Shiver

by Karen Robards

  “You shot them first, baby doll.”

  “I had no choice! You were right, they were going to kill me! And you.” She shot him a furious look. “I saved your ass. And look at the thanks I got: you’re kidnapping me!”

  The slight quirk at the corner of his lips almost could have been the beginnings of a smile. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.

  “What can I say? Shit happens.”

  “Shit happens?” Her voice quivered with indignation. “We’re talking about my life here. And my son’s life. Those two men are dead. They can’t identify me. You’ve got to let me go.”

  “Can’t.” He shook his head. “Now that I’ve had time to consider it, I don’t think those two jerk-offs being dead is going to be enough to get you off the hook. I grant you that they’re looking for me, but what do you think the odds are that somebody didn’t see you hooking your truck up to the BMW to tow it away? Then there are always surveillance cameras. Google Earth, even. They’ll be moving heaven and earth to find me, and the smart money says they’re going to stumble across you in the course of the hunt. I wouldn’t want to bet against it.”

  Sam went cold with fear as she remembered the partying going on across the street from where she had picked up the Beemer. As noisy as Big Red was, it was more likely than not that somebody had noticed what she was doing. And Google Earth—there was no escaping Google Earth.

  She almost wailed, “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah, well. These guys aren’t the type to take a chance on that. They’re big believers in scorched earth. Pull in here. This should work.”

  They were behind the service station now, approaching an empty lot that already held the chassis of an eighties-era Impala riding on cement blocks where its wheels had once been. He indicated the lot with a gesture. It was dark, shadowy, strewn with trash. A gravel parking area just off the alley at the front of the lot was overgrown with weeds. Scrub bushes grew tall against a broken-down privacy fence at the rear. A single-story building that Sam took to be a garage shielded the near side of the lot from view, while what appeared to be a metal storage shed squatted on the other side. The backs of various three- and four-story brick buildings crowded together across the alley. All the structures were dark and seemingly deserted, forming a wall of dense black rectangles that looked like uneven teeth getting ready to take a chomp out of the star-sprinkled charcoal of the sky.

  “Turn off the lights,” he directed, and she did. The night swallowed them. Sam immediately felt safer: at least no one chasing them down Story would be able to look over and see where they were.

  Of course, the bad guys didn’t need to see them to find them, she reminded herself grimly. They had the Beemer’s GPS.

  Wincing a little as Big Red rumbled noisily into the lot, she steered it around in a circle so it was facing forward again, haunted by the fear that they might need to make a quick exit. Knowing that at that exact moment a gang of killers might very well be tracking the Beemer’s every movement alarmed her to the point where the only thing she wanted to do was get away from it. Braking, praying the resultant sounds weren’t as loud as they seemed to her, she couldn’t slam the gearshift into park and get out of the door fast enough.

  “Hang on.” Quasimodo grabbed her wrist again even as she wrestled with the damned uncooperative door latch.

  “What?” Yanking against his hold in a futile attempt to free her wrist, she glared at him. If he were weakening, his grip showed no sign of it. His fingers were warm and strong. Except for a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and maybe an increased degree of tightness around his mouth, he looked no different than when she had first set eyes on him. “Let go of me. Let’s get this done.”

  “Just one thing first.” Without releasing her, he reached over the back of the seat into the rear compartment.

  “What?” Jiggling with nervous impatience, Sam watched as he grabbed the jumper cables she always kept on a pair of hooks above the shelflike rear seat and hauled them into the front. His damaged finger stayed stiffly erect while the rest of his hand curved around the cord. It was now the approximate girth of a hot dog in marked contrast to the rest of his long, tapering fingers, and just looking at it told her it had to hurt. Not my problem. “What do you want with those? According to you, we’re running out of time.”

  “We are.”

  “So?” She yanked at her wrist again, still without results.

  “I’m not taking any chances.” He thrust the jumper cables at her. They were twenty feet long, maybe an inch in circumference, black, with the flexibility of a bungee cord and a pair of colorful clamps dangling from both ends. “Tie the cord around your waist.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  She understood then: he was afraid she was going to run away. Well, she was, first chance she got, but that didn’t stop her from feeling a rush of indignation.

  “Now,” he ordered.

  Her lips compressed. Arguing was a waste of time, she concluded. Taking the cable, wrapping one end around her waist, Sam cast him a fulminating look. “You can trust me to dump the BMW, you know.”

  “Funny thing is, I actually believe that. But can I trust you after, is the question.”

  When Sam didn’t reply—if he knew she was lying, what was the point?—he made a gesture with her gun at the cord she had looped around her waist.

  “Tie it. In a knot.”

  She did.

  “Once more.” He indicated the knot. Sulkily, Sam made another loop. The knot wasn’t anything she couldn’t untie, but it would take a moment, and that would give him time to stop her. She knew it, and he knew it, which was why the look she gave him when she was done was venomous.

  “Satisfied?”

