Infamous (52 page)

I walked through her again, and she said, “No, that means no, right?”

Yes.

“Do we go right?” she asked.

No.

“Left?” She was already moving, since she’d been heading forward and coming from the rear—it was the only direction to go.

But I told her yes anyway.

And then she saw it as her eyes adjusted more fully to the night—the mine. And she and Hugh ran for it, slipping into the cooler darkness of its entrance.

No one believed him.

A.J. didn’t dare keep his cell line open for long for fear that they would track him, so he made a series of short calls. The first few times he was told that Rob and Charlotte were unavailable, could he hold please?

So he just kept hanging up and calling back.

And finally assuming that he was on some kind of speaker phone, he just started to talk, rattling off everything Jamie had told him about both Rob and Charlotte, hoping to get some sort of response.

And sure enough, there was a click, and Rob picked up. At least he said he was Rob. Without Jamie there to verify, A.J. couldn’t know for sure.

“There’s a man named Brian,” A.J. told him, “and he’s trying to kill Alison Carter. He’s in a black sedan on the road between Tucson and Jubilation. You need to send the police out there now. Brian killed Wayne. That’s what this is all about. He thinks Alison knows something about that murder. There are at least two other men he’s working with. A drug addict named Gene—bushy eyebrows, bald spot. And Skip Smith, who works on the movie set as Trace Marcus’s—the actor’s—assistant. I don’t know if Marcus is involved,
but Smith just shot and killed Neil Sylvester. You’ll find him in the kitchen of his house in Jubilation.”

“Lot of bodies showing up in kitchens when you’re around,” Rob said, and A.J. knew that the man didn’t believe him. Not even a little bit.

“That’s right,” A.J. said, changing his voice, making it rougher, harsh, giving them what they wanted—someone who was, as Lutz would say, batshit crazy. “And you better find Alison first, motherfucker, or she’s next.” He switched back to his own voice, and it wasn’t hard to sound frantic and upset. “Please,” he begged, “find Alison. Don’t let me hurt her.”

And he hung up his phone, praying that the FBI agent had finally taken him seriously, even though it meant that when they found him, there was no longer any doubt that they would shoot to kill.

The mine wasn’t much of a hiding place.

There’d been a cave-in, probably years ago, and the entrance wasn’t an entrance any longer. It was a dimple in the hillside. There was no shaft to escape down. No myriad tunnels to provide misdirection or confusion.

Just this shallow indentation.

“Have I mentioned,” Hugh breathed into Alison’s ear as they crouched in the darkness, “that I’m claustrophobic? And afraid of spiders?”

“Shh, just close your eyes,” she said, because Brian was out there. God, her arm was throbbing with every accelerated beat of her heart.

Jamie had walked through her, telling her no over and over again when they’d first come in here and he’d realized that the cave was no kind of a real hiding place.

But it was better than being out there, exposed, kneeling behind some scrub brush.

Still, she’d asked him to go out and try to find them a better place to hide. And as she waited for him to return, she closed her eyes, too, and prayed that A.J. would appear out of the sky like some superhero, rushing yet once again to her rescue. She was foolish for doubting him, foolish for fearing Henry’s threats of a lawsuit, foolish for getting on that plane.

She felt Jamie return, felt the now familiar buzz of cold energy as he passed completely through her. The buzz, oddly, made her injured arm feel better.

But what he was telling her was a great big no.

“No, there’s nowhere else out here to hide?” she asked, and he touched her shoulder, yes.

“Jamie, tell A.J. that I’m sorry,” she said, barely audibly, but he gave her another very definite no. Still, she wanted to say it. “Tell him I love him and that I’m sorry that … it turned out
I
was the one who couldn’t give
him
a guarantee.”

A.J. was still a good half an hour away.

“Drive faster,” I told him, then went back to the hillside where Alison was hiding.

I arrived just in time to hear Brian whisper to Gene, “Change in plans. Keep ’em alive.”

“What the hell …?” Gene asked plaintively.

To which Brian replied, “The car’s up to its fucking axles. We’re not going to be able to get it out without their help. And if we can’t, if it’s stuck …? You want their brains and blood in the back of your truck?”

