Scared Money (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 13)

by Jenna Bennett

  That didn’t sound good. “What are you going to do to me? I did what you said. You’re not going to hit me, are you?”

  She smiled. That wasn’t pleasant, either. “Not if you continue to do as I say.”

  “I will. Just don’t hurt Darcy. Or the baby.” Or me, if you can avoid it.

  “Get in the car.” She waved the gun again. I moved toward the driver’s side, and she shook her head. “In the back.”

  I opened the door behind Darcy, beside the suitcase with the baby, and slipped in. It was a tight squeeze, with Darcy’s seat pushed back so far.

  “Good,” Denise Seaver said when I had gotten myself and the stomach situated. Things seemed to be OK in that regard. I couldn’t feel that telltale trickle of blood between my legs she had told me to look out for.

  Carmen’s baby was still asleep, its tiny mouth pursed. Denise Seaver put the money bag down for a second to stick her hand in her pocket. “Take these.”

  They turned out to be a pair of handcuffs. Very official looking. She must have taken them off the dead guard in the van yesterday, along with the gun.

  “Loop them around the headrest.”

  The Volvo has headrests in the same leather as the rest of the seat, attached to the top of the seat with two metal sticks. I looped the handcuffs around one of them.

  “Put them around your wrists,” Denise Seaver said. The business end of the gun was pointed squarely at me, so I didn’t think I could demur.

  I used one hand to snap the cuffs around the other wrist, and then I used that hand to close the other half. And just like that, I was a prisoner in my own car.

  It was a bit uncomfortable, I guess. I had to keep my hands raised, so over time, they’d probably become numb and tingly. And if the baby woke, I couldn’t do anything to feed or change him. But I wasn’t really worried. I didn’t think she had hit Darcy hard enough to do any real damage. Darcy wasn’t handcuffed, so once she woke up, she’d get me out of here. Somehow. We just had to wait it out.

  Or so I thought, until Denise Seaver walked away from me and around to the other side of the car. She opened the door next to the baby.

  “You said you’d leave him with me!” I said. “You got your money. You don’t get to take him.”

  She gave me a look. “I have the gun. I get to do whatever I want to do. And you can’t stop me.”

  She was right, I couldn’t. But still— “You promised!”

  “Calm down,” Denise Seaver said. “I don’t want the brat. He’s all yours.”

  She left the passenger side door open and moved to the driver’s side. And reached in and turned the key in the ignition.

  The engine roared to life, and Denise Seaver straightened, looking pleased.

  It took me a second, I admit it. At first, I wondered whether she was planning to take us somewhere. It wasn’t until she scooped up Darcy’s handbag and mine from the concrete floor and started walking toward the door into the house that I realized what the plan was.

  “Wait a second!”

  She stopped on the top step, looking politely inquiring.

  “You can’t just leave us here. We’ll die!”

  “Yes,” Denise Seaver said. “That’s the idea.” She gave me one of those earth-motherly smiles. And then she went out through the door and closed it. I’m sure she locked it, too. Just as I’m sure it was fairly airtight. If some family man decided to do himself in by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage, the home builder wouldn’t want to be responsible for the gas seeping into the rest of the house and killing women and children.

  “Shit!” I was upset enough not to bother to clean up my bad language, although I admit to feeling a little guilt over it. “Darcy! Darcy, wake up!”

  Darcy didn’t wake up. I yanked on the handcuffs. They didn’t budge. Volvo builds solid cars.

  I tried shaking the seat. “Darcy! Darcy!”

  Nothing happened. The baby kept sleeping. Darcy kept being unconscious. And the car kept pumping out noxious fumes that would kill us all.

  I forced myself to sit back and take stock of the situation. I had no idea how long it normally takes to die from carbon monoxide poisoning, but I figured the whole garage probably had to fill up before we were in trouble. Once that happened, the baby would probably go first. It was so tiny, with such small lungs. It might even have been born a little early. Denise Seaver had told me Carmen had a couple of weeks left before her due date. If so, the baby was born at least a week before term. Its lungs might not be fully developed yet, and that might contribute to an earlier demise.

