Willing Hostage (24 page)

They crossed another street and ran between houses again.

“Why do we need the packs if we're not walking?”

“You'll see.” He raced ahead of her to the next street and up a dark sidewalk, stopping beside a pickup truck that even in the night shadow looked ready for the crusher. Unlocking the door in the small camper shell on the back, he threw the packs inside and then pushed Leah into the cab.

“Are we stealing trucks now?”

“No.” The entire cab shook when he'd finally coaxed the engine to start. “I bought it today with your money.”

A darkened Enveco heron hovered on one leg above a gas station closed for the night. If it hadn't been for the corner streetlight she wouldn't have noticed it at all. It brought back the memory of a yellow Volkswagen exploding in an innocent mountain meadow. “Do all big companies hire goons?”

“No, these guys are probably just for hire by anyone for specific jobs.”

“Like the advertisers,” Leah thought.

YAMPA RIVER
, a sign said as they crossed a bridge, and the truck was soon on a highway heading west and leaving Steamboat Springs behind.

“I take it you're not going through with the deal, after all.” Leah had to shout over the tortured rumble of the old truck. “That's something.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Why else go to all the trouble to lose Charlie and Brian?”

“I don't like them. Try to catch some sleep while you can.” Goodyear slept curled between them. But Leah couldn't manage it. The man next to her was too tense. His very stiffness screamed warning.

“We're not out of danger, are we?”

“No, we're not.” His head kept turning from the road ahead to the little round mirror outside his window.

Night pressed in on the truck. Clouds hid most of the stars. The air around Leah exuded oil and dirt and uneasiness.

“If we're not going to get the papers, where are we going?” Wouldn't it be wonderful if they were heading for an airport and a plane that would take them to some luxurious hideout in Hawaii or.…

“But we
are
going to get the papers, Leah.”

“This is the direction they expect you to go. Welker's been following you on a map with a line moving west across Colorado.”

“Everybody is about two bites from our tail.” They slowed. A car passed from behind. “They have been for quite a while.”

They crossed the Yampa River again. She couldn't see it in the dark but she heard it briefly as they passed over the bridge. It sounded angry.

“Are those papers worth all this? Are they? I mean, swindles are getting to be a way of life. Are you trying to be some kind of hero?” Leah pushed away the sudden image of the two women passing her so quickly as she screamed about her mother on the front steps in Chicago.

“I'll be unsung, dead or alive. Does that make you happy?”

Some miles later a town appeared.
CRAIG
, the sign read.

“Breakfast time.” He pulled the rattling truck over. It was an all-night truck stop. Semis bordered the street on either side.

The Dr. Pepper clock above the coffeepots said it was a quarter of two in the morning. A sign on the cash register informed them,
OUR CREDIT MANAGER IS HELEN WAIT. IF YOU WANT CREDIT, GO TO HELL'N WAIT
.

A short man in a khaki jacket and a welcoming smile bustled up to them. “Hey, buddy, what's up? You're late. I been in and out of this place three times,” he said to Glade and then turned to Leah. “So this is the chick I outfitted for you, huh?”

Glade scanned the room nervously. “Ben.…”

“You guys aren't just in from the trail. You smell too good.” Ben seemed almost to bounce with energy or excitement. “Hey, am I finally going to get in on the action?”

“More than you'll like if you don't keep your voice down. Leah, this is Ben.”

“Ah, the man with the exquisite bachelor's pad. I think I have your boots somewhere.”

Glade nudged Leah into a corner booth. “Order me something big with eggs in it.” He slipped an arm around the considerable breadth of his friend's shoulders and hustled him down a narrow hall to the men's room.

The waitress curled her lip when Leah asked for her poached-egg-on-milk-toast. A Coors Beer sign blinked faulty neon in the window. A heavy man, looking wrinkled and No-Dozed, belched on his stool at the counter, picked up a tall thermos, and walked to the cash register.

Smoke hung in a spaced-out cloud just below the lights in the ceiling. The smell of bacon grease, beer, and cigarettes mingled unpleasantly.

