by Jance, J. A.
She wanted to urge him to run. Or to tumble down the bank of lush pampas grass her neighbors had allowed to flourish on the steep hillside. But with the gun pressed against her spine, and with her arm twisted almost up to her shoulder, she said nothing. It would be bad enough if Jake shot her. The idea that he might hurt Chris was unthinkable.
At last they reached the gatepost. “Open it,” Jake ordered, propelling her forward.
Ali punched the keypad, and the gate swung open.
“In,” Jake said, waving his weapon in the direction of Chris’s car. “You drive. Your mother and I will sit in back.”
“Mom,” Chris asked. “Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”
“Shut up,” Jake said.
Chris did as he was told, too. He shut up and got back into the driver’s seat while Jake heaved Ali into the car and across the backseat. He shoved her hard enough that her shoulder smashed painfully into the door on the far side.
Jake settled in behind her and slammed the door. “Thanks,” he said to the back of Chris’s head. “You couldn’t have come at a better time. Now take us to the Ten and go east, and do it in a hell of a hurry.”
{ CHAPTER 20 }
Mom, who is this jerk?” Chris demanded. “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll—”
“I said shut up and drive,” Jake repeated. “And I meant it.”
Ali rubbed her bruised shoulder. It hurt, but not nearly as much as her bruised ego. How had she allowed this calamity to happen? It seemed to her that somehow, in a week full of disasters, she should have seen this one coming and been able to prevent it.
“I’m all right, Chris,” she said. “Do what he says so no one gets hurt.”
Chris was outraged. “For God’s sake, Mom. How can you say that? The man was holding a gun to your head!”
“And now I’m holding one to yours,” Jake reminded him. “So you’d best pay attention. Turn the car around and get going.”
Chris complied by slamming his foot on the accelerator. He backed away from the gate so fast that he came perilously close to the edge of the road. Then, after pulling a swift U-turn, the Alero sped back down Robert Lane.
“Have a ball,” Chris declared. “Shoot away. Then we’ll all see exactly how well Grandma’s Olds drives with no one behind the wheel! I don’t think this model comes equipped with a self-guidance system.”
Ali knew that “Go ahead and shoot me” often qualify as famous last words. In fact, she suspected they had been included in the Darwin Awards as an often-quoted exit line.
For God’s sake, don’t antagonize him, Ali thought. “Chris,” she cautioned. “Please.”
“Slow down,” Jake said as Chris raced through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. “The last thing we need is for the cops to come after us because you ran a damned stop sign.”
Chris slowed slightly. They traveled for the better part of a mile in silence.
“So what are you?” Chris asked finally, studying Jake’s face in the rearview mirror. “Somebody who’s just been profiled on America’s Most Wanted? An escaped convict? What?”
“He’s a friend of Paul’s,” Ali supplied. “Used to be a friend of Paul’s.”
“Some friend,” Chris muttered.
Once on the 10 there was far more traffic than there had been on the surface streets, and more semis than cars, all headed east, trying to make as much distance as possible before the blinding sun came up. Ali wondered about the drivers of those various big rigs. How was it that they could tool along, blissfully unaware of the life-and-death drama playing out in Edie Lawson’s innocuous-looking white Alero? Why was it none of them gave the speeding Oldsmobile a second glance?
Watching the lights of the not-quite-sleeping city speed past outside the window, Ali knew it was late but she didn’t know how late. Somehow, in the course of the struggle on Robert Lane, her wristwatch had disappeared. Huddled too far in the corner of the backseat to be able to see the clock on the dash, Ali was damned if she’d ask Jake Maxwell for the time of day. Finally, as they sped through Ontario, she caught sight of a huge neon clock at a Ford dealership. It was 2:12 exactly. No wonder she was tired.
