Shirl Henke - Sneak And Rescue

“Maybe I’m being paranoid. Just some drunk or dumb kid showing off for his buddies,” she said. But all the while she fixed the flat, she kept an eye on the highway.

Sam caught a few hours sleep that night in a cheap roadside motel. By late afternoon the following day, she was past Atlanta, heading toward the Tennessee line. Scenery was great and traffic light. She hummed along with a Cole Porter tune on her CD player, watching a big Caddie coming up behind her. Fast.

“Who does that jerk think he is, Mario Andretti?” she muttered.

The highway wound its way through some very mountainous terrain with steep drop-offs and sharp turns. Definitely not the place for a big luxury sedan to be doing ninety. “Your funeral, buddy,” she said as the Caddie pulled abreast of her. She slowed to let him pass as they approached a beaut of a curve.

But he didn’t pass. Instead the black sedan started to crowd her, veering dangerously over the line into her lane. A quick glance at its right side showed scrapes and flecks of white paint. “Shit!” she gritted out, punching the accelerator.

All the wiggle room available to her right was a couple of feet of berm and then a flimsy guardrail. The drop-off below was a minimum of fifty feet. She could easily have outdistanced the heavy car on the uphill grade with her specially modified engine if not for the wicked curve coming up much too fast. But the Caddie driver’s intent was clear, even though the tinted windows hid him from view. This bozo was out to finish the job he’d begun the preceding day.

“Uncle Dec, I hope you weren’t exaggerating when you explained what this suspension can take,” she said, along with a short prayer as she cut the wheel sharply and tromped the gas pedal again. Her speedometer approached triple digits. She’d left the Caddie behind but he was closing once more. If she dared to slow down to negotiate the curve, he could rear-end her and blast the van through the railing. Sam and the Econoline would fly over the edge like a Canaveral rocket.

But the landing would be a lot rougher.

She felt the van’s two left wheels leave the ground as she entered the sharpest angle of the curve. Sam literally leaned to the left as she held the accelerator steady going into the final turn. When the wheels hit the pavement again and the van surged straight ahead up the road, she murmured, “Thank you Uncle Dec. Who’d a thought St. Jude was a mechanic?”

The Caddie was dropping back quickly when she checked her side-view mirror. Too far away to get a plate number, which would no doubt be as bogus as the one on the Olds. She felt the adrenaline rush begin to fade and took several deep breaths, calming her jangled nerves. It had been a lousy twenty-four hours.

At least she didn’t have her usual scalding cup of joe between her legs, she considered philosophically. Now that would’ve been a really painful way to touch up her bikini line. She tried the cell as soon as she saw a tower on a nearby mountaintop. Dialing 911 she was patched through to the local highway patrol. Somehow Sam had a gut feeling that the black Caddie with its incriminating exchange of paint would be long gone before they could spot it.

On impulse, she dialed Matt. “Hi sweetie… Oh, no, nothing much. I’m about halfway to St. Louis… Yeah, should get there tomorrow. Just wondering if you’ve had time to check out Winchester or Reicht yet… No, no particular reason… What do you mean, ‘something’s wrong’? Nothing’s wrong,” she replied, crossing her fingers on the steering wheel and the cell.

If Matt knew two more attempts had been made on her life, he’d go ballistic and protective all at once. Then he’d fly to St. Louis and mess up her retrieval. If she only knew what was going on, she could handle it. So she omitted a few pertinent details…okay, she lied to him.

Matt gave her the info he’d dug up. “Haven’t had time to get beyond the society stuff, pure PR fluff on ‘Roman Numeral.’ He’s on every civic board and committee from here to Tallahassee. Lots of political clout. Reicht’s a different matter. Found some interesting dirt on him right off—but then you might not think so.”

“Huh?” Sam responded to his voice on the other end of the line.

“Seems our boy’s being investigated by your heroes, the IRS,” he said with a sarcastic chuckle.

Sam pathologically hated the IRS. They had audited her twice in the past five years. It seemed some of her “retrieval expenses” didn’t meet their criteria and she’d had to cough up a couple of small fines. To Sam, fines were like parking tickets. No such thing as a “small one.” “Bloodsuckers. You’re right, it could make me like the guy a little. What malfeasance is he supposed to have committed?”

“Can’t get Ida Kleb to say but I’m working on her.”

“Ida Kleb?” she echoed with an incredulous laugh. “Shouldn’t that be Rosa Kleb?”

“You mean the KGB agent from the James Bond movies?” he asked. “Fits the little troll to a tee. All she needs is the poisoned knife sticking out from the toe of her shoe when she kicks you.”

“Sounds charming. But I have complete faith in your way with the ladies. Find out what Reicht’s up to. Maybe he’s just a tad careless with his records. His office was a bigger mess than mine.”

“Not possible. That stockpiled warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark isn’t a bigger mess than your office, Sam. And you have more stuff stashed inside.”

“You’re a funny man, Granger. Oughta go on Letterman.” She cut the transmission, saying, “Call me if you turn up anything new.”

If the good doctor was stiffing the Infernal Revenue, she could care less, but there could be more to it or to poor Farley’s civic-minded father. But both men stood to gain if she quietly brought the kid back for treatment. That’s what Winchester was paying her to do. A better bet was Scruggs. He and young Winchester were living large if the credit info she’d received was accurate. For certain she’d like to know where he’d spent those seven missing years and if he had any pals with an affinity for big cars and reckless driving.

The sun was a big gold ball centered just above the gleaming silver of the Gateway Arch when Sam crossed the Poplar Street Bridge over the Mississippi and entered downtown St. Louis. The traffic was horrendous and everyplace she looked, orange construction site barrels were either lined up or knocked aside as commuters made their headlong dash during rush hour. The place resembled a life-size pinball machine.

“Just like Miami, only fronting a river instead of an ocean,” she muttered, dodging a barrel that a car in the oncoming lane had nudged in her direction. The van hit a pothole so deep she felt the jarring travel from her tailbone clear up to her front teeth. Yep, just like Miami. Once on city streets, she glanced at her map, getting her bearings while stopped at a red light. The city’s convention center was located a couple of blocks north.

She navigated up Washington and immediately figured parking might be an issue. But she was certainly in the right place. A huge neon marquee with bold red letters running across it proclaimed, WELCOME TO SPACECON XIV!! Farley and his dad had something in common—Roman numerals. How sweet. She found a parking lot and paid the extortionist at the booth, only willing to part with a sawbuck because it went on the expense account.

The price of admission nearly choked her, but Sam coughed up her credit card and accepted the three-day pass. It might take her that long to find her target in a crowd this big. The enormous hall was filled with several thousand Spacies. Oh, and were they ever! Maybe bringing Matt might not have been such a bad idea. He understood this aberrant behavior, liked it even. He’d assured her that physicians, attorneys, business executives and other successful professionals actually attended Space Quest Cons.