The first thug glanced down at them. Summer’s captor removed his hand from her mouth to make a violent shooing gesture. The first thug visibly swallowed, then reached out and swung the basement door wide. Summer licked her dry lips and waited.
Nothing happened.
A moment later the clicking started up again. The first thug hugged the wall, his pistol extended at arm’s length, aimed at whoever appeared.
Summer stopped breathing.
Suddenly an eight-inch-tall mop of fawn-colored fur moved into the pool of light, and clicked to the edge of the stairs. Bulging chocolate eyes focused on Summer.
“Muffy!” she moaned.
The tiny pink-satin bow that adorned the top of the Pekingese’s head quivered. Other than that, and the liquid eyes, the dog looked like a mobile hairball. If she noticed anyone besides Summer, she gave no sign of it. Instead she started down the stairs, hopping delicately from step to step, completely ignoring the gunman she bypassed.
“It’s just a goddamned dog!”
Grand Champion Margie’s Miss Muffet, now retired from the ring, was not just a dog. She was Summer’s mother’s cherished darling, and the winner of more ring-wars than Mike Tyson. For the last ten years, everywhere that Margaret McAfee had gone, Muffy had gone too, by plane, train, automobile, and cruise ship. The only reason Muffy was not at that moment in California with her mistress visiting Summer’s sister Sandra was that one of Sandra’s boys had recently developed a violent allergy to doggy hair. Or so Sandra said.
Summer had been elected to baby-sit. Er, doggy-sit. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Sis.
She could almost see her older sister grinning at her. Muffy was not exactly a popular houseguest. She had other unfortunate habits besides shedding.
“That pooch sure scared the crap out of Charlie!” The goons’ tension dissolved in a burst of jocularity at their point man’s expense.
“What kinda pussy are you, Charlie?”
“Pussy’s the word, all right. Me-ow. Scared of a little doggy.”
“Shut up, you morons!” Charlie was not amused. He scowled as he descended from the top of the stairs in Muffy’s wake.
“Come here, pup, pup, pup, pup!” The thug guarding Frankenstein snapped his fingers at Muffy. She went right to his feet. Summer could have strangled her with her hair bow as she submitted with regal dignity to having her ears scratched. She might have been more forgiving if the thug had not kept his gun pressed into the base of Frankenstein’s spine the whole time.
“Nice doggy,” the goon crooned.
Damned useless animal. Why couldn’t she have been a Doberman?
“Let’s go.” The third thug turned businesslike again. The second thug straightened up from petting Muffy. Charlie paused two steps from the bottom of the stairs.
“Move, you.” The third thug prodded Summer with his pistol. Hopelessly, Summer started to obey.
“Shit!” the second thug shrieked. Summer jumped a foot straight up in the air. She was not the only one, but she was the only one whose expression was not murderous when she landed.
“Damned dog pissed on my foot!”
Summer glanced down. Everyone glanced down. The hems of the second thug’s gray slacks were damp. A puddle spread rapidly around his Florsheimed foot. Dignity unimpaired, Muffy was already hopping back up the stairs.
Urinating on anyone she disliked was one of Muffy’s unfortunate habits.
Thugs one and three guffawed. Summer smiled. All hell broke loose.
Charlie went sailing through the air, courtesy of Frankenstein’s hands in his belt. He flew with a flailing bellow, and missed Summer by millimeters as he crash-landed. The other two thugs were not so fortunate. Charlie mowed them down like bowling pins.
“Run!” Frankenstein bellowed. No gentleman he, he had already leaped over Muffy and was halfway up the stairs. The thugs cursed and scrambled to regain their feet and their guns.
Summer sprang after him. She paused only to scoop up Muffy—she really couldn’t leave her mother’s precious darling to the mercy of a trio of murderers. A pistol went off as she swooped, sounding like an explosion in such cramped quarters. Something smacked into the wall just above her bent head, sending out a shower of what felt like sand. A bullet! If she hadn’t bent to retrieve Muffy, she would have been hit!
