Eyes in the Sky

by Debbie Burke

  “I don’ think you should be here.” Her words slurred and she blinked to sharpen her bleary gaze. “You gotta leave now.”

  He kept edging forward. “Your dad told me he had to take your sister Mimi to a retreat. He asked me to fix a sector error on his hard drive while he’s gone.” Keep her off balance until he got close enough. But, damn, she’d seen his face.

  The girl’s stare fixed on his gloved hands. Her eyebrows lifted. “You’re a burglar. Get out!” She hurled the vodka bottle at him.

  He ducked the missile and lunged forward to grab her in a bear hug. The bottle bounced on the carpet and rolled away, dribbling liquor.

  He easily turned her around in his arms even though she struggled and kicked. She was little and couldn’t do much damage. The cloth hood he’d intended to put over her head was still in his kit bag of tools next to the desk. Holding her tight with one arm, he cupped his hand tightly over her nose and mouth until her flailing waned. She went limp in his arms.

  From his kit bag, he pulled a roll of duct tape. He taped her mouth closed then bound her hands behind her back and taped her legs together. He carried her into the bathroom and laid her on the floor. With more tape, he secured her to the base of the toilet.

  When he glanced at his hand, he was irritated to discover blood seeped through a rip in the palm of his surgical glove.

  Goddamn braces.

  ****

  The hulking masked man prodded Tawny and Judah with the rifle barrel down the stairs to Tillman’s suite. Hands bound with duct tape, they had no choice but to obey.

  Tawny’s mind raced—somehow she had to get close to the bed where her revolver was tucked between the mattress and the headboard. But how could she shoot with her hands restrained behind her back?

  Where was Arielle? Maybe the girl was safe in another part of the house. Maybe she’d realize something was wrong and call 911. Please, God.

  The big man shoved them through the double doors into Tillman’s living room. A smaller man, also in a ski mask, bent over the desk. He glanced up, gave a brief nod to his partner then returned to the keyboard. He must have used Tillman’s computer to disarm the security system.

  The man with the rifle herded them into the bedroom.

  Tawny’s hopes for Arielle dashed as soon as she spotted the girl through the open door of the bathroom, crouched on the marble floor beside the toilet. Duct tape covered her mouth. Mucus dripped from her nostrils and her eyes were huge bloodshot moons of fear.

  “On the floor,” the big man ordered. He shoved Judah toward the bed.

  The boy clumsily bounced off the side of the mattress and landed with a thud. He rolled into a little ball.

  When the man pushed Tawny, she lunged across Judah, aiming herself toward the head of the bed. Her knees hit the floor hard, making her cry out. She rolled over and pretended to grunt with pain. She hoped that would disguise her whisper in Judah’s ear: “Knife.”

  Had he heard?

  Judah straightened one leg, kicking behind her back. Her fingertip touched a high-top. Just move an inch closer. His foot bumped her hands. Yes! He understood.

  Tawny tried to fix the descriptions of the two intruders in her mind even though ski masks hid their faces and hair. The armed one was well over six feet tall, heavy, and his head thrust forward like Sasquatch. The shorter one was five-eight or nine, a pear-shaped body with narrow, rounded shoulders and a wide butt.

  Tawny glanced at Arielle lying on the marble bathroom floor. Snot plugged her nose. To Sasquatch, she said, “Please. Take the tape off her mouth. She’s having trouble breathing.”

  He stared at her, the mask shadowing his eyes so she couldn’t tell what color they were. Brown, maybe?

  Her fingers crept along the edge of Judah’s sneaker and touched the plastic handle of the pocketknife. When the abductors weren’t looking, she’d grab for the knife.

  “Please,” she repeated. “There’s no one else in the house. Nobody can hear us. You don’t need to keep her gagged.” She prayed he was wavering. “She’s scared. Either take the tape off so she can breathe or hold a tissue for her so she can blow her nose.”

  He looked to the smaller man, who grunted assent. Sasquatch shifted the rifle to his left hand and moved into the bathroom, his back now toward her.

  Tawny grasped Judah’s knife and pulled it from his shoe. She clutched it tight between her palms, her thumb and index finger struggling to pinch the blade.

