Clawback (34 page)

After being momentarily stunned, it took almost too long for Cami's brain to register the words “bathrobe tie” and to understand the threat. If Jessie's plan was strangulation, Cami needed a countermeasure, and she needed it now.

Pivoting away, Cami lunged for the next usable weapon—one of the knives from the block on the kitchen counter. Knowing the larger ones would be unwieldy in close combat, she opted for two small paring knives as she darted past before positioning herself at the far end of the island.

The two women stood still at opposite ends of the quartz counter, each silently assessing the other. Cami noticed that even though Jessica had deflected Cami's initial blow, she had nonetheless suffered some damage. There was a jagged, bleeding wound on her cheek. A steady stream of the blood ran unchecked down her neck and dribbled off her breast.

Measuring from the top of the island, Cami estimated Jessie to be at least five six or five seven. She most likely outweighed Cami by a good forty pounds. It looked as though her arms might be long enough to enable her to fend off the short-bladed paring knives in Cami's hands without much difficulty. And so, Cami decided, if the knives weren't going to be the final answer, then that's where Cami needed to keep Jessie's undivided focus—on those two blades.

Still at the end of the island, Cami forced herself to take a deep breath. The element of surprise may have been taken from her, but Amir had shown her how to turn an opponent's supposed advantage in terms of size and weight against them. Cami's next proposed move was designed to do just that.

Jessie took a single challenging step toward the counter, one which also carried her a step nearer the knife block.

“Don't,” Cami commanded.

Holding both paring knives in plain sight, she, too, moved out from behind the island and into the small passage between the island and the kitchen countertop. Cami's and Jessie's next long stare-down took place with nothing separating them but five feet or so of open space.

“You'll never get to the knife block,” Cami warned. “I'll be all over you before you do.”

“Why don't you try it, you little bug?” Jessie sneered, taking another cautious step forward. “I dare you. You have no idea who you're dealing with.”

There was a certain familiarity in all of that, a reminder of Cami's old kung fu days, only this time the opponents were trading insults rather than formally polite bows. And then, for a second or so, Cami was back on that long-ago school bus with the bully needling her.
Which are you, Chinee or Frenchee?

Taking her own forward step, Cami needled right back. “Darers go first,” she said, with a smile. “The way I always heard it, the bigger they come, the harder they fall.”

Letting the tie drop from her hands, Jessica sprang forward, and Cami launched her own attack in the same instant. Jessica's whole focus was on reaching the knife block and grabbing for a handle. Ducking forward with the blades of her own knives nearly touching the floor, Cami darted in well under the taller woman's outstretched arms and under her radar as well. As they collided full-force, Cami rose to her full height, smashing into the bottom of Jessica's chin with the top of her head.

The blow was solid enough that it left Cami still standing but dizzy and seeing stars. Jessie, however, pitched straight backward, falling all the way to the terrazzo-tiled floor. With nothing to break her fall, her head bounced twice on the unyielding surface. After that she lay still.

Not knowing how long Jessica would be out, Cami didn't hesitate. Dropping the now unnecessary knives, she used all her strength to roll Jessie's considerable deadweight over onto her side. Next she grabbed the fallen bathrobe tie and bound Jessica's hands securely behind her back, finishing by bending Jessica's knees backward and securing her feet to her hands.

Cami was standing upright and admiring her hog-tying handiwork when Jessie started coming around. When she moaned, a small trickle of blood dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. Obviously she had bitten her tongue.

Out of breath with exertion, Cami quickly gathered up all the knives in the room—both the ones she'd dropped as well as the ones in the block. Out of sight behind Jessie's back, she stuffed all of the knives—block and all—onto the top shelf of the freezer, where they were both out of reach and out of sight. Then Cami went to the bedroom and retrieved Jessie's handgun. Returning to the kitchen, she dropped the fallen robe over Jessie's bloodied and naked form.

The woman's eyes burned with helpless fury. “You bith!” she muttered, lisping the word past a painfully swollen tongue. “You little bith!”

