"Get her!" Wolfe screamed at Marco. "Where the
hell is Rogers?
Clarissa almost lost her grip on the steering
wheel as the impact at the gates thrust her toward the windshield
and back against the seat. The older car had no airbag, thank God.
She wrenched the wheel into a sharp turn onto the street and felt
the warm pull of a sprain in her right shoulder. No force of will
would let her ease up on the gas pedal. She negotiated each twist
and hairpin turn of the winding canyon road with blind terror. Her
tears of relief had become more of an annoyance and she brushed
them away angrily. She was free of Wolfe's grasp only for the
moment and her one desire was to put as much distance between them
as she could.
The city lights beckoned from below on their
carpet of black velvet and Clarissa wanted only to lose herself in
the dark spaces between the lights. Panic-driven and nerve-taunt,
she fought the dark road with an acute sense of dread, but no
headlights appeared in her rear view mirror. Only when she reached
the bottom of the canyon at the Sunset Boulevard intersection, did
she relax her stiffened arms and fingers and wipe the tears and
sweat from her face with the back of her hand.
The traffic light turned green and Clarissa
eased the Jag onto Sunset, heading west toward the beach and the
exclusive community of Pacific Palisades. A quick second look in
the rear view mirror and the muscles of her stomach tightened. A
dark sedan pulled onto Sunset from the canyon intersection.
Clarissa couldn't take her eyes off the car and narrowly missed a
bend in the road, swerved to avoid a slump-stone wall. The sedan
veered off into a turning lane and disappeared into a dark
residential street. Clarissa let herself relax for a brief moment,
then picked fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. She thumbed
through her contact list, missing Hugo's number twice before her
nervous finger jabbed at it.
The phone rang almost six times before an
unfamiliar male voice answered.
"Is Hugo there?" Clarissa tried to mask the
desperation in her voice with a cheerfulness that came out more
like hysteria.
"He's in La Jolla all this weekend," the man
replied in a hissy annoyance. "Call the salon in Beverly Hills if
you want to make an appointment. I'm just his roommate, not his
damn receptionist."
"Please, this is Clarissa Hayden," she cried
into the phone. "I need to talk to Hugo. Please. Where is he
staying in La Jolla? Do you have a number?"
There was a disgusted sigh in her ear before
the man replied. "Look, I don't know where the hell his ass is,
okay? I'm sure somebody at the salon can help you with your
emergency perm or whatever the hell is wrong with your
hair."
"It's not my hair. I need help. Please. Where
is he staying?"
"I'll be right there," the man snapped
impatiently to someone with his hand half over the phone. "Some
bitch of Hugo's is having a bad hair day. I've got to go, lady," he
said to Clarissa. "Call the salon in the morning."
The line went dead. Clarissa's reserves went
dead with it. Panic rose like a slow, clinging fog and she shivered
with a chill. She had forgotten about Hugo opening the salon in La
Jolla on Monday. She racked her brain for the name of the salon but
she wasn’t even sure if Hugo had told her.
The city suddenly felt like a desert. She was
alone and friendless among eight million people. There had been
only Hugo to run to. She never had many friends in Los Angeles when
she grew up here and she had lost contact with all of them. There
were a few acquaintances in New York and her old modeling agents
there. They were of little use to her now. It was pointless to
continue on to the Palisades if Hugo wasn't there. His roommate
obviously wouldn't be too receptive to her showing up and waiting
there for him to return.
Clarissa followed Sunset until it crossed the
405 Freeway and made the turn down the on-ramp heading north toward
the San Fernando Valley. The Friday night freeway traffic had
lightened and there was no one behind her. She needed time to calm
down, to think, to formulate some kind of plan to keep herself
alive. She had two hundred dollars in cash in her wallet and a
couple of credit cards. That would get her through for a while. By
the time Morgan got the credit card bills to trace her, she would
be long gone or long dead.
She could feel the tenseness slowly ease from
her body as her mind took over the job of survival. The Jaguar's
tank, as were all of Morgan's vehicles, full of gas. She could make
it to Interstate Five and be more than half way to San Francisco
before she had to stop for fuel. Morgan had probably already
reported the Jag stolen but she hoped that she would make it out of
the city before the Los Angeles Police or the Highway Patrol
spotted her. If she could make San Francisco International Airport
before dawn, she could abandon the car and be on a plane to
anywhere before Morgan could find her. Then she could call her
brother and he could wire her the plane fare to wherever he was in
the Middle East. Andrew would know what to do. The number to reach
him at the American oil company he worked for was in her cell phone
and she would place that call when the plane landed. She would tell
him what had happened. The digital clock on the dashboard read
nine-twenty.
Clarissa started the long descent down into
the valley. It already felt good to put the hills of Bel Air
between her and Morgan. The solid sea of lights of the valley
gleamed brightly as she watched the green exit signs slide by. At
the Victory Boulevard exit sign she knew she was only a few minutes
away from the Interstate that would take her due north through the
lonely agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Four hundred miles of
nothing but fields and an occasional hamburger stand would put her
in San Francisco by three in the morning.
She did not notice when the black Cadillac
changed lanes directly behind her and stayed there past the Ventura
Freeway cut-off and crept steadily closer. She did not see the
glint of a revolver reflected from the overhead freeway lights
aimed directly at the back of her skull. When she looked casually
in the rear view mirror the lane behind her was clear.
The scanner was on the passenger seat beside
him. Marco glanced down at the blinking red light on the screen.
The sending unit installed in the Jaguar was putting out its signal
perfectly. All of Morgan's vehicles, except the Rolls Royce, had
the tracking devices installed, especially those driven by the
staff, including Virginia's own Mercedes. The scanning units were
portable and there were only two. Morgan had one and Marco the
other. Each device had a range of almost fifty miles. It kept down
the theft of the expensive cars and any one of Morgan's employees
could be managed and located almost immediately.
