by Rick Mofina
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“Move!” Vic pointed with his gun and Dan began walking uphill ahead of him.
As they navigated the trail, Dan’s pulse quickened as he took stock of his situation. Vic had the bag and his gun, making his balance a small challenge on the winding path. Dan could free his hands at will and he had the utility knife.
He may never get this chance again.
He began slipping the knife from under his sleeve, getting a solid grip on it. As he extended the blade, they came to a van parked on the road and his heart flooded with hope.
Lori and Billy!
Vic urged him on until they reached a pathway that twisted atop a narrow ridge and Dan saw a cabin a few dozen yards ahead.
Color flashed in the trees to the left and Dan saw a small outhouse—and two people on a path that wound near his trail. His heart soared.
Lori!
* * *
Cutty appeared relieved when he’d spotted two people near them on the adjacent trail.
He lowered his rifle and loosened his grip. The loud discharge they’d heard couldn’t have been a threat.
“Brother!” Cutty called.
He pointed with his gun for Lori to lead him to the others on the ridge. Moving through the branches, her heart nearly burst when she saw her husband.
She rushed toward Dan, but Vic and Cutty moved their guns like a gate before her. Contact was forbidden.
“Lori, are you all right?” Dan asked. “Is Billy—”
“We’re okay. He’s in the cabin—”
“Shut up!” Vic ordered.
“Peace be upon you, my brother,” Cutty said. “By God’s grace, we’ve succeeded!”
Vic slapped the money bag and grinned.
“Peace be upon you. Yes, my brother, by God’s grace we’ve been victorious.” Vic laughed.
As their captors continued boasting, Dan and Lori stared at each other with such desperation, tears filled their eyes. Lori saw the intense, adrenaline-fueled emotion in Dan that she felt herself. Then, with a subtle nod, Dan showed Lori the knife’s tip and she knew that this was their life-and-death moment.
“...a quarter million for the operation,” Vic said, slapping the bag again. “Now we carry on as planned with our message and warning to the—”
The peel, rip and snap of the tape and plastic cuffs sounded as Dan jerked his wrists free and blitzed Vic, knocking him to the ground sending his rifle clattering down the hillside as he slashed at him with the knife.
Drawing on her police training, Lori dropped, hurtling her body full force into Cutty’s knees, sending him to the ground before he had a chance to react. His rifle bumped down the ridge side with Vic’s. She sprang to her feet and kicked wildly at Cutty’s face, gut and groin.
Dan continued struggling on the ground with Vic, but his knife had slipped from his hand and tumbled down the rocky hill with the other weapons.
Lori picked up a baseball-sized rock with her bound hands and smashed it on Cutty’s head. As he lay dazed on the ground she made her way to Dan as he continued fighting Vic.
“No!” Dan yelled. “Go get Billy! Hurry—I’ll be right behind you!”
* * *
Alarmed by shouting along the road, Percy dropped his tools, grabbed his gun, left the SUV and flew toward the voices.
At the cabin, Jerricko seized his weapon, tore out the front door and down the trail.
Neither one saw the woman.
* * *
Lori had rushed into the forest, taking the outhouse path toward the cabin’s rear. In the seconds she ran, she contended with her desperation to return to Dan and to run ahead for Billy, knowing their captors could set off their bombs at any time.
She blazed through the back door of the cabin, relieved to find Billy alone and unharmed. The handcuff keys were on the table, next to Jerricko’s laptop. She snatched them, Billy standing, his eyes saucers of fear at hearing the shouting.
“Mom?” Billy’s voice broke as she frantically worked the key to unlock the cuff and free him. “What’s going on? Is Dad out there?”
In the instant she’d freed her son the blasts of automatic gunfire pierced the air outside. Lori looked out the window in time to see Dan rushing up the path, Jerricko and Percy behind, cutting him down with bullets and sending him toppling over the side of the ridge.
Dan! No! Oh God! No! They’ve killed him!
Shock paralyzed her with disbelief. Dan was gone. His killers took stances at the edge of the cliff and continued pouring bursts of gunfire downward to where Dan had fallen.
Numbed, horrified, Lori was rooted where she stood, wanting to cry out—bastards!—to the men who’d just murdered her husband.
Suddenly Percy whirled, fired. Bullets tore through the cabin.
Lori crouched, pulling Billy down beside her shielding him with her body.
She saw Jerricko’s backpack with food and water. She seized his laptop and, fumbling with her bound hands, shoved it in the bag and took it.
“Hurry!”
She rushed out the back with Billy and they crashed into the forest, running for their lives as bullets flicked through the trees.
51
Somewhere in New York State
When the shooting ceased, Cutty rushed down the slope, surfing on the gravelly dirt, hopping over rocks toward Fulton’s body splayed at the bottom of the cliff.
Motionless.
Vic had ordered Cutty to verify Fulton’s condition.
Cutty bent over him for closer inspection. His blood-soaked clothes were ripped and torn. His bullet-ridden arms and legs were twisted into impossible angles. His face was a bloodied, pulpy mass. Cutty gave him a hard kick, listening for a groan, watching for movement.
