Dangerous Refuge Page 26

  Tires crunching gravel and sage, the Bronco inched forward. Ace made grumbling sounds of impatience, but he didn’t distract Kimberli by yelling at her.

  Shaye didn’t, either. She had an aching memory of the feel of a gun rapping against her skull.

  I’m going to die here wearing these stupid sex-toy handcuffs. And Kimberli of the ridiculous tits and blond extensions is driving me all the way to hell.

  Hysterical laughter rose like an acid bubble in Shaye.

  Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  While you can.

  Forty-two

  The rocky ridges ahead of Tanner were dark, the copper glow of the setting sun only a memory. Everything was drowned in shadows darker than any bruise. The dirt road was a faint, pale thread leading to nowhere.

  Tanner turned the wheel and shot off the battered asphalt to follow the dirt. Dust rose all around, nearly invisible, leaving grit on every surface. The dust around the truck gathered into a ragged banner, flickering with the least change in direction of the wind. He drove like screaming hell, sending dirt spewing everywhere when the road turned, barely holding the straight pieces, and still he felt like he was glued in place.

  The knifepoint glitter of a few stars and a partial moon rising were the only illumination. In the rumpled land ahead of the old truck, night spilled out of ravines and spiked up the ridges.

  No lights showed ahead of him, no flash or gleam to pierce the layers of darkness. The dirt road was a shade or two lighter than the surrounding brush. So were the boulders that stuck out without warning. One of them tried to eat the truck’s right front tire.

  I can’t wait any longer, Tanner thought grimly.

  He turned on the headlights, losing stealth but gaining visibility. Tire tracks leaped out on the dusty stretches of the road, the tread marks crisp enough to leave tiny shadows. His memory told him that was a good sign.

  Someone was here recently. Wind makes short work of tread marks out here.

  The bad news was that headlights announced his presence like a siren.

  Can’t see light ahead of me. They’re probably in one of the folds in those small mountains. Can’t see me.

  I can’t see them, either.

  He pressed down on the accelerator and settled in for a rough ride. The road was made for maybe thirty miles an hour at best. He was doing twice that. The rutted dirt rose and fell, twisted and snaked, and generally behaved like something engineered by cowboys a century ago.

  With one hand he brought his cell phone up and checked the battery and signal. Battery was good.

  There wasn’t enough signal to matter.

  He hit the redial button just to be sure. The phone spun idly for three seconds, five, ten.

  CALL FAILED.

  Shit! August can’t help me anymore.

  Tanner wanted to throw the phone against the windshield, but he had better self-control, so he wedged it under his thigh. Depending on where the satellites were positioned in the sky, GPS could still be an option. But he suspected there were places out here that even GPS couldn’t reach.

  He hoped to hell he wasn’t in one of them.

  The image of Rua’s dead face turned ghastly by the light of the fish tank kept eating into Tanner. That memory he could live with. It was the way the face kept morphing into Shaye’s that was leaving a hole in his guts.

  Don’t think about it. Just drive.

  And pray.

  If Shaye doesn’t come out of those mountains, I’ll kill Ace.

  It wasn’t a prayer, but it gave Tanner patience when he wanted to explode right out of his skin. He’d seen people like himself before—parents of missing kids, families of miners waiting outside a mine explosion, waiting, waiting, waiting for news.

  After enough time, even proof of death was a relief.

  Stop thinking, he snarled at himself. Do the only thing you can do.

  Drive.

  His hands gripped the wheel and he pushed everything else out of his mind. No distractions, no mistakes, nothing but the fact that Shaye needed him.

  The phone chirped.

  Tanner knew what had happened. There wasn’t enough reliable signal to carry talk, but texts needed only an instant of connection to get through. He retrieved the phone and read quickly.

  CELL SIGNAL GONE.

  LOOK FOR TRACK ON LEFT.

  MINES IN AREA. DANGEROUS.

  That didn’t surprise Tanner. People had been falling into abandoned mines when he was a boy. The mines hadn’t been covered since then and human nature didn’t change.

