Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2) Read online

Headlights blossomed in the darkness behind them.

  Spencer’s accusation reminded Ramage that whoever was chasing them was after him. He’d endangered the boys when he’d jumped in their car. Now they were in his shit. He scanned the sides of the road for a place to hide, but there was nothing but patches of sagebrush, mesquite, and tall solitary cacti and Joshua trees.

  “Oh shit,” Maverix said as he noticed the headlights getting brighter in the rearview. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “You think crazy la… Marie called the cops?” Ramage said.

  “I repeat, we were slipping away peacefully until you joined the party,” Spencer said. Sweat dripped down his face despite the cold, his eyes red and sunken in their dark sockets.

  “Yeah, cray cray lady was feeding mice to her snake until all the ruckus started. She wouldn’t even know we were gone if it wasn’t for you,” Maverix said.

  “And we’d have the head start on Butch we planned for. Now we’re screwed,” Spencer said.

  “Wait,” Maverix said, his gaze drifting back-and-forth between the road and Spencer. “The nut blasting with the shotgun didn’t want us at all.”

  “They were shooting at Theo,” Spencer said.

  “Yup.”

  “They want him.”

  It was like the two guys were having a private conversation and Ramage wasn’t even there. He coughed softly.

  “I think it might be time for you to leave,” Maverix said.

  Dark nothingness slipped by as the Mustang tore down RT-6.

  “Get me just a little further,” Ramage said.

  Maverix glanced at Spencer, who turned in his seat, pointed at Ramage, and yelled, “Danger! Danger!”

  Ralph leapt up, human-like hands pounding his chest. Alice lashed out with her feet, kicking Ramage, the pink bow in her hair coming undone. Both chimps brayed and wailed and screamed like Ramage had taken away their bananas. The screeching echoed through the car, and Ralph began punching Ramage, first in the shoulder then two in the face, but that wasn’t the worst part.

  A yellow arc of urine sprayed from Alice as she pissed on him.

  “O.K. O.K.,” Ramage yelled as he put up his hand to shield his face, hot urine soaking his shirt and pants.

  “Pineapple pie,” Spencer yelled.

  The chimps stopped screeching, calmed, and sat back down, quietly holding hands like attack dogs that have been told to stand down.

  “Our safe word,” Maverix said. He stomped the brake and the Mustang screeched to a halt.

  “Good luck, Ramage,” Spencer said.

  Ralph waved, but Alice looked away, her milky brown cheeks turning a light shade of pink.

  Ramage threw open the car door, jumped out, and ran into the night.

  Chapter Four

  Approaching headlights peeled away the blackness as the Mustang’s taillights disappeared into the darkness. Ramage’s pursuers were getting close, and a growing sphere of white light chased him across the rock-strewn plain. He lept over sagebrush, darted in and out of cacti and Joshua trees, his feet sliding in the hardpacked sand, his long shadow stretching out like an arrow pointing directly at him.

  Ramage dove, landing in a thicket of junipers. Red berries squished on his face and hands as he plummeted through the thick bushes, hitting the ground with a puff of sand. He lay on his stomach, the world blooming like a giant flashbulb had gone off. In daylight there was no way the scrub brush would’ve hidden him, but in the darkness the headlights washed over the land and continued on, blackness filling all the empty spaces as the harsh light retreated.

  A hawk cawed, a lizard bleated, and the gentle breeze brought the scent of mesquite, gasoline and rubber. He laid in the cold for a long time, stringing together the events of the last hour. He kept coming to the same conclusion as his mind fought for a more convenient explanation: he’d been sandbagged by his past yet again. The who and why appeared obvious. Some folks had taken serious losses when he’d burned down the Sandman’s operation, and they were looking for their own form of reparations. Though he hadn’t mentioned it to Anna, this was another reason he’d wanted to get out of Prairie Home for a few days. From a certain angle he was the cause of everyone’s problems.

