Part 8 (1/2)

CHAPTER TWELVE.

As we raced north up the 101, I stared out my darkened window, watching rows of car dealers.h.i.+ps turn into rows of condos turn into rows of outlet stores turn into rows of planted fields.

Everything I looked at was shaded in black as if all of California were in mourning. As if it were all noir. Then the ocean appeared, as bleak as a nightmare. Surfers in wet suits, sleek as seals, waited on their boards for the next murky wave. These two men couldn't be stupid enough to hurt me. After all, my abduction was captured on tape for everyone to see. But why take me in the first place? Did it have something to do with what I knew about Celia? Or was it Jenny Parson? I dug my fingers into the lush leather. I felt like I did when I was in bed at night. Very alone, very scared.

As we reached Santa Barbara, I watched the driver lift his cell phone to his ear, say a few words, then put it down. The limo curved off the freeway onto Cabrillo Boulevard, a street lined with hotels and palm trees on one side, and the ocean, volleyball courts, and palm trees on the other. I watched mothers and fathers pedaling, with Herculean effort, rented surreys filled with their kids along the pristine sidewalks. Though the windows were too dark for me to define colors, I knew the parents' faces would be red from their endeavor. And I envied these tourists their sunburned skin, their tired legs, their cranky children. They might go back home and get divorced and selfishly rip out the hearts of their kids, but right now they were pedaling with all their might for them.

Soon we turned into the Santa Barbara Harbor and Marina. Using a key card to open a barrier gate, the driver guided the car into a private lot. My body grew alert. I knew this was when I had to do something.

The driver opened the door for me. The minute my feet hit the pavement I screamed and tried to run. But Heath was out of the limo, grabbing my arm. With one hand he swung me around to him, then clamped the other hand on the back of my head and shoved my face into his chest, m.u.f.fling my voice. I could smell his freshly ironed white s.h.i.+rt and the soap he'd used. To anyone pa.s.sing I'd look like a woman crying or laughing intimately into her boyfriend's body. Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h.

I struggled, trying to push myself away.

Lowering his head, lips brus.h.i.+ng my ear, he said, ”Shut the f.u.c.k up, please.”

I raised my right thigh, preparing to kick him in the groin.

”And if you're thinking of kneeing me, I'll knock your standing leg out from under you so fast you won't know how you ended up on your a.s.s.”

The driver moved in on me, and I felt a hard jab in my lower back. I'd done enough cop shows to know the feel of a gun muzzle.

Heath removed his hand from my head. ”n.o.body is going to hurt you, I promise. So relax.” He was so sincere.

I glared up at him. ”Relax? With a gun in my back?”

”Jesus Christ, Gerald, put the pistol away,” he ordered the driver.

”You don't have to deal with him. I do,” the driver growled. ”I was told to deliver her, and that's what I'm doing. Walk.” He jabbed me harder.

”If you don't put it away I'm taking her back to Malibu, now.”

Gerald thought about this, then holstered his gun.

At least I knew they didn't want to kill me. For now. But why should I trust Heath? And who was 'him' Gerald had to deliver me to?

With my purse slung over his shoulder the chauffeur stood on one side of me, Heath on the other. They walked me past the Yacht Club, a gray weathered building that looked like a s.h.i.+p marooned on the sand. The teal-blue ocean s.h.i.+mmered with the noon sun. As we reached the public boardwalk, seagulls dipped and soared under the piercing blue sky. Boats of all shapes and sizes bobbled in their slips. Tourists, children, the homeless, and old salts mixed together. A tan woman, about my age, wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt, long skirt, and flip-flops grinned at me. I saw an opportunity. I flashed her my best eat-the-camera smile.

”Do I know you?” she asked.

”Yes. Would you like my autograph?”

Gerald shuffled his feet like a nervous horse. Heath was amused.

”Oh, I thought I knew you from high school. We're up here for the Camarillo High Reunion.” She looked more closely as if inspecting a piece of produce. ”Are you somebody?”

”Yes, I'm ...”

Before I could finish, Heath said in an easy seductive voice, ”Excuse us. She's had a little too much to drink.” Draping his arm over my shoulder, he winked at the woman, who actually winked back at him.

His fingers slid down and dug into my elbow. I gasped as pain shot through my arm and the two men forced me farther down the boardwalk.

”What were you going to do, write 'help me'?” A sardonic smile played on his lips.

”Something like that.” I tried to pull away, but his fingers pressed deeper into my skin and bone, and I stopped trying.

”You don't give up, do you?”

”Maybe you're just not used to women who fight back.”

”You don't have to fight me.”

We paused at another gate that led inside the marina. The driver unlocked it, and we started down the long dock. The water smelled of salt and gasoline. I peered around to see if there was anyone relaxing on their boats. But there were only pelicans ogling me from the tops of pylons, looking like old drunks, and sunburned FOR SALE signs tucked into portholes.

We came to a yacht, a little smaller than a Princess cruise s.h.i.+p, docked in a slip far from the other boats. At the top of the deck-stairs stood a man wearing a baby blue windbreaker with the sleeves rolled up, showing off his biceps and a tattoo running down his right arm. I kept telling myself that no harm could come to me in the Santa Barbara Marina-unless my captors decided to sail out of the marina.

The man reached down to take my hand, and now I could read his tattoo. It said: One Night With You. His jacket fell open revealing a gun tucked into his waistband. I whirled around. Heath pressed in on me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The gunman helped me up onto the yacht. Heath followed. The driver, my purse still slung over his shoulder, remained on the dock.

A bar with stools, lounge chairs, and built-in banquets filled the s.p.a.cious deck.

”She goes in alone.” The man blocked Heath's way.

”No, I go in with her.” Heath glanced down at the One Night With You tattoo on the guard's muscular arm. ”Finally got lucky, uh?”

The guard's neck stiffened, and his biceps flexed as if he had no control over them.

”He's waiting,” Heath reminded him.

Fierce resentment oozed from the man as he ushered us into a mahogany-paneled salon about the size of my house. The floors were dark wood, and rich Burgundy-colored drapes were pulled over large rectangular windows blocking the sun and the water from view. A crystal chandelier glowed from the beamed ceiling. Old oil paintings of someone's royal ancestors and their dogs hung on the walls. A dining room table surrounded by twenty matching Chippendale chairs took up the end of the room. I felt as if I had walked not onto a yacht but onto the set of an old Merchant Ivory film about the English upper cla.s.s.

A man in his sixties sat on a paisley velvet sofa. Tall and thin, ash-gray hair swept back from a face as bony and grim as a skeleton's. His long narrow chin ended in a goatee. Staring with red-rimmed, stone-colored eyes at a heavily draped porthole, the man seemed to not to know we were there. Heath leaned against the wall near the salon door. I remained standing, trying to control my fear, which was fighting for dominance with my anger. The tantrum-squawking of the seagulls outside punctuated the tense silence. The thug waited, his thick arms hanging down, fingers twitching.

Finally the man said to him, ”Leave.”

As he did he b.u.mped Heath's shoulder. Heath pretended not to notice.

The man continued, ”You found my daughter's body.”

”You're Mr. Parson?”