Don't Lose Her

by Jonathon King

  “And why not?” she asked.

  Geronimo only shrugged his thick shoulders. Rae felt something flicker in the back of her head and actually felt the prickling sensation on her neck and she knew that feeling, rare as it was. She’d felt it that day in the car on the railroad tracks. She’d felt it a couple of times when one of her mother’s boyfriends came stumbling into the trailer, searching for something, probably sex, when Rae was there alone and had to skinny herself under her bed and practically stop breathing until the fucker gave up and left. And now she was feeling it again and recognized it as fear.

  She and Danny were way the fuck out of their league this time. It wasn’t some one-day quick-hit deal and everything’s gonna be all right this time, because now they were involved in the kidnapping of a federal judge. And when it finally was all over, was Geronimo really going to just let them walk? Give them the money and let them go on their happy Florida vacation, knowing they could identify him and his little band of Chippewa brothers?

  Shit, she thought as she stared out the window at a thousand acres of Everglades swampland. No different than going out to the Sand Lakes Quiet Area down by Kalkaska, she thought—pure untouched nature. You get a few hundred feet off the trail in that oak and pine forest and nobody’s ever going to find your body. Same here, she thought, looking out at honey-colored saw grass that ran all the way to the horizon.

  She squirmed a little in her seat and felt the cell phone tucked up half inside her and thought of her friend Kelsey. At least she’d know where to dig for their bones.

  Chapter 25

  I was already in a back booth at Lester’s Diner, working on one of their famous fourteen-ounce ceramic cups of coffee, when Sherry walked in. She was wearing her business suit, slacks that covered her prosthesis, and a jacket that covered the 9-mm Glock she carried in a belt holster on her side. Despite everything going on, my first thought was, Damn, she’s pretty, and I told her so when she slipped into the bench across from me.

  “Am I?” she said. She has a habit of answering every compliment with that question.

  “You’re very beautiful today.”

  “Am I?”

  “You handled that perfectly.”

  “Did I?”

  “You’re the smartest woman I know.”

  “Am I?”

  You get the drill. After our first few months together, so did I.

  And today she was the prettiest person in the restaurant. Why I needed to tell her that while my head was spinning with questions about Diane and what the hell to try next was beyond my comprehension.

  “You look terrible,” Sherry finally said, bringing me back to Earth.

  “Thanks.”

  She shrugged, but extended her hand across the table and laid it on top of mine.

  Lester’s is an authentic 1950s-style diner with an aluminum railcar look on the outside, and service at the counter on a swivel stool or at vinyl-cushioned booths running down the inside wall. Since the Broward Sheriff’s Office was once housed in a nearby warehouse, the place became a favorite hangout for cops. Sherry liked it for nostalgia’s sake. I liked the coffee.

  One of the gray-haired, sixtyish-looking waitresses in a white, knee-length uniform with a yellow apron and a pencil stuck behind one ear came over to take our order. I succumbed to the ranch breakfast special while Sherry ordered only tea.

  “Max, it’s ten at night,” Sherry observed after the waitress said, “Comin’ up, hon,” cracking her gum.

  “Hey, a man’s gotta eat,” I said, not remembering when I had last done so.

  I was now holding Sherry’s hand in mine. We stared at each other in silence for a moment.

  “Word at the office is that the feds are reviewing tapes of any traffic cameras that might have caught the Chrysler leaving the warehouse district and then using that as a point of reference in an expanding circle,” she said. “When they get a second sighting, they can use that as direction and try to narrow the search.”

  I nodded.

  “But it takes a lot of time and eyes-on,” she continued. “Even with unlimited manpower, it could still take hours, maybe days.”

  I nodded again. She was preaching to the choir. She knew that I knew all of these tactics and the length of time a search could take.

  “If they were smart, they wouldn’t have had to run,” I said, just voicing to Sherry what I’d been thinking since leaving Billy and asking her to meet me. Billy was not a brainstormer, but I was, especially with Sherry, who knew the lay of the land and had the experience to respond in kind.

