But I wouldn’t have it any other way. This was the closest to a real family gathering that I’d had in a very long time, and certainly more joyful than any since my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As an only child, I’d missed out on the fun — and frustration — of siblings, the good-natured and not-so-good-natured jostling and sharing. I smiled and leaned against the brick wall under the porch light, listening to the happy voices inside.
I like my à la mode a little soupy, so I twirled my spoon, watching the white creaminess ooze amid the cherries and crumbly topping. I wondered how many decades it had been since Dwayne had experienced a family dinner. He deserved a report on Bodie too. I’d hike to his homestead in the morning to issue an invitation for our next meal and have a chat with him. We had several important topics to discuss, not the least of which was his illegal activities on my property. Of course, I was in no position to cast stones in that matter, but I did want to know what other infractions I might need to add to Matt’s list for possible prosecution.
There was a soft thud and a warm rush of air from my left. I turned my head just in time to see — nothing.
Rough cloth pressed against my eyes. A hard hand yanked on my jaw, and a dry, scratchy wad was stuffed in my mouth before I had a chance to scream.
CHAPTER 22
I threw my bowl of crisp and heard a grunt as it connected with some soft part of my assailant, or one of his friends. Given the number of hands grabbing and shoving me, there had to be more than one. I forced squeals past the wad in my mouth, but they didn’t come out any louder than a mildly irritated chipmunk.
My arms were jerked in front of me, clamped together, and strapped at the wrists. My fingers went numb almost instantly. I was tugged around the corner, my feet tripping stupidly on the rough ground. Even though I couldn’t see, I sensed that I was no longer in the glow cast by the porch light, and I clamped my teeth into the wad to control my violent shivering.
I swung my right foot around, hoping to catch a shin — front, back, sideways. A soft hiss sounded near my ear — a warning — then something bony and hard plowed into my stomach, knocking my breath away, and I was lifted off the ground, middle first.
I flailed as much as I could from my hinged position, glad to still have on my hiking boots with their tough soles. Whoever was carrying me was moving at a full trot, and the hard jouncing felt as though it was cracking my ribs as I struggled to breathe through my nose on each upswing.
He ran for a long time — it’s hard to calculate time when your brain is fighting through flashing pain, but it was ten, fifteen minutes maybe. Then he stopped and dumped me on the ground.
I sprawled there, chest heaving, head throbbing with the blood rush from not hanging upside down anymore. A bright light raked across my blindfold, and I tucked into a ball. I didn’t think I could stand on my own, let alone run — not until I’d recovered my breath. Where to run to? The blindfold was still secure, and my strapped hands were useless. I tried squinching my face to loosen the cloth.
The male voices were low — too low for me to understand, although I was pretty sure they weren’t speaking English. Metallic clanks and then an engine roared to life, followed quickly by another in deafening tandem.
I was hoisted to standing and backed up and pushed onto a seat. A warm body crowded onto the seat with me, his arm tight around my waist. Then his muscles flinched, and we leaped forward.
ATVs, probably quads. They’d learned their lesson. I was pretty sure my captors were the finger message people, just more of them and better equipped this time. And I’d made it easy for them.
But they’d only taken me. The boys were safe. Clarice. Walt. Sidonie, Hank and CeCe. Only me. It could have been so much worse.
I relaxed against the man’s chest. If I’d known him in any other context, I would have thought his scent comforting — a mix of wood smoke, leather, motor oil, and cooked onions. It was like a record of what he’d been doing that day, before it came time to kidnap me.
I could try to throw myself off the ATV, but they’d probably stop, pick me up and keep going. I needed all the wits and physical strength I could muster for what was coming next.
oOo
They stuffed me in a shallow place, small and hard, by the way their bumps and grunts echoed quickly. They removed the now soggy gob from my mouth and left me.
They didn’t go far, though, because I could hear low voices and the occasional crackle of firewood sap igniting. I scooted in each direction until my shoulder bumped hard, cold wall on three sides, and a thick wood door on the fourth. I laid my cheek against the wall and felt the ridges of concrete block construction. Dampness seeped through the uneven floor.
They’d have never removed my gag if they thought my screaming would be a problem, which meant we were miles and miles from the nearest source of help. So I saved my breath and propped myself in a corner.
My mind was racing, but I wasn’t coming to any conclusions. The cold got to me first — seeped into my aching muscles until time moved with agonizing slowness. Everything became stagnant — my heartbeat faded, the men’s voices outside slurred, icy fingers crept over my limbs.
And I must have blacked out, or dozed, because slamming car doors jolted me to consciousness.
The door swung open, and someone pulled me to my feet. Pain prickles rampaged through my cramped legs as I staggered through the opening, the man prodding me in the back.
“Cut the ties,” a surprisingly tenor voice said.
My arms were pulled down at an angle, and the bands popped off. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out as blood flooded into my hands. I flexed them carefully.
“I want to see her,” said the same voice, and my blindfold was yanked off.
I squinted against the firelight, then slowly raised my eyes to the ring of faces of the men standing around the fire. No one I recognized. Dirt Bike Man was not part of the group, although most of the men could have been his siblings for similar appearance.