  He saw a thick stand of pine trees, their boughs growing together and creating a dark wall of green. He untangled himself from the junipers, got up, and gingerly jogged toward the pines, crossing the open space as fast as he could while being careful not to step in a hole or trip over a stone. His foot slipped in the loose sand and Ramage lost his balance, arms shooting out, weight tottering forward. He danced there for a second, arms pounding the air, feet shifting, thinking he’d be able to pull himself from the fall, but gravity betrayed him, and he went to the ground.

  Pine needles bit his palms and face, and a small pinecone lodged itself in his ear. He breathed deep, his frustration shutting him down. In the distance he heard shrieking brakes, then the screech of rending metal and breaking glass. He got to his feet and hid behind a thick pine.

  The glow of headlights and emergency lights wound east along RT-6, working their way from Price toward the Whispering Pine.

  A fly landed on his face and he slapped at it. He missed, smacked his face, and chuckled. Ramage was always finding new ways to hurt himself.

  At least Big Blue wasn’t involved. His truck was still at the shop in Price. He harrumphed in the blackness. He had to assume they’d been tailing him, so they knew where Big Blue was. That made him think of his room at the Whispering Pine, his gun, laptop hidden above the dropped ceiling, his personals, his picture of Anna. The computer was an issue, without it he couldn’t do anything for Rex should he require his expertise. The government man had hinted about a data mining assignment last time they’d spoken, but he hadn’t given Ramage any details, though he’d sent out a laptop. He loved driving, but he was starting to itch for something more, and putting his brain to work sounded like the perfect tonic.

  He had his wallet and phone, and in a pinch, he could tell Rex he’d dropped the laptop. Oops! And they’d send a new one. Thankfully the device was useless to anyone who might find or steal it due to triple threat encryption and password protection, but it would still be a big deal if he lost it. When he’d left his room for the fire alarm, he figured he’d be right back. At least he’d pulled on his jacket and boots, so he wasn’t freezing his ass off.

  It started to snow and Ramage laughed.

  He worked his way out of the stand of pine trees and went back to RT-6. Nothing moved in either direction, a small patch of light in the east marking the motel. Ramage started walking back toward the Whispering Pine. If he could get back and collect his stuff before his assailants backtracked, at least he might have a weapon, though he thought that unlikely.

  Crickets sang, a loud static buzz that pushed out all other sound and never ceased. Ramage’s breathing crowded his head, the thump of his heart pulsing through him. He couldn’t help but ponder the plight of Ralph and Alice. He knew many people were shits when it came to animals, saw them as less than human and thus expendable, here for our amusement, comfort and use, and when that usefulness ran out, said a-hole would dispose of the animal like it was a burger wrapper. The thought of it burned as bile crept up Ramage’s throat, stoking a rage that was always just below the surface despite his best efforts.

  Two sets of headlights appeared behind him on the road, moving slow and heading east. Ramage hid behind the trunk of a tall cactus, its thick arms casting long shadows as headlight beams knifed through the blackness.

  It took ten minutes for the vehicles to reach him, and when they did, Ramage saw why, even in the dark.

  The Mustang went by first, spitting sparks from where the smashed front fender dragged on the blacktop. He couldn’t see who was driving, but he thought he saw the glint of Maverix’s bifocals. The car was coughing and sputtering, smoke leaking from under the hood. Right on the Mustang’s tail, back twenty feet, was a dark blue Chevy Blazer. It looked old, but no smoke p
oured from the engine compartment, and the truck appeared to be running fine.

  When both vehicles had passed, Ramage walked back up onto the road, watching the cars’ taillights as they headed for the Whispering Pine.

  Ramage rolled his shoulders and rubbed his temples. The smart thing to do was walk away, pretend he’d never met the boys, never seen the loving chimp couple, never put his head on the dirty pillow in room six. But that wasn’t how he was wired.

  He was tired, hungry, and done for the night. Not to mention, he smelled of monkey piss. But there was still business to be tended to.

