Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) (9 page)

Passing a fireplace mantel on his way from one window to another, he caught a glimpse of family portraits angled creatively between a length of fake ivy. A fresh-faced, youthful Madalina stood between middle-aged parents who were already showing a lot of gray in their hair. Madalina’s mother, with shorter hair more silver than black, looked like the go-getter, effervescent sort. She was always smiling, always focused and alert. The father, taller than the mother and Madalina both, had a more stoic appearance. Yet there was something about the gleam in his eyes and the curl at the corner of his mouth that made Cole think Madalina’s father could be a handful. Madalina ranged in age from perhaps nine to eighteen, with one picture from prom night. She’d had shorter hair then, but was still a beauty in her crimson gown and wrist corsage of rosebuds. Her date was a gangly boy with braces and a piece of hair sticking up at the back who reminded Cole of Dennis the Menace.

Moving on, the images lingering in his mind, he looked through the edge of the blinds to the road.

Elsewhere in the house, he heard Madalina going through drawers and cabinets.

“Find anything?” he called out.

“Not yet.”

The banging and squeak of drawer hardware ceased.

Cole regarded the stormy day from another bedroom, gaining a different perspective of the yard and part of the driveway. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see the entire front of the house. The garage blocked his view of the other houses on this side of the street and impeded his ability to see vehicles until they were right in front of the home.

Not an optimal situation for surveillance.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

T
he extreme relief Madalina felt when she realized the house was intact faded as her attention turned to the search for clues. She tried all the usual places first: the nightstand drawers in her parents’ bedroom, the master closet, the cabinets beneath the double sinks. She even tried the box under the bed that she knew contained her mother’s favorite pictures and letters. Nothing new had been added, and nothing looked out of place or suspicious. She moved through the guest room, which had once been
her
bedroom. Madalina had taken all her things when she moved out, leaving nothing behind for her mother and father to cling to. That didn’t mean she didn’t experience little pangs of nostalgia as she searched the old familiar closet, which was now stuffed with holiday supplies and decorations.

She hit the kitchen next, sorting through the “everything” drawer—pawing through scissors, odds and ends, tape, glue, thumbtacks, a notepad, and extra pens. No strange letters with explanations about the dragon were anywhere to be found.

Just as she turned to the refrigerator, where numerous notes were suspended by butterfly magnets, a hand slithered over her mouth. A second pair of hands swooped her legs from beneath her, a neat display of timing and skill. A leather glove smothered her shouts and screams while she kicked and thrashed, desperate to make some kind of noise. Carried through the kitchen and out the open sliding glass door—which had been closed when she’d entered earlier—Madalina flailed a fist toward the aluminum frame, only to have her arm chop blocked before she made contact.

Cole was just around the corner in one of the bedrooms. If she could create a ruckus, he would probably hear her despite the storm unleashing a torrent of rain and low growls of thunder. Her attempts to alert him failed.

The men carried her across the back porch, moving quickly and in tandem, suggesting they had quite a lot of skill at abduction. She caught glimpses of dark clothing and running shoes with thick tread. Madalina screamed into the leather, thrashing harder, succeeding only in making her abductors trap her arms tighter against her body. The garage wall provided excellent cover as the men ran along the side of the house. Madalina knew this was a major blind spot, impossible to see from any other vantage point. Many California houses were structured in this way, leaving a long pathway between the side of the home and the fencing separating one property from another.

Running with her through the open side gate, from which the lock had been cut, the men darted through a stand of palms and foliage into the neighbor’s front yard. Madalina’s mother had prided herself on the degree of privacy she’d achieved with her many plants and bushy trees. Little had she known that it would keep her daughter from being spotted during an abduction.

Before she knew what had happened, Madalina found herself in the back of a sedan parked one house up on the same side of the street. All but invisible to Cole unless he ran out to the front yard or the end of the driveway. A scream finally ripped through the interior of the car as it pulled away from the curb, circling back toward the intersection. Held down by the weight of a body, face forced into the seat cushion, Madalina ceased fighting long enough to make a new plan. There had to be some way to outmaneuver the man pinning her to the seat. Some way to take him off guard.

