A Quarter for a Kiss Page 31

  “Tom, there’s no way you can make it down this wall with those hands.”

  “Sure I can,” he said, hoisting himself over the side. “Now go. Get over there. Now.”

  My mind still in a fog, I ran to the bank of trees. Squeezing between them, I felt fairly certain I wouldn’t be spotted. I couldn’t see much of what was going on with the gang on the tennis court, but at least I could watch Tom as he worked his way, spiderlike, down the wall.

  He seemed to do okay at first. Then, about ten feet down, he faltered, losing his grip. My heart in my throat, I watched as he found another hold then, suddenly, started slipping from that one as well.

  Quickly, without taking the time to think, I ran to the rock wall and started down myself. I knew if I focused on all I had learned, on all he had taught me about rock climbing, that I could do this. My injured toe was throbbing, but otherwise, at least, the rocks were good and rough with plenty of crags and crevices. When I reached Tom, he was frozen, using his elbows to form a brace against a rock.

  “It’s the blood,” he whispered frantically. “I can’t stop slipping.”

  Looking at him, I realized his hands were now bleeding profusely. The bandages were soaked.

  “Can you go back up?” I asked, clutching the wall, trying to ignore the fact that this was the first time I had ever climbed without a harness and a safety rope.

  “No, I don’t think so. We’ll have to keep going down.”

  “We can do this,” I said, trying to sound confident while lying through my teeth. “Let’s just overlap a bit. Here.”

  I inched sideways and then reached across his left arm to grab a hold in front of his face.

  “Now dry your right hand on your shirt and go for a lower grip,” I directed.

  He did as I said, then together we took it down a step. He dried his left hand and put it in a lower spot, then I crossed over it again with mine. When I felt his hand start to slip, I pressed myself against the rocks, pinning his arm to the wall.

  “Again,” he said, and in tandem we went down another step. It was working.

  “Mai pen rai, baby,” I whispered.

  Without thinking how hard it was, without thinking how frightened I was, without thinking how far we had to go, we made our way down the side of the wall until we were close enough to jump the rest of the way down to the sand.

  Once there, we simply embraced, holding on to one another tightly. It had taken so long to get down that I was terrified Jodi was gone by now, already being driven down the road to her imminent torture and death.

  Tom and I crouched down behind the biggest rock, daring to look around the corner at the private beach at the bottom of the estate.

  The boat was still there! Hopefully, that meant Jodi was still alive.

  It was a big craft, but low to the water with a sleek profile. I had no doubt that once they had it loaded, they would fly out of there at top speed, never to be seen again.

  “I’ll have to do the swimming,” I whispered, gesturing toward Tom’s hands. “You know you can’t go in the water bleeding like that. You’ll draw sharks for sure.”

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “I’ll wait until the boat leaves,” he said, “then I can run back up the trail and free the FBI agents.”

  “Just make sure you don’t run into Zach up there,” I said. “Look to see if that car is gone before you go out in the open.”

  My sweater was covered with Tom’s blood, so I stripped it off and handed it to him. I didn’t dare hug him at the risk of getting more blood on me, so I simply leaned over and kissed him hard on the forehead.

  Then I gritted my teeth and slipped into the sea, swimming in the opposite direction from the beach, swimming around Turtle Point.

  Except for the chilliness of the water, it wasn’t bad at first. The hardest part was the darkness, the not knowing what was under me or around me. I stayed fairly close to shore, finding a rhythm that let me keep up a steady pace without wearing myself out too soon. As I rounded the point, however, I felt a stronger current tugging at me, and it was a struggle after that. I kicked off my shoes and then my pants, as the weight of them was dragging me down. In the distance, I could see the public beach, and that was what I aimed for. Making a direct line across the water, I pretended that it was daytime and that I was just out for a nice midday swim. My pretense didn’t last all that long, but finally, just when I thought I couldn’t swim another stroke, I paused to catch my breath and my feet touched the sand.

