Stealing Taffy

  Dante was a man in love. There was no going back.

  I should have said the words.

  The sedan tires squealed as he whipped into Cherokee Pines. At the same moment, his cell started ringing. It was Turner. Dante would have to call the sheriff back. With no sight of the Cadillac in front, Dante continued on to the rear, where a cluster of women were gathered near the delivery door. They looked up in surprise at the sound of his car and backed away.

  Dante jumped out, immediately assessing, calculating. He saw it almost immediately—Tanyalee’s pearls, broken and pressed into a mound of smeared cake and icing, the white cardboard of a bakery box crushed against the stoop.

  “I can’t believe you got here so fast,” one of the women said. “I called the sheriff no more than ninety seconds ago!”

  Dante heard his heart pounding in his ears. Seconds mattered. Tanyalee and Fern were in deep shit.

  “I’m Louellen Lukins,” the woman said. “I’m Mr. Miller’s secretary, and a few moments ago our kitchen staff found all this mess out here and came to get me. On my way back to the office to call the sheriff, I noticed someone had broken in to the safe.”

  Good—Turner was on his way.

  “Take me to the safe, Mrs. Lukins. Now, please. And ladies…”—he gestured to the smeared cake and the entire parking lot—“keep everyone away from the area, including the kitchen. Don’t touch or move anything. Don’t touch the door. Don’t let anyone touch anything.”

  They nodded enthusiastically.

  As Dante hurried through the kitchen with Mrs. Lukins, he spied two undamaged bakery boxes carefully placed on a countertop. That meant whatever happened to Fern and Tanyalee took place just seconds after his phone conversation with her, now exactly one hour ago.

  A lot of bad shit could happen in an hour.

  They raced down two hallways and into the administration area. All the while Dante kept his eyes sharp while allowing his mind to twist and rotate every available snippet of information.

  The pearls.

  The pearls meant it had been a violent encounter, against her will, sudden, an ambush, maybe. It happened in the middle of the delivery because some boxes made it safely inside. The Cadillac was gone, and if that thing was driven out of here, there would surely be witnesses.

  He would find Taffy and Fern. There was no other option.

  Dante felt his entire body ticking. He had become a living stopwatch, pounding out the time with his heart and breath. The seconds ticked by like precious jewels, each second a lost fortune. Options were narrowed. Outcomes diminished.

  “Right in here.” Mrs. Lukins gestured through the open door of an office in complete disarray. The door to a commercial floor safe was flung wide, revealing an empty interior.

  Tick, tick, tick …

  “Did you see anything? Anyone?”

  She shook her head. “No, not at all! Mr. Miller was in here like usual. I was catching up on some data entry and billing, and—”

  “Where’s Miller now?”

  She was flustered. “I have no idea! I don’t know! His car is out back but he’s not here! I think something may have happened to him, and honestly, I can’t fathom that something like this could happen again!”

  The word clicked in Dante’s brain. Again. He could hear the individual bits of information sliding along each other and locking into place. Of course. Spivey’s son Gerrall had worked for Miller here at Cherokee Pines. Gerrall kidnapped Miller and Candy Carmichael and drove them to the Spivey complex, where he gagged and tied them to chairs. Turner found them like that when he busted down the door to Spivey’s trailer.

  So how did an innocent administrator get abducted twice in four months? The answer was simple—he wasn’t innocent and he was up to more than just administrating.

  A familiar smell touched his nostrils. He leaned into the safe and sniffed. Yep. Gun oil.

  Dante’s gaze raced across the office walls covered with framed photographs. There was Miller cutting a ribbon at a construction site. Miller eating a hot dog at the Cherokee Pines annual picnic. Miller playing cards with residents.

  Miller was an overweight man.

  The words escaped from his mouth. “He’s the Fat Man.”

  Mrs. Lukins gasped. “I’ll have you know he’s lost at least forty-five pounds in the last—”

  “Nobody goes in here until the police arrive, do you understand?”

  Her mouth hung open in shock, but she nodded.

