Sunset Bridge (35 page)

They reconvened in the living room when everyone was finished.

“I know there are things left to do here,” Wanda said, “but I’m going to look for my daughter. And I’m going to start at that Blake Armstrong’s house.”

Tracy hadn’t had a moment to talk to Marsh privately. She doubted he believed Blake Armstrong had anything to do with Maggie’s disappearance. Blake was such an unlikely villain, and there could be a dozen reasons why Maggie hadn’t come back to Happiness Key. Right now she could be in Palmetto Grove saying prayers for all of them or worse, she could have been on the bridge, although the timing didn’t seem right.

Instead, Marsh surprised her. “If Cardrake Brothers had done what they were supposed to, the bridge wouldn’t have gone down. I think it’s pretty clear they used inferior materials, or didn’t follow the plans they submitted and took shortcuts. They wanted to come in under budget so they’d get the contract for the new bridge, and whatever they did worked, as far as it went. But they gambled that the old bridge would stand until the new one went up, and they lost. It’s possible Maggie uncovered something, and they found out.”

Tracy was relieved she wasn’t going to have to plead Maggie’s case. “Where do we look for her, and how do we go about it?”

“I can start over at Armstrong’s house,” Marsh said. “There’s no reason for all of us to go.”

“Dead wrong,” Wanda said. “You couldn’t stop me with a truck.”

“I’m going, too,” Tracy said. “We can spread out.”

“It’s getting wild out there,” Marsh warned.

“And I’m physically fit, and perfectly capable of figuring out what I can and can’t do,” Tracy reminded him.

He smiled just enough to let her know he heard the message. “Got it. Janya, will you go through my cupboards and see what food you can find that won’t need heating? Maybe set that stuff on the counter by the microwave so it’s easy to find when the power goes off. Cook anything that appeals to you and the kids while you still can. I have a generator, but we’re going to have to conserve fuel. We don’t know how long we’ll be here until the bay is quiet or clear enough for my skiff or any rescue craft.”

They donned the rain gear they’d removed on arrival and took Marsh’s truck. Tracy sat beside him, with Wanda in the rear seat of the cab.

“I think we should break into Blake’s house,” Tracy said. “What if she’s in there?”

Marsh didn’t sound enthused. “Let’s just look around and see first, okay? And if it comes to that, will you let me go in by myself, please? If this guy’s done something to Maggie, then he’s not somebody we want you to encounter.”

She heard his concern, and despite everything else, it warmed her. Wanda was punching in numbers on her cell phone, still unsuccessfully trying to get through to Ken or somebody on the mainland. Tracy leaned closer to Marsh and rested her fingers on his arm. “My hero.”

He smiled at her, but sobered as he pulled into the driveway of Blake Armstrong’s house. “Let’s make a plan before we get out.”

“Think we should march right up there and ask if Maggie’s in the house?”

“What are the chances anybody’s there? But I think that’s the way we ought to start.”

Wanda snapped her phone shut. “I can’t get through to anybody anywhere. Now they’re saying all circuits are busy. When I get anything at all.”

“Unlikely we’ll be able to get through until the storm’s passed. But when we’re done looking, I know an old guy not far from the bridge with a ham radio.”

“Awesome. How fifties,” Tracy said.

“Still lots of amateur radio around, although nowadays the equipment can be really high-tech. That stuff was invaluable during Katrina. He’s kind of a recluse, so it’s unlikely he evacuated. We’ll head there and see what we can find out. He might already be in touch with the cops.”

Tracy opened her door, but Marsh put his hand on her arm. “Listen, you and Wanda be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary chances. That won’t help anybody.”

She nodded. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

Tracy hadn’t gone more than ten steps before she realized just how difficult their mission was. While the rain had lessened, at least temporarily, the wind was blowing so hard she found it difficult to keep her balance. She, Marsh and Wanda held on to each other as they struggled toward the door. Just as bad, the skies were growing dark enough to pass for night. On the stoop, Marsh rang the bell; then he pounded on the door with both fists. As all of them expected, nobody answered.

“She could still be in there!” Wanda shouted.

Tracy tried the door, but of course it was locked.

“It’s going to be hard to break a window. They all have bars over them. I’m going around back and see what I can find,” Marsh said.

Wanda nodded in agreement. “I’m going up the road. If
Maggie was snooping, she wouldn’t have parked where her car could be seen.”

“Why don’t you wait until we’re done here, then we’ll drive a little way and look for it together,” Marsh said.

Wanda considered. “Got nothing better to do while I wait.”

