Night of the Living Deb (25 page)

It made me realize how many such moments I’d taken for granted, just assuming I’d have time for more tomorrow and the next day.

If I ever did that again, may a wet noodle descend from the sky and smack me flush across the face.

“Here you go.”

I spun around on the stool at the bartender’s voice, dug into my back pocket for cash for my tonic and a tip. I took a sip and stared at my cell phone, feeling another attack of nerves as I noted the time.

Ten-Fifty.

What the heck were those kidnappers waiting for?

Where they here?
I wondered.
Had I done anything wrong? Parked in an unapproved spot? Arrived a minute too late? Where they watching me?

The hair prickled at my nape, and I hunched over my drink and the phone, willing it to ring.

The bartender did a final call at the bar, and I heard the musical notes of a phone going off somewhere near me.

Like a copycat, mine went off, too.

I snatched it up and leaned hard over the bar, using my

free hand to cover my other ear.

“You’re at Patrizio?” the mumbling voice asked.

“Yes, I’m here.”

Didn’t they know that? Wasn’t someone keeping tabs on me? The digits displayed appeared to be the same number as the pay phone used earlier. Did that mean there were two of them? One traipsing around on my heels and another back at Kidnapper HQ (i.e., the Northwest Highway IHOP’s phone booth)?

“Of course you’re there. Good girl,” the barely audible voice said. “Now, get to the Time Out Tavern in fifteen minutes. And you’d better be alone.”

“When will I see Brian?” I whispered.

The line went dead.

Well, crud.

Cell phone in hand, I cut through the last of the stragglers ultimately abandoning bar stools before Patrizio locked its doors for the night. I emerged into the crisp night air, unimpressed by the twinkles of lights, the fancy cars, or even the stars blinking bright against the cloudless night sky.

I rushed across the parking lot, nearly getting myself run over by a metallic blue Hummer whose driver leaned out the window to yell, “Watch out, you stupid chick!”

By the time I got to my Jeep, my breaths came in a rush; but I hadn’t a spare second to rest. I hurriedly unlocked the door and jumped in, cranked the ignition and shifted into gear. It was all I could do not to smack the bumpers of the vehicles ahead of me, each seeming to move at a snail’s pace as they exited Highland Park Village.

Despite Mother’s warning to drive safely, I hauled ass to Lovers Lane, where the Time Out Tavern sat in a tiny strip mall beside the London Market Antiques Store.

I used to hang out there some during high school, when I was too young to drink but didn’t care and had a fake ID should I get carded. My friends and I used to sit at the picnic table near the door and play quarters, squealing like idiots whether we hit or missed.

In normal circumstances, I’d have been happy to make a return trip to the place. I associated good memories with it.

But nothing about this night was good. As I took a fast corner, racing through the tail end of a yellow light, I glanced in my rearview and saw a flash of red rip through the intersection behind me.

I didn’t think much of it until I pulled off Lovers Lane, sliding the Jeep into an empty parking space in front of the antiques shop.

When I looked into the mirror again as I cut the engine, I noticed the red car taking a slow pass by where I sat. Beneath the street lamp the driver’s pale hair glowed for an instant, and I recognized the BMW Roadster that belonged to Allie.

Anger flooded my veins, rushed heat to my face, and I cursed her as I unclipped my seat belt and scrambled out after locking the duffel inside. I wondered what the hell she was up to; thinking she must’ve been following me since I left home. How else would she know where I’d gone? I certainly hadn’t told her.

I hesitated only a second, watching for her car to U-turn somewhere down the road and turn back. But I only saw taillights.

Please, don’t screw this up,
I prayed, rusty at it as I was.

I pulled my jacket tighter around me as I hurried toward the entrance, beneath the white awning, hoping Allie stayed as invisible as Stephen.

What was this? A parade?

All I needed was for Cissy to tail me in her Lexus.

Not funny,
I told myself as I swallowed hard and went in.

It was like stepping into a shoe box.

The interior looked just as I remembered; the walls crammed with sports memorabilia. Worn-out sneakers and hockey skates dangled from the ceiling, along with grimy old towels that doubtless reeked of putrefied sweat.