  Dante raced out of the office, down the hallways, through the kitchen, and out the back, still under the watchful eye of the kitchen staff. Within seconds Dante was peeling out of the parking lot.

  He already had a good idea where Miller was headed, but he requested an emergency warrant for a GPS track of Tanyalee’s smartphone just to be sure. O’Connor came back with the information in five minutes. He’d been right—Miller took them to the last place he believed the police would look: the scene of the crime.

  It was a place Fern knew better than Miller did, and that fact gave Dante some comfort.

  * * *

  The Cadillac bumped and jolted so badly that Fern would have smashed against the trunk ceiling if Tanyalee hadn’t pinned her down. Finally, the car lurched to a stop.

  Then, trapped in the darkness, they listened carefully. The old engine settled with a few more pings and shudders before it died. Tanyalee suspected that Viv would be peeved to learn Wainright had ruined her vehicle’s suspension, then nearly laughed at herself. Of all the things that could legitimately cause her concern at this particular moment in time, she chose to focus on the pimpmobile!

  A Newberry in denial to the bitter end.

  The phone rang again. “Tell you what I want, what I really, really want…” She twitched with the desire to answer it. In her heart she knew it was Dante.

  “I promise I will answer my phone…”

  She’d said those words just days ago, after accusing him of being overdramatic. Ha! Tanyalee squeezed her eyes shut, cutting off any tears that might blur her vision. Let your mind go there, Dante—the brutal and the horrible. Think the worst, because that’s exactly what’s happening. Find us!

  There came a foul curse and the sound of the heavy driver’s door opening. Oddly, the sound of Tanyalee’s ring tone seemed above her, then it faded away overhead, as if it just flew off on its own.

  She gasped.

  “I hate that fucking song,” Miller yelled, slamming the car door closed.

  “Sorry about your phone, Tanyalee.”

  She patted Fern’s hand. “Well, now we know we can’t call for help. You know what we have to do. Remember, you throw like a machine gun and then you run.”

  “I’m on it,” Fern whispered.

  Heavy footsteps sounded along the side of the long car. Then the jingle of keys. The trunk opened and the light blinded them.

  It didn’t matter. They were locked and loaded. “Now!” Tanyalee cried.

  The barrage of sticky, gummy cupcakes hit Wainright Miller square in the face and chest.

  “Aghh!” He threw up his hands and backed away a step, spitting out crumbs and icing from one especially well-aimed cake.

  “Go!” Tanyalee grunted, as she filled her fists with more cupcakes and let them fly. Nimble little Fern vaulted out over the side of the trunk farthest from Miller and was off.

  “Hey!” Miller spotted her and began reaching around behind his back, digging into his waistband. He pulled out a gun and Tanyalee planted a gooey one right in his eyes. He lost his balance but managed to take a shot in the direction Fern had gone.

  “Run, Fern!” Tanyalee went up on her knees and threw the last of her cupcakes with all her might. All the while Fern raced to the tree line at the clearing’s edge and the tree house beyond.

  Tanyalee was now alone with a furious and armed Wainright Miller … and she had only one more cupcake. But she was ready. In one hand she grabbed the car jack she’d long ago located beneath the trunk carpet, an
d in the other hand she held the very last diabetes-friendly bomb. Tanyalee hoped he enjoyed eating it.

  She hurled herself out of the trunk, right on top of Miller, smashing the cupcake directly into his face and grinding it in. It gave her just enough time to get her bearings and begin swinging that iron like a wild thing, all elbows and terror and pissed-off Southern belle, striking him in the head, the back, his sides, his knees. Miller was flailing, and the tire iron suddenly snagged on to the key ring he’d been clutching in his hand. Tanyalee watched as her car keys whipped off into an overgrown ditch.

  Miller went crazy. “You stupid bitch! How am I going to get out of here?” He raised the gun, and in that moment, Tanyalee decided she’d worked too damn hard to die. She raised the tire iron and brought it down on his wrist with a loud crack! and Miller dropped the gun, collapsing on top of it. Tanyalee didn’t wait around to see how long it would take him to locate the weapon and shoot her.

