"What about the real Nick Farner and the real Hannah Wilder? Are they in the back of your van too?"
Scott laughed, the sound closer to a snarl than honest laughter. "They"re fine. No humans were harmed in the making of those smokescreens. Those two were just diversions to allow us to get away before anybody figured it out."
Suddenly all the things that hadn"t made sense clicked into place. "Hannah"s license plate, Nick"s job at the health club, all that was your convoluted effort to mislead us, turn our attention to them so we"d ignore you. What about Mrs. Lowell? Is she on a cruise or in a trash bag in your van?"
"She"s on a cruise to Alaska, a cruise we paid for."
"She"s not on the pa.s.senger lists."
Scott smirked. "We write computer software. We"re the best at what we do. Getting her name off the pa.s.senger lists was easy. Getting Nick Farner out of prison and Steven Lowell transferred to a better facility so we could set up that part of the diversion and have them go along with our little joke was more complicated, but still no problem for us. We"re good."
Charley appeared next to Scott. "Play to his ego, Amanda. Encourage him to talk about what brilliant computer guys they are. Suck up to him."
Amanda looked from smug Charley to smug Scott. She didn"t want to suck up to Scott. She wanted to lash out, attack him with her words since that was the only weapon she had available at the moment. Instead she gritted her teeth and forced herself to smile. "Computer software. I see. You know all about writing code and that kind of genius stuff. So why do you need that program from Dawson? Why don"t you just write your own program if you"re so smart?"
Scott"s expression told her she hadn"t succeeded in sucking up. His brows lowered and his eyes narrowed. "If Dawson wasn"t so simple minded, he could find that code."
"My brother"s brilliant!" Grant shouted. He wasn"t any better at sucking up than she was.
Scott snorted. "I thought maybe your brother was stalling, pretending he didn"t know anything about the program your father wrote. That"s why I came over to check it out for myself, but he"s really so dumb he couldn"t find it."
Grant shot out of his chair and lunged for Scott.
d.a.m.n! Not again. Amanda leapt up and grabbed him just as he grabbed Scott. "Bad idea," she whispered in his ear. He struggled for a moment then gave up with a noise that sounded suspiciously but only briefly like a sob. She wrapped an arm around him and led him back to his chair.
Dawson still hadn"t moved. Amanda glanced at Grant to see if he"d noticed. His worried gaze met hers. He"d noticed. "It"ll be all right." She whispered the words again, but she wasn"t sure she believed them.
"If we"re finished with all the chit chat, I vote we kill them now," Alice said. "There"s no reason not to. We can find the program. We don"t need them." She lifted her arm, aiming the Glock in Amanda"s general direction.
Amanda"s stomach clenched into a hard, painful knot.
"Dawson knows where the program is!" she shouted, trying to be heard over the thundering of her own heart.
Chapter Eighteen.
Scott moved closer to her, pushing Alice"s gun-wielding arm toward the floor. "No, he doesn"t. I was there, remember? He had me helping to look for it. He has no idea."
Amanda twisted her lips into a sneer and forced herself to speak around the huge lump in her throat. "You really think Dawson trusted you? You really think he didn"t see through your silly masquerade?"
Scott grinned. "Yes, I really think he trusted me. Dawson was ready to trust anybody he thought might help him. I became his new best friend."
Amanda snorted...derisively, she hoped. "You may be a hotshot computer nerd, but you don"t know squat about people. Dawson knew where the program was the whole time. He copied it to a flash drive and gave it to Jake to take to the drop site. Jake and Ross were going to follow you when you came to pick it up. Dawson was just pretending all the time, delaying until they could get everything set up."
"That"s a pretty good spur of the moment story," Charley said. "I"m impressed."
Amanda was too. Apparently terror sparked her imagination and ability to lie.
Scott folded his arms and looked down at her. "I don"t believe you."
Amanda folded her arms, the action serving two purposes, to mimic and mock him and to hide her shaking. Her mouth was dry as the dirt on the road outside. She swallowed and forced the words up her arid throat, making every effort to keep her voice from wavering. "Fine. Don"t believe me. That"s your choice. You"re going to kill us anyway. The only question is when. You can kill us now and hope you"ll be able to find that program you"re so hot for, or you can wait until Dawson wakes up and get the information from him before you kill us. Up to you."
