The sun had gone down, but twilight hadn’t turned to night yet. He slipped in the mud, and he wished it hadn’t been raining quite so much. Of course, everyone who owned a cherry orchard was happy for the rain. A lot of rain in the spring meant a lot of fruit in the summer. And more fruit meant more money.
His mind rotated, and when he reached solid ground, he pulled his phone out again and called 9-1-1.
“What’s your emergency?” the operator asked.
“This is Jonathan Addler. My—” He couldn’t call Cassie his girlfriend. They’d broken up seven weeks ago.
“Do you need help, sir?”
“Cassandra Caldwell just called me and said someone was in her house. Has she called in?”
“What’s the address?” she asked. “I have you at 2419 Sunshine Shores Lane.”
“Yes, I’m out at my family’s cherry orchard. She’s at her house.” At least she was on the way there.
“Sir, do you know the address?”
Jon fumbled his keys and dropped them on the wet asphalt. He struggled to remember Cassie’s address—somewhere he’d only been once and had followed her there in the first place.
“I think she’s on Gunnison Road,” he said. “I don’t have the exact number.”
“We’ll send a unit down that way,” she said.
Jon swiped the keys from the ground and got behind the wheel of his truck. “Okay, great, thanks.” He hung up even as the operator started to ask him another question. He couldn’t think and drive, and right now, he had to drive.
The ten-minute drive to town only took him five, and Jon made turn after turn until he came to Gunnison Road. It was this road, and her house sat down on the right—number three sixty-seven.
He committed it to memory even as he eased to a stop in front of the house. Something was very wrong here. Very, very wrong.
The front door was open a few inches, something Cassie would never allow. Light spilled out of the crack, and her car wasn’t in the driveway. She surely had been closer than him, and he hadn’t passed her on the way here.
He glanced up and down the street, but it looked like all was well. No one stood on their front lawn, gossiping about what had happened at this house.
But something had happened.
Jon got out of the truck, pulled up his recent calls in case he needed to dial into emergency again quickly, and approached the house cautiously. He wanted to call for Cassie, but he didn’t dare. He wasn’t sure his voice would work anyway.
“Sir,” a man said in a firm, authoritative voice, and Jon spun back toward the sidewalk.
A police car had pulled up behind him, and two officers had gotten out. “Do you live here?” one of them asked.
“No,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m Jonathan Addler. I called in to nine-one-one for my friend, Cassie. She lives here.” He turned back to the house. “There’s something wrong here. Her car isn’t here, and I know she was here.”
He couldn’t believe she hadn’t been home with the twins when Larry had shown up. And how had Larry left Chicago already? He wasn’t supposed to leave the city for another two months, and he was risking a lot to come to Forbidden Lake.
That’s because he’s not going back to Chicago, Jon thought. He was going to take those boys and run, and while Jon had only met them once, he knew how much they meant to Cassie. Knew she’d promised her mother she’d take care of them.
“Stay here,” the other officer said. “All the way back by the car, Jon.”
Jon looked at the guy, realizing it was Morgan Quinn, a friend from all the way back in high school. Jon nodded at him and retreated back to his own car.
He heard the officer speak to Morgan and point to something on the front steps, and then he nudged open the front door and let it settle all the way open, revealing more of the house. They inched inside, and each moment felt agonizingly slow.
Cassie wasn’t here. The twins weren’t here. Larry wasn’t here.
So where were they?
He called Cassie, the way her phone rang and rang doing nothing to settle him. He held his device against his side and listened, hoping to hear her phone ringing from nearby. But the neighborhood was deathly silent.
He hung up and walked toward the house. The grass looked a little rumpled near the bottom of the steps, like a few people had tread there one right after the other as they exited from the house in a herd.
Going up the steps slowly, his eyes easily landed on the spots of blood on the cement on the porch. His breath stuck in his lungs. Whose blood was that? Had Cassie done something to Larry, taken the twins, and disappeared?
Jon’s whole heart wailed, and while he hadn’t spoken to her in a while, he’d been making plans. After this semester ended, and after he delivered her new entertainment center, he’d ask her out again. Try again.
He wouldn’t be her student then, and everything would be fine.
His gaze caught on a pen lying on the porch too. He bent down to get a closer look, knowing he shouldn’t pick it up but wanting to so badly.
“No.” He groaned as he saw the J clearly written there on the cement. Well, clearly if he got six inches away and squinted. He knew that J was for him.
The whole message read J – room 615
“The college,” he breathed, straightening. “Guys. Morgan,” he called into the house. “She’s at the college.” He leapt down the stairs and ran for his truck.
“Jon,” Morgan called after him. “Wait.”
He couldn’t wait. He had to go. He had to get to her now.
Morgan caught him before he could drive off. “Where is she?” he asked, glancing toward the house as his partner came down the steps. “Something happened inside that house. There’s blood in a few places, and furniture upside down.”
Jon’s nerves buzzed with adrenaline. With pure fear for Cassie and her brothers. He hopped out of his truck. “You guys drive. I’ll tell you what I know on the way over to Northwestern Michigan College.”
