Shooting Starr (22 page)

Caitlyn.

There she was, big as life, plain as day…talking to someone, looking, not at the camera, but at some interviewer off to the side. For an instant he dared to hope it was old footage, an update on the case, maybe. But no—the short, pale hair, cut in feathered layers like the petals of a chrysanthemum, couldn't quite hide the healing scar that slashed across her forehead.

The camera moved back, and he saw that she was sitting on a sofa in what looked like one of those made-up TV interview sets, with shelves full of books and a big vase of flowers behind her. Beside her on the sofa was C.J.'s sister-in-law, Charly—his own lawyer. And sitting in the chair facing those two was someone else he knew—Eve Waskowitz, the TV documentary filmmaker. Wife of Special Agent Jake Redfield of the FBI.

Caitlyn was speaking. Belatedly, C.J. tore his eyes from the women and focused on the closed captioning.

…nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

Interviewer: Will you be disclosing the whereabouts of Emma Vasily?

Caitlyn Brown: My position on that hasn't changed. I've said I don't know where she is. I still don't. And I will not disclose my contacts, so…

Interviewer: And are you prepared to go back to jail?

Caitlyn: I guess that will be up to the judge to decide.

Interviewer: Ms. Brown, what made you decide to turn yourself in? If you don't intend to obey Judge Calhoun's order—

Caitlyn: I never intended to spend the rest of my life as a fugitive. I just needed some time to heal…the shock of getting shot…Mary Kelly murdered…and then losing my eyesight. I didn't know whether I was going to be blind—

Interviewer: So, as I understand it your eyesight has returned.

Caitlyn: Yes, that's right. Not all the way yet—I see indistinctly and not really in color—sort of the way you see when there isn't much light. It's getting better all the time. The doctors said there was a chance it would come back as the swelling went down and it looks as though they were right.

Interviewer: I know you must be so happy.

Caitlyn: Well…relieved might be a better word. How can I be happy when Mary Kelly is still dead? She isn't ever going to get well.

Caitlyn's face disappeared. Now there was the anchorman again, and the white-on-black rectangles ticking across the screen:
You can catch the rest of Eve Redfield's exclusive interview tonight on…

C.J. didn't see anything more. Next thing he knew he was on his feet with his dinner check in his hand, staring down at what might as well have been written in Chinese. He remembered throwing some money on the table and walking outside into a crisp autumn night. He remembered standing beside his truck, leaning his forehead against the cold steel door and waiting for the ground to stop heaving under his feet.

Déjà vu, that's what it is. This can't be happening again. It can't be.

He was about to climb into the cab when some sort of instinct—self-preservation, maybe—stopped him. He was in no condition to drive. He'd be an eighty-thousand-pound menace on the road if he did, a disaster looking for a place to happen.

He took deep breaths to steady himself, then walked slowly around the tractor-trailer, checking his lights and brake lines, plodding methodically through all the steps of a complete safety check, forcing himself to concentrate on that. Little by little his mind cleared, and the sense of shock
and betrayal that had just about swamped him began to recede. And when it did, he realized he wasn't angry with her. He was barely even surprised.
Caty's stubborn. When she sets her mind to do something, she goes ahead and does it, and doesn't count the cost.

Thank you for this night.
He ought to have known, when she said that, the way she'd said it. The way she'd looked at him with that silver light in her eyes.

He wasn't angry or surprised, but he was disappointed. Disappointed she hadn't shared with him the incredible fact that her eyesight had come back. That hurt, way deep down inside, more than he wanted to admit or even think about. Disappointed, too, that she hadn't trusted him enough to let him in on what she was planning to do.

Trust you? a little voice way back in his mind mocked him.
Why should she trust you? Aren't you the one that turned her in to the cops the last time she did that? And be honest, Calvin James Starr, wouldn't you have tried to stop her this time, too?

His answer to that was:
You're damn right I would.

Because what he was most of all was scared to death. He knew exactly what Caitlyn was trying to do, with her television interview, announcing to the world her intention to turn herself in, even giving the exact time and place. She was staking herself out like a lamb in a clearing, to lure the tiger—Vasily—into the open. And it would probably work; he had an idea that most of the time in situations like this, the tiger ended up dead. Only thing is, most times the lamb did, too.

