The Bluebonnet Betrayal

by Marty Wingate

  “She would’ve told Damien and there was no way he would just hand over two million pounds to you,” Rosette said.

  “What’s two million pounds to a company that big?” Forde whined. “It’s nothing to him—big businesses buy ideas and then do nothing with them every single day.”

  “You don’t even know if your idea works—if you could truly produce biofuel. It’s all unproven theory.”

  “So let them find out for themselves. And if it didn’t work, what did it matter to me? I’d have my seed money for more research.”

  “Forde, that doesn’t make sense,” Pru said.

  “It makes sense to me,” he wailed. Forde dug his knee into her back and groped the pockets of her trousers. “The flash drive isn’t in that massive bag you carry about with you, and it isn’t in the shed.”

  “You didn’t conduct a very thorough search, did you?” Pru asked, spitting out a piece of grass. “You didn’t look in the pail of gravel at the back—you didn’t turn that out and sift through?”

  Forde hesitated long enough for Pru to hope he believed her—she couldn’t remember if there was another pail of gravel in the shed. What had Rosette done with the flash drive?

  “All right, then,” Forde said, standing and yanking Pru up with him. He took hold of her as he had Rosette—her arms cinched at her sides—and placed the secateurs at her throat. The steel was cold against her skin. “Let’s all of us go back and find it.”

  “I can’t walk,” Rosette said.

  “That’s your own fault,” Forde said, “if you don’t mind me saying so. Trying to kick away your computer just when that rock was coming down on it.”

  A wave of nausea came over Pru at the thought of the rock crushing Rosette’s ankle. “You don’t have to drag Rosette along,” she bargained. “She isn’t going anywhere. Let me take you back to find the flash drive. Once you have it, you can do anything you want with it. You can let us go.”

  If they could leave Rosette there, she might be able to scoot herself to the gate. Would she get there in time—before Forde got away? He certainly couldn’t drag both of them back to the ARGS site.

  “Let you go,” Forde murmured to himself. “I’m not sure that’ll work, but at least we’ll be quicker, won’t we, Pru?”

  “Yes, quick,” Pru agreed desperately, imagining their walk in the dark with sharp secateurs at her throat. And once they arrived there, she would need to produce the flash drive.

  Forde frog-marched her up the pathway, Pru moving as slowly as he’d allow while she scanned the grounds on their journey, looking for help and at the same time hoping to think of a way to break his grip. She wouldn’t be able to do it with pure force—she had thought Forde a bit pudgy under his ARGS sweatshirt, but as it turned out, it was solid muscle. And the secateurs—if Rosette could be pricked with only a slight movement, the blades could slice through Pru’s throat in a second. When they passed one of the lamppost security lights, she glanced round, seeking out the CCTV and locating cameras at the corner of the Rock Bank Restaurant at the end of the avenue, and she imagined their strange passage playing out on a television screen in a guard’s shack. At least there would be a record of what happened, although she found cold comfort in that.

  Forde didn’t speak as he pushed her along, but he was breathing heavily and his sweaty face was pressed up against hers. She could smell him, too, and the sharp, acrid odor brought the nausea back—it swirled round in Pru’s stomach, threatening an appearance. Forde’s afraid, Pru realized—but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing for her. She couldn’t reason with fear—she must look for some other way.

  They reached the Aussie garden first. The massive foliage-covered structure that represented a mountain rose up like a black specter. Try something, anything. Pru let out a gasp. “What was that?” she whispered.

  Forde’s head swiveled round. “What?” His grip on her tightened, but the hand with the secateurs moved away, as if ready to threaten someone else. Pru seized the chance.

  She stomped on his foot with all her might—with no steel-toed boots to protect him, Forde screamed and loosened his grip for a fraction of a second, enough time for her to break and run. She felt the secateurs slice through her shirt and touch her arm. Which way? She had no time to consider and went straight ahead. Just inside the ARGS garden, Forde caught her arm. Pru whirled to fight him off, but fell backward onto the dry-stacked stone wall with Forde on top of her.

