Shooting Starr

Chapter 15

“Drive,” the man in the ski mask snarled, slamming the door behind him. “Now.”

Hijacked. I don’t believe this, C.J. thought. This can’t be happening to me again.

This time there was no sense of déjà vu. The individual pointing the gun at him now was a long way from a girl with silver eyes trying to save the lives of a woman and her child and no other way to do it except to try a desperate bluff. This guy wasn’t bluffing. How, he didn’t know-it sure wasn’t from experience-but C.J. knew a cold-blooded killer when he saw one.

“I’m drivin’, I’m drivin’,” he muttered. He already had the truck in reverse.

As the big Kenworth shuddered and separated itself from the wrecked white sedan with another shriek of mangled metal, C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn and was all set to ask her if she was okay when he saw her eyes widen and her head move just slightly. A tiny, almost imperceptible shake. No!

“I’m sorry about your truck, mister,” she said in a small, frightened voice. A stranger’s voice.

Ski Mask cut her off with a savage, “Shut up! Get down!” and shoved her roughly until she was on her knees on the floor between his feet and the center console. The gun in his hand was pressed against her head now, its ugly gray barrel buried in the soft petals of her hair.

A strange prickly rush, like a shower of ice particles, swept C.J. from his scalp to his toes. Ice formed a great lump in the center of his chest.

Outside the windows of the cab, howling sirens and blaring air horns announced the arrival of a whole array of police and emergency vehicles. The light mid-morning traffic was beginning to snarl.

“Get on your radio,” Ski Mask growled. “Tell ’em they better clear us out. Otherwise I’m gonna start putting bullets into people, and since I need you to drive, it looks like it’ll have to be blondie, here.”

C.J. nodded and picked up his CB mike. His mind was clear and calm, and he was pretty sure the guy in the ski mask wasn’t going to kill Caitlyn-not yet, anyway. Considering he’d been paid to bring her back alive and in a fit condition to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Vasily’s daughter, Emma, and that the last hired hand to put Caitlyn’s life in danger had wound up dead a short time later. So, it was a fairly safe bet that if Ski Mask did put a bullet in her it wouldn’t be in a critical place. Not that that made a big difference to C.J.

Dialing in channel nine, he thumbed on the mike and spoke into it. “Uh…channel nine emergency, this is Blue Starr Transport driver requesting assistance…over.”

After a tense pause, a woman’s voice, calm and professional but at the same time typically, informally Southern, replied, “Yes, Blue Starr, we read you. How’s ever’ body doin’ in there?”

“Doin’ okay so far.” C.J. glanced over at Caitlyn. Her gaze was fastened on him with that strange silvery intensity, as if she were trying to talk to him with her eyes. Ski Mask made an impatient gesture, and, heart pounding, he turned back to the mike. “We have a, uh…situation here, though. I have a, uh…couple passengers, guy with a hostage. He has a gun, which he says he’s gonna use if he doesn’t get clear road outa here. Any chance you could, uh…help me out on that?”

There was another pause, longer and even more tense. C.J. waited, his heart thumping against the constriction of his seat belt. Finally, “Okay, Blue Starr, which way you headed?”

C.J. glanced at Ski Mask this time, and chuckled darkly. “Quickest way outa town, would be my guess. I’m thinkin’ the interstate?” He looked at Ski Mask, who nodded confirmation.

“Tell ’em they better not follow us, either,” he added in a low growl. “I so much as see a cop I’m gonna start shootin’.”

“They’re never gonna go for that. You think they’re gonna let us just drive away?” C.J. said in an incredulous hiss.

“You better hope they do” was Ski Mask’s reply.

Grinding his teeth, C.J. passed on the demand and the threat. After the usual pause the calm voice responded, “Okay, Blue Starr, we’re gonna give you some room.” Another, gentler pause. “You be careful, now…” And then silence.

With a grunt of surprise C.J. hung the mike on its hook and gave his full attention to driving.

Cramped and uncomfortable, wedged unpleasantly against the gunman’s legs, Caitlyn closed her eyes and listened to C.J.’s voice, talking in that drawling monotone truckers use on their CB radios…the police dispatcher’s voice calmly answering. As the truck growled in stops and starts, twists and turns, the gunman took out a cell phone and punched in a number. She listened to his low-voiced conversation and felt cold, clammy relief wash over her. He was talking to his boss, obviously, telling him about the glitch in their plans…the change of getaway car. Something about a rendezvous point. Everything else, it seemed, was still on track.