  Easy to hide a body.

  Forever.

  Forty-three

  A gate?” Kimberli asked in a rising voice. “You want me to drive through a closed gate?”

  Ace grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted hard enough to get her attention. “Yes. Just aim and don’t let up on the gas.”

  The gate loomed just at the edge of the headlights.

  Shaye hoped they would crash or roll. Ace was more vulnerable in the backseat than they were in the front.

  “But it’s closed!” Kimberli squeaked.

  “Do it.”

  From the corner of her eye, Shaye caught all the hard edges of Ace’s determination. Kimberli took one look in the rearview mirror and gunned the engine.

  The fence flew apart with a rending crunch. Chunks bounced over the windshield and side panels. Something caught in the grille, rattled, then fell off and spun out of sight. A plank caught in the undercarriage scraped along like a reluctant child. The sound made Shaye want to scream.

  But then, she felt like screaming anyway. Her wrist was bruised and blood-slippery from pulling against the cuffs. The links didn’t feel as solid as they had—and yet they kept on holding.

  “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Ace said over the grinding noise of wood on rocky dirt. “Nothing to worry about. You’ve got to learn to trust me, baby.”

  Whether through fear or silent mutiny, Kimberli lost control of the wheel. Metal gnashed against a boulder with a chilling cry. Sparks exploded.

  So did Ace. He cursed Kimberli in words that matched the shriek of metal on stone.

  Grabbing the diversion, Shaye set her teeth and yanked. The noise of fender and rock covered the small sounds of her struggle—and of metal links giving way.

  I’m free!

  Okay, not really free, but not chained like a goat waiting for a tiger, either.

  Though she ached to move her left arm, she didn’t, not wanting anyone to notice that the cuffs had failed. With her right hand she eased the bear-spray nozzle until it was in position for a left-handed grab and a right-handed pull on the safety ring.

  Slowly Ace ran out of curses.

  Kimberli was as tight-lipped as only a poster for Botox could be.

  “I think you got the oil pan,” Shaye said, her tone matter-of-fact.

  “Shut up,” he snarled. But he leaned forward to watch the dashboard.

  Shaye was watching the dials, too.

  Nothing changed.

  Damn.

  “Almost there, baby,” he said to Kimberli. “Just go up that rise and over the top. There’s a shack on the right. And relax. You know I never can stay mad at you.”

  Shaye felt her opportunity to escape—to live—racing past her far faster than night had overtaken day.

  “What would you have done if Lorne hadn’t so conveniently died?” she asked Ace.

  “We’d have gone the eminent-domain route,” he said. “We’d have won, too, after spending a lot of time and money on attorneys.”

  “That would have raised a stink that’d make a skunk smell like roses,” she said, watching Kimberli from the corner of her eye. “Nobody likes that kind of publicity, particularly Hill and Campbell. Conservancy would look like dirt, too.”

  Other than what might have been a flicker of discomfort trying to register on her unnaturally still face, Kimberli showed no response.

  “Everyone would have surv
ived it,” Ace said. “At the end of the day, money makes everything sweet.”

  “Then why take Lorne out of the equation?” Shaye asked.

  Kimberli opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

  “Who says I did?” Ace asked with a complete lack of interest. “I was at the Carson casino when he died. Ask anyone.”

  “We tried to ask Rua,” Shaye said, “but somebody had murdered him.”

  “Everyone dies. Fact of life. Some people die sooner than others. Boo fucking hoo.”

  Kimberli’s eyes narrowed and she sort of hunched over the wheel. The farther down the road they went, the meaner and colder Ace became. Whether he realized it or not, his attitude was helping Shaye chip away at the other woman’s certainty that Ace would never hurt her.

  Shaye saw what Ace couldn’t—Kimberli was looking more and more scared. Maybe she finally understood what waited for her at the end of the road. She certainly had stopped whining about how much farther she’d have to drive, as if she no longer believed she’d be with Ace on the long trip home. She was also going so slow it would have been faster to walk, which was why the Bronco kept lurching and stalling.

