The Wrangler: The only thing standing between the beautiful kidnapped heiress and death was -- The Wrangler. (7 page)

The Cleaner patched up the Agent quickly and efficiently, pouring more peroxide on some gauze, packing it into the back of the wound and into the front, then wrapping elastic bandages over his shoulder to hold the gauze in.

"You'll live," the Cleaner said.

"That's my plan," said the Agent.

"Speaking of plans," said the Wrangler, "it's about time we made one."

"What do we need with a plan?" asked the Agent. "We know where the Man's going to be. We know where the money is going to be. Let's go kill him and take the money."

"The Man may have some objections to that plan," the Wrangler said.

"Sure, but he doesn't think we're around to make any plans," said the Agent. "He knows he killed me and the Driver, and he knows he killed you two. How DID he plan to kill you two?"

"A bomb," said the Cleaner. "The Wrangler twigged to it when he told our guest he was going to kill her while he was fucking her. Figured if he was gonna kill her, he was gonna kill us, too. So we lit out."

"What about our guest?" asked the Agent.

"In the trunk, safe and sound," said the Wrangler. "An insurance policy."

"I'd rather have the money," said the Agent.

"Me, too," said the Wrangler. "So, you think we're gonna catch him by surprise?"

"Yep," said the Agent. "We're dead, he's sitting in that condo waiting for the money. We pop in, blow him away, get the money, and go on our merry way. What's not to like?"

"Nothing," said the Wrangler. "But the Man still might be worried about the cops."

"True," said the Agent. "He's not gonna answer any knocks on the door without his gun drawn, And he's gonna be watching the causeway with those binoculars."

"We'll need to ditch this car," said the Cleaner. "He sees it, he'll know we're still around."

"Good point," said the Wrangler.

"I'll rent another," said the Cleaner. Like the Wrangler, the Cleaner had three different sets of ID cards with him, each with its own credit cards and driver's licenses. Top of the line stuff, too, not like the kind of stuff they sold people just across the border from Mexico. The drivers' licenses would last indefinitely and the credit cards were good for about two weeks from their initial use. But the Cleaner never used them for more than a week.

The Wrangler dropped off the Cleaner for the rental, then drove off to a secluded spot they'd spotted on the way to the rental agency. The Cleaner came back and they made the switch, helping the Agent into the back seat and putting the bag with Christine in it into the trunk of the new car.

Christine mmphed a few times during the transfer. She was in a lot of pain. The circular container she was trapped in and the straps that confined her made all but the tiniest of movements impossible. Her body had stared a new round of cramping and once again she found herself screaming into her gag, alone and in darkness, in pain and fear and misery, writhing helplessly as her muscles contracted painfully, unable to relieve the pain in any way.

Yet strangely enough, all the pain and so forth was a considerable improvement over her state of mind when she had been convinced not so long ago that she was going to be killed.

She wasn't a fool. She understood very well that she still might be killed. She knew that they might just be toying with her, giving her hope and despair just for the fun of it. But being a plaything of people who might or might not kill you beat the hell out of thinking you would be killed, period.

She was of course deeply miserable, she just wasn't at the bottom of the black hole she'd been trapped in earlier. And anything, anything was better than that. Even all this pain and darkness and fear was better than that.

Still, Christine was deeply disappointed to hear an engine come to life and feel herself moving. She was in another damn car trunk. She hated being tied up and locked in the trunk of a car. She hated being kidnapped. She hated being raped. She hated being afraid she was going to die at any moment. She hated that most of all.

The car moved through the beautiful roads of St. Simon's Island, at times almost completely canopied by oaks with long beards of Spanish moss hanging from their branches, and the spiky green of palmettos lining the road. The condo they were heading for was just off the main drag, perched on a tiny spit of sand that had almost certainly been constructed into the marsh back before environmental rules made that difficult.

They pulled into the parking area underneath the condo next to the one they were headed for. The two condos were just 5 meters apart, built on stilts in case of flooding and also to take advantage of the tiny space available.