As they drove, Ali couldn’t help being struck by the latest irony in her situation. Earlier that evening and without either her knowledge or permission, someone working for the Joaquin organization had followed her every move by using the very tracking device that, even now, was still in her pocket. Through the soft denim material, she could feel the presence of that smooth round disk. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your point of view—the people who had been so vitally interested in her whereabouts earlier were now all under arrest. So even though it was technically possible for someone to track her, it seemed unlikely that anyone would do so.
With a sinking heart, Ali realized that all the high-tech GPS technology in the world wasn’t going to save her and her son. When it came to being rescued, she and Chris were on their own.
Still maintaining an uneasy silence, they traveled eastbound for some time. As they approached the merge with the 60, Ali’s hopes rose. Off to the right, she saw the lights of a phalanx of emergency vehicles sweeping onto I-10 ahead of them. When Ali first caught sight of them, she hardly dared breathe. She watched them for a few hopeful moments, praying that the lights were somehow related to what was happening to them, praying that Jake wouldn’t notice. And he didn’t. But by the time Chris negotiated the I-10/60 merge with its tangle of complicated traffic and disappearing lanes, the parade of cop cars or ambulances or whatever that Ali had put such hope in had shot on far ahead and completely out of sight.
Despairing, Ali closed her eyes and concentrated on some straightforward praying.
At last Chris spoke again. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry,” Jake replied. “Just stay on the Ten. I’ll tell you where to turn. It won’t be for a while yet.”
“If we’re going very far, we’ll need to stop for gas.”
Ali caught her breath as Jake leaned forward and peered over the front seat.
“All right,” he said finally, having read the gauge for himself. “I guess you’re right. We do need gas. Pull off at the next exit, but find a full-service pump. No one gets in or out of the vehicle while we’re stopped, understand? No one!”
Somewhere in Beaumont they pulled off the freeway and stopped at a convenience mart. While the three of them sat in the car and waited for the slow-moving attendant to fill the tank, Ali was startled by the ringing of her phone. She looked at the readout.
“It’s my mother,” she said. “She was supposed to come by the house tonight. If she did, she’s probably upset that I’m not there. She’ll be worried. She might even call the cops.”
“Answer it then,” Jake said. “But put the phone on speaker first, and don’t try anything funny. Understand?”
Ali understood all too well.
“Alison?” Edie said when she heard her daughter’s voice. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
Sometime earlier—was it hours or days?—with an armed and unstable April Gaddis standing in the kitchen at Robert Lane, Ali had somehow managed to convey the gravity of the situation to Dave by speaking to him in a kind of code. Now, though, with Jake Maxwell’s gun digging into her ribs and with him privy to both sides of the conversation, speaking to Edie in code simply wasn’t possible.
“I’m fine, Mom,” Ali said as reassuringly as possible. “I got called away from the house by an emergency with an old friend. There wasn’t time to let you know. I’m sorry.”
“You couldn’t have called?”
“No. Calling just wasn’t possible.”
“Well,” Edie said, sounding both perplexed and disgruntled, “the gate is shut. A cab brought me over, but I can’t get inside. What am I supposed to do, stand around here all night?”
Ali could have given her the gate code, but she didn’t. If something happened and Ali and Chris didn’t survive, the parked Cayenne would b
e the only real evidence as to what had happened to them. Ali didn’t want that evidence disturbed.
“Use the cab and find a hotel then,” she said. “I won’t be able to get back there before sometime tomorrow.”
“What about Chris?” Edie asked. “Where is he?”
“Staying with friends,” Ali said.
“It’s just that it’s not like you to be so irresponsible, Ali,” Edie said. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” Ali said quickly. “I’ve got to go now, Mom. Take care. I love you.”
It hurt to think those might be the last words Edie Lawson ever heard from her daughter, but they were the best Ali could do.
Seconds later they were back under way. “You still haven’t said where we’re going,” Chris reminded Jake.
“That’s because you still don’t need to know.”
“Mexico,” Ali supplied. “Oaxaca. At least that’s what he told me earlier.”
“Shut up!” Jake said.