  Or maybe, just maybe, the gas tank was nearly empty, working only when it sloshed over the feed.

  “We’re far enough out here that nobody can overhear, no reporter is going to pop out from behind a boulder, nothing but nothing around us,” Shaye said. “So why aren’t you trying to talk me into coming over to the dark side and having a nice cup of Kool-Aid?”

  “Impatient?” Ace asked, his tone baiting. “Don’t worry, all the hassle and waiting soon will be over for you.”

  “I’m in no hurry to die.”

  “Like I said, fact of life.”

  The Bronco stalled out, bucked, stalled, and finally lurched over the ridgeline. Ace was too busy keeping his head from banging against the hardtop or the window to swear at Kimberli’s driving.

  With both hands, Shaye gripped the bear-spray canister. The next time Kimberli stalled out the Bronco—or if Ace noticed the handcuff was broken—Shaye was going to turn and give him a face shot and to hell with being in a closed car.

  Kimberli made a whimpering sound that he couldn’t hear, but Shaye could. The other woman was a ghost wearing rouge and mascara, a clown face driving a death car. Shaye didn’t know whether to keep tearing away at the older woman’s confidence or to get ready for the emotional train wreck that was coming.

  Trees raked black fingers through the headlights. Off to the right, at the farthest edge of the high beams, the tilted hull of an old miner’s shack loomed like news from a deadly future.

  The Bronco coughed and died.

  Kimberli ground on the starter. The battery did its part, but the engine didn’t fire.

  Shaye got ready to pitch herself out into the darkness.

  Without warning, Kimberli broke. Suddenly she clawed at the driver’s door and scrambled into the darkness.

  “You stupid bitch!” Ace yelled, lunging forward and grabbing at her glittery shirt before it fled beyond his reach.

  Kimberli jerked, then fell forward, ripping her shirt from his grasping fingers. While she scrambled to her feet, his gun flashed in the overhead light as he took aim through the open driver’s door.

  Shaye whipped the can of bear spray around, pointed the nozzle at his face, and pressed. The can hissed, gurgled, hiccuped, and stuttered.

  The .22 went off with a sound like a very big whip cracking. Once, twice.

  Kimberli ran faster.

  Ace realized that the muted hiss and mutter he was hearing came from more than the engine. He glanced toward Shaye as she shouldered her door open while trying to get the bear spray to fire. He stared at her in disbelief and then pure rage, torn between aiming the gun at her and trying to protect himself by diving behind the front seat.

  The bear spray finally kicked in with a huge hiss. An instant later came the whip-crack of the .22 firing and Ace’s harsh curses. The smell of capsicum burned inside the Bronco, sticking to everything it touched like napalm.

  Shooting wildly, Ace bellowed in shock and sudden pain, throwing himself behind the seat’s protection.

  Shaye hit the ground on her hands and knees, still holding her breath, eyes tightly closed against the blowback of the spray. She rolled and scrambled to her feet. The clank of metal on rock told her that she had instinctively held on to the flashlight. For an instant she considered making a grab for Ace’s gun. Then common sense took over and she started running for the biggest patch of darkness she could see.

  As she took her second stride she felt a numbing pain along the outside of her left calf that was so intense, she barely kept her balance.

  Did I twist my knee? My ankle?

  Doesn’t matter.

  Run!

  She had to get to cover before Ace threw off the glancing encounter with the bear spray. From the corner of her eye, she could see the wink and flash of Kimberli’s silver tennis shoes as she sprinted up the rough dirt track.

  When his head clears, Ace will be on her like a wolf on a rabbit, Shaye thought.

  Wind called hollowly through the sparse forest, making branches tremble and sway. Gently she tested her leg, which was feeling weird, almost numb, yet she knew pain was there. The leg wasn’t out of commission, yet it wasn’t quite reliable, like it was slow in receiving messages from her brain.