“I’m going with Wanda,” Tracy told him. “Easier for two to stay upright.”

They separated, and Tracy and Wanda headed down the driveway as Marsh went around back.

“Didn’t see anything driving in, let’s go the other way,” Wanda said.

They walked into the wind, leaning forward and making slow progress.

“I know something’s wrong,” Wanda said after a minute of forging their way against the wind. “A mother knows.”

“A mother worries, but that doesn’t mean she’s right.”

Their progress was slow, but it was progress nonetheless. Both women were avidly searching the roadside as they lurched forward, but so far there was nothing to see except trees swaying in the wind. Tracy was tired almost immediately, but she kept moving.

One minute they were safe, far enough from the trees to limit their risk. The next a six-foot section of sheet metal came flying from the direction of the beach and missed them by mere feet as it finally caught, at least temporarily, against the trunk of a crape myrtle, one of a small grove at the roadside.

“This isn’t a good idea,” Tracy said, heart in her mouth. “We shouldn’t be out on the road unprotected. Marsh was right. We’d better go back and do this in the pickup.”

“She was going to park out of sight, she’d have driven a
ways,” Wanda said. “A good long ways, then doubled back. Not somewhere where it’d be easy to spot her car.”

“We’ll get Marsh to drive this way before we turn around.” Gazing toward the sheet metal to figure out where it might have come from, Tracy caught another glint just behind the crape myrtles, their segmented blossoms whirling madly in the air as the wind stripped them from the branches. She halted and pulled Wanda to a stop beside her.

She pointed, and Wanda shielded her eyes to see what Tracy had spotted.

Beyond the copse of bending, twisting limbs, the trunk of Maggie’s sedan was just visible. Hidden there by Wanda’s daughter or, worse, by someone else who had not wanted the car to be discovered.

M
aggie didn’t need years as a police detective and a degree in criminology to figure out what was going to happen next. The men had a boat, and they were taking it and her toward the mainland—only there would be three passengers on departure and two on arrival. They would untie her hands and remove the gag just before they shoved her out of the boat somewhere in the middle of the bay. Now the only question was whether they would depend on the fury of Mother Nature to take care of the final step or help the Good Mother along.

Despite the futility, she was hoping for the first. At least if they threw her in the water in a conscious state, she had a fighting chance. She was a strong swimmer, which, unfortunately, Blake might remember from their “getting to know you” conversations. In waves kicked up by an approaching hurricane, being a good swimmer wouldn’t be enough, of course. She would only survive if she stayed afloat long
enough to be washed ashore. But it was a chance. And she needed a chance.

Maggie fought the two men as they tried to lift her to her feet, and kicked out at Blake, who slapped her again. “Keep that up and we
will
drag you to the boat,” he snarled. “By your hair!”

She didn’t doubt he meant it, or that he would get some kind of perverse enjoyment out of doing it.

Every part of her ached from being bound, but her head hurt the worst. She knew she had to forget the pain, even welcome it. Pain meant she was alive, and that was good—a condition not guaranteed to last. She tried to welcome the blood rushing back into her limbs, and the stabbing ache in her back, where her bound hands had been shoved against her body while she was tied to one of the posts holding up her fish camp prison.

Upright at last, nausea threatened to overwhelm her, and she was almost sorry it didn’t. She would have loved to spew everything she’d eaten that day over Blake’s expensive topsiders.

“What…makes you think you can make it to Palmetto Grove in the storm?” she asked. “Your plan is full of holes.”

“Stuff the gag back in her mouth,” Blake told Ned.

Ned released her arm to rummage on the ground for the gag. As he did, Maggie’s bound wrist brushed against the pocket of her windbreaker, and she felt just the slightest bulge. She was sure the men must have searched her, but they had missed something zipped into her inside pocket. The familiar bulge of her cell phone in her jeans was gone. She couldn’t remember what this smaller bulge was. Certainly not her car keys. She remembered leaving them under the front seat before heading up Blake’s driveway.

How long ago had that been? The skies were now dark, so dark it could already be night. These days the sun set around six-thirty. Could it be that late, or even later? She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. Judging from the stiffness of her body, the numbness in her limbs, a long time. The dark skies could simply be the storm blotting out all remaining sunlight, or the hour could be advanced enough that the sun had disappeared on its own. Whichever scenario was true, one thing was certain. The storm had picked up intensity. Maggie guessed it was quickly bearing down on them.

She tried again to remember what was zipped inside her windbreaker pocket and couldn’t. Ned grabbed her arm again; then, when she struggled, he clamped his fingers on the rope still tying her wrists. As he did, she felt the rope give just a little more.

