M.L. Gamble - Trust With Your Life

His left hand was in his jacket pocket. Molly had a fleeting thought that he was carrying a gun. The orange gym bag she had noticed earlier was on the floor at his feet, as if he had dropped it.

“Hello,” she offered, her pulse racing as the elevator chugged slowly to the basement. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I’ve done that twice tonight.”

“No problem,” Buntz replied, then leaned down to retrieve the bag. He jerked it quickly upward and two computer disks tumbled out. “Damn,” he muttered, hurriedly grabbing up the small black squares as if he didn’t want Molly to see them.

She turned her eyes away, in the hopes that that would calm him down, but not before noting that the labels on the disks said Inscrutable Security. As the elevator doors opened to reveal the concrete basement, Molly stepped forward. Without looking back at the ex-sportscaster, she hurried into the well-lit garage area. No footsteps echoed behind her, so she assumed Buntz was riding back up to the lobby.

Molly heard men’s voices echoing off the thick walls, smelled gasoline and the sea and spotted a group working across the huge, open space of the office building’s basement. Rafe Amundson, foreman of the crew, was watching three other installers wrestle with a five-hundred-foot spool of cable.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Molly called out. “How’s it going?”

Three heads turned. Rafe’s didn’t. When she got to him she saw he was scowling while the installers grinned and kept working.

“Those g.d. frame rats at Gutless Electric, Inc. refuse to call out anyone to help us get dial tone, that’s how it’s going, Boss,” Rafe said as he kept his eyes on his men. “Which means out of the sixty-six special circuits we’re supposed to cut in here tonight, thirty-eight are dead. What the hell Gutless is doing still jerry-rigging its old-fashioned switching equipment is beyond me.”

“Gutless Electric” was the way Rafe and several others referred to the other local dial-tone carrier well-known for its less-than-timely resolution of problems. “I’ll go out to the van to call and get the district level out of bed,” Molly replied. “But before I do that, where’s the client?”

“Mr. Brooker disappeared with his block-long limo about an hour ago.” Rafe met her eyes and slid the wad of gum he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. “That’s one weird puppy, you ask me. Ranting and raving, strutting around, the whole time his kid sitting in the car looking like he wanted to drop off the face of the earth. He told me to tell you he had to go to meet some people who were moving his boat down to San Diego but that you weren’t to leave until the problem was fixed.”

Rafe chuckled and cracked the knuckles on his huge hands, which for thirty-five years had so ably serviced telephone customers throughout Orange County. “Guess he didn’t realize you had to get your makeup on and comb your hair before you could get out here with us peons.”

She smiled and looked pointedly at Rafe’s crumpled T-shirt, which was untucked from his grimy jeans. “You know how appearances count toward making good first impressions, Rafe.”

“Hell with that, says my union rep. The brass wants me to dress up in a monkey suit, they can give me a clothing allowance, Ms. Jakes.” Rafe spat out the gum into his hand, wadded it up and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, then lit a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

Molly bit back the two dozen criticisms she was ready to voice, well aware that the three installers were listening to every word. She gave Rafe an “I’ll deal with you later” look and asked, “Where did you park the van?”

Rafe made a motion with his hand, dug out a set of car keys and handed them to her, then turned his attention back to the diagnostic equipment on the cart in front of him. Molly walked out onto the loading dock, descended the steep stairway and crossed into the nearly empty lot. The Pacific Communications van was parked in the middle. She unlocked the back doors and climbed in.

Settling down for some intercompany unpleasantness, she located the home phone number of the district manager for repair in Rafe’s call-out book. A groggy woman answered on the fourth ring and then a sleep-filled male voice picked up, a this-better-be-good edge to each word.

After five minutes of tense conversation, Molly gained his agreement to dispatch a second-level supervisor—Molly’s equal at Garrett Electric Telephone, which was Gutless Inc.’s legal name—to help the frame people fix the circuit problems.

Molly hung up the phone, turned off the van lights and sat quietly in the dark. Her neck and back ached, and the headache she had fought off announced its reappearance with a vengeance. She hugged her coat close and looked around the van for a thermos. Molly knew a cup of coffee at this hour would give her a stomachache, but she needed a hit of caffeine to shake off the fatigue.

Grabbing a badly dented, old-fashioned aluminum thermos she knew to be Rafe’s from the front seat, Molly poured coffee into a foam cup and tried to relax while she waited for reinforcements.

Her mind wandered to the blue-eyed Australian stranger on the third floor. She met a lot of men on the job. Customers, fellow employees, lawyers from the megafirm that shared the Pacific Communications building in downtown Mission Viejo. But this guy seemed different from most. While few got her blood running during an initial meeting, this man had.

Despite his beak of a nose and the craggy lines around his eyes, he was handsome in what might be described as a dangerous way. A way that made her forget what she was doing. A way that got her thinking about things she would like to be doing—with him.

