Hide and Snake Murder (18 page)

I poked a finger at it. The substance glistened on my yellow-gloved fingertip.

Baz said, “What is it?”

I reached out to touch another one of the spots when a drop fell from the bottom of the desk and splatted on the back of my hand.

“What in the world?” I pulled my hand into the light, and the dark drop turned a deep, rusty red. It looked like blood. But how would blood be coming out of a desk?

Baz got up and walked around the desk-wagon. He said, “There's a door on the end here.” I heard a squeak, then Baz grunted a few times. “Uff. I could use a hand.”

I climbed to my feet. “That's an unconventional storage place.” I took a more critical look at the mock caravan/wagon/desk. The desktop was probably six or seven feet long and maybe five feet wide. A computer, keyboard, a couple of forbidding ledgers, and some files took up two-thirds of it. The last third, facing the door, was clutter-free.

A cutout allowed a chair to tuck under the desk, into part of the wagon. Baz tugged on a ring attached to a small door. I reached down and grabbed part of the ring. On three, we heaved. The little door popped open. Baz lost his balance and fell on his butt, narrowly missing taking me down with him. I crouched and took a gander inside the desk. I immediately wished I hadn't. Biting back bile, I made a strangled sound.

“What's wrong?”

I pointed at the door, the rubber glove rattling as my hand shook. I whispered harshly, “I think we just found Fletcher Sharpe.”

Baz struggled to his hands and knees and scuttled over. He froze for a long moment, then slowly rotated on all fours to face me. His usually pale face was sheet-white, and I was afraid he was going to pass out. His eyes met mine, and they had a wildness to them that I completely understood. With Baz out of the way, I could easily see the brush of red hair attached to the body that had somehow been crammed into the desk. Those splotches under the desk were indeed blood. There was a dead body's blood on my gloves. Holy shit.

“Come on,” I choked out, “we have to get out of here. Now.”

Without a word, Baz swung the little door shut and stood. His bottom lip was trembling. He looked like he was about to burst into tears. Which about summed up how I felt too.

We both backed toward the doorway, not wanting to turn our backs on the body in the wagon. I flipped the light off, plunging the room into darkness and gently closed the office door. Then we made tracks for the door that led onto the sales floor.

“Give me your gloves,” I whispered. Baz tugged them off and handed them over. I pulled mine off as well, then used one to open the door. We bolted through it, not caring if anyone saw us. Luckily, no one was in sight. I race-walked onto the Path of Ages, stuffing the inside-out gloves in my pocket as I charged along, Baz hot on my heels.

We rounded the bend into the retail side of the store. Coop was gone. The manager he'd been talking to stood at the cash registers jawing with the cashier. Splintered thoughts streamed through my mind like multiple shooting stars. Coop must have gone outside for some reason. Or maybe he hit the bathroom.

As we sailed past them, the cashier waved and called out, “Come see us again soon.”

“You bet!” I chimed.
Not
.

Baz and I zoomed out the door. The coolness of the night hit me, and I sucked in great breaths of fresh air, trying to purge death from my pores and keep my stomach's contents where they belonged. Baz panted behind me. He gagged a couple of times. Kate was idling next to the curb.

We hit the car like a monsoon, nearly ripping the doors off their hinges in our haste to get inside.

Once I slammed the door closed and heard the back door bang shut, I realized Baz was the only occupant of the rear seat.

Panic made my voice sharp. “Kate, where's Coop?”

I had been too preoccupied with my own terror to notice the strange look on Kate's face, or that she was white-knuckling the steering wheel.

“Kate?” My voice went up a couple more octaves.

“A few of minutes ago two men went into the store and came out seconds later with Coop between them.”

Oh no. Oh, sweet lord, no. “Was one of them tall?”

“Yeah, he was. Walked with a limp.”

From the back seat, Baz moaned. “We're all dead.”

I breathed out a long, “Oh, holy fuck.” For once, I was afraid Baz might be right. “Did you get a plate number or anything?”

Kate said tightly, “I tried to do better than that. I snapped a picture of the car with my cell. Got the license plate, too. They dumped him in the trunk.”

I cradled my head in my hands, then shook it, trying desperately to clear out the fog. “Go. Anywhere but here.”

