by Lynn Bohart
Blair screamed.
Rudy and Doe screamed.
Ponytail Guy lay frozen into the shape of a fetus at our feet. Only this time, he had a real gunshot wound in his forehead.
“Oh, shit!” Rudy murmured.
“My God, is he dead?” Doe asked, peering over Rudy’s shoulder.
“Are you kidding? He has a big hole in his head,” I replied.
“Where have we heard that before?” Blair asked cynically.
“Yes, but this time he was folded into the compartment that normally holds the dump hose,” I said, my voice rising.
“Okay, stop arguing,” Rudy snapped, glancing around. “We have to figure out what to do.”
“I say we get out of here,” Doe said, glancing around.
“No, now we have evidence,” Rudy said. “Now we should call the police.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “This changes everything. Blair, you heard April’s dream.”
“What dream?” Rudy demanded.
“April called and told us she had a dream that Ponytail Guy was dead.”
Rudy’s face was compressed into heavy skepticism. “How did she know anything about Ponytail Guy?”
“She didn’t. That’s the point. He showed up in her dream…dead.” I pointed to the dead guy at our feet by way of proof. “She also dreamt about a girl and two guys with a gun. But the most important thing was that just before she woke up, the police arrived and the girl was killed.”
A heavy silence floated in the air.
“She’s right,” Blair finally said. “That’s what April said.”
“If they killed Ponytail Guy, what’s to stop them from killing the girl if they think they’re cornered by the police?” I asked.
“What can we do?” Doe asked.
I turned to Doe. “I say we put the body back and…”
“I’m not touching that thing!” Blair screeched.
“Wait, hear me out. We put him back and let them get back on the road. Then we call the state patrol and report a drunk driver with something red dripping down the side of their motorhome.” I raised my eyebrows as if to say, “Get it?”
“That could work,” Rudy said. “But we have to hurry.”
“I still don’t want to touch him,” Blair said, folding her arms in protest.
“I’ll help,” Doe said, stepping around me. “I just want to get out of here before someone sees us.”
Doe leaned down to grab his shoulders, while Rudy slipped her hands under his hips. I cupped my hands beneath his knees. With a hefty grunt, we began to lift him. Doe squealed when blood smeared her sleeve. She yanked her arm back, dropping his shoulder.
He tumbled to the pavement again as we all lost our grip.
“Crap!” she said. “Sorry.”
“Why is he so stiff?” Blair asked from the safety of her position behind us.
“Rigor mortis, you idiot,” Rudy snapped. “C’mon, let’s do this.”
We bent down to try again and got him halfway to the compartment before realizing how hard it would be to get him back inside. He was, after all, stiff as a board and folded up like a pretzel.
“Wait,” Rudy said. “Put his shoulders in first.”
“No, I think we should tip him up,” I said.
“Did you see how he was stuffed in before?” Rudy asked in a strained voice.
“No! He just fell out.”
“I can’t turn him,” Doe said. “If I do, I’ll lose my grip.”
“C’mon, let’s just shove him in,” I said, straining under his weight. “I can’t hold him anymore.”
We got him to the lip of the compartment, fighting to hold him steady.
“Okay, on three…shove him in,” Rudy said.
Rudy counted to three, and we pushed.
Rudy got his butt in, but he started to tip forward. Rudy turned and leaned her entire body against his, holding that half of his body in position. She was gritting her teeth with the strain. I tried tucking his feet in.
In the background, I heard the diner’s front door open and close and looked up in time to see people crossing behind the cars parked in front of the door. I saw a head swivel in our direction, but the group kept going.
“Quick, we need to finish this,” I said. “Someone’s going to see us.”
“He’s not going to fit!” Rudy snapped.
“He’s got to fit.” I turned to Blair. “Blair, see if you can reach over and fold his head in.”
She gave me a horrified look. “His head with the big hole in it?”
“Yes, Princess!” Rudy retorted. “Quit being so dainty.”
Blair reached out a hand to delicately tip his head down.
Doe was facing the other side of the parking lot and let out a gasp.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s them,” she said breathlessly. “They just left the restaurant and are crossing the parking lot.”
I turned to look, losing my hold. Ponytail Guy fell to the pavement with a splat.
“Damn!” Rudy exclaimed.
“Never mind that,” I said.
The four of us left our dead friend and inched forward to look over the cars parked in front of the diner. Sure enough, Monty and crew were crossing in front of the AM/PM, weaving their way through the gas pumps.
“Where are they going?” Doe asked.
“Straight for that other motorhome,” Blair said, pointing.
Eva had her arm around the girl’s waist, while Roy dragged her forward by the arm. Monty was in the lead.
They got to a gray and white Tioga motorhome with a ‘for sale’ sign in the front window and paused. Monty looked around and then jimmied the door open.
“My, God. They’re going to steal that other motorhome,” Doe said.
“Makes sense,” Rudy said. She glanced behind her. “Why keep driving one that has a dead body in it?”
“That’s pretty brazen, though,” Doe commented.
“Not really,” Rudy replied. “All of those vehicles for sale are parked out of the line of sight of anyone in the store, and people at the gas pumps aren’t paying attention.”
