Mortal Sin (45 page)

“Did you forget the little talk we had about consequences?”

Kit clenched her fists in the folds of her skirt. “You threatened me,” she said. “You threatened my aunt. What did you expect?”

“This isn’t the time to air our dirty linens, babe. We’ll discuss them later,
when we’re alone
. Right now, we have a movie to make. Mr. Bryant has paid good money for you, and—”

“Leave me out of it,” Clancy said. “I’ve never forced a girl yet, and I’m not about to start now. If the lady’s not interested, neither am I. I’d like my money back.”

Rio let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “Are you nuts? That money’s already changed hands. You’re up the creek, Bryant.”

“Not the way I see it. You promised me something, and you failed to deliver. In my book, that’s a clear breach of contract. The money’s mine, and I’m not leaving until I get it.”

“Good luck finding a judge who’ll back you up. In case you hadn’t noticed, what we’re doing here is illegal.”

Kit sobbed dramatically, ended on a hiccup. “He blackmailed me, Mr. Bryant! He said if I didn’t go through with this, he’d kill my aunt! You have to help me.”

She might have been making up the script as she went along, but Clancy suspected the details came direct from real life. “What kind of operation are you running here?” he said to Rio. “Tom told me I could trust you. Now I find out you’re using threats to coerce your girls into performing?”

“She’s lying,” Rio said. He was starting to sweat, starting to lose his cool. “I swear on my mother’s grave that I never threatened anybody. And I’ve never coerced any of my girls. If you’re willing to wait a few minutes, I can have somebody else here. Somebody who’ll be happy to fulfill our, ahcontractual agreement.”

Clancy feigned deliberation. “Why should I trust you after this fiasco?”

“Because Tom gave me a glowing recommendation, and he’s a regular client. Because nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Because I admit to poor judgment.” Rio’s smile was ingenuous, ingratiating. “I should have known Kit wasn’t ready for—”

A knock on the door interrupted his words. All three of them froze. Then three heads turned in the direction of the door. This wasn’t in the script, Clancy thought. He and Kit exchanged brief, panicked glances as Rio walked to the door and glanced through the peephole. While inside Clancy’s stomach, butterflies danced the tango, Rio turned the dead bolt and undid the chain.

And opened the door.

The emergency operator had been a nincompoop, and Sarah could only pray that she’d gotten the message right. Especially the part about calling Vince Paoletti. But she didn’t have time to stew over it. Or to wait for the cavalry to arrive. She was on her own. Hopefully she’d learned a thing or two from those
Charlie’s Angels
reruns she’d overdosed on as a kid.

The .38 heavy in her hand, she stuck to the shadows at the edge of the parking lot. She circled a huge green Dumpster and began wading through waist-high weeds. It had been a hot day, and the pungent stench of old garbage turned her stomach. Somebody must have mistaken the area behind the motel for the city dump. Moonlight glittered off shards of broken glass. A bag of garbage, overflow from the Dumpster, had been ripped open and scattered by members of the local wildlife population.

The land dropped away sharply just a few feet from the building, and to keep from tumbling ass over teakettle into the gully, she was forced to cling to the slender saplings that grew tight against the cement walls. She tucked the .38 into her waistband so she wouldn’t drop it and accidentally shoot herself. Her foot tangled in a coil of wire that tore a deep slash in her ankle, bringing hot tears to her eyes. She blinked them away, shook off the wire, and kept moving. Counting windows as she went, she stumbled and nearly fell over an old television that somebody had discarded.

A bramble caught at her sleeve, and she yanked it free, barely aware of its prickles against the soft flesh of her forearm. She reached the backside of the fourth unit from the end, and looked helplessly at the bathroom window that was a good two feet above her head. “Shit,” she muttered. “Now what?”

Sweat trickled through the valley between her breasts. Somewhere out there in the weeds, a cricket chirped merrily. Glancing around, she spied the black hulk of the television, barely visible in the darkness.

It took some slick maneuvering to wrestle it into place without shooting herself or dropping it down the embank-ment, but she finally succeeded. She jostled it up against the wall, wiped the sweat from her brow, and climbed atop her wobbly makeshift stepladder.

