by Fiona Brand
For the first time, she faced the very real possibility that they weren’t going to make it. “There’s a notepad and a pen in the glove compartment. Get them out and write down the numbers I tell you.”
Rina, who had been silent and unnaturally still, retrieved the pad and pen.
Esther checked the rearview mirror as she recited the numbers of two Swiss accounts. The first was the Swiss account she had arranged Lopez’s money to be transferred into, after Xavier had stolen it; the second was her own private account. If Cesar had gone broke, the money in her Swiss account would have been the capital to start again, but now…“Recite the numbers back to me.”
Rina read the numbers out: they were correct.
“Okay. Now look at the sheet and remember the numbers. When you’ve done that, put the pad in my handbag.” At the first opportunity, she would destroy it.
She waited until Rina had slipped the pad inside her handbag, then pressed her foot more firmly on the accelerator and overtook a slower vehicle. Her gaze moved rapidly over buildings and road signs as she tried to figure out exactly where her evasive tactics had taken her and how quickly she could get back onto a state highway. The fog that had blanked out downtown San Francisco had also drifted in here, gradually blotting out the landscape and making it even more difficult to pinpoint her position.
The gray car loomed closer. She pressed her foot on the accelerator, widening the gap again. Ahead she could see an interstate sign and the symbol for the airport. She could also see two cars parked across the on-ramp, one with a flashing light. Traffic was already backing up.
Braking, she jerked the wheel and darted down a side road. The car behind shot past the turnoff. She didn’t know what the blockade was for, but she wasn’t going to risk it. The car tailing her was confirmation that Lopez knew she was headed for San Jose Airport, and that he had found out his account had been emptied.
Esther spared a glance for Rina, who was half out of her seat, craning around, studying a second car that had come up close behind them, this one a light bronze in color. The stark terror on her face made Esther’s chest go tight. Rina understood that Lopez was a criminal, the importance of the evidence on the tape, and just why they had to disappear. She had even accepted that they would have to be separated from Cesar. Esther had taken pains to reassure her that everything was under control—that they were safe—but now it was patently obvious that they weren’t and there was nothing she could say to change the situation. All she could do was act. “Sit down, honey. Make sure your seat belt’s tight.”
A corner loomed. Esther braked and wrenched on the wheel, hauling the car over as a school bus appeared. Seconds later another country lane provided her with the opportunity to drive back the way she’d come. The problem was she was caught in a narrow section of land, hemmed in on one side by mountains, on the other, a river. If she could get back onto the interstate her options would improve.
The jet in San Jose was on standby, but with Lopez’s men so close behind, flying was no longer a viable option; they would have her before she made the terminal building. She would have to cut back into the city and hope to lose the cars following her in the chaos of rush-hour traffic. Once she and Rina were free and clear she could ditch the car, hire a rental and head south for L.A.
A car materialized out of the mist, parked across the road ahead. Esther jammed her foot on the brake in a desperate bid to avoid a collision. The Saab slid sideways, punched into a fence post. She had a fractured glimpse of the driver’s face. Perez. Then the car was in the air.
Seven
The Saab’s air bag slammed Rina’s head back against the headrest. The seat belt bit into her chest, pinning her in place as the car spun through the air in eerie silence.
The car hit the ground with a bone-cracking thud and continued to roll, faster, harder. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think; she felt like she was looping the loop on a roller coaster, but the grinding crunching sounds in no way resembled anything she had ever heard at a fairground.
Something hit her wrist and punched the side of her head. When she opened her eyes the sickening whirling had stopped, the car was stationary and the world had turned red. It took long seconds for her mind to accept that the color splattered on the deflated air bags, coating what was left of the windscreen and soaking into her clothing, was blood.
She couldn’t see her legs, and for a frightening moment she wondered if they were still there. The front end of the car was buckled like a concertina, the hood snapped up in the air and hanging at an odd angle. Experimentally, she wiggled her toes in her school sandals, then tensed her calf muscles and realized that part of the weird feeling was that water was lapping at her feet. Her heart pounded faster as she realized that the car had slid partway into the river.
