by Lynne Hinton
“I’m trying to get help,” she said to the man standing behind her. “My sister—”
“Just shut up!” the officer responded. “It seems a lot of people are looking for you. I saw the APB on this bike about an hour ago. Of course, they think you’re in Vegas, and the description they have of you is all wrong since the report is that they are looking for a man, but they definitely got the bike right.” He was trying to pull out a pair of handcuffs while he held on to Eve’s neck, but he seemed to be having some trouble doing it with only one hand.
“I stole the bike,” Eve said, her face pressed against the street.
“Well, that’s just another charge we’ll get to bring against you.”
“No, I’m trying to explain that I stole the bike from the man you’re looking for. He’s got my sister. He’s going to kill her.”
The police officer was still trying to put the cuffs on her, getting one around her left wrist and starting to put the other one on her right. It appeared to Eve as if this wasn’t something he was very used to doing, and she wondered just how much crime there was in Pahrump, Nevada, and if the officer had ever even made an arrest.
“Well, that’s a nice story. I’m sure the Las Vegas officers will love to hear that. How did you learn to steal a bike anyway?” He continued to struggle with the cuffs, and Eve was tempted to assist.
It was then that she heard a vehicle heading in their direction. She turned to look and saw Daniel’s car careening toward them. She jumped up and fell against the officer before the car made a turn, barely missing them both. She could see that the man with the gun was driving, but she was unable to see anyone else in the car.
“That’s him!” she yelled at the officer. “That’s the man you’re looking for!”
FIFTY-TWO
The police officer immediately pushed her aside and reached for the receiver attached to his shoulder to make the call. “Base, this is officer 17 requesting backup at the intersection of Sage Brush and Lone Star.” He released the call button and yelled at Eve, “You stay here!” He jumped up and ran to his vehicle, leaving Eve by the curb, between the bike and the squad car, trying to decide what to do.
“Hey, wait!” she called out, but he had already gotten into his vehicle and was giving more information to the dispatcher.
Eve did as she was told and remained at the curb.
She swept off the dirt and dust from her pants from where she had both knelt and then fallen. The questions swirled around in her mind: Did the man have Dorisanne and Daniel in the car with him? Where was he taking them? Were they back at the house? Had they been harmed? She looked in the direction of the house on Lone Star and in the direction of where the stolen car had headed and then at the squad car still parked behind her.
She desperately wanted the police officer to return so she could send him either after the man in the vehicle or back to the house where Daniel and Dorisanne had been held at gunpoint. Every passing moment was critical to their well-being.
She considered running over to the officer in the squad car and begging him to follow them, but she knew that was not such a great idea since it seemed that he was convinced she was a dangerous suspect. And he still had the gun strapped to his belt, even as she still had his handcuffs attached and hanging from her left wrist.
Eve took in a breath, closed her eyes, and tried to be patient, tried to wait for the officer to return or at the very least drive after the man in the car who had only barely missed hitting them. She tried to pray, tried to recite familiar words. In the end, she could think of nothing meaningful to think or pray. She only knew to act.
She lifted up a quick Hail Mary before she finally bolted to the bike, whose engine was still running, a pair of handcuffs dangling from her arm, and took off. She was glad that she was unable to hear the officer’s shouts behind her and just hoped he wouldn’t take a shot, her back an easy target. She chose not to look in her rearview mirror to see how he was responding.
Considering the direction the car was headed, there was only one route the man could be taking, which was the same way she and Daniel had come earlier. Eve followed the road until she thought she saw the car speeding ahead of her. She leaned forward and hit the gas.
He made a turn and she made a turn. He sped forward and she did the same until she was almost close enough to . . . and she finally had that thought: Close enough to do what? She had no weapon. She didn’t even have a phone. The motorcycle, although fast and a machine she could easily manage, was no match for Daniel’s heavy sedan. All the driver would have to do if she did manage to pull up beside him was take a shot at her, since it was clear he had a gun, or even simply swerve a bit and knock her off the bike. She had no cause to stop him or even slow him down. And that was when she had another thought.
A rider loves his ride.
She glanced to her right and, recalling how the street curved and turned toward the town of Pahrump, noticed a field that could provide her with the necessary shortcut. She headed off the road, driving as fast as the bike would go, until she figured out the way to beat the car that was still speeding ahead of and away from her.
She hit bumps and swerved to avoid the bottles and cardboard boxes, narrowly missing a set of old tires littering the barren area. She used every maneuver she had ever learned when she raced before she headed over a ditch, finally making it to the place she thought would be exactly where the car would arrive. She spun and stopped dead center in the middle of the street, and before she could second-guess her decision, she saw the car speeding in her direction. She didn’t even have time to get off the bike. She closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross, gripped the handles, and prepared for the worst.
A horn blared. Brakes squealed. And when Eve opened her eyes, the car had come very close to her before veering off to the right and plowing into the ditch she had just jumped. She was right. The man could not bear to run into his Harley.