The barrel of his gun dug deeper into Ali’s ribs, but she was grateful that it was pointed in her direction rather than in Chris’s. He had his whole life ahead of him. As for hers? If she had to gamble her life to save her son’s, that’s exactly what she’d do.
Ali looked out across the darkened desert where mountains loomed black against a star-studded sky. They were only a few miles west of the Highway 111 turnoff and the place where the speeding train had plowed into a parked Camry—the place where Paul had died. Ali couldn’t help wondering if maybe she and Chris were destined to die there as well—in much the same manner.
“I need to take a leak,” Chris said from the front seat.
“Me, too,” Ali added quickly. “I had way too much coffee earlier.”
Jake immediately seemed to assume that their request for a pit stop was nothing but a ploy. And up to a point it was. Although Ali genuinely needed to use the facilities, it was also her sincere hope that in the process of getting in and out of the car, there would be an opportunity for Chris, at least, to get away.
“You’ll just have to wait,” Jake said. “You can hold it for a while.”
Soon, though, and now that she was thinking about it, Ali really couldn’t hold it any longer. She had drunk way too much coffee.
“I really do need to go,” she said.
“I told you, we’re not stopping.”
“Fine,” Ali said. “If you don’t mind sitting in a puddle of urine, neither do I.”
“There’s a rest area coming up in a few minutes,” Chris said. “Maybe we could stop there.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Jake exclaimed. “Stop then. By all means, but the two of you go in and out of the restroom one at a time, and your cell phone stays with me. Give it to me. Yours, too, if you’ve got one,” Jake told Chris. “Hand it over.”
As Chris signaled to merge onto the rest area exit ramp, Jake held out his hand to collect first Chris’s phone and then Ali’s. Chris passed his back. Involved in reluctantly handing over her own, Ali never saw exactly what happened. One moment they were slowing to exit the highway. The next the desert came alive with the flashing lights of a dozen police and emergency vehicles as the Alero gave a sudden violent lurch and veered to one side. Then it staggered forward on the rims of four instantly flattened tires.
“Nail strips!” Jake shouted in a panic. “Keep driving. Keep driving.”
But Chris had already reached another conclusion and slammed on the brakes. As the vehicle slowed and came to a stop, Ali heard a voice she barely recognized as her own, screaming at her son.
“Get out,” she screeched at him. “Go! Go! Go! I’m right behind you.”
But that wasn’t true. Before Ali could touch the door handle, Jake’s fingers clamped down on her wrist. Ali may still have been trapped inside the car, but Chris was in motion before all the words had tumbled out of her mouth. She saw her son land and land hard, thrown forward by a combination of his own momentum and that of the vehicle. Then to her immense relief, he scrambled to his feet. Limping slightly, he raced to cover behind one of several waiting California Highway Patrol vehicles.
After that, in the middle of the chaos—accompanied by a cloud of swirling dust and the blinding flash of lights—there was a moment of utter silence followed by someone shouting, “All right, Maxwell. You’re surrounded. Put down your weapon. Come out with your hands up.”
Jake looked at Ali. “How do they know it’s me? Who told them?”
Ali had no answer for that, but with Chris out of the car and out of danger, she found herself immersed in a well of complete calm—a place where Jake Maxwell’s threats no longer held any sway with her. She was immune.
“It doesn’t matter who told them, Jake,” she told him. “What matters is that they do know. It’s over. You can’t get away. Give it up.”
“You have to believe me, Ali,” he said, after a pause. “I had no idea she was going to kill him.”
“Kill who?” Ali asked.
“Paul. I thought Lucia was just going to teach him a lesson. That’s the way the Joaquins work, you see. They give people lessons, hard enough lessons so you know what they’re capable of, and you don’t need another one.”
The comment came from so far out in left field that it took a moment for Ali to process it. “You mean you knew?” Ali demanded. “You son of a bitch, are you saying you did it?”
“I didn’t. All I did was help get him drunk. I swear to you, I didn’t know anything about Tracy and the rest of it. I never meant for Paul to die.”
