The Thunder Keeper(71)

That’s when he’d said he had to use the phone now.

The detective looked across the seat at him. “Take it easy, Father.” He reached inside his raincoat and handed him a black cell phone.

Father John dialed Vicky’s number at home. He could make out the numbers on the dashboard clock: eight-oh-five. She should be home. He concentrated on the electronic buzz of a phone ringing somewhere in Denver, barely aware of the tape digging into his skin. His own pain receded in the distance.

“Pick up,” he said into the receiver. “For god’s sake, pick up.”





31


The sound of the phone startled her, erupting as it did out of the silence that enveloped the house. Vicky stood in the entry a moment, gripping the doorknob, staring into the shadows. No one was there, and yet something was different. She tried to make out what it might be. An unfamiliar odor. Aftershave? Perspiration?

The phone continued ringing.

She fumbled for the panel of light switches next to the door. The house burst into light: living room on the left; dining room straight ahead. She tried to shake off the feeling of uneasiness that clung to her like a fever.

Five, six rings now. Vicky crossed the dining room and picked up the cordless phone. Black letters floated into the green readout space: FREMONT COUNTY SHERIFF.

“Hello.” Her voice sounded shaky.

A shadow moved. The phone jerked out of her hand and clattered on the floor. A muscular arm encircled her waist, a hand clamped over her mouth. She felt the pain rip across her shoulders as she spun around. Her head was jammed back into the rocklike muscles of a man’s chest, her cheek buried against the fabric of a coat. Metal buttons pulled at her hair and dug into her scalp. She couldn’t breathe.

She felt herself floating upward, watching a scene below: the woman—who was she? So small inside the man’s grasp—struggling, arms flailing, head tilted back, eyes wide in disbelief and fear locked on the ceiling.

The hand moved away from her mouth and gripped her shoulder. She gasped with the pain. She couldn’t breathe: where was the air? Her heart was bursting inside her chest. Finally she caught a breath, then another, and forced herself to relax. The man’s grip loosened.

She waited for two heartbeats, and then, with all of her strength, she rammed her elbow back into the man’s ribs. His hand came up to her face, a reflexive motion, and she bit hard into the fleshy palm.

“Bitch!” The voice sounded like thunder.

She was free. A bulky man in a black coat was pedaling backward. She stumbled against the telephone stand, knocking it to the floor, and started for the entry.

The blow came out of nowhere. She crashed against the wall, her legs melting beneath her. The shock gave way to an explosion of pain in her face. She tried to scream, but no sound would come.

The fist rose again, and she drew inward against the stuccoed wall, steeling herself for another blow.

“Enough.” Another male voice sounded through the pain. “She won’t be any good to us unconscious.”

The man in the black raincoat still loomed above her, his breath coming in jagged bursts of air ripe with garlic and old cigarettes. She felt the pressure of his grip on her shoulders as he jerked her upright and propelled her past the dining-room table and into the living room. She stumbled out of her shoes, her feet in nylons skidding over the wood floor. She crashed against the coffee table and fell onto the sofa, the knobs of her spine bumping against the armrest.

The second man slipped past and dropped onto the coffee table. He smoothed the flaps of his raincoat over his thighs and gave her a long, tolerant smile.

She’d seen him before: in the entry to the Equitable Building the day she’d gone to see his father. She’d gotten it all wrong. She’d assumed Nathan Baider was still in charge of the company, that he’d had Vince Lewis killed to keep the diamond deposit secret. But it was his son, Roz. Roz who’d been having an affair with Jana Lewis. Roz was the one Jana had confronted about her husband’s murder, and he’d had her killed, too.

Roz Baider leaned toward her. “My apologies, Ms. Holden,” he said. He adjusted the flaps of his raincoat again around his gray suit pants.

“Get out,” she managed through the pain.

He gave her a benign smile, the kind he might bestow on a naughty child. “We’re all reasonable people here.” He glanced up at the large man moving like a black shadow above his shoulder. “Allow me to introduce Kurt, my security chief, who, incidentally, never saw a lock he couldn’t pick. I’m afraid your lock posed no challenge whatsoever.”

Vicky shifted her gaze to the man in the black raincoat. He’d been with Roz at the Equitable Building, but she’d seen him somewhere else: in the black sedan passing her on I-25. As she stared at him, his features rearranged themselves into a satisfied grin.