  She ran. Tanyalee ran as fast as her peep-toe pumps would allow through ruts and mud and clumps of weeds and tree limbs, her breath sawing in and out of her nose and mouth. It wasn’t pretty, but she’d made it across the clearing when she heard another shot fired. She ducked behind a broken-down trailer as the sound pierced the air and echoed through the hills. From there she ran into the trees.

  Okay. Now she was panicking. She tried to follow Fern’s instructions, realizing with horror that she couldn’t distinguish between a hickory and a hornbeam, especially with so little light, but she found the path and kept running.

  “Psst!”

  Tanylee looked up. Thank God! Fern was leaning out of a wooden boxlike structure perched about twenty feet off the ground, and she realized that if Wainright Miller didn’t kill them, this tree house surely would.

  “Hurry,” Fern whispered. “He’s got the gun and he’s going from building to building. He thinks you went into one!”

  With the help of some nailed-in footholds and Fern’s strong arm, Tanyalee scrambled up the tree and into the wobbly wooden cave. She felt horrified at the idea that Fern had ever had to hide in here—this was no storybook clubhouse.

  “Are you hurt?” Tanyalee whispered.

  Fern put her finger over her lips and shook her head.

  Tanyalee grabbed onto her and they scrambled together into the far corner, away from the entrance, and Tanyalee prayed the thing wouldn’t collapse under their weight.

  Only then did she realize that she was violently shaking, from head to toe. Fern was, too.

  But they’d made it out of that trunk alive, and Tanyalee was determined to keep them that way.

  * * *

  How many times had Dante driven this mountain road? Enough to remember each hairpin turn and dip, where the guardrail had collapsed, and where the creek tended to overflow. The familiarity came in handy, since he was going about sixty miles an hour on a stretch where forty-five would be death-defying.

  He’d done everything he could do without being on the scene. O’Connor had called in an APB for the pink Coupe de Ville and Tanyalee Newberry, along with an Amber Alert on Fern. He’d told Westley to run Wainright Miller’s financials. Turner was handling the crime scene and had allocated the task force as backup for O’Connor—there should be several cars on the way just minutes behind him. Now all he had to do was get to the Spivey place before Taffy and Fern were killed.

  Fuck. He should have put the pieces together a long time ago. He should have seen what was right in front of him!

  Dante stopped himself. He needed to keep his mind clean—get to the scene and make an instant decision about what to do. Miller was a cartel middleman, probably a brutal killer, and armed. And Taffy and Fern?

  They had been delivering cupcakes to old people.

  Dante cut the engine and let the car coast in neutral, rolling down the road trying to get as close to the property as possible. He made it around the last bend, pulled into the weeds, and braked. Dante drew his weapon. Hunkering down, he wove his way through the trees to the rusty old gate that marked the entrance to Spivey’s land.

  No voices. No car engines. No snapping twigs or the crunch of leaves. GPS tracking showed the phone was right here—but where were Fern and Tanyalee? He called again. He heard a ring tone but it sounded far away.

  Dante swung around, weapon at eye level. There was the Caddy, the trunk popped and crushed cupcakes everywhere. What was with the cupcakes? He quickly scanned the dozen or more ramshackle buildings and rusted-out trailers on the property, and he knew from personal experience that there were a thousand and one places for a man with a gun to hide up here, and nothing but a wide stretch of open space between himself and the Caddy. If he ran he would be begging to get shot. If he hung back and waited for backup, he would lose the advantage of surprise. Waiting could mean the difference between life and death for Tanyalee and Fern.

  So where the hell were they?

  As silently as possible, Dante stepped from the tree line and moved out into the open. One step. Two. Nothing. No sound or movement anywhere. He decided to go for it.

  Dante ran, moving fast but not fast enough due to the rutted ground surface. He was about ten feet from the car when he heard a woman scream.

  “Dante! He’s got a gun!”

  The world cracked open. Pain split his consciousness. And he felt himself falling … he was hit … he’d heard Taffy’s voice … she was alive. Dante crumpled, folded over, went down. He heard the sirens, the sound swinging around in his head … in and out of consciousness … he felt vibrations coming up through the ground, vehicles charging across the clearing. It had to be nighttime now because the light was fading. But that was all right, because he’d heard Tanyalee’s voice.

