The Heart Heist (36 page)

~~~

All of the multiple illnesses Kerrin had foreseen for her future assaulted her at once as she clung to the shadows, following Victor Bothmann. Her chest was in the rages of a heart attack. Her intestines were strangulated and her stomach was bleeding with an ulcer. She would have been fine, though, if she only could have managed to catch her breath, but she seemed to have a virulent case of emphysema.

The town was starting to shut down for the night as Victor headed up the street toward the eucalyptus grove. He'd gone up to his room at the WawaNeemah hotel to dump his camera case and Kerrin had hoped against hope that he would stay there, that he wasn't really Mr. Holiday. Or better yet, that he was the mad bomber, but had decided to abandon his project. Unfortunately for that theory, he'd emerged from the hotel a few minutes later and directed his steps straight toward the DWP plant.

Making his nightly rounds, Ray Connors, the policeman, greeted Victor with a mock salute. "Taking your evening constitutional, doctor?"

"As always," Kerrin heard Victor calmly reply.

So, he'd set up a routine. No one would take it amiss that he was strolling up the street in this direction on the evening before the big blast. Kerrin quickly hid in the alcove of the bank's door as Ray went past. There was no point trying to enlist the policeman's help. Ray Connors wasn't the sort of man who could do anything about a Mr. Holiday.

There was only one man Kerrin knew who could handle this situation, and since he wasn't here she was going to have to take care of things by herself.
Damn him! Damn him all to hell, that stinking
skunk.

Victor disappeared into the darkness of the eucalyptus grove and Kerrin hesitated. What if he'd sensed her stalking him and was awaiting her in there? But she had no hope of stopping Victor from setting that bomb if she didn't follow him.

As it turned out, Kerrin's fearful indecisiveness was for naught. Before she could move a step closer to the grove, a strong arm went around her neck, pinning her against a hard and unyielding body. Another hand went over her mouth, stifling the scream that tried to get out.

"For crying out loud, Kerrin, what the
hell
do you think you're doing?"

Kerrin closed her eyes and nearly fainted with relief. She'd know that low rasping voice anywhere.
Gary. The skunk had come back after all.
He'd escaped prison to come here, to save them! Then her eyelids fluttered open. But he wasn't saving anybody. Bothmann was getting away.

"Ouch!" A sharp and accurate jab of her elbow effected the result Kerrin wanted as Gary let go of her mouth.

"Hurry, we've got to follow him!" Ineffectively, she tried to extricate herself from Gary's imprisoning embrace.

"Follow who?" Gary wanted to know.

"Mr. Holiday, who else?" And she'd once thought this man brilliant?

But Gary only regarded the eucalyptus grove with plain distaste. "In there? If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not."

"This isn't a question of what you'd rather do. For Christ's sake, Gary, would you let me go? He's getting away!"

Gary held her fiercely struggling body with apparent ease. "I'd just as soon give him a little head start."

"We can't do that," Kerrin panted out desperately. "I don't know where he's going."

"Ah," Gary announced, finally letting her go, "but I do."

She turned around, breathless and amazed. "You do?"

Gary was wearing his prison coveralls, but the place where his inmate number should have been was just a pale rectangle. Even in the darkness she could see his teeth flash in a grin. "It's nice to see you, too, sweetheart."

"Gary, we don't have time for pleasantries." Kerrin stepped back with widened eyes as Gary reached for her. There was a gleam in his eyes she remembered well.

"I know we don't, but goddam it, I was scared." He pulled her into his arms and they tightened around her with suffocating force. Kerrin closed her eyes as the reality of him, too, began to seep in.

"We'd thought you'd gone to Mexico," she managed to breathe out.

"I don't know why everyone thinks I have this hankering to visit Mexico," Gary complained. She felt his lips in her hair.

"It was a natural assumption. Gary, you should have told somebody what was going on."

"I did." His hold on her relaxed. "I told Marty, but something seems to have happened to him."

Kerrin leaned back and looked into Gary's shadowed face. It was full of concern. A shamed relief flowed through her. Gary hadn't lied, he hadn't left them in the lurch. She should have known that, believed it. This was the man she'd chosen, after all. "Something did happen," she now informed Gary. "Car accident."

"Christ." He looked up from her face, staring past her while his concern transformed into something hard and rageful. "That was no accident." Letting out a breath, he looked down at her again. "Maybe you'd better tell me now, sweetheart: just who is Mr. Holiday?"

Kerrin was aghast. "You mean you don't know?"

"Would I ask if I already knew?"

She could tell he was losing patience. "It's Victor, Gary. Victor Bothmann."

He raised his brows. "Your old boyfriend?"

"Oh, for the last time, he was never my boyfriend!"

"Close enough," Gary snickered.

"For heaven's sake -- " The tension was telling on her, particularly as it didn't seem to be affecting Gary in the slightest. No, he could stand here joking with her. "Gary, I really think we ought to go after him."

"'We?'" Gary queried. "Who said anything about 'we?'"

"I did." She was rapidly approaching the point of combustion. The man thought he could waltz in here at the last minute and start calling the shots --

"Oh no, sweetheart, you aren't going anywhere near this."

"The hell I'm not." Kerrin was about to elaborate on this theme when Gary hauled her close against him and crushed her mouth with his. He made heat rush into her and all the aching longing of two months without him.

"Oh, Gary, Gary," she cried softly, as he finally lifted from his bruising kiss to trail his mouth down her jaw.

"I don't suppose," Gary murmured against her ear, "I've managed to convince you not to come with me."

Kerrin shook her head in a definite negative. This was her town and what's more, he was her man. She wasn't leaving him again, no matter what he told her to do.

Gary sighed. "I was afraid of that."

