Willing Hostage (7 page)

They weren't talking about her, surely. But how many Chicago women could have been kidnapped near Cameron Pass recently? She sat through a depressing report of Dow-Jones, the Detroit auto industry, unemployment, and an ad for denture wearers who ate blueberry pie.

Then a host of congressmen expressed shock in bureaucrateese over the “laundry list” of major oil companies. They all strangely resembled the man dumping money down a hole in the beach.

Words and phrases flew about the room from the flickering tube. “Special favors … loopholes … tax breaks … privileges … percentage depletion … dry holes … foreign royalties … intangible drilling and development costs …” But over it all Leah continued to hear “Chicago woman kidnapped.”

If Welker was with the FBI and had worried enough about her safety to exchange cars, surely he wouldn't have allowed her story to reach the news wires.

Two clear plastic stomachs digested aspirin at uneven rates and then: “A Chicago woman, thirty-year-old Leah Harper.…”

Good God! Her name and everything.

“… was held captive at gunpoint last night at Pair-O-Dice Cabins, a fishing resort fifteen miles west of Cameron Pass. According to Miss Harper, her alleged assailant …”

Alleged! Leah threw a plastic hair roller at the screen.

“… beat her and tied her to a bed, but didn't rape her, the woman said.”

Although there was no emotion in his voice, he made it sound as if there was something wrong with the “Chicago woman” because she wasn't raped.

“Jackson County authorities are searching for a black-haired, muscular man.…”

Leah began pacing the room.

“… probably in his mid-thirties and on foot, wearing dark blue shirt and trousers. The man forced Miss Harper to drive him to a spot a few miles east of Walden, Colorado, on State Highway Fourteen where he released her unharmed. A look at weather and sports after this message.”

“Welker, you bumbling idiot!” Leah hissed at the elderly lady in a porch swing who tried to discuss laxatives. “Now everybody will know my name, where I am.…”

Leah unlocked the door to peer cautiously out into the dark. “Kitty, kitty?” she called softly. She needed somebody to talk to. The shadow-Vega hunched between her and the road. She was suddenly relieved that it wasn't a yellow Volkswagen.

“The Denver area will be warm and dry again tomorrow,” said a voice behind her. “But there is more rain in the two-week forecast for the high country, where rivers and streams are dangerously swollen already, officials say.…”

“Kitty?” But the world was dark and empty. Leah spent her night in Shangri-La alone with her fear.

Chapter Nine

Leah looked suspiciously at everyone who entered the little café the next morning. Her hair was again knotted up under a scarf and her head ached from worry and lack of sleep. She finished her poached-egg-on-milk-toast quickly and hurried back to the Shangri-La, hoping she'd find Goodyear waiting to get in the door, hoping she would not find some menacing type waiting in the room.

But the front step and the room were empty. Welker had said first thing in the morning. Where was he?

Finally, Leah packed her bags and loaded them in the Vega.

She called softly for the cat, and when there was no answer, she locked herself in the room. Were there goons out there looking for Leah Harper? How much of all this could she believe? How much did she dare not believe?

The minute Welker came she'd hand him the money and leave Walden in the dust. She'd keep the Vega because she had no choice. Where could she go with so little money? With jobs so scarce?

Leah would find something. She had to. Something far away from a place called Oak Creek.

She placed the wad of bills on the dresser and took the car keys out of her purse, fiddled with them nervously.

A faint rustle at the door.…

“Goodyear, thank God!” But she opened the door to a man with his knuckles poised to knock. “Oh—”

“Brian Kruger.” He flipped open a wallet with the now-familiar badge and stepped inside. “Joe Welker sent me.” He checked the street and closed the door. “Listen, don't waste time. You have to get out of here.”

“You're telling me! I saw the news on TV last night. What—”

“We're really sorry about that.” He had soft brown eyes that reminded her of Jason's Mutt and hair so thin that his scalp showed between every third strand. But he couldn't have been over twenty-five. “Joe and I worked all evening to get that story off the wires but we were too late. Now, Joe wants you to—”

“You can tell Joe to take a flying.… Here.” She pushed the money at him and opened the door. “I'm taking the Vega because you took my car, but I'm not taking the job. I'm not going to Oak Creek. You can tell that to your Joe.”

