Deadly Gamble

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Easy,” Tucker said.

  I settled back, tried to breathe normally. Tried to get a grip. I wanted to stay conscious. I was also desperate to convince Tucker to get hold of the paperwork from the nursing home.

  Tucker ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. Somehow, that centered me.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked, after what seemed like a very long time.

  “Scanner,” he said. “I’m a cop, remember?”

  “Jolie and Greer?”

  He smiled. “In the cafeteria, swilling bad coffee. They’re quite a pair, your sisters. Made me show a badge, and Jolie called in the number for verification.”

  I strained for a smile, though I couldn’t quite reach.

  “Did I dream it? That Geoff was in my room last night? That he tampered with my IV bag?”

  Tucker’s eyes never left mine. “I don’t know, babe,” he said. “The bag’s been taken to the lab, so we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What lab? Tucker, if it’s here in this hospital, he could have access—”

  “Phoenix PD has it,” Tucker insisted quietly.

  “I need to get out of here. Lillian—”

  “One thing at a time, Moje,” Tucker broke in. “Your sisters are taking care of the funeral arrangements. Allison’s got the dog. And for the time being, I’m in charge of Project Mojo. When they let you out of here, you’re coming to my place.”

  “Tuck, he’s a nurse. He’ll try—”

  “Listen, Moje, I can’t put an APB out on the guy for showing up in a nightmare. What I can do is make sure you’re protected—from yourself, if necessary. Meanwhile, the official wheels are turning, and you’re going to have to be patient.”

  I began to get my bearings. “You must have things to do. You were on an assignment…”

  “I’m off the assignment.” He grinned fetchingly. “In fact, I’m unemployed. Will that change our relationship?”

  “We don’t have a relationship.” I paused, sifting through a lot of mental sludge. “Do we?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tucker said. “But we’re going to find out.”

  I WAS RELEASED from the hospital at four that afternoon.

  Greer wanted me to stay at her house, and I refused. The last thing I wanted was to be under the same roof with Alex Pennington, especially in a vulnerable state. I couldn’t face going back to the apartment, either, at least not until I was myself again. Too much had happened there, both downstairs and up.

  I didn’t want Nick to be there.

  I didn’t want Nick not to be there.

  It was a lose-lose situation.

  Tucker’s place was a rented condo in north Scottsdale. Bethany met us there, with Russell, and immediately went out again, for groceries, with Tucker’s list and a wad of bills in hand.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Tucker said, gathering scattered newspapers, empty chip bags and a few stray socks as he spoke. His furniture was worse than mine, and that’s saying something.

  I was settled on the couch, numb with sorrow over Lillian. Underneath that was an urgent, revving sensation. I needed to find Geoff before he found me.

  A little of the fog cleared. “Is Bert really in Witness Protection?” I asked. “And how’s Sheila?”

  Tucker stopped moving, studied me intently for a long moment. I knew he was wondering how much more I could take, and I braced myself.

  “Officially,” he said, finally, “Bert is dead. Sheila’s with him.”

  “They’re dead?”

  “Officially,” Tucker reiterated.

  I hoped that meant not-dead. As in, new identities, in new places. I also knew Tucker was never going to tell me the straight-up truth. He couldn’t, unless—

  Unless.

  “You quit your job?” I asked carefully. Russell climbed up onto the couch and stretched out beside me, resting his big head on my ankles. “You said you were unemployed—”

  “Yes,” Tucker said, standing very still. “The custody thing.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “So if you’re not a cop anymore, you could tell me the truth about Bert and Sheila.”

  “I told you all I could, Moje. Leave it at that, okay?”

  I sighed, stroking Russell’s head. Missing Lillian. Missing Chester. Missing the parents I barely remembered. There were so many empty places in my life where loved ones should have been.

  “Okay,” I said, and noticed that Tucker’s gaze was resting somberly on Russell.

  I tensed. “What?”

  “Dogs can be in Witness Protection,” Tucker said.

