I lowered my hands to the sink dejectedly.
Stay calm, Camilla. There has to be a way out of here.
But while I might think it, I didn’t believe a word of it.
I splashed cold water on my face and neck, feeling better and more clear-headed with each handful. I badly needed to relieve myself and used the toilet since God alone knew when I would get another chance.
Once I finished, I looked around for something to use as a weapon. It was obvious only one person lived here—a single toothbrush, a single razor, a single towel. Nothing that could tip the odds in my favor in a fight between me and a man twice my size. I clenched my fists in despair, trying not to cry. Tears wouldn’t do me any good.
“Are you okay in there, Camilla?” Doleman asked, his voice jerking me back to the present.
“Fine!” I shouted. “I’ll be out in a moment.”
Deciding there was no chance of escape, I washed my hands and then returned to the living room. I was still weak, but my legs were steadier. Still, I was glad to reach the couch.
The smell of bacon and eggs made me sick, but I forced myself not to wince when Doleman put a plate of food on my lap and sat next to me, with his own.
“Thanks,” I said, thinking how stupid it sounded to thank my kidnapper for offering me food. But what else could I do? The only chance I had was to make him believe I was cooperating, make him trust me on some level, so that he would let his guard down and I would have my chance to escape.
“You’re welcome,” he said, handing me a fork. “I’m afraid we’re out of bread. Mitsy forgot to buy some.”
“Where is Mitsy?” I asked, forking a bite of salty eggs into my mouth and swallowing them. “Is she staying here, too?”
Doleman shook his head. “No, she’s at home. No one can know she’s involved in this. She stops by every couple of days, like Richie does, and brings me supplies.”
“I don’t understand why you’ve done any of this. You’re rich. Even if your wife does get half of everything in the divorce, you would still have plenty to live comfortably. Why this charade? It makes no sense,” I said, gesturing at his head. “And that, is downright ridiculous. How could you let someone scalp you? Who did by the way?”
Doleman touched the back of his head gingerly. “Richie did. It hurts like a son of a bitch, but ... I thought giving up a patch of scalp would be preferable to giving up a finger.”
I shook my head in dismay. “And your girlfriend was okay with this? What kind of woman would let the man she loves suffer like this for the sake of a few extra dollars?”
Doleman looked confused and unsure. He chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed.
“We never expected things would go this far. Neither of us thought things through, nor did we count on Regina’s cold-bloodedness. I should’ve known better,” he said shaking his head. “I lived with that ice cube for ten years.”
We finished the meal in silence.
“What are you going to do now? And what are you going to do with me?” I asked, dreading the answer.
He took my empty plate and carried the dishes to the sink.
“I’ll have Richie take you back. You don’t know where we are,” he pointed out, turning to me. “If you mention this to anyone, Richie will make sure you and your friends and family are history. Trust me, he’s ruthless.”
The expressionlessness in his tone chilled me. He believed what he said. I shuddered. My stomach roiled, and I sorely regretted eating.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” I said ruefully. “This is all my fault. The story of my life. I screwed up again. I should never have gone to the police.”
Jack Doleman sat next to me again and took my hands in his.
“No, honey, you did the right thing. It’s not your fault that you got tangled up in this mess. I appreciate what you tried to do. You didn’t even know me, yet you tried to help. You cared about a stranger.”
“And that got me kidnapped and God knows what else will happen to me,” I snapped, snatching my hands away and pressing my face into my palms, overwhelmed by the need to cry.
Doleman put a hand on my shoulder, speaking soothingly.
“Camilla, I promise you that, if you keep quiet about this, nothing will happen to you or your family. I give you my word. This time tomorrow you’ll be safe at home. We just have to figure out what story you’ll tell the police when they question you. Now, would you like something to drink?”
I sniffed and looked sideways at him.
“Some water, please.”
He walked to the fridge and opened it, gazing inside at its contents.
“We’re out of water, but we have cola. I’ll pour you a glass.”
