Adrenaline (17 page)

The freezer had holes drilled into it.

Air holes.

Chapter 17

Steve was not particularly surprised that night when he got to the boat and the lights were off. He had left a message on the answering machine earlier saying that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

Steve
was
surprised that she hadn’t left a note. She usually left one in the galley, saying where she would be. Sometimes she just had dinner by herself up at Lawson’s Landing, the little restaurant at the marina.

As he changed into jeans, he listened to the answering machine. There were several calls: a stockbroker pushing for a sale, an interior decorator offering her services, and the dentist’s office.

And then one that gave him pause. It was Gary Bishop, the contractor for their house. “Lisa, it’s Gary. Thought I was going to see you this morning. We’ve got a lot to go over. Give me a call.”

There were two more calls that day from Gary with essentially the same message: Where are you?

Steve checked his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Jesus,” he muttered. He finished dressing and headed up to the restaurant. The owner, Rick Lawson, was just closing up when Steve rapped on the window.

Rick opened the door. “Hey, Steve. Did I hear a good rumor about you?”

Steve was confused for a moment, then realized that Rick was talking about Jansten Enterprises. “Did Lisa tell you? I was looking for her.”

“Yeah, it was Lisa that told me, but she’s not here now. This was a couple of nights ago.”

“Did you see her today?”

Rick thought for a moment. “I did this morning. I was setting up and saw her coming up the dock.”

“Heading toward her car?”

Rick shrugged. “Maybe. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m just looking for her.”

Steve saw faint amusement pass over Lawson’s face, and Steve turned away before he took his growing unease out on the man. “Thanks for your help,” he said, curtly, and left.

As he was leaving the restaurant, he looked out across the parking lot.

Her car. Her car was still there. He walked over to it, and found it was still locked. “What the hell …”

He started to flip through the possibilities. She had gone out for dinner, maybe with Claire. They had taken a cab. Or maybe she had simply gone out for a walk.…

He hurried back to the boat and searched it again for a message, looking for a slip of paper that had blown aside.

After a half hour, he checked his watch again, sighed, and got out the address book and called the contractor’s home phone. A woman’s sleepy voice answered, and Steve apologized for the hour and asked for Gary.

“Yuh.”

“Sorry to call this late, Gary. Lisa isn’t home yet, and I heard your messages. Did you ever connect?”

“No,” Gary said. “Tell you, I was surprised. She’s normally right on time. Hope she’s all right.”

Steve thanked him and hung up. He flipped through the pages of their address book. It was the same one they had had since Charleston, and he couldn’t help but notice that it was full of names; full of Lisa’s friends back there. Here in Boston, there were listings of tradesmen, a host of people that Steve knew from Jansten Enterprises. But as for friends there were exactly two: Claire Bowden, a college friend of Lisa’s, and Alex.

Steve called both and reached only answering machines.

“Damn!”

Steve paced in the limited space, growing more worried by the minute. It wasn’t like her to forget to call. It wasn’t like her to get wrapped up in what she was doing and lose all track of the time. That’s what he did—and he couldn’t shake the gut feeling that he had let her down somehow.

And then he heard someone step aboard.

He grinned with relief and started up the stairs to the cockpit. “You scared the hell—”

He stopped.

There was a dark shape of someone sitting behind the wheel.

He heard a sharp click and into the silence he heard a faint hiss and then a recorded voice speaking quietly. Lisa’s voice. “Steve, I’ve been kidnapped. He says he’ll kill me and I believe him.”

There was a sharp, mechanical snap, then a whirring noise.

“Listen close, now,” the man behind the wheel said. “I’ll rewind it so you can hear her again. And if you don’t do what I say it’ll be for the last time.”

It was Geoff. He moved into the faint light from the cabinway and Steve saw the gun. “Get below,” Geoff said.

Steve hesitated. What he was seeing made no sense. “Where is she? You can’t be serious.”

For an answer, Geoff reached out and put the tape player against Steve’s ear, and hit the button again. The voice was clear, undeniably Lisa’s—and it was also undeniable that she sounded frightened.

Geoff pressed the gun against Steve’s breastbone. “Lisa is depending entirely upon you. Now get below.”

Steve backed down the stairwell.

“Now sit at the table, lay both your hands out in front of you where I can see them.” Geoff pushed the Play button on the recorder again. The tape hissed and then her voice came on again.

Steve’s hands began to tremble.

“… My kidnapper told me to read you this headline from today’s
Boston Globe.
‘Small plane crashes on Cape, three dead.’ I have been given a note to read: ‘The clipping is a good example of how easily people can die.’ “

Steve heard a catch in Lisa’s voice, could tell she was trying to stay calm. Then she continued. “‘You are to raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, immediately. Until you do, I will be waiting for you in a box that normally stores dead meat. It’s a big freezer, one of those floor-mounted ones, like a big white coffin. There’s not enough room to lie down straight. My air is limited and the freezer will be padlocked shut. The man in front of you is my lifeline. You’re to remember that.’”

The recording snapped off abruptly.

“She’s tough,” Geoff said, grinning. “Refused to read it at first, then tried to sneak in little clues.”

He leaned forward and put the gun to Steve’s temple. “I had to hit her once to get her to do it right.”

Steve was shaking, and it took all he had to keep himself in check. “How far gone are you, Geoff?”

“I’d say pretty far, wouldn’t you?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Lots of reasons. I need the money, for one. But the fact you screwed me over ranks way up there.”

“If you harm her in any way, I will kill you,” Steve said.

“Kill me, kill her. But your attitude is understandable. Predictable, even. So I’m going to show you what you’re up against.”

