Never Again, Seriously Read online

  “And don’t forget Shivani’s back there trying to watch over the situation.”

  “He scares me too. I know you feel comfortable with him, but he’s not normal.”

  “He’s different, but I feel we can rely on him.”

  “No, I mean … he’s extremely intuitive, not that there’s something wrong with him.”

  “You told me about conjuring as a child. Like that?”

  “Kind of. I didn’t tell you everything. Sometimes I know what people are thinking, even hear it in my head, in their own voice. I never know when it’s going to happen. My sister says she’s heard my thoughts too.”

  “Could you hear the thought of that woman who tried to rob us? Is that why you already had your revolver out before she pulled a gun?”

  Sharon shook her head, eyes closed. “Please, let’s drop it for now. Maybe another time. I was trying to say I recognize something in him. It frightens me.” The swelling lump in her throat silenced her.

  She shredded a tissue with trembling fingers and leaned over to see the speed. “Why are you only going seventy? Everyone is passing.”

  “I don’t believe any police are looking for us, either from Miami or Lake Creed, at least as long as Detective Skaffe believes we’ll be back soon. By the way, I’m supposed to call and check in with him tomorrow. I’ll tell him we need to be away for a few more days.” Jake glanced at her. “I don’t want to attract attention from a cop out here on the road either. We have no reason to hurry.” He softened his tone. “Maybe you’re right. I’m going too slow.”

  “I was only asking.”

  Jake drummed his fingers on the wheel, nodding and humming.

  Sharon said, “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It sounded sort of like ‘Suspicious Minds.’ Elvis Presley.”

  “Sort of like? It’s exactly like.” Jake eased his tone of voice and said with a grin, “If I say so myself.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean it as a criticism.”

  “Okay. No offense. I guess the humming is a way of dealing with the tension. I was thinking about Shivani and his dancing. Did I tell you about that?”

  “At McDonald’s in Lake Creed? Yes, you did.”

  Jake glanced at her with narrowed eyelids. “Shivani thinks he’s a great dancer. Shuffling around like a chicken in shackles. I’d love to show him a thing or two.”

  “I can’t picture him as a chicken in shackles.” Her giggle broke off. What’s going on with Jake?

  “Enough about that.” Jake rubbed an eye. “I’m sorry. I’m being frivolous. Sometimes I act froggy when I’m stressed. I’m worried about tomorrow. We need to find a way to get out of this situation with the money.”

  “And Rachel.”

  “Of course. Above all, she mustn’t be hurt.”

  He eased the speed higher, to seventy-four. “A little faster is better. The way people drive, a cop might wonder why we’re sticking to the speed limit. Crazy.”

  Sharon nodded. “Are we going to stay somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I’d like to avoid stopping along the interstate. We’ll be on US 27 soon. I’m sure we can find something. Why don’t you Google hotels near Haines City? By the way, do you still have your little revolver?”

  “I do. Should we dig up that big pistol of Elmer’s?”

  “I don’t think we’ll need it, but we should have it just in case. Good idea, sweetie. We’ll do it before the bank opens tomorrow and go by the gun store to buy some extra ammo.”

  They found an off-brand motel near Haines City. Sharon eyed the one-story brick building, which had seen better days. The dimly lit parking lot was nearly empty. Jake went in to ask for a room facing the highway.

  In the room, Sharon looked around. “I expected this place to be dirty, but it’s clean and fresh.” Her face darkened. “What am I saying? My sister—” She choked, tears running down her reddened face. “She’s in danger, and I’m worried about cleanliness. Help me, Jake, I don’t know what to think, what to do.”

  Jake’s hands steadied her shaking shoulders. He pulled her close, her head on his chest. “I’m so sorry you’re hurting like this. I wish I could wave a magic wand. Let’s go to bed, and I’ll hold you. We’ll get her out of this, I promise.”

  Jake and Sharon were on the road by seven thirty a.m. After a fast-food breakfast, where Sharon attracted attention by sniffling and crumpling damp napkins between sobs, they both took coffee to go. Jake drove toward Lake Creed, trying and failing to think of something comforting to say.