“You did mean it,” Ali returned. “You meant it, and he did die. Why? Were you jealous because he got the job and you didn’t? Was that it?”
With that Ali reached for the door handle.
“Wait, Ali,” Jake said. “Don’t leave me, please. I’ll drop the gun if you stay. I promise. They won’t shoot me as long as you’re with me.”
What Ali felt in that moment was a contempt and loathing so complete and all-consuming that there was no room left in her soul for anything else, especially not fear.
“Forget it,” she told him. “You’re on your own.”
“But I have a gun.”
“You may have a gun, buddy-boy,” she told him, “but I know for a fact you don’t have balls enough to use it.”
With that, she opened the car door and stepped out into a world of flashing lights. And even there, in the middle of the sudden chill of the cold desert night, she knew that at least one or two of those flashing lights were bound to be cameras.
Blinded by them, she was startled when a pair of strong arms grabbed her and pulled her behind one of the waiting vehicles.
“Ali. Thank God!” Dave exclaimed. “Are you all right?” In the pulsing light she caught a glimpse of the relief on his worried face.
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Come on, then,” Dave said, leading her away. “It’s too dangerous. Let’s get out of here.”
“How did you find us?” Ali asked. “How did you know where to look?”
Dave didn’t answer. “Later,” he said.
“Where’s Chris?”
“Out of the line of fire. Where you need to be, too.”
Someone shouting over what sounded like a bullhorn was still ordering Jake Maxwell out of the Alero as Dave led Ali to the far side of the concrete restroom complex. There she found Chris sitting on a picnic table with a paramedic applying ice to his ankle.
“The EMT grabbed me and wouldn’t let me loose. It’s just a little sprain, Mom,” he said reassuringly. “It’s nothing. How are you?”
Ali hurried over and hugged him. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m completely fine.”
She turned back to Dave. “But how did you know…”
“Ask your son,” Dave said. “Once he realized you were in trouble, he punched his phone’s redial, and the last number dialed happened to be your folks’ phone back in Sedona. Fortunately Bob was there and answered. Chris was wearing hi
s Bluetooth mini earplug. That allowed Bob to overhear everything that was going on in the vehicle without Jake having any idea anyone was listening in. Bob immediately put another call through to us—a conference call—so we could all monitor the situation.”
Ali remembered giving Chris a tough time when he had returned from a weekend skiing trip to Aspen with a telephone earpiece attached to his head. Now it appeared that an even smaller mini earplug might well have saved both their lives.
“And knowing what was up,” Dave added, “Easy was able to get one of his electronic techs working the Pink Swan warehouse scene to reinitiate your GPS.”
“So, from all that, you knew where we were the whole time,” Ali said.
Dave nodded. “Pretty much,” he said. “But none of that would have happened if Chris here hadn’t used his head.”
Flooded with relief and gratitude, Ali gave her son another hug. She and Chris had been in danger, all right, but not nearly as much as she had supposed.
“But you were here waiting for us,” Ali said a moment later. “How did you do that? You and Easy were still in Valencia when I left. I thought you were going to pick up my mother.”
“Fortunately, we were unavoidably delayed. And after that, it took some doing,” Dave said. “And some pretty amazing police car driving on Easy Washington’s part. Of course, it helps to have CHP cars clearing traffic ahead of us all along the way.”
“So that was you?” Ali asked. “The flashing lights I saw merging off the Sixty onto the Ten just as we got there?”
Dave nodded. “Our first intention was to do this in Beaumont when you stopped for gas. Then we decided there would be less risk to the general public if we did it here at a rest area instead, so we cleared out as many civilians as we could, and here we are. Which reminds me. You should probably give your dad a call and let him know you’re okay.”
But Ali’s phone had bounced out of her hand the moment the tires had gone flat. She had no idea where it was now—none.
“Let me use yours, Chris,” she said, holding out her hand.