Death Vetoes The Chairman (Lizzie Crenshaw Mysteries Book 7)

by Teresa Watson

  “Didn’t…” WHAM! “…sound like it to me.”

  The SUV fishtailed a bit. The truck dropped back for a minute, before speeding up. “There’s a stretch of road coming up that curves a couple of times. I might be able to speed up some to put some distance between us. But…”

  “But what?”

  “There’s a steep drop off to the right.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t need to say more than that. The truck moved over into the other lane, and I prayed there was no one coming from the other direction. The driver sped up until the right front bumper was near our left back bumper. “He’s going to try and pit us,” I told Jake. “Speed up if you can.”

  “You’ve been watching too much Cops,” Jake said.

  “Actually, Alaska State Troopers.”

  He jerked the wheel to the left, and the other driver responded by moving to his left to avoid getting hit. Jake moved back over into the right lane as we started going around another curve. The truck sped up and managed to hit us in just the right spot on the bumper. The SUV started sliding to the right, doing a three quarter spin. We stopped in the middle of the road, facing away from the guard rail. That’s when I saw the headlights of the truck coming right at us, just before he hit Jake’s side of the car. Jake was pressing down on the brake as hard as he could, but that really doesn’t work when you’re going sideways. The smell of burning rubber was pungent. The side airbags deployed, blocking my view out the side window.

  Which is probably just as well. I didn’t have to see us through the guardrail and over the edge. Jake grabbed my hand as the car tilted sideways. I closed my eyes and held on for dear life.

  I was at some kind of carnival with T.J., and we were waiting in line to play the ring toss game on the Midway. When it was our turn, the carny was Edward Winthrop. “Win a prize for the lovely young lady, sir!” he said, handing T.J. three yellow rings. T.J. missed the first two, but hit the bottle right in the middle with the third one. “You win the grand prize!”

  He pointed to his left, and there was Ethan, holding a bouquet of black roses. “I told you things between us weren’t over,” he said, shoving the flowers into my arms. I cried out as my arms and hands were cut by the sharp thorns on the stems. Throwing the flowers to the ground, I turned to hide behind T.J., but he was gone. Edward was just standing there, laughing.

  I started running down the Midway, bumping into people everywhere I went. One of the people I ran into was Gladys, who sneered at me. “Karma, Elizabeth Crenshaw. You’ve been taunting karma for months, and now it’s come back for you,” she cackled as she poured a glass of lemonade over my head.

  Shoving her aside, I headed for the funhouse. I figured I could lose him somewhere inside. I went through the open door, going up and down over the walkway as I held onto the rails. It got dark as I made it past that point, and I felt my way forward by sliding my hand along the wall. Suddenly, someone threw a breaker, and the room lit up. I was in the Hall of Mirrors, and Ethan was staring at me. “You didn’t really think you could outsmart me, did you, Lizzie?” he laughed, moving toward me. I backed away from the mirror in front of me, and right into Ethan, who grabbed my arms and turned me around. “Things are never what they appear. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  I stomped on his foot and kicked him in the shin. He let go of my arms, I shoved him away and ran through an open door to the right. There were no lights on, and I was forced to feel my way along the wall again. A section of the wall gave way, and I stumbled into a room that looked eerily like my office. Ethan came in after me, pushing the section of the wall closed and locking it. Where had the lock come from? Who puts a lock on a wall? Frantically, I looked for another way out, but there wasn’t one. Every section of wall had a sliding bolt, and they were all locked into place. When I turned around, Ethan was standing in front of me again. “Looks like you’re out of places to run, Lizzie,” he said. He grabbed my arms, pulled me toward him, and started kissing me.

  Someone started pounding on the wall. “Winthrop, let me in!” I heard T.J. yell. He started kicking at the wall, but nothing happened. Ethan ignored the noise. He grabbed my shirt sleeve at the shoulder, and ripped it off. I pounded on his chest, but he just pinned my arms behind my back, tying them together with my sleeve.

  “Lizzie, hang on! Lizzie!” Wait a minute; Jake was here, too? Where did he come from? “Lizzie, wake up! Talk to me, damn it!”

  “Stop yelling.”

  “Open your eyes, and I will.”

  Ethan was holding onto me, trying to get me to stay, but I was drawn to Jake’s voice. Ethan’s face slowly faded away, and I opened my eyes to find Jake staring at me. “Are you real?” I asked him. I reached out and touched his cheek, which was warm. “Where’s Ethan?”

  “You were having a nightmare, I think.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Well, your side of the car is against a tree. Beyond that, it’s too dark to tell for sure.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Pretty sore. You?”

  I felt something warm trickling down the right side of my face, which I was sure was blood. I took my seatbelt off, grabbed my bag off the floorboard, and took out my phone. Turning on the flashlight app, I looked over at Jake. The SUV was caved in just behind his seat where the truck had hit us. I looked at my side and all I saw was a tree trunk. “Can you get your seatbelt off?”

  He pushed the button with his right hand, but nothing happened. “It must be jammed.”

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “There’s an emergency kit in the back. Garth put one back there just in case.”

  I got my seatbelt off. “You really have to tell me about him sometime,” I said.