  I walked the rest of the way out, praying I wouldn’t step on a stingray or a sea urchin. When the water was to my waist, I stopped and gasped. In front of me, just below the surface, swam an octopus. Remembering that they liked to come out at night, I watched it go by in the moonlight, feeling awed and terrified all at the same time.

  When I reached the road, I looked both ways, finally spotting the flashing lights of the police car at the end of Dianne’s driveway, off to the left. The pavement was rough but I moved quickly toward them, wishing I hadn’t needed to ditch my shoes in the water—or my pants, for that matter. A least my shirt was long enough to keep me from being completely indecent.

  As I drew near the police car, I heard an odd scuffling up ahead, so I ducked down into the brush alongside the road. Peering through the darkness, I could see two people coming down the driveway, and I realized they were Jodi and Zach. Duct tape covered her mouth, and her arms had been secured behind her back. Zach was tightly gripping her elbow with one hand. In the other he held a gun.

  I wanted to warn the cop inside the car that they were coming, but all I could do was toss a pebble at his bumper. It made a loud “ping,” but the man didn’t stir.

  I tried again, and on the second toss, he finally got out to see what was going on, though he didn’t look up the driveway. Instead, he came around the side of the car, looked my way and gasped, spotting me in the bushes. He reached for his gun. I put a finger to my lips and pointed up the driveway with my other hand. But before the cop even had a chance to respond or figure out what was going on, Zach called out for him to “Freeze!”

  The cop jerked his head up, but he was thinking quickly. Before he put his hands in the air, he let his gun drop to the road, and then he gave it a slight kick in my direction.

  “That’s right, nice and slow,” Zach said, stepping closer and aiming his gun directly at the cop’s head. As far as I could tell, Zach hadn’t spotted me. “Now walk over here.”

  The cop did as he was told, stepping around to the driver’s side, which placed the car between me and them.

  “What do you want?” the cop demanded.

  “I want you to shut up,” Zach said. “Where are the keys?”

  “The keys?”

  “To the vehicle.”

  As the cop hesitated, I looked down at the gun that had landed on the grass in front of me. A shiver ran down my neck, down my spine. I hated guns. Though Eli had taught me to shoot when I was a teenager, I had never been all that comfortable with them. When my brother Michael almost died from a gunshot wound, I decided that I would never have anything to do with guns again.

  Sometimes you have no choice, doll, I could almost hear Eli telling me. As I quickly sized up the situation, I understood that this might be one of those times. Silently, I picked up the gun, knowing I would use it if I had to to keep Zach from shooting the cop. The problem was that I really wasn’t a very good shot, and Zach was holding Jodi so closely to him that I wouldn’t dare try even if I was.

  “The keys are in the ignition,” the cop said finally.

  “Thanks,” Zach replied. “Oh, and bye-bye.”

  Zach lowered the gun to point it directly at the cop’s chest. Before he could pull the trigger, however, I raised my gun, closed my eyes, and fired into the air.

  The element of surprise worked. The gunshot still ringing, Zach spun toward me. As he did, the cop tackled him, knocking him and Jodi to the ground. Zach still had a gun, though, so I stood and
ran around to the other side of the car, pulling Jodi free from the scuffle and then desperately trying to figure out how I could help. Zach and the cop were rolling on the ground, the gun clutched between them. I managed to kick at Zach’s head, but then they flipped over and kept struggling. Jodi was whimpering so loudly that I took a moment to untape her hands. She ripped the tape from her own mouth and then started screaming.

  “Shoot! Shoot!” she yelled, but there was just no way I could without hitting the cop.

  Finally, much to my shock, Jodi grabbed the gun from my hand, ran to the struggling men, pointed, and pulled the trigger.

  Boom!

  I held my breath until the cop pulled himself out from under the lifeless body of Zach.

  Jodi’s body wracked with tremors, she dropped the gun to the ground and covered her face with her hands.

