M.L. Gamble - Trust With Your Life

Molly smiled and kept walking, wishing someone could drive her home, wishing she had someone waiting for her there. Now that the emergency was over, that initial rush of strength was dissipating and her bones felt like rubber.

Sliding into the car, Molly sat for a moment and stared in disbelief at the ignition. Her key ring, holding house keys, office keys, the whole shebang, was hanging there. She never left her keys in the car! If it had been stolen, the insurance company wouldn’t have paid off, good samaritan acts notwithstanding. So much for patting herself on the back earlier for following safety rules, she thought.

The car started immediately. Molly buckled her seat belt and hit the door-lock button. Accelerating, she turned right at Verdugo Boulevard and headed for home. She wanted off the freeway. Out of this scene of mayhem that was much too real to ever forget as one could an upsetting movie or even a tragic news show.

* * *

AS MOLLY DROVE AWAY from the accident scene, the man in the blue mechanic’s jumpsuit gave his name and telephone number to Lieutenant Cortez. He was also thanked and sent home.

The man returned to his car, but before driving off, he reached for his cellular phone and punched in a number.

“Hello,” a male voice snapped in his ear.

“Nothing went down as planned,” the slight man reported, wiping a bead of sweat from his thin mustache. Despite the cool night air, his being that close to a cop had made him nervous. “I was waiting for your guys, but all hell broke loose. They were ambushed or something. Both of your vehicles were in a wreck. When the girl arrived, she dived right in to help. By the time I got out of the car, there were three other cars stopped and I never got a clear shot.”

“Why didn’t you take them all out?” the man on the other end demanded. “I would have covered you for the extra work.”

“It never would have worked. There were too many people.”

“Well, where the hell is Steele? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Two guys are. The two live ones I saw were an old dude and a black guy. He ain’t either of those, I guess.”

“Well, at least he’s dead. That changes things, but...” The man’s voice trailed off. “Well, tomorrow I’ll send someone for the girl. You go back home. I’ll be in touch.”

The man in the blue coveralls hung up without answering and drove off. He saw the girl’s car up ahead, wondered if he could get a clean shot through the window, but discarded the thought. Too chancy with all the cops around.

He’d get her later. Or someone else would.

* * *

A BLOCK AWAY FROM the accident scene, Molly leaned back into the seat. It was then she noticed the dash light on. The tiny red diagonal line in the box indicating the silhouette of a car was blinking brightly, Detroit’s high-tech way of telling her that one of the car doors was ajar.

“For criminey’s sake,” she muttered, feeling the driver’s door with her left hand. She thought she had closed it tight and realized she was more wiped out than she feared.

“Put your hand back on the wheel.”

The man’s voice boomed out from the back seat in a ragged, angry command. It was deep, with an accent Molly’s terror-frozen brain did not immediately place.

Reflexively, her leg stiffened and the car lurched.

Her chest ached from the increased speed of her heart, and the muscles in her neck screamed out as if they were encircled by a noose. For a second, Molly felt as if she had suddenly died and floated above herself.

“I’ve got a gun aimed at your back. Put your hand back on the wheel.”

Molly trembled as the unseen passenger roughly pushed at her hand, and she cried out in a little whimper. The door that was ajar was on the passenger side of the car, she realized in horror!

While she was out helping keep a fellow human being alive, this guy had crept into her back seat with who knew what brand of crime on his mind.

She was too afraid to look around but risked a quick check into the mirror. It told her nothing. He must be hunkered down in the corner of the seat, or on the floor. How could I not have seen him when I got in? she asked herself. Molly damned the fact that she owned a two-door car. You could never see into the back seats.

With her hands now growing sticky with sweat against the leather steering wheel, a million possible actions to take flew through her mind. She could honk, slam on the brakes, run into a car. Anything to get someone’s attention. The traffic light a few hundred yards ahead changed to red, and Molly slowed down and stopped.

“What are you doing in my car?” she demanded.

The stranger made no response, though she heard him gasp as if in pain, then swear softly under his breath. Molly caught the image of a muscular forearm, and a glint of metal around his wrist. Then she saw his gun.

“Drive.”

She jerked her eyes straight ahead. The light had turned green. “Where to?” she asked, keeping her foot on the brake.

“Drive home. That’s where you were going, wasn’t it?”

He was Australian. The Crocodile Dundee inflection was there, though all the wit and “g’day, mate” humor were ominously absent.

“I’m not taking you to my home.” Molly knew she sounded insane, but even terrified, she had no intention of driving some maniacal murderer to her front door.

For a moment, it was quiet. Another car passed on her left, the driver peering in his mirror to get another glimpse before pulling his vehicle in front of her. The light ahead changed to yellow, then red again.

Molly realized she was holding her breath. Then she heard the gun click. Suddenly the man in her back seat jerked her head back by the hair. “Drive to your house or I will. I know the address, Molly, and I know Mission Verde. You have three seconds to decide what happens next.”