The window was cranked open a couple of inches. Sarah grabbed the wooden frame in both hands, wiggled it, then pushed it upward as hard as she could. It refused to budge. She tried again. Again, the crank held firm. Holding in the cuss word that formed on the tip of her tongue, she gave up on the window and applied herself to the rusted screen.

If only she’d thought to bring the nail file she carried in her purse, this would have been a breeze. Instead, she had to use a sharp stick to poke a hole in the screen. The rusted mesh gave, and she dropped the stick and widened the tear so she could get her hand through it. Feeling around inside, she located the window crank.

It seemed to take forever to crank the window open, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds. When it was fully opened, she tore the rest of the screen from the window frame and tossed it on the ground.

Now came the hard part.

She should never have quit aerobics class. Panting like a sheepdog on a hot July day, she hoisted herself, inch by painful inch, up the cement wall. She wished, not for the first time, that she were a size three. A big-boned size ten, she wasn’t even sure she’d make it through the window. But she didn’t have a choice. Her daughter, and the man she loved, were both depending on her. She couldn’t allow herself to fail.

Her belly scraped on the jagged pieces of screen she’d left behind as she squeezed through the tiny opening. She heard fabric tearing, but didn’t stop to check. She was halfway through the window when she realized she should have gone feet first. But it was too late to turn back now. She’d just have to dangle upside down like a slumbering bat and try not to break her neck. The window crank drilled into her hip as she squeezed her rump through the opening. Still upside down, she pulled in first one leg and then the other. With a thud they probably heard in Portsmouth, she dropped clumsily to the floor.

Heart hammering, she froze, afraid to breathe. If they’d heard the noise… if they got suspicious… but after a moment, when nobody came to check, she took a deep breath and tiptoed carefully to the door. One hand on the doorknob, the other on the .38, she pressed her ear against the door and opened it a crack so she could hear what was happening on the other side.

Clancy’s stomach turned inside-out at sight of the two men who walked into the motel room. One was tall, scrawny, stupid-looking. The other swaggered into the room, a half-dozen gold chains around his neck and shiny black boots with pointed toes on his feet. Luis Gonzales gave Clancy a hard little smile and said to Rio, “Your instincts were right,
amigo
. It’s him.”

“Goddamn it! I knew it smelled like a setup! Tom Adams is a dead man.” Rio’s face went a sickly gray as his gaze darted frantically from one piece of expensive electronic equipment to the next. “Shit,” he said. “He probably has the cops on the way. We have to get this stuff out of here.” He knelt beside the bed and began disconnecting his camera from its tripod. “Tico!” he barked. “Help me pack up this equipment!”

Santana blinked twice, then started unplugging lights and coiling the cords. Gonzales reached beneath his leather vest and smoothly pulled out a Beretta semiautomatic. Pointing it directly at Clancy’s heart, he said, “So, padre, we meet again. It’s a shame you ignored my last warning. It truly pains me to have to kill a man of God. I’ll be in confession for a year.”

Clancy stared down the barrel of the loaded gun, surprised to realize that should he die here, on this balmy summer evening in this miserable excuse for a motel room, he would meet his maker without fear or regret. He would be a little miffed at having been cut down in his prime, while his work here wasn’t yet done. There were so many things left to do. So many people he wasn’t ready to leave behind. But he didn’t fear death. He knew with absolute certainty where he was headed, knew with equal certainty that when he got there, he wouldn’t run into either Rio or Gonzales. That was enough for him.

But he didn’t intend to take Kit along for the ride.

He met her eyes across the room. Pressed up tight against the headboard, she looked terrified at the sight of Gonzales pointing that gun at him. “Let the girl go,” he said. “I don’t care what happens to me, but let her go. She’s only sixteen years old.” He thought of Meg, who would remain eighteen forever, and strengthened his resolve. “She’s done nothing wrong. Let her go home where she belongs. My sins are my own. She doesn’t deserve to pay for them.”

“Shut up,” Rio said, zipping his precious video camera into its vinyl carrying case. “Stay oat of it. Kit’s my property, and I’ll do with her whatever I choose.”

