No Escape

by Heather Lowell

  “And he killed a man,” Kelly said defiantly. “He was trying to get you, and this other person got in the way. Ricky wasn’t even sorry—”

  Tessa pinched Kelly, hard. But the damage had been done.

  Ricky yelled for Otis to come down and begin packing, then he ordered Bobby to take the women upstairs to Kelly’s bedroom and get them ready for a nighttime hike in the California wilderness.

  Kelly began to sob, finally overcome by the emotional outburst.

  “Cry all you want, little girl,” Ricky said. “You and your nosy friend are going to become tragic examples of what can happen when inexperienced hikers tackle Lake Tahoe. You’ll get lost and freeze to death—so sad. Probably won’t be discovered until spring.”

  Bobby shoved them up the stairs in front of him. “And don’t even think about escaping. We’re miles from any home in this area, and the temperature is below freezing out there. We’re supposed to get a foot of snow up here tonight. I hear it’s real tough to make a shelter out of Sierra snow because of the high water content.”

  “It will be all right,” Tessa promised Kelly under her breath as they headed up the stairs. “I’ve got something up my sleeve. Literally.”

  Chapter 49

  Near Lake Tahoe, California

  Thursday night, March 18

  “I don’t feel good,” Tessa announced a few minutes later. She and Kelly were sitting on the bed in a small upstairs room, with Bobby guarding the door nearby. As far as Tessa could see, the man wasn’t armed.

  But the two men downstairs were.

  And Bobby outweighed her by a good fifty pounds. Catching him off guard was her only chance. She just hoped that Kelly got with the program quickly enough that they were able to prevent their guard from sounding the alarm.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Tessa said, and bolted for the double sink at one end of the room. Next to it was a small door that led to the toilet and tiny shower area—no help there.

  Thinking quickly, Tessa leaned over the sink. She could see Kelly out of the corner of her eye, the teenager’s face a mask of concern and faint disgust. Taking a deep breath, Tessa hesitated as if in surprise.

  “What the hell is that?” She pointed to an imaginary item in the sink.

  “What?” Bobby asked as he cautiously approached.

  “That,” Tessa repeated, watching the man approach in the tiny vanity mirror.

  With his brow furrowed, Bobby approached the sink and peeked over Tessa’s shoulder. “What?”

  “This!” Tessa hauled back her casted left forearm and struck Bobby with it—right on the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed out immediately, coating Tessa’s face in red droplets.

  With a juicy, whistling sound of surprise, Bobby fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving.

  “Oh my God!” Kelly breathed. “You killed him!”

  “Shhh. Oh, God,” Tessa moaned in pain. The force of the impact with Bobby’s nose had sent shock waves of unbelievable agony through her broken wrist. She staggered to the bed and sat down, putting her head between her knees and taking several deep breaths.

  “You okay?” Kelly asked. “You didn’t hit him that hard, why did he go down like that?”

  “Not hard, but I got the sweet spot,” Tessa ground out between deep breaths, then motioned for the teenager to lock the door.

  “We’ve got to keep him quiet,” Tessa said through her teeth as the pain in her wrist began to subside to a rotting-tooth level of throbbing. “Give me a pillowcase. And something to tie him up with.”

  After a few more deep breaths, Tessa pushed to her feet and approached the man whose nose she’d broken. Using the recent example of Luke immobilizing Jerry Kravitz in his kitchen, she and Kelly rolled Bobby onto his stomach and made a gag out of the pillowcase. Once that was tied, she had Kelly take a leather belt and bathrobe sash that she’d pulled from the closet and immobilize his hands and feet.

  “He’ll be all right,” she assured a dubious Kelly. “But we have to get out of here, now.”

  She reached inside her cast gingerly to pull out the cell phone she’d hidden there, congratulating herself on her cleverness at keeping it concealed. Unfortunately, she’d cracked the thing clean through when she’d slammed her cast into Bobby’s face. The screen was dented in and the unit refused to turn on.

  Tessa stared at her mangled phone and thought about crying. “If I could catch a break here, I’d really appreciate it,” she muttered.

