by Lee Bellamy
"Good God no." Crystal recoiled in horror. "I could never kill anyone. I just want to get away from Sereno."
I could not see her face too clearly, even in the moonlight, but I'd have sworn she was telling the truth. Of course I could be wrong. In Virgin in the Pines she had proved she could act if the stakes were high enough. "Then who, Crystal? Who told Sereno?"
"I don't know, except it wasn't Jay. It couldn't have been Jay. I can't think of a soul who would tell on me. Not even Velia would go that far."
Her strange reference to Velia intrigued me, but I let it pass. "Why haven't you called the police?"
"The police? Are you nuts?" She snorted with disgust. "They'd think I was out of my mind."
Of course they would. "Then what on earth are you doing here? If Sereno Ghimenti were after me, I'd be half way to South America by now."
"I know, I know," she cried, "that's why I've come looking for Jay. He helped me before. He's got to help me again."
As she talked, I started slowly shaking my head. "Not this time," I told her gently. "Do you think Jay would leave his son at a time like this? Tyler could be dying."
She seemed to understand, and said in a tremulous whisper, "I know. I'm making excuses. Maybe it's just... I wanted to see Jay one last time. He'll be leaving again soon. What if he's killed over there? I may never see him again."
"You really love him."
"Oh, yes." She squeezed her eyes and nodded. "From the day I set eyes on him in Vegas. When he married Velia, I wanted to die." She paused. "That black-hearted whore."
"Could you possibly mean Velia?"
"Who else but my darling sister?" Mockingly she sing-songed, "Such a little lady. Velia walks on water, she can do no wrong." Her lips twisted. "Everyone thinks she's so, so wonderful. Well, that conniving slut stole Jay away. She knew I loved him. She did it on purpose, and you know why? Because she's been jealous of me all my life. She'd lie—cheat—steal—anything to show me up. And the worst of it is she hides behind all that religious crap so everyone thinks she's a saint. Well, she's not."
I thought, poor Crystal. She didn't realize how bad she made herself look—tearing herself apart with sibling jealousy. Obviously, she could use some counseling. Poor Velia, too. As far as I could tell, she'd done everything she could to help her sister, without a clue how Crystal really felt.
"I'll get him back, you know," Crystal continued with a remote, glassy gleam in her eye. "Jay's got to be tired of her by now. Soon he'll come running."
How sad. Couldn't Crystal see that if ever there were two people madly in love, it was Jay and Velia? I gripped her arm. "You don't have time to trash Velia. You'd better start thinking of yourself."
She pondered a moment and squared her shoulders. "My God, why am I sitting here? I'd got to haul ass out of Fresno."
"Now you're talking."
She fairly jumped off the bench. "Will you tell Jay I said goodbye, and that I'll e-mail every day?
"Sure. Now go!"
She headed back down the path towards the parking lot, me following. I paused, digging in my purse for my keys. Perez could be at Denny's already, wondering what kept me. The black Lincoln with the tinted windows still sat in the parking lot. There's something ominous about tinted windows, I mused, just as three of the four doors swung open, and three men sprang quickly from the car. They were big, burly, and dressed in black. Judging from the swift, determined manner they came charging up the hill, they had a mission. Clearly, it was not to visit a sick friend.
The biggest of the three took the lead. He was a mean-faced six-feet-six, with Viking legs and shoulders, and a pony tail. The other two crowded close behind him, forming a sinister, silent trio, their brows drawn, their expressions hard as stone, heading straight up the path towards Crystal.
She froze in her tracks, knowing. "Oh, no!" she gasped, and started to turn. They were upon her instantly, like eagles on a dove, surrounding her, pouncing, holding something under her nose—a white cloth it looked like, hauling her off her feet. Standing farther up the path, I watched in a state of numbness while she struggled. I heard her half-muffled scream. All at once she went limp and silent in their arms.
It happened so fast that I hadn't even breathed since those car doors opened. Viking looked up the path where I stood paralyzed. Suddenly I realized Crystal wasn't the only one in trouble.
I started to turn. Somebody hissed, "Grab her!"
The Viking came at me in a flash. I stomped on his foot, but it didn't faze him. I blocked him with my forearm, but he ducked away and laughed. "Ah—so she knows Karate, does she?" I attempted my sure-fire, ball-of-the-hand to the cup move, but he easily blocked my hand before it even got close to its target.
