Tool Belt Defender

by Carla Cassidy

  School, boys and ruminations on life in general— Emily shared her opinions about it all with an openness that Brittany found charming.

  When they were finished with Emily’s nails, it was her turn to paint Brittany’s and she decided she wanted to do each nail a different color.

  Brittany sat patiently as Emily carefully chose each color and painted each nail. By the time she was finished Brittany had a kaleidoscope of colors and more than a little bit of polish outside her nails.

  “My daddy was sad this afternoon,” she said suddenly as Brittany waved her hands in the air to dry the polish.

  “Did he tell you why he was sad?” Brittany asked cautiously. Surely Alex wouldn’t share with his daughter any details of the scene earlier in her kitchen.

  “He just said it was a blue kind of a day. That’s what we call it when we’re sad. I guess it was a blue kind of a day when my mommy died and it’s gonna be a blue day if my grandma doesn’t get better.”

  “It’s definitely not a blue kind of day for me,” a familiar deep voice said. Gary Cox walked into the living room with that goofy, friendly smile on his face and a Taser in his hand.

  “Gary?” For a long moment Brittany couldn’t process his presence here in her house. She stared at him blankly, trying to make sense of it.

  Someplace in the back of her mind she recognized she’d made a mistake…a terrible, crucial mistake. She’d turned off the security and then had left the front door unattended while she took care to put her gun away. It had only been for a minute, but apparently that’s all it had taken for Gary to slip inside.

  “Gary, what are you doing here?” she asked, trying to buy some time, trying to figure out what to do. Her first thought was for Emily, who was pressed tightly against her side as if sensing danger.

  But Brittany knew why he was here and she also knew that her gun was too far away to use for protection. “Gary, let Emily go,” she said urgently. “She doesn’t know what’s happening. Just let her walk out the front door.”

  “Not a chance,” he replied as he advanced closer. “You know what time it is, Brittany.”

  Emily clung tighter to her side, making it impossible for her to attempt to defend them. “Gary, stop now and nothing will happen to you,” Brittany said in an attempt to reason with the young man. “Just leave now and everything will be fine.”

  He grinned, that open, friendly smile that obviously hid the darkness in his soul. “Nothing is going to happen to me, Brittany.”

  He was close…too close. She knew the Taser could be effective up to fifteen feet away from its target and he was much closer to her and Emily than that.

  “What time is it, Brittany?” Gary asked as he raised the gun and pointed it at her.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “It’s party time.”

  He fired the Taser and instant pain crashed through Brittany. It not only roared through every nerve in her body, but fried in her brain as she felt herself crash to the floor in front of the sofa.

  As she felt herself convulsing the only sound she heard was the sound of Emily screaming and then Gary was next to her, a syringe in his hand. She could do nothing as he injected her with something. Emily screamed again and then there was nothing but silence.

  Chapter 11

  “I feel so foolish,” Rose said as she and Alex left the hospital. It was almost eleven and the moon played peekaboo amid a bank of clouds.

  “Don’t be silly. Angina isn’t anything to take lightly,” he replied as he led her to his car in the parking lot of the small hospital.

  “I sure thought it was a heart attack. I’ve never felt anything quite so painful.”

  Alex took her by the arm, grateful that it had been nothing more serious. “I’m just glad you’re okay now.”

  “I hate that you’ve been sitting in the waiting room so long. It felt like they ran every test imaginable while you just had to sit in that dreadful waiting room. You know I don’t like to be a bother.”

  Alex opened the passenger door of his car for her. “You know you could never be a bother.”

  He closed the door after she was safely tucked inside and then walked around to the driver door. He assumed by this time Emily was probably asleep.

  He felt bad about taking advantage of Brittany, especially given the fact that she’d basically told him to kiss off, but when he’d received the frantic phone call from Rose he hadn’t known where else to turn.

  “Hopefully Emily hasn’t run Brittany completely ragged,” Rose said as he started up the car.

  “I’m sure Brittany handled things just fine.”

  As he pulled out of the parking lot he felt Rose’s gaze lingering on him. “You like her,” she said.

  “I’m in love with her,” he replied, and then flashed Rose a rueful smile. “It’s a bit awkward confessing that to you.”

  “Shouldn’t be,” she said in her usual no-nonsense voice. “I know you loved my Linda, but she’s gone and you have a life to live and plenty of love to give. How does she feel about you?”

  He sighed, a hollow wind blowing through him. “I thought things were moving along nicely. I thought she might even be falling for me, but she told me from the very beginning she wasn’t interested in marriage or a ready-made family, and today she made it more than clear that there was no future there.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I want you to have the kind of love and happiness that you deserve, the kind that Linda wasn’t capable of giving to you.”

  He shot her a look of surprise and she smiled. “Alex, I loved my daughter with all my heart and soul, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t see her weaknesses, her flaws. She was beautiful and achingly fragile. She was like that as a little girl and she never really grew up to be a woman. I want you to find a woman, Alex, a passionate woman who can embrace all of life as you and Emily do.”

