Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers (60 page)

Another wave, smaller than the last. The massive wooden post protected them from the backwash. But when they had to leave its protection and make a run for the rocks? Don't think about it-hold on to Webb's hand, tight grip of his fingers twined with hers. Like that first time, when he'd held her hand fast and wouldn't let her escape him.

"Okay. After the next one .. ." And then she could feel him grow stiff. She hadn't heard the gate hinges squeak this time, but he had. Goddamnit! Ria, this soon?

Someone else?

"Annie, don't move. Don't make a sound." His voice was lower than a sea whisper breathing into her ear. He felt the tautening of her body; and putting his face against hers, whisker stubble and all, he knew she had clamped her jaws tightly together.

Webb heard Ria's voice then, calling his name softly. Somehow, he knew that Anne had closed her eyes. The water came higher. His pants were soaked through already. If Ria didn't go away ... if she stayed to wait for him ...

Anne flinched when the popping noises sounded directly overhead. Tiny vibrations, making the boat creak.

"Good-bye, Miss Mallory .. ." Had she heard that or only imagined it? If Webb hadn't come for her when he had, she'd be dead now.

It seemed as if they had been standing there for ages, with cold numbing feet and legs and hands and the wetness soaking upwards with its salt sting.

Over Anne's shoulder, Webb saw the dim glow of light from a boat, somewhere-out to sea. He waited, counting the seconds off grimly in his mind until he was sure Ria had gone. He had time to wonder what was happening at the house, and elsewhere.

If Joe Palumbo had managed to radio that message without having it monitored. He wished he knew what the fuck Reardon was up to-why he hadn't acted yet-or if he was going to.

"Webb?" Anne whispered, pulling his thoughts back to reality. "Webb, she's gone, isn't she? Because I-I don't have any feeling left in my legs. I don't even know if I can walk."

He hadn't heard the damn gate again, but that didn't mean a thing. Ria might not have bothered to close it again. And if she didn't find him back at the house ...

"You're not going to walk, baby. You're going to run. Both of us. And hang on to me, I'm not going to let you go."

Running, or even walking, was going to be sheer agony, he knew. His back, which he had almost forgotten about earlier, was a solid mass of stinging pain that helped, in a way, to keep his mind clear.

He timed the advance and retreat of the encroaching water, and then, grabbing her hand firmly, he pulled her with him and began to run, feeling as if he were becoming part of her re-current nightmare himself as both wet sand and undertow slowed them down so that they seemed to be moving in one place, getting nowhere. He concentrated on getting as far as the cave mouth. When they reached the underground garage -when, dammit, not if-that would be time enough to think about what came next.

The locked case was heavy, but she was stronger than. she looked-always had been. Anna-Maria set it down carefully beside her before she searched his pockets for the key. She found a keyring, was meticulous enough to fit the smallest one into the lock to make sure it was the right one before she slipped them all into her pocket.

She wished she could have stayed long enough to welcome Webb, but there was no time. She thought about the waiting helicopter and smiled again. She caught Harris Phelps's sagging body by the ankles and tugged until it came free and thudded to the floor. Too bad; she had almost come to admire him. Now he might have been a stuffed dummy. Killing meant nothing to her; she had killed before and would kill again if she had to. For an ideal, a dream of a better world where everyone would be equal.

She glanced towards the door that led into the cave passage, and her mouth, full and smiling a minute before, became hard. She would lock it. Or-better still-place one of the tiny explosive devices she had in her jacket pocket against it. The slightest jarring when someone tried to open it, would set off an explosion. She should do that with the door leading to the vaultas well-it would put everyone off.

"Did you have to kill him?" The voice sent Anna-Maria spinning around on the balls of her feet like a cat, her hand already reaching for the gun in her waistband. She found herself looking into another gun and froze.

"I don't know what you mean," she said cautiously, watching him as he walked softly down the last two steps. "I came here to find Webb, and found him instead-poor Harris! I was just going to ..."

"Don't," he said softly, and she heard the hammer on his gun click back, freezing her in place. He continued in the same gently conversational tone, "I think I know what you were just going to do. Take that little black case full of incriminating tapes and take off. Did he tell you he had the helicopter waiting? The only other question that comes to my mind is-why?" He had moved, until his back was now against the wall and he could cover both her and the stairway at the same time. "Was this Espinoza's idea or your own?"

