Bombed Page 16

  But most of the time that wasn’t what they’d talked about at all. No, all they’d wanted to talk about was Wes!

  “There’s nothing to say about him except he’s DEA!” she’d told them, several times, and even now she sometimes screamed it here in the car.

  But Russ had said, “That’s only his job. You shouldn’t judge a person by his job. Did you know I used to work for DuPont?”

  “It’s true,” Char had chimed in. “Russ sold himself to the Dark Side. He made this peculiar plastic.”

  Here Annie had been trying to get it through their drug-addled brains that they needed to be on some kind of red alert, that things had gone way beyond what she’d told them before, and they kept going on like that, the two of them relaxing on their porch again, nonchalantly sipping iced tea and taking Wes’s side!

  “You tried to brain him with a guitar? That must’ve been hard on the guitar,” said Char.

  “I hope Michael can fix it. But he was blocking the door!”

  “Because he was trying to tell you something,” said Russ.

  “He was trying to tell me Michael’s a bomber!”

  “Well, that’s just silly,” said Char.

  “And I knew he could beat me at hand-to-hand combat. I feel bad about the guitar.”

  “Well, I’m glad of that,” said Char.

  “I still think you overreacted,” said Russ.

  “I had to get away from him!”

  “I’m afraid we’ve damaged you with this job. Made you overly defensive,” said Char.

  “Also, losing your parents so young. And even before that, the way they left you so much. I’m afraid you have a trust issue,” said Russ.

  Annie had seen a shrink only that morning. She’d had enough shrink talk. “But I was right not to trust him. Didn’t you get that part? The DEA part?”

  No, it didn’t seem they had. In fact, at one point Char had said, “I know you’ve fallen for some egocentric bastards in the past, so it’s hard to trust yourself. But sometimes we sense something in a person that our rational mind doesn’t see. I haven’t met this Wes, but even I’m sensing something good in him. Just a little hidden right now under his cop job.”

  Russ’s comment: “When she says that sort of crap, it’s her spirit animal speaking through her, which I have come to believe is a tree frog.” But then when he was hugging Annie good-bye, he’d whispered in her ear, “When you finally meet the right man, that’s not the time to get your panties all in a knot over some minor detail.”

  Minor detail!

  Now it was dusk, and the headlights of Michael’s old car were a weak and unsteady yellow. Whenever she had to stop for a stop sign and the engine dropped to idle, they went so dim the car seemed likely to sputter and die. Michael was probably right not to drive it anymore.

  And she wouldn’t be driving it if Wes hadn’t lied his way into her life and put her and two of her favorite people in jeopardy.

  How could they even dream he might be the right man!

  She would write some more depressing songs, songs so bad she wouldn’t even play them for her band. Then she would never think of him again.

  Except when she got home, there he was on her couch.

  *

  “What the hell are you doing still here?” she yelled. “I told you to leave!”

  “I left for a while,” he said.

  “Right! You chased me!” The guy was shameless. He was listening to her stereo as if he still lived here—an old Elvis Costello album which at least fit, the watching the detectives part.

  But he turned it off. As if she wanted to hear what he had to say. “Yeah, I chased after you because I love you, remember?”

  “Wrong. You’ve been chasing me because you’re spying on me.” And she went to go see her uncle. “Get out!” she shouted over her shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you to get out!”

  Michael wasn’t at his computer. She headed for his bedroom.

  Wes was right behind her, following her down the hall. “I don’t think I’m a spy,” he said. “That’s more CIA, or NSA. Or FBI, who put the bugs in your house. Which is what I’ve got to talk to you about.”

  She turned to glare at him. “My house is bugged?”

  “Not anymore. I pulled them again. But that’s not what’s important.”

  “My house was bugged?”

  “You’re still not listening to me. Michael’s in serious trouble, and now he’s gone.”

  That stopped her there in the hall. “Where’s he gone?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  She was standing too close to him—his chest, his shoulders, and his blue eyes, which he was obviously trying to make look sincere. Like a blue-eyed Cocker Spaniel.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said. “The FBI were here today. They think your uncle’s a terrorist.”

  The eyes didn’t fool her a bit, but she was immediately aware of an infuriating hormonal rush while more rational parts of her brain were annoyed by his height and strength. She’d gotten by him before only by sacrificing a guitar.

  “It’s got to be due to his new friends,” he said. “They must have convinced him to help them build a bomb.”

  “Back up,” she said.

  “Sure. Okay.” He backed away. He backed all the way to the living room and settled deep into one of the overstuffed chairs as if to make himself smaller and less threatening.

  Which was also infuriating. She wanted to yell at him more. She wanted to yell at Russ and Char more about their romantic bullshit. She wanted him out out out!

  But he said, “There’s a note, although it doesn’t make any sense,” and he pointed to some cardboard on the coffee table.

  So she snatched up the cardboard. It was the lid of a pizza box complete with stains of red sauce and a few dangling threads of cheese, with writing all over it.

  “Did you hear what I said about the FBI? They were here, in your house, while you and Michael were gone. They were putting bugs in your house because they’ve been investigating Michael.”