  “They could have stayed tight in a local safe house and waited. Hell, they were safe where they were. I was just lucky getting a tip that paid off.

  “Maybe I flushed them,” I said, putting it out there. “Maybe one of the informants let it loose, somehow.”

  Sherry reached across the table and took my hand away from my neck. Without realizing it, I’d left her hand lying there on the table. Mine had gone to the scar left by the bullet wound from Philly, my fingers rubbing the slick soft skin where the hole had been. It was an old habit, a tic brought on by stress and anxiety. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d caught myself doing it.

  “Max, they’ve got to know that the heat is never going to come off this,” Sherry said. “Everyone will make this their top priority for as long as it takes.” She took both of my hands and cupped them in hers, our elbows making a tepee over the table.

  “You don’t mess with a judge, a federal judge, in this country. Just like the state attorney said, we’re scorching the earth on this.”

  “Don’t know. Maybe it was taking longer than they’d thought,” I said, still speculating on the kidnappers’ reason for moving. “Maybe their plan was falling apart.”

  “If they’ve got a plan,” Sherry said. “Far as I’ve heard, there’s still no ransom demand.”

  “What else have you heard?”

  When the waitress arrived, we sat back and cleared a space for my late-night breakfast. My appetite surprised me, and I went through the eggs and hash browns while Sherry went through a list.

  The feds had sent everything they got from the warehouse to the FBI lab in Miami. They’d already found a fingerprint on the portable toilet left in the room where Billy had smelled Diane’s perfume. If it was hers, good, I thought. If she was still cognizant enough to try leaving those kinds of bread crumbs, maybe they hadn’t hurt her. The feds would run every hair follicle and sweat stain and tossed-away napkin from the Dumpster for saliva and try to make DNA matches. Sherry said they’d already tracked the pickup route for the company that serviced the trash and would start raking through the contents present and past.

  “No blood samples,” Sherry said.

  I looked up from my last piece of toast with a quizzical look.

  “They found sheets and towels and some discarded clothing in the Dumpster, none with blood stains.”

  I knew she was trying to give me good news—something to hold on to. And she was right. The lack of any kind of blood was always a good sign.

  “You need to rest, Max,” she finally said, and looked over her shoulder to alert the waitress. “You’ve got nothing to run on now. Let’s go home.”

  I looked in her eyes and despite my anxiety, the days of no sleep, and the frustration, I went for selfishness and, yes, neediness. We paid the bill, tipping heavily, and went home.

  Afterward, we lay in Sherry’s bed with the overhead fan cooling the sweat on our bodies and the aqua light from her backyard pool seeping in through the window and painting the ceiling. Even though her skin was still hot from our lovemaking, she laid her head on my chest because she knew I liked it. I stroked her hair and stared up into the rippling blue light above us.

  “Thank you,” I said finally.

  “For loving you?”

  “For trying to
relax me, take my head out of the game for a while.”

  “That’s not why.”

  “Why then?”

  “I was horny.”

  “Liar.”

  “Yes, but still—did it work?”

  “It always works. But the sun still comes up tomorrow.”

  “And do we know what it might shine on when it does?”

  “We are, as they say, waiting for a break in the case.”

  “Didn’t you already create one break?”

  “Yes, but the jury is still out on whether it helped or hurt.”

  “Juries get to judge after the fact.”

  “True.”

  We were silent again. Maybe we even dozed a bit, or slept.

  My phone buzzed at 6:10 a.m. It was mine, not one of the burners. I rolled over and answered.

  “Max, they picked up the Chrysler on a photograph from the tollbooth camera on Alligator Alley going west.”

  I am a light sleeper, even when I’m exhausted. It’s an old cop thing. I deciphered the information coming from Billy with barely a blip in concentration.

