Authors: Maddie Cochere
Something caught my eye in the moonlight. It was coming to me almost from the direction of the burning car. Mick! Mick had gotten out somehow. He hadn’t died in the fire! I tried hard to b
ring attention to the fact
a train was coming, but nothing I was doing was making any sense. As the figu
re approached, I could see
it wasn’t Mick. It wasn’t Mick at all. It was Dudley! My screams started all over again. I was frantic to get my hands out of the ropes and fought harder against the pain and the knots. Dudley was going to force me
to stay on these tracks so
the train could run over me.
It was too late. He was right beside me
now. I quit squirming and could only lie there crying
. Dudley reached down and ripped the tape
from
my mouth.
As I took a deep breath to let out a scream,
he
clamped
his hand
down hard over my mouth
. “I’m not going to hurt you, lady,” he growled at me. “I’m here to help. Jeez, Chuck said you were a piece of work, and he wasn’t kidding. I’m going to take my hand away, and you have to be quiet. Then I’m going to cut these ropes and get you off of these tracks, you hear me
?
”
I nodded my head. I didn’t say anything. The train was audible now and the light was much closer. Dudley worked hard with a knife to saw through the thick ropes. When he
finally
had me free, I could barely stand, and he had to support me as I stepped off the tracks. We weren’t thirty yards away when the freight train came rumbling through. I sank to my knees in complete weakness at the sound of it.
My muscles had nothing left in them
to hold me up. Dudley picked me up like a sack of potatoes and threw me over his shoulder. I didn’t care that it hurt.
He made his way
to a spot
only a short distance from the burning car. It was a rock formation about 50 feet high. Behind the rocks was a four-wheel vehicle – and Mick!
Dudley tried to set me down, but I fell to the ground. My legs still had nothing. Mick rushed to my side and gathered me into his arms. His voice was thick with emotion. “
Susan, sweetheart, you’re alive!
I don’t know who this man is, but I can’t believe he made it to you in time. I’m so sorry. I’m so
truly
sorry. I couldn’t help him. I was see
ing double, and I couldn’t
stand up.”
“That’s Dudley,” I told him as I collapsed against his solid chest.
It was all
a blur for a fe
w minutes, and I was aware
I was being pushed around, but somehow Dudley managed to get all three of us situated on the four-wheeler, and we
started
off at a slow clip, not down the road, but off-road on the rough landscape. The vehicle was surprisingly quiet, Dudley used no headlight, and he seemed to know exactly where he was going. The ride was bumpy, and even painful, but it was bearable with Mick’s arms around me.
I assumed we were running parallel to the roadway,
and I had confirmation
when we
saw three police cars speeding
toward the burning car. A couple of miles later, I could see in the distance
,
a cluster of
police cars with lights
flashing
. Dudley turned
to approach the
vehicles
. As we neared the scene, I could see the car
the two men
had been driving,
and my heart did a little
jump at
the sight of the
truck
which
surely must have belonged to Carl. Dudley stopped along the roadside,
hopped off
the vehicle, and helped
me and Mick
to extricate ourselves. We had been a bit of a pretzel behind Dudley.
As we stood there, I
tried to
understand what
was happening
. How did the police know to come here? And why were there so many
police cars
? Why did Dudley bring us here instead of helping Carl to kill us? I was confused and couldn’t put the pieces together.
“Susan Hunter, you never disappoint,” said a familiar voice to my left. I turned to see who was speaking, and my mouth fell open.
“Detective Bentley?” I asked in bewilderment. “What are you doing here?”
“I got a call yesterday from Darryl
,” he said
.
“He said
things had escalated here
, and
you and Darby had succumbed to breaking and entering. I thought it might be a good idea for me to get out here and give the local authorities a hand with you.”
Who was Darryl? And how did Detective Bentl
e
y know
Darby and I were breaking and entering?
He held
his hand out to shake Mick’s and said, “Mick, good to see you alive. I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but I’m not so sure, and you might want to reconsider marrying this one. Stay put. I’ll be back.”
I
glanced
at Mick and was more confused than before. A minute later, Darby came running through the small crowd. He was by himself, and he was a wreck.
He
threw his arms around me and held me close in a bear hug. I bear-hugged him back. He pulled away and
peered
into my eyes. Tears were streaming down both of our faces. He couldn’t speak. He
finally looked
at Mick, and Mick reached out a hand to him. They gave each other one of those
man hugs
,
and I heard Mick say, “It’s ok b
ud, we got her back.”
The night air was cold, and I was shivering in my bare feet. Darby went in search of a blanket. Mick and I sat down on some nearby rocks. A couple of the police cars
pulled away with lights flashing and
sirens blaring.
Mick had his arms around me
,
trying to warm me up. I had my head on his chest a
nd was counting my blessings we were together and
both of us were alive. I looked up into his face and asked, “Mick, how did you get out of the trunk?”
“When those two guys
left
with you
,
the trunk opened a few minutes later
,” he said
.
“
I was groggy, but I was prepared for whoever opened the lid. I found a sma
ll fire extinguisher, and I
planned to cold-cock someone w
ith it. It was that Dudley guy who
opened the trunk, and I swung at him, but my blurred vision caused me to swin
g at nothing. He was finally able to make me understand
he w
as there to help me, not
kill me. He helped me out of the trunk and made me sit out of sight by the four-wheeler while he went to get you.” His voice caught with emotion again as he said, “
Susan, it killed me to hear the
train come through and not know if he got you off of those tracks. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
I looked at him with
a heavy
sadness and said, “I wa
s waiting for the train to
come through and kill me after I thought you
had
died in th
e explosion.”
