The Bogus Biker (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Without bothering to put on slippers, Penelope made it to the bottom of the stairs even before she finished buttoning her robe. She padded through the kitchen, eased open the back door, and stepped outside.
What am I blessed doing? Maybe he’s come back to finish the job. Take out the witnesses.

The full moon illuminated the veranda so brightly she imagined herself back on stage at Amaryllis High, spotlighted for her big scene in the senior play.
Tip-toeing past her father’s window, she stage-whispered, “Sam? Sam, are you out there?”

He arms came from behind her, one hand covering her mouth. “Don’t scream.” He turned her toward him and eased his hand from her lips.

“I’m not going to scream,” she hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“Come on.” He held out his hand. Dressed completely in black, he reminded her of the specter of Death.

“Where? The last time I went with you, I almost got killed.”

He kept his hand outstretched. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

He didn’t reply.

“I’m in my robe, and I don’t have any shoes on.”

“Your toes won’t get frost-bite in June.”

“Where are we going?” The eagerness pounding in her veins guaranteed she’d go with him.

“Not far.”

Without realizing she’d done it, she took his hand and let him lead her down the path that ran through her mother’s garden toward the garage where a bright green “bug” idled in the driveway. “Get in.”

“Where are we going?” she asked again.

“I told you, not far.”

“How far?”

“There’s not a biker in sight at Rosedale Bridge.”

“When you knocked me down at the Sit-n-Swill and told me to keep quiet, I knew you weren’t a biker.”

She thought she heard him laughing softly as he backed out onto the street.

“Did you come to finish the job? Get rid of the prime witness?”

“If you really thought that, I’d have had to drag you to the car kicking and screaming.”

“You moved Shana and me around like pawns on a chessboard.”

“I don’t play chess.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

Sam turned onto the road leading past the abandoned schoolhouse, slowed, then took the fork toward Pembroke Point. “That’s not the way to Rosedale Bridge,” Penelope said. A sick feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she really should be back at the B&B—kicking and screaming.

“You’re taking me back to the Point? What for? There’s nothing left in the safe, and I don’t remember the combination anyway.”

“You’re babbling, Mrs. Pembroke.”

“There’s nobody
there, and…”

“We’ll be there.”

“How many of us will stay there?”

He chuckled. “Do you want to stay?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then don’t worry about it.”
             

She pulled her robe more closely around her, acutely aware there was nothing underneath but a nightshirt and unmentionables. “If you were me, wouldn’t you worry?”

“Not if I was you, and you were with me.”

“That doesn’t make a blessed iota of sense.”

He laughed again. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Maybe Daddy heard us outside. Maybe he’s already called the police, and they’re looking for me.

Pembroke Point appeared on the horizon, dark and almost gothic despite the full moon, but the trees from the woods cast long shadows across the winding drive. Sam stopped near the terrace. “Now, we can talk.”

“Do I get to choose the topic?”

“
All you ever do is ask questions, but sure, go ahead.”

“I’ve got a lot of them. For starters, who are you?”

“Just Sam.”

“Travis called you Bart.”

“I’m sorry about Travis Pembroke. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You didn’t set us up in that garage?”

Enough light shone on his face for her to see it grow hard. “That’s what you thought?”

“What was I supposed to think?” She fiddled with the buttons on her robe. “How did he almost take the fall for what went on out here the night of the fire?”

“All I can tell you is, it was a mistake.”

“The fire?
Two dead men?”

“All of it.

“How did it happen?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Then what about Danny Holmes or Lawrence Drake or whoever he was? Did you know him?”

Sam’s voice came tight and terse through the semi-darkness. “I knew him.”

“I take it you didn’t like him.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“There’s a lot you don’t think I need to know.”

“Sorry.”

“Then why did you bring me here? Certainly not to talk about anything important.”

He turned toward her as much as the cramped space inside the tiny car would allow. “Maybe to make sure you’re all right.”

“Why should you care?”

He reached to touch her cheek with the tip of one finger. “I care.”

She shivered, and the unwanted feeling in the pit of her stomach turned from fear to longing.

“You’re a survivor, just like I am.” His finger moved to her lips and traced them. “You’ve got a sharp mind. You figure things out. I like that.”

“I can’t figure you out.” She had barely enough breath to get the words past her lips which were on fire beneath his touch.

“You don’t need to. Not now.” He leaned toward her, brushing her lips with his.

What are you blessed doing, Penelope? Why are you here in the middle of the night, half-dressed, with a man who may be planning to…oh, please, Lord, no. Surely he’s not going to…

His hand traveled down her arm and stopped. “We could go in the house.”

“It’s locked.”

“I can get in.”

“I’ll just bet you can. And then I suppose you’ll carry me upstairs to my ex-husband’s bed.”

“There are other beds besides his.”

