Trust With Your Life

She slowed and scouted a safe place to stop past the carnage, a shot of fear immobilizing her for a second before giving her brain a tremendous rush. As a phone company manager with eight employees reporting to her, Molly had completed over a hundred hours of emergency training. She even knew basic sign language commands. Traffic accidents, electrocution, cuts, poison, burns and broken bones, she had studied how to handle them in films and handbooks. Monthly newsletters, called Flashes, parked themselves weekly in her In box, and over hurried lunches she had made it a point to read them all. There were countless examples of how death resulted because the most basic safety rules weren’t followed.

Thanks to her training, all the procedures for keeping herself safe kicked in together in her head. She continued past the accident for twenty yards, leaving room for the cops and ambulances, and parked cleanly off the road. She was directly in front of a call box, right under a light. While waiting for the operator to answer, she removed her dark windbreaker to reveal a more easily seen white T-shirt. Molly noted more skid marks and a flattened safety fence lying on its back just ahead of her and glanced down the steep hillside.

Imagining another night’s vehicular violence gave her a chill, but she remained cool and gave the necessary information to the operator, whose sole responsibility was to communicate with motorists in trouble. A minute later, she hung up and grabbed two blankets she always kept in the trunk, looked both ways and dashed into the traffic lanes at the edge of the mayhem.

At that moment, a man in a black pickup truck rolled toward her. He stopped in the left lane and jumped out, yelling, “Did you call it in?”

“Yes. They’re coming,” she answered. “Do you have any flares?”

“Good idea.” The guy ran back to his truck while Molly hurried to the man lying on his back. He was young and preppy-looking, dressed in a white polo shirt, khakis and one deck shoe. The emblem on his shirt wasn’t an alligator, though. It was a face, a smiling Oriental face. She threw one of the blankets over him, smacking her knuckles on something hard as she tucked the cloth around his knee.

Her fingers wrapped around the object and she scooted it out from under him, recognizing its shape before she saw it, even though she had never held one before.

It was a gun. Small, heavier than she would have guessed, it was warm to the touch.

For a second, Molly couldn’t think what to do with it; panic squeezed out all thought. Finally she took a big gulp of air and stuck the thing into the pocket of her denim skirt. In the fullness of the fabric, the pocket swallowed the gun.

Molly pressed her hand against the man’s neck. No pulse. She pulled his eyelids up and found his pupils were dilated and motionless.

He was dead.

Molly drew back, suddenly cold, noticing how incredibly noisy it was near the truck since its engine was still running. Her train of thought was probably born out of reflexive self-protection, she realized, remembering people say that in times of great tragedy it’s possible to put one’s emotions on hold and take them out later when there’s more time for a nervous breakdown. Which is what Molly felt she might have someday when she recalled how lonely it felt to sit beside two dead men.

These were the first corpses she had ever seen, and her eyes filled with tears. They were so still. And heavy, as if gravity was sucking their bodies down into their graves already.

A few months ago she had been circumstantially involved in a murder case, but it had not saddened her like this. In that matter, Molly had been witness to no mayhem, had not been privy to dead eyes and wounds and blood. Because of that, she had remained calm. She had given the police various coherent statements, had coolly appeared before a grand jury, was set to testify next week at the trial. Molly had not even spent one sleepless night because of images of corpses.

Something told her that this time things were going to be different.

Now that she was face-to-face with violence, all she could think about was the car’s engine, the pebbles digging into her knee, the weight in her pocket, the sound of her heartbeat echoing in her ears and her own mortality. If she had been driving on this stretch of road only a few seconds earlier...

Molly stared at the dead man beside her, finally forcing herself into action. Carefully she leaned over the figure and started CPR.

Five puffs in, then push, push, push.

“Let me help you.” A man in a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit touched her shoulder and she nodded, not allowing herself to wonder what was going on around her, never missing a breath. She blew expelled air into the stranger’s body, while the other good samaritan pushed down on his chest.

The stranger remained dead.

“There’s one alive by the Bronco. I don’t think the car’s a risk to blow up. Do you want to try him?” the man asked, gently squeezing her arm as he coaxed her to her feet.