"I do not think you understand." She was watching his eyes and the gun in his hand; her tongue came out to lick her lips.

"When I found Harris dead, I knew that someone had to do something. Before Reardon's men come."

"Ah yes. As a matter of fact, that's why I came down. Harris had the forethought to install a very powerful radio, and it seems we should expect an invasion at any time now. I thought I'd warn him to hurry. Were you going in his place?"

"Yes." She swallowed. "Why don't you come with me?" The gun muzzle pointing at her midriff was unwavering. She looked at it and back into his cold blue eyes. "Why don't you? You don't trust me-I don't trust you. We can watch each other."

Surprisingly, he smiled, shaking his head slightly. "But I'm not afraid of Reardon. You see, I'm supposed to be working for him. That's why I'm here. At the same time, I have no objections to your leaving. Yes, and taking those tapes with you. There's nothing like having a foot in both camps, is there? I'm sure you'll deliver them into the right hands, won't you? I'll tell you what-you give me your gun, and I'll take the cartridge clip from it and toss it into the back seat of that jeep. I'll watch you until you drive off and close the garage door behind you. After that, if you mean what you say, you can drive like hell until you get to that helicopter. If you don't hesitate, I'm sure you'll make it. But I'd like you to answer a few questions for me first, just to get the record straight. What did you do with Anne?"

Craig Hyatt didn't let any feelings into his eyes or his face as he listened to her spill everything, becoming vituperative towards the end. Most of it he had already guessed. Reardon's training hadn't been wasted.

Espinoza was a useful cover-she actually despised him because he was too subtle, too slow-moving, and lived like a capitalist. Webb Carnahan had somehow managed to get under her skin, but now her hatred of him almost overwhelmed her self-preservation instinct. She was certain that he had gone back to rescue Anne, that they were even now groping their way back here through the caves.

"He's soft for her, that silly, whey-faced bitch! Like Harris, like you! I would not have trusted him for a moment if I had not learned what he was-an assassin, a contract killer for the Mafia."

Hyatt's smile widened while his lips thinned. He was quite a handsome man, standing there in a relaxed yet watchful stance with that businesslike gun pointed at her middle.

"Uh-uh. You got taken in by our story, didn't you? Carnahan had Mafia connections-still has, for that matter. But he was never directly involved. Harris and I cooked up that story to convince Anne. A pity you got fooled along with her."

"What?" She almost screeched the word. Hate and fury blinded her. The thought that he had been stringing her along, fooling her all the time she thought she was fooling him, was almost unbearable.

Hyatt's sharply uttered words snatched her back to her senses -and caution.

"Cool itl I have scores to settle, too, and I intend to settle them. You get those tapes out of here and take them to Randall; he'll know how to handle the rest. And in the meantime" -his teeth showed for an instant-"I'll stick around and do my part in covering up. When he's dead, Webb Carnahan can take the blame for Harris and Karim. I'll take care of Anne."

He didn't know-he thought she was still one of them. Ria's laughter was almost hysterical. If he still wanted his sniveling ex-wife, she was glad she hadn't told him that she might very well be dead already. But she wouldn't let that bastard Webb take the credit for Karim.

"I killed Karim." She said it proudly. "You know he had been trained by the PLO? But he had let himself get too soft, and had begun to talk too much. He wasn't expecting what he got from me. His neck was broken before he fell over the cliff. It was just bad luck that his body was washed into the caves and got stuck in there-we were supposed to find it, so that Webb would have been the one under suspicion." She laughed again, and deliberately turning her back on him, climbed into the jeep. "I will not give up my gun-and if you shoot me, all the little explosives I am carrying will go off and blow you to pieces along with me. So, shall we call it a stalemate and say adios for now?"

Craig Hyatt kept his gun leveled while she started up the jeep. The garage door opened noiselessly, and she gave him a careless, insouciant wave before she drove out. He admired the fact that she had the presence of mind to press the button again once she was clear, so that the doors closed again. She was tough and resourceful in addition to being a very attractive woman, and he could not help admiring her, even while he felt regret at what he had to do. When he was sure she had gone, he took the tiny transmitter out of his pocket and gave the signal. He got through almost immediately; and once he had passed on his message, he settled down to wait. It should not be long now ...