“What—?”
“Now,” Jon barked. “No time for questions.” He darted over to the police car and got in the back while everyone else loaded into the front. “Okay, get the lights on and get us there fast. Here’s what I know.”
He detailed what Cassie had told him about Larry and her brothers over the couple of months they’d been together. He told them about her phone call to him while he was in the orchard, and the message he’d found on the front porch.
Hal, Morgan’s senior partner, called for additional units to go to the house to secure the crime scene, as well as for the college.
“An emergency call just came from Northwestern Michigan,” his dispatch came back.
Everything went silent in the car, and Hal somehow made the already speeding car go faster.
“Who called it in?” Jon managed to ask.
Hal repeated the question through his radio.
“A Barbara Langstrom,” dispatch said. “She said she’s hurt with a broken arm, and there’s a man with a knife with one of her teachers and a pair of teenage boys. They’re barricaded in one of the kitchens there.”
“Room six-fifteen,” Jon said. “It’s the kitchen where Cassie teaches all of her classes.” Dread filled his stomach, and he leaned back against the seat behind him. “And Barbara Langstrom is the department head over the culinary arts program.”
“She’s still alive,” Morgan said, turning toward Jon. “So Jon, let’s do this the right way. You can’t go running in there, trying to save your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said automatically—and while he’d been prepared to tell that lie, he’d never had to. Not even this time.
Morgan’s eyebrows went up, but he turned around without saying anything else. Hal got them to the college, and Jon directed him where to park to be as close to the kitchens as possible. “There’s her car,” he said pointing. Another one—a fancier one—sat next to it.
Hal pulled right up onto th
e sidewalk as if he’d ram the brick building, coming to a sudden stop that had Jon thinking he’d have whiplash.
A woman stumbled toward them, and both officers flew from the car. Jon had never met Cassie’s boss, but Cassie had told him all about the woman.
“Stay here with Jon,” Morgan said, helping Barbara Langstrom into the backseat where Jon still sat. He didn’t close the door all the way before turning and sprinting back to the door where Hal stood pressed against the side of the brick.
“Are you okay if I leave?” he asked her.
She nodded, but her face was one of pain and panic.
“Was Cassie alive?” he asked. “The boys?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice rusty and hoarse. “There’s a huge man with them. Angry. Waving a knife. I tried to stand up to him, but he pushed me down.” She cradled her arm. “Cassie said the papers were in her office.”
Jon had one leg out of the car when he paused. “Papers?”
Barbara nodded. “I don’t know what she meant. I didn’t know she was in trouble.”
He wanted to get inside and help her so badly, but still he didn’t move. “You knew she took care of her half-brothers, right?”
Barbara nodded again.
“Well, that huge guy is their dad, and he just got out of prison in January. First day of class, actually.” He got out of the cop car and faced the building. In the distance, more sirens could be heard. Whatever Cassie and Larry were going to do, they’d need to do it quickly.
“I’m going in,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay here?”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he said. “You’re already hurt.”
“I know how to get in the kitchen through another door.” Barbara got out of the car too, and while she cradled her arm, she walked with purpose. Jon saw blood smeared on the door handle, the walls, and even a glass display case as they went by.
The hallway inside the building was only lit by the emergency lights, casting eerie shadows onto the walls.
“How do you know Cassie?” she whispered.
Jon took a moment to think before he whispered back. “I’m a student in one of her classes.”
“This way,” Barbara said, turning left when Jon would’ve continued straight. There was a handprint there—almost a perfect piece of art. Jon looked at it for a moment, his stomach filling with rocks. He had to find Cassie right now. Do something to get her and the boys away from Larry.
Barbara turned right then left again, and came to two doors at the dead-ended hallway they ended up in. “That’s the kitchen.” She nodded to the first door. “And that’s a back entrance to her office.” She looked at the door several feet down, at the very end of the hall. “We never use these doors. They’re probably locked.”
Jon tried the one closest to him, the one that would take him into the kitchen near the front, where Cassie stood to teach and demonstrate. The handle went down, but the door stayed stubbornly closed.
“Yep, locked,” he whispered. He eyed the other door. No way she’d left that door unlocked. Knowing her, she’d locked it and then boarded it up. She wouldn’t want anyone sneaking up on her.
Jon had only been in her office on the first day of class, and he certainly hadn’t been looking for doors at that time. He drew in a deep breath and stepped past Barbara.
“One way to find out.”
Chapter Fifteen
“It’s here somewhere,” she said, pulling another file of papers out of her cabinet. Her head hurt where Larry had hit her, but at least the blood had congealed enough to stop tracking down the side of her face. She’d lost count of how many times she’d wiped it, and she’d been sure to touch everything she could.
She hoped Dr. Langstrom would notice the almost complete handprint she’d put on the wall that led to the back entrances to the kitchen and her office. She hadn’t been able to get away from Larry long enough to unlock that kitchen door, and she felt horrible for putting Dr. Langstrom in danger in the first place.