“You got it,” Kate said as she put the car in drive. “What happened in there?”

I pressed my head against the backrest and squeezed my eyes shut. “I don't know what happened to Coop, and there's a body in the back office. Stuffed in a desk. I think it's Fletcher Sharpe.”

“You're kidding me, right?” Kate's voice dropped, sounding unusually deep.

Baz groaned in the back again. “No, she's dead serious.”

Heavy emphasis on the
dead
.

Twenty-One

Kate weaved through random
streets toward her house as I tried desperately to think of what to do next. Baz whimpered in the back seat, alternately howling that he was going to throw up and then going on about becoming “bloody fish bait.” I whipped around and told him to shut up or he could get out and hoof it wherever he damn well wanted. I'd had enough.

The vehicle in the picture Kate snapped looked like a dark-colored Camry or something similar. The first two letters of the plate number was GR, but the third letter was too fuzzy to read. The only digits I could make out on the plate were a 7 and maybe a 5. Or it could have been a 6. Call the cops? They'd probably think I was a crackpot or arrest us for breaking into the office and then they'd lay a murder rap on Baz and me.

As Kate neared her place, my cell phone rang. I grabbed for it and it slipped out of my fingers like a greased eel. I got a hand up and pinned the thing to my chest, then looked at the caller ID and recognized Coop's new number.

I pressed answer, and then almost hung up on him in my shaky haste. “Coop—”

“Shay,” Coop's voice was a ragged rasp. “I'm in the trunk of a—” a loud bang cut him off. “They don't know I have another phone—OW. Stupid potholes. Listen, I'm handcuffed in the trunk of a dark blue or black—” another thunk, this one sounding different from the previous banging interrupted him again. “Oh god. Gotta g—” Coop was cut off mid-word, and the phone went dead.

I stared at it, eyes wide. Panic blossomed from the bottom of my feet and rushed toward my brain.

Kate looked at me, eyes narrowed, face tense. “What?”

“I'm not sure.” I spoke each word slowly, deliberately, trying not to hyperventilate. “But I don't think it was good.”

The phone rang again, and this time I kept a solid hold on it. “Coop,” I nearly screamed.

Instead of Coop, another voice spoke. “Listen, you little devil bitch.” It sounded like Donny. Or maybe Hunk. Or maybe no one I'd ever heard before. The only thing I knew was that the voice wasn't Tomás. And whoever it happened to be was not happy. “3140 Shingle Creek. Brooklyn Center. Thirty minutes.” The phone went dead in my hand.

Exactly twenty-five minutes later, after leaving panicked messages on both Dirty Harry and Farroway's cell phones, Kate pulled into the empty parking lot and plugged the Bug into a spot near the main doors of 3140 Shingle Creek Parkway.

Shingle Creek was a curvy road that ran, in part, through an industrial area in northern Brooklyn Center, just up I-94 from downtown Minneapolis. The single-story, white brick building was gigantic, at least two blocks long. There was no hint of the dark-colored car that had whisked Coop away from the Toy Company. I noticed a small sign at the lot entrance that read
HOTC Manufacturing.

HOTC?

I hadn't realized I had spoken aloud until Kate said, “Probably Hands On Toy Company.” She peered out the windshield. “This must be where they make their exclusive toys.”

Kate lapsed into silence, staring straight ahead, her hands clamped on the top of the steering wheel.

Baz had ceased making any sort of sound in the rear seat, and I disjointedly wondered if he'd expired. That would be way too easy an out for him after he brought all this insanity down on us.

My caller had not directed me what our next move should be once we arrived. Were we supposed to wait in the car? Walk around the building? Break the glass in the door and—

The phone I held tight in my right hand rang, and I nearly crapped my pants. I'd hate to face my impending death with a load in my britches.

I stabbed at the talk button and practically slammed the cell against my ear. “Hello.”

“Walk behind the building to the first door. Go inside. Follow the hall to the fourth door on the left. Go through it, and go through the door on the other side of the conference room. Walk until you can go no farther.”

That was a lot of direction, and I hadn't been able to write a thing down. “Wait,” I croaked out. “Tell me again—”

A maniacal snort of laughter cut me off. “Figure it out or your friend becomes ball-less.”

