It wasn’t until laughter interrupted my thoughts that I knew it was starting all over again.
“Finally, we have something that Mr. Fletcher gives a damn about.” The footsteps came from the front door and fear rushed through me. There was no running away. It sounded like several people were behind me.
I turned my head to look over my shoulders, but they were still out of view.
“It’s taken well over a decade…” the man came closer. “But we’re one step closer.”
I attempted to get a look again and this time the man stepped to where I could see him.
“You’re even lovelier in person than the photographs. Beautiful girl…stunning really. Even under all this blood. I can see why he admires you so.”
I caught a hint of an accent on his last statement and scanned him up and down. The man was dressed in an expensive black suit. His eyes were as dark as coal to match his heart and his black, crescent-shaped brows were equally as startling as he watched me examine him. His bald head was shaved to a shiny globe and he was tall, taller than Luke. He would stick out no matter where he went.
Even though the room felt like a furnace, I began shivering uncontrollably the longer the man kept my gaze. That was when his men untied me from the pillar and began the assault on my body and mind, anchoring me to a chair in the middle of the room.
“Hannah, I’m really getting exhausted from this lack of respect. The least you could do is look at me.” I felt the sting on my cheek again and gritted my teeth.
“I see some sort of response at least,” he laughed. “Maybe we’re getting somewhere. Let’s try this again. Has Mr. Fletcher taken you out of state?”
I remained silent.
“Well, I might as well inform you that we captured both Mia and Luke. Mia was at her home and Luke’s failed attempt at retrieving you was laughable. He fell right into our hands.”
I twisted my body and attempted to jump at him, but the chair I was tied to fell over. My head hit the tile floor and the sharp pain dazed me. I opened my eyes, but the pain made my vision blurry, and my insides ached. Had they really gotten to Luke? And Mia?
“Put her upstairs. She’s a waste of time. We’ll get what we need from Luke with or without her help. Just having her bodes well for us. If she dies, so be it.”
I heard no response, but instead felt two sets of hands reach under my arms and use me to right the chair. My entire body hurt, and with every careless move from these men, the pain worsened. The strength I had left me as I hung my head, and my shoulders slumped in defeat. They didn’t bother to tie me again.
“More rope’s upstairs,” one of the men muttered.
They moved me off the chair and nearly dragged me up the stairs. Each bump of a step somehow began to knock sense into me. I thought of Luke and Mia. There was no way they had their hands on either of them. Luke had managed to stay out of their grasp since he was young. He knew he was a target. He knew Mia was a target, and he set up the perfect life to stay out of their clutches. Not for a moment did I believe Luke had made a mistake—unless, I was his mistake. I shoved that thought out of my mind and by the time I reached the top of the stairs, I felt invigorated. I locked my knees and shoved the palm of my hand swiftly into the nose of the man standing next to my left. Blood gushed down his face as the other guy attempted to grab my free hand. I elbowed him in the throat and he let go as he stumbled back to catch his breath.
I ran down the hall toward an open door to the left. As soon as I reached the empty room, I slammed the door and twisted the lock. I ran to the window and tried to slide it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I scanned the window and saw the window had been siliconed shut.
The men were beating on the door outside. I looked down at the yard and saw no one. The garage jutted out to my right. I turned quickly around and searched for something to break the glass with. There was nothing. The room had been stripped.
I ran to the bathroom and spotted a small window above the shower. Scaling the slippery tile, my feet scrambled to anchor on the soap dish as I locked my elbows into the windowsill. I slid the window open and relief spread through me. This window was above the garage roofline.
Using every ounce of strength I had, I pulled myself through the window and tumbled onto the roof of the garage. The asphalt shingles stung my skin as I quickly jumped up to avoid burns. The desert heat was pounding on the dark roof and it felt ten times hotter here than the sweltering home. I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I carefully maneuvered to the edge of the roof.
I prayed I wouldn’t break any bones as I slowly worked my body down and dangled from the roof before letting go. My body fell to the ground below, smashing a mostly-dead shrub, but I sprang up almost instantly and began to run away. I heard the men’s voices from the window as I ran down the driveway. The front door swung open and crashed against the home. The bald man began hollering, and I kept running down the street.
There was an engine revving down the road to my left, giving me a desperate sort of hope as I ran with everything I had. I screamed as loud as I could with newfound faith in coming out of this ordeal alive. I turned the corner, and my world literally shattered into a million tiny shards as every hope was dashed in less than a second.
The van that brought me here was barreling down the road toward me. Fences surrounded me, but I refused to give up. I darted across the street and ran into the side yard of an abandoned home.
I got to the backyard and was met with a concrete brick wall. Before I had a chance to react, I was slammed to the ground. The bald man was on top of me, pinning me down as the other two men came up behind us.
“You’ve got the rope this time, I assume?” he snarled.
“Yes, sir.”