It took them less than thirty seconds to get the door open and climb inside. A few seconds later, someone removed the ‘for sale’ sign from the window and Monty had the engine going. He pulled the motorhome past the store and toward the street.
“Tell Aria to follow them,” Rudy said.
I grabbed my phone again as we ducked down behind the cars and peeked around the front of the Jayco to watch them enter the roadway and turn right.
I quickly explained the situation to Goldie and told her to follow the gray and white motorhome that had just passed them.
“Roger that,” she said.
Once their RV had disappeared up the street, we scrambled back to the Hulk. This time, Rudy got behind the wheel. As a fierce competitor, she didn’t like to lose. To her, this had become a competition.
“Uh…isn’t anyone concerned we just left a dead body back there?” Doe asked, glancing out the window at the Jayco RV.
“Can’t worry about that now,” Rudy said. “We can’t lose them.”
She pulled away from the curb with a jerk, swerved around a slow moving car in front of us and revved the engine to give pursuit. I watched her for a moment, thinking that perhaps I’d unleashed a monster.
But we hadn’t gone more than a few blocks when Doe cried out, “Rudy…remember? We’re almost out of gas. We’re not going to get very far.”
Rudy mumbled an expletive and slammed her fist against the wheel. “Fine.” She turned to me in the co-pilot’s chair. “Let Aria know. She’ll have to keep on their tail.”
I nodded and once again dialed Goldie to give her an update.
“Roger that,” Goldie said again.
I rolled my eyes when I hung up. “Goldie thinks this is a game.”
Blair leaned forward from the main cabin. “Julia, could you have been mistaken about the color of the girl�
�s hair?”
I turned to her. “I don’t know. It happened so fast. Maybe that’s not Amy Owens, but some other poor girl they kidnapped. We could be looking at a sex trafficking ring or something.”
“God, I hope not,” Doe said.
“What are we going to do when we find them?” I asked Rudy.
Rudy sat in the pilot’s seat tensed as if ready to spring forward. Her jaw muscles were clamped shut, and her hands gripped the large steering wheel as if she were squeezing the life out of it. Watching the few cars around us, it made me a little nervous to have Rudy driving.
“Rudy?” I whispered again. “What are we going to do?”
She turned towards me with her small brown eyes squinted in a fierce stare. “Help that girl. Any…way…we…can.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rudy was one of those people who had a rough exterior, matched by a personality that always hummed with a little bit of adrenalin. And yet, she was also someone who kept her emotions in check. She was measured. Focused. She made reasoned decisions. We relied on her for that.
Right now, however, she seemed a little unhinged. The sense that these people might outsmart us had pushed her over the edge, and that underlying tension was seeping out through her pores.
“How are we going to save the girl? We can’t confront them,” I said. “They have a gun.”
“And they’re not afraid to use it,” Doe said from the swivel seat by the window.
“We’ll find a way,” Rudy snapped. “We always do.”
I turned back to the road ahead. We were still off the interstate, and there wasn’t much traffic. When the yellow fuel light indicated we were about to run out of gas, Rudy pulled into a Chevron station and slammed on the brakes. Blair got out to pump the gas.
As the rest of us waited silently in a tense-filled RV, my phone rang. It was Goldie.
“Where are you guys?”
“Not sure,” she said. “We’re in a residential area. It’s getting dark and difficult to see the street signs through all the trees. And we haven’t been close enough to get the license plate number.”
“Okay. We had to stop to get gas. Call us back when you figure out where you are and we’ll catch up.”
“Roger that,” she said a third time.
“Looks like we need to wait,” I said to the others. I related the rest of what Goldie had told me. I tried to relax into my seat, feeling like, once again, we were heading into a danger zone with few resources to back us up.
“Why do you think they killed Ponytail Guy?” Doe finally asked from behind me.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe because he just didn’t fit in. Remember, I heard him complaining to Eva at the Fourth of July celebration. Then I also saw Roy push him up against the motorhome. They clearly weren’t on friendly terms.”
“Maybe he drank too much,” Doe said. “Every time we saw him he had a beer in his hand.”
“And then there’s the night Julia thought he was dead,” Rudy said. “He must’ve been dead drunk when he ran into the tree.” She gave me a brief nod of approval, as if to apologize for her earlier skepticism.
“Creepy, though, how April called that one,” I added. “She knew nothing about these guys at the time. That’s also why I take her at her word when she says she saw the police shoot and the girl died. I think we need to be very careful.”
The door to the Hulk opened and Blair climbed back in. “What do we do now?”
Doe sighed as she glanced at Rudy. “I don’t know, but I feel like our legal liability is stacking up fast. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to explain our way out of any of this. Especially the dead guy we just left on the pavement back there.”
Rudy started the engine and pulled the Hulk over to the side of the parking lot, where she killed the engine again. The raw intensity of her exterior had softened, and she seemed to be breathing easier.
“We wait,” she said. “We’ll hear one way or the other from Goldie where they are and then we can catch up.”
There was a long moment of silence as Blair plopped down on the leather sofa.