"She"s just trying to stay alive until her boyfriend gets here." Alice waved the gun again.
"We"ve got the computers," Roger said. "Shoot them and let"s get out of here."
"These three will be easier to take with us if they"re bodies in bags instead of jumping around and talking." Alice pointed the bobbing gun in Amanda"s general direction.
"All that"s true," Scott said. "But our efforts will have been for nothing if we don"t find that d.a.m.ned program. We"ll be back to square one, and that"s nowhere." He looked at Dawson. "I gave him a rather large dose of zolpidem in his Red Bull and I think he drank most of it. It"s got a short half-life, but he should be out at least another couple of hours. We don"t dare wait that long since she says her boyfriend"s on the way. We could take Dawson with us and kill the others." He arched an eyebrow in Alice"s direction. "Please refrain from using your new toy on him until we"re sure we don"t need him."
Alice shrugged. "Okay, I"ll just shoot the other two." She swung the gun around and it went off, exploding through one of the rock walls off to the side, scattering shards of stone and dust over all of them and setting Amanda"s ears to ringing again. She"d probably have permanent hearing loss after this. The smell of gunpowder almost overpowered the musty scent of the cellar and the smell of rotten something that came from the broken jar. It was something of an improvement.
"I didn"t mean to do that." Alice smiled. "But I think I"m getting good with this thing. When this is over and we start getting our money again, I"m going to have lots of guns."
Things weren"t going very well. "Dawson will never tell you where the code is if you kill his brother," she threatened.
"Or his best friend," Grant added.
Scott shrugged. "We"ll have to take that chance. We"ve got to get away from here before your cop boyfriend gets here."
d.a.m.n. Just as she"d told Charley many times, lies always come back to haunt you.
She drew in a deep breath and prepared to say the only thing she could think of to save them, however briefly. "Jake"s not coming. I lost cell phone service several miles back." Her confession meant she"d destroyed her new phone for no reason.
A smug grin spread over Scott"s face. "I wondered about that. We"re pretty far off the grid to get cell phone reception. We lost our service back by the highway."
"That means you have time to wait for Dawson to wake up and give you the code."
"Unless you were lying about that too."
"She told the truth." Grant"s voice was small but strong. "My brother knows about the program. Dad left a note telling him everything."
"Now the boy"s lying," Roger said.
Scott peered at Grant as if trying to read his mind. Grant returned his gaze, never wavering. "If he"s always known about the program, why was he so upset when we took you? Why didn"t he just give it to us?"
"He wasn"t upset. He was pretending. He knew you"d kill me just the way you killed our parents no matter if he gave you the program or not. He"s been buying time to give the cops a chance to find you."
"The kid"s good," Charley said. "I almost believe him myself."
Scott turned away from them, toward the door. "Roger, drive down the road and see if anybody"s coming. Alice, give me the gun and let"s go inside to get things ready to leave."
Alice scowled but slapped the Glock into Scott"s hand. The three of them exited the cellar, letting the door close with a thud.
Total darkness filled the room, pressing against Amanda as if it were a tangible force, invading her senses with the musty scent of the underground as well as the lingering smells of gunpowder and rot or maybe it was just the lingering odor of the three beasts who"d been there.
Faint streaks of luminosity coming through small cracks in the ancient wood revealed the location of the door but didn"t let in enough light to allow them to see their surroundings or even outlines of each other.
"Put something on that door so they can"t get away," Scott ordered from outside.
Sounds of metal creaking and rattling were followed by heavy thuds.
As soon as the sounds stopped, Charley came through that door, frowning, completely visible, glowing faintly in the darkness. Amanda groaned. She couldn"t see her own hand in front of her face but she could see him. That was just wrong.
"They laid some heavy stuff on it," he said. "I don"t think we"ll be able to lift it."
"We?" Amanda snapped. "I don"t know about you, but Grant and I can lift that door."
"Get this rope off my hands and I"ll help."
Grant gasped. "Dawson!"
"Dawson? You"re awake? You"re alive!" The last word came out of Amanda"s mouth as a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
"Are you okay?" Grant asked, his voice trembling. "I was afraid-"
"I"m fine except my hands and arms are getting numb. I"ve been awake for several minutes. I let them think I was still unconscious until I could get my hands free, figure out what was going on and attack them before they realized I was awake. But that didn"t work out so well."
