by Dale Mayer
“We need her contact information.”
The men frowned as they looked around, and then the one supplied it willingly. “It is not far from here,” he said. “You should find it easily.”
“Did she work here alone?”
“Her brother did a lot of work outside. And when we needed extra help, he was supposed to be here, but he doesn’t have any training.”
“Understood,” he said. “Now look after your comrade,” Zack said. He and Bonaparte slowly backed out. “If you come after us,” Zack said, “I have a bullet here for each of you.”
“Not if we shoot you first,” the third man snapped from the back.
Immediately Bonaparte fired and took out his gunhand. The man screamed as he clutched his arm against his chest. “Well, now you won’t be shooting us, will you?” Bonaparte’s voice was hard. “I’ll take out your legs too if I think you’re coming after us.” And he immediately moved the gun over to the second man.
The second man held up his hands. “Go,” he said. “We don’t have any argument with you.”
“Good enough,” Bonaparte said. “But this is your only warning. If we see you again, it’s a bullet between the eyes.” And, like that, the two of them melted away.
Once in the trees, they stopped and waited to see if the guards would come after them. “What do you think?” Bonaparte asked. “Are they smart enough to leave well enough alone?”
“I hope so for their sake,” Zack whispered. “I don’t think their paychecks are big enough to get killed.”
“Good,” he said. “Now let’s get the hell back to that vehicle before we lose it.”
Chapter 7
Someone called to Zadie from down below. She froze in the tree. She hadn’t heard anybody arrive. She gave her head a shake and looked around her. It was pitch-black, and she couldn’t see anything.
Down below, the man called up softly, “Are you awake, Zadie?”
“Yes,” she whispered, relieved to hear Zack’s voice below her. Immediately she heard him clambering up the branches toward her. “Careful,” she said. “They are not very thick.”
“They’ll be fine,” he said, and suddenly he was here, standing on a branch, staring up at her only a foot below. “There you are. Come on. Let’s go. We need to pick up the vehicle before somebody comes back and grabs it.”
She nodded. “I was thinking of that,” she said, “but …” And she looked around nervously. “I’m more than a little worried about getting out of here.”
“Which is why we will take care of it. I’ve picked a trail already. I want you to get on my back and hang on tight,” he said.
“With just my arms? Because I can’t get my legs around you.”
“I know,” he said. He turned, so she was behind him. “I want you to grab on with your arms and hang on tight. I’ll get you down.”
“I’m not even sure my arms can do that.”
“Well, let’s try,” he said.
Immediately she slipped down to the branch he was on, linked her arms around his neck, letting her weight hang off his arms. “I can do this for a little bit,” she warned. “It’s pretty hard on my arms. Actually, hang on a minute …” and then she bent both knees around his hips. “That I can do,” she said.
“Okay, hold on.” And he nimbly moved from branch to branch without jostling her very much at all.
When she finally saw the ground below them, someone plucked her off his back. With a shriek, she turned around to see Bonaparte, grinning, as he lifted her and placed her on the ground. Then he said, “Let me make this easier.” Picking her up in his arms, like a two-year-old, he carried her, trampling through the underbrush.
Yet lightly, more lightly than she thought possible. “How can you move so quietly?” she murmured.
“I made a ton of noise getting in here. But now I’m trying to be quiet. For one, I’m used to moving silently,” he said, “and, two, I’m not injured.”
“True,” she said, “but you are five times my size, so that’s got to be a challenge.”
“Five times the muscle so that I can pick up my body parts as I need to,” he said seriously.
She gave up that argument.
He laughed and added, “Here is the car.”
She turned to see that they were already at the side of the vehicle. Zack stepped ahead, opened the back door, and watched as she awkwardly made her way from Bonaparte’s chest onto the back seat.
She shifted farther into the car. “I was so scared when the other vehicle arrived. I was afraid the cops would come too.”
“I’m just glad they didn’t take the vehicle at that time,” Bonaparte said. “Then we would have been sunk.” He hopped into the driver’s seat, pulled the keys from his pocket, and fired up the engine. With everyone inside and safe again, he quickly turned it around and headed down the road.
“What about my mother?” she asked.
Zack turned and explained to her what they’d found out.
“They are looking for my father’s ledgers.” She thought about that and nodded. “His office. He’s got a big safe in there,” she said, “but it’s hidden. If they’d searched his office, they probably wouldn’t have found it.”
“Well, maybe that’s why they want your mother then. She is still alive, but your father is not.”
She took that like a blow and let her body sway with it. “It’s not unexpected,” she said, catching her breath. “He chose to be the man he is, knowing that the end result wouldn’t be the nicest.”
“And your mother wasn’t doing all that good from what I understood,” he said.
“Her health is declining, but she was trying to hide it from me,” Zadie said shortly. “I’ve been hoping to get her out of there, so that we could get her treated.”
“You know the outcome is likely to not be good, right?”
“It’s a whole lot worse now, yes,” she said sadly.