She drove over to the passenger’s side of the car at the same time she heard the sirens heading toward her. When she looked inside the vehicle, there was only the driver, still dazed and slumped over from the hard hit. She leaned down and cupped her hands as she peered into the window. Dorisanne and Daniel were not in the car. She sat upright on the motorcycle seat, trying to determine her next move.
Eve knew she would be in trouble for not waiting for the police to arrive, but she also knew that getting arrested was now the least of her problems. She revved up the engine and headed back toward the house on Lone Star, passing a number of squad cars that were speeding to the location she had just left. She knew that no matter what she found at the house where Daniel and Dorisanne had been, the driver of the stolen car, the owner of the bike, would be apprehended and hopefully arrested.
Straight ahead on the street where she had been stopped by the first officer and then right at the warehouses and down to the end of Lone Star Place, Eve drove as fast as she ever remembered having driven a motorcycle. She stopped and jumped off the bike, throwing it down as she hurried to the front door.
“Daniel! Dorisanne!” She shouted and banged on the door, but there was nothing, no sound coming from inside. No one came to the door.
She ran around to the back of the house and at the same time she was trying to look in the window, she was pounding on it, calling out their names, trying to get their attention, hoping that nothing bad had happened but feeling more and more desperate as she continued to shout and pound.
Finally, she couldn’t stand not knowing, not hearing anything, any longer. She looked around, found a large rock near the fence, picked it up, and hurled it through the window. When it landed inside, she hurried back and yelled through the broken glass.
“Daniel! Dorisanne! Are you in here?”
She thought she heard noises from a room off to her right, and she took off her jacket, rolled it around her hands, and knocked away the jagged edges of glass from the window. Then she pulled herself up and over and fell inside.
“Dorisanne!” she called out again, standing up, looking around and seeing a refrigerator, counters, a sink, and recognizing that she was in the kitchen, near the table where she had seen her sister and Daniel earlier. She grabbed a large piece of glass and, unsure of what or who might be there, crept toward the front of the house.
There was no one in the front room, but now the sounds from a room down the hall were even louder. Eve hurried past a bathroom and another door before she stopped at the room the noise was coming from. She held the piece of glass high in one hand while she slowly turned the knob.
FIFTY-THREE
“Thank God!” These words of relief came from Dorisanne, who was tied, roped back-to-back to Daniel, who faced away from the door and who was slumped over and appeared to be bleeding.
Eve ran to the two of them and immediately checked to see if Daniel was alive. She felt a pulse and gave her own simple prayer of gratitude. She worked on the ropes and was able finally to free them both.
“How did you get here?” Dorisanne asked as she rubbed her wrists, trying to restore the circulation. And then she immediately asked, “Is he okay?”
They both turned their attention to their friend, who was not participating in the grand reunion. As Dorisanne moved away from him, he collapsed to the floor. Eve knelt to his side, watched his chest move up and down, saw the wound on the side of his head, which was the cause of the dried blood smeared across his face.
“He hit him with his pistol,” Dorisanne explained. Her voice sounded frantic. “He’s been out since it happened. I kept trying to keep him talking, but he lost consciousness after he was hit.”
Eve ran into the kitchen, found a towel, wet it, and brought it back and began cleaning off Daniel’s wound. There was a gash, but it didn’t seem very deep. She wiped away all of the blood, rolled the towel up, laid it beneath him, and gently placed his head on it. Then she pulled out the phone from his pocket where she knew he had put it and dialed 911. Calmly, she told the operator that there was one injured person, an apparent concussion, and gave the address.
When she finished the call she clicked off the phone and studied her sister. “Are you okay?” she asked, taking in the sight of her, taking in the realization that Dorisanne was sitting there in front of her. She had finally been found, and to Eve, she seemed to be unharmed.
Dorisanne nodded and then fell into Eve’s arms. She began to cry. “I thought we were going to die,” she sobbed into her sister’s shoulder. “I just knew when I heard you outside the door that it was him, that he had found Robbie and now was coming back to kill us.”
“Where is Robbie?” Eve wanted to know, pulling Dorisanne away from her.
“He drove to L.A.,” she answered. “This morning he decided to get out of town. We found out about Pauline, and we got her out of the hospital and over to her mother’s house.” She looked at Eve and wiped away the tears. And then she turned back around and took Daniel by the hand.
“She was able to tell me about you and Daniel being here, but we couldn’t come out of hiding because we knew they were onto us. We knew that if they got to Pauline or to Steve, they would find out where we were. I was lucky to get Pauline out before that guy found her.” She tried calling out Daniel’s name, patting him on the hand, trying to wake him.
Eve quickly glanced away, the name of Steve reminding her of what had happened earlier in the day.
“What?” Dorisanne asked, turning back to her sister after noticing Eve’s reaction. “What’s happened?”
Eve shook her head.
Dorisanne moved closer to Eve. “What? Tell me.”
“It’s Steve,” was all she had to say.
