by ML Gamble
Speeding toward a copse of trees that leapt out of the fog, Molly frantically turned to the right to avoid them. The tires squealed and the truck shuddered but missed smashing into them. Molly accelerated again, feeling as though the lodge had to be behind her now. She turned again and nearly smashed into the sedan, which materialized out of the mist and swerved madly to avoid a head-on collision.
Gunning the engine, Molly looked back. At that moment, the crack of a shotgun rang out and the windshield shattered.
Hunching over the steering wheel, Molly kept her foot firmly on the pedal. Two more shots were fired, accompanied by the sounds of ripping metal.
Whoever it was was determined to stop the truck, no matter who he killed, Molly knew. She had to get to Alec, wherever the hell that was. As she zigged and zagged over the terrain, Molly realized that she was no longer sure in what direction she was headed, or in what direction the lodge was. The fog swirled around her, blocking all vision, then disappeared in a misty cloud to reveal ten yards of black night.
Risking a glance in the rearview mirror, Molly saw she had gained a few yards on the sedan, which was tilting wildly to one side. Figuring he must have blown a tire, she pushed the accelerator to the floor again. The truck jumped forward into a clearing where the fog thinned out. Ahead and to her right, at a distance her brain estimated was a quarter mile, a strange row of lights was flickering along the ground.
Flares—it was the police!
Molly’s heart leapt against her chest and her mouth went dry. The police must have Alec, she thought, shivering at the memory of what he had said. “They’ll fire first and get the details later....”
“Don’t hurt him, please. Please,” Molly prayed, a part of her, however, a bit relieved that the police could at least end the immediate threat of pistol-packing Alicia Chen and her sidekick in the psycho sedan behind her. Flicking a last look in the mirror, Molly was stunned to see no trace of the sedan. She slowed and turned her head to look. The car was nowhere in sight.
“I’ll send AAA,” Molly muttered, then drove in the direction of the flares, more than ready to surrender.
But there were no police cars, no news vans. No vehicles at all. A few hundred feet from the lodge, she found only Alec, waving both arms at her, surrounded by candles.
Skidding in the loose gravel, Molly stopped the truck and jumped out. “Alec, what’s happened?”
“Molly! Thank God you found your way back. I thought I heard shots—”
She pointed to the shattered glass, which remained, remarkably, in one piece. “You did. Look.”
“I knew it! You should never have gone alone.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her so tightly she could hardly breathe, then he released her and looked at the truck. “But where’s Alicia? Didn’t her shuttle make it over?”
“No, it didn’t,” Molly replied. She suddenly felt out of breath. “I mean, she’s here, but I don’t think she just arrived on the shuttle. Alec, she pulled a gun on me. She’s crazy!”
“What are you talking about, love?” Alec held her at arm’s length. “Alicia pulled a gun on you? Where is she?”
“She’s in the truck, Alec. Be careful,” she shouted to his broad shoulders as he hurried away. “She had a gun, Alec.”
Alec pulled open the truck door and lifted the unconscious Alicia Chen into his arms. “Open the door, Molly,” he yelled.
Molly ran ahead and opened the lodge door, holding it against the wind, which was rising from the east, and watched. “Did you see the gun?”
“It’s on the floor. Come inside with me, though. I’ll put the truck away. The fog’s lifting and I thought I saw some headlights down the road a mile or so.”
“I’ll get the truck. You take care of Alicia,” Molly countered. Then she thought of the candles. Running down the road as fast as she could, Molly was gratified to see most were dark because of the breeze.
She kicked sand on those that were still flickering and jumped into the truck. The noise of some kind of engine carried over the rolling terrain and made her fumble as she tried to start the pickup. Was the sedan, with Dr. Chen’s probable accomplice, back again?
Grabbing Alicia’s gun, Molly stuck it in her pocket and ducked lower in the seat. Panting as if she had run five miles, she tried the ignition wires. Finally the switch kicked in and she raced the truck around and jammed it into the shed but not before ripping a huge dent in the left side panel.