"Nice try, sweetheart." Whatever amusement he felt suddenly vanished. "Have you learned this one yet?" He balled up his fist and punched me in the stomach. I went down in a heap and lay gasping on the grass.
Through a haze of pain I heard, "We'll have to get rid of them both."
"Yeah, but we'll have some fun before we do. Twice the fun now."
"First, we've got to get out of stinkin' Fresburg."
"Head for the airport."
Whatever fight I had left was totally knocked out of me. I felt myself lifted and carried to that big, black car. Viking held me tight, pressing his hand over my mouth while they taped Crystal's hands and feet and threw her, still unconscious, on the floor of the back seat. They did the same to me—taping my eyes, taping my ankles together and my hands behind my back. They heaved me face down on top of Crystal. They'd have given a sack of garbage more consideration.
The three piled in, two in the front, I guessed, one in the rear, digging his heels sharply into the small of my back. The engine came alive. As we began to move, the horror slammed into me. What Crystal had just described, about the baseball bat and the broken bones, about the one-way helicopter ride—all that was going to happen to me.
God only knew the "fun" they planned on first. Judging from the vicious way Viking had slammed me, and the callous way they threw me into the car, they would show no mercy. All my own fault. I had failed to defend myself again. What good was my refresher lesson at Golden Tiger Karate when I'd stood there like a dummy, letting Viking use me for a punching bag? Still the helpless female. Good going, Keene.
I had to get out of here!
But how? I couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't scream. In total despair I realized all I could do was die.
Chapter 15
The car left the parking lot and turned right. I sensed it was following the side road that ran in front of the hospital. It curved and stopped at what had to be the red light at Herndon. When it moved again, to my surprise it turned left. If they'd been going to Fresno Air Terminal, they'd have turned right. Maybe they were going to Chandler Field, or Sierra Sky Park, the two small airports close to Fresno. They probably had a plane waiting...
Or a helicopter.
Oh, Ashley. Terrible regrets assailed me. Why hadn't I run when I had the chance? Now I'd never see my little girl again. And who would bring her up? Her selfish, alcoholic father? Her bigoted, one-dimensional, WASP grandmother? The thought of either was unthinkable. I felt a helpless despair. Nobody could raise her right but me.
The car picked up speed. Herndon, a fast, fifty-mile-an-hour speedway, was wide open at that time of night. We were passing Denny's right about now. Perez. Little did he know...
Crystal stirred beneath me. "Crystal?" I whispered, my lips next to her ear, "are you awake?" No answer, and no wonder. A strong odor of chloroform hung about her. She was the lucky one. She didn't have to lie there like me, tortured by thoughts of what was to come.
She moaned again. I repeated, "Crystal?"
I heard a muffled, "Oh...where are we? What's on top of me?"
"In a car," I whispered. "I'm on top of you. We're being kidnapped."
"Then I'm done." Her voice broke in despair. "It's over."
"Hang in there," I murmured, th
inking, what an empty, meaningless phrase.
Crystal turned her head slightly. "Holly, I didn't kill him. I didn't kill Rudy."
Before I could answer, a sharp heel struck the middle of my spine. A voice bawled, "Shut up down there!"
I cried out as pain lashed though me. Again he brought his heel down, harder than before, yelling, "I said, shut up!"
The pain was excruciating, but I'd have to bear it. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, but tears welled and spilled underneath the tape over my eyes. Was this a preview...?
The waves of pain were starting to ebb when we stopped at a red light. Herndon and Fruit, I guessed. The sound of a motorcycle pulling up beside the car distracted me. Was it Perez? Come to rescue me? Oh, sure, wishful thinking, Keene. Even if it was Perez, what good could he do? If he carried a gun, I'd never seen it. He was tough, but a match for three professional hit men? No way.
I'd watched hundreds of kidnappings on TV, but they never seemed real. The helplessness and stark fear you feel when you're taken against your will doesn't come across on a tiny screen in your living room. How could anyone ever imagine it? You have got to be there.
Suddenly an ear-splitting noise of shattering glass jolted the car. Cold air gushed in. Pieces of glass fell on top of me. Even blindfolded, I could tell the side window had shattered. If only I could see!
