Manna From Heaven (5 page)

“You really think we were going to buy that backup vehicle crap, Blondie?” Denton asked as Charlie, realizing that the “something hard” was his gun, froze in horror. “Get your hands up and let’s see if you’re packin’.”

This was bad. The fact that she could no longer see or hear anything of Jake was worse. Dry-mouthed, Charlie lifted her hands in the air, and was shoved hard against the side of the Jeep for her pains. Her legs were kicked apart as Denton patted her down with an enjoyment that made her sick to her stomach. Woz popped into view like an evil jack-in-the-box, glanced in her direction, smiled, then disappeared again, leaning over something on the ground. The something was, presumably, Jake.

Oh, God, had they killed him? If so, she was almost certainly next. But she was too young! This whole insane episode was a mistake. And she didn’t—really didn’t—want to die.

God, she was taking that excitement thing back right now.

“She’s clean,” Denton called to Woz as he completed his search and straightened.

“Put her in the car.” The Jeep’s interior light came on as Woz opened the passenger side door. Denton grabbed
Charlie’s arm, opened the driver’s door, and pushed her
inside. Woz wrestled Jake’s limp body inside and belted it into the passenger seat. Jake was missing his cap, and his head, covered with ruthlessly short black hair, lolled limply on his shoulder. For a horrified moment Charlie was sure he was dead. Then she saw his chest rise, and with a flood of relief she realized that he was merely unconscious. Sadie leaped nimbly between the seats and
into her lap as Denton got into the back. Absurdly comforted by the dog’s presence, Charlie nevertheless wasted no time in thrusting her into the footwell out of sight. These men would not, she felt sure, hesitate for so much as an instant over killing a dog.

“Watch ’em. I’ll be right back. If he moves, hit him again. But don’t kill him. Not till after I get done talking to him.” Woz slammed the door. Charlie jumped reflexively, only to feel Denton’s gun nuzzle her cheek.

“Remember, ol’ Woz didn’t say nothing about killing you.”

Charlie sat very still. Through the windshield, she watched Woz open the door to the Blazer as Laura, illuminated now by the vehicle’s interior light, turned to look at him.

Then, just like that, Laura’s head exploded.
Blam.
Blood coated the inside of the Blazer’s windshield before the door was closed again, shutting off the light.

Charlie was still in shock when Woz jerked open the door and climbed into the backseat.

“I ain’t cleaning up that bloody mess you just made,” Denton said as Woz shut the door again. “Why the hell didn’t you do it on the grass?”

“’Cause we’re going to lose the car, dumbass,” Woz
replied. “Just like we’re going to lose this one. Nobody’s
going to have to clean up nothing.”

Denton grunted. “Good. ’Cause I ain’t.”

Jake made a slight sound. Terrified, Charlie cast him a sideways look. Would they blow off his head, too, when Woz was finished with him? And hers? Oh, God, and hers?

5

S
HE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE A CHANCE
on making a break and running for it. It might be a long shot, but it was the only shot she had, Charlie knew.

“You got the cuffs? Get ’em on him before he wakes up,” Woz said to Denton.

Denton leaned an arm against the back of Charlie’s seat and stroked her cheek with the pistol again. She shivered at the touch of the cold metal, remembered Laura’s head exploding against the windshield, and almost vomited where she sat. Only the fear that it might cost her her life kept her from doing exactly that.

“What about her?” The pistol still touched her cheek.

“Cuff her, too.”

“I just got the one pair. Besides, she’s got to drive.”

“Yeah.” Woz seemed to ponder. “Cuff ’em together. That way neither one of ’em’s going anywhere.”

Charlie’s eyes widened in horror as she realized that her last chance of escape was getting ready to fly right out the window.

“Give me your hand, Blondie.”

When Charlie didn’t comply fast enough—she was still mentally dithering over whether or not to attempt a run—Denton reached between the seats and grabbed her right arm, twisting it toward him painfully. A cold metal handcuff snapped closed around her wrist. Seconds later, the second cuff was fastened around Jake’s wrist. Charlie glanced at Jake’s big body, sprawled limply now in the seat with only the seat belt keeping him semiupright, with despair. There was no longer any hope of running for it. She’d just been shackled to a two-hundred-pound deadweight.