“You should actually be saying thank you about now,” Cami told her pleasantly. “When the cops show up here, you're going to be glad to have that robe.”

A
li had a bulletproof vest in the Cayenne, but if she was going to make the campaign worker fiction fly, she couldn't very well show up in a vest. Her silk shantung sheath made no allowance for carrying a Taser, and her very high heels weren't exactly doorbelling-friendly, either. She ventured up the walkway through a xeriscaped front yard, arriving at the front door with her fight-or-flight mode fully engaged.

“All right,” she said quietly into the cell phone now stowed strategically in her bra and switched on speaker. “Here goes. Quiet now, everybody. Not a word.”

She pressed the bell. A two-toned chime sounded inside the house, but that was all. No one came to the door. No one answered. She rang the bell again.

“I guess nobody's home,” she said resignedly to Stu. “You're sure Cami's car is still here?”

“I'm not sure of anything at this point,” Stu replied. “The GPS is still there, but the car may not be.”

“The blinds on the front of the house are all closed,” Ali said. “But there's a gate on the side of the house. I'm going to go around back and see if I can see anything there.”

“Don't,” Stu cautioned. “Please.”

But Ali's mind was already made up. “Stay with me,” she told him. “This won't take long.”

Walking around the house, she was grateful for the flagstone walkway that led to a side gate. The rough gravel covering the yard would have torn her heels to shreds, and in the scorching late-afternoon heat, walking barefoot wasn't an option.

She stopped at the gate and was tall enough to peer over it. The back of the property consisted of a small flagstone-paved patio, a lap pool, and another tiny bit of graveled yard. At the end of the yard was a thick oleander hedge lining what was evidently a golf course fairway. There was a golf cart parked in the center of the fairway with a golfer lining up to take a shot, but closer at hand, Ali saw no signs of life. There was no one swimming in the pool. There was no one seated at the patio table with its obligatory four chairs and brightly colored umbrella. The place seemed empty and deserted.

“Okay,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Can't stand here any longer or a neighbor will report me for trespassing. Going in now.”

Because of the pool, Ali knew there would be a state-mandated pool latch on the inside of the gate. She pulled up on it, cringing at how noisy it sounded in the stillness of that scorching afternoon. Carefully setting one foot in front of the other, she inched onto the patio.

The first set of patio sliders evidently led to a bedroom. She could see closed blinds and beyond those another covering of some kind, maybe blackout curtains. She stopped there, though. Holding one ear to the glass, she heard nothing—no one talking; no radio playing background music; no TV set droning away on an afternoon news show. Convinced the bedroom was empty, Ali moved on.

It wasn't until she reached the patio table that she saw that the door space in the next set of sliders was wide open. Again she paused, listened, and again heard nothing. She pulled the phone out of her bra and held it up to her lips.

“Something's haywire here,” she whispered, taking the phone off speaker mode. “Nobody's here. Door's open. Going in.”

The phone went back on speaker and into her bra without Ali bothering to listen to Stu's latest bark of protest. She edged up to the near end of the wall of windows and peered around the frame. Through a set of sheer curtains she saw a standard modern great-room arrangement—a kitchen with an island that looked out onto a combination living room and dining room. There was a dining table with six chairs; two sofas with matching end tables and lamps; a flat-screen TV set hanging on the wall over a gas log fireplace.

Then, as her eyes adjusted to the difference between the harsh outside sunlight and the more muted interior, Ali saw something else. Broken pieces of glass—or pottery, maybe?—gleamed on the dark area rug beneath the two sofas.

Something broken, Ali told herself. Did that mean there had been an altercation of some kind? A struggle? Was Cami hurt? Dead?

She hesitated for a cautious moment longer. Still there were no signs of movement inside the house and no signs of life, either. In the distant background she heard faint strains of approaching sirens, but she was too worried about Cami to give them much thought. Instead, she eased herself silently into the room and moved quickly to the spot on the carpet where she had seen what she assumed to be broken glassware. She bent down close enough to examine one of the pieces, peering at it closely without actually touching it. A glance was enough to convince her that it was a hunk of something that looked like carved marble. The base of something, perhaps—a lamp, maybe?

