Upon reaching the overhang, Sylvia found her path blocked by a pile of boulders. The lava was sharp, filled with air bubbles, and she cut her hands as she scrambled up. A large rock shifted unexpectedly beneath her weight, nearly trapping her foot.
As she tried to pull herself up into the main chamber of the cave, she realized she could not lift her leg high enough.
Sylvia crouched, wedging herself into the low hollow behind the boulder. Minutes passed like eternity, and she wondered where Lyle was. She had heard no shooting.
She couldn’t see the helicopter from her hiding place, but couldn’t miss its noisy approach. It came down low to the ground no more than a hundred yards away and then took off again.
God, Luigi had seen her hide and was coming to hunt her down. She needed Lyle with the pistol, but he’d run back down, probably thinking Tony would go after the black box.
Sweat ran down her back and sides. Her heart pounded in her ears. She should have stayed in the redwoods instead of showing herself in sparser cover.
Suddenly, there was a sharp crack outside as if someone had stepped on a piece of dry deadwood. Evidently, Luigi saw no need for subtlety.
She heard footfalls on soft earth beneath the overhang. All the animals in Andre’s trophy room had felt this dread, the moment when uncertainty became the knowledge the hunter had caught the scent.
The first thing she saw of the Valettis’ henchman was the rifle carried at the ready.
The chopping of the helicopter echoed off the valley walls. It seemed to change direction and circle around.
Luigi looked over his shoulder. For a fleeting instant, she wondered if she could leap down on him, but he turned back to her.
Their eyes met. Her heart sank.
Slowly, with an almost sexual smile, he raised the rifle. There wasn’t even time to think about loss or Lyle as she scrambled wildly for a way out.
The boulder in front of her rocked.
Everything felt as if it was taking place in slow motion. She looked down the gun barrel and gasped for breath. Bracing both feet and her arms against the rock face, she felt the boulder shift again.
With all her strength, Sylvia kicked out.
The rock went down and slammed him backward, an incredulous expression on his face.
Sylvia leaped to her feet. He lay on his side, bleeding from a wound above his left eyebrow. She wiped her sweating palms on her pants and saw bloody handprints from where the rocks had cut her.
He opened his eyes and groaned, then lifted his head. She saw the rifle on the ground by his side at the same time he did, and she went for it, snatching it up before he could move.
His hand snaked out with lightning speed and grasped her ankle, the iron grip shocking her.
She tugged her foot, and then kicked it frantically. Still, he gripped her, and began to pull himself up, twisting her leg to take her down.
Clenching her teeth grimly, she reached down and swung at him with the rifle barrel.
Her leg was suddenly free, but he gripped the gun and slowly twisted it, wresting it inexorably from her grip.
The sound of the chopper grew louder.
Luigi’s wrist sprayed blood; a dull pop came from down the hill.
The rifle was Sylvia’s.
She turned and ran downhill on pure adrenaline. Scrub-oak branches tore long scratches into her bare arms. Lyle waited at the tree line of the redwood grove, pistol in hand.
When she approached, he took the rifle from her and handed her the Smith and Wesson.
“Can you use this if you have to?”
She wiped one hand at a time on her pants—there were seeping cuts on her palms—and studied the revolver. Then she raised it in both hands with acceptable form.
“Good girl. Just aim it and pull the trigger.”
Lyle looked the rifle over. A .30-06 Winchester Model 70. Nice hunting caliber. One he’d not shot before, but he had been to the range with something similar. Fully loaded, one round in the chamber, four in the magazine.
“They can’t track us through the redwoods with the chopper.” He wished he’d told her before she ran up toward the cliff. “Let’s circle back and hide the black box if we can.”
He heard the scream of rotors. Tony was coming to pick Luigi up.
Lyle grabbed Sylvia’s hand, and they half-ran, half-slid downhill through the thick forest duff. Déjà vu gripped him; this might have been his dream of last Saturday morning at the inn.
“I tried to go back to the springs once,” he told Sylvia, “but I heard the chopper land and thought you must be in danger.”
