The Sour Cherry Surprise (23 page)

Then came her second thought: Her ears were simply doing a number on her. Trussed up like she was in total darkness. Rumbles of thunder shaking the ground. That damned rag stuffed in her mouth. Little Molly very likely lying dead right there next to her. Her senses were spooked. Human nature to hear things that weren’t really there.

So why am I still hearing it?

Actually, Des wasn’t sure
what
she was hearing. Some kind of steady, determined little scratching noises. They seemed to be coming from somewhere down there in the root cellar with her. Could they be …? Of course,
mice
were skittering their way along the foundation. She was hearing their little claws on the stones, that’s it. Harmless little field mice. Not to worry. Unless, that is, they were
rats
. Please, God, please don’t let them be rats. This is my final night on earth. I don’t want the last thing I remember before I die to be rats all over me, gnawing on my nose and my lips and my …

Wait, now she heard a whole new sound. And it had zilch to do with rodents. This one was the sound a rusty nail makes when you’re yanking it from a board with a claw hammer. Suddenly,
Des was blinded by a shaft of light. Her eyes blinking and watering as they adjusted ever so slowly to it. It wasn’t even a bright light, really. Just the dim light of the night slanting across a narrow section of the dirt floor. She heard more noises, quicker and bolder. And now somebody yanked open one of the air vents, flooding the entire root cellar with half-light. Des could hear the sound of the rain coming down outside. She could even smell it as her eyes flicked wildly about, searching and searching.

She was alone down there. No sign of Molly anywhere in the small, bare, root cellar. Or anything else. If the meth was stashed down there they must have buried it.

Now a flashlight beam was pointing straight downward to the dirt floor. Gauging the distance maybe. She let out a moan, gasping as someone began to wriggle headfirst through the narrow open vent. Some fearless SWAT cowboy with more cojones than brains. Some daring, wonderful fool who placed no value on his own life. She wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be Grisky. His operation. And his kind of grandstand play. No matter. If that bastard got her out here alive she’d kiss him. Hell, she’d
do
him. It would only take a minute and half of her time, after all. Yeah, it had to be Grisky. Only someone with his amount of advanced training could pull off a rescue operation like this with Clay and Hector right there above her in the house. The man must have been a Navy Seal before he joined the bureau. He was incredibly gutty and silent and sure as he made it through that opening, readying himself to drop soundlessly down to the dirt floor and …

And he landed with a thud.

Seriously, the man fell like a great big sack of potatoes. An “Oof” of air came out of him when he touched down. Des drew in her own breath, hearing rapid footsteps on the kitchen floorboards overhead. Had they heard him? Were they going to open the trapdoor and check on her?

No, please no….

The footsteps retreated. They hadn’t heard him. There was so much noise going on outside between Emergency Services personnel and the weather that he’d gotten away with it. Damn, he had balls
and
luck. And now her hero was crawling his way toward her. Checking her over from head to foot with his light. Then he turned it on himself so she could get a look at him and be reassured. Which was straight out of the rescue manual.

Except Des almost choked on that damned rag when saw whose boyish face was grinning at her. He’d been through hell getting here. Face, neck and arms all scratched and bloodied, streaked with mud. He was soaked to the skin in his Mr. Ralph Lauren polo shirt. But she was seeing
him
and her whole body knew it—that same old fluttering sensation from her tummy to her toes told her so.

He pulled the rag from her mouth and whispered, “Didn’t expect to run into
you
here, thinny.” His breath smelling of … was it pastrami?

She swallowed down huge, blessed gulps of air before her own lips found his ear, which smelled of some fancy new hair gel. Also cologne, she could have sworn. Which was positively
not
Mitch. “Am … I … tripping?” she gasped.

“If you’re tripping, then we both are,” he whispered in response.

“B-But what are you …?”

“No big. I had a free evening so I thought I’d hop in the car and see what you were up to.” Gently, he probed the back of her head with his fingers. “Hey, you’ve been bleeding.”

“Concussion, maybe. I’m okay. Doughboy, what are you
doing
here?”

He took out his pocket knife and went to work on the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. “Helping out a neighbor.”