If only she’d paid more attention in the kitchen or heard the hiss of the sliding glass door. If only she had glimpsed shadows, recognized the scuff of a shoe on the floor.

Madalina’s parents’ room gave Cole no better view than the other two. He paced before the window, restless, squinting past the deluge to the street. It was raining so hard that the droplets bounced off the asphalt in visible rebounds. Fronds from small palms along the front of the porch bent under the weight of the onslaught, and a steady stream had already started to race along the gutters on the other side of the street.

Pacing out of the master bedroom, he stalked down the hallway into the living room. “Anything? I have to tell you, I don’t like that I can’t see the upper half of the street. I’m sure it’s great privacy for your folks, but it’s crap for surveillance.”

Silence.

He glanced toward the kitchen, realizing something seemed off about the sound of the rain. When he saw the open sliding glass door, he brought the gun up and swept the kitchen, then stepped out onto the back porch. An awning kept the rain at bay.

“Madalina!” He ran into the house, bellowing her name, once he saw she wasn’t outside. “Madalina! Are you in here?” Cole checked each bedroom again and both bathrooms, thinking they might have crossed paths. The lack of an answer was ominous.

She wasn’t in the house.

Outside, he darted along the back of the home, taking the corner of the narrow pathway with the gun raised, posture slightly crouched. Out from under the protection of the porch cover, the rain pelted his hair, his skin. The gate at the other end of the pathway stood wide open.

Somehow he didn’t think Madalina had made the grave mistake of wandering out front by herself. Running, he blew past the gate, winding up in the driveway with the Jaguar. It was still there, and Madalina wasn’t inside.

He checked the street, the sidewalk, the neighbor’s front yard.

Nothing.

Despite all his precautions, Madalina was gone.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

L
eft, right, right, left. Madalina felt the sedan take each turn, leading her farther away from her parents’ home. From Cole. Lacking a coherent plan, she fought for all she was worth, until the assailant pinned her free arm down and literally sat on the outside of her thigh. It immobilized her entire body, pressing her harder into the seat. This low, without the advantage of looking out the window, she lost her sense of direction.

They could be going anywhere.

The man pinning her down spoke in rapid Chinese to the driver, although Madalina, who hadn’t ever taken a Chinese course in her life, had no idea what he was saying. Maybe her struggling disconcerted the man, made him nervous that she might break free and wreak havoc.

Sure, Madalina. A man who can steal you right out of a house in total silence will really be afraid that you’ll overpower him.
She might have rolled her eyes at herself if she hadn’t been so absorbed with how to distract the men and make a getaway.

Not only did she lose her sense of direction; she lost track of time. She couldn’t tell how long they’d been in the car, didn’t know if fifteen minutes or an hour had passed.

The conversation between the two men—no, three—intensified. Madalina could tell by the terseness and the impatient edge that there was a disagreement going on. The car surged, picking up speed. A burst of Chinese, a shriek that sent a chill down Madalina’s spine, preceded the sudden impact of another car. The cataclysmic explosion of metal on metal sent the sedan into a sharp spin, bits of safety glass blowing across the interior. The man atop her flew forward between the seats. Buckling inward, the door trapped the driver in his seat, while the passenger smacked his head against the window. Airbags had deployed, sparing the driver and passenger fatal wounds.

Thanks to her prone position and the cushioned seat, Madalina escaped serious injury. The volatile impact stunned her nevertheless.

This time when she screamed, nothing impeded the sound.

In the eerie silence immediately after the crash, when the sedan stopped spinning, Madalina wasted no time scrabbling across the seat. Pushing one man’s legs out of her way, dazed but intent on escaping the car, she spilled onto the wet asphalt in an ungainly heap. Wincing as she forced her stiff muscles into action, instantly soaked by the deluge, she staggered to her feet.