~~~

How Gary could have found the tunnel underneath the river was beyond Kerrin's ken. The opening was hidden by a boulder and some serendipitous shrubs. Across the star-spangled river lay the gently humming DWP plant, apparently serene beneath its flood of lights.

Gary held her back at the tunnel entrance. "Let me go first, and whatever you do -- " He closed his eyes, " -- don't use that gun of yours."

"My gun!" Kerrin covered her mouth with one hand. "I left it in my desk drawer at school!"

"Thank God for small miracles," Gary breathed, crouching to step into the tunnel. "Now don't make a sound."

The tunnel was plenty big enough to crawl through, for which Kerrin was grateful. The absolute darkness in which they found themselves was bad enough. The earth was soft and wet under her hands and knees as she followed Gary in the all-encompassing darkness. It was much too much like a grave.

After they'd been crawling for what seemed like forever, a dim light started to filter around Gary's bulk. The DWP. Gary halted at the end of the tunnel and turned back to press a finger against her lips. Kerrin nodded that she understood.

As it turned out, Victor never heard them come up behind him. He was working near a set of shiny metal pipes, a collection that bore a faint resemblance to a church organ. He was twisting a wire in the center of a contraption that seemed to be part electronics and part bags of a bulky substance wrapped in yellow paper.

Gary stopped just out of striking range and pulled a revolver from his deep coverall pocket. He let the sound of the safety being pulled echo in the large space. "Good evening, Dr. Bothmann."

Victor turned around with a violent start. Both Gary and Kerrin braced for the worst.

"Oh, hell," Victor pronounced, in his best bored society manner. He leaned back against the pipes, beside his bomb. He was still dressed in a pinstripe suit and tie, as though he were on his way to a faculty meeting and not to set up an explosive device. He regarded Gary in disgust. "I thought you were back in prison."

Gary's fingers flexed over the trigger of the gun. "You know I'm from the joint?"

"Oh!" Victor rolled his eyes heavenward. "Doesn't everybody? Kerrin made a point of announcing the fact."

Kerrin gasped. "That's a lie!"

"I know." Gary clenched his jaw. "He wanted to break my concentration, see if I'd turn to look at you. Not bad, Victor," Gary continued thoughtfully. "Not bad at all. Okay, now, the first thing is you're going to take apart this mother. Then we're going for a little walk together."

Victor crossed his arms over his chest. "And why should I do that?"

"Because," Gary replied evenly, "I have the gun."

Victor eyed said instrument with disdain. "You'd never use it on me. Besides, you kill me and you've still got the bomb to contend with. I might as well tell you, it's fully functional and ready to go."

Gary smiled. It wasn't like any smile Kerrin had ever seen on his face. "Maybe I wouldn't kill you," he calmly agreed. "But I could break your arm. Or crack your thigh, crush your wrists, any number of creative things."

