The Warning

by Saul, Jonas

  What was this place? Who did these clothes belong to?

  Then she heard a car.

  She ran to the bedroom that looked out onto the front lawn. Four black SUVs were pulling up the driveway.

  Her heart sank. They’d found her.

  She bolted back to the bathroom and gathered up her dirty clothes. The few pieces of dirt on the floor she brushed under the bathroom carpet. As she raced out of the bathroom, she saw the mirror was frosted with steam. She turned back and wiped it as fast as she could.

  Time was running out. Any second they would be on the front porch and entering right below her. She had to find a place to hide.

  How was she going to remove the water from inside the bathtub? With absolutely no time left, she pulled the shower curtain closed and ran from the bathroom.

  It took her a few seconds to find the attic door in the roof of the second bedroom. She set her clothes down, brought an end table over and stood on it to push the wood up into the attic. It lifted with ease. Before thinking about how she could get herself up and in she tossed her dirty clothes through the hole so at least they were out of the way.

  She heard the door downstairs open. Voices of multiple men rode the staircase to her.

  She was out of time.

  She got off the end table and ran around the bed to the other one. It was heavy but she managed to lift it and quietly move to the end of the bed.

  Then she ran back to the one under the attic door and even though her arm had a bullet wound in it, she used every last bit of strength she had to lift herself up and into the attic.

  Someone was ascending the stairs.

  There was no way she could move the end table back into place so she’d felt it would be better to have two misplaced than just the one. And of course it wouldn’t look good that the only one out of place just happened to be sitting under the attic door.

  Now there were two people at the top of the stairs. They were discussing a cop; someone who was doing a trade. She had no idea what they were talking about, but she was out of time.

  She took the wood and eased it back into place. It dropped with a soft thud.

  “What was that?”

  She could hear one of the men in the upstairs hallway running into the bedroom below. She crawled backwards making every effort to be soft and quiet. She would certainly die if they knew she was here.

  “I thought I heard a thump.”

  “Where?”

  “In here.”

  “There’s no one here John.”

  “I can see that, but what happened to these end tables?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe someone moved them.”

  “Are you being a smart ass Lenny, because I could get really fucking pissed. Obviously when I say I heard a noise, then I did and end tables don’t move on their own.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy. I’m just saying, there’s no one for miles and the house was locked so there’s no one here. We’d know the second we walked in if someone was here.”

  Sarah hoped that the second guy’s logic won the first guy over. I could really use a break here, she thought. She lay completely still, listening, waiting.

  “Come on, let’s put these end tables back and get changed. We have a long day ahead of us.”

  Sarah heard them slide the end tables back beside the bed. With the soft patter of their feet she heard both men leave the room. She let out her breath she’d been holding and started breathing more regularly.

  Using what little light was available to her, Sarah checked out her new digs. There weren’t any walls, just the underside of the ceiling as it joined in a “V” formation above her head. Pink insulation was jammed in between the studs haphazardly. The area she lay upon was a wooden base, big enough to spread out but hard as a rock. It had a thick layer of dust. If she moved too fast a cloud of it floated by. That ran the risk of causing her to sneeze.

  There were four moving boxes piled in a corner about five feet from her. She considered taking a look in them, but decided to wait until the men below were either all downstairs or asleep.

  A gentle move to the right got her further from the attic access where she placed her old, dirty clothes. The smell was bothering her more than before because she had spent most of the morning walking and breathing in clean fresh air. To be back in a confined space and smelling that shit again was just wrong.

  She eased over a little further away and lay down to rest and think.

  Now what? She escaped the compound only to walk right into their lair. She had no phone, no way to contact the outside world and no idea where she was.

  There were people walking around in the upstairs area. The sound of distant voices travelled over to her. A toilet flushed. Someone shouted something.

  Then she heard Sam Johnson’s name. Why would they be talking about Sam? She paid more attention, trying to hear what they were saying.

  The voices were too far away but she was sure she heard the words trade and kill him.

  Chapter 26

  Sam parked in the spot they told him to. He had no idea he would be this nervous. How long had it been since he was in the field? It had been four years.

  “Now I’m talking to myself. I have no plan. No idea what they’re going to do. No idea who these people are. And I’m walking into certain death.”

  He shook his head, looked down and said a silent prayer.

  Then he took out his cell phone and texted Parkman an SOS and his whereabouts. Maybe after he was taken, his colleagues could come and check the mall cameras for a hint as to who took him. Although he felt that would be futile, as the perps wouldn’t have chosen a mall setting if they were worried about their faces on security cameras.