  She could follow Kimberli but that would only make Ace’s job easier. The best way to help the other woman was to take off in a different direction, forcing him to choose which target he followed first. No direction looked particularly welcoming, but if Shaye’s orientation was correct, the arm of forest off the left bumper was between her and the twisty road back to civilization.

  Making no effort at silence, much less stealth, she ran into the trees with a dogged, uneven gait. She had gone barely a hundred feet before she heard the Bronco’s door slam open behind her.

  Cursing, coughing, Ace started firing the .22. Bullets whined, ricocheting off rocks to the right of Shaye.

  He had chosen his target and it wasn’t Kimberli.

  Shaye forced herself to run faster. Her leg was going from mostly numb to throbbing life. It hurt like hell burning, but it was more reliable despite the pain.

  From a distance, back in the direction where Kimberli had run in a full-out panic, came a shrill scream. It was cut off sharply.

  Did Kimberli fall?

  No more screams came and there was nothing Shaye could do about it right now. Ace was closing in on her.

  Get away from Ace. That’s all that matters.

  Run.

  Shaye ran.

  Forty-four

  The truck bucked and jolted over the road, going too fast and not nearly fast enough. All that kept Tanner from a saner pace was the tantalizing come-on of the tire tracks ahead. As long as they continued, he would follow at breakneck speed. He bounced over another rocky rise, hoping to see the Bronco ahead.

  Nothing but tracks slowly being sanded away by the increasing wind.

  Can’t lose them.

  Faster.

  He knew that he was covering ground quicker than the Bronco had, for its tracks showed none of the slipping and sliding that came from speeding over a bad surface.

  Soon.

  I’ll overtake them soon.

  Then he would be able to use the gun that was poking a hole in his back with every bounce.

  And he knew just who he was going to shoot.

  The engine made laboring noises. The stink of hot oil and metal filled the cab. He didn’t bother to look down at the gauges. He knew the temperature needle was edging into the red zone. He’d break down soon—whether by blowing the radiator or breaking an axle. But right now he was going a whole lot faster than he could run, and that was all that mattered.

  The only signs that the track had been used in years were the tread marks left by Shaye’s Bronco.

  Then his headlight picked out a bit of orange. In the instant
that his heart leaped, he realized that he was seeing a ragged line of paint scraped off by a boulder that poked out into the road. The tree line was just beyond his headlights.

  According to August’s last text, he had less than a quarter of a mile before he caught up with Shaye’s vehicle. Of course, that was a crow’s-flight measurement. Out here, with the road twisting back on itself and snaking around obstacles as it climbed and dipped, it could be a lot more.

  Briefly Tanner thought about going cross-country on foot, then decided against it. As long as the truck held together, it was the quickest way to Shaye.

  The phone chirped as another text arrived. He glanced down, seeing the message in one quick sweep.

  MINES AROUND U.

  STAY ON ROAD.

  Tanner gripped the wheel hard.

  What is August, a mind reader?

  The truck gnashed and hissed but kept going, spitting dirt, grit, and small stones every inch of the way. Tanner knew he owed the engine’s continued life to the coolness of the air. If the temperature had been ten degrees hotter, the engine would have seized.

  It would anyway.

  The only question was when.

  Under the driver’s relentless will, the truck bounced down the track, wallowed in the trough in the middle, and climbed up the rise like a swimmer gasping and plowing through heavy waves.

  Suddenly he saw a light glowing between trees ahead and above him, off to the right. The light wasn’t moving.

  The Bronco had stopped.

  Tanner didn’t know if a trap waited ahead and didn’t particularly care. The truck’s temperature had gone into the red. Spectral wraiths of steam escaped from the hood and flattened across the dusty windshield, creating muddy tears. He kept the accelerator down on the floor, screaming toward the Bronco and Shaye.

  Abruptly something cut into the path of the headlights.

  A woman, running toward him on the road.

  Shaye.

  Or Kimberli.