Cold Trail (Sue Thomas FBEye)

Cold Trail - Chapter Four

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Four stainless steel milk barrels?

Three days to live?

Two flutes of champagne?

And a Christmas card in a snowflake envelope?

~ * ~

One look inside the tiny apartment was enough to convince Sue no women had ever stepped in here.

"It's a little messy, but feel free to sit wherever you want." Rudolph pointed at a round table surrounded by three mismatched chairs. "If I untie your arms, you promise to help me, and not flee, right?"

He'd thrown her purse, which contained her blackberry, in the glove compartment of his car. She had no idea where she was, and even if she did, this wasn't the kind of neighborhood in which a woman wanted to roam free in the middle of the night. Ironically, she felt safer with Rudolph. "I promise."

Her hands tingled as circulation returned to them. She hadn't told him, yet, that she was deaf, and she wondered if he knew since he always seemed to look at her while he talked.

He sat in front of her. The gun was nowhere in sight. "What do you want to know about Jolly?"

"Everything, Rudolph, so start at the beginning, and go slow. I don't want to miss a thing." With any luck, the team would come barging in while they talked, and rescued her.

"Well...as you may know, my mother is a jailbird. I've seen her a few times, but never really lived with her. I had good foster homes, not their fault if I ended up selling dope. I wanted money to go see her. Instead I met Vixen. He and my mom had a thing, or so I was told. Anyway, next thing I knew my mom was in jail again and I was way over my head. I didn't know I had a sister, not until she approached me on the day we moved the weapons into the locker. She showed me her birth certificate with my mom's name on it. Jolly is only eighteen. She's a pretty thing, and she deserves better than Vixen. He recruited her after she ran away from her foster home. See, she wasn't lucky like me, but she's a bright girl, and she wants out, but Vixen won't let her." He sank in his chair, and his arms dropped down his side. "I just want to take her away, that's why I agreed to squeal on Vixen, not because Leland dropped the charges against me. But Leland, he doesn't believe me. He said she doesn't exist, but I saw her. She's a redhead, just like my mom."

"I believe you, Rudolph." She believed that he believed the girl was his sister. "Would you let me call Myles so I can explain the situation to him?"

"No!" Like a stretched rubber band, he tensed right back. "He's mad that the weapons were not there. I watch the news, you know. He's taking the heat, and he's blaming me. I'm not even sure if Vixen still trusts me or not. Might be why he replaced the weapons with dog food. Maybe he knew I sold him out. That would explain the Christmas card I found under my door."

His speech had accelerated, and she had to concentrate extremely hard to follow his rambling. "What card?"

He reached behind his back, and grabbed a card from the kitchen counter, then placed it on the table. "I found it on Friday."

The front featured a wintery scene. An old-fashioned two-story house, with two additions attached on one side, and a big shed. Two men and a woman worked around the property surrounded by a wooden fence half buried under the snow. On the snow-covered street, two horses, one black and one brown, pulled a sleigh driven by a man and his companion. Fur blankets warmed up their laps, and four stainless steel milk barrels stood at their feet, with the word ICE written in red on the two left barrels.