Nine o'clock tomorrow morning…

Cold washed over him and settled in the pit of his stomach. At nine o'clock tomorrow morning the woman he loved was going to walk into a killer's gunsight, and he was roughly six hundred miles away from being able to do anything to stop her. Six hundred miles. His only hope of
getting there in time was to drive nonstop for ten hours and pray for good weather and no traffic tie-ups.

He took his cell phone out of its belt holster and punched in Charly's number. After five rings her voice mail picked up. He didn't leave a message. He didn't have Jake Redfield's number with him, so he called information and got the Bureau headquarters in Atlanta. After a couple of transfers and some waiting around he was told that Special Agent Redfield was on assignment. Was there someone else who could help him? Would he like to leave a message? C.J. said, “No, thank you,” and disconnected.

His mind was clear and calm now, as he climbed into the cab of the idling Kenworth and turned on the running lights. A few minutes later he was roaring back onto the interstate, this time heading south.

 

The weather gods were against him. A cold front moving in from the west had, as usual, stalled out against the mountains and decided to dump its load of cold, sleety rain right there in the Virginias instead of saving it for the drought-stricken northeast. Between the nervous four-wheeler drivers poking along at fifty and the crazies trying to get around them, traffic was a zoo. Then there were the truck lane gear and speed restrictions on the grades, and a long slow crawl through construction outside Charlotte…. C.J. was tense enough to bite nails when he finally left the interstate at the Anderson exit and began to make his way down the stop-and-go main drag through town to the courthouse.

The way he remembered it, the designated truck route wouldn't let him go down Main Street, which had been subjected to one of those downtown renovation projects, including a lot of planter boxes and trees and the traffic flow restricted to one lane each way. He remembered the courthouse; the mall in front that was a patchwork of concrete and brick pavers, with more planters and shade trees and benches to sit on, and the stone steps that rose to the
courthouse door. The steps Caitlyn had been making her way down, flanked by Mary Kelly and a platoon of police guards, that bright, sunshiny morning in September….

C.J.'s stomach flip-flopped as the TV news videos played over and over again in his mind. It's not going to happen, he told himself.
He won't shoot her. She's the only one who knows where Emma is. He won't shoot her…he won't shoot her….

He repeated the words like a mantra. Or a prayer.

Before, when he'd dropped Caitlyn and her charges off at the police station, he'd taken the route on the east side of Main. This time he was on the west side, which was going to bring him into the parking lot directly behind the courthouse. Right on time, he thought, glancing at his watch just as he saw the light up ahead turn yellow.

Damn.
He stomped on the brake and brought the truck to a creaking, hissing stop, then sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Cold sweat trickled down the center of his chest. His leg, tense on the brake pedal, had developed a muscle twitch. Through the half-open window of the cab he could hear the clock on the bell tower across the street from the courthouse—the one from which the sniper had taken his shots—begin to strike the hour.

Come on, come on, dammit. Turn green….

And then he saw her. Them. Caitlyn and Charly. There they were, crossing the street from the parking lot about a block and a half in front of him. Caitlyn was wearing a light-gray tailored business-type suit she must have borrowed from Charly—he couldn't imagine where else she'd have come by such a thing—but he'd have known that chrysanthemum cap of pale-gold hair…that graceful, light-as-a-fairy walk anywhere.

His heart just about shot through the roof of his mouth. Heart hammering, wired and helpless, he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to break it off in his hands, while his mind shouted futilely,
Caitlyn, wait!

He was so focused on the two women he failed to notice right away the long white sedan with dark tinted windows that was moving slowly toward them from the opposite direction. Not until it stopped, and the passenger side door opened, and a man got out. Even though he'd been half expecting it, C.J. was so frozen with shock it was a second or two before he realized the man was wearing a ski mask.

It happened so quickly. The man didn't hesitate, but rushed straight at the two women, grabbed Caitlyn's arms from behind and at the same time kicked Charly savagely in the back of her legs. As she crumpled to the pavement, he was already turning, half dragging, half carrying Caitlyn toward the waiting car.

But by that time C.J. had the Kenworth in gear and, as truckers used to say, the pedal to the metal. He hadn't thought about it, didn't know he was going to do it, he just reacted. Caitlyn was in trouble, and in the best hero fashion he went charging to her rescue with the only weapon he had.