He did so and brought it to me. I took the glass and drained it, terribly thirsty after the salty food.
I wanted to question Jack Doleman further, but when I let my back rest against the couch, I realized I couldn’t think straight. My eyelids grew heavy. I had one final lucid thought. That son of a bitch had drugged me.
Chapter Sixteen
I awoke groggy, my thoughts confused. Where was I? Slowly, like someone turning the pages in a book, it all came back to me—the stun gun, the tape, the salty meal. As my bleary mind began to function, my eyes flew open. Doleman! The son of a bitch had drugged me!
I tried to sit up and realized two things: my hands were once again duct-taped—this time in front of me—and Jack Doleman was coming down the stairs. He wore black silk pajamas and was disheveled. He covered a huge yawn with his hand.
“Good morning. How do you feel?” he asked cheerfully.
“Like I’ve been drugged,” I muttered, struggling to sit up. My head ached. “Why the hell did you do that? And what did you give me? I’ve got a brass band playing inside my head.”
“Sorry about the headache. I’ve got some acetaminophen somewhere. Just a few sleeping pills—nothing illegal. I just had to make sure you would stay put.” He knelt in front of me to cut the tape off my wrists. “I’ve been thinking. I know exactly what you’re going to tell anyone who asks where you’ve been. Do you have a friend who lives out of town?”
I frowned suspiciously, but decided to agree to whatever he suggested—at least until I got the hell out of here.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He nodded, as I rubbed my freed wrists. “Then you’ll say you’ve been visiting your friend, and you lost your phone.”
“Where is my phone?”
“Richie destroyed it and threw the parts away. He didn’t want someone tracking you through GPS.”
I gritted my teeth. “Great. So I’m out the cost of a phone. Do you realize how much that cost me? But what’s a few hundred dollars to the rich Jack Doleman? The man who would let himself get scalped rather than give his wife half of everything.”
“I’ll give you the money for the phone,” he offered, trying to mollify me. “So will you go along with it? Will you tell them you were visiting your friend?”
I frowned and pouted. “That’s it? That’s your great plan? I was visiting a friend. You really think the police will believe that?”
He shrugged. “It’s not important whether or not they do. Your friend, Carter Evans, reported you missing, but the police don’t take any action until someone’s been gone forty-eight hours or there are suspicious circumstances—like blood. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve disappeared, and Richie swears no one saw him snatch you. If you show up with a logical explanation, they have no reason to follow through. Richie will take you back to the city, and since you’ll be blindfolded, you won’t know where we are.”
Back to the city.
So we were somewhere outside Jersey City in a forested area. That didn’t tell me much. We could be in the Jersey segment of the East Coast Greenway or farther inland.
I had to get out of here. Poor Fish was starving in his bowl, waiting and waiting for me. Carter was probably worried sick because he didn’t know where I was. He had reported me missing, and
that meant the world to me. There was no way I could spew that cockamamie story Doleman suggested. For one thing, if I did, I would not only lose my job, I would lose Carter.
Licking my lips, I nodded, fighting back tears of desperation. “All right. When’s your ghoul coming to ... escort me back home?”
Not that I believed he would. I didn’t trust Delgado. I was afraid that, despite Doleman’s instructions, he was going to kill me and dump my body into the river. He had too much to lose keeping me alive. Kidnapping was a capital crime, and in New Jersey, the punishment was thirty years to life.
Doleman glanced at his watch. “In about an hour. Meanwhile, do you want some breakfast?”
“I want to go to the bathroom first,” I said, getting cautiously to my feet.
“Okay. Then we’ll practice your story. You have to get it perfect, no discrepancies.”
I walked to the bathroom, feeling a bit shaky. I used the toilet, then washed my hands, face, and neck in cold water, trying to force my body to expel the drugs clogging my system. I gulped huge handfuls of water from the tap, knowing that fluids would help flush the residue faster. With my hands on the sink, I stopped to think. I had an hour to either convince Doleman to let me go or find a way to escape.