“Neighbor?” She sat up as soon as her limbs were free, flexing them gratefully. “What neighbor?”

“Molly Procter.”

“Molly’s …?” Des choked back a sob. “Clay didn’t shoot her?”

“Not so you’d notice. But you can ask her yourself. She’s waiting for us right outside that air vent.”

“She’s
here
?”

“Of course. How do you think I made it all this way without attracting any attention? Did you know she can actually see in the dark? I swear to God, that girl is part bat. Or
maybe
she’s actually a girl vampire who—”

Des clamped her hand over his mouth. Sometimes it needed doing when he got his jabber on. “Please tell me the hundred percent truth about something, will you?” she whispered.

He nodded his head up and down mutely.

“Am I tripping?”

“Y
OU’RE NOT TRIPPING,” HE
whispered after Des had finally agreed to remove her slender, clammy hand from his mouth. But, strangely enough,
he
was. Just being near to her, even in this darkness, Mitch could feel his skin tingling all over. Insane. It was totally insane.

“But what about … I mean, you and me. We’re not …” Des shook her head, unable to string the words together.

No maybe about that concussion. She definitely needed to get looked at by a doctor right away.

“Listen, if Cary Grant can come to Ingrid Bergman’s rescue in
Notorious
even after she’s been schtupping Claude Rains left and right for months, then I’m man enough to come through for you.”

Actually, Mitch was pretty proud of how adroitly he was handling himself. This was the first time he’d been face-to-face with the green-eyed monster since she’d stomped on his heart. And yet here he was being nothing but gallant. “The truth is that I still have feelings for you,” he went on, determined to say what needed saying. “I guess I always will. You can’t turn it on and off like a faucet. Besides, I figured I owed you one.”

“For what?”

“All of the times you’ve saved my life. So now we’re even. And everything’s good between us, okay? Ready to get the hell out of here?”

“No need to stick around on my account.”

Together, they crawled their way toward the air vent. Mitch
locked his fingers together to form a step and gave her a boost up and out with ease. She reached for Molly and embraced her. The girl buried her face in Des’s collarbone, sobbing with relief.

Next it was his turn. He was able to hoist himself up to the air vent on his own, no problem. But getting out was a whole other plot. Des had to grab him under the armpits and pull and pull with all of her might. He’d forgotten how strong she was, concussion or not. Strong enough to yank him right through that opening.

And now all three of them lay there in the mud and broken glass under the deck, Molly wiping the tears from her eyes.

Mitch dug the wire cutters and Baby Terrier from his jeans and jammed them into Des’s back pockets. “You found these down there,” he whispered. “Got loose on your own. We were never here, okay?”

“Why?”

“Better this way. Much cleaner. Got it?”

She nodded that she did.

Now the three of them slithered out from the under the deck and back across the wet grass to the big maple. It was still raining out, though not with quite as much intensity as before. The thunder and lightning had passed over.

Once they were safely behind the barn Mitch pointed Des in the direction of those two state troopers in the driveway and gave her a quick shove. Then he and Molly dove back into the thorny thicket beyond the chicken wire fence and started their slow, hard journey back to Big Sister.

He could hear Des call out her name to the troopers. Hear them bark in response. Then came the urgent voices into walkie-talkies. Soon somebody with a bullhorn was ordering Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva to come out with their hands up. Mitch and Molly had made it as far as the woods when all hell broke loose.
A lot of shooting. An insane amount of shooting. So much that it sounded to Mitch’s ears like the bloody finale of
Bonnie and Clyde
.

The shooting was still going on back there when he and Molly cleared the woods and, hand-in-hand, dashed their way across the meadow for home.

T
HE GLOVES GAME OFF
once they found out she’d managed to free herself from the root cellar. With Des safely out of harm’s way they gave Clay and Hector one last chance to come out with their hands up. Repeated it three times through a bullhorn, loud and clear. Clay and Hector refused to comply.

And then the shooting started.

