Death in Paradise (46 page)

"For the moment," he said, "your pesky little friend is just fine. Whether it stays that way is up to you."

"My, aren't we melodramatic tonight?" I said. "You know this is stupid, don't you? I didn't know anything and I was going to fly out of here tomorrow, permanently out of your hair. Instead, you had to come after me and get in my face and threaten to harm a child. Not the best way to work at getting away with crime, is it, Jeff?" We were walking now with him slightly behind me, back the way I'd just come. Although the night seemed to call for whispers, I made no effort to lower my voice.

"Shut up," he said. His voice was almost a whisper. "You talk too much. You've always talked too much." He stopped, suddenly, grabbed my shoulders, and whirled me around to face him, giving me a couple of rough shakes for good measure. "Where's the laptop? Didn't we tell you to bring it?"

I bit back the retort that jumped to my lips. In a careful, calm voice completely at odds with the way I felt, I said, "When Laura is safely back in the hotel, you get the computer."

I have a wonderful advantage over most people. When I get mad, it doesn't cloud my judgment or bathe me in a wild red cloud. I get colder and calmer and fiercer. I bring all the stubbornness my mother never could train out of me to bear on the matter—in this case, keeping the bad guys from winning. I knew this was a bad guy. Even in the dim light, I'd seen the bandages on his wrist.

"Bitch," he growled, shaking me fiercely with the hands that still lay on my shoulders, that lay much too close to my throat. "I told you—"

I brought my arms up inside his, up and out, breaking his hold, and stepped back. "What the hell—" There was uncertainty in his voice, as well as rage. These bozos didn't have a plan. They were playing this by ear, too.

"Where's Laura?" I demanded.

"You'll know soon enough," he said, "now get moving!"

"You sound like a B movie."

"Get moving!" His shove was supposed to send me careening down the parking lot. On TV, it would have. On TV, I also would have been whimpering, making helpless female in distress noises. I was in distress all right, but not yet helpless. I took one step backward, stopped, and stood my ground.

There was a growing edge of hysteria in his anger. I wanted to keep pushing him, taunting him to make him lose control. In some ways, an out-of-control bad guy was scarier, in others, it gave me an advantage. For all the awfulness of the moment, I had been here before, and he hadn't. Like I'd told Bernstein and Nihilani, I'd played with the pros. Not that that meant I was going to win—Jeff had already almost won the first round—but he was shaken. He'd tried to drown me, he'd tried to run me down with a car, and I was still standing.

"I'm taking you to that damned kid," he muttered, his voice nearly strangled by fury. "Now get moving!"

I wasn't going to walk with my back to him, though. I'd made that mistake once with this man. I dropped back so I was walking beside him. He had to keep turning his head to watch me. He had something on a strap hanging from his shoulder. Maybe his night scope?

"I want you walking in front of me," he ordered. "Now!"

"Been there," I said. "Done that. Remember?"

He came to a halt again. "What the fuck is with you?"

It was stupid and dangerous, but I took a perverse pleasure in defying him. "The fuck with me is named Jeff Pullman," I said. "Wife killer. Seducer and killer of poor, trusting Rory Altschuler. She thought she was helping you to do something good, to set things right, and you used her and discarded her like she mattered no more than a tissue. You tried to drown me and now you're threatening a little girl. A girl younger than your own daughter. There's nothing wrong with me, Jeff. There's
everything
wrong with you. You've been a lobbyist so long, having your views and beliefs shaped by whomever will pay you the most, you've lost sight of the fact that there are some absolutes in this world."

I felt his rage swell. With my infrared eyes I could see it billowing around him like a crimson cloud. He had to think of himself as the one who had been wronged. The victim of a bad marriage who was only trying to make things in his world right again—getting rid of his drunken sot of a wife and sending his daughter back to the school she loved.

"Laura Mitchell is only a child," I repeated. "What, in your warped philosophy, justifies hurting an innocent child to protect your own sorry ass?"

"Shut up," he said. "Shut up. Keep moving and don't talk. You don't understand anything."

"I understand. But I don't think you do. Laura is a bright, interesting little girl that nobody pays much attention to. She likes to read and she's interested in people and she likes to eat great big gooey ice cream sundaes. What are you going to do with her, Jeff? What's your plan? Are you going to strangle her like you did Martina? Close your big clumsy hands around that skinny little neck and squeeze until those innocent blue eyes pop out? Squeeze until she's limp as a rag doll and then throw her away? She has an awfully thin neck. It shouldn't be much of a job for a big strong man like you. I suppose once you've disposed of one or two inconvenient human beings, it gets easier, doesn't it, even though, as a father, you may feel a slight twinge at killing a child?"

I wasn't supposed to hear the footsteps sneaking up behind me. I wasn't supposed to notice the way his head jerked up, the way his eyes flickered as he watched the approach. I was supposed to be a dumb and cooperative victim, like his, like their others, had been. Twice today he had caught me off guard. This time he wouldn't be so lucky. I could hear as the person coming up behind me dug in her toes for the final leap. Quick as a wink I stepped sideways, turned, and stuck out my foot.

Linda Janovich, caught in midair, tripped over it and went sprawling. As Pullman rushed toward me, I brought out the Mace-and-pepper spray and gave him a couple blasts right in the face. At the same time, I hit the alarm, shattering the night with its shrieks. Unlike a car alarm, this one would continue until someone turned it off.

Pullman was down on his knees, pawing at his face, but Linda was up and coming at me. I had counted on them both being unarmed, since carrying guns is very difficult, particularly for the amateur crook. But I hadn't thought about knives. Or rather, I'd only thought about knives in my Scuba Woman fantasy. But the knife that she was carrying was very real and she was waving it in my direction like she meant business. Where the hell was Naveen? It sure was hard to get good help these days.

