Читать книгу Better Off Dead - Meryl Sawyer - Страница 12

“EVERY INCH HAS BEEN RESTORED to its original condition,” Brock told the admirers clustered around his Gull Wing in the Bethesda Sports Center where the car rally was being held.

The two doors were open and thrust upward like the majestic wings of a metallic bird, Brock thought. The lipstick-red paint glistened and the chrome was like a mirror. Hell, Brock decided, his car was better than it had been when it rolled off the assembly line in Stuttgart in 1952.

His baby. He had other cars, sure. A George Barris modified all steel ’32 Ford and a rare ’27 T Roadster, but the Gull Wing was his favorite. It was a crowd pleaser. People flipped over the unusual doors.

The show would close for the day in another twenty minutes. There were a few people wandering around looking at the other cars, but he was the only one with a crowd. He grinned, pleased with himself and the Mercedes.

He caught his distorted reflection on the chrome fender. His brown eyes were grotesquely wide as if someone were pulling taffy. His sandy hair didn’t show, but he knew women found him handsome.

Brock admitted he was a tad short. Before Obelisk had lured him away from the Defense Department, a general had accused Brock of having a Napoleonic complex. The prick had a tragic fatal car accident the following week.

The cell phone clipped to his belt vibrated. He yanked it off and glanced at the screen. It was his operatives in Santa Fe, Number 111, a man, and 32, a woman.

They had the bitch!

Brock punched “talk” and walked away from the car to avoid anyone overhearing him. “Yeah?”

“I—I d-don’t know what happened,” the woman stammered. “She slipped out the back door.”

“Unfuckingbelievable!”

“She’s only been gone a minute. Well, maybe two minutes.”

“The bitch can’t be far. Get her!”

Brock hit the end button. Hearing how his operatives had bungled it could wait. At least they hadn’t started searching before they notified him. Samantha Robbins—now Lindsey Wallace—was a black-bagger, a high risk WITSEC witness. The Federal Marshals knew she was very likely to be killed. She would have been given an emergency 800 number at the U.S. Marshal’s D.C. office.

Her cover blown, the bitch would call the number. It took Brock a few seconds to get on the Internet. He always insisted the con bring him a cell phone with Internet access for emergencies like this. Trouble was no two phones worked the same.

It felt like hours, but it was less than a minute before he was online and had contacted his computer at Obelisk. He gave it instructions to dial his anonymizer. This remailer was based in Switzerland and used a super-powerful software program that buried your real e-mail address.

Within seconds—thanks to technology—the remailer had contacted the phone company in D.C. When Lindsey Wallace tried to alert WITSEC that she’d been compromised, all she would get was a busy signal.

PANTING, A STABBING ACHE in her side from running, Lindsey slumped against an adobe wall blocks from where she’d listened to the hit team over the cell phone she’d left behind in her gallery. She punched the autodial for the emergency number she’d been given.

Still busy.

How could that be? Perhaps there was a storm back East or another widespread power outage. What else could explain a constant busy signal on an emergency line?

Frozen by fear, she could hardly think. Derek had drilled her relentlessly on what to do if worse came to worst. What would he say to do now?

There was an FBI field office here somewhere. Contact them. Her fingers were trembling so much she could hardly dial, but finally she managed to call information and obtain the number.

A busy signal.

Panic curdled her blood. What was going on? She was an expert on statistics and knew the odds of the emergency line and the local FBI office both being busy were astronomical.

Someone knew what she would do and had deliberately blocked her access to those numbers. She couldn’t imagine how, but she had to get away. Without her purse, she had no money, no ATM card, no credit cards. No gun.

Nothing.

She didn’t dare go to her condo where she kept an emergency stash. If they were clever enough to block the phone lines, they would know where she lived.

She could phone the police, but it would take a lot of explaining and calls to the U.S. Marshal’s office before her story could be verified. The hit team would expect her to do this. They might even be waiting near the station. One sniper shot and she would be in a black bag.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a beam of light swinging back and forth. The flashlight was far down the type of narrow unpaved street that made Santa Fe so quaint. She saw the hulking shape of the man in the shop, methodically searching the bushes. If she ran, he would see her.

Her only choice was to climb the adobe wall as quietly as possible and drop down the other side onto the adjacent street. Like most adobe walls in the historic area, this one had been crudely made by the Native Americans who had been used as slave labor by the Conquistadors. Over time it had weathered and had several holes where the adobe had deteriorated.

She jammed the toe of her sandal in an indentation part-way up the wall. Bracing on that leg, she boosted herself upward. She managed to grasp the top of the wall with the tips of her nails. Heaving one leg skyward, her foot caught the top of the wall.

The broomstick skirt made it nearly impossible to scramble to the top. After two tries, she was lying flat on top of the ancient adobe wall. The light was so close now that the man holding it would hear her if she dropped down the other side.

