Shelley howled, leaning backward, cradling her hand.
It was just far enough. Sara swung her legs up, wrapped them around Shelley’s neck, and yanked.
The body followed the head. Shelley went tumbling backward.
Sara twisted and rolled with the momentum, tightening her leg-lock on Shelley’s throat, squeezing her thighs together, choking her. Shelley flailed and kicked, hammering on Sara’s legs with weakening fists.
Sara clenched tighter and tighter, waiting until no more strength remained in the punches. She released her grip and clambered around, straddling Shelley, pounding a fist into her jaw, her teeth, the side of her head. Pounding, pounding, pounding.
She grabbed Shelley by the ears, leaned down, and pulled the slobber-drenched face closer to her own. Blood dripped from Sara’s broken nose, splattering on Shelley’s cheeks, running into stunned and groggy eyes. “What did you do with them?”
Shelley smiled and said, “You kill me, they die.”
“No,” Sara said. “You don’t get to die.”
“Good, because I want to watch.”
“Watch what?”
Shelley motioned toward the boxes with her eyes. “Look.”
The red LED numbers ticked slowly down.
04:05...04:04...04:03...
“What’s happening? What’s the timer for?”
Shelley hissed like steam escaping from a leaky pipe. “Hydrogen cyanide. Once it releases, they’ll have less than a minute.”
Sara dug her fingernails into Shelley’s ears and shook hard. “Michael said I’m the endgame, not them.”
“Michael never made the rules.”
“How could you do this? They adored you. They’re little. So little. Get them out of there, right now. You hear me? Right now.”
“But the game’s not over, Sara. Here’s a hint. They’re in one box, all together. No kicking, no screaming—I made sure of that.”
03:43...03:42...03:41...
“Pick the wrong one, the gas releases automatically. Last clue, in my right pocket.”
Sara’s lip quivered. She popped Shelley’s head against the concrete, just enough to stun her, then shot over to the shelf, grabbed the rope, and tied her hands and feet together in a frenzied rush.
03:15...03:14...03:13...
Shelley slurred, “Better hurry. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick...tick...tick...”
Sara reached into Shelley’s pocket and pulled out the final godforsaken piece of paper.
She read:
CHOOSE THE PROPER ORDER
10-21-7-7-5-18-14-1-21-20
The proper order? What does that mean? Do I reorder those numbers?
One...five...seven...seven...ten...no, that doesn’t get me anything.
Is it a phone number?
Area code? Area code...Jesus, what’s the area code here? Five-oh-three!
There’s a one...five...zero...no three.
Damn it. I don’t—what is this? I don’t even know where to start.
Sara read the numbers again, looked up at the time ticking away.
02:49...02:48...02:47...
Under three minutes and counting, disappearing so quickly.
Sara walked over to the boxes and paced back and forth in front of them.
From the floor, Shelley screamed, “Tick...tock...tick...tock!”
Sara ignored her. Allowing the distraction would only waste more time.
Okay, stop, calm down. Think...breathe. The numbers, the numbers. What if they—maybe they’re separate from the words? Maybe it’s supposed to throw you off?
Add them together? What if it matches a box number? Ten plus twenty-one, thirty-one. Plus fourteen is forty-five, plus five is fifty...plus eighteen...plus fourteen...one hundred twenty-four total. Doesn’t match. Shit...divided by three...three into twelve is four...three into four is one...forty-one and...and something.
She faced the first box, thinking she had it. Tears and panic blurred her vision as she saw the 42 painted on the front. She screamed at the ceiling.
02:20...02:19...02:18...
Lightheaded, Sara sat down on the floor, wiped her eyes.
Shelley giggled and said, “You added and divided, didn’t you? I knew you’d do that. God, you’re so predictable. Maybe that’s why Brian said you were boring. So predictable.”
Again, Sara tried to ignore her, but it wasn’t so easy this time. It didn’t matter why Brian left. Not anymore.
Or did it?