Out here, she could see that a white Suburban had hit the sedan as it passed through the intersection. It wasn’t difficult to assume that the agents had run a red light. Pieces of metal and glass littered the street. A turn signal blinked off and on, off and on, casting a red-orange glow across the pavement. The driver’s door of the sedan looked as if a giant fist had pummeled the metal, leaving a considerable dent behind. Rain battered the damaged vehicles, falling ever harder, as if the heavens themselves had decided to unleash a biblical flood. The entire scene seemed suspended in a gray haze, not entirely real.

Madalina didn’t linger. She dodged around another car on shaky legs, passing through the headlight beams, boots pounding noisily over the asphalt as she ran.

All she could think about was getting away. This was her chance, her shot to lose her captors.
Go, go, go, before the shock wears off, and one of the men gives chase.

She was in shock herself, and she knew it, but her survival instinct demanded that she flee.

Ignoring shouts from concerned drivers, Madalina located a familiar café that indicated the Chinese men had driven back to Whittier, which both relieved and dismayed her. She was here, running for her life, yet lacking the one component she had become used to in times of crisis: Cole.

You can get away without him. Think about all the things you’ve learned from him since this nightmare began.

She’d lived in this town long enough to know back roads and alleyways and other niches to hide. Ducking between the café and a dollar store, she ran through the back lot to another, smaller street that paralleled the main thoroughfare where the accident had occurred.

The sound of sirens wailed in the distance, briefly obliterated by a sharp crack of thunder.

A row of houses older than the one she rented sat across from the businesses, some with wrought-iron fencing circling the yard, others decorated by more of the huge old trees. Several cars parked next to the curb provided Madalina a little cover as she crossed the street to the sidewalk. Not known for her endurance in sprints (or longer distances—who was she kidding?), she dashed down the block, pushing her body to the limit.

Surprised that she hadn’t been snatched from behind or that she hadn’t heard the Chinese men shouting in pursuit, she took the next corner and then another, losing herself in the residential maze of streets. Wind bent the boughs above her as the storm raged on, blowing leaves sideways across the sidewalk, some getting caught in the wet strands of her hair.

Lianne did not live far away, perhaps another five blocks. It was the only refuge Madalina could think of, the only one where she might feel temporarily safe.

Pausing on the back side of a broad tree trunk, desperate to catch her breath, Madalina braced her hands on her knees and stared at the ground. Her chest burned, and her legs felt like noodles, knees trembling with the effort of running so far, so fast. Sucking in huge gulps of air, she sent a quick glance back the way she’d come, paranoid that the Chinese agents might already be on her trail. The street was empty of pursuing bodies. She brushed hair out of her face and plucked at the silky peach shirt that she wished she’d had time to change out of. But her purse and all the new clothing she’d purchased were in Cole’s car. Fat lot of good it did her now.

She didn’t even have her cell phone, which made her groan in dismay. Not only that, but she realized she had no way to contact Cole. She didn’t know his cell number, didn’t have an address to track him down by. She knew his name, and that was all. Why hadn’t she thought to exchange those things in the car? Or the hotel room?
You can find anything about anyone on the Internet. Pay two-ninety-five and you’ve got access to a person’s entire history
, he’d said. Maybe she could find him that way.

As another peal of thunder roared through the dark sky, she started out again, using the trees and parked cars as cover whenever she could.

Five blocks and two dizzy spells later, Madalina reached the golf course behind Lianne’s house. She ran through the clipped green grass toward the trees lining the walkway circling the course. The same walkway she and Lianne had used countless times in their effort to get more exercise. Partly obscured by rain and by the trees, Madalina jogged down the path behind the houses, out of breath again and almost out of gas. Her thighs shivered in protest, her lungs on fire from the hectic pace.