Add one more felony to the list, thought Molly with a sigh, glaring at the broken windshield. Ducking low and running in a zigzag pattern, she hurried into the lodge. Only when she was back inside, with the door locked, did she allow herself a sigh of relief. But her calmness did not last long.
Alec was sitting and staring at Alicia Chen.
The doctor was lying on her back, one arm dangling lifelessly off the side of the couch. She was covered with a blanket, but Molly knew as soon as she saw the anguished pain grooved into Alec’s face that Dr. Chen was dead.
Molly walked up behind Alec, hearing a roaring noise in her ears as she placed a hand on Alec’s shoulder. He covered it with his hand, and squeezed, but his fingers were as cold as stream rock in winter.
“Oh, no, Alec. She hit her head. I didn’t think it was serious. My God...”
Alec flipped the edge of the blanket. “It wasn’t your fault, Molly. She’s been shot.” A huge stain blackened the red suit coat.
“The guy in the sedan. He killed her.”
Alec rested his head in his hands and she saw tears glimmering on his face. “I did it, Molly. I’m the one who asked her to come. To risk trouble with the police, trouble like this.” He shook his hand at her dead body, his voice rising.
“Stop it, Alec.” Molly spoke in a firm, quiet tone. “Alicia Chen lied about the time she came over, and she pulled a gun on me. I think she was working with a man driving the sedan. The same man who knocked you out last night and left you in the parking lot, if I’m not mistaken.” She knelt beside him and made him look at her. “It’s not your fault, Alec. She was involved, somehow, with Brooker.” He was staring at her as if she were speaking a language he didn’t understand. “I’m sorry. I know you cared about her, Alec. But we’ve got to get out of here now. It’s not safe for us to stay, but we’ll have to go on foot. I need your help, Alec.”
With a deep sigh, Alec put both arms around Molly and hugged her to him. For a long moment they said nothing. Then he kissed her hair, her cheek, her mouth, as if he wished he could kiss her forever, and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s hit the road, then. It’s the midnight hour. Our usual time to be tromping through the underbrush.”
“We’ll be in great shape by the time this is all over,” Molly replied.
If we live through it, she thought. While Alec added a sweatshirt to his outfit and grabbed his hat, Molly layered another pair of borrowed pants over the ones she was wearing and shrugged into the leather jacket. She grabbed Alicia’s valise with the laptop and phone, stuck the gun inside and followed Alec out of the door.
The first thing tomorrow, when they were safely hidden somewhere, she would call and alert the authorities that they could find Alicia’s body at Frederick Brooker’s lodge. “We’d better find a way to get off the island,” she cautioned Alec as they cut across the back of the property and headed down toward Avalon Bay.
“My thoughts exactly, love. I think maybe it’s time to pinch another boat.”
Molly sighed in resignation. “I knew the punishment for rustling cattle in the States was hanging. What is it for stealing boats?”
“Don’t ask, love.” Alec’s Australian baritone drifted on the thinning midnight air.
* * *
SYLVESTER ROJAS LOOKED UP from his cluttered desk in exasperation. “What do you mean, you think they’re on Catalina Island? If you think that’s where they are, why don’t you go back there and get them?”
Trent took a drag on his cigarette and leaned back into the thick bed pillows of th
e San Diego Excelsior Hotel, where he had just checked in. “Because Brooker ordered me to come back. He said he would take care of them. That he had someone else working on things.”
“Someone else other than us?” Rojas gasped. “That sounds like trouble, Trent.”
“Look, rookie, this is your first hire-out. Don’t worry about it. Brooker thinks he’s going to skate on this rap. Me, I think he’s doing big time, but my opinion don’t count, since I’m not on the jury. Though from what I just heard on the news, the trial isn’t even going to happen.”
“That’s not true,” Rojas hissed. “I just got word from my boss that the judge ruled against Mason Weil’s request for a mistrial. The cops are crawling on all fours, trying to dig up Alec Steele and Molly Jakes. The trial’s going ahead on Tuesday. And someone here thinks both will be available to testify.”
