Bait (43 page)

“What, do you think we've got all night here? Time's up.” Fish grabbed her wrist with one hand and the hammer with the other. Maddie screamed, resisting his attempts to lay her hand on the table.

“No, no, I was just thinking ...” she babbled. “I'll tell you, okay? I'll tell you.”

She drew a deep, sobbing breath, thinking furiously all the while. He let go of her wrist and put the hammer back down. Sam was watching her, she was almost sure of it now. She was positive he'd stiffened when she screamed. But there was nothing he could do. He was as helpless as she. Zelda, equally useless, was close, too. Maddie could feel the little dog snuffling around her ankles.

Probably she was smelling food, and hoping for a hand-out from the table.

“You're stalling.” Fish grabbed for her hand again.

“The evidence is in a strongbox near where we used to live in Baltimore,” Maddie gasped, jerking her hand back and, in the course of the small struggle that ensued, managing to knock the bag containing Lunkhead's food on the floor.

“Yo, that's my ...” Lunkhead began, letting go of her shoulders to retrieve it.

Then, just as Maddie had prayed she might, Zelda popped out from under the workbench, grabbed the bag in her teeth, and trotted away.

“Hey, that's my dinner,” Lunkhead said, sounding more surprised than anything as he lunged after her. Zelda saw him coming and, bless her gluttonous little soul, put the pedal to the metal, scuttling across the floor with a really impressive burst of speed and racing out the door, bag and all.

“Goddamn dog! Come back here with that!” Lunkhead roared, giving chase.

She, Fish, and, she thought, Sam, too, were all so surprised that all they could do was stare after Lunkhead as he pelted through the door. But, since it was more or less what she'd kind of planned, Maddie recovered fastest.

Lunging across the table, she snatched up the hammer. Even as Fish reacted, milliseconds too late to do any good, she slammed it down on his head with every last bit of strength she had left. The resulting
thunk
was almost as satisfying as watching his eyes roll back in his head before he collapsed sideways onto the floor.

Take that, you creep,
Maddie thought exultantly, and gave herself a mental high-five as she sprang away from the table and her gaze swung around to Sam. His eyes were open. He was struggling to sit up.

“In his left front pants pocket. The keys to the handcuffs are in his left front pants pocket,” Sam said urgently, as her gaze locked with his.

Heart pounding, operating on adrenaline now, Maddie stuck her hand into Fish's pocket and, since it was the only thing in it, came up with the key at once. Then, with one wary eye on the door, she darted to Sam.

“Hurry,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock,
was the rejoinder that popped into her head, but she was too busy sweating bullets and trying to fit the teeny, tiny key into the teeny, tiny lock to answer. Shaking, panting, one eye on the door, she finally got it in there and turned it.

That was all it took. Jerking free of the bumper as the cuffs dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter, Sam scrambled to his feet and headed for Fish, who was beginning to stir.

“What are you
doing
?” Maddie was already racing for the door.

“If he's got a gun, I want it,” Sam said, leaning over Fish. Maddie was treated to the gratifying sight of him slamming his fist hard into Fish's jaw. As Fish went limp again, Sam patted him down.

“Shit.”

Maddie took that to mean no gun.

“Come
on.
” As far as she could tell, the coast was clear, but it was unlikely to stay that way for long. There were two cars in the paved area beyond the garage—and a garbage truck.

Maddie had an instant epiphany: The bad guys had been in the garbage truck.

Then she saw something that completely erased everything else from her mind. Like a boomerang, Zelda was returning. Leash flapping behind her, she raced back toward the open garage door with the bag still in her mouth and Lunkhead in hot pursuit.

“Oh, no!” Heart pounding, panic clutching at her stomach, Maddie jumped back from the door and looked at Sam, who was straightening away from a now limp and supine Fish. “He's coming back. Lunkhead's coming back.”

“Get in the truck.”

As he said it, Sam was already leaping for the garage door directly behind it. The door was metal, and looked to be heavy-duty. Not the kind of garage door even a Ford F-150 could just burst through.