  “Most of what I know about him is classified.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Maybe a little. It’s really only about fifty percent classified.”

  Since I couldn’t get out on my side, my only option was to crawl over the seats. Once I did that, I used my flashlight to look around. The back window was broken. “I see a couple of black bags here, and some blankets.”

  “There should be a first aid kit in one of those bags,” Jake replied.

  I dug around in the first bag, and found the first aid kit as well as a large black Maglite. Turning off the app, I stuffed my phone in my jacket pocket and grabbed the flashlight. “I’m going to crawl out the back window and check out the car.”

  “Be careful,” Jake warned me. “We’re probably in the middle of the hillside.”

  I used the handle of the flashlight to make sure all the broken glass was out of the way before I crawled out. Flipping on the Maglite, I saw the damage and shook my head. There only way to get him out was to either pull him out the driver’s side window, or over the seats and out the back window. I crawled back inside, shoved both bags and the blankets into the backseat, and slowly made my way back to the front seat I put the bag in the back seat, took out the first aid kit, placing it on the console between the front seats. A little digging through one of the bags turned up a Swiss Army knife.

  By this time, I was starting to ache all over. “I hope there some ibuprofen in one of these bags,” I said.

  “You and me both.”

  I handed him the Maglite. “Here, hold this.”

  He held it with his right hand for me while I searched through the bag. “Granola bars, water, chocolate, clothes, socks, first aid kit…geez, he thought of everything, didn’t he?”

  “It’s a good idea to carry an emergency kit in your car. Don’t you have one in your car back home?”

  “Nope. I do my best not to get into a situation where I would need one,” I replied.

  “That’s because you have no sense of adventure.”

  “I have a strong sense of self-preservation, thank you very much.” I took the flashlight from him, handed him a bottle of water and three ibuprofen. He put the water in the cup holder, opened it with his right hand, put the tablets in his mouth and
washed them down with the water. “Something wrong with your left arm?”

  “You mean besides the fact it hurts?”

  I put everything except the knife back in the bag, and shoved it down on the floorboard. “I can’t reach it from here, so I’m going to crawl in the backseat and get behind you,” I said, sticking the knife in my pocket.

  “I thought you were going to cut the seat belt strap.”

  “Let’s leave it on for now.” I got out, opened the back door, and slid across the seat until I was right behind Jake. “I’ll be as gentle as I can, but this might hurt a bit.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Starting near his neck, I gently moved my hand across his shoulder and down his left arm. “Did you try calling someone on your phone?” I asked him as I leaned forward a little more and ran my hand over the front part of his shoulder. I could feel something out of place, and Jake sucked in some air when I touched it. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he grunted. “Yeah, I tried, but no signal.” Putting my hand under his arm, I felt his ribs. “That hurts.”

  I pulled my hand away. “Sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing.”

  “I think you’ve got a broken shoulder, and you’ve reinjured your ribs. Can you hand me the flashlight?”

  He handed me the Maglite. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see if there is an ACE bandage or a sling in the first aid kit. There’s not much I can do about the ribs. I could try to tape them up, but I think that would be pretty hard in this small, confined space. I’m afraid all I have is an ACE bandage.” I unrolled it. “This is what I want you to do. Slowly bend your arm at the elbow, and place your forearm across your stomach. I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to hurt. I’ll help you as much as I can. Once we do that, then I’ll wrap this around you to keep your arm immobilized. Think you can do that?”

  “Piece of cake,” Jake said.

  “I’m going to cut the seatbelt strap first,” I told him as I took the knife out of my pocket, and carefully cut the strap in two. I carefully moved it to the left before folding the knife and putting it in my pocket again. I applied some pressure to the spot where I felt the broken bone as Jake moved his arm. “You’re doing good; hold on just a minute longer.” I picked up the ACE, carefully wrapping it around him. “Just rest your arm on top of your stomach and try not to move too much.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I looked at his face in the rearview mirror, and I could see a cut on his left cheek. “You’re going to have a lovely scar on your cheek,” I said. I found some antiseptic wipes, and used one to cleaned the blood off his cheek. “It’s not too bad.”

  “You need to clean your own face,” Jake said.

  Turning my face to the left, I could see the trail of dried blood. Using another wipe, I scrubbed the blood off. “I feel like one giant bruise.”

  “I’m sure you can color coordinate your clothes with the bruises,” he teased me. “It would be terrible if the colors clashed.”

  “Oh, very funny.”

  The blankets were heavy fleece throws. I carefully put one on top of Jake, took some sports tape out of the first aid kit, grabbed another blanket, and crawled out. It took a few minutes to get it fixed over the broken hatch window, and by the time I was done, I was really cold. I took the last blanket out of the back seat before sliding into the front passenger seat. “Nice job with the window,” Jake said.

  “I don’t know how much good it will do, but it’s better than having a cold draft coming in.” I looked out through the cracked windshield at the darkness. “Well, now that we’ve finished our first aid, I believe the next thing on the list is figuring out how to get some help.”

  “Mother will freak out when she realizes we’re not home.”

  “When?” Jake mumbled something. “Speak up.”

