Lance summoned his strength. “Let’s go,” he shouted to the boy.
Evan curled around himself as they moved back into the water. Lance pulled them both along the line. The force of the water made him struggle for every inch. Twenty feet.
Come on. Pull harder.
Lance gritted his teeth against his aching arms. He pushed off a rock with a foot, using his legs to gain another foot on the rope.
Fifteen feet.
Almost.
On the bank, Morgan and Tina leaned into the effort. Using their legs to pull, they inched backward.
Something crashed upriver. Lance’s head swiveled around. A small tree shot toward them, riding on the swift water. He grabbed Evan and pulled him toward the shore. The tree struck the guideline on the cave end. The rope snapped. The release of tension sent Lance and Evan flailing into the current. Lance hung on to the rope. But the nylon was slippery and his strength was flagging.
They dangled in the current. Lance kicked, but he couldn’t get his feet back under his body. He could barely hold on.
On the bank, Tina and Morgan strained, but the combined weight of the men and the strength of the river was working against them. They were not physically strong enough.
The yellow paracord was the only thing keeping them from being washed away.
Chapter Thirty-Five
In the darkness of the trunk, Sharp felt the car moving and the body next to him trembling.
“Olivia?” Sharp said softly.
Her body jerked, then stilled. “Lincoln?” Her voice shook.
He could hear her teeth rattling.
“Are you all right?”
“Physically, yes.” But her body trembled hard.
Sharp could sense a big fat but on its way. He began feeling around for something he could use to cut their zip ties. He and Lance sometimes practiced breaking them, but he had no room to maneuver.
Her breathing came hard and fast. “I’m claustrophobic. I have to admit, I’m freaking out right now.”
“Is your head covered?” Sharp tugged at his hood. It was secured around his neck with a thin piece of nylon. He had to work at the knot for a few minutes, but he eventually loosened it. He pulled the hood off. The trunk was dark and the air stale, but he could breathe a little better.
“Yes.” Her tone rose, as if she were going to cry. The vulnerability in her voice was unexpected. “I can’t get it off. It’s getting tighter.”
The fabric over Sharp’s head had been stifling. He couldn’t imagine how Olivia felt.
“Let me try.” He reached for her head, but his hands tangled in her masses of thick hair. He brushed it aside and found the nylon cord with his fingers. She’d pulled at it, tightening the knot.
He worked at the knot until it loosened. Then he eased the hood off her head. “There.”
Her gulps for air were audible. “Thank you.”
“I can give you more room too.” Sharp held his hands tight against his chest. There seemed to be an inch or two of space behind him.
The trunk was large as trunks went, but it was still a tight squeeze. Sharp wriggled backward. His legs were bent, and his body was curled into a C. But he managed to ease out from under her. She slid to the carpet. “Is that better?”
She was smaller and fit into the curve of his body. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Keep—”
“Do not tell me to keep calm.”
“I won’t.” Sharp would rather her temper flare than her fear. “I was going to say Try and keep your breathing slow and even. Close your eyes.”
“I can’t breathe at all.” She choked. “There’s no air in here.”
“Trunks aren’t completely airtight. If we control our breathing, we’ll be fine.” For a while. Sharp kept that last part to himself.
“Do you see a trunk release lever?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
Sharp wasn’t surprised. Men who transported bodies in trunks no doubt made alterations to suit their needs, like removing the emergency trunk release.
The car hit a bump, and they both bounced. His body position was awkward. His shoulder was pressed into the floor by his body weight. Pain sang from his wrist to his shoulder. If they were kept in the trunk for a while, his whole arm would be numb.
He was unarmed. He didn’t have his cell phone. And he had no freaking idea where they were going. He didn’t even know the lay of the land to guess. What was he going to do when the car stopped?
He needed to free his hands. He went back to searching the carpet with his fingers. He needed a nail or a paper clip.
Would the two thugs drag them out of the car to shoot them? Probably. They wouldn’t want to get blood in the trunk. Sharp would have to assess the situation as it happened.
But there was no point thinking of that right now.
Olivia trembled against him. Her breaths hitched.
“Breathe with me. In . . .” Sharp inhaled loudly, then blew out the air in two long slow words. “And out.”
Olivia mimicked him. Even in the dark, cramped space, Sharp could feel the tension radiating from her and respected her herculean effort to keep her shit together.
“Again.” He repeated the breaths, this time counting to four on the inhale and again on the exhale. They got a rhythm going, and Sharp turned his attention to listening. The road noise under the car’s tires sounded like a paved surface, and the car had picked up speed. They were on a highway or empty rural road. He listened harder, but heard no traffic other than the vehicle they were in.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “This was not how this was supposed to go.”
“I know.”
The car came to a stop, paused for a few heartbeats, then started up again. Sharp rolled a little as the vehicle made a turn. His weight hit the wallet in his back pocket. His lockpick was in his wallet. He could use the pick to open their zip ties. He tried to get his hands around his body to reach, but he wasn’t flexible enough.
“Are your hands bound in front of you or behind your back?” Sharp asked.
“In front,” she said.
