“Just making sure the rangers know there’s a lady in the park so if you don’t come out in three days we can send in a rescue team,” he said a little too quickly.
“Well, that’s a comforting thought. I had one more question. Is it all right if I feed the bears and squirrels or is there a rule about that? I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m afraid you are in for a bad storm.”
“I’ve lived through a class four tornado over in Arkansas one time when I was a little girl. Little old storm like this ain’t nothing. I’ll just find me a big rock and get in my sleeping bag. Did I tell you it’s made out of this fancy stuff to keep me dry? Well, good-bye now and you pray right hard them snakes stay denned up.”
He was already dialing the phone when she walked away. She walked slowly without looking back but listened.
“Fool woman in hot pink. Let me know which exit she takes when she’s had enough. Hell, no, she won’t make it up there. No way. Send the brothers to check on him tonight just in case I’m wrong. Don’t want her to stumble across something. It’s under control, I swear. Nothing to worry about.”
She deliberately stumped her toe and sat down on the edge of the path to take her shoe off and rub it. He waved and went back toward her truck. She smiled, waved back and went on her merry way. When he searched it, he’d find registration and insurance papers for Sue Ellen Bailey. There was a pay stub from Uncle Moe’s Café in Perkins and a dozen Snicker’s wrappers along with an empty Coke can behind the seat. All compliments of an undercover job she did five years previously. Thank goodness she’d had the good sense to keep a few props.
About a mile up the trail she found a thicket of wild plum trees covered in white blooms. Storm clouds gathered in the southwest. Lightning had begun to flash but the thunder wasn’t right on its heels so there was a little time before it started raining. She circled back in behind the thicket, dropped her backpack and swiftly peeled out of the pink wind suit. Underneath she wore black sweat pants and a matching shirt. She tucked all her hair up into a black stocking hat and changed shoes from brand new white Nikes with a pink swoosh to black hiking boots. Reaching into a pocket she brought out a long piece of beef jerky and a dark rain slicker. She had the slicker on before the first rain drops fell. Twenty minutes after the storm passed she heard them coming up the path.
“Bunch of crap if you ask me, which nobody does,” one grumbled.
“We got to check. It’s worth a million dollars. You know what Cyrus said. Make sure no one finds him for a week then make damn sure no one finds the body. When he’s deep sixed then Cyrus pays. You got that grave dug?”
Cold chills traveled down Roseanna’s spine as she followed in a parallel line picking up bits and pieces of their conversation. She’d thought it was nothing more than a simple kidnapping for a lot of money. It didn’t matter if the Fields family did come up with a million dollars cash, Trey was a dead man anyway.
Two hours and close to four miles later from her calculations she saw the chain reflecting in the moon light. She stopped thirty feet back and huddled down in the shadows, close enough for their voices to carry, far enough away to avoid detection.
One man pulled back the tent flap and kicked at something inside.
Trey’s voice came through the clean night air. “What took you so long?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you were someone else,” he said.
“Who’d be coming for you?”
“I was dreaming. I thought you were my sister.”
They both laughed. “Greta? Man, you’re already delusional and it’s only been a day. Greta might break a fake fingernail out here in the wilderness. She’s not coming for you. You seen anyone out here?”
“If I saw anyone, I’d beg them to rescue me. You are all going to jail,” Trey said coldly.
They both guffawed. “Sure we are.”
“Are you coming back every night?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll let it be a surprise.”
“I told you we were hiking up here for nothing,” the taller of the two said as they walked away. “Pete was spooked is all.”
“I don’t call my part of a million dollars nothing, man,” the other one said. “And we’ve hiked further than this for a lot less. Call it job security.”
She waited until they were out of sight, then gave them another twenty minutes before she opened the flap of the tent.
“Good evening, Colin Vance Fields, the third. I hope you had a nice nap because you’re going to be walking the rest of the night,” she said.
Chapter Five
“You came!” he breathed a sigh of relief.