  A hard, lumpy, painful landing as stones spilled out all in all directions and they both scrabbled over them, slipping as they tried to stand. Forde lunged at Pru again and managed to take hold of one of her feet. She kicked him with the other and began to scream, hoping that someone, somewhere, wouldn’t dismiss her as a London fox.

  “Shut it, shut it,” Forde rasped, panting. But perhaps he hadn’t expected the fierceness of her defense. She continued to kick, landing at least one good hit. And then she reared back and punched—not a slap, not a sideswipe, but a fist to the face—and she got him right in the nose. He screamed, but so did she as she grabbed her hand in pain.

  He clamped his fingers over her mouth and a hand round her throat. “You’re just like her,” he hissed, “you won’t be quiet.”

  Pru shook her head and went limp, hoping he’d interpret her action as a signal he’d won.

  Forde eased up on his grip, gasping and looking round, his face flushed and his eyes not quite focusing, as if he couldn’t get his bearings. Blood dripped from his nose. He put a fingertip to it, saw the results, and gave a furious cry. In his split second of confusion, Pru took off, first on all fours until she could stand. She had made it as far as the shed when he tackled her and they both fell sideways. She felt the structure shift and it caught Forde off balance. She broke—the easiest route this time led away from the heap of stones that had been a wall and into “Welcome to Oz.” She neared the crane when she felt his hands on her back. Trying to wrench herself out of his grasp, she tripped, fell forward, and the world went black.

  “Sail above the bluebonnets! Sweetie’s son-in-law has a friend who owns a hot-air balloon and has offered to give us a bird’s-eye view of the incredible wildflowers along Highway 130. Who’s in?”

  Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

  Chapter 41

  Pru floated high up in the air, out of reach, far out of reach of anyone. It was a dream she’d had occasionally all her life—and she dreaded its recurrence. Each time, she would drift along and see the ground below her shift and roll. Her parents and friends would stretch their arms up as if to save her. This time, instead of being carried along on some invisible magic carpet, she lay stationary on her back, looking up at a dark sky with a few meager stars. Not a country sky—so not at Greenoak in Hampshire. And she was awake—she could tell because her head hurt. She rolled onto her right side and felt cold metal on her cheek. Now ahead of her—beyond two metal bars close to her face—arose a black hole with a massive ghostly white blob behind it.

  A jerk and a shudder, and she shot up another few inches—whatever floor she rested on tilted, and she slid toward an edge beyond which was nothing. Awake, but still in a nightmare somewhere high up in the sky. Her left hand went to grab one of the metal bars, but when she did a searing pain shot up her forearm and she cried out.

  “Ah, so, awake, are you?”

  Looking down was forbidden—it only made things worse—but Pru forced herself to do it. Forde stood far below her, safe and stable on the ground. Forde, Rosette, Twyla—these images fought through the cloud of vagueness in her brain until she remembered it all, knew where she was, and realized her predicament. She had taken an unsolicited ride up in the Aussies’ crane, and now her life dangled precariously in the air.

  Her right hand, trapped under her body but with a mind of its own, began to wiggle itself free and move an inch at a time until it took hold of one of the upright metal bars that surrounded the crane’s bucket. I’m in a cage, she
told herself. Surely I am safe in a cage?

  The crane shuddered again, causing her to break out in a cold sweat as the world rocked and rolled. The nausea swept through her, causing her stomach to roil. She tilted her head over the edge just in time.

  “Ahh!” Forde yelled as she showered him with vomit.

  Pru panted and coughed. Her head hurt, her hand throbbed, but at least her stomach grew quiet. She heard a hammering of metal upon metal and the crane vibrated violently and lurched again, throwing her against the side of the cage. She would slip through the bars, she would slip through and fall to her death. She whimpered, wishing it would just be over.

  “There now, you’re both sorted,” Forde said. Pru expected he was smugly brushing his hands off. “You won’t be going anywhere. I can have a good look for that flash drive now—and it had better be where you say it is. And that’ll be the end of it. And you.”