Woz passed her the ignition keys, which he had presumably taken from Jake. They jangled as she took them, and Charlie realized that her hand was shaking.

“Pull up on the road nice and easy, and head on into the forest,” Woz directed as Charlie started the Jeep.

“And don’t fuck with us, Blondie, or you’re dead,” Denton added as, forgetting that the Jeep was still in park, she nervously stepped too hard on the gas, causing the engine to rev. He punctuated this remark with his gun, with which he prodded the back of her neck.

Charlie shrank, shivering. She was breathing hard, and her left hand was clammy as it grasped the wheel. Her right, rendered useless by being tethered to Jake, felt sweaty, too, as it rested on the console between the seats. At her feet, Sadie pressed up against her legs in sympathy. The dog was shaking. Or maybe the shaking was coming from her own legs. Charlie was so scared it was hard to be sure.

She kept seeing Laura’s head blow up. Oh, God, she didn’t want to die. She and Marisol had a really important singing gig on Saturday, and she’d just bought a
killer new dress that she hadn’t even had a chance to wear yet, and … and …

They were moving now. The cages rattled in the back as the Jeep bumped up onto the road. Jake moaned, stirred, and sat up, shaking his head.

Apparently feeling himself tethered, his eyes opened and his gaze slashed sideways. Charlie cast a frightened glance at him just in time to see a loop of rope descend over his head and tighten around his neck, yanking his head back against the headrest. Jake grunted, grabbing at the rope, and at the same time the muzzle of Woz’s gun jammed into the hollow just below his ear.

“Welcome back, asshole,” Woz said softly.

“What the hell?” Jake’s whole body seemed to stiffen. Before he could say or do anything else Woz slammed the butt of his gun into Jake’s temple. Charlie winced in terrified sympathy as Jake made a pained sound.

Blinking against incipient tears, Charlie forced herself to refocus her attention on the road. Although she was driving an as-slow-as-she-dared thirty miles an hour, the forest already loomed in front of them, its gravelike darkness as ominous as an executioner. Would they die in that forest? It seemed likely.

Charlie shuddered. In the footwell, Sadie pressed closer against her legs. The dog rubbed its head against her calf in silent sympathy.

“What the hell is your problem, the both of you?” Jake spoke in the tone of a reasonable man sorely tried. The rope around his neck pinned him back against the headrest, and his voice was raspy. A lightning glance in the rearview mirror showed Charlie that Woz had the ends wrapped around his fist.

Woz snorted. “Come off it, asshole. We know you’re a cop.”

“What?” Jake gave a derisive laugh that ended in a choked cough as Woz twisted the rope. “You’re crazy.”

A cop? Charlie felt a wild burbling of hope. He was a
cop?
Surely that was a good thing—if it was true. But he didn’t sound like it was true. That laugh had sounded incredulous. And maybe it wasn’t a good thing anyway, under the circumstances. A cop at the mercy of a pair of drug smugglers was kind of like a bird at the mercy of a pair of cats.

And she was with the cop.

Denton’s gun nudged her in the back of the neck, and she cringed. “Take a left up here at the fork in the road.”

They were in the forest now. Outside, the night was dark as a cave. Mist floated in front of the Jeep. She might, Charlie thought desperately, be able to blink the one remaining headlight if another vehicle came into view. Or honk the horn. Or drive head-on into the other car. The operative principle was, whatever it took. Anything would be better than what she feared would happen to her once the pair in the back ordered her to stop the Jeep.

But there was no other vehicle in sight. And, frightening as it was to face the truth, they were not likely to encounter one. This area had been chosen by Critter Ridders as an ideal place to release their captives for one primary reason: It was remote.

Charlie groaned inwardly. Why, oh, why, when Marisol had asked her to do this tonight, hadn’t she decided in favor of pleasing herself instead of her sister and
just said no?