She crawled into the tent, set her backpack on the top of the case of cans, opened it up and found the lock picks she’d brought along. “You look like warmed over sin.”
He eyed her from head to toe. “You look like a Ninja. Why didn’t you make black streaks under your eyes and tie a bandanna around your arm like Rambo?”
She unzipped the sleeping bag and grabbed his leg that had the iron around the ankle. In thirty seconds she had worked magic and he was free. “Shut up and be still. I’m trying to save your sorry hide, not seduce you so I don’t need to be dressed like a New York model.”
He shook the tingles out of his foot. “How far is it out of here?”
“It would only be a couple of hours if the exits weren’t under surveillance. Hopefully, we’ve got a day before they come back to check on you. Two if they wait to see if I give up and walk out of here. After that, they’ll bring in another expert tracker,” she explained as she removed everything from the backpack. She set about dividing the whole stash, putting half in the empty pack she’d brought for Trey.
She tossed a sweat suit, identical to hers, at him. “Put this on. I brought hiking boots for you. Thank goodness your foot is the same size as Dad’s. If you’d had to break them in on a trip like this, you’d have had blisters the size of silver dollars. Socks. Underwear. Sorry, they aren’t silk like the ones under that tux, but tightie whities are a little more serviceable out here. There’s a hooded jacket in the backpack if you get cold. I’ll eat while you change.” She turned her back and popped the top of a can of Vienna sausage.
Without a word he removed his tux and folded it neatly. “How can you eat that stuff?”
“It’s good food. Wish we could carry it with us, but it’s too heavy. I’ve got beef jerky and granola bars. I figure we’ll walk most of the night and rest tomorrow morning for a few hours. Should be in Mena, Arkansas in a couple of days. There’ll be a car waiting for us there and I’ll drive you home to Tulsa.”
“Why all this crazy stuff? Why don’t we just walk out of here and go straight to the police? You’re just doing this to punish me aren’t you? You know I hate outside and hiking is nothing short of hell for me.”
“You going to argue or live?”
He pointed toward the second backpack. “What’s that?”
“It’s what you are going to carry forty miles to Mena, Arkansas, Trey. It’s your half of the load. Hey, hey, there’s no room for that tux or those shoes.” She pointed at the clothing he was about to shove into the backpack. “We’re going to bury them along with a hot pink wind suit and a pair of almost new Nikes.”
The muscles in his jaw worked as he gritted his teeth. “I will not bury an expensive tux or my best dress shoes, either. Thank you for rescuing me, but I’ll just find my own way out of here. I expect there’s a park ranger at every entrance who can help me get home.”
She pulled the top off another can of sausages and dug inside with her fingers. “You go ahead and take that chance if you’re feelin’ lucky. When you step out of the tent follow the trail. There’ll be a man waiting not far from the parking grounds. His name is Pete. He’s got a Glock under his jacket. I’m sure he’ll take you right to the police station to fill out a complaint or maybe he’ll just put a bullet between your eyes an
d save the gas money from here to the nearest police station. Especially since the two brothers I followed up here already have a grave dug for you. Whether your folks hock your snooty sister and a failing company for the million dollar ransom is a moot point. Cyrus is behind all this. After a week, when your family doesn’t come up with the million, you will be dead. If they do produce it, you will still be dead and the kidnappers still get their money. In short, honey, you will be dead. You bet on the wrong horse, Trey. Evidently Cyrus is not as eager as Laura to put you in his family. Frankly, darlin’, I don’t give a tiny rat’s hiney about any of you, so if you want a bullet between the eyes and a nice soft dirt bed for the rest of eternity, just get after it. I’m going to Mena. I’m not ready for a coffin and I’ve seen Pete’s face and could identify the brothers by their voices and body size. They’d shoot me in the blink of an eye.”
He sat down with a thud on the sleeping bag, his world crumbling in a thousand pieces around him. “You’re crazy. You’re just jealous and saying those things to make me …”
“Make you what? Have I ever lied to you? Get your shoes on, Trey. It’ll be slow going since we have to be so careful, but we can get to Mena in a couple of days. Hopefully, they’ll spend a while checking exits and roads toward Tulsa.”
