Thugs and Kisses (28 page)

More time passed. The police hadn’t arrived, and the lock wasn’t budging. I was about to give up and let Steele have a go when I felt and heard a faint click. I gently wiggled the wire a little more, trying to wedge it in farther. Another minute and the lock opened.

As I leaned back against the pillows to rest, Steele wasted no time in removing the chain from his leg.

“Now you,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

Steele retrieved the broom from where he’d dropped it. “We need to fix you up so you don’t injure that leg any worse.”

Lining up the broomstick against my leg, he eyeball-measured it and broke it over his knee. While I watched, he fashioned a splint from the broom and strips he tore from the bed sheets, immobilizing my broken leg.

Grabbing one of the ripped sheets, I blew my nose with it. “What? I have a cold,” I explained when he shot me a look of disgust. Steele might be disheveled and dirty, but at his core he was still a fussbudget.

Once done, he put an arm around me and helped me up. I tried to throw an arm around his shoulders, but he was too tall for me. Instead, I wrapped an arm around his waist and hung on while we hobbled together in a clumsy three-legged race to the stairs. At the stairs, he took each one first and helped me hop up behind him. It was painful and tedious, but soon we were near the top.

Steele had me stay a few steps below the landing while he threw his shoulder against the door over and over until the lock finally gave. As soon as the door flew open, he helped me up the final few steps.

“The door’s that way,” I said, pointing toward the back door. Tim’s body was on the floor near the kitchen table. On the table was my cell phone. I wanted to grab the phone but didn’t want Steele to see Tim. My mission was to get us out the door.

We were almost out of the house when Steele, like Lot’s wife, couldn’t resist taking a last look and turned into a pillar of salt—or, in his case, into a pillar of horror. Abandoning me to balance myself against the doorjamb, he ran to Tim’s body.

“Tim!” He shook the body and examined the hole in Tim’s chest. He felt for a pulse. Finding none, he turned to me and bellowed. “What happened? Why is Tim here? Why is he dead?”

“We need to leave, Steele,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’ll tell you once we’re safe.”

“No, I can’t leave him here.”

“You can’t help him. You must help yourself.”

“No!”

“Damn it, Steele. He’s the one who had you kidnapped!”

A deadly hush, louder than a hundred screams, filled the room. Steele stared at me with unbelieving eyes. He turned his gaze upon his friend’s body, then back to me, weighing what I said with the evidence before him. I nodded and looked down at the floor.

Slowly Steele got up from the floor and made his way back to me. His shoulders sagged, and his face was pale beneath the two- week growth. He was shaken to his core by the betrayal and the loss, and I knew he’d never be the same.

I hopped over to the table and grabbed my phone while Steele took his turn leaning against the doorjamb. Once I returned to him, we wrapped our arms around each other and made our way down the steps to the ground. From there we started our slow shuffle down the driveway. When we passed Tim’s Mercedes SUV, Steele looked at it. In the faint glow of the porch light, I could see tears running down his face.

But something was out of kilter.

Before, in addition to Tim’s vehicle, there had been the white minivan and the dark green SUV parked in the driveway, along with the motorcycle. The minivan, the green SUV, and the bike were now gone, no doubt halfway to who-knows-where. Now, just behind Tim’s Mercedes was another Mercedes, a snazzy dark coupe. I didn’t know who it belonged to, but one thing I did know, it certainly wasn’t a police car.

I started limping faster, encouraging Steele with my body language to pick up the pace. He looked down at me. I glanced over at the coupe and then back at him with urgency. He read my concern and immediately moved faster, almost picking me up with each step. We were almost down the long drive. Just a few more steps and we would be at the road. A few more yards after that and we would reach my half-hidden car. A car drove by on the road but kept going. There was no sign of any police.

We were between the hedges guarding the entrance to the drive when a shadow came out of one of the bushes.

“Don’t you two make a cute couple?” It was a man, slightly built, and holding a gun. I recognized the voice.

“Your paid assassins are gone, Tommy. Flown the coop.”

Steele looked down at me. “You know this guy?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you later.”

Tommy laughed. “Same old Odelia.”

“What’s this about, Bledsoe?” asked Steele. “What do you have to do with Silhouette?”

