by Willow Rose
“But…then he could be anywhere by now?” Mary said.
I nodded. My head felt heavy. I had a pounding headache threatening to burst out and remembered that I hadn’t slept or had anything to drink for a very long time. “I’m afraid so. The entire town is looking for him, though.” I wanted to add that they’d find him, of course, they would, but I didn’t. Because this guy had tricked us so many times before, I was no longer so sure.
I tried to call Brad again but still got no answer. “Where the heck is he?” I mumbled, beginning to get nervous. I found a deputy out in the hallway.
“Take a couple of men and search the resort for Brad Shearer. He’s been gone for a little too long now, and I can’t reach him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The deputy nodded and went with two of his colleagues.
“Agent Thomas?”
I looked at one of the other field agents that Brad had brought with him. Agent Allison Henderson. A young up and coming woman that I saw a lot of myself in. She walked toward me.
“I just got off the phone with the owner of Billy’s Auto-shop downtown, the one Roy Hudson disappeared into.”
“Yes?”
“He said he’s not the owner anymore. He sold it to Roy Hudson about two months ago. He said Roy was mostly interested in the drainage tunnel running beneath it; he didn’t seem to care about the auto shop at all. The owner found that to be strange. But he paid a good price for it, so he didn’t ask.”
“Roy has planned this for a long time, and made this his plan B, his escape in case things got hot.”
“Looks like it,” Allison said. “Clever.”
“Thanks.”
I glanced at Mary, who had pulled up a chair and sat with Maggie. They were holding hands and talking. I wondered what I would talk to my daughter about if I hadn’t been with her in ten years. Where did you start? You had missed all of her childhood. She was a teenager now, fifteen years old. You had missed everything in between. Mary barely knew her own daughter. Who was she? What were her likes and dislikes? What had shaped her?
It had to be tough.
While looking at them, the deputy from earlier, Deputy Hanson, came in through the door to the room.
“Agent Thomas. You need to come right away.”
Chapter 69
“We found him in the pool and spa area.”
Deputy Hanson held the door for me so I could enter. The smell of chlorine sprang to my nose. I followed Hanson through a set of glass doors into the pool area, where I spotted him on the ground.
My heart dropped.
“Brad.”
I rushed to him and knelt. There was so much blood.
“I called for an ambulance,” Hanson said. “Should be here any minute. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Brad blinked his eyes and looked up at me. His shirt was soaked in blood from the bullet wound in his shoulder. His skin was pale.
“He took my phone so that I couldn’t call for help. But I had him,” he stuttered. “Right here. I almost had him and the…boy. He was…trying to drown him here in the pool. I walked in on him. The boy was still alive when I pulled him out of the water.”
“You disturbed him,” I said with a soft smile. “And that just might have saved Cole’s life. That’s the important thing to focus on right now. This means he might still be alive. This is good news, Brad.”
“But you didn’t get him, did you?” he asked. “He got away?”
I nodded with an exhale. “For now. But I’m not done yet. You just hang in there, Brad. I’m not losing you as well.”
Brad sputtered. Hanson rolled him to the side so he could breathe easier.
“I always admired you so much, Agent Thomas,” Brad said with a feeble smile. I didn’t like the color of his skin. “I was the one who suggested we bring you in for this one. I studied your work for years and knew you were on this case back then. I just wanted to be you.”
“And you will be, Brad. Just keep up the good work. You’re gonna be a great agent, and one day maybe profiler as well.”
He tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. Brad’s eyes rolled back.
“No, Brad, stay here. Don’t pass out,” I said and slapped his cheek gently. “Stay with me, you hear me? Stay here!”
Brad smiled blissfully and cracked his eyes open. “Find Cole for me, will you?” he almost whispered. “Make sure this wasn’t in vain. Bring him back to his mother. Don’t let my death have been for nothing.”
