The Elizabeth McClaine Thriller Boxed Set

by Catherine Lea

  The Dodge driver was a man in his fifties wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and windbreaker. He was wandering around evaluating the damage to his truck and shaking his head.

  “You okay?” she called out to him.

  He stalked around to meet her. “Was that you in the Mercedes?” he asked, pointing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You came from nowhere, you dumb bitch,” he yelled. “Look what you done. You could’a killed me.” Then he spotted the blood down the side of her leg and flinched.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” he told her. “And I want your insurance details.”

  She looked back over the tangle of cars. “Yeah, sure,” she said, but she didn’t have time for negotiations and blame. While he strode around the truck, telling her how he’d just bought the thing, and groaning at every newly discovered scratch or dent like it was a physical assault, she hobbled around the Camaro, checking the position of each car blocking it in.

  Another guy trotted up behind her, pointing to the Mercedes and saying, “Excuse me, is this your car?” Kelsey ignored him. She figured if she could move the truck three feet to the right and reverse the Camaro enough, she could get it out. She circled the truck and peered in the driver’s window. The keys were in the ignition, so she hauled the door open and hoisted herself into the driver’s seat.

  The Dodge guy, who’d gone over to exchange details with the Honda guy, turned at the sound of the truck starting up. “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

  When he charged across, she hit the lock.

  “Are you crazy? Get outta my truck …” he yelled, pounding the door with the flat of both hands.

  “I’m just moving it,” she told him.

  She put it in reverse with him still hitting the door and yelling, “You can’t do that. You’re gonna hit—”

  Metal groaned and screeched as the truck inched back, then something clunked to the ground. She pressed her foot to the gas and there was another shriek of bending metal from the Honda, the driver of which was also yelling. When she threw the truck into drive and pressed her foot to the pedal again, the truck lurched and the Honda’s front bumper popped and clattered onto the road. Now a small crowd had gathered around her, shouting and pointing as she shunted the Honda sideways. She didn’t know if she’d moved it three feet but it would have to do.

  By the time she cut the engine again, people had closed in around her, yelling abuse and threatening her with everything they could think of. The Nissan guy squeezed past his car and the instant she released the lock he ripped the door open. “I’ll have you know I’m an attorney and I’m suing you for every scratch …”

  “Go ahead,” she said as she hobbled back to the Camaro. He grabbed her arm and swung her around, but she pulled back and landed him a roundhouse that sent him reeling.

  She slid into the seat of the Camaro and hit the ignition just as another guy yelled, “Hey! What are you doing in my car?”

  She threw the Camaro in reverse and three people jumped out of the way as she eased back and hit the Nissan. “Nope, not quite three feet,” she said, then put the car into drive. She twisted the wheel and pulled out, nudging the rear of the Dodge again, while some guy banged his fist on the side of the car and another jotted down her plates. “Good luck with that,” she muttered and turned the car north.

  On the open road, she floored it. She had six minutes to get to Painesville and save Holly. There was no way she would make it.

  But she had to try.

  *****

  At almost the same time as Kelsey was plowing into the Dodge, Elizabeth hit on an idea. She pulled the Micra to the side of the road, lifted the hood, and stood to the side, gazing hopefully up and down the street. Less than a minute later, a late model Explorer pulled up and a man in his sixties got out. Dressed in a thick wool-lined jacket and Indians peak cap, he ambled towards her. “You got some trouble?”

  “Do you have a phone?” she asked.

  “I can take a look if you want. I know a thing or two about engines. It’s usually something small.”

  “I need a phone. Please.”

  “I got one in the car.”

  He retrieved the phone and gave it to her. While she punched in Richard’s number, the man angled his head, regarding her and said, “Anyone ever tell you, you got a remarkable resemblance to Elizabeth McClaine?”

