She heard a click and a voice, which gave her a pulse of hope that she’d escape from this alive.
“Jill? Honey, is that you?”
She didn’t answer her father, though, because Mitchell had turned around. He was coming toward her again.
Chapter 53
Tom tensed and gripped his cell phone tighter. He pressed the phone hard to his ear because he couldn’t hear the caller otherwise. The ringing had awoken him from a deep, drugged-induced slumber, and it took him a moment to convince himself he wasn’t dreaming now.
It took less time, though, to realize that the voice he’d just heard belonged to his daughter. He called her name again, but something in the few words he picked up made him stop speaking so he could listen.
“Mitchell ... don’t worry ... saw nothing ... Don’t be angry... .”
Tom sat upright in his hospital bed, quicker than he should have moved. Blood rushed to his head. An intense pain exploded from behind his eyes, painting his vision white. He sat still until the pain receded into something he could breathe through again.
“Jill, honey, is that you?” Tom asked into the phone. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
Tom’s voice sounded weak. His throat was parched. Worse than the thirst was the constricting fear wrapped tight around his chest, telling him something was horribly wrong.
A nurse making her nightly room checks glanced at Tom with concern. Tom pointed frantically to the phone pressed to his ear and motioned her back into the hall.
This could be nothing, he thought. What did Jill once call it—ass dialing—when you accidentally called somebody because you sat on the cell phone in your back pocket? Maybe that was all this was. But what had caused the urgency in what few bits of conversation he actually could hear?
No, he had instincts for this sort of thing, and a growing certainty that this was a call for help. The next four words that he picked up, spoken in his daughter’s stricken voice, confirmed those suspicions in the gravest of ways.
“Please ... don’t hurt me... .”
Tom slid his feet off of the bed. He stood on shaky legs. Had he heard her right? God, where was she? He wanted to scream to her to talk to him but didn’t say a word. What if the person she was talking to didn’t know she’d called him? The situation could escalate if her assailant became aware that she’d dialed for help. But he needed to know her location before he could take action.
Tom took his first few steps in hours and stumbled. He nearly toppled over the food tray by his bed. His IV was still attached. He turned and frantically pressed the call button, summoning the nurse he’d just shooed away.
“Get this IV off me,” he demanded. “Please, do it now. It’s important.”
The nurse looked at him in confusion but failed to take a single step. Tom put the phone tight against his lips and whispered, “Jilly-bean, give me something. Say something. Tell me where you are. Come on. Tell me.”
He held his breath, willing himself to become calm so that he could focus all his energy on listening. Compartmentalizing fear was a battlefield requirement Tom could access in a way similar to muscle memory.
He removed the tape that secured the plastic IV tube to his arm, oblivious to the painful pull against his skin as it lifted. There was tape on his wrist, too, which he unsecured with the same haste. Tom had dressed war wounds before, so he knew to shut off the flow of medicine before extracting the needle stuck into the back of his hand. Blood flowed, but less than Tom had expected. Now he needed to find his clothes.
“Sir ... Mr. Hawkins ... you haven’t been discharged.”
Tom covered the phone’s receiver before he spoke. “Where are my clothes?”
“Mr. Hawkins, Dr. Prince wanted you here overnight for observation.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not happening anymore. Get me my clothes.”
Tom’s expression communicated his intended threat: “Your way, or the easy way.” The nurse responded by handing Tom his street clothes, which were folded inside a pinewood wardrobe.
Though his legs were wobbly and his balance dramatically compromised, Tom managed to keep the phone close to his ear while he dressed. The pain wasn’t too bad. It was hardest to ignore when he looked down to pull on his jeans and put on his shoes. The room spun as though everything in it were water in a bathtub going down a drain. He shook his head to refocus his thoughts, but that only ignited embers of pain into a flash point.
Gritting through the agony, Tom managed to catch something Jill said.
“Mitchell, take me home ... please... .”
Take me home. Where could they be?
