Deadly Competition (Without a Trace) Page 16

  “Someone call 911!” Ava ran to Charla’s wheelchair from the back of the room, her own face terrified and pale as snow. “What was in her salad? Tell me—what did she have?”

  Time seemed to stand still, the interminable seconds passing one by one.

  Finally, faint sirens sounded closer and closer until the building seemed to shake with the last wailing note. A team of EMTs burst into the room, followed by two deputies.

  Mandy drew back and hovered at a side door away from the melee, a prayer running through her mind for the poor woman gasping and struggling for breath.

  The EMTs ordered everyone back. From over their heads, Mandy could see an IV pole go up, hung with a bag of fluid.

  “Stand back!”

  Something thudded. Voices rose. “Again!”

  The entire room fell deathly silent as the EMTs worked on Charla’s inert form.

  “Got a pulse!”

  Metal clanged, then squealed as they positioned a gurney. A few minutes later the gurney rattled out, the IV bag held high in someone’s hand, with Ava and Max following right behind.

  The crowd burst into agitated conversation after the ambulance left. A woman leaned close to Charla’s place setting. “Look at this! Are those crumbled pecans on her salad?” Her voice rose with excitement. “Those sure aren’t bits of bacon, and I didn’t have anything like that on my salad!”

  The hubbub grew as the two deputies shouldered their way toward Charla’s wheelchair, now empty and parked at an odd angle by the table.

  “Lenore—where’s Lenore?” a piercing voice cried. “She was here just before Charla came to the table. I saw her—right there at Charla’s place setting!”

  From out in the parking lot came the sound of a scuffle. Shouts. Lenore screaming indignantly for someone to let her go.

  “If Lenore put pecans on Charla’s salad, she ought to be charged with attempted murder,” Shelby said under her breath. “Almost everyone in town knows Charla’s deathly allergic to pecans. She nearly died at a Christmas festival one year.”

  Some of the crowd filtered back into the room, looking dazed. A steady hum of conversation grew, but far more subdued than before.

  “Serves that Pershing woman right,” someone said. “I’ll testify myself, if that’s what it takes to put her back in jail where she belongs—and this time, her fancy lawyers better not set her free.”

  After the chaos surrounding the departure of the ambulance, the banquet meal tasted like sawdust and Mandy’s stomach started to pitch. Was it the stress and the oppressive heat in the hall?

  Shelby went up to the dais, took over as emcee in Ava’s absence and began reading a long list of acknowledgments and awards.

  Mandy blinked. Tried to focus beyond the woozy spots starting to dance in front of her eyes. “I need to get some air,” she murmured to the woman on her left. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She bent low and fled to the back door, where she silently eased it open and slipped out into the cool darkness. Drawing in a deep breath of fresh air, she folded her arms over her stomach and began pacing back and forth along the back of the building in the pool of light cast by a single light bulb at the peak of the roof.

  A faint scent of cigar smoke drifted by and she straightened, peering out into the gloom. “Anyone out here?”

  Even from outside, the open windows allowed her to hear Shelby read the long speech about Mother’s Day that Ava must’ve prepared.

  A male voice took over to discuss the long history of the pageant.

  Mandy leaned against the back door of the building, willing her jumpy stomach to settle down.

  Then Shelby started again, announcing the winners of various raffles and the winner and runners-up for the Junior Miss Loomis. She cleared her throat. “The selection of Mother of the Year will take place tomorrow, on Mother’s Day. But tonight we have a very special award to present—Miss Congeniality.” After the applause faded, she continued.

  Applause erupted again, followed by a speech Mandy couldn’t quite hear over the sound of a car crunching across the gravel parking lot at the front of the building.

  “Now,” Shelby continued, “our judges—particularly, our ‘secret-shopper judge,’ Portia—thought this entrant offered something fresh and new to the contest. She was helpful and exceedingly kind to her fellow contestants and exemplifies the kind of nurturing spirit that we all aspire to. Mandy Erick—this envelope contains a cash prize for you, and a matching prize for your favorite local charity! As holder of this honor, you will be accompanying the Mother of the Year winner during many of her community outings.”

  Stunned, Mandy sagged against the door and closed her eyes in disbelief. This was impossible. She should have left weeks ago. She could have been farther west by now. Safer. But instead she’d found Clint, and he’d filled her heart and thoughts in ways she never would have imagined.

  Now…what could she do except accept the honor gracefully, even though she wouldn’t be in Loomis after tomorrow?

  She drew in a deep breath and rested a hand on her jittery stomach as she reached for the door handle.

  “Going somewhere?”

  The snarl was a nightmare voice from the past. One that she’d never wanted to hear again. Dean.

  A powerful, viselike grip clamped across her neck and chest from behind, choking her, robbing her of breath. Before she could even try to scream, a callused hand descended roughly across her mouth.

  Fighting to breathe, Mandy clawed at his arm and hands, trying to twist out of his grip.

  “Don’t bother, Katherine. You’re mine.”

  NINETEEN

  “You made this so, so easy,” Dean snarled in her ear. Dragging her into the shadows around the corner, he tightened his grip until she thought she felt a rib snap. Fierce, blinding pain slammed through her, sending black spots dancing in front of her eyes. “You thought you could get away. But of course, that was a stupid mistake from day one.”

