Night of the Living Deb (22 page)

Unless something went wrong,
I thought and swallowed hard.

“Dan gave me a couple dye packs for the topmost bundles,” Stephen continued, while I listened. “Normally, the device activates when a robber passes through the electroI-magnetic field set up in a bank’s doorway. But these”—he proffered two of the wrapped packs of bills, holding one in each hand—“are activated by a radio transmitter. I’ll give the device to you. You can turn it on when you transfer the money. The dye packs will mark the money and the bad guys.”

He returned the bundles to the bag, and when I didn’t say anything, he looked straight at me.

“You worried, Andy?”

Yeah, I was worried, all right.

“I’m not sure about this, Stephen,” I said, thinking should’ve gotten the money myself—real money—

because what if we weren’t dealing with amateurs, as we supposed? What if they were pros and knew a bad bill when they saw it? “What if they realize we’re tricking them?”

“They won’t,” he said, like it was as simple as that.

“How can you be sure?”

“I just am.”

I searched his eyes and his sober expression, looking for cracks, for any sign that he felt doubt. My own mind was whirring with possible trip-ups:

What if the dye packs went off too soon? What if they didn’t go off at all? What if they didn’t give up Malone, even when they had the money in hand? What would happen then? Would I have cost Brian his life, because I’d tried to outsmart his captors?

I wet my lips, telling myself that I had to trust Stephen, because my only other choice was to go to the police, and
that
I couldn’t do.

“We don’t know who they are, Andy,” Mother’s beau went on, doing his damnedest to convince me. “We don’t know that they really have Brian, do we? We’ve got to outsmart them, and we will.”

“You’re right,” I told him, letting out a held breath. “I just want Brian back safe.”

Cissy patted my arm, and I closed my eyes for an instant, telling myself it would all be okay. That, by morning, Malone would be home and the fake bills returned to Stephen’s pal, the former Treasury agent.

All would be right with the world.

When I opened my eyes again, Stephen was removing what looked like a small black box from his jacket pocket.

I was almost afraid to ask.

So Mother did it for me. “What on earth is that?”

“It’s a GPS tracker.” Stephen lifted the thing, as if weighing it. “I got it for my new truck as an antitheft device.

Ordered it off the Net. It uses Google mapping.”

“Dear Lord, I don’t even know what that means,” my mother said.

But I did.

Everyone and their dog used GPS these days, mostly to trace vehicles. It was legal, so long as the person in the automobile being tracked was aware of it.

“You want to track my Jeep,” I said.

“Sort of,” Stephen replied mysteriously. I watched him slip the black box into the bag with the money, shoving it down the side, toward the bottom. “I want to track the bag, which will be with you until you hand it over to the kidnappers.

Then I want to track
them
.”

“My my,” Cissy breathed. “The things they invent.”

Stephen cracked a smile. “I’ve got my laptop in my car, so I’ll know where you are. You aren’t in this alone, you know.”

I stared at the satchel. Goose bumps rose over my arms.

This was really going down, wasn’t it?

The zipper whirred as Stephen closed the bag and slapped its side. “All right, then. We’re all set on this end.

Now we just have to wait for the next damned call.”

“Did they mention when they’d phone back, sweetie?”

my mother said, and I shook my head. “You imagine they’ll try before or after dinner?”

Excuse me? It wasn’t like kidnappers had manners
.

“For Pete’s sake, I don’t know when they’ll call, Mother,” I said, unable to keep from sounding testy. Hell,

I
felt
testy.

“I think someone needs a nap,” Cissy drawled.

A nap? Like I’d sleep a wink before this ordeal was through.

I nearly said something snippy back, when, right on cue, my cell rang from my lap, the familiar idiotic music playing in aborted bursts.

I took a deep breath, thinking,
Ding dong, kidnappers calling.

“Pick it up, Andy,” Stephen said, as if I needed a nudge.

I grabbed the phone and flipped it wide-open, pressing it hard to my ear and answering with a shaky, “Hello? This

is Andy Kendricks.”