Victor began to look less than one hundred percent confident. "You don't know how to do any of that."

Gary raised his brows and Kerrin had the eeriest feeling Gary knew exactly how to do every single one of the tortures he'd enumerated -- probably because they'd been done to him. "Get moving," he told Victor.

"No, Victor," spoke a new and unexpected voice. "Stay right where you are."

Both Kerrin and Gary turned in astonishment to see Mike Rogers, the cold-faced man from the FBI. He was standing in the aisle between the series of metal pipes and the concrete block wall of the plant. In his arms was a weapon fit for Rambo. "You," he spoke to Gary. "Put the gun down. Slowly."

Gary didn't look especially surprised to see Rogers, just very, very disgusted. He crouched to lay the gun gently on the bare concrete floor. Meanwhile Kerrin noted a very odd look pass between Victor Bothmann and Mike Rogers.

"I've never been able to understand your stake in all of this," Gary commented, addressing the FBI agent. "I thought you guys were supposed to catch criminals, not assist them."

Rogers, completely ignoring Gary's statement, turned to the Holiday Bomber. "You just couldn't resist, could you?" There was a wealth of bitter accusation in his tone, as well as weary resignation. Whatever emotions the man had been keeping at bay all this time were now pouring forth.

"This is my duty," Victor returned, drawing himself up. The two men were both much taller than Gary, of a similar height, in fact.

"I gave you a chance," Rogers complained. "I found you a fall guy, but could you leave well enough alone?"

Victor looked astonished. "You did that, the guy from Boise? For me?"

Rogers scowled in disgust. "Who else do you think could have pulled it off?"

Kerrin watched in growing amazement as Victor Bothmann, the man with the perpetually sophisticated smile, began to tear up. "Gee, Dad, that must be the only nice thing you've ever done for me."

Gary's eyes met Kerrin's with identical shock.

"You're still my son," Rogers grumbled. "Even if your mother did manage to make you as crazy as she is."

Gary cleared his throat. "I hate to break up this touching scene, but might I remind everyone that there's a powerful explosive device sitting here?" He gestured with his head toward the bomb that was intertwined with the metal pipes of the pumping facility.

Rogers seemed to come back to himself, regaining a good deal of his normally cool composure. "Oh, that's right. Victor, get back here, would you? And you," Rogers gestured with his heavy-duty machine gun at Gary. "Over there, by the pipes."

Gary hesitated for just the barest, briefest moment. It was enough to let Kerrin know, however, that whatever Rogers had in mind, Gary didn't think it was good. Cold fear spread through her as Gary obediently stepped toward the metal pipes, closer to the bomb.

"That's fine. Now I want you -- " Rogers pointed the muzzle of his cannon in Kerrin's direction. " -- on the other side of the device, further away from me."

Kerrin's eyes met Gary's as she walked past him. The dangerous red tints in his dark irises were out in full force; the carnivore inside him was aroused and aching to fight. That he was holding back, Kerrin knew, was due to her presence alone. If he hadn't been afraid of endangering her, he would have damned the machine gun and taken his chances.

"Very good," Rogers pronounced. He handed the automatic weapon to Victor. "Keep this pointed right at the girl. If the convict so much as breathes funny, she buys it."

To his credit, Victor looked rather ill at this request. "I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Don't worry, you won't have to. This one isn't going to make a bit of trouble." As he said this, Rogers removed a heavy set of handcuffs from his back trousers pocket. He smiled slightly at Gary. "Are you, boy?"

Gary just glared at him. Even from a distance, Kerrin could feel the heat of his frustrated impotence. "There's no need to harm the girl," he told Rogers, his voice so hoarse it was nearly inaudible.

"I don't intend to. Now put your hands out."

Gary put out his hands and Rogers snapped the handcuffs over his wrists, chaining him to one of the vertical metal pipes. The sound of metal locking into metal went right through Kerrin's viscera.

Rogers shifted over to scrutinize the bomb. "How do you start this thing?"

"Dad -- " Victor was aghast. "The timer only gives you five minutes. That's not enough time to evacuate the town. And besides -- " He swallowed, looking at Gary. "I don't want to kill anybody."