Despair shattered the last of her resolve.She slumped onto the floor, her legs drawn up against her chest in a fetal position, and she started to cry—slow, aching tears that welled and spilled in a continuous flow of pain.
Casey cried until she lost all track of time.Had it been two hours or two minutes since Skeet’s warning that her time to die was close at hand?Was Lash already on his way?She remembered the wild expression on his face when last she’d seen him.
“God help me,” she prayed, and then choked on a sob as she realized she was lying in a position to see directly beneath her bed.
The elongated neck and small, unblinking eyes of the creature beneath her bed were startling, but for Casey, who’d lived in imminent fear for the last three days of being eaten alive, it was a large relief.
“Well, my word,” she said, and reached under the bed, pulling out a small, brown terrapin that had taken her move as threatening and disappeared into its shell.“So it was you I heard all the time.”
Sympathetic to the fear that had caused it to retreat, Casey quickly set it free, and as she did, saw something else under the bed that made her heart leap.There, in the corner beneath her bed!It looked like—
She crawled to her feet and pulled the bed away from the wall just enough to reach behind.When her fingers curled around the butter soft leather, she pulled.She was right!It was her purse.
She clutched it to her chest as she crawled onto the bed, then held her breath, listening to make sure that Bernie and Skeet were not about to come in.
Three days ago seemed like a lifetime.Casey couldn’t remember what she’d been carrying in her purse, or even what she’d been doing when she’d gotten the call about Ryder’s wreck.Her fingers were shaking as she undid the clasp.But when she opened it up, her hopes fell.Her shoulders slumped as the dumped the meager contents onto the bed.
Her wallet was gone, as was the compact cell phone she usually carried.She should have known this would be too good to be true.There wasn’t anything left but a handful of tissues, some pencils and pens, her lipstick and a small, plastic bottle of lotion.
Frustrated by the letdown, she slammed the purse down on the bed beside her and then winced when something within the purse itself hurt her hand.
“What in the…?”
She opened it back up.There was nothing inside but the black satin lining.She tilted it, then thrust in her hand, feeling within the bag itself.Something was there…but not inside…it was beneath…no, between.She pulled at the lining like turning a sock inside out, and saw the rent in the fabric near the clasp.
Curious now as to what was inside, she stuck her finger in the fragile lining and pulled.It ripped and then parted.Carefully, Casey thrust a finger inside, then another, and searched until she felt something cool and hard and sharp.And as she traced the object’s length, realization dawned.Her hands were shaking as she pulled it out.She tried to think of how the letter opener Lash had given her as a gift had gotten out of her desk drawer and into her purse.
And then she remembered running back to grab her wallet on the day of the call, and of grabbing a handful of pens along with it as she dropped it inside her purse.That must have been it.She’d gotten the letter opener with everything else.And because it had been so sharp, it had gone straight through the lining and lodged in between.
She looked toward the door as her fingers curled around the miniature rapier’s silver shaft.It wasn’t much, but it was the first means she’d had of self-defense and she had no intention of letting it go to waste.
A laugh boomed out in a nearby room.Casey flinched, then shoved the dagger beneath her pillow.Not now, she told herself.Only when it was time.When it was time.
CHAPTER 16
Ryder pulled up to the newsstand with less than a minute to spare.He double-parked in the street and grabbed the two bags, moving in an all-out sprint.The stand was closed, just as the kidnapper had promised, but a small, side door stood ajar, and he shouldered his way inside.
It was little more than three walls and a roof.The half wall that opened up to the public could be propped overhead like a porch, shading the counter beneath.The concrete sidewalk served as its floor, and Ryder dropped both bags on it with a thump and walked out.
All the way back to the car, he had the impression that he was being watched.He didn’t know whether that came from the Feds who had followed him here, or from the kidnapper waiting for him to leave.When he slid into the driver’s seat and started the car, his instincts kept telling him not to leave—not to leave Casey’s welfare up to kidnappers.But he ignored the urge and drove away, and had never been this afraid in his life—not even the night his plane had crashed—not even when he’d known that Micah was dead.He left with the knowledge that he’d done all he could do.The ransom had been delivered.Hopefully, his next point of contact would be the phone call telling him where to pick up his wife.
As Ryder drove away, Wyandott and his men began to slip into place around the area.A couple of blocks away, Gant watched from his car with binoculars trained on the door through which Ryder had come and gone.
And the wait began.
Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty.In spite of the coolness of the evening breeze blowing through his window, Gant was starting to sweat.He could just imagine what was going through Wyandott’s mind.The Feds must have been made.If the kidnappers got spooked and didn’t pick up the ransom, he wouldn’t give a plug nickel for Casey Justice’s chance of survival.
Just when he thought it was over, an old man turned the corner and headed down the street, pulling a little red wagon behind him as he made toward the stand.Gant thought nothing of his presence until the man paused at the door, opened it up and then stepped in, leaving his wagon just outside.
Gant sat straight up in the seat, adjusting his binoculars for a clearer view as the man emerged.But it wasn’t the bags Ryder had put inside that he was carrying out.It was a large black garbage bag.He tossed it into the wagon and started down the street when Wyandott’s men suddenly converged upon him.
Gant threw down his binoculars in disbelief and started his car.In spite of the kidnapper’s instructions, Wyandott was pulling him in.God help them all if this stunt got Casey Justice killed.
* * *
“You’re under arrest!”Wyandott shouted, as two of his agents wrestled the old man to the ground.
The terror on the old fellow’s face seemed sincere.“What did I do?What did I do?”
