Tempted by Trouble (6 page)

“Drive.”

She pulled her lips in and nodded, too terrified to utter a sound.

I told her to move from blocking traffic, make a U-turn, then turn and cut up Hillcrest, a street that ran toward the million-dollar homes. I told her to drive up that two-lane street and stick to the right side of the speed limit.

She trembled and asked, “Where are you taking me?”

I pointed toward Hillcrest, motioned for her to be quiet and drive. I needed her to move me through the hills, then come out facing Kenneth Hahn Park and drive down the hill headed toward La Brea. I looked back to make sure the SUV wasn’t being followed.

She turned on Hillcrest and rode past apartments, pounds of litter, and the smell of fried bacon mixing with the stench of marijuana, those aromas mingling with the funk of government-assisted living. She slowed down as she passed Hillcrest Drive Elementary School. When she slowed I tensed because I thought she was scheming to bail out. But her seat belt was on and both hands were on the steering wheel. A chubby kid was crossing the street eating a corn dog. She had slowed to let the obese kid run jiggling across the street. I looked behind us again. I didn’t see LAPD or the sheriff coming this way.

My frightened chauffeur hit a speed bump and everything in the SUV bounced. The back end rattled. She was going too fast. I touched her shoulder. She cringed, jerked like she had been stabbed.

My touch was gentle. And with a slight turn of her body my soft touch was rejected.

I said, “Slow down.”

She nodded, took a few curt breaths, pulled her lips in tighter, and eased off the accelerator.

There was coldness between us. Coldness and a heated fear.

As we climbed the hills, apartments gave way to houses. We crossed into the area called the Dons, where all the streets had exotic Spanish names, like Don Zarembo and Don Quixote.

Sweat drained down my face like a salty river in search of an ocean.

I looked at my getaway driver. She sweated just as much. It was a brisk morning in L.A. but we sweated like we were in the Bahamas under the midday sun. Her lips remained tight as she drove through an area that had homes with panoramic views, some hanging over hills and supported by metal stilts. It was an older section of the city, and after seeing Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and the beaches, nothing in this zip code impressed me. We passed Mexican lawn keepers. The people who maintained the yards were as south-of-the-border as the street names. The people who cleaned the toilets were probably from Mexico or another part of Central America too. My terrified chauffeur slowed at speed bumps. I looked back down the hill. LAPD had a chopper up high, circling the area we had just left. At least two news choppers were in the area too, circling skies painted with gloom.

My heartbeat deafened everything.

Everything ached, but I could drive now, so I had to figure out what to do with her.

My hostage kept both tense hands clenched on the steering wheel and her eyes straight ahead.

A ring sparkled on her left hand. I looked in the backseat again, didn’t see a child seat, just more of the same book and some scattered CDs, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have kids.

Sweat rained across her forehead and upper lip. Her labored breathing told me she was terrified. I’d earned a kidnapping charge. If I had been able to run away from the accident, the two-second glimpse she had of me wouldn’t have mattered. But fate had derailed our operation.

Sammy was dead.

Rick had been shot.

I’d been forced to leave them both behind.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this.

No one was supposed to die. I wasn’t supposed to take a hostage to get away. But all had gone to hell and now this woman named Abbey Rose had seen my face.

She was what stood between me and living the rest of my life behind bars.

Darkness rose up and told me that in order to remain free, I’d have to kill her.

I opened my hostage’s
glove compartment and found tissues.

It hurt, but I dabbed my bloodied nose and split lip. Abbey Rose twitched whenever I moved. My skin burned. I touched my damaged face with the tips of my fingers and cringed, then reached inside the glove compartment and searched for more tissues.

I said, “I need you to relax and look normal while you’re driving.”

She nodded. “I’m doing my best.”

“Do better.”

Then I turned, and in pain I reached to the backseat and snatched her purse off the floor. She jumped like her first instinct was to reach and stop me, to claw at me, but I gritted my teeth and shook my head. Her eyes and facial expression told me that she was praying for either LAPD or the L.A. county sheriff to come this way. My prayer was the opposite. Blade at my side, I went through her wallet.

I fumbled around and removed her driver’s license. The address on the insurance registration card matched the address on her license. She swallowed and shook her head, made a terrified sound when I took her driver’s license and stuffed it inside my coat pocket.

I said, “Abbey Rose.”

“Yes.”

“I know who you are. I know where you live.”

Lines gathered in her forehead as she pulled her lips in tighter.

Police helicopters continued circling the area we’d just left.

I said, “Abbey Rose.”

She didn’t say anything but her paranoid eyes were glued to the rearview mirror.

Something was back there. I looked in my side-view mirror and saw law enforcement.

“Abbey Rose, maintain your speed. If they turn their lights on . . .”

Tears ran down her face as if that was her last hope of surviving. When the police turned left at Don Lorenzo, I took a deep breath.

Abbey Rose cried a little harder.

A Maserati was parked in front of one of the homes we passed. The next-door neighbors had Toyotas and Nissans. After that I saw a garaged Lamborghini and a fleet of Mercedes.

I sighed. “Everybody up here has two imports per person in each household. For every one car we export, they import three hundred to our soil, and all the imports are up on this hill.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just drive.”

Drops of sweat dripped from my chin.

She asked, “What did you do? Why are the police after you?”

I licked my lips and felt pain. I said, “I can’t chance you calling the police.”

She whispered, “I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“If I let you go, you will.”

She wiped her eyes. “You said
if.
Not
when. If.
”

I took another frustrated breath. My heart beat faster.

I said, “You’re married.”

She paused. “Yes. And my husband is looking for me right now.”

“What day was your wedding? And where did you get married?”

She clenched her teeth.

I said, “You’re not a good liar.”