  I felt a mingling of hope and sorrow. Hope because in cop-lingo, “officially dead” doesn’t always mean “really dead,” sorrow because Russell was probably going away.

  “Soon?” I asked, and the word came out squeaky-hoarse.

  “Yeah,” Tucker said. He leaned down, kissed the top of my head, and vanished into the kitchen.

  I ruffled Russell’s ears. “I’m happy for you, bud,” I told him, “but you’re going to leave a big hole when you go.”

  Tucker was banging around, probably making tea. There was a certain comfort in his knowing what I needed when things got stressful.

  Besides that.

  “So I think I could make a place for you in Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks,” I said, when Tucker came back with a steaming mug of tea and set it on the ugly coffee table in front of me.

  “So long as I don’t have to change my name,” Tucker replied, with a slight grin. “Are there benefits? Health insurance? Paid vacation? 401K? Double-time for holidays?”

  “Get real,” I said.

  “Half the profits?”

  “I offered you a job, not a partnership.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t mention a wage.”

  “Half of whatever business you bring in.”

  “Gee, Moje, what a deal.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  He grinned again, but he looked tired as he sank into a recliner patched here and there with ragged scraps of duct tape. “Can’t we call the company Sheepshanks and Darroch?”

  “That would make you a partner.”

  “Well, hell, at least I’m real, which is more than I can say for the other two Sheepshankses.”

  I straightened my back, which made my scissors wounds hurt again. “Take it or leave it,” I repeated.

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “So do you,” I said, very softly. With all that had been going on, I could have used a little distraction.

  It wasn’t to be.

  Bethany chose that moment to come back with the groceries. She said a few muffled words to Tucker, patted Russell on the head and departed.

  Tucker made grilled cheese sandwiches and stood over me until I took my pills, one for pain, one an antibiotic.

  I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up, it was dark in the room, and someone was pushing at my left shoulder. I thought I was back in the hospital, with Geoff looming over me, and came up swinging.

  Tucker caught my wrists together. “Moje,” he said. “It’s me.”

  I blinked, looked around. Something was different.

  Off, somehow.

  Well, yeah. There were two Tommy Lee Jones types standing in the middle of the room, men-in-black. Their eyes didn’t flicker, their haircuts were military and their jaws might have been chiseled from bedrock. Between them, they couldn’t have come up with any part of a sense of humor.

  I was terrified, for Tucker, for myself.

  “Moje,” Tucker reasoned. “They’re feds.”

  “Russell—” I groped frantically for the dog, but he was gone. My stomach went into a freefall. “Tucker, where’s Russell?”

  “Come with me,” Tucker said, helping me to my feet.

  The men-in-black didn’t move or react.

  Tucker led me into the kitchen.

  Bert was kneeling on the floor, jostling Russell’s ears while the dog licked his face in a whole-bod
y effort.

  “Bert,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “Thanks for taking care of the mutt, Moje,” he said.

  My eyes burned, and my throat closed tight.

  Tucker helped Bert to his feet—he was still awkward from the stabbing and there were bruises on his face—and the feds wafted in from the living room. The inside door leading to Tucker’s garage stood open.

  “I left you Bad-Ass Bert’s in my will,” Bert told me. He pushed up one sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Look. No tattoos.”

  Sure enough, the road map was gone. The skin looked inflamed, as though the body-art had been scrubbed away with a wire brush, but nothing remained of Route 66.

  It made me feel sad.

  “What am I going to do with a biker bar?” I asked. Okay, it was a stupid question, and a little insensitive, but the circumstances weren’t exactly normal.

  Bert grinned. “You can sell it,” he said. “You can burn it to the ground. You can run it and make a decent living. It doesn’t matter to me, because I’m going to be in—” His gaze flicked to the agents, and back to my face again. “Another place,” he finished.

  “Why me? You must have someone—”

  “You’ll do fine,” he said, and touched the tip of my nose with an index finger.

