Secrets Never Die (Page 48)

The trunk was large as trunks went, but it was still a tight squeeze. Sharp wriggled backward. His legs were bent, and his body was curled into a C. But he managed to ease out from under her. She slid to the carpet. “Is that better?”

She was smaller and fit into the curve of his body. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“Keep—”

“Do not tell me to keep calm.”

“I won’t.” Sharp would rather her temper flare than her fear. “I was going to say Try and keep your breathing slow and even. Close your eyes.”

“I can’t breathe at all.” She choked. “There’s no air in here.”

“Trunks aren’t completely airtight. If we control our breathing, we’ll be fine.” For a while. Sharp kept that last part to himself.

“Do you see a trunk release lever?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

Sharp wasn’t surprised. Men who transported bodies in trunks no doubt made alterations to suit their needs, like removing the emergency trunk release.

The car hit a bump, and they both bounced. His body position was awkward. His shoulder was pressed into the floor by his body weight. Pain sang from his wrist to his shoulder. If they were kept in the trunk for a while, his whole arm would be numb.

He was unarmed. He didn’t have his cell phone. And he had no freaking idea where they were going. He didn’t even know the lay of the land to guess. What was he going to do when the car stopped?

He needed to free his hands. He went back to searching the carpet with his fingers. He needed a nail or a paper clip.

Would the two thugs drag them out of the car to shoot them? Probably. They wouldn’t want to get blood in the trunk. Sharp would have to assess the situation as it happened.

But there was no point thinking of that right now.

Olivia trembled against him. Her breaths hitched.

“Breathe with me. In . . .” Sharp inhaled loudly, then blew out the air in two long slow words. “And out.”

Olivia mimicked him. Even in the dark, cramped space, Sharp could feel the tension radiating from her and respected her herculean effort to keep her shit together.

“Again.” He repeated the breaths, this time counting to four on the inhale and again on the exhale. They got a rhythm going, and Sharp turned his attention to listening. The road noise under the car’s tires sounded like a paved surface, and the car had picked up speed. They were on a highway or empty rural road. He listened harder, but heard no traffic other than the vehicle they were in.

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “This was not how this was supposed to go.”

“I know.”

The car came to a stop, paused for a few heartbeats, then started up again. Sharp rolled a little as the vehicle made a turn. His weight hit the wallet in his back pocket. His lockpick was in his wallet. He could use the pick to open their zip ties. He tried to get his hands around his body to reach, but he wasn’t flexible enough.

“Are your hands bound in front of you or behind your back?” Sharp asked.

“In front,” she said.

“I have a tool in my wallet I might be able to use to spring these zip ties. My wallet is in my back pocket, but my hands are bound in front of my body. Do you think you can somehow get it out? We’ll both have to roll over.”

“I’m small. I can do it.”

“I’ll give you as much room as I can.” Sharp flattened himself against the back of the trunk.

“Here goes.” Olivia began to squirm. Thankfully, criminals preferred vehicles with large trunks. “Can you slide up a bit?”

Sharp was game. Any action was better than simply waiting for their fate as if it were inevitable. He mapped out the trunk space in his head. Sharp began to inch along the carpet.

Olivia continued to move. Some part of her jammed Sharp in the groin. If he hadn’t been pinned, the pain would have doubled him over.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s OK,” he hissed and breathed. It had been a light blow, and the pain ebbed quickly.

“I’m over,” she breathed. Her hands grasped his.

He gave hers a return squeeze. “We can do this.”

“OK. I’m wiggling backward.” She shifted away from him.

He released her hands, then started to move. He was taller and could move only an inch or so at a time. But eventually, he was facing the back of the trunk.

He felt fingers in his pocket and his wallet slid out. A few totally inappropriate thoughts skittered through his mind.

You’re an idiot.

“I have it.” Olivia sounded triumphant. “I’ll drop it in front of you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how will you open the ties?”

Sharp snorted. Without being able to see, it wouldn’t be easy. “It might take a while.”

“If you roll back over, I could do it for you.”

“That makes sense.” Sharp went through the reverse motions of turning onto his other side. He was out of breath and sweating by the time he faced her. Their legs were tangled, and he could feel the heat of her breath on his face. He slid the pick from his wallet and pushed it into her fingers. “You need to work the pick between the locking mechanism and the teeth.”

“All right.”

The zip tie moved, biting deeper into Sharp’s skin as she worked with it.

“Do you think Joe gave the order to kill us?” she asked.

Sharp rewound the meeting in his head. He’d been focused mostly on Joe, not Aaron, but there had been definite anger in the son’s face. “I’m thinking that Aaron is staging a coup. He didn’t seem all that happy that his papa was back from prison.”

“I think so too. Aaron didn’t give the order for us to be killed until his father was gone,” Olivia noted. “Aaron has been running the business for twenty-five years. He might resent having to give up control now because his father’s been released.”

“It has to be a kick to Aaron’s ego to have his weak old father giving him and his men orders after he spent more than two decades at the helm.”

“Do you think Joe or Aaron had Paul killed?” Olivia asked.

“Aaron,” Sharp said, almost surprised at how quickly the answer came to him. “If Joe had done it, he would have had us killed. Or he wouldn’t have asked to meet us in the first place.”

“I’m not sure why Joe wanted to meet with us anyway.”

“He wanted information from us about Paul’s murder.” Sharp replayed the conversation in his head. “He was bluffing when he said he knew everything.”

“And he was hoping we’d fill him in,” Olivia said.

“Yes.” Sharp replayed the interview again. He hadn’t told Joe anything that wasn’t public information. What had Joe been hoping to learn?

Did he want to find Tina? Or Evan?

Sharp couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

The car rumbled on and on. Sharp tried to keep Olivia’s mind engaged and off their dire situation.

“I’m sorry this is taking me so long,” Olivia said. “I suspect we’ve gone farther than back to the office complex.”

“It might just seem that way,” Sharp lied. He was betting on a very isolated secondary location, with no witnesses and adequate open space for two shallow graves. But Olivia was already scared. She didn’t need his ideas in her head along with her own fears.

“They will want to take us somewhere very private.” She was too smart.

The sound of tires on pavement became a flat and monotonous track of white noise. Sharp realized the car hadn’t stopped or changed speed for a long time. They were on a long road that didn’t require them to stop for lights or intersections. He’d felt the slight force of the car speeding through curves in the road, but that was all.

“I’ve got it,” Olivia said, her voice excited.

Sharp heard the sound of the plastic teeth moving through the lock. A few seconds later, his hands were free.

He rubbed his wrists, then took the pick from her hands and went to work on hers. He had the lock open in a few minutes. “There you are.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Sharp slid the lockpick into his pocket. “Move your hands and feet. Tighten and release all your muscles to keep them from going to sleep. If I can disable or distract the men, I want you able to run.”

Sharp flexed his fingers and rolled his ankles, tying to keep the blood flowing into his limbs as best he could.

“If I can turn around,” Olivia said, “I can try to break a taillight. Maybe I can signal someone.”

“Good idea.” But Sharp suspected they were in the middle of nowhere. He doubted there would be anyone to signal.

The car began to bounce up and down. Sharp wrapped his arms around Olivia to protect her from the jarring. Had they left the road? Dread pooled like acid in his belly.

Olivia tensed. “We’re stopping.”

“Maybe. Position your hands as if they are still joined.”

“I thought I wanted to get out of this trunk more than anything else, but now I’m afraid of that too. They’re going to kill us.” She was bracing herself.