Chapter 41 #2
“Lennox of the LAPD is getting a warrant to pick up Harper,” Sam announced, his ear still to his phone. “Human remains in the garden is a no-brainer for the judge. But it’s gonna be... a bit before he can make that happen, and then pass the info on to the Palm Springs and Palm Desert police.”
“Define a bit,” Jules said, heading out the door into the garage.
“Their best guess is forty-five minutes—and FYI, that’s pretty fucking fast.”
But not fast enough.
Welp, okay. “Emily, you’re with Rod in his SUV,” Jules ordered as Rod pushed the button to open the garage door. “Hob, you’re with me and Sam in the rental.”
Sam, SEAL that he was, got in the driver’s seat as Hobbit climbed into the back.
Emily went out onto the driveway ahead of Rod, who glanced back at Jules, and nodded.
Jules nodded back. He would, likewise, keep Hobbit safe.
And with that, they were on their way.
Sam pulled out first, putting the rental car in the lead, heading out of Rod’s driveway toward the main gate of the community, the headlights from Rod’s SUV in the rearview mirror.
“I will, I promise,” Kevin spoke up from the backseat, “follow your instructions to the T, although really, shouldn’t it be to the S and okay, I’ll shut up now while you reveal your plan and give me said instructions.”
As Jules gritted his teeth and muttered “God damn it, I don’t have a plan,” Sam knew he was unhappy that his friend was in the car with them.
But his choice had been a good one. If he’d put both Rod and Kevin in the same vehicle with Emily, she would’ve realized what he was doing and dug in her heels, creating a larger time delay. And leaving Kevin behind at a safe house that had been compromised was not an option either.
But Jules was not done addressing Kevin as they wound their way through the quiet residential streets: “Other than: you will stay in the car, at all times, until Sam or I give you the all-clear. Is that understood?”
“It is.” Kevin’s voice rang with his absolute sincerity, which yeah... didn’t mean all that much. Jules had mentioned to Sam that his friend was a very talented actor.
What was it with Jules and actors, anyway?
“I’m serious, Kevin.”
“Yeah, boss, I know. I will stay in the car, I promise. I’ll get behind the wheel in case we need to adios our asses fast.”
Jules seemed to believe him. “Thank you.”
“FYI,” Sam said, glancing over at Jules, “if we’re in take-down mode, I’m it.”
But Jules shook his head. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said.
“Mmm,” Sam said, “I beg to differ. We know there’re at least two hired guns, and probably more than that at hand, considering the roster of photos Lindsey sent.”
“I think we can both agree that the first thing we do when we arrive is to send you out on a quick sneak-and-peek,” Jules said.
“Absolutely,” Sam confirmed.
“I also feel pretty certain that Harper needs Mick alive.”
Sam glanced over at him.
“We didn’t hear a gunshot,” Jules pointed out. “Before the line went dead.”
“Lotta reasons why I wouldn’t fire a weapon in my front yard at this time of night,” Sam commented.
“Yeah,” Jules agreed, “but they also didn’t kill him when he went to pick up his car.”
“Maybe there were too many witnesses.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s possible, but... I’ve been thinking about that hospital bed that’s still in the middle of the library.”
Sam laughed a little. “Of course you have,” he said as they pulled through the gate.
He’d plugged the address of the Palm Desert house into his phone’s GPS and he headed down toward the main strip, banging a right to head south and east, pushing the little vehicle well over the speed limit on the bigger road.
“Okay,” Kevin said from the backseat, where he turned to look out the rear window. “I was right. Yikes, Emily’s gonna be ma-ad.”
“Yup,” Sam confirmed. “Better mad than dead.”
Emily couldn’t believe it—and then, absolutely, yes she could—as, instead of following the rental car, Rod turned left onto the main road, driving in the opposite direction.
“No!” she said, turning to look out the back window at the other car’s fading red taillights. “No! God damn it!”
This was why Rod had made her get into the backseat—he had childproof locks for both the doors and the windows back here, in case she was crazy enough to try to jump out.
It was possible that she was.
But even if she wasn’t, she was a gullible idiot. “Pull over! Right now!”
Rod looked at her in the rearview. “I’m not doing that.”
“This is kidnapping!”
He glanced at her again. “The good news is you’ll be alive to press charges, whereas—”
“Stop this fucking car right now!” she shouted.
“No, I will fucking not!” he shot back. “Because you are the target, and your showing up at that house will get my good friends killed and I will not let you do that!” He’d shouted that last bit back at her at a frightening loud volume, and she could tell from his face in the rearview that he realized he’d scared her.
“Emily,” he said now, way more quietly, so much so that she nearly had to lean in to listen.
“The most important thing you can do right here and right now—to help Mick—is to trust Jules and Sam. To give them the space to do what they’ve trained extensively to do.
Come on, tell me honestly what you think you can do that they can’t—the former FBI agent and the former Navy SEAL? ”
She started to cry because he was right. But he’d hit the nail directly on the head when he’d shouted at her. She was the target, thanks to Milton Devonshire changing his stupid will. But she couldn’t bear the thought of Mick dying for her.
No, she couldn’t bear the thought of Mick dying, period. The idea of losing him permanently made her crazy. Even more so as she sat here, dressed in the clothes of the dead woman that this quiet man, Rod, had loved and lost, through no fault of his own.
Mick had been right when he’d told her that you can’t fix dead.
“I just keep thinking that maybe if I go there, they won’t kill Mick,” she whispered.
“More likely if you go there, they’ll kill you both,” Rod countered.
“And in the chaos, as Jules and Sam attempt to keep you from being shot instead of focusing on rescuing Mick, you’ll probably get them killed, too.