A call to 911 had ended up being dropped; he assumed the forest was too dense.
By the time they got back down near the springs, the helicopter was making tight circles over the clearing with the pools. Though Lyle had Luigi’s Winchester, he had to assume the man had another firearm. To do otherwise would be stupid.
So he staked out the springs where the mercury dispersion device was in full view to the sky, sitting beside the river. He told Sylvia to stay back beneath the forest canopy, to hide behind a redwood log.
While he waited, Lyle tried 911 again. This time he was able to get across that Senator Chatsworth’s daughter was at Lava Springs in deadly peril before he was cut off.
The beat of helicopter blades rose, and Valetti made a pass over the springs. Lyle planned on waiting until law enforcement arrived, unless Tony managed to land the smaller helicopter on the road and tried to get the device. Then Lyle would try to capture them at gunpoint.
If only they were now unarmed.
The chopper went off in a wide circle, swinging around to come in from another direction. Tempted by opportunity, Lyle slung the rifle over his shoulder and moved out of cover toward the black box. Once he secured it, he and Sylvia could find a hiding place in the redwoods and not worry about Tony making off with the evidence.
Lyle made it over the footbridge at a run. His feet burned from impacting the hard earth and running over twigs and stones, but if they left trails of blood, he’d keep going. He sprinted over the softer grass and, with the helicopter noise in sharp crescendo, bent to pick up the black box.
The rotor wash caught him with the rifle over his shoulder and the box in hand. Lyle looked up to see the Hughes come in over the travertine cliff above the springs about fifty feet off the ground.
In the left front passenger seat, Luigi aimed a mean-looking handgun, maybe his Glock. Just Lyle’s luck to hit a right-handed shooter in the wrong wrist.
Lyle dropped the box and headed for cover. A bullet kicked up dirt near his feet. Then another.
He decided to stand and fight.
Pulling up beside a tree, Lyle leaned against it as a steadying point and raised the rifle. He aimed first for Luigi.
And managed to hit some part of the helicopter. The sharp ping was audible even above the rotor racket.
Another bullet buried itself in the bark, inches from Lyle’s head.
He worked the bolt and shot to kill.
With the rifle’s recoil, he didn’t see what he’d hit, but when he was able to focus he saw that Luigi was slumped over. Blood stained his chest, and it appeared only his seat harness was keeping him upright.
Valetti was pulling up and away in the chopper.
Lyle raised his weapon again and started shooting at the rotors, or more at the juncture where the rotors hooked onto the rest of the machine. He got off two more shots before Tony was up and out of his sights.
Yet, there was a sharp whining to the engine. Then it started to make grinding noises.
Sylvia appeared at Lyle’s elbow. “I think you’ve shot him down.”
“I hope so.” Lyle took off at a run for the road. There, where the vineyards began, he saw the wounded helicopter’s fuselage start to rotate with the rotors. It took a couple of wild gyrations before it crashed into the rows of Andre’s prized Sangiovese.
“Stay back,” Lyle ordered Sylvia. “This time I
mean it.”
This time she obeyed, peering from behind one of the eucalyptus lining the road.
Charlotte Longstreet of Wineland Helicopters showed up at a run, cell phone in hand. “I heard shots. The National Guard and the sheriff are on the way.”
Lyle approached the wreck with the rifle up, ready to kill either man if they reached for a weapon. He had one bullet left.
The rotors wound down. Luigi appeared unconscious … or dead. Tony glared at Lyle through the cracked windshield. Then raised both hands and put them on top of his head.
Chapter 30
When Sylvia saw Tony Valetti surrender, she stepped out from behind the tree. From far away down Highway 29, she heard sirens.
Recalling the reason she and Lyle had come to Lava Springs, she went back through the gate and found the black box. She hoped there would still be enough of the mercury solution inside to prove their case.
