Bailey raced to the sofa to retrieve the laptop she had been working on all day. She turned the screen towards Leo as he snuck another dip of the chocolate mix. She somberly said, “All I’ve been able to come up with is a picture of him at a truck dealership in Tucson. He must’ve bought a truck there. I mean he’s got fam—”
Leo tuned her out as he stared at the picture. A smallish man in a white tank top and gray cap shook the hand of another man in a suit. Beside him was a woman about half his age. She looked down and away from the camera as her feet turned awkwardly in on themselves. Behind him was a large white truck.
Leo wasted no time, “Bailey, are you sure this is him?”
“Yeah. It’s definitely him. And that must be his new girlfriend or wife or something. I don’t recognize her, but from the looks of her, he must be doing numbers on her.” She looked back at the photo of her ex-husband and the broken woman. She knew she should feel pity for her, but she was too overcome with anger.
“We gotta go.” Leo launched himself from off the stool and ran to where he placed his car keys. Bailey watched him curiously from her spot in the dining room. “Come on, Bailey! We have to go. Now. I saw him!”
Bailey’s blue eyes grew as she asked, “What do you mean ‘I saw him?’”
“I saw him today! After I went to Jonathan’s place I went to the home to survey the area. When I was leaving I saw that white truck, that man in the baseball cap, and that girl pull in.”
“No, no, no—” Bailey stood in disbelief, unsure how to get her feet to move.
“They went inside, Bailey! We have to go NOW.” He grabbed her arm, forcing her to drop the metal batter on the tile floor.
Her mind caught up with her as she screamed out, “He’s going to get my baby!” Leo closed the door behind her and led her out to the car. She shook in his arms as she sobbed uncontrollably. Leo fastened her into the seat and then hopped into the driver’s.
The roads passed in a haze and blur. Neither could speak as they each attempted to refocus their minds. Bailey silently spoke to her grandmother, “Gran? It’s me, Bailey. I know I haven’t spoken to you in a long time, but I need you to hear me now. You told me when Lily was born to fight for her. Well, I’m trying real hard to do that, but I’m going to need some extra help. Can you look in on Lily for me and tell her that her Mommy’s coming? I need her to know everything’s going to be okay, that I’m going to do what you told me to do.”
The couple pulled into the lot as Bailey unbuckled her seatbelt and ran out the car as Leo was still driving. Her feet couldn’t carry her faster through the black metal doors or the glass entryway. The same woman with the red glasses who was there when she first dropped off Lily still sat behind the same front desk reading her magazines. She looked up with surprise when she noticed Bailey standing in front of her, her chest heaving in and out from the panic.
“My daughter! I need to see my daughter now!”
“Do you have an appointment, dear?” The woman pulled out a black binder with a list of names on the first page. “Who’s your caseworker?”
“I don’t have an appointment, but this is an emergency. I need to see my daughter now!” Bailey did not realize that she was screaming. The woman stared at her from behind the desk, unsure if she should push the red panic button or call in Ed the head of the center’s security.
“Ma’am, I want to help you, but I need to know who your caseworker is first.” The woman stood, raising her arms as a defense.
Bailey tried to calm herself down as she began to pace. “Her name’s Jenna—Jenna Partridge… I think…” She could picture the blonde perky woman with the black business suit, but had trouble placing a name to the face.
“Jenna Parting, you mean?” Bailey nodded gratefully as the woman sat back down and dialed an extension. She whispered into the phone, out of range of the still pacing Bailey. A metal door leading to the office space opened moments later as the caseworker stepped out.
“Ms. Reed? What are you doing here?” She looked around the room as if she expected Bailey to not be alone.
“I have to see my daughter. It can’t wait for tomorrow. It’s an emergency.”
Leo stormed through the doors, past the security glass, to hear the caseworker say suspiciously, “Ms. Reed, your husband picked her up just a couple of hours ago. He had a note from you…”
She could not finish before Bailey sunk to the floor. Leo raced to her side, catching her by her arms. Joe had found Lily. It was too late. He was gone, and there was nothing she or Leo could do about it.
In the back of his truck, Lily struggled to buckle her seatbelt. The strange lady watched her before reaching behind her and clipping her in.
She hadn’t seen her dad in awhile, at least not after the fight that ended it all. She had always remembered him as bigger, like a giant stumbling through a room. But today, he was dressed up like he sometimes had for work. There wasn’t even that funny smell on his breath or clothing. Lily hoped this meant he had gotten better from whatever her mom had said had made him sick. Her dad had promised her that she was going back, to where she was supposed to live. Her stomach filled with excited butterflies as she thought of her bedroom above the garage in her great-grandmother’s home.
The woman’s eyes lit up as her high pitched voiced squeaked over the sound of the booming radio, “I’m so excited to be your new mommy, Lily! We’re going to have so much fun!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next few hours passed in a nightmare slow pace with a mix of uninterested police officers and tired social workers. No one could give Bailey or Leo an answer as to where Joe was or how he managed to convince the staff to let her leave with him. Each officer told the desperate, clinging mother only one thing: Go home. Wait.