“But.…” He followed her out to the Vega.

Leah slid in, threw her purse on the seat beside her, and put the key in the ignition.

But Brian Kruger held the car door open. “Wait, listen, you mustn't come back to Walden. We're leaving right away and we don't have enough people to keep a watch on you here.”

“Don't worry. If I never see Walden again, it'll be—” A dark tail, unmistakably feline moved rhythmically along the motel wall above a line of low shrubs.

“Goodyear!” Leah struggled out of the low car and pushed Brian aside. “Kitty, kitty.” The tail turned the corner by the office and Leah followed. “I'll even go to the café and beg you some breakfast if—”

A large black torn with yellow eyes emerged from the shrubbery and sauntered off toward the filling station next door.

Leah turned back to the Vega. How could she miss a cat she didn't want? When she didn't even like cats?

Brian still stood by the car. “Listen, I wish you'd change your mind about—”

“Good-bye, Mr. Kruger.” Leah got in, slammed the door in his face, and backed out into the street.

A sign at the edge of the desolate cemetery read
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS 62
, and a lonely road stretched west. Why not?

Brian Kruger watched her from the parking lot of the Shangri-La Motel. Leah headed the Vega across the valley for Steamboat Springs. It had the same four-on-the-floor shift as the Volks and even a working radio. But she heard a repeat of the newscast she'd watched on television the night before, complete with more rain for the high country and a Chicago woman kidnapped near Cameron Pass. She turned it off.

She missed the cat. Had the big Siamese found a new home already? Cats were independent. Leah was independent. Her mother had depended on cats when she was in trouble. Leah might well be in trouble now. But Leah would depend on Leah. She checked the scarf over her hair. If a blonde in a yellow Volkswagen was in danger, who would notice a girl in a scarf and a blue Vega?

She would look for a job in Steamboat Springs. Maybe it was bigger than Walden. Anything was bigger than Walden.

Leah'd had a vague impression, perhaps from school maps, of the Rocky Mountains as one jagged barrier running north and south along the western end of the United States, the impression that one drove through them as she had in getting to Walden and then came soon to California and the sea. But more mountains rose across the treeless rolling plain ahead of her, and from what she could remember of the map, still in the Volkswagen, there was a lot more Colorado after Walden.

The expanse of sagebrush and fence posts, the infinite view of distances, the empty road added to her loneliness. She could be attacked by an airplane here and no one would ever know.

Why hadn't the newscast mentioned the plane? It had given away everything else.

As she left the valley floor and rose again onto a tortuous mountain road, Leah finally admitted to herself that she'd made a mistake. She was running from guilt and failure and she had run to the wrong place. Just as her sisters and brothers-in-law had warned her.

The harsh and stunning beauty all around her was the kind that should be viewed on television from the safety of an easy chair—like the surface of the moon. This was no place for Leah Harper, born and bred to the city.

Even if she hadn't met an attacker on her first night in the Rocky Mountains, the strangeness of this country would have added one more element to her burden—fear.

And the more time she put between herself and Walden, the more she thought of the silly cat. How was he faring? She missed having him to talk to.

Keeping her eyes on the devil road, Leah reached into the purse beside her for a Kleenex. Her hand met a pile of jumbled paper. She knew what it was even before she dared to glance away from the road. Brian Kruger had stuffed the money into her purse, probably when she went off chasing the wrong cat. But why? She told him she wasn't taking the job. She couldn't go back to Walden. Welker and Kruger would have left by now, anyway. What was she to do? If she kept the money it would be like stealing because she wasn't going to Oak Creek.

“Politicians and corporations steal from the government all the time.”

RABBIT EARS PASS, ELEVATION
9,880, and soon Leah started down again.