No one was certain which of the two suspects was responsible for firing those first shots. Although Des thought she had a pretty fair idea. Didn’t really matter though. The important thing was that the opening salvo absolutely, positively came from the house. The SWAT teams returned fire. Had no choice. Then they stormed the Procter cottage with overwhelming force. Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva were given every opportunity to surrender. They would not.

When it was over, both men were pronounced dead at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds. There were no casualties suffered by any sworn personnel at the scene.

An internal State Police investigation into the raid on Sour Cherry Lane was launched the following morning. But there was very little heat behind the after-action inquiry. No bereaved loved ones coming forward to express outrage over Clay and Hector’s violent deaths. No friends or business associates demanding answers. No one asking why they’d chosen to shoot it out like they had.

If anyone has asked her, Des would have told them: Clay had simply made good on his promise. He’d vowed to her that he
would never, ever spend a single night in jail for as long as he lived. That night on Sour Cherry Lane, he made sure of it.

Grisky’s team found the stash of ice down in the root cellar. Some 187 pounds of crystal meth buried in one-gallon plastic freezer bags under fresh dirt not four feet from where Des had lain bound and gagged. Also another twenty pounds of heroin. This information was not made public. The joint task force wasn’t giving up on its quest to crush the Vargas drug cartel just because Clay and Hector were gone. Operation Burrito King lived on. So there was no mention in the media about the raid having anything to do with illegal drugs. Instead, the coverage focused entirely on the so-called “Triangle of Death”—Richard Procter, his estranged wife, Carolyn, and her lover, Clay Mundy. The official story line coming from the Major Crime Squad’s homicide investigators was that Clay had knifed the professor in a fight over Carolyn. Hector had helped Clay dispose of the body. And when the state police closed in on them the desperate pair had set off a crisis by taking Dorset’s resident trooper hostage.

For now, an FBI agent would remain stationed in the woods just in case someone associated with Clay and Hector moseyed along and tried to dig up their stash.

Brandon had been standing out in the middle of the lane looking utterly distraught when Des came staggering through the rain toward him, a big, strong trooper helping her along. Brandon ran to her and hugged her tight, kissing her, kissing her. And then here came Soave and Yolie, beaming with delight. All of them wanted to know how she got out. Des’s ears were ringing. And her memory of the previous few minutes was a feverish stew of fantasy and reality. But somehow, she gave them what Mitch had fed her to say. That she’d managed to work the ropes loose. Found wire cutters and a pry bar down there. Jimmied open an air vent. Grabbed the nearest trooper. End of story.

It didn’t fly for long, because when they searched the root cellar in the morning they found that her ropes had been cut with a knife, not loosened. And the vent cover pried open from the outside, not within. But for now no one showed any interest in pressing Des over this apparent discrepancy.

“It’s all over.”

That’s what a relieved Brandon kept saying to her as the Jewett sisters were getting her settled in the back of the ambulance. The media people were shouting questions her way. She wasn’t answering them. Wasn’t up for any questions.

“It’s all over.”

He said it as they were being whisked away to the Shoreline Clinic together, his arm wrapped around her, making her feel safe and loved. He said it as she sat there on the examining table, an eleven-year-old doctor shining a bright light in her eyes and asking her to look up, down and sideways. The doctor told her what she already knew—that she had a concussion and needed it to take it slow for a few days.

“She’ll take it slow,” Brandon promised.

Otherwise, Des was fine. Shockingly so. Her blood pressure was a textbook 126 over 78, her resting pulse rate a steady 74. Des knew why. Hell, yes, she knew—because Mitch had come through for her. Risked his life to save hers. He cared. He still cared….
“You can’t turn it on and off like a faucet.”
… As simple as that.

And hello, more than a tiny bit complicated. Not exactly helpful to discover that it was Mitch, not Brandon, who’d been in her heart as she lay there in that root cellar waiting to die. Des had already had her chance with Mitch and blown it. And now he’d given his own heart to someone else, according to Bella. A British dance critic-slash-bitch named Cecily. So it was too late for a do-over. Which Des accepted. Had to accept. Because it was what it
was. Besides, Brandon was by her side right now being so supportive and sweet. She belonged with Brandon. And she was going to make it work with Brandon. She was determined to make it work.