  It was his fault the boys’ escape plans had been ruined, and now they were being dragged back to their wife, and god knows how many other angry husbands and animals. What was the worst that could happen? Ramage had been the master of rationalization, but he’d been working on that. Self-analysis sucked, but Anna had sold him on the idea, saying it would help him stay accountable to himself. He knew that was a fancy way of saying accountable to their relationship. Ramage agreed, yet here he was building walls, seeking excuses and a reason to walk away from a problem he’d created.

  “Shit!” he yelled into the darkness.

  There was nothing around the motel. It was as if the original owner had sought-out the most remote stretch of RT-6 possible. The town of Price was forty miles to the southeast, but the stretch of highway the Whispering Pine sat on ran through the narrow valley that separated the large southern patch of the Wasatch Plateau from its smaller brethren, and was mostly devoid of development. Ramage figured that had been the motel’s charm in some long-ago era when just leaving your house and staying someplace overnight counted as an excursion.

  He walked on through the night, his tongue out, catching tiny snowflakes on his tongue. It was odd seeing cactus and Joshua Trees with a coating of snow, but it happened regularly in Utah, especially in the pass.

  Another forty-five minutes slipped away and when Ramage reached the motel, everything looked buttoned up for the night, the police gone. No light leaked from the Main Office’s bay window that looked out into the parking lot. No music played, no TVs blasting Disney channel or SportsCenter. The Mustang and the Blazer were parked in a corner of the parking lot away from the other guest vehicles, and Ramage saw the glow of a cigarette in the backseat of the Blazer.

  Room number six’s curtains were pulled, light leaking around their edges and spilling out onto the white plastic chair next to his door. Nobody walked along the breezeway, and the park on the side of the hotel was empty and silent. Moonlight cast errant rays through the thick cloud cover, the snow tapering off to frozen mist.

  Ramage used the shadows to work his way across the parking lot toward his room. He was halfway across the lot, striding purposefully like he owned the motel, when he saw a face peering through his room’s curtains. He dropped behind a mini-van, watching number six through the car’s windows.

  He recognized the guy, but couldn’t put his finger on where he knew him from. The man had short black hair slicked back, and his eyes darted around, searching the lot, but he didn’t appear to have seen Ramage. The words greasy and slick ran through Ramage’s brain as he tried to match the dude’s face with the faded, ink-smeared past that was his life.

  The curtains fell back together and door number six cracked open and a big man wearing a black workout suit slipped out, eyes locking on the blue Blazer.

  The glow inside the Chevy went out, and a man with blonde hair climbed through the Blazer’s bucket seats and sat behind the wheel. The engine sparked to life and the SUV lurched forward, picking up greasy boy in the middle of the parking lot.

  Ramage caught the strong scent of cologne on the breeze, and something in the back of his mind came forward, then fell back like a volunteer who’d learned they’d been assigned bathroom detail.

  The Chevy looped around the parking lot and made a left onto RT-6.

  Forty miles away in Price, Karma pulled her rental car in behind an eighteen-wheeler where she could watch the Red Rock Truck Stop. She took a sip of tea and settled in to wait.

  Chapter Five

  Smelling of chimp urine, his back still pressed to the mini-van, Ramage slipped off his gloves and rubbed his hands together as he watched the blue SUV’s taillights disappear into darkness. It was cold, but the snow had stopped, and the stiff breeze that flowed down from the Wasatch Plateau was dry and crisp. Clouds fleeted by, the faint scent of pine and gas carrying on the wind.

  The Whispering Pine Motel was silent, all eleven rooms dark except number six. The porchlight above the office entrance was on, as well as room six’s, but the other porchlights were dark. He stood and walked into the shadows at the end of the parking lot, stopping next to a thicket of scrub pine where he had a good view of the motel.

  The office was on the western end, its neon vacancy sign blinking in the blackness. Behind the main office was the manager’s quarters, which had a rear exit. The eleven guest rooms were all the same, and though none of them had rear exits, they all had bathroom windows along the back of the building. Number six was dead center, so its front window and bathroom window were the only means of access, except for the one normal people used: the door.

