* * *
“WHA?” I SAID like a fool.
But there was no time to articulate a better query.
The door to the Navigator was yanked open. I yelped as a man in a balaclava dropped a bag over my head.
The safety belt loosened, and I was dragged from the vehicle. My ankle banged on metal as I was pushed, shoved and finally lifted off my feet. I struggled. I hit out and reached nothing. Soon I found my hands bound. Duct tape? I tumbled to a floor. Hard. Cold. Was I in the back of the van?
My captor mumbled something, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
The van screeched away. Was that Walter yipping? What if he got hit by a car? OMG.
Now there was only the whir of the tires and highway noises. How many times had I been told, “Never let them take you to a second location”? It was one of the many tenets of my unorthodox childhood. Well, I would have wanted to stop them—whoever they were—but what chance did I have with a bag over my head? My uncles had never mentioned that possibility.
It seemed unfair. I mean, Inspector Alleyn never had to put up with anything like that. Not that he’d never been attacked, but always with dignity. Even Fox managed to escape.
Well, back to the here and now, I told myself. Use what you know, and don’t go mooning over your bad luck. My uncles had of course explained how to undo duct tape. I hoped that’s what I was bound with. Its holding powers are overrated. Plastic ties are much, much worse. Maybe these kidnappers didn’t keep up with the latest trends. My plan was to free my hands first. They were duct-taped in front of me and not too tightly. This didn’t seem to be the work of an experienced kidnapper, I decided. Was that good or bad? Time would tell.
I brought my hands down as far as I could and snapped the tape open.
Unlike heroines in the movies, my hands shook, quite violently, and I was breathing loudly. There are probably quieter freight trains. Think of something soothing, I told myself. With an image of the signora’s lasagna in mind, I managed to collect myself enough to reach up and test the bonds on the bag over my head. It felt like burlap, and, oddly, there were no bonds. I yanked it off to find myself in a dark interior of a van that was rattling along. The ride was so uncontrolled that I wondered if anyone was actually driving it. I edged toward the back of the van and tried to figure out where the rear lights were. My captor hadn’t secured my feet, so I had some options. Everyone knows that if you kick out the back lights of a vehicle, then people will spot you and call 911. I did my best to listen, for a train, traffic, voices, familiar noises. Anything to identify where I was being taken and the route. I never did figure out where the lights in the van were. Maybe that’s easier in a car trunk.
I willed myself to be calm. I would need my wits about me when we stopped and I came face-to-face with whoever was behind this.
Be logical, I said to my quivering, terrified self.
The police were looking better by the minute. As much as we distrust them in our family, they don’t kidnap people and put bags over their heads. Not in this country, anyway.
I was not wealthy. So most likely not a kidnap for ransom. Could it have been a random attack? Unlikely. I was close to—inadvertently, but still involved in—two murders. I was nosing around about those murders. Therefore, this was almost certainly connected to them.
I really didn’t want to meet this dude face-to-face.
I didn’t know if he worked alone. Chadwick Kauffman was dead. There had been a gang of three at Summerlea, and now one of them was dead too. That left two. I might have been terrified, but I could still do simple arithmetic.
Time to get a plan.
Now we were bumping and bouncing along some very uneven terrain. Whatever we were driving on, it could not possibly be a road. Therefore, there probably wouldn’t be many people to see my efforts even if I did get the lights kicked out. Plus my captors might hear the noise. Better to see if I could get out of the van.
Find the windows. What was covering them? I stood up, woozily, and promptly fell down again as the van bounced in another direction. I tried again, gripping a piece of metal and easing myself up. Maybe I could pull off whatever was blocking the windows. I felt . . . curtains?
Curtains? Really?
The van lurched to a stop. My heart almost did too. I had to get out of there—wherever “there” was—before my captor arrived. I needed to see.
I yanked open the curtains and screamed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“UNCLE KEV?” I slumped to the floor of the van and sobbed.
“Jordie!”
I gathered enough strength to stand up and shout. “Are you insane?”
The familiar look of hurt crossed his handsome Irish face. “That’s not nice.”
“Demented? Crazed? Delusional? Mad? Off your rocker? Just plain nuts?”
“Why are you screaming, Jordie? It all went according to plan. Ouch, that hurts.”
I got to my feet so that I could hop around with rage and frustration.
“What plan? What plan is that, Kev?” I may have augmented my point by beating my shaking fists against his handsome Kelly chest.
“The plan to pretend to kidnap you so the police would lose interest in you as a suspect.”
I resisted the urge to bang my head on the side of the van. The only thing that stopped me was that I already had so many bruises from that metal. Plus I had a message for Uncle Kev.
“The police, as you may not be aware, Kev, do not actually lose interest in people who are kidnapped.”
“Okay, okay, but you have to admit it worked. You should see the clips online.”
I rubbed my temples. “Clips of what? The police?”
“Your kidnapping!”
“There are clips online?”
“YouTube and everything. It’s big news.”
