The Senator’s Daughter (44 page)

Coughing and spewing water, she tasted sweet air. Yet, the choking still gripped her and she couldn't have kept herself afloat without Lyle. His sleek wet head bobbed beside her in the cavern pool.

He kicked smoothly while holding her and deposited her hands on a rock ledge where she could hang on. He rapped his fist between her shoulder blades to help expel the water.

Finally, she breathed raggedly.

“What the hell were you doing?” he burst out.

She launched herself so her arms went around his neck. “You were gone too long. I was afraid you had drowned.”

“Ditto.” With one hand on the ledge, he put his other arm around her. A corner of his mouth went down. “Now, don't drown us both.”

Later there would be time to explain how enraged she'd been at the prospect of not having time with him. Right now, since he hadn't had a near-death experience, he wasn't going to understand. It was a shame, though; they had risked it all in vain.

Lyle chuckled. “At least we didn't come for nothing.”

Sylvia pulled back and stared at him.

“There it is,” he said, treading water and holding on to her while he pointed.

Sylvia looked down onto a ledge about five feet over and three feet below the one she'd grabbed and saw the square looking black box from Andre's lab, attached to a rock protuberance with a pair of yellow bungee cords.

As strongly as she'd believed their theory, finding out they were right was still a shock. Knowing mercury seeped out from that source made her want to jump out of the water.

“Let's get out of here,” Lyle said. “If I get it, can you dive down and let the current sweep you out under the grate?”

Sylvia nodded. Now they had found what they were looking for, she thought she could walk through fire to see Andre behind bars … she could only assume he had awakened from her blow to his head determined to find and finish her. God, how she prayed her father wasn't part of this.

Lyle left her holding on, swam over, and reached down to release the device. He held it before him and gestured for her to go out first. “If you get stuck, hang on. I'll be sure you get free.”

She inhaled a huge breath and dove. With the current behind her, it was easy to make it under, out, and up. Swimming to the rock wall, she waited for Lyle and took the heavy black box from him, setting it carefully onto the stones.

When she reached the latch to open it, he stayed her hand. “Let the authorities open it.”

Sylvia nodded and climbed out onto the bank. The afternoon air was cool, so she yanked on her sweater and slacks. They stuck to her wet skin.

While slipping on her shoes, she heard the chop of a helicopter in flight. “Is Charlotte leaving us?”

Lyle jackknifed out of the river. He snatched up the pistol she'd taken from Andre, but before he could put on his shirt, jacket, or shoes, the scream of rotors assaulted them—a chopper dropped down over the edge of the travertine cliff and hovered over Lava Springs.

Sylvia recoiled. Lyle swore.

It wasn't the blue Bell 206 they'd come on, but a little green Hughes 500 with its rounded bubble cockpit. From news photos and video, she recognized the missing Tony Valetti manning the controls. Beside him sat Andre's guard, Luigi, a long rifle propped next to his leg.

He pushed open the door and started raising the weapon.

“Go!” Lyle shouted.

Sylvia turned and sprinted between the hot pools toward the footbridge she and Lyle had crossed the other evening. She heard him running behind her and surmised he must have abandoned the weighty black box.

Racing toward the redwood grove and plunging through a thicket of brush, she caught her tangled hair on a limb. Tears of pain filled her eyes as her head jerked back.

Three feet away, a bullet left a raw wound on a tree. She smelled the sudden redolence of pine.

Lyle pounded up behind her and freed her hair. “We've got to split up.”

“No!”

“If I shoot at them, it will draw fire.” He gestured with Andre's pistol. “I want you safe.”

She would have protested, but he took off down the hill and she knew she couldn't catch him.

Thinking of finding a place to hide from the aerial sharpshooting, she headed out of the forest and uphill toward a lava cliff.

Scrambling, an effort in smooth-soled shoes, she searched for a place to hide along the cliff face. About a hundred feet away, she spotted an opening of considerable size.

Upon reaching the overhang, Sylvia found her path blocked by a pile of boulders. The lava was sharp, filled with air bubbles, and she cut her hands as she scrambled up. A large rock shifted unexpectedly beneath her weight, nearly trapping her foot.

As she tried to pull herself up into the main chamber of the cave, she realized she could not lift her leg high enough.

Sylvia crouched, wedging herself into the low hollow behind the boulder. Minutes passed like eternity, and she wondered where Lyle was. She had heard no shooting.

She couldn't see the helicopter from her hiding place, but couldn't miss its noisy approach. It came down low to the ground no more than a hundred yards away and then took off again.

God, Luigi had seen her hide and was coming to hunt her down. She needed Lyle with the pistol, but he'd run back down, probably thinking Tony would go after the black box.

Sweat ran down her back and sides. Her heart pounded in her ears. She should have stayed in the redwoods instead of showing herself in sparser cover.

Suddenly, there was a sharp crack outside as if someone had stepped on a piece of dry deadwood. Evidently, Luigi saw no need for subtlety.

She heard footfalls on soft earth beneath the overhang. All the animals in Andre's trophy room had felt this dread, the moment when uncertainty became the knowledge the hunter had caught the scent.

The first thing she saw of the Valettis' henchman was the rifle carried at the ready.

The chopping of the helicopter echoed off the valley walls. It seemed to change direction and circle around.

Luigi looked over his shoulder. For a fleeting instant, she wondered if she could leap down on him, but he turned back to her.

Their eyes met. Her heart sank.

Slowly, with an almost sexual smile, he raised the rifle. There wasn't even time to think about loss or Lyle as she scrambled wildly for a way out.

The boulder in front of her rocked.

