by Dale Mayer
“Fifteen minutes.”
“In fifteen minutes, you can probably get across this whole town,” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe, where we’re going, I mean?”
“It’s safe,” he said. “At the moment. Of course, if we get found out, then it’ll be the next unsafe place.” At that, she went quiet. He felt sorry for her because there wouldn’t be any easy answers for this. It was getting more and more difficult, as people came out of the woodwork after them. He had to wonder if it wasn’t the husband. “We need to contact Max,” Killian said suddenly.
“Why?” she asked. “Anything my ex says is nothing you can believe.”
“That might be true, but we still have to see if it’s him behind this.”
“You mean, he might make a deal for me?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
A long moment passed before she said hesitantly, “You … You wouldn’t really turn me over, would you?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But we have to know, we have to find out exactly who and what we’re dealing with.”
“Says you,” she said. “I’m okay to not see whoever it is.”
“I understand. However, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life watching your back, do you?”
“I’m afraid that horse is already out of the barn,” she said flippantly. “Does anybody ever get over something like this?”
“If you get closure, yes,” he said, as he took another sharp turn. He took two more sharp turns, before heading out to a long stretch of road, where he immediately shut off his lights, yet continued driving.
In the complete darkness, she gasped and asked, “Is that safe?”
“It’s safer than giving anybody a trail to follow,” he said, speaking quietly in the hum of the darkness. Killian knew that he’d lost whoever was behind them, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come up against them again. He drove another ten minutes, heading out of town to one of the other communities. As he approached one of the main lights, he turned on his headlights again and took a left. Then he took a right, followed by two more lefts.
“So we’re right back where we started from,” she said good-naturedly.
“Not quite.”
“But obviously we’re somewhere.”
Just like that, he took several more corners, then suddenly pulled into a back alley and then into an open garage. The door closed swiftly behind them. Hatch left the vehicle immediately. Killian let out a slow breath, then turned and looked at her. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” she said. “I guess we can’t get a fast airport flight out of here, huh?”
“No, not with that leg. Let’s get you inside, where you can get rested again. That’s what you need in order to get out of here.”
“I’m starting to feel like I’m putting you guys in danger now.”
“Not your concern,” he said. He moved quickly to help her get out of the back. Keeping her leg still without jarring it or bumping the bandaged area, he pulled her against him, then slowly lowered her, to the floor. “You’re still in your shorts and a T-shirt.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have time to change of out my PJs.”
“Hey, as long as you’re comfortable with it, I’m good.” He grabbed the rest of the bags from the back seat and led the way toward the inner access door.
Hatch stood there, waiting for them. “Inside is clear. I’ll do a search of the exterior of the house.”
“Good, and we’ll set the security afterward.” Killian led Stacey inside to the kitchen, then through to a small sitting area. “Two bedrooms on the main floor,” he said. “So we’ll stay down here.”
“Okay,” she said, but her voice was fainter than he’d have liked.
He looked at her sharply, seeing her pale skin, her huge eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “It’s just that everything, well, it feels off.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it does. And that’s okay.”
She collapsed on the couch with her leg resting on the big ottoman, and he walked into the little kitchen and said, “How about a cup of tea?”
“That’d be lovely,” she said. “I feel like I’ll crash again soon too.”
“That’s the adrenaline rush, draining from you,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
“For how long though?” she said, soft and low. “Also what about everybody else in my life?”
“Is there anybody else you’re close to, other than your father?”
She stopped, thought about it, and then gave a hard snort. “Not so much, now that you mention it,” she said. “My husband didn’t approve of any of my friends. And, when I left him, I didn’t want to contact anybody because they had warned me to stay away from him. I hadn’t listened, and I just couldn’t face all the I told you sos I knew I had coming.”
“Well, if they were true friends,” Killian said, “they might have said I told you so once, but then they should have left it alone. And honestly? Real friends would have come looking for you and would have opened their arms to help you. So maybe you’re better off without them after all.”
“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” she said. “It’s been such an incredible change in my world. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing either,” she said quietly.
“Maybe not.”
She looked down at her leg. “This damn leg is causing a lot of trouble.”
“Which is exactly why the kidnapper did it,” he said. “Because you’re incapacitated, so you can’t escape. You can’t do much of anything, except struggle with the injury.”
“So is this something he’s done before, you think?”
He looked at her in surprise and then slowly nodded his head.
“Now that’s a line of work a guy can be really proud of,” she said in disgust, thinking of other women with big gashes in their legs. “It’s not like you can track that.”
“Hmm,” he said, pulling out his phone and looking down, as he sent off messages to his team. “You might be surprised just what they can track.” With that done, he walked back into the kitchen and then called out, “I said tea, but would you rather have coffee instead?”
“Either is fine,” she said. “Just a hot comforting drink sounds great.”
He put on the kettle and then made a pot of coffee as well.
