Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (7 page)

Charles could have shot Reg. That would have underscored the point that he was to be feared and obeyed without question, but he wasn’t sure he could afford to lose him yet. The targets had to be transported to the airplane. Bernie’s master plan had not been brilliant: acquire the targets, dispatch the peripheral individuals, and move the targets from camp to vehicle to airstrip via trails and logging roads. Every change in venue was a risk for one side and an opportunity for the other. Change of venue meant exposure and possibility. Bernie had factored more changes into this job than Charles would have accepted.

If he hadn’t been blinded by greed.

Spilt milk, blood under the bridge, this was the hand he’d been dealt.

According to the GPS, they’d bushwhacked four miles along the river from the burned-out camp to the targets’ actual location. Venues were now changed.

They could canoe back upriver. The canoe looked big, but he guessed more than four would be dangerous. That meant two men remained behind and two accompanied the targets. Charles had never been in a canoe and doubted dumb, dumber, or dumbest had either. That meant forcing the females to paddle at gunpoint. Not only was the river too public at this time of year, but Mrs. Hendricks or Miss Hendricks might think to roll or swamp the boat, and then, all bets would be off.

Hiking the targets back to the original pickup location was another option. That would mean another four miles bashing through the bushes with the targets, then three miles on foot along rough roads with the targets from the original pickup to the vehicle, and another stretch in the vehicle. A lot of exposure, many chances to be seen, to be interfered with, to be betrayed. Bernie’s little gang had come close to mutiny fighting their way through the shrubbery on the walk down the river.

Sighing inwardly, Charles surveyed his temporary duty station. Because he had ordered it, the dog had to die. The cripple and the older child would be disposed of before they left this place. Bernie, God rot his soul, hadn’t mentioned one of the disposables was crippled. Charles abhorred broken things, broken people. He’d had to abandon the park he’d eaten lunch in every sunny day he was in town for over ten years because someone got the bright idea of bringing retarded children to play there at noon every day. Observing the mentally retarded made him physically ill, nauseated.

People who weren’t whole needed to be taken out of the equation.

This cripple, with her too-thin legs that fell to one side, with shoes on her feet as if she could walk, made his skin crawl. The legs moved jerkily of their own volition it seemed, small erratic motions like those of an insect. The wheelchair filled his nostrils with the stink of old people, sitting in their urine, drooling on their hospital gowns, hair dry as straw, eyes vacant.

Charles would choose to burn in hell rather than sit in a wheelchair. He had chosen to burn in hell. Occasionally, he still went to confession to unload a few sins, but there were things God could not forgive.

Dragging his gaze off the trappings of hospitals and nursing homes, he considered what the cripple had told him: The fifth female had opted out of the trip. One canoe, four females, four tents. There was nowhere else to be but this camp or the river. Why wasn’t he surprised that Bernie hadn’t known of this development either?

“Finish securing the hostages, then find something to eat,” Charles told the men. Food would go a long way toward heading off any thoughts of mutiny Bernie’s little side trip might have fostered. As Michael used to say, the world looked better from the bottom of a plate.

Walking to the edge of the bluff overlooking the Fox River, Charles took the cell phone from its holster on his belt beneath the heavy blanket fabric of the new coat. He punched in the speed-dial number for Bernie. Briefly he outlined the choices for moving the product. “Any ideas?” he asked when he’d finished. Bernie floundered around awhile, Charles listening to him talking to himself as he pawed through what sounded like a pile of nails.

“Okay,” he said when he finally came back on. “Have you got a GPS on your phone?”

“Yes.”

“I Google Mapped it. You have four miles back along the river, three to the car, then five by road to the strip and a last mile or two on foot. The road is there, but might be impassable in a car.”

This was information Charles had just given to Bernie.

“Yes,” Charles said again and amused himself with the thought of killing Bernie for nothing when this thing was over, a little lagniappe for putting up with such a pain in the ass.

“It’s only six total if you go cross-country from where you are to the airstrip. That’d save you time. There’s no huge mountains or rivers as far as I can see.”

