Invincible

by Diana Palmer

“Yes. To some big guy with a Northern accent,” he replied. “He didn’t have any luggage, though, and he didn’t look suicidal to me.” He glowered. “He just left without paying the bill or handing back the key,” he muttered.

  “Isn’t that the key?” Jake asked, nodding toward the bedside table.

  It was. There was a fifty-dollar bill under it.

  “Well,” the manager chuckled drily. “A man with a sense of honor, at least. Sort of.”

  “Sort of.” Jake shook his head. “I can’t imagine why he’d fake something like this.” Then he remembered. Carson had a date. Rourke was playing poker with Cash Grier. Jake was here. Carlie was alone. At home.

  He bit off a bad word, chided himself for the slip and ran for his car. On the way he dialed Carlie’s cell phone, but there was no answer. He was referred to her voice mail. He’d told her to keep that phone with her. She never remembered. He dialed the home phone. The answering machine picked up after four rings. Now, that was unusual. Carlie would hear it, even if she was playing, and she’d pick it up before the message finished playing.

  He was very concerned. He wasn’t certain that someone was after him because of his past, despite the threatening phone call Carlie had taken. The man with the knife went for Carlie deliberately, it had seemed to Jake. He groaned as he pictured it, recalled her pain and terror. She’d had so much misery in her short life, so much violence. He hated what she’d gone through. Some of it was his fault.

  He burned rubber getting home. He ran up the porch steps, put his key in the lock and went in like a storming army. But the house was empty. Carlie’s computer was still on. And, although she’d logged out temporarily, her character screen was still up and the game was still running. That meant she’d been interrupted while she was playing. He checked every room. In the kitchen he found her cell phone, lying on the table.

  He backtracked out the front door and, with a flashlight in addition to the porch light, searched around. He noticed tire tracks that weren’t his. He also noted a piece of paper. It was a rough drawing, a map of sorts. It was a clue that the police would want undisturbed. He had no idea what the map depicted. But he knew what to do at once. He pulled out his cell phone and called Cash Grier.

  * * *

  “I HAD TO call Hayes,” Cash apologized when he was on the scene. “You don’t live in the city limits.”

  “That’s okay.” Jake clapped him on the back. “You’re forgiven.”

  “Don’t worry. Hayes has an investigator who dines out on forensics. He even has membership in several professional societies that do nothing else except discuss new techniques. Zack’s good at his job.”

  “Okay.” Jake shoved his hands into his pockets. He felt as if it was the end of the world. “I should have realized it was a ruse. Why didn’t I think?”

  “We’ll find her,” Cash promised.

  “I know that. It’s what condition we’ll find her in that concerns me,” Jake said tautly.

  “I don’t think they’ll harm her,” Cash said. “They want something. Maybe it’s you.”

  “They can have me, if they’ll let my daughter go,” he rasped.

  “I phoned my brother,” Cash added. “It’s a kidnapping. That makes it a federal crime. He’ll be over as soon as he gets dressed.”

  Cash’s brother, Garon Grier, was the senior special agent at the Jacobsville FBI office. He was formerly with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, and one of the best people to call in on the case. But Jake was concerned that the police presence might cause the kidnapper to panic and kill Carlie in order to get away.

  “Where’s Rourke?” Jake asked. “Was he playing poker with you?”

  “He was, but he had a call from the politician he’s supposedly the enforcer for,” came the reply. “It seems the other enforcer was indisposed and he needed Rourke to run an errand for him.”

  “Interesting timing,” Jake said.

  Cash knew that. He could only imagine how he’d feel if it was his little girl, his Tris, who was missing. He drew in a breath and patted Jake on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said again. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “Yes,” Jake said and managed a smile. “I know that.”

  * * *

  JAKE BLAIR EXCUSED himself in the early hours of the morning by saying that he had to visit a sick member of his congregation at the hospital. He left his cell phone number with Cash and asked him to please call if there was any word from the kidnapper.

  He went inside and put on jeans and a pair of high-topped moccasins with no soles and his bomber jacket, along with a concealed knife in a scabbard, a .45 magnum in a Velcro holster and a pair of handcuffs.

  With his equipment carefully hidden under the roomy bomber jacket, he waved to local law enforcement and spun out of the yard in the Cobra.

  Unknown to the others, he’d had time to process the crude drawing on that map. He didn’t for a moment think it had been dropped accidentally. No, this was a setup. They wanted Jake to come after Carlie. Which meant that, in his opinion, Jake was the real target.

  He assumed that someone in his past was out to get him. He didn’t know why. But there were plenty of reasons. His former life had been one of violence. He’d never expected that he would ever revisit it. Until now. His old skills were still sharp. Nobody was hurting Carlie. And as the Good Book said, God helps those who help themselves.

  Probably, he amended, God didn’t mean with guns. But then, he rationalized, they hadn’t had guns in Biblical days, either. He was winging it. He wouldn’t kill anybody. Unless it came to a choice between that and watching Carlie die. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t live with it.