“They got to him, didn’t they?” Dorisanne began to cry again. “This was never supposed to get this messed up. There were never supposed to be other people involved. They promised me.” She turned to Daniel, taking his limp hand once more. “Pauline, Steve, Daniel, you . . .” She looked at Eve. “So many people have been hurt.” She dropped Daniel’s hand and sat down with her back against the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest and dropping her face into her hands.
“Dorisanne, tell me what all this is about. Tell me what you’re involved in.”
Dorisanne stopped crying enough to be able to tell Eve about how Robbie got behind on his gambling debts and that he had borrowed money from loan sharks. He couldn’t pay them back right away, so at first they charged a street tax and made him pay double. Soon he had no money, and that was when he told Dorisanne what had happened. Then they were both forced to go to work for the men Robbie owed money to.
It was exactly what Daniel and Eve had thought it was: a credit card theft ring. Robbie was getting card numbers from casinos and cash machines and from Dorisanne at the lounge where she worked. She was caught by the FBI the first time she skimmed numbers and was then set up by the feds to catch the guys who were the real leaders of the theft ring. First she was brought in by the feds and then Robbie.
Dorisanne supplied Robbie with phony numbers and fake receipts, and that was how the loan sharks finally figured out the couple had been turned by the FBI. They would try to make purchases from the cards and they kept getting turned down. The guys put two and two together and realized that Robbie and Dorisanne were working with law enforcement. It was the risk the couple knew they were taking but thought the FBI would protect them.
Once they found out they had been discovered, that the men they were working for were after them and that the FBI wasn’t providing the protection they had hoped for, the couple went into hiding. They had been on the run for three weeks. Pauline had found them the house on Lone Star Place, and that was where they had been hiding ever since. They had tried to ask for help from the FBI, but because they hadn’t gotten enough evidence for them to make an arrest, the agents had told them they were on their own.
“I’m sorry,” Dorisanne said.
“Why are you sorry?” Eve asked. “You did what anybody would have done. You didn’t have a choice. This isn’t your fault.”
“I knew Robbie had a gambling problem. I knew I shouldn’t marry him, but I did it anyway.” She shook her head. “The Captain gave me his full background report when I told him about the engagement. He had the entire history, but I still didn’t listen. I still married him even though . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Even though you were in love with somebody else?” Eve reached over and touched her arm.
“How did you find out about that?” Dorisanne asked.
Eve shrugged. “We’ve been together looking for you for three straight days. Something that important eventually just comes out.”
Dorisanne nodded slowly and both women turned their attention to Daniel, who still had not awakened.
“You think he’s going to be okay?” she asked Eve.
Eve nodded. “I do,” she answered. “He’s almost as hardheaded as you are.”
Dorisanne smiled. She reached over and rubbed Daniel’s arm. “He said it could never work for the two of us because of the Captain.”
“I know,” Eve responded. “He told me the same thing.”
Dorisanne looked up at her sister. “Do you think that too?”
“No,” Eve replied. “But if he couldn’t bring himself to tell him, then you would never really get the chance to give the relationship a try. So, I guess in a way, if Daniel thought it was too big of an obstacle to overcome, it was.”
Dorisanne nodded.
There was a pause as they both heard the sirens heading in their direction.
“By the way, how did Daniel know that Mr. Winters would give us the clue to where you were? Who is Mark Winters?”
Dorisanne smiled. “Winners, not Winters,” she explained. “It was something Daniel used to say to me when I first moved here.”
Eve waited.
“He said that he knew I would do well in Vegas because I was marked as a winner, that I was lucky, special.” She shrugged. “So, we just started calling the guy our gu
ardian angel, Mark Us Winners. It was just a silly thing we shared, so I wrote the name on the receipt, hoping Daniel would find it.” She looked away. “Find me,” she added.
Daniel started to stir at that moment, and as Dorisanne rushed to his side, Eve headed to the front door to let in the paramedics, who, by the sound of the approaching sirens, she knew were just around the corner.
FIFTY-FOUR
Daniel was admitted to the same hospital where Pauline had been a patient. Eve found herself hiding her face every time she saw a security guard or a nurse. She was worried that Patsy from the fifth floor might recognize her or that there was still some search going on for her and she would be dragged away to jail.
“What are you doing?” Dorisanne finally asked after seeing her sister quickly turn away or jump up from her chair and face the wall or run into the bathroom every time a health-care worker came near them.
“She thinks they’re after her,” Daniel said, answering the question put to Eve.
The sisters glanced over at Daniel, who hadn’t been very responsive since he’d been admitted. He had regained consciousness just as he was being placed in the back of the ambulance, but he had not been able to stay awake. He was diagnosed as having a concussion; luckily, tests revealed that there was no brain damage and no severe consequences. The doctors had been a bit concerned that he was unable to stay awake, but they also said that everything else appeared to be normal.
“Well, look who’s joined the party!” Eve said, not addressing Dorisanne’s query. She didn’t really want to have to explain about her early morning mad dash through the hospital halls or about hiding in the morgue.
“You found her,” he said softly.
“We found her,” Eve responded. She reached over and squeezed Daniel’s hand. “You had us pretty worried,” she added.