Authors: Janis McCurry
“Well, of course, I feel responsible,” he said fiercely. “I hired a civilian for a low-risk babysitting job and she’s been kidnapped, not to mention the jumper himself. It’s my job to get them back.”
“A civilian? I see. And the job. That’s why you came knocking on the door at six o’clock in the morning?” She shook her head. “Wrong answer.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but we’re wasting time.” Bailey turned away.
“Suit yourself.” Rand returned to the computer. “Any property acquisition is public record. The catch is there are shadow companies and subsidiaries and you have to dig a little harder. The bottom line is Taylor, Coston, & Jurgens own this home. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it. Give me the address and I’m out of here.”
“Oh no, you don’t. I am not letting you go alone. I’ve got a score to settle with them, too. They hired me under false pretenses and now I don’t get the money I was going to use to buy some artwork.” She walked over to the closet and pulled out a black windbreaker. “Added to that, whether you believe it or not, you’re emotionally involved and you need me to provide the clear head.” Rand headed for her bedroom. “I’m getting my gun,” she called back.
“Fine. Hurry up.”
* * *
When Tess woke and tried to sit up, the pounding in her head made her dizzy and she dropped back to her original prone position. She had extreme cottonmouth, which made swallowing painful. She put her hands to her head in an effort to control the ache that danced with each pulse of the veins in her temples.
The residual chemical taste told her that the goons had used chloroform to put her out. That would also explain the splitting headache that threatened to make her throw up when she raised herself again to a sitting position on the cot she had been lying on.
She groaned and cautiously removed her hands from her head. She tried one deep breath, but quickly found out that wasn’t a good idea. Shallow ones worked better.
The men obviously didn’t think her a threat because she wasn’t tied up and it looked like the room she was in didn’t have any special security features. No bars on the window.
Better check the door.
She carefully stood, taking time to orient herself to an upright position. Crossing to the door, she turned the handle. Locked.
She turned around too quickly and a wave of dizziness swept through her. Leaning against the door for support, she closed her eyes and waited for it to subside. She had to think. The first order of business was to find out where they had poor Lucius.
When the hotel room door had opened, Tess hadn’t even looked up from her place beside him because she’d thought Bailey was back with the things Lucius had wanted. Big mistake. She had been grabbed from behind and the drugged cloth clamped over her mouth and nose before she realized it. The last thing she had seen before passing out was another man jerking Lucius from the sofa. She hoped the excitement hadn’t caused another asthma attack when she’d been unable to help him.
Feeling better, she crossed the room to the window and looked out. It was hard to tell where she was with only dense forest to see. They were either deep in the area outside of town or this room was on the side of the woods. There were a lot of summer homes that faced Highway 50, but were nestled among the trees.
Her watch indicated it was ten o’clock in the morning. From what she knew about chloroform, it had to be the next morning. She wouldn’t have been unconscious for any longer.
She walked back to the door and pounded on it. “Hey, let me out of here. Is anybody there?”
Okay, shouting wasn’t a great idea.
She rubbed her temples. “Lucius, can you hear me? Lucius?”
The door opened and the biggest man Tess had ever seen loomed over her. “You finally woke up, huh? It’s about time. The little feller kept asking about you until we had to gag him to get some peace.” He turned without saying another word and she followed him out into a hallway.
“Where is he?” Tess demanded in what she hoped was an authoritative tone.
The giant unlocked a door at the end of the hall and pushed her through it. “Ya got company, Monroe. I told ya we didn’t do nothin’ bad to her.” He locked the door and Tess heard him stomp away.
Lucius was sitting on the bed with his hands tied behind him and a white handkerchief around his mouth. Tess hurried over and released him. “Oh, my dear, I was so worried about you. You never moved the whole time we were in the car and when that cretin carried you into the other room, I didn’t know what to think. I’ll tell you, I gave them a piece of my mind.”
“I’m fine, Lucius. A little headache, but not hurt otherwise. How about you? Any trouble breathing?”
“Why, no. I guess I was too busy being angry at myself for getting you into this predicament to worry about an attack.” He examined the floor as if too ashamed to look at her. “I should have known I couldn’t go up against them. I should have left the country.”
“No, you should have trusted the police, but that’s not going to help us now, so let’s forget about ‘what ifs’ and figure out where we are. Were you able to recognize where they brought us?”
“Not exactly. I was in a state, you know, worrying about you. I must confess I didn’t pay attention. We drove for about an hour, but they may have been trying to confuse me. We turned down a road off the main highway and then went through an iron gate. The house is pretty big and, to my way of thinking, entirely too refined for creatures of this ilk.”
“Hm, Lucius, do you know if your boss had a place here in town?”
“I’m sure he didn’t. He hates the outdoors.” He paused, deep in thought. “Wait, I ran across a mortgage payment once for what was billed as a company getaway for special functions! I didn’t pay any attention to it because a lot of companies have such places. Maybe it was in Tahoe.”
“Okay, we’ll assume that’s where we are, which means Bailey will find us because he’s good at his job and the Tahoe area is the first place he’ll look.” Tess felt better now. She knew Bailey could outsmart these goons. “We have to give him enough time and he’ll be here. I’m sure of it.”
“Er...well, there might be a problem with that.” Lucius was hesitant.
“Better tell me all you know.”
“They aren’t going to keep us here long. The rather large oaf told me they were arranging to take me back to Portland this evening.” Lucius paused. “Their bosses want to interrogate me themselves. They don’t trust these men to get the location of the money.”
“That doesn’t give Bailey much time.” Tess paced. “Lucius, we can’t let them get away from Tahoe. Portland’s a bigger place to hide.”