  He stared back at RT-6, half expecting the Blazer to come ripping into the lot, but that made no sense. Ramage figured the guy he’d seen take off in the Chevy with the future cancer patient was the boss. He and his partner were probably heading to Price to stakeout the truck stop, wait for Ramage to come get his truck and hit him there.

  Who the hell was in his room? The backup team in case he did exactly what he was doing, backtracking? The Mustang was still at the motel, so that meant the boys and snake lady were around, but he wouldn’t find any help there. He’d caused them enough grief, and they had their own problems. Ramage needed to see what was happening in his room, but every few seconds number six’s window curtains would flick open, and a slice of white face would appear.

  He could storm the room, but without weapons, and assuming those in his room were armed, that wouldn’t be a very fair fight. He could call the cops, but Rex might catch wind, and he was half a strike away from being locked down, riding the rap for the last time on one last chance. Plus, he was the one who had fled the scene. Ramage was sure the local cops would at least want a word with him, and who knows what story the boys had spun to stop Marie from feeding them to her snake.

  Talking with the cops meant using real ID, leaving a trail, and that made him quake. He’d given a false name to the hotel, which he did whenever he ran into cash-conscious entrepreneurs because credit card data could be used to track his whereabouts better than any GPS. All the hotel manager had was a false name, Rick Barret, and a general description that matched half the white dudes in Utah.

  Number six’s window curtains parted again. He needed his laptop and he wanted to know what the hell was going on, find out exactly who these dipshits were. He could knock on the door and see where that went, but that gave away the element of surprise.

  Ramage got low and worked his way through the parked cars, easing past a Volvo, the tangle of skis and snowboards strapped to the wagon’s roof like a pile of busted Pixie Sticks™, light dancing off the sugary snow. A pale green glow leaked from the car, bright digital numbers on the dash display reading 12:21AM.

  As he slipped past the picnic area to the rear of the building a shriek cut through the stillness. It was like a broken alarm; wea, wea, wea, wea. Ramage knew the sound and used it as cover as he jogged behind the motel, working his way across snow covered gravel to the only bathroom window aglow.

  Room number six’s bathroom window was locked tight, and the door was closed, so he couldn’t see inside his room. A plan started forming, the foundation of a shack Ramage hoped to shore up. He needed to be careful. At first sign of trouble the goons in his room would call their boss, and things would careen out of control.

  The twisted klaxon stopped, and an armadillo eased through a splash of light from a floodli
ght mounted on the corner of the hotel. It turned its pointy head in Ramage’s direction, yelled one last time, and disappeared into the night.

  Ramage continued along the back of the motel, and when he reached the rear entrance to the manager’s quarters, he got low, peering through the window beside the door. Nothing moved within, and only the red glow of a power light from a silent TV cut through the blackness.

  A chill ran through him, his pants and jacket still damp with monkey urine. He eased around the front of the building, keeping tight to the wall, moving past the office’s front window. He checked the door and found it locked. No surprise there, but the old brass knob was the same as those securing the rooms, ancient key-operated things that had been manufactured years before electronic keycards were invented. He put pressure on the doorknob, slowly easing it back-and-forth. There was plenty of give, but it held fast.

  Ramage circled back around to the Volvo and stripped off several bungie cords and a length of rope holding down the bundle of skis and snowboards. All he needed now was something flat and strong. The gleam of a buckle caught his attention. One of the snowboards had plastic bindings with straps that were made to wrap around oversized boots. He reached up and bent one of the bindings. No way he could break it, but if he could find a blade, he might be able to cut the binding.

  Ramage checked car doors. Most of the vehicles in the lot had blinking alarm lights, and the ones that didn’t were locked, but he didn’t give up. Crawling on his hands and knees, he slowly searched for what he needed. He was about to give up and come up with another plan when the shine of an Arizona license plate sparked an idea.

  Using a penny, Ramage unscrewed the plate. It felt like it took forever, the night symphony chirping and buzzing. Quarter turn by quarter turn the first screw came out, then the second, the night pressing in around him, his heart galloping. When the plate finally came free, Ramage gathered his supplies and started for the hotel.