a Touch of TNT (An Everly Gray Adventure) (36 page)

She grabbed my handbag from back seat and slid out of the car.

Run, Everly. Now!
I grabbed the door handle.

Pain spiked through the back of my head.

The world shuddered and went dark.

My eyes fluttered open, and my
hands clutched the back of my head. Pain, immobilizing, shot through me.

She stood in front of me, legs spread wide, both hands wrapped around the weapon, the barrel trained on my forehead.

I looked into her eyes and caught an unwanted glimpse of crazy.

Danielle Chambers.

She was covered with smudges of thick, red dirt.

I blinked a few times trying to hold her in focus. Couldn’t. Head hurt. I looked at my hands. Bloody. Shit. Not good.

“Out.” She motioned with the gun.

I swung my legs around, thought about hooking my feet around her knees to knock her down, but she’d stepped back too far. When I stood, the horizon spun. Nausea burned my belly. I grabbed the car door for support, snapped my eyes closed, and sucked in air through my mouth willing the shakes to stop.

She moved. Cold metal snapped against my wrists and tightened.

Bloody, bloody hell.

She tied a rope around the link between the handcuffs and jerked me toward the trailer.

Death. Not a shadow. A full-blown specter hovered over me. Imminent.

An image of Mitch floated through my mind. He loved me. Oh, shit. He loved me.

That meant I had to live through this. It had felt so good to just float into the arms of death, to not care what she did to me.

I fell to my knees and lost the Chick-fil-A lemonade. Danielle jerked me to my feet, pushed me inside the trailer, and shoved me down on a brown, metal folding chair. “Stay.”

I flexed my fingers. Fat lot of good they’d done me.

A chair creaked. Danielle sat across from me on a matching chair behind a matching desk. I never wanted to see brown metal again. She held the gun loosely in her right hand. Her eyes focused on me, flat and empty. Scary as all hell.

“Water,” I croaked, running my tongue along my lips.

She breathed out a heavy sigh, dropped her feet to the floor, stood and leveled the gun at me, cocked her head this way and that as she caressed the trigger, playing with me. Then she backed the few steps to the water cooler and filled a cup, barely shifting her gaze away from me. She set the cup down arm’s reach away, then sat behind the desk, feet propped up.

I stretched to reach the cup, caught it between my palms and slowly pulled it toward me. I kept my fingertips away from the paper, not wanting to be hit with any crazy person energy Danielle may have left on the cup.

She was carrying around the energy from at least one murder, possibly more. Experience taught me that touching a murderer knocked me on my butt. Not something I could afford to have happen if I wanted to survive this…encounter.

I sipped the water, letting it trickle down my throat. Time to start asking questions so I could plan how to escape. “Who are you?” I asked. Nothing like starting with basic info to set the tone for a friendly chat.

She cocked her head at me. “Why?”

“Because—” I glanced at the handcuffs— “you’re going to kill me. I want to know who you are. And why you want me dead.”

“Don’t know what difference it makes. I’m going to kill you anyway.” She did a half-hearted shrug. “The more important question is who are you? And what the fuck were you doing in Calvin Jacobson’s office?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t really. Another wave of nausea hit, and I needed to concentrate on breathing through it.

She snagged my handbag off the desk, rummaged through for my wallet and flipped it open. “Ev-er-ly Gray. What kind of name is that?” she asked, derision hanging from every word.

“Scottish.” The nausea had eased, but her casual attitude about my impending death left icy fingers around my heart.

She shook her head. “You’re not related to Calvin. What were you doing in the C.J. Builders?”

“Building a house,” I ventured. Should I replay the scene Mitch and I created for Justin North?

She slid her chair back and her feet slammed to the floor. “Don’t be funny. You were there with a detective. I recognized him…”

Something shifted in my brain, and I decided to tell her the truth. I told her about helping Adam, that we were taking one last walk-thru looking for evidence as to who killed Jacobson. Only thing I left out was about my fingers.

By the time I finished, she’d leaned back in her chair again and gave me a speculative look. “What’d you find? Stone was on a mission when he stormed out of there.”

“You were watching?”

She nodded. “I work with Jacobson.”

I reached for the water, took my time taking another sip. It gave me a minute to think. “You’re in construction?” I laced the question with skepticism.

It worked.

“I do engineering design for most of his projects. I’m Danielle Chambers.” Her smile was calm, proud as she introduced herself.

It was unnerving that she kept talking about Jacobson as though he were still alive. As though things were normal.

“He’s dead, you know. Murdered.”

Her shoulders went up around her ears, dropped back down. “Maybe.”

A chill ran through my body. She was well and truly crazy. How had Adam missed this? And how the hell was I supposed to keep a crazy woman from killing me?

I had to keep her talking, at least until I figured out something else. “Do you work for Justin North, too?”

She settled back, crossed her arms, but kept the gun pointed in my general direction. “Yes,” she spat. “But not for much longer.”

“Why not? Seems like a viable company. Especially now that C.J. Builders is closed.”

She shook her head, and her eyes turned flat. “Jacobson and North hurt my Marcy. They have to be punished. You understand that, don’t you?”

Not in this lifetime, lady. But now was clearly not the time for honesty. “Yes. Marcy is special. I met her at North’s office.”

“She hates him.” Danielle twirled a finger in her hair. Long, lanky, strands of mousy brown hair. “I’m the one she loves. We’ve been together a long time. Since before Shauna—”

Her voice trailed off, and I scooted to the edge of my chair. Make a run for it? Maybe. I put some weight on my legs to test my knees. They shook so hard it rattled my teeth. Not a good time to try for a flat-out run. Better talk some more, give my knees a chance to settle down. Besides Danielle knew all the answers.

“Shauna?” I asked softly. I didn’t want to disturb her altered state, but definitely wanted some answers.

