Vegas Lies ( Lies Mystery Thriller Series Book 3)

by Andrew Cunningham

  For the next couple of hours she walked. It was more like trudging, often tripping when she found herself closing her eyes to the glare of the sun off the rocks. She passed a large cactus at one point and stopped before it. Wasn’t there a way to get water—or some liquid—from a cactus? Was it all cacti or just certain ones? Were some poisonous? She didn’t think so, but it was more hope than an actual knowledge. She picked up a rock to break off one of the arms of the cactus, but the rock wasn’t big enough and one of the needles shot into her palm. She cried out in pain and dropped the rock.

  She squeezed her palm, letting the wound bleed to clean itself. She didn’t know if the cactus needles were poisonous, but she didn’t want to take a chance. After a minute or so, she put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. Oh, it was so painful!

  It was time to stop for the day. If there was someplace close, she could try the cactus again a bit later when her hand wasn’t hurting so much. She looked around, and then she saw it—another gully. It was a small one, but it had a large rock hanging over it. It might give her enough shade to keep her alive for the day. She walked over to it and checked for lizards, snakes, and scorpions, but it looked clear. She hopped down into it. It was only about four feet below the desert surface, but that was enough. It was still unbearably hot, but at least the rock provided a little shade. She settled herself against the wall of the gully under the rock, pulled her knees toward her chest, rested her head on them and closed her eyes.

  Emma slept. When she woke up, the sun was on the other side of the sky, about halfway down. Two o’clock? Three o’clock? She was so thirsty and her mouth was so dry she almost couldn’t close it. She had had horrible dreams, but now that she was awake, she couldn’t remember them. Maybe it was better that way. She thought about the cactus. She’d have to try again, this time with a bigger rock.

  She slowly got to her feet, using the wall of the gully for support. She was about to find a foothold to push herself over the rim when she heard it. A gunshot? She stopped and listened. There. The same sound again. It was far off. She had a momentary fear that they had found her and were shooting at her, but she knew that was stupid. She scrambled over the rim and stood up. She listened for more, but heard nothing. She didn’t know which way the sound had come from, but she was pretty sure it was from the north, if she had her bearings right. She scoured the horizon, shading her eyes from the sun.

  A flash of light—the sun reflecting off something. She stumbled off in the direction of the flash. She walked for about ten minutes. She found a flat rock a couple of feet higher than the desert floor. She stood on it. And then she saw it.

  It was a car.

  Chapter 32

  My hands were bound and I was unceremoniously tossed into the trunk of the Mercedes and the trunk lid was slammed shut. In the distance, I could hear Sabrina screaming my name. I would have screamed back, but I was still a bit loopy from the blow to the head.

  I was also scared. This was it. I knew I was going to die. In fact, I knew exactly what they were doing. They were driving me far out into the desert, where Ludwick’s man would put a bullet in my head and leave me as dinner for the various species of vermin. Sometime—maybe in a month, maybe in a year—someone would come across my bleached bones. Eventually they would determine that it was indeed the missing Del Honeycutt.

  Strangely enough though, I wasn’t concerned about me. I was concerned about Sabrina and Mo and Peep. What would happen to them? Were they really going to be sold in the Middle East or Europe to be used as sex slaves? I had seen the movie Taken four times. I knew how it worked.

  No, I couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, I had to stay alive.

  I was slowly coming to my senses and didn’t feel so dizzy. Already though, the trunk was becoming unbearably hot. I looked around and could see only blackness. Damn expensive cars. Why couldn’t they have been driving a shitbox with gaps and holes in the cheap body to allow me to see?

