From Cape Town with Love (39 page)

Marsha's face flinched. Not much, just a quiver at the edge of one eye, but I saw it.

“It's not personal, Ten. It's my job.”

“And you do love your work, don't you?”

“Ten, don't make this harder than it has to be.”

“That's up to you. How long before your friends get here?”

Marsha shrugged. “Thirty minutes after I call. Give or take.”

Her words roared in my ears. “After you call . . . ? You haven't flipped on your tricorder so your people can hear us?”

Marsha's face was empty. “No.”

I took another long breath. “Why not?”

“I don't know.” For the first time, Marsha lowered the muzzle, away from my heart.

She was barely five yards from me, and I was fast. In a deadly race, I could have launched at her like a missile. I didn't. The day was coming back to life. I saw a calm, snowy Japanese garden in my mind.

“Don't,” I said, trying to help Marsha see my garden, too. “Don't make the call. I was where you are the day Nandi was kidnapped—the boss wanted one thing, but the other thing was right. I should have done what was
right.
Maybe someone in Paso is trying to do what's right, too—and Nandi is still alive.”

Marsha didn't answer.

But that was the first moment I knew Nandi still had a chance.

The drive to Paso Robles was six hours from San Diego, back north on Interstate 5, but we decided not to try flying. Even if we arranged a last-minute flight to Paso Robles Municipal, we figured we would still have to rent a car once we got there. Marsha could have called for a helicopter, but claimed she'd “gone black.” We were on our own.

My ride in the car with Marsha was tense, mostly silent at first. We were both on our way somewhere we had no business going, with someone we had no business going with. Just being near Marsha pissed me off. We both knew we were better off with backup, but neither of us could call the people we were supposed to. I didn't dare call my father, since the FBI might be bugging my line to set me up for obstruction of justice.

Not ideal circumstances for a rescue attempt.

Marsha drove this time, so I went to work on Google Earth again to
try to find a photo of Happy Cellars. The closest satellite image I got, if it was the right place, was a nondescript but large wooden farmhouse on a hill, surrounded by vineyards and at least a half dozen outbuildings. By the time we got to Paso, the shadows would be long.

“How's it look?” Marsha said.

The memory of Marsha holding me at gunpoint made my tongue swell with anger. I had to concentrate to keep a civil tone. “Looks like a big farmhouse, if it's the right place,” I said. “More than three thousand square feet. Probably has a big cellar, up on the hill like that. Lots of other little buildings where they could be holding her. Sheds. A barn.”

“We have our work cut out for us,” Marsha said. “We'll want to separate again.”

“Works for me.” The farther away I got from Marsha, the better. She was insane if she thought I would ever trust her again.

“I'm putting my ass on the line for you and Nandi, Ten,” she said.

“Your choice,” I said. “You could have stayed behind. I don't need a babysitter.”

“If we find what I think we might, we'll need more than a babysitter,” Marsha said.

“If you want to talk, talk. Cryptic don't mean clever.”

“You're already in deep enough to go to prison for a decade.”

“I'll wash your back in the showers,” I said.

“Bring a loofah, and some aloe. Jail soap is shit on my skin.”

The 101 is the more scenic route to Paso, hugging the Pacific, but it would have added ninety minutes to the drive. We shot north along Interstate 5, which stretched for mile after mile with no homes or businesses in sight, mostly just craggy rocks, brown grass, and the occasional fast-food watering hole.

Until the vineyards. After we turned west on Highway 46, about sixty miles from Paso, the vineyards' lush greenery filled our windows. My hardest trials have often been waiting for me in pretty places, so the sights didn't soothe me. Even landscapes can lie.

Marsha's sigh seemed to echo my thoughts.

I removed the Beretta's magazine and replaced it again, checking the action. Memorizing its rhythms. If we stumbled on a nest of armed men, I had to be prepared to fire multiple rounds. I hoped that the loud
CLICKs
from my exercise were irritating the hell out of Marsha.
If you pull a gun on me again, you better pull the trigger, too,
I thought.

