by R. B. Schow
“Keep them closer,” Tyler Vandecourt said behind her.
Up ahead, the crowd was tightening all around them, people moving through the streets like it was New Orleans on a Saturday night.
“What’s anyone going to do to us in broad daylight?” she turned and asked him, the inquiry in no way demeaning of him or his specialty.
“Let’s hope we don’t find out,” he said from behind a pair of mirrored aviator glasses. “Keep Callie and Zoey close. And maybe hold Maisie’s hand.”
Right then, Callie decided to cross the street, heading straight to a booth with tattoo artists, printed body art, and a few younger guys talking to the artists like it was time to get inked.
“Mom, come look at this artwork!” Callie called out as she pushed through throngs of people.
“Get her back here,” Tyler growled. “I said we can’t be separated.”
She turned and fired him a look. “You’re not helping any. You’re just stressing out all of us!”
Zoey broke away, pushed through the crowds as well. The girl stopped when she saw two boys approaching her sister. Sydney saw this as well. They were older, nineteen or twenty at least—entirely too old for Callie.
“Callie, come back here,” she called out as she grabbed Maisie’s hand.
“Mom, you’re hurting me,” Maisie said, pulling her hand back.
“Callie!” she called out, her daughter pretending for a second that Sydney was not her mother now that she had clearly started to panic.
The practiced smile on Callie’s face was too old for her. It was an Instagram headshot meant to get likes from cute boys and social media influencers, not something you use in real life with strangers in a strange city.
“For the love of Christ,” Tyler muttered under his breath.
“She’s got shiny penny syndrome these days,” Sydney said, stepping off the sidewalk into a street full of bodies in motion. “I’ll go and get her.”
Zoey walked back to her and said, “Those gross guys are hitting on Callie and I think she actually likes it.”
“I know,” she said, moving through a group of college kids that smelled like pot and body odor.
A few of the boys glanced at her with lustful eyes. One of them even made a MILF comment she ignored. But then Tyler got the sordid group moving when he shoved one of the boys and told him to keep his eyes to himself.
As she approached the tattoo display, Sydney saw one of the customers touching Callie’s arm, telling her she could get something there, a cool tattoo of a bird or a butterfly.
“What would you do if you got a tattoo right now?” the kid asked Callie. He had a lot of short stubble on his face and bad skin.
Sydney grabbed Callie’s arm and said, “She’s underage, guys.”
Callie started to say something, but Sydney pulled her back into the street heading back to the other side.
“Mom!”
“Bye, Callie,” one of the guys called out.
Callie broke free of her grip, walking ahead of her family where she could sulk in private. Sydney caught up to her and said, “I know you need your space, sweetheart, but you have to be more responsible when you’re in public. Some of these guys…they aren’t what you want them to be.”
“It’s not safe here,” Tyler interrupted.
“Who the hell asked you?” Callie turned and snapped. “Your job isn’t to give us your opinion.”
“Actually it is,” Tyler countered. “Stay with the others, please.”
When Sydney first met Tyler Vandecourt, he had taken off his mirrored sunglasses and introduced himself with a sort of icy detachment. She had greeted him with her own brand of indifference. Aside from his soulless eyes, he sported a wiry frame that looked lean from years of training, he had scars on his knuckles and forearms, and there were a few odd markings on his face, all good signs that he knew what it was like to mix things up in a life-or-death situation.
“Let’s go, girls,” Sydney said. “You need to do as the man says.”
“He has a name, Mom,” Maisie said.
“Do as Tyler says,” Sydney said.
When they started walking again, Maisie looked up and said something loud enough for only Sydney to hear. “Mom, Del Paso is kind of a scary place.”
“It’s called El Paso, and it’s only scary to you because it’s not home,” Sydney said. “The crime rate here is one of the lowest in the nation, I think.”
Behind her, Tyler said, “Something isn’t right.” He said this as he tightened his proximity to her and the girls. “Tell Callie to slow down, and keep Zoey close.”
“I know it’s your job to be paranoid,” Sydney said, “but you’re scaring Maisie.”
Tyler glanced down into the eight-year-old’s liquid brown eyes—eyes that were impossibly big and super cute—and then he returned his attention to Sydney. She saw herself and the girls reflected in his mirrored sunglasses. And then she saw a mud-colored van rudely cutting through traffic.
Turning around, she saw the van moving too fast. She barely heard herself cry out for Zoey and Callie when the screech of rubber skidding over asphalt threw the crowd into high alert.
Tyler went for his pistol, but the distinctive sounds of gunfire popped through the air. To her horror, the bullets caught Tyler right in the chest, putting him down hard.
Three men poured out of the van, all of them armed, all of them wearing dark sunglasses, ball caps, and COVID masks. Panicked, Sydney pulled Maisie too hard while grabbing Zoey’s hand. Fanning out, one guy grabbed Callie while the other ripped Zoey from Sydney’s grasp.
She started screaming for help, but no one tried to help them. The girls were screaming as they were dragged away, and still, no one moved to help them.
When the third man came for Maisie, Sydney tried to protect her, but the fist that punched Sydney in the ribs had her folding over in pain. The kidnapper jerked Maisie out of her hand, the little girl screaming bloody murder.
