I’d been inside a small refrigerator. It was riddled with what I now recognized were bullet holes. There were three thick stripes running around the exterior, one at the bottom, one at the top, and one in the middle, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light I realized with a shudder they were bands of gray duct tape. Whoever had put me in that refrigerator … they hadn’t planned on ever taking me out again. The tape was wrapped layer upon layer all the way around, except where Daniela had sliced it open along the door’s edge.
I felt completely paralyzed, but I knew there was no time to waste. It took practically every ounce of willpower I had to crawl toward the door, but as the blood started flowing through my body I started feeling a little stronger and pushed myself up on wobbly legs.
The other room was empty except for an old metal desk against one wall, with piles of bills and newspapers littering the floor around it, and there was an old water-damaged calendar on the wall with a bikini-clad girl firing a big machine gun and flashing a toothy smile at the camera.
Right underneath her, flung up against the wall next to the desk, was my backpack. I practically lunged for it, and then I looked down to find my cell phone and my car keys sitting in the middle of the desk, right on top of a short stack of wrinkled computer printouts. Right next to that was the picture of Pachamama I’d had in my back pocket.
I picked the whole pile up and went to the door, which was just beyond the desk in the far corner. It was painted shiny black, with three commercial-sized dead bolts down the right side. In quick succession, I flipped all three bolts open, hoping with all my might there weren’t other locks on the outside, and also that Daniela or some goon wasn’t standing guard somewhere, waiting for me to show myself.
With a deep breath, I whispered a silent prayer. If ever I needed a guardian angel on my side—somebody up there in the clouds watching over me—this was it.
I closed my eyes, grabbed the doorknob with both hands, and pulled.
33
The door swung open, and right in front of it, facing me in a blaze of blinding sunlight, was my Bronco.
If there’d been a choir of angels singing I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised—I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited by the sight of a car in my life. I didn’t even stop to see where I was or if anybody else was there. I just stumbled out into the hot light, guiding myself with one arm along the hood as I made my way around to the driver’s side, and then once I was in, I started it up and backed away from the door.
Only then did I realize I was in the middle of some kind of storage compound. There were long cinder-block buildings on either side, stretching almost as far as the eye could see in both directions, with low-slung roofs painted bright brick-red and black metal doors spaced every twenty feet or so. Each of the doors was painted with a big number in bright yellow. I glanced at the door of the cell I’d been locked in, and as I threw the car in gear, I whispered to myself, “Remember that number.”
Then I drove like a bat out of hell.
It didn’t take me long to find the exit. It was around the corner at the end of one of the buildings, blocked with a tall chain-link gate, and just as I was thinking I might have to crash right through it, there was a high-pitched whine as the gate automatically rolled open.
Beyond that was a busy four-lane thoroughfare. I pulled to a stop and slowly shook my head back and forth. I think I’d just assumed my kidnappers would have taken me to some creepy remote hideout in the middle of nowhere, but as soon as I saw the hodgepodge collection of fruit stands and thrift stores on the other side of the street, I immediately knew where I was.
It was Tamiami Trail, the main road through the middle of Sarasota, and I was standing at the entrance to Happy Time Self Storage, not five minutes past Grand Pelican Commons.
As soon as I merged into traffic, I had to consciously will myself not to slam the gas pedal through the floor. I wanted to get as far away as possible before anybody saw me, but I didn’t want to kill myself or somebody else in the process. At that point I realized I’d been operating on pure adrenaline, because the moment it dawned on me that I was going to be okay, every cell in my body exploded. My muscles must have been in a state of atrophy after being crammed in that refrigerator for God knows how long, and the blood pushing its way back into all the nooks and crannies felt like a thousand stinging needles.
I ignored it, concentrating instead on the road in front of me. My instinct had been to head home, but I knew I couldn’t do that, so I headed south out of town. Once I felt it was safe, I pulled into a parking lot off the road and cut the engine. My backpack and the computer printouts I’d taken were sitting on the passenger seat next to my cell phone. I reached over and flipped it open.
It was off, of course. They’d shut it down so it couldn’t be tracked, so while I waited for it to power up, I tried to organize the jumble of thoughts and images that were swimming around in my head.
The first thing I saw, looming over me with those intense aquamarine eyes, was Barney Feldman … and then I saw the long red scratches on Daniela’s arms and legs. Mr. Fiori and his goon may not have known it yet, but she was clearly double-crossing them. Of course, that didn’t mean she wasn’t fully capable of murder, but for whatever reason, she had decided to cut me loose from that refrigerator. I couldn’t say for sure if she’d felt so generous after she’d knocked me unconscious in the Kellers’ laundry room, or what her plans had been for me as I lay there on the floor after, but I knew who it was that had stopped her.
It was Barney Feldman.
He had attacked her. He must have sensed I was in danger and put those sharp claws to good use—It was entirely possible that Barney Feldman had saved my life that morning.
I also had a very strong feeling that Daniela was the woman McKenzie had talked to, the woman who’d gone home with Levi the night he died. She’d tricked him into taking her home, and then she’d probably gotten him drunk so she could get her hands on that delivery list. And since she couldn’t very well tell the truth about where she’d gotten those scratches, she’d lied and said Levi had tried to rape her—knowing full well he wasn’t around to defend himself.
I reached over and picked up one of the computer printouts and read the heading across the top of it. “Sarasota Herald-Tribune—Siesta Key.” It was Levi’s delivery list, with the names and addresses of his entire route. There were about fifteen names that had been marked with a yellow highlighter, and at the end of each one was a notation: “Stop Delivery.”
That list was what Daniela had been after.
There’d be plenty of time to figure out the details later, but for now, it was slowly dawning on me that Levi must have been selling his delivery lists to criminals, who were then targeting any house whose paper had been stopped temporarily because they were on vacation … which meant their houses would be vacant and ripe for picking. That would explain the string of burglaries in the area that Paco and Tom had mentioned.
And I couldn’t prove it yet, but I now knew it was either Fiori or his goon or Daniela who had stabbed Levi, maybe even with the knife Daniela had used to cut me free. They had murdered him for the same reason they’d murdered poor Mr. Paxton: so he wouldn’t talk.
I remembered Mona telling me she knew Levi had been hanging out with some rather shady characters, one of them a “Mexican,” and that he drove a motorcycle. I had a feeling I knew exactly who that particular shady character was. He answered on the first ring.
“Dixie?”
I said, “Paco, I know you said this number was only for emergencies, but I’m pretty sure this qualifies.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s a long story but we need to hurry. When I was leaving Tom Hale’s place today, somebody jumped me. They hit me over the head and took me to a self-storage unit south of town, and then they locked me up in a refrigerator.”