  “Shut up. I’m trying to read this,” she said.

  Someone had written up one side and down another of the pizza box lid in an impressive display of lack of spatial reasoning. Plus they’d written in a variety of styles, some backhand, some thick first-grader caps. Lots of indecision was evident too with multiple scratch-outs, such as “toes” in the sentence “We’ll cut off his toes” had been scribbled out to be replaced by “fingers,” then “nose,” and finally “ears.”

  But eventually she’d twisted the thing around until she’d reached the horrific conclusion. “Michael’s been kidnapped!”

  “But that doesn’t make sense, does it?” said Wes. “It seems more likely he’s gone to join his new friends. So they can bomb whatever they’re planning to bomb. The note is only a cover to explain why he’s gone.”

  “Michael didn’t write this.”

  “Well, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it? Whoever wrote it was trying to disguise his handwriting.”

  “Whoever wrote this can’t spell and is insane.”

  “Not arguing that. If Michael’s a good speller, then it was one of his bomber friends.”

  Annie sank onto the couch, the gooey pizza lid in her lap, trying to take this in. Michael wasn’t here. This note didn’t make sense, but it was gruesome and frightening. And the FBI had been here because they were investigating him not her?

  “You’re not going to convince me Michael’s a bomber,” she said.

  “That’s the way I felt too,” said Wes. “And my first thought when those agents came here was that they were working with us. But they weren’t. In fact, they didn’t know anything about me and . . . you know . . .”

  She glanced up to find him looking at least halfway embarrassed by his investigation of her—plus sincere, concerned, broad-shouldered, and lean.

  “Of course, they wouldn’t tell me exactly what they were doing,” he said. “They couldn’t, and I
’m not supposed to be telling you any of this. But they did say they were working with a Joint Terrorism Task Force, and you’ve seen the websites where Michael’s gone.”

  Okay, she had to admit the FBI might think her uncle was planning a bomb—if they could monitor a person’s usage of the Internet the way some people thought they could. Still . . .

  She held up the pizza lid. “So why does this note ask for ten million dollars in gold?”

  Wes kind of shrugged while still managing to look sincere and concerned. “The terrorists are always needing funding. They seem to like gold.”

  “Michael knows I don’t have any gold.”

  “Like I said, that note doesn’t make a lot of sense. But maybe it’s not supposed to. Maybe it’s here just to send us off on some wild goose chase.”

  “Us?” She felt herself stiffen.

  “Can’t you believe me? I’m telling you all this because I’m on your side now, and Michael needs our help or he’s going to get hurt. We need to find him.”

  Then just for a moment, with him sitting all the way on the other side of the room shrunken down in that chair—but still apparently reaching her with pheromones that lit up parts of her body she’d come to enjoy during these past few weeks and wasn’t looking forward to turning off again—plus actually acting embarrassed by his DEA work, she did believe him. And it felt good. He cared about her. He cared about her uncle. She didn’t have to deal with this grisly thing all by herself, the way she’d had to deal with everything ever since her parents died—and often before that.

  But no, Wes was a professional liar. He’d been just using her!

  “I need to find my uncle,” she said. “I need to rescue him from the kidnappers. You are out of my life. And if you come chasing after me again, don’t try to claim it has anything to do with love.”

  Chapter 22

  Wes thought he’d done a much better job this time. He’d told Annie everything he knew. She’d seemed to more or less listen.

  She still hated him.

  Maybe it was the resulting sense of hopelessness that kept him in that chair while Annie headed for the garage. He could have jumped up and stopped her.

  Of course, that would have just made her hate him more.

  But he stayed uncertain what to do for only another twenty seconds. Then he ran out the front door. He dashed across the street, and when the garage door began to roll up, he ducked behind a garbage can. He did a broken run with what cover he could find, a few bushes, a car in a driveway, several more garbage cans, to the blue Ford pickup parked two houses down. As Annie backed out of the garage, he slipped into the passenger seat. “Follow that Beetle,” he said.

  The US Fish and Wildlife kid looked over at him clearly baffled and annoyed. “You’re DEA. Since when do you tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t our paychecks come from the same place? I can’t use my car for this.”

  Annie was heading down the street, but driving at a normal speed for the neighborhood. Because she could see his BMW wasn’t following her.

  “Go! Go! Go!” shouted Wes.

  *

  Sometimes there were headlights behind Annie, but they were the high wide lights of a truck. It wasn’t Wes’s coupe. He had given up. She became aware of a painful sick empty feeling in her gut.

  Because her uncle had been kidnapped!

  It couldn’t be because some part of her wanted Wes to keep chasing her.

  At least she’d told only her band members her uncle had gold. There had never been any reason to tell anyone else a bizarre story like that since she was careful not to live a flashy life that would make anyone else question where her money came from.

  So the psychopath who had kidnapped her uncle, and written that brutally disturbing and at the same time lame ransom note, must have talked to one of the members of her band.

  Buzzard’s house was the closer one, and his car was parked out front. Of course, that didn’t mean much since she didn’t think the car ran. Still, someone seemed to be home. Dim light showed through the front window’s shabby drapes, and when she walked up to the door, she could hear what sounded like the explosions of a video game.

