by Shirl Henke
Sam thought Jenny never won an argument with either kid. She tried to resettle herself beneath the lumpy cover of backpacks and duffels. But her misery was quickly forgotten when Tiffany said, “I have some gunk for poison ivy in my gear someplace back there.” She started rooting dangerously near Sam’s hiding place. What the hell do I do now? Pull my stunner and scramble a couple of kids and soccer moms?
Jenny saved Sam the decision. “Never mind, honey. I saw some in the glove compartment.” She pulled out a small spray bottle of poison ivy repellant.
“Be prepared. Isn’t that the Scouting motto?” Matt asked, grinning as he exited the highway and pulled into a gas station. While Jenny paid cash and filled up her SUV, Matt and Tess continued studying the map. From the corner of his eye, Matt noted that Tiffany was regarding him with grudging respect. He might be in trouble.
Within a quarter hour, they had a game plan. “I think it would be smart for you to spend the night someplace in the complex where no one can find you. Zandski will probably know a hidey-hole if he’s been living here for years,” Matt said.
“Then we can backtrack to Jenny’s SUV in the morning and take off.” Tess nodded.
“We’re going on the lam,” Mellie said excitedly, clapping her hands.
Didn’t either of the little dragons ever sleep, Sam wondered. Probably too busy watching forbidden movies.
“We just have to be careful for a few days until the police arrest the bad people,” Jenny said soothingly to her daughters.
“But Steve’s granddad says Aunt Tess killed Uncle Alexi and we know that’s not true. Is he a bad person?” Tiffany asked logically. “Will you find out, Mr. Granger?”
Matt was impressed with the kid’s logic although he hated to admit it. “I’ll try, Tiff,” he promised gravely. Then, turning to Tess, he said, “We need to keep in touch. I’ll give you my cell number. Check in with me at irregular intervals and if I don’t pick up, don’t leave any messages. Just try again later.”
“Believe me, I’ll be careful,” Tess replied. “I’ll give you my cell number, too, just in case.”
As they exchanged numbers Sam listened, committing both numbers to memory. It was time for a quick exit. She knew their plans and how she could retake Granger. She was within an hour of San Diego, an easy if expensive cab ride back to Samaritan Haven. Lucky for her she didn’t have to sneak in the back way and risk poison ivy. As bad as her reaction to the stuff was, not a product on the market would save her from weeks of looking like a refugee from the “Creature Cantina” in Star Wars.
While the rest of the passengers in the Yukon used the gas station’s restrooms, Sam slipped out the back hatch and paced in front of the Quik Mart as she speed-dialed Patowski. She had a lot to arrange before tomorrow morning, she thought as she watched the SUV pull away. Her first call was to the cab company. Then she reached Pat by way of his beeper and gave him an edited version of what had happened since last night.
“Yeah, so I need a pair of drivers to pick up my van and make like kamikazes back to San Diego.” She listened to the anticipated outraged rejoinder, then said, “Look, you want Granger on ice or not? You give me the van, I give you Tess Renkov.” She paused a beat, then added another enticement. “Alexi stashed some kind of evidence about his father’s operations. Threatened to sell it to Pribluda if Daddy didn’t get off his case.”
That got his attention big-time, just like she knew it would.
“What’d he do with it?” the cop asked.
“Don’t know yet. But it has something to do with his golf trips this spring to a bunch of Eastern bloc countries near Russia and the Ukraine.” She could hear the wheels in Pat’s head turning long distance. “Let your fibbie friends run with that one.”
Pat wasn’t happy about making the arrangements for her car but did it just as she anticipated. She gave him a street near Samaritan Haven where her van should be deposited. It was a tight timetable. Could Pat’s FBI connections deliver the Econoline to her before she had to snatch Granger again? All she could do was make a backup plan.
Uncle Hugo was one of a kind. So was the arsenal hanging from every wall in the front rooms of his living quarters—all the guns were either World War I or II, or earlier vintage. Matt imagined many were souvenirs the old man collected during deuce. No wonder he gave Tess and Jenny those damned relics. He probably didn’t have a clue they were still loaded!
