Killer Cargo

FOUR

The room was dim, except for the sputtering candle and the weak overhead kitchen light. Rain pattered on the roof like gentle cat feet. Cy’s face was unreadable as he watched her intently.

What should she say? The truth sounded ridiculous, even in her own mind. She had a feeling he would see through any evasions in a snap. She watched him lean back in the chair, strong hands laced across his flat stomach. He didn’t move. She might have thought him sleeping if it wasn’t for the glitter of his eyes watching her.

She sipped some tea before answering. “I really am a pilot.”

“So you said.”

“I fly small payloads and sometimes people.” She thought she caught a look of suspicion. “I’m commercially rated and all. I’ve got my certification, if you want to see it.”

“Later. Please go on.”

“The longer I waited on the tarmac, the more worried I got. Did you ever have one of those weird ‘something’s not right here’ feelings?”

He nodded.

He’s probably having one right now. “Well, the long and short of it is the box of contraband was, er, drugs.”

He stiffened. “And you opened this box?”

“I did.” Her chin went up. “It’s my plane, and I have a right to know what’s in it down to the last kibble.”

He continued to watch her closely, his body tense. “And?”

She shifted on the chair, feeling the pulled muscle in her shoulder from her unceremonious fall into the creek. “I ran. Then I crashed into your creek.”

“I remember that part.” His eyes bored into her. “Did you take the box?”

She flushed. “No, I did not take the filthy stuff. I left it there and took off.”

“Why did they come after you, then?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Shell, the guy who hired me, called my cell phone and accused me of taking some other package on board. I still can’t believe it. The guy makes honey and raises champion Yorkshire terriers. His wife knits. How could he possibly be a dealer?” Maria got up from the table and slammed her soup bowl on the counter. “Whether you believe me or not, I didn’t take any drugs.”

“So what do you think is going on then? Folks don’t chase down other folks unless there’s a good reason.”

“I think Shell’s own people double-crossed him. I mean, he works with criminals, after all. That’s the only theory I can come up with.” She felt her remaining energy ebbing, like a balloon leaking helium. “I’m the victim here. I lost my plane, for crying out loud, because I trusted the wrong person.” She was dismayed to feel her eyes prick with tears.

His face remained impassive. “That’s quite a story. I’ve never heard one like it.”

“Well, it’s true, every word.” Her anger rose to the boiling point. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You don’t have the right to interrogate me.”

The glint in his eyes was dangerous. “Actually, I believe I do. You are a stranger, who crashed a car that doesn’t belong to you into my creek. I’ve got only your story that bad men are after you to retrieve something you say you don’t have. And the item in question is drugs. That’s some serious subject matter, to me anyway.”

She opened her mouth for a retort when an enormous black man carrying two flashlights poked his head into the kitchen. The man must be over six feet tall. She recognized the person she’d seen right after the crash.

His bald head gleamed as he nodded. “It’s time.”

Cy gestured to his friend. “Maria, this is Stew.”

She managed a half wave.

Stew shot Maria an uneasy look and went back outside.

Cy looked at his watch. “Stay put until I get back.”

She straightened. “Maybe I’ll be running along. I’ve got places to go.”

A hint of a smile revealed a small dimple in his cheek. “You won’t be getting very far in that fancy car. We haven’t pulled it from my creek yet.” He took a windbreaker from the peg and headed out the door. “Stay put,” he said again. “I’ll be back.”

The cottage settled into silence except for the occasional pop from the fire. Maria washed her dish and returned it to the cupboard. Outside the tiny square window she could see only glimmers of rain and wind-whipped trees. Once, she thought she saw a pair of lights bobbing in the gloom but only for a moment. What on earth were two men doing out at night in a downpour?

The rain hammered against the windows and wind howled all around. A shutter whacked against the outside wall, making her jump. She wandered back into the sitting room. A row of faded pictures hung crookedly on the wall. One was of an older man and woman sitting in an old car. Another was of a young man, tall and muscular, in a military uniform, his arm around the same older couple. So Mr. Cy Sheridan was an ex-soldier. Why didn’t that surprise her?