The Tenacious Protector stirred in my gut. It filtered everything out. The world shrunk down to just me and the bad man on the other end of the line.

My voice sounded like it was coming out of a barrel. “Listen, jackass. You touch a single testicle on that man and I'll return the favor, twice over.” Whoa.
Way to go, Shay. Put the man right over the edge
. Jesus.

The Protector inside me was slowly and irrevocably squeezing rational thought from my mind. Everything in my line of vision was now tinted red as a veil of righteous rage descended. It'd been a long time since I unleashed the Protector in all her glory—so long since I felt this close to losing complete control. Abducting and manhandling my best friend was the last straw. The relief I felt in the power of my growing fury was palpable, and the adrenaline rush made my torso tremble.

The man on the cell continued, “You have five minutes. Make sure everyone in that car comes with you,
bitch
.” He sneered the last word and hung up on me. That was becoming a pattern.

I turned to look at Kate, my expression hard, but my demeanor deadly calm. “You've got to come.”

Kate nodded, recognizing the signs that I was now fully in TP mode. We'd been friends long enough for her to see my reaction when someone I cared about was in trouble or was threatened. One night back in college, an evening of tutoring one of the U of M's star football players turned into a train wreck.

I had swung in to pick up a textbook Kate had borrowed and instead found Kate pinned to her bunk by the wide receiver.

His muscled weight muffled Kate's shrieks as she struggled to scream for help and breathe at the same time. Blood was flying, but later I was relieved to find out she'd managed to bash him in the nose before my arrival. Out popped my inner lioness, and I took care of business. There was no explanation when the coach benched that wide receiver for a conference game the following night because of an unexplained dislocated shoulder. To the best of my knowledge, the kid hadn't tried to “fix” another lesbian ever again.

I snapped back from the past with a shudder. “You're coming too, Baz.”

“Erk,” was the only sound he made.

Kate and I climbed out of the car. I yanked open the back door, grabbed Baz by the collar of his jacket, and dragged him from the vehicle.

Once Baz was on his feet, I pointed at him for emphasis. “You will stay between me and Kate.” I stuck my face right in his space. “You try anything, you try to run, and—” I jabbed my finger in his chest, “I'll make you sorry you ever asked me for help.” I poked him again for good measure.

“Ow,” Baz yelped and rubbed his pec. He glowered at me but wisely kept his lip zipped.

I gave Kate a piercing look. “Don't let him get away if he tries to take off.”

Though she was slight, there was a lot of stubbornness and determination in Kate's slim body. She nodded.

“Pop the hatch Kate, will you?”

A worn duffle bag lay in the narrow area between the back of the rear seat and the hatch. I unzipped it, and just as I remembered, it held a half-dozen well-used aluminum bats. Kate was the first baseman for the Uptowners, a team we belonged to on a Twin Cities
LGBT
softball league. Good thing she hadn't brought the gear in from the last indoor batting practice session.

I tossed a bat at Kate, who snagged it with one hand. Baz wasn't so quick, and the bat I lobbed sailed past him and clattered on the sidewalk.

“Better hone those reflexes, Baz.” I secured my own tool of potential mayhem.

I shut the hatch and took a deep breath. “Okay, follow me.”

The fricking clock was ticking, and I tried to recall, with a shiver of dread, the exact instructions the man had fired at me through the phone. First door, go inside. Down the hall to the fourth door on the left. Pass through the room and out the door on other side. The devil would be there, waiting for us. My heart pounded triple time.

A sidewalk led around the corner of the building and disappeared into the darkness. I followed the path to the first door, about twenty-five feet from the corner of the building. My two-car quasi-train was right with me. I tugged on the handle, but it didn't budge. How were we supposed to get to our destination when the baddies hadn't bothered to unlock the door?

“Goddamn it.” Frustration simmered on the brink of boiling-over. I snapped, “Back up.”

Both Kate and Baz stepped off the cement and onto the dead grass that bordered the sidewalk. I raised my bat and swung with everything I had. The sound of the aluminum shattering tempered glass barely registered as reverberations ran up and shook my arms. What should've felt like an incredible release was just one more emotion I stowed away for later. I used the bat to knock out the remaining glass shards so we could step over the frame without skewering ourselves.

