Trust with Your Life

by ML Gamble

  With a burst of energy, she soon found herself with the padlock pried off the shed door. Inside, it was dark and dank and empty save for two motorbikes and had a space large enough to park the truck in. An expert now at hot-wiring the truck’s ignition, she backed it inside without so much as scraping the paint, then closed the door.

  Feeling her energy faltering, Molly hurried back to the lodge and closed and locked the door from the safety of its sheltering walls.

  She emptied the satchel with the foodstuffs on the kitchen table. With a minimum of fuss, she made herself a cup of tea and drank it down while fixing Alec a glass of beer.

  Beer was a kind of food, she reasoned. Although everyone knew not to mix alcohol with drugs, Alec’s condition warranted some action, and this was the best her sleep-deprived brain could manage. She pounded two of the capsules and three aspirins into powder and spooned three tablespoons of beer on top of it to make a frothy white mixture.

  Returning to Alec, she turned him on his side enough to get some of the liquid into him. His eyes opened and he swallowed, coughed, then shook his head. She gave him a few ounces more of the beer, then picked up the smaller glass of medicine.

  “This is going to taste like hell, mate, but it’s good for what ails you.”

  He managed a weak smile and touched her face. “You are good for what ails me. Where are we?”

  “Brooker’s lodge,” she told him once again. “Drink.”

  He drank it down, made a face and motioned for more beer. She gave him a bit, then let him relax. As soon as his head rested on the rug, he was out.

  Molly knew she didn’t have the strength to move him to the couch. She managed to throw two of the blankets over him and pull off his boots. Draping one of the sleeping bags around her shoulders, she fell into a heap beside him. With a final effort, she raised her hand and looked at her wristwatch. It was 11:55.

  Without another thought, Molly dropped into sleep, her mind and body numb to all but Alec’s warmth.

  * * *

  ALEC OPENED HIS EYES. In front of his face was a closed door. He could see a thin lip of light from outside and felt a chill draft on his face.

  Why am I on the floor? he asked his sleep-fogged brain. Is this the rest room at the island airport? He supposed he couldn’t be there still, but where he was, he hadn’t a clue. Straining to push himself up, he suddenly became aware of a person next to him. It was Molly, warm and soft, snuggled into the small of his back. Her even breathing filled his mind, pushing the pain and worry away for a moment.

  Somehow she had found Brooker’s lodge, he realized. Although how she’d gotten him inside, he didn’t have the vaguest memory. He brought his watch to within two inches of his face and forced himself to focus. It was 8:10. He assumed it was evening. His neck throbbed with pain, his bones ached and his mouth felt like an acid pit. Even more urgently, his bladder ordered him to get moving or else, but Alec willed himself to lie still and not wake Molly for a few seconds more.

  He liked the feel of her next to him, more than he should, Alec found himself thinking. At least until this mess was over, he couldn’t afford to lose control of himself as he had that night in the motel room. The thought of the blond man lying in wait for them in the next room sent a shudder of anger through him.

  Molly stirred and slid her arm tenderly across his stomach. “Alec?” she whispered.

  “Hey, Molly girl.” Alec patted her hand. She moved enough for him to turn on his back and look up at her in the fast-darkening gloom. “Fred Brooker’s place, I presume.”

  “Yes. Thanks to your map, I found it without too much trouble.” She pushed herself upright and sat cross-legged, pulling her long hair with her fingers as if to straighten it.

  “You look fine,” he murmured.

  “Yeah, right.” She made a sound of disgust and bent closer to Alec’s face. Quickly she felt his forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been bitten off, chewed and spit out by a fiend who didn’t like the taste of my Australian bones.” He swallowed with difficulty. “I need to get up and get something to drink. And find a bathroom.”

  Molly grinned and stood, then stretched out her hand to assist. His skin was much cooler to her touch, but Alec was pale and, from the sight of his graceless stumbling as he walked with her toward the bathroom, very weak. She stopped at the doorway. “I’ll leave you alone. There’s no light. But there’s fresh water in the kitchen if you want to wash up.”