Esther reached behind her to the backseat. Her hand fumbled at the strap of her handbag. It was then Rina noticed blood welling from a frightening cut in her mother’s chest. Esther pulled the bag into her lap, grimacing as she did so, and Rina saw a jagged piece of twisted steel the size of a knife protruding from her shoulder. Raw fear exploded. “Mom, you’re cut—”
“It’s all right, baby.” She reached inside the bag, then with a frustrated sound upended the bag, which was empty.
Swiveling in her seat, Rina saw that most of the contents of the handbag were strewn across the backseat. It was then she realized the reason her right hand wouldn’t work was that her wrist was broken.
Esther’s fingers closed on her good hand. “I need you to do two things for me. I had a gun in my handbag. I need you to get it for me. Then I want you to find the notepad you wrote the numbers on and throw it in the river.”
Blindly, Rina depressed the button that released her belt, not questioning why her mother needed a gun, or even that she had one. Her whole being was centered on doing exactly what Esther wanted.
“Hurry, baby.”
Esther’s voice had gone funny, soft and a little blurry, and she was sitting quietly, as if she was too tired to move. Rina hurried. Her head felt weird, heavy and hot as if she had a fever, and sharp pains shot up her right arm every time she moved. Holding her broken wrist against her stomach, she wriggled through the gap between the seats. Even back here there was blood, soaking the leather upholstery and the tangled mess of objects strewn across the seat and floating in the water that covered the floor.
The notepad was easy to find, it was in the water, the ink smeared, the numbers already dissolving. The gun was wedged in a crumpled corner of the backseat.
Climbing back into the front seat, she handed the weapon over, then threw the notepad out through the gaping hole in the windscreen, watching to make sure it went into the river.
With a slow movement, as if she was so tired she could barely move, Esther set the barrel of the gun on the buckled rim of the window. “Repeat the numbers I gave you to remember.”
Blankly, Rina repeated them once, then, when Esther insisted, a second time.
Esther’s gaze was fierce. “The first set of numbers is for the police, no one else. That second set is for you, only you, do you understand?”
Tears squeezed out from beneath her lids. “Yes.”
Esther’s hand closed on hers and gripped hard. “Good girl. I love you, baby.”
Seconds later, the narrow face of Vitali appeared. There was a loud explosion and Vitali disappeared.
Rina blinked, her ears ringing. Someone said, “She’s got a gun,” but the words sounded like they’d been spoken through a long pipe. Another explosion followed. Esther’s head rocked back, then flopped sideways onto her shoulder.
Rina stared with horror at the hole in her forehead. Her eyes squeezed shut and her torso shrank inward in mute denial. She shook her head, every cell in her body utterly rejecting the image.
That wasn’t right. Her mother didn’t look that way. She refused to see it. She refused to know it.
The heaviness in her head increased, the pressure crushing. She f
elt weird and floaty. Then, as abruptly as if someone had just flicked off a light switch, everything went dark.
Confused, she stared at the thick, impenetrable blackness. She was still awake; her eyes were wide open. She could feel her arms and legs, the soreness in her head and her wrist. She could hear voices.
The heaviness in her head increased, as if she was caught in a vice and someone was winding it tighter and tighter. Her chest ached and dimly she realized her mouth and throat were clamped so tightly shut she couldn’t breathe. An odd buzzing started in her ears. The pain in her chest and throat grew sharper, tighter. Then suddenly she couldn’t hear or feel, either.
Dennison dove into the water and surfaced, wallowing out of his depth. His fingertips brushed the notepad; it spun, moving out of his reach. The ink had almost dissolved but he could see numbers: two sets.
River water filled his mouth; he went under. He flailed, trying to get his footing but the current was too strong. Clamping his mouth shut, he surged toward shore. His feet finally found hard ground and he bobbed up, gasping for breath. Blinking, he scanned the surface of the river. In the middle, the current was moving like a freight train; the notepad was gone.