“Listen and listen good, because I’ll only say this once,” the mumbling voice instructed, and Mother hastily shoved a pen and pad of paper at me. “Here’s what you do if you want to see your boyfriend alive again.”

I whispered, “I’m listening.”

The barely audible voice told me where to go and when, and reminded me that if I didn’t show, if I didn’t do exactly what I was told, or if there were any signs of police involvement, Brian was a goner.

Then it was over.

The phone went silent.

And my heart went,
Gulp
.

Chapter 17

The ransom drop activities wouldn’t begin until 10:45
p.m
.

I was to sit at the bar at a Highland Park restaurant called Patrizio, right before closing as it were, and

wait for their call.

They gave me the starting point, but that was all. They planned to direct me from one place to another, and I’d have no idea where I was headed next until they phoned after I’d arrived at each successive spot.

It gave me flashbacks to childhood scavenger hunts, having to run around the neighborhood accumulating goodies on a list until you had them all. The first one back with all their items won a prize.

If I did my part right, I would “win” back Brian.

Who did these people think they were? Because I was thinking they had a thing for Jerry Bruckheimer action movies, where car chases were more important than plot.

Stephen said the setup was done to make sure I wasn’t followed; so it worried me all the more that I knew he’d be tailing me, keeping track on the GPS.

What if they spotted him?

Would they call the whole thing off? Decide Malone wasn’t worth the trouble and dispose of him, like they had Trayla Trash?

Stephen swore up and down that he’d keep a ways back, maintaining visual contact but relying on the GPS to know the direction I was headed. That way, he assured me, he wouldn’t have to ride too close on my bumper.

Trust, trust, trust.

One of these days I’d get it down pat.

It was just so danged hard for me, perhaps having to do with my being an only child. I was used to counting on myself, getting everything done solo. No one had ever accused me of being a team player.

Even in school, I’d taken over group projects, never willing to sit back and let the chips fall where they may. I wasn’t all-fired certain I was much good at sharing, either.

But this evening I had to play by the rules, both Stephen’s and the kidnappers’. I wanted to save Malone without risking my own neck, kind of like being between a rock and an impossible place.

If all went well, I would end up at the final drop spot at midnight.

According to Mr. Mumbles, they’d release Malone as soon as they had the bag in hand and had eyeballed the contents to be sure I wasn’t screwing them over.

Lovely.

Who was I to protest? I had nothing else, no other option. Malone hadn’t called again, so how could I not accept that these people were keeping him under lock and key? I still had no inkling how the Paris Hilton dognapping ransom connected with the Oleksiy case, and I had pretty much convinced myself it didn’t matter at this point.

My only focus was Brian.

I couldn’t even allow myself to dwell on what would happen once he’d been freed, because it was nearly as frightening to think of him trying to explain to the cops that he had nothing to do with Trayla’s murder.

Despite my firm conviction that just because she was found in his car trunk and one of his Calloways had been used as the murder weapon didn’t mean he’d done it, convincing the police was something else entirely.

So would I be releasing him from one prison only to send him to another?

Dang.

This whole thing sucked.

Maybe we could run away, to Brazil or someplace they didn’t have extradition. Only who’d take care of my mother if I slipped away in the dark of night?

Stephen?

Yeah, right.

He might be ex-Navy and ex-IRS, but he had no earthly idea what he was getting into with Cissy Blevins Kendricks. She was about the most high maintenance individual God had ever designed and built. Not only had He broken the mold after He’d made her, but He’d doubtless run up a hefty tab to outfit and shod her properly, not to mention the hair and makeup.
Ca-ching!

How could I disappear with Malone and leave poor Stephen as Mother’s only crutch and still live with myself?

I couldn’t.

Okay, so Malone would have to face the music eventually; though I was sure once he told the truth about what had happened—whatever that was—he would set the record straight. He could explain that he was tied up and chained to a radiator while someone borrowed his Acura to trash poor Trayla.

