Up in Smoke (39 page)

“No. We were all waiting to get this strategy meeting underway, figure out what to do while the governor recuperates. He obviously can't keep up the same hectic schedule he's been doing.”

“We'll find her, Mr. Quaid.” Susan knew, and Bernie knew, those were just words. If Cass was intent on suicide and without knowing where to look, they would likely only find a body. If that.

“Go back to your meeting. We'll call when we find them.”

“But maybe I can help. Maybe—”

“There's really nothing you can do,” Susan said gently. “Go back to the Garrett farm and let us do our job.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. He put a leash on the dog, took her to the car and put her in the backseat. He started to get in and stopped. “I just thought.”

“Yes?”

“I've remembered a place she might go,” Bernie said.

46

Sleet pelted the windshield and the wipers kept up a continuous
thunk
as they swept a clear arc. Cass hunched over the wheel to see the road. Todd watched her. Even in the dark, she could feel his eyes assessing. No anger was coming from his still body, no hatred or malevolence, only irritation. She was in the way and she had to go. The obvious, or what should have been obvious, if she hadn't been so stupid, so blindly focused on herself, was a cold awareness that seeped in through her hands and feet and spread throughout her body. He was going to kill her.

Mad laughter bounced through her head. He was going to kill a suicidal woman! Don't ever say God didn't have a sense of humor.

She clamped down on her back teeth to keep from howling, and pulled what senses she had together. If she just went along like a lamb to the slaughter, he'd get away with it. For killing Gayle and taking away Wakely's life, poor Wakely who had already lost so much, and the little girl. Fourteen. That was the most unforgivable. What would Laura have been like at fourteen?

Slowly, like recovering from a flu, she brought her mind back to the icy road. Only a few seconds had passed and Todd was still sitting silently in the passenger seat. She couldn't let him get away with it. She had to survive and she had a big plus. The gun in her pocket. How fast could she get it?

Options clicked in her mind. She was the one in control of the car. She could speed up and drive headlong into a tree or a concrete abutment. That might kill them both, but as least Todd wouldn't get away with killing three people. She could let the car slide off the road into the steep ditch alongside. That would render the car useless until a tow truck came and hauled it out. Todd might just smash her head with something and say she was hurt in the crash. He'd walk away whistling.

If she did anything, he'd realize she knew. As long as he thought she was still in the dark, mentally as well as physically, she'd be all right. At least until they came to wherever they were going and her world came to an end.

“Make a right here,” he said.

She nodded and made the turn onto the dark road. The world was pitch black, only her headlights glinting silver sparks from the slanting sleet. He took a roll of tape from his pocket—tape from her dining room—and tore off a strip. What was he going to do with it? Tape her mouth? He stuck one end on the dash.

Getting in the car with him had been stupid. Self-defense classes taught never get in the villain's car. And never go where he wants you to go, no matter what he promises. She'd left it too long. Now she was out here on Strahmeyer's Road getting farther and farther away from the possibility of help. Should she keep going or try to get out the revolver and hope she could shoot before he realized what she was doing?

He looked over at her and in the phosphorescent green of the dash light, his eyes seemed to glitter. For a moment, they stared at each other; then he shifted slightly, but that instant was enough. Knowledge had passed between them. She no longer needed to pretend, he was aware of what she knew.

From the glove box, he got a flashlight that he put in his lap, then he took out a gun and pressed it against her temple. Not an old revolver like the one in her pocket, but a modern, slim, far more deadly semi-automatic.

A lightning-fast thought zigzagged through her mind. Hit the door handle and bail. She didn't follow through with action because she believed with every fiber of her being that he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. Slight squeezing of his finger and she would be very messily dead, brains all over the window and the seat.

It didn't matter if she was killed, but the little girl had mattered. Cass hadn't done anything to set right Laura's death, but she could do something for this girl's.

“Why kill me?” she said.

“Cops won't stop sniffing around until they have the killer.”

