Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  She turned and saw Riss staring down at her.

  Her cousin withdrew her hand. Her pupils were wide in the dim light. They were wide like a cat’s, eyeing a bird.

  Rory’s heart thumped against her ribs. “What are you doing?”

  “You poor kid,” Riss said. “You are just a mess.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Seeing for myself.”

  Riss set a get-well card on the nightstand and looked Rory slowly up and down. She shook her head.

  “Sorry sight. Sorry, girl. So sorry,” she said.

  She leaned over the bed. Rory shied away and said, “Hey—” But Riss put a finger to her lips. She bent and kissed Rory on the forehead. Then she put her lips to Rory’s ear.

  “Karma’s a bitch,” she said. “I warned you.”

  Rory could hardly swallow. She felt for the nurse call button. She didn’t want to meet Riss’s eyes but didn’t dare look away.

  “You have to learn to listen. Or it won’t get better,” Riss said.

  “Get out,” Rory said.

  Now she found herself in her car, hand on the keys in the ignition. She didn’t remember climbing in. Her phone was ringing.

  She didn’t recognize the number. She answered and was surprised to hear her neighbor’s voice.

  “It’s Andi Garcia. I was driving past your house earlier and saw the gate open. I didn’t think much of it except now I’m near the Cloud Canyon freeway off-ramp and your dog’s running loose.”

  “Chiba?”

  “Big dog, part husky?”

  Rory turned the key in the ignition. “Is he on the freeway?”

  “He’s chasing squirrels. There’s a lot of traffic.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “I called him but he ignored me.”

  “He’s a rescue dog. He has hearing loss from neglect when he was a puppy.” She put the car in gear. “I’m on my way. Five minutes.”

  When she screeched up Cloud Canyon Road to the freeway, she saw Andi’s car parked on the off-ramp. She didn’t see Chiba. She pulled over and jumped out, her stomach in knots, and scanned the countryside. The air had grown chilled and blue with sunset. Some cars had their lights on.

  This off-ramp was three miles from her house. What was Chiba doing way out here?

  Then she saw her neighbor, chubby in crimson capris, in the grass beside the off-ramp, about a hundred yards beyond her parked car. Rory hollered and waved.

  Andi pointed at the freeway and cupped her hands to her mouth. “He’s in the median strip.”

  Rory ran up the ramp, her leg stiff. She saw Chiba about two hundred yards beyond Andi. He was in the center of the freeway on the wide grass strip between six speeding lanes of traffic.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  Traffic was thin, but the light was bad. There was no good way to capture him either on foot or in the car. Running across the roadway would be dangerous, but so would stopping her Subaru in the center of the freeway. Not to mention illegal.

  Dammit, what was he doing here?

  Chiba jogged along in the grass. He approached the pavement as though preparing to run straight back across the road, oblivious to the threat. Oh God, the dumb, lovely dog.

  A Volkswagen came ripping along, doing the speed limit, and braked hard. The driver hit the horn and Chiba brought himself up short. The VW continued past.

  Andi jogged up, out of breath, cheeks pink. “What do you want to do?”

  “Can you drive around to the on-ramp on the other side of the freeway and wait there, so if he bolts in that direction you could catch him?”

  “Sure.” She headed for her car.

  Rory ran back to the Subaru, opened the hatchback, and got the leash. She hurried up the ramp again. Glass and gravel crunched beneath her feet. She paused on the hard shoulder while trucks and station wagons roared by. The wind smelled of eucalyptus.

  A school bus blared past. Behind it was a gap of several hundred yards before more traffic.

  Rory sprinted into the road. Three lanes of scored concrete had never seemed so wide. Headlights rose on her left. The cat’s eyes in the road to her right began to glow white. A horn honked. And kept honking, growing louder. She didn’t look. She just ran.

  She reached the median strip. The horn Dopplered past her. A driver shouted, “Idiot!”

  Heart going like a sewing machine, she clapped her hands and whistled. “Chiba.”