When two men finally came for her, she tried to fight them off, but it was no use. They were too strong. As they hustled her to the van with her girls, she kicked and swore and tried squirming free. Then a shot rang out. One of the men trying to snatch her grunted hard and collapsed to a knee. Another shot barked out, hitting the man again. By this time, the other man had gotten her to the van. A deafening roar of returning gunfire erupted, fraying her already battered nerves. She was roughly shoved inside with her girls and several other men. As the exchange of gunfire peaked, and then tapered off, the man who had been shot crawled into the van beside her. He rolled on his back, pulled his legs in, and then let out a god-awful groan. She glanced down and saw blood smeared all over the bare metal floor.
“¡Vamonos!” one of the men yelled as he jumped inside and slammed the van’s sliding side door shut.
The driver smashed the accelerator and the van screeched off, weaving in and out of foot traffic as they made their getaway.
As one of the kidnappers tried to stop his partner’s bleeding, Sydney’s eldest two daughters fought the men who took them. Their captors solved that problem within seconds. Not only did they zip-tie everyone’s wrists, they duct-taped their mouths shut, too.
She leveled her scared, hateful eyes on the men. The man with the duct tape caught sight of her hostility and responded by duct-taping everyone’s eyes shut. The second the sticky tape was pulled across her face and smoothed down, she told herself not to panic. It was scary now but everything would be okay. That’s when the man covered her head with some sort of a sack. Claustrophobia set in and that’s when she started to panic.
Chapter Four
OTIS FYKES
Otis was scrambling eggs and frying bacon when his cell phone buzzed. He double-tapped the screen, accessed his messages, and read the text saying that the Camden family had been taken. A big smile broke over his face.
He’d made it to the big leagues for sure! He texted back right away: EXCELLENT.
Unable to stop smil
ing, he finished cooking breakfast. He checked the time and frowned. Esmeralda would be there soon.
Due to this morning’s business both on the phone and the toilet, he’d already made his daughter, Janie, wait too long to eat. He didn’t want her to wait another minute.
The phone started ringing and it looked like Janie would be waiting a little longer. He put down the spatula, wiped his hands on the dishtowel at the sink, and took the call.
“Give me the good news,” he said.
He snugged the phone in between his ear and his shoulder while he turned off the stove to stop the loud popping sounds and the splattering grease.
“We have them,” the voice said with confidence.
“No one got hurt?”
“They’re scared but they’re fine,” his contact said. “The team’s approaching the staging grounds now.”
“What’s their ETA?” Otis asked.
“Five minutes tops.”
His stomach growled hard, giving him significant pause. This wasn’t a shit bomb being assembled internally, this was hunger.
He dropped two pieces of toast in the toaster, lowered the rack, and spit in the sink because his mouth was dry from nerves and maybe a bit of dehydration.
“What about the bodyguard?” he asked, then drank some water from a dirty glass. “Was he an issue?”
“They put him down but he got one of my guys.”
“You’ll manage that, right?” Otis asked.
The disdain in the man’s voice came through as clear as day. “Of course. I’ll call when we reach the next leg of the journey.”
Before his contact could hang up, Otis disconnected the call. Smiling once more, he took a breath, phoned the client, and exhaled as the line rang through on the other end.
The grouchy old prick answered with what sounded like phlegm in his throat. He coughed a couple of times to soften the rattle. “I’m not sure if getting old is a privilege or a curse,” the seventy-year-old groused.
“I suppose it all depends on how excited you are for tomorrow.”
The man laughed himself into another coughing spell. “Did you get the packages?” he asked when he was done.
“They’re heading to the warehouse as we speak. You asked that I call you for approval to proceed.”
“You have it,” the old man said. “Call me when it’s done.”
Otis called his contact on the other side of the border. “You’re good to go. Call me when they’re across.”
“I’ll text you instead,” the man said, ever the pain in the ass.
There were two knocks at the back door and then it slowly opened, an older Mexican woman appearing. “Hola, Señior Fykes,” Esmeralda said, not exactly jubilant, but not moody either.
“Hola to you, Miss Esmeralda,” he said, cheerfully.
His daughter’s caregiver, Esmeralda Rodriguez, nodded to Otis almost like she was confused by his agreeable mood. Otis watched her walk back to Janie’s bedroom before turning the stove on to finish his eggs and bacon.
“Bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
Ever since Tanya left him, Esmeralda was about as cold as a Michigan winter with no signs of thawing.
Through the large picture window in the kitchen, Otis stared at a clear blue sky. For a moment, he dreamed of the money he was going to make from this job. And then he found that he was grateful that Tanya wasn’t there to take it from him.
“I’m heading out,” he called out after setting his unwashed dishes in the sink.
“Come say goodbye to your daughter,” Esmeralda said in a tone.
He frowned then moseyed to the back where he saw his fourteen-year-old child in a special bed with tubes in her throat and a heart monitor next to her.
“Bye Janie,” he said.
The bedridden girl glanced over at him, wordless. He hated the look in her eyes, but he smiled anyway. Her fingers moved, but he didn’t know what that meant. Was she waving goodbye, saying hello, or just giving them a wiggle?