Amanda felt suddenly giddy. Dawson was alive and ready to help them get out of this mess. She was so happy, she wasn"t even mad at Charley for being visible. Suddenly anything seemed possible. It didn"t matter that Jake wouldn"t be able to save her. They"d save themselves. "So you heard everything," she said. "They don"t expect you to wake up for another couple of hours."
"I heard. Either that creep"s better at hacking than he is at administering drugs, or all that Red Bull I drank counteracted it. I still feel pretty wired."
Amanda rose from the floor, her balance strangely affected by the total darkness.
"Watch it," Charley warned. "Grant"s up too. He"s trying to get Dawson"s ropes undone."
"You can see in this dark?"
"Of course I can," Charley said. "Can"t you?"
"No," Dawson replied in answer to Amanda"s question. "I can"t see a thing."
"Neither can I, but I"ll be able to get these ropes loose by feel," Grant said. "There"s only a couple of knots left. Amanda already got the hard ones."
She stumbled to the back wall and made her way toward Dawson by touching the dusty, disgusting shelves along the way. Her motorcycle gloves would have protected her hands, but they were back with her bike and her knife. When she left home that morning, she hadn"t planned to be trapped in a dark cellar, sitting on roach bodies and groping along a dirty shelf while being held prisoner by psycho computer nerds. Next time the situation arose, she"d be more prepared.
"There"s an old lamp just to your left," Charley said. "It looks like it might have a little kerosene left."
"Great. Now all we have to do is find a match to light it."
"Light what?" Dawson asked.
"Just thinking out loud. We could sure use a light right now."
"Yeah," Dawson agreed. "A light, a knife, an a.s.sault rifle."
"You"ve got me," Charley said.
Oh, yay.
"I"m free!" Dawson exclaimed. "Thank you, Grant. Now we need to figure out how to get out of this place."
"We"ll dig out," Charley said.
Again with the we. Digging out was easy enough to say when he could just fly out.
"Let"s try the door," Dawson said. "Take my hand, Grant."
"And mine." Amanda fumbled in the general direction of Dawson"s voice and finally connected with a small hand. Grant wrapped his fingers around hers in a trusting manner that made her more than ever determined to somehow get them out of there...alive. "Head for those streaks of light."
The three of them stumbled across the floor and up the first couple of steps. Dawson and Amanda lifted their hands to the door. Grant climbed up another step and did the same.
"On three." She counted, and they pushed at the same time. The wood was rough and Amanda felt splinters digging into her palms, but she bunched her shoulder muscles and pushed harder. Later-a.s.suming there was a later-she"d deal with a few splinters.
"It"s not moving," Dawson finally said. "Maybe if we had a lever."
Or a stick of dynamite. "Let"s try one more thing. Go up a couple of steps, turn around, stoop over and put your back against the door."
They pushed with their backs. Grant grunted with the effort. The door seemed to lift a fraction of an inch, or maybe the bones in Amanda"s back lowered a fraction of an inch. The latter seemed more likely.
"I told you they put heavy stuff on it," Charley said. "Forget the door. You can dig out. That crazy woman shot a hole in the wall, and it looks like the concrete grout around the rocks is loose anyway."
Amanda sighed. "This isn"t working. We need to try something else."
"The grout between those rocks is pretty old," Grant said. "It"s probably loose and crumbly. The stones are big enough, if we could get a couple of them out, I could crawl through and open the door. Surely we can find something in here to dig with."
That was a little freaky. If animals could see Charley, maybe kids could hear him on some level.
Amanda didn"t really believe they could dig out of the place, certainly not before Scott and his buddies came back for them, but they might as well be doing something while they waited, anything to divert them from thoughts of dying at the hands of those evil people. "It"s worth a shot," she agreed.
Charley smiled. "Told you so."
"I came in here with a piece of broken pipe. That might be a good tool."
"The gla.s.s from your phone, gorilla gla.s.s, we could use that too," Grant said. "It"s very strong."
"Now all we have to do is feel around on this floor until we find all those things." Amanda started to the spot where she thought she"d dropped the pipe.
Charley moved to her side and pointed downward. "It"s right there."
She reached to the floor, groped and found it. "I"ve got the pipe."
"Great!" Dawson said. "You really have a good sense of direction."