Fatal Justice (Jack Lamburt #1)(13)
But how? Why? Who knocked him out and tied him up? He remembered the big kid at the wench’s house, but he couldn’t be the law. Otherwise he’d be on his way to a holding cell, not wrapped in plastic and heading over to a hole in the ground off some backwoods trail. In his own SUV. How disrespectful.
Had he messed with the wrong guy? Unlikely. This sleepy little rat-fuck town had no made men in it. He’d checked with all his contacts to see if the guy he was gonna whack, a real estate developer with an art collection side business in the neighboring town of Cobleskill, had any connections. He didn’t, and this town was clean as a whistle.
He couldn’t say the same for the real estate developer. Eight months ago the sleazy little bastard sold him some artwork that turned out to be of questionable origin. So questionable that the FBI had come to have a little chat with Sam. Not only had the cheating bastard art dealer tried to pull one over on him, but he’d led the FBI to him.
Sammy was shrewd enough in his shady dealings to avoid convictions on most of the criminal charges that were brought against him, but that was a double-edged sword. It wouldn’t take much for the bosses to think that he’d stayed out of jail because he was a mole. A visit from the FBI was the last thing he needed, and dropping in on the art dealer unannounced was payback for his little FBI meet-and-greet. And while he was here, he’d help himself to some artwork. For his troubles and all.
He took a deep breath and sucked in plastic. He struggled to move his face around so that he could breathe, and was shocked to feel the plastic start to unravel around him. What? His captors hadn’t used duct tape to secure the plastic? Ha. What a bunch of fuckin’ amateurs!
He felt the vehicle decelerate, and the smooth pavement ended with a jolt. His whole body became airborne for a second before slamming down with thud. The bouncing of the vehicle picked up, and they slowed down to a near crawl. They must have gone off road, which meant they were getting close to the hole.
He mentally raced through some survival plans before settling on the one he thought offered him the best chance of success. He had always been good at spur-of-the-moment improvising, a trait he hoped would prove its value again in extending his life.
14
“Are you okay?” Mary Sue asked Harold. She cut through the electrical cord that bound his wrists and ankles to the chair.
“Yeah, I’m fine, just in shock.” He was shaking his head as if to wipe the slate of his memory clean. “Wow, that was close. Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
“Positive. Besides, we gave the sheriff our word.”
“I know, but he’s a freakin’ psycho.”
“He knows what he’s doing.”
“It’s fine until we get caught. Then we’ll get jail time for covering up a murder.”
She frowned. “You’re looking at it all wrong. We didn’t cover up anything. We just didn’t report an assault that occurred in my home. End of story.” She sliced through the last of his bonds. “There, all free. Now leave and never speak of this again.”
“But what about us?” Harold sniffled and looked like he was about to well up. “Can I still see you?” He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.
She slapped his arm away. “No, Harold, it’s over.” Her voice rose an octave.
“Why?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” She clenched her fists in anger, digging her nails into her palms. It was all she could do not to smack him in the face or kick him in the groin. She’d never in her life felt so little respect towards a living being as she felt now towards him. “That man was going to rape me and kill us both. You didn’t even put up a fight. You did nothing, Harold. You were going to let him! Get out and don’t ever contact me again.”
She held the front door open and Harold shuffled out, his body sagging in despair. She slammed the door behind him so hard that all the family portraits rattled against the wall. She sat down on the couch and buried her head in her hands and cried.
15
I pulled the big SUV out of Mary Sue’s driveway and up to my truck. I hopped out and reached into my glove compartment. I found the lead-shielded film bag that was originally made for protecting camera film from X-ray machines at airports. That didn’t fly anymore. Nowadays you couldn’t even get a Chapstick through security without a sideways glance from the X-ray operator.
Anyway, the reason I had this bag was to keep the locations of my burner phones away from prying eyes. Even though the cell phones were off, I knew that they could still be tracked, so I always kept a fully charged phone in the lead-shielded bag. One never knew when they’d need a burner phone.
I opened the bag and tossed Sam’s phone inside, then sealed it up. There was no cell signal here, but as I got closer to Summit, I’d be picked up by a cell tower, so I figured better safe than sorry. As far as Verizon or AT&T were concerned, Sam had driven along on Route 10 into a dead spot and never returned. They didn’t know how right they would be.
I grabbed my cleanup kit, which was nothing more than a Ziploc bag that held paper towels and hand sanitizer, and stuffed it in my back pocket. I locked my truck, jumped into the SUV, and threw it in drive.
It took me twenty minutes to reach my property in Eminence, and another thirty minutes to make my way through the tractor trail that connected my driveway to the back corner of my land, where it butted up against the million-plus acres of state-owned forest.