“You’re not dying, Brad. Do you hear me?” I almost screamed. “You’re staying here. You’re being taken to the hospital, and then you’re gonna be stitched up, and you’ll be fine; you hear me, Brad? Brad? BRAD?”
I screamed his name, and it echoed off the walls of the pool area, just as the paramedics came storming in, rolling the stretcher behind them, Agent Allison showing them the way. I broke down and cried, bending forward, gasping for air as they took over.
Please, don’t let him be dead. Please, let them be able to save him.
I watched as they performed CPR, then pulled out a defibrillator and jerked his chest, trying to get his heart beating. I held my breath as they listened for a heartbeat, then went for it again. Brad’s torso jerked once again, and they felt for a pulse. Then they tried again, and I felt how the hope seeped out of me—another jerk, then the search for the sign of a heartbeat.
The female paramedic looked up at her colleague.
“I have a pulse.”
I watched, crying hard as they rushed Brad out of the pool area on the stretcher and into the ambulance, while the photographers crowded the ambulance, and the deputies tried to hold them back. The ambulance went down the street, lights blinking in the night, while the tears wouldn’t stop streaming down my cheeks.
I rushed back inside before the photographers got pictures of me like this, and without answering any of their questions.
Chapter 70
They found Brad’s phone in a trash can nearby, and Agent Allison also found the reporter’s phone, which she went through.
“There’s a video,” she said. “Footage of when Shirley Murphy approached Roy Hudson or Peter Marshall in the garage. Look.”
I watched the video she had made of him rolling the suitcase across the garage floor when she called out to him, asking him what he was doing. She had somehow figured him out long before the rest of us, and that became her demise.
“And the boy?” I asked. “Could he fit inside that suitcase?”
“I think so. We found it by the poolside on a lounge chair. There was also a sedative inside of it. And syringes.”
“That we must assume he used to pacify the boy with so he didn’t scream or make noises to alert us to where he was,” I said, annoyed at continually being a step or two behind this guy. “Makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us where they are right now. But it will serve as evidence for his trial once we do get to him.”
“You see him attack the reporter in the video, so, yes. Pretty strong material,” Allison said. “I’ll make sure it is secured.”
“That’s good,” I said and tapped her shoulder. “Nice work.”
“And Brad?” she asked. “Is he going to be okay?”
I exhaled. “We don’t know. We’ll know more in a few hours.”
She nodded, then looked down.
“I’ll continue,” she said, then left me.
I approached Mary and asked her to come with me. She got up and followed me to the couch, where we sat down.
“Is there anywhere you think Peter would take the boy? You know him better than any of us.”
She sighed, her hands shaking slightly. “You’d think after sixteen years. I feel like I don’t know him at all.”
“Still, he might have a place, somewhere you know he likes to go. What does he like to do? We assume he’s gonna take the boy to some body of water if he’s keeping up with his MO. Can you think of anywhere around here where he might go with Cole?”
She shook her head. “I…I didn’t even know he had been here two months ago to buy the auto shop. He traveled a lot for work, conferences and stuff like that, but I didn’t know he went to Florida. I thought he hated the state as much as I did. That’s why I was so puzzled when he suggested we come back for a vacation. But he said he wanted to take Cole to all the parks: Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld. I bought into that, thinking that okay, maybe it doesn’t have to end badly; it’s not the state’s fault, what happened last time. Guess it turns out that it was all my fault. For being so blind?”
I sighed when Mary’s phone buzzed on the coffee table in front of us. She leaned over to look at the display. Her eyes went wide, and she looked at me.
“It’s him. It’s Peter. What do I do?”
“Pick up,” I said. “Pretend you don’t know that he has Cole. Try to get him to tell you where he is.”
I signaled for Allison to try and trace the call. Right when Cole disappeared, we had gotten everything ready to track any call she might receive, should the kidnapper call with demands.
Allison nodded and tapped on her computer. I bit my lip as Mary put the phone to her ear.