When Tom was fully dressed, the duty nurse objected once again. “Mr. Hawkins, we can’t authorize your leaving.”
Tom staggered toward her, pushing his way by the woman, who blocked the door. “You don’t have to authorize it,” he said. “Just don’t try to stop it.”
He would have taken the elevator down from the third floor but didn’t want to risk dropping the connection. He could call Jill back, but he worried that the phone’s ringing might put her in deeper peril. So he took the stairs, though his steps were shaky and each footstep felt just the way he expected it would after surviving a major car accident.
Horrible.
“Jilly, come on. Give me something, and I’ll come get you,” Tom whispered into the phone.
The more he moved, the stronger he felt and the faster he moved. He exited through the stairwell door and into the deserted parking lot of Catholic Memorial Hospital.
Tom stood statue still, with his eyes closed and the phone to his ear. He waited for something that would inspire his next move. Some tidbit of information he could act upon. He remembered the GPS location app installed on Jill’s phone. Tom accessed the FamilyWhere app on his Android-powered smartphone, and when he got what he wanted, Tom felt a thousand miles away, though at best he was only a short cab ride’s distance from her.
“You’re scaring me... . I’ll scream... .”
Tom heard Mitchell Boyd speak for the first time, and the boy’s words pierced him with fear.
“My dad’s in his office. He can’t hear you scream.”
Tom saw a cab pulled to a stop by the emergency room entrance, some fifty yards from where he stood. He raced over to the cab, careless of the pain that exploded inside him with every stride.
The cabdriver acted surprised that it was Tom who had jumped into his cab.
“Hey, I’m here for a Mrs. Wilcox. You her?” He let out a mocking laugh; obviously, the answer was no.
“Yeah, I’m her,” Tom said. He gave the driver Roland Boyd’s home address. The driver appeared ready to protest, but one look at Tom in the cab’s rearview mirror must have convinced him that Mrs. Wilcox could find herself another ride. Once the cab got moving, Tom closed his eyes tight and cupped the phone to his ear with both hands. “I’m coming, baby girl,” he whispered. “You hang on, and I’ll be there soon.”
“Can you drive faster?” Tom asked the cabdriver.
“If you pay the speeding ticket.”
Tom thought better of it. “No. Don’t get pulled over,” Tom said. “Get me there as fast as you can.”
Tom leaned back against the cab’s hard vinyl seat and closed his eyes. His headache was worsening.
His mind sped through different scenarios. He needed to formulate a plan with the best odds for success. Sergeant Brendan Murphy had single-handedly made it a no-go to contact the Shilo PD.
Tom called Roland’s home number. Roland answered on the third ring.
“Roland, it’s Tom.”
“What do you want, Tom?”
“Is my daughter there?”
“She’s here.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s with my son. They’re in his room, hanging out. How are you feeling?”
“Roland, I need you to forget about our issues. I need you to just think of me as a father. Forget anything else you suspect, or believe. Now, Jill
called me. She sounded like she was in trouble. Can you please go check on her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Roland! Please. Just check on her.”
Roland sighed into the phone. “Hang on,” he said.
One minute passed ... then two.
Roland got back on the phone. “They’re fine,” he said.
“Did you speak to my daughter?”
“She said she was fine,” said Roland.
“Did you see her?”
Roland sighed again. “No. The door to Mitchell’s room was closed. But they said they were fine.”
“Roland, I need you to check again. I need you to open the door to the room and make sure she’s all right.”
“You know what, Tom? I’ve got other things to do with my time than listen to your paranoid delusions about my son. I think whatever pain meds they gave you have gone to your head. You have a good night. Glad you’re all right. Now, get some rest.”
Tom didn’t say anything more. Roland had hung up on him.
Chapter 54
Tom decided his course of action well before the driver turned his cab onto Route 101A. The cab took the right-hand exit for south Shilo. Tom had no plans to try and reestablish contact with Jill. But when he got to Roland’s home, he’d attack the way an unconventional warrior was trained to wage a war.