Molly stood up and nodded, feeling her lip tremble and her eyes sting. She moved away as if walking through sand. A rock, zinged out from under the tire of a vehicle on the freeway above, smacked into her forehead above the eye. It hurt like mad, but for some reason Molly welcomed the pain.

She heard a squeal of tires behind her and shouts, then two young women, dressed in bicycle pants and U.C.L.A. T-shirts, ran past her. They began working on one of the other accident victims, an older man with white hair. When he lifted his hand, all three women grinned.

Encouraged, Molly fell to her knees next to the remaining man. He had on a heavy windbreaker zipped up tight. His pulse was so weak she could hardly feel it, and his dark skin had paled, particularly around his mouth. Glancing back at the off-ramp entrance, she saw both lanes were blocked by cars and several people were running around.

The pickup driver and a teenager with dreadlocks were working together and lighting a string of flares around the blocked lanes.

Molly tilted the man’s head back, then blew sharply through his dry lips. Her hands fumbled with his windbreaker, stopping at the hard lump over his heart.

Damn if he wasn’t wearing a gun! A bigger one than she had picked up before, to judge from the outline of it. The weapon was strapped against his chest.

“What in the hell was going on out here?” she asked in fear and anger. No one answered her.

Visions of high-speed chases and deranged drug dealers flooded her brain. She blanched, but pushed on. A second worry, that this scene somehow had something to do with the murder trial she was going to testify at, Molly dismissed. Get a grip, she scolded. Lives were depending on her.

The scream and whine of emergency vehicles began to fill the air.

The girls had saved the white-haired man, Molly thought. Maybe she could save this one, too.

“Please stay in your cars and proceed.” This static-tinged command blared out of a patrol car’s loudspeaker as two black and whites rolled up and parked a yard from Molly. She left the gun where it was and slipped her hand beneath the holster to do chest compressions. Suddenly the man’s body jerked, and he inhaled and began to gag.

Molly turned him on his side so he wouldn’t choke, which was when she saw the hole. It was about the size of a pencil, neat and clean, right in the center of his left shoulder blade. Blood soaked his entire back.

“We’ll take over, miss.”

The paramedic’s hand on Molly’s shoulder made her gasp. She stood. “His pulse is low, about thirty-three. I’ve been doing CPR for three minutes. And I think he’s got a bullet in the back,” she added.

Hearing this information, the paramedic didn’t even blink, but turned and ordered, “Get me an IV and plasma. Possible gunshot.”

A uniformed cop beckoned Molly and the two coeds. They followed, and Molly saw there was now an entire fleet of police and rescue trucks. The authoritarian honk and blinking lights of a fire engine clogged her senses along with the sounds of radios, dispatchers, air brakes and the whacka, whacka, whacka of a hovering news helicopter. It buffeted the group below with hot gusts of air.

“Hell of a job, ladies,” offered a smiling highway patrolman, his beige uniform impossibly clean. “We could have used you after the last earthquake.”

The group stood silent, watching as the ambulances loaded up their badly battered or lifeless cargo. One of the policemen, a man about sixty with a precision salt-and-pepper haircut and a fat polyester tie, took Molly aside to ask a few questions.

“Molly Jakes. I work for Pacific Communications,” she answered.

“Phone number?”

She gave him her work number, craning her neck to look at the firemen, all yellow jackets and boots. They were spraying foam on the Bronco, and she thought of herself sitting next to it five minutes before.

“What were you doing out at 3:00 a.m., Miss Jakes?”

“I was going home. I live just up the road, in Mission Verde.”

He stared at her. “Didn’t you have something to do with the Brooker murder case?”

Weakly she nodded, cursing the fact that she was now so well-known by the authorities in her own town. She had preferred her law-abiding, anonymous life. Being known by sight by a cop gave her an odd feeling. She explained that she was a witness, though only a material one. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to make her go to the station. But he let it drop.

