The Heart Has Reasons (28 page)

His
anger slowly fading, he found himself in a despair so enervating he felt as if
he hadn’t the strength to finish.  Feeling emptied, bereft, he wanted
nothing more than to return to the motel room and crawl into the bed.

He
scooped the calico up and exited the vehicle.  Cradling the purring feline
in his arms, he made one last pass through the motel room to assure he wasn’t
overlooking anything.  Satisfied, he locked the door behind him and walked
down the long row of rooms to the office, where he dropped the key through the
slot in the door.

Leaving
the cat by the office, he headed back to the vehicle.  When it tried to
follow, he slapped his hands together and stomped.  Confused, the cat
froze.  It was still sitting there, watching, as he pulled out of the
parking lot onto the road.  Swallowing the lump in his throat, he forced
himself to look away.

There
was already some early traffic on the road, and every time an oncoming car
passed in the thin dawn light, the sound seemed to echo through the emptiness
inside him.  He found a gas station and filled the tank.  As soon as
he climbed back into the driver’s seat, she began drumming her heels against
the floor of the cargo compartment.  “Mmmph! 
Mmmph!
”

“Shut
up,” he said wearily.

As
he drove, the pine-shrouded mountains gradually gave way to the mottled browns
of the Mohave Desert.  Joshua trees and scrub dotted the desolate
landscape and the air began to shimmer with the heat rising from the baking
sand.

As
they crossed from Arizona into California, she started to wheeze again. 
He tried to ignore the sound, but it grew steadily worse.  They were still
several hours from her husband’s house and there was no way of knowing if an
inhaler would be there waiting for her.  As much as he hated to risk
making a stop, he was going to have to buy her a new one, and soon.

He
exited the expressway in San Bernardino and quickly found a drug store. 
Numerous vehicles dotted the parking lot.  Even with her tied and gagged,
she could still drum her feet and make enough noise around the gag to attract
someone’s attention, so he pulled into a nearby alley and parked halfway down
in the shadow of a building.

As
soon as he killed the engine, the extent of her wheezing was painfully
apparent.  He yanked the keys from the ignition, grabbed the empty inhaler
and, through the curtain, said, “Hang on, I’m going to buy another
inhaler.”  He climbed out, shoved the ski mask into the waist of his
jeans, thumped the door shut behind him, and took off at a jog down the alley.

* * * * *

Larissa’s last wisps of hope were
evaporating like dew in the first rays of the morning sun.  With any luck,
she’d die of asphyxiation before he could deliver her.

Beneath
the sound of her own wheezing and the ticking of the engine cooling off, her
ears detected the faint sound of hip-hop booming from a speaker.  An
approaching car?  As she lay there, the music gradually got louder, and
then she heard voices.  She held her breath and listened.  There were
multiple voices, and she caught snatches of conversation beneath the thumping
bass as they approached.

“—he
cain’t.  He on parole—”

“—aw,
dog, fuck that—”

“—he
be goin’ back inside—”

She
began drumming her feet against the bed of the van.  “Mmmph! 
Mmmph!”  Oh,
please
, let them hear her!  “
Mmmmmph!
”

The
voices drew nearer until they were just outside the vehicle, and then the rear
door of the vehicle rattled as someone tried to open it.  Apparently
unable to hear her over the music, a voice said, “What you think inside?”

Another
voice replied, “Must be somethin’ good if a motherfucker gots to paint the
fuckin’ window to hide it.”

“Check
it da fuck out, dog.”

Yes,
dog
, Larissa thought
crazily,
check it the fuck out
. 
You might be surprised at what
you find.

There
was more muffled discussion from outside the van, and then someone tried the
side door.  She drummed her feet again, hard enough to bruise her heels
even inside her shoes.  Something metallic banged into the side door as
they tried to jimmy it.  Yes!  Oh, thank god, she was saved.