“Huh? Well, that don’t concern me, Sylvester. All that I care about now is that you get me what’s owed me.” Trent paused while he took another hit off his cigarette, thinking about Molly Jakes. He should have stayed around to even the score. “Besides, don’t play dumb with me. It was getting too hot on that little island. I saw one of the police shrinks along with the lieutenant Brooker says he turned come into town. Didn’t he tell you about that?”
“No. What shrink?”
“That Oriental gal. You know, that works in the office next to Brooker’s. Isn’t she a cop?”
Rojas felt sick. He had accepted money, more than he would make in twenty years, to feed this lowlife on the other end of the phone information from the D.A. about Alec Steele. If he had it all to do over right now, he would never have accepted the bribe. Rojas darted his gaze around the nearly empty office. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just got directions to pull out all the stops to eliminate those two. I assumed you were going to do it.”
“Well, boyo, you assumed wrong.” Trent hung up and sucked on the cigarette. A knock at the door signaled that room service had arrived. Trent got up and eyeballed the peephole. A man in a white coat, with a wheeled cart full of covered dishes, stood outside.
Trent opened the door and waved the man in. Before he could reach his gun, two men jumped out of the door of the room next to his while the man in the white jacket put a very impressive semiautomatic right up against his left nostril.
“FBI, Trent. Hit the floor.”
“Can I see some ID?” he asked, his arms held high. Two men in suits knocked him to the floor on his face and cuffed him.
Chapter Fifteen
It took them only three hours to walk to Avalon Harbor, in most part because of Alec’s sense of direction and revived condition.
Within twenty minutes, he had slipped aboard a Cal 28 sailboat the owners had obviously stored for the season. With the stealth of U.S. Navy Seals, Alec and Molly guided the Pie-Rat out of Avalon Harbor and into the dark, fog-shrouded Pacific.
Ten minutes out, Alec accepted a cup of steaming tea Molly offered him with a grateful smile. “We’ll stay under power for a couple of hours. By dawn we can put up the sails. We can be in Marina del Rey by nine.”
Marina del Rey was the destination they settled on at Molly’s suggestion. Her assistant, Sara Gillem, lived there, and Molly felt sure the woman would offer them some shelter while they regrouped and decided what to do.
While Alec hadn’t admitted it in so many words, Molly believed he was ready to surrender. Their main concern was that they avoid surrendering to a cop who might be under the guidance of Lieutenant Cortez, who they decided had to be the key hit man hired by Brooker.
“You’re the one who should get some sleep, Alec. What with the fever and everything.” She handed him two more antibiotic capsules she had brought up from the galley with her. “How are you doing now anyway?”
Alec threw the pills into his mouth and gulped his tea. “Peachy.”
“I know you’re hurting about Alicia. I’m going to use her phone to call the police before we dock in Marina del Rey. They’ll go pick her up.”
He nodded but said nothing, just frowned into the wall of fog surrounding them.
“Do you feel up to answering a couple of questions for me, Alec?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
Molly licked the salt spray from her lips and took a step away from him. It seemed heartless to be asking him while he was suffering, but she knew they were running out of time. If they were taken into custody, they would have no further chance to talk, that much she knew for sure.
“Did you know Alicia knew Brooker?”
“No, I didn’t. Although it makes sense now. Brooker contacted me a couple of years ago, said he heard of me because of my experience with the America’s Cup races. But I knew they were in the same office building. I should have realized Alicia probably put a bug in his ear about me.” Alec shrugged and threw the last dregs of tea overboard. “I still can’t believe he got to her, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s pretty obvious she was working for him, don’t you think?”
“No. I didn’t come to that conclusion at all. That’s the major thing I can’t figure out about all of this. Brooker wanted us found and/or dead. Alicia wanted...I don’t know.”
“She pulled a gun on you, Molly. She must have been in Brooker’s pocket. I just can’t imagine how someone that classy let him get to her.”