“You're going to pin it on me? If you think that's going to work, you're crazier than I am.”

Gun hard at her temple, Todd clamped his right hand around one of hers on the steering wheel and squeezed so hard she could feel blood pulse in her fingertips. “Do exactly what I tell you.”

Part of her wanted him to pull the trigger. It would finally be over. Another part talked to her and called her a coward and yelled at her to do something and not let this bastard get away with killing a little girl. These two parts seemed to be talking to each other. Disassociation. Her shrink had talked about it.

“You think you can scare me? You think I care if you kill me? You are nothing but a piece of shit.”
Way to go, Cass. That ought to calm him long enough so you can figure out how to get away. Yes, indeed, when the ship's going down, bash a big hole in the bow, I always say.
She darted a glance at him and saw sweat beads on his forehead.

“Shut up.” The dangerous edge in his voice told her she'd pushed him past some point of no return.

“Make a right.”

She turned onto another deserted road and passed a house with lights in the windows. “Nobody's going to believe it,” she said.

“I'll make them believe. You confessed. You told me what you'd done.”

“Why would I kill a woman I didn't know and poor Wakely and the little girl?” If anyone happened to be looking out, all he'd see was a car driving in sleet that kept turning to rain and back to sleet. It was a night only a fool would be out.

“They were blackmailing Jack. You did it for him. Still in love with him. Thought he'd be grateful. Planned to get rid of Molly so he'd marry you.”

She drove on until there was nothing but empty fields on both sides of the road. “That's just stupid.”

“Yeah, well, to tell the truth you were babbling incoherently and I couldn't really understand half of what you were saying.”

“How'd I get way out here? Hike through a thunderstorm?”

“You forced me to bring you. Held this gun on me.”

“Why didn't I just shoot myself?”

“You're a whack job, who knows why? Kept saying you couldn't live with yourself. Pull up over here.”

Cass eased the car to the edge of the road, hit the headlights, and turned off the ignition. A blacker dense area to the right she thought was a grove of trees.

“Both hands on the wheel.”

She did as she was told. Several seconds. When he got out of the car, she'd have several seconds while he ran around to the driver's side to get to her. She'd get the revolver from her pocket.

A hand slapped down over both wrists and in an instant he had tape whipped around them. A panic attack threatened. She couldn't breathe. Clammy sweat broke out.

The gun was on the seat while he'd taped her wrists together and now he snatched it and jabbed the barrel into her temple. Would she hear the shot before she died?

“Release the seat belt.” His voice sliced through her panic, the terrible calm of destiny set her free. Awkwardly, she fumbled for the release. He clicked his own seat belt loose, stuck the flashlight in his pocket and reached behind for the door handle. Not for an instant did he relax his focus on her.

He pushed open his door, slid out and yanked her across the middle console. The emergency brake gouged her stomach and a knee banged the steering column as he wrenched her from the car. He dumped her on the ground and backed a step. Her hands landed in mud. Cold water seeped into her jeans. Sleet was coming down so hard she could barely see. She struggled to her feet.

“Don't try anything or I'll kill you where you stand.”

“Oh, right. As opposed to later? You going to try for another suicide? It really won't fly.”

He flicked on a flashlight. “Move.”

She started in the direction he gestured. In the distance was the darker blackness of trees, beyond that she couldn't see anything.

“I didn't want to kill him.” Todd's voice, slightly higher than normal, had an odd quality of regret. “I had to.”

“Oh yeah? Why is that?” She stumbled along the rocky uneven ground, shoes squishing in the mud, cheeks stinging with cold.

“He knew.”

“And Gayle? She knew, too? What the hell did they know that was so important?”

“She wouldn't drop it, kept talking to Wakely, trying to convince him Vince was telling the truth.” The flashlight beam wavered as he stumbled.

If she rammed herself into him, would he fall? Would that give her time to run? Hide herself in the dark? “And the little girl? She knew something, too?” Cass let contempt drip through.