Finally, along the fencing that separated the backyards of the homes from the golf course, Madalina spotted Lianne’s gate. Each residence had access to the course, although Lianne had never golfed a day in her life. She’d moved in for the relative privacy.

Liberating a small key from under a rock, Madalina let herself into the yard and relocked the gate.

Although it was the middle of the afternoon, the back porch light burned bright, as if Lianne had left it on as a beacon. There was no way Lianne could even know she was in town, which led Madalina to believe that Lianne had simply forgotten to turn it off. The house, modest in size and more than thirty years old, was nondescript in design. Nothing stood out, from the beige stucco to the flat roof to the utter lack of creative architecture. Madalina had always considered the homes in this section of town to be some of the ugliest, but the rent was moderate and within Lianne’s budget.

Under the porch roof, dripping from head to toe, Madalina knocked on the door. A furtive
tap-tap-tap
that she hoped Lianne heard above a fresh rumble of thunder.

Hissing curses under his breath, Cole jumped in the Jaguar and sped down the street. He jerked glances back and forth along the sidewalks, looking for any clue, any sign of Madalina. Rain made it difficult to see inside vehicles parked along the curb, but he didn’t want to conduct a search on foot. It would take too long, and if the Chinese agent
had
managed to stuff Madalina into a car, he needed every spare second to try and catch up.

Using Madalina’s parents’ house as a starting point, he expanded the radius of his search in a methodical, overlapping grid. A half hour later, after driving countless miles and scouring four residential areas, he had to accept the fact that the Chinese agents had made good their escape. Madalina was probably scared out of her mind, which made him feel twice as guilty about losing her. He didn’t want to contemplate what might happen if he didn’t find her before the assailants began their questioning session, which they would do as soon as they possibly could.

Returning to her parents’ house, he parked in the driveway and entered the house through the still-open sliding-glass door, intending to check one more time for the missing woman.

“Madalina!” he shouted as he walked the halls, searched the rooms. She wasn’t there, as he both expected and feared. Closing up the house in his wake, he jogged back to the car and drove away.

Cruising the streets beyond the grid he’d already worked, Cole looked for sedans along the busier commercial districts. He saw quite a few, although none that panned out to be Madalina and the men who’d taken her.

Raking a hand through his hair, he cursed under his breath. Gripping the wheel tightly enough to turn the skin of his knuckles white, Cole tried to convince himself that the only reason he felt so volatile was because Madalina had been abducted right out from under him.
Not
because she’d managed to make an abrupt, lasting impact on his life. That he found it odd to glance across the car and see an empty passenger seat meant nothing. And he certainly didn’t miss her feisty banter and witty comebacks. Guilt that he’d let her down, that he’d let
himself
down, was the cause of his brooding mood.

People didn’t usually get the jump on him. His adversaries were wily, though, and he
had
tried to keep her away from places he suspected were dangerous. The risk of searching the Chino house for information hadn’t paid off either, leaving all the questions about the dragon unanswered.

Cursing the weather, Cole decided to change tactics. He could search Chino for a month and never get any closer to finding Madalina. It was time to try something different. Every hour that passed was another hour she might be subjected to . . . uncomfortable situations. His teeth clenched at the thought. She wasn’t built to be a prisoner. Wasn’t able to withstand torture. Madalina Maitland wasn’t of his ilk.

He pulled into a mom-and-pop restaurant that boasted free Wi-Fi and turned off the engine. From the trunk he withdrew a laptop case and toted it inside, ducking out of the torrential rain. Nondescript on the outside, the restaurant brimmed with warmth beyond the single glass door. Cole barely noticed. He sank into a booth with black vinyl seats and pulled the laptop from its protective sleeve.

The storm kept the flux of customers low, which meant that he had all the privacy he needed when he pulled up a search engine not typically available on the regular market.

As thunder boomed through the sky, Cole’s fingers flew over the keys. One way or another, he
would
find Madalina again.

He just hoped he wasn’t too late.