Except one. The shortest man separated himself from the group and strolled toward me. Light flickered off his rimless glasses. His hair was sandy brown and tightly curled close to his head. His eyes were lighter, hard to tell the color exactly in the dim, uneven firelight.
“So you’re Nora Ingram,” he said in the high-pitched voice that matched his stature.
“Nora Ingram-Sheldon,” I corrected him.
He snickered, not a pleasant sound — nasal, almost wheezing. “I am Giuseppe Ricardo Solano.”
“Numero Tres,” I whispered.
He scowled. I think he would have preferred a higher rank. “I go by Joe.”
He was dressed in an expensive pullover sweater — I guessed cashmere or very fine merino — and tailored slacks with wingtips. No wonder he’d had his henchmen do the dirty work of careening through the woods to abduct me. But he was broad-shouldered and thick through the torso with a crude toughness lurking below the designer clothes that was never developed in a board room. If he was scratched, he would bleed like a street hoodlum, his true colors.
“Since my men have been unable to locate your husband,” Joe said, “I decided to pay you a visit.”
“You and the FBI,” I said, forcing bitterness into my voice. “Why does no one knock these days, or call first? Uncivilized.” I glanced at the other four men who were clustered close to the fire but whom I suspected were also listening intently.
“What does the FBI know?” Joe’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.
“Less than they need to, more than they realize.”
Joe barked an unamused laugh. “I might like you, Nora Ingram, which is a pity. Where’s my money?”
“Are you a good Catholic?” I figured with a name like Giuseppe, his mother was, even if he wasn’t.
Joe frowned slightly and rocked on his heels. “When it suits me.”
“What’s the going rate for a confession these days?”
“Ahh.” A smug look crossed his face, and he c
racked the knuckles of his left hand, flashing a glitzy pinkie ring in the process. “I thought you’d have something you wanted to tell me.”
“You’re the one who needs to confess. I’ve made the first payment on a get-out-of-purgatory layaway plan for you. Widows and orphans. Remember, Joe? I suspect you’ve made plenty of them when we’re instructed to care for them.” I stared at him.
“You’ll get my money back.” He made the statement flatly, as though the deed were already accomplished, and stepped closer.
I shook my head. “Too late. Your contribution is already well invested — on nutritious food for growing children and contractors for new dormitories and clean water wells and metal roofs and teachers and goats. Not the sort of currency you can recall.”
Joe’s fists balled at his sides and almost disappeared into the too-long, bunched-up sleeves of his sweater. His eyes glinted as he glared hard at me through his lowered pale lashes.
I arrowed my gaze straight back. No wavering — he must not see me flinch. He had to believe what I said was true — because it was true. I’d never be paying him back. He could kill me over the money if he wanted to, but that wouldn’t make it reappear. But he might need to send a message to his associates to save face, just as he had with the fingerless subordinate. My heart was thumping so wildly, I was sure he could hear it.
He finally spoke through stiff lips, still frozen in his menacing stance. “You’re more like your husband than I expected for being so recently married.”
“What did he do for you, exactly?” I murmured.
“If you’ve been talking to the FBI, then you know,” Joe snarled. “When I find him — and I will — I will kill him.”
“Are you asking my permission?” I knew it was a smart aleck response and a huge risk, but I couldn’t let him think I was beaten.
He whirled and smacked me across the cheek with the back of his fist. My neck snapped sideways and cracked, and I lost all feeling, all control. I fell flat, staring, my eyes dry. I couldn’t even blink.
Feet walked past me, doors slammed, engines roared, and I was left in silence with the dying embers of the fire.
CHAPTER 23
Fog enveloped me like a down comforter, heavy, dense, and so thick I could barely see the junco hopping on the ground, scratching through pine needles to reach tasty morsels. His beady eye kept close watch on me, but I must not have stirred in long enough for him to feel safe.
He was joined by a mate, her head dusky charcoal in color. She reached my outspread fingers, pecked delicately around them, perched on my wrist for a fleeting second, then carried on with her foraging.
The thought that coyotes might be next prodded me into action. I pushed my torso up until I was sitting. Pine needles fell from where they’d been imprinted in my cheek. I was still in one piece, but I felt pulverized and jellied, with the screaming rush of a blinding migraine.
I doubled over, head between my knees, gulping huge breaths to hold back the nausea. The bird whistle Eli had given me swung forward on the leather thong around my neck, and I clutched it. My little bit of home. I was still alive.
I shouldn’t be, but I was.
After a few experimental attempts, I balanced on my feet — hunched over with my hands propped on my knees, but progress at any rate. My body ached, dull and stiff.
I took a breather, and from that awkward position, examined my surroundings, what wasn’t masked by opaque fog. The cinder block hut that had been my prison stood like an outpost at the edge of a cultivated field that had not been tended recently. Bushy winter foliage mounded in overgrown, parallel rows. A dirt track ran by the hut’s open door, with the ashy remnants of my captors’ fire several yards away.
I went over last night’s events in my mind, particularly our arrival — my stumbling, the direction I’d been shoved to get me in the hut — and decided we must have approached from the right.