  “I promise not to crawl out any windows,” he replied.

  Molly left him and crept back into the living room. The stove was full of hot ash and dying embers, but she quickly stoked it up again into a serviceable fire. The two burners on the top would do to heat dinner, she decided. She grabbed a blanket and headed into the kitchen.

  Night was falling all around her. Outside she could see a last trace of sunlight reflected upward off the curve of horizon along the Pacific. Quickly she covered the wide windows over the sink with one of the blankets and lit a candle to work by.

  Scrounging through the supply satchel, she pulled out the can opener from the Geisha Empress, as well as several packages of cheese and crackers. Her mouth began to water as the smells from the opened cans of chili reached her nose. Munching on a mouthful of crackers, she looked up to find Alec staring at her, huge and ghostly pale in the flickering light.

  She pointed to the pump. “Water, soap and a roll of paper towels are there.”

  “Yes, Nurse Ratched,” he retorted, but walked slowly to the sink. “Do we have any beer left?”

  “Beer, chili casserole and bread sticks coming right up,” she replied cheerfully. “Followed by medicine for you. How’s the neck?”

  Alec looked at her curiously, using his jeans instead of the paper towels to dry his hands. “I’m doing better, love. What kind of medicine are you talking about?”

  His voice was edgy and suspicious and Molly realized he wasn’t completely back to normal. Calmly she explained about the prescription and the aspirin.

  “Well, that explains the way my mouth tastes,” he replied, seeming to relax. “You don’t happen to have a toothbrush in that magic bag of yours, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Look inside the paper bag with roses on it. I bought us each one at the airport.”

  At the reminder of the airport, Alec clutched at the table and let his body fall into the chair across from where Molly was working. “I remember arriving there. I remember the cop and the gift shop and that I couldn’t reach Alicia on the phone. What the hell happened next?”

  Quickly she explained as much as she knew. “So I went into the men’s room and found you—”

  “Cheeky American snips,” Alec cut in.

  “Don’t interrupt,” she returned with a smile. “Anyway, so I went in and found you, but I also got grabbed by our friend, the nut case in the nylon mask.”

  “Jeez,” he exploded, “he didn’t hurt you?”

  Molly licked the warm chili from the spoon. “No, he didn’t. Our satchel hurt him a bit, I’m glad to say.” She summarized her run-in with the attacker and explained about answering the call from Dr. Chen. Peering at her wristwatch, she added breathlessly, “Alicia should be on the island soon. She’s going to wait for me to come for her, or to call her in the ladies’ room. I wrote down the number, so we could reach her with directions if it seemed too dangerous to go back to the airport.” Molly pulled the scrap of paper on which she had scribbled the phone number out of her pants pocket, then stopped short. “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “I did write the number. But it’s the men’s-room number.” Furious with herself, Molly slammed the mixing spoon down against the side of the pan. A huge dollop of chili flew off and smacked her in the cheek.

  “Well, then we’ll have to go to the airport.”

  “I don’t think it’s safe to take the truck,” she protested as she wiped the chili from her face. “What if the island police are looking
for it?”

  “They probably aren’t. It’s Friday night.”

  “What about the pictures of us in the newspapers?” Quickly she told him what she had seen in the gift shop. “What if the cashier recognized us? It’s probably staked out.”

  “She was pretty interested in that pregnant woman. I doubt anyone would recognize us.”

  “Right. You’re six foot three and blond. You have cowboy boots, a cowboy hat and scratches on your face. I was wearing pink tennis shoes and a hat with dolphins. I’m sure we blended right into the scenery!”

  “Calm down, Molly,” Alec whispered, resting his elbows on the table so he could steady his head by leaning his chin on his hands. His voice was raspy and fading. “Don’t give up now. That’s what Brooker’s planning on, don’t you see? That we’ll give up. If we can just hold out until Alicia gets here...”

  “I never should have listened to you, Alec. I should have stayed in my apartment and called the police.”

  “You would have been killed.”

  “Well, then I should have gone to the police after we tied up those two men on the boat. Surrendered. I could have gotten a lawyer to bail me out.”