“Alicia seemed very confident and strong willed,” Molly offered. “Could it have been money?”
Alec scowled and squeezed the stainless-steel wheel until his knuckles were white. “I guess it can always be money or love behind a crime. Isn’t that what they say? But I don’t know. Alicia was loaded. Had enough money to support her mom, even. Set her up in a condominium back East, in Maryland, from what I heard.” Alec shook his head. “But what can she have been doing?”
Molly hated herself for saying it, but she had to ask Alec the question that had been gnawing at her for hours. “Do you think she was the masked person who was brainwashing you, Alec?”
Alec stared upward for a moment. His face was a study in dueling emotions of fury and betrayal. “Maybe. I thought of that. I can’t be sure, thanks to the drugs, that it was a woman under the mask. I do think Alicia may have been with the man who knocked me out and stuck me in the car at the Devil Fish.”
“What did they do to you? Can you remember at all?”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “No. Maybe checked out the thing on my neck. I don’t know.”
Molly settled into the cushion-covered seat beside Alec and pulled a blanket around her. Along with the boat, her mind was racing through the waves of mysterious and impenetrable motives of people she barely knew. One thing was certain in her mind.
Alicia Chen wasn’t working with Frederick Brooker, but against him.
“What does it mean, Alec?”
“What does what mean?”
“The brainwashing. That has to be the key to this. Why such an elaborate plan?”
“You said Brooker’s attorney is trying to build a case that I’m a murderous type. Isn’t that a good enough reason? The way I see it, I was going to kill you that night on the freeway and remember nothing. That way, they’d hit the district attorney’s only two witnesses with one stone and raise the possibility I was lying all along.”
Molly’s blood ran cold listening to Alec’s words. She met his eyes, which were navy blue and frigid like the midnight sea. “And your memory about having to kill someone?”
“Might be bogus...I don’t know. I guess we’ll never know, unless I do freak out...”
The wind swallowed his words. Molly grabbed the railing behind her and stared at the profile of the man she had spent so much time with, yet still knew only by instinct. “You’re no killer, Alec Steele.”
He left the wheel of the boat and pulled Molly into his arms, crushing her against him. Then he kissed her, a kiss of thanks and of wanting. A wave splashed over the side and Molly shrieked from the cold, making Alec
laugh, the first sound of happiness he’d felt like making for days.
“Here, love, sit leeward. You’ll do better.” Gently he wrapped her in the blanket.
Molly settled herself next to him. “You know, Alec, we may be missing the biggest clue here. I think what we’re not looking at is motive. The why of this mess. Isn’t that always the key thing cops look for?”
“I think the district attorney is sticking with the line that Paul Buntz was fencing goods stolen during robberies of Brooker’s clients. Which means they think Brooker set up his own clients. Motive enough, no?”
“Because Buntz was blackmailing him?”
“That would be my guess. And Brooker got tired of paying him off. So he got rid of him.”
“On the spur of the moment like that? It just doesn’t fit with what we know about Brooker. Besides, I saw Paul Buntz that night. He had an orange bag with computer disks in it that I think belonged to Inscrutable Security. He was looking for Brooker and was very nervous. But he didn’t seem frightened. After all, he went very willingly with him in the car. I don’t think Buntz was blackmailing him. I think it was just a business-as-usual night, but something went wrong.”
“Yeah. Something called a gun.”
“Several other people saw Brooker pull into the office complex around the time I did. So why would he, without trying to hide it, pick up Buntz, drive him to the marina and kill him near his own yacht?”
“It was a crime of passion, Molly. Even the rich and famous fall victim to that. The cops found the murder weapon in the Dumpster a block from his estate.” Alec shook his head again. “At least he wiped his prints off.”
“But don’t you see, Alec? That series of events is poorly planned. Actually, it cries out amateur. Whereas all of this drama with us—impersonating cops, kidnapping you, calling me out on a phony complaint, planning for us to meet on the freeway, brainwashing—all of that is very sophisticated and complicated. Did the same mind plan both?”