"Hooo....yee...ahhhhh....eeee!"
The shocking sound blasted my ear drums—a savage, blood-curdling, yell—the kind General Custer must have heard that last day on the Montana hill.
"What the hell?" came alarmed voices from the front.
"Jesus Christ!"
"Wha...?"
I heard the car door next to me fling open, another "What the hell?" from the man in the back, and then a sudden crunching sound, like a fist pounding into a face. A scream of agony rang out as two strong hands gripped vice-like around my waist. In one fell swoop, I was lifted off Crystal and slung out of the car, onto the pavement of Herndon Avenue, flat on my stomach.
"DRIVE, YOU BASTARDS!" Perez's voice—loud, rough, threatening—like I'd never heard it before. "DRIVE! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE OR YOU'RE DEAD MEAT! GO, DAMMIT GO! GO!"
I heard, "Grab her! Get her back!" then the slam of a door, the screech of tires, and the Lincoln was out of there, the sound of the engine quickly fading.
"Damn, they got her." Perez's frustrated voice. "Holly?"
"It's me," I cried. "What's happening?"
"Got to get you out of here, babe." I felt myself tucked under his arm and dragged from the middle of Herndon Avenue to what I guessed was the curb. "Let's get that crap off your eyes." Seconds went by until—oh the relief!—he ripped off the tape and I could see.
I felt dizzy and disoriented, nauseous from the pain caused by the punch in my stomach and the kicks to my back. My heart still racing, I looked around and found I was lying on a little piece of lawn in front of a shopping center. "Where is Crystal?" I asked in a ragged voice. "I thought you—"
"I tried. They grabbed her back. There wasn't time—"
"They were going to kill us."
"Tell me later." Breathing fast and hard, Perez pulled a knife from his pocket and sliced at the tape that bound my wrists. "They'll come back. We've got to split."
He finished cutting my bonds. I stood and rubbed my wrists, half bent over from the lingering pain in my back. "Are you all right?" Perez asked. "Can you get that far?" He indicated his bike, lying sideways in the middle of Herndon Avenue.
I answered, "Yes," not really sure. One of my shoes was gone. It didn't matter.
"Let's go—quick!"
Herndon was deserted. As we stepped into the street a pair of headlights appeared to the west, approaching fast. Perez said, "Oh, shit," grabbed my hand, and we broke into a run, a lopsided run for me with just one shoe. The bike lay across the middle lane. Perez jerked it up and half leaped onto the seat, me scrambling right behind him, slinging my leg across the saddle as slick as a Hell's Angels mama, not caring that my skirt hiked up. My arms locked tight around his waist. He turned the key in the ignition. The bike did not come alive. He tried again. Nothing. I thought, this is Hollywood cliché stuff—the bad guys coming, the engine won't start—but it was all too horrifyingly real.
"Start, dammit!" Perez cursed. Nothing.
Brakes screeching, the Lincoln stopped beside us, a few feet away. My adrenaline started raging. I yelled, "Keep trying," to Perez, and slid off the back of the bike, thinking, no more helpless female, this time it's up to me. The front passenger door swung open. Viking leaped out, gun in hand. I flashed a glance at the man in the back seat. He'd be sitting out this round. He lay unconscious, bleeding. The driver still had his hands on the wheel.
The threat came totally from Viking. He was heading toward me, raising his gun. This time I didn't freeze. I decided on a roundhouse kick, the one the moviegoers love because it's so powerful. "EEEE....OWWWWWW." My yell so startled Viking he stopped in his tracks, gifting me with a precious extra second before he started to aim the gun. I set my stance firmly, brought my knee up, and at the same time swiveled through a 180-degree turn on my front leg. I kicked backward from the hip, knee and ankle in line, hitting him in the stomach with my pointy-toed shoe. It was like sinking my foot into a pillow. Immediately, I knew I'd caused some serious damage, maybe even a ruptured spleen. Viking dropped his gun, grabbed his stomach and went down screaming. When he hit the pavement he lay there and writhed. I grabbed the gun just as the Harley came alive. Leaping on the back again, I yelled to Perez, "Let's go!" We hung a tight U and ripped out of there, back towards St. Agnes.