“Tommy wasn’t behind your abduction, Steele. Karen and Tim were. Tommy just gave them the referral to your abductors.”

Tom Bledsoe smiled at me. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty-five years, but even in the dark, I could see that except for losing his hair, he hadn’t changed much in appearance. The noticeable difference was his self-assurance. In school, he had been a timid bookworm, nervous and unsure of himself. Now he was a man in control, a multimillionaire business owner and a puppet-master.

“Karen came to me, saying Tim was going to blow the whistle on everything. Seems he had a bad case of the guilts. So I came down to make sure all the loose ends got tied up nice and neat. Looks like I arrived too late. Also looks like they did a half-assed job.” He raised the gun higher. “No Christmas bonuses for them this year.”

“Mother got a call, Tommy, giving her a heads-up that the police were on their way. She and her gang took off, leaving us behind.”

“That doesn’t sound like Mother. She’s very detail oriented. She’d never leave live witnesses behind without a good reason.”

Steele stepped forward, moving me behind him. Pain shot through my leg. “Well, this time she did, Bledsoe.”

Another car went by on the road just a few yards away. I held my breath, hoping it was the police, but it didn’t stop or even slow down.

“There was a deal cut,” I said, poking my head out from behind Steele. The two men looked at me with interest. “She got a call from someone. Our lives for hers and a head start on the police.”

“Who called, Odelia?”

I wasn’t about to let Tommy know I knew the caller’s identity or that the call actually came in on my phone.

I shrugged. “Not sure, but she seemed to think it was a deal worth taking. In fact, the caller rattled her enough for them to scatter like roaches.”

“So who does this SUV belong to?”

“Tim Weber,” Steele told him in a low voice. “He’s inside—dead.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to do all of her cleanup.”

I started backing up, edging for the road a few feet away, and pulling Steele with me.

“This isn’t necessary, Bledsoe,” Steele said, backing up with me very slowly.

“Sure it is, Mike. You see, I really do love Karen, and I believe in her work. She and I have plans for Family Bond, and those plans include rather unorthodox methods. It would never do to have you on the board, nosing around. So when Karen told me that her friend Tim needed you out of the way for a bit, I figured why not take advantage of it for our own purposes. It seemed like a natural way for all of us to get what we wanted.”

He laughed. “The only thing is, I never intended for Mother to release you. They, on the other hand, did. Very naïve on their part.” Tommy looked at me. “And I never expected you to get involved, Odelia. Still can’t believe you work for this clown.”

Saying nothing, I backed up a little more, again trying to take Steele with me.

“Did you like my little gift to you, Odelia?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Gift?”

“Donny Oliver. Well, an almost gift. When I found out about the theme of the reunion, I just knew I had to reward you for all your kindnesses. Nice dramatic touch, don’t you think? Unfortunately, someone had already paid Mother for a hit on him.” He grinned. “Still, my heart was in the right place.”

Steele glanced from me to Tommy and back to me. “Who’s Donny Oliver?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Tommy laughed again and took aim with his gun. “As much as I like you, Odelia, I’m afraid there won’t be a later … for either of you.”

Just then, another vehicle approached. I could see the headlights lighting up the road ahead of it, but this time it didn’t pass. Instead, it aimed for the driveway.

Steele flung me to the ground and threw himself at Tommy.
I screamed as flames of pain scorched my broken leg. My cries mingled with the sounds of another scream, a gunshot, and a crash. Seconds later, all was silent, except for the sound of a running engine.

I lifted my head. A few feet away was another SUV, a Jeep Grand Cherokee. It had barreled into the driveway, taking with it part of the hedge, and crashed into the back of Tommy’s car.

“Sally!” I screamed. “Sally!”

In the darkness, a man rose from the ground. In his hand was a gun. I shrank in fear until I realized the figure was tall. Steele ran to the driver’s side of the Jeep. I tried to roll over and thought I was going to pass out from the pain.

“She’s okay,” Steele yelled. “Banged up, but okay.”

I watched as he scurried back to where he’d left Tommy.

“Bledsoe’s still alive, but just barely,” he reported. “Stay put. I’m going to see if there’s a phone in the house.”

