California Schemin' (20 page)

Beau was taking advantage of Guy’s
distraction, moving away as stealthily as he could on crutches. I
waited until there was a good car’s width between Beau and Guy. I
started the limo, threw it into gear, and skidded between the men.
I held my breath as I popped the locks open so Beau could dive in
and took off backward before he even had his crutches in the
car.

Guy lunged for my door and got it open before
I could flip the locks shut. We were zooming backward, Guy hanging
on to the door for dear life as Beau tried to get his crutches in
the car and the door shut. I screamed along in reverse as far as I
dared and slammed on the brakes. Guy lost his hold, and both doors
slammed shut.

I jammed the gearshift into drive and went
roaring down the road in the direction we’d come in from.

“You kidnapped that old coot?” Beau asked. I
nodded my head, and he laughed. “My God, you’ve got balls. Who was
he?”

“Senator Wallace. He was using you to
blackmail me. I was supposed to tell Fogel I saw these two guys up
at the river when his wife died. He was going to hold you until I
did what he said. He actually kidnapped me before I kidnapped him,
so I think we’re even.”

“What are we doing now? Heading home?”

“If I can find my way back to the freeway,
I’m taking us to Fogel. I need to tell him what’s going on.”

“Did they treat you all right?” I looked over
at him. He looked good. If it wasn’t for the broken leg, I’d say he
was in fine fighting form.

“I didn’t even know I was kidnapped until you
arrived. Some guy called me and said a senator wanted me to look at
his property and give an estimate for some masonry work. I said I
couldn’t make it for a while, and they offered me a lot of money
just to look and do the design. So I thought what the hell and
came. Every day there’s been something new for me to look at,
design, what have you. I was downstairs figuring a dry stone wall
when Guy came down and asked me to come upstairs. We were out the
door before I realized he had a gun and you were in the car. The
rest you know.”

I focused my attention on the road. The limo
wasn’t the easiest thing to drive, especially on these dinky
winding roads. If somebody was bombing up the hill and didn’t see
me around one of the corners… I didn’t want to think about it.

“Get your seatbelt on, would you? This road
worries me.”

“Want me to drive? Couldn’t be worse than
driving a fire truck.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not letting you drive
with a broken leg.”

I negotiated a hairpin turn, pleased that the
back end hadn’t ended up in the ditch, and heard Beau suck in his
breath.

“What?” I said, but I saw. Wallace’s other
limo was blocking the road ahead of us.

I shoved the brake to the floor and the back
end broke loose, sending us skidding sideways toward the other
limo. The rear tires slid off the road into the ditch, and the
undercarriage scraped along the rocky surface. My jaw ached with
the noise, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I glanced
over at Beau. His hands were over his ears.

The length of the car slammed full into the
other limo, bouncing my head off the window. Tears and flashes of
light blocked my vision, but I heard yells from the other limo.

“Those bastards were expecting you to crash
into them. Lock the doors.”

But I still couldn’t see. My fingers fumbled
along the armrest feeling for the controls. Beau lurched across me
and slammed the master lock. The doors clicked front and rear. They
clicked unlocked and Beau hit the button again. The doors locked
and unlocked. My vision cleared, and I saw Hammie climbing around
the front of his limo, a black key-fob in his hand. Either both
cars worked on the same frequency, or he had the spare.

There was movement in the rearview mirror.
Moose was climbing around the back of the limo. Wendy and Paris
were standing a ways down the road, holding Fiddle and Bow. The
dogs were barking, adding to the general hullaballoo.

The locks clicked twice again. I pushed my
hand under Beau’s.

“I’ve got it,” I said to Beau. “You think of
a way to get us out of this.”

“You want me to think of a way out of this?
Sweetheart, I think we’re screwed. Those guys have guns. What do we
have? Nothing, as far as I can tell.”

“The car is bulletproof. We’ve got that. And
maybe I can figure out how to jam the locks so they can’t keep
opening them.”

I tried starting the car. The engine caught,
and I put it in gear. This caught Hammie off guard, and he forgot
to unlock the door. Unfortunately, I was anticipating him unlocking
so I hit the button for him. My fingers scrambled at the button
again and I managed to lock it again before Moose opened the back
door. Hammie came and stood at my door.

