“You have to be kidding me right now,” he said.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“Baby, please, just be quiet. This isn’t the time.”
“This is the perfect time, and don’t baby me,” Molly said. “Is she what you want now?”
“Do you hear yourself?” Nick asked.
Molly shoved the kid toward Nick and walked toward the doorway leading out of the bedroom.
“Where the hell are you going?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said, her back to Nick. She left the room.
“Don’t you dare leave this house,” Nick said.
Molly didn’t respond.
Nick could hear her footsteps heading down the stairs to the first floor. He stared out the window, hoping Molly wouldn’t appear outside. Nick listened for the clack of the screen door but heard nothing.
The mother grabbed the boy in her arms and held him close. Nick kept his grasp on her. “Put your hand over that kid’s mouth. A peep, and I snap his neck.”
The mother did as instructed.
“Good. You just keep him close,” Nick said. “If that kid runs from this room, your blood will run from your body.”
The woman didn’t make a sound. The only noise came from the boy’s erratic breathing and the faint whining from his mouth being muffled from his mother’s hand.
Nick watched out the window while the cops appeared to be looking into the woods at the driveway’s edge. Then he heard footsteps coming back up the stairs. He turned his head to see Molly at his shoulder with a butcher knife. She jabbed the blade in front of him, and he looked down. Molly had plunged the knife into the side of the woman’s neck. Blood spilled from the woman’s throat and covered his arm.
“What the hell are you doing!” Nick said.
Molly let go of the knife’s handle—the knife remained lodged in the woman’s throat. Molly grabbed the kid, yanked him in front of herself, and placed a hand over his mouth. She turned her back to Nick and walked the kid toward the corner of the room. “Let’s see the bitch turn you on now,” Molly said over her shoulder. She kept one hand over the boy’s mouth and pressed his face directly into the room’s corner.
Nick let the woman drop to the ground and stared down at her. The woman’s hands reached for her neck. She grasped the knife’s handle briefly before her grip went limp.
“Dammit, Molly! Everything was going just fine, and you get some stupid idea in your brain and have to go off the rails.”
Molly looked back at him. “Whatever. It’s done, and I feel better about the situation.” She nodded at the woman, lying in a pool of her own blood. “Give me that knife so I can kill this little shit.”
“You’re not killing that kid,” Nick said. He placed his foot on the dead woman’s head to create leverage and reached down to yank the knife from her throat. The knife slid out with a sound of suction. Nick walked to the bed in the room and used the bloody knife to cut two strips of fabric from the bedsheet. Then he walked to Molly and held out the strips. “Tie his hands and gag him.”
Molly looked away.
“Ugh,” Nick said. He grabbed the boy’s hands and tied them behind his back. Nick spun the boy around to face him, put the center of the strip of bedsheet in the kid’s mouth, and tied it around his head. The boy stared at his mother’s body as tears streamed down his cheeks. Nick pulled the boy toward the closet, opened the door, and pushed him inside. “There, problem solved,” he said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Molly said.
Nick walked to the window and glanced outside. The cops were gone, and he caught a glimpse of the man walking back toward the house. A moment later, he heard the screen door clacking against its frame downstairs. The man’s climbing footsteps caught Nick’s ear. He closed the bedroom door halfway and put his back to the wall beside the door. Molly stood against the far wall staring at the doorway.
“I got rid of them,” the man said from the hall outside of the door. “They went through the woods to the other neighborhood.”
Nick watched the door push open at his shoulder. He swung the knife in a backhand motion into the man’s chest as he came through the doorway. The man stumbled into the room and dropped to his knees.
“Good shot, baby,” Molly said. She headed to the man.
Nick walked around the man with the knife sticking out of his chest and then reached into his pocket for his garrote.
“I got it,” Molly said. She crouched next to the man and yanked the knife from his chest. Molly stared at him and smiled. “Bye bye,” she said.
Molly sank the blade into the man’s stomach and twisted it around. She removed the knife and did it again. The man’s hands went to the wound, and he fell from his knees to his side. Molly pulled the knife and flicked blood from the blade to the floor as she stood.
“Let’s find those truck keys and get the hell out of here,” Nick said.
“What about all the blood on your clothes?” Molly asked.
Nick stared down at the man on the floor. “Go grab me something of his.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
We’d walked the trail through the small section of woods and appeared on the other side smack in the middle of a neighborhood. Each house looked to be worth a few hundred thousand—upper middle-class was my guess. The homes to our right and left, hugging the tree line we’d emerged from all appeared a bit larger than the homes on the far side of the street. The road split three ways before us. Directly ahead, I could see cross streets and a police car in the distance. To our right and left, the street curved away from us. I spotted no one in either direction.
“Forward looks to be the main road, I’m guessing,” Beth said.
I nodded, agreeing. “Are you familiar with the subdivision here, Lieutenant?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say familiar, but I know it just from passing. There are a couple hundred houses back here, I’d think. One second.” The lieutenant made a call on his shoulder radio, asking whoever was in the neighborhood to report back.