“So you know exactly where they are heading?”
“Yes,” she said. “Back to my childhood home.”
“And what do you want to do?”
She looked up at him, startled. “Well, there is only one thing we can do,” she said. “We have to go after them.”
Bonaparte gave a bark of laughter. “I figured you would say that. But, just for the record, there are other options.”
“Not for me,” she said smoothly. “Loyalty, honor, family, friends. Those are all very important to me.”
“Well, I won’t argue with that,” Zack said mildly. “But you have to understand the danger.”
“I know,” she said. “Same danger as always.” She groaned, shifted on the back seat, and wished the damn painkillers would have kicked in better. “I don’t suppose it’s time that I can take another one, is it?”
He checked his watch. “Not for forty-five minutes.”
She groaned and collapsed flat out against the seat then. “In that case, wake me up when we are there.”
“Where?” Bonaparte said. “I need an address.”
“And I’ve got it for you.” She reeled it off as she laid here with her eyes closed. She heard Zack repeating it after her.
“I’m putting it into the GPS,” he said. “Sleep. We’ll get there.”
“The question is,” she said, “will we be in time?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They already had a head start, and your mom is not in a good position here.”
“So it’s a kidnapping, outside of the fact that they also took and killed my father.”
“True, but it depends on what’s in those ledgers,” Zack said. “Maybe they should be destroyed, so other people can’t use them as tools against more people.”
“And that’s a possibility too. Actually it’s a hell of a good idea,” she murmured, her voice getting quieter. “If he’s got it, and he’s holding on to it, chances are it is ugly material and should be destroyed forever.”
“Then maybe that’s what we have to do,” he said.
“Now sleep.”
*
Bonaparte glanced at the rearview mirror and laughed. “Not too many women can drop off like that,” he said.
Zack smiled, turning to check on her. “At least she is sleeping soundly this time,” he said. “I was afraid the news about her mother would stop her from sleeping again.”
“I think she’s just at that point of exhaustion. I don’t know if you noticed, but look at the color of her fingers.”
Zack reached across and lifted her hands. They felt like sheer ice. “We should have grabbed a blanket for her,” he said. “She doesn’t even have shoes.” The old socks were worse for wear from climbing the tree, not to mention the fact that they had little bits and pieces of foliage in them. “She needs more clothing, blankets, and she needs time to heal,” he said.
“I’m not sure she will get that anytime soon,” Bonaparte said. “We are an hour and forty minutes away from the address she gave us,” he said, “so if you want, close your eyes and rest too.”
“I’ll take a power nap,” he said. “What about you? Do you want me to drive?”
“Nope, I drive all the time,” Bonaparte said. “That’s the best way for me to operate in this world.”
Zack would not argue with him. If Bonaparte said an hour and forty, and Zack’s GPS said two hours and twenty, he would trust Bonaparte’s assessment.
As it was, he had a power nap, texted Levi several times, checked the GPS, looking for avenues and routes for an attack at the new location. But it was a house, again a decent size, large, gated, with other similar wealthy estates around it. “Nice to have money,” he said, motioning at the screen on his phone. “Security, high walls, heavy gates. That figures.”
“I guess. It sounds like her father was quite a piece of work.”
“If he’s got blackmail-worthy material on other people,” Zack said, “I think it’s important that we make sure of its disappearance forever.”
“We’ll at least check to see if something there needs to be made public first,” he said.
“That’s a judgment call that would be hard to make.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about the mother,” murmured Bonaparte.
“Neither do I,” Zack said, his tone quiet. Absolutely nothing inside him said the mother would be alive and well. “This is a fool’s errand.”
“It definitely is,” he said, “but I don’t see you telling Zadie that it won’t happen.”
Zack winced at that. “No,” he said. “I can’t say that I’ve gone that far.”
“Not only have you not gone that far,” he said, “but you are also looking out for her a little bit more than I would have expected.”
He shrugged. “She’s hurt. She’s alone in this world, and she’s traumatized. And now she’s just found out her father is dead. Do you expect me to be mean?”
“Of course not. I don’t expect you to be mean, but I see a storm developing.”
Zack looked over at him and smiled. “You don’t see anything developing,” he said. “It’s your French background to just see romance in the air for everyone.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “Especially for you.”
“No,” he said. “I’ve made some pretty irrational decisions in my young and stupid days. I don’t see that any of my choices had been particularly an improvement on most.”
At that, Bonaparte laughed. “We tend to pick a type,” he said. “Until we realize how wrong that type is for us. Then we chose something that’s good for us instead of a type.”
“Well, I don’t know what’s good for me,” Zack said with a chuckle.
“I think she’s good for you,” he said.
“Zadie?” Zack asked in surprise. He turned to look at his partner. “I don’t know her very well, but she’s got guts, and she’s been very easy to deal with. She’s got that weird, almost warrior thinking to her. But I mean, I really can’t say there’s anything between us.”
“No, you probably can’t,” he said. “At least not yet. But give it time.”
