All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  He paused at the door. “One last question. Carlisle said you met Sloan at a Chamber of Commerce function.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yet his name wasn’t on the guest list?”

  “No. Roger . . . Mr. Carlisle . . . made a joke of it at the time. Said something to Nick about knowing the right parties to crash.”

  “Carlisle spoke with Sloan?”

  “They were standing together at the bar when I went up to tell Roger one of the Raytheon VIPs wanted to talk to him. They’d just met, there at the bar, and were waiting for their drinks. That’s what Roger told me later, anyway.” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “I’m sure that’s what he told the FBI.”

  Mitch nodded and thanked her again for her time.

  “What now?” I asked when we were belted into the Bronco again.

  “Let’s have lunch, then deliver the critter you’ve been hauling around in the rear of this heap.

  MY cell phone rang while we were chowing down at an Applebee’s I’d spotted near the interstate. I dug it out of my tote and glanced at the screen, but the number was blocked. Praying it wasn’t one of my team calling with some new disaster, I flipped up the lid.

  “Lieutenant Spade.” A faint click told me the line was open. “Hello?”

  I heard another click and quickly disconnected. I’d received too many recorded ads and solicitations to listen to a high-pressure salesman right now. If it was anyone else, they could leave a message.

  Mitch was quiet for most of the meal. I could tell he was still mulling over our visit to B&R and The Brow, as Joy Bennett would forever remain branded in my mind.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked over a shared serving of my favorite, Triple Chocolate Meltdown.

  “I’m thinking that when we get back to El Paso later this evening, I’m going to dig into the background of one Roger Carlisle.”

  I had other hopes for later this evening and wasn’t at all sure we’d make it back to El Paso tonight.

  As it turned out, I was right. The utter demolition of my Bronco and subsequent hail of assassin’s bullets figured nowhere in my plans, however.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT happened about twenty minutes out of Tucson.

  We were heading northwest on I-10. I cruised along with only the occasional laconic reminder from Mitch that fines multiplied with every ten miles over the limit.

  Our route took us through the heart of the Sonoran Desert. The rolling landscape was dotted with gnarled mesquite, creosote, saguaro and the desert’s own ironwood trees. These, I remembered from one of Pen’s boring lectures, exist nowhere else on Earth. They grow to about forty feet in height and supposedly live upwards of fifteen hundred years. I’d taken her word on that.

  Off in the distance, the jagged mountains thrust their red-rock peaks high into the cloudless sky. On either side of the highway, dry gullies gaped open like hungry mouths.

  The mid-afternoon traffic was sparse for such a well-traveled interstate. So sparse, I divided my attention between Mitch and the empty road ahead, with only sporadic glances in the rearview mirror.

  I’m not sure when I first noticed the black SUV trailing us. I do remember thinking at one point that the driver couldn’t be on cruise control because he maintained the same erratic speed I did and seemed to stay the same distance behind us.

  Not until we reached a curve in the highway and I just happened to glance in the mirror did I see the SUV rapidly closing that distance. It was one of those big, heavy monsters that get maybe eight or ten miles to the gallon and was jacked up even higher on oversize wheels.

  “What’s heavier than lead?” I asked Mitch, keeping a wary eye on the oncoming vehicle.

  “Uranium, I think. Or plutonium. Why?”

  “You think I have a lead foot? The joker behind me is wearing boots made of solid plutonium.”

  Mitch twisted around for a look. “Jesus! Idiot must be going close to a hundred.”

  Even in those few seconds the SUV had gained so much ground that its shiny grille and front end now almost filled the rearview mirror. I kept expecting it to pull out and pass but it stayed right on my tail.

  “Dammit! Why doesn’t he go around?”

  I tore my eyes from the mirror to gauge the road ahead. The oncoming curve was one of the sharpest we’d encountered since departing Tucson. Mid-curve was a bridge spanning a deep gully. I needed to slow down for the curve, but couldn’t hit the brake or the idiot almost kissing my rear end would crawl right up it.

