The Other Lady Vanishes (Burning Cove #2)(51)

With luck, an innocent person would be easily frightened off. Who, in his or her right mind, wouldn’t run from a certifiably crazy woman holding a gun?

She listened closely, hoping to hear the muffled rumble of an accelerating car engine telling her that whoever had stopped had left the scene. A Good Samaritan would likely take off once he realized the occupants of the car were gone. But if the driver of the car was the person who had drugged Jake, he might decide to conduct a search of the beach.

A searcher looking for a hallucinating man and an escaped mental patient would probably use a flashlight, she thought.

She peered back through the narrow tunnel. She glimpsed the weak beam of a flashlight sweeping back and forth. The searcher was still up on Cliff Road.

She knew the roar of the surf would drown out the sound of their voices; nevertheless, she went up on tiptoe and spoke directly into Jake’s ear.

“The person who drugged you is searching the beach. He’s looking for us.”

“For you,” Jake said with great certainty. “The monster is looking for you, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I think so. I’m hoping he won’t come down to the beach. If he does, we must be prepared. He might have a gun.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jake said, blithely unconcerned now.

He held up the fountain pen. The handsome barrel gleamed in the moonlight.

“Let’s hide behind those rocks,” she whispered.

The boulders offered some concealment, she thought. They were the only hope if the searcher came through the tunnel.

“No,” Jake said.

“Jake, please, this is important.”

“I’ll take care of you,” he said.

Without another word he turned and walked to the mouth of the rock tunnel.

“Jake, where are you going?” she hissed.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to kill the monster.”

“Jake, no. We can talk about killing the monster later. Right now we have to stay here on this side of the tunnel. You might get hurt.”

“Nope,” he said. “The monster can’t see me. The moonlight makes me invisible.”

“Damn it, Jake, come back here.”

She rushed forward and grabbed his arm again, but he gently pried off her fingers and disappeared into the tunnel. She reminded herself that she was the one with the gun. All Jake had was a fountain pen.

Unable to think of anything else to do, she followed him.

When they reached the far side of the opening in the rock, there was no sign of a flashlight beam. She heard the rumble of an accelerating car engine. Up on Cliff Road headlights lanced the darkness. The vehicle drove off in the direction of Burning Cove. Relief left her feeling oddly weak.

“It’s all right, Jake,” she said. “The monster is gone.”

“Good.” He put the fountain pen back inside his jacket. “Now we can follow the moonlight road and find the answers.”

“The answers are at home,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”

He didn’t argue. She took his hand and led him up to the road. Jake’s speedster was the only vehicle in sight.

He contemplated the car with a thoughtful air.

“You should drive,” he said.

“That is a very good idea.”





Chapter 30


The most dangerous time in a blackmail operation was the moment when the transaction took place, Thelma Leggett thought.

It was two o’clock in the morning. She stood inside a deserted hot dog stand, Zolanda’s pistol in one hand, and watched the darkened ticket booth at the entrance of the old seaside amusement park.

The park had closed a few years earlier, one more victim of the lousy economy. It had never been as grand as the boardwalk amusement park farther up the coast in Santa Cruz, but when she was a kid, it had seemed like a magical place. Tonight the moonlight shone down on the hulking skeletons of the great wheel and the roller coaster. The rides and arcades that lined the old midway were now deserted ruins. The wooden boardwalk was rotting into the sand.

She had chosen the ticket booth for the drop point because she knew the territory. When she was a little girl, her mother had often taken her to the amusement park in the summer when they came to the small town to visit her uncle. Tonight she had left her car parked a couple of blocks away on a dark side street where it was unlikely to be noticed. She had spotted the opening in the fence at the back of the park that morning when she had set out to choose a safe location for the payoff.

She and Zolanda had developed a variety of secure payoff strategies. The ticket booth had the single most important advantage that they had considered necessary for success in the extortion business—it could be observed from a safe distance. The old hot dog stand in which she stood was just one of a sprawling jumble of tumbledown shacks and arcades that littered the grounds of the amusement park.

A car cruised slowly past the sagging gates at the front of the park. It was the first vehicle to drive down the street in the nearly two hours that she had been waiting. Arriving early to ensure that there were no surprises was another important element of the payoff procedure.