Night Thunder (18 page)

“You . . . came here?”

“Yes, my mother and father and I. Somehow she must have learned about you and we all came to Thunder Creek. I believe we drove down Angel Road and saw you one afternoon on your porch. You were watering flower pots, as I recall. You looked up, saw us, and . . . and you set the watering can down.”

“Oh, my Lord.” Ada went pale. “Your mother . . . actually came here? Right down Angel Road?”

“Yes. I’m sure you don’t remember—”

“I do.” Ada gave a small moan, her hands pressed to her lips. “I do remember. I saw a strange car one day—it stopped, never came closer. That was odd; Angel Road is secluded, most people don’t come down here unless they mean to. So it struck me when the car just stopped like that and didn’t come any closer. I had a funny feeling,” she whispered. “I didn’t know why. But then the car just backed up and went away. I never thought about it anymore, not until just now. But for some reason, it stuck in my mind.”

She drew in a deep, shuddery breath. “All those years ago . . . I never dreamed . . .”

“How could you?”

“Oh, my. Oh, Josy. If I’d known . . . don’t you see, if your mother and I had reached out, found each other sooner . . . you might never have been sent off to live with strangers—” She broke off, choking on the words.

Josy put her arms around Ada, hugged her gently, as tears rolled down her grandmother’s cheeks. “I know. I’ve thought the same thing so many times since I found out my mother was adopted. But . . . there’s no point in wondering about the ifs,” she said quietly. “We can’t change the past.”

“True, but . . .” Ada closed her eyes with a great sigh.

Josy leaned back, a tightness in her own chest. She struggled to find the right words. “It seems to me that all we really have is
now
. Right now. You and I—we’ve found each other, haven’t we?”

“That we have. What a wise young woman you are.” Ada spoke approvingly as she wiped the final tears from her eyes.

“I’ve wondered so many times since I learned the truth—about you, and about my grandfather.” Josy looked at her with hopeful eyes. “Do you still have any pictures of Cody Shaw?”

“Do I?” A slow, wide smile swept Ada’s face. “I slept with his picture under my pillow every night while I was carrying Cody Jean—your mama. It was only when I knew I was marrying Guy that I finally boxed up all the pictures I had of Cody—pictures of him at rodeos, riding broncs, roping calves, lounging on my front porch. The box is in the attic, wrapped in pink ribbon inside an old chest.” She pushed herself up off the sofa. “Would you like to see it?” Ada asked tremulously.

“Very much.” Josy rose and followed her as the older woman led the way to the upper floor of the house on Angel Road.

Dolph was watching two hours later from the shelter of the trees as the blue Blazer rolled up Angel Road and out onto Lone Wolf Road. He melted back into the thickness of the trees until he reached his Explorer.

In less than a minute he had the Blazer in his sights. He kept a good distance behind it on the lonely road. No need to get too close and risk warning his quarry. He was pretty sure where she was headed. And he’d already scoped out her Pine Hills apartment.

The package wasn’t there. He’d searched thoroughly, and in a way that left no trace to warn the woman he was tracking. But tonight, once Josy was back in that apartment, he’d have her cornered exactly where he wanted her.

Alone. In her bed. In the dark.

With no warning and no means of escape.

Dolph smiled, confident that in a short time he’d be able to report to Tate that his job was done. He wouldn’t need to spend more than five minutes with Josy Warner in apartment 2D before she was begging him to let her tell him everything he wanted to know.

Chapter 18

JOSY PACED THE DARKENED LIVING ROOM OF HER apartment.

She was too restless, too wound up to sleep. She’d already made the final adjustments to Corinne’s gown and had hung it carefully in the bedroom closet. But now her plan for meeting Ricky tomorrow filled her mind—along with the image of a twenty-year-old Cody Shaw, his dreamy good looks and cockiness captured forever in photographs.