For her, too. It’s going to be all right, she told herself, riding on the crest of a wave of improbable optimism. It can still work. And then, plunging into a trough of utter despair: Oh, C.J.-why couldn’t you have stayed out of this?

The FBI’s plan had taken everything into account-except this. Maybe it had been a mistake, after all, not to tell him. He would have tried to keep her from taking part in it, of course he would have, but at least he wouldn’t have stumbled-no, not stumbled-come charging into the middle of things, magnificently, heroically, like some gallant knight on his great blue and silver steed. Oh, C.J., how wonderful, how magnificent you were. And how I wish you hadn’t done it!

Vasily wouldn’t kill her, she was sure of that, not until he had Emma back in his clutches. And long before that happened, the FBI would have him in theirs. But C.J. Oh, God, they wouldn’t hesitate to-and almost certainly would-kill him once they had no more need of him and his truck. How she would stop them, she didn’t know; she only knew she had to. She had to.

The images of her nightmare came back to her…the people she loved most in the world lying dead in pools of blood.

Once he’d made it to the interstate, C.J. began to breathe easier. The cops were evidently taking Ski Mask’s threat seriously. The way through town had been wide-open, and he hadn’t seen any overt signs of pursuit in his mirrors so far-not that that meant the cops weren’t out there somewhere, following at a safe distance, waiting to see what developed. In fact, C.J. had been wondering what Ski Mask hoped to accomplish with what had undoubtedly been a spur-of-the-moment desperation gambit. Surely he didn’t think the cops were just going to stand by and let them drive off into the sunset, free and clear!

That was before he’d heard part of that cell-phone conversation with the bossman. After that he’d understood-especially when Ski Mask instructed him to take the exit for the scenic highway that ran north up into the mountains. They were heading for a “rendezvous,” probably with another vehicle. Which meant all they needed was to get far enough ahead of the nearest pursuer to make the switch unseen. The way those little roads wound around up there in the mountains and met themselves coming and going, the cops wouldn’t have any way of knowing what vehicle they were in or which way they’d gone.

More important to C.J., with a new car and a new driver, they weren’t going to have any further use of the driver they now had-namely him. He didn’t have any illusions about what that meant in terms of his future.

Which meant, since he didn’t have any way of knowing exactly where this rendezvous was supposed to take place, that he was going to have to make his move as soon as possible. All he had to do was figure out what move to make-preferably one that wasn’t going to get him or Caitlyn killed in the execution.

As the Kenworth churned along the two-lane highway through rolling pastureland dotted with farmhouses and cattle grazing in the chilly drizzle, C.J.’s mind was churning, as well, spinning as fast as those eighteen wheels; discarded scenarios hurtling off the vortex of his consciousness like chunks of mud flung from the truck’s tires. His heart pounded and the steering wheel grew slick in his hands. The closer to the looming blue haze of the mountains they came, the faster his mind whirled. They were running out of time. He had to do something. But what?

They passed sedately through a small town, and shortly after that the road began to curve and climb. That quickly they were in the mountains. And most likely out of time.

It was raining harder now; the cold front lay draped along the shoulders of the Blue Ridge like a feather boa. The road was shiny in the truck’s headlights, and wisps of fog sifted through the tops of trees still thick with yellow leaves. The road twisted and turned and climbed steadily higher…and higher. There were few other cars; the rain had evidently deterred the sight-seers who would normally have clogged the mountains roads this time of year.

Any minute now, C.J. thought. Around the next bend we could come to that rendezvous…

He could feel his heart beating, like the ticking of a clock counting down the final seconds of his life. And Caitlyn’s. What would become of her after they killed him? Vasily would have her then. Would the FBI rescue her in time? Had they figured this into their plans?

His mind careened backward to the first moment he’d laid eyes on Caitlyn Brown, there in that rainy interstate rest stop. He remembered the fist-in-the-belly shock when she’d pulled that gun out of her pocket. How could he ever have imagined that six months later he’d be fighting to save her life-and the future lives of his unborn children?

