Crash and Burn (26 page)

“Krista!”

She turned to look at him.

“We have to go
now,
R.J. They’re getting away.”

“
Who
is?” He glared down at her. Sweat beaded at his temples and his blue eyes were intense.

“Lily. They kidnapped her right in front of me.
Right in front of me!
” She rushed around the car and yanked open the passenger door as he stared at her over the roof.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

She hopped inside. He slid behind the wheel and shoved the car into gear before she even closed the door.

“Hurry up,” she said. “We’re losing them.”

He gunned it across the highway, barely missing an oncoming pickup. She gripped the door as they took a curve. G+ravity thrust her back against the seat as he accelerated into a straightaway. The Rover was long gone, but maybe they could catch up to it.

She blinked through the windshield that felt strangely low to the ground. She looked at her hands, her arms, her legs. All her limbs were intact, but she felt dazed and disoriented.

“Your lip’s bleeding.”

She looked at him, but his scowl was fixed on the road.

“You followed me here?”

He flicked a glance at her. “I grabbed the notepad in Lily’s kitchen. Led me to the cabins.”

Krista touched her lip, and her fingers came away red. For the first time, she noticed the coppery taste of blood. And that her hands were trembling.

“My car’s totaled.”

“Your car was a piece of shit.” He glanced at her. “And you drive like a maniac.”

“You see the Miata?”

He looked ahead as they took another curve. “Ran the plate. Comes back ‘unavailable.’”

“It’s probably a cool car,” she said, referring to cars used for undercover ops. “You know about Sykes?”

He didn’t say anything.

Bitterness and frustration welled up in her chest. “I knew you were holding out on me.”

He looked at her. “It was only a hunch until today.”

“What happened today?”

“I talked to someone in Anaheim PD,” he said. “They’ve got an internal investigation focused on Detective Kevin O’Quinn. Evidently he came into some unexplained money recently.”

“So he was in on the hit with Sykes?”

“They used to be partners at LAPD, so my guess is yes. Might explain why the body turned up in Anaheim. Easier to steer the investigation that way.”

They passed a yellow sign and came to a fork in the road. R.J. screeched to a stop, cursing.

Krista looked left, then right. To the east, the road wended its way higher into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, which were covered with fir trees. To the west, the road sloped down, into a sunny yellow valley.

“This joins up with the Five. Heads back to L.A.,” she said. “I don’t know where the hell that goes.”

“Fifty-fifty shot.” He looked at her. “Let’s take the high road for a change.”

~ ~ ~

“We need to call the sheriff,” Krista said as the hillside raced past in a blur. It was getting steeper and steeper and they were getting farther away from civilization.

“You trust them?”

“No, but I trust Scarlet.”

He dug a phone from the pocket of his leather jacket. She dialed Scarlet and quickly explained the situation, omitting the part about driving over a cliff.

“Feel it out,” she told Scarlet. “Make sure it’s someone you trust before you spill everything.”

She hung up and looked around. The terrain was getting more and more rugged. “We’re way off the beaten path here.”

“Good place to dump a body.”

She glared at him.

“Or maybe they plan to stash her until they can get information out of her.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Whatever they were looking for at her house the other night.”

Krista thought about it. She imagined Lilian Daniels sitting in the parking lot of the Grove Motel, probably weepy and humiliated as she watched her lover enter a motel room with another woman.

Or maybe she hadn’t been weepy at all. Maybe she’d been royally ticked off and out for vengeance. Jilted women had different reactions. Some threw a hissy fit. Some turned a blind eye. Some hired P.I.s.

Suddenly it all snapped into focus.

“Oh, my God. She filmed him.”

“What?” R.J. looked at her.

“That night, at the motel. Lily was
filming
Robert Beech from the parking lot.” She grabbed his sleeve. “She wanted proof so she could blackmail him. She wanted to get money, or get his attention, or get him to leave his wife.”

R.J.’s jaw tightened.

“You
knew.
” She smacked his arm. “Have you been honest with me about a goddamn
thing?
”

“I didn’t know. I suspected. What else would they be looking for at her house?”