  The dog turned. He immediately dug in and raced toward her. She ran along the grass strip to meet him. He lurched up to her. She grabbed his collar and held on tight.

  “Boy, what are you doing here?”

  He was panting and shaking. He whimpered and tried to put his paw on her shoulder. He was terrified.

  She clipped the leash to his collar. He moaned and twisted and jumped.

  “Chiba. Shh.”

  She tried to calm him. On the far side of the freeway Andi Garcia coasted to a stop on the on-ramp and got out. Chiba shivered and barked, turning in circles at Rory’s side.

  An eighteen-wheeler rolled toward them. The driver blew the air horn. The noise was horrendous. The truck blew past with heat and thunder and a draft of wind. Chiba panicked.

  He was a strong dog, too strong for Rory. When he broke, seventy pounds of pure muscle in flight, he tore the leash from her hands and raced into the roadway.

  “No—”

  Across the freeway Andi covered her mouth.

  The Jetta didn’t honk. It did brake. The lights flashed red and it slowed hard, straight, like a black beetle sweeping past. Screeching, laying rubber.

  Rory gasped.

  She heard a hard thump. The screeching stopped. The Jetta rolled slowly for a second, then changed gears and roared away.

  “Oh no, oh no…”

  Rory ran across the roadway, smelling exhaust and burned rubber. She heard one of the worst sounds in the world. Chiba, crying.

  She ran to his side. He’d been hit. On the hard shoulder he lay half-limp amid dust and broken glass. He cried pitiably and tried to stand. His back leg was bloody.

  She put a hand on his side. He whimpered and looked at her. His eyes almost broke her heart.

  “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.” She was nearly crying.

  She scooped him into her arms. He moaned but didn’t thrash. His back legs were limp. Groaning under his weight, she stood up.

  “Come on, boy. It’s okay.”

  Nearly staggering, she hurried toward her car. Chiba hung his head, panting. Blood dripped from his back leg to the asphalt. He trembled and whimpered. Traffic whirled by.

  Her arms burned with the effort of holding his warm, furry weight. She huffed to her car. Awkwardly she got the hatchback open and laid Chiba in the back. He cried, his chest heaving in and out. She got a beach towel and wrapped it around him.

  “We’re going, Chiba. It’s okay, boy.”

  She stepped back. When she slammed the tailgate, the window reflected the jangled flash of a red police gumball light.

  She turned. Parked behind her Subaru was a silver SUV. The gumball light was propped on the dashboard, spinning. Like an unmarked car. Like the car Seth had seen tailing them earlier in the day.

  A man stood in front of the vehicle.

  He wore civvies. He was stocky and stolid and had a face that looked sandblasted. He was Neil Elmendorf, Officer Lucy Elmendorf’s husband.

  And he had Rory’s car keys in his hand.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “You got a big mess here,” he said.

  “My dog’s been hit. I have to get him to the vet.”

  “You could get cited for all kinds of violations.”

  She was breathing hard. “Ticket me. Shoot me with a radar gun and call it reckless driving. But God, please—I have to get him help.”

  He curled the keys tight in his fist and locked his hands behind his back. “Lucy nearly got executed yesterday.”

  Christ, what is this? “I
’m glad she’s okay. Please, what do you want? For the love of God, my dog needs help.”

  “I got shoved to the floor by those assholes and couldn’t get to her. Had to watch while they made her write out a false confession. Thought they were going to put a double tap through her head. You know what that felt like, for a husband to be that helpless?”

  He was heavier than she was. He looked fit. She was breathing like a guppy and jacked enough to leap up and knee him in the head, but she doubted she could take him and get her keys back.

  “Arrest me. Take me to jail. But for Christ’s sake do it with the lights flashing, and alert the K-9 unit that you’re bringing in a casualty. Come on.”

  “What did you know about the attack?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  In the car, Chiba whimpered again, and barked as though in agony.