  Meanwhile, Sasquatch squatted beside Arielle. The girl’s complexion had a sickly green tinge. When he ripped the tape from her mouth, she shrieked with pain and fear.

  Her cry startled Tawny. With the blade partly out, her thumbnail broke and the blade snapped back into the handle. Damn. She had to distract him for a few more seconds. “Let her come in here with us. Please.”

  The man glanced over his shoulder at Tawny. She couldn’t read his expression behind the mask but he drew a spring-loaded knife from his pocket and flicked it open. While he sliced the tape fastening Arielle to the toilet, Tawny willed all her strength to pinch the thin edge of the blade. She pulled. It opened. Yes!

  He seized Arielle’s arm and yanked her to her feet. Horror crossed the girl’s face. Suddenly she threw up, splattering the man’s dark clothing. He jerked backward and cursed. Still holding Arielle with one hand, he grabbed a towel with the other and tried to clean off the vomit.

  With her legs bound together, she couldn’t walk. He dragged her into the bedroom and shoved her toward Tawny and Judah. She fell on her brother, who woofed with pain. All three scrambled, trying to untangle from each other.

  While Sasquatch continued to wipe his soiled clothes with the towel, Tawny scooted on her butt away from the struggling kids. She had to reach the head of the bed where her gun lay hidden behind pillows. She hoped he was too preoccupied to notice as she sawed at the tape around her wrists.

  The first two rounds in her revolver were snake shot meant for rattlers. A lousy option—tiny pellets couldn’t penetrate clothing or even the ski masks the abductors wore. The other three rounds were hollow points. Only five shots total. She had to make every one count.

  The last shred of tape snapped and her hands broke free. It took all her willpower to keep them behind her back as if they were still bound. She peeled the tape from her wrists.

  Arielle lay on her stomach, peering up, eyes glistening, the stink of thrown-up vodka wafting from her.

  “It’ll be OK, honey,” Tawny said. “They aren’t going to hurt us.” She pinned the big man with a stare, hoping against hope that her reassurances were true.

  He said nothing. He dropped the towel and again held the rifle poised to shoot.

  From the computer, the pear-shaped man called, “Hey, look at this.” Sasquatch turned away from her and moved toward his partner in the living room.

  Immediately Tawny grabbed the revolver and tucked it in her waistband under her shirt. Then she quickly sliced the tape binding Judah’s wrists and pressed the knife handle into his palm. His fingers closed around it. “Keep your hands behind your back,” she whispered.

  The boy gave a slight nod.

  Arielle still lay on her belly, hands and feet bound. She stared up at Tawny with desperate hope lighting her eyes.

  Tawny couldn’t fail them. She had to find a way to escape.

  The men blocked the suite’s entrance as well as the sliding door to the verandah. Plate glass spanned the bedroom wall. The only windows that opened were narrow and too high to be accessible.

  She recalled there were windows in the bathroom above the mirror over the sink, barely large enough to climb through. If they could lock themselves in there, they might have time to clamber up on the counter and skinny out.

  Both men now bent over the computer.

  “Cut Arielle’s feet loose,” she whispered. As Judah sawed through thick layers of tape, she added, “Run for the bathroom. Climb out the window.”

  The instant that Arielle’s legs bro
ke free, Sasquatch turned to check the captives.

  Tawny pulled the girl to her feet. Judah had already popped up from the floor and was racing to the bathroom. She shoved Arielle ahead of her into the bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it. Solid wood but not strong enough to resist hard kicks.

  Footfalls stomped across the bedroom.

  In a second, the intruders would bust through.

  She boosted Judah up on the counter. No time to free Arielle’s hands. While she lifted the girl up to stand on the counter, Judah opened the high window and punched the screen out.

  The first kick hit the door.

  Tawny gripped her revolver. Her only chance with snake shot was a direct hit in the eyes.

  Judah had scrambled outside and reached back through the window for Arielle. With her shoulder, Tawny pushed the girl up toward his grasp.

  A second kick knocked the door open. It crashed into the wall. A full-length mirror shattered.

  Sasquatch pounded in first.

