Freefall

by Kristen Heitzmann

  Gentry jumped. He turned and stared at her. Did she think him a brute? He was no worse than the bighead actor whose house he’d taken her from. No worse than that boyfriend who’d given away his own kid. The investigator. And then it clicked.

  He crouched down and grabbed her face. “You told him. How?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your boyfriend, Cameron Pierce.”

  “He expected to talk to me last night. I told you he’d wonder.”

  There it was again, the tone that made him feel stupid, worthless.

  He gripped her throat. He could crush her skinny neck, squeeze it as he’d wanted to squeeze his mother’s so many times. He felt her fear. She was helpless. Feel it. Feel what it’s like to be small and vulnerable.

  Allegra stood over Rob’s shoulder, an ache deep in the pit of her stomach as he stared at the screen. “I fitted Gentry’s phone with a GPS chip and software that enables the satellite to locate her within a two-meter radius. The program isn’t officially operational, but from my computer I should get a ping if her phone is turned on.”

  She squeezed her hands. “I can’t believe he’d do this.” Had he been so desperate? She remembered the night he’d come to her door, beaten bloody like someone in Gentry’s movies, and she still hadn’t seen it coming. She felt responsible not only for Gentry’s danger, but for letting Curt believe, for allowing too much. “I could talk to him, offer to meet—”

  “No.”

  “If it would help Gentry …”

  “You’re not getting anywhere near him.”

  “He’s not a monster.”

  Rob looked up, pain darkening his face. Curt had cost him his leg and almost his life. He could have cost Gentry hers and might still. How could she say he wasn’t exactly that?

  She dropped her face into her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  They’d been finding their way, in spite of the crushing guilt. His forgiveness had been so profound, so unexpected. Incomprehensible really, utterly foreign. Tears stung her eyes. “I did this, Rob. I have to find a way to …”

  “Punish yourself?” Hurt as he was, he turned and took her hands. “You’ve had enough condemnation, Allegra. Enough.”

  “But I encouraged him. He believed there was a future.”

  “He conned you.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. There was … an emptiness in him too.” She looked into the face of the man she loved. “Like finds like.”

  He clutched her hands to his chest. “Then how do you explain us?”

  Her throat squeezed. “I never let you see what was really there.”

  “You’re wrong. And so was your father. Three days isn’t enough to undo fifty years of wrong thinking, but if you could see how God—”

  They both jumped when his phone rang. Rob pressed Speaker.

  “Rob,” the caller said, “I think Curt Blanchard’s got Gentry.”

  “I know.” Rob sagged in the chair. “He wants fifteen million dollars.”

  “Fifteen mil?”

  Allegra echoed his incredulity. Rob had told her Curt wanted ransom, but not the amount. Not …

  “Can you do that?”

  “It’s roughly what I’m worth, after fees and penalties, if I liquidate everything I own, including the house I—we—live in.”

  She grasped the back of Rob’s chair, feeling weak. Had she caused her worst fear, returning to the poverty of her youth? She was terrified, and yet, if it wasn’t that Rob would lose it, too, she’d give it all up to be free of her guilt.

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  The man sounded adamant, but what other way was there? Rob would do anything for the niece he loved like a daughter, the child she’d denied him. Another weight. These last days had been the most painful and wonderful of her life. Now it was all crashing down.

  Rob rubbed his face. “Where are you?”

  “Gentry’s apartment. I came in last night, but she was gone and hasn’t been back.”

  “If her phone was on, I could locate her.”

  “GPS?”

  “A highly accurate system, but so far her chip’s only operational from my computer.”

  “Do you need a sustained connection?”

  “She only has to power on, Cameron, now that I’m watching. Maybe it’s time to pray.” Rob disconnected and stood like a man whose heart had been torn out and held up for his inspection.

  “Who was that?”

  He raised his head. “The man who loves her.”

  She saw the love in Rob’s face too. Wounded by her mother’s desertion, her father’s cruelty, she’d chosen sterility before she ever met Rob, tied the tubes that could have produced life. But her choice had become his loss—if she’d only known.

  Curt released her throat. He hadn’t cut off the air, just let her know he could. If that didn’t shut her up, he would finish the job. She lay gasping on her side, half crying, half seething. But her anger couldn’t touch his. He’d gone beyond anything he’d known before. Something had slipped. A line was crossed.

  Holding her throat, he’d felt invincible. Life. Death. Hers. His. Didn’t matter. They were nothing. It was all a sham.

  He turned her phone on, scanned down to a number, and called.

  “Gentry,” Cameron Pierce all but hollered.

  “Wrong.” His own voice sounded cold and distant. “I need papers. ID, birth certificate, social security, and credit cards.” The man who’d caused the trouble could fix it now.

  “What makes you think I can do that?”

  “You deal with fraud. Are you saying you can’t come up with a purveyor?”

  A pause while he considered that. “I can.”

  “Get me a name and address. If you try to mess me up, go to the cops again, set a trap, anything, you won’t find Gentry alive.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “No.”

  “If I don’t know she’s alive, why should I help you?”

  “Because you don’t know she’s dead.”

  “No deal.”