Gene mumbled something in reply, but Brian’s powerful flashlight swept across the hillside.

I jumped up to Alison and Hugh as that beam of light made another pass. We all ducked. Me, too—it was instinctive.

We held our breath, but the light swept back toward us yet one more time. And then stopped.

Brian had found the cave.

I heard Alison moving and I saw in the darkness that she was looking for a rock, small enough to conceal in her hand, but big enough to pack a wallop.

I told her no. This was not the time or place for this—A.J. was coming—but she ignored me as the light got closer and closer and closer.

And then it was shining right on Alison and Hugh. And Brian locked and loaded the rifle he must’ve gotten along with that flashlight from Gene, who did the same to his own weapon a few yards away from him.

“Hands up,” Brian ordered. “Where we can see ’em. Move slowly!”

And slowly, obediently, Alison and Hugh both straightened to their feet, as I touched Alison’s shoulder to let her know that I was still there.

“You!” Alison breathed as Gene moved closer and his flashlight illuminated Brian’s face. “I saw you, outside my trailer—threatening Trace Marcus. With that other man, with the tattoos. Oh, my God, Jamie, was
that
Wayne?”

Yes, I told her. Yes.
Yes
.

I was right. I’d been right all along. Alison had seen something she wasn’t supposed to see. She’d seen Brian and Wayne with Trace Marcus, moments before Brian had killed Wayne.

“No talking,” Brian ordered. “Hands on your heads. Both of you. Move it. Now!”

The car was stuck in the sand.

The tall man that Jamie called Brian made both Alison and Hugh try to push it out as he sat behind the wheel and Gene stood guard.

But neither of them had the muscle or bulk—at least Alison didn’t, especially with her injured arm—and it didn’t take long before Brian realized it was hopeless.

She watched as he wiped the car down, presumably so as not to leave prints. And then he ordered the other man—Gene—to empty out the covered bed of his truck.

Yes, Jamie told her, but he kept his hand on her shoulder a long time, as if he were saying yeeeeeesssss, really slowly, and although she didn’t know it for sure, she suspected he was trying to tell her what she’d already figured out.

Delay was a good thing.

Because A.J. was on his way.

Please, God, let A.J. be on his way.…

But Gene’s truck didn’t have all that much in the back, and he quickly moved it into the cab, whereupon Brian marched her and Hugh over and ordered them into the truck bed.

“First give me the keys to your Jeep,” he told Hugh, who immediately handed them over.

“I didn’t see anything that day,” Alison tried to tell Brian, and felt Jamie tell her no, even as the tall man hit her.

He backhanded her almost effortlessly, casually, and even though she saw it coming it still nearly knocked her off her feet as her brain clouded from both fear and the sudden burst of pain.

And she should have been terrified, and she certainly was, but a part of her seemed to separate and look down at herself with distance and analysis. And that part was thinking not of her own impending and likely death, or of her fear for Hugh and A.J.’s lives, but of Melody Thompson Quinn Gallagher, who had received blows
exactly
like that one, as a matter of course.

For scrambling Silas Quinn’s eggs in the exact same way as she had the day before, when he’d told her he’d enjoyed them.

For speaking when not spoken to, or for not properly greeting her husband when he came into a room, even though she couldn’t possibly do both.

There was no rhyme or reason, no pattern, no way to do anything but lose and continue to lose, day after day after horrible, hopeless day.

And Alison knew what that was like—it had been the same with her mother. Even though she’d never been hit, even though she’d never even really been screamed at or berated, there had been no pattern, no rhyme or reason to her mother’s drinking.

Things would be going wonderfully well—and after months of sobriety, her mother would drink.

Things would be terrible, and she’d drink.

Things would be in between, they’d be average, moderate, uneventful, unimportant—and always and forever, Alison would never know whether or not her mother would come home sober or staggering and word-slurringly drunk.

You’re not a kid anymore
, A.J. had said when she’d told him about her mother, when he’d told her the truth about being an alcoholic himself. Recovering alcoholic.
You could walk away from me
.

Like Melody before her, Alison didn’t quite believe how strong she could be.