With a forearm, Todd brushed drops of melted sleet from his forehead. “Sunglasses,” he said. “Must have dropped them. Only wanted to find them. She was there.”

“Sunglasses? You're too cheap to buy another pair?” She lurched against him in a trial, to see what he'd do.

He stepped aside and let her fall. “Prescription,” he said.

She struggled upright with more mud on her clothes to show for her effort. “You meant it when you said you did whatever the governor needed.”

“He'll win the nomination, and have a good shot at the presidency.”

“Yeah? And what do you get?” Jack Garrett had this man kill three people? The Jack she'd loved all those years ago would never have done that. What had changed him so drastically? Ambition? “Jack told you to kill me?” The words no longer had the ability to hurt, she was long past hurt.

“He doesn't know.”

“Doesn't know,” she repeated. She was getting tired, the flashlight beam wobbling through the dark was making her dizzy.

Her brain, cold and numb, couldn't assimilate quickly. “You're going to kill me and he doesn't know? That's really showing initiative. What do you get out of all this?”

“Chief of staff. When he's elected president.”

“What did Wakely know?” Whenever she stopped, he prodded her with the gun.

“Vince. Made up a story. Threatened to talk to the press. Wanted money to keep quiet.”

“You killed Vince Egelhoff, too?”

“He lost a ski pole. Terrible accident. Smashed headfirst into a tree.”

Cass's ankle twisted as her foot slithered over a rock and she fell to her knees. Todd jerked her up. “He'd have ruined everything. I've worked too hard for this. It's here, right here within reach. Its goddamn
happening.
He would have taken it away. For what? A mistake twenty years ago. Something beyond change. I couldn't let that happen.”

“How'd it go with Wakely?” she said. “He talked too much when he was drunk? Said something? You repeated it to Jack, saw it made Jack nervous?” The sleet turned to rain. Cass was soaked and cold to the bone. Loathing in her voice, she said, “He was a cripple. Couldn't run, couldn't fight. He couldn't even walk.”

“I didn't want to kill him.”

There was some mixture in his voice that Cass couldn't quite identify. Regret and that hard sense of entitlement that made his agenda more important even than another's life.

“I'm not a killer,” Todd said.

“Yeah, you are. Did you make it easy for yourself? Give him a bottle of booze with a sedative in it? When he was so far out he couldn't even struggle, you shot him and staged the whole suicide scene.”

“I didn't want to.”

“I'll bet you stood there in the bathroom doorway and looked at his brains splattered over the walls and his blood dripping on the floor and went over it all in your mind to make sure you'd thought of everything.” Rain fell harder. She shook water from her eyes.

“I was sorry.”

Cass snorted. “And the little girl? Sorry about her, too?” Cass's voice was thick with scorn. “You cut her throat and left her to die. When she didn't, you held a pillow over her face. How hard is it to kill a little girl?”

“Shut up!”

“Jack has to know what you've done. At least, suspect. You really believe he'll keep you around if he knows? He's an elected official. He can't afford you. He'll throw you to the dogs.” She finally realized where he was taking her. The Hanging Barn. It loomed in the distance, a blacker presence against the black horizon.

“Keep moving.”

He'd string her up and make her look like another suicide, tell the world she'd killed a little girl. “You're a killer. He can't—”

“So is he!” Todd prodded her shoulder with the gun. “Keep moving!”

Rain turned to sleet again. With her hands taped, her balance was poor. She staggered and fell facedown in cold mud, so cold and tired she didn't care any longer.

“Get up!” He yanked on the sleeve of her jacket.

When she didn't move, he fired two shots, one right after the other. The bright flash of gunpowder so close blinded her and the sound was deafening. Dazed from the shock of two rounds fired in front of her face, she couldn't move. Clutching her jacket at the neck, he lifted her like a half-drowned kitten and hauled her to her feet. She could see his mouth moving, but could only hear the ringing in her ears and the muted roar of static. The muzzle flash left sparks of light etched on her retinas like leftover fireworks.