Deathblow (31 page)

He moved to kiss her again, but his laptop pinged. “I better check on that.”

She nodded and walked away from him, back to her own work.

Joe opened another e-mail from Leila, notes and contact info from calls that had come in on the hotline, people who thought they might have seen Keith or the van. Joe started down the list and worked on callbacks for the next two hours without break, until Wendy padded back to the kitchen.

“I have an idea.”

His gaze dipped to her perfect breasts. “Does it involve us being naked?”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She shook her head, smiling, but then the smile disappeared from her face as she said, “I have an idea for catching Keith.”

His X-rated thoughts evaporated. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I want to say.”

“We’re not using you as bait.”

She stood there all solemn and determined, sticking her chin out. “This is my problem. My life. My son’s life. I want to be the one making the decisions that affect my family.”

Oh hell, she was right. “It’d better be a hell of a plan.”

“We’ll make it work.”

He watched her for a few seconds, the confident tilt of her chin. “I have to say, I like the new, strong, sexy-chick thing you have going.” And then he kissed her to prove it.

* * *

Keith sat in the beach house, alone in the cold. The damned place had no heat, and with the wind coming off the ocean, early May still had plenty of chill in it. He’d bought an electric heater at the nearest department store, but it did little to warm up the living room that stood open to the kitchen and the stairs that sucked all the heat up to the second floor. He didn’t want to go back for a bigger unit. The shooting, along with his name and description, was all over the radio. He’d heard it in the car. It was probably all over TV too. He didn’t want anyone to recognize him.

Rage held his muscles rigid.

Wendy had betrayed him.

She’d betrayed him to her bastard cop.

Keith shifted on his seat. She’d had her chance. He’d offered to forgive her everything, had offered a way for the two of them to be together. Stupid bitch didn’t get it.

He couldn’t stand the thought of her with the cop. Picturing another man’s hands on her pumped his blood pressure so high, he felt dizzy.

If he couldn’t have her, nobody could. He knew where they lived.

Keith spat on the heater and watched the saliva sizzle. His woman and kid inside that cop’s house. It wasn’t right. They were all over there like some goddamn happy family while he was sitting here, freezing his ass off. They had everything; he had nothing. It wasn’t fair.

Joe Kessler needed to be taught not to go after another man’s woman. And Wendy needed to be taught not to be a whoring bitch.

Keith shut off the heater and stood, then strode out of the drafty summer house. He had the black van parked behind the house, with a new license plate. He’d switched plates with a pickup in a mall parking lot earlier.

He opened the back of the van, looked at the row of five-gallon cans filled with gasoline. He closed the door, then patted his pocket. He had plenty of matches.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Wendy whispered into the cell as she stood in Joe’s kitchen. “The police made me do it. I didn’t trick you, I swear. They knew I was going to meet you at the diner. They probably tapped the phone.”

“Maybe they’re listening now,” Keith snapped on the other end.

“I’m on Joe’s cell phone. He’s in the shower.” She was relieved Keith had picked up at last. She’d been trying for hours, but kept receiving messages that the number she dialed wasn’t accepting calls at the moment.

Long seconds of silence passed on the other end before Keith said, “You need to get away from those people.”

“Yes.”

“You need to meet me.”

“Where? I can get out after Joe goes to sleep.”

“You can’t trust anyone but me.”

“I know.”

“I’m the only one who cares about you and Justin. We need to be together again.”

“I want that.”

“Then you’ll bring Justin?”

That was a trick question. Keith knew she wouldn’t leave without her son. If she said she was going alone, he would know that she was lying. “I’m bringing Justin. I’ll bundle him up in the car. He probably won’t even wake up.”

“All right. I want you to drive south on Route 1. Take the Oxford exit. Pull over at the end of the off-ramp. How fast can you get there?”

“In another hour?” She wanted to give the police enough time to set up a trap. “Joe will probably head off to sleep once he gets out of the bathroom. He looked pretty beat.”

“This time, be there,” Keith said, and then the line went dead.

