Blues Highway Blues (A Crossroads Thriller Book 1) Page 4

  She nodded nervously but didn’t believe him. She’d seen too many men like Rabidoso in her lifetime to believe anything would be all right with someone like him in the house. “Señor?”

  Daniel could sense her concern but ignored it as he led his escorts past her to the stairs. He looked down at his hand, surprised that the massive amount of adrenaline pumping through his system had numbed the throbbing pain. He looked down at his hand. Adrenaline had numbed the throbbing pain. Or maybe it was the “quitcherbitchin” Vicodin that Moog had pressed on him during the trip. Halfway up, he stopped and turned back to her. “Maria, I need you to run out and pick up the dry cleaning.”

  “Dry cleaning?” she asked, her brow furrowed with confusion. “You no have dry cleaning, Mr. Daniel.”

  The murderous odd couple on either side of him looked hard at Daniel, letting him know he’d wandered dangerously close to crossing their invisible line. He knew and understood, but he couldn’t be frightened out of making this play. Before anyone could say anything to the contrary, he called out again, sharper this time. “I have some things at the dry cleaners. I want you to go pick them up. Now.”

  She waved him off. “I go after my story. Five minutes.”

  “Now!” he repeated, his voice as sharp as she’d ever heard it. “You’ll go now!”

  “All right, all right,” she called back, before muttering under her breath a string of Spanish obscenities about him and his cohorts. She waited until he’d resumed his ascent before she turned back to the television to rejoin her stories.

  Daniel climbed the rest of the stairs, two flights of steel twisted at odd angles in their ascent like something out of an M.C. Escher etching and then led them down a long corridor to the room he used as his office. It was an impressive space, with a curved wall of glass at the far end through which the Pacific could be seen in the distance. The other walls were strewn with all sorts of musical memorabilia, concert posters, and framed autographed photos of musicians who had crossed Daniel’s professional path at one time or another.

  There were also a number of guitars hung up for display. A 1955 Gretsch White Falcon. A Gibson L-5 that had once belonged to Hank Garland. A Rickenbacker 360 12-string. A butterscotch 1953 Telecaster. And a Gibson Kalamazoo, the prize of the lot.

  Moog stood admiring the collection. “You play?”

  With other things on his mind, it took Daniel a moment before he realized the question was meant for him. He looked up at the instruments, pausing as if he needed some time to remember the answer. “I did. You know, when I was first starting out. Now I just collect them as invest—”

  “No one gives a fuck,” Rabidoso interrupted. “All we want is the money.”

  All anybody ever wanted was the money.

  Crossing the room to a framed black velvet painting of Elvis—the fat and sweaty period—Daniel pulled it open like a cabinet door and revealed a safe exactly as he’d described.

  Daniel took a deep breath.

  He wasn’t agonizing over losing the money as the other two naturally assumed. No, he was trying to prepare himself mentally for what he had to do once he opened the door.

  “Come on, come on,” Rabidoso prodded. “Let’s go.”

  Daniel nodded and then took another deep breath. Delay wasn’t part of the plan. If it was going to work, he had to act quickly. He knew this, but still couldn’t shake his reluctance. It wasn’t that he was scared, not really. Not for himself anyway. It was just that he’d never killed anyone before.

  He hadn’t even really thought about killing anyone before. There may have been a time or two during the worst part of the divorce when the liquor and pills had set his mind off wandering into the darkness like a misguided pilgrim, and he’d momentarily flirted with the prospect of killing the punk who’d stolen his wife, but he’d never really seriously or soberly thought about actually taking someone else’s life. Not really.

  Now he was planning to take two.

  All through the long night, he’d spent the endless hours of the drive west making a plan, and then walking through it in his mind. Over and over. And never once had he questioned his resolve.

  Now, however, with the time at hand, he began to question whether he could really follow through. He told himself he had to. But telling himself was a long way from getting it done.

  His hand reached for the tumbler and he turned it twice to the left.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Rabidoso objected. “I thought you said the safe was voice activated.”

  Daniel offered a sly smile. “I also told you I’d owned a pair or two of leather pants before, remember?”