“You are serious, aren’t you?”
“As a cardiac arrest.”
“Why didn’t he just have me killed outright? Why wait a week?”
“You humiliated his daughter when you married me. It’s his turn. How better than to put you in a tent with a chain around your leg and give you lots of time to think? Sure you don’t want to eat some of this food before we take off?”
He shook his head, his upper lip turning a faint green. Just the smell of food nauseated him and the idea that Cyrus was behind such a stunt made it unbearable. He couldn’t go to the authorities if Roseanna was telling the truth and she’d never lied to him. He stepped out of the tent into the night air. The pack fit well between his shoulders and she’d distributed the weight so it didn’t strain his back.
“Sit on that rock over there,” she pointed, then she went to work. Using an empty bean can she dug a hole deep enough in the wet earth to bury his tux and shoes and her pink outfit and shoes. She covered the area with dead leaves she scooped up from under the trees. When she finished that job she locked the shackle back into a circle and wrapped the chain around the tree, threw cans of food everywhere, dragged the sleeping bag into the plum thicket and using a knife, slit it into a hundred pieces. After that she kicked holes in the tent and left it strewn all around the place.
“Let’s go now. We can use the trail and then the road until daybreak because when they find this wreck, they’ll immediately start looking toward the easiest way out of these mountains. Keep your feet in the middle of the path as much as possible. That way there won’t be tracks.”
“Why’d you do all that back there?” He asked after they’d gone a few feet.
“Felt good.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say? It felt good?”
“Yep.”
“Was it to make them think someone or a bear dragged me away and killed me?”
“Nope.”
“Roseanna, talk to me. Why did you do that?”
“Because it’s against the law to do it to you.”
“Roseanna, you’ve got to understand that our marriage was doomed from the start. We had a strong physical attraction but our backgrounds are so different.”
She didn’t answer.
“Are we going to walk two days without conversation?”
“Looks that way. Take a deep breath.”
He sucked in a lung full of foul air and began to cough. “What is that?”
“It’s a skunk. Stinks, doesn’t it? Well, that smells like Channel Number Five compared to the way you smell to me. I don’t want to talk to you. I just want to get you back to your plush little life. I lived in your jungle for four years and you didn’t do jack squat to help me get around in it. I’ll keep you alive in mine for a few days and then we’ll part company. Why talk about it?”
She led the way and he followed for the next several hours. Clouds shifted across the sky and the moon appeared with a million stars gathering around as its subjects. In such peaceful surroundings, just thinking that they could be in danger was far fetched, yet it was there behind them, an apparition like a ghost on Halloween, ready to jump out from behind every tree.
His stomach began to grumble loudly but he would starve before he asked her to get out the jerky or granola bars she’d mentioned. He tried to wrap his mind around the idea that Cyrus was actually behind this scheme. That the entrances to the park were really guarded by men with guns. Sure Cyrus and Laura had both been furious when they heard of his marriage but that was four years ago. Since then Laura had been nothing but flirty with him. She had even said she’d forgiven him for his slip into the back alley of life. Crimson crept up his neck as he thought about the way he’d laughed when she said that, rather than sticking up for Roseanna. Granted, Roseanna had come from a lower socio-economic status than he did, but she didn’t come from a back alley. Truth be known, if Cyrus wasn’t going to merge with Fields Inc., the Cahills could easily have more money than the Fields family.
Roseanna kept a steady pace out to the end of the trail then she stopped and listened. There would be little traffic at this time of the night and year. Talimina Drive was a fifty four mile trail across the crests of the Rich Mountain and the Winding Stair Mountains in the Ouachita Mountain range in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas. From the place where they had him staked out like a dog, she figured they could cut at least twenty miles off, giving them a little more than thirty to walk, but more than half of that was steeply uphill. She was glad she’d worked out often at the gym the past four years. Every muscle in her body was going to be howling by the time they reached the crest of the mountain and began the downhill hike down into Mena.
