by Willow Rose
“Tony Velleda, forty-eight, is being held hostage. Kidnappers forced their way into his home yesterday when he was there alone with his eight-year-old son. The kid was then bound on his hands and legs and left in the home when the kidnappers took his father. The boy managed to free himself and alert the neighbors, who called for authorities. The kidnappers took him across state lines, and as far as we have been informed, are keeping him at the farm up there. We know there are four armed men and the hostage. We know that at least one of the kidnappers has gang connections and another is still on parole for assault with a lethal weapon. These guys don’t mess around.”
“Neither do we.”
Gary felt his gun in the holster. He felt the thickness of his vest like he often did before going into action. It was a strange thing to do, he always believed, but he couldn’t help himself. It was like he needed to make sure it was thick enough to actually stop a penetrating bullet…like he didn’t completely believe it would.
“We’re going in,” he said and nodded at the sheriff. “Have your men ready.”
Minutes later, they were walking up the dirt road, Gary leading them. As he held his M-4 assault rifle out in front of him, preparing himself for what awaited him inside that small house, he thought about his wife Iris and their newborn son, Oliver. He was no more than three weeks old and the most adorable thing in the world. Just this morning, when Gary had left the house to go to work, the boy had smiled for the first time, and Gary had cursed himself for having to go to work on an important day like today.
“Please, let this go down well,” he prayed under his breath. “Please, let me see that smile again.”
Gary snuck around the house, then found an unlit window that he broke with his rifle. He removed the glass, then crawled inside, pointing the gun through the darkens. His partner, Agent Wilson, came up right behind him, sliding in after him. They found a door where light came out, then walked closer and peeked in through the crack.
Gary spotted three men, armed to the teeth, and another man sitting in the middle of the room, blindfolded and bound to a chair.
Gary signaled Wilson, then grabbed the door and they burst inside, both yelling:
“FBI! GET DOWN!”
The three men in front of them threw down their weapons, then cast themselves on the floor, heads down, arms lifted.
Gary turned around to search for the last guy, when he appeared in the doorway behind them leading to the bedroom, holding a rifle between his hands.
“Throw down your weapons, Officers. NOW.”
Gary swallowed, almost panicking, then did as he was told. Wilson followed, but as the weapons landed on the floor, his partner pulled out a handgun, turned it at the kidnapper, and shot. One clean shot that went straight through his head. The kidnapper sunk to the floor with a thud, rag-doll limp.
Chapter 3
“So, there you have it, Greg. It still remains a huge mystery to the citizens of Cocoa Beach. What happened to the prom queen, Carina Martin, and her two friends, Tara Owens and Ava Morales, on prom night after they left the high school? Maybe this new evidence they found today will help the detectives get closer to an answer.”
I turned off the TV and threw the remote on the couch. It was on as I came home from my visit to Rhonda’s, file still under my arm, and no one was watching. Before I turned it off, I paused to hear if they had any news in the case of the disappearance of the three teenage girls who went missing after prom night two weeks ago. It was all everyone talked about lately, and I had to say that the reporter on News13 was right; it remained a strange mystery. They had been gone for two entire weeks now, and still, there was no trace of the girls. The theories went from them being kidnapped to them having planned this themselves to escape the pressure of senior year and exams. The last part was way too far out for my taste, but that left us with the first option, and I really didn’t like that either. Matt had been on the case from the night they never came home, and their parents anxiously called CBPD to ask them to set up search teams.
Matt and I had been dating for a little more than six months now, and things were going really well. We were enjoying spending time together and hated being apart, something I had never experienced with Chad. The connection Matt and I shared was so much deeper, which was only natural since we had known each other since pre-school and his house had been my place to run to when things got tough for me at home as a teenager. But we had been nothing but friends back then, and now we had finally decided to be more than that. Twenty years apart was apparently what we needed in order to figure it out.
My book was coming along well too. Between unpacking and getting settled, I had managed to almost finish it, and I couldn’t wait to be done. I was writing about my—not biological—dad, a serial killer who had managed to deceive the people he loved and hide what he was up to in plain sight, committing these atrocities right under my mother’s nose. Writing his story had been a process for both my mother and me since I kept coming to her with my questions into his childhood and their lives together. I think it was therapeutic for my mom to talk about him and what had happened, but I sensed that it also drained her emotionally.
Originally, I was supposed to be writing about some of the worst serial killers in the country seen from the perspective of an FBI-profiler, but when my publishing house learned about my new storyline, a true crime story told by one of the implicated, they threw away the contract for the first book and we signed a new one. And they gave me a huge advance on top of what they had already paid me. That’s how excited they were. This one was so commercial and had bestselling potential, they told me. I wasn’t opposed to it becoming a bestseller. I could use the money to support myself and the kids. Chad hadn’t been in the picture much since he left us, and the few times he remembered to pay alimony, it barely covered half of the rent for our house. Having three children and being a single mom was expensive.
“Knock, knock.”
