The Witch's Grave Part 30

"Bruja."

This had worked once before when I was in a jam. It was worth a try now. Squaring my shoulders, I glared at the stranger. "I'm a bruja, bruja," I said as I tapped my chest.

"Yes?" The man looked amused.

"Yes...and if you don't release us, I'll curse not only you," I replied, jabbing my finger in his direction, "but your entire family."

He glanced at Antonio. "Que?" "Que?"

Antonio translated my words.

The stranger laughed in my face, then said something to Antonio.

"He said he doesn't believe in witches."

So much for that idea.

From where I was standing, I saw a shadow fall across the top step. I prayed it meant rescue as I tried to keep the hope out of my face.

Two feet wearing wing tips appeared on the top step, then a body dressed in a gray suit. Then Chuck Krause emerged from the shadows at the bottom of the steps.

My knees felt weak with relief, and I opened my mouth to cry out a warning, but before I could, Chuck spoke.

"Enrico, what in the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

Oh, great.

Enrico answered him in Spanish, and Chuck argued back in Spanish, too. Then with a shake of his head, Chuck turned and climbed back up the stairs. Moments later he was back with two ropes.

Thirty-Five.

Hours later we were still being held in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Antonio and I sat with out backs to the wall. A rope led from our hands, tied behind our backs, to our necks. I'd squirmed at first, when Chuck and Enrico tied us up, but any movement seemed to tighten the noose. I stopped struggling after a couple of tugs on the rope around my throat.

So I sat, trussed up, on the hard-packed floor and watched the light s.h.i.+ning down the steps fade to nothing. The kerosene in the old lantern had long ago run out, and the only light now came from Enrico's flashlight. I still wasn't afraid yet-I'd come too far, learned too much, to have it all end now in some dark, smelly cellar. And after my dreams of Madeleine, there was a certain amount of peace in knowing death wasn't the end. But that knowledge didn't mean I intended to face death today.

I wanted to ask Antonio if he had known of Chuck Krause's involvement with the smuggling ring, but speaking made the rope chafe against my skin. Right now all I could do was wait.

Finally, we heard Chuck call out from the top of the stairs in Spanish. Enrico answered him, then motioned for Antonio and me to stand. I inched my way up the wall to my feet, trying to keep as much slack in the rope as I could. Rattling off something else at Antonio, Enrico jerked his head at me.

"He wants us to turn around," Antonio said.

Facing the wall, I didn't want to antic.i.p.ate what might be coming next, but part of me expected to feel the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed up against the back of my skull at any second.

Now I was scared.

Instead of feeling the gun, however, I felt the bindings around my wrists fall away. The noose around my neck tightened as my hands were freed, and I twisted away from the wall, choking.

Enrico stood in front of us, his gun in one hand and his other holding our ropes taut. With a wave of the gun, he indicated we were to climb the stairs.

Antonio and I trudged up the stone steps into the night air, away from the dank cellar. Chuck Krause waited for us, holding a gun of his own.

The moon had set, but the stars strewn across the sky winked and blinked as Enrico led us like a couple of dogs past the tombstones. The beam from his flashlight caused the writing on the headstones to appear then disappear while we walked by. He stopped abruptly at the far corner of the cemetery, his light reflecting off two shovels propped up against the trunk of one of the pine trees. Stepping away from us, he let the rope play out of his hands as he joined Chuck. He pointed his light at the shovels, then moved it to the ground at our feet.

"You've got to be kidding me," I croaked. "We're supposed to dig our own graves?"

"Just one, Ms. Jensen. Two would take too much time," Chuck said. "Now please pick up your shovel, and don't try anything or we will shoot you."

Antonio and I grabbed the shovels and started digging. Or made an attempt to-every time I shoved the point into the hard ground, the rope around my neck got in the way.

I let the shovel fall to the ground. "Look, I can't dig with this around my neck. Take it off. You have guns...we're not going anywhere."

Chuck and Enrico exchanged a look, and Chuck nodded. Reaching up, I loosened the slip knot and tore the thing over my head. Antonio did the same. Rubbing my chapped skin, I thought about making a break for it. We were close to the trees, we might make it, but recalling what happened to Madeleine when she ran from Vogel, I thought better of it.

All of a sudden Chuck felt chatty. "I'm curious, Ophelia, how much did you figure out?"

Picking up the shovel, I rammed the tip into the ground and stepped on the top with my foot. "It's pretty obvious...you were using the church as a place to stash the immigrants you were transporting across the country." I threw the dirt to the side. "But the last group were killed in that car accident." I paused, resting my arms on top of the handle. "Stephen La.r.s.en and Ben Jessup knew, so you shot them."

"Cavar," Enrico hissed, waving his gun at me. Enrico hissed, waving his gun at me.

"He wants you to keep digging," Chuck translated.

The blade of my shovel hit the ground again, and picking up a scoop of dirt, I calculated how far I could fling it. Nope, they weren't standing close enough for me to hit them. If I could lure them closer... If I could lure them closer...

"I thought you were just a smarmy politician." I tossed the dirt to my other side and inched a step closer to Chuck and Enrico. "I didn't know you were running the show."

"I'm not," he declared hotly, and stepped forward. "I'm just as much as a victim as you are."

I stopped digging and stared at him. "I doubt that, Chuck. You're not the one holding the shovel."