All those photos Ada had shown her. They painted him clearly—a lean, tall, sinewy cowboy, all of twenty years old. Josy had marveled at how closely he resembled a ten-gallon-hat version of James Dean—except for his warm, dancing eyes. Even in the photographs they shone, not with sullen toughness, but with life, with humor, and with the passion Ada had described.

And they held kindness as well. Josy saw it and felt it as she stared at the young man leaning both arms against a rail fence, his cowboy hat perched on his head.

So now she knew who her grandfather was. And she had finally come clean with her grandmother—at least, about most things.

For someone who’s terrible at lying, I’ve had to do an
awful lot of it lately. But it’s nearly over.

Tomorrow she’d dig up the package and take it to Ricky. Then . . . what?

There were answers she wanted from him. She needed to know what he planned to do with the diamond. And exactly what she’d been wading knee deep in. Maybe then she could finally leave it to him and climb out of the bog.

She couldn’t even pin down yet exactly what she’d do next. Return to New York? Explain herself to the police? Or would Ricky have a way to keep her out of it?

No matter what, she realized as she paced, she had to go straight back. Jane and Reese must be worried sick about her, and Francesca needed the sketches and she needed them now.

Well, at least her muse had somehow danced back into her life and she was certain Francesca would flip over the ideas that had flowed onto her sketch pad after she’d redesigned Corinne’s gown.

So, she’d go back. To work and to her ransacked apartment and her friends. She’d miss Corinne’s wedding. That gave her a pang.

But I’ll send a gift from Bloomingdale’s,
she told herself.
And maybe Ada will come to the city to visit sometime soon
.

For some reason, her heart sank in her chest.
It’s only
natural,
she reasoned,
to have conflicted feelings about
leaving Ada when we’ve only just discovered each other,
just when the fragile process of building a relationship
has begun.

Or maybe,
she thought, pausing before the balcony doors, staring out into the night,
I’m not quite ready to
leave Thunder Creek yet.

That idea surprised her.

Josy lit a candle in the small glass votive holder she’d bought for the coffee table. She sank down on the sofa and pondered the flame. Its tiny brightness seemed to speak to her more powerfully than all the billboards and neon lights in Times Square.

But she wasn’t sure what it was saying.

Actually, at this moment she wasn’t sure about anything.

The balcony doors were open and she heard a sound from below. It sounded like the soft thud of a car door closing.

Instantly she thought of Ty.

It was late, after midnight, and she’d been aware all evening that his car wasn’t parked in the lot. He could be anywhere, she knew—working late on police business, playing pool at the Tumbleweed, out on a date . . .

It doesn’t matter to me,
she told herself. She might never see him again . . . kiss him again . . . but it didn’t matter. She didn’t mean anything to him. That was especially true now that he knew how she’d lied to him, lied again and again.

Besides, she reflected, tensing her shoulders, facing the pain that squeezed around her heart, there was no chance of a future, any kind of future with Ty anyway. He’d never love her or any woman the way he’d loved Meg.

Haven’t you had enough hand-me-downs
? she thought angrily.
You don’t want someone else’s man—even if he
wanted you. Which he doesn’t.

When she did fall in love—
if
she did fall in love— she’d always dreamed it would be everything.
Mean
everything. She wanted the kind of deep, giving love Ty had known with his wife. The kind Ada had felt for Cody Shaw.

She’d never have that with Ty Barclay. It was stupid to even think about it. About
him
.

Yet she moved to the balcony doors in the darkness and peered out to see if he was home.

The spot where he usually parked was empty. But there was another car, a dark SUV, parked across the lot, half hidden in the shadow of the flanking trees. And in the moonlight she made out the shadowy figure of a man moving swiftly toward the entrance of her building.

He paused and suddenly glanced up—straight at her balcony. She could feel him staring at her. In the darkness, she sensed surprise, but he kept moving, his head down now, his steps quicker.

She realized suddenly that with the candle burning behind her, he must have seen her—dimly, at best—just as she’d been able to see him.

A shiver ran through her, something deep and instinctive.