Molly gave him her address, telling herself that the edge in his voice wasn’t really thankless. Molly had a tendency to apologize for other people; it was her way of retaining her optimism about the human race.

This guy is obviously tired, she told herself. He seemed to be near retirement age, and Molly imagined he was sick of being called out on these middle-of-the-night disasters.

“Where were you coming from?”

“Summer Point Towers. Eighteen ten Summer Road. I got a call that there was an emergency at that location where my phone crew was doing an installation.”

“How long were you there?”

“Not long. It turned out the call was a mistake by the dispatcher.”

“That happen often?”

“No, thank God.” It had never happened before, not to Molly anyway. But she wasn’t going to get into that with the cops. She was going to raise hell with dispatch, but it certainly wasn’t a big deal.

The cop raised his eyebrows, then glanced in the direction of her parked car. “You went alone?”

“Yes.” She swallowed the words “I’m a big girl, Officer,” and with this little defiance felt her equilibrium take a turn for the better.

“Okay, Miss Jakes. We’ll be calling you tomorrow, I mean later today, to get you to come in and give a complete statement of what you saw here tonight.”

“Fine.” She wanted to ask what he thought had caused the accident, but the cop took a couple of steps toward one of the coeds, probably to ask her the same basic questions. Molly clasped her hands over her forearms and looked down to see why they felt so dry and tight. She had brown splotches on her T-shirt and skirt, and all over her arms. For a moment, she was nauseous, but forced herself to breathe deeply and headed for her car.

A red-haired patrolman nodded as she passed, his eyes flickering over her. More than anything, Molly wanted to go home and take a hundred-and-fifty-degree shower, then soak in a bubble bath.

“You can go ahead and get back on the freeway, ma’am,” the officer told her. “They’re setting up barricades so they can get the fuel hosed off, but you can make it if you go now.”

Molly smiled and kept walking, wishing someone could drive her home, wishing she had someone waiting for her there. Now that the emergency was over, that initial rush of strength was dissipating and her bones felt like rubber.

Sliding into the car, Molly sat for a moment and stared in disbelief at the ignition. Her key ring, holding house keys, office keys, the whole shebang, was hanging there. She never left her keys in the car! If it had been stolen, the insurance company wouldn’t have paid off, good samaritan acts notwithstanding. So much for patting herself on the back earlier for following safety rules, she thought.

The car started immediately. Molly buckled her seat belt and hit the door-lock button. Accelerating, she turned right at Verdugo Boulevard and headed for home. She wanted off the freeway. Out of this scene of mayhem that was much too real to ever forget as one could an upsetting movie or even a tragic news show.

* * *

AS MOLLY DROVE AWAY from the accident scene, the man in the blue mechanic’s jumpsuit gave his name and telephone number to Lieutenant Cortez. He was also thanked and sent home.

The man returned to his car, but before driving off, he reached for his cellular phone and punched in a number.

“Hello,” a male voice snapped in his ear.

“Nothing went down as planned,” the slight man reported, wiping a bead of sweat from his thin mustache. Despite the cool night air, his being that close to a cop had made him nervous. “I was waiting for your guys, but all hell broke loose. They were ambushed or something. Both of your vehicles were in a wreck. When the girl arrived, she dived right in to help. By the time I got out of the car, there were three other cars stopped and I never got a clear shot.”

“Why didn’t you take them all out?” the man on the other end demanded. “I would have covered you for the extra work.”

“It never would have worked. There were too many people.”

“Well, where the hell is Steele? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Two guys are. The two live ones I saw were an old dude and a black guy. He ain’t either of those, I guess.”

“Well, at least he’s dead. That changes things, but...” The man’s voice trailed off. “Well, tomorrow I’ll send someone for the girl. You go back home. I’ll be in touch.”

The man in the blue coveralls hung up without answering and drove off. He saw the girl’s car up ahead, wondered if he could get a clean shot through the window, but discarded the thought. Too chancy with all the cops around.

He’d get her later. Or someone else would.

* * *

A BLOCK AWAY FROM the accident scene, Molly leaned back into the seat. It was then she noticed the dash light on. The tiny red diagonal line in the box indicating the silhouette of a car was blinking brightly, Detroit’s high-tech way of telling her that one of the car doors was ajar.