When she muscled the box across the road into the vineyard, Tony’s dark eyes flicked over it, then away. He stood with his hands on his head, while Lyle held the rifle pointed at his chest. With the calm assurance of a veteran, Charlotte frisked Tony for additional weapons, then moved to the passenger seat, removed a handgun from Luigi’s lap, and checked his carotid artery for a pulse.
“Alive,” she said.
The single word almost sent Sylvia to her knees. Thank God, Lyle hadn’t killed anyone, and thanks, too, that they were alive. She’d been running on pure adrenaline since diving into the spring, and suddenly she didn’t have any left.
Though she wanted nothing more than to fold down and sit between the vine rows, she had to hear what Tony might spill about the black box.
Carrying the evidence, she took it closer and set it on the ground behind Lyle. “You know who I am?” she asked Tony.
“Of course.”
“Which of us was supposed to die in the fire at the inn, me or Lyle Thomas?”
“We had too much to lose with him,” Tony jerked his head at Lyle, “snooping around.”
“The bomb came through my window.”
Tony’s eyes flicked to Luigi, and Sylvia surmised the guard been the thrower. “When it got dark,” Tony said, “I came down and checked the room register.”
Sylvia remembered Mary frowning and closing the book.
“That was you sneaking around at the springs,” Lyle said. “Luigi must have seen the light go on in Sylvia’s room and thought we’d gone there.”
“If Lyle was the target, didn’t you think there’d be hell to pay with my father if I got killed?” Sylvia pressed.
The sirens were closer, turning in to the lane.
“Collateral damage.” Tony shrugged with an insolence that was tough to imagine when he had his hands on top of his head and a rifle aimed toward him should he bolt. “We were getting to the point of needing leverage on Chatsworth.”
Charlotte Longstreet whistled. “These guys don’t kid around.”
Lyle glared at Tony. “You know, I actually liked you. Worried about you when you went missing.”
“When Chatsworth heard my plan for tanking the land values, he threatened to turn me in.”
Sylvia’s ears perked up. There was a sign Daddy hadn’t…
Vehicles pulled up behind her, doors slammed.
“After we bought up plenty of land at ten cents on the dollar, we were going to pull the device. Then we figured on Chatsworth to influence the commissioners about zoning … he would have profited along with the rest of us, but he only works within the law.”
Sylvia nearly sagged with relief. There would be no disgrace, no resignation from the Senate, and, best of all, no facing Mom and telling her she had been the one to expose Lawrence Chatsworth.
“Keep talking, Tony,” Lyle said. “Your confession will sound good in court.”
Tony sneered. “I have not said a word. If I had, I have not heard my Miranda rights. I will hire the best lawyer in the country, and nobody will pin a thing on me.”
“You were a big dreamer when I met you,” Lyle replied.
Law-enforcement and army personnel surrounded them. Paramedics started working on Luigi.
A dark blue sedan pulled up.
“FBI,” Lyle told Sylvia. “That was fast.”
A pair of sheriff’s men cuffed Tony and bent him over the hood of their car. Once they had, Lyle handed over the rifle and Sylvia the pistol.
A pair of plainclothes agents flashed their credentials. “We had a tip that Tony Valetti would probably be up here today pulling a device that was dispensing mercury into the Lava River.”
“Who …?” She started to ask who had dropped dime.
Lyle broke in, “We need to tell the authorities to pick up Andre.”
“No need,” said the voice of Lawrence Chatsworth, as he emerged from the rear seat of the FBI sedan.
She gasped. “Daddy!”
Her eyes met Lyle’s; he looked as shocked as she felt.
Then she looked at her father, whose blue eyes checked her over with concern. Thankfully, the cuts on her hands had stopped bleeding.
He addressed the group. “Andre was arrested in the wee hours, after he phoned me last night. Threatened to kill my daughter if I didn’t use my influence with the zoning commission. You can’t imagine my shock when I heard on the news that the mercury evacuation was actually happening and not some demented dream.”
“You should have called the FBI weeks ago, when Tony told you his plan,” Lyle said. “He doesn’t strike me as somebody who bluffs.”
