Authors: Heather Lowell
Near Lake Tahoe, California
Thursday night, March 18
T
essa got off Bobby’s snowmobile and made her way through calf-deep snow and slush to the front door of Ricky Hedges’s cabin. Although why anyone would call it a cabin was a mystery—the thing was probably bigger than Luke’s whole house. It was two stories and had to be pushing two thousand square feet.
Maybe it was the log-style exterior that earned the cabin title? She tiredly pushed aside the meaningless thoughts and slogged up to the icy front steps. The clothes she was wearing were completely inappropriate for the heavy snow conditions outside, and the cold was beginning to sap her strength. She had a parka and hat, but beyond that was wearing jeans and running shoes.
Thankfully, she’d managed to grab the shopping bag containing her new long underwear and gloves, and had put the gloves on before the snowmobile trip. But she was still shivering convulsively after being chilled in the back of the truck. At that point, she was almost eager to get inside Ricky’s cabin.
“Get her pager,” Ricky ordered his assistant, as they climbed up the stairs to the porch.
“I l-left it in the t-truck,” Tessa said through chattering teeth.
“Frisk her,” was Ricky’s reply.
She stood there shivering as she was stripped down to her jeans and T-shirt and patted down by Ricky’s assistant. He didn’t have her remove her gloves, so she was able to conceal the cell phone jammed inside her cast—for a bit longer, at least.
“Nothing here, boss.”
Ricky motioned them into the cabin without a word. She put her sweater and parka back on and made her way painstakingly up the stairs.
When she opened the front door, the two people inside looked up. Kelly had been sitting curled in the corner of the sofa, watching a movie on television. Ricky’s bodyguard, Otis, was sitting at a table cleaning the disassembled parts of a large handgun. Tessa tried not to stare at it.
“Tessa!” Kelly said as she launched herself off the couch. For a moment, everything was forgotten as the teenager flew into her arms and hugged her tightly. Then Tessa pulled back to look at the girl.
“Are you all right? Has anyone hurt you?”
Kelly shook her head. “I’ve just been bored.”
The prosaic teenage complaint made Tessa shake her head, then she hugged Kelly again before turning to look at Ricky.
“You may as well let us go now,” Tessa said.
“You’re outta your fucking mind,” Ricky replied. “No way this little bitch goes anywhere.”
“Her family is looking for her. The police are looking for her. You won’t get away with this.”
“She wants to stay with me.” Ricky shrugged. “It might not be her mama’s idea of a good life, but the kid wants to be an entertainer. Right, Kelly?”
The girl said nothing as she huddled at Tessa’s side.
“That’s a very cute defense, Ricky. But for one fact—Kelly is a minor. According to the law, she can’t make that decision for herself.”
Ricky began to look less relaxed. “How the hell am I supposed to know she’s a minor? Kid’s a liar. She told me she was eighteen and wanted to sing like Britney Spears.”
Tessa shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find witnesses to counter whatever lies you tell. Let us leave, and things will go easier for you in the courts.”
“You’re full of it, lady. If you had any evidence, you’d be here with the police to arrest me. No, I think we’ve got some kind of vigilante thing going. Or maybe you want Kelly for yourself? Yeah, I can see the headlines now—prosecutor and her young lesbian lover discovered dead in Tahoe cabin.”
Tessa laughed confidently, even though her grip tightened on Kelly in a spurt of panic. “I’m not gay, and neither is Kelly. No one will believe it.”
“They will if you two die in some kind of tragic murder-suicide. Hey, Bobby, I’m starting to like this idea. Think how the media would eat it up. District attorney’s star prosecutor visits Club Red and falls in love with one of the acts. Society can’t accept their doomed affair, and they commit suicide,” Ricky said.
“There’s a Movie of the Week in that,” Bobby agreed.
“I’ll tell you why this discussion is pointless, and everyone will know that you are responsible for anything happens to us. First of all, your club has been busted. So everyone will hear the kind of disgusting crap that’s been going on there for the last few years.”
That got his attention. Ricky turned pale and gaped at her. “The hell you say?”