She’d had an emergency flip phone in the glove compartment of her car. On the way here, amidst the chaos of claiming she needed a napkin for her bleeding head wound, Kyle had managed to get the phone as well as pass a tissue to her.
The phone had exactly one number in it—Dr. Langstrom’s. She was all Cassie had when they’d first come to Forbidden Lake, and only putting in one number made it easy to make a call without having to look at the phone.
So Kyle had, and then Cassie had made a big deal about where she was taking Larry and the boys, and how long it was until they arrived, and that surely the cops, whom she’d already called would be there.
Dr. Langstrom may not have had all the pieces, but she’d been at the college when Cassie had pulled up with everyone else. The older woman had been shocked to see Cassie being manhandled by a thug three times as big as her, but she’d squared her shoulders and said they couldn’t go inside.
Larry wasn’t taking no for an answer tonight, and poor Dr. Langstrom’s arm had snapped as soon as she’d hit the ground.
Cassie pushed against the desire to throw up, that horrible cracking sound of Dr. Langstrom’s bone still echoing in her head.
“Hurry up,” Larry growled from his position next to the door that led into the kitchen. Lars had already unlocked the one beside the filing cabinet, which she usually kept locked and stored files in front of. But Kyle had immediately hauled all those boxes out and started going through them, looking for the legal paperwork Larry wanted.
Their birth certificates. The legal guardianship papers. Their social security cards.
Cassie actually kept the originals at home, but she had copies in every runaway bag—also still at home or at the cottage or the trunk of her car.
And a set here in her office, that she couldn’t seem to find. She knew where they were, but she and the boys had been through every scenario she’d been able to think of. And this one would hopefully continue to go as they’d practiced.
The boxes were between them and Larry. The door was unlocked. Now she just needed him to be distracted enough that they could fly out the door and into the kitchen next door. They’d never practiced, as doing so had scared Lars too much.
A man yelled something from the kitchen, and Larry locked his gaze in that direction.
“Go,” Cassie hissed, and Kyle didn’t waste another second. He pulled open the door and he and Lars were gone in an instant. Cassie followed them, not taking even a moment to look back.
But there was nowhere to go, and she collided with a couple of other bodies in the hall.
“Cassie,” Jon said, and relief flowed through her. Except him being there was causing a problem—there wasn’t room for her to get fully out of the office and close the door.
“Move,” she whispered, and it felt like years but was only seconds before she was in the hall with the door to the office closed behind her. “Come on,” she hissed. “We can’t stay here.”
She’d taken one step when a bellow sounded from the office. “Go, go.” Surprise darted through her, only adding to the cacophony of emotions surging in her bloodstream, when she saw Dr. Langstrom in the hall.
They rounded the corner just as the door crashed into the wall, and Larry said, “You can’t outrun me.”
Cassie knew that. Oh, she knew that.
“Right,” she hissed to Jon, and he opened the door into the adjoining kitchen, waiting until they’d all gone by him before going in and closing the door. He fumbled with the lock while Larry pounded on it, yelling obscenities from the other side.
“Over here,” she said to the boys, guiding them in the dark while watching Jon struggle with the door. If he got hurt, she’d never forgive herself. “In the pantry. There’s another door. Remember, left, right, left.”
She turned back to help Dr. Langstrom and had just gotten her in the pantry when the door practically exploded in on Jon.
“Jon,” she screamed, running back toward him.
Larry came through the door, and it was her very nightmare personified. He stood so tall, with shoulders that were impossibly wide. He’d worked out for the twelve years he was in prison, because he was two hundred and ninety pounds of muscle. With a knife.
Jon scrambled backward, grabbing onto a drawer handle as he stood. He rattled around in there until he came up with a pair of tongs, which he held up as if they could do some real damage to Larry and his eight-inch blade.
In fact, Larry laughed. The sound made Cassie’s blood turn to ice, but she reached into the drawer and pulled out the first thing her fingers curled around. A can opener.
She met Jon’s eyes and faced Larry. “You can’t take my brothers,” she said, feeling brave for the first time since she’d broken up with Jon. And what a cowardly thing that had been. Shame raced through her, but she couldn’t change the past nor deal with that relationship right now.
“They’re my sons,” he growled.
“The court granted custody and guardianship to me,” she said. “And you’ll be going right back to prison, because you’ve violated your parole by leaving Chicago.”
“I’m never going back,” he said, so much hatred streaming from his eyes that Cassie wondered what his plan had been. Cross the border, probably. Get new identities in Canada with the legal documents he wanted so badly.
Larry took a step forward, and Jon and Cassie fell back one. Jon opened another drawer and glanced inside it. “Cans,” he whispered as Larry continued to glower.
Cassie wondered how long they could hold him off. She’d never been great at softball, and throwing something and having it hit her target almost never happened. She pulled open the drawer on her side as they took another step backward. It had silverware in it.
Plenty of things to throw.
“There’s two cops here,” Jon said, not trying to keep his voice down. “Let’s start yelling and throwing everything we can.”
Flirting With Danger (Rebels 0f Forbidden Lake Book 1) Page 9