Geoff walked Steve at gunpoint up to the vacant lot underneath the bridge. The place was full of rocks, pipes, construction materials. The streetlights gave just enough illumination for them to see. Geoff put the gun on top of a big metal drum and said, “Do your best.”

He held his arms out wide.

Steve hesitated. Regardless of his every impulse, it had been fifteen years since he had been in a fight. And though the navy had trained him well in hand-to-hand combat, he had been using his head all his life, and his head was telling him that he should bargain, that this was the man who held Lisa’s fate in his hands.

Geoff grinned mockingly. “You choking?”

“There’s nothing to be accomplished here,” Steve said.

“Sure there is.” Geoff punched Steve in the stomach. It knocked the breath out of Steve and he bent over, gasping. Geoff stepped in grinning. “What’s to be accomplished here is that
you do what I want
. And I want to kick your ass right now.”

The heat pumped through Steve’s chest and arms as he regained his breath. He let himself appear more winded than he was, backing away as Geoff advanced on him. And then, when he could draw enough air, he set his back leg and snapped off a kick at Geoff’s right knee.

Geoff pivoted, swung his leg out of the way, and caught Steve’s foot. He pulled Steve along, making him hop, once, twice. Steve dropped to his back, hitting the ground hard. He shoved his free leg behind Geoff’s foot and rolled over onto his stomach to bind Geoff’s legs. Geoff hit the ground with a surprised grunt. Steve kicked out hard, going for Geoff’s face.

But Geoff blocked the kick and rolled to his feet. He came back at Steve with a rock the size of a grapefruit. Steve dropped to one knee, and, as the rock whistled past his head, he grasped Geoff’s legs and threw him over his shoulder with a simple wrestling takedown.

He was all over Geoff in an instant. Kneed him in the groin, butted him in the head. Took a couple of short punches in his stomach, but he was too close for Geoff to deliver much power. Steve got his hand around Geoff’s throat and pressed down while grasping for a rock off to the side.

Geoff went totally relaxed.

Steve stopped, the rock held high over his head. Geoff’s face was bloody, he was momentarily defenseless. But there was no mistaking the victory on his face, even though he was on the bottom. “Go ahead, Steve.”

“Where is she?” Steve shook him.

“Use that rock, and you’ll never know.” Geoff spit blood away. He whispered. “Maybe the gun. Maybe the gun will scare me.”

Steve looked over at it on the drum and figured Geoff’s gambit was to beat him to the gun.

So Steve hit him on the head with a rock. Not too hard, not hard enough to knock him out. Just enough to slow him down.

Steve went over the past few seconds in his mind as he got up to pick up the gun. He looked back at Geoff, who was touching his head where Steve hit him.

“Jesus Christ,” Geoff said. “It’s painful teaching you something.”

Steve looked for some hint of fear in Geoff’s eyes. He couldn’t see any, certainly nothing like what he knew could be found in his own.

“Do it.” Geoff stood slowly and ripped his shirt open. “Right there, put a round right there.”

Steve pulled the hammer back. “You want to die?”

Geoff shrugged. “Not particularly. But I can’t be pushed.”

Steve moved the gun down to Geoff’s knee. “We’ll start here.”

“You better hope I don’t go into shock. She’s got less than an hour left.”

Steve repeated his threat.

Geoff shook his head. “You still don’t get it.”

Steve felt his hand move.

Suddenly Geoff’s face was out of his line of vision.

Steve was barely aware of what happened, that Geoff had nudged the gun with the back of his wrist. Steve backed away and fired a round near Geoff’s ear, trying to shock him into submission. But before Steve could pull the trigger again, Geoff had his hand around the gun and twisted it away. He kicked Steve in the stomach and then knocked him to the ground with his forearm.

The gun spoke four times in fast succession, big gouts of orange flame lit the underside of the bridge as Steve scrambled away on his back. Bullets slammed into the ground around him, at his head, his sides.

In the sudden silence that followed, Geoff towered over him and said, in a calm, cold voice. “That leaves one round.” He spun the revolver’s chambers and put the gun to his own forehead. “When I die, she dies.” A bead of sweat slid down his jaw and Geoff shouted as he pulled the trigger.

Steve cried out too.

“Jesus, what a rush,” Geoff said. “What a goddamn rush.” He spun the chambers again, put the revolver back to his forehead, and this time Steve jumped to his feet and knocked the gun away.

“Don’t! For God’s sake, tell me where she is!”

Geoff nodded. “You’re beginning to get it. And in my own time, I’ll tell.” He held the gun out for Steve, butt first. “Do it.”

Steve’s breath shuddered in. He broke the gun open, checked the cylinder. There was indeed one bullet left. He dropped it into his hand. The slug was heavy, soft-nosed. It had been cross- hatched.

“Enough to take off most of your head.” Geoff took the gun, loaded the bullet and spun the cylinder. He handed it back to Steve. “Lisa’s got forty-five minutes left. So I better get back. And I’m not doing that until you prove you love her more than yourself.”

Steve’s breath rasped out loud in the night air. He mentally scrambled for another answer, searched for another way out that left him and Lisa with a chance. Go ahead and shoot Geoff in the leg? Call in the police? Everything came back to whether or not Geoff could be forced to talk.

Sirens began to wail in the distance. Geoff smiled, almost gently. “Listen to me. I’ve got a timer set up. If I’m not back in time, it starts pumping water. If the police pick me up, I’ll keep my mouth shut until it’s too late. You understand?”

“Yes.” Steve’s voice was dull, but inside he was shaking, ready to vomit. Flashes of Ray drowning came back to him, pounding on that slick fiberglass.

“You don’t want that for her, do you Steve?” Geoff’s voice remained soft, concerned. “I heard about your dive partner. How you let him drown. You wouldn’t want to do that again, would you? Let your wife die the worst death
you
could imagine?”