When I emerged from the bathroom, I smelled freshly fried eggs.
“Eggs again?” I asked unenthusiastically, dragging my feet to the kitchenette.
Doleman turned around, a spatula in his hand.
“Aren’t we snippy this morning? It’s all I know how to cook.”
I glanced in disgust at the curling mass of half-burnt scrambled eggs.
“I can make some pancakes,” I offered.
He emptied the frying pan onto a plate, then gestured for me to take his place at the stove.
“Be my guest. What do you need?”
“Flour, eggs, and milk, if you have some.”
I cracked the eggs into a bowl and started beating them with a fork.
Doleman produced a bag of flour. He scratched his unshaven chin, then turned away to look into the fridge once more.
“We don’t have milk, but will cream do?”
As he stood there with his back to me, contemplating the contents of the fridge, I saw my chance. I didn’t stop to think. With strength born of despair, I grabbed the heavy cast iron frying pan by the handle with both hands and swung it with all my might at the back of Doleman’s head.
The thud on impact sickened me. He dropped like a stone, face down onto the wooden floor.
I didn’t wait to see if he was alive or dead. I dropped the pan and ran to the door. Damn it! It was locked. I searched frantically for keys, but there were none in sight. Adrenaline, fear, and desperation took over. Since we were on the ground floor, I opened the closest window and was over the sill before I knew it, my feet landing on the veranda with a suitable thump. I hurried along and down the stairs, heading into the trees.
I ran blindly, dodging trees and bushes, probably making more noise than Papa T-Rex had in the movie. I couldn’t hear anything except the mad hammering of my heart.
The forest was thick, blocking the morning light, leaving the area in an eerie semi-darkness. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I had to move quickly in the opposite direction of the cottage. I didn’t know how long I had before Delgado arrived.
I caught a glimpse of a car over to my far left. A road! Was that Delgado coming to get me? Chills ran down my spine when I imagined how he would react at the sight greeting him in the cottage. Had I killed Doleman? I sincerely hoped I hadn’t, but anything was justified. My life was at stake here. I was as sure of that as I was of my love for Carter.
I slowed, my abused system about to collapse. Finally, I stopped and bent from the waist trying to catch my breath and steady my pulse. Dying of exposure, exhaustion, or a heart attack wouldn’t help me. I had to think. If I followed the road, but stayed in the forest and out of sight, it would eventually lead me to a town. That’s what I was going to do.
I started walking again, moving slowly between the trees, hoping I was hidden in their shadows. My black slacks and white shirt were wrinkled and torn, and I’d scraped several layers of skin off my arms. I didn’t even want to speculate as to the condition of the rest of me. And as for this wooded area, were there any wild animals here? Bears, wolves, killer bunnies, rabid squirrels? I slapped at a mosquito. Did it carry West Nile virus?
Stop, Camilla. You’re only scaring yourself.
Did it always happen like this? Did people involved in life and death situations worry about stupid things like how they might die, their hair, or their clothes? Maybe it was my brain’s defense mechanism, taking my mind off the severity of the situation. Now that was an insightful observation for a budding journalist. What I should be doing was recording in detail everything I saw and heard.
Over to my right, I heard a noise. I dropped to the ground, heedless of the decomposing leaves and God alone knew what else there. I watched and waited. Was it Doleman? Had he gotten up and come after me? He was going to be royally pissed. Or had Delgado returned, found his boss dead, and set out after me, hankering for revenge?
My heart beat so fast, it hurt. Just when I was sure I’d expire from fear, a doe stepped out of the trees, a fawn by her side.
Way to go, Camilla. Scared of Bambi.
I waited for them to disappear into the trees again before standing and continuing my flight.
I walked on, stopping only for brief moments, when my legs simply wouldn’t carry me any further. I don’t know how long I trudged through the undergrowth. Hours? It certainly felt that way, but suddenly the trees thinned and I was at the edge of the forest. Just like that, after all the eerie, dark tunnels of vegetation, I was out in the open.