  He’d thought he’d found that woman in Brittany and even now he wasn’t sure how he was going to live his life to the fullest without her in it.

  When he reached Rose’s house he insisted he walk her inside and get her comfortable. As she went into her bedroom to change into her nightclothes and a robe he stood at the front door and stared out into the night.

  It had been a tough day. He’d tried to keep a happy face on for Emily after he’d gotten home from Brittany’s, but even the little girl had sensed his unhappiness.

  How could something that had felt so right turn out to be so wrong? Why was she so certain she couldn’t be a mother? She was terrific with Emily and he knew his daughter was already more than half in love with her.

  Had she thrown them aside because of the danger that surrounded her? Maybe that’s what this afternoon had been, her attempt to protect them.

  The thought put a little bit of hope in his heart. Or maybe he was fooling himself and she just plain didn’t love him. The tiny blossom of hope withered and died away.

  He couldn’t do anything about it now. He’d pretty much laid his heart on the line and she’d kicked it to the curb and at this point whatever her reason, the end result was the same.

  Rose came out of her bedroom clad in her long, flowered robe. “Thank you, Alex. I don’t know what I would have done without you tonight.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. “I don’t know what Emily and I would do without you.”

  “Now go on, get out of here. I’ll be fine here. Get that child of yours and get some sleep and I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  Within minutes he was back in his car and headed to Brittany’s place. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, preparing himself for seeing her again.

  He’d lived through the death of a wife. He’d survived dealing with a grieving daughter. He’d dealt with girly tears and learning to French braid and yet the thought of seeing Brittany again suddenly terrified him.

  He pulled up in her driveway and saw the lights shining from the front window. Emily was probably still awake, treating the night like a special slumber p
arty.

  He got out of the car and walked to the front door and then knocked, surprised when he didn’t hear any sound of movement from inside.

  “Brittany, Emily, it’s me,” he said as he rapped harder on the door. The resulting silence set off the first alarm in his head. Brittany wouldn’t have gone anywhere with Emily at this time of night. They should be in there and he couldn’t imagine that they would both be sleeping so soundly they wouldn’t hear him at the front door.

  He rang the doorbell several times and then pounded on the door with his fist, the alarm growing louder in his head.

  When there was still no answer he grabbed the front doorknob and to his surprise it twisted and opened. No sound to indicate a breach of the security.

  Heart pounding, he stepped inside. “Brittany! Emily?” he cried out even though he knew they weren’t there. The house held the silence of a person holding their breath…a silence that absolutely terrified him.

  He raced through the house, just to make sure that he was right, that they weren’t there. Brittany’s car was in the garage and her purse was slung over the back of a kitchen chair. It was when he saw the purse that he went to the phone and called the sheriff’s office.

  Thankfully it was Tom who answered the phone. “Tom, you’ve got to get to Brittany’s house right away. Something is wrong. I just got here and the door was unlocked, the security wasn’t on and she’s not here. Her car is here, her purse is here, but she’s not.” His voice cracked as emotion swelled up inside him. “She was babysitting my daughter. They’re gone, Tom. They’re both gone.”

  The minutes were agonizing as he waited for Tom to arrive. He stood in the center of the living room where he imagined he could smell the scent of Brittany’s perfume, the sweet strawberry scent of his daughter’s hair.

  It was easy to see how the two had spent part of their time together during the evening. Bottles of fingernail polish littered the top of the coffee table. What he couldn’t make sense of were the small multicolored tabs that littered the floor, looking like pink, yellow and white confetti from an abandoned party.

  He touched nothing, except his heart, slamming his hand against it in an effort to control the frantic beat. His knees felt weak and he had to consciously tighten his knees to keep him upright.

  What had happened here? Who could have gotten in with the security? Where was his daughter? Where was Brittany?

  Tom didn’t arrive alone. He had all three brothers with him and they entered the house as if entering a war zone. With grim faces and dark eyes, they strode into the living room looking as if they wanted to find somebody to kill.

  It took precious moments for Alex to explain the events of the night: Rose’s heart attack scare, him bringing Emily here and then his race to the hospital.

  “Taser markers,” Benjamin said as he bent down and picked up one of the yellow pieces of confetti.

  Alex’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “When a Taser is fired it deploys little identification markers,” Caleb said.

  “So, you can tell by those who the Taser belongs to?” Alex asked hopefully.

  “If it was bought legally, which I seriously doubt,” Benjamin replied.

  “We have to do something,” Alex exclaimed. He felt as if he were about to jump out of his skin. They needed to find Brittany. And God…dear God, he needed them to find his daughter.

  “We start by processing the scene,” Tom said. “Did you touch anything?”

  “Nothing—except for the phone to call you,” Alex replied.

  “Then stand out of the way and let us do our jobs.”

  Alex stood in the foyer as they all began to collect evidence, talking in hushed tones that did nothing to ease Alex’s fear.

  He felt as if he were dying a slow death, as if everything and everyone were moving in slow motion. He wanted to scream at them to hurry up, to do whatever it took to find his daughter and Brittany.