“Bree! Crack your window so I can talk to
you.” He was yelling but I could barely hear him. “I promise I
won’t try anything while we’re talking. Okay? Truce.”

Beau put his hand on my arm.

“MacGowan, keep your finger on the lock, and
watch out. I’ll keep an eye on his buddy. We’ll roll down my window
so he can’t put the barrel of the gun through the crack.”

Beau rolled his window down a couple of
inches.

“I can hear you now,” I said. “Talk.”

“Are either of you hurt?” he asked.

This threw me off. He kept making me think
that he cared, the bastard. It was so annoying. I looked at
Beau.

“You hurt?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“We’re fine, what do you want?”

“You don’t look fine. You’ve got a bruise on
your face. You need to make sure that you didn’t fracture your
skull.” He looked over at Moose, who was standing at the rear door.
I searched the dash for the privacy window controller.

“Help me figure out how to roll up the
privacy window,” I hissed at Beau. “Then it won’t matter if they
get in the back.”

“I told you this wasn’t a good idea.” Hammie
was talking to Moose. “She’s hurt.”

I saw Moose shrug in the wing mirror. “You
didn’t come up with anything better,” he said.

Hammie turned his attention back to me.
“Listen. You’re going to have to come out of there sooner or later.
You don’t have any food or water. You can’t watch over the locks
indefinitely. Why don’t you let me take you to the hospital?”

“Sooner or later,” I said, “someone is going
to come down the road. They’ll call a tow truck and the cops, and
I’ll be free of you. I can watch the locks for as long as that
takes.” Stupid! I slapped my palm to my forehead and immediately
regretted it as pain shot through my cheek. I turned to Beau. “Can
you look around in the center console? I’m pretty sure there’s a
phone in here or one of those buttons that calls emergency
services. We can get the cops to come to us.”

Beau turned his attention to the electronic
doodads in the control panels. I heard the locks click open and
before I could react the back door was open, and Moose had a gun to
my head.

“Moose! You’ve got a gun to my head. What are
you thinking? Someone could get killed.” I turned and looked into
his eyes. “I don’t believe this. You’re going to kill me because I
tried to escape? Un-effing-believable. I’m ashamed of you.”

“You kidnapped my boss. What did you expect
me to do?”

“Your boss is a filthy murderer. He killed
his wife for money and power. What does that make you?”

The gun wavered from my head. Moose looked
down. “Wallace wants you back, so I have to bring you back. It’s as
simple as that.”

“What do you mean, it’s as simple as that?”
Beau was hopping mad. “You’d kill an innocent woman because your
boss asked you to? On orders? You’re just a couple of thugs dressed
up with nice girls and dogs.” Beau spat on the floor at his feet.
“You going to kill us in front of them?” He motioned to Wendy and
Paris who were still standing a ways up the road, horrified. “I
doubt it.” Beau knocked the gun away from my head, and Moose
pointed it at him.

“Will you two stop it?” I unlocked the car
and got out. Moose looked from me to Beau, unsure of who to follow,
but Hammie stepped up and took me by the arm. He beckoned the girls
to follow us.

“We’re going up to the cabin.”

Hambecker and I took the lead with Moose
trailing Beau and the girls, who were bringing up the rear.
Hambecker had a lock grip on my arm, and my hand was starting to
feel numb, but I’d be damned if I’d ask him to loosen it. I’d show
him I was tougher than I looked.

We hadn’t walked more than a quarter of a
mile when a white jeep came bombing down the road. A spark of hope
rose in my chest, then fell again. It was Wallace’s goon from the
cabin. He made a three-point turn and stopped. Hambecker—I refused
to think of him as Hammie ever again—shoved Beau and me into the
middle of the back seat, while he and Moose perched on the outside,
hanging onto the doorframe. Paris and Wendy squeezed into the front
passenger seat, the dogs tucked in their laps. I took a last look
at the limos wedged sideways in the road and said a small prayer
that no innocent people would get hurt.