  “P-please, Dean.”

  “Please?” He spun her around and slammed her against a telephone pole next to the building. Stars exploded in her head and the world started spinning, faster and faster and—

  “Please what? Let you come home? That’s what I planned, until I saw you here, living with another man. Or did you mean ‘please make this fast and easy’?”

  Terror crawled through her, its tentacles robbing her of strength. Of coherent thought. She fought against the panic welling up in her throat as she tried to draw in a single, ragged breath…tried to scream against the massive hand clamped over her nose and mouth. She suddenly felt weightless—oddly disoriented in time and space.

  An explosion of light and pain filled her head and then everything went dark.

  Blackness.

  Nausea.

  Throbbing pain.

  Something thin and sharp now bound her ankles and her wrists in front of her, biting deep when she tried to move. Wire?

  She forced her eyes open and tried to make out the silver object in front of her. A single key dangling from an ignition. Was she in a car? Truck?

  It had to be a pickup.

  She was on the front seat of a pickup. Dean stomped on the gas pedal and the truck rocketed forward, throwing her against the back of the seat as it rattled down a gravel road, bouncing crazily from one pothole to the next.

  With each slam, the wire bonds bit deeper into her skin. Something warm and wet was pooling beneath her ankles on the seat. The coppery scent of blood filled the air.

  She tried to raise her head, but Dean shoved her back down against the seat and twisted his fingers in her hair until she bit back a cry. “You ain’t going anywhere, girl. I told you, you’re mine.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “No?” He chuckled, but the sound of his voice made her skin crawl. “You sure will.”

  He was enjoying this.

  “You picked the perfect place to hide out, sweetheart. I’ve been in bayou country before
, and I know just what to do with you. I figure there won’t be anything left by dawn if I drop you in the swamp for gator bait.”

  Again Mandy struggled to sit up, but fell back as the pain sliced through her.

  “Go ahead—fight. The scent of blood will make this go faster. Less chance anyone can interfere.”

  Mandy tried to clear her mind enough to think. She was at eye level with Dean’s thigh and the keys in the ignition, though the standard stick shift on the floor precluded any chance that she could lunge for the keys.

  He accelerated even more, and the truck swerved and swayed, hitting more potholes than Dean apparently tried to miss. Her head slammed against the metal stick shift and she slid partway off the seat onto the floor of the passenger side.

  The truck careened, then rocketed through yet another deep hole and went airborne.

  Dean jerked his head around to look behind, screaming a litany of curses as something slammed into the back of the pickup, sending it into a flat spin.

  He wrenched the wheel, overcorrecting in one direction and then the other. She could feel the truck fishtailing wildly. It crashed against something hard and unforgiving with a squeal of scraping metal, then ricocheted with neck-snapping force against something else. A tree? An embankment?

  Fighting to regain some leverage, Mandy edged her bound hands inch by inch along the seat, snaked her fingers up the stick shift, then launched upward and threw her weight against it, ignoring the searing pain in her side.

  With a deafening screech the gears locked and the motor ground to a halt, even as the truck started into a slow, horizontal roll that slammed her against the roof and dashboard and seat, again and again for what seemed like eternity.

  When the truck came to a shuddering stop on its side, she felt a slippery pool of warmth beneath her. Dazed, she blinked and tried to focus through a haze of crimson. She found herself looking up into Dean’s bloodied face, now still. Was he unconscious? Dead?

  His unfocused eyes opened slowly.

  Fixed on her face.

  With catlike speed he twisted and grabbed her throat with one hand. “We’re…getting out of this truck. I’m going to take that wire off your ankles, and you and me are going for a little walk.”

  It was pitch black. From the heavy odor of decayed vegetation and swamp she knew they were on the edge of the bayou, and in the dark, one false step could mean stepping into its murky depths…where alligators awaited.

  One false step and she’d never be seen again.

  The frame-up for the sprawling, two-story home was now a smoldering heap of wet, charred two-by-fours and crumpled cooling ducts.

  The acrid smell burned Clint’s throat and made his eyes water. He stared at the wreckage, still stunned by the damage that fire departments from two townships hadn’t been able to hold at bay. A dozen or more firefighters were still on the scene, packing away gear.

  Over a month’s work, gone.

  Building materials. Power and hand tools. Ladders and heavy extension cords. But more than that, the owners had already sold their other house and planned to move in within sixty days.

  “Gas explosion,” the fire chief said, pointing out the heavy char pattern at the back of the house. “Started back there, where the kitchen will be.”

  “The gas wasn’t even turned on. Nothing was ready to hook up.”

  The older man, still dressed in his heavy, yellow rubber fire coat and boots, made another note on his clipboard. He’d been hired last year to head up the volunteer fire department and had come from New Orleans. Clint had never met him.

  “I understand you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. What with your sister and all, it must be hard to keep up with everything. Bills. Work. Your niece.”

  The man wasn’t making friendly small talk. He’d been asking a lot of questions and now he was fishing.