He waded from the water and used a tree branch to haul himself up the lip of the bank. Sucking in a breath, he surveyed the wreckage of Esther Morell’s car, which was partly submerged. The Saab was totaled, but then it wasn’t designed for aerial stunts, and for the first part of the crash it had been spectacularly airborne. The air bags had deployed, saving Esther and her daughter. If Esther Morell hadn’t produced a gun and shot Vitali, the situation just might have been salvageable.
Now Lopez was going to go ape, but Dennison didn’t think there was anything he could have done that would have saved her, even if she hadn’t had the gun. The driver’s side had taken a big hit. The door had been punched in and the engine block had shoved back, pinning her in the seat. Blood was everywhere, coating what was left of the interior of the car, and coating the kid.
Bending, Dennison checked Esther Morell for a pulse, although he didn’t expect to find one. He’d seen plenty of dead bodies, and Esther Morell was dead on a couple of counts, between the piece of steel that had pierced her chest cavity and the bullet hole in her forehead.
It was regrettable, but in shooting her, Dennison had made the only decision he could. She had known she was dying and she’d had nothing to lose; she had been protecting her kid.
He wasn’t happy. The order had been to bring her in alive, but with arterial bleeding that close to the heart, there had been no chance she would survive more than a few minutes. Lopez would be upset at the outcome, but Dennison was pragmatic. Sometimes shit happened, and in this case it was a given. After stealing Lopez’s money, there had never been any question that Esther Morell was going to give up easy.
Dennison signaled to Collins, who was crouched over Vitali. By some strange quirk, she had shot Vitali through the heart. It wasn’t often he saw a shot as clean and instantly fatal as that. Usually, when someone got hit there was a lot of noise and mess before they finally died, but Vitali had barely shed a drop, and most of it was staining the front of his shirt.
Esther Morell had stopped Vitali’s heart dead and saved him a major headache. The last thing he needed was for the cops to find a blood grouping that didn’t match either Esther or Rina Morell’s at the scene. “Open the trunk of my car, then give me a hand.”
Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he leaned into the car, picked up the gun and slid it into his pocket. With a jerk, he wrenched the door off its hinges and let it drift away in the water. Reaching into the interior of the car, he lifted Esther into his arms, strode up the bank to his car and placed her in the trunk. Slamming the lid closed, he sat in the driver’s seat, picked up his car phone and called Lopez, who was already en route. Then he went back for the kid.
She was unconscious but still breathing. Feeling sick to his stomach, he checked her over. She had a broken wrist, a few cuts and bruises. Unless she had internal injuries, she would survive. As Dennison hauled her out and laid her on the grass, he couldn’t help thinking it would have been a lot simpler if she had died.
Collins stared at Rina Morell. “What are we going to do with Vitali?”
“Put him in the trunk of your car.”
Collins swore beneath his breath.
Dennison hooked his arms beneath Vitali’s knees and waited for Collins to take his shoulders. “What do you think you’re paid for? To sit on your ass and drink coffee?”
“I didn’t think it would be like this. That’s a kid.”
“It’s a job.”
Collins gripped Vitali beneath the shoulders, hauled upward and straightened his legs. “I’ve got a daughter.”
Dennison could feel himself going red in the face as they moved awkwardly up the slope; Vitali was a lot heavier than Esther had been. He was having trouble breathing and the blood was pulsing through his veins in thick, labored strokes. He had high blood pressure; carrying Vitali up the bank would probably give him a heart attack, but was he bitching?
Collins leaned his hip against the rear fender of his car while he juggled supporting Vitali’s weight and unlocking the trunk. The lid sprang open. Seconds later, Vitali’s body was neatly folded on his side; he looked like he was sleeping.
Dennison slammed the trunk closed. “You know what? I never had kids, because I knew this was exactly what it would be like.”