“If there’s a tape, it might include Sheffield’s murderer dropping off the Mercedes. And it
wouldn’t
include the gunshots that were reported by the motel clerk. It’s no longer a ‘he said, she said’ case and it proves Nyugen lied under oath. It destroys the case. Does Walker know about the video?”

“I don’t think so. There’s nothing like that on the evidence list.”

“Then how would
they
know about it? The people who killed Sheffield?”

“Maybe one of the investigators found out.”

A road sign whisked past, and Krista braced her hand against the dash. “Stop!”

R.J. skidded to a halt just before a turnoff. Through the foliage, Krista saw a roof.

“Look up there. A cabin.”

“Shit, the Range Rover.”

“Where?”

“Behind the tree, far side of the house.” He pulled onto the shoulder and cut the engine. He checked the mirrors, then pulled out his Glock.

“You’re going in there?”

He pulled back the slide and checked it, then slid it back with a
click
. “You want to wait for backup?”

“But—” She glanced around, heart thundering now. Her mind was spinning with her new theory, and R.J. was ready to storm the place, guns blazing. “What if we’re wrong? What are the odds they’d have a place out here, twenty miles from where Lily was hiding out in some cabin?”

“Maybe they’re squatting. Or maybe tracked her out here days ago.” He pushed open his door. “You coming or not?”

“I’m coming.”

They crept up the road, sticking to the bushes for cover. The A-frame cabin was nestled against a hillside covered with spruce and eucalyptus trees. Leaves blanketed the ground and the air smelled loamy, as though it had rained recently.

R.J. ducked behind a thicket and peered at the house.

“It’s got to be two guys, at least,” Krista said quietly. “One to drive and one to grab her. Where’s the Miata?”

“I don’t see it.”

“Give me your phone. Mine’s back in my car.”

He handed it over. “Wait here.”

Before she could protest, he moved away, creeping through the brush to skirt the back side of the clearing where the cabin stood.

Krista pulled up their location on a map and sent Scarlet the GPS coordinates. Then she waited.

Her heart pounded as she peered through the brush. She couldn’t see R.J. She couldn’t see anyone, just the tail end of the Range Rover peeking out from the bottom level of the cabin. This was a bad setup. She didn’t like it. They were outnumbered and most likely outgunned, and there might be others on the way.

A faint rustle of bushes and R.J. reappeared, his jacket bulging with stuff.

“Miata’s around back,” he said, “behind the trees.”

“How many?”

“Three guys. All with AKs.”

“Jesus.”

He pulled a paint can from under his jacket, then an aerosol can of wasp spray.

“What’s all that?”

“Part of my plan.” He crouched down and dumped the stuff on the ground. “They busted out a window and let themselves in.”

“Did you see her?”

“I think she’s downstairs. I heard voices down there. Think they’re questioning her.”

“You mean torturing her?”

“There are two guys posted up on the deck, looking around.” He pulled out a long-reach lighter and some charcoal fuel.

“What the hell are you doing?”

An engine grumbled to life nearby. The Miata did a three-point turn and headed down the dirt road to the highway.

“Shit, we’re running out of time,” he muttered. “I bet she told them something, sent them on a wild goose chase looking for that video. We need to move now.”

“You don’t think we should wait for the sheriff?”

His gaze locked with hers and the grim look in his eyes sent a chill through her. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” He used his car key to pry off the lid to the paint can. “Here’s the plan. You sneak into the lower level. There’s a small window there, probably a bathroom. Go in and get Lily out of there.”

“Great. I’ll just pop right in grab her.”

“Don’t make a lot of noise.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? What kind of plan is that? What about you?”

“I’ll create a distraction, draw all the guards away.”

“What if one stays behind?”

“At least it’s better odds. You got a watch?”

“Yes.”

He glanced at his. “Set up in the bushes behind the house. Give me exactly three minutes. Exactly. Then bust through the window and go get her. Check your watch.”

She checked her watch, heart pounding. This was a crappy plan, but she didn’t have a better one.

“Starting now.”

She slipped into the bushes and hunched low as she made her way toward the house. Her pulse raced. Her chest hurt. Every footstep sounded like crumpling cellophane. She rubbed her palms on the thighs of her jeans and desperately wished for her gun.