With Muffy tucked beneath her arm, Summer leaped up the remaining two stairs and dived through that doorway like a quarterback sneaking a keeper over the goal line.
The thugs were already barreling up the stairs.
Summer’s head crashed into the wall opposite the basement door. She saw stars as she ended up sprawled on her stomach. Muffy squirmed out from beneath her and licked her face. Ungratefully, Summer swatted her away.
The basement door crashed shut. Frankenstein pushed the button that locked the knob. The bad guys were locked in the basement! They were saved, saved, saved!
“Cheap-ass lock,” Frankenstein grunted as the knob began to rattle. For added security, he snatched a chair from the trio that still remained with the kitchen set and wedged it beneath the knob.
Summer scrambled to her feet and stared at the door with a pounding heart. The air was thick with muffled curses and threats as the thugs lunged against it from the other side. Watching the thin panel quake beneath their determined assault, Summer began to revise her initial jubilation.
They weren’t saved yet.
“You got a gun in the house?”
“No.” Summer was a staunch advocate of gun control. Besides, they scared her.
“Figures.”
“We could call the cops …”
“Who the hell do you think’s in the basement? Come on, let’s go!” Tearing at the duct tape around his wrists with his teeth, Frankenstein bolted toward the nearest door. It led to the garage.
A fierce banging raitled the basement door. With a single longing glance at her kitchen phone—it had been programmed to dial 911 at the touch of a single button—she snatched up Muffy and fled after him.
He had to use his foot to shove aside something that blocked the door. A dark, motionless form, sprawled on the white linoleum.
Betty Kern, Summer discovered as she raced after him. Dead, without a doubt. Beside the body lay the mahogany box that contained the silver her mother had given her for her wedding. Forks, knives, and spoons were scattered across the floor.
So much for help from that direction.
When Summer appeared at the top of the shallow flight of steps, Frankenstein had already found and pushed the button that opened the automatic door. Dawn’s gray light spread across the garage as he ducked beneath the rising panel. There was a car in the garage—and it was not hers.
The car was a late-model navy Lincoln Continental. Summer knew Lincoln Continentals. Her mother had one, though hers was bright yellow.
The racket from the kitchen—muffled thuds and curses—told her that the thugs were still locked in the basement. This would take a few minutes—did she dare take the time?
The thought of the ancient Chevy being pursued by this sleek baby decided her. She would take the time.
All but dropping Muffy, who grunted her indignation as she landed on all dainty fours with rather more force than usual, Summer ran to the car, released the catch, and raised the hood. It took only seconds to rip out the spark plug wires.
A gunshot followed by the sound of splintering wood was her signal that time had run out. Clearly they had decided to shoot their way free. Summer hit the button that operated the garage door and sprinted beneath it as it started to close. Muffy ran at her heels, and Summer scooped her up again. As she gained the street she looked this way and that, but Frankenstein was nowhere in sight.
He had probably abandoned her and Muffy to their fate. The no-good son of a …
Still she ran down the street. Dead center, toward where they had left the running car.
Without warning the Chevy careened around the corner and roared toward her. Low and black
and bewinged, it gave new meaning to her mental image of something that moved like a bat out of hell. Mindful of Frankenstein’s warning that he couldn’t see to drive, Summer leaped for the edge of the road just as the car’s breaks squealed. The Chevy came to a rocking halt about five feet beyond where she had just stood.
Yet another way she might have died on this nightmarish night.
The passenger door opened. “Jesus, Rosencrans, what took you so long?”
Explanations and recriminations could wait. Clutching Muffy to her bosom, Summer flung herself inside.
She didn’t even have time to close the door before Frankenstein stomped on the gas. Flung back against the seat, Summer clawed at the vinyl for purchase and prayed she would not be thrown out onto the pavement. Muffy, no fool, crawled under the seat.
“Shut the door!” Frankenstein roared.