  Clint met his gaze dead-on. “My company is doing fine. I have a nanny for my niece. If you’re suggesting foul play—”

  “I’m not suggesting. This was definitely arson. I found a clipped gas line. The big question is who the perpetrator might be. Can you account for your whereabouts during the past twenty-four hours?”

  “Mostly. My planner is in my truck.”

  “Let’s go over and get it. The sheriff is on his way, and he’d like to ask you a few questions, too.”

  Clint felt his heart sink. “You think I’m responsible?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  But the man planned to walk with him when he got his planner, probably so Clint wouldn’t have a chance to alter any entries. Worse, the sheriff was en route.

  “You think I burned this building site because I’m in financial trouble?”

  “I assess the cause of fires. The sheriff handles that part of any investigation.”

  His cell phone vibrated against his hip and Clint grabbed it to look at the screen. Shelby’s number—but he would need to call her later. He clipped it back to his belt. Any news about the pageant would just have to wait.

  “My business records are an open book. There’d be no reason for me to do anything like this.”

  His phone rang again, and this time it was Max Pershing. Why would he call? “Excuse me. I should probably take this.”

  Max’s tension vibrated in his voice. “You need to get over to the pageant. Now.”

  “Is it over? How did Mandy do?”

  “We’ve searched the country club grounds, and no one can find her. She left her purse at the banquet, and the pickup of yours that she drove is still in the parking lot. There’s…signs of a scuffle, Clint. And—” Max took a deep breath “—and there’s some blood. The cops are already here.”

  An icy hand gripped Clint’s heart. “On my way.”

  He turned to the fire chief. “There’s been an accident of some kind. A woman—my niece’s nanny—is missing. There won’t be any deputies out here for a good long while.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “No, we won’t. I have to go—”

  The man clamped a hand on Clint’s forearm. “You’re going to stay here until they show up.”

  “You think I’m a flight risk? That I’d leave my hometown and niece over something I couldn’t possibly have done?” Clint wrenched away from the man and stood, hands clenched at his sides. “I’m leaving right now. I’ve got to get over there. After that? Sheriff Reed knows where to find me.”

  “But—”

  “No. You can come along or you can stay here. But a woman I care deeply for is in danger, and I have to go.”

  The country club was on the opposite side of town and five miles out in the country on a long, winding road that ran along the bayou.

  Once the downtown street lamps ended, the night was deep black, light from the sliver of moon blocked by the dense overhead canopy of live oaks and cypress.

  Fog was drifting in off the bayou like a thick blanket as high as his truck’s headlights, making it doubly risky to go as fast as Clint wanted to. One moment’s misjudgment and he could drive into the bayou, then he would never make it to the country club.

  Clint’s frustration and worry ratcheted up with every passing mile.

  Had Mandy’s ex-boyfriend caught up with her? Guilt swamped him at the thought. She’d wanted to run. He’d encouraged her to stay. Selfishly, because he now realized he hadn’t wanted to face the prospect of a future without her. If anything had happened to her, he would carry that guilt for the rest of his life.

  A new thought hit him and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles ached. Gators came out of the bayou at times and killed pet dogs or went after kids.

  Last year, one had lumbered across a golf green and a golfer lost a leg, making the national news. Please, God, watch over Mandy. Keep her safe. Help her…and help me find her.

  The fog grew thicker. He had to drive even slower, judging the approximate position of the asphalt by the line of trees and brush flanking it on either side. Instead of racing
to help Mandy, he was now driving at a crawl, and his tension escalated even more. Please, God—

  Off to the right, he caught just a brief glow of light through the mist, and then it was gone. He would’ve missed it if he’d been going any faster.

  The bayou was over there, maybe twenty or thirty feet away. There were no houses along this road, no bayou shanties. So who would be out here on a night like this?

  He slammed on the brakes, sending the truck into a slide on the slick asphalt. There was no safe option. Even if he parked way over on the shoulder, an oncoming car could rear-end his truck. It was impossible to see any turnoffs or safe places to get farther off the road.

  But if he drove off into the ditch he might not be able to drive back out again. What if this light was nothing? What if Mandy was struggling for her life miles ahead, and he couldn’t get to her?

  I still need your help, God—more than ever. Please show me what to do….

  Dean unwrapped the wire binding Mandy’s ankles, leaving her wrists bound tightly in front of her. Pain shot through her with each step as he pulled her along.

  He cursed at the dense fog and gave her another rough shove, sending her to her knees. “Hurry up, or next time you’ll wish you had.”

  He’d fallen twice, too, and each time he’d exploded with rage. One time he delivered a powerhouse punch to her lower back, slamming her into a tree. The second time, he’d taken his anger out on her by grabbing her hair and forcing her face-first into the mud.

  She’d lost both of her high heels long ago. Sharp rocks sliced her feet as she walked, and prickly vines tore at her ankles, which were already raw. God, please help me. I know there’s no way out of this without you. She recited the brief prayer over and over, holding on to the hope that help might arrive.

  But how could it? The fog was heavier than ever. No one would see the narrow, rutted lane leading off the highway. No one could hear her if she screamed. And she knew she’d pay dearly if she even tried.