His other hand stopped just short of inside her robe.
This is so wrong. Say something. Say what you didn’t say to Travis years ago.

“Was it good for you with him? He stroked her neck with a gentleness she wouldn’t have attributed to his general demeanor.

She willed herself to push him away, but she couldn’t do it. “No,” she heard herself say.

“Never?”

“He took what he wanted, and it was over.”
Why are you telling him things you never even said to your best friend?

“I don’t do that.”

Her whole body felt consumed with desire.
Make him stop, Penelope. You know it’s wrong.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he moved away from her. “I want you,” he said. “I had the crazy idea you might want me, too.”

I do…oh, God forgive me, I do, but…

“I don’t even know you.” Her voice came out as dry as her lips. “You don’t know me.”

“I might know you better than you think.” He let his eyes drift over her body as she huddled against the door. “I don’t know when I’ll get back this way. I’m already supposed to be somewhere else, but I had to see you first.”

The odd note of vulnerability in his voice nibbled at her conscience. “I guess I should thank you for keeping Shana and me alive. You did, didn’t you?”

“I did my best.”

“I just wish I knew why you had to do it.”

“It had to be done.”

“Daddy’s the toast of the coffee set at the Daisy Café.”

“Jake’s a good man.”             

“Yes, he is. I’m glad you see that.”

“There’s a lot of your father in you.”

“I consider that a compliment.”

“I meant it as one.”

A long but not entirely uncomfortable silence filled the small car. Finally Penelope said, “Sam, where did you come from? I mean, you didn’t just spring full-blown from somewhere. You had to be a little boy once.”

“I was a little boy.”

“And then?”

“I taught medieval literature for a while.”

“And now…” She smiled a little.
“Never mind. I don’t need to know.”

“Now I’m a survivor.”

“Like me.”

He nodded. “Like you.”

“Did you really come back tonight just to be sure I was all right?”

“I like to tie up my loose ends.”

“You tie up loose ends with women by trying to get them into bed with you?”

“I usually don’t have to try.” He blew out his breath. “I shouldn’t have done it with you. I knew you were different from the beginning. But I knew there was an attraction there—for both of us.”

“Because you know things.”

He shrugged.

“Tomorrow morning I’ll wonder what I was doing here in the middle of the night in my nightshirt.”

“I think you know.”

Inexplicable tears filled her eyes. “I…I’ve been thinking about you,” she murmured.

“Well, that’s progress, I suppose.”

“Progress toward what? You’re leaving.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of.”

He reached for her hand. “Penelope Corinne Louise. That’s a mouthful. ”

“Penelope was my mother’s cousin who drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz and died one night when a building fell on her.”

“How old are you?”

“Never ask a woman her age.” She sighed. “Forty-seven.”

“I’m a year older.”

She studied his face. He looked older somehow. The lines between his eyes and across his high forehead might be premature, but they hinted at more than one lifetime already lived.

“What are you looking at?”

“I want to be sure I’ll recognize you when I see your face in the post office someday.”

“In the…” He grimaced. “That’s not very flattering.”

“Sorry.”

He brought her hand to his lips,
then appeared to freeze.

“What?”

“Be quiet.” He put his hand on the back of her neck and pushed her down. “Don’t move.”

She felt her mouth hit her bare kneecap and tasted blood, but the survival instinct Sam said she had kicked in, and she stayed still. She heard his door open, then close with a soft click, and knew he’d gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

All right, Penelope, now you’ve done it. Gotten yourself in a real mess this time. Why didn’t you tell him to buzz off? But, oh no, you just blindly followed a man who could well be a modern-day Jack the Ripper, down the garden path—quite literally—and rode away with him, half-naked, in the middle of the night.

As she crouched in the tight space, hardly daring to breathe, she thought she heard the sound of footsteps circling the car. She tried to wiggle lower in the seat, but it was no use.
Bradley will kill me, even if someone else does it first. And Daddy will help him. Daddy…oh, Lord, how many times has he told me to think three or four times before I do something?

The single gunshot came from far away, somewhere beyond where the fertilizer shed had stood. She tensed, waiting for returning fire, but it didn’t come. Then, before she could breathe again, someone flung open her door and
drug her from the car. Before she had time to feel fear, she smelled Sam’s aftershave.

“Not a sound,” he whispered close to her ear.

The debris on the unswept terrace—bits of gravel and twigs—cut into her bare feet as she stumbled along after him, trying to keep up with his long strides. In the moonlight, the gun in his hand gleamed like a lighthouse beacon promising hope. When he jerked her forward in an arc around him, she barely had time to put out her hands to break her fall.

“Stay down.”

“Who…”

“Shut up.” He hunkered down as if to shield her.