A squat stocky man with an arthritic everything, Hugo Zandski’s narrowed dark eyes studied the younger man shrewdly. Noting the obvious seal of approval Tess, Jenny and “his girls,” as he called Tiff and Mellie, had placed on Granger, he smiled broadly, revealing the worst-fitting set of dentures Matt could imagine, barring the wooden ones George Washington had worn.
“Welcome to my home, Matt Granger,” he said, extending one bearlike paw and pumping Matt’s hand with vigorous enthusiasm.
Then young Steve Renkov came flying down the hall and into his mother’s arms. He was a tall, gangling kid with his father’s golden good looks but his serious demeanor aged him well beyond a mere twelve years. “Mom, what’s going on? I just heard on the TV—”
Tess shushed him imperceptibly, brushing a straight lock of blond hair from his eyes as she said, “It’s going to be all right, Steve.” Her glance at his younger cousins tipped him off not to discuss the dire situation they were in. “Can you take Tiff and Mellie and show them that new video game you got last week?”
He nodded gravely, warmed with the “adult responsibility” being accorded him. “Sure thing, Mom. Come on, girls. Auto Heist really rocks.”
After the trio disappeared into the television room down the hall, the adults sat around the scarred oak table in the center of Hugo Zandski’s dirty and cluttered living-dining area. Besides the weapons on the walls, which Matt noted were at least placed high enough a kid couldn’t reach them without using a stepladder, the large double room was filled with other relics from the past.
Polish nesting dolls perched on rickety little tables, tattered old handmade afghans and quilts were spread or piled on the lumpy sofas and armchairs crowding the room. An enormous hutch and two smaller cabinets were filled with a mismatched array of chipped and faded dishes. Granger imagined they must have belonged to his wife and sisters, long dead according to what Jenny had volunteered.
The old man shuffled into the big old-fashioned kitchen and soon had tea steeping. After retrieving four cups from the mound of dirty dishes piled in the sink, he scrubbed them out, dried them and brought the refreshments to the table. The stuff was strong enough to strip varnish off white pine. Matt added another heaping teaspoon of sugar in futile hopes of killing the taste as he listened to the old man.
“So, those Renkovs say Ta Ta here killed that good-for-nothing husband for insurance, eh?” he asked rhetorically.
“It’s a way to discredit her so the police won’t believe anything she says,” Matt replied.
“I fought Nazis in Poland until our ‘Soviet liberators’ arrived.” Zandski removed a red cotton handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose noisily. “Never trust a Russian. He’d lie over his own mother’s grave. Especially old KGB like Renkov. Once you belong, always you belong.”
Matt nodded in agreement. “That’s why most of them ended up in the Russian Mafia.”
Tess explained their plans for eluding the police and the Renkov family by finding an isolated place in northern California where they could hide until Matt figured out how to nail Mikhail. “We cleaned out both our bank accounts at an ATM in Utah. I only hope it’ll stretch until this is over.”
“I have money, too.” He shushed Tess and Jenny’s protests as he withdrew a large wad of bills cleverly concealed in one of the nesting dolls. “You will use my truck,” the old man said in a tone that left no doubt that they must obey. “The police and Mikhail’s people, they will know that Yukon.”
“Besides, there might also be a problem if it starts to rain,” Matt said. “And the
cops’ll be curious about the bullet holes in the roof, too.”
Hugo turned to the red-faced women in alarm. “Someone tried already to shoot at you?”
Jenny stuttered until Tess said, “It was our fault—I mean about the holes in the roof. We had an accident with one of the guns.”
Matt produced the two weapons which he’d confiscated from the women when they got out of the SUV. The instant the old man saw the machine pistol his eyes widened in horror. Seizing the weapon, he opened the breech.
“I already removed the bullets,” Matt said.
Hugo’s shoulders slumped in relief. “How did you get this?” he asked the women.
“You told me to take that one from above the window,” Jenny said, pointing to the opposite wall, “but I couldn’t reach it and you were busy finding one for Tess. So I just took one from above the sofa instead. It looked almost exactly like the one you said for me to take. I didn’t know there was any difference,” she added weakly.
