Dangerous Refuge (24 page)

Forty-one

T
he Bronco finally came to a lurching halt.

“Sorry, baby, but I gotta pee right now,” Kimberli said, reaching for the door handle.

“You’re not the only one,” Ace said as Kimberli stalked off into the thickening dusk. He concentrated on Shaye. “Put your left arm back between the seats. Slowly.”

Shaye hesitated.

“Do it.”

The cold muzzle of the gun sank into her ear, telling her that she could die here, now, or she could obey.

Ace had been bad enough when Kimberli was around. Without her, he made Shaye’s skin crawl in stark warning.

Slowly her left arm slid back between the front seats. As she partly turned, she saw a flash of hot pink. Disbelieving, she focused on the colorful open handcuffs trailing from blunt male fingers. Bright, fake fur padded the inside of the vaguely heart-shaped cuffs, providing a playful cushion for sex games.

But the cuff itself made a solid sound as it locked around her wrist. Even in bed, Ace played to win. The other cuff clicked closed around the metal brace underneath her seat.

“They look good on you,” he said, his glance traveling over her body. “But then, they look good on any woman.”

She forced back her hot words by thinking how different Ace was without Kimberli around. Blunter, colder, harder. Like a mask had been taken off to reveal the death’s-head beneath.

He’s helping Kimberli be as stupid as she needs to be,
Shaye realized.

The knowledge was chilling and sparked a small flicker of hopeful fire. If the other woman could be brought to realize that she was going to die up here, maybe she would help both of them get out alive.

Once Ace was sure that Shaye couldn’t escape, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. Then, loose shirt rippling in the wind, he walked quickly into the sparse cover of the forest.

She yanked on the cuffs hard enough to hurt. Twice, three times.

Four.

Not enough time for this. I’ll have to do what I can one-handed.

As she wriggled around enough to grab the canister of bear spray from under her feet, a surge of wind and grit peppered the Bronco like a handful of dirt at a graveside ceremony. She stashed the spray between her thighs.

The Maglite was next. It had four D-cell batteries inside and was heavy enough to break a person’s nose. Or skull, if it caught someone just right. She shoved the flashlight between her butt and the back of the seat. Not comfortable, but comforting. Any chance, no matter how slender, was better than certain death.

Then she remembered the Leatherman. She had been thinking in terms of pure weapons. The knife on the Leatherman was more for cutting kindling than throats, but the handy little many-tools-in-one might be able to break open a link on the handcuffs.

It seemed like minutes, but really was only seconds before her fingers closed around the tool’s leather carrying case inside the backpack. She opened the snap of the case with her teeth and shook out the Leatherman. Awkwardly using her cuffed hand, she expanded the jaws of the pliers, then positioned them around one of the links connecting the cuffs.

Her hand slipped, then slipped again. Vaguely she realized that she was sweating, clammy. Working by feel, she finally got the jaws around a link and squeezed. The cuffs might not have been law-enforcement grade, but they weren’t aluminum foil, either. Nothing budged.

She twisted her wrist repeatedly, winding the chain until it was taut, humming. Then she clamped down on the pliers with all the strength of her desperation.

There was a grinding sound of metal on metal. Sweating, she sawed and gnawed on the metal with the tough little tool, trying to keep the link way back in the jaws, where there was a wire cutter. She thought she felt something move. Hope gave her a surge of strength.

Kimberli’s shirt flashed in the headlights, a silent warning.

Biting her lip, wishing for Tanner’s raw male strength, Shaye gave one last wrench.

Maybe it was hope, maybe it was the links, but she sensed that something gave. She yanked again.

And stayed attached to the seat.

She stuffed the pliers out of sight just as Kimberli got into the Bronco. The open door attracted bugs to the overhead light and ruined any chance of letting eyes adjust to the thickening dark.

Kimberli noticed the flash of bright pink connecting Shaye to the seat and snickered. “He’s a playful one, isn’t he?” she said, her voice teasing.

All that kept Shaye from trying to use the bear spray on the other woman was the certainty that the blowback inside the Bronco would put her out of commission as fast as it did Kimberli.

“Relax,” Kimberli said soothingly. “Ace just talks mean. He’s really a pussycat. All you have to do is rub him the right way. Didn’t your mama teach you anything at all about handling men?”

The only way I’d touch Ace is with a cattle prod,
Shaye thought bitterly.
Is Kimberli really stupid? Crazy?

Dumb like a fox?

One of the other woman’s most obvious and bewildering traits was that she could make herself sing cheerfully with any chorus she had to. Whether that made her crazy, stupid, or as coldly pragmatic as Ace didn’t really matter. The result was the same.

Shaye was on her own.

But she didn’t stop trying. Stupid could be educated. It just took more time than she was afraid she had.

“Do you know a man called Tonio or Tony Rua?” she asked carefully.