The three characteristics of Navy SEAL mission planning were bottom up, extremely flexible, and short fused. By the time conventional forces finished developing their preliminary course of action briefs, a SEAL could be geared up, out the door, and engaging the enemy. Tom had been trained to think fluidly, to respond to information that could lead him from a dry target to one of high value.
Roland’s mistake was failing to establish visual confirmation of Jill’s well-being. Tom knew something was wrong. He’d heard the panic in her voice. He had no choice but to assume Jill was under duress when she claimed to be fine. That meant she needed to be extracted from the threat.
That was his one and only mission.
Tom kept his plan simple. He would enter through the front door with force, address any threats encountered, and exit with his daughter the way he came in. If there was time, he’d devise a backup plan before engagement. He’d learned that almost no plan survived first contact with the enemy. One of the SEALs many mottos evoked their ruthless determination. “The only easy day was yesterday!” His daughter was the objective. Anybody who stood in his way would be met with violence of action.
From what Roland had relayed, Tom believed his daughter was in Mitchell’s bedroom. He suspected the two were alone. Mitchell wouldn’t have risked attacking Jill otherwise. But if anybody became an obstacle, Tom would act decisively to ensure that the objective was safely extricated from the premises. No, not the objective, Tom reminded himself. His daughter.
Tom could drain himself of most emotion.
Just not all of it.
Tom mentally constructed a probable sequence leading up to his daughter’s phone call. Jill had gone to Mitchell Boyd’s house.
Why?
They were still seeing each other. Still involved. She knew that Tom disapproved. That was why she kept the relationship a secret from him.
Why didn’t they go to Jill’s house? he asked himself. He was in the hospital, and her house was empty.
Mitchell was a known womanizer, that was why. He wanted to show off in his domain. He wanted to impress her. To seduce her.
So, they were alone in his bedroom. Mitchell got aggressive. His daughter rejected him. Mitchell became angry. Simple as that.
“How far now?” Tom asked the driver.
“Three minutes. Four at the most,” the driver said. Tom had figured on that answer. He’d been keeping mental track of the time.
“What’s the big rush?” the driver asked. “Is there a fire where you’re going?”
“Not yet,” Tom answered him.
The cab turned onto Roland Boyd’s street.
“Shut off your lights,” Tom instructed. “Pull the cab to a stop fifty feet before the driveway on your right.”
“Shut off my—”
“Do it,” Tom commanded.
The cabdriver did as he was told.
“Do you have any duct tape in the trunk?”
The man stuttered before he could respond. “I think so,” he managed to say.
“Pop the trunk.” Tom heard a click as the trunk latch released. “How much money do you need to guarantee you’ll wait for me here?” Tom asked.
“Are you breaking the law?” the man asked.
“Give me a number.”
“Five hundred?” the driver said, though he made it sound like a question and not a demand.
“Done. I’ll be right back.”
Tom flicked a switch to shut off the cab’s interior light so he could exit the vehicle in darkness. He walked to the back of the cab and opened the trunk. He moved quickly to cover the trunk light with his cupped hand. Inside the trunk he found a roll of duct tape and, even better, a box of spark plugs.
Tom closed the trunk and fished around on the ground for a suitable rock. He took a single spark plug out from the box and, using the rock’s edge, knocked off a piece of the ceramic insulator. He slipped the ceramic piece into his pocket, grabbed the duct tape, and closed the trunk.
Tom cut a zigzagged path across the well-kept, chemical-green lawn. He avoided the lighted walkway and kept mostly to the shadows. He crouched low when he reached the front of the house. It was mostly windows, with more lights on in the home than he expected to see. But a long, trimmed row of evergreen shrubs kept him hidden from view. He was glad the Boyds didn’t have a dog, but was angry with himself for not having secured a weapon of some sort before he left the hospital.