She snapped, “You’re not a good driver.”

Fear and frustration blistered my mind and I was about to detonate, but I put the switchblade down at my side, then I rubbed my temples and shook my head before I regarded the streets, my pained movements nothing more than controlled nervousness. I was distressed and angry, and that anger was almost explosive. I wanted to scream and pummel her German-made dashboard with my hands.

I motioned for her to stop driving.

I said, “You’ve seen my face.”

She wiped her dank hands on her pants, then she pulled her mountain of hair back as best she could, but her mane remained strong, rebelled and bounced back to its circular form.

I motioned for her to drive again. She didn’t hesitate to pull away from the curb.

That told me she felt safer with us moving. I felt the same way.

She said, “You were speeding.”

“You ran the red light. Is that how they teach people to drive in L.A.? My guess is you were on your cell. You were distracted. Am I wrong?”

She trembled. “I was reading a text message. I slowed in front of you because I was reading a text message. My fiancé was breaking up with me. Days before Christmas and he broke up with me with a text message. So, that’s why I slowed down. I was in the middle of breaking up with my fiancé.”

I said, “Makes sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“Most people get out of their cars right after an accident. It’s a natural thing. You didn’t get out right away. You didn’t scream about your BMW being wrecked. Something else was on your mind. And now it makes sense.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

She had driven Hillcrest Drive to Don Milagro Drive to Don Felipe Drive to Don Miguel Drive. Right before Don Miguel touched Don Lorenzo, I instructed her again to do her best to look normal. We were in the section where the houses started to become smaller and old apartment buildings began to reappear.

I motioned for her to turn right and we came to La Brea. Again, I motioned to the right. Then she was stopped by the red light. It was a no-right-on-red light. I pointed that out and told her to obey the traffic laws. Some people crossed the street while others jogged up a dirt hill that led to hiking and jogging trails at the park. When the light turned green she turned right, drove down the pathway that cut between Baldwin Hills and Kenneth Hahn Park. We were heading north at close to fifty miles an hour, a little over the speed limit but a lot slower than the rest of the traffic. I motioned for her to turn left onto Coliseum Street and pointed up ahead. We were behind the Village Green, a seventy-acre wooded area that was a maze of tropical confines, a place I could vanish into and never be found again. First I looked beyond palm trees toward the village of condos. To the left were single-family homes rising into a different set of hills and more million-dollar residences that would never make the cover or centerfold in
Architectural Digest.

Abbey Rose, my reluctant getaway driver, parked next to the curb, across the street from a single-family home. A van was parked along the curb too, one car-length away. I saw the driver look in the rearview mirror when we stopped. The engine on the van was running and the driver had a foot on the brakes.

My skin burned, salty perspiration dampening my face like blood from an open wound. Abbey Rose sweated the same way. I smelled her sweet perfume and looked at her diamond ring. She saw me staring at her ring and motioned like she was going to give it to me. I shook my head. I dug inside her glove compartment and found the last of her tissues, wiped my nose, dabbed my forehead. I closed the switchblade, then opened it again, repeated that over and over, the clicking sound making Abbey Rose shudder, take curt breaths, and blink a hundred times.

“Abbey Rose, close your eyes again.”

“No.”

“Don’t test me.”

“Please . . . I’m begging you.”

“Last time. Close your eyes.”

“I don’t want to die.”

Every part of her body trembled. She put her palms on her stained business suit, ran her hands across her globe of hair. Then she took another deep, trembling breath and closed her eyes.

I took a deep breath too. “Let your seat back, Abbey Rose. Recline like you’re sleeping.”

“If I don’t?”

“You said that you don’t want to die. Now’s the time to start acting like you want to live.”

The Wells Fargo job
was supposed to be a two-minute job that ended with a four-way split. Sammy, Rick, and I were three of the crew. Sammy’s mistress was the fourth. She was in charge of the stage-two getaway van. This was where we would’ve dumped the first car. I had already closed my switchblade and dropped it back inside my pocket by the time I had made it to the passenger-side window and read Jackie’s face. She read my tense expression like it was a postcard from prison, the blood on my shirt the ink used to write a long letter, the injuries to my lips and nose the postmark and stamps. Her surprise magnified exponentially.

“Where is Sammy?”

“Dead.”

Her eyes widened, then she swallowed. “Dead?”

“Took one to the head. He was gone before he hit the ground.”

I expected a flicker of pain, maybe tears. The death of a lover made many people cry. She waited because she wouldn’t leave Sammy behind. Now there was nothing she could do for him.

She asked, “Rick?”

“Rick might be dead too.”

“You left them?”

“Had no choice.”

“Sammy’s dead. No way.”

“He’s dead, Jackie.”

“What about the money?”

With the blink of an eye she had moved from the death of her lover to the primary objective of this trip. I shook my head to let her know this job had garnered no cash, not one dollar.

We paused and listened to the cries from police vehicles.

“You were in the passenger seat.” She motioned behind her. “Who’s driving that black BMW?”

“Somebody cut in front of my damn car. Car crashed and totaled. I had to improvise and carjack.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“Kids with her?”

“She’s alone.”

“We can’t leave any witnesses.”

Jackie was former military. Her husband had divorced her during her third deployment and her kid had been taken away from her while she was in Afghanistan. In the eyes of the court, serving her country and protecting these shores had made her an absentee and unfit parent. But Jackie said her husband was an unfit parent. If she hadn’t deployed and had stayed home to take care of her kid, then the military could’ve locked her up for two years and given her a dishonorable discharge. Jackie had abandoned all allegiances, except to her child, her soul blackened by the government’s betrayal.

Jackie’s lips curved downward. “Get in and be ready to drive. I’ll put her down.”