By the time that was done, Hatch had returned to the kitchen and gave him a nod. “All clear. Security set.”
“Perfect.”
“How long can we stay here?” she asked them.
“Several days hopefully,” they said.
“You mean, long enough for me to heal?”
“Long enough that you can tolerate the trip down south.”
“If it wasn’t a commercial airline,” she said, “it would be easier.”
“It won’t be a civilian airline for sure, and it will be easier for us to restrict who is around you,” he said. “But you still have to be ready for it. That car ride couldn’t have been comfortable, even in a roomy SUV. Imagine flying for hours at a time, and all that getting in and out of the planes. It’ll hurt your leg, for sure. So let’s give it a couple more days, and I promise we’ll try to get you on a military flight and get you back to California first. We’ll figure out how to get your car back to you somehow.”
“I would love that,” she said, as she shifted on the couch among a bunch of pillows, propping up her head on them. “Why am I always so dang tired?”
“Because of the pills, the injuries, the shock, and the adrenaline. It all just crashes you,” he said in a laughing tone. “Just remember. The best healing happens when you are asleep, so think of it as a good thing and leave it at that.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do some healing, and I’ll be wanting coffee when I wake up.”
He chuckled. “Go ahead. Close your eyes and get some rest.” He watched as she closed her eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep, long before her tea or coffee. He turned to lo
ok at Hatch and said, “We need to track down other women who were cut like Stacey was. It’s a hell of a tactic in terms of keeping a prisoner in check and making her incapable of running away. I just wonder how many times he might have done that before.”
“We need to find that out,” Hatch said, turning to look at her. “And in what states, what countries?”
“I know. We’ll start with the US West Coast right now, and I suspect that’s probably his hunting ground.”
“So we need to expand that to check from the Yukon all the way down the west coast of Canada into the US.”
“I’ve put the team on it,” Killian said, “but it wouldn’t hurt if we dug into it ourselves. I’ll take California,” he said, turning to look at her. “Maybe you should start in British Columbia, as the guy picked her up off a ferry there.”
“On it,” Hatch replied.
Killian’s phone buzzed. “It’s Jerricho,” he noted to Hatch. “What’s up?”
“We’re monitoring the police chatter in your area and seems someone was caught speeding. He tried to tell the cops that a man’s wife had been kidnapped by two men, and he and his buddy were sent to your hotel to save her.”
“Not very original but it delayed us for a bit.”
“Stay low until you are ready for transport. Meanwhile, we put in an anonymous tip that these were hired guns and gave them Max and James as possible leads. We’ll share more with the locals as you and the team uncover more. I understand the guy already in custody is giving up his partner involved in this. The police expect to have him in custody soon.”
“Sounds good. Keep us updated.”
They both poured coffees and headed to the dining room table, where they set up their laptops and got to work. It wasn’t too much longer that Killian looked over at Hatch. “Last year, a woman filed a kidnapping complaint, and her kidnapper attacked her by cutting up her leg so badly that she couldn’t get away. He didn’t sexually assault her, eventually dropped her off on the roadside. She said that he was looking for ransom, but she didn’t have anybody who would pay. He had thought she was somebody else, so it was a case of mistaken identity. She said that she’s still haunted by his actions and by the injury that has kept her close to home, even after all this time.”
“Well, that definitely sounds like one right there. When and where was that?”
They jotted down her info on a sheet of paper and kept looking, and it wasn’t long before they had five cases.
“Five cases, five women, all kidnapped, all with the same cuts to the leg,” Hatch noted, shaking his head. “Wow.”
“The good news is,” Killian said, “that they were all released without further harm.”
“So at least he didn’t kill them.” Hatch nodded.
“Now, in Stacey’s case,” Killian said, “she did say that her second kidnapper was supposed to kill her because that’s what Max paid him for. But the kidnapper didn’t do that. He got greedy, trying to score our cash as well. So he doesn’t seem to be a murderer either, from what we know to date. And these five cases could be his as well. But surely Max is looking for that second kidnapper who took Max’s money and didn’t get the job done, but, more than that, Max is looking for Stacey.”
“Max may take care of our second kidnapper problem.”
Killian agreed. “And then there’s the first two kidnappers themselves, trying to get out of trouble with Max for losing Stacey, maybe trying to clean up any loose threads there.”
“I wonder if her father is a loose end?”
“I wonder …” At that, Killian quickly punched an order into the Mavericks’ text box, to make doubly sure that her father was adequately guarded, and the response came back immediately that he was and would be until the case was over with. He looked up and said, “They’ve got it covered.”
“Okay, that should have been a given.”
“Nothing is a given in this world,” Killian said, “so I always double-check just to make sure we do the best we can and make no assumptions without verification where we can get it.”