Matt peeked inside, holding a bottle of wine in his hand. I smiled when I saw him. I could hear the children rummaging around upstairs, and Alex yelled something at one of his sisters. It was Olivia who yelled back and then slammed her door. She was now fifteen and had no patience for her six-year-old brother, or her twelve-year-old sister, Christine. Or for me, for that matter.
Matt jumped at the sound of the door slamming. I was so used to it, I barely reacted. Instead, I smiled at Matt again and grabbed the wine from his hand.
“What’s the occasion?”
He shrugged, then leaned over and kissed me. “It’s Friday, and I have the weekend off.”
I sent him a look. I knew the wine was for me and not him.
“I’ll order some pizza. There’s beer in the fridge,” I said.
His face lit up. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Chapter 4
“Yum, meatloaf!”
We walked into the kitchen, and Matt laid his eyes on the dish on the counter.
“I love meatloaf,” he said and approached it. “Did you make this?”
I put the bottle on the counter and shook my head with a wry smile. “Me? Cooking? If that’s why you’re dating me, I might as well come clean right now. I don’t cook, I’m afraid. I thought you knew this by now.”
“It looks delicious,” he said. “Why don’t we just eat that instead of pizza?”
I found the bottle opener and opened the wine. I poured myself a glass, then gave him a look, and he nodded.
“Ah, I see. Your mom made this, right?”
“Yup.”
“And there is absolutely no meat in it?”
“Not an ounce. No meat, no dairy, no gluten. Only plant-based ingredients. She cooked for us all earlier because she was going to Winter Garden to play cards with her girlfriends.”
Matt sighed with dissatisfaction. “It looks so good, though.”
“Be my guest,” I said. “But I have been eating vegan for this entire week now, chewing my way through plant-based dishes so
much I fear there might be palm trees growing out of my ears. I, for one, am ordering a pizza with loads of meat on it and enjoying the fact that my mom isn’t here to disapprove or get hurt by the fact that I can’t stand her cooking.”
Matt shrugged, then grabbed a plate. “I’m gonna try some. It’s good for you.”
I sipped my wine and watched as he grabbed a piece, then found my phone and ordered a family-sized pizza, making sure there’d be enough for the kids and Matt in case he changed his mind. Once I was done, I put the phone down and looked at Matt, who seemed to be enjoying the vegan meatloaf.
“This is good,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re complaining about your mom’s cooking. I think it’s really good.”
I sat down on a stool and watched him take another piece and finish it while sipping my wine.
“So, where’s Elijah tonight?” I asked.
Matt found a stool and sat down too. He stopped chewing, and his eyes grew weary. Matt had been a single dad ever since the mother of his child was murdered in the fall. He had never had a close relationship with the boy since he hadn’t learned of the boy’s existence until he was three years old, and the mother finally told him. She and Matt had a one-night-stand some nine years ago, and he thought he’d never see her again. Now, he was taking care of the eight-year-old boy on his own, and it had completely changed his life.
“He’s with my mom,” he said. “She took him to the movies, giving me the night off.”
I leaned over and grabbed his fork, then took a bite of the vegan meatloaf too. I chewed, then made a face. Nope. Just as bad as the rest of her cooking. I sipped my wine, washing away the bad taste. There was a big part of me that wished I could enjoy my mother’s cooking; there really was. I could shed a few pounds or fifteen, but I just didn’t enjoy it. And if I was honest, all this healthy eating somehow made me snack more between meals, and I found myself gaining weight after my mom moved in, instead of losing it like I wanted to.
“How are things between the two of you?” I asked. “Is it getting any better?”
Matt looked down at the plate, then shook his head. “He hates my guts.”
“He does not. You’re his dad.”
“I’m telling you; he hates me. He won’t let me help him with anything, and he most certainly won’t talk to me. He won’t even let me tuck him in at night. He spends most of his day with my mom after school since I am at work and every day when I come home, I hope that things will be better, that he’ll have warmed up to me, but he hasn’t so far. I think he blames me for Lisa’s death.”
I reached over and put my hand on top of his. “He lost his mother, the only parent he really knew since you had him so rarely.”
“And whose fault was that?” Matt asked. “It sure wasn’t mine. I begged her to let me see him more, but she always came up with all these stupid excuses. It was like she enjoyed disappointing me…like she only told me about him to hurt me.”
“But she did tell you, so she must have wanted you involved on some level,” I said. “Maybe it was just hard for her.”
Matt ate some more from his plate, then shook his head. “Yeah, well…”
“Don’t give up on him. You’re all he’s got. Give him time. His life has changed a lot in the past six months, and he doesn’t know where he stands. He probably misses his mom terribly, and you’re the only one around he can take it out on. Give it some time. I’m sure he’ll come around.”
“It’s just…it’s nothing like I imagined it would be, you know? Being a father, full-time I mean. It’s really…hard.”
“Welcome to the club.”