If Mick’s still alive—” she must’ve made another face, because he quickly added “—and I believe that he is, the best way you can help him stay that way is to let the professionals do the work that they’ve been trained to do, without distracting them with the additional task of keeping you safe.
Can you maybe see, maybe just a little bit, how your being there might be a major distraction?
Keeping yourself out of the equation could mean the difference between life and death, and not just for Mick.
You said it yourself to Mick, just a few minutes ago: Trust the team Mick hired because they’re very good at what they do.
” He met her eyes in the mirror again. “Trust Jules and Sam. They will contact us as soon as they can.”
“You just met Sam,” she pointed out.
“Navy SEAL,” he said. “The reputation is real.”
“And Jules...?”
“I’ve known him since high school and... Well, it’s a long story.”
Emily took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “Well, it looks as though I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. And apparently they had some time to kill here in purgatory as they waited to find out if she, too, had lost Mick forever.
Mick came to in near total darkness, with a head that was pounding and a pain in his back and arms because... his hands were cuffed behind his back with something hard and thin that cut into his wrists...?
And—fuck!—as he tried to sit up, he hit his head on... Jesus Christ, he’d been jammed into the trunk of a car. It smelled like spare tire and ass, and his mouth was painfully dry because, shit, he was gagged and whatever had been stuffed in his mouth was nasty. He tried to spit it out to no avail.
This wasn’t good, in fact it was very, very, very bad, and he juggled his panic at being trapped in such a small, dark space with the shards of memories that were stabbing his brain through the throbbing pain.
Emily. On the phone, begging him to come back.
Harper’s car with its stupid vanity license plate on that pink-pavered drive.
Two men with guns.
His phone breaking on the asphalt beneath a big booted foot.
Emily’s voice: I need you to walk away from the gun on the desk.
Too late.
Except maybe it wasn’t, because as bad as this was, at least he was still alive.
“This isn’t my problem,” a petulant voice said from outside of the trunk, because yeah, Mick was for sure alone in this tiny space, “it’s yours.”
It was Ernest Harper. His reedy voice was unmistakable, but whoever he was talking to, it was surely over the phone because there was silence then, interrupted only by those horrible little sniffing sounds the lawyer made when he was waiting for someone to stop speaking.
Mick’s first instinct was to kick the side of the trunk; to use his body like the beans in a rattle to let the man know he was locked in there, but then Harper testily said, “Your morons broke his cell phone. If they hadn’t, we might’ve been able to use it to find the girl.
Who is also, I might add, your problem.”
And there it was. The men who’d hit Mick hadn’t been watching Harper’s house because they’d been gunning for him, too—they’d been guarding the place. Harper was very much involved.
Exactly as Mick had expected.
He heard the sound of the car door opening and Harper’s voice got louder as he said, “Tim and Reilly are bringing my car back to LA. They didn’t want to use the SUV—too many windows—which you need to get rid of anyway.
The other two morons went to try to get a van to transport him to you and.
..” A pause. “No! I’ve waited long enough.
Every second he’s in there is... No! This is not okay. You’d said you’d take care of—”
He was silent again as the car door slammed shut.
“No,” Harper said again but then lowered his voice as he no doubt became aware that he was having an argument on his driveway in the middle of the night.
“They’ve been gone too long—” Mick strained to hear him “—so they’re bringing him to you in my car—which I will report as stolen in the morning, so move quickly and proceed accordingly. ”
Mick was the he being referred to. Another pause.
“That is not my purview,” Harper said, getting louder again in his testiness.
“You said you’d take care of it. It’s a little late now to—” He broke off.
“He came here tonight because he knows—something, at the very least. So the amputation thing isn’t going to— No!
He can’t be able to contest the power of attorney and— No!
Killing him also won’t— Not at first, not until we know exactly who’s in his life and.
.. No, it needs to be a brain injury, so figure it out and get it done! ”
Holy shit.
Brain injury.
Ernest Harper was intending to kill Emily but keep Mick alive the way he’d kept his father alive—unable to communicate and trapped in a hospital bed.
They weren’t going to kill him until after they knew who was in his life—as in who, if anyone, would show up at the estate to visit him. Who would miss him after whatever tragic accident was about to befall him.
Truth was, Mick didn’t have a lot of people in his life.
The producers on the movie he was currently working on would miss him, though.
Carol Franklin, the post-production supervisor was a friendly woman who checked in on him regularly via email.
She’d be pissed to find out he was unable to finish the project.
And she might even come to see him because she was nice, but mostly to try to pick up his unfinished audio files.
Really, in his life, there was only Emily, whom Harper and whoever he’d been talking to were planning to kill.
Please God, let Cassidy and Starrett keep her safe... They would, he knew they would. What was it that Emily had told him?
You really want to fix this? she’d asked. Then you start by trusting the extremely competent people you hired to help us figure this out.
Mick did trust them. They weren’t his friends—Cassidy and Starrett—he’d messed that up by withholding information from them. By not being completely honest with the situation in which he’d found himself.
But despite that, because of who they were, they were, absolutely, in his life.
They were coming to save him, he believed that with every cell in his battered body.
Mick listened hard, but he heard nothing more from Harper, whom he hoped had gone back inside of the house after getting whatever it was he’d grabbed from the backseat of the car—which was about to be driven to LA by two of the thugs from the SUV.
Brain injury.
Over his dead body.
Mick turned himself around in the cramped space so that he could use his legs to kick at the area that separated the trunk from the car’s back seat. It was solid and he met resistance—he wasn’t getting out that way. So he turned again so he could kick the trunk’s metal side.
At the very least he was going to make some noise, and maybe someone, please God, would hear him.