Shelley was so obsessed with him...did the numbers have anything to do with Brian?
Did he ever say I was boring to my face? Like out loud? Did I ever do anything that he thought was boring? He hated those cooking shows I watched all the time. He laughed at me when I tried to learn how to knit. What else...maybe it was—no, never boring. What was boring?
She scanned her memory for their daily and weekly rituals. Get up, shower, go to work, pick up the kids, eat dinner. The usual stuff. Normal family life. Never boring.
01:45...01:44...01:43...
He played softball on Saturdays. Sometimes they got a babysitter and went to the movies on Saturday nights. Date nights. Routine, but not boring, at least not to her.
And on Sundays...
Sunday mornings! First the crossword and then that other word game—the cipher. The one he said was...boring. Could it be a cipher?
Sara crawled to her knees.
01:27...01:26...01:25...
She held the note up, read the numbers again.
You can do this. Easy, just like the one in the paper. The two sevens repeat. Same letter. Which letters double-up? B...S...T...D...so many of them. Big word, big word. Ten letters. The two sevens repeat...what if—do they match the alphabet?
A-one, B-two, C-three...four...six...G-seven. G, G.
I got it. Holy shit, that’s it.
She was so relieved that she shouted the word. “Juggernaut!”
Shelley kicked at the floor and strained against the rope, erupting in a barrage of curses.
01:05...01:04...01:03...
Shelley said, “Forget it, you’ll never get the rest.”
Sara glanced at the numbers on the boxes.
Choose the proper order. Do I put them in order? Eighteen, forty-two, ninety-one. Right, left, middle. Nothing. That means nothing. Choose the proper order. Juggernaut. Are they connected? Do the numbers mean anything in Juggernaut?
Forty-two? Wasn’t that the number of hidden missions? Wait...no...that was forty the last time I checked. Anything? Anything at all?
Move on. Come back.
Sara moved to the next box.
Ninety-one. I can’t—nothing. Ninety-one? Ninety seconds in a power round. Close...not exact...doesn’t have anything to do with an order of something...
This is impossible!
Stop, you can do this. Try the next one.
Sara moved to the third and final box.
00:37...00:36...00:35...
She paused, tried to subdue her desperate breathing.
It has to be this one.
Make sure! Think first. Think, Sara.
Eighteen. Eighteen in Juggernaut. Why does that—I should know this—so familiar. Why can’t I think? Damn it. Concentrate. The new storyline...new aliens...attacking Earth from a new solar system...attacking from—yes!
She glared at the LED display. Time had sped up.
00:22...00:21...00:20...
Sara wiped the blood from her nose with a shaky hand.
Attacking from Planet 18...that weird writer kid with a crush on Shelley...
Jeremy...he named it Araneae...didn’t he say the aliens looked like spiders?
What was the word he used? Taxonomy, right?
Taxonomy...grade school...
Grade school...biology class...taxonomy...
Mr. Walker at the blackboard...
King Philip Came Over....
Kingdom, phylum, class...
Order.
Choose the proper order.
Plan
et 18.
She remembered asking Jeremy, “Why Araneae?”
“Taxonomy, Mrs. Winthrop. It’s the Order for spiders.”
The countdown careened toward 00:00.
00:09...00:08...00:07...
Positive she was right, had to be right, Sara inhaled deeply, steadied her frenetic hand, and slapped the green button of Box 18...and waited.
00:05...00:04...00:03...
The timer stopped. The door popped open.
Shelley screamed and thrashed.
And inside the box sat Lacey, Callie, and Jacob. Alive and unharmed, but bound and gagged. All three exploded into garbled shouts of “Mommy!” through the white cloth across their mouths.
Sara collapsed to the floor. She crawled over to them, tears and blood mixing, dripping and splattering on the concrete as she went. Sobbing, she untied their legs, their hands, removed their gags, apologizing over and over for not finding them sooner, for what Shelley had done to them. They hugged and cried together until no more tears would come.