  Tawny aimed at his face and squeezed the trigger.

  He jerked back and dropped the rifle. It clattered on the marble floor. He clapped both hands over his eyes and staggered. Pear-man shoved his wounded partner sideways and reached for the dropped rifle.

  Tawny fired at the face of Pear-man. His gloved hand jumped up to the side of his head. He crouched behind Sasquatch, who was still pawing at his eyes.

  From the corner of her sight, she caught Arielle’s legs disappearing through the window. Both kids were out. Thank God!

  Pear-man made another lunge for the rifle. She fired three times. Sasquatch flinched and grunted. A body hit?

  Pear-man grabbed his wounded partner. Together, they stumbled to the sliding door and ran out to the veranda, leaving the rifle behind.

  Tawny pulled the trigger again but it only clicked. Empty. Dammit. She scooped up the rifle and chased after, desperate to prevent them from grabbing the kids outside.

  She ran through the sliding door, across the veranda, and around the corner of the house toward the exterior wall of the bathroom. Fumbling in the dark, she scrambled over landscape rocks, willing her eyes to adjust as she scanned the hillside for the abductors.

  The outside security lights were out, disabled like the rest of the alarm system. The only light filtered through the high bathroom window.

  Both kids had landed in a thicket of junipers. They climbed out of the crushed shrubs, snapping branches. Twigs stuck in Arielle’s hair and covered their clothing. Judah sliced the duct tape around her wrists with his knife.

  “Are you OK?” Tawny gasped.

  Arielle pulled the remaining tape from her hands. “Yeah, except Clumsy here dropped me.”

  Judah sneered. “Shoulda just let you fall on your head. Mighta made you smarter.”

  Their bickering reassured Tawny. “Did you see where they went?”

  From the street above, they heard car doors slam then an engine started up. It roared away, fading in the distance.

  Gripping the rifle, Tawny scanned the steep hillside the mansion was built on. The men must have run up the slope and scaled the boulder wall surrounding the property to a getaway car parked on the cul-de-sac.

  A huge grin lit Judah’s dirt-smudged face. “That was awesome!”

  Chapter 14 – End of an Era

  Law enforcement and guards from the security company swarmed over the sprawling property for three hours, searching for the intruders. Except for a trail of blood droplets on the boulder wall leading to the street, the kidnappers had vanished, apparently fleeing in the car Tawny had heard.

  A tech discovered the alarm system had been disabled by a virus. On Tillman’s computer, he also found a ransom note that the perpetrators were ready to email, demanding $5,000,000. But they’d been interrupted before they sent it, evidently by the escape of Tawny and the kids.

  The lead detective was a neatly dressed, fortyish man named Bettencourt. He sat beside Tawny on the couch and listened patiently as she described the kidnappers the best she could without seeing their faces—the bigger man, with the rifle, walked stooped over with his head thrust forward like Sasquatch. The smaller, pear-shaped man spent most of the time working on Tillman’s computer.

  At the bar, another deputy talked with Arielle who had seen Pear-man’s face. On her artist pad, she drew a quick sketch of him. Judah sat on a bar stool, swinging his legs, and chattered to a third deputy, proudly displaying his pocket knife.

  Bettencourt questioned Tawny about each shot. She was sure one round of sand shot was a direct hit in the eyes of Sasquatch and believed the second was a glancing hit on the side of Pear-man’s head. She guessed a hollow point round had struck Sasquatch in the torso or chest but couldn’t be sure.

  Deputies found two bullets from Tawny’s revolver had gone wild—one imbedded in the door frame of the bathroom, the other skidded through carpet and penetrated the subflooring.

  Bettencourt examined her gun, opened the cylinder, and dumped the brass shells into his palm. “Out of five shots, three hits. Not bad for a snub nose.” He added, “Lot of trained law enforcement don’t do that well in a shootout.”

  Tawny swallowed hard but her voice still quivered. “I had to protect the kids.”

  He smiled grimly. “Good job.”

  Informed by satellite phone of the attempted kidnapping, Tillman had summoned an armed private security crew who now stood sentry at all entrances to the mansion and held back the TV cameras at the gated driveway. Florentino showed up with his hunting rifle as well and guarded the interior.