  He followed the highway to a dirt road leading off to a deserted area with just the beginnings of scrubland, with cactus and sand. He parked the car, got out, checked his weapon, stuck it back in the holster and belted it around his waist. He strapped the bottom of the holster to his thigh with the Velcro tabs. He pulled out his knife in its sheath from under the jacket and fixed it on the other side of the belt buckle. Then he started off, with uncanny stealth, down the road.

  * * *

  CARLIE REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS slowly. Her mind felt as if it was encased in molasses. She couldn’t imagine why she was so sluggish, or why it was so hard to breathe.

  She tried to move and realized, quite suddenly, that it was because her hands were tied behind her. She was lying on her side on a makeshift pallet. A big, worried man was standing nearby, wearing a business suit and a big gun. He wasn’t holding it on her. It was on his belt, inside his open jacket.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You was breathing awful jerkylike.”

  “I’m okay.” She tried to take small breaths. She was scared to death, but she was trying not to let it show. “What am I doing here?” She swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No!” he said, and looked shocked. “Look, I don’t do women. Ever.” He blinked. “Well, there was one, once, but she shot me first.” He flushed a little.

  He was the oddest sort of kidnapper she’d ever seen. He was as big as a house and he seemed oddly sympathetic for a man who meant her harm.

  “Then why did you bring me here? You said my father was hurt...!” she remembered, almost hysterical.

  “Not yet,” he said. “We had to get him out of the house so we could get to you,” he explained. “It takes time to do these things right, you know. First we get you. Then he comes out here, all alone, and we get him. Real easy.”

  “Why do you want my father?” she asked, relieved that her dad was all right, but nervous because the man was making threats.

  “Not me,” he said with a shrug. “Somebody else.”

  “Why?”

  “Lady, I don’t know,” he muttered. “Nobody tells me nothing. They just say go do something and I go do
it. I don’t get paid to ask questions.”

  “Please don’t hurt my dad,” she said plaintively.

  He made a face. “Look, I’m not going to do anything to him,” he promised. “Honest. I don’t kill people for money. I just had to get him out here. There’s two guys outside...they’ll do it.”

  Her heart jumped up into her throat. Her father would be lured here because she was under threat. He’d walk right up to the door and they’d kill him. She felt sick all over. “Couldn’t you stop them?” she asked. “Don’t you have a father? Would you like to see that done to him?”

  His face closed up. “Yeah, I had a father. He put me in the hospital twice. I wouldn’t care if somebody did it to him. No way.”

  Her eyes were soft with sadness. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently.

  He looked uncomfortable. “Maybe you should try to sleep, huh?”

  “My wrists hurt.”

  “I can do something about that.” He went around behind her and fiddled with the handcuffs. They were less tight. “So funny, I got kicked off the force five years ago, and here I am using cuffs again,” he mused.

  “The force?”

  “I was a cop. I knocked this guy down a staircase. Big guy, like me. He was trying to kill his kid. They said I used excessive force. There was a review and all, but I got canned anyway.” He didn’t add that it was really because he’d ruffled his partner’s feathers when he wouldn’t take bribes or kickbacks. That was sort of blowing his own horn. He’d been set up, but that was ancient history now. The bad thing was that it had given Mr. Helm a stick to hit him with, because he’d been honest about losing his job. He hadn’t known at the time that Mr. Helm was even more crooked than his old partner.

  “I work for the police chief, here,” she said. “He’d use excessive force with a guy who was trying to kill his kid, too, but nobody would fire him for it.”

  He moved back around in front of her. He smiled faintly. He had dark eyes and a broad face with scars all over it. He had thick black wavy hair. He was an odd sort of gangster, she thought.

  “Maybe he knows the right people,” he told her. “I didn’t.”

  She studied him curiously. “You aren’t from Texas,” she said.

  He shrugged. “From Italy, way back,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “Are you in the Mafia?” she asked.

  He burst out laughing. He had perfect white teeth. “If I was, they’d kill me for telling people about it.”

  “Oh. I get it.”

  “Your wrists okay now? That feel better?”

  “Yes. Thanks.” She made a face. “What did you do to me?”

  “Chloroform,” he said. “Put it on a handkerchief, see, and it works quick.”

  She drew in another breath. Her chest felt tight.

  “You ain’t breathing good,” he remarked, frowning.

  “I have asthma.”

  “You got something to use for it?”

  “Sure. It’s back at my house. Want to take me there to pick it up?” she asked. She wasn’t really afraid of him. Odd, because he looked frightening.

  He smiled back. “Not really, no. I’d get fired.”

  “Not a bad idea, you could do something honest for a living before your bosses get you locked up for life,” she returned.

  He seemed disturbed by that. He checked his watch. It was an oddly expensive-looking one, she thought. He’d said they didn’t pay well, but if he could afford a timepiece like that, perhaps he’d just been joking about his salary.

  He drew in a long breath. “I have to make a phone call,” he said. “You just stay there and be quiet so I don’t have to gag you, okay?”

  “I can’t let them kill my father,” she said. “If I hear him coming, I’m going to warn him.”

  “You’re an honest kid, ain’t you?” he asked admiringly. “Okay. I’ll try not to make it too tight, so you can breathe.”

  He took out a clean handkerchief and rolled it up, tied it around her mouth. “That okay?” he asked.