Joe was standing next to her. She passed him back the phone he’d given her. He made a call, listened. “Okay. Thanks.”

He put the phone away, a grim expression on his face. “The paint on the murder weapon in the Brogevich case is a perfect match to the paint in the hallway in your apartment building. Keith is officially wanted for murder.”

A cold shiver ran down her spine.

Joe kissed her eyebrow. “The tracking worked on the call. His cell was activated in Philadelphia. As soon as the call ended, he went off-line again.”

“How does he do that?”

“Takes the battery out. Looks like he knows that cell phones can be tracked even when they’re powered off. They’re not really powered off. If they were, the phone would lose track of time and other things. When you power off, the screen is powered off. But the phone still checks in with the nearest tower periodically. That can be tracked.”

“What do we do now?” She rubbed her hands together, her fingertips icy cold.

He took her hands and warmed them inside his. “You relax. I’ll set up everything.”

He kissed her on the lips this time, then went to work on that.

She fed Justin dinner, then called Sophie and asked if she could come over to watch him for a couple of hours. Putting Keith behind bars was the right thing to do. No matter what happened tonight, he would be out of their lives. She left Justin with his cheesy macaroni, then ran upstairs and grabbed some towels from the bathroom.

She rolled them up on her way back down the stairs and put Justin’s red coat on the roll, zipped up in the front. She tugged Justin’s hat over the end that hung out on top. Then she took her gun from the top of the fridge, slipped it into the car seat, placed the towel-roll kid on top, and strapped it in.

“Looking good,” Joe said as he came up behind her. “Everybody is getting into position. I called Amber. She’s coming over with Max. Jack is bringing Ashley and Maddie over, and he’ll stick around, hang out with the women and the kids.” He pulled her into his arms. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. I have to. I need to end this.”

Sophie arrived first, with Peaches, which delighted Justin no end but made Pirate Prince shoot out the back door with an irritated hiss. Then Jack came with Ashley and seven-year-old Maddie. Amber popped in last, Max wide-eyed with excitement at the idea of a party.

And as Wendy stood in the middle of the small crowd, she couldn’t believe that everybody was here for her. She wasn’t alone. She was never going to be alone again. Her eyes misted as the women moved in for hugs and wished her safety, promising to watch over Justin.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Sophie said. “I’d be too chicken.”

Amber nodded. “Knock him dead.”

Wendy kissed Justin good night, a little longer than usual, then hurried to Joe, who was waiting for her by the front door. He had a bulletproof vest for her. “I want you to wear this.”

She shrugged into the vest with his help. “Thanks.”

“I could go in your place.”

“He’s not going to fall for that again. He’s not going to approach the car unless he clearly sees me behind the wheel.”

Joe nodded with reluctance. “I still hate this.”

“In another hour, it’ll be all over.”

He kissed her again. “All right. You drive down Route 1. I’ll drive the back roads. I’ll be in position by the time you get there. The second he shows, we’ll take him down. Keep your head down. Stay safe.”

“You too.” This time, she was the one who kissed him.

Amber gave a wolf whistle from the living room.

Jack called out, “Get a room.”

Wendy was smiling as she pulled her spring coat over the stiff vest and picked up the car seat, which was much lighter than usual.

They walked outside together. She went to her own car, and Joe strode to his cruiser. She strapped the car seat into the front so Keith could see from afar that she’d brought Justin. Then she went around the front and got behind the wheel.

Joe followed her to Route 1. She took the south ramp; he kept going straight.

She barely drove half a mile down the road when something shifted in the back seat, scaring a small scream out of her, and then Keith popped up with a gun to her head.

“Here we go. I thought I’d make sure there are no mix-ups this time. How about we skip Oxford tonight? Why don’t we take the next exit?”

He glanced at the bundle next to her. Shook his head, fury lacing his voice as he said, “Fucking liar.”

He unsnapped the car seat and pushed up between the two front seats, kept the gun aimed at her head with his left hand while he reached over with his right and opened the door. He shoved the car seat out to make room for himself, then plopped down on the passenger seat next to her.