“But, what can we do?”
“We’ll have to free ourselves.” Tess sounded more confident than she felt.
“Tess, really, you had better sit down and rest. You aren’t thinking very practically.” Lucius was clearly worried.
“Trust me. We can wait for a while to see if Bailey finds us. But if he doesn’t, we have to act. Don’t you think we’re smart enough to fool these jerks?” She glanced at the closed door.
“Well, it is obvious they are not very intelligent, but they are bigger than we, carry weapons, and have keys to lock us in. I’m certainly smart enough to realize that,” Lucius said skeptically.
“You’re right, they hold all the cards. That’s why they’re going to let us go.” Tess smiled. “We’re going to run a bluff.”
* * *
On the road, Bailey and Rand didn’t waste time on small talk. Tahoe was considered a small town, but it was seventy-two miles around the lake, and there was a lot of road to cover to get to the address. Bailey cursed again. It was because of him that Tess was involved and possibly seriously hurt.
His head told him that the kidnappers didn’t want a murder rap on their sheets. They were getting Lucius to get the money back. If they were smart, they had blindfolded the marks so they wouldn’t identify their captors. It was Snatching 101. He hoped the crooks had been awake during that class. No, it made sense that Tess would be all right.
Still, logic had disappeared the moment he’d found the torn piece of her blouse. He was terrified something would happen to her...and he couldn’t live with that possibility. He could’ve gotten Lucius without her, but he’d been selfish enough to want her along for his own reasons. And that had been his first mistake.
“So what’s the going rate, nowadays?”
“Huh, what are you talking about?” He glanced from the curving road to Rand.
“For hair shirts and flagellation rods.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Rand.”
Rand sighed and took another sip of the coffee she’d been nursing since they’d left her house. “Come on, Bailey. Even if it weren’t my business to read people, you’re lit up like a Roman candle on July Fourth.”
“And you know me well enough to understand I’m hunting and I’m on strike mode. No big deal.” He almost growled the words.
“Right, and I’m Mother Teresa. You’d better get this straight because you need to ’fess up before we go in. It might save our collective butts for you to realize it. And I’m not going to help you if we don’t settle this.”
Bailey swore and pulled off the road at a turnout. “Make this quick. We don’t have all the time in the world.”
She turned in her seat to face him. “You’re not beating yourself up because you brought a civilian in on the case and that civilian is in danger. And it’s not because you should’ve seen it coming and you were outsmarted.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “You
love
Tess. You don’t just
like
her. You’re not just
fond
of her. You’re out of control, crazy, nuts in
love
with her. And you need to face it so you can do your job and save her and the little guy. If you don’t, we run the risk of you doing something stupid, okay?”
Bailey stared at Rand for a moment, and then rested his head on the steering wheel. “That’s not possible. I didn’t plan on being in love and I don’t want to be.”
“Well, this is one time your heart overruled your sequential logic left brain. I never believed I’d see that happened to you. But lately, I’ve seen that even someone as cynical as me might find love when I least expect it.” Rand squeezed his arm and smiled.
“You sound like you have someone in mind.”
“There’s a guy. Seems to think I need taking care of.” She smiled and winked. “And I like that.”
Bailey raised his head and shook it. “Good for you.” He inhaled a deep breath. “God, what am I going to do? I can’t let anything happen to her, Rand. I’ll kill anyone who even touches her.” He slammed his hands onto the wheel.
“What
we
are going to do is plan and execute, like always. Except now…” she turned back to face the windshield and adjusted her seatbelt, “…you know what the variable is. You have to control yourself. Let’s get this thing on the road and go over our options.”
* * *
Tess pounded on the locked door. “Help, he can’t breathe. Help!”
Lucius lay on the cot, wheezing and trying unsuccessfully to catch his breath. The guard opened the door and stood, with his gun in hand, in the open doorway.
“What’s the matter with him, lady?”
“Can’t you tell? He has asthma and he’s having an attack.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it? I ain’t no doctor.” He stepped into the room.
“It’s your fault, you know. We didn’t have time to bring his medicine and the stress has brought this on. He could die. Would your bosses like that?” Tess was kneeling by Lucius, mopping his forehead with a towel.
She had to hand it to him; he was scaring her and she was a professional. The wheezing and coughing were absolutely perfect. She looked down and Lucius winked.
“Hold on a minute.” The guard sounded worried. “You didn’t say nothing about the little feller being sick.”
“And I would’ve done that when? While you had the handkerchief soaked in chloroform on my mouth, or after I was unconscious?” She stopped. No need to antagonize the moron.
The guard turned and stomped out, calling for his partner.
“How am I doing, Tess?”
“You’re an Oscar-winner, Lucius. How’d you get so good?” She squeezed his hand.
“I took a little drama in college. I’m a method actor, you know. I headlined in “The Secret Lives of Walter Mitty” when I was a senior,” he said, obviously proud.
“Well, we’d better get ready for Act Two. If the guards fell for it and called an ambulance, we need to be ready for them.”
When Goon Number One returned, Lucius was lying on the small bed, wheezing on cue. Tess had stationed herself by his side and was wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. She looked up and said, “He’s getting weaker. He’s not getting enough time to rest between attack onsets. What are you going to do about it?”
“Look, lady, we’re in a bind here, but you gotta know, we don’t kill people. We called an ambulance, but this is the deal. We figure the little feller is too weak to say anything,” he looked at Lucius. “But you ain’t gonna be anywhere near ‘em.”
She had to think fast. “What do you plan on doing with me?” Maybe, she could keep them from tying her up. “I need to stay with him as long as possible to monitor his vitals.”