The three of them had decided that there wasn't much point in doing anything fancy. The best plan would have been to have one of them sneak onto the condo's balcony overlooking the marsh and then break into the apartment at the same time as the other two broke into the front door. But in the early afternoon sun anyone climbing about on the outside of the condo balconies would have been visible to anyone on the causeway that crossed the marsh, and anyone fishing or boating in the marsh, and probably to anyone on the far side of the marsh visiting the Battle of Bloody Marsh memorial site.

A guy crawling around on the outside of a building had way too much chance of attracting official attention.

So they stood at the door and the Wrangler tried the handle very carefully. It was locked, of course. He pulled his gun out, took careful aim at the lock while the Agent took aim at the deadbolt. They fired nearly simultaneously. The Cleaner kicked the door in and it swung open easily. They Wrangler and then the Cleaner dove into the room.

A moment of staring intently over drawn guns showed there was no one in the room. They fanned out through the condo, guns at the ready, clearing each room in turn, then returned to the living room.

The Wrangler and the Cleaner returned to the living room while the Agent scoped out the balcony.

"Looks like he was here," said the Cleaner. "Got a laptop on the dining table."

The Wrangler glanced over at the laptop on the table. There was a webcam hooked up to it. It's light was on.

A connection formed in the Wrangler's mind. "Get out!" he cried to the Cleaner and the Agent, turning to run for the door as he did so.

There was a noise so loud it picked the Wrangler up and slammed him through the front door and into the wall that fronted it.

Things were hazy for the Wrangler after that. He could not move at all. He felt sticky stuff on his face. Nothing hurt, but he couldn't feel very much. He may have drifted in and out of consciousness, it was hard to tell. He smelled smoke and heard clattering and thunking noises. Then voices. Then sirens. Shortly after that, the voice of a young Coast Guardsman standing over him, saying, "This one's still with us."

The Wrangler summoned all his strength. "Hey," he said. "Hey."

The guardsman knelt down over him. "Take it easy, guy, we'll take care of you."

"Woman in trunk of car next door -- gray Toyota sedan -- locked in there," said the Wrangler. "Help her. Help her."

"Sure, we'll help her, but you need help too," said the young man. "Take it easy."

"She might die if you don't get her," said the Wrangler. "Help her."

"Right away," said the Guardsman. "We'll have a man down to check that car out right away. Now, you rest."

The Wrangler nodded. He didn't know if he would die or not when he closed his eyes, but at least now he could close them knowing he'd done what he had to, to save Christine's ass, and maybe his own.

Corpsman Alan Greene was alarmed by the Wrangler's words, and as soon as the medics had the Wrangler in their gurney, got two corpsmen and hurried next door. There was a gray Toyota sedan parked under it. They pried open the trunk with some firefighting equipment.

A round, striped suitcase lay in the trunk. Corpsman Greene flipped open the latch, and there inside it was a naked woman. Ropes criss-crossed her body and a black hood enclosed her head, with an iron collar beneath it. There was a red ball with holes in it gagging her mouth.

The Corpsmen lifted the suitcase out of the trunk, then lifted the naked woman out of the suitcase. She made a number of intelligible noises through the gag, possibly indicating distress.

They pulled the hood off her head and unbuckled the gag from her mouth, then untied the ropes securing her while she gagged and retched. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

Corpsman Greene placed his coat over her to cover her nakedness. She hardly appeared to notice.

"Oh, thank you thank you thank you," she said. "I'm going to live!"

Her eyes were so bright and her manner so distracted that Greene was concerned about her presence of mind.

"My name is Corpsman Alan Greene," said Green. "What's yours?"

"Christine," she said. "Christine Willock."

She paused for a moment, as if saying her name had reminded her of something.

"You need to call my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Willock, right away," she said to Greene. "They've got to be worried sick. I've been kidnapped."

* * * *

Arthur Willock was just approaching the bridge that crossed the Jolly River behind St. Simon's Island when he got the call. When he heard the words "safe and sound" his heart leapt with joy. Christine was alive! Suddenly the bag of bills sitting in the back seat behind him meant no more than a pile of leaves swept from the lawn. All the weight on his shoulders was gone.