Charles considered the idea. It was shorter. The going couldn’t be much rougher than it had been along the water. Six miles. Half a day. The crippled female wouldn’t make it; that was a plus. The greed that had the goons believing she was of monetary value would wane quickly enough if they had to carry her on their backs. Let them choose when to dispose of her. That would leave him out of the negotiation and keep resentment from stiffening their spines.

“Have the plane there by noon.” Charles punched the
OFF
button before he had to listen to Bernie get whatever last word he planned on getting.

He turned his attention to their primary target.

Leah Hendricks, Boulder, Colorado. BS, MS, PhD, thirty-five, five feet nine inches, one hundred eighteen pounds. Net worth unknown, estimated between three and seventeen-point-five million. Hair light brown, dyed black. Eyes gray. Skin white.
Mrs.
Hendricks. Charles had seen her picture many times. Photos didn’t show how thin she was, wide-hipped but narrow.

When she turned sideways and stuck out her tongue, she’d look like a zipper. Michael’s childhood joke would have made him smile had those muscles not atrophied from lack of use. For a supposed outdoorswoman, she was pale to the point of anemia, blue veins visible on her temples. He knew her dirty little secret. As dirty little secrets went, hers was fairly pathetic; still, he enjoyed knowing it. Leah Hendricks hated camping, backpacking, and all the other outdoor sports she designed for.

That she was a fraud didn’t impress him one way or another. She was cattle on the hoof, money to purchase Michael’s passage out of hell, a repast of dishes best served cold. The more quickly he got his goons fed and through the night, the more quickly he could get this business finished.

He pointed his pistol at Mrs. Hendricks. A little scut work would do the multimillionaire’s soul good.

“You. Help Sean with the food.” He had no qualms about using Sean’s name. The damage was already done. The fools had been bandying names about. If Hendricks was as smart as she was supposed to be, she’d realize that was tantamount to announcing they didn’t expect witnesses to survive. Victims who didn’t expect to survive took more chances than those who thought good behavior would win them a gold star and a few more mundane years of their mundane lives.

If she read the unstated bad news, she didn’t show it. Mutely, she nodded. Charles couldn’t tell if she was scared speechless or if she wasn’t the talkative type. He hoped both were true.

TEN

There would be hell to pay when the thugs discovered that not only was Heath not a multimillionaire, she still had forty-three thousand in medical debts. Given that there was already hell to pay, she was grateful for the reprieve, grateful she and her daughter weren’t going to be shot down like dogs. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of a way to get Wily included in the reprieve, but at least at the moment, Sean was too occupied with Katie to cut Wily’s throat. She dared hope, somehow, this save would be permanent for E, that she’d live to grow up and have a whole new set of issues from this second violent trauma in her world.

Heath doubted her reprieve would keep her alive more than a day longer than her dog. She and Wily could keep each other company on the ferry ride across the River Styx. Had these men the dedication and stamina to work as hard as it would be to carry a one-hundred-fifteen-pound woman, half of her dead weight, through the wilds of northeastern Minnesota, they would have made their pile in honest jobs by now. The instant she became a burden, it would occur to one of the louts that Elizabeth would probably bring as good a price as they’d get for the both of them anyway.

From the dude’s abbreviated phone conversation, it sounded as if he intended to take them cross-country for six miles. Before this trip, Heath had never been to Minnesota. She had no idea what the cross-country hiking was like. In the mountains around Boulder, Colorado, in the older pine forests, there were places where she would rate hiking off trail from doable to joyful. Here, what she’d seen as they glided past in the canoe was a different matter.

The forest was mixed evergreen and deciduous: red fir, aspen, red and white pine, white fir, maple, balsam and oak, aspen, tamarack, and alder thickets that truly earned the title “thicket.” Beneath the forest’s canopy bracken fern, tansy, aster, wild roses, sumac, and more grasses than an amateur naturalist could identify tangled together.

It would be difficult to navigate on foot. Impossible in a wheelchair.

Lacking wheels, Heath’s most efficient mode of travel was backward, on her butt, using her arms in place of her legs. Palms to the ground, she could lift the weight of her body and move her buttocks back a few inches. Being strong and practiced, Heath’s personal best was ninety feet, and that was over smooth surfaces. More than that and she began to burn out her shoulder muscles. Six miles cross-country might as well have been six thousand.