  Suddenly, we were bathed in light as a car came speeding down the driveway. The cop picked up his gun and pointed it toward the car, but I yelled at him to wait. He didn’t shoot, and after the car screeched to a stop, Tom jumped out, hands held high and eyes wide as he sized up the situation.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the cop. “He’s one of us.”

  The cop let his arm drop to his side, and then he bent down to pull Zach’s gun from his dead hand. The officer was all business then, putting the guns away and using his radio to call for help.

  “Get an ambulance too,” Tom told him. “There are three FBI agents up there, alive but in need of medical attention.”

  I stepped forward, wanting to go to Tom but knowing Jodi needed me more. As I put my arms around her, she buried her head against my shoulder, sobbing violently.

  “I think she should sit down,” the cop said after he finished with the radio. “I have a blanket here.”

  She let him lead her to the backseat of his car, where he tucked a blanket around her and told her that a doctor would be coming soon. The way she was trembling, I think he was afraid that she was about to go into shock. I knew Tom could use some medical help as well, since his bandages were in shreds and his arms were stained with dried blood.

  Tom turned his attention to me, taking off his shirt so that I could tie it around my waist. In all of the commotion, I had forgotten that I had kicked my pants off into the sea! I asked him to bring my tote bag from the car instead, as I knew it contained a pair of shorts.

  Once I was decent, Tom put his arms around me and pulled me close. I pressed my face against the warm skin of his chest and held on tightly, knowing that I would never, ever let him go again.

  Forty-Seven

  In the end, we learned that it was a matter of car keys that had saved the day. Determined to retrieve the $300,000 in bearer bonds, Zach had searched in vain the pockets of the three unconscious FBI agents, trying to find the keys for the Explorer. Unbeknownst to him, however, that was our car, and the keys were in Tom’s pocket. Since it was blocking the other vehicles, Zach realized his only option was to walk down the driveway, shoot the cop, and take the police car. Because they were on foot, I had time to reach the scene first and react the way I did. The only part that still had me stunned was Jodi’s hubris in taking a shot at Zach while he and the cop were struggling on the ground. My secret guess was that she was so frightened, and she wanted Zach dead so badly, that she was willing to risk the cop’s life in order to take that shot.

  Tom explained what he had been doing since I left him there at the cliff to swim around the point. He had waited there on the rocks for a good while, but once the boat carrying Dianne, Earl, and Larry sailed away, Tom was able to use the road from the beach to climb back up to the house. Once he got there, he saw no sign of Zach or Jodi, so he took the Explorer down the long driveway, intending first to search for me and then to go save Jodi. Of course, when he made the final turn and saw us there at the end of the drive, he realized that we were okay.

  Though the Streeps had seemed to make a clean getaway, it was Abraham’s quick thinking that finally brought them down. Apparently, it had struck Abraham that there was one person who had been conspicuously absent all day: William, the young man who cared for Dianne’s beloved dogs. Going on the theory that William’s job for today might have been to keep the dogs safe and far away from all of the action, Abraham led the FBI to the waterfront park near the neighborhood where William lived. Sure enough, the agents were able to get there just in time to arrest Dianne, Larry, and Earl, who had stopped to pick up the dogs before heading out into the open sea.

  Inside their boat agents found more than 20 stolen works of art, among them a Matisse and a Picasso, some of which had been missing for years. When the agents had a good look at the basement under Dianne’s house, they realized it was much more than merely a basement. It was an art storage room, with fully insulated walls and a complete underground HVAC system with humidity and temperature regulators. I found it ironic that the stovepipe vent that Tom and I had both tripped on in the yard was the air intake pipe for the whole system.

  Tom and I spent half of the night back at the command center, recounting the series of events and giving our full statements to the police and the FBI. Tom’s hands had been tended to at the scene, but I could tell he was in enormous pain, and I was glad when they finally told us we were free to go. As we were leaving, we said our final goodbyes to Abraham, who filled us in on Jodi’s status. She had been sedated at the clinic and released to Sandy, who had brought her back to the house and was spending the night there at her bedside.