“Marcy’s little sister,” she crooned in a sing-song voice. “Little baby girl froze to death, all alone.” She spun to glare at me. “They did it you know. North and Jacobson. They took my Marcy away when they killed Shauna.”

The changing moods were beyond creepy, but I didn’t know what else to do except keep her talking. Where the hell were Adam and the troops? “So Shauna Blaine’s death is what led to—”

Her head bobbed from side to side several times as though her brain was trying to connect the loose synapses. “They took my Marcy away.” Tears ran down her cheeks unchecked.

She giggled, and ice slipped along my spine.

The gun was still in her hand, but her attention had shifted to her internal nightmare. A faint humming sound escaped from her throat and ran ragged along my nerves. I tried to gauge the distance and time it would take me to reach the door, then shifted to make a run for it.

“No running.” Danielle spit the words at me and brought the gun to bear on my forehead.

I shivered, then nodded to reassure her I wouldn’t run—at least not while her attention was focused on shooting me. My mind busied itself trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. She’d killed Jacobson. No doubt about that, but— “Did Jerry Applegate try to run?”

She nodded. “Waste of a man. Blew up my work. Naturally I had to kill him.”

“Naturally,” I breathed. Fear paralyzed my brain.

“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry,” she sang. “Kept talking to my Marcy. Taking her away from me.”

Her focus snapped to me. “He kept blowing up my buildings. Talked my Marcy into helping him.” She stared through me. “He didn’t deserve a long, slow, creative death, you know. That’s why I executed him. Shouldn’t have blown up my buildings. Shouldn’t have taken my Marcy away.”

I sucked in a calming breath. Didn’t work worth a damn. The shaking had reached epic proportions, and my hands and feet had gone numb. How the hell was I going to get out of this?

Danielle’s mind had turned inward again. I could tell by the eerie humming sound that filled the space between us. Damn unnerving. I tried to tune it out by focusing on her expression, or lack thereof, and realized that late afternoon shadows had crept into the trailer. Patterns of darkness colored the walls and she’d made no move to turn on a light. Oddly, the shadows helped to calm me.

I couldn’t see the gun clearly—and that meant Danielle couldn’t see me as well either.

Suddenly her head snapped toward the window. “It’s time,” she said, crisp businesslike. “Stand up.”

“Why? Are we going somewhere?”

“A walk.” She grabbed some keys from the desk drawer and moved toward the door, opened it, motioned at me with the gun. “Out.”

Yes. Thank you God. There were a whole lot more escape possibilities out there than locked in the trailer. I got my feet under me and headed for the door. Stumbled a few times, but managed to stay upright. Fresh air never smelled so good, and I inhaled like a woman possessed.

Danielle pulled the trailer door closed behind us. “Straight ahead,” she said, and prodded me in the back with the gun.

I scanned the area for cover, anyplace I could hide. We seemed to be moving toward several large pieces of equipment. Maybe behind one of them, or if I was really lucky, I might be able to get those keys away from her. A getaway in an earthmover. Now
that
was a plan.

The moon was beginning to shine through the darkening sky, and I could smell the scent of freshly turned earth. My attention focused on the huge yellow piece of machinery and how I could start it with my hands in cuffs.

I should have been paying attention to Danielle.

She pushed me.

Hard.

I tumbled into a deep hole, landed on my back. Pain sliced through me knocking the breath from my lungs. Panic flashed through me, bold and all encompassing.

My head threatened to explode, and something wet trickled down my neck. The fall must have opened the cut on the back of my head. Every bone in my body protested, ached. I tried to move my arms and legs—twitched my toes, and gave up.

Too much effort.

After a few breaths, I rolled onto my side and looked around. Lots of red dirt and not much else. The hole was about eight feet deep and six feet wide.

Looked like a coffin to me.

Bloody, bloody hell.

Did she intend to bury me?

Alive?

Oh, no. Not gonna happen. That was definitely not in my plan, and hers was about to go south. No way in hell was anyone going to bury me alive.

I crawled onto my knees and clawed up the side of the hole until I was standing. Good thing I had the wall of earth for support. I couldn’t stop swaying, and the ground kept shifting beneath my feet. But that might have been the pounding in my head. I slowly tipped my head back. Danielle was standing at the edge of the hole, hands on her hips peering down at me. “That’ll do. Shouldn’t take me long to fill the hole.”

She giggled. All the way to the earthmover.

It sent the mother of all shudders through me, and the pounding in my chest suggested an imminent coronary. If things kept moving in this direction, I’d be dead well before Danielle dropped in the first load of dirt.

Damn, but my head hurt.

The engine on the earthmover kick over and started to plan how I could best use the dirt she dumped into the hole as a ladder to climb out. All I needed was enough of a lift to reach the edge. Then I could pull myself to freedom. There was still the gun to worry about, but first things first.

I sized up the scoop thing on the front of the machine, tried to gauge how many shovels of dirt it would take. A shaft of moonlight glinted off the gun. Danielle had set it down on the seat next to her. Guess she needed both hands to operate the controls on that baby.

Time shifted. The earthmover rotated.

The gun slid to the edge of the seat. Bounced. And then tumbled, caught on the rim of my soon-to-be-grave. A shudder grabbed my muscles and wouldn’t let go.

I tracked the direction of the earthmover, focused on Danielle for a couple seconds, and ran my fingers over the diamond. Pierce’s diamond. What would he do?

Danielle worked the controls, wasn’t paying any attention to me or the missing weapon.

Yet.

I needed to get that gun. Keep her from shooting me. I scrabbled around in the dirt searching for a sizeable rock. There had to be one. My fingers bumped into a few pebbles, and finally, a medium-sized rock. The engine on the earthmover revved.