Her feet stung, and her arm, which he’d clutched in a death grip as he hauled her away from the car, felt numb. She buried her face against his shoulder. For one brief moment, his hand came up to stroke her hair. Then he was gone again, and before the sound of his footsteps died away, another gunshot, closer this time, shattered the dark stillness.

Don’t let him die. I don’t care who he is, I want him to be all right. I’ll think about what to do later, but for now I just want him to stay alive.
She flattened herself against the damp earth of her former mother-in-law’s iris bed. The smell of the soil, honest and unchanging, calmed her.

Somehow she knew the approaching footsteps belonged to Sam, but she didn’t look up. “Keep your head down and crawl around the house to your right. There’s a utility room door…”

“I know where it is,” she interrupted.

“It’s unlocked. Open it just far enough to go in. Don’t stand up. Don’t make a sound. Now go.”

Penelope went. By the time she slid inside on the cool tile, her knees stung like her feet. She longed to wet a towel in the deep concrete sink and bathe away some of her pain, but she stayed flat on the floor behind the closed door.

Oh, Sam, be careful! Who’s out there, and what are they after? Surely there’s nothing left after the police and the drug dealers—and I—went through everything. Unless…unless whoever’s out there wants Sam. Or do they want me? I don’t know them…do I? Even if they know I took the money, they’ve got to know I don’t have it now.

A barrage of gunfire broke into her thoughts and shattered her hope for Sam as she realized he was one against several. Then she thought of the gun case in Travis’s study. Had it been broken into and ransacked? She couldn’t remember, but there was only one way to find out.

She inched toward the door leading into the kitchen.
I’ve never shot at anything in the dark. In daylight I’m dead-on, but I can see the target. I can’t hit what I can’t see…and I could hit the wrong person.

She kept moving across the kitchen, through the dining room, into the foyer, and finally felt the threshold of Travis’s study. No moonlight lit the room, which told her the drapes were closed.
Do I dare turn on a light? I don’t have a choice. I can’t pick out the right gun and ammunition without it.

She felt for his desk, her fingers crawling upward to the top until they felt the base of the brass lamp. Gritting her teeth against thoughts of the consequences, she rose to her knees, then her feet, and switched it on.

She picked her way through the littered room until she stood in front of the gun case. It was locked, of course, but she hefted the nearby floor lamp and smashed the glass. Careful to avoid the tiny shards sparkling dangerously in the carpet, she reached for the only handgun she recognized, a forty-five, and fumbled with the box of ammunition stored next to it.

She loaded it, made sure the safety was on, and turned off the lamp before she dropped to the floor to begin the long crawl back to the utility room. Sam would expect to find her where he’d left her.

Back where she’d started, she felt around in the jumble of miscellaneous junk cluttering the lowest cabinet until she found what she was looking for—an ancient ragged pair of Travis’s tennis shoes he’d always kept handy for unexpected forays outside at night. For a big man, he’d had a small foot. She pulled the laces tight on feet which still burned from their earlier encounter with gravel.

Then she edged under the concrete sink again, bumping her head on the exposed pipes, and tried to make herself part of the back wall. Sooner than she expected, the door opened again, but the voice didn’t belong to Sam.

“The broad could be anywhere in the house.”

“I say we leave her.”

“I saw we feed her to the fish down by the wharf.”

“Why? She can’t finger us for anything.”

“I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”

“We need to get out of here, like half an hour ago. We’d have been gone if that narc hadn’t given us the slip.”

“How do you now he’s a narc? He could be a rogue dealer outside the network.”

“Whatever. He’s the one we need to go after. He knows what we look like.”

“He didn’t see you lob that grenade into the gin. It was a stupid thing to do. You could’ve gone in and picked off Holmes and the other guy like pigeons, but no, you had to alert half the county something was going down.”

“He’s figured things out by now. And if he doesn’t have the money—which I’m betting he does—he knows where it is.”

“I still say you could’ve taken care of Danny another way. Frying him wasn’t the smartest thing.”

“It took care of him, didn’t it? And it would’ve gotten the old guy if he hadn’t slipped out the back.”

“He’s taken care of now.”

“Yeah, by the same guys that’ll be coming after us. That money’s our insurance.”

“Sure, I guess. But we have to get it first. Look, let’s go. The dame isn’t going to cause us any trouble. We can always take care of her later. We know where she lives, her and the old man.”

Penelope knew the meaning of blood turning to ice water. She desperately needed to take a deep breath, but she didn’t dare do more than take small, shallow ones that, hopefully, couldn’t be heard. With the gun, she could take down one of the men but not both. She wasn’t that good.

“You coming? We’ll make one more round to turn up Bart. Until he’s dead, we’re not home free, money or no money.”

“If he’s dead, we’re not going to see the money.”

“He’ll tell us where it is. I’m betting on it.”

“How can you be sure?”