She was being silly. She was fully dressed, after all, in a white tank top and gray drawstring pants. Perfectly presentable. And yet . . .

She heard a footfall in the hall. He was on her floor.

Why?
She’d never seen him before. He didn’t live here, as far as she knew. And who would he be visiting after midnight . . .

She knew then. She didn’t know how, perhaps some basic primeval instinct of self-preservation, but she knew as surely as if he’d hissed her name in the dark that he was coming for her.

The doorknob turned with a tiny click and she struggled to hold back the scream streaking through her throat.

Chapter 19

JOSY RAN TO THE SMALL ROUND DINING TABLE. Adrenaline flew through her as she shoved it over to the door, ramming it up against the doorknob even as the damned thing clicked again and she saw it turn. Her heart hammering, she spun around and glanced wildly about. She had to get out of here. And now there was only one way to do that.

She paused only long enough to blow out the candle, leaving darkness behind her, then she grabbed her purse from the sofa, slung it over her head and across her shoulder, and sprinted onto the balcony.

Her blood pounded in her ears as she climbed over the iron rail. She grabbed a toehold on the outside portion of the balcony, clutching the railing for dear life.

He was shoving against the door now—she heard a thump, and the creak of the table being shoved inward. No time to lose. Josy spared a swift glance downward—a row of shrubs was lined up almost directly below her but it was still a twenty-foot drop.

She twisted quickly around, took a deep breath, then let go of the railing and jumped.

Terror surged through her as she fell, then pain exploded as she hit the shrubbery and smashed through it.

But it cushioned her fall and after that first quick, brutal impact she rolled and tumbled free of the shrubs with only a grunt and a moan. She tried to stifle any noise, praying he’d search the apartment before he realized she’d jumped, hoping to buy as many extra seconds as she could before whoever was up there came out here to search for her.

She stumbled to her feet and dashed toward her car, digging in her purse for her key. But even as she found it and rammed it into the lock, she heard running footsteps behind her.

Terror filled her as she glanced up. He was plowing toward her like a linebacker. He was a huge man, with a shaved head, long legs, and a thick neck, and he wore all black . . .

Open the damned door!

She threw it wide, lunged inside the Blazer, and was trying to slam the door when he grabbed it, flung it back, and seized her with an iron grip. One hand clamped over her mouth, crushing her lips against her teeth as his other arm wound around her body, dragging her out of the Blazer.

“Nice try.” A harsh voice cold as Alpine snow hissed into her ear. “But you’re not playing in the kiddie leagues now.”

Josy bit down hard on his fingers and tried to scream, but he refastened his grip after flinching no more than a millisecond—and this time the power of his grip across her mouth was even more agonizing. She thought every one of her facial bones was going to crack.

“I see you like to do things the hard way. Personally, I prefer to do them the easy way.”

The next thing she knew, he slammed her head against the Blazer’s door and pain roared through her.

Red stars danced in her eyes, agony sang in her skull, and then the world spun around. The pain and everything else instantly receded into deep liquid blackness that swallowed her up like the grasping waves of an endless midnight sea.

She awoke cold, wet, and shivering, greeted by a burst of white-hot pain. Dazed, Josy kept her eyes closed tight, clinging to the blackness, trying to slide back in. But the pain and the cold were insistent and she moaned, feeling sick and weak. Slowly, unwillingly, she opened her eyes.

Please let it be Ty,
she thought.
He came home, saved
me, he’s reviving me . . .

But it wasn’t Ty who stood over her as she forced her eyes open. It was the huge ox of a man, with a satisfied smirk on his face, a man even more powerfully built than Ty Barclay. He held an empty plastic bottle of spring water in his fist as he towered over her.

“It’s about time. I don’t have all night. The sooner you give me what I want, the sooner you and I will conclude our business.”

“I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He threw the empty bottle of water down, narrowly missing her head. Before she could even gasp, he reached down and hauled her up by the neck. Pain swept over her in a great crashing wave and she felt as if her head were about to split open.