Elizabeth would exhaust herself trying to help. Worse, she would endanger herself by annoying the thugs. When the time came to shoot Heath, Elizabeth could not be trusted not to throw herself in the line of fire and take the bullet for her. Her daughter had a selfless streak that time and inexperienced mothering hadn’t been able to eradicate.

The only escape Heath could envision depended on getting Elizabeth out of camp while there was still enough darkness to cloak her. Anna would find her. They would take Anna’s canoe downriver and get help. On her own, Anna would never leave. With Elizabeth’s well-being to consider, she’d have to.

Help had better come fast, to save even Leah and Katie. Kidnapping was often simply murder postponed.

The bearded thug staggered up from the canoe with a loaded cooler. The thugs attacked the food like ravening beasts, ripping into plastic containers of potato salad, bread, cornflakes, and milk cartons. Tops were popped off canned chili and stew. Jimmy didn’t bother with a spoon, the dirt on his fingers apparently providing added zest. As they were pillaged, paper plates, plastic wrap, bottles, tins, cups, and napkins were tossed aside or into the fire.

Anna would be appalled.

The dude ate sparingly and without sitting down.

Sean dragged Katie down by his side. Kneeling, her face hidden behind the screen of blond hair, her hands tied together on her knees, she sat immobile while she was treated to a monologue about the quality of the food. Leah did not look at Sean or her daughter. Sitting, knees up under her chin, bound arms around them, she looked like a side of beef trussed for slaughter. Her face expressionless, she stared at Heath’s wheelchair. Remembering Katie’s crack about being loved only if she had titanium parts, Heath wondered what kind of relationship Leah had with her daughter. What inspired a thirteen-year-old girl to call her mother by her first name?

“Save the sleeping bags,” the dude ordered when he’d finished. “Salvage food for tomorrow. Burn the rest.”

Sean licked his fingers in a parody of seduction. When he’d done, he stood and unbuckled his belt. Nausea threatened to make Heath’s supper come up as he took Katie’s pale bird-boned hands in his paw and drew them toward his crotch.

“Hey!” Heath shouted. She’d not meant to, didn’t want to draw attention to herself and, therefore, Elizabeth. It just happened. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“See-cure-itty,” Sean drawled, showing teeth the size of BBs. He drew his belt between Katie’s arms and rebuckled it, attaching her to his waist. “You want to get free, all you gotta do is open my pants,” he said.

“As if,” Katie snapped. Sean laughed. Leah did nothing.

The fabric of the first two tents went up in a colorful column of chemical flame. Poles shrank and grew distorted, like bones aging on fast-forward. Small, startling explosions rocked the air as tubes and bottles of whatever the women felt they couldn’t live without exploded.

“Five sleeping bags, Dude,” said Jimmy as he crawled, ferretlike, from the last tent.

The dude, standing with the pistol loose at his side, eyes raking the campground and the woods with the professional dispassion of a Secret Service bodyguard, turned his stare on Leah.

Leah said nothing. Her eyes, unfocused, remained fixed on the wheelchair. On climbs, Heath had seen that vague look in the eyes of climbers who panicked and mentally opted out of the adventure. Abdicating, it was called. When people abdicated responsibility for themselves, they became the responsibility of the rest of the party. A burden that could not be trusted.

“Five bags,” the dude repeated.

“My back,” Heath said. The dude didn’t like looking at her; she’d figured that out. Now he stared at the point in the middle of her forehead where the third eye is rumored to reside as if weighing her veracity against some internal measure, the way the ancient Egyptians were said to have their hearts weighed against a feather when they died.

People who didn’t like to look at disability wouldn’t want to hear about it either. Heath didn’t care what he thought about her, just so long as he stopped thinking about the number five.

Feigning enthusiasm for the subject, Heath started saying whatever came into her head. “The way my spine fractured made it so the weight that my rib cage used to support now rests on my bladder. A lot of us have catheters, up the urinary tract—or the rectum, you know, fecal matter and all that shit. Well, I guess, technically shit is fecal matter, but anyway—”