"We've got to call the police," I yelled over the noise.
"I know," Perez shouted back to me. "But don't get your hopes up for Crystal. It's a miracle I got you."
Yes, a miracle. I glanced back. Nobody following. Safe!
"They're gone for good," Perez yelled.
"Looks that way," I agreed, but felt no relief. I could hardly bear to think about Crystal. For her the miracles had run out.
When we got back to St. Agnes, we called 911.
***
The next two hours were a blur. The police arrived fast, alerted by the dreaded word "kidnap." Did I need medical treatment? No, I'd be okay. I turned over Viking's gun and showed them the place in the east parking lot where Crystal and I were kidnapped, relieved to find my purse still lying under a bush.
Perez related how he'd returned to the hospital after I didn't show up at Denny's. He arrived in time to see me hauled away. He followed. We showed the police the broken glass on Herndon where Perez seized the opportunity at the red light. He told how he'd smashed the window with a tire iron he carried on the cycle, then swung the door open while belting out that banshee yell. He punched the guy in the back seat, grabbed me fast and hauled me away. Had he gotten the license number of the Lincoln? Sure. The police checked. The Lincoln was found almost immediately, abandoned at Sierra Sky Park. It had been rented, with false papers that were untraceable.
Obviously, the kidnappers had left town, probably by plane, possibly by helicopter. The airport had no record of who took off at night.
The police put out an A.P.B.
An officer asked, what about Crystal's relatives? Whom should they notify? I felt a deep tug of sympathy for Jay and Velia, remembering they were still in the hospital waiting for word on Tyler. And now this. I informed the police where Crystal's sister and brother-in-law could be found, and no, thank you, I didn't want to be the one to tell them.
At the moment, there was nothing more that Perez or I could do. Tomorrow we would go downtown and make our statements, in particular to Lieutenant Diaz who'd been working on Crystal's disappearance all those years. Meanwhile, we could go home.
***
Dawn was breaking when Perez walked me to the east parking lot, to my car. I wasn't lopsided anymore. I'd lost the other shoe when I kicked Viking.
"Sure you don't want to get something to eat?" Perez asked.
I looked down at my disheveled self. Shoes gone—panty-hose torn—the Elie Tahari outfit wilted, and my blood-stained blouse hanging half-way out of my skirt. "I'm a mess." I made a weary attempt to tuck the blouse in, ran my fingers through my tangled hair. "I just want to get home."
Perez thrust his hands on his hips. "Thought you were Bruce Lee there for a minute." He grinned. "Dammit, Keene, you were good."
It was the first time he'd mentioned my attack on Viking. He'd been so busy starting the Harley, I figured he'd missed my big karate scene. I felt ridiculously pleased by his remark but managed a cool, "You weren't so bad either." He was looking down at me.
Perez tipped his head to one side and observed, "Hey! You're shorter than I am."
"Really? I hadn't noticed." I ducked my head, opened my purse, and rummaged for my keys. "Thanks for the rescue. That yell of yours scared me worse than those goons did. Why did you do that?"
"I had to get you out of that car in zero time. I didn't have a gun, so there was only one way—shock them. The hollering's a psychological weapon. It unnerves them. Takes them by surprise."
"You sure did."
"Yeah, well, the idea was to make so much noise they couldn't think. People go on instinct when they can't think. Their instinct is to run. That's what happened."
"But what if they hadn't?"
"Then we would have had a problem, wouldn't we?"
"Slightly. That crunch I heard—you must have hit him pretty hard."
"That was the general idea."
He stood looking down at me in the early morning light, eyes red from fatigue, face sprouting a stubble of beard, yet to me he had the look of a hero. That cocky, hands-on-hips stance of his—that short leather jacket hanging from his capable shoulders—reminded me of Brad Pitt's easy, sexy style, and Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, and every roguish, devil-may-care silver screen hero I'd ever had a crush on.
I was seeing Guillermo Rivera Perez as I'd never seen him. His amusing go-to-hell attitude had become, inexplicably, a turn-on. Oh, definitely, his Latin magic was getting through to me. I wouldn't allow it, of course. Still, there was no harm in asking something I was curious to know. "You risked your life to save me. Why? You could have been killed."