“You have something that belongs to my employer. He wants it back.” His breath smelled of mints and lemons all at once. Josy knew she’d never eat another Altoid again. His hands cut into her flesh, brutal as iron prongs.

“Tell me where it is and I’ll let you go.”

“I don’t understand,” she muttered through the pain splitting her skull. Dizzily she tried to glance sideways, to see where she was. It was pitch-dark, save for the frosted illumination of the moon, and all she could see was that they were in the middle of nowhere—she made out a hill, a weedy track where a dark SUV sat, a hulking shape in the shadows.

There were some shrubs around, looming trees, and the incessant song of crickets.

She could be ten miles outside of Thunder Creek—or a hundred.

How long had she been unconscious?

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but—”

“Dolph,” he said, showing his teeth in an eerie mirthless smile. “Call me Dolph. And you’re Josephine Warner.”

“You . . . you have the wrong person, Dolph. It’s a mistake—I don’t know what you’re looking for, or—”

“I’m looking for the diamond. You know which one. The big fucking diamond. There’s only one like it in the world. And if you don’t tell me where it is by the time I count to ten, I’m going to have to take something that belongs to you.”

In horror, she stared into his night-black eyes and saw the icy pleasure shining in their depths. An instant later she felt the knife pressed against her ear, its tip sharp and cold as he traced along the delicate shell.

“You won’t look so pretty without this ear,” he chuckled.

Josy’s knees buckled, but he held her up, his smile widening.

“Talk, Josephine.
Now.
”

Ricky, I didn’t sign on for this. How the hell did you get
mixed up with someone like this—and whoever his
damned employer is?

She had another vision of Archie, dead on the floor, the life bleeding out of him.

“Are you . . . the one who . . . killed Archie?” she heard herself ask in a voice that sounded raw and weak. He smirked at her.

“That was Hammer. He made a big mistake. He should have kept Archie alive, made him tell us everything we needed to know. This could all have been ended that night. But Hammer got stupid and screwed up.” His voice rasped in the darkness.

“I don’t screw up though, Josephine. I’m going to keep you alive and conscious and talking until you tell me exactly what you’ve done with that rock.”

He pressed the blade harder against the lobe of her ear and she felt the prick of a cut. Warm blood trickled onto her bare arm. The man with the black eyes licked his lips.

“One,” he said softly. “Two. Three . . .”

She was going to faint, which would be for the best. She didn’t want to feel him cut her ear off . . . she needed to faint . . .

“Nine . . .” he was saying, and Josy still hadn’t fainted.

“Okay,” she gasped. “I’ll take you to it. But get that damned knife away from me . . . now. Right now.”

He laughed. She didn’t like knives. None of them did. It made it all the more fun. He let her go for the time being, slid the knife into a sheath attached to his belt, under his light windbreaker. “Sure, blondie. You just take me to the diamond.”

“I . . . need to know where we are. I hid it . . . in the foothills. I can’t find my way there, unless I get my bearings.”

“We’re a mile west of your apartment. Six miles west of town. Nothing, nobody around but some hungry wild animals. And you and me.”

Josy took a deep breath, trying to think past the pain in her head, past the fear and the shock of being at this man’s mercy.

He kept watching her face, reading her. He wasn’t stupid. Or gullible. This realization frightened her almost as much as the knife.

“It’s after one in the morning. You’re not going to find any help. So be smart and take me to the rock. It’s the only way you’re going to get out of this alive.” His mouth stretched into a long, thin, creepy smile. “And in one piece.”

Right—like you’re going to let me go,
she thought on a wave of desperation.

He wouldn’t kill her until he had the diamond, so she could risk one more try . . .

But if it didn’t work, it would cost her.

She swallowed.

“I buried it in a clearing . . . it’s the other direction. Not far,” she added quickly as his mouth drew back in a grimace of disbelief. “I’ll show you.”

“Oh, yes, you will. So quit talking about it and do it,” he growled, and dragged her toward the car.