  Is that what he said? Pru thought. She couldn’t hear properly because now a roaring had started up in her ears, as if she were in a wind tunnel, and it drowned out Forde and those other voices. She lay gazing at the sky, wishing for quiet.

  Other voices? The roaring subsided and her wits returned—Pru could hear several voices shouting, including Forde’s. She dared a glimpse and saw blue lights flashing and people, lots of them, swarming on the ground below, closing in on Forde. He ran, and a short figure leapt at and tackled him, and they both crashed onto the spilled pile of stones in the ARGS garden. A clear thought came to her—DS Chalk. Yes, rugby for sure.

  When the ground began to spin below her, she shifted her gaze to look straight ahead. Another voice caught her ear and embraced her heart in hope—she heard Christopher call her name. Did he know she was there—could he see her hand gripping the metal bar? In her immobile state she could do little to call attention to herself—she certainly couldn’t outshout what sounded like the entire London police force. She took a few deep breaths, gathering her strength, and waited for a pause in the commotion.

  “Pru?” Christopher called again, desperately.

  With all the energy and the last iota of courage she had, she looked down at him, her right cheek still firmly resting on the metal floor of the bucket.

  “Hello.” A tiny voice, but all she had. But it grew louder instantly when the crane shuddered and she cried out.

  “Hold up,” Christopher called, and the shudder ceased. He was magic, she thought idly. Would they have to send the fire brigade up to rescue her, like a cat out on the limb of a tree? She almost laughed at that, and felt a tiny flicker of warmth ignite inside her.

  “He’s buggered the gearbox,” another voice said, and a general discussion began, most of which was lost to her. She stared up at the sky and counted stars—seven of them, she thought.

  “Pru,” Christopher said.

  “Yes?” She wiggled a finger.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No—well, yes. My left hand.” And my head. And my back feels as if it’s been used as a punching bag.

  “We can get a ladder and one of us will run up and help her climb down,” a voice said. Chalk.

  “No,” Christopher replied. “No ladder.” Certainly not. “Pru, I’m right here, I’m only going to step away.”

  To ring the fire brigade, no doubt. Pru considered her options. If they brought a net or one of those bouncy tarps, or whatever it was they used, would she be able to jump out of the bucket and fall through the air to safety?

  No, she would not. She thought they’d probably need to build a floor out from the bucket where she lay, and also an enclosed staircase so she could walk down in proper fashion. They’d better hop to it.

  A minute later, Christopher said, “There’s another crane on the grounds and they are bringing it over. Pru, I’ll come up in it and get you.”

  “Thank you,” she replied. It would still mean movement on her part, and she wasn’t sure she could do it, but another, more pressing issue than her fear of heights had occurred to her. “Christopher?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you find Rosette?”

  “Is she here?”

  She gave him the sketchy highlights—really only a few words and a couple of phrases—and heard a discussion ensue. She didn’t catch what was said, and didn’t care to. It was enough to think about Rosette lying in shock or unconscious in the dark with a crushed foot, and how Pru’s own situation was nothing in comparison, and so the least she could do would be to dig up a bit of courage herself.

  Pru held on to that attitude, counting stars, while she waited for the second crane to arrive. After an eternity, Christopher appeared, rising up as a vision next to her. He strapped the two buckets together, climbed into hers, and helped her up, guiding her legs as she climbed into his crane. She kept her head buried in his chest and her left forearm propped on his shoulder; her stomach tied itself into a knot as they descended. Christopher held tight.

  “French has found Rosette,” he reported. “She’d almost made it to the London gate, except for one last hill. She’s conscious, but just barely. She mumbled something about only resting for a moment.” Good—one bit of relief, knowing Rosette had held it together. “The ambulance is on its way to her. We can leave now,” he said, “go to emergency about your wrist.” She murmured into his jacket, just to let him know she was listening.