With
a loud metal screech, the lock gave.  The door slid open on its track, and
five dark faces peered in at her.  The men were dressed in ridiculously
oversized tees and homeboy jeans with crotches in the vicinity of their
knees.  All appeared to be younger than her — in their late teens or early
twenties — and their eyes, hard and ruthless, opened wide upon discovering her.

“God
damn!”
exclaimed the fat one.  “Christmas done comed early this year.”

CHAPTER
17

Chase slowed to a walk as he neared the
pharmacy.  This was clearly a high-crime neighborhood, so there’d most
likely be security cameras in the store.

A
wino loitered near the door of an adjacent liquor store.  Spotting Chase,
he pushed off the wall and headed his way, presumably to panhandle some spare change. 
When he drew near enough to get a good look at Chase, whatever he saw made him
reconsider, and he veered off in another direction.

“Want
to make some money?” Chase called after him.

The
offer of money apparently overcame whatever misgivings he had, and he turned
back to regard him with the rheumy eyes of a lifetime alcoholic.  “What I
gotta do?”

Chase
held up the empty inhaler.  “Go inside, give this to the pharmacist, and
tell him you need a new one.  Bring it back to me with the receipt, and
I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

The
wino cautiously approached.  An abomination of a shirt swallowed his
scrawny frame, and a yellowish-brown grin revealed several missing teeth. 
“You can count on me, boss.”

Chase
pulled a fifty from his wallet.  Jesus, did the inhaler require a
prescription?  If so, he was royally fucked.  He’d have to drop
Larissa at a hospital, thereby forfeiting the second forty thousand.  Not
to mention that Keswick would demand the return of the first forty.

The
wino smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in months.  Trying to breathe as
shallowly as possible, Chase handed him the fifty.  “Hurry, and don’t try
to slip out the back.  I’ll be watching.”

“No,
boss.  I might be a drunk, but I ain’t loony.”

Once
the wino was inside, Chase pulled out his cell phone.  “It’s me,” he said
when Keswick answered.  “We’ll be there about noon.”

“That’s
fantastic news.  So, everything went well?”

“If
I’d realized what a fucking pain-in-the-ass she was going to be, I’d have
doubled my fee.”

Keswick
chuckled.  “Yeah, she is that.”

Phrasing
it as a statement rather than a question, Chase added, “You’ll have my money
waiting when we get there.”

“It’s
all here, in cash, as we agreed.”

He
snapped the phone shut without bothering to say goodbye.

The
wino was back in ten minutes, clutching a small, white paper bag in one grimy
hand, his change in the other.  Chase tore open the bag to assure he’d
purchased the correct item.  “Here’s the twenty I promised, and here’s
another to keep it company.  Buy yourself something to eat.”

“Yes,
boss.  Thank you, boss!”

* * * * *

Although Larissa found absolutely nothing
amusing about the early arrival of Christmas, the fat thug’s pronouncement
provoked a rift of nervous laughter from his companions.

The
fat one wore his hair cornrowed straight back, three tattooed tears dripped
from the corner of one eye, and the gold grill encasing his upper front teeth
coordinated with the multitude of gold chains that hung from his neck.

None
of them would have won any beauty contests, but this one especially was not the
sort one would wish to meet in a secluded alley, especially while tied up and
helpless.  Worse, the knowledge that each tattooed tear was supposed to
signify a person he’d killed made her wheezing suddenly accelerate. 
“Mmmph!” she grunted in frustration around the gag.  “Mmmph!”

Gold
Grill turned to the light-skinned one carrying the boom box.  “Turn dat
music down.”  As the light-skinned one complied, the youngest-looking
thug, who had a black doo-rag wrapped around his head and only one tattooed
tear, leaned into the van and started to remove the gag.

“Naw,
dog, don’ take that out,” said Gold Grill.  “She gonna start screamin’.”

Larissa
frantically shook her head in the negative.

The
tallest of the motley group, with a long, narrow, homely face, had his hair
drawn up into two pom-poms high up on his head.  “Why she makin’ that
noise?”

“She
gots asthma,” Doo-rag answered.