But like Melody, she
could
walk away—if there were good reason to. But to walk away before that, from the most incredible man she’d ever known …?

A.J. was not her mother, in the same way that, for Melody, Jamie hadn’t been Silas Quinn.

It was then that her fog lifted and she was back. Hugh was helping her, pulling her with him into the grimy bed of Gene’s truck. She hit her head again on the metal cover, which was much too low—just a few feet above the truck bed—and Hugh pulled her down again as she saw stars, holding her in his arms both to protect her and to keep her from bumping her head again as her ears continued to ring.

Gene or maybe Brian closed the tailgate first, then the cover’s flap, plunging them into total darkness and heat. Unlike some truck bed covers, this one had no windows.

“Oh, my God,” she heard Hugh breathe as someone outside—Brian or Gene—put a key in the cover and locked it shut with a clunk.

Alison was still carrying her cell phone—they hadn’t taken it away from her, and she opened it, hoping …

But it was still useless. Maybe if they drove away from the sedan …

“Jamie,” she said, aware that the inside of her cheek was bleeding from that blow—cut by her own teeth—and that beneath her bandage, her arm felt wet and warm, “are you still here?”

Yes.

It was hard not to cry when she felt that now reassuring buzz. “He’s here,” she told Hugh as she felt the truck jerk forward, but then stop. It jerked again, and again, tossing them about in the darkness. “What are they doing?” she asked, but then immediately rephrased. “Are they trying to tow the car out of the sand?”

Jamie’s answer was both a yes and a no. Which meant …

“Are they towing something else?” she asked.

Yes.

“Hugh’s Jeep?” she asked, and again he told her yes.

“Melody’s diaries,” she told him. “They’re still in that Jeep. Tell A.J.…”

“Tell A.J.,” Hugh hissed in the darkness, “to call the fricking police and FBI and tell them that we’re held hostage in the back of this truck!”

The police had set up an observation post out on the road into Jubilation, but Gene and Brian had already slipped past it before I saw what was going on.

There were three state cruisers and an unmarked car, probably FBI, hidden behind a hillside at a curve in the road, and none of them moved an inch as the truck and Hugh’s Jeep went by.

They were, no doubt, watching for that black sedan that A.J. had described—which was now well off the road, mired in the sand.

I jumped to A.J. to tell him, and he immediately dialed his cell phone, muttering about how his battery was running low.

Whoever was on the other end of his call answered immediately, and A.J. said—as if they were good friends—“Rob, it’s me. Call your boys who are sitting two miles outside of Jubilation. A truck and a Jeep just blew past them. Hugh Darcy and Alison Carter are locked in the bed of that truck.”

He hung up before giving Rob time to respond, telling me, “He always says the same thing after I call. I think he might be reading off the turn-yourself-in page of the manual. How far am I behind them?”

He was going eighty-five, which was as fast as that truck he’d stolen could manage without shaking itself apart.

“Seventeen minutes,” I told him, and he swore.

But then he said, “Go stay with Alison. If the cops stop them, she’s going to need to know to kick and scream.”

“She said to tell you that she loves you, kid,” I told him, hoping it would help bring him hope.

But the look he shot me was black. “Don’t tell me that,” he said. “You go back to her and you tell her that I am
not
going to let her die.”

“I’ve been trying to,” I said, and I popped away, hoping to
hear sirens as the cops chased after the two vehicles they’d let pass.

But there was only the sound of tires against the road as Alison again tried her cell phone, cursing softly as she snapped it shut. Hugh, meanwhile, was feeling his way along the bed of the truck, looking for a way out and finding none.

I touched Alison, and she bumped her head on the cover again. “Ow! Jamie?” She didn’t wait for me to say yes, she asked, “The cell phone jammer. Did Brian or Gene take it out of the car and bring it with them?”

I did a quick check and sure enough, it was in the front seat of Gene’s truck. I also verified visually that none of the state troopers or even the unmarked car had followed the truck and the Jeep.

I took a few extra seconds and zoomed down the road, where—God damn it—they’d moved all right, but only to create a road block, with their lights flashing. No doubt they’d interpreted that phone call from A.J. to mean that he was nearby.