“I have a tool in my wallet I might be able to use to spring these zip ties. My wallet is in my back pocket, but my hands are bound in front of my body. Do you think you can somehow get it out? We’ll both have to roll over.”
“I’m small. I can do it.”
“I’ll give you as much room as I can.” Sharp flattened himself against the back of the trunk.
“Here goes.” Olivia began to squirm. Thankfully, criminals preferred vehicles with large trunks. “Can you slide up a bit?”
Sharp was game. Any action was better than simply waiting for their fate as if it were inevitable. He mapped out the trunk space in his head. Sharp began to inch along the carpet.
Olivia continued to move. Some part of her jammed Sharp in the groin. If he hadn’t been pinned, the pain would have doubled him over.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s OK,” he hissed and breathed. It had been a light blow, and the pain ebbed quickly.
“I’m over,” she breathed. Her hands grasped his.
He gave hers a return squeeze. “We can do this.”
“OK. I’m wiggling backward.” She shifted away from him.
He released her hands, then started to move. He was taller and could move only an inch or so at a time. But eventually, he was facing the back of the trunk.
He felt fingers in his pocket and his wallet slid out. A few totally inappropriate thoughts skittered through his mind.
You’re an idiot.
“I have it.” Olivia sounded triumphant. “I’ll drop it in front of you?”
“Yes.”
“Then how will you open the ties?”
Sharp snorted. Without being able to see, it wouldn’t be easy. “It might take a while.”
“If you roll back over, I could do it for you.”
“That makes sense.” Sharp went through the reve
rse motions of turning onto his other side. He was out of breath and sweating by the time he faced her. Their legs were tangled, and he could feel the heat of her breath on his face. He slid the pick from his wallet and pushed it into her fingers. “You need to work the pick between the locking mechanism and the teeth.”
“All right.”
The zip tie moved, biting deeper into Sharp’s skin as she worked with it.
“Do you think Joe gave the order to kill us?” she asked.
Sharp rewound the meeting in his head. He’d been focused mostly on Joe, not Aaron, but there had been definite anger in the son’s face. “I’m thinking that Aaron is staging a coup. He didn’t seem all that happy that his papa was back from prison.”
“I think so too. Aaron didn’t give the order for us to be killed until his father was gone,” Olivia noted. “Aaron has been running the business for twenty-five years. He might resent having to give up control now because his father’s been released.”
“It has to be a kick to Aaron’s ego to have his weak old father giving him and his men orders after he spent more than two decades at the helm.”
“Do you think Joe or Aaron had Paul killed?” Olivia asked.
“Aaron,” Sharp said, almost surprised at how quickly the answer came to him. “If Joe had done it, he would have had us killed. Or he wouldn’t have asked to meet us in the first place.”
“I’m not sure why Joe wanted to meet with us anyway.”
“He wanted information from us about Paul’s murder.” Sharp replayed the conversation in his head. “He was bluffing when he said he knew everything.”
“And he was hoping we’d fill him in,” Olivia said.
“Yes.” Sharp replayed the interview again. He hadn’t told Joe anything that wasn’t public information. What had Joe been hoping to learn?
Did he want to find Tina? Or Evan?
Sharp couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
The car rumbled on and on. Sharp tried to keep Olivia’s mind engaged and off their dire situation.
“I’m sorry this is taking me so long,” Olivia said. “I suspect we’ve gone farther than back to the office complex.”
“It might just seem that way,” Sharp lied. He was betting on a very isolated secondary location, with no witnesses and adequate open space for two shallow graves. But Olivia was already scared. She didn’t need his ideas in her head along with her own fears.
“They will want to take us somewhere very private.” She was too smart.
The sound of tires on pavement became a flat and monotonous track of white noise. Sharp realized the car hadn’t stopped or changed speed for a long time. They were on a long road that didn’t require them to stop for lights or intersections. He’d felt the slight force of the car speeding through curves in the road, but that was all.
“I’ve got it,” Olivia said, her voice excited.
Sharp heard the sound of the plastic teeth moving through the lock. A few seconds later, his hands were free.
He rubbed his wrists, then took the pick from her hands and went to work on hers. He had the lock open in a few minutes. “There you are.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Sharp slid the lockpick into his pocket. “Move your hands and feet. Tighten and release all your muscles to keep them from going to sleep. If I can disable or distract the men, I want you able to run.”
Sharp flexed his fingers and rolled his ankles, tying to keep the blood flowing into his limbs as best he could.
“If I can turn around,” Olivia said, “I can try to break a taillight. Maybe I can signal someone.”
“Good idea.” But Sharp suspected they were in the middle of nowhere. He doubted there would be anyone to signal.
The car began to bounce up and down. Sharp wrapped his arms around Olivia to protect her from the jarring. Had they left the road? Dread pooled like acid in his belly.
Olivia tensed. “We’re stopping.”
“Maybe. Position your hands as if they are still joined.”
“I thought I wanted to get out of this trunk more than anything else, but now I’m afraid of that too. They’re going to kill us.” She was bracing herself.
“They’re going to try.”