He squeezed me harder and tried to pull me even closer to him. There were
truly
no words to describe
the emotions. I looked up
again and said, “Dudley is the man who’s been following me every day since I got here. I have no idea who he is or why he’s been following me.”
“I can tell you,” said Darby. He had two blankets and h
alf of one cup of hot coffee which
one of the officers had in his patrol car. Mick and I wrapped up in the blankets and shared the coffee. Darby sat down to face us. He seemed to have his emotions under control now. “He’s not a Dudley, he’s a Darryl. And he’s not the enemy, he’s Detective Bentley’s cousin.”
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe it, but I had seen the resemblance when I first saw Dudley at Wolfgang Puck. “Well, who’s Chuck?” I asked. “Dudley said, that Chuck said, that I was a piece of work. Who’s Chuck?”
“That’s Detective Bentley,” Darby said. “I guess we’ve never heard his first name before. Anyway
, when Bentley found out
you were coming to Vegas, he called his cousin Darryl. Darryl’s a private investigator out here. Bentley told him that everywhere you go, you seem to get mixed up in something whether you mean to or not. He told him if he wasn’t working on anything, he should keep an eye on you, and it would pay off. Obviously, it did.” He smiled a little smile.
I didn’t know whether to be insulted or grateful. I’d have to think about it later. I asked, “How did Dudley know to come out here to help us?”
Darby shook his head. “It gets a little confusing for me here. I guess several things were happening all at once. When you didn’t come back from work shortly after 5:00, I called your phone but it went straight to voice mail.”
My phone was in my purse. Oh my gosh! I bolted upright out of Mick’s arms and interrupted Darby. “My purse! My purse was in the rental car that blew up!”
Mick
stared
at me like I was certainly overreacting to a purse. He shook his head and said, “S
o? We can replace anything
you had in your purse.”
He was right. I could replace everything in my purse. I let out a little laugh and said, “You’
re right, but for a second
, I thought I still had over $20,000 in cash in it.”
Mick’s mouth dropped open, and he asked, “How in the world did you get $20,000? And why was it in your purse?” I could see his wheels spinning, and I knew he was wondering if I had actually taken it from the motel room.
Before I could say anything, Darby butted in and said, “She won it playing craps and poker, but it’s safe back at the hotel.”
Mick could only shake his head at
both of
us. His brain was surely on overload from too many surprises and too much information today - in
addition to the murder attempt
.
Darby laughed a little and continued with his story, “Anyway, when you didn’t come back right away, and I couldn’t get you on the phone, I called the office. I insisted on talking to someone, and fina
lly got Gregory
. He’s the eavesdropper, right?” I nodded my head. “Well, he was eavesdropping again, beca
use he heard you tell Mick
you wanted to go to
Anna’s. I knew right then
you were going to make Mick take
you,
so you could get the
motel key. I tried to get there in time to talk you out of it.”
I looked sheepishly at him. I hated being called out on my subterfuge.
He hesitated and prefaced his next words with, “Susan, she’s ok. Anna is perfectly fine. But when I got to her house, the front door was slightly open, and I heard muffled sounds from inside. She had been tied to a chair and had duct tape over her mouth.”
I gasped. Poor Anna. She had already been through so much this week.
Darby was quick to jump back in. “She was fine. Just a little scared. The two guys from the arena had just been there. She said
one
was a man with tattoos on his arms, and
the other had
an ugly scar on his face.” Mick and I both nodded. “They
said
her husband had something of theirs, and they wanted to know where it was. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t tell. Carl had been
to her house
twice recently trying to sweet-talk information out of her, but she was clueless as to what he was ta
lking about. She panicked today
and told the guys about the
motel room and that she had
giv
en the key to you. T
hey tied her up and left. I called the police, but I wasn’t going to stay
and wait for them. I took off for the motel. I knew it was going to be close between you two and those
two guys
. By the time I got there, Dudley was running through the parking lot and yelling at me to call th
e police. It was
confusing be
cause we’ve always thought
he was one of the bad guys. He got in his car and yelled at me, and I quote,
‘
Tell Chuck Bentley
they’re running south out of the city on Peterson.
’
That was it.”
Dudley had been at the motel? He prob
ably followed me and Mick.
and then
saw what
happened with the two guys.
Darby had more to tell. “Before I could even pull my phone out, Dudley was gone, and three police cars were pulling into the motel lot. I was clueless. I didn’t know if you were up in the motel room, running out of the city on Peterson, or somewhere else. When Detective Bentley stepped out of one of the police cars, I gave up trying to figure out any of it. I only convinced him to let me co
me along here by promising
I would stay in the car until they told me I could get out.” He stopped again as though the next words were hard to speak. “It was maddening
to sit in the car knowing
a car had
exploded down the road and
one of the guys confessed to tying you to the tracks.” He stopped talking for a mom
ent, choking back the tears which
threatened to come again. Finally he said, “Then the train came through.” There were no more words. He was simply too emotional, and he was done telling his story.