  Swearing, I flipped on the directionals and moved into the left lane to let him pass on the right. When he cut left as well and got within inches of the Bronco’s bumper, my jaw locked.

  “This has ceased to be funny.”

  I swerved into the right lane again and took my foot off the accelerator. The SUV surged up alongside the Bronc. For a second or two we were door-to-door. I glared up at dark-tinted windows and pried one hand loose from the steering wheel to shoot him the finger. Pretty stupid, I admit, but I was thoroughly pissed by this time.

  I didn’t transition from pissed to scared out of my gourd until I hit the brake, and he did the same. We were side-by-side again for another couple of seconds.

  I caught a swift movement out of the corner of my eye. My heart jumped into my throat when I realized Mitch had hiked up his jean leg and was reaching for his ankle holster. Before he could get to it, the other driver cut the wheel again. His monster SUV sideswiped my smaller, lighter Bronco.

  “Shit!”

  The ram shoved us sideways, into the guardrail. With the screech of metal on metal shrieking in my ears, I fought like the devil to keep the Bronco from careening through the rail and flying off the bridge into the gully. In sheer desperation, I stood on the brake. The SUV shot ahead while we fishtailed all over the place.

  Each swing was wilder and wider and slammed us back against the metal railing. All I could do was try to minimize the arc and keep aiming for the far end of the bridge.

  We almost made it. Had only inches to go when the Bronc plowed through the last stretch of rail and flew over the embankment.

  “Hang on!” I shouted to Mitch, like he could do anything else!

  He braced against the dash. I hung on to the wheel. The Bronc nose-dived into the steep-sided gully. We plunged straight down, taking out creosote bushes and prickly pear cacti as we went.

  Halfway to the bottom, we hit a rock, tipped and rolled. My driver’s side door flew open and came wrenching off. On the second roll, something hit me in the face. My tote, I know now, as it flew through the opening.

  Even then we might have walked away. We were both strapped in. The seat belts held and the airbags deployed. If it wasn’t for that friggin’ tree, both Mitch and I might have sustained nothing more than bruises and cuts.

  They don’t call those suckers ironwood for nothing. When we hit the trunk, it felt as though we’d slammed into a freight train head-on. The Bronco came to a jarring stop that rattled every one of my teeth.

  The impact stunned me. I must have blinked out for a few seconds. When the daze cleared, the Bronc was tipped at a precarious angle and I was in the air, hanging by my seat belt. The powdery chemical stink from the airbag burned my nostrils. Something green and leafy tickled my cheek. Horrified, I realized a limb of the ironwood had broken off and speared right through the windshield.

  “Mitch!”

  I propped a shaky hand on the center console to steady myself and saw he must have slammed into the passenger side window. It had shattered, and blood from a vicious laceration drenched his forehead.

  “Mitch! Can you hear me?”

  His lids twitched. He tried to shift, and gave an agonized grunt. That’s when I saw that the branch had driven right through his shoulder, pinning him to his seat.

  “Oh, God! Don’t move, Mitch! Don’t move!”

  I couldn’t get to him. The damned tree limb formed a solid barrier between us and my lap belt was about
to cut me in half. I wedged a foot against the floorboard to relieve the pressure and called to him in a voice cracking with fear.

  “I’m going to climb out and come around to your side. Don’t move. Please, don’t move.”

  The driver’s side door was completely gone. I got a grip on the frame with one hand and fumbled for the seat belt release with the other. Once free of the shoulder harness, I scrambled out.

  My shaky legs crumpled before I could find my footing on the steep embankment. I went down in clump of creosote and banged my head against the Bronco’s up-tilted underbelly in the process. Cursing and seeing stars, I shoved upright.

  With the low-hanging branches of the ironwood forming a barrier in the front, I staggered around the rear of the vehicle. The back hatch had sprung open on impact and disgorged EEEK. He’d landed some yards away and was lying half in and half out of his foam-padded box.

  I had no time to worry about him. Not with the Bronc tipped almost onto its side and Mitch trapped inside. I had to stretch out on the ground to get to him. His eyes were still closed and blood seeped from the cut on his forehead, but it was the branch impaling his shoulder that scared the bejesus out of me.