Tom’s first objective was to enter the house silently. Cutting power to the home was one option, but he worried Mitchell might panic if the house went dark. Jill might try to escape and could get hurt in the process. A loud shattering window could result in the same. So Tom needed to break the window without making a sound.
The steps to the front landing were lit as well. Tom hid behind a large ceramic planter perched at the top of the landing. Somebody would have to open the front door to see him crouched there.
He confirmed that the front door was locked before pulling off the first strip of duct tape. He secured several strips of tape in an X-shaped pattern to the opaque, rectangular sidelight window nearest to the brass handle of the mahogany front door.
With the tape in place, Tom retrieved the ceramic spark-plug chip from his pants pocket. He moved out from the shadows and stood about five feet from the taped window. He threw the ceramic chip at the center of the X with a dart player’s grace. There was a quiet, near imperceptible popping sound when the chip hit the window. Veins of breaking glass danced an erratic pattern across the cracked window. But the combination of ceramic and duct tape made the break no louder than a drop of water landing in an empty bucket.
Tom popped the glass pane free from the door’s raised molding and removed it as silently as it had broken. He reached his hand through that opening and unlocked the door from the inside.
He stood in the same foyer where weeks ago he’d come to ask Roland about Kip Lange. He listened for any sounds that might direct him. He heard nothing useful. Tom’s footsteps fell silently as he ascended the winding staircase in front of him. He assumed Mitchell’s bedroom was located on the second level. If his daughter was still in the house, that was where he would find her.
At the top of the stairs, Tom came to a long east-west-running corridor. Light seeped from a closed door at one end of the hallway.
Tom moved toward that door. He kept his breathing quiet. When he couldn’t pad his footsteps on the plush carpeting, he stayed close to the wall, where the floors typically creaked less.
Tom continued noiselessly down the hall. He moved the way he’d been trained. He set his heel down first and rolled his foot slo
wly and gently toward his toes. He bent low at the knees to improve his balance. He tightened the muscle on the inside of his pelvis.
At the end of the hallway, Tom pressed his body against the wall and leaned his head toward the door to get a better listen. No sound. Nothing at all.
He heard a cry. It was a soft, plaintive, scared-sounding cry. It was Jill. Close as he was to rescuing her, Tom managed to remain calm. He took a few breaths to center himself. He reached for the doorknob.
With a gentle nudge, Tom pushed the door open. Only part of his body was exposed to the room. He peeked inside.
Mitchell Boyd was standing with his back to the door. Jill was seated on his bed. The boy’s position kept him from getting a clear visual of his daughter. Jill’s sobbing was louder now. There was no way for Tom to tell if she was hurt or not. Tom needed to ascertain if Mitchell carried a weapon.
Tom pressed his body against the wall. Through the slot between the door and the doorjamb, he had Mitchell directly in his line of sight. He knocked on the open door.
Mitchell whirled around. Nobody was standing in the doorway. Mitchell appeared to be confused.
Tom determined the boy was unarmed. That was all the information he needed. Mitchell took a single step toward the open door. Tom pushed himself clear of the wall.
“Dad!” Jill cried out. He could hear the relief in her voice.
Tom charged at Mitchell. There were hundreds of ways Tom could incapacitate him. What he needed was one that wouldn’t permanently injure or kill the boy.
In hand-to-hand combat, the body got divided into three sections—high, middle, and low. Each section was rife with vital targets, key nerves and arteries that, when struck, caused debilitating pain, unconsciousness, or even death. Tom knew every target and could attack them at will with bold precision. A strong blow to the side of the neck—specifically, below and slightly in front of the ear—shocked the carotid artery, jugular vein, and vagus nerve. Such a strike would render his opponent instantly unconscious. A lesser blow would result in intense, but incapacitating pain.
Tom opted not to hit Mitchell at all. Rather, he applied pressure to the strike area. Mitchell shrieked at Tom’s touch and fell helplessly to the floor. Jill leapt up from the bed as soon as Mitchell went down, and grabbed hold of her father. Tom felt her body shake with sobs.
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