  “Did somebody pay you off to convict Lucy?” Elmendorf said.

  “No. Jesus Christ, no. I had nothing to do with the attack. Now cuff me or chain me up and drag me behind your SUV, but goddamn it, don’t let my dog die.”

  The gumball light spun, round and round. Elmendorf’s face twitched. And Rory realized: He’s not a cop.

  She backed up a step.

  “If you did have anything to do with it, I’ll find out. And you’ll pay,” he said. “Keep your dog on a leash. Unless you want Animal Control to pay you a visit.”

  He threw her keys, a careless swipe. They landed on the off-ramp.

  She ran and grabbed them. Five seconds later she was racing toward the vet’s.

  43

  Chiba lay on the stainless-steel examination table, panting and trembling. Rory leaned over and held him. She stroked the fur on his back.

  The vet prepared a syringe. “This will ease his pain.”

  Chiba had broken ribs, severe bruising, and a mess of abrasions along his side and back leg. The vet had shaved his fur and picked gravel out of the scrapes and gouges. He was in agony but was going to make it.

  The vet looked at Chiba with compassion. “Credit German engineering for good brakes. That Jetta must have slowed to around twenty or he’d never have survived.”

  “Credit cowardice for the jackwipe driving off and leaving him,” Rory said.

  With a tap on the door, Andi Garcia stuck her head in. Rory waved her neighbor in and gave her a grateful hug.

  “Thank you. You probably saved his life.”

  Andi crept to the exam table and smiled at Chiba. He looked up and whimpered.

  Rory said, “The gate at Petra’s house has a slide bolt on the inside. It shouldn’t have been open.”

  Andi looked at her sharply. “I don’t think it swung open on its own. There was a guy.”

  Cold, Rory said, “What guy?”

  “The one standing there pushing it open.”

  “Young, brown hair, blue uniform shirt from Ransom River Auto Salvage?”

  “That’s him. You don’t sound happy about it.”

  Rory looked at her dog. “I’m not.”

  “You think he let Chiba out on purpose?”

  “How long between the time you saw him pushing open the gate and the time you found Chiba running loose on the freeway?”

  Andi thought about it. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  Chiba had enough husky in him to run long distances—miles and miles without tiring. But not three miles in fifteen minutes. Not when enjoying an unexpected bout of freedom. He would have stopped at every bush and fire hydrant. He would have meandered. He never would have gotten so far on his own.

  Andi said, “Did somebody let him out on the freeway?”

  The vet frowned. “Who would do a thing like that?”

  Rory phoned Seth. “It’s Riss and Boone, and they’re after me. I need your help.”

  “Where are you?”

  She told him. “I need a place to stay tonight that’ll take a dog.”

  He was quiet for a moment. She was asking something big and open-ended. She expected to hear him mention his apartment or a hotel. But he said, “I don’t want anybody to follow you to my place, or my dad’s. You need to go someplace unexpected.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “In town. Dogs are no problem. Just follow my instructions for avoiding a tail.”

  The sun had fallen below the western hills and infused the sky with a rose-washed light. Over the mountains, clouds gathered. Rain was coming. Rory drove slowly along a crumbling one-lane road into the Callahan Ranch, as it had been called on TV. Live oaks and sycamores formed a canopy overhead.

  The property was now a city park that closed at dusk. But the swing gate off the main road had been open when Rory drove up. Seth Colder, she suspected, owned a collection of lock-picking tools. She drove through and closed the gate behind her.

  A mile up the glen, she eased over potholes and around a bend and saw the desiccated remains of the Hollywood set. There was a barn and the old three-story house with the porch and widow’s walk, now preserved as a landmark. The interior scenes for the show had been shot on a soundstage in Burbank, but this classic old building had stood in for the headquarters of the mighty Callahan clan. Nobody had lived here for eighty years. Rory didn’t know if it had electricity or running water.