  He yawned. “I hardly slept.”

  “I didn’t sleep at all.”

  Once they were out of developed areas, the highway was practically deserted, mostly bordered by groves, pastures, and woodland. Run-down businesses with unpaved parking lots punctuated the landscape. Lakes with undeveloped shorelines intermittently shone in the distance.

  Sharon made a wan smile. “This coffee’s not so bad, is it?”

  Jake felt something tugging in his chest. She’s trying to be brave. “Not bad at all, and it’s doing the job. Are you sure you can find Elmer’s pistol?”

  “If I can’t, I’ll let you have mine.”

  “It’s too small. I want something more substantial.”

  “I think I remember the street. It’s an old shell road off highway 29, nothing around. Now that I think about it, I can visualize the place where I buried it.”

  Jake recalled one of the locals telling him about the area, calling it “the land scam.”

  “Yeah, that road looks like it hasn’t been maintained since the development failed fifty years ago. High-pressure marketing of small lots in the middle of nowhere, sight unseen, to northerners, not that they didn’t deserve it. No houses there now, just sandy scrub torn up by ATVs.”

  He turned to Sharon. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Her face was puffy, and her eyes were red from crying. “Don’t stop talking. I need the distraction.”

  He touched her hand and waited before speaking. “Okay, so how will you find it?”

  “When I buried it, I found a line between two landmarks, and then another line that crossed close to the spot where I buried it. Is that called triangulation?”

  “That’s very clever, especially if it works.”

  “I’ll remember the landmarks when I see them.” Her voice softened. “Remember, Rachel and I are backwoods girls.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw her facing the window, shaking as she cried soundlessly.

  Jake parked the car on the edge of the road where Sharon indicated and slogged behind her, their shoes slipping on the sandhills. She pointed to a dead pine. Jake followed as Sharon walked a line from the pine tree toward a bald, discarded tire until she stopped, looking left and right. She raised her arms, pointing one hand toward a deep depression in the sand and the other toward a beer can.

  “This is it.”

  “Are you kidding? What if the beer can’s been moved? Or the tire, for that matter?”

  Sharon grimaced. “Look around, Jake. No one’s been here.”

  “What did you use to dig when you buried the gun?”

  “I took a metal cooking spoon from the house.”

  He plodded back to the car and rooted around inside, finally opening the trunk and unfastening a metal flange used to secure the spare. He waved it above his head and trudged back to Sharon. “This will do it, for sure.”

  Jake scraped sand from where she pointed, piling it high next to the hole. “Are you sure this is it?”

  Sharon looked at her landmarks and moved slightly to a different position. “It wasn’t as deep as that. Try a little more this way.”

  On the fourth try, they were rewarded with a soft thunk. Perspiration ran into Jake’s eyes when he bent over the excavation. Using his hands, he removed more sand
and held up the double sealed bags containing Elmer Leonardis’s pistol. He examined it carefully. “This is a Glock 40. I believe it could stop anyone with one shot, no matter where it hit. It’s an automatic with a big magazine. Dry as a bone.”

  On the way to the bank, after they’d stopped at Carey’s Guns and Ammo in Lake Creed, Jake took a side street toward the bank. They rolled down a few quiet blocks, stopping for the sign at each corner. Only once did a car cross in front of them. When the street dead-ended at a thoroughfare, he turned, and after half a block made another turn into the bank’s parking lot.

  Jake slowed to pull in a parking space. Sharon said in a panicked voice, “Look.” She pointed to the street. A familiar black sedan slowed as it went by, Detective Skaffe’s head turned in their direction. The black car stopped, and its backup lights came on. Jake accelerated through the parking space to an alley.

  “This isn’t good.” Jake kept an eye on the rearview mirror as the alley opened out to a street. He jerked the car to the right onto the street and turned right at the next two intersections. This put them back on the street where Skaffe had been when they first sighted him. “I don’t see him, do you?”

  “No, but what are you doing?”