“I learned that the hard way,” the Senator said. “Once they picked up Andre, who had a mean bump on his head,” he made eye contact with Sylvia, “I knew Tony would try to pull the device.”
“We just wanted to prove it existed once we figured it out,” Sylvia said. “We didn’t know we were in a race.”
Her father smiled. “A race you won. I rode up with the FBI … to tell Tony he’s a damned fool.”
While the ambulance drove away with Luigi under guard and the FBI secured the black box for transport to a lab, Sylvia approached her father. Lyle felt like a third wheel.
He’d imagined when this was over he’d have his arm around her and she him.
There were so many ways he could have lost her in the past hour. When he’d seen her limp form pressed up against the grate in the spring outflow, his heart had almost stopped. The seconds it took to get her to the surface seemed an eternity. Watching her desperate struggle with Luigi over the Winchester, Lyle had taken a challenging forty-yard shot—the equivalent of a basketball Hail Mary from behind the centerline. When Luigi had fired the Glock, as it had turned out to be, from the helicopter, Lyle had expected at any second for Sylvia to lose him from a bullet in the back.
Charlotte Longstreet stood a little away from the clutch of milling law enforcement, talking on her cell phone. She’d certainly missed her next client.
Lyle shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Sylvia and her father were embracing now.
How was he going to play this? He wanted to make it clear he was in love with the Senator’s daughter. From Sylvia’s challenge, asking him to be her Sir Galahad, he believed she would stand beside him..
So, as soon as there was an opportunity, a break in conversation, Lyle would step over and put both hands on her shoulders. The gesture would speak volumes, and then he would explain how Sylvia had asked him to keep her location secret … that from last night in Japantown until the end of time, her wishes would come first … above everything and everyone else in the world.
Sylvia was in her father’s arms for the first time in … how many years? Her Jag was three years old, so it must have been then. That had been a quick hug, with most of her concentration on the car.
“Oh, Daddy.” Tears came on in a flood. They must be staining his shirt, but he clutched her to his heart.
Was it her imagination or was his breath jerky, like hiccups or sobs? Any doubt she had as to whether he had wished her
gone evaporated.
After a long moment of feeling like a little girl again, she and her father drew apart.
His eyes were watery, yet he gave her a mock-stern look. “You know, you scared the hell out of your mother, kid.”
“Just her?”
“No, not just her. I was torn between giving you a bear hug and ripping your head off.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “The hug was nicer.”
“Indeed, it was.” He pulled out his cell. “I’m calling your mother right now to tell her I’m standing next to you.”
While he dialed, Sylvia saw Lyle about ten feet away, looking at her with the same yearning she felt.
Then she wasn’t standing next to her father, but launching herself into Lyle’s arms. With her head pressed to his chest, she could feel his strong heart pumping.
“Baby,” he whispered at her ear. “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”
She wanted to kiss him, but their audience was too large.
“Sylvia! Come talk to your mother.”
Lyle stiffened. She froze. It reminded her of when Julio Castillo’s taunts had destroyed their first kiss.
“We’ll tell him about us,” she told Lyle.
“You bet we will.”
She went over and took the cell. Lyle had said he’d seen her mother crying, she assumed on TV. As she lifted the phone toward her ear, she imagined Laura’s penetrating black eyes, heard her say, “We’d just as soon you disappeared.” Heart pounding, Sylvia said, “Mom?”
“Darlin.’ Ah have been out of my mind with worry.”
“I’m all right.”
“Thank God. That horrible Andre Valetti called and threatened to kill you. Larry said he had you prisoner at his town house and you hit him over the head and escaped.”
“That’s right.” Sylvia kept her tone even.
“You come straight home, now. Don’t even think about staying in the City.”
Sylvia’s eyes met Lyle’s. There was only one place she wanted to spend the night and that was in his arms. But she would have to see Mom, and the way to accomplish both was to bring him along. Surely, after being “out of her mind with worry,” Mom would have to accept she had taken up with “that common lawyer,” who happened to be the most uncommon man she’d ever met.
The Senator’s Daughter Page 28