He was powerfully built and what her grandmother called cocksure of himself. Molly blushed and smiled at the X-rated thoughts racing through her mind.

But there was no denying the attraction she’d felt toward him. Could it have been fate willing them to meet on a night like this? If she went upstairs later, would he still be there?

The Aussie was fresh and a bit arrogant, but very, very sexy. Definitely dangerous for a serious-minded professional woman with a plan for the next couple of years that called for hard work and all the overtime she could stand.

“Heck of a guy to meet on Valentine’s Day,” Molly murmured, then laughed aloud at her silly fantasizing. The sound of an approaching car cut short her thoughts, and she peeked out the window, wondering if Frederick Brooker was ready to reappear. Sure enough, as she watched, a long, cream-colored Lincoln limo rolled past. It stopped near the dark side of the loading dock.

Molly put her hand on the door handle, but stopped as a shape emerged from the darkness. From twenty yards away, she could not make out the face of the person in black, but the bright orange bag the man carried told her it was Paul Buntz.

The back door of the limo opened, Buntz got in and the car sped off.

So much for her confrontation with Mr. Brooker, Molly thought. With a sigh, she stepped out of the van and headed back to the crew for what she feared would be a long night.

* * *

AT SIX-THIRTY in the morning, Molly pulled out of the parking lot of Summer Point Towers. Sixty circuits into Inscrutable Security from various commercial and residential-alarm customers were at last up and running.

Frederick Brooker had not returned, though she had endured a terse phone call from him at 2:00 a.m., during which he’d promised to “report you and your crew to the Public Utilities Commission, the Better Business Bureau and the mayor’s office if those circuits aren’t up as promised!” After all, Brooker had continued, hadn’t he paid a huge advance installation bill because the credit office of Pacific Communications had requested it?

Molly had done her best to soothe him, imagining that a man like Brooker had taken it personally when his business’s creditworthiness had been questioned by her company’s business office. But despite that edge of ego, she had been able to calm Brooker down remarkably fast.

The supervisor from Garrett Electric had shown up and been effective with his technicians; all in all, it had not been a bad night’s work. As she pulled off the Orange Freeway and headed up the already busy streets toward home, Molly figured she could shower, sleep for a couple of hours and be back in the office by noon.

She turned off the soft-rock station and flipped to an all-news station. The first story was a frightening one about more turmoil in the Middle East, a car bomb and dead children. The second story was about the murder of ex-sportscaster and football player, Paul Buntz.

Molly stared at her radio as if she could see the story unfold, while the broadcaster filled in the details. Shot five times in a deserted parking lot near the Summer Point Marina, Buntz was found floating in the Pacific by an unidentified man at approximately 2:00 a.m.

A suspect was being sought by the police, the radio voice added. He was a wealthy Orange County businessman identified as Frederick Brooker, owner of Inscrutable Security in Summer Point. An eyewitness reported seeing Brooker speeding off in a beige Lincoln limo, in the direction of Mission Verde.

September 2

Like most women, Molly Jakes was good in emergencies.

The sight of blood, particularly other people’s, did not freak her out. Which is why, without hesitation, she was ready to help as soon as she spotted three wrecked cars and four people scattered across the sloping concrete freeway off ramp, a mile from her home.

As she braked, she noted it was 3:00 a.m. exactly by the car’s clock. Above her in the damp, late-summer air, ribbons of fog wound around the thousand-watt fluorescent bulbs atop the light poles lining the double-laned expanse, giving animate and inanimate objects alike the spooky blue tint peculiar to the middle of night.

The accident had occurred just a minute or two ago, she estimated, reaching for the cellular phone in the car console. Her fingers brushed the cold leather where the mobile unit was usually nestled and she swore under her breath. The phone was being repaired, and all she had in her purse was the antiquated pager that gave her no ability to call out.

She glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to see the reflection of oncoming headlights, but caught only a blank swatch of asphalt. Clearing the incline, she braked and rolled past a red-and-silver Bronco, its wheels still spinning. From her location she saw a handful of twinkling lights from the sleeping houses lining the hills of Mission Viejo. The town-house development where she lived was just beyond. For a moment, she considered driving on and calling for help from home, then returning. But the smell of burned rubber and the sight of people tossed like rag dolls thrown by a malicious giant changed her mind. Years of first-aid training had taught her that in many cases five minutes’ delay could cost a life.

Molly judged that the wreck had started in the left lane, for the Bronco had left a long trail of skid marks that cut across both lanes at an angle. The car it had run into—a small blue compact—was smashed into the two-foot-thick abutment on the right, facing east in the westbound lanes. It was hooked into the Bronco’s door panel by its rear bumper.

There were four people on the pavement. Two were facedown near the back of the Bronco, which was spitting out a threatening plume of white smoke from under its hood. One lay on his back in a strangely restful pose, the fourth a few yards over against the abutment.

He was the only one she knew for sure was dead. Even at a distance of twenty feet, Molly’s brain registered his missing limb and the bright smears on the ground.