Who’d have thought, when she pointed that gun at me and hijacked-

Adrenaline hit him, jolting him so hard he almost let go of the steering wheel. This has happened to me before. I took a gun away from a hijacker once. I can do it again.

Calm settled over him. A glance at his passengers, disguised as a check of his right-hand mirror, confirmed what he’d already observed without realizing it: whether he’d forgotten in his haste to get himself and his prisoner into the truck, or hadn’t wanted to risk restricting his gun hand, Ski Mask had neglected to fasten his seat belt. And Caitlyn was wedged securely into the space between the seat and the dash, her head resting on folded arms. Snug as a babe in a car seat.

He could do it. Just like before. If he could get up some more speed…

“That next turnoff up there, take a right,” Ski Mask said.

C.J.’s heart pounded harder. “Right,” he said.

Caitlyn lifted her head. Her eyes swiveled toward him like searchlights, silver beacons in the murky twilight inside the cab. He gave her a long, intent look as he took the turn, and a barely perceptible nod.

The side road was paved but narrow. It wound steeply down between banks thick with ferns, rhododendron and mountain laurel. Trees rising high on both sides of the road blocked the light.

“Take it easy,” Ski Mask growled, glaring over at him, “you tryin’ to get us killed?”

“Sorry,” C.J. muttered. Up ahead he could see a straight downhill stretch of road, just before it disappeared in a sharp turn to the left. Perfect. He ran it over one more time in his mind, then hauled in a breath and sent up a prayer. Then he hit his brakes.

The sound was like a boiler letting go-a giant hiss, creaks and groans and thumps-as everything in the cab and the sleeper compartment that wasn’t fastened down hurtled forward at roughly twenty-five miles per hour. One of the loudest thumps was caused by Ski Mask’s forehead hitting the windshield. C.J. tried not to think too hard about that sound; it was one he hoped to go the rest of his life without ever hearing again.

Anyway, for the next few minutes he had enough to do to keep him from dwelling on the fact that he might have just killed somebody. He’d never jackknifed a tractor-trailer before, and that was another experience he’d just as soon never repeat. The ride was bumpy and loud. His stomach cringed at the hideous noises his rig was making and the thought of what must be happening to the shiny blue Kenworth and that trailer load of North Carolina apples.

But at last there was stillness, both of sound and of motion. C.J. sat gripping the wheel, thinking for one dazed moment that he must be dizzy, that his internal axis was off plumb. But it was only the cab, which had come to rest canted at an odd angle, with the driver’s side higher than the passenger side. Fear clutched at his heart as he looked over at his passengers. It released him, wrung out, drained, limp with relief, when he saw Caitlyn slowly unfolding herself from her cubbyhole, moving stiffly, as if she wasn’t sure everything was going to work the way it should.

Ski Mask was slumped against the passenger door; no way to tell if he was breathing or not. His gun was in Caitlyn’s hands.

“You okay?” his voice felt sandy in his throat.

She nodded. Her eyes skidded sideways, toward the inert figure by the door. “Is he-?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think we ought to wait around to find out, though. Whoever he was planning on hooking up with-”

“Your truck-”

“Isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” he said dryly. “It’s jackknifed. Come on, we have to get-” He was shoving at his door, which seemed to be jammed. “No dice. It’ll have to be this way.” He shoehorned himself out from under the steering wheel and stretched across the center console.

Caitlyn cringed back out of his way. “Oh God, you’re not-”

Trying not to notice her horrified expression, C.J. reached across the gunman’s body and opened the door. In an awful sort of slow motion, Ski Mask began to lean…then all at once, tumbled out of the truck. C.J. felt as sick as Caitlyn looked when they heard him hit the pavement with a slithery thud.

“Now you,” C.J. said grimly, half lifting, half shoving her toward the door. “I’m right behind you.”

He tried not to think about the body lying crumpled on the ground as he stepped over it.

He found Caitlyn waiting for him on the other side of the trailer, as far from Ski Mask as she could get. She was standing in the middle of wet, leaf-littered pavement, hugging herself and looking first up the road, then down, like a lost traveler. He went to her and without a word, folded her into his arms.

He held her for a while, not nearly as long as he wanted to, feeling the tremors she tried to hide. Until she drew away from him with a reluctant sniff.