Scattered around the tiny space were TV screens silently flashing some sporting event or another. A jukebox playing an old Van Halen tune served as the backdrop for the sharp click of balls from the minipool table.

Everything inside the Time Out Tavern appeared to have seen better days, but it was a comfortable spot to have a Shiners Blond and hang with pals. Malone and I even dropped in on occasion, though hardly enough to be regulars.

The clientele was diametrically opposite the posers who’d crowded the bar at Patrizio. I glanced around at the grizzled-looking dudes in baseball caps and ponytailed women sucking hard on their Marlboros, and I realized that prettified singles putting on airs and pretensions weren’t a problem here.

A few heads turned to check me out as I stood up front, solo, and I wondered if my friendly kidnapper was in the room, making sure I acted like a good girl and didn’t share a beer with a cop.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to really do anything.

Should I order tonic water that I wouldn’t drink, like at my previous stop?

Should I loll around and not order anything, so I stood out like a sore thumb and gave the impression I was out to score drugs or sex?

Honestly, my Little Miss Manners classes hadn’t prepared me for anything like this, nor had all the lectures on social graces my mother had given me through the years (which hadn’t seemed to stick too well).

I finally decided it was best not to stand near the door, looking unsure of myself, so I headed over to the bar and slid up on a stool.

Not wanting to be any more conspicuous than I was—a lone woman in black with pink high-tops, clutching her cell—I ordered a beer. A pair of whiskered and not-sogently creased men halfway down the bar shot me grins that were a mite too friendly for my taste.

Did they think I was a badly dressed hooker? I wondered.

Or just a desperate chick sorely in need of male attention?

I tried to give them discouraging frowns in return and leaned toward my left, where a middle-aged female in leopard print played some kind of videogame while she alternately inhaled her cigarette, took tequila shots, and mumbled, “Well, shit.”

Obviously, Cissy’s doppelganger.

Ha ha.

A nervous smile touched my lips, but quickly faded. I had my hand on my cell, willing it to ring. With the other, I fingered the neck of my Shiners before I began my bad habit of picking off the label.

I felt the sudden puff of breath against my hair before I heard a voice rumble, “Hey, pretty lady, can I buy you a drink? You all by yerself? What a shame.”

A scruffy-looking fellow with an unshaven jaw and brown chunks of hair hanging over his eyes planted a palm on my right and greeted me with a full-on leer.

“No, I’m not alone,” I shot back, and the dude glanced at Leopard-Print Smoking Lady on my other side. I realized where
that
was going, and I shook my head. “I’m not actually
with
anyone, but I’m waiting on a call from”— how best to put it?—“someone close to my boyfriend.”

Scruffy Dude squinted. “So I can’t buy you a drink?”

“No.” Besides, I already had a full Shiners plunked squarely in front of me, and I wouldn’t even have time to drink that. I squinted back at him, wondering suddenly if he wasn’t part of the kidnapping posse, making sure I was flying solo. Though I think he mistook my narrowing my eyes on him as a sign of interest.

“Maybe I could meet you later?” He bent nearer so I could smell the tobacco and beer on his breath, not to mention the manly-man scent of one-hundred-percent perspiration. “I’ve got a six-pack on ice in the cab of my Silverado, right in the parking lot.”

I’ll meet you when hell freezes over, cowboy,
I wanted to say, deciding he was just a loser out looking for love in all the wrong places—well, at least on the wrong bar stool— but I didn’t get the chance to open my mouth.

My cell chimed its silly musical ring at just that moment, and I elbowed the guy in the gut—for which, ungraciously, I did not apologize—as I snapped the phone to my ear.

“Yes?” I said and hunched down over the bar with palm pressed to my other ear, trying to hear, ignoring all else around me.

“The IHOP on Northwest Highway, on the way to the airport. It’s your final destination. Be a good girl and drop it behind the Dumpster in back. You got that?”

Wait a dad-blamed minute.

Was that where the mumbling kidnapper had been phoning me from all along? So he could’ve directed me there in the first place, instead of jerking me around?

Grrr.

I was far less sure at this point that anyone from Team Bad Guy had been watching me. They’d probably strung me along all this time, merely to keep me in line and make sure I behaved.