Her head was throbbing as he shoved her inside, but she tried desperately to think. If they passed another car, she could scream, open the door, jump out . . .

But they passed no one on the dark gravel road as he turned the car and headed east, one hand on the steering wheel, the other clamped around her arm. He was trying to keep her intimidated, she realized, and constantly aware of the fact that she was his prisoner, that she couldn’t escape.

But she had to. And she would, Josy told herself, trying to ignore the bite of his fingers into her flesh, trying to form the sketchy outline of a plan.

“Where are we going?” he demanded as they passed within a few hundred yards of the darkened Pine Hills apartment building.

“Sh-shadow Point. It’s very picturesque. You’ll like it.”

He looked like he was going to whip out the knife again, so she hurried on, “Take Old Wolf Road. It’s coming up. I’ll direct you as we go.”

She prayed she could find Shadow Point in the dark— it was one mile south of where she’d really hidden the package. But she wouldn’t take him
there
—not yet, not until she had no other choice.

There was a chance, a small chance, though, that someone might be at Shadow Point. It was a makeout spot, wasn’t it? Thunder Creek’s version of Lover’s Lane? Maybe some couple would be there, or on the way back from there. If she could only come in contact with someone, she might be able to get some help or get away . . .

“Thought you were smart, hiding it, didn’t you? If I’d found it in your apartment while you were gone, I might have just kept on going—taking it with me, of course. You made things worse for yourself. But your first mistake was getting mixed up with Sabatini.”

“I can see that now.”

“You know where he is?”

“No. I haven’t heard a word from him since he left me holding the diamond. He only told me I’d better disappear—and not to go to the police.” She stared straight ahead at the rough road the SUV was jolting over. “Believe me, I’d love to get my hands on him. I never bargained for this trouble.”

“Don’t worry. He won’t be missing for long. The man I work for specializes in payback. We’ll find Sabatini.”

“Like you found me? How . . . how
did
you find me?”

He sneered at her. “How do you think? We traced your flight—once we knew you’d landed in Salt Lake City, it was all legwork. It took longer than it should have,” he said darkly. “But it paid off, like it always does. One thing in our favor—men always notice a beautiful woman.”

Her skin prickled as Dolph threw her a long look. His eyes gleamed in the lights from the dashboard and she turned away, shivering.

“You know that little flea-bitten motel you stayed at in Rock Springs?” He smiled in the darkness. “When you paid your bill, you set your map on the checkout counter. The big dumb clerk happened to look at it and noticed a red circle around Thunder Creek. I forked over a hundred-dollar bill and he told me everything I needed to know.”

She closed her eyes. The clerk in Rock Springs. Why hadn’t she kept the map in the car?

Because she’d brought it to her room, studied it before she went to sleep in that rock-hard double bed.

I wasn’t cut out for cops and robbers,
she thought bleakly. She opened her eyes, took a breath.

“Tell me about Ricky. What did he do to the man you work for—aside from stealing the diamond, that is?”

“That alone was quite enough.” Dolph let go of her arm at last and held the steering wheel with both hands as the road grew more rocky and rough. She rubbed her raw skin, wincing.

“But before that he made a series of mistakes. He came to work for a business associate of my employer. And he got too close, too deep. He found out some things he shouldn’t have. And then he turned out to be a cop.”

He spat the last word out like it was filth. “Not very smart of Detective Sabatini. And he only made things worse when he stole the diamond. My employer takes that sort of thing very personally.”

Why would Ricky have stolen the diamond? He was never a thief. Growing up, he bent the rules, but he didn’t break them. He’d become a cop to do right—he wasn’t on the take. Josy would bet her life on that.

Then she remembered she already had.

Her hands felt clammy. She was cold and sticky with fear. But she had to fight it, fight the fear as Ricky had taught her.

There had to be a way out.

It occurred to her she couldn’t trust anything this man was saying . . . about Ricky, or anything else. But since she figured he was planning to kill her anyway, why would he lie?