The nasty laugh echoing across the tile set Penelope’s teeth on edge. “I know something about him you don’t. Come on.”

Footsteps.
The sound of a door closing. Penelope gasped for more oxygen and loosened her grip on the forty-five, realizing she hadn’t released the safety. She did so now. The door opened and closed again. She strained to identify the feet that paused at the edge of the sink. “Penelope?”

She scooted out from under the sink. “Those men have gone after you again.”

“I know.”

“One of them burned the gin.”

“I know that, too.” He reached down and hauled her to her feet. “What in God’s name…”

“Don’t be profane!” she snapped. “I got this out of Travis’s study, and yes it’s loaded, and yes, I know how to use it.”

“And you’re worried about my language.” He chuckled.

“I don’t appreciate hearing that.”

“You’re something else, lady. Something else.” He pulled her against him. She smelled sweat and smoke, and her insides burned again.

“You’ve been at the gin.”

“I thought I heard them down there, but no dice.”

“Just two of them?”

“As far as I know.” His arms tightened around her. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I’d known about them.” He turned her loose. “Stay here, and keep your head down.”             

“Don’t go, Sam. Can’t we go out the front and get to the car before they see us?”

“Too risky. Besides, I want those two.”

“You’re going to kill them?”

“If I have to.”

She shuddered.

“Things happen that way sometimes,” he said. “But it’s my immortal soul, not yours.”

Something stirred in the back of her mind. “You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Lapsed. Permanently. Now stay here.” He was out the door in seconds.

Penelope considered crawling back under the sink, but her hand reached for the doorknob instead. Those men
were out there, and so was Sam. Three immortal souls…but only one she cared to preserve.

****

Keeping close to the house, out of the moonlight, Penelope edged her way around toward the front veranda running from one end of the house to the other. Half a story off the ground and edged with waist-high boxwoods, it would provide more cover while she took a look around.

Someone, she supposed the gardener, had mowed recently. She hadn’t noticed that earlier when they came for the burial. The flagstone walk shone whit
e in the moonlight filtering through the tall oaks dotting the lawn as it sloped to the road. She could see the remains of the gin off the road that stretched to her left.

No movement, no sound, not even the birds stirred in the branches of the trees. A couple of minutes later, she worked her way back along the same route. Then, near the cemetery, something moved.

What an idiot you are, slipping around with a loaded gun! Playing cops and robbers…cowboys and Indians. Those are the big boys out there, Penelope, people who incinerated two others in the gin, shot Travis in cold blood, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.
She gritted her teeth.
But I don’t like them playing two against one, so I guess I’m evening up the odds whether I want to or not.

Crouching low on the ground, she moved away from the house toward a black walnut tree and hugged it as she listened. The sound from the cemetery gate, always needing oil, was unmistakable.
Now what? Who’s down there, and why the blessed heck would they be in the cemetery anyway? It’s wide open, except for those tall markers belonging to the first Pembrokes who built this place.

She eased her face around the tree, scraping her cheek in the process, and peered through the moonlight. Something—someone—was down there all right. Then the heard the gate again.
Idiots! If you’re trying to sneak in, you could step over the blessed fence. It’s only a foot and a half high.
A single gunshot sent her cowering behind the tree again.

Voices drifted up from the quiet place of rest, angry, demanding, but she couldn’t decipher them.
Another gunshot, then two. She dropped to the grass and began to crawl closer. Was Sam down there?

She lost sight of the fence as a cloud drifted across the moon. At the same time, she felt someone take hold of the collar of her robe. Rolling over just as the moon reappeared, she looked up into a grinning face—not the one she’d have preferred to see. Raising the gun, she fired pointblank. Without waiting to see the result, she scrambled to her feet and ran toward the cemetery, taking the fence as she’d taken the jumps in girls’ track a million years ago,
then flattened herself against the ground.
Oh, Holy
Mother of God, help me! I shot a man! I’ve committed murder!

“What the hell?”

She recognized the second voice from the utility room and tried to roll over, but the man’s foot in the middle of her back kept her pinned. The gun she clutched pressed painfully against her ribs.

“What the hell?”

A hand jerked her to her feet, and at the same time, easily wrested the gun from her trembling fingers. She’d heard the name he uttered before, but never directed at her personally. Without stopping to think, she spat at him. When he slapped her, she hit the ground again, and this time he pulled her up by the hair. She gritted her teeth against the pain, but her eyes filled with tears.

The man put his face close to hers. “I’m going to cut you up into little pieces and feed you to the fish in the bayou, but you’ll probably still give them indigestion!”

She felt her knees go out from under her. His arm went around her neck. “Sister, you poked your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Let her go, Rick.” Sam’s voice came from somewhere, but Penelope was too disoriented to guess where he might be.

The man’s head spun around, but he didn’t loosen his grip on Penelope. “Bart?”