Diners, Dives & Dead Ends

by Terri L. Austin

  “Oh no, now we’re all captured,” Axton said.

  “What the hell?” the guy asked. He flipped one side of his jacket and reached behind his back. Probably for a huge ass gun that could blow a huge ass hole through my liver.

  “NO!” I screamed. I charged down the remaining steps and zapped him straight in the Adam’s apple. His bulk twitched forward as he crumpled and he nearly took me with him on his way down. As it was, I had to struggle to free my right foot from his meaty thigh.

  “Rosie, you are kicking ass tonight.” Axton slapped me on the back.

  “We gotta go,” Roxy said.

  Body shaking, heart pounding, adrenaline spiking, I stepped over the still conscious but unmoving cold-eyed guy, and waved Roxy and Axton on like a third base coach. “Go, go, go. This guy’s won’t stay down forever.”

  Roxy grabbed Axton’s arm and dragged him toward the kitchen, me only three steps behind. Then the alarm sounded. Every light turned on and the loudest, most high-pitched wailing blared through the house.

  “Go, go,” I yelled as loud as I could.

  Roxy flung open the back door. Floodlights lit up the backyard like it was opening night at Busch stadium. They flew through the doorway, sprinting across the yard without looking back.

  I’d taken just two steps outside, when someone slammed into my back and knocked me to the ground.

  Chapter 31

  My face scraped the flagstone tile, my right cheekbone taking the brunt of the fall. My earpiece shifted and I felt my shirtsleeve tear.

  Cold Eyes hauled me off the ground by my backpack, and with my back to his chest, he wrapped one arm around my neck, the other around my waist, and carried me into the house.

  I reached up and smacked at him as hard as I could, but he seemed impervious. I stopped hitting him and clutched the edge of the stainless steel refrigerator, but my puny fingers and the slick surface were no match for his mile-high frame and huge muscles.

  He lumbered through the kitchen, the alarm continued to wail, and I kicked back against his shins. I tried to claw at his arms, but had no nails, since I had nervously bitten them off earlier. I shifted my head to the side and tried to bite his arm through his suit jacket, but all I got was a mouthful of fibers.

  As we passed through the kitchen and into the foyer, I grabbed a decorative china bowl off the credenza and hit him on the side of the face. He simply grunted and the bowl fell to the ground and shattered. He tightened his hold. Between his arm constricting my throat and the other arm squeezing my ribs, I thought I was going to pass out. Then the front door burst open and Sullivan rushed in, covered in pink and green splotches.

  His gaze took us in. Me gasping for air, Cold Eyes squeezing me like a boa. Sullivan hiked his thumb over his shoulder. The henchman simply released his hold on me and I fell straight to the floor, flat on my ass as Cold Eyes made his way out the front door.

  I stared at Sullivan, coughing and wheezing, as I rubbed my throat. I didn’t run. Blatant fear, excruciating pain, and the mind-numbing shrill of the still blaring alarm kept me rooted to the floor.

  When it abruptly stopped, the quiet was as deafening as the alarm had been.

  “Rose,” Sullivan said. I blinked, as if I had just come out of a trance, like my name was the magic word that set me free.

  I scrambled up and ran back to the kitchen and out the door as fast as I could. I sprinted across the lighted yard and into the woods. “I’m coming,” I said in a scratchy shout, hoping my headset still worked. “It’s Rose. I’m coming.”

  I tripped over stumps, fell on my already bruised knee twice as I ran in what I hoped was the right direction. When I burst through the trees, I saw Eric standing next to the SUV with the door open. With hands on his hips, his head swiveled from left to right, searching for me. When he finally saw me, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come on, hurry up.”

  No shit. What did he think I was doing, taking a stroll?

  I clambered into the car and hopped over the back seat into the cargo space with Roxy, accidentally kicking Axton in the head. Eric climbed into the car after me.

  Steve pulled out of the shallow ditch so fast, Roxy and I tumbled against the cargo door. With a grunt I rubbed my shoulder, but didn’t care about the pain. I was just so grateful to have made it out of the house in one piece.