  Alligator Alley is the old name of what is now I-75, which takes you westbound across the state from Fort Lauderdale to just shy of Naples. It was built by a construction company in the late 1960s as a fast two-lane road from west to east coasts. When I-75, which goes all the way to Michigan from Florida, started using it as its main extension from Tampa to Miami, the name was officially changed. It was widened in recent times and the lanes separated because of increased traffic and the fact that when it was a narrow two-lane, head-on wrecks in the dead of night were of epic proportions.

  There were two other things I knew about it. One, the far west toll plaza was dedicated to the memory of Edward J. Beck, a toll taker who was murdered on the job in 1974. Two, midway across are entrances to the Seminole’s Big Cypress and the Miccosukee Indian Reservations. Together those Indian-held lands cover more than two hundred square miles of the Everglades.

  “Did they catch it coming out at the Beck Plaza?” I asked Billy.

  “No. No sign after that. But they could have gone north or south on State Road 29.”

  “Right,” I said. Neither of us had to say it—Indians. Why the hell were Indians coming into all of this?

  “You have some contacts out there, right, Max?”

  “Yeah, in the Glades—one of the best. But inside the tribe is a lot tougher. You’ve got the big business casino boys pulling their ‘privacy of a business entity’ line and on the Indian side they stay behind their ‘we’re a nation of our very own’ cloak. It’ll be tough to crack in terms of search warrants or information coming out if tribal members are involved.”

  “I’ve got a legal connection,” Billy said. “I helped with a case a few years ago when one of the tribe’s big names got arrested for killing a Florida panther, a designated threatened species.”

  “They said it was a tribal custom,” I said, remembering.

  “They came to a mutual agreement,” Billy said.

  “Let’s hope they’re as cooperative this time.”

  “I’m also working another angle.”

  I waited.

  “I’ll get back to you, Max. I know you’ll do what you do.”

  “Count on it,” I said, and pressed the disconnect button.

  Chapter 26

  Braxton Hicks! Braxton Hicks! Oh God, please. Not real contractions. Braxton Hicks! I am not going into labor in the trunk of a damn car!

  They were still driving, moving fast, but on a flat, straight trajectory that she figured had to be the interstate. But which one? I-95 north or south, or I-75 west?

  And then came the contractions. No, no, no, she felt the squeeze in her uterus, muscles cinching up. She let go a gasp that only she could hear. She gritted her teeth as the pain increased and tried not to cry. A minute felt like ten; and then the muscles let go.

  Diane tried to control her breathing, deep, regular breath, through the mouth, in and out, in and out. The air was terrible. The hood had been over her head for how long now? The smell of her own bad breath, the stink of moisture on the cloth pressed to her face. And she was in a damn trunk!

  Breathe, Diane, in and out.

  In her head, she tried to replay a scene from the childbirth classes she and Billy had taken at Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: Billy sitting so uncharacteristically on the floor of the classroom with her, still dressed in his Brioni suit, but sitting there nonetheless, encouraging the rhythmic breathing, reading the second-hand sweep of his watch with her, timing her. He was supposed to be counting out loud to her now. She was supposed to relax in between contractions. He was supposed to be holding her hand, letting her know she was not in this alone, that they were a couple, that this was miracle made for two.

  Damn it, Billy, where are you now? Why hadn’t someone come to rescue her? Why was she going through this by herself?

  Diane knew her anger was misplaced, but there it was. Why her? What had she done to deserve this? And what if something happens to this baby? The marriage, the pregnancy, and the child she’d almost given up thinking she’d ever have before she met Billy?

  Damn! There it came again, the squeeze starting at the top of her uterus and spreading down. She started breathing faster, faster, too fast.

  Calm yourself, girl. Come on. Thirty seconds. Damn. Maybe a full minute—then the muscles relaxed.

  Not drinking enough water can cause Braxton Hicks contractions; that’s what the doctor had said. She reached again for the water bottle and drank. When she rolled herself as best she could to change position, Diane felt the fetus inside slide with her.