There was enough mysteriousness to his voice that made Zack look at his partner in surprise. “Now you sound like some weird little French seer.”
“I have a good track record when it comes to things like these,” he said.
“Well, don’t tell Ice and Levi that, for God’s sake,” he said. “That’ll add to their whole mystical matchmaking program they have going on.”
“Works for them though,” Bonaparte said.
“Maybe,” Zack said, “but that doesn’t mean I want to be another part of the program.”
“Pretty sure it’s already too late,” he said, and he whistled the wedding march.
Zack glared at him. “On that note, I’ll take another power nap.”
“Sweet dreams,” he said.
Groaning, Zack closed his eyes, and, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t think of anything but the woman on the seat behind him. He went over the words and the actions shared between them. Noting a little zing of a spark every time they touched. How he felt extraprotective of her. But then she’d been through a lot. She deserved to have somebody look after her for a change, instead of her always looking after everybody else.
She’d been making plans to escape and to take her mother with her. He wondered about that because he really felt that, in her heart of hearts, that wouldn’t happen. Mom would never leave Dad, and no way she could get Dad out of there. Now that Dad was gone, Zadie’s worry was definitely focused on Mom, but, at the same time, Zadie had to know how dicey this would be.
Finally he opened his eyes and glared at Bonaparte. “It won’t work.”
“Sleep,” Bonaparte replied. “Leave it to fate. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
He shook his head at that, closed his eyes, and let his mind drift. The last thought he had, thanks to Bonaparte, was all about Zadie.
Chapter 8
Maybe the drop from the hell-bound speed signaled a change in circumstances, but Zadie woke with a start as the vehicle came to a rolling stop. Pushing onto her elbows, she stared out the windows. “This is the right neighborhood,” she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “I can’t believe I slept that long.”
“You needed it,” Zack said, turning around in the seat to look back at her. She smiled up at him. “You look much better,” he said, his gaze assessing as he studied her down the length of her to her leg and back up again. “How does the leg feel?”
“It feels okay at the moment,” she admitted. “At least until I stand up.”
“Do you have any clothing at your parents’ place?”
She looked at him in surprise; then her eyebrows rose. “You know what? I probably still do,” she said. “I never even thought of that.”
“I’m hoping we can at least get you some shoes,” he said, motioning at the socks that were surely much the worse for wear.
She sat up awkwardly with her leg raised as it was and pulled some twigs out of the socks. “They did the job up ’til now,” she said. “But you are right, it would be nice to have proper fitting shoes.” She looked around, leaned forward, and pointed. “Go up two blocks and then take a left.”
Bonaparte followed her directions easily.
She looked at him and asked, “How is it you have needed no sleep yet?”
“I had lots of sleep before the job,” he said.
She shook her head at that. “We can’t stockpile sleep,” she said dismissively.
“You can do anything you need to,” he said. “I’ll sleep after this scenario.”
“I still doubt he’ll let me drive,” Zack said, laughing.
Bonaparte shrugged. “I won’t have any choice,” he said, “but it’s not my preference.”
They pulled up where she told them to and parked. “Now, that next block,” she said, “that second driveway leads into that residence, and that’s my parents’ house.”
“Who owns it?”
“They do,” she said. Sh
e struggled to turn around so she sat normally and then opened the passenger door. As she did so, Zack hopped out of the front seat, came around, and reached down with a hand to help her up. She stood up on her good leg, looked down, and said, “You’re right. The socks have got to go.” She smiled.
“Maybe, but how’s the leg doing?”
She carefully put a little weight on it, hobbling forward. “Not as good as it could be. I was hoping it would feel much better.”
“It might soon,” he said. “What we need is to get you off of it.”
“Now that I’m finally standing on it again,” she joked.
He smiled, nodded, and turned as Bonaparte joined them. With the vehicle locked up, Zack looked at her and said, “We don’t know for sure anybody is here.”
“No,” she said, “but I do know that staff lives here year-round.”
“How many?”
“Husband and wife,” she said. “Speaking of which, whatever happened to the housekeeper from the other estate?”
“We didn’t have time to go to her house in the village,” he said. “Levi’s got somebody else coming in to talk to her, if we can’t get back there in time.”
“Meaning, my mother’s kidnapping is more important than mine?”
“We have you,” he said. “We understood from you that your mother’s life was the priority.”
She beamed a smile at him. “I’m really glad you made that decision,” she said. “We can drive back to that village later. We can sort that out after this. But first, we have to go in here.”
“And how do you want to do that?” he asked. “If your mother is being held inside, we can’t just waltz in.”
“True,” she said. “But, if we go in through the neighbor’s backyard, a small gate is between them. We can come up on the side where my room is and a big ladderlike trellis.” As she spoke, they listened intently. “It leads up to my window. I’ve used it more than a time or two to get in and out.”
“Must have been fun growing up here,” Bonaparte said with a smile.
“My father was not an easy person to live with,” she said.