  “I think he came through the parking lot and into the alley just after we turned out of sight. No lights, no siren, so I think—hope—he’s just curious, wondering why we didn’t tell him we’re back. Or maybe he’s not sure it’s us, since we’re in a different car. Keep your eyes peeled. Pray he doesn’t come back this way until we’re long gone. I’m going straight up this road. It goes through a residential area and then out on US 27. I’ll try to make it to the blind curve ahead before he thinks to check this direction.”

  Once away from town, Jake drove north on US 27. A few miles farther, he turned on an older two-lane highway that ran parallel. Jake ducked his head to look up at the clouds. “This drizzle’s turning to rain.” Raindrops pelted the car. “Oh, boy, it’s gonna be heavy.”

  “But what will we do, Jake? We can’t go back to the bank.”

  “Maybe we can, after a couple of days. If we rent a car in Bard Green and try to sneak back, I think we have a chance.”

  Sharon’s phone rang, and she handed it to Jake.

  “Hello? Hold on.” He held the phone against his thigh as she gripped his arm. “It’s the guy who’s got Rachel. He’s asking if we have the money.” Raising the phone to his face, he said, “Give me a minute. I’m in heavy traffic. Let me try to remember how to use this Bluetooth and call you right back on the speaker.”

  He clicked off and handed the phone to Sharon. “I don’t want to fiddle with the phone while I’m driving in this rain. Can you connect it? We’re going to have to tell him we couldn’t get the money.”

  Her face sagged with anxiety. “He said he’ll hurt Rachel if we don’t bring it.”

  “I know, but he wants the money. He’s not going to do anything rash if he believes it’s still within reach.” Jake didn’t say the caller might hurt her enough to make a point.

  “Call Raj Shivani.” Sharon sounded desperate.

  “There’s no time, sweetie. Besides, if Raj had something to tell us, we would have heard from him.”

  Eyes filling with tears again, she connected the phone and called. Over the speakers, the tinny voice said, “Hello?”

  Jake leaned toward the mike. “Listen, what I’m about to tell you is the absolute truth. We were spotted by a cop in the bank parking lot and had to take off. We can’t go in there again today. We’ll try to sneak back to the bank in a few days, but that’s the best we can do.”

  Silence. “Why am I not believing you?”

  A truck hauling a piece of earthmoving equipment on a flatbed trailer blew by them, spraying muddy water from the road on their windshield. The steel treads of the machine hung over the edge of the trailer, passing inches from them as the driver whipped back to the lane in front of them, the heavy load swaying and straining against the chains that held it. Jake instinctively swerved and mashed the brake, fishtailing back and forth on the wet pavement, finally regaining control.

  “Well?”

  Jake had forgotten about the call.

  “Holy cow!” he shouted. “Some trucker just tried to kill us. I guess I was going too slow for him. Give me a second to catch my breath.” He glanced at Sharon. “You okay?” She nodded.

  Jake craned his neck up at the microphone. “I swear, it’s the truth. You’ve got to realize Rachel is the only important thing to us now. If we could have gotten the money, we would have.”

  More silence. “Be here with it tomorrow by four. Or else. No excuses this time. And if I suspect you’re up to something, she’s dead. I won’t take any more risk of being found. I’ll kill her and disappear. I’d rather give up the money than prolong this.” He ended the call.

  “Sharon, double-check and make sure the call is closed.” She checked the phone and nodded.

  “We have to continue to Ray City now,” Jake said. “I don’t think he means what he says. His way of talking doesn’t come across like a typical criminal to me. He’s analytical. He might bail out early, but—”

  “No, no,” Sharon wailed. “Please, no. Can’t we just go to the bank tomorrow for the money? We could be in Ray City by the four o’clock deadline.”

  “I know this is hard to think about objectively, but I see almost no chance of getting the money and making it out of Lake Creed now. Skaffe will have an eye out for us in the Camry. I think he knew it was us. Even if we went back and made it into the bank, he might identify the car, and we wouldn’t know until we came back out. Not only that, he might have talked to the bank manager and asked them to be on the lookout.”