  “What?” Kelly asked.

  “Never mind. On to my next backup plan.” Tessa made her way to the window and used the little knob to crank it open. The rush off rigid air was welcome on her heated face, and she drew in several deep breaths to steady herself.

  It was still touch-and-go as to whether she was going to hurl from the pain in her wrist. The cold air helped tip the balance toward not throwing up—for the moment. She looked outside and saw that the roof of the cabin’s wraparound porch provided a perfect escape route from their second-story room.

  “Do you have your coat and gloves?” Tessa asked. Kelly nodded. “Good girl. I want you to crawl out the window and slide on your butt along the roof of the porch, going all the way to the corner of the building. I’ll hold on so you don’t slip.”

  “What about you?” Kelly asked.

  Good question. “Um, when you get down there, brace your feet in the gutter. I’ll hold your arm, and you can help me down to the edge of the roof. Then we can scoot along until we find a place to jump off.”

  “Let’s go to the side yard,” Kelly suggested. “The snow is really deep there, and underneath are some bushes.”

  They both managed to get to the edge of the roof without incident. From there, they were able to use the gutter to help slide along. Once they made it to the corner, both surveyed the ground below.

  “It’s a long way,” Kelly said.

  “Not that far,” Tessa lied. “I’ll go first, then help catch you, okay?”

  Kelly nodded and began to shiver. The snow was coming down in fat, heavy flakes, and she hadn’t had any suitable clothes to bring along. She was lucky that Ricky had let her pack a suitcase at all the day she left Club Red, and she hadn’t known they were heading up to the snow. So she was wearing a pair of jeans, with sweatpants and a wool sweater over them. She had a ski jacket, but the rest of her clothing, like Tessa’s, was not going to stand up well to the bitter chill of the Sierra Nevadas during a winter storm.

  They had to get out of the cold—and soon.

  Tessa swung her legs over the edge of the roof and twisted slightly to the right. She knew her injured left arm wouldn’t be any help at all, so she planned to swing down and grab the gutter with her right hand as she went by it. Hopefully, that would be enough to break her fall while she maneuvered over what looked to be a nice, deep hump of snow.

  With a last, squinting look into the dark below, Tessa eased her hips over the edge. When she started to fall, she twisted around and reached for the gutter with her gloved right hand.

  It caught for a second, then slipped off as if the metal had been greased.

  With a muffled cry, Tessa felt herself flatten out with the momentum of her move. Before she could do anything about it, she was heading straight down into the snow—butt first.

  At the edge of the tree line that surrounded Ricky Hedges’s cabin, Luke and MacBeth paused to scan the house and make sure there was no one outside to be alerted to their presence.

  Luke pulled out the pair of night-vision glasses he’d borrowed from the guide and scanned the property. He felt MacBeth tap his shoulder and saw him point to the northeast corner of the cabin.

  In silence, he watched two slight figures huddle on the edge of the roof covering the wraparound porch. Then one of them slid feetfirst off the roof, trying and failing to catch hold of the gutter with one hand on the way down. The person’s left arm hung like deadweight, and Luke knew in an instant that it was Tessa.

  He threw the glasse
s at MacBeth and was running across the yard in a heartbeat, heading to where he’d seen Tessa’s body fall into the darkness at the side of the house.

  “Tessa,” he whispered roughly as he reached a chest-high drift. “Baby, can you hear me?”

  A gloved hand appeared out of the deep depression in the snow. “Right here, and am I ever glad to see you. I’m going to throw up now.”

  Luke reached over and hauled Tessa out of the deep drift, then stood and supported her as she retched convulsively. He knew that only the most severe pain could make a person do that. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done but hold her head and stroke her back until the spasms passed.

  “Hey, Kelly!” MacBeth called softly to the teenager who still clung to the roof. “Jump down—I’ve got you.”

  The girl looked down from her porch, then squinted over to where she could hear Tessa throwing up.

  “I don’t think so,” Kelly replied dubiously.

  “I’m a friend of Tessa’s. We’re here to take you home,” MacBeth promised.