Marsha knew that if she didn't shoot me next time, I would kill her. We had an understanding, Marsha and I.

“We leave the car parked somewhere with the keys ready,” I said. “Whichever one of us gets Nandi first, we take off. The other one's on their own.”

“That's not how I usually do business,” Marsha said.

“Your world has changed,” I said, repeating her words from Paki's apartment.

“This doesn't count as an apology?” Marsha said. “I changed my mind, Ten.”

“And a thrilling, heartrending moment that was. Where were you planning to take me?”

For a long time, Marsha stared at the road. I assumed she was ignoring my question until she finally said, “A federal holding cell. Off the books, so it wouldn't have been on your record. We would have wanted to host you for a few days, that's all. Keep you out of the way—scare you out of talking. No rough stuff—just intimidation, a taste of your future if you got in our way. But I would have made sure they brought you In-N-Out Burgers.”

I hadn't realized my anger had room to grow. “You think that's funny?”

“You asked for the truth, Ten. I never said it was pretty,” Marsha said. “Do you think that course would have been easy for me? But look at what's at stake! Did you think we haven't had another nine-eleven because no one's
tried
it? Because somehow the bad guys had a change of heart and didn't want to hurt us anymore? No. It's because there are a lot of people like me, willing to work in the shadows to keep you safe.”

“I believe our former vice president called it ‘going to the dark side.' Congratulations, Vader. The Emperor must be pleased.”

“Grow up. This is bigger than you. Or me. Or a beautiful two-year-old girl.”

Part of me was amazed by her powers of rationalization; another part understood her position, whether I wanted to or not. In her place, I might have done the same thing.

“And don't turn your nose up at my burgers,” Marsha said. “After a couple of days cut off from the outside world, you would have been loving some burgers.”

“A comedienne
and
a humanitarian,” I said. “You're the whole package, Marsha. All's forgiven now.”

Marsha turned to me as if to make a snappy comeback, but she gave me only a peek of sad eyes. I can't stomach a woman's sad eyes.

“Save it,” I said, and pretended to doze against my headrest.

The dusk sky lit up Paso Robles in orange and deep violet, wordless beauty.

Once we'd talked through our plan, Marsha and I didn't speak for the rest of the drive.

Happy Cellars appeared at the intersection the navigator had promised, a building designed like a giant wine cask, well marked by a large ranch-style wooden sign at the T created by the intersection of two dusty rural roads. The bigger farmhouse stood high on the hill, an eighth of a mile away. There were four cars parked in a small parking lot set off from the street by a row of old, cracking, wooden wine barrels. A banner hanging on the building advertised
WINE AND MICROBEER BAR NOW OPEN UNTIL
9
P.M.!!!

I hadn't expected Happy Cellars to be open for business on a weekday, or so late. Most wineries in Paso rely on weekend business for wine tasting, but Happy Cellars also apparently had its liquor license to sell wine by the glass. I was glad for the chance to snoop without sneaking around. Yet.

We didn't pull into the parking lot. Instead, Marsha drove straight past. Barely slowing.

Adjacent to the public building, acres of foil strips tied throughout the vineyard winked like confetti in the dying sunlight, a deterrent against birds. The west section of the vineyard was protected by eight-foot-high deer fencing, which might trap us inside better than it kept
the deer out. I also spotted nets strategically placed among vineyard rows.

Happy Cellars didn't like pests of any kind in its vineyard.

“Let's circle back around the way we came,” Marsha said. “Parking lot's risky, and the car will stand out too much if we leave it by the side of the road.”

“We passed an old billboard a quarter-mile back,” I said. “We could pull behind it.”

“Perfecto.”

She pulled into a makeshift turnabout that traffic had carved into the grass and turned the car around. It would be a long quarter-mile if one of us was carrying Nandi in a hurry. The distance would be greater if we were coming from the farmhouse on the hill or one of the more distant outbuildings. But there was nowhere else to hide our car in the acres of vineyards.