  Wait! Cars now had something in the trunk to pull on that would open it from the inside. I was pretty sure they were designed for situations like this one. I scrambled around for a few minutes trying to find it, but it was no use. My wrists being taped behind my back made it difficult to move around and impossible to use my hands. And then I had another thought. What good would it do? I hadn’t heard another car, which meant that we were traveling down a back road. Even if I could open the trunk, then what? I’d have to get really lucky that there was someone behind us. And if there was, I might put their life in danger by showing myself. I had also seen Fargo four times. I knew what happened to innocent witnesses. If there was no one behind us, the gorilla driving the car would just pull over and rap me on the head again. I might be unconscious when he arrived at his destination, which would make killing me that much easier. Time for a Plan B.

  A half hour later I still hadn’t come up with a Plan B. The only thing I had come up with was to kick out one of the tail lights. By then I knew that there was no one behind us. I just needed to see and to breathe some fresh air. The heat was oppressive and I knew I was close to passing out, even with the newly formed hole. I did everything possible to try to stay awake. But in the long run, would it even matter? I was going to die. Maybe it would be better to be passed out and not see it coming.

  I had my face up to the small opening sucking in the hot Nevada air when I had my first inkling of an idea. Next to my face was the metal into which the light frame had been seated. The edge of the metal was sharp. Was there any way that I could use it to cut the tape that bound my wrists? If so, I was going to have to move fast. The road had become bumpier and bumpier. We had gone off the pavement. We were now on a dirt road. Seemed like a rock road. It wouldn’t be long now.

  I squirmed and was able to turn myself around in the small space. It took a few tries, but I was finally able to bring my wrists up to the sharp metal. The car slowed down. I frantically rubbed the tape against the metal, cutting myself more than a few times in the process. The car stopped. It was now or never. I rubbed even harder. Luckily the metal was very sharp and the tape broke just as I heard the driver get out and start to walk around to the rear.

  “Hey, you in there. Ready to meet your maker? You are going to lie out there and the coyotes, vultures, ants, and other assorted vermin are going to tear the flesh from your body. You ready for that? It won’t matter. You’ll be dead. Then after I kill you, I’m going to go boink your girlfriend—maybe both of them—before heading back. That’ll be fun.”

  Surprise was my only option. I located the inside door opener and just as I saw him pass the broken tail light, I pulled on the latch.

  “Oh, I see that you were a busy…” He never finished the sentence.

  The trunk flew open and I leapt out, totally surprising him. I wasn’t as graceful as I had hoped and I tripped on the edge of the trunk and landed hard on the ground, chest first. He took a step back and reached for his gun in his belt. I wasn’t on the ground for more than a second. When your life is on the line, it’s amazing how fast you can move.

  I jumped at him just as he pulled out his gun. He took a wild shot, and then a second one, both times missing me. I landed on him just after the second shot and he fell to the ground. He punched me in the face and then weakly swung his gun and hit me in the side of the head. As he tried to stand, I rolled off him and right off a cliff.

  Well, it felt like a cliff. In fact, it was a five foot drop into a sort of trench. A natural gully in the sun parched desert. Knowing he still had the gun, I jumped up and ran along the gully, putting my hands on my head and keeping my head down below the edge. I wasn’t quite sure what putting my hands on my head was going to do. It certainly wasn’t going to stop a bullet, but it felt safer.

  The gully was a winding one, which was good for the short-term, but bad overall. I was still stuck in a gully and he was up top. All he had to do was keep up with me and I was a sitting duck.

  And then my luck changed. The gully divided. I took
the left fork. Now to get me, he was going to have to jump over the gully from the side he was on to follow my fork, and in most places the trench was wider than he could probably jump.

  Another fork to the left! I took it. Another to the right. I just kept moving, still keeping my head low. I came across an area littered with boulders. When I felt like I was somewhat protected from the gorilla’s view, I lifted my head. I couldn’t see him anywhere. So, I took a chance and shimmied up the side of the gully and hid behind some of the boulders. From that vantage point I could see the car about a hundred yards away. The guy was standing behind it, looking down at the ground. He seemed to have forgotten about me. And then I saw why. There was a dark stain in the dirt. The ground around the back of the car appeared to be wet. Gasoline. One of his wayward bullets must have punctured the gas tank.