  “And Brooker would have sent someone like the creep last night to shut you up. Face it, Molly. We’re targets. The only way to survive is to find out who was behind my abduction.”

  “That’s not the only thing we need to do, Alec Steele. We need to prove why it happened, why you were tortured and me set up to be kidnapped. How in the world are we going to do that from here?”

  “Together, we’ll think of something, Molly....” Alec’s voice trailed off.

  Molly realized how much of his stamina had been taxed just by walking through the house. He was going to drive back into Avalon on a dark and winding road to meet Dr. Chen? I don’t think so, her brain taunted.

  Suddenly it all seemed too impossible to contend with. Alec was too weak from being sick. There were too many people working for Brooker, too many cops looking for them, too many people to mistrust.

  There was no phone to call Sylvester Rojas, or her assistant at work, so she couldn’t even begin to do any sleuthing. And most of all, she, it seemed, did not have the kind of intelligence to outwit a gnat.

  Slowly, Molly stirred the chili. Alec hadn’t said a word for several seconds. When she looked up, she found him, head resting on arms crossed on the tabletop, sound asleep. She crumbled a handful of cheese and crackers on top of the chili and walked out of the kitchen.

  Placing the pan on the top of the stove, she stood in the dark and ate dry crackers so fast they scratched her throat.

  An image of Rafe sprang into her mind. The first repair emergency they had worked together was a nightmare. An inept line assigner in the Mission Verde central office had given a new customer, a life insurance company, the same phone number already assigned to another customer, the area’s biggest funeral home.

  The owner of the insurance company called the repair line, screaming and complaining that his customers reporting claims were getting a recording about Perpetual Care Family Plots. The poorly trained frame repairman who got the complaint ticket couldn’t figure out how to wire the lines to a live operator to intercept the calls and reroute them temporarily. So instead, he disconnected all the circuits, signed off the ticket as complete, and left the sixteen bereaved families who called over the next two hours to hear a recording which said, “The number you have called has been disconnected. There is no new number.”

  Molly’s call from dispatch came at 6:00 a.m., reporting a man who complained that the funeral home had stolen his mother’s body.

  It had taken thirteen hours and two crews of installers to fix all the problems. When she’d arrived at the funeral home to try to explain things to the exasperated owner, Rafe had met her at the door.

  “You must be the new boss lady,” he had snarled. “All I can advise you to do is take one thing at a time, Miss Jakes. ‘Cause if you don’t, that man will make sure you end up a customer here, and it ain’t gonna be of natural causes.”

  With those words of wisdom, Rafe had chuckled and left her to deal with the mess.

  And she had, Molly remembered. By being patient, tactful and using her head, she had taken Rafe’s advice and dealt with one issue at a time until both customers were, if not happy, at least satisfied.

  As the spicy scent of chili filled the air, Molly felt herself regain some confidence. She could do this, she told herself. First she would eat and make Alec eat, then get him into bed.

  Then she would go outside and hot-wire the truck one more time, drive over and get Dr. Chen from the airport and bring her back here.

  Dr. Chen would help Alec.

  She would find a way to get to a telephone and reach Sara Gillem at home and Sylvester Rojas at the office. They had both promised to help her.

  She would have to trust them to do just that.

  Molly was a manager—of people and of problems. She could do this. She could, she reassured herself.

  “Thanks, Rafe,” Molly whispered. With that, she used the arm of the stolen leather jacket as a pot holder, picked up the bubbly pan of chili and took it into the kitchen.

  “Wake up, Alec Steele. Dinner’s ready.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  As the lights of Catalina’s airport came into view, Molly realized she had no clue as to what Alicia Chen looked like. Well, to heck with her E.E.O. training, she thought, swinging the stolen truck into one of the darker parking spaces beside the terminal. She would do the obvious and assume Alicia Chen was Chinese and hope there wasn’t more than one Asian waiting in the ladies’ room by the telephone.

