Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

“That reminds me. Better check her boots, too. She should have another weapon.”

Harmon’s manhandling was excruciating. He found her second gun, her mace, her knife.

Galaz put his index finger to his lip. “What we’ll do is, you make sure this place looks right. Doesn’t matter about hair and fibers, lots of people come here. What about Freddy?”

“I saw him race out of here. He won’t be back for a while.”

Galaz said to Laura, “Freddy thinks someone stomped his boyfriend. He’s probably just now figuring out his inamorata isn’t at St. Mary’s Hospital. Pretty ingenious, don’t you think? If only you hadn’t come early and spoiled the party.” He sighed. “I should have known—you never know when to stop.”

Laura barely heard him. Her arms felt as if they were being pulled out of their sockets, handcuffed as they were behind her back. Every muscle, long and short, big and small—writhing, turning inside-out, flopping like an oxygen-starved fish, wringing itself limp, squirting pain and adrenaline into her system.

“Aren’t you even curious where we’re going?”

Laura tried to say something, but couldn’t.

“You mean to tell me you haven’t figured it out?”

He stood over her, the toe of his alligator-skin loafer inches from her face.

“We’re going to see Summer,” he said.

Buddy Holland trailed Laura Cardinal to a house in midtown, then to Fort Lowell Road. He knew from the way she was acting that Cardinal was on to something and he wanted to know what it was.

It was easy to get locked out in an investigation like this—he was just some cop from Bisbee with no power here. He also knew that Cardinal didn’t trust him because Summer was his daughter. He understood how she could think that. But he didn’t care how she felt; he wanted to find his daughter, and no one was going to stop him.

He watched her drive through the gates to what looked like an estate. He got out and walked up the utility road along the east side of the property, lined with a new ten-foot-high, chain link fence topped with barbed wire, every panel marked NO TRESPASSING in big red letters. When he came to a place where the lane curved, he spotted a mirror by the side of the road to show the blind corner. The last time he’d seen something like that was in Germany, where he’d been stationed during his stint in the Army. Fingers locked into the chain link, Buddy peered through the kaleidoscope of foliage at the narrow road and saw Laura Cardinal’s car stopped on the lane as she talked to someone in a black SUV.

The SUV turned around and followed her up the lane. They turned in at some tall trees—where he assumed the house was. Buddy wondered if the black Suburban belonged to the DPS lieutenant, Galaz. Whatever they were doing, he and Victor had been kept in the dark. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Summer’s kidnapping. Maybe their meeting was of a personal nature.

Still, he decided to stay around awhile and see what happened.

He backed his Caprice under a tamarisk tree a little ways back from the road, where he could keep an eye on the entrance. The sun was low in the sky and the shade of the tamarisk, dense and inky, concealed the car well.

A little over an hour later, he heard cars coming up the lane. Galaz’s black Suburban drove slowly out the gate and turned right onto Fort Lowell, followed by Laura Cardinal’s 4Runner.

The glass was dark on the SUV, but he thought he saw a person in the passenger seat. A man drove Laura Cardinal’s 4Runner. He was by himself.

Why wasn’t Cardinal driving her own car? Was she riding with Galaz?

There was something secretive about this that seemed off.

Buddy realized he had a choice. He could go onto the property, or he could follow Galaz and the 4Runner.

He compromised by calling Victor Celaya. Victor said he would send someone to check out the property. That worked out, Buddy put his brown Caprice into gear and slipped into the traffic stream like an alligator into a river.

56

Ghostly letters spelled out the words CHIRICAHUA PAINT CO. in canary yellow on the dark red brick just under the roof line of the warehouse. Below that were two rows of multi-paned factory windows, all of them either blacked-out or broken. The property was wrapped in chain link. Behind the warehouse, an east-bound train rattled past. Laura wished she could scream to them. But even if she were able, they were too far away.

Mickey Harmon un-padlocked the gate and swung it open, waiting for Galaz to drive through. They jounced across the potholed parking lot around to the back and parked in the shadow of the building. Mickey got out of the 4Runner and into the backseat. Galaz left the engine running so he could run the air conditioner.

“Where’s Musicman?” Galaz asked Harmon.

“Parked down the road between a couple of trucks. Must think he’s invisible.”

Galaz laughed. “I’ll bet he’s waiting for it to get dark. You should leave the gate open, make it easy for him.”

“He might call the police,” Harmon said.

“He won’t. He wants her for himself. There’s no way he’d give her up—not voluntarily.” A smile flickered on his face, not reaching his eyes. “What do you think, Laura? You’ve been hot on Dale Lundy’s trail for some time. You think he’s going to give up now?”

“No.”

“See, Mickey? Cardinal knows her quarry.”

She stared at him, feeling the ache in her eyeballs. Tried out her voice again. “You used me to find him.”

He laughed. “It pays to have a crack investigator on the home team. At a certain point I didn’t need you anymore, though—Jay tracked down his ISP before Charlie did.” He turned to Harmon. “Just remember, Mickey, I want Lundy alive. I want the last thing he sees to be me doing Summer. I want him to know he’s been dominated. He’s got to learn that he can’t defy me.”

He tapped the steering wheel, the only sign that he was nervous. “I’ve got to figure out what to do with Laura here. Any ideas?”

Harmon grunted.

“I didn’t think so. That’s why you never got higher than the third level.”

The third level? He must be referring to the game Dark Moondancer. Pushing forty, and he was preoccupied with a kid’s game. It was the first thing about this whole situation that made her want to laugh out loud. The feeling didn’t last long.

Galaz’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel: Tap, tap, tap. “Jay was easy, but if one of our criminal investigators disappears, that’s going to look bad. I really wanted to have some time with Summer, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now.”

“I dunno. You could maybe take her someplace else—“

“No. There’s the time element. I’ll be lucky if I have a half hour. Laura here is the head of a task force, people will be calling, they’ll come looking for her. This whole thing could blow up in our faces. Better just go ahead and cut my losses.”

Laura asked, “Why Dark Moondancer?”

“Why? Because it’s more than a game, that’s why. Dark Moondancer transcends fantasy. To get to the highest level and become Dark Moondancer, you have to make it real. Things you would never dream of doing in your regular life—you’ll do if you want to win. This game isn’t for the faint of heart.

“The problem with Mickey here, and Jay—they always pulled their punches. They had no commitment. No vision.”

Across the empty lot east of the warehouse, Laura saw cars crawling along a road that paralleled the railroad tracks, the last rays of the sun flaring off their back windows. Too far away to signal. She traced their movement with her eyes, though, watching them turn and go out of view, becoming swallowed by the rise of land and the creosote. One of them was a brown Caprice, the kind Buddy Holland drove. Now she wished she’d brought Buddy with her.

She said to Jay, “After all these years, you’re still playing this game?”