Dime-sized
stones that could only be cubic zirconias glinted in the ear lobes of the one
with an overgrown, unkempt afro.  “How da fuck you know?”

“My
mom’s gots it, too.”

Were
the morons going to stand here all day talking?  Her kidnapper would be
back soon.  “Mmmph!” she tried again.  “
Mmmph!
”

Gold
Grill leaned into the van to leer at her.  His eyes were utterly devoid of
any humanity.  Without even so much as a “May I”, he yanked up her tee
shirt and sport bra, baring her breasts.  The light-skinned one and
Doo-rag appeared as shocked by the act as Larissa felt.  When he squeezed
her nipples, she grimaced and tried to shift away from him.

Doo-rag
frowned.  “What you doin’, dog?”

Gold
Grill shoved one meaty hand between her thighs and squeezed, bruising the
tender flesh there.  “I’m gonna get me some dis.”

This
ordeal just kept getting better and better.  Traffic hummed a street over,
and a car horn blared, but Larissa doubted many drivers ventured down this
alley.

Doo-rag,
his dark eyes disapproving, said, “Dog, we ain’t got time for that. 
Whoever b’longs to this truck gonna be comin’ back.”

Larissa
nodded her head in frantic agreement.  He
was
coming back, and they
all
needed to be gone before then.  She’d worry later about what
these men would do to her.  Even though this particular man appeared set
on raping her — and his companions might eventually decide they wanted their
share as well — it seemed reasonable to assume that whatever they did to her
wouldn’t be as bad as what Sparrow intended.  If she calmly submitted,
maybe they wouldn’t hurt her too badly.

Gold
Grill climbed into the van.  He pulled a large, chromed semi-automatic
from under his oversized tee shirt, placed it on the floor of the vehicle
beside her, and lowered his oversized pants to his knees.

She
frantically shook her head.  “Mmmph. 
Mmmph!
”  If the
idiot would just remove the gag, she could warn him.  Over the shoulders
of the men outside the van, she spotted movement down the alley.

Oh,
crap
.  It was too late.

Moving
with his usual predatory grace, and with the ski mask already in place, her
kidnapper silently closed the gap.  The thugs’ attentions were all riveted
on what was happening inside the van and so they were as yet unaware of his
approach.  She let her head thump back to the carpet as Gold Grill grabbed
the waistband of her yoga pants and roughly yanked both them and her panties
down.

Her
kidnapper came to a stop directly behind the thugs.  “You punks have made
a huge fucking mistake.”

As
one, they jumped and spun toward him.  Gold Grill released his grip on her
pants, leaving them bunched around her ankles.  Yanking his own pants back
up, he grabbed his weapon and crawled from the van.

With
the understated confidence of a martial artist, her kidnapper stood there
calmly, feet planted firmly, arms loose at his sides.  Since they were
five against his one, none of them seemed overly concerned by his unexpected
return.  Strangely, no one questioned that he was wearing a ski mask in
the heat of summer.  Perhaps in this neighborhood such details went
unremarked.

Gold
Grill was holding his weapon casually pointed at the ground.  “Yo, who the
fuck you callin’ punks?  Bitch, you in our ‘hood now.”

“This
may be your
‘hood’
, but that doesn’t give you the right to break into my
vehicle.”

An
invisible fist clamped Larissa’s heart and squeezed tight.  Despite
everything, she didn’t want her kidnapper to be killed.  However, if his
death were the price for her salvation, then so be it.  After all, whether
he believed it or not, he was delivering her to her death.

“Yeah?”
challenged Gold Grill.  “Why you gots a woman tied up in yo’ ‘
vehicle’
?”

Her
kidnapper shrugged, still looking confident and comfortable, arms still hanging
loosely at his sides.  “This woman is my wife and, what can I say, she’s
kinky like that.”  He locked his gaze on Gold Grill and, behind the mask,
Larissa could see ice-cold rage in his eyes.  “But it was a mistake for
you to have put your hands on her.”