I heard a number of responses, but none of them indicated anyone had seen our couple, so I didn’t pay much attention. I opted instead to search the tree line we’d emerged from, looking for any signs that our couple did in fact take the path from the farmhouse to the neighborhood. I spotted nothing.
“Okay,” Lieutenant Hampton said. He scratched the part in his short brown hair. “Agent Harper here was correct. My guys reported back that this was the main road that leads out of the subdivision. Your fellow agents are with Officer Patton at the front, straight up this road here. We have two more exits out of the subdivision, both blocked by my cruisers. There’s three cars now circling the neighborhood, and we’re going to start some foot patrol here in a second, door to door.”
“Okay.” I saw a car in the distance, headed toward us. As it neared, I identified it as Bill and Scott’s rental.
Scott was driving. He parked at the curb nearby, and he and Bill stepped out and approached.
Scott jammed his palm in his eye when they stopped before us. “We found the owners of the RV,” he said.
The way the words sounded when they came from his mouth made it pretty clear the owners were deceased.
“Where?” Beth asked.
Bill cleared his throat. “I just got a call from Makara over at the superstore. We have a man and woman’s bodies jammed into the lower, storage section of the RV. Makara said that they both showed signs of strangulation similar to what we’ve been dealing with here. I guess they also found a small cache of firearms.”
I cracked my neck from side to side and let out a breath. “Do we have anything in this subdivision? Any sign of them?”
“Zip,” Bill said. “The exits are covered. There are a few cars that are patrolling. Looks like we need to do a little pavement pounding here and see if we can get anywhere. Did you guys get anything?”
“We followed their tracks through the brush and weeds behind the store out to the street that
runs along the golf course. We confirmed it is the way they took and found a few articles of theirs, coming up a driveway that belongs to a farmhouse back there”—I pointed to the tree line—“We spoke with the homeowner and his wife. They said they didn’t spot anything or see anyone, but he showed us the little trail that cuts through the patch of woods there. We followed it out to here.”
Beth was looking up and down the street. “They could be in any one of these houses, holding someone hostage or just hiding out. We’re going to need to look for forced entry and ask for permission to enter and search each property if the owners are home.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Scott said. “Judging by how these two have been operating, it’s not out of the question that they have someone against their will.”
A patrol car pulled up and parked behind Bill and Scott’s rental car. The officer stepped out. The lieutenant walked to him and then back toward us.
“This is Officer Harris,” Lieutenant Hampton said. “He’s going to start some foot patrols back here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, we’re thinking they came through this little path through the trees at our back. Let’s just start here and hit every house. Make notes of where we don’t receive answers at the doors.”
“Let’s do this in twos,” Scott said.
Bill and Scott headed to the left. Lieutenant Hampton and his officer walked back up the main street.
Beth and I turned right and walked to the first house with the tree line—and what I assumed to be the golf course—at its back. The house was a big two story, I figured twenty-five-hundred square feet at a minimum. A closed three-car garage faced the street on the right side of the red-brick home. Burgundy shutters surrounded the windows. We walked up the empty driveway and followed the short sidewalk leading off to the big white front door. Beth thumbed in the doorbell—I heard it chime inside. I glanced at the door and spotted no signs of forced entry. Beth hit the doorbell again. The mat beneath my feet on the front stoop read The McLains. We waited, yet no one came. I reached out and banged the butt of my fist on the door. To the left of the door, Beth tried to get a look into one of the windows at the front.
She glanced over at me. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home. Nothing that I can see looks disturbed.”
I reached for the doorknob and tried giving it a turn. The handle didn’t move—locked.
“I’m going to do a quick lap around the house and make sure there are no signs of forced entry at the back, then we’ll move on.”
“Yup,” she said.
I walked back down the front sidewalk and rounded the home’s garage into the backyard. A tee box appeared through the trees on my right. The back of the home had a concrete patio, where a small table set with four chairs stood in the center. I glanced a few houses down, through the visible backyards, and nothing looked out of the ordinary. I continued along the back of the home, inspecting the windows—all closed, none broken. I went to the back door of the house. The doorjamb was intact and didn’t look as though anyone had attempted to get in. I twisted the knob—locked. I rounded the other side of the home and found Beth waiting at the sidewalk to move on to the next house.
“All good?” she asked.
“Yeah, locked up, and no forced entry anywhere.”
I joined her on the sidewalk, and we walked toward the next house to our right.
“We’ll do the houses up to the corner there on this side and then do the other,” Beth said.
I nodded.
“I saw Bill and Scott moving on from the first house they checked back there.” Beth jerked her chin over her shoulder. “Seemed like all was well.”
Beth turned right and headed up the next driveway. The home, like the neighboring one we’d come from, was a large brick two story, yet instead of red, this one’s bricks were more natural colored. This house appeared slightly larger as well, though that could have been because the garage didn’t face the street, instead meeting at a ninety-degree angle to the driveway. Beth and I walked up the three stone steps to the brown front door, tucked back into an alcove.
I thumbed the doorbell. A moment later, a deadbolt clicked, and the door pulled open. A woman looking to be in her early sixties stood inside the home. She was thin with chin-length gray hair and wore a pair of white pants and an olive-green sweater. The woman looked at me and then Beth. I watched as her line of sight went from our faces to our feet and then back up. She appeared confused.