“For criminey’s sake,” she muttered, feeling the driver’s door with her left hand. She thought she had closed it tight and realized she was more wiped out than she feared.

“Put your hand back on the wheel.”

The man’s voice boomed out from the back seat in a ragged, angry command. It was deep, with an accent Molly’s terror-frozen brain did not immediately place.

Reflexively, her leg stiffened and the car lurched.

Her chest ached from the increased speed of her heart, and the muscles in her neck screamed out as if they were encircled by a noose. For a second, Molly felt as if she had suddenly died and floated above herself.

“I’ve got a gun aimed at your back. Put your hand back on the wheel.”

Molly trembled as the unseen passenger roughly pushed at her hand, and she cried out in a little whimper. The door that was ajar was on the passenger side of the car, she realized in horror!

While she was out helping keep a fellow human being alive, this guy had crept into her back seat with who knew what brand of crime on his mind.

She was too afraid to look around but risked a quick check into the mirror. It told her nothing. He must be hunkered down in the corner of the seat, or on the floor. How could I not have seen him when I got in? she asked herself. Molly damned the fact that she owned a two-door car. You could never see into the back seats.

With her hands now growing sticky with sweat against the leather steering wheel, a million possible actions to take flew through her mind. She could honk, slam on the brakes, run into a car. Anything to get someone’s attention. The traffic light a few hundred yards ahead changed to red, and Molly slowed down and stopped.

“What are you doing in my car?” she demanded.

The stranger made no response, though she heard him gasp as if in pain, then swear softly under his breath. Molly caught the image of a muscular forearm, and a glint of metal around his wrist. Then she saw his gun.

“Drive.”

She jerked her eyes straight ahead. The light had turned green. “Where to?” she asked, keeping her foot on the brake.

“Drive home. That’s where you were going, wasn’t it?”

He was Australian. The Crocodile Dundee inflection was there, though all the wit and “g’day, mate” humor were ominously absent.

“I’m not taking you to my home.” Molly knew she sounded insane, but even terrified, she had no intention of driving some maniacal murderer to her front door.

For a moment, it was quiet. Another car passed on her left, the driver peering in his mirror to get another glimpse before pulling his vehicle in front of her. The light ahead changed to yellow, then red again.

Molly realized she was holding her breath. Then she heard the gun click. Suddenly the man in her back seat jerked her head back by the hair. “Drive to your house or I will. I know the address, Molly, and I know Mission Verde. You have three seconds to decide what happens next.”

Tears stung Molly’s eyes from the pain of his grip, as well as from sheer physical terror. The fact that he knew her name scared her much worse than when she thought she was a randomly chosen victim. Some bell of recognition was ringing in her brain, though through the fog of fear she couldn’t tie it to a specific piece of information.

With no other alternative, Molly eased her foot off the brake and hit the gas, sending the car rushing through the red light.

Chapter Two

A half mile from her home, Molly’s heart rate slowed down a bit, and anger joined forces with hysteria as a leveling force. Most people she knew would agree that she wasn’t a tough person, but she also did not allow anyone to push her around.

If a waitress was snooty, Molly asked to see the manager. If she paid eighty dollars for a silk blouse and the seam popped open the first time she wore it, Molly took it back. So, now that it appeared she had been kidnapped, she decided to be what her nephew, Tyler, would call a “hard case.”

Her passenger had made no further comment the past few seconds, but she could hear his breathing. She thought he must be injured and wondered if he’d been a passenger in one of the wrecked cars. Molly kept picturing the gunshot wound in the one man’s back.

Was the guy in her car the shooter?

Clenching her teeth to stay calm, she let the car coast as she rounded Isabella Avenue, weighing if she should call the guy’s bluff and go straight instead of turning on Plaza Viejo, where her town house was. She stopped at the light two blocks from her house, slanting her gaze to the mirror again.

“You can turn right on red in California, doll. I suggest you do it.”

“I need to get gas.”