  “But he hasn’t called us.”

  “Good point, but what does that mean? If we’re delayed in Lake Creed, it would be too late to do anything. I’d rather go to Ray City now and surprise this guy. I know it’s scary, but at least we have a chance.”

  “Ohhhh, God. Jake, call Shivani.”

  Chapter 24

  The morning after Jake and Sharon had left him in Ray City, Shivani stirred awake, lying in the back seat of a silver Chevrolet Malibu

  They’d let him out at Crown Auto Brokers, which occupied a small white stucco building covered by a tin roof, off the main drag. The gable roof over the concrete porch, supported by two sturdy brick pillars, indicated a possible former life as a tiny church. Thin grass struggled to grow in the graveled side yard. Facing the street was a row of cars, all at least fifteen years old. A hand-lettered sign hung on the front of the building. “Buy here. Pay here. Ray City’s hometown Auto Source.” Shivani had walked around the building and seen no sign of people inside or anywhere nearby. He picked the car’s door lock and made himself comfortable.

  The morning sunlight streamed in, warming him. He sat up and rested his wrists on his knees, breathing deeply with his eyes half-open, until a man in overalls rapped on the window.

  “What are you doing in my car, boy?” The man appeared to be in his sixties, and his jowls bore a stubble several days old.

  Shivani opened the door, causing the man to back away. “I’m interested in buying this car.”

  The man crossed his arms. “I don’t know you. I ain’t carryin’ no paper for you, so git your black ass outa here.”

  “I can pay cash, if it runs okay.”

  “Of course it runs okay. If I see the color of your money, you can test drive it. With me in the passenger seat.” He patted a sagging pocket that bulged with the outline of what had to be a gun.

  “How many miles on it?”

  “Look for yourself. It shows 148,000.”

  “Is that the true mileage?”

  The man squinted and thrust his lower lip. “I ain’t no pin-hooker, and even if I was, I wouldn’t know how to roll back the electric odometers in these cars. Th
is is a local car, clean, lots of goodies on it, and it runs good.”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty-five hundred.”

  “Body’s a little rough, don’t you think? You don’t have even fifteen in it. Not even twelve, I’d say. I’ll give you two big ones, cash, right now. After I drive it. Then you can go buy another beater for twelve hundred and pocket the difference.”

  The man rubbed his toe in the dirt and straightened his back. “That’s—”

  “That’s what I’ll give if you stop right there. Otherwise, I’m gone.”

  “Once you drive it off the lot, it’s yours. No warranty at that price.”

  As he pulled away in his newly-acquired car, Shivani muttered, “Redneck bastard.” If the guy had acted half-decent, he’d have gone $2,200. After stopping at a drugstore for toiletries, he found a budget motel a few miles out of Valdosta where he cleaned up. At Walmart, he bought some clothes to fit in better with the locals. Jake should be pleased this money was being spent wisely. Ugh.

  He stopped for a late breakfast of bacon and eggs in his new jeans and camo T-shirt, topped by a camo cap. His tan leather work boots bore smudges and scars from being scuffed against a rock so they wouldn’t look new. The restaurant’s picture windows along the back faced a pond, surrounded by a marsh, which was edged with tall pines trailing Spanish moss from their high branches. The interior reeked of cooking oil from fried fish and hush puppies. A stuffed marlin decorated one of the gray, fake-wood walls, above a forlorn scrap of netting. Except for the walls, the color scheme was shades of brown on the tabletops, the floors, and the padded chairs.

  Shivani Googled the address Sharon had given him. It was several miles out of town, the last house on a dead-end road forking off a county road. The satellite view showed a wooded area behind the house, with the county road running along the other side of the woods. According to the photo, he should be able to approach the house through the trees, unseen. He rose, paid his check, and walked to his car.

  On the county road, he drove past a house he’d used as a landmark in the satellite view. He traveled five hundred feet beyond it and slowed to peer into the woods for a glimpse of Rachel’s house. It had to be along here somewhere, but he couldn’t see it through the trees.