A sheaf of papers on the end table caught her eye. She picked them up and squinted at the handwritten scrawls.

HCN, CNCI, KCN, check vapor density, solubility, polymerization. Flammable limits, binds to hemoglobin. Binding to cytochrome? ATP synthesis stopped. How quickly?

Maria puzzled over the strange notes. Then she caught a familiar word written at the upper corner. Cyanide.

Her mouth went dry. The guy was keeping notes about cyanide? Great. She thought about the tea and soup she’d ingested. Her stomach spasmed, and an ache materialized in the small of her back. What could he need with a lethal substance like that?

She sank down on the floor next to Hank’s cage. He was asleep, curled into a tight ball, nose quivering slightly.

“What am I going to do? Stay under the same roof as a guy who knows about cyanide?” Her lip curled at the thought of Cy and his imperious order. For all she knew, Cy and his giant friend could lure people into this place and poison them. Hank fluffed his fur. The effort upset his balance and he fell over on his side. With a start, she reined in her imagination and started working on her escape.

Leaving presented a logistical problem. She would have to wait until the car was fished out and then hightail it to the nearest police station. In the meantime, she resolved not to eat anything unless he tasted it first.

Formalizing a plan buoyed her spirits for a moment. If she could extricate herself from this predicament, and get her plane back, her old life was waiting for her: a quiet apartment, plenty of work. And plenty of memories. She shook her head to dislodge that last thought. “My life is going to be fine again, Hank, you’ll see. And you can come live with me. How would that be?”

From her position on the floor, Maria saw a small needle-point sampler on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? Psalms 139:7. She wondered who had stitched it for Cy, those precise loops of color embroidered onto ivory linen. The paradox confused her.

What kind of a man had scripture on his walls and cyanide info on his coffee table? It was all too much. She squeezed her hands together.

“God, You already know that I’m running for my life down here. I know You’ll be with me wherever I have to go. Help me figure out what to do, please. Help me figure out whom to trust.” Maria rested her elbow on Hank’s cage and leaned her chin in her palm.

The warmth of the fire and the trauma of the day eased her out of consciousness and into slumber.

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” Cy looked down at her, holding one of his forearms with the other. Blood seeped through his fingers and into the material of his jacket.

Maria blinked, coming fully awake. “What happened to you?”

He grunted, shaking water droplets from his hair. “I fell.”

She eased her body upward, wincing as her back protested. “Why were you out in a rainstorm at night?”

“Business,” he said, making his way past her.

The giant man followed Cy into the kitchen and handed him a packet of gauze. Then he returned to the sitting room and extracted a bundle of green from his bulging jacket pocket. “Here.”

He held the stuff out to Maria but she was too confused to take it. Why was he giving her parsley? With a sigh he knelt at Hank’s cage and put in the handful of leaves. Hank went to work at once, devouring the greenery, stems and all, flopping his ears in ecstasy. Stew removed a plastic bag from his other pocket and added a pile of alfalfa hay to the cage floor. Then he closed the lid and left, without another word.

Maria made it to her feet. “Does he…ever use complete sentences?”

“Rarely. He must like you otherwise he wouldn’t have spoken at all.”

“All he said was ‘here.’”

“For Stew, that was a regular diatribe. He’s one of eight children so that might explain his economy of words.”

Maria watched Hank suck down the last strand of green. Then he went to work scraping the hay into a pile, stopping once in a while to nibble a stalk. Soon he hunkered down, eyes closed. She could almost see him sigh with happiness. “It was nice of Stew to take care of my rabbit.”