  When they alit, she climbed out with Christopher’s aid and stepped into a changed landscape. Night had turned to day—security lights, police lights, headlights from the panda cars, and a van painted with the same yellow and blue squares. They had parked on the roadway, just as lorries parked to deliver plants for the gardens. Pru’s vision had stabilized along with her equilibrium, but that could not be counted a blessing as the first thing that came into clear view was the demolition site formerly known as the ARGS garden.

  “ARGS Study Group #5 will hear Ivory Braswell talk on The Heartbreak of Gardening—What to Do When You Lose Your Favorite Angel’s Trumpet. All members are invited.”

  Austin Rocks! the e-newsletter of the Austin Rock Garden Society

  Chapter 42

  The wall lay in ruins. She and Forde had crashed through it and thrashed round enough that they had opened a great gap in the middle and scattered stones across the site. They had knocked the shed off its foundation, and it slumped, listing to one side. Police crawled over the area, taking down what had remained of the wall and emptying out the shed. Two others lifted the grating from over the reservoir and a uniform stepped down to troll the shallow water, as if fishing.

  “Oh God,” Pru moaned as her legs threatened to give out beneath her. Christopher grabbed her, and she said, “I’m all right, just let me sit down for a moment.” He guided her to a boulder that jutted out from the Aussies’ display and she sank down upon it with Christopher next to her. She wiped the back of her hand across her cheek and felt something stuck to her skin. She looked at Christopher’s shirt where she’d buried her face. Of course—she’d been resting her cheek in her own vomit. “Lovely,” she muttered as she reached over and tried to wipe it away.

  “Here you are,” Christopher said, pulling out his handkerchief. “I’d say most of it landed on Forde—you’ve quite good aim.”

  Pru laughed, perhaps a little too loudly, but her emotions—happy, sad, fearful—had been shoved up into the stratosphere.

  He nodded to her wrist, swollen as big as a softball, and asked, “Did he do that?”

  “No,” Pru said, although she couldn’t quite remember all the details. “It probably happened when I tripped and fell.”

  The sleeve of her shirt had been neatly sliced with the secateurs—Christopher carefully looked inside, but Pru could see only a small cut and little blood. “Yes, he did do that.”

  “And this,” Christopher said, and lightly touched a place on her forehead.

  “Mmm. I lost consciousness for—I don’t know, not long. But long enough for Forde to put me in that crane.” Pru searched each of the faces on-site. �
��Have they taken him away?”

  “They will do. He’s in the minivan.”

  Pru squinted her eyes at the van’s dark windows, wondering if Forde squinted back at her.

  Christopher took her good hand and spread out her fingers on his knee. “What about this?” he asked.

  Red knuckles, slightly swollen—she thought hard as she flexed her hand. “Oh yes, that’s right—I hit him. And it hurt. Did it help?”

  Christopher laughed quietly then kissed her temple. “So that’s where his bloody nose came from.”

  “I do what I can.” Pru could make light of it now—she needed to make light before she was overcome. But before she knew it, a sob had escaped, and she trembled for a moment before she got control of herself with a few deep breaths. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Really.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Pru looked up to find one of the PCs at her elbow, holding out a takeaway cup of tea.

  “Thank you,” she said, as if he’d handed her a life-giving elixir. She took a sip. It was hot and sweet, just what she needed.

  The PC lingered for a moment. “It’s good to see you again, Inspector Pearse.”

  “Thank you, Jones, and you, too,” Christopher said. “But I’m—”

  “Jones!” someone called, and Jones left.

  Pru and Christopher watched the action for a moment in silence, Pru unable to tear her eyes away from the destruction.

  “They’re looking for the flash drive,” Christopher said. “Rosette told them she’d tried to get rid of it before Forde got to her, but wasn’t quite sure where it had landed.”

  “Forde wanted to be rid of any mention of Twyla’s response. He killed her because she would’ve stopped Damien from buying BlueGreen Enterprises. Then Forde discovered Twyla had kept proof of his research and he wanted to destroy that. Even tonight, he still believed he would get Damien’s money—what was he thinking?”