  I blinked hard and kissed his cheek. Squinted at the even little rows of hair sprouting on his previously shaved head. Another of the wonders of the federal witness protection program, I guessed. Shaved head today, flowing tresses tomorrow.

  “Goodbye, Bert,” I said. I couldn’t even look at Russell, because some goodbyes are just too hard to say.

  Bert nodded.

  One of the agents hooked a leash onto Russell’s collar. Handed it to Bert.

  “I guess we’re leaving now,” Bert said.

  I watched as Bert, Russell and the two feds went out through the garage door. Russell didn’t even look back, which both stung and made me feel like whooping for joy.

  I turned into Tucker’s arms.

  He held me.

  “It’ll be okay, Moje,” he said.

  I would have loved to believe him.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I t seemed ironic to bury Lillian in the cemetery at Cactus Bend. After all, she’d fled the place, nearly a quarter of a century before, and steered clear of it ever since. Now, a week after her death, by the terms of her own will, she was back to stay.

  Jolie, Greer and I stood together, in our tasteful black dresses, surrounded by people who remembered Lillian as the woman who snatched little Mary Josephine Mayhugh, and subsequently eluded the police, the FBI and watchful citizens all over the United States, for more than twenty years.

  Senator Larimer attended the simple graveside memorial, as did his wife, Barbara, once again enthroned on her wheelchair, with Joseph standing protectively behind her, clasping the handles in a white-knuckled grip.

  A warm breeze whispered in the cottonwood trees.

  I was moving in a bubble composed of shock and grief, but some awareness began to leak through. I felt people’s eyes on me; word had obviously gotten around—thanks, no doubt, to Boomer and a few others—that I was Mary Jo Mayhugh, daughter of Ron and Evie, all grown up. I felt their unspoken but still intrusive questions, too, like thrusting elbows in a crowd.

  I wanted to escape, fly away, forget there was ever such a place as Cactus Bend, Arizona, and feel my way through the rest of my life.

  I would piece it together, bit by bit, task by task. Move out of Tucker’s place, where I’d been staying for the last week. Dig up dirt on Alex Pennington. Help Jolie with the move from Tucson to the little brick house she’d rented in Phoenix. Decide what to do with Bad-Ass Bert’s Biker Saloon.

  I hadn’t been back to my apartment at all since the day I was released from the hospital; early on, Jolie and Tucker had picked up some of my clothes. Tucker’s condo had been a refuge, and he’d done all he could to make me feel welcome—but being there was like wearing unmatched shoes, neither one fitting. I’d checked my voice-mail messages periodically, nervously expectant.

  There were no more death threats.

  Just one call—from Brian Dillard, Heather’s former husband. She was in the hospital, under psychiatric observation, with an arraignment pending, he’d said sheepishly, and the kids were with his mother. Somehow, he’d saved the ticket for the slot machine credits I’d left behind at the casino, the night Geoff scared me off, and I could pick it up any time.

  It wasn’t high on my priority list.

  I shifted my attention back to the sad matter at hand.

  Lillian’s coffin gleamed in the sunlight. Greer, Jolie and I each laid a white rose on top and whispered our goodbyes. The funeral home people would lower her into the ground later, I presumed, to spare our sensibilities.

  I wanted to fling myself on that casket, like some frenzied gothic heroine, but I was afraid someone would sedate me if I did. I was in enough of a stupor without medical intervention to make it worse.

  So I waited it out, standing there in the dress Greer had scrounged from the back of her closet, my eyes so dry they hurt, my throat pulled into such a raw knot that, once or twice, I thought I tasted blood.

  Clive Larimer approached as my sisters and I were making our way back to the mortuary’s limousine.

  “Barbara and I are having a few people in,” my uncle said quietly. “We were hoping the three of you would join us.”

  I stared at the senator, unsure how I felt. It seemed an odd time for an invitation.

  “Now?” I asked.

  Greer nudged me. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but she wasn’t too stricken to overlook a social opportunity. This was her chance to add a state senator and his very prominent wife to the guest list for her next party. Not to be missed.