  Curt seethed. “You’d take that chance?”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Fine. No harm, no foul. Curt put the phone on speaker and crouched down.

  “Can you hear me, Gentry?”

  “Kai?” Her voice broke.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her breaths came sharp and quick. Curt felt her fear. He raised the phone. “She’s fine.”

  “I wasn’t finished. Gentry—”

  Curt hung up and pocketed the phone. He gagged her, checked her bonds, and went out.

  Cameron called Rob. “Did you get it?”

  He heard the smile first. “I’m locating the ping now. Was it you she called?”

  “It wasn’t Gentry calling; it was Curt.”

  “What would he call you for?”

  “Anonymity. He wants me to help him disappear.” Ironic that he’d just shown them where he was.

  “Okay, write this down.” Rob gave him an intersection and a distance east of that. “This is accurate within three meters—if they don’t move.”

  Cameron hung up and called Detective Stein. He got the station.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Stein is not available.”

  “His partner, then. It’s urgent.”

  “The detectives have been called to a shooting. I’ll page, but he’ll have to return your call.”

  And in the meantime, Curt could take Gentry anywhere. The detective had told him not to interfere, but they’d be tied up at the new crime scene. If dispatch sent uniforms, Curt might act on his threat. He’d sounded too calm. As though he had nothing to lose.

  Cameron placed another call—to FBI agent Joe Ridder. “Hey, Joe. I need a false ID specialist in L.A.”

  “This in connection to the missing girl?”

  His throat tightened. “Yeah.” If helping Curt disappear saved Gentry …

  “I’ll get back to you.
Nice work on the Bulger file. Very clean.”

  “Thanks.” Cameron hung up. He checked the loads in his Glock and holstered it. He had his plan.

  As soon as the door closed again behind Curt, Gentry felt the bed frame for anything sharp. She’d cut herself on enough frames to know the possibility. Her fingers found a pointy metal nub that might do it, and she worked her wrists up to that diagonal section and started rubbing the plastic cord. Her wrists burned; her arms throbbed, but this was her chance.

  She didn’t know where he’d gone this time or how long he’d be. She didn’t know if Cameron could or would do what Curt had demanded. She only knew she had to get free.

  She wedged her head under the bed to see, then worked the loops harder over the point. It was tiny, and the plastic was much tougher than her skin. But she kept rubbing in spite of the pain.

  She had barely marred the cord’s surface when the door opened again. She dragged her head out from under and lay still. Curt stopped at the end of the bed, a small paper bag in one hand, her car keys in the other. His gun protruded from his waistband. She gave him a sullen stare as he went past into the bathroom. Minutes later her nostrils were assailed by the sharp odor of hair dye. He was changing his appearance.

  She rubbed the cord while the shower ran. Steam added the scents of egg and rust to the chemicals. The air conditioner choked and spewed out blasts of cold air. Her arms shook. She rubbed harder. The water stopped. Had he heard the bed bang the wall? The curtain rings squeaked along the rod.

  She heard him moving and forced herself to lie limp and discouraged. With only a ratty towel around his waist, he stepped out and scrutinized her. His wet hair was dark brown. Water drops pearled his muscular chest and shoulders, smooth and bare like a weight lifter’s. He’d probably posed before stepping out. She looked away.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you such a prude. Not with your reputation.”

  The gag kept her mute, but his assumption rankled. He walked back into the bathroom. Maybe he’d leave again. The plastic coating had started to peel away from the wire inside the cord. If she could snap one strand …

  But he came out and sat down on the floor across from her. “Hungry? Thought I’d order pizza.”

  The shoddy, sixties-style motel looked like the kind where rooms were rented by the hour. Not much activity this early, but amid the forms huddled against the graffiti-covered walls and the heaps of garbage, despair hung thick. Making a slow pass, Cameron saw what looked like Gentry’s Honda in the parking lot.

  It could have been abandoned after the phone call, but Curt was no pro at covering his tracks. According to the cops, he was nothing more than a petty schemer in over his head. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

  Cameron circled the block. Before ordering the accident on Kauai and now holding Gentry at gunpoint, Curt had no arrests for violent crimes. No rape, no battery, no accidental manslaughter. He was cleaner than Malakua. That only slightly eased the chest-squeezing vise. Anyone could be pushed to violence. Cameron knew that by how much he wanted to hurt the man himself.

  He parked across the street beside a Dumpster midway between a pawn shop and rescue mission. The windows of both were as heavily barred as a prison. From that position he could observe the motel, but he got out and walked hunched and slack-hipped to the office. The twenty he passed over the manager’s palm refreshed her memory.

  “Room seven. He paid cash, hasn’t checked out.”

  Back in his truck, Cameron tried Detective Stein again. His message had been forwarded; the detective wasn’t available. Cameron got back in his truck and waited. If Curt was inside and had Gentry with him, it was only a matter of time. As soon as Agent Joe Ridder gave him the name of the false ID specialist, he’d have the means to separate Curt from Gentry. That was all he cared about. Curt was LAPD’s problem; Gentry was his.

  FORTY-SIX

  Curt removed the gag and settled back against the wall. “So what’s it like making movies?”