“Difference was, one I offered you was unloaded. This one always I keep loaded.”
“Oh,” Jenny said with a gulp.
“My fault. I should be more watchful.” The old man shook his head. “My little ones could be hurt.” He sighed mournfully.
“Luckily, no one was, but now everyone is tired. Is there somewhere in the complex where they could spend the night?” Matt asked Hugo.
The old man nodded, pointing above him. “End of third floor. Old Mr. Tucci died last week. His place is vacant. Come,” he said, motioning to the women. “I give you clean bedding.”
“Good plan. You ladies get some sleep while I stash the Yukon,” Matt said. “Then you slip out before dawn tomorrow in Hugo’s truck, but first have him drive it over to Alvard Street for you. You cut through the woods just the way we came in.”
Hugo grinned. “That way, no one sees you leave.”
“With Miami-Dade’s chief suspect out of sight, I should have some time to find out what’s going on,” Matt said.
“How can we ever thank you, Mr. Granger?” Tess asked.
He grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone on the Pulitzer committee, would you?”
Chapter 8
Matt hid the SUV on the basement floor in a large but ill-attended parking deck in the worst neighborhood around downtown San Diego, then removed the plates. By the time the cops located it, it’d be stripped so bare there’d be nothing left to trace. He took a bus back to Samaritan Haven and used a side entrance to his own building, not expecting any trouble.
His first order of business was to call his aunt in Boston. He was pissed but not terribly surprised when her secretary informed him that the old bat was off for a few days at Martha’s Vineyard. Incommunicado…unless she deigned to check up on him.
Whoever had convinced his aunt to sic Sam on him wouldn’t be looking for him until darling Samantha got loose and reported his escape. He reconsidered and grinned. Nope. Sam would never admit she’d let a prisoner—oops—“a patient” get away. Once she was released from that motel room and made her way back to San Diego, she’d come looking for him again. He was sure Sam wouldn’t fall for the soccer mom ruse about being bail bondswomen who were taking him to Boston. But it would take her quite a while without wheels. He grinned. Two, three days or so…if he was lucky.
He slept like a baby.
Sam didn’t. With her cabby’s meter running, she cased the Samaritan Haven complex and located Hugo Zandski’s apartment. No way to overhear what was going on in the joint, but she felt pretty sure the happy crew inside would not be going anywhere before the following morning. She waited until Matt emerged and followed as he hid the shot-up GMC, then followed him back to his digs in the complex. He looked as beat as she felt.
“No rest for the wicked,” she muttered to herself as he climbed the stairs to his room. With Matt getting his beauty sleep, she would have time to check on the arrival of her van. If she couldn’t use it, that would greatly complicate the snatch. This was the most pain-in-the-ass assignment she’d ever taken. Matt Granger was the most pain-in-the-ass retrieval she’d ever met, too. Also the best looking. No, don’t go there. That interlude in the motel was very unprofessional, she chided herself.
But she couldn’t help remembering how great they’d been together in bed. And she couldn’t help considering how much better it would be if he had his hands free the next time. No! No next time. This was business and if there was one thing Samantha Ballanger took seriously, it was business. She would collect her fee from his aunt, give the info on the Renkov case she’d gathered to Pat and walk away. Let the Miami-Dade homicide detectives and the FBI take it from there.
The Russian mob and Matt Granger would be out of her life. Odd, but somehow she realized that of the two, Matt was a lot more dangerous—at least to her. And once he found out the real reason she’d snatched him, he’d never want to see her again. Forcing herself not to think of that, she directed the waiting cabbie to take her to a small, dingy motel room nearby. She collapsed on the unmade bed after she set the alarm, then dozed off instantly.
Late the next morning, Matt was awakened by the jangling of his phone. Overturning the nightstand groggily, he reeled in the receiver and growled, “Granger here.”
“Mr. Matthew Granger?” an officious female voice inquired.