That's when she spotted blood. There were drops of it on the white-tiled floor and some on one of the broken pieces, too. Suddenly she heard a rustling sound coming from somewhere behind her.

Goose bumps instantly covered her body. A chill ran up her spine. Standing and spinning, she fully expected to find an armed attacker directly behind her. No one was there, but the sound came again, louder this time. A thrashing, bumping noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere in the kitchen, from the far side of the quartz-topped island.

Heart in her throat, Ali stepped toward the sound. A moment later she saw a naked woman, tied hand and foot, struggling desperately to free herself. Ali was about to reach out and offer to help her when she heard a fierce pounding on the front door.

“Police! Open up! We're coming in!”

The front door splintered under the weight of a battering ram. A troop of uniformed officers, all wearing SWAT vests and helmets and carrying automatic weapons, burst into the house—through the shattered front door and through the open slider from the patio as well.

“On your knees,” one of them shouted, grabbing Ali by the arm and flinging her roughly to the floor. “On your knees and don't move!”

C
ami was halfway across the first fairway when a golf cart with a red sign marked
MARSHAL
in the front window came bearing down on her.

“Hey, lady,” the old guy in the cart yelled at her. “You can't be here. This is a golf course. I've had unauthorized people out here running around like crazy today. One of you is going to get beaned on the head by a golf ball and end up dead.”

“Where'd he go?” Cami asked.

“Where'd who go?”

“The other guy on the course. He came this way, too. I saw him. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and sandals.”

“Who isn't dressed in Hawaiian shirts?”

“And he was carrying a computer.”

“Oh,” the marshal said. “That guy. I have no idea where he went. People called to complain that he was out here screwing up their game. When I came looking for him, guess who I ended up finding? You.”

“You've got to call the cops.”

“Crossing a fairway is a bad idea, but it's not exactly a federal offense. Come on, sweetheart. Get on board here. Let's get you out of the way so the people waiting to play this hole can at least tee off.”

“You don't understand,” Cami insisted. “The man's a crook, and he's about to get away. He and his girlfriend have been holding me at gunpoint. She's back there in the house. I left her tied up, but I don't know how good my knots are. She might be able to get loose.”

The marshal already had a phone out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “If you want to call the cops, you dial.”

Once the phone was in Cami's hand, it was all she could do to hold on to it as the speeding cart bounced through a narrow line of gravel-lined rough and onto another fairway.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“My name is Camille Lee. I was kidnapped earlier this afternoon, by two people who held me prisoner at a house in Peoria—15540 West Par Five Drive. I managed to get away. The man took off, but the woman is still at the house. I tied her up before I left, but I'm worried she may get loose. Her name is Jessie—Jessica Denton, I believe. The man is someone you're looking for—Jason McKinzie. He ran off across a golf course . . .” She held the phone away and looked at the guy driving the cart. “What course?”

“Rancho Vista,” he said. Cami quickly relayed that bit of information into the phone.

“Are you hurt?” the emergency operator was asking. “Do you require medical assistance?”

“I don't need anything but some help in catching the bad guy. Help catching both of them. They're planning to leave the country tonight. If we don't stop them, they'll get away. Please, please hurry.”

She hung up, saying thank you as she handed the phone back to her driver.

“My name's Larry,” he said, stuffing the phone back into his pocket. “I'm taking you to the office, by the way,” he added. “I'll need to write up a report about this. Residents aren't allowed on the course unless they're actually playing a round.”

The speeding cart rounded a sharp corner and careened onto a cart path, aiming for a long, low building with umbrella-dotted dining decks on one end and a pro shop and club drop-off at the other. Larry drove around to the front of the building, stopping the cart near where a mob of excited people were milling around the front entrance next to a valet parking stand.