“P-Peter? Honey? Where are you? You’ve been gone for a long time now. Will you be back soon?”
Mary went pale. She didn’t say any other words, just listened. I saw tears spring to her eyes and signaled for her to continue. But it was Peter who did the talking. Then she removed the phone from her ear and put it on the table.
“He hung up.”
“What did he say?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the seat.
She turned to look at me. “He wants me to come to him. He says he has Cole, and he won’t harm him if I come to him. But I must come alone. He’ll call and guide me where to go.”
I shook my head. “Not gonna happen.”
Mary looked up at me. I had risen to my feet and placed my hands on my sides.
“But…my boy?”
“Peter might kill you both. It’s too risky.”
Mary stood up too. “I want to do it. If there is any way I can save Cole, I will.”
I ignored her and looked at Allison. “Did we get anything? A location?”
She shrugged. “Orlando area, that’s all. The cell phone tower this call went through covers south Orlando, but it’s still a pretty large radius.”
“You can’t get closer than that?”
She shook her head. “Nope. His phone is a burner. It’s untraceable. Plus, he’ll probably toss it and get another one for the next call.”
“Probably. He’s smart. Keep trying to track him,” I said. “He’ll call again, right? He said he’d call again?”
Mary nodded. “That’s what he said. He told me to get ready, and then he’d call me. Please, let me go.”
“We’ll put a wire on her,” Allison said. “We can follow her closely. If he leads us to the boy, we go in.”
“It’s risky,” I said. “You’re the one he wants to hurt. Maybe if I go instead?”
“He’ll know it’s you,” Mary said. “I won’t risk it. He might kill Cole. I’ll go. I don’t care. Cole is most important right now.”
I exhaled and glanced at Maggie, who sat with Sydney, drinking a soda she had gotten for her. Did I want to risk her losing her mother once again?
“I’m doing it, no matter if you let me or not,” Mary said, then grabbed her phone in her hand. “This is my only chance of saving Cole.”
I nodded. “Okay. But we’ll follow you closely as you go, okay? We’re not letting you out of sight for even one second.”
Chapter 71
“What are we doing here? Dad? Why are we here?”
Roy looked at the boy in the rearview mirror. He had stolen the Subaru in a driveway not far from where the drainage tunnel ended. Stupid owners had left the keys inside it. People really were clueless. But it was to his advantage. Just like it had been his luck that it hadn’t rained much lately, and the tunnel hadn’t been filled with water. His legs and pants were soaked, and so were the boy’s from walking through it, but that was all. They could deal with some wet clothes easily in this heat. Right now, it served to keep them cool inside the car. Roy had to shut the engine off for a little while so they wouldn’t seem suspicious being parked where they were in case a patrol car drove by. That meant the AC was also off, and the temperature was quickly rising inside the cabin.
“I’m really tired, Dad. Can’t we go home?” The boy’s voice was trembling. He was scared but trying not to show Roy.
“Not yet, son,” Roy said. He looked at his phone, then at his watch. He’d give her ten minutes to tell Agent Thomas and whoever else was in the hotel room still about the phone call and his demands. Then he’d call her back. He knew they’d probably be tracking his phone, or at least try to, but he’d make it brief. Tease them just enough for them to think they could find him, then hang up.
“All I want is you,” he had told her. “I don’t care about the boy.”
It was a lie, naturally. But he knew Mary—the Little Maggot—enough to know that she’d do anything to get to her child.
Her and her annoying children.
He had never felt like a father. Roy had never connected with the children, and the bigger they grew, the more he grew to loathe them and their presence in his life. Everything about them was always wrong. Especially the boys. They annoyed him so much; all he could think about was the day he’d be able to shut them up for good—just like he had wanted to do to the Maggot when she was a toddler and had ruined everything for him.
Roy shivered at the thought. He remembered how he had looked at her neck and wanted to strangle her already back then. He should have done it when he had the chance. He hated her more than anything. She was always there, and his dad adored everything about her.