Minutes later, Lopez arrived, pulling in behind Dennison’s car. So far, only one other vehicle had used the country lane, and it had barely slowed. The fog had thickened, blanketing the countryside, but even if it hadn’t rolled in, the Saab, which lay at the bottom of the slope, wasn’t visible from the road.
Dennison gave Lopez his report. He had finished cleaning out the car, and with Collins’s help they had pushed it farther into the river. The water would wash away most of the evidence, and they had been wearing gloves. They couldn’t do much about the muddy trampled area or the tire tracks their vehicles had made, but the chance that the cops would be able to find anything to connect either him or Collins to the accident was remote.
He had searched the car and removed everything, including all of Esther Morell’s and the kid’s luggage and personal possessions. So far he hadn’t been able to find any trace of an account number, or anything relating to an international banking transaction on either Esther, the kid or any of the possessions that had been strewn about in the car and on the ground. It was possible the information was there and he had missed it. The only way to be thorough was to take it all with him.
The only item he had missed had been the notepad. Collins had taken a quick walk downstream and checked out the riverbank, but with no luck. At the speed the current had been going, the notepad would be in San Francisco Bay by now.
Lopez stared at Rina Morell. “Are you sure there were numbers written on the notepad, not words?”
Dennison rose to his feet. “Numbers, two sets, although I couldn’t make them out clearly because the ink had mostly dissolved. What do you want done with the girl?”
Lopez’s expression was cold. “We need her alive.”
Dennison’s stomach did a queasy flip. Lopez had actually imagined that he had just offered to shoot Rina Morell. A ten-year-old kid.
Suddenly the gulf between Dennison and Lopez yawned wide. He’d thought he was a hard-ass. On occasions he’d been certain he had scraped the bottom of the barrel of human behavior, but Lopez was operating on a whole other level. Lately, when Dennison looked into his eyes, he didn’t see anything he recognized.
Collins looked like he was going to throw up. He sent Dennison a sideways look. “She was conscious when Dennison shot Esther Morell.”
Lopez barely acknowledged Collins’s presence. Ever since Dennison had told him about the notepad and the figures, his gaze had been fixed on the kid’s face. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
Dennison watched as Lopez walked ba
ck up the bank and disappeared into the mist. The money Esther had stolen was the power base of Lopez’s operation. According to Vitali, very little of it had been his. The money was loaned to Lopez by his father, Marco Chavez. Losing it had effectively cut Lopez off at the knees and had likely signed his own death warrant.
Esther had taken the secret of where she’d stashed the money with her to the grave, but if Rina Morell had the key to the Chavez billions, then there was no way she could be allowed to die, and no way Lopez would let her go until she spat the key out into his hand.
Eight
Cesar stared at Esther’s body where it lay in the trunk of Dennison’s car. He hadn’t believed Dennison when he had called him about the accident, but he believed him now. Grief speared through the haze of alcohol that had gotten him through the afternoon, and would have driven him to his knees if it hadn’t been for the barrel of the .38 shoved into his side.
Dennison’s hand shot out and gripped his throat, choking off his breath as he pushed him back against the wall of Lopez’s garage. “We know your wife had a photographic memory, just like the kid. So why would she write down details of account numbers?”
Dennison’s fingers tightened, grinding on his trachea, then abruptly released. Cesar gulped in air and massaged his throat. The snick of a blade jerked his head up. Lopez stepped out of the shadows. Warily, he studied the flick knife in Lopez’s hand.
Lopez repeated Dennison’s question.
Cesar’s stomach rolled. The amount of money that was “missing” was nightmarishly large and right now it was balanced against his and Rina’s lives. Even drunk, the logic was clear. It was too late for Esther, but if he could make Rina remember, he could get the money back.
His gaze flickered to the body in the trunk. He began to shake. Dennison had shot Esther. Lopez would have no compunction about ordering Rina’s death, or his. Their only chance for survival lay in the fact that Lopez believed she had something he wanted.