“Ma’am.” I reached into my suit jacket to grab my credentials. As I looked down to grab my bifold from my pocket, I realized why we were receiving the odd look. Beth and I were dressed for business from the waist up but wearing casual clothing covered in mud from the knees down. I pulled my credentials from my pocket and flipped the bifold open to show her my ID. “Agents Rawlings and Harper with the FBI.”
“Okay, what can I do for you?” she asked. “You’ll have to excuse me for not inviting you in.” The woman pointed to the mud clinging to us. She didn’t appear distressed in any manner, so I figured we’d talk to her a bit before requesting to search her home.
“No problem. Your name?” I asked.
“I’m Meridith Jones,” she said.
I pulled out my notepad and jotted the name down. “We’re in the process of going door to door in the neighborhood here. We’re asking the homeowners if they’ve spotted anyone or anything out of the ordinary around the neighborhood in the last hour or so.”
“Well, no, I can’t say that I have. You said this was in the last hour?”
“Correct,” Beth said.
The woman’s mouth curled to the side. “Sorry. No. I’ve been sitting in the living room at the back of the house for the last few hours, on the phone.”
“Did you see anything odd in the back?” I asked. “Maybe some people running from the golf course or cutting through the tree line?”
She shook her head. “Again, no. Sorry. I guess I wasn’t really looking for anything like that.”
“Sure,” Beth said. “What about hearing anything? We had a neighbor mention some dogs barking over here.”
“Dogs barking? From back here?” Ms. Jones asked.
“Yes,” I said. “An hour or so ago. The woman across the way there in the farmhouse on the other side of the trees said she heard some dog barking coming from the neighborhood here.”
“Catherine said that?” she asked.
“Yes, I believe that was her name,” I said.
“Catherine and Jim? The farmhouse behind the trees? Across from the golf course?” The woman pointed through her house in the general direction of the home we’d come from.
“Correct,” I said.
“No.” The woman shook her head. “Something is not right with that. Catherine knows this is a pet-free subdivision. Her boy, Mark, got attacked by a dog a few years back. I don’t think the dog really hurt him, but it definitely traumatized the poor little guy. She and I spoke quite a bit about it. I’m in the psychology profession. Anyway, I see Mark playing with the neighborhood kids around here all the time. If there was a dog anywhere, and I mean anywhere, in this subdivision, Mark surely wouldn’t be.”
“Appreciate it, ma’am,” I said. I jerked my head at Beth to follow me.
We walked from the front of the house and down the driveway. After spotting Scott and Bill walking to another house up the block, I curled my middle finger and thumb and pressed them into my mouth to let out a quick whistle. Scott turned to look, and I waved them back.
Frane and McCoy are in that farmhouse,” I said.
“You think?” Beth asked.
“Yeah.”
I picked up a jog toward the tree line and the path leading back to the farmhouse. Bill and Scott must have noticed because when I looked up to see where they were, both were making haste back toward Beth and me. We met them where the three roads intersected and led to the path.
“I think they’re in that house that Beth, the lieutenant, and I came
from,” I said. “The woman there made a comment that I’m sure she knew we would find out as false inside of a few minutes. She said she heard dogs barking back here when she knew this was a dog-free subdivision. Shit.” I remembered the woman had said it came from the house two or three up and realized she might have been trying to send us to the Jones house with that story.
“Something else?” Bill asked.
“Let’s just get over there,” I said.
The lieutenant and his officer must have seen us huddled and talking—both jogged up, their duty belts jingling with each step.
“Do we have something?” Lieutenant Hampton asked.
“Get a car on the other side of that road that the farmhouse and golf course is on.” I pointed through the trees. “I want it blocked.”
“What happened?” Hampton asked.
“I think they are in that farmhouse that we stopped in at.”
“With the guy and the wife?” the lieutenant asked.
I nodded.
“I’ll make the call and get over there myself,” Officer Harris said. He jogged toward his patrol car.
“Does someone have Makara’s and Gents’s phone numbers?” I asked.
“I have them,” Scott said.
“Get them off that store and at the entrance to the driveway for that house. Tell them it’s just past the golf-course entrance, where the road turns to gravel.”
Scott pulled his phone and made the call. After clicking off, he said, “They’re leaving now. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes until they’re in position.”
I pointed toward the path in the trees. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We quickly made our way up the path leading back toward the farmhouse’s driveway. I led, service weapon drawn and ready. Beth was at my back, followed by Scott then Bill and then the lieutenant following at the rear.
I had eyes on where the path exited the tree line at the gravel of the driveway. I shifted my line of sight toward the house, catching glimpses of it through the breaks in the leaves. Nearing the end of the path, I slowed for a bit, to get everyone bunched. “We have the two homeowners and the woman from that neighborhood back there mentioned a kid. The man and woman we saw. Man, blue-hooded sweatshirt, jeans, baseball cap. The woman, gray long-sleeved shirt, jeans, brown hair. Keep those friendlies in mind. You see someone using a human shield, you get to some cover, and we hold these two in that house until we can get the necessary people here to put an end to this.”
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