"She's alive and she's OK," he told Mendova, his chief of security who sat beside him.

Mendova's whole body relaxed perceptibly. "That is GREAT news!" he said. He had been racked with guilt ever since the package from the kidnappers had arrived. His shoulders, too, were a lot lighter. He might get fired yet because the kidnapping had happened on his watch, but at least there were no dead kids for him to worry about.

Willock noted Mendova's increased relaxation, understood it as simple relief over Christine, and decided not to fire him on the spot.

* * * *

A few days later, the Wrangler lay in a hospital bed while an array of men in suits sat in chairs surrounding it. (The cops had tried to interview him the day after the explosion, but the doctors wouldn't let them, since the Wrangler was feigning incoherence.)

One of the men in the chairs was his court-appointed lawyer, the other was an assistant D.A. and there were also two assistants for the assistant D.A.

The Wrangler had been spending the couple of days thinking about this meeting and what he would say during it. It was so important to him that he cut back on the painkillers just so he could think without the haze induced by the painkillers fogging his mind. After a time the haze induced by pain would send him back to the painkillers, but he was able to get in several hours of clear thought each day in that way.

He thought he had it figured out.

"Mr. Sanders, we are sorry to have to interview you in your hospital bed, but we understand from your doctors that you are well enough to talk with us," said Assistant District Attorney Culpepper. "We have a few questions for you related to your activities prior to the incident which injured you. What were you doing at that condo?"

"I was considering renting one of the apartments in it," said the Wrangler.

"How did you come to be among the other men that were found there?" asked the D.A.

"Well, let me start from the beginning," said the Wrangler. "I was vacationing on St. Simon's and saw the condos and thought they might be a nice place to stay in during my next visit. So I just walked over and took a look at the condos from the outside, figuring I'd call the realtor once I had the number on the sign out front. Plus, it was a pretty good excuse for taking a walk."

"OK, that's how you got there," said Culpepper. "Now, how did you hook up with the other men in that apartment?"

"I wasn't really with them," said the Wrangler. "I saw them drive up and park in the condo next door. When they got out and I saw they were all middle-aged guys traveling in a late-model car, I figured they were either realtors or guys who'd rented the place for some company thing. Then they came over to the condo where I was and walked up the stairs. I decided I'd go talk with them and see if they could tell me something about the condos. But they were moving fast and before I got close to them they were past me. They seemed very intent, if you know what I mean. I was under the stairs when they were climbing them, and while I was there I heard one of the men say, "Man, it is so weird to be traveling around with a hottie locked in the trunk."

And one of the other guys said, "I never travel without at least one hottie locked in the trunk."

"So I figured they were joking," the Wrangler continued. "You know, guy talk."

"Yes, badinage about women locked in the trunk, what wit," said Culpepper dryly.

"OK, so I headed up the stairs and just when I got up there with them, I saw all of them going into one of the apartments. So I figured this way I might get a look at one of the condos, and walked over to the door and looked inside and said, "Excuse me." And two of the men whirled around and pointed guns at me. Then there was an explosion. You know the rest."

"What made you report what you thought was a jest to the Corpsman?" asked Culpepper.

"Well, it was the weirdest thing," said the Wrangler. "I came to for a time after the explosion. I could hear and see but I couldn't move. And I figured the apartment must have blown up. And out of nowhere the thought comes, "If those guys were blown up, they're probably the sort of guys who really WOULD travel around with a 'hottie' locked in their trunk. And even though I knew I'd probably been seriously injured, I was worried about that ... a lot. That's why I reported it to the Corpsman."

"Where did you walk to the condos from?" asked Culpepper.

"My car," said the Wrangler. "I had it parked in that public beach parking area across from the condos."

"Really?" asked Culpepper. "We've received no reports of an unknown car parked in the Sandpiper Beach lot."

"I don't remember the name of the lot," said the Wrangler. "But it's a green Camaletto I rented in Boston."