I struggled under the heaviness of the man on top of me and the hardness of the desert soil beneath me. A scorpion was only inches away. I wished I was in one of those movies where I could grab it, and it would sting the bad guys, but that wasn’t how the real world worked.
“You might be a tiny thing, but you certainly don’t give up easily, do you?” he laughed, as he rolled off me, but not before the other men had already anchored me down with their knees.
I grabbed a pile of the sandy dirt and threw it at the man closest to me. He spit it out, wiping his face off as his knee dug into my shoulder.
“Not this time.” His eyes met mine, and I knew it would take more than luck to get out of this alive.
.
Luke
“According to Seth, the van took a bit of a detour before parking briefly in front of a warehouse at the other end of town. I don’t think we should go to the warehouse first. We need to see why the van went where it did before arriving at the warehouse,” I said, glancing back down at my phone. Sam had just texted that his agents were headed to the warehouse.
Of course they were. That was the easy way. It was too obvious of a destination. I’d already informed my other team on standby of our plans. Something told me Hannah wasn’t at the warehouse. Not to mention the van was no longer there either. I bet they dropped her off somewhere on the way. They knew we’d be using the DOT cameras to track them. That’s why they’d used so many decoys at the hospital.
Josh turned onto the ramp, and I continued to feed him directions based on the coordinates Seth had sent over. We were headed to a section of town that was less than desirable.
My phone buzzed and I looked down.
“The van headed back in this direction and Seth is attempting to whittle down our search area,” I relayed.
Josh gave a quick nod.
Against my better judgment, I texted Sam the information I’d received, and my thoughts on the subject.
“A lot of vacant homes around here,” Josh said.
I pressed my lips together and nodded in agreement. We were still driving on the main arterial where older homes dotted the sides of the road. If there were this many here, I couldn’t imagine what it was like inside some of these subdivisions.
“It’s almost as if the banks gave up on even trying to sell them,” Josh continued.
“Does look that way, doesn’t it?”
I felt the familiar tension in my system as if we were getting close to something. The homes spread out, and the streets were now peppered with mostly vacant strip malls. I really hoped Seth could work his magic. Seeing this many options for where Hannah might be made the situation that much bleaker.
The air-conditioning was on full blast and the heat was still blazing through the windshield. There was something different about desert sun. I still had my vest on and was cooking. I glanced at Josh who looked to be suffering the same condition.
My phone rang and I quickly answered.
“It’s Seth. I’ve managed to narrow down our options. It looks as if the last intersection they went through was Fortune Hill Avenue. That leaves us with entrances to four subdivisions.”
“Shit.” I couldn’t even imagine how many homes we’d wind up scouring. It was mathematically impossible.
“But where they came back out narrowed it down to one.”
“Seth, next time just start with that,” I said, trying to keep my anger at bay. We didn’t have time for accolades right now.
“Apologies. The subdivision is East Willow Heights. There are seventy-nine homes. Twenty-eight of them are documented as vacant. My guess is there are more.”
“Thanks, Seth. Let the rest of the team know where they need to meet us and what to expect.”
Josh had already programmed the coordinates into the GPS when I’d hung up with Seth.
“Seven minutes,” Josh said.
“Let’s make it three.”
Josh hit the accelerator, and my nerves bounced between hope and resignation. For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t know what to expect. I passed the information on to Sam in a text and slid my cell phone in my pocket. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about whether or not Hannah was okay. I had to assume she was alive. It was the only thing that kept me going.
If they were trying to get at me, they would want to keep her alive. But if they were trying to get at me, why didn’t they send any messages? They’d always managed to somehow, so had I missed them in my rush to find Hannah?
“About thirty seconds until we turn,” Josh informed me.
“Once we get into the subdivision, slow down and follow my directions. We need to crawl and look for anything out of the ordinary. Our most important objective is to get Hannah out alive. If as many of these homes are vacant as Seth implied, any new car or foot traffic around a home might be easier for us to spot.” I was silent for a second before continuing. “If I tell you stop, stop. If I tell you to hit it, you know the drill. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Josh turned into East Willow Heights and the subdivision looked like a war zone. Old cars on blocks in the driveways and homes with missing windows welcomed visitors into the neighborhood. Every so often a vibrant splash of paint was visible where someone had tagged their turf.
My eyes scanned each driveway and home we passed, searching for any sign of a disturbance or something out of place. A little girl in one of the homes quickly hid behind a stained curtain and my stomach tightened. Was this a lost cause? I felt my shoulders tense up and scolded myself for that thought. Hannah counted on me to find her. I was the only hope she had of surviving.
We reached a stop sign and Josh waited for my instruction. It was a four-way stop and I had no idea which direction to go. I saw two SUVs enter the subdivision and relaxed slightly.
“Take a left, I’ll have the others cover north and west.” I quickly texted my men as we turned, and I saw a dead end street in front of us but not before another street extended to the left.
“This doesn’t seem right. Turn around.”
Josh followed my instructions and had us back to the stop sign. “Take a right. I think their quarters would be on a main drag for easy access.”