There was a faint thump from the vicinity of the bathroom. Heedless of the sound, Rio and Santana continued packing lights and stands and electrical cords. Had they not heard it? Or had they all, Gonzales included, attributed the thud to the commotion from the hasty packing? He glanced at Kit. She stared back through unblinking blue eyes. She was either paralyzed with terror, or the gutsiest kid he’d ever met. Maybe a little of both. “Give it up, Rio,” he said. “Or Roger, or whatever your name is. Let us go. Too many people know the truth, including a BPD detective named Paoletti. If anything happens to me, who do you think they’re going to come to first?”

“I told you to shut up!” Rio was sweating, his underarms damp, his face dripping. “Get him out of here, Luis. Take him someplace and get rid of him. This time, make sure you do it right. I don’t want any evidence left behind.” He snatched up his tripod, his camera. “Tico, get the rest of this equipment into the Camaro. You know what to do with it.” Shouldering the camera bag, he turned to Kit. “You, come with me. We’re getting out of here.” When she didn’t move, he barked, “Now!”

“No,” she said. “I’m not going with you.”

“Move it! I don’t have time to argue!”

She folded her arms and held her ground. “I told you, I’m not going.”

“There you go,” Clancy said with a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. “Dissension within the ranks. Whether you kill me or not, Rio, your little empire is about to come tumbling down on your head.”

The look Rio gave him would have vaporized a lesser man. The pimp darted a glance toward the door. In a tone just short of pleading, he said to Kit, “I thought we had something really good going here. Don’t do this to me.”

With a poise that was amazing under the circumstances, Kit said, “I’d rather die than spend another minute with you.”

Rio’s face hardened. “Fine!” he said. “Take her along for the ride, Luis. It’s a damn shame, you know, kitten. You had potential. We could have gone places together.”

“I told you,
amigo
. Sooner or later, they all become liabilities.” Gonzales waved the gun in the direction of the parking lot. “Move! Both of you!”

The bathroom door opened silently, and Sarah stood in the doorway, Clancy’s .38 trained directly on Gonzales. Her hair was a tangle of twigs and leaves, and her shirt hung in tatters. A clump of burdock clung to her sleeve, and a drop of blood trickled down her forearm. Clancy had never seen a more beautiful sight. “If I were you, sugar,” she said in a deceptively soft voice, “I’d drop the gun. If I pull the trigger on the one I’m holding right now, the only thing you’ll be good for is guarding the sultan’s harem.”

Gonzales froze. Santana paused to gape at her, a heavy box clutched to his chest. “Aunt Sarah!” Kit said.

“Come here, baby. Go in the bathroom and shut the door, and don’t come out until I tell you it’s safe.”

“But—”

“Go on,” Clancy said gently. “It’ll be all right.”

The girl hesitated for an instant, then scrambled to obey. Rio came out of his stupor and began edging toward the door. “Move another inch,” Sarah said sweetly, “and I’ll blow you away. I’ve waited months for the privilege.”

Rio froze. “Luis,” she said, “be a good boy now and drop the gun. I’d really hate to have to shoot you. I detest messes.”

Scowling, Gonzales bent and placed his gun carefully on the floor. “Wise choice,” she said. “Now kick it across the room.”

He shoved the gun with his foot. It skittered across the floor. Clancy bent and picked it up, unloaded the ammunition, and tucked it into his belt. In the distance, he heard the wail of a siren. “Santana’s carrying, too,” he said.

“Then perhaps you’d best disarm him, sugar. Tico, just keep on holding that box. If you drop it, I’ll have to shoot you.” She smiled wickedly. “Just because I can.”

His gaze darting wildly around the room, Santana swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He raised the box slightly so Clancy could remove the gun at his hip. Pocketing it, Clancy said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been quite this happy to see anybody.”

Across the room, Sarah held his .38 steady, without so much as a tremor. “The feeling’s mutual, sugar. By the way, you got a permit for this thing?”

Outside, tires squealed and the siren he’d been hearing squawked to a stop. “Yes,” he said. “Why?”

“I just thought it might be a good idea for it to be in your hands when Paoletti gets here.”