  After the last deputies and detectives left, Tawny sat on the couch in Tillman’s living room, flanked by Arielle and Judah, her arms around their shoulders, afraid to lose touch for even a moment. Neither seemed averse to being cuddled close as they slept, worn out from the ordeal and questioning.

  The jackhammer of her heart had finally slowed. The kids were safe…for now.

  Tillman was on his way back from suicide camp, a several-hour drive. Despite fatigue, Tawny couldn’t rest until he was home.

  She stroked Arielle’s hair and pulled out a stray twig. Judah shifted, his head pillowed on Tawny’s lap. She didn’t know if the pungent smell of fear-sweat came from the boy or herself. Probably both.

  With gritty eyes, she studied the pencil drawing that lay on the coffee table next to the couch.

  During questioning, Arielle had revealed she sneaked to Tillman’s suite to drink vodka and look at old photos of her Ethiopian great-grandmother. She’d fallen asleep behind the bar. When she woke up, she surprised Pear-man and saw his face. Despite still being tipsy, she’d sketched the man with clarity and detail that amazed the detectives and Tawny. The girl was talented, as Tawny already deduced from her drawings of hairstyles.

  The sketch showed the kidnapper had greasy-looking, dark hair, acne-pocked skin, and a thin, scraggly beard that accented a lantern jaw. According to Arielle, he claimed to have worked on Tillman’s office computer but neither child nor Tawny recognized him. Detectives had snapped photos of the drawing with their phones to circulate and to compare with known criminals in their database.

  Low rumbling like thunder reverberated in the distance. Through the windows, Tawny spotted the bright cone of a searchlight in the night sky. It beamed down, sweeping over the canyons surrounding the mansion. Thrumming grew louder as a helicopter circled. She slipped free from the sleeping children and watched as the chopper dropped lower, apparently intending to land.

  She ran up the stairs to the main floor. Security lights had been reset and now flooded the estate with a brightness that rivaled high noon. On the front porch, she met Florentino as the craft slowly descended to the circular driveway. “Is that the sheriff’s chopper?” she asked.

  Florentino shrugged. “Maybe is Señor Tillman.”

  A hopeful thrill surged in Tawny’s chest. “How could he…?”

  The rest of her question disappeared in blowing dust, tossing pine branches, and whirling le
aves from poplar and hackberry trees. The helicopter touched down. With the blades still spinning, the hatch opened. An instant later, Tillman jumped to the ground, ducking low. He reached inside and lifted Mimi out, then slammed the hatch.

  The sight of him sent relief flooding through Tawny. She grasped Florentino’s shoulder and he nodded with a smile.

  But no Rochelle. Where was she? Why didn’t she come back for her children?

  Father and daughter ran, hand in hand with heads dipped, toward the house. Once they were clear of the blades, Mimi yanked free from Tillman and hugged herself. He waved to the pilot and the chopper lifted off.

  In the meantime, Judah and Arielle had awakened and now ran out the front door past Tawny and Florentino, screaming, “Dad! Dad!” Even over the noise of the rotors, Tawny heard the excitement in their voices. Joy welled in her heart—his children did love their father, even though Tillman often voiced doubt.

  They darted directly to him. He scooped both of them up in his arms. Their feet dangled as he hugged them tightly.

  In contrast, Mimi watched from a short distance away, with the same blank expression Tawny had seen in the hospital.

  Harsh spotlights lit the trails of tears running down Tillman’s face. He repeatedly kissed each child’s head, alternating between Arielle’s hair and Judah’s bald pate, holding them close.

  Tawny read the anguish in his expression—he hadn’t been there to protect them when they were in danger. She forced herself to hang back even though she longed for his arms to enfold her, too. But she wouldn’t break into their precious reunion.

  She caught Mimi watching her but, as soon as their eyes met, the girl dropped her gaze to the ground.

  After more embraces and muffled conversation, Tillman finally released Arielle and Judah. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand then touched their shoulders, directing them across the driveway to the front door. They chattered over each other, relating the excitement of their near-abduction as they approached Tawny.