“He’d take care of Hitler’s hamsters rather than see any animal go hungry. He prefers them to most people. Majority of the time, I agree with him.” Cy stripped off his jacket and sat in the worn rocker, rolling up the torn sleeve. His arm was a solid mass of muscle, lean and white in the lamplight. A dark spot showed a nasty scrape. He held a towel to the cut, pressing down to stop the flow of blood before he applied rubbing alcohol.

Maria settled uneasily in the chair next to him. It was hard not to stare at his strong profile. He didn’t look like someone who went around poisoning people. “Um, do you need help?”

He ripped open the gauze package with his teeth and applied it to his wound. “Thank you, no. I’m used to taking care of myself.”

The wind blew so hard it shook the walls of the small cottage and made the flames in the fireplace dance higher. “You never explained what you were doing out there in the storm.”

“No, I guess I didn’t. I was trying to protect my creek, that’s all.” He taped up the wound and disappeared down the hall, returning in a dry shirt and jeans, holding a handful of sheets and blankets. He gestured for her to follow him into the miniscule room with the cot and trunk. For the first time she noticed a glass aquarium on top of a crate illuminated by the tiny lamp hanging from the low ceiling.

She felt a twinge of unease as he unfurled the bedding. “Don’t go to any trouble for me. I’ll only be here tonight. I can sleep in a chair. No problem.”

Cy didn’t look at her. “You’re not going to sleep in a chair.” He made up the cot, tucking the sheets into sharply folded corners with machinelike precision. When he finished, he opened the trunk and examined the contents.

She thought she saw the same odd look steal across his face as he pulled out another faded pink sweatshirt and soft cotton pants.

He laid them on the bed. “You can borrow these.” A faint flush crept over his cheeks. “We’ll leave your shoes and socks to dry by the fire. Here’s a blanket. March evenings are cold in this part of Oregon.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be fine. Really.”

He put a flashlight on the pillow. “Sometimes we lose power during a storm. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. Only one, I’m afraid. I’ll be over in Stew’s cottage if you need anything.” He handed her a scrap of paper with his cell number on it.

“You don’t need to leave because of me,” Maria said.

“Wouldn’t be proper for me to sleep here.” He looked into the aquarium at the frog huddled under a hollowed-out hunk of wood. “She won’t make much noise to keep you awake.”

She followed his gaze. “I won’t mind having her as a roommate.”

He didn’t smile. The look he turned on her was the usual impassive expression, but she saw a gleam in his eyes that she took for sadness. “She’ll be a quiet one anyway.” He laid a hand lightly on the glass lid and peered at the frog. “I’m afraid she’ll be dead before too much longer.”

“Oh.” Maria searched for something to say. She felt a pang for the tiny creature and for the man who peered at it so tenderly. “That’s too bad.”

He turned to go.

“Um, thank you. For the blankets and everything.” She watched his broad back vanish down the corridor. In a few moments, she heard the sound of the front door close.

Maria crawled into the narrow cot, wishing desperately she had thought to bring her laptop along on the disastrous trip. No, she couldn’t have managed it anyway. She’d have been hard-pressed to carry Hank’s crate and the laptop, too. She thought about plugging in the cell phone but she didn’t think another menacing call from Marty Shell would soothe her bedtime nerves.

There were no magazines, no books. No sign really that anyone ever inhabited the room. With the exception of a broken calculator, the bedside table was empty. There wasn’t even a dust bunny under the bed.

A noise made her heart leap until she decided it was the snap of a branch against the window. She hugged herself, her ears straining for sounds of movement. The stream of rain coursing down the gutters mimicked the tread of running footsteps. “You’re making yourself crazy, Maria.”

The chest called to her. “Open me,” it seemed to say. She listened for the sound of movement in the house, any tiny noise that might announce Cy’s return. Nothing. She eased the lid of the trunk open one millimeter at a time. The hinges squeaked, but made only a small groan of protest. Finally it was completely open and she could get a good look at the contents.