  No one said a word until we were huddled around Axton in Eric’s living room. He sat on one of the loveseats next to me, with Ma and Roxy sitting on its twin. Eric and Steve copped a squat on the floor.

  I told them about playing catch and release with the psycho henchman while Eric grabbed a blanket from the bedroom and draped it around my shoulders. “Thanks.” My voice was raspy.

  “Sullivan didn’t try to stop you from leaving?” he asked as he resumed his seat.

  I shook my head. My neck was sore, my ribs bruised, my face was swollen, and my shoulder throbbed, but as I looked at Axton, I was more content than I had been in over a week.

  “When we saw the SUV pull into the drive, we set off the alarm,” Eric said.

  Steve looked up at me. “I grabbed the paintball gun from the cargo space and ran through the woods. The second Henry and Sullivan got out of the car, I nailed them.”

  “So that’s why Sullivan was covered in pink and green splotches. You’re my hero.”

  He grinned his crooked grin and blushed.

  I grabbed Axton’s hand. “Now your turn. Tell us everything.”

  “And start from the beginning,” Eric said.

  “Okay, so, like, I went to this club and the next day I asked you to take my backpack. Remember, Rose?”

  “I remember. Where was the club?”

  “In this warehouse, well it used to be a warehouse. But now they have poker and stuff.”

  “Where was located?” Eric asked.

  “In the city. And it was a pretty dicey neighborhood. But the people there were dressed up in really nice togs.”

  “Here you go, honey.” Ma handed him a chocolate chip cookie she’d pulled from her quilted tote bag.

  “Thanks.” He let go of my hand and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of beer. “I can’t tell you why I was there, you know, for personal reasons.”

  “It’s okay, we already know the trouble Pack is in,” I said.

  “Really? Because he told me it was a secret.”

  “Yeah, well, we got it out of him.”

  “Rose has been working every angle to find you,” Steve said.

  “Thanks, Rose.” Axton tipped the bottle in my direction.

  “I had a lot of help. Anyway, back to this club.”

  “Right. So Pack got me the invite. I went to get info on Sullivan. You know about him?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, while Sullivan and Henry watched the poker game, real stealthy like, I sneaked into the back room.”

  “Clever. Then what?” Roxy asked.

  “There was a laptop sitting on this desk, so I removed the hard drive.” He leaned back and nodded, a little grin on his face.

  “Then what?” Roxy asked. “Are we going to have to pull each and every detail out of you? Just tell us the story already. Jeez.” I could tell she needed another piece of gum or a new patch or maybe both.

  Axton looked a little hurt. “All right, keep your panties on. So, I removed the hard drive, stuck it in my jacket pocket, and made like the wind.

  “Then I drove back to my house and called Pack with the good news. But Pack was, like, pissed. He didn’t want me to take the whole thing, he just wanted me to hack into Sullivan’s computer. Like I had that kind of time.” He looked at Steve and Eric. Eric shook his head and Steve scoffed.

  “But then, I noticed this big ass SUV following me around. That’s why I gave you the backpack, Rose. After I came home from work that night, I heard a car pulling up in front of the house. I looked out the window and there it was, the SUV, and it was blocking my car. Then I saw Henr
y.” He took a long drink of beer. “So I ran to my room and jumped out the window.”

  I huffed out a frustrated breath. “I could just slap Joe. I asked him a dozen times about that night and not once did he mention a very large man in a very large SUV looking for you.”

  Ax shrugged. “You know he’s a little scattered. He can’t always remember stuff.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ma said, “how did they even know who you were?”

  “Sullivan told me his entire club’s set up with cameras. So they saw me steal the hard drive. Plus, I think they already knew who I was. I used Pack’s invite to the club and they had my stats, you know? It was freaky, them knowing so much about me.”

  I thought about the files I had stolen. Yeah, Sullivan knew exactly who Axton was.