“Well, I need something to eat,” I said.
I went to the refrigerator to grab the grapes we’d bought earlier. I quickly ran them under water and then brought them to the table in a bowl. I took a couple before offering them to Doe.
“You know, we have no idea where they went,” Doe said, breaking off a small bunch. “They’re in a motorhome that no one knows they have, and it’s getting late. They could just pull off somewhere up by the lake and lay low for the night.”
“Wait!” I said with a grape halfway to my mouth. “I remember now. I heard Ponytail Guy say something during the fireworks. He mentioned a side trip Monty had to make to Lake Cleary.”
“So they’re purposely going to the lake for some reason. And apparently it has nothing to do with the girl,” Rudy said thoughtfully. “I wonder what that’s all about. The good news is they don’t know about Aria and Goldie…yet. Keep your fingers crossed they don’t figure out they’re being followed.”
Blair sighed. “What a trip this has been. We thought we were just taking a simple trip across country.”
Doe chuckled. “When has anything we’ve done ever been simple?”
“Well, at least none of us are in any danger this time,” Blair said, reaching over for a bunch of grapes.
I glanced around at my friends. We were all exhausted, frustrated, and deflated.
We needed a rest.
As I munched on a grape, my phone rang.
“They got away from us,” Goldie reported when I answered. “We’re up by Lake Cleary. We got cut off by a truckload of kids. The motorhome pulled up a hill and disappeared.”
“Where are you?” Rudy called out.
“Just a sec,” Goldie said.
We could hear her conferring with Aria.
“We’re at a crossroad–Forest Glen and Sparrow Road. Do you wanna meet us here?”
“Yeah. We’ll find you.” Rudy turned to Blair, who already had her cell phone out looking up the streets.
“Okay, follow this road,” she said, slipping into the co-pilot’s chair. “Then turn left at the first stop sign.”
Rudy followed Blair’s directions until the GPS voice took over, telling her what to do. Several minutes and several turns later, we found the spot where Goldie and Aria were waiting.
The intersection was two country roads surrounded by open fields and two structures on opposite corners. Across the street from us was a large ranch-style home with a sloping driveway. The lights were on and a pickup sat in the driveway. To our left was a closed auto repair shop with a fenced junkyard behind it.
Rudy found a wide space in the road and pulled over in front of Aria’s camper, next to a sagging wire fence. Seconds later, our door opened and Goldie and Aria climbed in.
“We lost ‘em,” Goldie said with disappointment.
She and Aria plopped into the swivel chairs.
My heart sank. “Can’t we do something?”
Goldie shrugged. “We could split up and drive around looking for ‘em.”
“It’s getting late,” Doe said. “It will be dark soon.” She glanced at her watch. “Maybe we should call and report in to David.”
“C’mon, you guys. I didn’t think you’d give up so easily,” Aria complained.
Her dark eyes glinted in the low light. She was loving this.
I heaved a deep sigh. “But we don’t know where they are.”
“We have the atlas,” Blair said, opening the glove box. “Since we know they’re going to Chicago, they’ll probably have to circle back at some point.” She pulled out the atlas and joined me at the table, opening the map book and flipping pages.
“Okay, here we are. Lake Cleary,” she said, pointing to a spot on the page.
Rudy had left the driver’s seat and slipped into the seat next to me, while Aria, Goldie and Doe looked over Blair’s shoulder.
“Look here,” I said, pointing. “Forest Glen circles all the way around the lake and comes back out to Sparrow Road. And Sparrow Road is blocked on the west by this nature preserve.”
“Which means there’s no other exit,” Aria said. “The roads that split off around the lake are all dead ends,” she said, pointing toward the map. “Nothing cuts all the way through to Gateway.”
“We have them!” Blair said. “That road has to be a good five or ten miles long. All we need to do is to wait here until they double back.”
“Or we could just call the state police and let them know,” Doe interjected.
Her dark eyes looked sad in the waning light, or tired, as if she was fighting a losing but important battle. She and I had just barely missed being killed by a madman a few weeks earlier. Now, we were chasing a group of thugs who had already killed two people and who we believed may have abducted a young girl. Doe lived in an ordered world. With three murder investigations already under our belts and now this, her ordered world was unraveling.
“We need to see this through, Doe,” I said. “We can’t risk a young girl’s life.”
We locked eyes for a moment, and then she nodded. “I know.”
Everyone suddenly became animated again.
“Okay,” Rudy addressed Aria. “Why don’t you and Goldie follow the motorhome up that road and around the lake? Check the side streets and see if you can find them. We’ll stay here, just in case they come back. We’ll move the Hulk over by that repair shop, where they’d be less likely to see us if they circle all the way around and come back on Sparrow Road.”
“Okay,” Aria, said. “But hold on. I have a couple of walkie-talkies. They’re faster than the phones.” She left the Hulk and hurried back to her truck. A minute later, she returned and handed me a black walkie-talkie. “Keep it tuned to channel 2,” she said. “You just press here when you want to talk and release the button to listen. They’re top end and have a 35-mile range, so we should be good.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I got it,” I said, wondering why she had walkie-talkies in the first place.