  “For now. Out my side.” Hanging onto the other end of the cable, he opened the passenger-side door—not without having to put some force into it, because it tended to stick, too—and slid to the ground. Since the truck had been modified to carry out its mission of carting off repossessed vehicles as unobtrusively as possible, the cab’s interior light had long since been disabled. Except for random night sounds, the empty lot stayed as dark and silent as a graveyard. Following him out, she was encouraged to see that he was bent almost double and leaning heavily against the side of the truck. She could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing. He was growing weaker, she thought hopefully. Maybe the prospect of him passing out wasn’t quite as much a case of wishful thinking as she had supposed.

  “Cut the car loose,” he ordered as he saw her looking at him.

  She didn’t need him to tell her. In this one matter they were in perfect accord. The idea that the bad guys might be homing in on the Beemer’s GPS and even at this moment might be closing in on them made her blood run cold.

  The motor operating the winch had never sounded so loud. Sam winced as she switched it on and it roared to life, but there was no help for it. There was no other way to put the car down. If anybody hunting them got within earshot, it was all over. The darkness, the deserted lot, the late hour, wouldn’t help one iota in the face of that nerve-jangling noise. Might as well beam a giant spotlight in the sky flashing “we’re here, we’re here, we’re here” and have done. By the time the Beemer’s front wheels touched the ground, Sam was so antsy she was ready to jump out of her skin. Her heart pounded like a piston in her chest. She was breathing way too fast. Casting anxious glances all around, she ran to disconnect the sling even as the car was still settling onto its tires.

  “Come on.” Like a dog coming up short on the end of a too-restrictive leash, she gave an impatient tug to the cord tethering her to him as she moved faster than Quasimodo could keep pace. Unfastening the sling was the work of only a few moments, but she was sweating by the time she was done. At any second she expected to see cars screeching into the alley after them. Waiting impatiently as the winch and sling swung back into place, she shifted from foot to foot while her eyes darted everywhere. Her c
aptor betrayed no similar signs of anxiety. He leaned against the truck’s rear fender just a few feet from where she guided the winch back into position. His head was lowered, his shoulders slumped, and the foot of his wounded leg barely touched the ground. The gun was no longer aimed at her, but rather pointed down. His hold on the cable that served as her leash seemed slack. Was he still watching her? She couldn’t be sure: the shadows obscuring his face were too dense.

  As she shut the motor down and secured the winch and sling, she kept a covert eye on him. What was the likelihood that she could give the cable a hard jerk and successfully wrench the other end away from him? How was he holding it? She couldn’t quite see, but it was in his left hand, and she remembered that injured finger. How secure could his grip be? If she tried and succeeded, then maybe she could jump inside the truck and drive away. Or even just run for it. She was, she calculated, maybe seven miles from her duplex. On foot, it would take her . . .

  “Let’s go.” He straightened and tightened his hold on the cable even as she did the math. She wondered if something in her body language had given her away.

  Whatever, she had lost the chance. He now stood straighter, seeming fully alert. And he was definitely watching her. In response to his gesture, she walked around to the passenger door and opened it. A tiny glow deep in the recesses of the foot well caught her attention: her phone. Her eyes widened. Her heart lurched. His injuries made him slow, and he hadn’t quite caught up with her yet; she had still been contemplating the possibility of jumping inside and trying to slam and lock the door in his face when she had spotted her phone. Instead she used those few precious seconds to snatch up her phone, then slid it into the front pocket of her jeans as she clambered up into the truck and slid across into the driver’s seat.

  First chance she got she was calling 911. Whether they believed she’d acted in self-defense or not, she would way rather deal with the police than with whatever murderous criminals were on Quasimodo’s trail. At least with the police she wouldn’t have to worry about Tyler’s safety.

  Although if they put her in jail, what would happen to him? And if Quasimodo was telling the truth and not just exaggerating to scare her, and someone went after Tyler, how would she be able to protect him if she was locked up in a cell?

  Worrying the matter like a dog with a bone, she automatically started to untie the knot in the cord around her waist.

  “Leave that alone, and get us the hell out of here.” Quasimodo sounded short of breath as he hitched himself onto the seat beside her and closed the door. The other end of the jumper cable was not only held in his left hand, she saw; it was also wrapped around his left arm, which meant that just jerking the cord out of his grip and running wouldn’t have worked even if she had tried it. He wasn’t taking any chances on losing her, it seemed, and his forethought earned him a spurt of grudging admiration. The gun he had thrust into the waistband of his jeans. The butt protruded; he would be able to grab it easily. His wounded leg angled stiffly down into the foot well, so that he had to turn sideways in the seat to accommodate it. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather out through the passenger-side window. It was hard to be sure, but she thought his expression was grim. Sam followed his gaze, then stiffened, her attention riveted by the intermittent bursts of light that he, too, must be watching. The headlights of a car speeding down Story, just glimpsed between the buildings lining the street. Identifying the light bursts made her breath catch.

  The car was moving way too fast to be anything but bad news, and it was coming from the direction of the scrap yard. Of course, there were lots of reasons cars might be speeding through East St. Louis, and a number of places in that general direction that the car could have been coming from besides the scrap yard, but still she caught her lower lip between her teeth and wrenched the truck into gear.

