I looked. I saw shadowy heads in a dark car. That was all. It gave me a creepy feeling like they were looking straight at me. I nodded.
“Those are the men I’m telling you about. I am offering you a means of escape.”
“Where are Jake and Opal? Opal wasn’t in her room when we went looking for her. Jake is looking for all of them. Have you kidnapped them?”
“Opal is with us. Jake soon will be. We’ll move them out today. We’ll make sure they get to Oregon. That is, if you play by our rules. One of our people will come to escort you. You need to sit tight here until then. We will personally deliver you to the airport and your flight.”
“I guess I have to decide now. I don’t get to sleep on it.”
“That’s correct. I need you to sign on the dotted line right now.”
“Where’s the pen?”
Chapter 15
An expense paid vacation to Australia was now part of the incentive package. But I wasn’t sure about the remodel job and ranchette.
My cell phone rang.
Jake said, “Fiona, you okay?”
“Alice just left. She said she’s taking care of everything.”
“Alice? You’re kidding. What did she want with you?”
“She offered me an incentive to leave the country real fast. I’m awash in incentives. I didn’t realize the criminal life could be so lucrative. I’m definitely in the wrong field.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so. I hope so. I’m not sure. What about you?”
“I haven’t found anyone. They all seem to have disappeared. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. I’m glad you’re still here.”
“Alice says Opal is okay and that you two are going to Oregon. She said Hudson is, and I quote, ‘one of ours’. Trouble is she wasn’t forthcoming with a lot of details. Where are you?”
“I’m at the door, let me in.”
I opened the door cell phone still to my ear. Jake shut his phone and walked inside.
“Jake, the bad guys are in the parking lot, and Alice says they are after us. She’s providing us — you, me, Opal — a safe out so the bad guys don’t get us.”
“Fiona, are you sure you aren’t hallucinating? You’ve been under a big strain lately. You wouldn’t be making all this up, would you? You have a very active imagination.”
“Jake, she offered me money and a ticket to Sydney.”
“What about Hudson and the arson and all that.”
I shrugged. “She says she’ll take care of everything. Look.” I handed him the envelope she gave me. “Look inside, if you don’t believe me.”
Gingerly, like I had just handed him a bomb, he peeled open the envelope and whistled. “You’re telling the truth.” He ran his hand through the disarray of his dark curls. “I can barely think. You sure Opal is okay?”
“Alice said she was in their safe keeping.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Jake, I’m going to Sydney. I’ll lay low for a month, and then I’ll be back in touch.”
He lifted my chin with his finger. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“You have a nasty habit of eluding me.”
“I’ll reform.”
“Will you come to Oregon?”
“I have a house and job waiting there, don’t I?”
He smiled. “You bet.”
Someone banged on the door.
“Who is it?” I called through the door.
“Friends.”
“That must be my escort. Here we go,” I said. “Alice said she was sending someone to escort me to the airport.”
I opened the door a crack only to have it slam into me, forcing me backward into Jake. Two men in brown suits muscled their way into the room. One whacked Jake so hard with a hand chop he crashed to the floor. The other had his hand over my mouth and my arm up behind my back in an excruciating grip. He smelled of onions. He wasn’t tall but made up for it in width and grip. The other guy kicked the door closed.
“Listen good,” Onions said. “You will not make a fuss or we kill you. But that would be messy and hard to explain. Nod your head if you understand.”
I could barely move my head up and down.
“Good.” He eased his nasty smelling hand off my mouth and relaxed his grip. Of course, I couldn’t speak I was so scared. I looked at Jake who was crumpled on the floor. I was impressed with how fast they operated. Very impressed.
“Did you kill him?” I said, rubbing my maltreated arm. “You’ll be sorry if you did.” My brave self wanted to whack them with something, wanted to go out fighting.
Onions laughed. “Wow, I’m scared. Your boyfriend, he’ll be fine. Little headache, maybe.”
“What do you want with me?”
“We want to know what you know. We seen you at the Lodge place. We want all the information you have on Alice and Albert and Cody and their operation.”
“I’m an interior designer. I found Albert dead on the library floor and somehow got pulled into this ridiculous mess.”
Onions manhandled me into the room and shoved me down on the bed, which, unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten to use much. The other guy watched Jake.
“Girlie, you know a lot more. You been hanging with these people since Albert died.”
“Did you kill Albert?”
“We should have. Dumb bugger couldn’t do a job right if he wanted to.”
“Did he work for you?”
“We thought so, but then Alice muscled in.”
I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was sharing information with me because my life wasn’t worth much in the grand scheme of things. That was unnerving, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking more questions. Curiosity was my one weakness.
“Muscled in? What does that mean?”
“It means she wanted a cut, too.”
“Alice? She was Albert’s co-worker. She’s a good guy.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
“Nice try, girlie. She was his squeeze and the wife’s.”
“The wife? You mean Olivia?”
“I mean whoever was the broad living with Albert. Alice was doing them both. We got that on her. She was willing to pay money to keep that quiet. Trouble is she stopped paying us. You’re going to help us get our money.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “I know absolutely nothing.”
“I don’t believe you. We want to know where Cody has the rest of the rifles we paid for, and he hasn’t delivered. He shorted us.”
Missing rifles was bad enough but Alice’s convoluted involvement in this whole thing was making my head hurt. I kept glancing at Jake to see if he was coming to. I didn’t want to be in this alone, and I was worried they’d done him permanent damage.
“Don’t worry about him, girlie. He’ll be fine. But you won’t be if we don’t find them rifles and our silence money.”
It was now clear why Cody wanted our help. Why he had to talk to us. He hadn’t delivered on his part of the bargain. That’s why they wanted him. I wondered why he hadn’t delivered but now wasn’t the time to go through a bunch of scenarios, not with the ugly looking guy in front of me making menacing faces.
“You have a funny accent,” I said. “Where are you from?”
“What?” he said. “Don’t make fun of me, girlie.”
“My name is Fiona, it is not girlie.”
“I don’t care what your name is. It won’t really matter if you don’t level with me.”
“You know, I wish I knew where the rifles were. I would tell you. But I didn’t know about them until the day before the fire.”
“Are you the one who set the fire? You were trying to get rid of the evidence, so’s we can’t find the guns.”
“I thought you set the fire. Cody said you set the fire to get rid of the evidence.”
Onions rubbed his square chin. “You’re testing my patience. You’re making me crazy here, girlie. I may have to use a little persuasion if you don’t stop being cute.”