Had the light changed? He didn't know nor care. Horns blared as the powerful diesel engine roared and roughly eighty thousand pounds of eighteen wheeler rolled through the intersection. Through a red fog of rage C.J. saw the ski mask swivel toward him, as if in slow motion. He saw the mouth form a round black
O
of astonishment. He had one brief glimpse of Caitlyn's face, bleached white with shock, and then, with a hideous screeching, grinding, breaking sound, his Kenworth's front bumper plowed into the hood of the white sedan.

For a moment he sat frozen, staring down at the wreckage through the windshield of the cab. Truth was, he was pretty shocked at himself, now that the deed was done, even though the driver of the sedan didn't seem to be hurt much. C.J. could see him flailing around inside the car, trying to untangle himself from the airbag and at the same time get
the door open—it had apparently been jammed shut by the collision.

What he didn't see was Caitlyn, or the guy in the ski mask. Not until the door on the passenger side of his cab suddenly opened and Caitlyn came hurtling through, propelled by a powerful shove. Right behind her was the ski mask—and something else. For the second time in his life, C.J. found himself staring at the barrel of a gun.

“D
rive,”
the man in the ski mask snarled, slamming the door behind him.
“Now.”

Hijacked.
I don't believe this, C.J. thought. This can't be happening to me
again.

This time there was no sense of déjà vu. The individual pointing the gun at him now was a long way from a girl with silver eyes trying to save the lives of a woman and her child and no other way to do it except to try a desperate bluff. This guy wasn't bluffing. How, he didn't know—it sure wasn't from experience—but C.J. knew a cold-blooded killer when he saw one.

“I'm drivin', I'm drivin',” he muttered. He already had the truck in reverse.

As the big Kenworth shuddered and separated itself from the wrecked white sedan with another shriek of mangled metal, C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn and was all set to ask her if she was okay when he saw her eyes widen and her head move just slightly. A tiny, almost imperceptible shake.
No!

“I'm sorry about your truck, mister,” she said in a small, frightened voice. A stranger's voice.

Ski Mask cut her off with a savage, “Shut up! Get down!” and shoved her roughly until she was on her knees on the floor between his feet and the center console. The gun in his hand was pressed against her head now, its ugly gray barrel buried in the soft petals of her hair.

A strange prickly rush, like a shower of ice particles, swept C.J. from his scalp to his toes. Ice formed a great lump in the center of his chest.

Outside the windows of the cab, howling sirens and blaring air horns announced the arrival of a whole array of police and emergency vehicles. The light mid-morning traffic was beginning to snarl.

“Get on your radio,” Ski Mask growled. “Tell 'em they better clear us out. Otherwise I'm gonna start putting bullets into people, and since I need you to drive, it looks like it'll have to be blondie, here.”

C.J. nodded and picked up his CB mike. His mind was clear and calm, and he was pretty sure the guy in the ski mask wasn't going to kill Caitlyn—not yet, anyway. Considering he'd been paid to bring her back alive and in a fit condition to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Vasily's daughter, Emma, and that the last hired hand to put Caitlyn's life in danger had wound up dead a short time later. So, it was a fairly safe bet that if Ski Mask did put a bullet in her it wouldn't be in a critical place. Not that that made a big difference to C.J.

Dialing in channel nine, he thumbed on the mike and spoke into it. “Uh…channel nine emergency, this is Blue Starr Transport driver requesting assistance…over.”

After a tense pause, a woman's voice, calm and professional but at the same time typically, informally Southern, replied, “Yes, Blue Starr, we read you. How's ever' body doin' in there?”

“Doin' okay so far.” C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn. Her gaze was fastened on him with that strange silvery intensity, as if she were trying to talk to him with her eyes. Ski Mask made an impatient gesture, and, heart pounding, he turned back to the mike. “We have a, uh…situation here, though. I have a, uh…couple passengers, guy with a hostage. He has a gun, which he says he's gonna use if he doesn't get clear road outa here. Any chance you could, uh…help me out on that?”

There was another pause, longer and even more tense. C.J. waited, his heart thumping against the constriction of his seat belt. Finally, “Okay, Blue Starr, which way you headed?”

C.J. glanced at Ski Mask this time, and chuckled darkly. “Quickest way outa town, would be my guess. I'm thinkin' the interstate?” He looked at Ski Mask, who nodded confirmation.

“Tell 'em they better not follow us, either,” he added in a low growl. “I so much as see a cop I'm gonna start shootin'.”