  Her little face appeared over the edge. “Yeah?”

  “Hays, Kansas. Right?”

  Tears welled in Kelly’s eyes as she nodded. “Here I come.”

  MacBeth grunted as he broke Kelly’s fall, then he pulled her under the protection of the roof. They waited against the side of the house while Tessa composed herself.

  “Sorry. It’s been a hell of an evening,” she said weakly.

  Luke pulled out a flashlight and began to look her over for injuries. He stopped short when he saw the spatters of blood on her face. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but you should see the other guy.” She held up her cast, which was also smeared with Bobby’s blood, and gave a halfhearted grin. “Broke his nose. He’s tied up, but I’m afraid I stunned him more than anything else. We should get Kelly out of here fast.”

  Luke nodded. “I want you two to cross the yard over there. Go beyond the woodpile, and follow the path to the creek. Once you cross it, you’ll head out at about two o’clock until you pass—”

  “A twisted pine tree with a double trunk,” Tessa finished. “I remember the way to the Suburban. Did you park it where we originally planned?”

  “Yes,” Luke said. “Stone is there waiting. He’s got blankets and food for you. Once you’re settled, if it’s safe, I want you to send Stone back this way. MacBeth and I may need his help.”

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you coming with us?” Tessa asked.

  “Not yet. We’re going to take Otis and Ricky into custody first.”

  “No,” Tessa said. “I heard him say he’s going to the airport. They’re packing up as much money as they can carry right now. Let the FBI stop him when he goes to his plane.”

  “No way. He killed Ed, he kidnapped you. He’s hurt too many people for me to take the chance that he might get away.”

  “They’re armed,” Tessa protested.

  “So are we, baby.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Tessa said. “You’re more important to me than any arrest.”

  “I love you, too. But this guy is not going to get away. Not this time.”

  Tessa made a frustrated noise. Luke took her arm and began to walk with her in the direction of the woodpile. “MacBeth and I are two guys with SWAT training against Ricky and his bodyguard. You’ve got to trust me.”

  They reached the cords of stacked wood with the others right behind them. “Maybe I should stay here and—”

  “You and Kelly aren’t dressed for the cold. Hypothermia clouds your judgment, baby, so you don’t have long to get to the car. Stop arguing and take that girl to safety. I need you to do that so I can do my job—the one you hired me to do.”

  Tessa looked over at Kelly, who was standing next to MacBeth and shivering miserably. The knowledge that she was suffering made the decision a little easier. When it came down to it, she’d just have to trust that Luke knew what he was doing and would get his job done. Her job was to keep her promise to Kelly and get the girl home safely.

  She threw her good arm around Luke and hugged him tightly. “Please come back safely. You said you wouldn’t abandon me. I’m holding you to it.”

  Luke leaned down and kissed Tessa’s blue, trembling lips. “I’ve got your back. We’re going to bring Ricky and Otis to L.A. to face charges, then you and I are going to have a long talk.”

  She nodded and shivered at the same time, then kissed him again before pulling away. “Come on, Kel. Once we get moving you’ll warm up.”

  Chapter 50

  Near Lake Tahoe, California

  Thursday night, March 18

  Luke watched as Tessa and Kelly disappeared in the trees. MacBeth cleared his throat. “While Tessa was puking her guts up, I checked out the windows. Wired, all of them.”

  Luke frowned and turned to study the house. “Did you see the box for the alarm or wires anywhere?”

  “No. My guess is they’re buried.”

  “So we’ll have to go in on the second floor,” Luke said. “So nice of Tessa to discover that the gutters are slicker than snot and save us some trouble.”

  MacBeth chuckled. “She’s a pistol, that one. Smart, too. So if you’re not serious—”

  “Get lost, buddy. She’s mine.”

  Luke led the way back to the edge of the cabin and stopped out of view of the windows. “Tessa said she left her guard incapacitated upstairs. I say we go in the window they left open—I mean, we know it’s not wired for the alarm.”

