To Trust a Stranger (43 page)

“I'm so scared,” she whispered, the words coming out before she could stop them. As soon as they left her mouth, she wished she could call them back. Saying it aloud didn't help; if anything, it made them both feel worse.

“We've made it this far. We'll make it the rest of the way.” He moved, and his lips brushed her mouth. The kiss was hot and sweet, and Julie closed her eyes and kissed him back and felt her fear recede a little as the familiar electricity coursed between them. Thank God for Mac, she thought. Without him, she would have been dead back there in the car with Sid. No, she would have been dead long before.

“You seem to be making a habit of saving my life.”

“Maybe I think it's worth saving.” There was a loud splash out in the swamp. Julie tensed. Beside her she could feel Mac stiffen. But, though they listened intently, the sound was not repeated. Gradually they relaxed.

Mac said, “The police should be on their way. I called my old captain while I was haring around after you. They're going to get here sooner or later.” It was meant to comfort her, Julie knew. But unspoken between them lay the truth: Basta might well find them first. And even if the police came in time, could they trust whoever showed up?

Julie shivered.

“How did you find me, anyway?” She'd wondered about that.

“I put a homing device in your purse this morning.” He sounded as if he were smiling. “In case you tried to give me the slip.” If she'd heard that a couple of hours earlier she would have been mad. Now she was profoundly thankful.

“Mac,” she whispered after a moment, desperate to get her mind off their plight. “Did you have a brother named Daniel?”

A beat passed.

“Yeah,“ he said “Why?”

“In the car, Basta said he killed him. He said he killed Daniel and Kelly and my father, too.” Another beat.

“Ah.” Mac sounded as if he were expelling a breath he'd been holding for a long time. “Did he say how? Why?”

Mac's voice was expressionless. Too expressionless. Julie realized that there was a lot of emotion connected with the death of his brother.

“No. Sid said my father had stolen something from him and his father. He wouldn't say what. But I got the impression my father was killed because of it.”

“What else did he say?”

“Sid?” Julie gave a bitter little laugh. “Nothing much. Only that he never loved me. That he basically just married me because he thought I knew where the thing my father stole was. That he was planning to have me killed one day from the time he married me.”

There was the briefest of pauses. Then Mac snorted. “Sounds like Sid. He always was the biggest idiot I ever met.”

Julie smiled a little in the darkness. “You really are a sweet man, you know that? Thank you for that.”

“Hey, like I said before, sweet is my middle name.” A sudden roar from just beyond the stump was followed by a high pitched cry and a sharp snap. Julie was so startled she almost fell into the water.

“Gator,” Mac, sounding as if he was speaking through gritted teeth, answered her unspoken question. “Must've caught something. Don't worry, the roots are too narrow to let one get in here.”

Great. Now she didn't only have to worry about ruthless murderers, she had to worry about alligators. Julie shuddered, then deliberately forced her mind on to other things.

“How do you know Sid, anyway?”

“Sid?” Mac shifted uncomfortably, and drew a deep breath. Julie had to move, too, to keep the pad pressed to the wound. “He was Daniel's best friend. Daniel was my big brother. Our dad was a cop who was killed by a prick trying to rob a convenience store of sixty bucks. That left my mom and Daniel and me.

I was only five when it happened. Daniel was thirteen, and getting ready to go to high school. On behalf of the community, John Carlson-Sid's dad funded a scholarship for Daniel to the same expensive private school Sid went to.

Daniel was a player with the girls, a jock, a never-ending good time. Sid wanted some of Daniel's reflected glory, and they started hanging out. As a result of being pals with Richie Rich, Daniel began appreciating the finer things in life. The things Sid had and we couldn't afford. They stayed friends even after high school, and one thing led to another and Daniel ended up working for Sid. One night Daniel went to work and never came home. He was twenty-five.” Mac took a deep breath, and Julie ached at the psychic pain she heard in the sound. Mac's next words were slightly uneven.

“I think Daniel's disappearance killed my mom. She didn't live long after that.” Another deep breath. “I always suspected-no, I always knew-Sid had something to do with Daniel's disappearance. With his death.“

Mac's voice was raw, and Julie cuddled closer in a silent gesture of comfort. “You loved Daniel a lot, didn't you?” she asked softly. She felt rather than saw him shrug. “He was my brother.” That stark statement made a lump form in her throat. She turned her head, meaning to kiss him consolingly. Her lips brushed his cheek before moving on in search of his mouth. His head turned and his lips found hers again, and suddenly he was kissing her as though he would die if he didn't. Julie kissed him back just as desperately. With the small part of her mind capable of focusing on anything beyond the kiss, she sensed his grief and anger for his brother as well as his fear and frustration at their current situation, and realized that those were fuelling the kiss along with his elemental need for her. She felt a tremendous swelling of emotion, an almost primeval urge to give him comfort. Then she knew, and pulled her mouth from his.

“I love you, Mac,” she whispered against his lips. For a moment he didn't move. She could feel his breath on her lips.

“I love you too,” he said after a moment, in a deep husky whisper drawl that made her heart start to slam in her breast. “More than anything or anyone in my life.” Then he kissed her again, a soul-shaking kiss that made her forget that she was supposed to be pressing a bandage to his back, made her forget that they were hiding in a swamp from a conscienceless killer who had already murdered who knew how many people, made her forget everything in the whole world but Mac. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. He broke off the kiss abruptly, stiffening and lifting his head.

“Shh,“ he said. “Here they come.”

Julie listened, and heard it: the faint squelch, squelch of somebody walking through the swamp. It was a rhythmic sound, far different from any they had heard before. Julie broke out in a cold sweat. Her stomach clenched. Her heart began to pound. Then, beyond the encircling roots, she saw the slashing beam of a flashlight. Suddenly Julie realized that she was about as safe as a rabbit frozen in place while the hounds close in, and began to shake.