Stay put. It was the second time that night I’d been told that. What would have happened, or not happened, had I stayed put when Dev had ordered me to? Steele might be dead now. Certainly Tim Weber’s fate would not have been different, and my leg wouldn’t be shattered. But Steele was alive, and that had been my mission.

Biting back cries of pain, I dug out my cell phone. I tried calling Dev, but the call failed. I tried Greg, but again it failed. Where were all those network people you see following customers around on TV?

I kept punching speed-dial numbers, going back and forth between Greg and Dev, until by luck one of them started ringing.

“Where are you?” Greg’s frantic voice demanded on the other end. I started sobbing but somehow managed to tell him.

The stillness after the crash seemed to last for hours, but in reality it was only a couple of minutes before we heard sirens heading our way. Steele went to the road to flag them down. My call to Greg got dropped, but he called back and got through, staying on until he arrived on the heels of the authorities, directly behind Dev’s car.

Once the police got there, everything was kicked up several notches. People ran between me, Sally, and Steele, asking each of us questions about our identity, physical condition, and what we knew all at the same time; it was pandemonium backlit by flashing lights. The paramedics loaded Tommy onto a stretcher, stuffed him into an ambulance, and took off. Dev told me it didn’t look good for him.

Soon Sally and I were also bundled into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Greg never left my side once we got there. For a minute, the doctors and I thought he was going to insist on being in surgery with me, but Sally, who had only minor cuts and bruises from the accident, talked him into staying with her. It broke my heart to see his face as they wheeled me away from him.

Greg is right. He shouldn’t marry a corpse magnet.

“You decent?”

I turned toward the voice and smiled, knowing who it was before I saw his face. I shifted myself in the hospital bed and smoothed the covers down. Dev came in and took the chair next to my bed.

“As decent as I’ll ever be.”

“I just saw Greg. He was heading out to get a bite to eat with Mike Steele.”

“Now there’s a duo you don’t see every day.” I laughed. “Actually, I enlisted Steele to get some food into Greg before he drops, but Greg had to agree to go to a decent restaurant.”

Dev shook his head and gave a deep, gravelly chuckle. “Steele’s not such a bad guy under all that Armani.”

I thought about that and smiled. “I know, but that’ll be our little secret. He’d die if the truth got out.”

“Seems you and I have another little secret that shouldn’t get out.” He leaned forward, resting his arms on the bed railing, his face a foot away, his eyes locked onto mine.

“Willie?”

Dev nodded. “I got two hysterical calls about your shenanigans—one from Sally and one from Greg. Neither surprised me. But just before that I received a very concerned and calculating call. One I never expected to get.”

I said nothing but studied the blanket where I was plucking at a loose thread.

“I didn’t know you were still in contact with William Proctor.”

“I’m not really. He just materializes from time to time, kind of like fog.”

“Uh-huh, and this time he provided you with information about Let Mother Do It and told you to tell me. Which you did not. In fact, he told you to keep your big nose out of it, didn’t he?”

“Maybe.”

“In fact, it’s my understanding that he told you to tell me about Mother and then disappear.”

“Maybe.”

“Odelia, Odelia.” Dev shook his big blond head. “Just be thankful the men in your life know you so well.”

I studied Dev’s lined face. “Willie got you to hold up the police while he threatened Mother, didn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know what he said to the woman, but it worked. It was a risky plan, but we didn’t have much choice. If the police had shown up, everyone in that house might have died. Those women would have killed you all without a second thought before going down themselves. It was a gamble we had to take.”

I shuddered. “Have they been found?”

Again, a shake of his head. “The green motorcycle was found ditched, but no surprise there. But at least we have some good descriptions, thanks to you. There was suspicion that a gang of professional killers was operating in California, perhaps in all of the Northwest, but in all these years there’s never been any hard evidence. Mother may seem homespun and folksy, but she’s very smart.”

A silence settled between us. I studied Dev’s face, feeling bad that I had placed him in such a spot professionally and emotionally.

“I’m sorry, Dev.” I paused. “About everything. I haven’t been very fair to you.”

Dev picked up one of my hands and held it gently. “I’m a big boy, Odelia. And I’m no fool. In my heart, I’ve always known that you and Greg belonged together.”

Tears rolled down my face as I slipped my hand out of Dev’s and cupped it against his warm cheek. He turned and kissed my palm.