  “Whoa, slow your roll, fool!” Moog seemed concerned about the turn of events. “You fucking lied to us?”

  “I got myself off that balcony,” Daniel admitted. “I did what I had to do. If I hadn’t tricked you was there any way I was walking out of this?”

  Moog thought about it…and then smiled. “Fuck, no. We woulda dumped your ass in the desert.” He smiled more broadly. “Good for you, man.”

  Daniel was relieved to see the big man’s grin.

  “But if you fucking lie to me again, I’m going to turn you over to this crazy Mexican motherfucker.”

  “Yeah,” Rabidoso concurred, until the words settled in on him. “Hey!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the big man told his unwanted partner and then turned his attention to Daniel. “However you open the fucking thing, open it and let’s get going. It’s been a long fucking night.”

  Daniel set back to work and when the final turn produced an audible click in the mechanism he let a skittish little laugh escape past his lips. “Ta-da!”

  Neither of the henchmen closely watching him seemed particularly impressed. There was no more stalling. It was now or never.

  Daniel tried to act nonchalantly, like there was nothing extraordinary about being kidnapped by hired killers, like it was perfectly natural to be blowing them away. He tried to act like he wasn’t afraid of any of it, but his trembling hand made a liar out of him. He slowly pulled the safe door open as he offered his captors a smile, hoping it would distract them from the final part of his plan, the part where he shot them both dead.

  Inside the safe was all of the money Daniel had left in the world. Just north of a million, he’d put the cash stash together a dollar or two at a time—sneaking some here, stealing some there—over his twenty-odd years in the music business. A trust fund he’d hoped he’d never have to raid.

  Besides the money, the only other item in the safe was a Ruger semiautomatic 9mm. Daniel had locked the pistol away as a suicide precaution; ironically, it was now part of the plan to save his life.

  He’d worked the plan out in his head: He would reach into the safe like he was going for the money but pick up the pistol instead. As soon as his fingers touched the steel, there would be a fleeting instant when the advantage of surprise would be his. In that single moment two hardened killers would pay a steep price for underestimating what he was capable of when his back was put to the wall. In that split second, he would turn from the safe and shoot them both dead.

  Daniel took one last deep breath and mentally walked through the plan a final time, step by step: Pick up gun. Turn. Slide the safety off (Don’t forget!). Find targets. Moog was off to his right, still looking at the guitars. Rabidoso was ten feet behind him, off to his left. Squeeze the trigger. Squeeze! Don’t pull it! Squeeze!

  He took a deep breath. He was ready.

  He wondered what it would be like when it happened. Would it be like the movies? Would they die quickly and quietly? Somehow he knew it wouldn’t be anything like that at all. It was going to be worse. Much worse.

  Stop it!

  It was him or them. Survival.

  He reached into the safe…and was caught completely off guard.

  The scene had played out in his head a thousand times. Probably more. And in all those brief mental rehearsals, he’d never—not once—opened the safe and disc
overed all of his money was gone. All of it. Just. Gone.

  It couldn’t be, of course. There was no way a million dollars could’ve just disappeared. It simply couldn’t have happened.

  And yet the safe was empty. Absolutely empty. Absolutely, completely empty.

  Nothing. Not a thing. Except for the Ruger.

  And a CD.

  A CD?

  He picked up the plastic jewel case and turned it over slowly, examining it with all the wonder and disbelief of some isolated aboriginal tribesman who’d just discovered it like a gift from the gods dropped from the sky. It was impossible. And yet there it was in his hand: a silver CD on which someone had written in black Sharpie. “The Blues Highway Blues/Dockery Plantation.”

  The whole situation was so surreal and Daniel’s disbelief was so completely overwhelming that it seemed as if time itself had been stopped. He turned back from the empty safe in what felt like an exaggerated slow motion, like drowning in glycerine. Each scene moved frame by frame, with all of the voices behind him slowed down until the individual words were garbled and lost in thick bottom depths of bass. The words being shouted sounded something like, “Heeeeeeeeeeeee’s gooooot aaaaaaa gun!”