Marco had been in constant phone contact with
Wolfe. They knew Clarissa would try to contact the hairdresser. One
of the guards had already been dispatched to watch the Pacific
Palisades house. Morgan had allowed that one friendship of
Clarissa's to continue only because Hugo had been cooperative in
relating any information Clarissa had discussed with him during her
hair appointments. The partnership had worked out to benefit both
parties. Hugo had been paid well. He was a hot hairdresser and
Morgan's investments in the Beverly Hills salon were paying off
nicely. The new shops in La Jolla and Santa Barbara should prove
equally lucrative.
Marco crested the rise on the 405 Freeway
under the Mulholland Drive overpass. He had the gray Jaguar in
sight. He sped up until he was right behind Clarissa and took a
practice aim. Then he eased the Cadillac over into the lane next to
her, sped up a little until he was in her blind spot. Two of
Morgan's other men were waiting at the warehouse in the city of Sun
Valley, an industrial district in the east section of the San
Fernando Valley. All Marco had to do now was head Clarissa in that
direction. The hit would be safer and easier in the warehouse than
at the house, and much more enjoyable.
The first bullet slammed into the trunk of the
Jag and Clarissa thought that she had thrown up a stone from the
road. Her rear view mirror showed that the lane behind her was
still clear. The next bullet shattered the side mirror and she
swerved wildly toward the Roscoe Boulevard off ramp. The high-beam
head lights slid slowly across her rear view mirror until they were
directly behind the Jag.
She winced from the blinding glare and her
body jolted with the shock wave of renewed terror. Instinct shoved
logic aside. They had found her and it was Marco Camponello behind
the wheel of the car behind her. The surge of panic left her heart
pounding and the taste of nausea in her throat. She drove for the
dark spaces, the only refuge where she was certain that she could
hide.
She ran the red light at the foot of the
off-ramp and pulled onto the street heading east. The garishly lit
stores and shabby supermarkets gave way to shoddy Mexican specialty
shops, taco stands and, car dealers. Though traffic was light on
the boulevard, Marco had made no move to force her off the road.
Instead, he was following closely. Clarissa could see his twisted
grin in the mirror. He was toying with her, sapping what was left
of her nerve before he finally grabbed her.
Clarissa could hardly think. She had to lose
Marco somehow and the frustration of not knowing what to do was
overwhelming. She fought tears and terror, and she tried to make
her mind work against the rising tide of defeat. She drove on,
looking for an all- night gas station or convenience store. To her
utter dismay, light industrial facilities and automotive repair
shops locked up behind chain-link fences and gates, replaced the
shops and stores along the street.
She had made a terrible mistake taking this
road. There was no traffic this time of night. She did not know
exactly where she was, the street was getting darker, and Marco was
still behind her. He was not making any moves and that unnerved her
even more. The darker side streets were no comfort. She didn't know
if they would suddenly dead end on her and she would be trapped.
The once welcome dark spaces between the lights she had seen from
the crest of the hills were now only dark alleys and dangerously
empty avenues.
The boulevard suddenly turned a bend and
narrowed into a two lane road. Marco was almost on her bumper as
the street wound in and around factories and warehouses. She knew
with a striking clarity that he had wanted her here. He had let her
get to that exit on the freeway, had forced her off with the
gunshots. He let her think that she was getting away from him, when
he really was herding her into a trap. Ahead were more industries
and warehouses. She couldn't even see an intersection or another
traffic light. Farther up the road red lights blinked and the arms
of a railroad crossing began to descend. The end of the line. There
was nowhere else to go.
The clanging of the railroad signal was like a
death knell. Death at the hands of Marco. The way he had looked at
her, the licentiousness of his desires, made her flesh crawl with
the memory. She felt sick to her stomach.
"Damn you, Morgan Wolfe," she screamed. "Damn
you to hell!"
Her foot jammed down on the accelerator and
the Jaguar leaped toward the oncoming train.
Marco picked his teeth with his fingernail and
watched the one remaining tail light of Jaguar ahead of him. His
thoughts were lost in the fantasy of what he was planning to do to
Clarissa in the warehouse. This one he had been waiting for a long
time. It was not often that one of Morgan's women attracted him as
much as Clarissa. She had the same seductive looks and empty-headed
charm like the others but there was a feistiness about Clarissa
that excited Marco.
He knew he would have her eventually and Marco
was a very patient man. He was delighted when it happened so much
quicker than he expected. Usually he had to wait until Wolfe was
tired of them, set them up in some penthouse apartment for a while,
to which Marco had a master key. Wolfe could care less what
happened to them as long as the jewelry and cars were all accounted
for and the women could not legally touch him. Clarissa was
special. He could do whatever he wanted with her tonight without
the worry of arrest on rape charges, as long as she was dead by
dawn and her body disposed of with Roth's.
He grinned wide with anticipation as he
watched the railroad crossing arm go down across the road. He
wondered if she felt the terrifying realization that she was
finally snared, about to be reeled into Marco's deadly playpen.
Wolfe's warehouse was on the other side of the tracks and there was
no way out of the industrial park except back the way they had
come. Marco took a pair of handcuffs out of the glove compartment
and slipped them into his pocket. It was going to be one hell of a
party.
His pleasure turned to sudden rage as the
Jaguar shot forward.
"What the hell?" Marco swore loudly as he
grasped the revolver and slid open the Cadillac's sun roof. He
screeched to a stop, stood and braced his arms on the car's roof.
He could see the light from the train's engine illuminate the
crossing. The Jag wasn't even slowing. He had only seconds to stop
Clarissa's suicide run. He fired all of the rounds at the Jag's
tires. The right rear blew apart and the Jag spun wildly toward the
crossing.