I chuckled and sipped my wine, sending a loving glance toward my own children upstairs. Mine weren’t doing too badly lately. Alex seemed to have found his peace with his new surroundings. Being a part of the gifted program TAG at school meant they were giving him more challenging assignments, and that seemed to have calmed him down a lot. He still yelled often when he spoke, and it was still hard for him to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, but he seemed happier. The girls seemed to be doing better, too, than when we first got here. They never spoke much about their father anymore, and I didn’t really know if that was a good or a bad thing. In the beginning, they went up to Washington to visit him and Kimmie at least once a month, but the past two months, the girls hadn’t wanted to go when I asked them. Especially my oldest, Olivia, seemed like she couldn’t care less about her father, and that wasn’t like her. I wondered if something had happened the last time they were up there. I felt sorry for Alex since he missed his father, but I couldn’t really send him up there all alone on a plane. Maybe other six-year-olds would do fine, but not my Alex. It wouldn’t end well for any of the passengers on that plane.
“I saw on the news that they found another shoe they believe is Carina Martin’s?” I said, trying to change the subject. “This time all the way at the east end of the golf course in some bushes?”
Matt walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. “Yeah, it was the second shoe. We found the heel on the asphalt and the remains of the first shoe on the night she disappeared.”
“But that means she went even deeper into the golf course than you thought, right?”
He nodded, opened his beer, and sat down. “Yeah. It was found close to a bushy area where lots of golfers usually lose their balls. It’s like a small forest part that is nearly impassable. I thought we had that place completely combed through, but it’s just so…big, you know?”
I nodded. “So, do you think she might have been hiding in there?”
“I don’t know. She could also have gone in there with some guy. It was prom, you know? People do some pretty crazy things on prom night.”
“But you found the crown by the entrance to the country club, right?” I asked.
He nodded and sipped his beer. “We’ve found broken shoes in multiple locations spread throughout the golf course. We found Tara Owen’s purse with her phone in it and part of Ava Morales’ dress that was ripped off was floating in one of the small ponds.”
“It’s almost like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs,” I mumbled.
He looked up. “What was that?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. What about the two other phones? Have you been able to locate them?”
He shook his head.
“Social media accounts? Anything that might give you a lead? Anyone they chatted with?”
“We’re still working on that part,” he said. “The forensic lab is taking care of it. They’re still working on their computers and getting their cell phone histories. Young people today have so many social media accounts, it takes forever, but so far they haven’t found anything useful.”
“Have any of the girls had issues with other students at the school? Have they received any threats? Trouble at home with parents or relatives? Any mental illnesses?”
“No, no, and no,” he said. “The three girls had perfect attendance, and they were straight A or A-B honor roll. They were well-liked and popular, especially Carina Martin.”
“What about boyfriends?” I asked, sipping from my glass.
“Ava Morales was dating a guy from the school, but he wasn’t at the prom since he was in Orlando to say goodbye to his grandmother who died the night before. The two other girls didn’t have boyfriends. Some of the other students say that Carina was with Kevin Bass that night and that she was stealing him from her best friend.”
“And this Kevin Bass, have you talked to him?”
“I think we’ve talked to pretty much everyone who was at the prom. Kevin was on the cleaning committee and left a lot later than the girls. He was cleaning up with a bunch of teachers until about an hour after the party.”
“It sounds like they were running,” I said, pensively. “The way the shoes were scattered all over the area. I mean, it’s not easy to run across a golf course wearing high heels, so it would be natural to take them off to be better able to run.”
He swallowed. The look in his eyes told me he knew I was right, but he didn’t like to think about it.
“But if they were running, where were they going?” I said, thinking out loud. “There really isn’t anywhere to go. The golf course is surrounded by water,” I said.
“We’ve had diving teams in the river for days on end, searching through every area of the river and the canals leading to the residential areas. You know this, Eva Rae,” he said. “They haven’t found anything.”
“I know; I know. I’m just trying to figure out why you’d want to run across a golf course in the middle of the night, wearing your very expensive shoes and dress unless you were being chased.”
“Or drunk. Or high and foolish,” he said. “According to their friends, the three of them had been drinking before they went to the prom. Carina Martin even smoked marijuana with her friend Molly Carson behind the performing arts building right before she was crowned prom queen.”
“That sounds like prom all right. They had an argument; didn’t they?” I asked. “Carina and Molly? Over Kevin? I remember you told me so…or did I read it somewhere? Maybe Melissa told me. Molly is her daughter, you know.”
“Yes. That’s right. They did. We’ve been looking into her.”
“Molly?” I asked, startled. “Melissa’s daughter, why?”
“Because of the fight. Maybe it turned bad later on. Maybe she could have chased Carina, and maybe she fell and hurt herself and Molly hid her body? Molly’s father does have a concealed carrier’s permit. She might have taken his gun and gone off, or it could have been an accident.”
I shook my head. “I hope you’re kidding me. Not Molly. Not Melissa’s daughter.”
Matt took in a deep breath, then ran a hand through his thick brown hair. He hadn’t been surfing much lately because of a growing workload, and his hair wasn’t as blond as it used to be.
“Did she have an alibi at least?” I asked.