  The dash clock read 10:01am. He was a minute late.

  Sam unclipped his holster and placed it, with the gun, under the front passenger seat. He reached down to his leg and felt for the knife; it was exactly where it was supposed to be.

  A couple of potential shoppers walked by as he exited his vehicle. He followed them into the mall. He was probably being watched to make sure he was alone. His job was simple: walk to the maintenance doors by the JC Penney and then to the garbage compactor at the back. A garbage truck would be there to pick him up.

  He saw the JC Penney, walked by it and opened the maintenance door without a hitch. The hallway was long and barren. He got to the compactor and saw a red door leading to the outside. He opened it and waited.

  As if on cue, a large garbage truck came into view and lumbered up to him. A single driver wearing a red bandanna and sunglasses smiled at him.

  Sam stepped onto the rungs leading to the passenger side and looked in the open window.

  “Get in,” the driver said.

  “Where are Caleb and Amelia?”

  “You get nothing until you get in.”

  He opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat. The garbage truck started moving right away. He waited. A deal was a deal. All he could hope was they would honor their part in it.

  The driver wasn’t leaving the mall parking lot. He swung around, aiming for the area where Sam had parked. The driver applied the brakes and stopped four rows away from Sam’s car.

  “The parents are over there,” the driver said, pointing.

  Sam looked over and saw two black SUVs, one parked and one moving slowly away. The doors opened on the parked one. A stunned Amelia, followed by Caleb, stepped out into the sun. They looked around, appearing disorientated.

  The garbage truck driver reached down and lifted a device from the seat beside him. He looked over and smirked as he pushed a button on the device.

  The explosion made the garbage truck sway back and forth. Instinctively, Sam shut and shielded his eyes. The first thought he had was Caleb and Amelia, but when he looked through the windshield of the truck he saw that it was his car that had exploded. It was completely engulfed in flames, along with the two cars on either side of it.

  Caleb and Amelia had taken
shelter behind the SUV they’d just gotten out of.

  Sam looked at the driver. “You’re insane.”

  He shook his head in the negative. “No, we’re not. Just safe is all. How do we know if you have a tracking device on your car? Maybe you left a message in there for someone about this plan. I’m sure you won’t need your car anymore anyway. You knew this was a one way trip.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” Sam said.

  He looked for Sarah’s parents again and saw they had walked away from the parking lot. They were crossing the street and moving away from the car on fire and the SUV that had held them captive.

  His last look told him they were safe.

  He sat in the passenger seat and watched the terrain unfold, contemplating his next move. When would he take it? How would he take it? They’d left the city limits fifteen minutes ago. Flat grassland and the odd batch of trees passed them as they cruised just under the speed limit.

  They’d done a pretty stupid thing by only having a driver watch him. The guy hadn’t even frisked him.

  He leaned forward and looked in the rear view mirror. The two black SUVs from the mall were following. Of course.

  It took them five minutes to pull over and dump the garbage truck. Sam was ordered into the second SUV and then they were underway again, heading to who-knew-where.

  Sam figured out why they didn’t blindfold him. He wouldn’t be getting away alive, so what did it matter if he knew where they were taking him?

  It crossed his mind to try to take out as many of these guys as he could and then run for it. He’d already saved Sarah’s parents, so now he could save himself. But he remained quiet and waited. It was Sarah, Esmerelda and Dolan that he was after. He wanted to know where they were and then he would find a way out of this.

  Even if it cost him his life as he felt it would anyway.

  Exhaustion started to cling to his consciousness as they rode on the endless highway, his eyes drooping in sleepiness. Parkman had gotten him up early to meet in that truck stop and now he was feeling the effects of it. No one spoke. One man sat beside him with two in the front. He needed conversation to wake up.

  “Do all you guys have a twin complex?”

  No one responded. The man beside him continued looking forward.

  “You all drive the same black SUV and you all wear the same black jackets. The only differences are your clothes. You all rip the bottoms of your shirt. Why is that?”

  The guy beside him looked away, as if something interesting caught his attention outside.

  “Does a great personality go with this job?” Sam asked.

  He wasn’t trying to fire them up. He could feel what it was on the inside. Anger. His anger that people like this even existed. For all the pain they caused he was going to do everything he could as long as he was still breathing to end this craziness.

  They pulled off the highway and started up a winding dirt road. It hit him that he hadn’t seen a house or any sign of civilian life for quite some time.

  The SUV pulled up and stopped in front of a barn-like structure that was attached to a much larger building. He wondered if that was where they kept a getaway plane or something.