Of course, they had practically forced the money on her. She had refused it and returned it. What more could she do now? And she certainly could use that money.

She rounded a curve and found herself facing another valley, the jagged peaks that loomed on the other side of it. The valley itself was far below, jade green and lush, with a river snaking through it. The road catapulted down a ledge on the mountainside.

She'd heard of breathtaking views. This one left her limp. So did the appalling grade of the road. As she started down, she noticed a settlement on the valley floor and hoped it was Steamboat Springs.

Had Brian Kruger stuffed the money back into her purse so that when she found it she'd feel she had to carry out Welker's orders, after all? Were they playing on her honesty, vulnerability?

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
4, the sign read at the bottom of the grade, with an arrow pointing ahead. But the words below almost sent her off the road,
OAK CREEK
16, with an arrow pointing to a side road.

Thinking she'd been running from it, she'd actually been heading for Oak Creek all morning.

Leah stopped at a drive-in for lunch. While she ate, she could see the side road that led to Oak Creek. Her layer of guilt had doubled once she passed it. She wasn't a politician or a corporation. She had no right to take the Vega and the money and not go to Oak Creek. She didn't want a job in Steamboat Springs.

Leah wanted to admit defeat and get the hell back east. Not to Chicago and the family, but to New York where she knew she could get a job, lose herself comfortably in the canyons of the city.

When she drove out of the drive-in she headed back the way she'd come. She couldn't help being dumb and honest—the blue Vega pulled onto the road to Oak Creek—even though she knew that people like Welker and the man pouring money down a hole in the beach used and abused the honesty of people like her. She couldn't use that money unless she did as Welker asked.

She'd stay around Oak Creek for four hours instead of eight because she was only half as dumb as Welker thought her. She'd make no attempt to look for the brutal Glade, who had miles of other places to hide anyway. After four hours she'd have earned the money and the car and use them to head for healthier climes.

Feeling better for having made a decision, Leah traveled the green valley, wondering about the man's odd name. Glade evoked either a spray can or a peaceful clearing in a forest. But there was no peace in the misnamed man with shadows for eyes and a gun in his hand.

Leah was not eager to carry out her instructions. The Vega made no attempt to reach the speed limit and two vehicles came up behind her and passed. The first was an empty dump truck with coal dust flying from its bed. The second was a yellow Volkswagen with a blonde at the wheel and a giant Siamese cat blinking back at Leah from the rear window.

Chapter Ten

Leah chased the yellow Volks all the way to Oak Creek but lost it after it passed the dump truck.

She drove around the town, which was even smaller than Walden and placed half in a narrow valley and half up the side of a mountain. She didn't see her car. But she did see a small airplane fly up the valley along the road and circle Oak Creek.

Not knowing if it was the same aircraft she'd met the day before or not, she felt sickly in the midst of things again. She parked the Vega on a side street and left it.

Tightening the scarf around her head, she headed for main street to mingle with other unknowns. Like Walden and unlike New York or Chicago, there was no one to mingle with. She felt exposed to all eyes in the sky.

Leah spent the afternoon entering, leaving, and reentering the few shops—her plans in disorder. The plane left, and just as she was calming down, it returned.

Oak Creek contained curious inhabitants. She couldn't have met more than thirty in three hours, but half wore cowboy boots and Stetsons, and the other half, sandals and long hair. They seemed to blend amicably. The straights and the long hairs divided the businesses—one shop offering hardware and the one next to it crafts in wood and pottery. Both shops sported identical signs in their windows offering a fifteen-hundred-dollar reward from the Cattlemen's Association for information leading to the arrest and conviction of cattle rustlers.

In another, she met a Siamese cat presiding over a display counter of Indian jewelry and obviously the prized possession of the girl in the granny dress who ran the place. But this cat was a true Siamese with the slender head and sleek body. Goodyear would make two of him; still there was the same rich cocoa-brown face, paws, and tail, the same fawn-colored body between.

Leah left the shop with tears in her eyes and wondered what this strange country was doing to her. “This is just not the United States of America, that's all.”