Nothing.
“He’s dead!” Cutty called up to the others, quickly covering the body with large branches and undergrowth. “The animals are going to feast on you. Too bad you won’t live to see what we’re going to do to your bitch wife in front of your kid, you greedy banker nonbeliever asshole, one-percenter prick!”
Cutty touched the back of his hand to his throbbing face, assessing his own wounds as he climbed back up, cursing Lori Fulton.
“That bitch is dead!”
Above him, Percy and Vic had collected the two lost rifles and were inspecting them for any damage when the sound of new gunfire erupted around them.
Percy and Vic turned to the cabin to see Jerricko was behind it, firing into the woods.
“She got away with the kid! Let’s go!” Vic shouldered his weapon, then tossed the bag he held to Percy. “Carry the money. Come on!”
Behind the cabin, all four unleashed sustained gunfire into the dark woods before Vic ordered them to regroup inside.
Breathing hard, cursing and gulping water, they assessed their situation. Jerricko was searching the cabin and the area near the beds.
“How the hell did this happen?” Percy said.
“Forget the how. What do we do now?” Cutty said.
“I say detonate the bombs,” Percy said. “Blow the mothers up, end of story.”
“Cell phones don’t work up here,” Cutty said. “We can’t send the signal.”
“That satellite phone works. Use it to call the numbers and boom,” Percy reminded them.
Vic pulled the satellite phone from his pocket, looked at it then looked at his crew while weighing the call.
“Don’t do it!” Jerricko said. “She’s got my bag—and our laptop with everything on it! Everything! You blow her up, you blow up everything we’ve been working for! We have to get it back!”
They all looked to Vic, waiting for him to decide their next move.
He put the phone away.
“We’re do
ne here. The gunfire is going to bring hikers or police this way. We’re not blowing anything up. We need that laptop. The police found both cars—we heard it on the news on the way up. They’re getting closer, but we have time. We’ll go after her and the kid.”
“Yes!” Cutty said.
“Divide the money into other bags, so it’s easier to carry,” Vic said. “Get what gear you need—fast!”
Percy went to the duffel bags by the beds where there was more ammunition and food.
“It’s dark. She’s a woman, handcuffed, dragging a kid and she’s unarmed in a dense forest. There are four of us. We have automatic guns, plenty of ammo and equipment. We know these woods. We’ll hunt her down, recover our laptop, salvage our operation and carry out our plans to the glorious end. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” the others said.
“Allah is the Greatest!” Vic shouted.
“Allah is the Greatest!” the others repeated.
52
Manhattan, New York
Kate lifted her head from her work to the glittering spires of Manhattan’s skyline rising before her.
She and Stan were crossing the Hudson on the George Washington Bridge into New York City. It was late. She’d worked nonstop the entire return trip, filing story updates and making more calls in pursuit of information about Lori’s ties to Jerricko Blaine or Malcolm Samadyh. Most people she’d reached met her questions with, “Who? Never heard of him,” or “Not us, wrong Blaines.” She dialed another number, this one in Southern California, with little hope of a lead. The line was answered by a woman.
“Is this the home of Ramone and Wanda Blaine?”
“Yes, this is Wanda. Who’s calling?”
“Kate Page. I’m a reporter with Newslead in New York. I’m trying to reach relatives of Jerricko Titus Blaine. Are you a relative?”
The woman on the phone hesitated, then replied that, yes, she was related.
Kate sat ramrod straight.
“You’re related to Jerricko Titus Blaine?”
“Yes.” The woman sighed. “We figured someone would call us sooner or later—we’ve been watching the news all day and we weren’t sure if we should get involved, or what. We’re not sure how we could help.”
Pressing the phone to her head, Kate made a one-handed scramble into her bag for her pen and notebook, flipping through it to a clean page.
“You could talk to me—help me get the true facts?”
“All right. But listen, we’ve got nothing to do with him, or what he’s involved in.”
“Of course not. Can you tell me how you’re related to Mr. Blaine?”
“We’re cousins of Andy Blaine, Jerricko’s father. He was a great guy—real salt-of-the-earth man.”
“Was?”
“Oh—yes, he died in a car accident a long while back.”
“I’m sorry about your loss,” Kate said. “What about Jerricko’s mother? Do you know her very well?”
“I think she’s crazy. All Andy’s trouble seemed to start with her. Ever since they moved back to the States, all she did was rant about how much she hated living here, telling the boys this was a terrible country right from the start.”
“Sorry—can you backtrack a little bit? The boys?”
“Jerricko and his older brother, Mac.”
Kate couldn’t believe her luck, discovering that Jerricko had a brother. This call was good. “Jerricko’s brother—his name is Mac?”
“Yeah, short for Malcolm. That one was always trouble, especially after Andy passed away. Got in with the wrong crowd—no thanks to his mother—and did some...pretty horrible things.”
“Horrible like what?” Kate asked.
“Robbing convenience stores and that sort of garbage. He eventually went to prison, but when he got out he was right back to his old ways and... Well, a few years back he shot a police officer who caught him mid-robbery—ended up shot dead himself.”