  She rang the bell.

  Suddenly the lights went out. The video game went off. Buzzard had blown a circuit breaker?

  She rang the bell again and heard a melodic organ-music chime that didn’t fit Buzzard but probably fit the old house. Now no other sounds came from inside.

  And no one came to the door.

  The only explanation for this was that Buzzard was in there naked with some woman. His roommate’s red sports car wasn’t here, and it was a Friday night, so he and his date were playing video games in some unclothed state, possibly for sexual favors.

  The images this brought to mind almost made her turn around and go back to her car. Except she needed to talk to him! She beat on the door.

  More silence inside. Did he think she hadn’t seen the lights or heard the video game? The bastard could get dressed!

  She raised her fist to beat on the door some more.

  But then . . . she didn’t really want to wait for Buzzard to get dressed. Or deal with his hysterical and also naked date. She could talk to Gary and Mercedes first.

  She let her hand drop.

  If after she’d talked to Gary and Mercedes, she still felt the need to talk to Buzzard, she could come back.

  *

  “No!” said the Fish and Wildlife kid. “This is as far as I go!”

  Wes could see Annie getting back into the VW even though clearly someone was home at Buzzard’s house. But why had she come here? He didn’t believe Michael had ever had anything to do with Buzzard.

  “I’ll pay you. I’ll get authorization,” he told the FWS kid. Annie was driving off again! “I’ll fill out any forms you want.”

  “No. I should never have brought you this far. I’m supposed to stay with the house!”

  “What do you think the house is going to do? No one’s there right now.”

  “I told you, I can’t tell you.”

  “You’re letting her get away!”

  Annie had already disappeared around a corner while this bozo was pulling into a driveway, then backing to make a U-turn. Wes grabbed the wheel and swung the truck into a garbage can. That can fell into another can. It was apparently garbage day here. There was a whole row of color-coded cans that people had rolled out to the curb. The clattering domino effect did just what he’d hoped.

  The fool stopped the truck. He said, “Look what you made me do.”

  He was clearly the product of some environmentally concerned college. He’d never been a soldier or he would have immediately recognized this as a diversion tactic. He jumped out of the truck and started straightening cans, picking up the spilled garbage, and even trying to sort the recycle into the right-colored cans.

  “Thanks!” Wes called as he slid across the console into the driver’s seat.

  Chapter 23

  Samantha, the leggy brunette, was swaying slightly out of synch to one of the raunchier songs of David Allan Coe that blasted from the speakers hung in the trees. She was also grinding her crotch into the thigh of some guy that Hector was pretty sure was married to the short, dumpy woman who had at least four kids. Short and dumpy didn’t seem to mind. According to what he’d heard since he’d stumbled onto this redneck camp this afternoon, Samantha was suffering through a difficult divorce, and the other women were so sympathetic they were letting her dry-hump all their men.

  Besides, Dumpy was busy tending at least three barbecues, dishing out ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, whatever, and yelling at one kid or another to quit putting his hamburger down where the dogs could get it, or quit chasing his sister so close to the campfire, or stop beating up on the boys. One scrawny dirt-smudged girl was terrorizing all the boys.

  Then there was Lettie—Hector believed that was her name—who had the most humongous boobs he’d ever seen, and they always looked just about to flop rig
ht out of her halter top. Not that she was another Samantha. She wasn’t shoving those boobs into anyone’s face. In fact, she spent most of her time at the barbecues too and yelling at kids, so more than likely some of the little varmints were hers.

  Still, Hector considered this one of the most entertaining assignments he’d ever had. He’d convinced his boss that if he had a KTM like Annie’s, he could comb these woods more effectively, and he’d been rewarded with a great motorcycle and camping gear. He hadn’t found the lab, but he’d had several exhilarating rides up and down gnarly trails and found this camp, and as soon as he’d brought out a bottle of tequila, he’d been accepted as just another fun-loving addition to the party.

  Now he held down one of the canvas chairs that circled the fire, which was huge, piled high with saw log sized rounds. There were a couple of ratty couches too, but they seemed to belong to the dogs. RV trailers ringed the camp kind of like a wagon train. Strings of Christmas lights looped from trailer to trailer. And in between the David Allan Coe that no one but him seemed to think was inappropriate for the swarming ten and younger crowd, he heard a number of Annie’s songs. So he could claim he was still on her trail. At least these people were fans of hers.

  He hadn’t yet seen any LSD, but he’d seen some weed, in fact taken a toke or two from a blunt that had been passed around. Unlike his tight-assed partner Wes, he thought it was okay to partake a little in the interest of blending in. The drug of choice here though was clearly alcohol, in its many forms. There was beer, of course, and bourbon. The tequila he’d contributed had been polished off in two rounds of the fire. But there was also Southern Comfort, Bristol Cream, even Amaretto. He’d always considered those girly drinks, but these brawny rednecks seemed to like to goad each other into tossing back that sweet shit.

  He figured he might as well stick around until morning if only to be amused by the nauseating aftermath.

  Samantha moved on to another guy, and Hector noticed headlights sweeping through the trees.