“I guess you had to do that,” she said huskily. “I think he was going to kill you as soon as we got to- Oh, C.J.-” her voice broke “-why did you have to come back? Why couldn’t you just-stop…trying…to help me, dammit!”

She pounded him once on his chest, then slipped away from him. Eluding him when he reached for her, she put a hand over her eyes. Her vision was still blurry, but she didn’t need detail to recognize the shock and bewilderment in his face. She felt awful. Her heart hurt as though it were being torn in two.

“You set it up,” he said in a flat voice. “You and Jake Redfield. Right? You were hoping Vasily would make his move. You were hoping to be kidnapped.” His laugh was a whisper without amusement. “And I…messed things up.”

Pain lanced through her; she cried out with it. “Oh, no! C.J., you were brilliant. Absolutely…completely…magnificent. I couldn’t have imagined a more spectacular-” And she was crying, but laughing, too.

Then she was back where she wanted to be, in his arms again, and he was kissing her, wildly, recklessly, smearing both their mouths with her tears. She held him tightly, with all her strength, and felt the tremors he tried so valiantly to hide.

“It’s just,” she whispered brokenly, “that now I have to worry about keeping you alive. I don’t know what I’d do if-”

“Yeah, well, this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t tried to keep me out of it. If you hadn’t lied-”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I swear I’ll never do it again. It’s just that you’re so damn protective-”

“You damn right I’m protective. I love you, dammit!”

“Oh, C.J.,” she whispered. She pulled back from him and gazed, unfocused, into his face. “What are we going to do now?”

“Good question.” Looking past her, over her head, he added grimly, “This might be a good time to let me in on the plan.”

Caitlyn let out a slow breath. Her teeth had begun to chatter. It had stopped raining, but water and leaves fell with a noisy patter as the wind stirred the tops of the trees. “It’s simple, really. We figured Vasily would try to kidnap me-he still thinks I know where his daughter is.”

“You mean…you don’t?”

“No.” Her laugh was scared and breathy. “I don’t. I know how to get in touch with the people who know, but I can’t just…take him to where she is.”

“Oh, God.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Caitlyn said quickly, over his agonized groan. “The plan was for me to pretend to know and then lead him into a trap-a fake safe house-where FBI agents would be waiting. C.J.-” At his angry hiss, she caught at his arms, and felt a strange thrill go through her at the strength, the coiled-spring tension in them. “C.J., listen-it would have been all right. Vasily wouldn’t risk harming me as long as Emma’s in hiding. I’m still his only hope of getting her back.”

“Yeah, well-” he cleared his throat with a low growling sound “-right now we have to worry about getting us back. I don’t suppose you know where the cavalry is, right about now?”

“Staying well back out of the way, I should imagine. They’re not going to risk scaring Vasily away.”

“Yeah…and speaking of Vasily…” He was once again directing his nervous and searching gaze beyond her. “I don’t know how far away the rendezvous point was, but that truck made a good bit of noise jacking itself up like that. If they were anywhere nearby, there’s a good possibility they heard it. No telling how much time we have before somebody comes to investigate. Do you have any way of contacting those FBI guys? No…guess not.” He sighed grimly. “Then I’d say-” He froze. So did she.

They both heard it at the same time: the roar of a powerful engine making its way toward them up the steep, winding road.

They took off running instinctively, like flushed quail. Caitlyn’s thick-heeled dress shoes making scraping, clumping noises on the wet pavement. After a few steps they halted, clutching each other’s arms, both talking at once, in panting gusts.

“Where’s the gun?” C.J. wheezed.

At the same time Caitlyn was saying, “You go-it’s me they want.”

There was a shocked pause. Caitlyn said, “Oh, no-I left it in the truck.”

And C.J. was yelling, “Are you crazy?”

They both halted again, breathing hard. Then C.J. said evenly, “I’m not leaving you here. Don’t even think about it.”

Caitlyn was sobbing. “C.J., you’re the one they’ll kill!”

“Then I guess we’d better both get the hell out of here, hadn’t we?” He gave her a halfhearted smile as he grabbed for her hand. She made a whimpering sound and resisted, only for an instant. “Cheer up,” he panted, “maybe it’s the Feds.”

It wasn’t. She knew it wouldn’t be, even before she saw the hood of a gray sedan inching its way past the cab of the jackknifed truck, dark tinted windows reflecting jigsaw puzzle pieces of a pearly sky.