  She was momentarily comfortable, or as comfortable as a pregnant woman could be in the trunk of a car, when she felt and heard the slowing, the deceleration, and finally the stop. They made a turn and then sped up again, but not as fast. A while longer and then another turn, and another, this time onto a rougher surface. They jounced along on a road that somehow felt soft, yet each lurch caused her body to move and push into the close space. When they finally came to a full stop, Diane heard the doors, four of them, open and close. Again, there were no voices. Not a word.

  She sensed a change in the light despite her veiled eyes, and then the creak of metal hinges. A change in the air meant they’d opened the trunk. She felt coolness on her legs and arms. Someone reached in and scooped her up in his arms as if she were a child, and helped her, really helped her, get up and out, in distinct contrast to the way she’d been tossed in. She felt her bare feet touch something moist and stringy, which she recognized as some kind of grass. Two people again guided her with hands under her armpits, her belly hanging, unguarded.

  She could feel a breeze and, despite the hood, she could smell something musty, like soil or plants. After several steps, she heard the slosh of water and then stepped into something wet. She recoiled at the feeling at first, but was prodded by her captors, who splashed their way forward. The ocean? No, there was no salt in the air. A lake?

  She was calf-deep now, with soft muck between her toes. A hand grabbed her behind one knee and lifted her leg and planted her right foot onto something solid. She was urged to step up. When she put her weight on the object she could feel the stair or platform give a few inches—something unstable, something floating. With some uncomfortable pushing and twisting she felt herself finally placed into a hard seat.

  When she leaned back carefully, she found herself in some kind of chair, and the hands holding her let go. There was clomping and bumping and again the feeling of instability as weight shifted, and whatever she was on rose and fell. All the sensations were causing her head to spin.

  Then all of a sudden, she heard the grinding sound of a motor starting. When it finally caught, her ears were assaulted by perhaps the loudest eruption of noise she’d ever heard. In a panic, she reached
up with her bound hands and began wrenching the hood from her head, but was immediately stopped by one of her guards, who grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her hands back down into her lap.

  The noise continued to grow, burring with a physical force against her eardrums and vibrating through her body until she felt a rolling, wobbling movement. The engine noise increased and the movement continued forward. She could feel the wind increase with the sensation of speed; gathering her wits, she realized she was on an airboat. They were in the Everglades, she thought. Part of her deflated. She’d actually prosecuted two homicide cases in which bodies were dumped in the Everglades, one in which human remains had been found partially digested in the stomach of an alligator. Florida was full of conjecture that dozens of bodies of missing persons had been dumped in the Glades, where the chances of discovery were next to nil.

  But as the boat increased its speed and the wind pressed the hood against her face and forced her to dip her chin so she could breathe, she had another thought: that her captors had made a big mistake coming to the Everglades, a place Max Freeman knew better than any investigator she’d ever been associated with.

  She hadn’t thought of Max during this entire ordeal. Billy would have called him, brought him on board immediately. Max was his man in the most dangerous cases Billy had gotten involved with, and Max was absolutely relentless when Billy put him onto something. She knew that Max had killed a man who was kidnapping children from the west Broward suburbs and letting them die in the Glades. She knew he’d worked a case for Billy that involved a serial killer in Fort Lauderdale that came to an end with the shooting of that man. She knew that he’d saved his girlfriend, Sherry, by taking on a gang of Glades fish camp looters and an oil company henchman.

  You’ve screwed up, she thought of her captors, stepping into Max Freeman’s world. He will track you and find you and if history repeats itself, he will hurt you.

  Chapter 27

  Rae was enthralled to the point of near-stupidity. What the hell are we doing? Where the hell are we going, in this wide-open and somehow gorgeous landscape with towering clouds like big sailing ships moving across the sky? It was fabulous. But if she could have somehow given the high sign to Danny, she thought the best plan would have been to jump out of the car and just run for it.