One of the guards stepped to the edge of the deck and looked out over the clearing. Krista hunched behind a bush and watched him. He was short and bulky and looked like he spent about a thousand hours a week in the gym. A Kalashnikov was slung across his body and he gazed out over the clearing, talking on his phone. At least he was distracted.

Krista neared the house and noticed two brown doors. On stood ajar. Looked to be a storage closet, probably the one R.J. had raided. The other door was firmly shut. Krista crept along the side of the house and found the window. It was small with frosted glass and looked to be a bathroom. It was five feet off the ground, and she had no idea how she could possibly get through it without making a hell of a lot of noise.

She eyed the door again. R.J. had probably tried it and knew that it was locked.

Krista looked at the window. She looked at the door and weighed her chances. She crept toward the door and silently reached for the knob. It turned. Her heart pounded. Slowly, she rotated the knob and pushed the door open.

Footsteps shuffled on the deck. She froze.

“Hey, you smell something?” The voice was gruff.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Smoke?”

“What the fuck?”

Footsteps thundered above her.

“The fucking deck’s on fire. Hey!”

“Fire.”

It was a stampeded now. Taking advantage of the distraction, Krista darted through the door and found herself in a dark room. A rectangle of sunlight fell on the concrete floor where a Lily was strapped to a chair. She had a gag in her mouth and so much duct tape wrapped around her, she looked like a mummy. The side of her face was bloodied and she wobbled back and forth, fighting against her bindings.

Krista rushed over and pulled loose the gag. “Don’t talk, listen.” She whipped out her Leatherman went to work on the tape. “We have to hurry.”

“Get my hands! They’re coming!”

Krista cut through the tape, but Lily’s arms were still secured behind the chair. ZipCuffs. She muttered a curse and started sawing at the bindings, but they were tough.

Stomping overhead as men put out the fire.

“
Hurry.
” Lily wobbled frantically. “They have
guns
.”

“Stay still.”

She got the bindings loose. Lily jumped to her feet and Krista caught her chair before it crashed to the floor.

“Quiet,” she hissed, grabbing Lily’s hand. She pulled her to the door and peeked out. More stomping above them, but the fire was out now and the men were arguing.

Lily looked at her, wide-eyed and terrified. Strips off duct tape hung off her clothes.

“On the count of three, we run for those trees,” Krista whispered. “One, two—”

Footsteps on the stairs.

Lily dashed for the trees with Krista right behind her.

“Hey!”

A hail of gunfire. Dirt and leaves burst up near Krista’s feet as she sprinted for cover. Lily tripped and fell. Krista dragged her up by her arm and shoved her into the woods.

“Move!”

More gunfire. A bullet whizzed by Krista’s ear, and her heart clutched.

Lily went down, this time with a shriek.

“Are you hit?”

“My ankle’s twisted!”

Suddenly R.J. was there, hauling her to her feet. Lily yelped, terrified.

“He’s with us.” Krista looked at him. “She turned her ankle.”

R.J. heaved Lily over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Haul ass.” He grabbed Krista’s elbow and shoved her toward the woods.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

Lily shrieked as R.J. plunged into the woods. Krista swiped at the branches. Sticks and thorns stabbed at her as she plowed through the thicket. Where was the car? How much farther? She didn’t know which direction—

Boom!

She crashed to her knees. R.J. went down in front of her, sending Lily sprawling. Krista spit dirt and turned around to see a black column of smoke billowing above the treetops.

“What in the hell?”

“Come on.” R.J. pushed to his feet and heaved Lily over his shoulder again.

Krista followed him, ears ringing. She pushed through more bushes and suddenly she was in narrow clearing. Only it wasn’t a clearing, but the road. Sirens sounded in the distance.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the cloud of smoke rising above the treetops. The sirens grew louder.

“Was that a
bomb?
”

“I set up some pyrotechnics.” R.J. staggered to his car and slid Lily off his shoulder. “Get in. Soon as the shock wears off, they’ll be after us. And their guns are bigger.” He yanked open the door and pushed Krista into the car. He stuffed Lily in after her, forcing Krista to sit on the console. Lily was clutching her ankle and making little high-pitched yelping sounds. She was hysterical.