Inside were a few more sweatpants and shirts. One denim skirt, size ten and a pair of reading glasses. Underneath was an almost-used-up tube of lipstick, Petal Pink. At the very bottom was a tattered roll of wallpaper border in a busy floral print.

She almost missed the photo of a young man. It had been folded and the crease dissected the face just below the nose. The man was in his teens, she guessed, eyes dark, a half smile on his lips. Was it a relative of Cy’s? No, she thought. The man didn’t have the strong chin and wide shoulders she’d seen in her host.

Maria sat back on her heels. Who did this odd collection of bits and pieces belong to? Cy’s wife perhaps? Daughter maybe? She discarded that idea. Cy didn’t look old enough to have a daughter who wore a Misses size ten. It might be a wife, but there was certainly no sign of her outside of this room. Whoever she was, Cy wasn’t inclined to explain. The topic of cyanide bubbled up in her brain but she pushed it away.

The wood floor was cool under her bare feet. She padded over to the glass case and squatted down. It took several minutes to spot the small brown ball that wasn’t more than two inches long. The frog’s skin was satiny and spangled with black freckles. As she moved to get a side view, the frog startled forward. It bent its long, almost translucent legs to hop, but fell over instead, landing on its side on the mossy floor of the cage.

She could see the gold eyes watching her. Maria’s throat constricted. How helpless it must feel, exposed, terrified, unable even to make it to the sheltering corner a few inches away. “How did you get hurt, little frog? What will happen to you?”

She knelt next to the cage until a chill made her legs stiffen. When the light was out, she lay in bed, shivering against the cold sheets. With the tiny lamp turned off the room settled into quiet darkness, broken only by the whoosh of rain against the walls. Poor frog. Was her mind still active, trapped in a lifeless body? Tears wet her pillow until she dashed them away. Not now, Maria. You’ve got enough to deal with. Pray. It’s all you can do.

“Thanks, God, for keeping us safe tonight and providing us with shelter and warmth. Please give me the courage to face tomorrow.” Her eyelids grew heavy. “And please, God, take care of the frog, too.”

Her eyes snapped open. She lay there, heart pounding, wondering what had awakened her. The darkness was complete; her watch told her daybreak was still hours away. It came again, the soft crunch of a footstep outside. She bolted to a sitting position, blankets clutched around her.

What should she do? Call Cy? She scrambled through her backpack and looked on the floor for the scrap with his number on it. “Oh, no. I must have dropped it somewhere.”

She slid out of bed and hurriedly pulled on the pink sweat suit. Her skin prickled when she heard the sound again, closer this time, as if someone was walking a few feet from her window.

Had Cy locked the doors? Was she easy prey for the men who were looking for her? Her bare feet met the cold wood. As quietly as she could, she tiptoed down the corridor, praying the floorboards would not give away her location.

The house was dark, silent. Her panic increased with each passing step until she reached the kitchen. Sidling up to the window, she peered out into the darkness. The beam of a flashlight just outside the kitchen door flooded her body with terror.

A scream fought its way up to her mouth, and she sucked in a deep breath.

She watched in horror as the doorknob slowly turned.

FIVE

The handle revolved until the catch gave. A man stepped inside.

She screamed, grabbed a frying pan from the stove and swung with all her might.

The man dropped his flashlight and warded off the blow with a powerful forearm.

She staggered back against the wall and snapped on the light.

Cy’s eyes were wide, his mouth open in shock.

“Cy…what…what are you doing here?”

“I came to make sure I’d locked the windows.” He inhaled deeply. “You nearly brained me with that frying pan. Are you all right?”

Maria sagged in relief and sank onto the chair. Her face was coated with sweat and her hands shook as she pressed them to her face. “I thought you were…never mind.”

He sat across from her. “I apologize for scaring you. I couldn’t sleep and I began to wonder if I’d locked up properly. I didn’t want to wake you, but maybe I should have.”

She looked closely into his face to gauge the sincerity in his words but he was predictably unreadable. “It’s okay. No harm done.”