Free Cat Pay the Devil by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page A

had a partner on some jobs. She must have seen mug shots or read a description, but that was ten years ago; still, there was something about this guy that rang a bell. He started the car, gunned the engine, and pulled out with a squeal of the tires. Drove three blocks to a less public side street, parked, and got out. When Cage got out, too, she managed to twist around and sit up. They stood by the front of the car, talking. There was no one on the narrow little residential street behind the mall, no one visible but Cage and his partner. Yes, this man was younger, maybe twenty-five. Six foot two or three. Lean, long face, high cheekbones. Tanned arms, tanned neck and face. She could see no prison tattoos. He swung into a blue Plymouth that sat parked just ahead of them, a car maybe ten years old and grimy with dirt. She was craning to see the license plate when Cage slipped into the backseat again and pulled a long, dark rag over her eyes, tying it tightly behind her head, and shoved her down on the seat again.
    â€œStay down. Or you’re going to hurt, bad.” He slammed the door. She heard him open the driver’s door, felt the car rock, heard the door slam and the locks click. He started the engine and pulled out; she could hear the other car take off behind them, the driver gunning the engine. Didn’t he know any other way to drive? Cage made a sharp left, and when she struggled up again, hoping to hear better and to retain a sense of where they were headed, he reached over the back, hit her hard, and shoved her down.
    â€œStay down, bitch, or I’ll fix you so you can’t get up.”
    She could only swallow her rage. She thought about her .38 locked in the glove compartment, and she could almost hear Clyde say, “You had to know he’d escaped. Why the hell weren’t you carrying! You have a permit for a concealed weapon, and a perfectly good shoulder holster.” She could just hear him, and Max, too. In her mind, she pointed out to them that she hadn’t known Cage was free, that it was Sunday, broad daylight, in an ordinary shopping mall. She could just hear her niece, too—“You are a retired federal officer, you had every right…” Worst of all, she imagined Dulcie worrying when she didn’t come home.
    As he increased speed, and his attention was on the traffic, she squirmed around until she could reach the door handle behind her, but it wouldn’t unlock; he’d engaged the childproof locks. And she didn’t relish rolling out of a moving car. There was no hope of running out of gas; she’d gassed up when she hit Gilroy, before breakfast. At least she wouldn’t go to her grave hungry, she thought wryly.
    Listening, and memorizing the turns, she was sure they were headed for the freeway. And in just a minute the car picked up speed, climbing, as if going up an entry ramp, and then they were whipping through heavy traffic, passing roaring trucks. Heading south, she was certain. TowardMolena Point? If this was Cage’s vindication for her testimony in court yesterday, why hadn’t he killed her in Gilroy where he could dump her back in the hills somewhere? But what else could this be about?
    Could Cage want something from her, or plan to use her as a hostage for some reason? She couldn’t imagine what. In the past, when Cage was on parole, she’d usually been able to reason with him, on his own level, to his own degree of tolerance; on several occasions, she had even been able, with careful efforts, to sidetrack or delay his crimes.
    Now, with the tape over her mouth, she couldn’t even talk to him. And then she thought, what about Mandell? Did Cage plan to find Mandell Bennett, too?
    But Bennett was a far warier adversary; he was younger and he kept himself sharp for his work. Mandell was bigger and stronger than she, and he would be armed. Again she was ashamed of letting down her natural wariness and becoming