Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (9 page)

"Speaking
of choices," I switched gears, grateful for a segue out of her tie-dye
philosophy, "reach behind you on the floor. There's a shopping bag with
something in it."

Callie
rooted around in the backseat and came up with the bag. "What do you want
me to do with it?"

"Open
it. I bought you something."

Callie
carefully extracted the lizard handbag and gasped so loudly that Elmo rose to a
standing position and pricked his ears.

"Oh,
Tee, it's gorgeous! I love it! How did you know what to buy me?"

"I
just went for something expensive that, personally, I would never own..."

"Well!"
She feigned being offended.

"..
.but would look smashing on someone as lovely as you."

She
unbuckled her seat belt and leaned way over and gave me a long, warm kiss on my
neck just below my ear. I went red with pleasure.

"Thank
you so much," she whispered sincerely.

"You're
welcome."

Callie
rocked her seat back, clutching her purse like a teddy bear, closed her eyes,
and wrapped her small, perfectly manicured fingers over the top of the
waistband on my faded jeans, the bouncing Jeep allowing the tips of her fingers
to brush my naked skin. I gave out a large bassetlike sigh as Callie fell
asleep. I wanted to buy her a gift every day just to see her sweet, childlike
joy.
How could anyone live to be our age and still have so much joy for the
small things?

I
glanced over at her gorgeous face. She had a sharply chiseled profile, her nose
straight and elegant. She was really stunning looking. Why did she spend all of
her time talking like an alien philosopher trying to put the planet in
perspective?
What in the world do we have in common other than my intense
desire for her? Maybe that's why God gives us desire, to keep us sexually
hooked on one another until we have time to figure out we have other things in
common.
Whatever drew me to her, I knew that I couldn't remember ever
feeling this much at peace in all my forty-one years. Callie Rivers touching me
as she slept seemed to calm every nerve in my body.

We
moved through the Texas panhandle while it was still daylight. The land on the
north side of I-40 was so flat that if a prairie dog raised its head in Canada,
I was certain we would spot him. Callie talked about her family and how her
brother died of a drug overdose when he was just twenty-two. How her mother was
psychic and her father's mother had predicted the moment of her own death,
based on a dream she had, and how Callie herself felt she was directed by her
dreams.

"In
my dream there were three flashing neon signs with showgirls all kicking their
legs in the air. I threw a ball to them, and it dropped down between the girls
into this slot and one of the showgirls kicked it and the ball exploded into
the number fifty with three more zeros on the end of it. So I knew I was
supposed to go to Las Vegas, play the slots, and win $50,000. So I did and I
did!"

"You
won $50,000 on the slots based on a dream? If I'd had that dream, I would have
gone to Radio City Music Hall, dropped my token in the subway
slot,
and
ridden the damned train along with 50,000 other people wondering what in the
hell the dream meant!"

"It's
not interpreting the dream correctly that makes you win. It's believing in the
dream." She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

By
ten p.m. we were just east of Albuquerque, under a dark blue sky dotted with
stars, singing along to a country song about some woman's anatomical boogie
woogie and where she was putting it, which included places like the ceiling. It
dawned on me that if we ever stopped to analyze half of what we sing, we'd be
highly perplexed. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road except for
truckers. In the rearview mirror I spotted a beat-up pickup weaving across the
double line. I asked Callie if she was belted in. New Mexico at night was
notorious for drunk drivers. Suddenly the pickup moved up quickly behind us,
then swung around to pass us. Callie's voice was shrill and insistent.

"Swerve
off the road. Get off the road!" I pulled to the right a little, but at
seventy miles an hour, no right-minded person "swerves" off the road.
That's when I heard the first blast. Callie was screaming now, covering her
face with her right hand and pulling herself toward me with her left. Out of
the corner of my eye I saw the blasts coming from the truck window, and I took
the Jeep over the side of the embankment at about sixty-five miles per hour.

My
seat belt snapped tight and luggage flew around our heads as the car rolled
over and Elmo wailed. My mind seemed to leave my body. I was steering, but I
wasn't in the car. I was editing our crash. Little four-frame, butt cuts
flashing before my eyes: the latch on my luggage by my right eye, Elmo pinned
against the door, then not pinned, my mom and dad waving goodbye from the
porch, us bleeding at the bottom of the embankment, although we weren't there
yet, telling someone I wanted a vet for my dog, seeing my hand twist and go
numb, Callie's face contorted in pain, sand flying up around the windows. Ten
seconds and sixty edits later, it was over. We were silent except for Elmo's
low sobs. We were not on fire. We were down below the road.

My
insides were frantic as I felt for Elmo and asked Callie if she was badly
injured. But Callie didn't answer. She was staring back up at the highway. She
gripped my hand and told me to lay my head back and look dead. A moment later,
a large light shone down on us from the road. We lay still, slumped in our
seats. My heart was slamming against my chest so hard that my inner ears pulsed
to the rhythm. We couldn't just lie here like sitting ducks and let them come
finish us off. Moving nothing but my lips, I told Callie I had to get to the
gun.

"Don't
move or they'll kill us."

"With
the gun we have a chance," I said.

"Lie
still and picture a white light all around us. A white protective light. They
are being pushed back, they are being pushed back," she chanted a wishful
mantra.

Remaining
stone-still was the biggest gamble I would ever take in my life. Callie's calm,
sure voice made me override my own instincts, and I obeyed the hypnotic
instructions that were whispered beneath the muttering of angry male voices up
above. They were deciding whether to crawl down the hill and check on us. If
they came down, we were dead. I spoke quietly to Elmo, who was sobbing and
struggling to free himself from the topsy-turvy luggage, telling him to be
quiet, everything was okay. The thickly accented voices above us seemed to
argue forever, although in real time it probably lasted thirty seconds. After a
moment, one of the men swore at the other two and they moved out of our line of
sight. Apparently no one wanted the honor of descending the hill to examine
bloody bodies. There was too much road traffic.