But was it enough?

“Give me that,” Blake said, and Ned handed him the gag. Blake wrapped it around Maggie’s mouth as she fought him, kicking her hard in the shin when she attempted to bite him.

She used the kick as an excuse to collapse to the ground, where he kicked her again.

“Cut it out!” Ned shrieked above her. “You want to leave proof she was beaten before she died?”

“You don’t think a corpse drifting on the tides gets knocked around?”

“I watch cop shows. Maybe you ought to watch a few. The coroner can tell if somebody was killed before or after they were injured.”

“You think this is, what, an episode of
Palmetto Grove CSI?
”

“I think you ought to concentrate on the task at hand.”

“Me, huh? This isn’t about
me
. It’s about
us
. It’s about saving our necks. We have one chance here. We kill her. We make sure nothing—
nothing
—connects us to that barber and his wife. We plead ignorance about the bridge, tell them the fault was the contractors’ and we did everything we were supposed to. The guys cheated us. They lied to us. The only way we disappointed anybody was not uncovering their plans.”

“Like they’re going to go along with that! The guys who did the labor worked for Cardrake, too. Nobody’s going to believe any of this.”

“Then you come up with a better plan, Ned.”

On the ground, Maggie was breathing raggedly, afraid Blake might have cracked a rib. She prayed Ned
would
come up with a better plan, and that it wouldn’t involve killing her. But then she saw the man’s shoulders slump.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Ned said. “Just see if you can manage to do it without enjoying yourself so much.”

Blake launched into a profane tirade that Maggie might have found funny once upon a time. Now it was clear that the man was simply at the end of his rope. If she pushed him too hard, he might well kill her now just for the brief moments of release her death would afford him.

Ned bent over and grabbed one arm, and Blake, his clasped hands like a vise, raised her to her feet again.

“Don’t push me!” he shouted at her, as if the gag had somehow affected her hearing, too.

She longed to tell Blake where she would like to push him, but communication time was over. She just stared at him, her gaze steady, until he shoved to get her moving again.

She dragged her feet as much as she could, and she stumbled over every obstacle in the way, buying herself seconds
each time. Once they were out of their dubious shelter she was instantly drenched again, and the wind was a living creature clawing and moaning as it wrapped itself around her, nearly lifting her off her feet.

She had no idea how far they still had to go. Praying someone would happen upon them, she continued to stumble, to drag her feet, to fall to her knees once again when the men missed a piece of driftwood and she tripped, this time without planning to. There was a sliver of silver along the horizon, and now she guessed that sunset was just ending. She suspected the men had carefully waited until this moment, the hurricane not yet here, the sun just down, the bay still navigable, if only just.

Ned hauled her back to her feet by the rope tying her wrists. She felt it give a little more and prayed he wouldn’t notice. They pushed her on, and she stumbled again, but between them, they held her upright.

The men had stopped talking. No one would hear them over the storm, but she supposed they really had nothing to say to each other, anyway. She wished that, while she had the chance to talk to Ned, she had pointed out that if Blake was willing to kill her for what she knew, he would be just as willing to kill his partner. The boat and the storm might yield the obvious ringleader a twofer.

When lightning flashed, which it did intermittently and distantly, she attempted to gauge her whereabouts. She had expected to be thrown into a car to cross the key to a boat on the bayside. But now that she was oriented, she saw they were moving in the general direction of Happiness Key, and then she saw why. Lightning sizzled again, and when it did she saw, opening up before her, the small silted-up channel where
guides had once brought boats to ferry customers out into the Gulf. She saw a craft anchored in the water near the mouth. A cabin cruiser, from the look of it.

They weren’t yet close enough for her to guess the boat’s size, but she knew it had to be large, because Blake was willing to risk taking it to safety somewhere. Leaving from here meant that he would have to negotiate the Gulf waters, then, most likely, one of the saltwater canals that cut across the island at the tip nearest the bridge. Or perhaps, even more hazardous, skirt the island, giving it wide berth to avoid sand-bars and treacherous shallow water, then round the point to head into the bay toward town.

Exactly where would Blake shove her over? She tried to imagine the worst place, the one she was least likely to escape from. At the same time, she knew it probably didn’t matter, because Blake would make sure she wasn’t conscious wherever she went into the water. Gulf or bay, halfway to Palmetto Grove or only a hundred yards out to sea. She would be just as dead in one place as another.

She felt tears welling in her eyes and blinked them away. She had to stay focused. She had to stay alive.