  “How kind,” she said. “Of course we’ll come.”

  I planted my feet. Barbara had zipped up alongside her husband, in the motorized chair, with Joseph keeping a proprietary watch. I looked at her, then Joseph, then the senator.

  They’d attended the services to show support for me, I supposed, but it seemed to me that an after-funeral party for a woman they’d seen as a kidnapper was a little over the top. If Lillian had been caught at any point during the runaway years, the Larimers probably would have lobbied for life in prison.

  The question I wanted to ask, but couldn’t find the words for, must have shown clearly in my face.

  My uncle cleared his throat diplomatically and spoke in a low voice. “The press is waiting to close in,” he told me. “Do you feel like dealing with them? They’ll have a million questions, all of them pretty personal.”

  I looked around. Sure enough, there were people with microphones and cameras among the blatant gossips and curiosity seekers. Some members of the fourth estate were already interviewing the locals who’d attended the service, but I knew Clive was right. They were ready to pounce. And they wouldn’t stop with inquiries into my years on the run with Lillian. They’d want to know about the murders, too.

  About the blood, and the fear.

  How did it feel, hiding in a clothes dryer, after witnessing a double homicide?

  “No,” I said, with a slow, dazed shake of my head. “No.”

  My uncle took my arm. Several of his aides materialized out of the crowd and walked in casual but practiced formation around us until we reached the limo. Joseph leaned in on the front passenger side, spoke quietly to the driver.

  Clive, meanwhile, held the back door for us.

  Greer blushed prettily, fetching even in a whiter shade of pale, and slid in. Jolie followed, though not so readily. I stood warily before the opening.

  “You would have sent her to prison,” I said, looking up into Clive’s face. “Back then, I mean. When she took me.”

  “Yes,” he answered.

  For a moment, we just stared at each other, in measuring silence.

  Then I got into the car.

  A few minutes later,
we glided into the driveway at the Larimers’ place, the press effectively stopped at the heavy steel gates behind us.

  Peculiar, I thought, that I hadn’t even noticed those gates on my previous visit. They must have been open before. Now, they made the estate seem as impenetrable as a fortress with the drawbridge up.

  I felt a paradoxical combination of claustrophobia and relief, like a baby struggling to be born, then summarily sucked back up into the womb by some incomprehensible force.

  “Nice place,” Greer said, in a reverent whisper. Up ahead, the Larimers, chauffeured by the ever-present Joseph, got out of a black Jag. Joseph hurried to open the trunk, where Barbara’s wheelchair was stowed, but she shook her head and entered the house on her husband’s arm. “Just think,” Greer said. “If Lillian hadn’t abducted you, you might have grown up here.”

  A surge of defensiveness seared its way along every vein, like the unseen impact of a blast. Before I could speak, though, Jolie squeezed my hand.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  The driver opened the door on my side, and I got out. Rested one hand on the roof of the limo to steady myself a little. Joseph sprinted down to the gates, and they swung open to admit another car.

  Barbara and I are having a few people in, my uncle had said, back at the cemetery. I wondered who they were, these “few people,” but in the final analysis, I didn’t really care. As long as they didn’t ask any questions, we’d get along fine.

  The gathering was held on the large patio behind the main house. In daylight, the Larimer swimming hole looked roughly the size of the reflecting pool at the base of the Washington Monument. A variety of cold cuts, crackers and cheeses had been set out on a long table set in the shade of the extended roof.

  I was suddenly starved. At the same time, I knew if I tried to swallow so much as a nibble, my throat would clamp shut or I would retch.

  I waited for a cue from Senator Larimer, but it was Joseph who came to my side.

  “Good thing they didn’t put out the heirloom silver,” I told him, sotto voce, indicating the elegantly casual picnic spread. “Plastic flatware is a lot less risky, with me around.”

  “Truce,” he said, with the semblance of a smile. “Can I get you something?”