Beau’s eyes were shut on the trip back up the
hill. I wanted to ask him if his leg was hurting, but I knew he
wouldn’t admit to it in front of Moose and Hambecker. I really
needed to remember Moose’s real name. He’d shown his true colors,
and in my estimation he’d lost all right to a nickname. These two
were as slimy as Wallace.

There was no one in sight as we pulled up in
front of the mini ski lodge. The girls jumped out, and the dogs
hopped out of their arms and ran tree to tree, sniffing. Nothing
like girls with dogs to make everything seem normal. I looked away.
Beau’s crutches had been left behind. I couldn’t remember if he’d
had them when he had gotten out of the limo, but regardless, they
were gone. He leaned on my shoulder as we mounted the steps to the
deck and in through the door that led to the living room. We were
led through a hall and down a flight of stairs into a huge stone
room.

It was furnished like a studio apartment.
There were a couple of couches arranged to take advantage of the
view of the hillside. A small kitchen area was built into one side
of the room, and a canopy bed took up a great deal of space toward
the back, behind where the staircase came down. Across from the
kitchen a drafting table held designs and blueprints. This must be
where Beau had been working.

I walked over to the drawing table and
flipped through the pictures. Beau had transformed the room we were
standing in. The windows encompassed the entire wall. The stone
wall across from the kitchen would be broken up by a gigantic
fireplace and hearth. A knee wall would separate the sleeping area
from the rest of the room, and I could see from the floor plan that
there was a bathroom hiding under the stairs.

“Is this bathroom part of the original
building?” I asked.

“What? Oh, yeah. Feel free, if you need to
use it, but remember, it’s a guy bathroom, okay. I don’t want to
hear about how disgusting it is.”

I went into the room with trepidation, but it
turned out not to be so bad. The shower wasn’t black with dirt, and
the toilet looked as though someone was cleaning it regularly. The
sink and mirror had toothpaste splatters, and there wasn’t a towel
for hand drying. I dried my hands on Beau’s shower towel and went
to join him on the couch.

He had propped up his casted leg on the
cushions and had his head resting on the arm of the couch. I
dropped onto the other couch and relaxed into the pillows.

“Nice space,” I said. The places I’d been
confined flitted through my brain. Tom’s office, a room at the posh
hotel where I used to work. The trunk of a car. This was by far the
most comfortable. That didn’t make it any less menacing.

“I used to like this room,” Beau said, “when
I didn’t know it was a cell. Let’s go out the window and steal the
Jeep.”

“We should wait until they’ve had time to
clear the limos out of the road, or we’ll be trapped.” I looked
around for a clock. “I figure another hour should do it.”

“Seems reasonable. I’m going to take my
stuff.”

Beau hobbled around the room, picking up his
clothes and packing them into his suitcase. He limped and grimaced
when he put weight on the casted leg, but he didn’t complain. He
paused at the drafting table and rolled up the drawings. These he
shoved in the top of his backpack.

Beau headed back toward the bathroom, and I
went to stand by the windows. The view of the mountains was
spectacular, but what I wanted to see was if there was a way around
the house. There was enough flat ground that we could get out the
window, but I had no idea what we’d find when we rounded the
corner. I hoped Beau would be able to manage with his luggage and
cast.

Beau had his suitcase open on the bed when
the upper door opened. Moose stood on the upper landing and looked
around. He couldn’t see Beau or his suitcase, thank goodness.

“Wallace wants to see you.”

“Both of us or just me?”

“Just you.”

I glanced at Beau and hoped he could read my
mind. He could get help while Wallace was distracted.

I climbed the stairs and followed Moose down
the hall into the main living area. It was another huge room with a
freestanding fireplace right in the middle of the room. A copper
hood and chimney hung from the ceiling, sucking up the smoke from
the fire. I could feel the heat five feet away.

Wallace was sitting on one of the couches
with a view of the deck and the hills beyond. I veered away from
the fireplace and sat on the couch opposite him.

“You wanted to see me?”

“I’ve been going about this thing the wrong
way, appealing to your sense of civic duty. Obviously, you don’t
care who they let loose in California. Can’t blame you. I’d feel
the same way if we were talking about Vermont.”