35

IN THE DISTANCE BASTA HEARD JULIE SCREAMING. His senses went on high alert. He was standing near the edge of the clearing looking out over the lake, in the high spot where they'd had to move so that the one remaining flunky who was playing bodyguard to the boss could get his cell phone to work properly. It was a beautiful sight, with the moon shining on the surface of the water and tiny twinkling stars just beginning to put in an appearance. In fact, it was just about his favorite place in the world-or, at least, his favorite killing place. “Sounds like they found them,” he said to John Carlson, who stood beside him, his face etched in grief, tears glistening in his eyes. He almost would have felt sorry for the man, had he not been absolutely sure that the next item on the Big Boss's agenda, after Basta dispatched his pesky daughter-in-law and the supposed killer of his son for him, was Basta's own demise. The rule was as old as the playground: first one to the finish line wins. He meant to abide by it. He had hoped to get Carlson alone, but it looked like he was out of time. The flunkies who'd been searching the swamp had obviously struck pay dirt. They'd be turning up in a few minutes with the captives, like dogs bringing their master a bone. Basta knew how it worked. He'd been a dog with a master, too. But no more. The dog was about to bite.

“Call the rest of them in,” Carlson said, his back now to the lake al he stared vindictively toward the woods. A step or so beyond him, the flunky fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, obviously meaning to pass on the boss's order. Basta realized that Julie wasn't screaming anymore. He didn’t even waste his time wondering what they'd done to shut her up. He didn't care. Funny how things work out,” he said to the boss, as though he was Just making conversation. At the same time, he took a step back. Just as quick as that, he raised his gun, aimed it-the man was still looking toward the woods-and blew a hole through the Big Boss's head. The body dropped like a felled tree, dead before it hit the ground. The bodyguard dropped his cell phone like it was suddenly red-hot, going for his gun. Basta shot him in the head, too.

Nice and easy and quiet. Couldn't ask for a hit to go down better than that.

Humming softly under his breath, Basta scooped up the fallen cell phone, stuck it in his pocket-it would never do to leave evidence like , that lying around for one of the flunkies to find and wonder about grabbed the bodies by the ankles and dragged them the few feet to the drop-off over the lake, then rolled them off. The Big Boss was still twitching as he went over the side.

“This guy's fricking heavy,” the thug carrying Mac's ankles grunted. I don’t know why we couldn't just kill him back there and leave him in the swamp, instead of lugging him all this way.”

“You ought to be on this end.” A second thug, the one with his hands locked under Mac's armpits, responded feelingly.

“Boss's orders.” The third thug had his hand twisted in Julie's hair and his gun pressed to her neck. Walking easily over the uneven ground, he sounded unsympathetic to the others' plight. “He said bring '
em
to him alive, so that's what we're gonna do.”

“Quit your bitchin', Dye. We're almost there.” The fourth thug was walking a few steps behind with his gun drawn and aimed at Mac, purely as a precaution, Julie thought.

Otherwise, there seemed to be no purpose in it. They'd beaten Mac unconscious. There was blood all over his face now, too. He lay limply between the two thugs, his head lolling against the one's chest, his middle sagging perilously close to the ground as they all, captives and captors, trudged across the moonlit field.

The killing field. As that thought took possession of her mind, Julie was suddenly so frightened that her legs would barely support her. She would have collapsed, she thought, except for the thug's hand twisted in her hair. She knew she was walking toward her own death, and she knew equally that there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

The instant, unwanted image of Sid's face being blown away made her queasy. Please God, she thought, please God don't let me die like that. Don't let Mac die like that. We've only just found each other. Please let us live. Please.

When the flashlight beam had hit them, shining directly through the roots of the sheltering cypress as if the thugs had known exactly where they were hiding, Mac had pushed Julie behind him and opened fire. To Julie's horror, his gun had made empty clicking sounds. Mac had said shit, it's wet and stepped out with his hands up, dropping the gun on command. Then, as the two thugs had looked at Julie, squeezing out through the roots behind him, he'd launched himself at them like a missile.

Wounded and weak, he'd been beaten to a pulp.

So here they were, walking across the field, drawing closer to eternity with every step. She was wearing only her skirt and bra, with lots of bare skin on display, but she was covered with so much mud that she might as well have been fully clothed. The mud served another purpose, too: it seemed to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Not that she was going to have to worry about being bitten for very much longer.

The moonlight was beautiful, soft and white, painting the clearing with an otherworldly glow. It was a night for romance, Julie thought, for walks on the beach, for friends and laughter and love.

For Sid, and now for her and Mac, it was also a night for dying. “Keep going.”

The hand in her hair tightened painfully as she stumbled. Julie recovered, and they marched past the car where Sid's body lay. Julie 'averted her eyes. Her stomach churned. Gorge rose in her throat.

Sid had deserved a lot of bad things, but not to meet an end like that.

Several other cars were there, too. Julie did a double take at the big gray BMW parked beside the Lexus. That car was John's. She would recognize it anywhere. For a moment hope did its eternal thing in her breast again as the thought that her father-in-law might help her popped into her head. Then she remembered that John was part of this, too.

Did he know Sid was dead? He would grieve.

It was hard to get her mind around the fact that she shouldn't care if Sid's father grieved. She felt as if her whole life had been turned inside out, and everything she had believed to be true suddenly wasn’t.

As they passed the cars, she saw something small and white slink out from their shadow and fall in behind them.

Josephine, minus her usual happy prance. From her demeanour she was obviously aware something was amiss. Her head was down and her tail drooped. Julie felt a glimmer of joy as she spotted her, which was almost immediately superseded by fear. She would have shooed the little dog away, except, she didn't want to call attention to her.