The brakes made a soft squeal as the car came to a complete stop. When the vehicle remained motionless, Sharp waited. He’d have preferred to be between Olivia and the opening, but the limited space in the trunk did not allow for them to switch positions.
The trunk popped open. The night was dark, and rain fell on Sharp’s face. Thunder crackled as someone reached into the trunk and hauled Olivia out.
Sharp was next.
“You got the hoods off. Now you can watch each other die.” The driver pointed a gun at Sharp. “Get out.”
Sharp pressed his wrists together, pretending his hands were still bound. The driver became impatient and half dragged him over the lip of the trunk. Sharp landed on his knees in the mud.
He got his bearings. The sedan was parked in the middle of a field. There was no road in sight. The passenger had Olivia over his shoulder like a rolled carpet. Her feet kicked, and her body flailed.
“You bitch.” The passenger dropped Olivia to the muddy ground.
She fell to her knees, lifting her chin and staring up at him with a fierce look.
He touched his cheek, pulled his hand away from his face, and looked at it. “You scratched me.”
He slapped her across the face, knocking her to the ground. Pressing a hand to her cheek, Olivia started picking herself up. She was plastered in mud from head to toe.
Anger and fear pulsed in Sharp’s veins. He needed to save himself before he could save her.
Closing in on Sharp, the driver chuckled, his voice radiating arrogance. “If you can’t handle the woman, I’ll get her next.”
Sharp got one foot under his body and repositioned his weight. He needed to be able to act in an instant should an opening arise. The driver whipped out his gun and pointed it six inches from Sharp’s forehead. Sharp had a split second of time before he would be dead.
“Fuck!” the passenger yelled.
In Sharp’s peripheral vision, he saw Olivia launch herself at the passenger. Wrapping her arms around him, she drove a knee toward his groin.
“Fucking get off me!” The passenger twisted away from her driving knee and pulled at her arms, but Olivia held on.
The driver’s gaze wavered at the distraction.
And that was the split second that Sharp needed. In one quick movement, he slipped his head to the left, out of the line of fire, while grabbing the slide of the gun and redirecting the weapon’s aim to the right. At the same time, he used his right hand to strike the inside of the driver’s wrist, then grabbed the gun and twisted it out of the driver’s grip. Sharp shot him three times in the chest, then spun toward Olivia.
The passenger had shaken her off and was reaching behind him. He brought his gun around his body. On her knees, Olivia flung a handful of mud in his face. Sharp fired. His first bullet hit the man in the neck. The second and third were body shots. The passenger jerked twice, stared down at his chest for a second, then his legs folded and he collapsed.
And just like that, it was over.
Adrenaline rushed through Sharp’s blood like a subway train. His heart hammered, and his vision blurred.
Olivia crawled over to him. Her mouth was moving, but all he could hear was the echo of his own heartbeat.
He held up one finger and motioned for her to stay behind him.
Staggering to his feet, Sharp walked closer to the driver. With the gun still pointed, he kicked the man’s legs. The body moved limply. Sharp checked both bodies to make sure they were good and dead. Then he pocketed their weapons and cell phones.
He stumbled a few feet away and leaned on the bumper of the car.
Steady rain pattered on the vehicle and splashed in puddles in the muddy weeds at his feet. L
ightning rushed across the sky, brightening the landscape with three flashes of light.
Relief—and exhaustion—flooded Sharp. They were alive. He almost couldn’t believe it.
Olivia was still on her knees, catching her breath.
“Are you all right?” he yelled over the sound of the storm.
She nodded, then felt around in the mud and pulled a sandal out of the muck. She held it up to the sky like a trophy. Then she climbed to her feet and walked over to him, her gait lopsided in one shoe and one bare foot.
She was a piece of work.
Olivia joined him at the car and turned her face up to the rain. The rain washed away some of the mud. Neither of them moved for a few seconds, as if they couldn’t believe they were still breathing.
Sharp broke the silence. “You were supposed to run.”
She brushed a streak of mud off her face. “Fuck that.”
Leaning over, she tried to put on her sandal, but the strap was broken. A stream of Spanish flowed from her lips.
Sharp spoke a little Spanish, mostly profanity from his years on the police force. When you’re arresting someone, they generally don’t say nice things to you. Even with the Cuban flair she put on the language, he recognized most of the words and was impressed with her creativity.
“Let’s get out of the rain.” Sharp opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel. Olivia got into the passenger seat.
He started the engine, turned on the heater, and offered her a cell phone. “We should probably call a cop.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Morgan’s feet slid in the mud. She and Tina were losing ground. The current was too strong. She glanced at a tree next to her. Before she lost the play in the rope, she wrapped it around the tree to help anchor it.
The rain began to slow, but no one told the river.
“I’m going to get the Jeep,” she shouted. “We can’t pull them in ourselves.”
“I’ll keep trying.” Tina braced her foot against a boulder on the riverbank.
Morgan tied off the rope and ran for the stairs to the observation decks. Her lungs cried as she jogged up the wooden steps, and for the fiftieth time in the past year, she regretted not being in better physical condition.
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