She stood, pulling her children with her in a wide arc around Shelley, turning them away, shielding them from where DJ lay on the floor.
At the bottom of the stairs, she urged them upward. “Wait at the top. Do not go any further. Mommy will be right there, she just needs to talk to Shelley for a second, okay? Remember those monkeys we saw? See no evil, hear no evil? Yeah? You do? That’s what I want you to do. Pretend you’re all three monkeys at the same time. Close your eyes, cover your ears. I’ll be right there. I promise. And when I’m done, we’ll go home for some ice cream.”
They protested, she insisted, and reluctantly, they climbed the stairs and sat on the landing, eyes and ears covered. So good, so trusting. Waiting patiently.
She checked on DJ. Still breathing, barely. She found an old rag, pressed it against his chest, told him to hold it there, if he could, then dug around in his pockets until she found his cell phone. Dialed 9-1-1 and reported an officer down. “You saved us,” she said. “We’d be dead without you. All four of us. They’re on their way. They’ll save you.”
She hated to leave him like that, but help was coming, and Shelley waited.
Sara walked over, straddled Shelley and knelt down, leaning over her defeated foe.
Shelley said, “You’ll never get rid of me.”
“You sure about that?”
“Get used to looking over your shoulder.”
“Michael, he told me about your foster home. They did some bad stuff to you, but before that, you were somebody’s little girl once. Somebody’s sweet little baby. Look at you now. Such—such evil. And you may have turned Michael, but at least he had a soul.”
“He was weak.”
Sara grabbed Shelley by the sides of her head. “No, he was human. You’re a monster, and I don’t give a fuck about the messed up shit you had to deal with, but those are my kids. Do you understand me? You fucked with the wrong woman,” she said, thrashing Shelley’s head around. “How dare you. I hope you burn in Hell.”
Shelley grinned. “When I get there, I’ll tell Brian you said hello.”
Sara tightened her grip. “End of Level Three, right? Before I came in here, you told me I had one last question. Well, here it is, bitch. Are you ready to play my game? I like to call it...Resolution.”
She slammed the back of Shelley’s skull into the floor once, twice, three times, knocking her unconscious.
Sara fell over. Exhausted. Relieved.
Knowing she’d done it.
Knowing her children were going to be okay.
Knowing she’d won...the game.
Epilogue
Sara struggled with letting the kids out of her sight, even months later. Like most children, time passed differently for them, and the events of that day were a distant and lightly scarred memory. Something they referred to as ‘Remember that time?’ while Sara dreamed of dying in a cage beside Teddy’s lifeless body, night after night.
At the office, she was a frazzled mess in a well-pressed business suit. The only things on Lacey, Callie, and Jacob’s minds were the inevitable end of summer break and the return to school in a week. She dreaded sending them back to where it had all started and had entertained the idea of homeschooling.
But life had to go on. She kept reminding herself that she’d succeeded, but peace of mind was not a prize that she had won.
The only thing that gave her comfort was a single news article regarding an incident at Coffee Creek, a female correctional facility nearby. It was vague, hinting at what happened to those who committed crimes against children. It was easy to assume that many of those women were mothers themselves and hadn’t taken kindly to the new inmate. No names were given in the article, but Sara had a good idea of whom the victim might’ve been.
Miss Willow became a bigger part of their world, often staying over and holding Sara’s hand at three o’clock in the morning, talking, and watching wisps of steam rise from chamomile tea. These impromptu therapy sessions helped Sara sleep through the remainder of the night.
Sometimes.
Sara knew that someday she would emerge from the cocoon of regret and self-doubt as a stronger, take-no-shit person, but for now, the recovery process was doing its job, albeit slowly. But it was better than sitting in a padded room, bound in a straightjacket.
She’d started referring to Jacob as “Jake,” creating the nickname in an attempt to disassociate him from the memory of his father’s betrayal. Some days, it worked. Some days, it seemed silly to try. So many of his facial features—his smile, the dimples in his cheeks—were all carbon copies of his dad’s, making it difficult to forget and move on. One day.