Leah was wondering if she should have ordered for Ben, when he emerged from the hall, looking subdued. He left the diner without even glancing at her.

Glade leaned against a wall in the narrow hall, a phone to his ear, his denim jacket two shades darker than the tight bleached-out jeans. His shoulders blocked the hall, his expression and stance were rigid with that intensity he wore like clothing when his problem gripped him. For an instant Leah wanted him with an intensity of her own. She inhaled stagnant air and looked away.

When Leah looked back to the hall, Glade was disappearing into the men's room at the back of it. When he emerged he made another call.

They ate quickly. The blood from his rare steak mingled with egg yolk and grease from the hash-brown potatoes that automatically came with eggs in Colorado.

“Who'd you call?”

“Welker. Always keep my promises.” He dipped toast into the mess on his plate.

Leah swallowed and looked elsewhere. “So you're going to deal.”

“He's got my brother. But he's very unhappy about our losing our companions.”

“Ben left.”

“Yeah.” He stared her down over the rim of his coffee cup, daring her to ask about Ben. His knees pressed painfully against hers under the table.

“If we're not running off, why are you taking me?”

“I might need your help. If I have to have somebody at my back, you're still the best bet I could come up with at short notice.”

“I'm no help in dangerous situations and you know it. I can't—”

“What is it with you?” he snapped. “It's always I can't. You don't know what you can do till you have to. I've been out of the country a lot, but the word liberation means revolution. So I was curious.…”

He mopped up the last of the yuk on his plate with the last of his toast. “When I got back to the States, I expected something new. But I got, instead, ‘Glade, I'm tired.' ‘Glade, I'm scared,' ‘Glade, I can't'” He smiled and Leah knew he was waiting for a slap or a kick, bracing for a challenge he could easily overpower and that he might well have gotten.

But the door opened just then and two men entered. Leah froze halfway between a grimace of protest and a false smile. One of the men was pasty-faced, the other dark. Both looked tired and sour. But they noticed Leah and then Glade while trying not to apppear to notice anyone. They couldn't quite hide their surprise. Neither was a truckdriver, nor a lineman, nor a cowboy coming in the wee hours to sober up on diner coffee.

“That's interesting. If you're done, I think we'd better go. But leisurely, naturally,” Leah said.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Glade Wyndham had picked up his cue without hesitation, wrapped the fat and bone of his steak in a napkin, finished his coffee over quiet small talk, and signaled for the check.

Goodyear roused for a steak breakfast as Glade pulled the truck out into the street. “Okay, what spooked you? I saw them when I paid the bill.”

“They didn't fit. Any more than Welker and aides fit in Steamboat Springs. Any more than you do. CIA agents are supposed to be medium height and unnoticeable. You can be spotted a mile away. And you were, Glade, just now. So was I.”

“I was hired as deep cover. Nobody intended I branch out. What about them? What was it exactly about—”

“Intuition.”

“Oh, Jesus!” But he checked the outside mirror.

“Listen, pig, I've lived in cities all my life. And there are some people you work hard to avoid and you pretend not to notice.”

“They wore suits, is that it?”

“And their eyes. They looked like yours.”

“Their eyes?” He sighed and shook his head.

“Yes, eyes. Those men have killed. And city stuck out all over them. And the highway patrol picked you up in Craig. And they noticed us as if they'd just peeked into the Wyndham and Harper files. And they tried so hard not to show it. And for an instant they looked as if they couldn't believe their luck. What more do you want?”

The creep was laughing. She was too tired and scared to hit him.

“I want to pull this truck over and.… However.…” He leaned across her to open the glove compartment. This time, instead of a bottle, he brought out a gun and laid it on her lap. “I want you at my back. One for you, one for me.” He pulled out another.

“One more crack about women and I might use it on you.” She left the nasty thing lying on her lap without touching it.

“Why is it whenever I'm with you I wonder how I got there? Why I went in the first place? How do I let myself get into these—”

“You said you wanted to come along. I had a hell of a time convincing Welker to let you. If he wasn't so hot for those papers he wouldn't have let me talk him into it.”