  The question, his tone and posture were so ludicrous they struck her dumb. Did he seriously intend to converse as though this were a social occasion? As though one of them wasn’t there by force? He’d swung so erratically between rage and calm, she didn’t know what to think or how to be, but it was such a relief to have the gag off that she answered the question. “It’s difficult.”

  “How?” His blue eyes looked stark now with the dark brown hair and eyebrows.

  “To keep the focus; step outside yourself and play the part.”

  “That’s not hard. I do it every day.”

  She looked away. What she did was nothing like his cons. She represented the truth in an imaginary scenario. He made real life a lie.

  “So is your life perfect now that you’re a big celebrity?”

  That question proved him certifiable given the situation. “My life’s not perfect.”

  “Everyone screaming and begging for your autograph? Like you’re something special, something more than anyone else. Your face in all the papers.”

  “The lies people tell.” She looked him dead in the eye. “And the lengths they’ll go to destroy me?”

  He rubbed his face. “I didn’t want it to be like this.” He didn’t seem to know where to rest his hands, as though they anticipated already the task before them.

  She thought of Uncle Rob lying in the hospital in Kauai, fighting for his life. And of herself with no idea who she was and only a vague sense of fear to tell her something was very wrong. “How did you think it would be, Curt? When you imagined it.”

  “I didn’t.” His agitation grew. “I just took the opportunity I got.”

  “Did you ever think there might be more to it than taking what you want?”

  He gave her a cold stare.

  “Maybe if you’d thought beyond that, things would have turned out better.”

  “Beyond it to what?”

  “To what you could do for someone else.”

  He snorted. “When your lunch is whatever you can grab, and a good day is when you break the other guy’s nose? Yeah, I’m gonna worry about someone else.”

  “There’s always someone worse off. And someone trying harder. There are people bringing good out of the worst things imaginable.”

  “Is that what you tell the kids in your troupe? Take this crap and make it good?”

  “I tell them God knows the plans he has for them, plans to prosper and not to harm.” But harm happened. It happened and happened and happened. Something inside her cracked.

  Curt scoffed. “When he shows up with my plan, let me know, cuz so far it’s been straight from hell.”

  “Your plan is the same as everyone’s.” She sounded like Daniel, so sure of the truth he’d made certain nothing ever tested it.

  Curt tossed his head back and feigned a quavery voice. “Salvation through my personal Lord and Savior.”

  The fracture inside widened. Out of the depths I call to you…. But did God hear? She had promised Cameron the Lord would answer, but where was he now?

  “Problem is, when they handed out personal saviors they skipped me. Maybe you got mine, you with your fairy-tale life.” His face darkened dangerously. “You don’t know what it’s like to wake up starving and bruised and pray your teacher won’t notice and call authorities to move you from one hell to another.”

  “I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through. But it doesn’t give you the right—”

  He lunged up and grabbed her. “Don’t tell me my rights. You think you know fear? Pain?” He brought his hands to her throat. “Prove it. Show me some therapeutic improv.”

  He had intended to wait until Joe called with a name. He’d wanted to give LAPD a chance to arrive, but the longer he waited without hearing from the detectives, the more it hurt to think of Gentry in that shabby room with a guy who’d slipped into the zone between conscience and crime. What if stuff happened because he hadn’t acted soon enough?

  With those thoughts churn
ing, he barely held himself in check. He knew not to interfere with a police operation, but when the dented pizza-delivery car pulled into the lot, Cameron was out of his truck and crossing traffic before he found a reason not to. The motel looked pretty empty. Did he dare hope…? A hundred bucks bought the pizza, the hat, and the room number. They were in there.

  As the car pulled out, he placed a 911 call, gave the address for a hostage situation, and hung up. He shouldered the box and approached room seven. Brim lowered, pizza tipped to fill most of the peephole, he knocked and called, “Pizza.” Then he slipped his Glock from the holster.

  He hadn’t planned a showdown, but some instinct outside himself drove him now. The seconds ticked. Had Curt slipped out some other way? He wanted to call out to Gentry. But he waited, head down. Open the door.

  At last he heard motion. A bolt. A safety chain. Cameron dropped the pizza, brought both hands to his weapon. The door swung open and they were face-to-face, guns raised. Cameron rasped, “Put it down.”

  Curt took a step backward, another. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Just give me Gentry. You can walk away.”

  Curt backed again.

  The room looked empty, even the bathroom, but he couldn’t see the tub. “Where is she?”

  Without breaking eye contact, Curt swung his arm, pointing the muzzle down. Gentry whimpered. Cameron’s heart hammered. With the gun on Gentry, all risk factors skewed, as Curt had known they would. Even shot, he could squeeze off a bullet, but he would not risk her.

  “Put it down.” Curt’s voice shook. The tendons stood out in his throat.

  Cameron’s rigid arms went soft. If Curt hadn’t hurt her yet, maybe he wouldn’t. If he got what he wanted … “Let me see her.”

  “Drop it.” Curt’s hand shook. “Drop it or I shoot.”

  Worked up as he was, he could shoot her by mistake. Cameron swallowed. His breath came in short bursts. “Okay. I’m putting it down.” He started to lower the gun.