“We can’t outrun them,” C.J. gasped. “If we can make it to the woods-”

But the laurel-and fern-covered banks rose high on both sides of the road, and it was at least fifty yards to a place where they might have been able to leave the road and lose themselves in the undergrowth. It might as well have been miles. C.J. could probably have made it, but he wouldn’t leave her, and in her short skirt and clumsy, hard-soled shoes she didn’t have a prayer.

The gray sedan throbbed softly and puffed out its warm breath like some great beast, its unhurried pace making it seem almost benign as it came up behind them. Accepting the inevitable, Caitlyn slowed to a limping walk, and after a moment C.J. did, too. The big car glided past them and halted just beyond. The rear door opened and a man stepped out and gestured silently to them with one hand. In the other was a gun, held with the relaxed competence of one entirely comfortable with its use.

“I’m really starting to hate those things,” C.J. muttered as he ducked his head to climb into the back seat.

Caitlyn followed, groping involuntarily, her vision failing in the car’s shadowy interior. She felt C.J.’s hand envelop hers, and the sick terror in her heart subsided…just a little.

That small comfort was short-lived. The gunman motioned her impatiently to move over, then wedged himself between her and C.J. She felt the barrel of the gun dig into her ribs as he reached across her to close the door.

Silence settled around the five people inside the car. Cold to the bone, C.J. found that his eyes were riveted on the man in the front passenger seat, the same way they’d have kept track of a coiled rattlesnake.

The man had turned in his seat and was observing them with a tight-lipped smile. Now he favored Caitlyn with a slight nod and said softly, “I am delighted to finally meet you, Miss Brown.” His voice, C.J. noted, was slightly accented, something vaguely Eastern European, he guessed. He would probably be considered a handsome man, with even, deeply tanned features and silver hair, thick, wavy and expensively groomed. For some reason he had on sunglasses with mirror lenses, in spite of the heavily overcast day.

He signaled the driver with a hand gesture, and the car began to glide forward. “As you probably have guessed, I am Ari Vasily. I have waited for this moment for…quite a long time. You have something that belongs to me, I believe. Or…perhaps I should say, you know where it may be found.” His lips parted to reveal rather large and very white teeth. “But before we get to that-might I ask what you have done with Lorenzo?”

“If you mean the guy who hijacked me,” C.J. said, “he didn’t fare too well in the…accident.”

Vasily’s sunglasses swiveled toward C.J., as if until that moment he’d considered him of little consequence. After an interminable moment, his mouth gave a twitch of vexation. “Ah, I see. A pity. Reliable employees are hard to find. Well-” the sunglasses shifted back to Caitlyn “-then we will get immediately to business. My dear Miss Brown-Caitlyn-you will, of course, tell me where they have been keeping my daughter. And quickly-I am certain the authorities will not be far away.” He sounded faintly amused by that, C.J. thought, as someone might observing the antics of a clumsy child.

Cold inside, Caitlyn stared at the shiny blur that was Ari Vasily’s eyes. This was it-the moment she had been preparing herself for. Everything-everything-depended on whether or not she could carry it off.

She took a deep breath and did not have to try very hard to make her voice sound timid and afraid. “But I don’t know where Emma is. I swear-”

A slight movement of Vasily’s head interrupted her. He made a mild shame-on-you sound with his tongue. “Caitlyn…Caitlyn. Please don’t waste our time. If you do not know precisely where my daughter is, you most certainly know how to contact those who do. I want that information, and will do whatever is necessary to obtain it-as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”

She couldn’t answer. Her heart was beating too fast, and her tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of her mouth.

After regarding her for a moment, Vasily shook his head and sighed. “You are correct in thinking I will not kill you, since that would defeat my purpose. There are, of course, numerous ways in which I can induce you to tell me what I want to know, without ever harming one hair of your pretty head. For example…” His voice was a thoughtful purr. Caitlyn’s skin shivered as if something unspeakable had crawled over it. “I know that you are a person who cares about other people…very much. You no doubt even care for this unfortunate fellow here-this truck driver who has had the bad judgment to interfere in my affairs.”

The sunglasses flicked toward the gunman sitting beside Caitlyn. With the casual indifference of one brushing at a fly, Vasily said, “Shoot him.”