Teddy, bless his narcissistic, egotistical heart, had returned to his normal self around LightPulse. Offending everyone in proximity, pushing the limits of acceptability, causing two of their strongest employees to quit. He’d stared Death in the face, and had come away from it with a renewed, invigorated sense of being untouchable. Jim had called Sara into his office one afternoon, asking for her counsel on how he should go about firing his own son. She’d talked him out of it, and, as far as she was concerned, she and Teddy were an inch closer to being even.
Besides, when they were on the private side of closed office doors, he treated her with the reverence and respect that had been missing from their professional relationship for so many years. He said ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no, ma’am’. Liked to call her B.C., short for ‘Badass Chick’. She’d stopped calling him ‘Little One’ as promised, and encouraged the rest of the senior staff to do the same. Yet another fraction closer to making up for playing God with his life.
And then, on a wet Saturday in September, she loaded the kids into the minivan, stopped to pick up Miss Willow, and drove to the cemetery.
Sara parked and stepped into the drizzly, gray morning, leaving them behind. The light rain sprinkled her face as she zipped her jacket higher to block the wind, holding the bouquet of lilies and baby’s breath close to her chest. She trudged up the grassy hillside, breeze lifting the hem of her black dress, passing simple plaques with nothing more than a last name jammed into the muddy ground. Markers with elaborate designs carved into the granite. Ornate cherub statues placed by those with enough money, or enough care, to do so.
So much death buried around her. Such little time they all had. How many broken hearts were out there in the world while their loved ones rested peacefully underneath her feet?
She stopped at the gravestone she’d come to see, which was nestled amongst a group of plain gray rectangles with simple designs and simpler lettering. Sara swiped her rain soaked hair from her face, stared at the name carved into the rock. Knelt down close to it.
“You were a good man,” she said, “and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. But how often do things turn out like they should, you know? Happy endings aren’t always happy for everyone. I think about you a lot. I wonder about what you’d be doing, where you’d be right now. You’re here because of
me, and—and I haven’t figured out how to deal with that yet, but I’ll keep coming back until I do, I promise. Maybe after that, too. See you next week, okay?”
She laid the flowers down at the base of the granite block, read the words as she had so many times before.
DET. JONATHAN JOHNSON
“LOVED AND RESPECTED”
1977-2012
Sara stood, traced her fingers across the top of the gravestone, and walked down the hillside, back to her family.
Back to where they were close.
Close...and safe.
~the end~
Sample of Sara’s Past
Please enjoy a complimentary sample of Sara’s Past, Book 2 in The Sara Winthrop Thriller Series.
Detective Emerson Barker was not happy.
He marched across the playground, enduring yet another sprinkling, foggy afternoon in Portland, Oregon. You’d think the gods would allow the weekends to be nice, if nothing else, but at least the changing leaves gave some color to the drab, dreary gray.
As he approached the squealing children, he thought about his former partner, a memory that would never fade.
Detective Jonathan Johnson, DJ, JonJon, had taken a bullet trying to protect the woman that Barker now trudged toward. It had been honorable of DJ, trading his life for this small family, but damn, one life lost was one too many.
Barker thought, It’s been what, well over a year already? Time don’t wait for the dead to come back, but we still miss you, cowboy.
He stepped in a puddle, splashing sandy, dirty water onto his slacks, making his left shoe soggy and cold. “Son of a—” He caught the last word, wrenched it back, realizing he was within earshot of Sara Winthrop and her children. The twins, Lacey and Callie, and Jacob, her son, who was unfortunate enough to have not one, but two older sisters to torment him.
Over the past year, Barker had occasionally checked in on the Winthrops, making sure they were mentally sound and had gotten their lives nudged in the right direction again. Surviving the kidnapping, beating that crazy girl, Shelley Sergeant, at her own game—it’d been rougher on Sara than the kids.
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