Once we'd safely navigated the point of entry, I took a few seconds to regroup. Donny or Hunk or whoever called had to have heard that. But no one was in sight.

A weak light from the exit sign above our heads extended only a few feet down the hall.

“Ready?” I asked Baz and Kate. Kate nodded. Baz stared at me like a startled bunny. I spun on my heel and marched down the hallway, counting off the doors until I hit the fourth on the left. The knob twisted easily under my hand, and I pushed it open.

“Shay, wait a minute.” Kate's whisper barely penetrated my hearing. I paused long enough for her to flip a switch, and the room flooded with light. All three of us stood still for another few seconds as our eyes adjusted to the brightness.

We were in a large conference room. At least twenty chairs encircled a huge, rectangular table. A white board covered the far wall, and diagrams of what looked like toys in different stages of development filled the surface.

My brain registered these details, but I was too busy looking for the door that was supposed to be on the opposite side of the room to pay any kind of attention. I stalked toward it, fingers tightening on the wrapped handle of the bat resting on my shoulder. I was ready to end this.

I grabbed the doorknob and heaved, then launched my body through the threshold into the unknown, which turned out to be a cavernous space, dimly lit by two fluorescent bulbs suspended from the ceiling. With the bat held high above my head, I belted out a battle cry that would've curled my Irish ancestor's toes. I charged across the floor toward a cluster of people forty feet away. Kate and Baz whooped it up right alongside me.

Spread-eagled and bloodied, Coop was shackled to a chain-link fence that ran into the darkness. Where the light did reach, I could see cardboard boxes stacked inside the fence. The sight of my best friend, wounded and dangling like yesterday's laundry, was the final straw.

Hunk and Donny stood on one side of Coop. Tomás, on Coop's other side, was behind a tall, red-haired man dressed in khaki pants and a bright green Hawaiian shirt. If I hadn't seen Fletcher Sharpe mashed into his desk, his blood leaking out on the floor with my own eyes, I would've thought it was him.

A woman, obscured in shadow, waited a few feet away. She was dressed in black boots, black cargo pants, a loose cable-knit black sweater, and one of those black-felt Mexican cowboy hats. Her face was an impartial mask.

My brain assessed all that in a blink, and then I was back on task. If I took Tomás out, Kate and Baz could take a few whacks at Hunk and Donny. As I closed in on the group, my shout turned into a high-pitched growl. My eyes locked on Tomás's as my pumping legs carried me toward him.

The woman turned a pair of deep blue eyes on me and calmly uttered, “Shoot him.”

Her voice was high-pitched and heavily accented. I shoved those lightning-fast thoughts away as my brain frantically tried to process the meaning of her words.

Tomás moved a half-stride forward, coming even with the Sharpe lookalike. He held something in his hand. That something was a huge, black handgun. In slow motion, he pivoted and pointed the weapon directly at Coop's chest. He'd never miss.

“NO!” I screamed and chucked the bat at Tomás as hard as I could. He ducked, and it sailed harmlessly over his head, clattered against the fence, and dropped to the floor with a hollow clang. I launched myself into the air. Tomás hesitated between completing his orders and turning his weapon on me.

His hesitation cost him. In a textbook flying tackle, my shoulder met Tomás's legs. He flew over me, and then hit the hard concrete with a bone-rattling crash.

Gunfire erupted as I skidded across the floor. I flashed back to a particularly violent broomball game, careening on my back over slippery ice after a vicious hip check from an opposing player. That hadn't ended well, either.

I slammed into a huge though surprisingly light plastic barrel and upended it. My forward motion stopped, but gunfire continued to echo throughout the huge space. I was vaguely aware of some fuzzy-like substance tickling my exposed skin.

Move, Shay. Get up. Find cover.

I rolled to my hands and knees, fought for breath. With each inhale, the fluffy substance coated the inside of my mouth. I spit, nearly gagged. Hands grabbed at my jacket. I panicked, tried to crabwalk away. Too late. After a quick scuffle, my assailant wrapped an arm tight around my throat. Pressed something cold and unyielding to my temple.

The scent of jasmine filled my nose.

Then it clicked. Oh my god. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind this woman was Luz Ortez.