A tactic surely Cissy would envy.

“Did you hear me?” The muffled voice sounded impatient, and I detected the vague buzz of white noise in the background. It sounded like traffic.

“Loud and clear,” I said.

“And come alone,” the bad guy reminded me, as if I’d forget something like that, “or he’s chopped liver.”

“I’m alone, for Pete’s sake,” I snapped into the phone, but the line had already gone dead.

I dug in my back pocket, tossed ten bucks on the bar, and ran out of there faster than Carl Lewis in his prime.

When I climbed in the Jeep, the clock on the dash showed eleven-twenty.

I hadn’t been playing this ransom game for an hour yet, and it felt like an eternity.

I put the Wrangler in gear and took off in a screech of brakes.

My cell rang again, not long after I’d reached Northwest Highway, heading west. If it was the kidnappers, changing plans, I was going to throw up.

But it wasn’t.

It was only Stephen.

“You all right, kiddo?” he asked, and I quickly told him where I was going and that I’d be dropping the bagful of his old pal’s fake
dinero
.

“I’ve got your back,” he reminded me, “though I don’t think I’m the only one tailing you, Andy. There’s a red BMW Roadster that’s been behind you for a while.”

“Allie Price,” I hissed. It had to be. I wasn’t about to believe the kidnappers drove the same kind of car as Brian’s ex-girl. That would’ve been one coincidence too many.

“The red car belongs to Malone’s colleague,” I told him. “I told her to stay out of this, but she can’t.”

“Well, er, neither could your mother, apparently,”

Stephen said, though he sounded reluctant to have dropped that particular bomb.

“What does that mean?” I did my best to keep from yelling, but I felt close to exploding. It was all I could do to keep the Jeep on the road and talk at once.

“Now don’t get upset, Andy, but I do believe she’s following me, following you. I spotted her beige-colored Lexus with the tinted windows.”

My mother had joined my ransom drop parade?

Was he kidding me?

“You have to make them stop, Stephen,” I said, feeling a rush of sheer panic. “What if someone sees?”

Namely, the kidnappers.

If Stephen had noticed I had a red Beemer and a champagne-hued Lexus on my tail, wouldn’t Malone’s captors, who’d arranged this whole run-about-town so they could make sure I hadn’t called the police?

Could Cissy and Allie have spoiled everything already?

“Oh, God,” I moaned, trying to keep my eyes clear and on the road, when I wanted to pull over and weep.

“Just stay cool,” he told me in that unwavering way of his. “If they suspected anything, they would’ve called off the drop by now. I have a feeling this whole setup was more of a scare tactic than anything, which adds to my suspicion that these folks aren’t pros.”

Aren’t pros?

What did that mean?

Amateur kidnappers?

Well,
that
was reassuring.

“Just continue to follow their instructions, Andy, and we’ll go from there,” Stephen said. “We’ll pin ’em down with the GPS, find out where they live. Then, once we’ve got Brian safely home, we’ll call the police.”

“Okay.” That sounded great to me.

“Good girl,” he remarked before he hung up, and I shakily set my cell in my lap, returning both hands to the steering wheel.

Good girl.

There it was again.

I scrunched up my forehead, overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu.

Those were the very words the kidnappers had used, and not just in this last phone call. I forced my mind back to what they’d said earlier and tried to figure out why the phrase nagged at me.

Be a good little girl, and he won’t get hurt, okay?

Be a good girl and drop it behind the Dumpster in back.

Got it?

As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t nail down the connection.

If I hadn’t been so distracted by the satchel full of counterfeit money sitting on my backseat or the thought of rolling along Northwest Highway with a caravan behind me, I might’ve been able to retrieve that lost information more quickly. It’d be one of those things that popped into my head in the middle of the night or during an unrelated conversation, one of those “Eureka!” moments that’s so annoying, because it’s always on a time delay.

I fixed my eyes on the road, watching the same landmarks pass that I’d seen out the window the night before, en route to The Men’s Club with Allie.

The Walgreens, the Jack Daniel’s billboard, the Family Dollar store, the Jaguar dealership, and the Best Western.