A pickup with a bad muffler and a radio blaring music from a station in Juarez rumbled up the street. Pachucos—bad boys—out looking for trouble. She waited until they were closer, almost upon the man with the flashlight, then she plunged off the wall.

Thump! She landed on her side and rolled. Starting at her shoulder, a sharp, punishing jolt of pain seared through her body. Shuddering in agony, she pulled her feet under her and lurched upright. The pachucos’ music was still blaring, and she forced herself to run, knowing the noise she made couldn’t be heard.

She breathed through clenched teeth. With each pump of her lungs, a stab of pain told her a rib must have broken. She couldn’t lift one arm above her waist. Her shoulder might be broken. Sweat gushing from every pore, breath coming in ragged painful spurts, she willed herself into a fast walk. Running was out of the question.

It was only a few blocks to Romero’s house. If he would give her some money and lend her his car, she could drive to Phoenix. There she could call WITSEC or the FBI field office. The hit team would expect her to head for the airport, but she wouldn’t be that stupid.

What would she tell Romero?

Camino de las Animas—the soul’s way—was an unpaved narrow street with sprawling haciendas. Romero’s house was at the far end. She spotted the wrought-iron lantern shining at his front door. Like a beacon the light sent a burst of adrenaline through her. Somehow she broke into a sprint.

She charged through the arched adobe gateway and up the steps of the hacienda built almost two hundred years earlier. Cringing with pain, a wild story for Romero forming in her brain, her world suddenly pitched from side to side, then halted with a mind-numbing jolt.

The front door was wide-open.

“Romero,” she cried out before she could stop herself.

What if the woman was inside? It had been a man with the flashlight. He couldn’t have beaten her here. More important, how did they know about Romero?

Zachary bounded out of the house. The soft lantern light revealed fresh red blood on the retriever’s paws. A suffocating wave of terror enveloped her like a vision of hell.

“Please, please,” she whispered, “don’t let them have hurt Romero.”

Common sense said to run, but she refused to desert her friend. She tiptoed into the house and was met with dead silence. A single lamp was on in the living room Romero had so meticulously decorated with furnishings from the Spanish Colonial period.

The only sound was the click-click of Zachary’s nails against the tile floor. The aroma of blue corn enchiladas filled the air. She inched forward. Each ragged breath brought white-hot pain from her ribs.

In the dining room, she called out, “Romero, are you there?”

No answer.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen. Sprawled on the floor in a puddle of blood and bloody pawprints, Romero’s dark eyes stared up at the ceiling.

“Oh, God, no!”

She staggered forward and fell to her knees, scraping them on the tile. Someone—it had to be the woman—had slit Romero’s throat. Anger like invisible lightning arced through her.

Why? Why? Why?

Why kill an innocent man? It was incomprehensible. She knew Rutherford and Ames were responsible. Corporate piranhas, they let nothing and no one get in their way.

In a heartbeat the anger drained from her. They had more money, more resources than she did. They were able to get around WITSEC. What could she possibly do?

“Come and get me,” she called out. “I’m ready to die.”

It was true. She’d been living in hell for over a year. Tyler had married another woman. She couldn’t see her sister or niece, her only family. The way things were going her purgatory seemed endless.

Now this.

A kind, wonderful man had befriended her. He’d paid for his trouble with his life. She hoped the woman hadn’t tortured him somehow before she put the blade to his throat.

Tears sparkled on her lashes, and then blurred her vision as she waited to die. Seconds passed. The house was eerily still except for the low hum of the refrigerator. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. With a broad swipe of his tongue, Zach licked her face.

This could mean only one thing. The woman was searching for her elsewhere. They may have thought she had car keys in her pocket or had gotten a ride or that she had gone to the police station.

Hang on, she thought. Those bastards had money and would kill anyone who got in their way, but she had something more important. Truth was on her side. She had to get away and live to testify.

She reached over to close Romero’s eyes. To his left, hidden by the shadow from the kitchen table was a message scrawled on the cabinet in blood.

Lindsey

Kill

me

“What?”

The woman must have dipped Romero’s finger in his own blood. The bile rose up in the back of her throat. She prayed the poor man had been dead by then.

There was a purpose to his death, she decided. They’d slit his throat to frame her for his murder. Why, when they wanted to kill her? It took a second for her to realize the killers hadn’t a clue where she was, and they wanted more manpower in finding her. What better way than to have the police after her, as well?

“I’m sorry,” she told Romero’s lifeless body. “I knew better than to make a friend. Forgive me.”

With her fingertip she gently closed Romero’s eyes. She kneeled beside him and said the Irish Blessing just as she had when each of her parents had been lowered into their graves.

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind always be at your back

May the sun shine upon your face

The rains fall soft upon your fields

And, until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.