Bailey couldn’t do that. She couldn’t just wait for someone to happen upon her, not knowing what Joe was capable of. No one moved fast enough. No one had her urgency. No one cared enough. All except Leo.
After several hours of interviews and false reassurances, Bailey had enough. Slumped over in Leo’s arms, she whispered in his ear, “I need to go. Get me out of here.”
He picked her up, carrying her past the cars with their lights still flashing and the officers sipping their mugs and writing the same information over and over again in their tiny notepads. Bailey listened helplessly for the sounds of the female voice announce the description of the missing girl over their intercoms. Tears fell from her eyes onto the thin cloth of Leo’s black and white flannel shirt.
Leo placed her gently into the passenger side, taking care to buckle her in as she stared mindlessly out the front window. “We're going to find her, Bailey. We’re going to find her.”
But just like the police officers standing stagnant in the center’s parking lot, he had his doubts. He wasn’t sure what to believe. He heard this story before like everyone else. Crazy parent manages to get ahold of the child and the next thing you know, there’s a body. No happy ending and a devastated parent left to mourn.
Leo shook his head as he got into the car. This was a fight he wasn’t about to get knocked out of before the bell even rang. He turned to the silently sobbing Bailey and asked gently, “Bailey, I know this is hard, but I need you to think. What do you know about Joe? Where would he take you if he had you?”
“I—I—I don’t know. I don’t know, Leo.” She turned her head again with her glossy blue eyes searching the horizon for an answer she had yet to come up with. All of the abuse she had suffered came back to her in a wave as she imagined what Lily was living through. She imagined a scared little girl with bright blue eyes huddled in a corner of a room, just as she had done nearly four years earlier.
A phone rang as both Leo and Bailey broke their concentration to turn their attention to the foreign sound. Leo’s cup holder vibrated as it rang a piercing sound. The screen lit up with the picture of his agent. Leo turned the phone on using his bluetooth. The car filled with the sound of Jonathan’s voice, “Leo
, I’ve got some information for you.”
“This best be about Bailey’s ex-husband, man,” Leo barked. “He kidnapped the girl. We were too late to get to her.”
“He what?! Son of a bitch. I'm so sorry. Are the police involved? Do you need me to do some presswork? What can I do?” His voice was genuine in his concern. He would never take the loss of a child lightly despite the circumstances or his personal feelings.
“No. No press was there that I know of. What we need from you is whatever information you can get on Joe. Did you find anything out?” Leo turned up the volume of his speaker so Bailey could hear, as well.
“Yeah, actually the detectives got some intel on him. I’ll email the specifics to you as soon as I hang up. The big stuff is that he owns several properties and has some addresses in the states. The Parkhurst, Idaho place looks pretty run down. The detective I used sent a guy over there to check on it. I don’t think he’ll be going there anytime soon. There’s another in Arizona.”
“That’s his father’s ranch in Tucson,” Bailey interjected in a zombie-like, monotone voice. “He won’t go there. His father would kill him if he attempted that.” Bailey flashed back to their divorce and the elderly man who screamed at her ex-husband in the parking lot. He may have been a potential heir to their very small fortune, but he had done him a huge dishonor when the details of Bailey’s abuse got out.
Jonathan continued, “One’s here outside of Chicago. It’s a cabin about twenty miles west of the Indiana border in a town called Rocking Hill.”
“What do you think? Should we start there?” He looked at Bailey for answers, but she remained silent, preferring to keep in the darkness of her mind.
Jonathan gave his stern warning, “I think you should stay home, Leo. Call the cops, give them my information and let them handle this. This is a job for professionals, not people who have court dates coming up.”
“Yeah. I think that’s what we're gonna do. Bailey needs to rest and the police can do their job. I’ll call them as soon as I get in the house. Thanks for your work, Jon. Let me know if you hear of anything else.” Leo hung up the phone as his car pulled into the long, winding driveway.
The house lights were still on from earlier and the entire estate loomed over them. Bailey glanced over at him, catching his eyes.
He reached over and touched her face gently with the palm of his hand as he assured her, “She’s going to be okay. They're going to find her, and she’ll be home with you in no time.”
She nodded, wanting to believe him, to rid herself of this doubt that there was a happy ending for her and her daughter. But her life had been a string of regret and disaster. What little hope she should have disappeared every moment she spent waiting. She looked at him one last time as he made the slow turn into the roundabout to drop her off. With a final glance to the house, she quickly unhooked her seatbelt and lunged at Leo. Her hands gripped the steering wheel as he yelled in surprise. The car screeched as it slipped into the damp grass. Bailey pressed her body down on Leo’s leg to push the gas pedal.
Leo caught his breath in time to push her off and take hold of the wheel before it slammed into one of the lawn’s trees. “What are you doing!” He screamed at her, unable to hold his temper. He knew she was distraught, but he did not think she was capable of risking their lives.
