She had on jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, running shoes, no jewelry except for a diamond ring on her left hand the size of an aspirin . . . or an Easter egg.
“Take it easy,” I said.
“You take it easy.” She looked around, eyes wild, but beneath that surface uncertainty was a murderous look. Right then I should have jerked sideways, dropped to the ground, tried to take out one of her knees, given Jeri a chance to drop her with one good kick. But I didn’t do any of that. I just stood there with the bore of what looked like a .45 locked on my chest. In fact, it was a 10mm Glock, which was the next best thing.
Julia licked her lips, trying to figure out what to do next. Given another minute I might’ve tried something, but she looked at Jeri and said, “Turn around, girl. Get on the ground, lie down, face-down.” Her gun stayed on me.
Jeri hesitated, gave me a look.
“Do it now, girl, right now, or he’s dead.”
Lot of shrill emphasis there. Jeri did as she was told. To me, Julia said, “Now you. Turn around. Sit. Legs out in front of you, hands behind your neck and lace your fingers.”
She’d watched a lot of television. Thing is, it worked. I sat with my back to her, put my legs out, laced my fingers, heard something move behind me, a rustle of something, then the world went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I WOKE TO darkness, movement, a rumbling sound, the hum of an engine. My head felt as if it were hanging on by a thread of bone and gristle. I could count my heartbeat by a throb pulsing through my skull behind my right ear. I might have another concussion. Sonofabitching concussions were going to be the death of me yet.
My eyes were open but I couldn’t see anything. I wondered if I was blind. A minute later, a pale sweep of headlights slid across the roof of the car, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Mort?” Jeri whispered.
Maybe it was Jeri. It might have been a hallucination, or a breath of wind under an eave.
“Mort?”
I decided to answer. “Yeah?”
“Thank God, oh thank God. I didn’t know how hard she hit you.”
Plenty hard, honey bun.
“Mort? You still there?” Her voice sounded like it was inches from my ear. “Don’t go back to sleep.”
“Yeah, nope.” I tried to sit up, couldn’t. I tried to make sense of the world I was in, couldn’t do that either.
“Stay with me, Mort. Please.”
“I’ll . . . try. How long’ve I been out? Where are we?”
“Hour and a half. We’re in the back of that Mercedes SUV. That thing I saw earlier is in here with us, too.”
None of what she’d said could be good.
“Where’d she come from?” I asked. “There weren’t any cars at the house. No one was there.”
“She was. Leland’s Lexus was behind the garage under a tarp. And, I don’t know, maybe they were keeping the SUV hidden in the garage after she used it so much.”
“Where’re we goin’? Where’s she taking us?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say. We’ve been on the road for at least half an hour.”
I tried to move my hands. Couldn’t. They were tied behind me. My ankles were bound, too. “I’m tied up.”
“Me, too.”
“How the hell did she get me in here?” I asked. “She didn’t look that strong.”
“She made me help. I did most of the work. She had a gun on you the whole time.”
“So you finally got some use out of your powerlifting.”
“Jesus, Mort—”
Julia’s voice floated back to us. “Shut up, back there.”
“Make me,” Jeri said. Her voice was loud in my ear.
The car jerked a little on the road, then Julia laughed. “Fuck you, girl. Go ahead and talk. Say good-bye to each other.”
Man, I hated that bitch.
“Where’re we goin’?” Jeri called out.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Can you sit up?” Jeri whispered to me.
I tried. Couldn’t. “No. My head hurts like hell. I think I’ve got another concussion.”
“Shit,” she breathed.
“Maybe not too bad,” I said hopefully.
“See if you can roll over, away from me. I’ll try to untie your hands. I can’t get to my knots, but my fingers are free. We won’t be able to talk but we should try to keep her talking.”
It hurt, but I bent my legs and levered myself onto my right side. Jeri faced away from me, and I felt her fingers scrabbling at my wrists, exploring the knot.
“Where’s Allie?” Jeri called out.
“Allie?” Julia said. “That whore child who started all this? I called her Candy, since that’s what she called herself.”
“Candy, Allie. Where is she?”
“About fifty feet down, that’s where. You’ll find out.”
My blood felt icy.
“Fifty feet’s a long way,” Jeri said. “Probably took you a long time to dig something that deep. When’d you start, around 1998?”
“You want details, girl? You want to hear a story?”
“Why not? It’s really boring back here.”
Julia laughed again. “Ballsy little bitch, aren’t you? Well, maybe you deserve to know. How ’bout you, Mort? You up for a story while I drive you two off the edge of the world?”
“If it’ll keep you awake. Fall asleep at the wheel and it’d ruin my whole day.” I hate it when I lie like that, so I said, “Actually, if you hit a tree, I hope your air bag doesn’t inflate.”
More laughter. She was in control. But the laugh had a nervous undertone to it, so this wasn’t her everyday self. She was operating outside her comfort zone, like most people when they decide to solve life’s little problems with murder. She was in this thing up to her neck and everything had to go just right from here on out or her life was over. Which made her dangerous as hell, but there was nothing Jeri or I could do about that. Yet.
Jeri’s fingers