  The men got out and walked around to Sam’s door. It opened and he stepped down. An older man walked up to him and took off his glasses.

  “We will dispense with the niceties. I have paid a steep price for having you join us today. Please, come with me so we can begin our conversation,” the man said as he turned and gestured with his hands toward the barn doors.

  “Niceties? Am I in the right place? I think they missed my stop along the way. I’m supposed to be meeting with a bunch of thugs and a bad guy who kidnaps little girls and mistreats them. You must have me mistaken.”

  The old man turned around and looked at Sam. His face was rugged from years in the sun, but to Sam it looked like a face of stone at the moment. “Don’t humor yourself with games Mr. Johnson. I assure you, my men will kill you where you stand. I can only keep the ravenous grizzly caged for so long. Won’t you join me?” He was gesturing again.

  Sam looked at the men scattered behind him. Two of them reached inside their jackets, implying a weapon was in their hands. Not sure how this would turn out, he started toward the barn door knowing that he may have to act at any second. Keep all senses on full alert, he thought to himself. Look for a chance because something tells me I’m running out of time.

  They walked down a hallway and he followed the strange man into a room. One table and one chair sat in the middle with a solitary light dangling above the table. This must be their interrogation room, he thought. Clever.

  The strange man looked at him. “My friend Blake here and his associate have a few questions for you. After that, you will be made comfortable providing you answer correctly. I bid you farewell.”

  The door shut behind him, leaving the three men standing in the dank room looking at each other.

  Sam addressed the one called Blake. “So, do you guys ask the questions or me?”

  He watched as Blake reached inside his jacket and pulled out a whip of some kind.

  “Okay, so this is where it gets serious? This is your interrogation room right? Interrogate away. What have I got to lose? I’m captive here with no idea where I am and no one else knows where I am so there’s no need to have a show of violence. I’ll talk. Or rather, we can talk. Fire away.”

  The associate pulled out a gun. He cocked the hammer. “Fire away?” he said.

  “Wait, wait–”

  The gun went off. Sam felt a tearing below the knee. The bullet crashed into him hard, knocking his leg out from under him. He lost his balance and dropped to the hard floor.

  The pain wasn’t what hit him first. It was the shock of being shot.

  He could hear his scream. It started as a frustrated wail and then turned to something more inclined to a painful scream.

  Blood was oozing out of the wound in the center of his calf muscle.

  “What the FUCK!” he screamed.

  The guy with the whip was smiling. Sam already forgot his name. Something about that guy freaked him out. Some men acted the part. Some wanted to be tougher. A guy like him, he was just evil. Something you could feel coming off him in waves.

  “I wanted to talk. I even said…so,” Sam tried to calm down a little. He looked at his leg. It appeared the bullet had gone right through. A glance to the floor about three feet behind him confirmed it. There was a small indent in the floor where the bullet made contact after going through his leg.

  When he looked back up, the guy with the whip was moving toward him.

  In a flash, he dove, landing on Sam, wrestling him down, the strap flailing in the air. The pain worsened. He had no strength to fight the guy off. The pain worsened again.

  Then darkness.

  Chapter 27

  They had to be downstairs, because she hadn’t heard anyone close for some time. For the last half hour at least she had tried to hear more of their conversations trying to glean anything on Sam Johnson or what they meant by trade and kill him, but couldn’t.

  She turned quietly and angled her body up so she could crawl. If someone had thought to put a window in the attic it might not be so hot. Sarah brushed at the sweat as it kept threatening to blind her. The act of a miscalculation, a misstep, could spell disaster. If she tumbled to the side and dropped hard to the floor of the attic it would surely alert those below.

  So with each movement, she tested it and eased into the next one. It took her a full three minutes to cross five feet. At the boxes, she unclipped one and took a look inside. Old blankets and what looked like table cloths were folded and placed neatly inside.

  She moved to her right and opened another box. Inside this one were what looked like school supplies. Empty binders and textbooks filled it. Before closing the lid and moving onto the next box, something caught her eye. She looked back in and confirmed her suspicion; a pencil case. It came free without pro
test. A little movement revealed that a writing tool lay within. She opened the zipper and pulled out a red pencil crayon.

  Her arm went numb.

  She had a couple of seconds to secure herself before passing out. Her last thought was, what am I going to write on?

  ***

  Thumping came from below her as she woke up. How long had she been out was a mystery but now people were in the room below her.

  She could smell something burning too. Maybe they screwed up in the kitchen.