  The only emergency medical training I’ve received was a Red Cross CPR course in high school and mandatory training for all casino employees on how to use the defibrillators scattered throughout the hotel and playing floor. I had no idea what, if any, vital arteries or organs the branch might have speared through.

  Thrusting an arm inside the shattered window, I felt for a pulse. His jaw and neck weren’t clammy or cold to the touch and his heartbeat was steady. I prayed that meant he hadn’t gone into shock, and withdrew my arm to rip at the sleeve of my gauzy tunic.

  The shoulder seams gave, and I folded the bright poppies into a pad that I pressed against the cut on his head.

  “Mitch! It’s Samantha. Can you hear me?”

  His lids twitched again, then slowly fluttered up. He blinked a few times before focusing on my face.

  “You . . . okay?” he ground out through gritted teeth.

  “I’m fine.” I swallowed a huge fur-ball of panic and tried not to let my voice reveal my stark terror. “But you’ve got a tree branch spearing through your shoulder.”

  Slowly, agonizingly, he turned his head. The effort curled back his lips and had his breath coming in short gasps.

  “First . . . time for . . . that.”

  I made a sound dangerously close to a hysterical laugh and tried to wedge through the narrow opening. I knew he had a phone he clipped to his waist, but it was under his hip and I couldn’t reach it.

  “My purse flew through the window when we rolled,” I told him, wiggling back out. “I’m going to climb up the slope, find it and call 911. Don’t move! I’ll be right back.”

  The gully was so steep I had to scramble up it on hands and knees. The dry-baked earth was as hard as shale. I was bleeding from a half dozen scrapes and cuts when I heard the sound of a car slowing to a halt on the road above.

  My first ecstatic thought was that a passing vehicle had spotted the upturned Bronc and stopped to help. Even before I raised my head, though, I knew with sick certainty that when I looked up I would see a black SUV.

  Sure enough, it had pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate. I could see the gleaming grille, the darkened windows, the driver who climbed out and walked to the edge of the shoulder.

  He didn’t look like a cold-blooded psychopath. Not the ones you see in thrillers like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, anyway. In his neatly pressed dark slacks, open-neck white shirt and tan sport coat, he could have been your everyday, average stockbroker or Realtor.

  His gaze went first to the Bronco’s underbelly, which was all he could see from his angle. Then he swept the slope.

  He spotted me right away. He could hardly miss me. I was crouched on the baked dirt with no cover except a spiny creosote. My eye-popping orange and pink tunic must have stood out like neon against the plant’s silvery green.

  Our gazes met for a short infinity. I don’t know what he saw in mine. Stark terror, probably. I saw death in his.

  Almost casually, he reached across his chest. I didn’t wait for him to draw out the gun I knew had to be nested in a shoulder harness. With a scrabble of rock and dirt, I lunged back down the slope.

  I didn’t hear the shot that spit up dirt some yards to my right. Or the one that sent up another puff just a foot away. As I zig-zagged wildly, a corner of my terror-filled brain registered the fact that the shooter had to be using a silencer. The rest of me just wanted to get out of his line of fire!

  I flew the last few feet and flattened myself behind the Bronco. Almost choking with fear, I crabbed forward.

  “Mitch! We’ve got company!”

  He forced his lids up. “Bastard . . . who . . . rammed . . . us?”

  “He’s got a gun.”

  I was breathing so fast I was sure I’d hyperventilate. I couldn’t think, couldn’t move. All I knew was that we were both sitting ducks.

  “He’ll come down,” I gasped. “Find you trapped like this. I have to . . . I have to lead him away from here.”

  “No!”

  His lips curled back again in that awful rictus of pain. Without moving his upper torso, he contorted his lower.

  “Mitch! What are you doing!”

  “My . . . Glock.”

  His eyes squeezed tight. Sweat popped out and mingled with the blood on his forehead. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the agony he must have suffered as he tried to reach his ankle holster.

  I squirmed into the opening as far as I could, straining to help, but a sharp, metallic ping froze us both. A second thud sounded from the Bronc’s exposed underbelly. Realization crashed through me with sickening force.