  Caleb left and Alex knew he was probably going to canvass the neighborhood, to see if anyone had seen anything, had heard anything that might let them know who to look for.

  But where would they even begin to look? He knew there wasn’t even a suspect on their radar. They had no idea who might be responsible for whatever had happened here tonight.

  A darkness swept through Alex as he realized they might already be too late. He might have already lost not just the woman he loved, but the daughter who was his heart, his very soul.

  The Real Professional looked at the two unconscious bodies in his shed. He’d done it! It had been pure, sweet fate that had allowed him to sneak into Brittany’s house, to see her reset the alarm after the little girl had come inside and to hide in her coat closet until the time he’d stepped out and confronted them.

  The Taser had done the initial work and then the drug he’d used had done the rest, rendering them both unconscious while he got them loaded into his vehicle.

  The setup in the shed wasn’t ideal. He didn’t have the finances that Larry Norwood had possessed. He hadn’t been able to build separate cells. Instead the two were shackled to the wall with iron ankle rings. He’d provided a portable toilet that could be reached by the length of their chain. He’d give them food and water.

  He could keep them here as long or as short of a time as he desired. Emily had been a surprise…a gift that would certainly ensure that his name would be written in the annals of famous criminals.

  The Professional hadn’t taken a child. But The Real Professional had and that made him badder and better. Excitement roared through his veins. If he stuck to the plan, then he’d need to take several more women before he had his own “party.” But he wasn’t sure he could wait that long. He wasn’t sure he wanted to wait that long.

  Chapter 12

  Consciousness came slowly. Brittany’s first thought was that she’d been hit by a car or had been in some sort of terrible accident. Every muscle in her body ached and her head banged with a nauseating intensity.

  She couldn’t open her eyes…not yet. She was afraid that a shaft of sunlight, an overhead lamp might make her skull split in two.

  She must have fallen back asleep, for when she became conscious once again her head felt a little better. The banging was down to a manageable ache. Then the memories slammed into her brain, retrieving her headache with a vengeance.

  Gary. The Taser.

  Emily!

  Her eyes flew open and in an instant she took in her surroundings. An old shed. No cages, but her ankle was shackled to the wall with a thick chain.

  Emily was curled up on the floor next to her, unusually pale and not moving. Don’t be dead, Brittany thought anxiously. Oh, please, don’t be dead. She touched Emily’s arm, encouraged by the warmth of her skin.

  “Emily?” she whispered.

  The little girl stirred but didn’t wake up. Brittany decided to let her stay sleeping. There was no question that they’d been drugged. Brittany could still feel the aftereffects—a touch of nausea and the feeling of cotton wrapped around her brain.

  But she needed to peel back the cotton and take stock of their surroundings. She needed to find a way out, to get Emily to safety.

  But before she could think, before she could plan, a wave of despair rushed over her. How could this be happening again? What were the odds of being held captive by a madman twice in a lifetime?

  Tears burned at her eyes but she willed them away. She didn’t have time to cry. She had to figure out a way to get Emily out of here. If Brittany had to die in this shed, then so be it, but Emily was just a child and somehow, someway she had to be saved.

  Sucking up the tears that still threatened to fall, Brittany took a look around. The wooden shed where they were being held was old and relatively small and had probably once been used for storage.

  She saw the portable toilet nearby and a new chill danced over her skin. That indicated a lengthy stay. She also saw that there were three more shackles b
olted into the walls, all empty and awaiting new victims.

  So, Gary had intended to emulate his hero as closely as possible by kidnapping five women, but he obviously hadn’t had the financial means to make this place as spiffy as Larry had made his holding area.

  She tested the shackle around her ankle, unsurprised that it was fastened tight and impossible to slip. She was also not surprised to see that it was securely bolted to the wall, bolted tightly enough that it would take more than her bare hands and strength to get it loose.

  With a sigh she leaned back against the wall. Gary. Her mind still couldn’t wrap around the fact that it had been red-haired, freckled Gary behind all this.

  What worried her more than anything was that Gary would probably be the last person her brothers would look at as a potential suspect. Although he had been hanging around her house to work, he was so young and appeared to be friendly and eager to please. But that was obviously a facade that hid a malevolent darkness well.

  She didn’t have her watch on and so had no idea what time it might be. A small bare lightbulb dangled from the ceiling burned in one corner of the shed, illuminating the interior, but it had to be after midnight.

  She had no idea where they were, where this shed was located. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, didn’t know if they were still anywhere near Black Rock. She didn’t know enough about Gary’s background. She didn’t even know where he lived.

  It was possible nobody even knew they were missing yet. Alex might still be at the hospital with Rose, not knowing that his daughter was in danger.

  She glanced back at Emily, who still seemed to be sleeping soundly. Fine, let her sleep through the night. Let her sleep as long as possible before she had to wake up and face this nightmare that had caught them unaware.

  She tensed as she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Gary stepped through the door, that goofy, friendly smile on his face and a plastic grocery sack looped over one arm. “Ah, I see you’re awake.”