It was disgusting.
The wait had been the hardest part—years and years of planning how to do it. Killing their parents, his dad and her mom, had been the easy part. He drowned them both in their own bathtub, then burned down the house. But it had felt rushed—like it wasn’t quite satisfying enough. It was too easy of a way out for them. He wanted them to have suffered the way he did—day after day in that home. But by the time he found that out, it was too late. They were both long gone. It hadn’t taken him long to find out that the best way to get back at Mary was to ruin her life completely. To give her everything she wanted, all the happiness, just like he had before it was taken away from him. He wanted to destroy her, just like he had been destroyed.
After all, it was all her fault. Life was good before she showed up.
And he wanted to make sure this was done completely the right way. So, he married her instead. He pretended to love her, even though he loathed her more than anything. He gave her children, twins, and the happiness was overwhelming. And that’s when the planning began. He knew he had to wait until they were a certain age—to be the most devastating to her. And to make sure he got it right. He had actually planned it all two years earlier, to the smallest detail, when the chance was there on another vacation to California. But then those annoying people, James and Brittney, suddenly called and said they’d join them there, and that was the end of that plan. Two years he had to wait to get the chance again, but it was all worth it. Pushing Blake and Maggie down in the water and feeling how life left them was the most intoxicating thing in his life. And he even got away with it.
Some idiot who had also been at the hotel was put away and received the death penalty instead of him. It was overpowering. He felt invincible. But then depression struck after the twins were gone. People around him thought it was due to the loss of the children, so no eyebrows were raised. But little did they know what really went on inside him. The intoxicating thrill ride had come to an end. He started wondering what was next for him. Killing those two had been his goal for years, so now what? He had broken Mary like he wanted to; she was hurt and cried like a wounded animal at night. His purpose had been fulfilled, and he starte
d thinking about murdering Mary. Then two years later, Mary came to him and said she was pregnant again. Roy was thrilled. Not in the prospect of getting a third child, no because now his life had meaning again. There was no doubt in Roy’s mind that he had been given another chance. He could do it all over again, and it filled him with new hope and purpose.
Cole sank back into the seat behind Roy with a deep sigh. “I’m hungry.”
“Not now, Cole. You’ll have to wait.”
“Where’s Mommy?” he said, then started to sob as he remembered his mother. “I want Mommy.”
That made Roy smile and turn to look at Cole.
“Mommy will be here soon. Don’t you worry.”
His big eyes looked up at Roy.
“Will you take her to see the mermaids too?”
“Maybe,” Roy answered absentmindedly and turned away. He was sick of talking to the boy and wished he had taken the sedative with him when he ran. He could use a little of it to shut the boy up while he made his last move. “We’ll see once Mommy gets here.”
The boy shook his head and looked out the window at the tall building next to them. “I didn’t really like it down there, Dad. Do I have to go again?”
That made Roy laugh.
“We’ll have to see about that, son. You might have to go again, but it’ll be the last time. I promise.”
Chapter 72
Leave the resort. Go to the Mall at Millenia. There’s an IKEA there. Go to the parking lot outside of that building. Remember to be alone. If anyone follows you, the boy is dead.
Mary sat in the car, remembering Peter’s words. He had called her a few minutes earlier and given her the instructions, then hung up. She wanted to ask him if Cole was with him, if he was okay…if she could hear him say something, get proof of life like Agent Thomas had told her. But he had hung up too fast for her to get even one word in. And now she was driving out of the resort, her heart throbbing in her chest. Eva Rae Thomas and a couple of other agents were behind her in Eva Rae’s minivan. They promised to stay at a distance so that they wouldn’t be seen. They had put a mike on Mary, a small button that looked like it was part of her shirt, and told her they’d be able to hear every word that was said. They would also be able to trace her and see where she went. That way, they didn’t have to follow her closely and risk being seen by Peter when she got there.