  “Go left.” There was tension in his voice.

  Since left was away from Story, she was down with that. Even as she complied, Sam saw a second set of headlights racing behind the first.

  Her hands tightened on the wheel. It was tempting to floor it, but trying to speed away over the alley’s pitted asphalt would, she feared, make way too much noise. At the best of times the truck was an unpredictable collection of rattles and groans. At full speed, over rough terrain like the broken pavement of the alley, it could get loud enough to wake the dead. All it took was one person looking out one window to see what was up. Just in case no one from the tenements had noticed her truck preparing to tow away the Beemer earlier, she didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention to the name and number on the side of the truck now.

  “Do you think that’s them?” She glanced fearfully back over her shoulder as she spoke. The first vehicle was nearing the gas station. If it were following the Beemer’s GPS signal, it would turn into the alley in the next few seconds.

  “Don’t know.” He shifted so he could look out the rear window as she drove as fast as she dared toward the end of the alley. The truck trundled over the ruts, making way more noise than Sam would have liked even at the relatively sober speed she was keeping it to. With the window blown out, she could hear every clank and rattle. “But I’d rather not find out.”

  “Me neither.” Nearing the end of the alley, Sam braked just enough to make the turn safely. Remembering the brake lights, which were intact, she winced at the sudden mental picture she had of them glowing brilliant orange through the darkness. The alley was straight; anyone turning in would be able to see the twin red lights shining at its far end. As the truck slowed with its usual painful screech, she glanced fearfully into the rearview mirror. As far as she could see, there were no headlights turning into the alley, which didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen at any second.

  “Not that way.” He shook his head as she eased up on the brake and started to pull the wheel around so they were headed toward town. “Go north.”

  Her eyes widened. “There’s nothing that way.”

  “The expressway on-ramp is that way.”

  The expressway on-ramp. Where was he planning to make her drive him? Her already frayed nerves stretched tighter. She couldn’t just disappear.

  “Home’s the other way. I need to go home. Like I said, I have a little boy.” There was a note of genuine desperation in her voice.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You really want to take this home with you?” Quasimodo must have read the instant negative in her face, because he gave a jerk of his head toward the north and once again said, “That way.”

  Sam’s lips tightened, but she turned the way he wanted. What choice did she have? Leading trouble right back to Tyler was the very last thing she wanted to do. He would be asleep right now in his bed in their duplex, with Mrs. Menifee stretched out on the couch, probably sleeping, too. Take me home safe to him. She wasn’t a praying person, because in her experience praying was pretty much a waste of time, but for Tyler’s sake she sent the plea winging skyward as she cast another glance at the rearview mirror: still nothing. But the truck had no sooner made the turn and started to chug away down the street than she caught a glimpse of headlights pulling into what she thought, from the headlights’ position, must be the other end of the alley the truck had just exited. She sucked in air. Her heart skipped a beat.

  “Look,” she breathed, but he was already looking. From his expression she knew he was harboring the same suspicion she was. “Do you think it’s them?”

  “No way to be sure.”

  But his tone told her that he thought it was likely.

  Her stomach tied itself into a knot. “That was quick.”

  “Yeah, well, they want me real bad.”

  Her chest tightened.

  “Why?” The question was almost a wail. It emerged of its own volition even as she glanced fearfully back at the lights.

  “Let’s just say I pissed some people off.”

  Sam’s lips tightened as she shot him a scathing glance, but she knew that was all the explanation she was going to get
. She didn’t really want to know the answer anyway. Like he had said earlier, the less she knew, the safer she probably was. One thing she had learned in the course of growing up in East St. Louis was that too much curiosity could get you killed. Mind your own business, do your own thing, look the other way: those were words to live by. Anyway, she didn’t care what Quasimodo had done. All she wanted was to get away from him, grab her son, and run somewhere safe where she could hide until it was all clear and things got back to normal. To think that earlier she was pretty much hating her life. Would she ever complain about it again? Knowing herself, Sam gave a wry inner grimace. Probably, but only after this night was a distant memory. Because at least in her regular life she and Tyler were together, and she wasn’t afraid they were going to die. Panic dampened her palms and dried her throat as she thought of her son: whatever it took, she had to get back to him. Fighting off the urge to scream or launch herself on her captor or do something else totally unproductive, she looked toward the headlights again. Had the car stopped? She couldn’t tell for sure. It would have stopped if whoever was driving had been looking for the Beemer and found it.

  “You got any more bullets for this gun?” He had pulled the revolver out of his waistband and was checking the cylinder.

  The question rattled her. “No.” A building blocked her view of the alley. No way to tell what was up with the headlights now.

  “Too bad.” Snapping the cylinder back into place, he thrust it back into his waistband.

  Sam’s heart stuttered. “What, are you planning a shootout?”

  “I like to know where I stand.”

  Her eyes fastened on him. She realized that until now she must have been in some kind of shock that had dulled her responses. Fear suddenly felt as sharp and painful as a stomach full of glass shards. She was cold all over, and breathless.

  Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow before she could speak. “Let me go. Please.”