She glanced in the rearview mirror at the car behind her swerving to avoid the car seat rolling in the middle of the road. Would the driver call the police? Her palms were sweaty on the steering wheel.

Keith watched her with an icy gaze, lowered his weapon to point at her chest, so it wouldn’t be seen by passing drivers. “I take it this is another setup?”

“The police made me do it.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me!”

She cringed. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Keith.” But even as she said the words, something shifted inside her. She
wasn’t
sorry. She shouldn’t be the one apologizing. She shouldn’t be in danger because of him once again. She shouldn’t have to wonder whether she’d ever see her son again.

Yet when he dug the barrel of the gun between her ribs as he said, “Take the next exit,” she obeyed him.

His black van waited behind an out-of-business gas station. He held the gun on her as he forced her to switch vehicles. “You’re driving.”

The dome light went on when she got in, and as she glanced back, she caught sight of a row of red, plastic gasoline cans, along with rope and duct tape. She could have no doubt that Keith wanted to kill her. Fear froze her limbs.

“Go!” he barked the single word next to her, jamming his gun back against her ribs.

She turned the key in the ignition and cut through the lot, pulled into sparse traffic. Fear fought to put her on autopilot, make her obey whatever he said. Fear whispered,
Don’t make him angry, and maybe he won’t hurt you so bad.
 

But she had another voice inside her, the voice of long-suppressed anger. She was no longer the woman who used to cower before Keith. The heady realization brought strength surging through her veins.

So when he said, “Turn up there,” instead of slowing down, she stepped on the gas.

He shoved the gun harder between her ribs. “Take the next turn!”

“No.” Instead, she whipped the steering wheel and spun the van in a U-turn, heading back toward the highway while the cans of gasoline rolled in the back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She swung back on Route 1, then stepped on the gas like she meant it. Eighty-five miles per hour. Ninety.

“Slow down, you stupid bitch!”

“Roll down your window and throw the gun out,” she said, not exactly calmly, but she wasn’t panicking either.

He pulled the gun up. “I’ll shoot your fucking head off.”

“Then we both die. Wherever you want to take me, you’re taking me there to kill me. I die either way. Between the two of us, you have more to lose.”

He swore viciously. “You wouldn’t let Justin go like that. You kill yourself on the road, who will raise him?”

“Joe and Sophie will,” she said with certainty.

“You won’t kill yourself all knocked up. You’d kill your little bastard.”

“The baby is already dead.” She swallowed hard, swallowed the pain and the rage. She needed to focus on staying alive. “I’d rather go home to Justin. But dying while taking you out is better than dying and letting you live. You took too much from me. I’m not giving anything else, not without a price.”

Keith shook with barely controlled rage, grinding his teeth.

She had to get that gun away from him before he lost it. “I’m going to count to five.” She was going a hundred miles an hour now, in the left lane, passing a handful of cars so fast she couldn’t even see the drivers staring after her. “If you don’t throw out your gun by the time I reach the end, I’m going to drive head-on into the nearest tree, and we both take our chances.”

She pictured the fiery explosion with all the gasoline in the back.

Apparently, Keith was too, because he didn’t sneer. He was looking at the rapidly passing landscape with worry.

The speedometer showed one hundred and five.

“Five.” Wendy swallowed. “Four.” If a deer jumped in front of them, if she hit a bump or a pothole, that was it. Game over. “Three.”

He tried to grab the wheel away from her, but she hung on and stepped even harder on the gas.

“If we go off the road, we die. You better pray I don’t lose control.”

He let her go. Swore.

“Two.”

“I don’t need a gun to beat you to death. I can choke the life out of you with my bare hands.”

She said, “One.”

He rolled the window down and tossed the gun. “Slow down! You can’t drive.”

“Turns out, I can. I can do a lot of things. And I will. I’ve barely begun trying.”

“Slow the hell down!”

She wanted to. But if she did, he’d try to take control of the steering wheel. Desperate thoughts flitted through her head, until one came that might work. “Grab some duct tape from the back and tape your hands together.”