  Darcy was unconscious and breathing shallowly. That would probably help her—she was taking in less air—although it didn’t help me. I’d rather have her awake and able to do something than unconscious and breathing shallowly. As it was, it seemed rescue was up to me. And I was handcuffed to my own car. Chances were, the more energy I expended and the more air I took in, the faster I would start breathing poison.

  At the same time, sitting still and doing nothing wasn’t an option. Today was not my day to die. Not here, and not like this.

  I started yanking on the handcuffs again. It rattled the seat. I could see Darcy’s head roll back and forth. “Darcy! Wake up! Darcy!”

  Inside the house, I heard Denise Seaver’s footsteps rattling down the stairs. A second later, the back door slammed.

  “Darcy!” I stretched my hands as far as they would go through the cuffs and started swatting my unconscious sister. “She’s leaving! We have to get out of here! C’mon, Darcy! Wake up!”

  Darcy moaned, but didn’t stir.

  “Shit.” I sat back and took a breath. Was it my imagination, or was it getting harder to breathe?

  Probably just my imagination, I told myself. There couldn’t possibly be enough carbon monoxide in the garage yet, to kill us.

  Outside the garage door, I heard a car engine roar to life. Darcy’s little Honda, I assumed. The one she had driven over here in. A second later, it reversed down the driveway. Then the sound faded as it took off up the street.

  “Damn.”

  There went the possibility that Denise Seaver might change her mind about committing three more murders, and come back to let us out. We were stuck here until someone came by and found us, or until we could get ourselves out. At the moment, it didn’t look good.

  I rattled the seat some more and called Darcy’s name. She didn’t respond. When I leaned forward as far as I could and peered over the seat at her, I saw a smear of blood on the leather. Denise Seaver had hit her hard enough to break the skin. She probably had a concussion. For me to keep shaking the seat probably wasn’t good for her. Yelling at her probably wasn’t, either.

  Denise Seaver had taken both our handbags. We had no phones, so we couldn’t contact anyone. I kicked one shoe off and tried to twist my body enough to get my leg through the gap between the front seats and across the console to where I—maybe—could turn the car off with my toes, but I couldn’t reach. The baby was starting to make squeaky noises. Shortly, it might wake up and want more to eat, and I wouldn’t be able to feed it. We’d all just sit here and starve, until the carbon monoxide overtook us, and then we’d all be dead.

  And my husband didn’t even know where I was. By the time he figured it out, we’d all be rotting.

  My eyes filled with tears. Not the most useful response, but I couldn’t help it. Blame the hormones. That’s what I did.

  Anyway, it was the tears’ fault that I didn’t immediately notice the door from the garage to the house opening.

  When a figure appeared in the opening, I did notice, although it took a few seconds for me to blink the tears away enough to recognize him. By then he had uttered a bad word—I couldn’t hear it, but I saw his mouth shape the single syllable, and recognized it because I had said it several times myself over the past couple of hours—and slapped his hand on the garage door opener.

  Nothing happen, and I wasn’t surprised. I had seen Denise Seaver slam the butt
of the gun against it as a last salute before closing the door and locking us in. Dix grabbed the end of his tie, held it in front of his face, and plunged down the stairs.

  “No,” I squealed when he reached over the steering wheel to turn the key in the ignition. “Don’t turn it off!”

  He stopped and peered at me. His eyes widened at the sight of the handcuffs. “Why not?”

  “She took Darcy’s car and Darcy’s money. We have to go after her.”

  “The garage door won’t open,” Dix pointed out.

  “It’s aluminum. Thin. You can probably bust through it.”

  Dix bit his lip.

  “It’s my car. If I’m willing to risk it, you should be.”

  “Fine.” He slid behind the wheel.

  “Strap Darcy in before you start.”

  He reached over and dragged the seatbelt over Darcy’s unconscious body. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m wedged in pretty tight. I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

  “If you say so.” He put the car in reverse and his feet on the gas and brake at the same time. The engine screamed in protest.