They were together, at least. In a damp darkness that made Anne think about being in the belly of a whale, closed in and pulsating with the surf. Rushing in and pulling out, changing and unchanging at the same time.

She did not want to think about the effort that it had taken to get this far, every step like a knife-thrust. "The little mermaid," she had thought, knowing even then that she was close to hysteria. The ocean was as icy as the arms of a selfish, long dead lover, wanting to take her and keep her. And yet she had struggled and fought for every inch, every foot, clinging to black rock that bruised and battered her, finding her way back into the gaping maw of her most frightening dreams-flung forwards and tugged back like a tiny, bobbing cork.

Coldness, wet coldness, was like millions of tiny icicles working their way deeper and deeper through skin and flesh to penetrate all the way to bone. Each new breath a further pain.

"You have to go first, Annie. You know the way."

In spite of the now-enveloping blackness she closed her eyes -it made it easier for her to find the way. The only difference between now and before was that now Webb was with her, his fingers tightly laced with hers.

The cave sloped very gradually upwards and they would soon get to slightly higher ground. But in the beginning every time a wave came roaring in with a crash of splintering foam, it was like being caught in a gigantic washing machine. Stumbling, losing balance, clawing for handholds on slippery rock walls where there were none, Anne now knew why travelers in the snow had the overpowering urge to lie down and slide into an icy sleep. It had to do with a numbness that seemed to spread to the brain itself, bringing with it a sense of not caring.

Something bumped against them and she went down, swallowing water. She thought of Karim'and tried to scream, knowing she was drowning, but again Webb yanked her upwards, shouting at her furiously over the thunderous sound of the rushing tide.

"Damn you, Annie, you're not going to give up now, hear me?"

"I can't-I can't!" She sobbed chokingly, coughing up salt water. "You go on ..."

"The hell I will! And get myself lost in here?"

She kept shaking her head wildly until he slapped her.

"Keep moving, Annie. We're making headway, I can feel it. You just keep concentrating on finding the way back and I'll take care of the rest. Okay, move! I'm in no shape to haul you all the way."

Anne gritted her teeth. Even her face felt like a mask of ice, but his slap and the further goads of his words made anger banish the feeling of lassitude and hopelessness that had been creeping into her earlier.

She started forwards again. Bully! How dare he strike her? When they stopped running, after the next two bends, she would ...

Only a few feet further! The water was no longer a menace and a monster but a wetness she hardly felt. It was only her legs that refused to move any faster when she wanted to run. They felt like blocks of wood that didn't belong to her at all.

Now the cave was more like a tunnel, widening. The sound of the pursuing waves seemed to subside into sullen, rumbling murmurs as the ground rose more sharply, becoming more rocky than sandy.

The door-suppose it was locked from the other side? There was no light, no sound except the incessant sea-murmuring and the sound of heavy, rasping breathing. The door should be right ahead. It was heavy, and well insulated around the edges to keep the moist air out of the garage. The door, too, was new. God, don't let it be locked!

Anne had been trying to run, driven on by a mixture of rage and desperation, feet moving clumsily in slow motion. She knew she had to stop and tell Webb about the door, and half turned her head, trying to find him behind her. She felt her wet, water-logged shoe slip on a loose stone, her ankle twist sickeningly.

There was no time and no way to stop herself from falling -sprawling heavily forward with the unexpectedness of it, bringing Webb crashing on top of her. She felt what seemed like an explosion in her head, red streaks of light, and then blackness.

IT WAS ANNE'S SOFT BODY that had saved him from injury. He had still been holding her hand, but as they fell, he had put out his other hand, feeling the pain jar all the way up to his shoulder in spite of the numbness of cold. Almost immediately he rolled over onto his side, feeling for her; cursing steadily under his breath while he ran his hand over her, finding her neck and running his fingers gently under her wet, clinging hair that still contrived to feel like silk. He found the bump on her forehead, touched her closed eyelids, and put his ear against her back, listening, and praying while he listened, for the sound of breathing.