  It was only that “gun” part Daniel heard with absolute clarity.

  And by then it was too late.

  Daniel held up his hands. “No!” As he did, he realized he was still holding the CD in his hand. In that one moment, Daniel realized neither man would be able to differentiate between the mysterious jewel case and the pistol, which he’d foolishly left in the otherwise empty safe. “It’s not a gun!” And even as he was shouting it, he knew what was coming. There just wasn’t time to stop it.

  Rabidoso pulled the Colt 9mm from the low-slung waistband of his baggy jeans and drew down on Daniel, who instinctively dove to the ground as five quick shots zinged over his head.

  There would’ve been three more, but the weapon jammed. “Coño!” the pint-size assassin screamed as he furiously tried to pull the slide back.

  Daniel recognized that brief moment of silence as his cue to get up and get moving. He sprang to his feet and ran toward the double doors that led out onto the deck—not with any plan in mind—but like a wild animal caught in a corner who sees a way out.

  Holstered under Moog’s massive arm was a pistol as big as he was—a chromed Desert Eagle. While he was no quick draw, when that hammer fell it sounded like a clap of thunder from the gods, and the room’s curved glass wall instantly dissolved into a shower of falling NanaWall.

  Daniel ran straight through the crystalline downpour and out onto the deck as a second shot from Moog’s .50 rang out, but his escape was short-lived. A metal railing ringed the deck and the only way off it was a fifteen-foot drop to the brush-covered slope of the canyon below. He was still trapped, he’d just traded cages.

  He turned back over his shoulder, thinking he might be able to get back into the house. Instead, Daniel saw the big man pulling up his oversized pistol and bracing to take a third shot.

  There’s no bravery in not wanting to die, no cunning in following a simple mammalian survival instinct. Without a thought, Daniel hopped over the deck railing. There might not be anywhere to go, but whatever awaited him on the other side was better than standing on the deck and giving Moog a target he couldn’t miss.

  It took longer to fall those fifteen feet than Daniel would’ve thought. There was plenty of time to anticipate the fractures and dislocations he knew he was about to suffer, to chastise himself for having done something so stupid. He tried to brace himself for impact, but hit the ground with an umph and then tumbled forward, a floppy pile of flesh and bone, rolling over once or twice before coming to a stop.

  A very practical person had gone over the railing, but a true believer had landed in the dirt: he didn’t have any of the fractures, dislocations, lacerations, punctures, or serious abrasions he’d been expecting. He was absolutely fine—and aware he probably shouldn’t have been.

  Beside him on the ground was the mysterious CD case, also unbroken. Daniel wasn’t sure where the jewel box had come from, but he knew it was the only link to whoever had taken his money. He picked it up and tucked it into his shirt.

  “I got him!” Moog’s voice boomed, as powerful and loud as the sidearm dangling at his side. Daniel looked up at where he’d fallen from and there was the big man at the railing pointing down toward him. “I got him.”

  A second later a shot bit at the ground near Daniel’s head. He flinched instinctively then looked back to the deck to find Rabidoso with his un-jammed pistol still smoking in his hand. “Like hell! He’s alive!”

  Daniel sprang to his feet, but the grading of the slope was too steep for anything that didn’t have horns and hooves. With his very first step he pitched forward, hit the ground on his right shoulder, and then began to roll uncontrollably.

  Rocks and brush scraped and cut him with every revolution he made. He built up speed quickly, rolling faster and faster until he was spinning through a painful blur: Rocks. Rocks. Sage scrub. Rocks. Dirt. Deerweed. Rock. Deerweed. Sage scrub. Rock. Rocks. Rock.

  And then he was falling free. Just for an instant.

  When he landed again, it wasn’t on desert brush. The ground he hit was hard, cold, and black. He recognized it immediately as the drive lane of the northbound Pacific Coast Highway. Dizzy and disoriented, Daniel looked up and saw nothing but a set of tires and an oversized chromed truck grille coming straight at him.

  There was no time to run. His body tensed and he only barely managed to roll away onto the highway’s shoulder before the Hummer sped past. The truck’s horn blared and whoever was overcompensating behind the wheel screamed out, “Asshole!”