  “Are you sure about this?” Dix asked over the sound.

  “Just do it. Before she gets too far away, and before we die of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  Dix nodded and took his foot off the brake. The car responded by leaping backward. It hit the garage door with a crunch. For a second, I was thrown against the seat in front of me. Since it was only a matter of a couple of inches, I didn’t think there was any damage done. Then the metal door crumpled like so much scrap metal, and we burst out into the sunlight and careened backwards down the short driveway at sixty miles an hour.

  * * *

  WE ENDED up halfway onto the lawn across the street, and made some nasty gouges in the grass when we first arrived and then, a second later, when Dix shifted gears and we accelerated to take off up the street. Grass and dirt flew, and we took out a bed of mums, too, on the way. The mailbox survived, but it was a close call.

  “Any idea where she was going?” Dix asked. He was handling the car competently, skidding around the corners like a real pro. Rafe would have been proud. I knew I was. But I could hear the tension in his voice.

  “She didn’t say. Away from here.”

  “I figured that,” Dix said, taking the next corner on two wheels.

  “If I had my hands free, I’d call the sheriff and tell him what’s going on, and to get an APB out on Darcy’s car. As it is, there isn’t much I can do.” Other than hold on for dear life.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dix said. “I already called it in.”

  “No kidding? How long were you out there before you came to the rescue?”

  He glanced at me in the mirror. “I came with Darcy. She was carrying a lot of money, and I didn’t want her to go alone. I didn’t know we were coming here until we pulled up in front. If I had, I would have realized something was wrong sooner.”

  I nodded. “I was hoping she’d catch on. I guess it’s good that you did.”

  “When we got here, I let her go in by herself, while I went around the front and looked in the windows. I didn’t see what happened when she first arrived, but I saw Denise Seaver march the two of you into the garage at gunpoint.” His lips turned down as he directed a worried look at Darcy.

  “Once we got down to the garage floor, she hit Darcy with the butt of the gun,” I said. “I put Darcy in the car, and then she made me handcuff myself to the seat. I thought it was just so we wouldn’t run away or try to stop her. It wasn’t until she turned on the car that I realized she was trying to kill us all. And by then there was nothing I could do. She destroyed the garage door opener and locked us in on her way out.”

  Dix nodded. “I saw her go upstairs, and a couple of minutes later she came back down with two bags. She threw them in Darcy’s car along with the paper bag with the money, and took off.”

  “And you came inside to save us. My hero.”

  “Bull pucky,” my brother said rudely as we squealed through the gates of the intersection onto the Columbia Highway. “Which way?”

  I had a split second to make a decision, and no reason to suspect Denise Seaver had been partial to one direction over the other. There was a fifty/fifty chance I was wrong, but what could we do? “North.”

  North was the way back to Nashville, but also the quickest way to the interstate, whether she planned to go north or south. And south led into downtown Sweetwater, what there is of it. North leads out of town.

  Dix went north. A couple of minutes later we flew past the mansion. “How’s Mother?” I asked.

  Dix gave me an incredulous look over his shoulder. “You seriously want me to make small talk? Now?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I haven’t checked on her since the last time we talked. As far as I know she’s fine. Now be quiet and let me drive.”

  I subsided. However, the baby must have decided it was time for more food. He started making little squeaky noises, and contorting his little face, and pretty soon he opened his mouth and let out a wail.

  “Jesus Christ!” Dix said, almost driving off the road. “What’s that?”

  “That’s the baby. I think he’s hungry. But I’m a little tied up here, so I can’t feed him.”

  “He’s going to have to wait,” Dix said grimly, pushing down on the gas pedal. “It won’t hurt him. Maybe the screaming will be incentive to drive faster.”

  I could well imagine it might be. The shrill desperation of those wails felt like they were drilling into my brain. I sat where I was, with my hands slowly going numb, with a screaming baby next to me, an unconscious woman in the front seat, and with my brother muttering curses under his breath as we tore up the Columbia Highway.

