California Schemin' - Kate George [60]
I pressed the remote for the garage door and started the car. So far, so good. I put it in gear and eased out through the door and down the drive. Except for being really long, it handled pretty much like any other boat. I turned right onto the street and heard something scrape the side of the car. The mailbox toppled. Great. By the time this was over, I’d be replacing half a mil’s worth of stuff.
The gate to the complex went up as we approached. I drove through without looking at the guardhouse. I braced myself for the gate to come crashing down on us, but we got through free and clear. Hammie must not realize the seagull had left the building.
I maneuvered the big car out onto the freeway and headed north. If Wallace had a cabin, I was betting it was not far from Foresthill—more specifically, the Foresthill Bridge. The privacy window was up between the front and back seats. I pushed a likely looking button, and the sunroof rolled back. Okay, don’t need that at the moment. Closed the sunroof and tried again.
This time the privacy window slid down. I was worried about Wallace coming over the seat and trying to throttle me, so I stopped it at about five inches. Enough so he could hear me, not so much that he could get through the window and kill me.
“Senator Wallace. Wake up.”
He didn’t move.
“Hey. Wake up!”
Still nothing. I turned on the radio full blast.
“What!” Senator Wallace sat up. “Turn it off! Turn it off!”
I turned the radio off.
“Are you trying to make me deaf?”
“I need to know where your cabin is.”
“Like I would tell you where my cabin is. You must think I’m stupid.”
Yep, I did think he was stupid, but I wasn’t telling him that.
“I put something stronger in Wendy’s drink. It’s potentially lethal but slow acting. You take me to the cabin, and I’ll call and tell Hambecker to take her to the hospital. You don’t take me, and there’s a chance that she dies. It’s up to you.” I was feeling ruthless and desperate.
“No. I won’t be blackmailed.” He was shaking his head, but his eyes were closed.
“What will your constituency think of you when they find out you could have saved your daughter but didn’t? Don’t think you’ll be in office too long, do you? Could you recover from that? Not without seeming like a callous bastard.” I sounded pathetic even to myself.
“Fuck you. All you had to do was implicate two slimy cheese balls, and your life would have gone back to normal. They’re crooks, rapists, thieves, fucking scum. And you’re too high and mighty to finger innocent men. Let me tell you, Sweetheart, those guys are nowhere near innocent.”
“Don’t care what they are. I. Don’t. Lie. Period.” I crossed my fingers as I said it, trying not to think when the last lie was. Almost everything I’d said since we’d been in the car, but not the essentials, the essentials were true. At least that way I could justify myself.
We were coming into downtown Sacramento. I put on the signal and pulled onto the off ramp.
“Where are you going?” Wallace asked.
“Jail. No point in driving all over the foothills looking for a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I’ll take you to the police and let them deal with you.” I followed the signs toward the courthouse and Police Department.
“All right,” he said, “all right, I’ll take you. Just get back on the freeway and go east.”
We drove up Interstate 80 for an hour. We passed Auburn and the Foresthill exit. I was in familiar territory now. I’d spent a month driving around this area scoping out photo opportunities. It was another forty-five minutes before Wallace told me to get off the freeway, and we followed winding back roads into the woods. The condition of the roads got steadily worse until we were bouncing along a barely paved road in the pines.
We came to a place