“The FBI has been following your operation for over a year,” she said, hoping to impress upon Ricky the fact that the game truly was over. And that there would be no point in killing either her or Kelly at this time.
“No way, I would have heard from—”
“Jerry? Crystal? Or maybe your lawyer, Krugman?” Tessa finished. “They’ve all been arrested.”
Ricky turned to Otis. “Get on my cell phone. Tell the pilot to have the plane ready in two hours, then start calling people from the club to check this bitch’s story.”
“Getting the Learjet ready to fly to South America?” Tessa asked. “Rio, isn’t it? Don’t bother, the FBI knows about that plan as well.”
Ricky jerked his head to indicate that he wanted to speak to Bobby in the kitchen, only a few steps away. Even though Otis ran upstairs, and they were left alone, Kelly stayed glued to Tessa’s side.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. I don’t want you to say anything, but there are a bunch of my friends who know exactly where I am right now. In fact, they were coming here to rescue you,” Tessa said. She ignored the little voice inside her head pointing out that she had no confirmation Luke had even received her text messages.
“So I don’t have to be scared of him anymore?” Kelly asked.
Tessa shook her head. “Have some healthy respect for the fact that he has a gun, but don’t be afraid. We’re going to get you out of here tonight. We’ve been planning for a couple of days now, and my friend Luke is a very thorough guy. We’ll be out in a couple of hours, and we’ll call your parents once we get back to L.A.”
“And my brother? I really missed him,” Kelly said. “Ricky and Jerry threatened him. That’s why I said those mean things to you on the phone. I’m sorry, they made me do it.”
“I know, sweetie. I need you to be brave for just a little while longer. If we can convince Ricky that the police know everything, then he has no reason to hold us. Hopefully, he’ll leave us here and run for the border.”
Which meant that she would have Kelly, but wouldn’t be able to prosecute Ricky Hedges for his numerous crimes.
Tessa looked down at the platinum blond head nestled against her shoulder and decided she could live with that.
“Be careful, Tessa. He’s acting all cool now, but he can be really scary. He turns bright red, and screams and yells at me sometimes. I just opened the door to the basement here and he flipped. I think he’s got a bad motherboard,” Kelly whispered.
Tessa choked on a laugh, but took the advice with a grain of salt. After all, Kelly was a kid and easily intimidated. Crystal had painted a picture of Ricky Hedges as a basically spineless rich guy who preferred to let others do his work. And Tessa was gambling that Ricky would be more interested in protecting his money and his freedom than settling any scores with her or Kelly.
In fact, she was betting their lives on it.
She knew she had to find the right balance between confidence and the willingness to bargain. That she had to hammer into Ricky’s thick skull the idea that the best thing for him to do would be to give up. Her job was to convince him that there was no way for him to escape, but an infinite number of ways for him to make his inevitable capture and punishment much harder than it had to be.
What she couldn’t do was let the man know that they were aware of his involvement in a murder for hire. If Ricky realized that he was facing a death penalty case, he might become desperate.
Desperate men had been known to do horrific things, but she tried not to think about that.
“What do the police know?” Ricky stalked back into the living room and stood in front of them.
“Everything,” she said. “They know about the drugs and prostitution. The catering to celebrity athletes so that your club became a city hot spot. The, um, contributions that you gave to city council members through third parties to ensure favorable zoning changes around your clubs.”
Tessa thought fast while Ricky absorbed the information.
She had to get across the point that there was a major case being made against him—one that didn’t necessarily include her or Kelly. That way, she hoped to avoid giving him any further incentive to make them disappear.
“It’s over, Ricky. The FBI was looking at you going back to last year. They have information on money laundering, illegal shell corporations, and your accountant cooking the books,” Tessa continued.
Ricky shook his head sadly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe I didn’t manage my employees closely enough, and they engaged in these activities outside of my knowledge.”
“Put your hip boots on, folks,” Tessa drawled. “The B.S. is getting deep in here.”
“Shut up, you vindictive bitch. I run a legitimate business in Club Red. And while the morality police might want to shut me down as a smut peddler, I’m only serving a need. If people didn’t buy it, I wouldn’t sell it.”