  “Probably in the morning.”

  “Lovely. And your dad?”

  “Not even at home.”

  “Too bad you aren’t a stock on the market. He’d certainly notice a drop in income.”

  “Very funny.”

  “So what you’re telling me is we’re on our own, and we should depend on ourselves to get out of this lovely mess we’re in.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Yippie skippie.” I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the battery: almost a full charge. There were more than enough supplies in the emergency bags to make it through the night. I looked over at Jake. He had his eyes closed, and in the dim light of the Maglite, his face was a little pale. Was he hurt more than he let on? I checked the time. Just after 9 p.m. “Is there a chance that someone else may drive this road tonight?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not a traffic reporter, Lizzie.”

  “It will probably be easier to go down than up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about hiking to the road and getting some help.”

  “No way,” Jake said. He started to turn to face me, but grimaced in pain and sat still.

  “There’s no way you’re going to go, bub,” I told him. I was wearing jeans, a long sleeved shirt, a heavy coat and my new boots. I took out an extra pair of socks from the bag at my feet, and taking off my boots, pulled the socks on over the ones I already had on. “I have to try, Jake. You need help.”

  “You’re hurt, too.”

  “I can handle muscle aches and pains, Jake,” I said, putting my boots back on.

  “Well, here’s something to consider: whoever ran us off the road might be waiting around to see if one of us decides to go for help. Did you think of that?”

  No, I hadn’t thought of that. Nerts. “Then I guess I’ll just have to be extra careful, won’t I?”

  “You’re just going to sit right here and wait,” Jake said. “There’s no sense taking an unnecessary risk.”

  “You mean because I’m a woman?” He didn’t answer. “If the roles were reversed, what would you do?”

  “That’s different.”

  “The hell it is, you chauvinist pig.”

  “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “Take the bag in the back seat. You’ve already taken stuff out of this one. Look on the floorboard behind my seat for a small black case.”

  Sighing, I got into the backseat, and found the case Jake wanted. “Got it.”

  “Open it.”

  I did what he asked. “It’s a gun.”

  “Take it with you.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “No. I know you know how to use one.”

  “I haven’t handle a gun since that night.” The night when I was forced to choose between saving T.J.’s life or killing my half-aunt. I guess you know how that turned out.

  “I know,” Jake said, suddenly sounding very tired. “But you’ll have it just in case…”

  Just in case someone was out there waiting. “Gotcha.”

  “Go down. It will be easier than trying to find something to grab to haul yourself up.”

  “Right.” I leaned forward between the front seats. “Keep that blanket wrapped around you, and try not to move too much. You don’t want one of those ribs to accidentally puncture a lung.”

  “Lizzie? Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “T.J. will kill me if I let something happen to you.”

  “Hm, there’s a thought…”

  “Not funny at all, Crenshaw.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  I got out, dragging the bag with me. I made sure the safety was on the gun before I put it in my right pocket. I slung the bag over my shoulder, made sure the blanket was secure over the back window, and pointed the flashlight down the hill. Taking a deep breath, I headed back to the road.

  Chapter 23

  I wish I could tell you I went on some long, courageous walk through the woods to the road. Yo
u know, like you see in all those Lifetime movies. The heroine fights off wild animals, spends the night in the cold, and stumbles into town the next day to mount a rescue of the injured members of her group. I wish I could tell you that…

  …but I can’t.

  Truth be told, it was far less dramatic than all that. More like Queen Klutz walking around with a flashlight, tripping over fallen branches, stepping in a couple of holes, and stumbling into the middle of the road…right in front of a car.

  I fell down on the road, closed my eyes, and braced for impact, but the driver managed to stop in time. I heard a couple of doors open, and heavy footsteps running toward me. “Ms. Crenshaw?”

  The glare of the headlights were blinding me, and I wasn’t sure who was there. I pulled the Sig Sauer out of my pocket. “Back off!”

  “Whoa! Hold on,” a male voice said. He was standing to my left. “It’s Sheriff McDonald and Garth.”

  “Garth?” How the heck…

  “Why don’t you put the gun down first, Ms. Crenshaw?”

  I put the Sig Sauer down on the ground. “The safety’s on.”

  McDonald picked the gun up, made sure the safety really was on, and walked back to the car. Garth helped me to my feet. “Where’s Jake?”

  I pointed at the hill behind me. “He’s still in the SUV. He’s hurt, Garth. I think it’s a broken shoulder, and reinjured his ribs.”

  “Was he having trouble breathing?” I shook my head. “What about yourself?”

  “I’m fine.” Was I really? It’s not like I had taken the time to check for injuries. Adrenaline does strange things to a person. I’d worry about myself later. “How did you know we were out here?”

  “I put a tracker on the SUV when I loaded the emergency kits. Just in case…”

  “In case of what?”

  “Well, someone is harassing you, Ms. Crenshaw, and you two are trying to find a murderer. I thought it would be prudent to make sure you were safe,” Garth replied, taking the emergency bag from me. He walked to the back of the car and put the bag in the trunk.

  Great, Big Brother is watching. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Something else to deal with later. “You and I really need to have a long talk, Garth.”