I
dug hurriedly through the Jeep debris and located my cell phone. No cell tower
signal. That was the last straw!

"What
is the fucking purpose of having a phone to save me, when there's no signal? Do
I need to be saved in a populated area? No! I need to be saved when I'm in the
middle of butt-fuck nowhere, shot at by a bunch of cowardly little
assholes..."

"You're
bleeding. I think it's coming from your mouth, along with a few other terrible
things, like your language."

"My
language? You don't think this is a situation that might call for a little
language?" I shouted at her, glancing over my shoulder up the hill to make
certain we weren't on the second wave of a death charge.

Even
though Elmo was crying out in pain, I steeled myself and crawled over him to
the luggage to retrieve my .357 and shells, shaking so badly I could barely
load the gun.

Suddenly
the men were back, descending the hill, sliding down the sand toward us, two of
them. They must have been waiting for the traffic to clear before coming after
us.

Callie
whispered, "Oh my God!" and clutched Elmo to her.

I
was shaking horribly now, the barrel of the gun moving back and forth like a
psychotic metronome.
Six bullets, two men. Maybe. They obviously have guns,
but they might not realize we do too.
I slithered down in the seat to rest
the gun barrel on the window ledge to steady my shaking hand and got my head
down as close to the gun as possible, telling Callie to lie still. I wanted
them to get very close. Close was my only hope.

The
two men loped toward the car abreast of one another. Barrel-chested,
linebacker-looking men. They were no more than twenty strides from us. I knew I
had to pull the trigger. Suddenly, from up above, a shrill whistle pierced the
air. The men stopped in their tracks. A man on the hilltop frantically waved
his arms in the air as if directing a jetliner into its berth. The men below
turned and, without a sound, scrambled back up the hillside. Three car doors
slammed. Tires squealed onto the highway. Thirty seconds later a highway patrol
car, its red light on, whizzed past us up above, having apparently scared them
into moving on. I yelled up to the patrol car and hit my car horn, which made
no sound.

"Omigod,
this is a nightmare! I told you it was a bad idea for you to come on this trip,
and now I've almost gotten you killed!"

"It's
okay, Teague. It was just a very close call, but we pushed them back with our
energy and the white light," Callie said.

"The
guy whistled. That's why they went back," I said sarcastically.

"We
put the protective energy out there, and it merely manifested itself as the guy
whistling them back," Callie said. I couldn't respond because she had hold
of my jaw. "I think you bit your tongue," she said, crawling into the
backseat and opening an ice chest, taking out a few cubes and wrapping them in
a handkerchief. "Hold this against your tongue." As she tried to help
me, she could barely use her arm and I worried out loud that it was broken. She
insisted it wasn't but said I could take a look at it for her when we got to
the motel room. I didn't want to tell her that I wasn't sure if that would be
tonight or two days from now. We were out of sight of the highway. It was pitch
dark, I had no idea if the tires were flat or the gas tank leaking, or if the
car would even run. Callie pulled herself slowly out of the car, circled it,
looked under it, and reported that she thought we just needed to find a trail
that would get us back up on the road.

"The
top of this car is completely bashed in. My cosmetic mirror
would
be in
the suitcase on top of the car. I hope it's not broken," she said
seriously.

"Oh,
me too," I smirked.

I
found Elmo's "Bute" painkiller before cranking over the engine and
forced a pill down him. My legs were Jello like from fear, and my body felt
like I'd been pummeled with a large meat-tenderizing mallet. Callie pulled on
Elmo's shoulder only slightly and then rested her hands on him. Her touch made
him release a huge sigh, and he stopped sobbing.

We
drove slowly over the sand and sagebrush, not having any idea whether we were
about to run into barbed wire or Black Angus. Fifteen minutes later, it
appeared that the distance between the highway above us and our battered Jeep
had narrowed. It was now or never. I prayed the men weren't waiting for us up
above and told Callie this was the point in time where we'd find out if the TV
commercials lied. The Jeep's wheels spun, then locked onto the earth and slowly
pulled us to the top. When the front tires hit asphalt, Callie and I executed a
pitiful and painful high-five!

Why
in the goddamned hell are we being chased by these guys?
I wondered.

As
if Callie could read my mind, she said, "You have something they want,
Teague. Think. What could it be?"

I drove,
Elmo whimpered, and Callie dug through the first aid kit, putting Neosporin on
all three of us. She had scraped legs and a cut across her arm. I had a deep
gouge in my leg by the knee. Elmo had a sprained shoulder. All in all, we were
very lucky.

"Who
do you think they were?" I asked Callie through the darkness.

"I
don't know, but there's definitely a connection between what happened to your
friend Barrett and what happened to Frank Anthony," Callie replied.
"Tell me everything from the beginning."

I
began with the phone call from Barrett inviting me to lunch, explaining that I
went hoping for a writing assignment from Marathon. Callie looked interested
when I mentioned the studio. I told her Barrett had begun discussing a barter
system at the studio that involved everything from drugs to prostitution and
she was experiencing fear, and maybe a little guilt, about her part in it.
Before we could finish the conversation, the Latin man had kissed her and
Barrett had collapsed.

"Who
did Barrett feel was behind it?"

"She
said she didn't know and that for me to know would be dangerous. Maybe it goes
right up the chain of command. She answers to Robert Isaacs, who reports to Lee
Talbot, who's accountable to the Marathon board of directors."

Callie
stiffened at the mention of their names and looked ashen.