  The gorilla was on his cell phone. Or rather, he was trying to be on his cell phone. It was clear that he was getting no signal. He screamed in frustration and threw the phone down. Touchy. He looked around, but couldn’t see me. He sat down on a rock, fondling his gun. I had a feeling he wasn’t very happy with me.

  I chose that moment to take stock of my situation. I was alive. That was the positive part. Just about everything else was negative. I had no food, no water, no shelter, and no weapon. No vehicle anymore. I was in the middle of nowhere, or right next door. Plus, I had a pissed off guy with a gun ready to shoot my head off.

  Things could be better.

  Chapter 33

  The car was parked seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Had they broken down? Maybe they were prospectors or geologists. Regardless, they would have a cell phone, wouldn’t they?

  Emma was close enough that she might be able to get their attention. She tried to call out but nothing came. Her throat was so dry she had no voice. She started to panic. What if they left before she could reach the car? She tried to go faster but the pain in her legs from all of the scratches and bruises had gotten worse over the last few hours. She couldn’t move much faster than a shuffle.

  But she was closer now. She could see the car clearly, but she couldn’t see any people. She was happy about that. If the people weren’t there, they couldn’t drive away. She made herself slow down—as if she could go any slower than she already was going.

  It took her another ten minutes to reach the car. As she rounded a hill, she suddenly had a clear, close-up view of the car. There was someone there. He was sitting next to the car drinking from a bottle of water. He had water! She picked up her pace, stumbling as she ran. The man saw her and stood up, shading his eyes to see her more clearly. Emma had been so fixated on his bottle of water that she failed to look at the man closely. Now she saw him clearly. It was Hoss, the bearded man who had kidnapped them. How could it be?

  “Hoowee,” exclaimed Hoss. “Are my eyes deceiving me, or did God drop you down from the heavens for me?”

  She pulled up, slipping on a rock and landing on her already sore knee. She cried out in pain, finding a little voice. Emma turned and started getting up slowly, hoping to get away. She knew it was hopeless. She didn’t stand a chance. He caught up to her just as she managed to get to her feet, putting his hand around her waist and pulling her toward himself.

  “My God, you’re a mess.”

  His breath was bad and Emma recoiled from both the touch and the breath.

  “Now don’t you go fighting me,” said Hoss. “You’re in no condition to fight. In fact, you’re in no condition to be sold, so I guess that puts you on the clearance rack at a bargain price.”

  His hand was already under her shirt fondling her. She squirmed, but she had been depleted of almost all of her strength and it was nothing more than a symbolic gesture at this point. He pushed her against the car, ripping her shirt off in the process. As her back touched the metal of the car, she screamed out in pain—this time her voice came. He quickly pulled her away from the hot metal.

  “Sorry kid. You had me so excited, I forgot how hot that metal would be.”

  Emma knew it was a bad burn, but did it really matter at this point? She was in so much pain she almost couldn’t feel his hands on her breasts. He was breathing heavily now and his right hand slipped down to her pants, sliding down inside her jeans. His fingers seemed coarser than before and they were hurting her. With his left hand, he fumbled at her belt. She could feel his excitement against her.

  She gave up. He was going to rape her and there was nothing she could do about it. She had no more strength. A few minutes earlier she was excited about the prospect of finally having her freedom back. Now, it was all over.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of motion. It was something big coming toward them. Hoss was too lost in arousal to even notice. The big thing collided heavily against Hoss and its momentum ripped him from her, the force of the hit spinning her around. She heard him crash to the ground behind her. She turned back, instinctively covering her breasts with her arms, just as Hoss bellowed in pain.

  Hoss was on the ground. On top of him was another man, a man she'd never seen before, and he was pounding on Hoss with his fists.

  Where had he come from? Who was he?

  Emma had never seen anything so wonderful.