Everything felt as if it was taking place in slow motion. She looked down the gun barrel and gasped for breath. Bracing both feet and her arms against the rock face, she felt the boulder shift again.

With all her strength, Sylvia kicked out.

The rock went down and slammed him backward, an incredulous expression on his face.

Sylvia leaped to her feet. He lay on his side, bleeding from a wound above his left eyebrow. She wiped her sweating palms on her pants and saw bloody handprints from where the rocks had cut her.

He opened his eyes and groaned, then lifted his head. She saw the rifle on the ground by his side at the same time he did, and she went for it, snatching it up before he could move.

His hand snaked out with lightning speed and grasped her ankle, the iron grip shocking her.

She tugged her foot, and then kicked it frantically. Still, he gripped her, and began to pull himself up, twisting her leg to take her down.

Clenching her teeth grimly, she reached down and swung at him with the rifle barrel.

Her leg was suddenly free, but he gripped the gun and slowly twisted it, wresting it inexorably from her grip.

The sound of the chopper grew louder.

Luigi's wrist sprayed blood; a dull pop came from down the hill.

The rifle was Sylvia's.

She turned and ran downhill on pure adrenaline. Scrub-oak branches tore long scratches into her bare arms. Lyle waited at the tree line of the redwood grove, pistol in hand.

When she approached, he took the rifle from her and handed her the Smith and Wesson.

“Can you use this if you have to?”

She wiped one hand at a time on her pants—there were seeping cuts on her palms—and studied the revolver. Then she raised it in both hands with acceptable form.

“Good girl. Just aim it and pull the trigger.”

Lyle looked the rifle over. A .30-06 Winchester Model 70. Nice hunting caliber. One he'd not shot before, but he had been to the range with something similar. Fully loaded, one round in the chamber, four in the magazine.

“They can't track us through the redwoods with the chopper.” He wished he'd told her before she ran up toward the cliff. “Let's circle back and hide the black box if we can.”

He heard the scream of rotors. Tony was coming to pick Luigi up.

Lyle grabbed Sylvia's hand, and they half-ran, half-slid downhill through the thick forest duff. Déjà vu gripped him; this might have been his dream of last Saturday morning at the inn.

“I tried to go back to the springs once,” he told Sylvia, “but I heard the chopper land and thought you must be in danger.”

A call to 911 had ended up being dropped; he assumed the forest was too dense.

By the time they got back down near the springs, the helicopter was making tight circles over the clearing with the pools. Though Lyle had Luigi's Winchester, he had to assume the man had another firearm. To do otherwise would be stupid.

So he staked out the springs where the mercury dispersion device was in full view to the sky, sitting beside the river. He told Sylvia to stay back beneath the forest canopy, to hide behind a redwood log.

While he waited, Lyle tried 911 again. This time he was able to get across that Senator Chatsworth's daughter was at Lava Springs in deadly peril before he was cut off.

The beat of helicopter blades rose, and Valetti made a pass over the springs. Lyle planned on waiting until law enforcement arrived, unless Tony managed to land the smaller helicopter on the road and tried to get the device. Then Lyle would try to capture them at gunpoint.

If only they were now unarmed.

The chopper went off in a wide circle, swinging around to come in from another direction. Tempted by opportunity, Lyle slung the rifle over his shoulder and moved out of cover toward the black box. Once he secured it, he and Sylvia could find a hiding place in the redwoods and not worry about Tony making off with the evidence.

Lyle made it over the footbridge at a run. His feet burned from impacting the hard earth and running over twigs and stones, but if they left trails of blood, he'd keep going. He sprinted over the softer grass and, with the helicopter noise in sharp crescendo, bent to pick up the black box.

The rotor wash caught him with the rifle over his shoulder and the box in hand. Lyle looked up to see the Hughes come in over the travertine cliff above the springs about fifty feet off the ground.

In the left front passenger seat, Luigi aimed a mean-looking handgun, maybe his Glock. Just Lyle's luck to hit a right-handed shooter in the wrong wrist.

Lyle dropped the box and headed for cover. A bullet kicked up dirt near his feet. Then another.

He decided to stand and fight.

Pulling up beside a tree, Lyle leaned against it as a steadying point and raised the rifle. He aimed first for Luigi.

And managed to hit some part of the helicopter. The sharp ping was audible even above the rotor racket.

Another bullet buried itself in the bark, inches from Lyle's head.

He worked the bolt and shot to kill.

With the rifle's recoil, he didn't see what he'd hit, but when he was able to focus he saw that Luigi was slumped over. Blood stained his chest, and it appeared only his seat harness was keeping him upright.

Valetti was pulling up and away in the chopper.

Lyle raised his weapon again and started shooting at the rotors, or more at the juncture where the rotors hooked onto the rest of the machine. He got off two more shots before Tony was up and out of his sights.

Yet, there was a sharp whining to the engine. Then it started to make grinding noises.

Sylvia appeared at Lyle's elbow. “I think you've shot him down.”

“I hope so.” Lyle took off at a run for the road. There, where the vineyards began, he saw the wounded helicopter's fuselage start to rotate with the rotors. It took a couple of wild gyrations before it crashed into the rows of Andre's prized Sangiovese.

“Stay back,” Lyle ordered Sylvia. “This time I mean it.”

This time she obeyed, peering from behind one of the eucalyptus lining the road.

Charlotte Longstreet of Wineland Helicopters showed up at a run, cell phone in hand. “I heard shots. The National Guard and the sheriff are on the way.”

Lyle approached the wreck with the rifle up, ready to kill either man if they reached for a weapon. He had one bullet left.

The rotors wound down. Luigi appeared unconscious … or dead. Tony glared at Lyle through the cracked windshield. Then raised both hands and put them on top of his head.