  The terminal was as good as closed. The lights were out at the coffee shop and snack bar as well as the ticket counter. A wire-mesh door was pulled across the gift shop and secured with a huge padlock. Two men, one dressed like a pilot in a brown leather flight jacket and matching hat, sat smoking cigarettes at one of the round tables. Molly, pulling her dolphin cap lower over her forehead, made a beeline for the ladies’ room.

  Her heart rate increased when she glanced at the door leading to the men’s room and remembered her encounter earlier that day. Where had the guy gone? she found herself wondering. Jeez, it was like walking through a snake farm, worrying whether that creep was going to slither across her path again.

  Molly smiled as she thought of her counterattack on the thug. As she did, she suddenly realized why he’d looked familiar to her. He had been at the freeway crash. He was the man in the mechanic’s uniform, who had been so helpful.

  Molly shuddered. This business of trusting strangers was affecting her entire life. In his case, she had been wrong. In Alec’s, right. At least, she hoped she was right. She thought of his kiss in the motel and wondered whether a man could hide a murderous heart behind a kiss that caused a woman to melt.

  It happened all the time in the movies. Molly shook her head. She was no Sherlock Holmes, but Alec Steele wasn’t a danger to her. She would bet her life on that opinion.

  You already have, a voice inside her head observed.

  Shrugging away her doubts, Molly thought of the blond man who had fired a gun at her even though she had never hurt him at all. It was becoming more and more obvious that she had been intentionally lured to the freeway to meet up with Alec. But why? And why had Alec been tortured and brainwashed? Why not just kill them both? Brooker would probably get off scot-free, unless there was someone else who could finger him.

  Someone else. This hunch echoed inside her brain with the solid authority of truth. A truth Molly would have to pursue. Because if someone else knew what had happened that night, it must be someone Brooker couldn’t get to.

  Or wouldn’t get to.

  “Later, Miss Scarlett,” Molly said with a sigh. “I’ll think about that later.” Though the hours of sleep she had managed to grab on the carpet next to Alec had restored some of her energy, she was exhausted. She was looking forward to getting Dr. Chen on the sce
ne. Even if she couldn’t help Alec psychologically, she would be another person to talk to about this mess.

  Molly pushed against the ladies’ room door, her step light and her spirits lifting. A woman dressed in a tailored red suit, a cashmere coat over her lap and a kid leather valise at her feet, was sitting on the sofa in the waiting area. She had a laptop computer open beside her and was speaking into a cellular phone.

  Her dark eyes met Molly’s and she held up a long-nailed finger in caution. “Yes, Operator, I’ll wait. Thank you,” the woman said.

  She was stunning. Small-boned and willowy, Alicia Chen looked about thirty, although Molly immediately judged her poise to have ten or fifteen years more experience than that. Her eyes were small and gracefully set at a slant. Her hair, cut to chin length and parted on the side, was glossy blue-black in the fluorescent light.

  Dr. Chen wore no makeup save for vivid red lipstick.

  Molly licked her own chapped mouth and nodded. “Hello. How are you?” she whispered, then crossed to the rest-room area and checked to see that they were indeed completely alone. Satisfied no maniacs lurked inside, Molly took a seat across from Dr. Chen.

  The woman’s attention was drawn back to the voice in her ear. “Operator, you must have misdialed. The number is 202-555-6825. He has to be there! Please try again.” Suddenly Dr. Chen held out her hand to Molly. “I’m sorry, dear. You must be Molly. I’ll be right with you.”

  Molly shook her head that she understood, but she was distracted by the phone number. Since her business was phones, she heard and read and wrote down probably hundreds of phone numbers a year. But that one seemed very familiar. Letting her brain work at trying to remember, Molly tuned back into Dr. Chen’s conversation.

  “Yes, Operator?” Alicia Chen listened intently. “I see. No, I don’t wish to leave a message on the recorder. Thank you.” With an irritated flip of her wrist, the woman closed the phone, snapped down the laptop and slid both into her valise.

  Alicia Chen stood and held her arms out to Molly. “Oh, Molly, I’m so relieved to find you safe. Where is Alec? Outside? Do you two have a car?” The doctor’s fingers, surprisingly strong, dug into the flesh of Molly’s arm. “How is Alec holding up?”