  “My husband used to,” she told him distractedly. “He hasn’t in a while. Richard,” she said as soon as he answered the call. “It’s me. She’s not at Beachwood. They’ve got her at Painesville. It’s the Painesville construction site. Tell Delaney. We’ve got …” she checked her watch. “Oh God, Richard, we’ve got five minutes,” and her breath caught in her throat. The man was frowning at her, as though still trying to decide if it was her. “Never mind how I know,” she told Richard when he asked, “just tell Delaney. I’m on my way there now.” And she hung up.

  “Is this about your little girl?” the man asked. “The one that was kidnapped?”

  Tears pricked in her eyes and her throat tightened. “Yes. I have to get to Painesville.”

  “Get in the truck,” he said. “I’ll take you there.”

  “But my car …”

  “We’ll call someone. Let me get you to Painesville to your little girl,” he said and opened the passenger’s door for her. “You just worry about calling the police.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  2:58 PM

  Kelsey found the construction site at the end of a short side street off the main road. A vast area of churned-up earth stood like an open wound in the landscape. In the middle, buildings sat in an expanse of surrounding concrete like a raft in a swamp. Leading off to the right, a long tongue of blacktop was pegged out with upright markers from which tape flapped like bedraggled streamers in the wind. And at the far end, a control tower stood maybe a hundred or so feet high. Surrounded by a network of scaffolding, it looked like the skeleton of some medieval fortress.

  She rolled slowly past signs warning off trespassers, then turned into the parking lot with the crunch of gravel under the tires. Friday afternoon she’d have expected the place to be crawling with construction workers. Not now. The place was deserted.

  She got out of the car and surveyed the buildings. Wind whistled around scaffolding and torn building paper flapped from the unfinished walls. Dust swirled and snack wrappers and plastic drink bottles skittered across the ground. No signs of life. Just wasteland.

  Cleveland, the comeback city, she thought. Some comeback.

  With the throbbing in her thigh sending heat waves up and down her leg, and the swelling stiffening her knee, she gritted her teeth and headed for the front entrance. In lieu of doors, heavy plastic screens were draped across the opening. Inside the floor was bare concrete covered in drywall dust and boot prints. Empty crates and boxes of nails and lengths of metal were stacked on makeshift workbenches while, overhead, electrical wire snaked across the open ceilings and down the walls to terminate in coils and tangles on the floor.

  Kelsey hobbled across the enormous open area of the main terminal, looking all around. All she could hear was the wind howling around the corners of the building and the echo of empty space inside. She figured she had the wrong place after all.

  “Shit!” she said and turned full circle, taking the whole of the place in. “Shit, shit, shit.” Furious with herself for getting it wrong, angry with Matt for making this so friggin’ hard, pissed with Lionel for everything else, she started back towards the car. She was wondering what the hell she should do, where she should go next, when a gust of wind picked up the plastic screen covering a doorway at the far end of the building and she caught a glimpse of a car. She stopped short, then limped across to it. With her back pressed close in beside the opening, she leaned briefly and peeped out. A green Toyota Land Cruiser sat in a parking lot at the base of the control tower.<
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  She waited a beat, then leaned out again, this time peering up at the tower. A concrete structure, it was surrounded by a framework of steel rods and planks that made up the cage-work of scaffolding. At the top was the viewing platform. From here, all Kelsey could see was the underside of the deck. If they were here, that was the only place they could be. She turned to head on down the corridor that connected the main terminal with the control tower when she heard the echo of footsteps, then a voice.

  “Pick up your phone, asshole,” he yelled. “Jesus Christ.” Lionel, the douche bag. She stepped out into the open. He was just tucking the phone into his pocket when he looked up. “Oh, not you an’ all.”

  “Yeah, me an’ all.” When he pulled a gun from the back of his jeans and aimed it at her, she said, “What’s happened, Lionel? Did you lose the money?”

  “Fuck you. We got the money.”

  She snorted. “If you had the money, you’d be long gone by now. You’re probably down here trying to talk to your contact because Matt doesn’t know about all your drug deals and shit. Am I right?”