“Well, that’s terrific. But I was scared to death. What if I’d had a heart attack?”
“Jordie! You’re only, what, twenty-seven? Why would you have a heart attack?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I thought I was being kidnapped by the person who killed Chadwick and Shelby, you . . .” Words failed.
“But it was me.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t know it when you put that bag over my head.”
“Of course you knew. It was part of the plan.”
“Maybe it was, but I—the person with the bag over her head in the speeding vehicle—didn’t know about the plan.”
Kev shook his handsome ginger head. “Why didn’t you?”
I thought for a second that my eyes would pop right out of my head. “Good question, Kev. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did!”
“You did not. I would have noticed if you had mentioned it.”
Kev shrugged.
I resisted the urge to slug him.
He said, “I did tell you.”
“When? When did you tell me?”
“I left a message on your burner.”
“How did you get the number?”
“Cherie gave it to me.”
“That makes sense. And you left a . . . ?”
“Yeah. Left a message. Burner to burner, no problem there.”
“There was a problem, Kev, in that I never got that message.”
“You didn’t? But you called me back.”
I scratched my head. “I did?”
“Yes.”
“Um, what did I say?”
“You said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Uncle Kev.’”
It actually hurt when I scratched my head. “Okay, I did call about a particularly obtuse message and said I didn’t understand it.”
“Told ya,” Uncle Kev said with a grin.
“But the thing is that you left me a message saying, ‘All systems ar
e go and the eagle will be landing and we will have liftoff, Houston.’”
“Exactly.”
“But that didn’t come across like you were going to stage a faux kidnapping, Uncle Kev.” I tried to speak gently, although I actually felt like . . . Well, never mind.
“Oh.”
“Next time, a bit of detail.”
“I thought I’d be careful in case the cops or someone got hold of the message even though it was burner to burner.”
“But I had Walter with me. What happened to him? He could have been hit by a car or something. He won’t know what’s—”
As my voice rose, Kev cut in. “Don’t worry about the little doggie. Your cop friend picked him up when he tried to chase the van.”
All I could utter was a strangled gasp.
Kev added, “He had a hard time hanging on to the pooch without dropping his towel or his cell phone. It’s all good news. I hope someone got a video of it.”
I stared at Kev as I imagined that scene. Smiley would have been reporting my kidnapping. The neighborhood would be swarming with police in minutes. He probably would have had to admit that I’d used a key to get into his house. No doubt some helpful person on the street would have spotted me coming or going as well as Smiley in his towel.
“It was pretty funny, Jordie.”
Sure it was. I’d been rolling around on the floor of the van, terrified. Smiley would have been better off, but not much. Walter would be hungry and peevish.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s get out of here.” I glanced around. Kev had tucked the van into a small clearing in the woods.
“Great. Come on in.”
For the first time I focused on something other than woods and van. “In where?”
He puffed up with pride. “Our cabin.”
“We don’t have a cabin.”
“Hey, we do now. Wait till you see it.”
I followed him into a larger clearing. There was no question that I was looking at a quite lovely log cabin in the middle of nowhere. If you like log cabins in the middle of nowhere. I was pretty sure I didn’t. I’m more of a library and art gallery and vintage shop and formal dining room kind of girl.
“What if someone sees the van, Uncle Kev?”
I hated that van, yet now I needed to protect it.
“No one’s going to see it. They don’t even park there. They park by the house.”
I just had to let that go. There wasn’t much I could do about it. Driving off in a van that was all over the news seemed like it would just make a bad situation worse.
Uncle Kev strode ahead and opened the door. I followed, but only after giving a longing look back to civilization, assuming that it was in the same direction. I had no real reason to assume that. Mainly, I stared at trees, thick, dark, impenetrable, as far as the eye could see, except for the dirt track I assumed we had lurched in on.
Kev disappeared into the cabin, and I followed. What else could I have done?
Inside, there were more surprises. Mainly, food. It looked like the signora had catered for our hideout. There was a huge dish of stuffed manicotti, a mountain of rolls that smelled freshly baked, green beans and salad. I glanced around, worried that the signora and Vera had also been ’napped, but it was only me.
It felt wrong eating, but I was ravenous. I suppose being faux-kidnapped can do that to a person. When I’d wolfed down the last bite, I felt calm and soothed enough to ask, “When did you rent this cabin, Uncle Kev?”
Kev chortled. “I didn’t rent it, Jordie. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
I chose not to answer that. Not that Uncle Kev takes offense that easily, but I was marooned here—wherever “here” was—with him, and he’s hard to take when his feelings are hurt.
“How, then? Exactly how did you borrow it?”
He wagged his finger under my nose. I felt like biting it off, but I put that down to recent stress. “Don’t want to leave any kind of trail.”
I sighed. If you didn’t want to leave a trail, maybe kidnapping someone in broad daylight in sight of a serving police officer wasn’t the way to go.
“It was empty. No one here.”