Summer shot him a killing glare. Clinging to the seat back for all she was worth, she dropped a handful of spark plug wires that she didn’t remember hanging on to in the first place and reached for the wildly flapping door. Her perch was precarious at best, and if he went round a bend—but she caught the handle and slammed the door shut.
For a moment she felt as limp as a cooked noodle.
Summer slumped in the seat, her head down, her hands curled in her lap. She noted with a flicker of chagrin that her hands were black with grease. How the mighty are fallen, she mourned on behalf of her once much-praised fingers.
They were roaring past her house just as the thugs burst through the front door. The three charged out onto the front lawn and watched wild-eyed as the Chevy tore past.
At the sight of them Frankenstein must have put the pedal all the way to the floor, because the Chevy peeled rubber like a good fifties car should. They raced to the end of the street, and took the corner on two wheels.
As she was flung against the door she had just closed, Summer didn’t even bat an eyelash. She congratulated herself on getting positively used to flirting with death.
They skidded left out of the gates that marked the entrance to Albermarle Estates. The objects on the seat between them happened to catch Frankenstein’s eye.
“What the hell’s that?” he asked, indicating the little pile of twisted black wires. With his vision, they probably looked like snakes. Snakes from hell. To match the car. A bat out of hell carrying snakes from hell.
Summer giggled.
He glanced at her. Both his eyes were visible again, though neither opened wider than a slit. She only hoped he could see.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” she admonished him. Not that it would probably do much good, but at least he hadn’t crashed them. Yet.
“What are they?” He really did sound perplexed.
“Spark plug wires,” Summer explained, settling deeper into her seat. Then, at his astonished glance, she added, “To keep them from following us. The nuns did it to the Nazis in The Sound of Music. Hey, I like movies.”
Frankenstein glanced at her again. His lips twitched, and then he started to laugh.
16
Their luck ran out on Route 165 just south of Tellico Plains. Or, rather, their gas did.
Summer was driving. It was full daylight by this time, but she was so tired that she could barely focus. Her hands, which she had wiped as well as she could on her pants, were no longer black with grease but merely faintly gray, with black rims around the nails. She couldn’t look at them without feeling queasy. Beside her, Frankenstein frowned down at a map he had found in the glove compartment. For the last fifteen minutes he’d been trying to use it to plot the escape route that afforded them the best possible chance of avoiding detection. Something, either his blurred vision or the same exhaustion that plagued Summer, was making it an uphill task.
“We want to keep heading south on 165. We should run into a gravel road running east-west in about half an hour. I can’t find it on the map, but I’ve been up this way before. I know it’s there.” His voice was rough-edged with weariness.
Putt. Putt. Sputter. Putt. The Chevy seemed to be having a coughing fit. Summer frowned and pushed on the gas. For an instant the car responded. Then it gave another consumptive snort and started to slow down.
“Jesus, we forgot about the gas!” Frankenstein sounded as horrified as she felt.
Summer stared down at the gas gauge in stupefaction as the Chevy’s speed slowed to a crawl. How could they have forgotten something so important? But what could they have done even if they had remembered? It hit Summer like a baseball bat between the eyes: They didn’t have any money. She had forgotten to retrieve the thirty dollars from her house.
All that for nothing.
“Pull off the road.”
They were in the mountains now, and the road—all the roads—were uphill. Steep, forested slopes slanted skyward on Summer’s left; on her right was a sheer drop of perhaps a thousand feet. Up ahead, more mountains rose out of the early morning mist. Snow caps blended with drifting white clouds in the distance.
A hawk dipped and swooped overhead as Summer pulled off onto the rocky shoulder. They were about halfway up a tortuous two-lane mountain road with no sign of civilization in any direction. They hadn’t spotted another vehicle since they’d passed a coal truck skirting Tellico Plains.
“Now what?” Summer asked, shifting into neutral—she’d really gotten very good at shifting—and setting the emergency brake before the Chevy could roll downhill.