  He snorted. “Still the same smart-mouth bitch you always were. We should’a got rid of you when we had the chance.”

  “Maybe you should have. Wouldn’t have made a difference. You’re screwed whatever you do from here on in.” She inched towards him. He raised the gun and sighted her down the barrel, finger stroking the trigger, so she stopped. “Lionel, it doesn’t have to end like this. Give her to me and I’ll give you plenty of time to get away.”

  “Well, you’re too late. By ten minutes. Just ten minutes!” He shrugged theatrically and grinned. “What a shame.”

  She wanted to hit him, throttle him, punch him out. She also wanted Holly back. She took a step closer, and said, “Get out of my way.”

  He grinned. “I already told you. She’s dead. Pulled the trigger myself.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He reached into his jacket, pulled out a crumpled up bundle of fabric and tossed it on the floor. She bent and picked it up. It was the blue sweater Kelsey had dressed Holly in not twenty-four hours earlier. She shook it out. Blackened bloodstains radiated from a tear across the middle and her heart stopped.

  “How could you do this? How could you hurt a little girl …?”

  Lionel snorted and looked around like he was addressing an audience. “Have you seen the time? Anyone would’a thought her parents cared more. I certainly did. We told them she had until three o’clock. We couldn’t have made it clearer. Shit, even you knew she had until three o’clock, and yet here you are at—” he checked his watch. “—seven minutes after. So is this our fault? No, it’s yours.”

  Tears pricked at her eyes. One broke and ran down her cheek as she clutched the little sweater close to her heart, and wondered who she hated most—Lionel, or herself. She had made a promise for Holly to cling to. And she’d failed her. Oh, sure, she could fight, strip a car, drive better than any of the guys she knew. What the hell use was any of that when all she ever did was fail anyone who put their faith in her, or destroy those who crossed her? Look at the nanny. Look at Maria, Maria’s mother.

  What about her own mother, for chrissakes? All gone, and just because of her. Vic was right, she was useless. Dumb as a sack of hammers and no use to anyone.

  “I hate you,” she whispered. Despair had reached into her chest and drained the very essence of her. When she looked up, Lionel was watching her, grinning, enjoying the moment. He raised the gun and took aim, but at the sound of a car pulling into the lot out front, he hesitated. He backtracked a couple of steps and peered out a window across the lot. His expression shifted briefly. When he regained his composure, some of the confidence was gone.

  Curious, Kelsey stepped back to an opening and looked out across the lot. A red Dodge Caliber sat next to the Camaro. The doors opened and three muscled-up black guys in long leather coats and jeans stepped out. They each paused to survey the area, then sauntered across to the Camaro. The tallest opened the driver’s door, bent and touched the seat. He examined what Kelsey knew would be blood on his fingers, and said something. At once their collective attention turned to the terminal and each drew out a gun.

  “I hope they fuckin’ kill you,” Kelsey told him. That’s how she felt. It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to him, but she felt better saying it.

  Lionel tipped his head in defiance and lifted the gun again. “Ain’t gonna happen. But you won’t be around to find out, anyway. You’ll be takin’ that big cement swim with the kid while me an’ Matt will be heading out for those blue skies and crystal clear waters with a cool ten mill in our pockets. Who’d’a thought, huh?”

  He thumbed back the hammer, ready. At the sound of a second car entering the lot, his attention wavered. He glanced outside and this time the grin vanished and the gun dropped a fraction, so Kelsey put her head down and charged him. He cracked off two shots, but he was too late and they missed her and pinged off the floor. She caught him in the midriff with her shoulder and drove him back so hard they both hit the wall with a crash and the gun flew out of his hand and skittered wide. Kelsey stumbled over him, rolled and got straight back to her feet, but Lionel was already coming at her. He threw a right and missed, spun on his toes and followed it up with a couple of jabs. She responded with a left hook that glanced off his jaw but it knocked him off balance, so she followed it up with a combination left and right that dropped him on his ass. He put a hand to his mouth, then looked up at her and grinned.