I bent down and snatched the strap off Jeff's shoulder, pulling the thing free. Whatever was in the case was nice and heavy. As she lunged, I swung.

Point to me. The knife barely pricked my shoulder but the case made nice solid contact with the side of her head. I jumped back and swung again as she dove for my knees. I was aiming for her face but she dove low and I got a rather ineffectual hit off the back of her head before she knocked me off my feet and we both went down.

I had no false pride about the odds here. I was not Wonder-woman. There were two of them and they'd already killed twice, while I'd had rather a debilitating day. I had never been on the high school wrestling team. I
had
been up close and personal with knife-wielding vermin, though, and the rules of engagement were simple. I intended to walk away from here with my skin relatively intact. I didn't care whether Linda and Jeff walked away or were carried. I didn't even care if someone had to pick up their pieces and carry them off in baskets.

I grabbed the hand that had the knife, shouted for Naveen, and slammed my forehead into her face as hard as I could. The responding crunch was more satisfying than Maui potato chips. I pulled my head back and slammed again, following it up by jamming the fingers of my free hand into the base of her throat.

She made an ugly gurgling sound and dropped the knife, rolling off me and curling up into a gagging, whimpering ball, screaming that I'd ruined her face. She actually said, "How could you?" She killed people; under extreme duress I broke noses. I didn't see that there was any comparison.

I turned to see whether I had to deal with Jeff but by this time, the shy and reticent Naveen had finally materialized and seemed to have him subdued and was on his radio, calling for other security people to back him up. I stared at the knife, and at Linda and Jeff. My hand reached toward it, trembling with desire, before I willed it back down to my side.

We still had to find Laura. "Look in his pockets and see if you can find any car keys," I said.

Linda was struggling to get up. She'd gotten as far as her knees and swayed there on all fours, shaking her head like a confused bull. "Stay down," I ordered. As she continued to struggle to her feet, I yielded to a base impulse. I didn't warn her. I was not the cops. I kicked her. A good, solid blow to the ribs, hard enough to jar my knee and hip and to promise days of limping from bruised toes. And damn, it felt good!

This time, she went down and stayed down. I kicked the knife farther away from her hand. Naveen stooped to grab it. "Don't," I said. "You don't want to mess up the fingerprints. Let the police take care of it."

Jonetta came rushing up out of the darkness. "Damn it all, Thea," she said, "you didn't tell me there were two parking lots. I've been wandering all over hell and gone trying to find you. If it hadn't been for that alarm, I'd still be over there bumping around in the gloom."

I turned my back on all of them. I no longer knew who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Away in the distance, where the hotel's own grand entrance drive met the main road, I could see the blinking emergency lights of the arriving constabulary. Behind me, keys jingled. "Here you go," Naveen said. I turned, grabbed them from his hand, and headed back toward the end of the parking lot. I wanted to find that car with the warm hood. I was still looking for Laura.

Jonetta came panting along behind me, jingling as she walked. "What is the matter with you, girl? You mad at me? It's not my fault that I was wrong."

Maybe it wasn't. And maybe it wasn't her fault that she'd gotten lost. But right now I had no response to that. My mother's oft-repeated instructions were that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. For once, I was following her advice. I doubted if she would have been proud of me, though. For one thing, she's constantly admonishing me to stay out of trouble. For another, she'd be mortified to know she had a daughter who was a down-and-dirty street fighter. She would rather have me punctured by knives than smashing people's noses and crushing their windpipes. Or maybe not. Maybe I was wrong. I got this toughness from somewhere.

I couldn't remember which car it was. I had been under rather a lot of stress just then. I made my way down the row, feeling the engines, until I came to a warm one. I tried the key. Opened the doors. Looked in the backseat and the front seat. No Laura. I went around to the back and stuck the key in the trunk lock. All the while, Jonetta followed me, talking at me, demanding to know what was wrong and why I wasn't answering her. Before I opened the trunk, I put my finger to my lips and she fell blissfully silent.

The lid popped up, the light came on, and there was Laura, curled up on her side, terrifyingly still. She was encased in so many yards of duct tape she looked like a badly wrapped package. I closed my eyes and leaned against the car for support, pressing back the ugly images that crowded into my mind. Another car. Another trunk. Another body. Just please God let her be alive.

 

 

 

Chapter 32

 

I took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and leaned down into the trunk. Carefully, I slipped my arms under Laura's body and lifted her out. She was warm. Limp but warm, and she was breathing. I sat down on the ground behind the car, cradling her in my lap, and gently loosened the tape across her mouth, slipping a finger underneath to work it free of her lips. I knew only too well how easily torn-off duct tape can take a piece of the lip with it. Then I ripped it off. She moaned and moved in my arms but her eyes didn't open.

Jonetta was talking again but I didn't pay any attention. I was in a small universe that only had room for me and this child, this sweet, brave, mistreated child. The red marks on her arms and legs told a story of struggle. It made me regret not getting a few more licks at Jeff and Linda while I'd had the chance. By the time I'd freed her hands and feet, we were surrounded by police and security guards, people who jostled us and shouted questions at me as if I'd suddenly been rendered deaf.

Ignoring them, I folded my body protectively over Laura, trying to shield her from the eyes of this noisy, intrusive crowd. I heard a loud voice demanding quiet, demanding that everyone move back and then Kane Nihilani shouldered his way through the pack and squatted down beside me. "How is she?" he asked. "How are you?"

"She should have a doctor," I said. "I'm fine." He glanced heavenward but being a man of few words, said nothing.

Laura shifted restlessly in my arms and opened her eyes. "Thea..." she mumbled.