“They're never gonna go for that. You think they're gonna let us just drive away?” C.J. said in an incredulous hiss.

“You better hope they do” was Ski Mask's reply.

Grinding his teeth, C.J. passed on the demand and the threat. After the usual pause the calm voice responded, “Okay, Blue Starr, we're gonna give you some room.” Another, gentler pause. “You be careful, now….” And then silence.

With a grunt of surprise C.J. hung the mike on its hook and gave his full attention to driving.

Cramped and uncomfortable, wedged unpleasantly against the gunman's legs, Caitlyn closed her eyes and listened to C.J.'s voice, talking in that drawling monotone truckers use on their CB radios…the police dispatcher's
voice calmly answering. As the truck growled in stops and starts, twists and turns, the gunman took out a cell phone and punched in a number. She listened to his low-voiced conversation and felt cold, clammy relief wash over her. He was talking to his boss, obviously, telling him about the glitch in their plans…the change of getaway car. Something about a rendezvous point. Everything else, it seemed, was still on track.

For her, too. It's going to be all right, she told herself, riding on the crest of a wave of improbable optimism. It can still work. And then, plunging into a trough of utter despair:
Oh, C.J.—why couldn't you have stayed out of this?

The FBI's plan had taken everything into account—except this. Maybe it had been a mistake, after all, not to tell him. He would have tried to keep her from taking part in it, of course he would have, but at least he wouldn't have stumbled—no, not stumbled—come charging into the middle of things, magnificently, heroically, like some gallant knight on his great blue and silver steed.
Oh, C.J., how wonderful, how magnificent you were. And how I wish you hadn't done it!

Vasily wouldn't kill her, she was sure of that, not until he had Emma back in his clutches. And long before that happened, the FBI would have him in theirs. But C.J. Oh, God, they wouldn't hesitate to—and almost certainly would—kill him once they had no more need of him and his truck. How she would stop them, she didn't know; she only knew she had to.
She had to.

The images of her nightmare came back to her…the people she loved most in the world lying dead in pools of blood.

 

Once he'd made it to the interstate, C.J. began to breathe easier. The cops were evidently taking Ski Mask's threat
seriously. The way through town had been wide-open, and he hadn't seen any overt signs of pursuit in his mirrors so far—not that that meant the cops weren't out there somewhere, following at a safe distance, waiting to see what developed. In fact, C.J. had been wondering what Ski Mask hoped to accomplish with what had undoubtedly been a spur-of-the-moment desperation gambit. Surely he didn't think the cops were just going to stand by and let them drive off into the sunset, free and clear!

That was before he'd heard part of that cell-phone conversation with the bossman. After that he'd understood—especially when Ski Mask instructed him to take the exit for the scenic highway that ran north up into the mountains. They were heading for a “rendezvous,” probably with another vehicle. Which meant all they needed was to get far enough ahead of the nearest pursuer to make the switch unseen. The way those little roads wound around up there in the mountains and met themselves coming and going, the cops wouldn't have any way of knowing what vehicle they were in or which way they'd gone.

More important to C.J., with a new car and a new driver, they weren't going to have any further use of the driver they now had—namely him. He didn't have any illusions about what that meant in terms of his future.

Which meant, since he didn't have any way of knowing exactly where this rendezvous was supposed to take place, that he was going to have to make his move as soon as possible. All he had to do was figure out what move to make—preferably one that wasn't going to get him or Caitlyn killed in the execution.

As the Kenworth churned along the two-lane highway through rolling pastureland dotted with farmhouses and cattle grazing in the chilly drizzle, C.J.'s mind was churning, as well, spinning as fast as those eighteen wheels; discarded scenarios hurtling off the vortex of his consciousness like
chunks of mud flung from the truck's tires. His heart pounded and the steering wheel grew slick in his hands. The closer to the looming blue haze of the mountains they came, the faster his mind whirled. They were running out of time. He had to do something.
But what?

They passed sedately through a small town, and shortly after that the road began to curve and climb. That quickly they were in the mountains. And most likely out of time.

It was raining harder now; the cold front lay draped along the shoulders of the Blue Ridge like a feather boa. The road was shiny in the truck's headlights, and wisps of fog sifted through the tops of trees still thick with yellow leaves. The road twisted and turned and climbed steadily higher…and higher. There were few other cars; the rain had evidently deterred the sight-seers who would normally have clogged the mountains roads this time of year.