  The sound of footsteps on gravel was getting closer, so she had to finish this fast. Lionel got to his feet and fell into stance. She shadowed him a few steps, bouncing unsteadily on her toes, looking for an opening. Concentration—that was the key. Out of nowhere the image of Holly flashed across her mind—the innocence, the trust. She hit him hard and he went backwards. Driven by determination, by anger, she launched herself at him. With her head down and her teeth clenched, she pounded his face, his gut, anything she could reach. When he folded over, she grabbed his shirt and drove her forehead full in his face and heard bone crack. Breathing hard from the exertion, she bent with her hands on her knees, watching him flounder back and fall on his ass with blood spurting from his nose.

  “Yeah, hurts like a bitch, don’t it?” She straightened and wiped blood from her brow with the back of her hand.

  He went to get up but she stepped in again, hit him with a kick in the side that toppled him over sideways. “And that one’s from Holly, you asshole,” she said and bent again, to fend off the pain radiating through her.

  Lionel’s face squeezed up in pain, arms holding his ribs while he lay grunting and gasping for air.

  “Yeah, I know,” she told him. “Ain’t exactly Queensberry rules, but hey, you started it.” Blood gushed from his nose, his face was pale, and he could barely breathe. Why wasn’t she surprised when he simply looked up at her with that stupid grin again? “Where’s Matt?” she said.

  But before he could answer a squeal echoed from the door of the control tower. “Holly! Is that you, baby?” she called. She went to move, but the sound of slow clapping from the far end of the corridor stopped her short and made her turn.

  Three black guys were standing across the doorway, two with guns aimed straight at her. “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “We got no business with you. We’re here for the kid,” he said, and tipped his head. “But we’ll cut you a deal. We’ll just take the money instead.” He turned his attention on Lionel, who was now on his feet, leaning heavily on the wall with his sleeve pressed to his nose. She opened her mouth to tell him they could have Lionel, when the throb of a car sound-system at full throttle pulsed across the lot, and another car pulled in. All five of them looked to the windows.

  “How the hell many people did you blab to?” Kelsey asked Lionel. “It’s like Saturday night downtown around here.”

  Lionel gave her a smug little smile. “It’s called finding the highest bidder.”

/>   “Highest bidder? Highest bidder for what?” she said, but before he could answer, the black guy snapped off two shots that just about made her heart jump out of her chest. A bloody hole opened up in Lionel’s forehead and he slid down the wall to sit staring blankly at a point right in front of him.

  “An’ this,” the guy who’d shot him said, “is called cuttin’ out the middleman.” When Kelsey turned a look on him, he simply shrugged and said, “You got somethin’ you wanna say?”

  “No.”

  Out in the lot, four Hispanic guys had climbed out of a dark blue Escalade and were now also checking out the Camaro. Like a TV rerun, they also drew out their guns and directed their attention at the terminal.

  “But,” she said, tipping her head toward the lot, “I think they may have.”

  As if to underline her words, the sound of a chopper rumbled overhead and banked towards the runway.

  “What the fuck …” said one of the guys, raising his palms in exaggerated wonder. “Downtown nuthin’. We got the whole of fuckin’ Cleveland out here?”

  From the top of the stairs behind her she heard clatter of footsteps. They were followed by another scream, then Matt yelling, “Get back here, you little shit.”

  Then silence. She went for the door to the tower, but Matt’s voice echoed down. “All of you stay back or I’ll kill her.”

  The first guy grinned wide, regarded his associates, then checked his gun. “I can work with that. Outta my way,” he said to Kelsey.

  “I’m not movin’,” she said and stood square in front of the stairs with her fists clenched. “You want her, you’ll have to go through me.” She glared at them, heart thumping and wondering what the hell they’d do next.