“If you run out, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Someone else knew all about being a “hard case,” she decided.

One minute later, Molly turned left into the steepest driveway in town, cursing the fact that she hadn’t seen one cop or one burly trucker.

The car groaned as it usually did at the incline, and Molly shifted into low. Her home was one of sixty, ten rambling groups of blocks cut into terraces in the hilly countryside of Mission Verde, fifty-six miles south of Los Angeles. It sat at the edge of some of the last undeveloped land in the area, where skunks, raccoons and rabbits poked around on the patio where Molly sunned herself.

Killing the headlights, Molly heard the coyotes bragging out loud about their night’s catch of slow house pets, and a shiver of empathy for their furry prey ran down her back. She reached for the door at the same moment her passenger again grabbed her hair.

“Take it nice and slow, Molly girl. I wouldn’t want to wake up your neighbors.”

“Stop pulling my hair,” she replied, surprised when he let her go. Slowly she stepped out of the car. Her skirt caught on the edge of the door and she tugged at it quickly, unable to place the weight in her pocket. Then she remembered.

Holy night, Molly thought as her scalp prickled with fear. I’m armed.

She turned toward her captor and got her first look at him as he stepped out of the car. He was big. Well over six feet, he had shoulders like some lumberjack and longish blond hair. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, a red T-shirt with an Aussie flag over his heart and a tiny gold earring in his right ear.

“Oh my God,” Molly gasped. “It’s you.”

“Hello, Miss Jakes. Long time no see.” Despite the words, he didn’t smile.

Impossible as it seemed, standing in front of Molly, gun in hand, was the man she’d met briefly in the office of Inscrutable Security, the night Frederick Brooker was alleged to have shot Paul Buntz. Molly felt her stomach flip as a rushing, ringing noise rattled through her brain. My God, she thought, as her face flushed with embarrassment and anger, I fantasized about this guy! Talk about poor judgment!

She stared at the big man. He was sporting handcuffs this time. Or handcuff, if the singular is correct, Molly silently corrected. His right wrist was encased in one metal circle. The empty one hung down like a punk rocker’s bracelet.

The gun was big, too, with a long, black barrel.

She met his eyes. “Who the hell are you and what’s this all about?”

“Let’s go in. Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll make coffee,” she snapped.

The man’s deep blue eyes narrowed. “I’d rather have tea. Or don’t you Yanks ever drink the stuff?”

“I’ve got tea. I save it for invited guests.”

“Yeah, well consider me invited or we’ll finish this right here.” He moved the gun slightly, his face deadly calm.

The weight of the pistol in her skirt felt enormous, and Molly wondered if he could see the outline of it against her leg. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was close herself in her house with this maniac, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what else she could pull off.

Molly nodded toward the path winding around the parking garages. “We need to go that way. Should I go first?”

The man seemed to detect something in her eyes that racheted his anxiety up a notch, because he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Who’s in there?”

She could smell the fear on his skin and began to panic. He had kidnapped her, for heaven’s sake! What was he so afraid of? “My marine husband and six Dobermans. So why don’t you take off now?”

Molly regretted her smart answer but not the look on the man’s face. He looked shocked. But the shock quickly turned to arrogance. “Nice try. Get going. I’ll take my chances.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” An obvious answer to her question suddenly occurred to her, and she felt weak. “Does this have anything to do with Brooker?”

His grip on her arm tightened and he waved the gun in her face. “Shh. I don’t want you waking anyone, understand?”

When he drew closer to her, Molly realized with a shock that she had memorized his features from their last meeting. Up close she saw deep fatigue lines in his face. But it was the same firm chin, the same aggressively curved nose, the same pale eyebrows, silky above eyes a clear sea blue. He had a tiny, uneven cleft in his chin, which she did not remember. He was as tanned as when she saw him months ago, as if he worked outdoors, and his teeth glimmered white in the light from the security lamp next to her front door.

“I understand. But don’t you see how ridiculous this is for me? I can’t let you in my house. I’m afraid,” she added, the very real sentiment coming out without her thinking it.