic hair, perky breasts with upthrust nipples. But no. Not yet. Under the nightgown were red gym shorts and a tank top. She pulled the top over her head, and there they were, her breasts, firm creamy mounds with nipples erect. She began to dance, whirling, waving the shirt like a flag as her other hand lowered to her gym shorts. But now they were faded blue cutoff jeans. She opened them, continuing to dance, and they slowly slid down her legs. She skipped out of them.

She lay on her back, knees up, thighs apart, rubbing herself with both hands, then beckoning him. But as he approached, he saw jagged shards of glass embedded in her skin. They protruded from her
breasts, belly, thighs—glistening, clear blades waiting to rip him up. With a grin, she opened her mouth. Her tongue slid out, weighted with a jagged triangle of glass. Reaching between her legs, she spread her flesh. Powdered glass spilled like salt from her vagina.

“Fuck me,” she said.

“Not till you take the glass out,” he told her.

She spat the chunk from her mouth. It shot out like shrapnel, flipping and twisting toward him. He flinched away. His forehead struck the windowsill.

He awoke with a gasp.

“
Christ
,” he muttered, angry at himself for dozing off, and shaken by the dream.

He scanned the area in front of the house. Still no sign of the car or any people. Getting to his feet, he crossed the room. He knelt on the couch and parted the curtains behind it. Fifty feet away stood a garage of white stone. Nobody at its corners or visible on its roof. But off to the left, a hundred yards away, a figure was lying prone on a rise among balls of cacti. Dukane saw a rifle in his arms. He ducked away, and hurried into the kitchen. From its window, he saw another distant sniper.

He filled a glass with water. As he sipped it, he entered the hallway. Scott and Lacey were asleep on the floor, holding each other. He carefully stepped around them, and entered the bedroom. From its window, he spotted another man with a rifle.

At least they’re not assaulting the place, he thought. Containing us. Maybe waiting for
reinforcements. That would explain why the car hadn’t shown up again. One of them must’ve taken it to alert others.

If the girls got away all right, they’d go for the authorities. An army of cops might descend on the place any time.

Interesting to see which army arrives first.

Setting down his empty glass, he went into the hallway and shook Scott’s foot. The man woke with a start. Lacey moaned, but didn’t awaken. Scott gently untangled himself from her, and followed Dukane into the living room.

“I want you to take over the watch. They’ve got snipers stationed on both sides and the rear. Maybe one in front, but I haven’t spotted him.”

“All right.”

“I don’t think they’ll rush us, but we can’t rule it out.”

He left Scott by the front window, and went into the kitchen. He searched a utility closet, a cupboard under the sink, and wasn’t surprised at not finding what he wanted. People don’t usually store combustibles in the house.

He returned to the living room.

“I’m going out for a second,” he said, unholstering his automatic.

Scott frowned.

“We’ve gotta get the paint off Hoffman.”

“What for?”

“Have to make him disappear in case the cops show up. That’s assuming you’re still hot to get his story for yourself.”

“I am. But I don’t like the idea of you going outside.”

Dukane slapped his shoulder. “Buck up, boyo, I’ll be back.”

He led Scott to the window over the couch, and pointed out the rifleman. “I don’t expect you to hit him at this range, but put a few rounds close enough to worry him if he starts tracking me.”

With a nod, Scott opened the louvered window.

“You have the keys?”

Scott fished Jan’s key case out of his pocket. Dukane took it. He went to the front window.

Scanning the area in front of the house, he saw no one. He pushed open the door and stepped out. Back against the wall, he searched the barren terrain. Odd if nobody was covering the front. If there were only four, though, and one had to drive for help…Well, the two at the sides could easily pick off anyone trying to break from the front.

He stepped off the edge of the stoop. Pressing his back to the wall, he made his way toward the corner. Prickles stung his legs, and he looked down to see cactus spines clinging to his trousers. The girls had apparently planted “jumping cactus” along the wall, a variety that seems to shoot its quills into anyone venturing too close.

Nice of them, he thought.

At the corner, he blinked sweat from his eyes and crouched down. The spines dug into his calves. Ignoring the pain, he peered around the wall’s edge. He glimpsed the sniper, saw the rifle aimed his way.
Two shots blasted at once. As a bullet whined off the wall inches from his face, he sprang up and dashed for the garage. Gunfire erupted from both the house and sniper, a roar that seemed to jolt the air around him as he ran.

A bullet tugged his sleeve near the shoulder.

Abruptly, there was silence. He threw himself against the side door of the garage, and shoved a key at the lock face.

Didn’t fit.

He tried another. This one slid in. He turned it, threw open the door, and burst into the stifling heat of the garage.

There were no windows.

Feeling along the wall, his fingertips found a light switch. He flicked it. A single bulb came on.

No car.

But he smiled as he saw what he wanted.

Lacey, shocked awake by the shooting, grabbed her revolver, scrambled off the makeshift bed, and rushed into the living room. She saw Scott kneeling on the couch, aiming through the open slats of a window.

He glanced around at her.

“Come here,” he said.

She hurried to the window.

“See that guy out there? Dukane’s in the garage. He’ll be coming out in a minute, and the guy’ll try to nail him. Take my place here. I’ll go to the front. When Dukane comes out, start shooting.”

“It’s too far.”

“Doesn’t matter. With fire coming from two angles, he won’t know whether to…”

“Shit or go blind?”

“Exactly.”

Lacey nodded, and Scott ran out the front door. She cocked the revolver. She lined up the distant man in the sights, glanced away at the garage door, then back to the man. From his location, it looked as if the garage would give Dukane shelter for the first two or three yards. Then he would be in the open.

Her hand was sweaty on the walnut grips.

Too bad the man’s so far away, she thought. If he was half that distance, she’d stand a much better chance of hitting him.

Just as well, maybe. She didn’t need another killing on her conscience.

The garage door opened. She sighted on the man and held her breath. Then she glanced again at the door. Dukane stepped out, a large metal container in each hand. But he didn’t run. Instead, he set them outside the door and vanished into the garage. Moments later, he reappeared. With a ladder!

He spread the ladder’s legs, climbed it, and boosted himself onto the roof of the garage.

He was gone.

Seconds passed. Lacey licked her parched lips.

Then a single gunshot roared in the stillness.

The distant figure of the rifleman lurched as if kicked, and dropped flat.

Dukane climbed down the ladder. He made a thumbs-up gesture toward Lacey, then carried the
ladder back into the garage. He picked up the two containers, and strolled across the open area.

He and Scott came into the house, beaming like boys who’d just won a no-hitter.

“Nice play,” Scott said.

“The bastard came too close, first time across. I chickened out of the return run.”

“Wonder if we can get his rifle.”

“Not worth the risk. The rear man would pick us off. But I got what I wanted.” He raised the cans: a two-gallon tin of gasoline and a gallon container of turpentine.

Lacey frowned. “Turpentine? You’re going to take the paint off Hoffman?”

“Right.”

“Don’t.”

“Could come in very handy. Lacey, you stay out here and keep an eye on the situation. Scott, get your recorder. No time like the present to get his story.”