  SUV Guy didn’t have to come down the slope to finish us off. All he had to do was hit the gas tank. The son of a bitch could incinerate us both in one giant fireball!

  When Mitch’s pain-glazed eyes locked with mine, I could see he’d reached the same lethal conclusion.

  “Go,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Run for . . . cover.”

  Cover hell!

  I didn’t argue with him. There wasn’t time. But every instinct I possessed told me our only chance—Mitch’s only chance—was to lead our attacker away from the Bronco.

  I was up and running in the next heartbeat. I cut into the open for a few terrifying seconds to let him get a look at me before plunging the remaining few feet to the dry gulch.

  He had to come after me! He had to!

  He couldn’t stop to search the Bronco or he might lose me.

  With those frantic thoughts careening through my head, I hugged the gully’s high bank and ran. I got maybe twenty or thirty yards before three loud shots cracked through the air in rapid succession.

  I threw myself against the dirt bank. For a panicked moment, I thought SUV Guy was right on top of me, that he had unscrewed the silencer, that he intended to pick me off right where I was.

  “Samantha . . .”

  The weak shout seemed to come from a thousand miles away. I almost didn’t hear it over the roaring in my ears.

  “Samantha. He’s . . . down.”

  Mitch! That was Mitch!

  I blinked the dirt from my eyes and scrambled out of the gulch. SUV Guy lay facedown in the dirt not ten yards away. Blood seeped from a hole in the yoke of his sports coat. The top half of his skull wasn’t there anymore.

  Gulping, I stumbled back to the Bronco and dropped to my belly. I couldn’t imagine how Mitch had managed to retrieve his weapon until I saw him slumped against the dash. He’d shoved forward, impaling himself even more, to reach his ankle holster.

  “Good shooting,” I choked out.

  “You led . . . him right . . . into my line of . . . fire.”

  I didn’t think this was the time to admit my only intention had been to lead him away, not into the line of fire.

  “We have . . . an
other . . . problem,” Mitch grunted.

  “What? Oh, God! You’re losing too much blood! Hang on. Please, hang on. I’ll find my purse and call for help.”

  “Samantha.” He stopped me in mid-scramble. “I smell . . . gasoline.”

  Now that he mentioned it, so did I. A wave of nausea spewed into my throat as I rushed around for a view of the Bronc’s belly.

  SUV Guy hadn’t hit the gas tank but one of his shots must have nicked the fuel line. An oily slick had already pooled below the crumpled chassis.

  My heart was pounding so hard and loud I almost missed the ominous click-click-click coming from the engine. A whole new terror grabbed me by the throat. I had no idea what was under the hood that might spark a fire but I knew we couldn’t stick around to find out.

  I was so shell-shocked I just stood there for a second or two, trying desperately to think how I could get Mitch out. My gaze swung wildly to the road above, to the spreading oil slick, to EEEK’s shipping container, to . . .

  EEEK. I had EEEK.

  Faster than a speeding bullet.

  Stronger than the Hulk.

  More agile than . . .

  Oh, shit. Who cared! I rushed back to the passenger side and flopped on my belly again.

  “We need to get you out of there,” I told Mitch. “Like, fast.”

  “You go. Call . . . for help.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I can use EEEK to help me haul you out of the Bronco but . . .”

  “Yeah. But . . .”

  His pain-filled glance flicked to the branch spearing into him. Another round of clicks penetrated the small silence. Mitch looked me straight in the eye and ground out what we both knew was a certain death sentence.

  “There’s no . . . time, Samantha. Go up to the road. Flag someone . . . down and call for . . . help.”

  When I dig my heels in, they go all the way to China.

  “We’re wasting time. I’ll be right back.”

  I had to drag EEEK out of the half-open crate. Damned thing weighed a ton, but I finally got him upright and propped against the rear end of the Bronco. Praying his circuitry hadn’t sustained damage in the crash, I pressed the switch that powered his computers. When the circuit lights blinked on, I sobbed with relief.