  “I don’t see her,” I said a couple of minutes later. “I think maybe we went the wrong way.”

  “Bite your tongue.” Dix gave the car a little more gas. “There she is.”

  There she was. Or at least there was a car up ahead that looked like Darcy’s blue Honda.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  He looked at me. “I thought you had a plan.”

  I shook my head. “I just didn’t want her to get away. But I have no idea how to stop her. Just keep following, I guess. Far enough back that she doesn’t see us.”

  “I think it’s too late for that,” Dix said, as the car up ahead picked up speed and increased the distance between us. “I think she just did.”

  I thought so, too. “Just stick with her, then.”

  “I would, but I think we’re going to run out of gas soon.”

  Damn. I mean, darn. Not the way I had envisioned this situation. Denise Seaver was the one who was supposed to run out of gas in my car, not we. “Maybe we just need to let her go, then. Tell the sheriff we’ve spotted her heading north on the Columba Highway just past Beulah’s Meat’n Three, and let them take over.”

  “They’re not here,” Dix pointed out.

  “But they’re coming, don’t you think? You said you called them, right?”

  He glanced at me. “Do you hear sirens?”

  I didn’t. Although it was hard to hear anything over the baby’s squeals. “How much gas do we have left?”

  “The gas light is on,” Dix said, “so maybe a gallon?”

  “That’ll give us about fifteen miles, I think. Maybe twenty. Depending.”

  “We can spare a couple of minutes.” He sped up. “There’s a gas station just before the interstate, if we haven’t caught her by then.”

  Since we had no idea how to catch her, I wasn’t really worried about it. Although if we got close enough, we could ram her and force her off the road, I guess. If it had been Rafe behind the wheel, I wouldn’t have questioned the sense of that kind of maneuver. Since it was Dix, I did. He’d probably kill us all.

  And anyway, I’m not sure even Rafe would have risked it, with his pregnant wife and Carmen’s baby in t
he car.

  “Maybe you should get back on the phone with the sheriff. Tell him where we are and that if he doesn’t hurry, he’ll lose her.”

  “Or I could just drive the car,” Dix said. “This isn’t easy, you know.”

  I’m sure it wasn’t. And aside from the precious cargo, Dix had two motherless children at home. The last thing I wanted, was for anything to happen to him. The fifty grand was just money. I could spend the rest of my life paying Darcy back for it. As long as we survived.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Just follow her at a safe distance. Don’t try to catch her. If she doesn’t run out of gas or drive herself off the road by the time we get to the interstate, just let her go.”

  Dix nodded. “Anything you can do to quiet that baby down?”

  “Not without the use of my hands,” I said. “Although I guess I could try singing him a lullaby.”

  “No,” Dix said. “That’s OK. Thanks anyway.”

  Sure. “How’s that gas gauge looking?”

  “The same as a minute ago,” Dix said. “I think we can make it to the gas station. If we lose her at that point, it won’t be our fault. We can’t drive with no gas.”

  I nodded. “Hear any sirens yet?”

  “No,” Dix said. “You?”

  I shook my head. Up ahead, Darcy’s Honda was making good time up the Columbia Highway. It’s a main street with a right of way, so pretty much all the streets entering it has stop signs. As a result, she could just keep trucking while everyone else stayed out of her way.

  Until she came to the big intersection with the road to Damascus, a small town southwest of Columbia. Elspeth Caulfield, David’s biological mother, lived there before her death.

  The intersection kept coming closer. There was a red light, but the Honda showed no sign of stopping. Denise Seaver must be lying on the horn. We could hear the tooting over the squalling of the baby. Cars parted to the left and right like the Red Sea before Moses. Not that there were a lot of cars, but more than we’d seen so far. They scrambled to get out of the way as Darcy’s little Honda shot into the intersection and around the corner. Denise Seaver went from her own lane into the next lane and back to her own lane again, sending cars skidding out of the way. And just as she was about to straighten up, stomp on the gas pedal, and take off like a shot up the road to the interstate, a vehicle barreled across the lanes of traffic and clipped the rear corner of the Honda.