He still couldn’t hear—he must still be in earmuffs—and he was blindfolded. Still insulated in the cocoon, except he was moving.
Fear kited up inside. He tried to speak. Maybe he was speaking.
Hold onto the green fire, he thought. Hold onto the deputy-turned-detective with the calm eyes.
Bide your time.
If I can, he thought, if I ever get the chance—they’re not gonna know what hit them.
Chapter Forty-Eight
BY THE TIME Shaun made it back up to the road, the sun was low in the sky. She took stock of her surroundings. It would be a long walk into town.
Shaun heard the car coming before she saw it. She flagged down an older green sedan. Just the one man. Good.
Her appearance clearly shocked him.
“There’s been an accident,” she said.
The man got out of the car, shoving his keys into his pocket. He followed her around the guardrail and looked down.
“Good Lord—”
Two to the back of the head: phut-phut. He crumpled to the dirt. Shaun fished out the keys to the sedan and pocketed them. She pushed the man down the embankment until he took over from her and rolled. He came to rest about fifteen yards down the slope. She went down and rolled him a little more, into the trees that looked like bushes.
The car was old but OK. She opened the glove compartment. A Glock 9 mm sat atop the driver’s manual. She checked the magazine—it was full. Good. Somewhere along the way, in one of the two car accidents, she’d lost her .45, and she needed more firepower than the .22.
The bad news: the bullets were full metal jackets. Shaun didn’t like FMJs. Many times FMJs resulted in through-and-through shots, which lessened the chance of killing someone with the first round.
But, she thought, the Lord provides.
Shaun didn’t believe in God, but she believed in coincidence, and finding this gun was a good sign. And she liked the words, “the Lord provides.”
She cruised through Jerome and took Highway 89A to the Desert Oasis Healing Center. She drove up to the gate and spoke into the speaker. The gate rolled open and she drove through.
ON THE FREEWAY, Tess unsnapped her holster and approached the truck from behind and to the left, outside the range of the side-view mirror. The driver buzzed down his window.
“Keep your hands on the wheel where I can see them,” she said.
“What did I—”
“Hands on the wheel,” she repeated.
The man peered into the side-view mirror. Max Conroy.
No. Not Max. The other guy. Dave Finley, who owned the motorcycle shop. She had him hand her his license.
Tess cuffed him, settled him in the back of her car, and leaned in to talk to him.
It didn’t take long.
Finley told her he didn’t know where Max Conroy was now, but he knew where he would be later this evening.
“What time?” she asked.
“I think they said six o’clock.”
“Where?”
“The Conquistador Outlet Mall.”
Tess remembered seeing that mall, but it was a way out of her territory. “Is it outside Cottonwood?” She found the mall on her phone, Google Earth view. “You said Diane von Furstenberg?” she asked.
“The middle store. But the back entrance.”
“What are they doing there? Who else is with him?”
He hesitated. He’d been cooperative until now, although he’d tried to sound clueless. Clearly, he knew a lot more than he was saying.
“Sir?”
“They’re shooting a scene for a movie.”
“Can you tell me who else will be there?”
“Gordon White Eagle of the Desert Oasis Healing Center. His brother, Jerry Gold. A woman and her daughter.”
“Do you know the names of the woman and her daughter?”
“No.”
“Do you know the nature of the movie they’re shooting?”
“Nope.”
“Can you describe whatever vehicles they might be driving?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t know what vehicles they might have?”
“I have nothing to do with it. What I’m telling you is just what I heard.”
She tried to get more out of him, but he shifted to mono-syllables.
In the end, she let him go on his way with a warning that the right brake light on his trailer was out. She said if he called anyone to warn them, she would nail him for obstruction of justice.
He seemed to believe her.
SHAUN PARKED THE car and walked into the Desert Oasis Healing Center. There were few people, but she registered their shocked faces. The guy at the desk half-rose from his chair. “Ma’am?”
“Where is Gordon White Eagle?” she said.
“Uh…” She saw his right shoulder dip. Shaun knew there was a button, an alarm. She knew because she’d overseen the installation of it.
“Where’s Gordon?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. Let me see if I can ring through.”
“Where’s Gordon?”
“He asked not to be disturbed, he—” The young man stared into the barrel of Shaun’s .22. “He’s at the outlet mall in Verde Valley.”
“Is Max Conroy with him?”
“Pardon?”
“Max Conroy—the actor. Is he with him?”
“I believe so, yes.”
She kept the .22 concealed from any passersby with her body. “Are you sure Conroy’s with him?”
“Yes. Yes!”
“Thanks.”
Two to the forehead:
Phut-phut.
Chapter Forty-Nine
GORDON, JERRY, AND Talia arrived at the outlet mall a half hour early. The tall wall behind the defunct Diane von Furstenberg store hid the box truck, which had first been driven up to the loading dock to deposit its contents (Max Conroy).
As Gordon emerged from his car, he glanced around. “Where’s the Cadillac?” he asked.
“Dave must still be on the road,” Jerry said.
Gordon placed a call to Dave’s number and got his voice mail.
They went in through the back. The soundstage looked pretty convincing. There was a green screen along one wall, a couple of cameras, lights, a boom, and a few other pieces of equipment. The equipment cases littered the edge of the set, and Gordon almost tripped over one. He told Jerry to move them.
Just window dressing, obviously, but enough, Gordon hoped, to confuse Max and fool the mother and the daughter. “There’s no car,” he said to Jerry.
“That’s OK. It’s all illusion.”
“But the mother and kid might think something’s up.”
“There was no way to get a car in here,” Jerry said, in that annoyingly patient voice he reserved for children.
Gordon looked at Max, lying on the gurney. “Time to get him on his feet,” he said.
MAX HEARD THE exchange. He had no idea what they were talking about until he remembered the script. It was difficult to concentrate, but he needed to. In the script, there was a woman and her daughter. There was a killer, threatening them. Max was the hero in the scene.
He knew it was all made up. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond, but he knew that this was something planted in the back of his mind. He knew they were manipulating him, treating him like Pavlov’s dog.
Freeze!
He steeled himself against the word. In his mind, “Freeze” meant move. It meant that he should fight back. And he would.
He was lifted off the gurney. It was a struggle to get him off. His feet skated under him for a moment before gaining traction. His blindfold was stripped away like a Band-Aid. The earmuffs jerked away. The light was so bright. He knew they were actually fluorescents, and dim. The lights that had been brought to the set weren’t turned on yet. But after all the time in the darkness, anything was too bright. He squeezed his eyes shut. Whatever he’d been bundled up in came off. Hands pulling, unsnapping, ripping. He felt like a mannequin. It was hard to move.