I spotted both teams slowly crawling down the streets; one of them in the direction we were headed and the other to the west. I scanned each yard, looking and searching for any kind of sign, when I spotted a home with the front door wide open. A window on the second floor, sitting back from where the garage jutted out, was also open. My eyes scanned the front yard, and my pulse immediately quickened when I saw a shrub against the garage that had been crushed.
It looked recent. I gauged the fall between the garage and the open window. It was doable.
“Here.” The moment the words left my mouth I also saw the SUV in front of us put on its brakes.
My cell rang and I quickly answered, “What do you see?”
“Recent vehicle tracks. At least two different tire marks smashed the dirt next to the drive.”
“Keep moving and park down about 40 meters. We’ll be right behind. This might be it.” I messaged our other team in the neighborhood for back up as well as texting Sam the address. I hadn’t heard any updates about the warehouse so I assumed it was a dead end.
Six of the seven men climbed out of the vehicle in front of us, and I instructed Josh to stay ready. This was it. If Hannah wasn’t here, she sure might have been. Just as I gripped the door handle, the first shot rang out, hitting our vehicle.
Josh jumped out of the driver’s side and used the car as a shield, while I swung open my door, scanning the windows to find the shooter. All I cared about was finding Hannah and getting to her before it was too late. I ran up along the side of the yard, unable to see much from my vantage point because the garage was in the way, and watched my men make their move to the front door.
My men descended on the residence with more shots fired as I ran along the side of the house, preparing to enter the back. I quickly snuck along the stucco and slunk down to peer through the sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. The kitchen was empty. I reached my hand up to the handle and it moved slightly. Another shot sounded, but it wasn’t in my direction.
I prayed I wasn’t too late as I stayed crouched and slid the door open. The smell from the house hit me hard as I took my first step in. My eyes watered, and it was difficult to breathe the foul-smelling air that was a mixture of overall filth and rodent excrement. The kitchen walls had been torn through, and rat nests made out of the insulation. I scanned the hallway and heard my men enter through the front as I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt. I heard some movement upstairs and quickly ran toward the stairs, finding the body of our shooter on the way, before I quickly scaled the steps. A loud hum overhead shook the house as my team followed behind. When I reached the landing, I saw the corpses of two men, but not by our hands.
The banging percussion of a helicopter hovering over us made my insides rumble as I walked to the first room. I opened the door slowly, my pistol drawn, and saw nothing. It was completely vacant. I searched the closet and looked outside the window. Sam and his men had arrived. The entire street was covered in agents and SWAT. Someone or something must’ve tipped them off. The chopper belonged to them.
I went from empty room to empty room with no sign of Hannah. I heard the agents enter the premise and my world began to silently implode. There was no sign of Hannah here, so did that mean they’d found her at the warehouse? Had I been wrong again? No. I was certain I’d heard something upstairs and the men who’d been killed had been dead a while so it hadn’t come from them.
I walked into the last bedroom, which was the master bedroom. There was a large closet, which was empty. But there was a closed door directly in front of me. I glanced out the window and spotted the garage. The window that was open belonged to the room in front of us, most likely a bathroom.
I raised my pistol and slowly approached the door. My hand touched the knob and attempted to turn it, but it was locked.
“Don’t open it.” Sam’s voice stopped me in my tracks as he came from behind.
“Luke,” Hannah screamed from the other side of the door and my heart almost stopped.
“Hannah.
” I pressed my hands to the door as if I could touch her. “Are you alone?”
“Yes,” her voice trembled.
Sam pointed out the window. I took a step back and watched several agents scale the roof of the garage and make their way to the open window. There was no way any of them would fit through it, but they could at least survey the situation.
If Hannah was being held hostage, we needed to know how to proceed. I took a step back toward the bathroom door just as I heard the click of the handle unlocking. I glanced over at Sam, who shook his head. He didn’t want me to move in.
Before anyone had a chance to react, the door swung open and Hannah appeared wild-eyed and badly battered. She ran into my arms, sobbing, and all I wanted to do was take away her pain.
But the very realization that I was the one who caused it was impossible to ignore. The agents ran past us into the bathroom as I held her tightly and prayed for a better life for her.
“All clear,” an agent yelled.
Hannah kept her face buried in my shoulder as I held her. My hand tightly cupped the back of her head as I tried to provide her comfort that seemed impossible to give. I’d failed her. I let them get to her, and there was only one way to ensure this never happened again. My throat constricted and I held her even tighter.
“I love you, Hannah Walker.”
She sniffed in and took a step back. “I knew you’d come.”
Her words were like knives to my heart. This never should’ve happened.
I gently lifted some of the blond hair away from her face that had stuck to her wounds. She grimaced and my life stopped in this one moment. The woman I loved had endured so much because of me.
I brought her gently into my arms and pressed my lips against the top of her head, leaving a kiss. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Buried Sins Page 8