I stopped and blinked at the bright sunlight, feeling the oppressive heat pushing me down. I shaded my eyes with my hand. In the distance, I saw warehouses. I was trying to make up my mind as to what to do next, when I heard a car engine. I rushed back to the edge of the woods and ducked behind a large trunk, lowering myself to the ground. The car came closer. A police car!
I scrambled out of my hiding place, shouting and waving madly as the police car drove by. The driver must’ve spotted me in his rearview mirror. Red lights showed the car was backing up.
For a split second, I questioned the wisdom of what I’d done. Could this be Vinnie, Delgado’s cousin, coming to shut me up? He had a lot to lose if I survived—his job, his pension, his blood pressure. I heaved a sigh of relief when two officers got out of the car and hurried to me. I didn’t recognize either one.
“Thank God!” I collapsed to the ground, exhausted beyond words.
The officers hurried to my side, helped me stand, and got me into the backseat of the squad car.
“Ma’am, are you Camilla Jackson?” the older one asked.
I stared up at him, dumbfounded. Fear filled me. Had Vinnie sent these men to find me? I cowered in the seat, trying to make myself smaller.
“It’s okay. We aren’t here to harm you. We know everything about Jack Doleman’s staged kidnapping. Vinnie got nervous after you disappeared and confessed his part in it. We have Richie Delgado in custody, and we were on our way to the cottage to get you and Doleman. You have nothing to fear now. You are Miss Jackson, aren’t you?”
I nodded stupidly, not fully convinced.
“Who ... Who told you where the cottage was?”
“Delgado, of course,” the other policeman said, handing me a thermos. When he unscrewed it, I smelled fresh coffee. “When he saw he was cornered, the guy blabbed everything. This is one sick story, I can tell you that,” he said as he poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup.
I gulped it down as if it were water, then took a few deep breaths.
“What about that Mitsy woman?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Did Delgado tell you about her? She’s the brains behind this whole thing.”
Both policemen smiled grimly. The older one spoke, h
umor in his eyes.
“Mitsy got away cleanly, along with three million dollars. Last night, Regina Doleman broke down and decided to give the kidnappers what they wanted. She took three million in cash to an abandoned warehouse, as instructed in that note that came with the patch of her husband’s scalp. Apparently, Mitsy took the money and vanished.”
I gaped at him. I must have been in shock. Laughter bubbled inside my throat, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Tears ran down my face. The two officers looked at me, then at one another, not sure what to do with what was clearly a hysterical woman.
“That’s one smart cookie,” I said when I could finally speak. “She got the money and got to leave the cheater behind. What will happen to Doleman and Delgado?”
The older policeman shrugged. “Well, they might’ve gotten off with misdemeanors had they not kidnaped you. They’ll be watching one another’s backs for a long time behind bars.”
I nodded, giggling once more, then stopped abruptly
“That might not be the case. It’s possible I killed Doleman ... with a frying pan ... in the kitchen,” I said as if I was offering a solution in a game of Clue.
Once more the men exchanged glances. One of them shook his head.
“I think we’d better call for an ambulance and backup.”
* * *
Hours later, after calling Carter to assure him I was alive and, if not 100 percent, well, I underwent a thorough examination in the Emergency Room where the nurses checked every part of my body for ticks. Once they’d finished, tick-less to my relief, the doctors agreed I would live with only minor scrapes and bruises and an antibiotic in case I’d accidentally caught a virus of some sort.
Praying I could leave, my hopes were dashed as I was subjected to a barrage of questions from the detectives and the D.A. Once they were satisfied that I’d crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s to seal their case against Delgado and Doleman, I was discharged and allowed to leave. But I didn’t go home.
I sat in Carter’s house, holding a cup of hot tea between trembling hands. On the coffee table in front of us was Fish, sitting quietly in his bowl after having devoured three portions of fish food. I hoped his gluttony wouldn’t result in constipation for eating too much at once.
Sacked! Page 16