  Chapter 22

  The emergency surgery waiting room of the Western Carolina Medical Center was a nice enough place, with upholstered chairs, cable TV, and windowsills lined with plants. But after five hours, Tanyalee was about ready to crawl out of her own damn skin. She wasn’t sure she could sit there another minute while waiting for Dante to wake up from the anesthesia.

  She appreciated all the company she’d had that night. She truly did. Everyone had been so kind. She’d had plenty of friends and family to celebrate with when the surgeon delivered the best possible news: Dante would recover—no organs were hit. The bullet had broken his collarbone and destroyed a large number of blood vessels before it exited out the back of his right shoulder. He would require physical therapy but would regain full use of his arm.

  Oh, how she’d rejoiced at that news, laughing and crying and jumping around like a little kid!

  “Taffy Marie, are you sure you’re all right?” Aunt Viv leaned in close. “Is there anything else you need before I head out with Fern and Gladys?”

  Her great-aunt had been so kind that evening. She’d supplied everyone with snacks and brought clean clothes for her and Fern, since they’d been covered head to toe with cupcake icing and sprinkled with dirt, weeds, and dead bugs.

  “I’ll be fine,” she told Aunt Viv. “Granddaddy and Cheri are staying, and Dante’s coworkers are here. I just can’t go until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

  Aunt Viv smiled sadly. “I know, honey. But promise me you’ll come home soon. You’ve had a long day.”

  “Promise.” She hugged her aunt tight, comforted by the familiar Eau de Viv—a mix of Jean Naté, Dippity-Do, and risky slush. “I love you, Aunt Vivienne.”

  “I love you too, Taffy Marie, and I’m more proud of you than you’ll ever know.”

  Fern came over to say good night, plopping down in the chair next to hers. “You’re my hero, Tanyalee. I’m being totally serious when I say that.”

  That made her laugh. “And you’re mine, Miss Bisbee.”

  Fern nodded. “We should have our own superhero cartoon or something, you know?” She leaned in and gave Tanyalee a kiss on the cheek, something she’d never done, then jumped up and assumed a karate-chop stance. “Wax on, wax off, Mr. Miyagi!” She smiled a
nd ran off to join Gladys and Viv at the elevators.

  It took a moment for her smile to fade. There was just so much to be grateful for … Fern was unharmed. Dante would recover. Life would go on.

  Granddaddy and Cheri were a few chairs away, Cheri on her phone and Garland nodding off with his hands in his lap. O’Connor and Westley were on the opposite side of the waiting room next to the window. When she looked over, both gave her friendly smiles.

  O’Connor had been very gentle when she’d interviewed Tanyalee about what happened with Wainright Miller, and Tanyalee had told her how much she appreciated her kindness. That was why she was shocked when, on her way to the ladies’ room a few minutes later, she overheard a snippet of conversation between O’Connor and Westley. They stood on the opposite side of a bank of phones, out of her line of sight.

  “But I think he’s in love with her.”

  Tanyalee froze. She did not take another step. She didn’t breathe.

  “That’s fine, but he can’t date her. He knows as well as we do—it’s against administration policy to associate with a known felon. At this point, Dante’s got three choices: stop seeing her, take a transfer, or find another line of work. It’s really that simple.”

  Tanyalee heard Wes sigh. “Is his transfer request still under consideration?”

  “Absolutely. I figured it would give him an easy way out.”

  Tanyalee scampered back to her waiting room seat and had been stewing in quiet despair, anger, and guilt ever since. She would never want Dante to change his career for her, so that left the other two options. He’d either have to leave Bigler or leave her alone.

  The idea of either felt like hell.

  “Agent O’Connor?” The surgical nurse stepped into the waiting room. Granddaddy woke up with a snort. Cheri turned off her phone. Kelly and Wes stood up. “Agent Cabrera is awake. You had asked to talk to him first, isn’t that correct?”