She kneeled in her seat as she looked at him. “We have to drive to the cabin. I remember now. That town—Rocking Hill—it’s where his buddies used to go with their jet skis in the summer. He never missed it, ever. It’s the season for it. If anything, the people in the town might know something. We have to go Leo! We have to go now!”
“Are you sure this is what you want? We can call the cops and they can take care of this. It’s their—” He tried to reason with her, but she quickly cut him off.
“No. No. It’s not their job. It’s my job. I'm Lily’s mom, and I'm supposed to protect and fight for her. I need to do this. Please, Leo. Let’s go.”
He looked deep in her eyes and saw the hurt and pain. He could not deny her what she wanted. And by how she pled with him, he knew that even if he forced her back into the house, there would be no stopping her from going out to finding Lily on her own. “Okay. Let’s go.” Leo spun the car around back towards the exit as he opened the large metal gate from his car’s clicker. He used the voice command to set the course towards the rural town of Rocking Hill.
The two remained silent as the car navigated outside of the city limits. As the GPS’s commands led them off the highway and onto the small town roads, Leo turned to Bailey once more. “Listen,” he said gently, “it’s dark. Do you want to get a hotel or something or do this now?”
“I know how to get there. I remember the way. I had to drive it every year when he and his boys would get too drunk to make it all the way. I can do this, Leo.” Her voice had become nervous and raspy.
He nodded at her and turned off the GPS. She sat up straighter as she began to call out directions based on the town’s restaurants and signage. “That diner!” She pointed to a rickety old brick building on the main street of town. “That’s where he used to go every day. He used to love that catfish, and the waitresses always over-served the guys when they tipped well. We need to go in. If he’s in town or has been, they would have seen him.”
Bailey again got out of the car before it was fully stopped. Leo had just enough time to put his Lexus in park, unbuckle himself, and run to her side. She had already called out for a waitress as she walked through the door causing the entire patron of diners dressed in flannel and hunting hats to turn their heads her way.
She used their attention to her advantage. “Have you seen a man named Joe Malnuty come through here recently? He owns a cabin out by the lake. He usually comes in with a couple of his friends—uh—Rick and—uh—Dale, I think. He may have had a woman with him—”
“Short, brown hair, real slender with a funny walk.” Leo interrupted her with the description of the partner.
A bleach blonde waitress eyed him up and down as her made up eyes heavily blinked in appreciation for the man in front of him. Without losing her stare, she answered, “Honey, I know who you’re talking about. But I haven’t seen him in a week or so. He got real drunk at the bar and started yelling at the girl he was with. Bartender walked him out and called his lady a cab.”
“Is the bartender working? It’s real important that we find the address for his cabin, and we’d be so grateful for your help.” Leo winked at her knowing the power he had on women like her.
“Sure, sweetie. Let me go get him.” She walked away, her hips swinging dramatically from side to side. Bailey nudged him playfully in the side as she gave him a knowing look. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “whatever works, works.”
A man in a bartender’s apron walked over shortly after. His thinning hair gave off the appearance of a regular. No doubt he would have noticed Joe in a timid crowd like this. The man reached out his hand to Leo and spoke in a jovial roar, “Leo ‘Lionheart’ Connelly! I knew your face from the moment you walked in! I was a huge fan! A huge fan!”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Leo tried to keep himself from beaming. “Listen, we’re looking for someone. It’s very important. A man by the name of Joe Malnuty. The waitress said he came in last week and was kicked out by you when he started arguing with the young girl he was with.”
“Yeah, I remember. Mean guy. Kept talking about his ‘plan.’ Nothing good comes out of a drunk guy with a plan. I kicked him out after he smacked her in front of the rest of the bar.” He lowered his voice to a serious tone, “No one disrespects a girl like that in this place—no matter what she may have done or said.”
Bailey piped in, “Did you hear him mention a daughter or a little girl at all?”
“No, I don’t think so. He just talked about the plan but never gave specifics. I would have remember it if he had.”
Bailey sulked at the bartender. “Okay, well, do you remember where you
told that cab driver to take the girl? We need to find the cabin they were staying in. I know he used to own a place by the docks for jet skiing. Does that sound familiar?”
“Yeah, I think I told him to take her to Yellowstone Street off of the Charlie Dock on the east side of town. She mentioned that as where she was staying. He walked in that direction that night, as well. I’d start looking there. I know there are a couple cabins in that ar—”
Bailey had no time for him to finish. Without another word, she turned her back and ran out of the diner. Leo quickly thanked the man and shook his hand in appreciation. As he left, he could hear the bartender request a picture, but he had no time to respond. This was Bailey’s quest, and he had to abide by her rules.
“I remember, Leo. I know where the cabin is. Take a right at the end of the road and then another at the stop sign about a quarter mile down. That’s Yellowstone Street. The cabin should be right there on the left.”
Possessive_A Bad Boy Second Chance Motorcycle Club Romance Page 36