Kate was stunned. Malcolm—the man Lori Fulton had shot after he murdered her partner...
“And just to confirm—this shooting, was it in Orange County?”
“That’s right. Santa Ana. About five, six years ago now I think.”
“Wait,” Kate asked, still trying to puzzle out one last detail. “Can you spell Malcolm’s last name for me, please?”
Wanda spelled it for her, S-A-M-A-D-Y-H, adding, “It’s Sam-a-dee-hah.”
“Got it. Thanks. But do you know why his last name isn’t Blaine, like his father’s and brother’s?”
The woman snorted. “Just more of his mother’s influence. He took her name when he got out of prison. She’d convinced him that there was nothing good that came from America, so he wanted to reconnect with his mother’s roots.”
Bingo! Kate thought, everything finally falling into place. Malcolm Samadyh is Jerricko Blaine’s brother. Lori shot Jerricko’s brother.
“Do you have a number for Jerricko’s mother, Nazihah?”
“No, sorry. She went back to Afghanistan, or Syria, someplace after Malcolm died—and we were never close. Like I said, she hated America and everyone in it, and that seemed to include us and the rest of Andy’s family.”
“Do you know why she hated it so much?”
“Well, she used to go on about how immoral we were here. And Mac’s death only solidified those beliefs.”
“Does Nazihah have terrorist, or jihadist sympathies?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Wanda said.
“Have police talked to you?”
“No.”
“Have any other reporters talked to you?”
“No, you’re the first. But, hey, I should have said this from the start—I don’t want you putting our names in any news stories. We’ve got nothing to do with this mess, and I don’t want anyone thinking otherwise.”
“But I identified myself as a reporter at the start of this call.”
“Well, we were just talking!” Wanda said. “You never mentioned anything about a formal interview or anything. You don’t have permission to use our names.”
“Okay, how about this? If you can help me get in touch with some of Jerricko Blaine’s other relatives, I won’t use your name. I’ll just identify you as a relative.” Wanda took a moment, covering her phone for muffled discussion before returning to the call.
“My uncle wants to know how much you pay for the contact info we’d give you?”
“We don’t pay for that kind of thing, sorry. The best I can do is offer to keep your name out of my story.”
Wanda covered the phone again to deliberate.
“All right,” she confirmed when she was back on the line. “I’ll help you if you guarantee to keep our names out.”
“Absolutely. I will.”
“All right, why don’t you give me your number? I’ll call some relatives and tell them to give you a call.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. There’s a few people I can think of, cousins around the country, especially one in New York you should talk to. He knows way more about the boys than me. I’ll make some calls and tell people to talk to you.”
Kate thanked the woman and then spent the rest of the drive waiting.
But no calls came.
Block after block rolled by as Strobic drove through Manhattan’s West Side and Kate was filled with the sick feeling that something critical had slipped through her fingers. In an act of desperation, she called Wanda Blaine back, but no one answered.
I had her on the line, and she was talkative. I should’ve pressed her harder.
But exhaustion had clouded Kate’s thinking, and now it was too late.
* * *
Images of the day replayed in Kate’s mind when she was alone in the elevator on th
e way up to pick up Grace. As it rose, the hum lulled her. She leaned against the wall and almost drifted off.
Nancy greeted Kate with a warm smile, letting her in to wake Grace from a dead sleep on the sofa.
“Thanks a million, Nancy.”
“No thanks needed.”
Kate then brought her groggy daughter to their floor, into their apartment, into her nightshirt and into bed. After kissing Grace good-night, Kate saw that Vanessa was in her room asleep. Knowing she’d have just finished a night class, and that she’d be up early for a morning shift at the diner, Kate was careful not to disturb her as she moved down the hall toward the bathroom.
Kate climbed into the shower, the needles of hot water soothing her. As she let the pressure of the water slowly relax the tense muscles in her neck, she contemplated her next steps.
She needed to dig up more about Jerricko. Now that the link between him and Lori was clear, she needed to find out whether this whole thing was cold-blooded revenge or something more. Why rob the bank and take the family hostage? Why hadn’t he just gone straight after Lori? And the big question: Who was helping him?
She still had a lot of work to do. But she’d just landed a big exclusive, which should make Reeka happy. Kate would start writing her story in the morning, and she’d press Agent Varner with this new information to try to leverage anything more. And, keeping her promise, she’d also share her information with Ben Keller in LA about thirty minutes before Newslead released her story.
After showering, she brushed her teeth, dried her hair, pulled on her robe, then slipped into Grace’s room to check on her. Kneeling at her bedside, Kate adjusted her blanket, tenderly pushing aside strands of Grace’s hair and looking at her.
“I’m sorry I’ve been working so much, sweetie,” Kate whispered, grateful to have Grace safely by her side. Her heart ached for Lori, Dan and Billy Fulton. “I love you so much.”
Kate kissed Grace’s cheek and left the room.
Since the door to Vanessa’s room was opened a crack, Kate tiptoed in and knelt at her sister’s bedside.
Sometimes I still don’t believe that you’re here with me.