She wondered if the heart muscle would hurt less after three days with Trey; somehow she doubted it.
Granny Etta said hard work erased most problems. If that was the truth then she should be free as a bird by the time they reached their destination, because walking ahead of him, knowing he was back there was the hardest work she’d ever done. She barely noticed when dark clouds obliterated the moon and stars, then a few big drops of rain plopped right down on her nose.
She stopped so quickly that Trey practically ran into her back. “Unzip that backpack and take out your slicker. You’ve only got the clothes on your back and if you get wet you’ll freeze up here this time of year,” she ordered.
Without a word, he did as she said and slipped the black poncho over his head. The hood shot out past his face like a parka and the lightweight plastic fell to his ankles. They looked like byproducts of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the grim reaper coming to gather lost souls as they plodded on, rain falling through naked tree limbs and sliding off their slickers.
They reached a paved two lane highway and she held up a hand, listened intently before she turned up the mountain. In an hour his calf muscles threatened to seize up in full-fledged Charlie horses but he didn’t complain. Instead his mind went to what she’d said about Cyrus. After the many, many times he’d come to their rescue, there was no way Trey could ever accuse him of kidnapping. Not that it could ever be proven anyway. Yet, knowing that, there was no way he could marry Laura. If Cyrus was willing to have him killed before the wedding, then he wouldn’t stop until the job was done. No, Trey would simply have to end it with Laura. She would be furious, but he’d brought it on himself.
Lightning flashed brightly in the sky. Thunder followed.
Roseanna stopped. “Here’s the first turn out for sightseers. We’ll rest a little while.”
“Got a building?”
“Got a bench and a rock wall. Take your pick.”
Careful to keep the plastic under him, he chose to sit on one end of the bench. She took
the other end. Reaching under the slicker and around her midriff to the zipper on the side of her back pack she brought out a couple of granola bars and handed him one. “It’s not filet mignon but it’ll keep body and soul together a little longer.”
He chewed slowly. He hadn’t had anything in a long time that tasted as good as that cereal bar. Honey and almonds. He could have devoured ten of them. He shook his head, hoping he would awake to find the whole previous thirty-six hours had been a nightmare of gargantuan proportions. It didn’t work.
“Think it will rain all night?” He asked.
She cocked her head to one side. “Shhhhh! Hurry. Follow me. Do what I do.”
He shoved the rest of the granola bar in his mouth and did what she said. She jogged to the end of the curved wall looking out over a valley and hopped over it, landing just on the other side. Then she swept the slicker around her and sat down. He could see nothing but a faint shadow. He didn’t hop over the wall, but carefully threw one leg over, hoping the whole time that he wouldn’t slip and slide all the way to the bottom of the mountain. His feet hit solid ground and he promptly sat down, a millisecond before he heard the automobile engine and saw headlights lighting up raindrops. It pulled into the turn out and two doors opened.
“You think he could have gotten this far?”
“Who knows. I just know he’s not where we left him three hours ago and the boss is going to be really mad. You going to get out and go look down over that mountain for him?”
“No, you are.”
“Not me. It’s raining. My shoes will be ruined and besides he couldn’t have gotten this far. He’s too dang soft to be climbing mountains. He’ll take the path of least resistance and go down the mountain, not up it. First thing he would do if someone didn’t steal him from us is waltz out of here in his fancy little tux and go to the police. He didn’t do that so it means someone has him and Cyrus is going to pitch a hissy. If he doesn’t die, he becomes Cyrus’ son-in-law. That means he’s family, not family like us, but the real thing. And that means Cyrus can’t buy out Fields and make a killing on the company. No, he’s not up here. Toss out that cigarette butt and let’s go back down to the site and see if we can find any footprints. Pete may have already taken care of the problem. Hope that six foot hole I dug hasn’t filled up with water.”
To Believe Page 6