Woz was still talking to Jake. “You know what? Blowing your brains out will be my pleasure. I never liked you anyway.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to get a marriage proposal from me any time soon either, but this cop shit is the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

“Liar! You’re going to tell us everything you know, believe me. Or maybe your friend will. She a cop, too?”

“No!” Charlie squeaked in horrified protest.

“Shut up.” Woz growled. Charlie shut up. Protesting her innocence would not save her, she realized with despair. Indeed, it might even hasten her end. If they thought she was a cop, they might try to torture information out of her. Once they knew that there was no reason to keep her alive, however, she was pretty much toast.

“Turn here,” Denton ordered.

Trembling so hard that she had to grit her teeth to keep them from chattering, Charlie turned. Gravel crunched as they left the paved road. Denton’s gun brushed the back of her neck almost caressingly. Short of a miracle, there was no chance of any kind of encounter that might save them. They were as good as dead. Charlie realized that she was starting to hyperventilate, and deliberately slowed her breathing down. Breathe in, breathe out, in, out …

Sadie was behind her legs now, rubbing against them, offering what comfort she could. If she didn’t think of something, fast, poor innocent Sadie would die along with poor innocent her and who-cared-if-he-was-innocent Jake. Charlie thought frantically, but could come up with nothing that might save their lives.
Running the Jeep into a tree would not help. If she did that, and survived, she would almost certainly be shot for her pains.

She was going to be shot anyway. Oh, God, would it hurt? Had it hurt Laura to be shot like that? With a sense of deepening horror, she realized that Jake did not even know that Laura was dead. He’d been out cold when it had happened. She glanced at him, burning with an urgent need to acquaint him with Laura’s fate. But she didn’t dare so much as open her mouth.

Sadie rubbed against her leg again, twining around her left ankle almost like a cat. Poor, dear Sadie. Beloved Sadie.

“Is Jerry Colina working with you? He is, isn’t he? I always hated the bastard.” There was a certain grim pleasure in Woz’s voice, Charlie realized, that told her that he was enjoying the situation. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie saw him grind the mouth of the pistol into Jake’s neck. She could see the gleam of Jake’s teeth as he grimaced. She could see something else, too, she realized: the gleam of Sadie’s eyes.

Sadie was huddled in the footwell on Jake’s side.

Charlie froze. If Sadie was on Jake’s side,
what was rubbing against her leg?

She glanced down. Something black was twining around the paleness of her jean-clad calf. Something twisty and ropelike and alive. A triangular head was slithering up the pale blue column of her leg toward her knee.

Charlie screamed. No, she shrieked. The sound was earsplitting, window-shattering, heart-attack inducing. No horror film in history had ever recorded a more
bloodcurdling screech. Completely forgetting that she was at the wheel of a vehicle traveling at thirty miles an hour over a narrow bumpy track, completely forgetting that there was a gun pointed at her and two armed murderers in the back and a strange man cuffed to her wrist, she shot out of that seat like a ball out of a cannon, flinging herself over the console and onto Jake in an insane effort to dive through his closed window, screaming all the while.

“What the hell!” Jake grabbed her.

“Shut the bitch up! Shoot her!” Denton lunged between the seats. Without even meaning to do it, Charlie kicked him in the face. He fell back.

“Snake! Snake, snake, snake, snake,
snake!”
The snake swarmed toward her crotch, then undulated past her pelvis, moving up her body like it had somewhere to go. Charlie screamed like a steam whistle, kicked like a demented mule, then grabbed the writhing, leathery thing and flung it as hard as she could. Two plus yards of twisting, ropelike reptile flew into the air, smacked against the roof, and disappeared into the backseat.

“Snake!” Woz screamed as horribly as she had done seconds earlier, and kept on screaming to the sound of beating fists and stomping feet.

“Shit! Snake!” Denton was screaming, too, as they both engaged in panic-stricken battle with the snake. A hideous smell suddenly exploded in the air.