I glanced around. The inside was definitely rustic. It was made of logs inside and out. Some beautiful old quilts covered the furniture, which had a handcrafted look to it. Other quilts were hung on the log walls. They looked handmade by someone’s grandmother. I stepped forward to examine the tiny stitches. Lovely. I couldn’t imagine Grandmother Kelly making a quilt, although she drove a getaway car like an artist.
There was so much to look at. The wide plank flooring, the spectacular stone fireplace that must have taken someone an eternity to complete. At the back of the cabin, overlooking what I thought was a ravine, was a sunroom with a sloping glass roof and three sides of windows. A pair of battered recliners, with a small table between them, pretty well filled the room. This was no abandoned cabin. Someone loved this place. A lot of work had gone into making it a serene escape. And then along came Kev.
“Was there anything in the fridge, Uncle Kev?”
“Oh yeah. Lots of stuff. Beer, cheese, bacon, eggs, bread, a cake. Some wine. I brought our food from the signora, but we coulda been all right anyway.”
“Uh-huh. But you know that kind of food spoils quickly.”
Uncle Kev nodded, waiting for me to make my point.
I made it. “That means that whoever owns the place either comes often or is planning to come back soon.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, Kev, it isn’t.”
“But they won’t because—” A loud clap of thunder drowned out whatever else he was going to say. The thunder was followed soon by a flash of lightning and then the slash of rain. We glanced out the window. Soon the view was obscured by heavy rains.
“That’ll wash out that track,” Kev said with enthusiasm. “At least once every spring it gets washed out. They’ll have to regrade it.”
“Mmmm. And how will we get out then?”
“The old van will probably make it.”
Personally, I bet the owner would have an all-terrain vehicle or at least a pickup.
“They’d never drive out here midweek in this anyway,” he said, happily. “I’ll make a fire.”
“Please don’t. Someone may see the smoke.”
“No one’s going to see it, Jordie. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
I experienced a pang in my heart. Uncle Kev was so kind, cheerful and well-meaning. He was also so hopeless and innocent and unable to make the right decisions. How would he ever survive in prison? The way we were going, Kev and I would definitely be behind bars within a day, for crimes we hadn’t committed, compounded by a few crimes Kev had committed and, um, mistakes I had made. Even Vera might be arrested and detained, possibly convicted.
I knew that near heroic action would be required to save us, and it would be up to me to take that action. Unfortunately, I was swaying with fatigue and what was probably a reaction to my apparent kidnapping. My head swam, and my knees started to buckle.
“Uncle Kev, you need to put the van out of sight and then we need to be ready to get out quickly if anyone comes. I’ll leave it to you to stand guard. I only need a short nap. No fires, please. Promise. It would just take one hiker to—”
“There’s a storm, Jordie. No hikers are out there now.” He chuckled fondly, as if I was a slow but beloved child. “Oh yeah, that reminds me.”
“Something about hikers, Kev?”
“Huh? No. No hikers.”
“What then? The storm?”
“No. Why?”
I sighed deeply. This was the man who had kidnapped me in front of a police officer. Why would I expect his conversation to follow logically?
“What did it remind you of, Kev?”
�
�Cherie called.”
“Okay.”
“She had something really important to tell you.”
“Did she?” I tried not to think about throttling Uncle Kev and to focus on Cherie. She had wanted to tell me something about Shelby. Cherie might be outrageous, but at least you could count on her to make sense in her own unique way.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll reach her as soon as we get to a place where we have cell phone reception. I wonder if I wander around outside when it stops raining if I could find a high spot with a signal.”
“Nah. I tried that. Even stood on the van. But I’ve got her on the line for you.”
With horror, I saw that he was holding the receiver of the landline in the cabin.
Two things became apparent. One, we couldn’t have been in the middle of nowhere, as Kev claimed, if there was phone service. And two, if the police discovered we’d been in this cabin, they could make a link to Cherie by checking the phone records. Well, maybe that was an unlikely scenario, what with the storm and all. I hoped she had a burner and that was the number Kev had called.
“Cherie?”
“You’re all over the news.”
“Let’s not, um, go there. What did you discover about our mutual friend when you visited her home?”
“Oh. Right. Our mutual friend. Yeah, really interesting, and I think it explains why the neighbors were so fascinated by you.”
“Okay.”
“Guess who showed up?”
“Can’t guess. Not a good time for games. Could you just tell me?”
“Repo!”
“What?”
“Ree-po.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. I thought back to the pleasant home on the leafy street in Grandville. “But what was being repossessed?”
“Her car. You know you’re having a real bad day when they try to repossess your car and then you get—”
“Don’t say it. Are you sure?”
“Yup. Talked to the guys. Wasn’t too hard to get into a conversation.”
It never is for Cherie. That’s what comes of looking like a modern-day Marilyn Monroe with a side order of Wonder Woman and a dash of the Cable Guy. “And?”
The Marsh Madness Page 23