“Come off it. You make money selling teenage girls,” Tessa said as she stroked Kelly’s soft hair. “We have corroboration from multiple individuals inside your operation who will testify that you make millions and millions every year off of the wholesale commercialization of women, among other things.”
“I’d be happy to open my accounting books and let the FBI review them. They’ll see that I run a business with decent profit margins, but certainly nothing like you’re insinuating. If young girls seek out employment in my club,” Ricky sneered, “it’s because they’re greedy and into shortcuts.”
“Shut up!” Kelly screamed the words as tears started to fall. “Jerry tricked me. I was willing to work hard for what I wanted, but you guys lied to me.”
“Kids are so emotional,” Jerry said ruefully. “I hear they make terrible witnesses in court.”
“Yeah?” Kelly yelled. “Wait until I tell them about the boxes of money in the basement.” She turned to Tessa, wanting
to be believed. “I saw them—all these banker’s boxes filled with twenties and hundreds.”
“I told you not to go down there!” Ricky bellowed.
Tessa grabbed Kelly in an attempt to defuse the situation. But the teenager had apparently had enough of being victimized. She’d believed Tessa about help being on the way, and that gave her the confidence to finally defend herself after all these weeks of abuse.
“And he killed a man,” Kelly said defiantly. “He was trying to get you, and this other person got in the way. Ricky wasn’t even sorry—”
Tessa pinched Kelly, hard. But the damage had been done.
Ricky yelled for Otis to come down and begin packing, then he ordered Bobby to take the women upstairs to Kelly’s bedroom and get them ready for a nighttime hike in the California wilderness.
Kelly began to sob, finally overcome by the emotional outburst.
“Cry all you want, little girl,” Ricky said. “You and your nosy friend are going to become tragic examples of what can happen when inexperienced hikers tackle Lake Tahoe. You’ll get lost and freeze to death—so sad. Probably won’t be discovered until spring.”
Bobby shoved them up the stairs in front of him. “And don’t even think about escaping. We’re miles from any home in this area, and the temperature is below freezing out there. We’re supposed to get a foot of snow up here tonight. I hear it’s real tough to make a shelter out of Sierra snow because of the high water content.”
“It will be all right,” Tessa promised Kelly under her breath as they headed up the stairs. “I’ve got something up my sleeve. Literally.”
Near Lake Tahoe, California
Thursday night, March 18
“I
don’t feel good,” Tessa announced a few minutes later. She and Kelly were sitting on the bed in a small upstairs room, with Bobby guarding the door nearby. As far as Tessa could see, the man wasn’t armed.
But the two men downstairs were.
And Bobby outweighed her by a good fifty pounds. Catching him off guard was her only chance. She just hoped that Kelly got with the program quickly enough that they were able to prevent their guard from sounding the alarm.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Tessa said, and bolted for the double sink at one end of the room. Next to it was a small door that led to the toilet and tiny shower area—no help there.
Thinking quickly, Tessa leaned over the sink. She could see Kelly out of the corner of her eye, the teenager’s face a mask of concern and faint disgust. Taking a deep breath, Tessa hesitated as if in surprise.
“What the hell is that?” She pointed to an imaginary item in the sink.
“What?” Bobby asked as he cautiously approached.
“That,” Tessa repeated, watching the man approach in the tiny vanity mirror.
With his brow furrowed, Bobby approached the sink and peeked over Tessa’s shoulder. “What?”
“This!” Tessa hauled back her casted left forearm and struck Bobby with it—right on the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed out immediately, coating Tessa’s face in red droplets.
With a juicy, whistling sound of surprise, Bobby fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving.
“Oh my God!” Kelly breathed. “You killed him!”
“Shhh. Oh, God,” Tessa moaned in pain. The force of the impact with Bobby’s nose had sent shock waves of unbelievable agony through her broken wrist. She staggered to the bed and sat down, putting her head between her knees and taking several deep breaths.
“You okay?” Kelly asked. “You didn’t hit him that hard, why did he go down like that?”
