everything. No, that wasn’t quite true. Not everything—at least, according to a terrible suspicion that he’d never voiced and never would.
He sure as hell wouldn’t be going to a party for his boss tonight if Shorty hadn’t encouraged him and promised a promotion to chief detective before long. All Rick wanted, really, was to lick his wounds in private. To hunker down somewhere far from here and figure out whether he was capable of living without Martine. Or maybe he should be considering whether he could still live with her. Tappany Island, yeah, that was the place. Tomorrow he’d ask for a week off, depart on a road trip to South Carolina and just hang for a while.
The front door of their house swung open abruptly. Rick, expecting Martine to hurry out, waited impatiently for her to emerge into the yellow glare of the bug bulb in the porch light. Then, in the shadows inside the house, he saw the stocky dark-clad figure pressing a knife to Martine’s throat, muscular arms gripping her in an awkward embrace. Instinctively, Rick reached for his weapon, a .38 semiautomatic tucked away in the shoulder holster under his jacket. He leaped from the car.
At this point, the action sped into fast-forward. Martine let out a small involuntary squeak at Rick’s sudden movement. Lightning quick, the knife slit a shallow cut across the creamy skin at the base of her throat. Beads of blood appeared, dark red and out of place as they slid toward the scoop neckline of Martine’s pale green dress.
“Stay away,” warned her captor in an agitated voice, his accent guttural and Hispanic. “Unless you want your wife to become fish food at the bottom of a canal.” The man seemed electric, wired, jittery, like an out-of-control marionette.
Rick recoiled, held himself back when all he wanted to do was to rush the man and blow his head off. Martine, who must have known his inclination, sent him a look of such dire pleading that it rocked him back on his heels.
All thought of their previous argument and of last night’s discovery faded in the force of Rick’s sudden, gut-wrenching comprehension. He recognized the man as Jorgé Padrón, an illegal immigrant who had been convicted on Rick’s testimony some years ago. Padrón had created a fracas in the courtroom before they led him away, kicking over a chair and yelling in broken English that he’d get even with Rick McCulloch, no matter how long it took. Since Padrón was sentenced to ten years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, Rick had known he would eventually be back on the street, but he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. The newly convicted often issued impassioned threats before being led away to serve their time.
“Drop your gun,” Padrón commanded.
Rick hesitated, bile rising in his throat. It tasted metallic, coppery.
“Rick—” Martine gasped, her eyes begging him.
“Shut up,” Padrón said, tightening his grip so that she winced. “Drop it,” he said to Rick. “Unless you want me to add a few more red beads to this pretty necklace I gave your wife.”
Bloodstains now covered the bodice of Martine’s dress. Feeling a sense of futility, Rick dropped the .38. It landed with a thud on the grass.
“Hands up where I can see them.”
Slowly, Rick raised his hands above his shoulders.
Padrón maneuvered Martine between him and Rick as he propelled her toward the white car at the curb. “No talk from you,” he warned Rick. “I’ll kill her without thinking twice.”
“Take me, instead,” Rick said urgently. “Let her go.”
“You? You’re no use to me. Comprende?”
Rick comprended, all right. The man was a convicted sex offender who had robbed a convenience store and raped the owner’s wife. He’d carved the woman’s face into ribbons for good measure.
“Open the door,” Padrón ordered Martine as they approached the driver’s side of the white car. “Do it!”
Martine’s hand, the one with his wedding ring on the third finger, inched out. Rick watched, alert for any lapse on Padrón’s part, any chance he might be able to jump the man before he reached the car. The steel skin of the .38 gleamed in the moonlight a few feet from his right foot.
“Hurry up!” Padrón said.
Martine pulled at the door; it opened. Padrón slid inside under the steering wheel and yanked Martine in after him.
“Padrón, let’s talk about this,” Rick said, refusing to panic. “We can solve your problems some other way. Let her go. Take me. I can help you.”
“Like when you sent me off to Raiford Prison? Yeah, right.” To Martine he said, “Turn the key. Start the car. You and me, we go for a ride.” He tightened his choke hold around her neck.
Martine did as he said. The car’s engine clunked to life, and a cloud of black exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. Rick hoped some of the neighbors would notice, but all the nearby houses were dark.
“Now put it in drive. No surprises, Mrs. McCulloch, and you will be okay.”
Rage flickered up past the fear in Rick’s throat, wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed. Martine…Martine. The white car began to roll slowly toward the intersection.
“Don’t call police,” was Padrón’s parting command. “Anyone follows me, she dies.”
This warning notwithstanding, Rick grabbed his gun and was behind the wheel of his Taurus sedan before the Impala rounded the corner. He grappled with his cell phone and managed to alert the police department, relieved to learn that his friend Wally was working the desk.
Rick did his best to explain, and Wally was no dummy. He knew who Padrón was. Wally had worked the case with Rick shortly after Rick had joined the force.
“Don’t worry, Rick,” Wally said, but by that time Rick was straining to keep track of the Impala, which was darting in and out of cars ahead. He almost lost it in the traffic on busy Kendall Boulevard.
Rick sped through traffic lights and ignored stop signs as the Impala bobbed and weaved, nearly running up on the sidewalk at one point, speeding up the ramp to the Palmetto Expressway. From what he could tell about the car’s occupants, Padrón stayed pressed close to Martine, and he could only imagine her state of mind at present. His wife wasn’t the most stable of women even in the best of times; in the past few months she’d been seeing a counselor for depression. Hang in there, Martine, he muttered. Despite their difficulties, she would expect him to do everything in his power to save her. Rick wouldn’t disappoint her—the consequences were unthinkable.
The expressway was its usual tangle of passenger cars and semis, with macho guys jockeying for every inch as they dodged from lane to lane, women laughing into cell phones pressed to their ears. Packs of commuters were scurrying home to outlying subdivisions. Overhead a 747 banked low, preparing to land at Miami International. Graffiti rushed by, spray painted on the metal guardrail in the median: SNOWBIRDS GO HOME. DOLPHINS ROCK. JULIO + ANA (TRULY).
The white Impala picked up speed, almost sideswiping a Mack truck. Rick jammed his foot down on the accelerator, raced past a school bus, barked out his location to Wally on the phone.
What happened next went down fast. The Impala, traveling an estimated hundred miles an hour in the passing lane, swerved to the right for a few seconds, almost clipping a red Mustang.