Chapter 7
Stacey woke up the next morning, her body stiff and achy from head to toe. She remembered falling asleep on the couch, yet she was in a bed now. Killian must have moved me. She laid still for a long moment, as she tried to assess if anything else had happened. But she figured it was just from the rough ride away from the hotel and from the added psychological stress of moving from one location to another. She slowly sat up, pushing aside the bedcovers and swinging her injured leg outward to drop to the floor, gauging her strength levels. She made her way to the bathroom, wincing as she realized the bandage was covered in blood again. She hadn’t gotten it changed last night, and now she needed a shower, and it would obviously have to come off.
She studied it for a long moment. What the heck. She might as well have a shower and take it off there. After all, getting it wet first made taking off the bandage less painful. Then Killian could rebandage it fresh, after she got dressed. It was morning outside, and she heard the birds, and the sun shone brightly. She turned on the shower, and, as soon as it was hot and ready, she stepped in, with the bloody bandage still affixed. She scrubbed her body down, avoiding the bandage on most of her thigh, taking the time to lather her hair twice, letting the water sluice down her face and onto her back. She already felt better as she got clean again.
With the soap and warm water easing off the dried blood, she gingerly took off the bandage, wincing as she could still see dry crusty blood everywhere. On the whole, the incision looked decent though. She let the water soak down into the wound and around, cleaning it up. The hot water felt good, easing the tension in her leg. As soon as she was done, she grabbed one of the towels and dried off as much as she could, patting around the wound. Then she wrapped one towel around her hair, while she grabbed another for her body.
As soon as she made her way back to her bedroom, she laid out what she had for clothing and managed to get partially dressed in a T-shirt and panties. She chose shorts again, as she didn’t have any other clothes that allowed for the bandaging to be done. Slowly she managed to slip the shorts up over her injured leg. Now fully dressed and in need of a fresh bandage, she straightened up her room, then headed to find the guys. She was still braiding her hair as she walked into the kitchen.
Both men sat there, and they looked up in surprise.
“What?” she said. “Were you expecting me to sleep later?”
“That, and the fact that you’re walking so easily,” Killian said.
She nodded. “The hot shower helped a lot.”
He got up and took a closer look at the leg. “It looks pretty decent, but I’d still like to see another bandage on it, to help from hurting you and to avoid infection. You’ll need to keep up the antibiotics for the same reason.”
“I won’t argue with that,” she said. “I took off the old one in the shower. It was pretty crusty with dried blood. I gave it all a good cleaning, but I think another bandage would be good for today.”
“Give me a minute,” he said, and he disappeared.
She looked over at Hatch. “How was your morning?”
“It’s good,” he said. “Just checking up on the news.”
“Anything about the kidnappers?”
“Nope.”
She looked around at the table and saw all kinds of notes and files. “Did you guys learn anything new?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Do you want a coffee?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes, please, I’d appreciate it.” She sat down on the bench, waiting for Killian to come back. “What did you find out?” she asked.
“A bunch of stuff, not anything terribly awe-inspiring,” Hatch said. “The two guys working the parking lot are in custody, so you don’t have to worry about them.” She nodded, her mouth grim. “Just a couple locals, probably hired by Max. We’re leaving that to the police to investigate. However, it looks like the guy who kidnapped you from the ferry has potentially
done this before.”
“Well, it makes sense,” she said. “He had no hesitation about grabbing me instead of helping me. Who does that?”
“We have five related cases so far,” he said.
Her jaw dropped. “Five?”
“Five women were kidnapped, their legs slashed open while he had them, but they were all released when ransom money was paid.”
“So, this is how he makes his living?” she said in disbelief. “And he cuts all the women he kidnaps?”
“It would appear to be his standard operating procedure,” he said.
It was stunning to think that somebody could have gotten away with this so many times. “And the women could never identify him?”
“No, they couldn’t,” he said. “In each case it happened the same way. They were snatched from an innocuous setting, and then the family was contacted for ransom.”
“Which is when my father was contacted. But, instead of paying online, he sent you guys in person,” she said.
“Yeah, and rightly so. Paying ransom rarely works out for anybody but the kidnapper. The good news about this guy is that he didn’t kill any of his victims.”
“That is really good news,” she said. And then she stopped, winced, and added, “At least as far as you know.”
He looked at her with a flat stare and said, “Yes, as far as we know, with the cases we’ve found to date.”
“I really don’t want to think of this guy having done this to any other victims. How does the timeline look for them?”
“Well, that’s why it’s a bit of an issue,” he said. “We found five so far. But that’s just between Oregon and Washington State.”
“So what about Canada?” she asked. “That’s where I was taken from, both times. There could be another five women from BC or from the territories or even Alaska.” She then challenged, “How about California?”
“Exactly, the results are ongoing.”
“Do you know how much the ransom was that he asked of my father?”
“That’s one of the unique things about it that keeps him kind of under the radar and prompts people to pay. He doesn’t ask for all that much.”