“Not hard, but I got the sweet spot,” Tessa ground out between deep breaths, then motioned for the teenager to lock the door.
“We’ve got to keep him quiet,” Tessa said through her teeth as the pain in her wrist began to subside to a rotting-tooth level of throbbing. “Give me a pillowcase. And something to tie him up with.”
After a few more deep breaths, Tessa pushed to her feet and approached the man whose nose she’d broken. Using the recent example of Luke immobilizing Jerry Kravitz in his kitchen, she and Kelly rolled Bobby onto his stomach and made a gag out of the pillowcase. Once that was tied, she had Kelly take a leather belt and bathrobe sash that she’d pulled from the closet and immobilize his hands and feet.
“He’ll be all right,” she assured a dubious Kelly. “But we have to get out of here, now.”
She reached inside her cast gingerly to pull out the cell phone she’d hidden there, congratulating herself on her
cleverness at keeping it concealed. Unfortunately, she’d cracked the thing clean through when she’d slammed her cast into Bobby’s face. The screen was dented in and the unit refused to turn on.
Tessa stared at her mangled phone and thought about crying. “If I could catch a break here, I’d really appreciate it,” she muttered.
“What?” Kelly asked.
“Never mind. On to my next backup plan.” Tessa made her way to the window and used the little knob to crank it open. The rush off rigid air was welcome on her heated face, and she drew in several deep breaths to steady herself.
It was still touch-and-go as to whether she was going to hurl from the pain in her wrist. The cold air helped tip the balance toward not throwing up—for the moment. She looked outside and saw that the roof of the cabin’s wraparound porch provided a perfect escape route from their second-story room.
“Do you have your coat and gloves?” Tessa asked. Kelly nodded. “Good girl. I want you to crawl out the window and slide on your butt along the roof of the porch, going all the way to the corner of the building. I’ll hold on so you don’t slip.”
“What about you?” Kelly asked.
Good question. “Um, when you get down there, brace your feet in the gutter. I’ll hold your arm, and you can help me down to the edge of the roof. Then we can scoot along until we find a place to jump off.”
“Let’s go to the side yard,” Kelly suggested. “The snow is really deep there, and underneath are some bushes.”
They both managed to get to the edge of the roof without incident. From there, they were able to use the gutter to help slide along. Once they made it to the corner, both surveyed the ground below.
“It’s a long way,” Kelly said.
“Not that far,” Tessa lied. “I’ll go first, then help catch you, okay?”
Kelly nodded and began to shiver. The snow was coming down in fat, heavy flakes, and she hadn’t had any suitable clothes to bring along. She was lucky that Ricky had let her pack a suitcase at all the day she left Club Red, and she hadn’t known they were heading up to the snow. So she was wearing a pair of jeans, with sweatpants and a wool sweater over them. She had a ski jacket, but the rest of her clothing, like Tessa’s, was not going to stand up well to the bitter chill of the Sierra Nevadas during a winter storm.
They had to get out of the cold—and soon.
Tessa swung her legs over the edge of the roof and twisted slightly to the right. She knew her injured left arm wouldn’t be any help at all, so she planned to swing down and grab the gutter with her right hand as she went by it. Hopefully, that would be enough to break her fall while she maneuvered over what looked to be a nice, deep hump of snow.
With a last, squinting look into the dark below, Tessa eased her hips over the edge. When she started to fall, she twisted around and reached for the gutter with her gloved right hand.
It caught for a second, then slipped off as if the metal had been greased.
With a muffled cry, Tessa felt herself flatten out with the momentum of her move. Before she could do anything about it, she was heading straight down into the snow—butt first.
At the edge of the tree line that surrounded Ricky Hedges’s cabin, Luke and MacBeth paused to scan the house and make sure there was no one outside to be alerted to their presence.
Luke pulled out the pair of night-vision glasses he’d borrowed from the guide and scanned the property. He felt MacBeth tap his shoulder and saw him point to the northeast corner of the cabin.