Any minute now, C.J. thought. Around the next bend we could come to that rendezvous….

He could feel his heart beating, like the ticking of a clock counting down the final seconds of his life. And Caitlyn's. What would become of her after they killed him? Vasily would have her then. Would the FBI rescue her in time? Had they figured
this
into their plans?

His mind careened backward to the first moment he'd laid eyes on Caitlyn Brown, there in that rainy interstate rest stop. He remembered the fist-in-the-belly shock when she'd pulled that gun out of her pocket. How could he ever have imagined that six months later he'd be fighting to save her life—and the future lives of his unborn children?

Who'd have thought, when she pointed that gun at me and hijacked—

Adrenaline hit him, jolting him so hard he almost let go of the steering wheel.
This has happened to me before. I took a gun away from a hijacker once. I can do it again.

Calm settled over him. A glance at his passengers, dis
guised as a check of his right-hand mirror, confirmed what he'd already observed without realizing it: whether he'd forgotten in his haste to get himself and his prisoner into the truck, or hadn't wanted to risk restricting his gun hand, Ski Mask had neglected to fasten his seat belt. And Caitlyn was wedged securely into the space between the seat and the dash, her head resting on folded arms. Snug as a babe in a car seat.

He could do it. Just like before. If he could get up some more speed…

“That next turnoff up there, take a right,” Ski Mask said.

C.J.'s heart pounded harder. “Right,” he said.

Caitlyn lifted her head. Her eyes swiveled toward him like searchlights, silver beacons in the murky twilight inside the cab. He gave her a long, intent look as he took the turn, and a barely perceptible nod.

The side road was paved but narrow. It wound steeply down between banks thick with ferns, rhododendron and mountain laurel. Trees rising high on both sides of the road blocked the light.

“Take it easy,” Ski Mask growled, glaring over at him, “you tryin' to get us killed?”

“Sorry,” C.J. muttered. Up ahead he could see a straight downhill stretch of road, just before it disappeared in a sharp turn to the left.
Perfect.
He ran it over one more time in his mind, then hauled in a breath and sent up a prayer. Then he hit his brakes.

The sound was like a boiler letting go—a giant hiss, creaks and groans and thumps—as everything in the cab and the sleeper compartment that wasn't fastened down hurtled forward at roughly twenty-five miles per hour. One of the loudest thumps was caused by Ski Mask's forehead hitting the windshield. C.J. tried not to think too hard about that sound; it was one he hoped to go the rest of his life without ever hearing again.

Anyway, for the next few minutes he had enough to do to keep him from dwelling on the fact that he might have just killed somebody. He'd never jackknifed a tractor-trailer before, and that was another experience he'd just as soon never repeat. The ride was bumpy and
loud.
His stomach cringed at the hideous noises his rig was making and the thought of what must be happening to the shiny blue Kenworth and that trailer load of North Carolina apples.

But at last there was stillness, both of sound and of motion. C.J. sat gripping the wheel, thinking for one dazed moment that he must be dizzy, that his internal axis was off plumb. But it was only the cab, which had come to rest canted at an odd angle, with the driver's side higher than the passenger side. Fear clutched at his heart as he looked over at his passengers. It released him, wrung out, drained, limp with relief, when he saw Caitlyn slowly unfolding herself from her cubbyhole, moving stiffly, as if she wasn't sure everything was going to work the way it should.

Ski Mask was slumped against the passenger door; no way to tell if he was breathing or not. His gun was in Caitlyn's hands.

“You okay?” his voice felt sandy in his throat.

She nodded. Her eyes skidded sideways, toward the inert figure by the door. “Is he—?”

“I don't know. I don't think we ought to wait around to find out, though. Whoever he was planning on hooking up with—”

“Your truck—”

“Isn't going anywhere anytime soon,” he said dryly. “It's jackknifed. Come on, we have to get—” He was shoving at his door, which seemed to be jammed. “No dice. It'll have to be this way.” He shoehorned himself out from under the steering wheel and stretched across the center console.

Caitlyn cringed back out of his way. “Oh God, you're not—”

Trying not to notice her horrified expression, C.J. reached across the gunman's body and opened the door. In an awful sort of slow motion, Ski Mask began to lean…then all at once, tumbled out of the truck. C.J. felt as sick as Caitlyn looked when they heard him hit the pavement with a slithery thud.