“Here. They were in the slimeball's other pocket. If we run out of time, if something happens, you
go.
” He tossed her the keys. She caught them instinctively.

“But ...”

Leave him if necessary, he meant, which wasn't happening. But she wasn't going to argue about it at the moment. She scrambled behind the wheel. He turned the lock with a sound so loud it made her jump, and bent down to drag up the garage door.

Fish was moving again.

Then three things happened simultaneously.

Handicapped by her throbbing finger, Maddie fumbled with the keys, found the right one, thrust it into the ignition, and turned the engine over.

The garage door went rattling up.

And Zelda, with panic in her eyes, burst through the open door.

She'd saved them, so saving her back was nothing short of quid pro quo. And she was cute, kind of, when she wasn't being a pain in the ass. And there was the Brehmer account. Not that Maggie was probably ever going to have to worry about it again, but ...

“Zelda,” Maddie cried, opening the truck door and wrenching at the gearshift at the same time. Seeing Maddie, Zelda scrambled toward the truck and took a flying leap that landed her almost on Maddie's lap. Maddie grabbed her collar and hauled her the rest of the way on board.

“Hit it.” Sam dove into the passenger seat beside her. The transmission locked into reverse ...

“Now,”
Sam yelled, slamming his door, and Maddie hit it, slamming her door and elbowing Zelda to the middle at the same time as she stomped on the gas.

“What the—?” Lunkhead burst through the door just as the truck shot backward out of the garage. He ran into the space they'd just vacated, fumbling behind his back for what Maddie assumed was a gun.

Maddie caught just a glimpse of Fish shaking his head groggily and sitting up as she steered in a wide reverse doughnut that barely missed the garbage truck.

“Forward! Go forward!” Sam screamed in her ear. She had the impression that if he hadn't been afraid of making them wreck, he would have shifted for her.
No duh,
she thought, but this was definitely not the time for conversation. With her heart pounding so hard that it felt as though it was going to beat clear out of her chest, she slammed on the brakes, throwing all three of them forward, then shoved the transmission into drive.

The rear window exploded. Maddie screamed, ducked, and stepped on the gas so hard that the truck catapulted forward like a rock out of a slingshot.

TWENTY-THREE

Keep your head down!” Sam yelled, hanging on to the dashboard as another bullet whistled past Maddie's ear, shattering the windshield. Glass blew out over the front of the pickup, rattling like hail. More glass from the rear window littered the seat like spilled popcorn, bouncing and sliding onto the floor as the truck shot away from the house. Zelda, bag and all, had been thrown down into the passenger's footwell when Maddie hit the brakes, and she stayed down there, clearly smart enough to recognize that she had found the safest place in the vehicle. A place where she could devour her booty undisturbed.

“I'm trying!” Crouched as low as she could get and still see where they were going, Maddie hung grimly onto the steering wheel and kept her foot mashed down on the gas.

The road was a winding gravel track with thick piney woods on one side and a brush-covered ravine ending in more thick piney woods on the other. A hunted glance into the rearview mirror showed her a one-story lodge-looking house in a clearing behind them. Hills covered with more piney woods rose behind it, and the sun in all its orange and purple and pink glory was just getting ready to sink behind the hills. The garage they'd just exited was to the side of the house. Lunkhead stood in two-handed firing stance on the paved area in front of the garage, while Fish and two other men ran for the cars.

“Keep your eyes on the road!”

Maddie looked forward again just in time to see that they were coming up on a curve. She swung the wheel hard, and gravel spurted up around them, hitting the side of the truck. In seconds they were around the curve, out of sight of the house—and still on the road.

His face grim, Sam reached around her, grabbed her seat belt, pulled it across her body, and clicked it into place. Maddie barely noticed.

“They were in the garbage truck.” She was still having trouble getting her mind around that. Something about the garbage truck bothered her ...