“Never heard of him,” Kimberli said. “Sounds Italian, or maybe Mexican?”

“He was a mixed-martial-arts fighter, like your playful lover.”

“Really,” Kimberli said with a total lack of interest. She turned the rearview mirror to check her makeup.

“Rua had a specialty. It’s called a heart shot. He used it to kill Lorne.”

With a sigh that was somewhere between patience and irritation, Kimberli pulled lip gloss out of her tiny backpack purse. “Lorne died of a heart attack and everyone knows it. No wonder Ace is so moody, what with you and your hookup spreading rumors to anyone who will listen. Who benefits from that?”

“Rua died of bullets. Ace killed him after Rua killed Lorne.”

Kimberli paused, gloss wand in her hand. Then she shook her head firmly, making her bleached hair stir. “Ace wouldn’t really do something like that. It’s just part of his tough-guy act.” She went back to slicking her lips. “Honestly, sometimes I just don’t understand you.”

“Right now you aren’t a murderer,” Shaye said. “Ace is. You could walk out of here.”

“Ace is a good businessman. He’ll pay a generous price for Lorne’s ranch and that money will be put toward buying three other huge ranches with a lot more acreage in mustang territory. Everyone will benefit, can’t you see that?”

“All I see is Lorne’s scavenged corpse.”

“Oh, that’s just nasty.” Kimberli shivered. “Anyway, it’s not like he was sixteen with all his life in front of him. He was an old man.”

“He was alive,” Shaye said doggedly. “Someone murdered him.”

“Honestly, how a bright girl like you can be so stupidly blind about the simplest things . . .” Kimberli shook her head. “People younger than Lorne die all the time of perfectly natural causes. What is up with you? The Conservancy will sell the land to Ace for enough money to buy ranches on the mustang range. The people around Refuge will have work at the new resort. My bosses will be happy and the mustangs will be happy and I’ll be promoted and Ace and I will get married and I’ll never have to worry about money ever again. It’s win-win-win.”

“What if Ace decides to kill you and keep all the money?”

“Why would he do that? Nobody can blow him like I do. When you have control of a man’s dick, you have control of the man.”

Shaye tried another approach. “If Lorne wasn’t murdered, why are you and Ace kidnapping me?”

Kimberli’s face struggled to frown. Botox kept her from being successful.

“He wouldn’t let me talk to you anywhere that he, personally, wasn’t certain was safe,” she explained. “He said it would be stupid because anyone could walk in or record stuff and make the Conservancy look bad. You know how the media is—bad news sells better than good. That’s why he took away your phone.”

Shaye felt the frayed threads of her temper slipping through her fingers.

“I didn’t want to come all the way to the end of some no-name dirt road just to talk to you,” Kimberli continued, “but he wouldn’t listen. He doesn’t trust you to know a good thing. Then you kept being bitchy and it just kept getting worse. As soon as Ace settles down and you guys have your talk, everything will be fine. When he’s in a mood like this, a smart woman shuts up and doesn’t push.”

“And you’re going to marry him?” Shaye asked before she could stop herself.

The older woman laughed. “I said he was rich and smarter than me, not that he was a purse-pet like Peter. Anyway, Ace is a lot better than my first husband.”

“Tanner won’t believe whatever setup Ace has planned. He will look for me until he knows the truth.”

“The truth is, Tanner Davis will go back to L.A. a rich man.” Kimberli capped the gloss with a gesture that said the conversation was over.

She’s going to die, too,
Shaye thought.
She’s just too willfully blind to let herself see it.

With a disgusted sound, Kimberli slapped her arm and squashed a mosquito. “What’s taking Ace so long? Is his zipper stuck?”

Maybe he tripped and broke his neck,
Shaye thought. What she said was, “Close the door. Light just attracts mosquitoes.”

“What do they live on out here?” Kimberli complained.

“People who leave doors open.”

The door slammed shut.

Shaye had been expecting the sudden darkness. If she hadn’t been handcuffed, she would have been gone. As it was, she would have to wait until Ace returned. Unless . . .

“Do you have a key to these cuffs?” she asked calmly.

“Of course not. Ace keeps all the keys—it’s the way he his, some sort of control issues.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“He’s rich and smarter than I am. What’s to mind?”

Shaye gave up. Reality had nothing to offer the other woman but getting old and dying.

Silently, Shaye thought about ways to escape and live. Only one seemed remotely possible.

First I have to get out of the cuffs.

Then the bear spray.

Even with both hands free, she would need a moment to pull the tab on the spray and turn the nozzle in the right direction. She doubted that Ace would give her that kind of time.

Whatever the state of his mind, cotton candy was no part of it.

Speak of the devil,
she thought unhappily.

The door opened. In a flash of overhead light, Kimberli hopped out, letting Ace get inside. His bald head gleamed in the light.