Her arm brushed the slight bulge in her pocket again. Whatever was there wasn’t worth the time she was spending trying to identify it. She had to concentrate on getting away from the men, breaking free and running. She couldn’t let them put her in that boat.

As if they knew what she was thinking, both men tightened their grip on her arms. They were half dragging, half propelling her forward against the wind now. She dug her feet into the sand, but she was no match for the two of them, especially since they were motivated by their own desire to escape while
they could. They finally reached the water’s edge, despite her every attempt to delay them.

The tide was as high as she had ever seen it, and the waves were rougher, not good news on either count. The boat was moored out from the shore in deeper water, and the men waded in, pulling Maggie along behind them. The water was cold, the waves already spraying as high as her chest. She shuddered, but the shock seemed to clear her head a little, and when Ned stumbled as the shore fell away near the ladder to the boat, she took advantage of the moment. She yanked her arm away and angled toward Blake, using her body as a battering ram to knock him into the waves. The attempt was futile; he didn’t even stumble. He shoved back, and Ned, who had recovered his balance, caught and gripped her arm again.

“I’ll go up and haul her in once I’m on board!” Blake shouted to Ned. “You push her up the ladder.”

Maggie hoped this might be the moment to escape. Ned alone would be clutching her while Blake climbed, giving her precious seconds to get away from the partner who was at least partially ambivalent about what they were doing.

“And, Ned,” Blake said, “you lose her now, I take off without you. It’s a guarantee.”

Blake dropped Maggie’s arm and started up the ladder, but before she could do anything, Ned shoved her hard against the bottom rung and pinned her there with his body. She tried to wriggle free, but clearly Ned had taken Blake’s threat as gospel. She felt hands reaching down, then Ned lifting her. She struggled, but with no success.

“You pin her into that seat over there,” Blake told Ned
once they’d hoisted her flailing body on board. “I’ll get this thing going.”

She had been afraid the men might tie her to the seat, but this wasn’t much better. Ned was lanky, but wide in the hips. He pinned her between himself and the sidewall, and Blake went to the steering console. In moments they were moving out into the high waves, the boat rocking crazily beneath them. Ned tried to snag a life jacket on a seat from the other side of the aisle, but it was tantalizingly out of reach. Maggie watched carefully. If he stood to get it, she might have seconds to launch herself past him and into the water. But Ned quickly gave up.

She wedged herself in the corner of the seat and began to work her hands. Ned was clearly anxious, and seemed less worried about
her
than about being out on the water with a hurricane descending. The rope was definitely looser now. She could touch it with both thumbs and managed to turn it an inch, then another, until the knot was within reach, but after long minutes of struggle she despaired of inserting a thumb into the knot itself. Blake had obviously trained as a sailor, probably at his local yacht club. But her struggles had loosened the bond enough that she thought she might actually be able to slip one hand free.

The maneuver required room, and she doubted Ned would give it to her without question, or ignore what she was doing. When he leaned forward to shout something to Blake, she used the opportunity and yanked one hand as high as it would go. She made progress, but the rope caught on the heel of her hand and held.

One more try. She just needed one more chance and she might be able to free herself.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” Ned said, settling back against the seat. “This wasn’t my idea.”

She was gagged and couldn’t answer, which was just as well. Carefully, as the boat rocked violently, she tried to slide her hand higher, to free her palm from the grip of the rope. Again she brushed whatever was in her pocket and was distracted for a moment.

She didn’t need distractions, but the bulge continued to occupy some portion of her mind anyway, as if it was a living presence that would not be so easily set aside. Furious at herself, she tried harder to concentrate, to pay attention, so if Ned leaned forward again, or gave up and reached for the life jacket, she could give her hand one more jerk to freedom.

And then she remembered.

The GPS unit that Felo had given her, in case she got lost on one of her solo adventures. She had slipped the little unit into this windbreaker during her canoe trip on the morning before she and Janya had searched the Duttas’ apartment. She hadn’t thought of it since.

She struggled to remember what the GPS required to set off its alarm. Was it as easy as pushing a button? She had accidentally set off the locator after moving to Palmetto Grove Key. That’s how Felo had tracked her there. But she knew there was also an SOS button. Unlatching and pushing the button in a crisis sent a signal that was tracked by an international rescue center. Her coordinates would continue to be tracked and logged and all information sent to local rescue personnel, as well as to her designated personal contact.

Felo.

Had he continued to pay the service fees? They hadn’t been together for months now. She wouldn’t blame him for
canceling. A cop’s pay allowed few luxuries, and these days Felo was paying the mortgage alone.