  Exhausted, Tom and I went home as well. On the way, we decided that we wouldn’t try to fly back to the States until Monday, which would give us the weekend to rest and recuperate. At the house, I helped Tom take his medicine and get into bed. I stayed there with him until his breaths were deep and even, and then I returned to my own room, dreaming of the future when I would be able to spend the whole night in his bed, in his arms—as his wife.

  By the time I got up, Tom was gone. He had left a note on the counter saying he was out running some errands but would be back by noon. I found Jodi in the hot tub out on the deck, and I quickly changed into my bathing suit so I could join her there. I lowered myself into the hot water and then looked out at the incredible view, amazed that we had been here for nearly a week but I hadn’t had the time to try the hot tub until now.

  Jodi seemed to have rallied, though there were dark circles under her eyes. She spoke openly about her own trauma, how Larry had tricked her and Sunshine into going to his mother’s house two nights before. Once there, the women were tied up, prisoners of Zach and the Streeps. My worst fear was that Jodi had been hurt or even raped, but she said no, Zach had merely kept her tied up and hidden, waiting for the opportunity to seize the bearer bonds.

  “I’m such an idiot,” Jodi said now, leaning back against the tub and closing her eyes.

  “Not everyone is a good judge of character,” I replied diplomatically.

  “Oh, it’s not just that,” she said. “I’m talking about the money. First I was stupid enough to bring the bonds down here, and then I didn’t even have the presence of mind not to talk about them! I confided in Zach because I wanted to impress him. Little did I know, those bonds ended up almost getting me killed.”

  I stretched out in the warm water, feeling the aches seep from my bones.

  “So what will you do with the bonds now?” I asked. “Have you made a decision about your donation?”

  “I gave the bonds over to Sandy this morning,” she said. “I probably didn’t investigate SPICE as thoroughly as you would have, Callie, but I know it’s a good group, working for a good cause. In any event, I’m going to stick around down here for a while longer.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah. Sandy offered me a job as their fund-raiser. I think between my donation and whatever else I can drum up for them, we might be able to make some definite plans to build a facility. The sooner we can get everything out of storage and into a permanent museum, the better.”

  I could
see that the excitement in her eyes had returned, and I knew she had made the right decision, on all accounts.

  “What about the pieces that were stolen?” I asked.

  “As far as I know, once the FBI releases them, they’ll be returned to the climate-controlled storage facility in San Juan. Though we may amp up the security a bit.”

  I sat up, stretching in the sunshine. The warmth was lulling me to sleep, and I thought it might be time for me to get out.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I said as I climbed from the hot tub. “How did you give the bonds to Sandy? I hid them for you.”

  Jodi laughed.

  “I figured you probably put them in the secret closet,” she replied. “Sure enough, they were in there, on the top shelf.”

  “You know about that?”

  “It’s my house, Callie,” she said. “Of course I know about it. Gosh, when I was a kid, that closet was my best place for hide-and-seek.”

  I stood there on the deck, wrapped in a towel, looking out over the mountains to the sea beyond. It was easy to picture Jodi as a kid, running around this house, playing games with her babysitter. She had been through a lot in the last two days, but she was safe now. I wondered if all the trauma she had been through might’ve helped her to grow up just a little bit.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said, pulling a chair over so that I could sit and drip dry.

  “Sure,” she replied, spinning around in the hot tub so that she was leaning forward, her chin resting on the side.

  I was quiet for a moment, trying to think how to phrase it. I didn’t want to offend her, but I knew I couldn’t leave here not having had this conversation.

  “When you were in such danger,” I said finally, “I know you must’ve realized you might be killed.”

  “Of course,” she said softly.

  “If you had been killed,” I said frankly, leaning forward, my eyes meeting hers, “do you know where your soul would be right now?”