Blue Smoke and Murder

82

SEPTEMBER 17

6:26 P.M.

I’m going in,” Jill said to Mary. “I’ll call you once I check the money.”

“Be safe. If that doesn’t work, be matte-black bad.”

Jill almost smiled. Someday she’d like to meet Mary. “Same goes.”

She hung up and tossed the phone in back with the aluminum suitcases. It banged and clattered.

Hope your ears are ringing, whoever and wherever you are.

She picked up the BlackBerry and put it in one of the cargo pockets of her hiking pants. The belly bag hung around her waist. She opened the top zipper, shifted the pistol so that she could reach it with one grab, and checked the safety.

Matte-black bad.

And the mother of all rapids is just ahead.

The idea of rowing with a black pistol was unnerving.

It can’t be any worse than my first trip alone down a class-five rapids.

Can it?

Jill got out of the car and looked at the cribs arrayed around the dusty pool. The “cottages” looked shabby, abandoned.

Looks like the sex business isn’t real good out here.

Beyond the ranks of cottages, more than half a mile down the rutted road, several sagging barns and outbuildings silently stated that once this had been a working ranch, rather than a working girls’ ranch. The distant buildings were even more beaten down by time and sun than the cribs, where sex had come with time limits and a price list.

The door in the fourth cottage away from her banged open with more than the force of the wind. There was a flickering blue light showing inside. Somebody was watching TV.

Got bored waiting, did you? she thought with grim satisfaction. Too bad. I’m tired of being your puppet.

Besides, she didn’t know how much time it would take St. Kilda’s people to close in on the ranch. She wanted to give them every second she could.

Slowly, like a woman with all the time in the world, Jill stretched, loosening muscles that had been confined too long in a car. The stretch felt so good that she repeated it, held it, and did it all over again a third time, breathing in the fading heat and exhaling clammy manacles of fear.

She could fairly taste the impatience radiating out of the fourth cabin.

You can just wait for it, dude, she thought. I certainly have.

Ignoring the primitive unease that slid down her spine from her nape to the bottom of her hips, she pressed down on part of the key fob. The Escalade’s cargo area opened. She pulled out one suitcase and locked the vehicle again, leaving two cases inside. No way was she going to be shuffling three suitcases when she needed a hand free for the pistol.

The open door on the fourth cottage banged in the wind again. Despite the nerves jumping in her stomach, Jill didn’t flinch at the sound. Wind rattling around old buildings was as familiar to her as her childhood.

Neither fast nor foot-dragging, she walked toward the open cottage.

And wished she was somewhere else.

Anywhere.

Zach, I sure hope you aren’t far away. This isn’t the kind of river I know how to run alone.