  Chapter 34

  From behind the boulders I weighed my options, if you could call them that. 1) It was mid-afternoon and the sun was scorching hot, with very little in the way of shade; 2) There was a big guy with a big gun and a big grudge. He didn’t seem to be actively searching for me—the sun might have had something to do with that—but if he did find me, I was a goner; 3) Looking around, there seemed to be nothing but desert in every direction. All in all, my prospects didn’t look too bright.

  My only possibility was to try to get past the gorilla and see if I could find the road he'd used to get here. Even then, we'd been on that road for a long time with seemingly no other traffic.

  I had one thing going for me though. A white-hot burning hatred. Nothing was going to get in the way of me finding Richard and Ludwick and killing them both. My only fear was getting back after Sabrina, Mo, and Peep had been shipped out of the country. If that was the case, I knew I’d never see any of them again.

  So, step one was to get rid of Ludwick’s man. I took another look from my relatively safe location. He was still there, still in the same position sitting behind the car. He was obviously unsure of what to do. He wasn’t going to venture out after me. I was no longer important. If he happened to run across me, he could take out his anger on me, but otherwise, I was pretty safe from him. At least I hoped.

  God, it was hot. I could almost feel the fluids being sucked out of my body. Total dehydration wasn’t far behind. I peeked out over the rocks again. He was still sitting there, but now he had a bottle of water. A beautiful, sweet, bottle of water. Might there be another one? Only one way to find out.

  I climbed down into the gully and started on my way back toward the car. It took me a while because I made a few wrong turns. I blamed the dehydration. I was finally within a hundred feet of the guy. That was all well and good, but what now? There was no cover between the gully and the guy. I could wait until he passed out from the sun, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t last that long. He had the water.

  No, I had to be proactive. It was a miracle I was still alive, so I really had nothing to lose. I was going to have to take the direct approach. I grabbed two baseball-sized rocks and traveled a little closer in the gully, until I was within fifty feet. I took a chance and stuck my head up just far enough to see over the edge. He had moved over to a partially shaded spot next to the car. He was sitting there with his head hanging. It was now or never.

  Wait. Something moved off to the side. The gorilla saw it too and stood up. It was a girl! She was a young girl, mid-teens, maybe, and she was a mess. Her jeans were ripped and bloody, as was her shirt. She looked like she was on her last legs. What was she doing way out here?

  “Hoowee,” exclaimed the gorilla. “Are my eyes deceiving
me, or did God drop you down from the heavens for me?”

  At that she seemed to stumble and then fell to her knees.

  He approached her almost like he knew her. She turned and got back up to run, but I knew she wouldn’t get far. She didn’t. He grabbed her from behind and said something I couldn’t hear. He carried her back to the car. I think he’d forgotten all about me. Now his hand was up her shirt. He ripped off the shirt and flung her against the car. She cried out in pain. That metal must’ve been about a million degrees. He yanked her away from the car and grabbed at her again and his hand went down her pants. Holy shit! He was going to rape her.

  I dropped the rocks and changed my plan. There was no time for anything subtle. I climbed out of the gully and ran toward him. He didn’t even hear me coming. The force of my body hitting him dropped him to the ground with a crash, and then I just started pounding on him. All my frustration about what they were going to do to Sabrina—what they might have already done to Sabrina—and all my anger at seeing what he was about to do to a young girl provided the driving force behind my blows. Every once in a while, the guy would get off a weak hit, but they were nothing more than glancing shots. He didn’t stand a chance against my rage. I just kept pounding. My knuckles were bright red, partly from the blood covering his face and partly because I was destroying my knuckles.

  I finally stopped. His face looked like meatloaf and he was clearly unconscious. I realized that I should have kept him conscious so he could tell me the way back. But he wouldn’t have done that. This was my only choice.

  I sat down heavily on the ground next to my victim and caught my breath—or tried to anyway. My chest was heaving from the exertion and the lack of water. They make it look so easy in the movies.