  His legs were shaky and unsteady, but Daniel forced himself to his feet. He looked out at cars rolling past, trying to gauge speed and traffic patterns like he was a small amphibian trapped in a life-size Frogger game.

  One after another: a Mercedes sedan, then a Prius and a Wrangler. A Lexus and a Mustang convertible. There was no end in sight. And nowhere to go.

  Behind him was a hill he couldn’t climb and two killers waiting for him at the top even if he could have. To his left was the base of his driveway, from which he expected his BMW to come racing after him soon enough. To his right was just more highway, where the killers driving his car would catch him easily enough.

  With nowhere else to go, Daniel looked hopefully to the other side of the highway as the only place of refuge. The distance wasn’t that great, no more than a couple hundred feet, but given his current condition it might as well have been a million. His wobbly legs wouldn’t let him dodge the oncoming traffic across six lanes, no matter how great his motivation to get over there. He tried to flag down a passing car, but the shocking sight of a disheveled man with his left hand wrapped in blood-stained gauze didn’t motivate any of the passing motorists to stop.

  And then he turned. It wasn’t a specific sound or movement; he simply sensed something behind him. He looked up the steep slope, all the way back up to his house, and there was Moog doing his best to make a controlled descent of the ground Daniel had just tumbled down.

  The big man had not been designed by his creator for mountaineering. He tried to move nimbly, but his muscular bulk wasn’t balanced for that sort of terrain and his fine Italian shoes weren’t ideal footwear for making the mountainous descent. Looking like a drunken grizzly on a Slip ‘N Slide, he was forced to scoot most of the way on his formidable backside. The whole scene might have been funny in a YouTube-worthy sort of way if that big, bad bear wasn’t headed down—with a .50-caliber pistol in his paw.

  A Range Rover sped past Daniel. Then a Ford F-150 towing a landscaping trailer. An Audi A4 followed way too closely by a Celica with Oregon plates.

  Daniel was desperately aware he had to do something before Moog reached the bottom of the hill. Still, a corpse is a corpse. Ending up as a hood ornament wasn’t any better than becoming sidewalk pizza after a sixty-fi
ve-story fall or getting perforated with a .50 slug. In the end, it was all just dead.

  The cars kept coming. So did Moog. Time was running out. Daniel had to do something. Just do something, he told himself.

  Daniel looked down the line of traffic and saw the next car to pass him would be a Lotus Elise being driven cautiously by a gray-haired man who’d obviously addressed his impending mortality by signing lease papers. The tiny sports car gave Daniel an absolutely idiotic idea. A plan with almost no chance of working and every probability of getting him killed. Still, with Moog sliding closer, a stupid idea was better than none at all.

  With a deep breath but no second thought, Daniel stepped out onto the highway and directly into the path of the oncoming Lotus.

  Unsure whether to brake hard or swerve around the mad man in the center of his lane, the startled driver made the mistake of doing both—at the same time. A heartbeat later, the shiny yellow sports car started spinning like a hand-finished fiberglass dreidel, crossing across all three northbound lanes and skidding right past Daniel. After four and a half full revolutions, the Elise came to a suspension-shaking stop and the driver probably breathed a sigh of relief thinking he’d avoided a more serious incident.

  The Lotus’s driver had, but the motorists behind him weren’t so fortunate. A split second later there was a catastrophic chain reaction. A cacophonous symphony of squealing tires built quickly to a crescendo of collisions, punctuated by the high tenor of shattering glass and the percussive pops of metal hitting metal. Within thirty seconds the northbound lanes of the PCH had become completely impassable.

  “I’m so sorry,” Daniel said to the moaning driver as he ran up to the Lotus. “I know I’ve just made this a really shitty day. And I hate to make it worse. But I need your car.”

  “What?” The driver suspected he might be lapsing into shock, but even that didn’t explain such a bizarre request. “What the hell are you—”

  “I need you to get out of the car.” Daniel pulled open the door like a valet waiting on a celebrity outside the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Please.”