“What I meant was I wanted to get out of that apartment and away from them.”

“Poor Leah, you're always getting away from something, only to get into something worse.” And he laughed.

“Why not have Ben at your back? He lookes more capable.”

“I have other plans for him. Besides I want you to see something. Leah, don't you really know why you wanted to come along?”

“No.” But Leah was afraid she did know.

Glade reached across the cat to put his hand on her knee. Goodyear bit his wrist.

Leah stood at the back of the truck, shivering in her windbreaker. She stuck her hands in her pockets, felt the grisly cold of metal in one of them, and took that hand out again. A constant whishing sound somewhere near.… She could smell water.

Glade shoved an oblong yellow object toward her. “Gas cylinder for the boat. Here, take it.”

“What boat?” she said suspiciously and experienced that sinking feeling she'd known before when around him. The cylinder was slippery and heavy.

“This boat.” He drew a large bundle from the camper shell, balanced it on his shoulder, and started around the truck. “Come on.”

“What do we do with a boat?”

“Ride in it. I told you, you wouldn't have to walk, didn't I?” He moved ahead of her as if his burden was heavy.

She'd expected a lake. But it was a river. And even at night it had a strange color.

Dropping the bundle, he stood on the bank and looked down at the water. “Shit!” He kicked a tall grass clump with his toe. “Leah, this river's twice the size it was when I went down it last fall. And I'm no river rat. There isn't time to train you, either. I'm afraid we're going to have to fake it and pray.”

The river answered him with a sinister whoosh. It should have looked inky in the dark before dawn, but it had a funny creamy color that might have been tan in daylight. It didn't smell of fish or reed. It smelled of earth and … decay? Death?

“I'm not going on that river. And if you think Goodyear will, you don't know cats. He'll be climbing our heads.” She turned to see the gas cylinder inflate the heavy bundle into a rubber boat that would look small and flimsy on a river that appeared to be a good hundred feet wide. “Cats hate water.”

“I suppose ex-underwear models do, too.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to the truck. “I'm worried about Goodyear, too. We'll be in the middle of the river where he can't jump out of the boat. But I couldn't leave him back there. They wouldn't have cared for him when they didn't need him anymore.” His concern for the cat was the only emotionally warm thing about him.

“You are crazy, Glade Wyndham.”

By dawn they had stuffed the contents of the backpacks and her purse into rubberized duffel bags, along with the provisions he'd bought in Steamboat Springs with her money. They had changed into tennis shoes and he'd moved the truck back down the road and off into the trees. Leah was still protesting.

Goodyear sniffed at the boat suspiciously.

Glade threw her a life jacket and strapped one on himself. He'd lashed the four duffel bags in the center of the boat with a series of ropes and he now added a fifth to the top of the pile. It was empty. “This is for Goodyear.”

He handed her a small metal case and put an identical one in his pocket. “There are matches in this and the case will keep them dry. If you get thrown out of the boat and can get to shore, you can build a fire to keep warm. Here's your paddle. I'll explain.…”

“Glade, I don't want to go on that river.” Just the thought filled her with terror. “I'll wait for you in the truck.”

“I'm not coming back here. There's no going back on the Yampa River. It won't be long before Charlie and your friends at the restaurant in Craig find that truck anyway.”

“But we lost Charlie.”

“Nobody loses Charlie for long.” He grabbed Goodyear and stuffed him into the top duffel, drawing it up so that only a small air hole remained. The bag bucked and pitched as if it were filled with ten cats.

Just as a sharp pain stabbed her middle so hard that she doubled over where she stood, a car motor rumbled on the road behind them. The pain released Leah in time for her to glimpse headlights bobbing through the trees and hear the vehicle bottom out on a chuckhole.

Glade had the boat in the water and sat on the bank, holding it with his feet. “Get in front, fast!”

The boat wobbled threateningly as she stepped into the cramped space and practically capsized when he jumped in behind.