“Keys on the driver's-side tire,” I said. “Like I said, whoever gets Nandi first leaves. Nandi is our priority. No messing around to plant bugs or whatever you want your people to do. After Nandi's clear, you can blow the place to Hell for all I care.”

Marsha met my eyes. “Nandi is the priority,” she said, a solemn vow.

With that promise from Marsha and ninety-nine cents, I'd almost have enough for a trip to the dollar store. But no matter what her other motives were, I had to believe that she wouldn't do anything directly to jeopardize Nandi's life. If that was true, maybe we could pull it off.

Besides, if bringing Marsha had been a mistake, it wasn't too late to undo it.
I could render her unconscious, stash her in the trunk . . .

No. She was right: Without her to back me up, Nandi was dead. If she was there at all.

The car jounced on stones when Marsha pulled off the road to park behind the billboard, largely out of sight from either traffic direction. The billboard wasn't lighted, so the car would be completely hidden in the tall grass after dark. I just hoped that no overzealous local police or neighbors would get curious before the sun went down. There were no buildings nearby, only acres of grapevines.

There wasn't a sound around us as we climbed out of the car, except for the swishing of the tall grass as we made our way back to the road. A
distant car's headlights were too far away to have spotted us. If anyone asked, we were just taking a walking tour of Paso.

My cell phone was in my jeans pocket, on Vibrate. My Beretta was hidden beneath my shirt. Marsha's was nestled in her purse. She pulled the backpack out of her trunk to make us look like hikers, so I strapped it on.

“What have you got in here?”

“A few goodies. First aid. A couple of energy bars.” She looked up at me. “We have no idea what condition we'll find her in, or if they've been feeding her.”

Her eyes slid away when I met them. I'll be damned. So she had a heart, after all. Maybe two-year-old girls have that effect on everyone.

“Let's make it look good, shall we?” Marsha said, slipping her hand into mine.

I almost let her hand go, but she had a point. Her palm was warm and dry against my cool, damp one. Hand in hand, we walked the steeply dipping road back toward Happy Cellars. Even after what she'd pulled on me, as far as my skin was concerned, all was forgotten.

Two crows perched above us on the deer fence made me struggle to remember the old wives' tales about crows, how many meant good luck, and how many meant bad. All I knew for certain is that a flock of crows is called a murder. The term got stuck in my head.

Nandi is here,
I thought. I was so certain, nobody could have called me a liar if I'd been strapped to a polygraph machine.

“The customers are probably just customers,” I told Marsha, “but anybody else at this place might know all about Nandi. They're all in on it. This might be the kidnappers' whole base of operations. They're highly armed, so we can't make mistakes.”

“Damn right,” Marsha said.

Our plan was simple: First, we would go inside to check the place out under the guise of being customers. Collect tag numbers. Next, we would take anything we learned to help drive our search after dark. I wasn't in a full costume, but I hoped my sunglasses, three days' worth of razor stubble, and a baseball cap would obscure my face to anyone who might recognize it.

A fifth vehicle had pulled into the parking lot while we were gone,
a huge mud-caked white Ford pickup truck with an empty gun rack. I wondered who was carrying the rifle, and where they were. I listened for a child's voice or laughter, but all I heard were laughing crows.

HAPPY CELLARS—EST.
1987 read the lettering that looked like it had been branded into the wooden sign posted on the barrel beside the road.

Internet research suggested that Happy Cellars had been a local staple for years, but had passed into new ownership five years before, after the original owner died. The new owner, a man named George Wesley, had been mentioned in the minutes from a city council meeting after his application for a liquor license earlier that year. But George Wesley, whoever he was, had kept his name off the internet otherwise. I'd gotten several hits from the name, which was common, but no more for a George Wesley in Paso Robles. His local address listing matched the address for Happy Cellars, as if he didn't exist otherwise.

The building that housed the tasting room had once been a small house, with a stone path and a patio swathed by grapevines overhead. Squashed grapes and shrinking raisins dotted the patio floor. A bell tinkled when we pushed inside the heavy, aged oak door.