  She groaned.

  “Come on, don’t make me feel no worse than I do. You’re just a kid. I wouldn’t hurt you. Not even if they told me to.”

  She made a face under the gag. Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “Okay. I won’t be long.”

  She heard him go to the door. Just as he started to open it, she thought she must be hallucinating, because she heard a chiming rock song. It went away almost at once, followed by a mild curse. The door opened and closed. She heard voices outside.

  What could she possibly do that would save her father? She squirmed her way to the edge of the bed and wiggled so that her feet made it to the floor. She was still a little dizzy, but she managed to get to her feet.

  She moved to the door and listened. She heard distant voices. She looked around. The room had no windows. There was a pallet on the floor, nothing else. There wasn’t even a table, much less anything she could try to use to untie herself.

  Well, she could at least listen and try to hear her father’s voice. She might be able to warn him before they shot him. She groaned inwardly. It was going to be on her conscience forever if he died because she’d opened the door to a stranger. When she recalled what the big man had told her, it was so obviously a ruse that she couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t questioned his story. He’d said her father was hurt. After that, her brain had gone into panic mode. That was why she’d agreed to leave with him.

  But it was going to make a really lousy epitaph for her father. If she was lucky, the FBI would involve itself because it was a kidnapping. There was also her boss, who’d come looking for her. Maybe Carson would, too. Her heart jumped. Sure he would. He was probably up in San Antonio with that gorgeous blonde, out on a date. He wouldn’t even know she was missing and probably wouldn’t mind unless somebody asked him to help find her. That made her even more depressed.

  But how would they ever find her in time to save her father? She hoped he had no idea where to find her, that they hadn’t left some sort of clue that would lead him here. But there were armed guards at the door, and they were waiting for him, her kidnapper had said. That meant they had to have left some clue to help him find this place.

  She closed her eyes and began to pray silently, the last hope of the doomed...

  * * *

  CARSON HAD JUST walked back into his apartment, after insistently leaving Lanette at hers, when his cell phone went off.

  He locked himself in and answered it, tired and out of sorts. “Carson,” he said shortly.

  “It’s Cash. I thought you might want to know that we’ve had some developments down here.”

  He grimaced as he went into the kitchen to make coffee. “Somebody confessed to trying to off the preacher?”

  There was a pause. “Someone’s kidnapped Carlie...”

  “What the hell! Who? When?”

  Cash wanted to tell him to calm down, but he had some idea about Carson’s feelings for the woman, so he bit his tongue. “We don’t know who. Her father was hoaxed into going to a motel to counsel a suicidal man, who conveniently disappeared before he showed up. Rourke and I were playing poker. We had no idea Carlie was going to be home alone. Somehow she was lured out. Her father said that he found her telephone on the kitchen table and her purse upstairs.”

  “That damned phone...”

  “I know, she’s always forgetting it,” Cash replied heavily. “It seems that Carlie was the target all along. There was one clue, a crude drawing of a building in the area, but nobody knows where it is. The map isn’t very helpful.”

  “Where’s her father?”

  “Funny thing,” Cash mused. “He says he has to visit a sick member of his congregation at the hospital. The timing strikes me as a bit odd.”

  “
I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “You won’t help her if you die on the way.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” He hung up.

  * * *

  “JAKE BLAIR’S ONLY been gone a few minutes,” Cash told Carson when he arrived.

  Carson glanced past him. “Crime scene guys at work already, I gather.”

  “Yes.”

  Carson went inside and looked at the map lying on the table in a protective cover. It had already been dusted for prints—none found—and cataloged in position. He also saw Carlie’s cell phone.

  “May I?” he asked.

  “It’s been dusted. Only prints are hers,” Zack, Sheriff Hayes Carson’s chief investigator, told him with a smile. “We checked her calls, too. Nothing.” He went back to work.

  Carson’s fingers smoothed over the phone absently. It might have been one of the last things she touched. It was comforting, in some odd way. He thought of her being held, terrified, maybe smothering because the asthma would be worsened by the fear and confusion. His face mirrored his own fear.

  He stuck the phone in his pocket absentmindedly as he studied the map once more. His black eyes narrowed. The drawing was amateurish, but he recognized two features on that map because they were on the way to Cy Parks’s ranch. He drove the road almost every day. There was a ranch house that had burned down some time back, leaving only a ramshackle barn standing. It had to be where they had Carlie.

  He was careful not to let his recognition show, because if the gangbusters here went shoving in, they’d probably shock the kidnappers into killing her quickly so they could escape. He couldn’t risk that.

  “Any idea where this place is?” he asked Cash with a convincing frown.

  “Not a clue,” Cash said tautly, “and I’ve been here for years.”

  “It’s a pretty bad map,” Carson replied.

  “Yes.”

  “You said her father just left?” Carson asked in a low voice, incredulous. “His daughter’s been kidnapped, and he’s visiting the sick?”

  Cash motioned him aside, away from his brother and the sheriff’s department. “He was carrying a .45 magnum in his belt. Nicely hidden, but I got a glimpse of it.” He pursed his lips. “Can you still track?”