  MacBeth agreed. “A lot of homeowners don’t wire the second floor. You’re taller than I am, so why don’t you give me a boost. Once I’m up there, I’ll reach down and help you onto the roof next to me.”

  “Let’s go.” Luke bent down and boosted MacBeth until he could grab the edge of the gutter. With a grunt of effort, he lifted and guided MacBeth’s slushy feet to his shoulders.

  “I’m going up,” MacBeth advised in a whisper. Using Luke’s shoulders for thrust, he heaved himself up until the lip of the roof was at his waist. Then he lifted his right leg sideways and levered it over the edge.

  “Ricky! We’ve got company. The girls are gone, too!”

  MacBeth looked up at the shout and saw a man he recognized as Otis the bodyguard standing in the open window.

  “Let go,” Luke hissed from below, knowing his friend was completely vulnerable in his current position.

  “Ah, fuck.” Even as MacBeth began to throw himself backward, the other man drew a silver-plated Glock—goddam sissy gun—and fired. He groaned at the sudden burning pain in his thigh. The other man continued to fire at him as he disappeared over the edge of the roof.

  Luke tried to catch MacBeth and break as much of the fall as he could, but gravity brought them both down into an awkward pile in the deep snow. He’d heard the gunshot, and realized his friend was hit when he didn’t immediately move off the ground.

  “You all right, man? MacBeth?” Luke rolled his friend over and clenched his jaw in protest as he saw the glossy black gleam of blood on the snow.

  “Almost there, Kelly,” Tessa panted as they jogged awkwardly along the poorly defined trail that the men had made earlier with their snowshoes. “At least we’re warmer now, right?”

  “Whatever,” Kelly huffed. “Please tell me there’s a tall mocha latte waiting for me at the truck. Or chocolate.”

  Tessa laughed in response, then pointed ahead. “Look, there’s a little clearing, just past the path between those big rocks. And see the slight rise that goes up through the trees—Stone and the truck are just down the hill from there. We’ll be inside in another minute.”

  “Thank God,” Kelly said.

  Tessa muttered agreement under her breath, but came to an abrupt halt at the distant booming sound she heard.

  “What was that?” Kelly asked, only to have her question answered by a series of muffled sounds.

  “Gunshots. Oh, God.” Tessa immediately turned to the way they’d come, then s
topped. She was torn between wanting to rush back to Luke and needing to escort Kelly the last quarter mile to safety.

  Luke won.

  “Okay, listen to me. I need you to follow the trail like we’ve been doing. Keep going until you see the truck, then shout to Stone who you are. Tell him we need an ambulance, or a medevac helicopter if weather permits. He’ll make sure that you’ll be safe. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “You’re not leaving me?” Kelly asked.

  “I have to go help Luke and MacBeth,” Tessa said.

  “You said you’d help me. I don’t want to walk in the forest alone, I’m scared. You said you’d stay with me.”

  “Luke needs me right now, and you’ll be fine. You should be at the truck in less than ten minutes. Think how good it will feel to get out of the cold.”

  Kelly sniffled.

  “I need you to do this for me,” Tessa said. “We have to get word out that someone might be hurt, and that’s going to be your job. Can you handle it?”

  The teenager looked hesitantly over her shoulder, to where the trail disappeared into darkness. “I think so.”

  “Good. I promise we won’t be long. Go now, run!”

  Tessa watched as Kelly took off at an awkward, loping pace. Then she turned around and headed back toward the cabin.

  Luke had managed to lift MacBeth in a fireman’s carry and got him as far as the woodpile before he heard more gunshots. Puffs of snow flew up where the bullets had struck close to his feet.

  Too damn close.

  He dove behind the stacks of wood. From the tension in MacBeth’s body, he realized that his injured friend was conscious.

  “You all right?” Luke asked as he drew a borrowed handgun from his jacket.

  “Fuckin’ A,” MacBeth replied grimly. “I’m going to save the California taxpayers the cost of Otis’s death row appeals process though.”

  “Why don’t you stop bleeding all over the place first,” Luke advised. “Take my belt and make a tourniquet while I watch the front door.”