“What took you so long?” Kimberli asked. “You didn’t trip and hurt yourself, did you?”

“I tried to see if anyone was following us.”

“Why would anyone do that?” she asked.

He handed the keys to Kimberli. “Just drive. I’ll do the thinking. Keep to the left. There’s a mine head up that way.”

“Mine head? You mean, like a hole in the ground?”

“Do you know another kind of mine?”

“All I know about mines is that money comes out of them.”

With that, Kimberli started the Bronco and crept up the unraveling track, keeping to the left.

Shaye wondered why some woman hadn’t cut off parts of Ace while he slept.

“Don’t worry about any gates, either,” he added.

“I know, I know, you have the keys,” Kimberli said.

“No, you do. It’s called the accelerator.”

Shaye understood, but even if Kimberli didn’t, the other woman didn’t ask any questions.

Tires crunching gravel and sage, the Bronco inched forward. Ace made grumbling sounds of impatience, but he didn’t distract Kimberli by yelling at her.

Shaye didn’t, either. She had an aching memory of the feel of a gun rapping against her skull.

I’m going to die here wearing these stupid sex-toy handcuffs. And Kimberli of the ridiculous tits and blond extensions is driving me all the way to hell.

Hysterical laughter rose like an acid bubble in Shaye.

Breathe.

Just breathe.

While you can.

Forty-two

T
he rocky ridges ahead of Tanner were dark, the copper glow of the setting sun only a memory. Everything was drowned in shadows darker than any bruise. The dirt road was a faint, pale thread leading to nowhere.

Tanner turned the wheel and shot off the battered asphalt to follow the dirt. Dust rose all around, nearly invisible, leaving grit on every surface. The dust around the truck gathered into a ragged banner, flickering with the least change in direction of the wind. He drove like screaming hell, sending dirt spewing everywhere when the road turned, barely holding the straight pieces, and still he felt like he was glued in place.

The knifepoint glitter of a few stars and a partial moon rising were the only illumination. In the rumpled land ahead of the old truck, night spilled out of ravines and spiked up the ridges.

No lights showed ahead of him, no flash or gleam to pierce the layers of darkness. The dirt road was a shade or two lighter than the surrounding brush. So were the boulders that stuck out without warning. One of them tried to eat the truck’s right front tire.

I can’t wait any longer,
Tanner thought grimly.

He turned on the headlights, losing stealth but gaining visibility. Tire tracks leaped out on the dusty stretches of the road, the tread marks crisp enough to leave tiny shadows. His memory told him that was a good sign.

Someone was here recently. Wind makes short work of tread marks out here.

The bad news was that headlights announced his presence like a siren.

Can’t see light ahead of me. They’re probably in one of the folds in those small mountains. Can’t see me.

I can’t see them, either.

He pressed down on the accelerator and settled in for a rough ride. The road was made for maybe thirty miles an hour at best. He was doing twice that. The rutted dirt rose and fell, twisted and snaked, and generally behaved like something engineered by cowboys a century ago.

With one hand he brought his cell phone up and checked the battery and signal. Battery was good.

There wasn’t enough signal to matter.

He hit the redial button just to be sure. The phone spun idly for three seconds, five, ten.

CALL FAILED.

Shit! August can’t help me anymore.

Tanner wanted to throw the phone against the windshield, but he had better self-control, so he wedged it under his thigh. Depending on where the satellites were positioned in the sky, GPS could still be an option. But he suspected there were places out here that even GPS couldn’t reach.

He hoped to hell he wasn’t in one of them.

The image of Rua’s dead face turned ghastly by the light of the fish tank kept eating into Tanner. That memory he could live with. It was the way the face kept morphing into Shaye’s that was leaving a hole in his guts.

Don’t think about it. Just drive.

And pray.

If Shaye doesn’t come out of those mountains, I’ll kill Ace.

It wasn’t a prayer, but it gave Tanner patience when he wanted to explode right out of his skin. He’d seen people like himself before—parents of missing kids, families of miners waiting outside a mine explosion, waiting, waiting, waiting for news.

After enough time, even proof of death was a relief.

Stop thinking,
he snarled at himself.
Do the only thing you can do.

Drive.

His hands gripped the wheel and he pushed everything else out of his mind. No distractions, no mistakes, nothing but the fact that Shaye needed him.

The phone chirped.

Tanner knew what had happened. There wasn’t enough reliable signal to carry talk, but texts needed only an instant of connection to get through. He retrieved the phone and read quickly.

CELL SIGNAL GONE.

LOOK FOR TRACK ON LEFT.

MINES IN AREA. DANGEROUS.

That didn’t surprise Tanner. People had been falling into abandoned mines when he was a boy. The mines hadn’t been covered since then and human nature didn’t change.

Easy to hide a body.

Forever.