  “Anyway, I ran through the neighborhood and hid behind some bushes. That’s when I called you, Rose. But I saw the SUV trolling the street, so I hung up and hopped the fence and lost the phone in a drainage ditch. I decided I better keep moving, in case I was, like, captured, which I totally was, by the by.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “I hid out in someone’s shed, and the next morning, I hitched a ride to Sunset Lake. Packard and I worked that out ahead of time, if I got in trouble, go to the old lake house my family used to own.”

  I held up a hand. “Whoa. Packard knew where you were?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t tell you?”

  That jackhole. “No, he didn’t. Sorry, Ax, finish your story.”

  “So I broke in and was there four days. I couldn’t call you because the phone and electricity had been shut off. But they had some bottled water in the garage and some canned veggies, so I made do.”

  “How did Sullivan find you, hon?” Ma asked.

  “I don’t know. Saturday afternoon, I’m on the deck soaking up some rays, next thing I know, Henry’s hauling me out to the SUV.”

  “I saw a picture of you bound and gagged, Ax,” I said.

  “Did they hurt you?” Eric asked.

  “Henry smacked me around a little. ‘Where was the hard drive? What had I done with the hard drive?’ Then Sullivan played good cop. If I told them where it was, they’d let me go home. But I kept quiet.

  “They only let me have water. No food. But then yesterday afternoon, Ron comes in with a sack of burgers and bunch of video games. Wouldn’t tell me why.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I called Sullivan yesterday, told him I had access to the hard drive. I wish I had called him sooner. I’m so sorry, Ax.”

  He squeezed back. “It wasn’t your fault.” Ma passed him the cookie bag and he let go of my hand again to eat.

  “By the way, look what I found when I searched the house.” I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the files, then reached into my belt and snagged the USB drives I’d stolen from Sullivan’s desk.

  “This is Pack’s file,” Eric said, taking it from my hand and paging through it. “It has all his financials. How much he makes, what he owes, credit reports. Plus, there’s personal info in here. Stuff about you, Ax, and your mom, random pictures of everyone in the family. It wouldn’t have been hard to find out about the house at Sunset Lake. People do what’s familiar.”

  Ma angled her head so she could read through her trifocals. “Here’s a file on Martin Mathers. And another on Arthur Briggs. ”

  Eric whistled and rubbed his head. “The mayor? Man.” He blinked a few times then looked at me. “What have you done, Rose?”

  “She did the only thing she could do,” Roxy said. “She took out an insurance policy.”

  “I thought I could make two or three copies of everything and put them in different — hopefully safe — places.”

  Steve looked up at me. “That’s good thinking.”

  Eric rubbed his hands together. “Okay then, I guess we should start scanning all this crap.”

  Chapter 32

  “I know I don’t have an appointment,” I told the receptionist for the third time, “but I need to see him today.” I pointed to a chair in the waiting room. “And I’m going to sit there until I do.” I flounced away and sat down next to a side table piled high with news magazines.

  I had already left Dane four messages. The optimistic side of me said he was probably tied up in court or busy with a client. The rational side said he was avoiding me.

  I picked up a magazine and flipped through the pages, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. The copies of the files burned a hole in my bag. I barely kept myself from checking every five minutes to see if they were still there.

  They were very detailed, containing financial records, personal stats, and the amount each person owed with coordinating dates, times and bets. It was all very factual and impersonal. I read over my own file twice. It was a little sad how thin and boring it was. But at least I didn’t owe Sullivan money.

  Ma gave me the day off so I could take care of business. I went to the bank and opened a safe deposit box to hold one hard copy and one set of memory cards. She advanced me a week’s salary to pay for it. I wasn’t too happy about that, but since I’d emptied my bank account buying stuff like underpants and secondhand sweats, I had to suck it up.

  I glanced at the clock every few minutes. The woman sitting next to me gave me the stink eye. Probably because I kept shifting in my chair and clicking my nail nubs against the arm rests.