Frankenstein shrugged and opened his door. She had pulled to the left, across the northbound lane, so the car would hug the mountain rather than perch precariously on the edge of the cliff.
Summer got out too, absently tugging on her broken bra strap to get her pertinent assets back where they be longed. Muffy crawled out after her, slunk to the edge of the road, and threw up in the tall grass.
Muffy had always been prone to travel sickness.
“Now we walk.” Frankenstein already had the back door open. Besides textbooks, and the baseball cap, the backseat yielded four cans of unopened beer remaining in a plastic ring-pack, a zip-up hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of high-topped basketball shoes. From the looks of them, they were at least size eleven.
“Must be a big kid.” Frankenstein gave the shoes a cursory glance and set them alongside the beer, cap, and sweatshirt at his feet.
“Walk!” His previous remark just registered on Summer’s consciousness. She was so tired, she could barely stand, much less contemplate putting one foot in front of the other. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Nope. Unless you can fly.” Frankenstein turned and headed back the way they had come. Too weary to do anything except lean against the car and watch him retreat, Summer was relieved when at last he bent, picked up something from the roadside, and headed back toward her. For a moment there she had feared she and Muffy were being abandoned.
She was almost too tired to care.
“What’s that for?” she asked when he was once again within hearing range. He was carrying a rusty metal rod about three feet long.
“To break into the trunk. To see if there’s something in there we can use.”
He inserted one end of the rod in the crack by the lock. After a few mighty heaves—Summer was impressed with the way his biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves of the T-shirt when he bore down—the metal on both sides of the lock was bowed and bulging.
But the trunk was still locked.
Summer began to grin.
Except for the new cut in his cheek, Frankenstein’s face didn’t look quite so fearsome this morning, or maybe she had grown used to the way he looked. Both his eyes were ringed with truly magnificent shiners, but they were open wide enough so that she could actually discern the color of his irises without having to squint. His facial bruises ran the color gamut from purple to yellow to green. So when what little normal-hued facial skin he still possessed flushed bright red with annoyance and exertion, she merely admired this cheerful addition to an already impressive array
of colors.
“What are you laughing at?” he snarled when his dozenth effort to pop the lock failed.
Summer told him, and added helpfully, “Looks to me like what you need is a can opener.”
Frankenstein shot her a killing glare. Summer grinned at him. He gave a downward heave on the rod—and it bent almost double.
But the trunk was still locked.
Summer giggled. Frankenstein swore. Withdrawing the rod from the crack, he stared at its twisted shape for a bitter moment before throwing it aside.
“Jesus!” he bellowed, without apparent provocation. Summer jumped in reaction to the shout, then followed the trajectory of his outraged gaze.
Muffy trotted daintily away from his foot.
“Goddamned dog peed on my foot!” He banged his fist down hard on the trunk. The trunk popped open.
Summer couldn’t help it. She laughed so hard she had to sit down on the ground. She laughed so hard that when Muffy crawled into her lap all she could do was bury her face in the dog’s talcum-scented fur to try to muffle her cackles. She laughed so hard that her sides ached, and she thought she might die from being unable to catch her breath.
Then she caught a glimpse of Frankenstein’s sour expression, and laughed some more.
“She does that,” she gasped semiapologetically when she could spare enough air for speech.
“She does that? The dog goes around peeing on people’s feet and all you can say is, she does that? Jesus.”
“She doesn’t much like men—and anyway, she saved your rear back at my house. And she got the trunk open.”
“I got the trunk open.”
“You wouldn’t have gotten it open without Muffy’s help.”
“Out of gratitude I might let her live, then.” Frankenstein finished wiping his foot on the grass at the edge of the road and headed back for the trunk. He disappeared from view as he rummaged inside.
From the safety of Summer’s lap Muffy barked once, a delicate little yap.
“What’s she barking at?” Frankenstein’s head emerged from the trunk.
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