I might as well be moving. I was cold to the core and starting to shiver. My fingers and toes were tingly lumps that I could barely wiggle.
I walked slowly, keeping to the road which had obviously been designed for tractor use only. Fog had frozen on the surface, dusting the dirt with a crunchy sugar coating like a fancy cupcake. The track took an abrupt turn at the corner of the field, and I stopped. I didn’t remember any sharp turns on the ATV, but we’d probably been traveling cross-country.
I spun slowly, but the fog was a shifting white wall, making it impossible to get my bearings. Suddenly, the scent of toothpaste and cough drops filled the heavy air.
I glanced down — I’d stepped on a plant. I bent and crushed a leaf between my fingers and held them to my nose. The crop was peppermint.
The piercing freshness cleared my sinuses and maybe my brain, and I chuckled. Roads are built for a reason. I’d follow the road.
The only sound was my unsteady footsteps. I was grateful for the frozen ground — otherwise I’d have been slogging through mud. How long had I been gone? Clarice would have noticed when I didn’t show up to help with the dishes. But then what?
I figured the best thing I could do was remember — remember everything possible about last night, about the men who’d taken me, about Numero Tres Joe and his operatives — what they’d looked like, what they’d said, why they’d spared me.
Why? I was still fuzzy about Joe’s motives. Maybe he’d realized I was a dead end with regard to his money. Maybe he thought I was in contact with Skip and would pass along the threat against his life. Maybe he had to assess the situation for himself.
The news articles about him, while sketchy on specifics, had reported third-hand accounts of his tight-fisted management style, but had also said he tended to be reclusive, with hints of growing paranoia. Apparently the higher one rose in the cartel hierarchy, the greater the risk to one’s life, from both outside and inside the organization.
Maybe Joe didn’t think I’d survive out here by myself, that I was as good as dead anyway. Maybe he was right. My stomach rumbled, gnawing in on itself to remind me just how long it had been since my cozy family dinner.
I palmed Eli’s gift and gave it a tentative puff. The same cheerful warble — and a comforting form of companionship.
The road didn’t narrow but felt more closed in as it wound into increasingly dense trees that towered over me, their trunks puncturing and disappearing into the fog. The moisture in the air seemed to carry sounds — solitary chirps and scuttles as small animals went about their daily responsibilities.
If I could hear them, they could hear me. I could holler, but wasn’t sure my voice would last long, or if anyone was looking for me. Or if they were looking for me, how would they find this patch of woods among the endless acres? I didn’t even know if I was still in May County.
Or I could whistle. I might be mistaken for a bird, but I would be a very persistent and obnoxious bird.
oOo
Blowing on a whistle takes more tongue muscle — and saliva — than one would think. Hours later — two, three? — I was reduced to occasional squeaks, with long bouts of panting in between. It didn’t help that the road was now a steep incline.
My flimsy efforts were becoming ridiculous. I flopped at the base of a tree and leaned against the trunk.
At least there was still a road. Miles and miles of road. Although at my pace I might have only covered a fraction of that distance. What distance? I had no idea.
I groaned and considered removing my boots to check on the blisters that were rising on my heels and left big toe. But the worry that I might not be able to get my boots back on kept me inert.
In ascending, I’d climbed into even thicker fog. I was tunneling through the middle of cloud. I had no idea how many trees surrounded me now since I could only see the ones I could also touch.
Except for the road, I might have been walking in circles. There had been a few slight bends in the track, but I figured whoever put in the time and effort to build this road did so economically, only diverting tempor
arily from the intended direction for major obstacles that could not be removed.
For being visually impenetrable, the fog sure was fluid — swirling, pressing in on me, distorting even the shape of my own hands in my lap, confusing and lonely, the damp version of a mirage. And ruminating did no good for my situation.
I clawed my way up the tree until I was standing again and set out, one foot in front of the other.
Tweet.
Puff. Wheeze.
Chirp.
Pant.
The whistle and I developed an odd sort of syncopated cadence, but we carried on.
A branch crackled to my right, and I froze. Snap. Crunch.
Something was definitely walking toward me. It sounded big and heavy and clumsy. Not a cougar — didn’t they have soft, padded feet? An elk? A bear? What other kinds of big, scary creatures roamed these hills? Sasquatch?
I peered into the fog, straining to see an antler rack or a bulky, mangy hide. If a wild animal and I bumped into each other and things got ugly, I knew who would win. But I couldn’t take off running in the opposite direction because the road was my lifeline.
However, I could sound bigger and more intimidating than I was. I inhaled and gave a mighty blast on the whistle. It wasn’t made to handle that much air all at once, and the resulting sound was a cross between a squealing pig and a sick chicken. Definitely scary. I blew again for good measure, expelling my entire lung capacity until the screech faded into a staccato gurgle.
A black form — no, two forms — two heads, four legs — came crashing through the brush and white vapor, assault rifles pointed at me.
I thrust my hands in the air and just about peed my pants.
“Nora Ingram?”
I emitted a tiny squeak that was supposed to be a yes.
“FBI. You alone?”
“Very,” I whispered.
“You armed? They strap anything to you?”
I shook my head until my teeth rattled.
Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 16