  An hour later Dane walked into the office accompanied by a beautiful blonde in an expensive navy suit. She smiled up at him, laughing at something he’d said. A little bolt of jealousy zapped my chest and I jumped to my feet, wishing I’d worn something nicer than break-Axton-out-of-jail sweats.

  When he saw me his eyes widened in surprise. “Rose.” The blonde had been mid-hair flick when he stopped. She looked at him in confusion for a second, and then stared at me. And not in a happy way.

  “Sorry I’m here unannounced, but I need to talk to you.” I looked from him to the beautiful woman now glaring at me. “In private.”

  “Of course. Is everything all right?”

  He took my elbow, his companion forgotten, and steered me toward the inner office door.

  “Dane,” she said sharply.

  He stopped and turned back to the blonde. His hand, still clamped on my elbow, forced me to turn with him. “I’m sorry. Rose Strickland, this is Amy Phipps. Amy, Rose.” He nodded his head between us.

  Amy smiled. Sincere, professional, with the right touch of warmth. I wasn’t fooled for a minute. “Are you a client of Dane’s?”

  “No, Rose is a friend,” he said, answering for me.

  “So nice to meet you, Amy,” I said.

  “Excuse us.” Dane led me away again. Over my shoulder, I smirked. Her phony smile turned to a scowl.

  He hustled us into his office and shut the door. The office was on the small side, with one window and a large desk. A glass-covered case containing books of codes and statutes stood next to it.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” He set his briefcase on the floor and settled me into one ugly green client chair before dropping into the second chair, angling toward me so our knees almost touched.

  “Axton’s back.”

  “That’s great.” He pulled me into a hug. It felt nice. Plus, he smelled good, like cedar and coffee. He finally leaned back a bit, but kept his hands on my shoulders. My knees were wedged between his now.

  “How did this happen? Did Sullivan just let him go?”

  I cleared my throat. “Not exactly.”

  “Did Axton escape?”

  I took a deep breath and shifted my gaze to his tie. It was navy with little red dots in a diamond pattern. “Not exactly.”

  He dropped his hands and sat back in the chair. “All right, tell me.”

  “Roxy and I broke him out.”

  “What?” He stood, and with his hands in his pockets, he began pacing the length of the small office. Six steps to the window, pivot, six steps to the wall behind me. Rinse and repeat.

&nbs
p; “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking I needed to get Axton out of there. And since Sullivan has the Chief of Police in his pocket… Anyway, I need to hire you.”

  Dane looked out the window, his back to me. I could see the line of tension in his shoulders. “Yes, of course. But you might need a more experienced defense attorney. One of the partners, maybe.”

  “Why would I need a defense attorney?”

  He faced me then. “I assume you’re worried about Sullivan pressing charges.”

  “Sullivan pressing charges against me? He broke into my place first. And he kidnapped Axton. Wait. Before I tell you anything, Dane, I need to hire you.”

  He looked at me for a long time. I think he was debating whether or not he wanted me to tell him anything at all. He nodded. “All right. I charge four-fifty an hour.”

  I pulled a bill out of my pocket. “I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “God. All right.” He grabbed the money and tucked it in his pocket.

  I took a deep breath and paused before unzipping my bag and pulling out the stack of papers. “I borrowed some files from Sullivan and made copies. I need you to take a set and hide them.”

  His face blanked, like what I said hadn’t even registered. Then his face turned a dull red. He threw his hands in the air. “My God, Rose, have you lost your mind? You stole…” He realized he was almost yelling and lowered his voice to whisper. “You stole files from Sullivan? The man who kidnaps people? The man who broke into your home and destroyed everything you own? That man?” His brows lowered over his eyes and his jaw began to twitch.

  “More like borrowed than stole. And I don’t think he actually did that last one. Destroyed all my things, I mean. I think that was someone else.”

  “Who?” he yelled again. “Who else would have done it? That nitwit with the ear holes?”

  “Well, I don’t think Kevin did it either.”

  Dane sank back into the seat next to mine and thrust his face into his hands. “Do I have gray hairs yet? Because I feel my hair turning gray.”