“I figured that out about the time I woke up in the back of it and that fat dude hit me with a stun gun. Just be glad there wasn't any garbage in it.” Sam's voice was wry. He was fastening his own seat belt as he spoke.

“There was a garbage truck near my apartment the morning I got shot,” Maddie gasped as her mind hit on the elusive memory. She glanced back reflexively to see if the bad guys had rounded the curve yet.

“Shit. We got trouble,” Sam said. At first Maddie thought he was talking about something she was missing behind them. Then she looked forward.

A small yellow car had just rounded the next bend, and was hurtling up the track toward them. It was smack-dab in the middle of the road. Clearly it wasn't intending to let them get by.

Maddie did some quick mental calculations. Big truck, little car—could anyone say “Let's play chicken”?

“Yee-haw,” she said grimly, and charged toward it without giving an inch. Beside her, Sam sucked in air. His eyes widened as they stayed glued to the oncoming car.

“Maybe you want to ...
swerve right!
”

Maddie did, at the last possible second, just as the car, in the same desperate attempt to avoid a head-on collision, swerved the other way. They zoomed past each other with inches to spare.

“Jesus.” Sam looked sideways at her. “And I thought Wynne was a scary-ass driver.”

Maddie laughed.

And then something hit the back of the truck with all the force of an exploding grenade. The truck's rear end slewed sideways as if in an insane attempt to pass the front. And the truck slid off the road and plunged down the ravine.

Maddie screamed and stomped the brake. Sam yelled and held on. The truck hurtled downward, bouncing over the ground like a kid on a trampoline. Bushes and scrub trees flashed past. As the bottom rushed up at them, Maddie could clearly see what looked like a solid wall of trees ...

She was steering hard to the left when they hit with a
bang.

She must have blacked out, because the next thing she was aware of was that she was being dragged out from behind the wheel. Hard hands under her armpits. Her left ankle thumping down painfully on the running board. Someone locking an arm around her waist, dragging her upright.

“What?” She tried to resist. Her eyes blinked open.

“It's okay; it's me,” Sam said. Blood ran from his nose. Before Maddie could register more than that, he said, “Hold on,” and heaved her over his shoulder.

Then he took off at what felt like a dead run.

Maddie clutched the back of his shirt and hung on. His shoulder dug into her stomach, making breathing an effort. With her head bouncing against his back like a basketball being dribbled, it was hard to think, let alone see. But she knew that they were in the woods because she could see the brown carpet of fallen needles and the thin, gray trunks with their stubby, denuded branches like small arms as they flashed past. It was already a deep purple twilight there, where the last rays of the sun couldn't reach. The air was cooler and smelled strongly of pine. The high-pitched chorus of insects was almost drowned out by the thud of Sam's feet on the ground and the harsh rasp of his breathing.

Zelda was with them: Maddie could see her bounding along behind, her leash slithering like a lavender snake over the pine needles.

Whatever else she was, Zelda was no fool. She clearly knew the bad guys from the good.

As she gradually became aware enough to take inventory, Maddie realized that she had the mother of all headaches; her stomach was being pounded to smithereens; and the little finger of her left hand throbbed horribly.

She also realized that Sam was tiring. His breathing was growing more labored, and his steps were slowing. His shirt felt damp, and she realized that he was sweating.

As Lunkhead had said, she wasn't any feather.

“Sam.” She tugged on his shirt, then poked his ribs to get his attention. When he flinched, she knew she'd succeeded.

“Sam.”
She poked him again.

He slowed, then stopped as she poked him once more, and leaned forward so that she spilled off his shoulder. To her surprise, her knees refused to support her. They buckled, and, with his hands on her waist to keep her from collapsing completely, she maneuvered into a sitting position on the ground. The scent of pine rose all around her. The needles were as thick as good carpet, and felt smooth beneath her. Zelda came limping over and collapsed beside her, panting. Her top-knot hung down over her left eye again, and Maddie, performing an act of mercy, pulled the bow off.