In silence, he watched two slight figures huddle on the edge of the roof covering the wraparound porch. Then one
of them slid feetfirst off the roof, trying and failing to catch hold of the gutter with one hand on the way down. The person’s left arm hung like deadweight, and Luke knew in an instant that it was Tessa.
He threw the glasses at MacBeth and was running across the yard in a heartbeat, heading to where he’d seen Tessa’s body fall into the darkness at the side of the house.
“Tessa,” he whispered roughly as he reached a chest-high drift. “Baby, can you hear me?”
A gloved hand appeared out of the deep depression in the snow. “Right here, and am I ever glad to see you. I’m going to throw up now.”
Luke reached over and hauled Tessa out of the deep drift, then stood and supported her as she retched convulsively. He knew that only the most severe pain could make a person do that. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done but hold her head and stroke her back until the spasms passed.
“Hey, Kelly!” MacBeth called softly to the teenager who still clung to the roof. “Jump down—I’ve got you.”
The girl looked down from her porch, then squinted over to where she could hear Tessa throwing up.
“I don’t think so,” Kelly replied dubiously.
“I’m a friend of Tessa’s. We’re here to take you home,” MacBeth promised.
Her little face appeared over the edge. “Yeah?”
“Hays, Kansas. Right?”
Tears welled in Kelly’s eyes as she nodded. “Here I come.”
MacBeth grunted as he broke Kelly’s fall, then he pulled her under the protection of the roof. They waited against the side of the house while Tessa composed herself.
“Sorry. It’s been a hell of an evening,” she said weakly.
Luke pulled out a flashlight and began to look her over for injuries. He stopped short when he saw the spatters of blood on her face. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but you should see the other guy.” She held up her cast, which was also smeared with Bobby’s blood, and gave
a halfhearted grin. “Broke his nose. He’s tied up, but I’m afraid I stunned him more than anything else. We should get Kelly out of here fast.”
Luke nodded. “I want you two to cross the yard over there. Go beyond the woodpile, and follow the path to the creek. Once you cross it, you’ll head out at about two o’clock until you pass—”
“A twisted pine tree with a double trunk,” Tessa finished. “I remember the way to the Suburban. Did you park it where we originally planned?”
“Yes,” Luke said. “Stone is there waiting. He’s got blankets and food for you. Once you’re settled, if it’s safe, I want you to send Stone back this way. MacBeth and I may need his help.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you coming with us?” Tessa asked.
“Not yet. We’re going to take Otis and Ricky into custody first.”
“No,” Tessa said. “I heard him say he’s going to the airport. They’re packing up as much money as they can carry right now. Let the FBI stop him when he goes to his plane.”
“No way. He killed Ed, he kidnapped you. He’s hurt too many people for me to take the chance that he might get away.”
“They’re armed,” Tessa protested.
“So are we, baby.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Tessa said. “You’re more important to me than any arrest.”
“I love you, too. But this guy is not going to get away. Not this time.”
Tessa made a frustrated noise. Luke took her arm and began to walk with her in the direction of the woodpile. “MacBeth and I are two guys with SWAT training against Ricky and his bodyguard. You’ve got to trust me.”
They reached the cords of stacked wood with the others right behind them. “Maybe I should stay here and—”
“You and Kelly aren’t dressed for the cold. Hypothermia clouds your judgment, baby, so you don’t have long to get to the car. Stop arguing and take that girl to safety. I need you to do that so I can do my job—the one you hired me to do.”
Tessa looked over at Kelly, who was standing next to MacBeth and shivering miserably. The knowledge that she was suffering made the decision a little easier. When it came down to it, she’d just have to trust that Luke knew what he was doing and would get his job done. Her job was to keep her promise to Kelly and get the girl home safely.
She threw her good arm around Luke and hugged him tightly. “Please come back safely. You said you wouldn’t abandon me. I’m holding you to it.”
Luke leaned down and kissed Tessa’s blue, trembling lips. “I’ve got your back. We’re going to bring Ricky and Otis to L.A. to face charges, then you and I are going to have a long talk.”
She nodded and shivered at the same time, then kissed him again before pulling away. “Come on, Kel. Once we get moving you’ll warm up.”