He took another step. "They're blackmailing me."

"Why?"

"My father's landscaping business in California-"

"Let me guess, he uses undoc.u.mented workers."

In the glow of his flashlight, I saw him sneer. "No need to be politically correct, let's call them what they are." He pointed his beam in Antonio's face.

Antonio raised his arm to s.h.i.+eld his eyes, and I sensed Chuck's intolerance and hatred swell to pour out of him like a fury.

"They're illegal immigrants," he jeered. "And I never hired them-my father did fifteen years ago."

"If it wasn't you and it happened that long ago, why worry about it now?"

"Don't you know the past has a way to come back and haunt you?"

Boy, did I!

"If the party found out, they'd drop me like a stone, my career would be ruined. I had no choice," he declared in a vehement voice, and took a half step forward.

Abruptly, Enrico reached out and pulled Chuck back toward him. Enrico was quiet, but he wasn't stupid. He had no intention of letting Chuck get close to me. I glanced at Antonio. His hole was a lot bigger than mine. He needed to slow down-we needed to take as much time as possible. needed to take as much time as possible.

"Please, just show me a way out of this," I muttered to myself.

"What did you say?" Chuck leaned forward.

"Nothing." I pressed the blade of the shovel into the ground and felt it strike something. "You could've admitted you were wrong."

"I couldn't do that-"

"A better choice is to have your aide killed and Stephen shot?"

"I had nothing to do with that," he answered sanctimoniously. "When I told Enrico that Ben had learned about the blackmail, I had no idea they'd kill him."

"So you're not responsible for anything, are you, Chuck?" My temper shot up as I wiggled the blade into the dirt to pry out whatever lay beneath the topsoil. Suddenly, the thing I'd been digging at burst out of the ground and landed on the other side of me.

"What's that?" Chuck asked, trying to hit it with his light.

"Nothing, just a root," I lied.

It wasn't a root. Grinning up at me in the shadow of Chuck's flashlight was a human skull. I nudged it back into the darkness with the toe of my tennis shoe. Glancing over my shoulder at Chuck, I stared past him into the cemetery.

Around the headstones a mist seemed to be gathering. Wispy at first, but before my eyes it coalesced into a heavy vapor that began to roll and tumble across the ground. Even at this distance, I felt the energy as the fog s.h.i.+mmered with a ghostly blue light. In my head once again, I heard women crying and could smell the smoke.

The cloud headed right for Enrico and Chuck.

Enrico must have read the expression on my face. He whirled around to face the fog. "Dios mio!" "Dios mio!" he cried out. he cried out.

Antonio seized the moment and launched himself toward Enrico, swinging his shovel high above his head. He struck Enrico in the center of his back, and Enrico tumbled forward.

Chuck looked at the fog then at me and seemed to freeze for an instant. I grabbed the skull, its teeth cutting into the palm of my hand, and hurled it with all my strength, aiming straight for his head.

My aim was true. The skull caught him in the chin and snapped his head back.

As his gun went off harmlessly in the air, I heard a voice cry out from the other side of the old graveyard.

"See, Lucy, I told you this place was haunted!"

Thirty-Six.

Four days later I sat at Stephen's bedside telling him the rest of the story. He'd lost weight and his eyes had a hollow look around them, but he was off the respirator and in a private room.

"Wow, you threw a skull at Krause?" he said with surprise.

"No, she didn't," Bill said as he walked into the room. "It was a rock. We found it lying near the hole she dug." He paused long enough to give me a hard look.

I simply shrugged. I knew what I'd picked up, and it wasn't a rock. Rocks don't have teeth.

Crossing to the bed, Bill placed a laptop and cases of disks on Stephen's tray. "I thought you might want these. The disks are copies. We had to keep the originals for evidence."

Stephen ran a hand over his laptop. "Thanks."

"And you," Bill said in a stern voice, "you're lucky Ron Mark had sent up a hue and cry when he discovered that those two little old ladies had slipped away from the winery. Otherwise you might not be sitting here now."

Stephen peered at me around Bill's large frame. "You must have been scared to death."

I sat back in the chair and crossed my legs. "It's funny, I really wasn't," I answered honestly. "I was desperate but not terrified..." I paused. "And I was ticked off that they were making me dig."

Stephen smiled. Bill frowned.

"When's Tink coming home?" Bill asked, changing the subject.

"Abby and I are picking her up later this afternoon."

"You'll be glad to have her home," he stated. Extending his hand, he shook Stephen's. "Glad you're going to make it, La.r.s.en, and thanks for your cooperation."

"Not a problem, Sheriff, I only wish I would've been able to answer your questions sooner."

Bill turned and looked at me. "Do me a favor, Ophelia. Don't run into me for a while."

I clicked my tongue. "You got it, Bill."

He strode out of the room rubbing his head.

"He could've at least thanked you," Stephen grumbled when Bill was out of earshot.

I laughed. "I don't think grat.i.tude is the emotion Bill a.s.sociates with me."

"Hey, would you mind plugging this in for me?" Stephen asked as he handed me the electrical cord from his laptop.

I did as he requested while he opened it and booted it up.

"I have a question for you," I said, sitting back down in the chair. "Did you ever meet with Ben Jessup?"

"No," he replied, his eyes never leaving the computer screen. "We were going to meet Monday."