“I’ll probably see you tonight, Esmeralda,” he said.
Without a reply from her, he turned and left. He was walking down the hallway when he heard the woman mutter, “Asshole.”
“Same to you,” he grumbled back.
Outside, he got into a beat-to-crap Ford Ranger pickup, started it up then checked the time on the dashboard clock. With a few minutes to spare, he lumbered along the streets and highways, moving toward the predetermined location near the border. He glanced over at the sealed white envelope sitting on the seat next to him. Inside was a thousand dollars in cash. Movement in his rearview mirror grabbed his attention. He glanced up in time to see a Texas state trooper pull in the lane behind him a little too fast.
“Oh, for shit’s sake.”
He double-checked his speed then he discreetly folded the envelope of cash in two and tucked it inside an opening in the dash. Next, he slid his throwaway pistol under his thigh hoping he didn’t have to use it. Then he looked back up at the rearview mirror again.
The state trooper’s light bar suddenly became bright and busy, followed by the wail of his siren.
Chapter Five
ATLAS HARGROVE
Atlas walked toward the visitation room with his heart beating so hard that he found it tough to regulate his breathing. He couldn’t stop wondering if he would see black hair or blonde hair. Black hair was Jade; blonde hair was Cira. Did he want to see one more than the other? He hadn’t thought of this before, but now he wasn’t sure. All he knew was the thought of seeing either of them had his boisterous heart skipping beats.
Pull yourself together, he told himself. He was building this visit up to be too big. Then again, he was so desperate to see either woman that he’d lost sight of the old Atlas Hargrove—the charming, more refined version of himself. When he walked into the visitation room and sat down at the table with the Plexiglas barrier between them, he saw the gorgeous face of the woman he’d been in love with for most of his adult life.
He couldn’t help but smile as he took in her striking appearance but the smile turned into a frown as he thought about how he must look to her.
They picked up their phones at the same time. “Hello Jade,” he said, self-conscious and for good reason. “After our last conversation, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again.”
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked as she took in the state of his hair, his beard, and the exceptionally gaunt look of him. He couldn’t fault her for asking the question but did this really need to be the first thing she asked?
“This ain’t the Club Med, sweetheart,” he joked, sloughing off the judgment in an attempt to preserve what little pride remained. “Guys want to ass-rape you in here when you have a pretty face, and as you know, I happen to have a pretty face. I thought it would be best to dress down the rest of me.” He said this and then he leveled her with one of his more charismatic grins.
“There’s the smile I once knew,” she said in Russian, her tough exterior softening into what some might argue was the slightest hint of a smile.
Atlas was about to ask why she was speaking to him in Russian when he saw that douchebag boyfriend of hers sitting nearby. So, that explained her speaking in her native tongue.
Rocco Rosato sat by himself like a good little boy. He frowned at the sight of Atlas staring back at him. Atlas didn’t care. The kid’s hair was still a little long, the front falling just below his eyes and the back resting on his collar. Even worse, his hair was nothing but loose curls. It made Atlas sick. Rocco looked like the kind of guy who did cologne ads in overpriced magazines when he wasn’t doing underwear and abs ads. His brilliant green eyes would have been his best feature had the rest of his face not been model-perfect. Even the guy’s physique—while much smaller than his own—looked lean and strong the way it would look if you did a lot of Pilates or hot yoga a few times a week.
“If I didn’t know you better,” he said, holding his sarcasm in check, “I’d say you were dr
agging your little brother around with you. He’s cute, does he have a girlfriend or is he the kind of guy who’s into other guys? He sure is pretty, pretty enough to go both ways.”
“Stop it, Atlas,” she said. “That’s Rocco.”
“I know who he is. I just don’t know why he’s here.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“I’d like to feed that cocksucker his own spleen.”
“Be nice,” she warned.
“To the man who took my wife? You want me to be nice to him after I’ve spent six months in here?”
“This is the responsible adult who was there for me when my husband lost his way and forgot how to be a good man,” she said. “You know, I used to be sad thinking of what happened to us, but then you went berserk and that clarified everything for me.”
He forced a smile, then wagged his index finger at her and said, “You were letting him inside of you before I went 5150, my Belarusian beauty.”
“Don’t call me that anymore.”
“Let’s try again,” he said, his temperature rising. “You were letting him inside of you before I went 5150, Rocco’s little Belarusian beauty.”
“Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way,” she said without emotion. “I appreciate you finally acknowledging him, though.”
“What does that skinny little bitch want to tell me?”
“I don’t know. He’s his own man these days, so just…indulge him if you will.”
Atlas was about to bring up Alabama when Jade pulled out some papers and said, “I hired a divorce attorney. He needs you to sign some papers.”
“No, he wants me to sign some papers.”
“C’mon, Atlas. This was inevitable and you know it.”
He couldn’t believe he was sitting across from her, but even more, he couldn’t believe the different emotions crashing around inside of him. And they were crashing around. He was so attracted to her that his entire body ached with need. But she was gone, now sharing a bed and a life with another man, a better-looking, younger man. That stung, too.