He could hear voices, the swish of elevator doors and other clacking sounds in the background. Busy joint. “Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Vivian Vitelli, Mr. Granger. I’m a nurse at Alvarado Medical Center. I’m calling for a Mr. Hugo Zandski. He gave me your number and insisted I phone you.”
Matt sat bolt upright in bed. “He’s a patient? What happened to him?”
“He was admitted to emergency about an hour ago with severe contusions, broken ribs and the fingers of his right hand have been…severely damaged. He appears to have been the victim of a vicious attack.”
“Is he going to be all right?” My God, where are Tess and Jenny and the kids!
“He’s an amazingly tough old gentleman, Mr. Granger. Kept saying something about Russians while they were sedating him to sew up the cuts and set the broken bones. He was in the Second World War,” she added with youthful awe in her voice, apparently astounded that anyone from that era was still alive.
“I need to talk to him—it’s an emergency.” Matt held his breath.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible right now. He’s still in recovery. Amazing, but he wouldn’t accept treatment until I practically swore a blood oath that I’d contact you.”
Matt combed his fingers through his sleep-tousled hair and tried to unfog his mind. “I’m heading straight to the hospital. Give me directions.” As he jotted down her instructions, his mind raced. The old guy had been tortured for information about Tess. This stunk of Renkov.
“Mr. Zandski should be out of the E.R. and waiting for admission to a room on a floor within an hour or two, although I wouldn’t vouch for how coherent he’ll be after the doctors give him pain meds.”
Matt chuckled grimly. “Knowing Hugo, I’d bet my last buck they’ll have to strap him to a gurney before he’ll accept any more pain medication before he talks to me.”
Matt was dressed and out of his room in the Samaritan Haven complex within five minutes. He raced down three flights of stairs rather than waiting for the antiquated elevator that ran strictly on whim—when it ran at all. He hit the pavement, checking both directions and seeing no one, then made a dash for his car, parked half a block down the street. He was just putting his key in the door lock when he felt a familiar pressure against his right kidney.
“Miss me, Matt, darling?”
He muttered an obscenity beneath his breath as he leaned his head on the car roof. “This can’t be happening. How the hell—”
“How the hell did I escape your pals’ neat little wrap job? It wasn’t easy,” she replied grimly. “Only took pounding my feet against the door until they were bloody stumps. And that was af
ter I nearly brained myself falling twice. The maid heard me or else I’d still be sucking on a damned sock. That dump only has maid service three days a week. Lucky for me yesterday was my day.”
“Today sure as hell isn’t mine,” he said with a sigh of resignation as she shoved him into the driver’s seat and pulled open the rear door, taking her place behind him.
She stuck the stunner over the console and jammed in into his ribs. “Now, drive very carefully and make a left at the corner. Follow around the block to where my van is parked. You do remember my van, don’t you? Just follow your nose. Have any idea how sitting for hours with the carpet marinating in strawberry Slurpee made it smell?”
“They locked the van and took your keys.”
“Yeah. Real cute. But I always carry a spare set.” She wasn’t going to enlighten him about her little “hitchhike” in the back of Jenny’s Yukon. “Get this hunk of junk revved up. And so help me God, if you try to pull anything, I’ll scramble your antenna but good!”
He might have known she was that resourceful. Matt made a mental note not to make the mistake of underestimating Sam Ballanger again. “Look, Samantha, you have to listen to me. I was on my way to Alvarado Medical Center to see Hugo Zandski, a friend of Tess Renkov’s. Seems her in-laws got to him last night and busted the old guy up pretty good—trying to find Tess and her son. The Miami cops are trying to pin a murder wrap on her and Renkov’s goons may have captured—”
“Save it for Aunt Claudia, Matt.” Patty, I’m gonna kill you when I get back to Miami. But only after she collected her fee and expenses from the Witherspoon broad, she reminded herself. “Ah, here we are. Pull over. There’s a parking space right behind the van.”
“How bloody convenient,” he snarled in frustration, seriously considering ramming the cheesy hunk of tin. But there wasn’t a soul on the street and in this neighborhood he knew damn well no one would call the police. Remembering what it felt like to wake up with a stun-gun hangover had a lot to do with his restraint, as well.