Tears stung Molly’s eyes from the pain of his grip, as well as from sheer physical terror. The fact that he knew her name scared her much worse than when she thought she was a randomly chosen victim. Some bell of recognition was ringing in her brain, though through the fog of fear she couldn’t tie it to a specific piece of information.

With no other alternative, Molly eased her foot off the brake and hit the gas, sending the car rushing through the red light.

A half mile from her home, Molly’s heart rate slowed down a bit, and anger joined forces with hysteria as a leveling force. Most people she knew would agree that she wasn’t a tough person, but she also did not allow anyone to push her around.

If a waitress was snooty, Molly asked to see the manager. If she paid eighty dollars for a silk blouse and the seam popped open the first time she wore it, Molly took it back. So, now that it appeared she had been kidnapped, she decided to be what her nephew, Tyler, would call a “hard case.”

Her passenger had made no further comment the past few seconds, but she could hear his breathing. She thought he must be injured and wondered if he’d been a passenger in one of the wrecked cars. Molly kept picturing the gunshot wound in the one man’s back.

Was the guy in her car the shooter?

Clenching her teeth to stay calm, she let the car coast as she rounded Isabella Avenue, weighing if she should call the guy’s bluff and go straight instead of turning on Plaza Viejo, where her town house was. She stopped at the light two blocks from her house, slanting her gaze to the mirror again.

“You can turn right on red in California, doll. I suggest you do it.”

“I need to get gas.”

“If you run out, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Someone else knew all about being a “hard case,” she decided.

One minute later, Molly turned left into the steepest driveway in town, cursing the fact that she hadn’t seen one cop or one burly trucker.

The car groaned as it usually did at the incline, and Molly shifted into low. Her home was one of sixty, ten rambling groups of blocks cut into terraces in the hilly countryside of Mission Verde, fifty-six miles south of Los Angeles. It sat at the edge of some of the last undeveloped land in the area, where skunks, raccoons and rabbits poked around on the patio where Molly sunned herself.

Killing the headlights, Molly heard the coyotes bragging out loud about their night’s catch of slow house pets, and a shiver of empathy for their furry prey ran down her back. She reached for the door at the same moment her passenger again grabbed her hair.

“Take it nice and slow, Molly girl. I wouldn’t want to wake up your neighbors.”

“Stop pulling my hair,” she replied, surprised when he let her go. Slowly she stepped out of the car. Her skirt caught on the edge of the door and she tugged at it quickly, unable to place the weight in her pocket. Then she remembered.

Holy night, Molly thought as her scalp prickled with fear. I’m armed.

She turned toward her captor and got her first look at him as he stepped out of the car. He was big. Well over six feet, he had shoulders like some lumberjack and longish blond hair. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, a red T-shirt with an Aussie flag over his heart and a tiny gold earring in his right ear.

“Oh my God,” Molly gasped. “It’s you.”

“Hello, Miss Jakes. Long time no see.” Despite the words, he didn’t smile.

Impossible as it seemed, standing in front of Molly, gun in hand, was the man she’d met briefly in the office of Inscrutable Security, the night Frederick Brooker was alleged to have shot Paul Buntz. Molly felt her stomach flip as a rushing, ringing noise rattled through her brain. My God, she thought, as her face flushed with embarrassment and anger, I fantasized about this guy! Talk about poor judgment!

She stared at the big man. He was sporting handcuffs this time. Or handcuff, if the singular is correct, Molly silently corrected. His right wrist was encased in one metal circle. The empty one hung down like a punk rocker’s bracelet.

The gun was big, too, with a long, black barrel.

She met his eyes. “Who the hell are you and what’s this all about?”

“Let’s go in. Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll make coffee,” she snapped.

The man’s deep blue eyes narrowed. “I’d rather have tea. Or don’t you Yanks ever drink the stuff?”

“I’ve got tea. I save it for invited guests.”

“Yeah, well consider me invited or we’ll finish this right here.” He moved the gun slightly, his face deadly calm.

The weight of the pistol in her skirt felt enormous, and Molly wondered if he could see the outline of it against her leg. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was close herself in her house with this maniac, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what else she could pull off.

Molly nodded toward the path winding around the parking garages. “We need to go that way. Should I go first?”

The man seemed to detect something in her eyes that racheted his anxiety up a notch, because he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Who’s in there?”

She could smell the fear on his skin and began to panic. He had kidnapped her, for heaven’s sake! What was he so afraid of? “My marine husband and six Dobermans. So why don’t you take off now?”

Molly regretted her smart answer but not the look on the man’s face. He looked shocked. But the shock quickly turned to arrogance. “Nice try. Get going. I’ll take my chances.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” An obvious answer to her question suddenly occurred to her, and she felt weak. “Does this have anything to do with Brooker?”