  Headlights off, she followed Seth’s directions and drove past the house. Seth came striding toward her. In his denim jacket and boots, he looked the part of a Callahan son. Stick a cowboy hat on his head and send him to the back forty.

  He pushed open the big barn door. She eased the Subaru inside and parked it next to his truck. She got out and opened the hatchback. Chiba, drugged and drowsy, feebly wagged his tail.

  Seth crouched beside the tailgate. “Hey, boy. You’ve had a hell of a day.”

  In the corner of the barn was a faucet above a basin. When Rory turned it on the pipe creaked and groaned but filled the basin with water. Seth lifted the dog carefully from the car and carried him over. Chiba put his head down and drank. Seth rubbed the fur between his shoulders.

  “Thanks.” Rory looked around. “Security guards? Park ranger? Night watchman?”

  “Hasn’t changed since we were in high school, or I was on the force. Nobody’ll check on it unless there’s an explosion and fireball.”

  “I’ll try to restrain myself.”

  Chiba finished drinking. He stood unsteadily, back legs shaking. From the corner of the barn Seth pulled a little red wagon. Rory laid the beach towel in it and Seth set Chiba inside. The poor dog was too whacked-out to realize that he was going against instinct, being pulled rather than pulling a sled. They walked outside and Seth shut the barn door.

  The night was descending, the glen cosseted in oaks gone black in the twilight. It was amazingly quiet.

  “Where are we camping?” Rory looked at the big house. “I do a poor imitation of Constance Callahan, standing there with my feet wide, spitting tobacco into the dirt and fighting off outlaws.”

  Seth smiled. “I’m willing to watch that.”

  She stopped, unsettled by his smile. Jesus, it was the old smile, the one that slid across his face when taking on a challenge.

  “She was also expert at throwing a hatchet,” she said.

  He turned and walked up the glen. “It’s getting cold out here. Come on.”

  The caretaker’s cabin was a hundred yards farther up the way, under the boughs of the live oaks. The ground crunched with acorns beneath Rory’s feet. Seth let them in. It was cool inside. Chiba raised his head, curious. Seth shut the door and bolted it.

  The shutters in the living room were closed tight. A hurricane lantern sat on the coffee table, guttering with amber light. In the fireplace split logs burned, bright orange.

  Seth shrugged off his jacket. They arranged a bed for Chiba. Seth opened a backpack and tossed Rory a sandwich and a bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He dropped to a knee in front of the fire and jabbed at the wood with a poker. Sparks spewed, red and dying.<
br />
  “I checked out the guys who were involved in the heist,” he said.

  Rory sat down cross-legged in front of the fire. “And?”

  “They weren’t part of organized crime or L.A. street gangs. They were semipros who dreamed of the greatest heist of all time and got in way over their heads. One died at the scene. One guy was shot in the head and survived, but with permanent brain damage. He lives in a secure facility for the mentally incompetent. He has no family, nobody who would go after the money on his behalf.”

  He sat down. “The third guy is in San Quentin, serving out his sentence as a jailhouse preacher. Jesus’ biggest fan.”

  “You believe that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. These guys were the logical starting point. But they’re not the ones after the money.”

  “Was this a thorough investigation?”

  “It was a couple of phone calls and some computer voodoo thanks to a backdoor password I have for the system. I wanted to see if we were missing a red light flashing under our noses. But we’re not.”

  Though she hadn’t eaten much all day, she was hardly hungry. “Riss and Boone,” she said.

  Seth’s face was grave. “If your cousins are involved, it means Lee was the fourth man.”

  The blasphemous shine of her parents’ revelations flared in her mind.

  “Riss and Boone are involved,” she said.

  In the firelight, Seth’s face was aglow. His dark eyes seemed to capture and amplify the flames.

  “And they’re not doing this on their own,” she said. “So who did they get in bed with? Somebody from Lee’s past?”

  “Maybe. Somebody who has connections to career criminals in Vegas—people who can pressure a gambler to take on a suicidal mission? That’s some real grease. Who’s got that?”