I had to stop being Debbie Downer.

Everything would be all right. It would be over soon.

My head would explode if I let myself think otherwise.

I decided to go home for a few hours and reconnoitre back at Cissy’s house before beginning my ransom run.

Patrizio wasn’t far from there, and Stephen had a few things to go over with me first; so I promised them both I’d return by ten o’clock.

I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a reason the bad guys had picked that spot.

I’d gone with Malone to Patrizio a couple weeks ago, strangely enough. I wondered if whoever it was had been watching us then, already plotting to snatch my boyfriend, or if Malone had mentioned the place to them as somehow meaningful to us, to send me a message—though I figured I was trying to pull import from thin air at this point.

Still, what type of kidnappers would start a ransom drop at Patrizio, since it seemed a little upscale for lowlifes?

More like the kind of spot lowlifes dreamed of going to rub elbows with the prettified crowd. Besides, it closed at eleven on Monday night, or was that the point? To make sure I was there in time and that I didn’t linger, attracting unwanted attention.

Hmm.

I wondered if I were allowed to order a medicinal margarita at the Patrizio bar while I killed time waiting for further instructions.

Or was that not kosher, per the Kidnappers Handbook?

Mother seemed anxious about my leaving. She offered to feed me dinner, but I wasn’t hungry. What she really wanted, I supposed, was to keep me in arm’s reach; so much so, in fact, that she’d dispatched Sandy and Stephen to retrieve my Jeep and bring it around. She’d hoped that might encourage me to stay put, but I wanted some time alone. So that’s what I did.

The sun setting to the west, the sky purple above me, I drove home in silence, no radio or CD playing, just my thoughts as company. And I had plenty of them to spare. I kept thinking of all the people in the cars that passed mine and wondering what their lives were like, if the most they were worried about was where to eat tonight or what color to paint the living room or if the babysitter would show up

on time.

Were any worried about the life of a loved one? Did a single one of them have to contemplate driving around Dallas in the dark, running down clues from a list of nightspots, all in hopes that counterfeit money in a bag rigged with GPS and dye packs would serve their purpose and set a man free?

I would have guessed the answer was no, although I couldn’t say for sure in this day and age when crazy things happened all the time. All you had to do was turn on the nightly news and watch for a few minutes in order to learn about one atrocity after another. Like a kid taking a gun to day care in his knapsack and shooting another kid, or a defenseless animal being tortured. How about soldiers dying

overseas? Or earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes causing massive destruction?

That stuff usually made me feel fortunate, realizing how relatively untouched my life had been with regard to tragedy.

Until something like this happened, and it reinforced that bad stuff could happen to anybody.

Any trace of the sun was long gone by the time I made it to North Dallas and turned off Preston Road into my cozy enclave of town houses and condos. A flock of geese had wandered over from the lake of the nearby country club, and they waddled across my parking lot, squawking and pecking at each other, oblivious to the fact that my Jeep had to idle until they’d safely passed through its headlights.

Were that I was a goose,
I mused.

All I’d have to worry about was flapping my wings to head south for the winter and avoiding cars and hunters’ bullets.

That sounded so nice.

As I angled the Jeep into a spot near my front door, I saw nothing amiss, no media vans lurking, no unmarked police cars containing anyone remotely resembling Starsky and Hutch.

Home free.

Or so I thought.

Until I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and I heard a car door slam followed by the staccato rush of high heels on the pavement behind me.

I turned as the noise got closer, the glow of my porch lamp illuminating a specter so terrifying I was tempted to run and hide.

Attila the Blonde.

Live and in the flesh.

Well, okay, not flesh exactly. More like an Ann Taylor suit.

How could I have missed her shiny red Beemer, for Pete’s sake?

I blamed it on too many distractions.

“Allie, what do you want?” Friendly, I wasn’t. I didn’t even wait for her answer, merely marched up the porch steps and shoved my key in the dead bolt.