by Diane Capri
Constantly checking the rear view mirror, she retraced the route she’d taken the day before. Anna, securely belted in the back seat, had returned to her subdued behavior. She talked quietly to the rag doll she’d brought along with her. About an hour into the drive, her eyelids closed, her chin gently touched her chest and she fell into the rhythm of sleep. A bit of drool slid from the corner of her mouth onto the doll’s head. She was so young, so sweet. So undeserving of this mess. Jess clenched the steering wheel so tight her hands cramped.
Was Richard controlling Anna with medication of some kind? Another thing to despise him for. Jess glanced at her watch. Just like yesterday, she was right on time. Even the weather cooperated.
When they approached the border crossing, Jess located the passports, prepared to show them if she had to. She’d seen no sign of Richard or anyone following her for the entire return trip, which worried her.
Richard was crazy, violent, controlling. She’d expected him to know where Anna was every second, and to come after her. Or at least, Richard should have learned Anna was abducted and reasoned that Jess would take the shortest route back to the U.S.
So far, she hadn’t seen Richard. But her senses were on alert. She’d finally learned never to underestimate him. There was something she’d missed. Somehow, she believed, when they reached the border, he’d be there. Then what? She’d already decided. Plan B. Could she pull it off?
Supremely focused now, she drove over the bridge without noticing the spectacular views of Niagara Gorge. At the U.S. check point, the line of vehicles moved swiftly through a single open kiosk. She looked into the cinder-block customs building, which also housed the duty free store. She saw one officer behind the counter, and one clerk in the store waiting on a customer.
While she watched, the customer carried a bottle of liquor in a plain brown bag to the rusty battered panel van waiting in line in front of Jess’s vehicle and got in. The panel van belched smoke when it backfired, and its muffler had long ago surrendered to the rust belt.
Mid-week, off season, at lunch time, the entire area was relaxed, thinly patrolled and almost deserted. She hoped this would make Richard more obvious, if he appeared and tried anything.
Jess mentally rehearsed the lie she’d tell if the customs officer asked her more than routine questions. Yesterday, the process was casual, easy, intended to encourage tourism, not to thwart a kidnapper. Would it be the same today? Please, God.
Two cars ahead passed through the checkpoint. Only one more ahead of her. When the panel van jerked toward the kiosk window, Jess pulled up and waited at the yellow line. The van blocked her view of the officer.
She glanced around the entire vicinity and saw nothing unusual. Then, looked again toward the duty-free store. She saw a lone figure, vaguely familiar, standing outside.
Could it be?
Richard.
He’d shaved his head and wore sunglasses. But it was him. Definitely. He couldn’t disguise his arrogance.
She didn’t know how he’d found her, but he had and she wasn’t surprised. She’d expected him, knew he’d come. But how?
A tracking device on Anna somewhere? Regular calls to the school just to check on his daughter?
However he’d managed it, he was here now. She had to move. Adrenaline made her heart pound and sweat bead on her brow. No choice now. Plan B.
Stay calm.
Checking the rear view, she realized she’d have to move forward. An eighteen-wheeler six feet behind blocked any alternative, even if she’d wanted to leave the line and return deeper into Canada. Which she didn’t. What she needed to do was leave the country. Now.
The officer in the kiosk seemed to be chatting too long with the occupants of the panel van. But she couldn’t see the officer and he couldn’t see her. She tapped the steering wheel impatiently with her thumbs.
Mimicking the guy who’d joined the van earlier, Richard strolled toward her car. Quiet panic fluttered in her chest as she watched him. Did anyone else see? He reached her car door, looked directly into her eyes as if to mesmerize her, grasped the handle, and lifted it.
The locked door didn’t open. He glanced then into the back seat where Anna slept, covered by the blanket Jess had brought, still holding the doll. The normal sarcastic smirk creased his face. Insight struck.
It was the doll. That’s where he’d hidden the tracking device.
Bastard. You think you’re so clever. We’ll see.
Jess lowered the back window and Richard stuck his left hand on the top of the glass, gripped as if he might pull the glass out. His right hand gripped the passenger door handle.
“Go away, Richard, while you still can. If you try anything here, border patrol will kill you. Your choice.”
He laughed. “I’m touched that you’d care. Truly. But you’re kidnapping my daughter, Jess. Do you really think they’ll take your side over mine?”
While he held onto the glass and the door handle Jess punched the accelerator. The car leaped forward. Richard lost his balance. She slammed the brake. The car’s quick jerk threw him to the ground. Her actions, and Richard’s, were blocked from the customs officer’s view by the panel van, which moved forward now, slowly, through the open gate.
Maybe surveillance cameras saw him. Surely, the border guards would protect her and the child. She hoped.
The officer inside the booth waved her ahead. She released a breath and eased to stop next to the booth, left hand on the wheel.
“What’s your citizenship, ma’am?” the kindly old officer asked.
“U.S.” She glanced in the right side mirror. Richard had risen from the ground. His stare carried a malevolence she could feel. Bastard. Go away. While you still can.
The customs officer glanced into the back seat now, too, where Anna slept. At the same time, he noticed Richard, hands in the oversized pocket of his sweatshirt, standing too close, not moving, saying nothing.
The officer became more alert. “How about the child, ma’am?” Another officer came out of the building, hand on his gun, waiting.
They had seen Richard try to enter her car. It was working. Plan B was working. Thank God.
“U.S., too.” Small rivulets of sweat tickled her armpits. Let us go, Richard, and live to try again.
“Picture I.D., Ma’am?”
Jess reached into her handbag, retrieved the passports and handed them to the officer. He examined the blue jacketed folders. “Your name is Jessica Kimball? And hers is Anna Martin?”
“Divorce,” she said. Richard simply stood there. What was he thinking? Was he willing to die to thwart her?
The big truck behind her seemed to breathe fire through its roaring engine when the driver tapped his accelerator impatiently. Jess felt the heat rolling toward her.
The officer glanced at Richard again. Maybe experience, or training or something gave him an uneasy pang. Now, his full attention was focused on the situation. “Do you have the child’s birth certificate?”
Jess furrowed her brow with mock consternation. “I didn’t think you’d need it.”
He closed the passports and gestured toward the building. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. Park over there and go inside where they’ll verify your identification.” Then he nodded at Richard, who stood stock still, feet braced shoulder width apart, hands still inside his big front pocket. “Do you know him?”
Now. Plan B. Now was the time. Do it!
She took a breath. Exhaled. “He’s got a gun.”
Before the officer could react, Richard slowly extracted his hand from the sweatshirt, and pointed the gun at her head.
“Get down! Get down!” the officer shouted, squatting beside the car’s engine block, the only place safe from gunfire.
In that instant, Richard chose death.
The deafening noise of shots rang out. Bullets entered the rear glass. One grazed Jess’s arm as she fell sideways. Another exited inches from where her head had been an instant before. The pain seared through her
as blood soaked her blazer and ran down her arm. Anna began to scream.
Border guards acted immediately. They shouted for Richard to drop his gun. He didn’t.
A guard shot and hit Richard in the leg. He went down, and kept shooting.
Bullets tattooed the back of the sedan. Anna’s screams intensified.
Idiot! You’ll hit Anna!
After an excruciatingly long few moments, the customs officer in the booth drew his weapon, and two additional officers ran out from the building. “Drop your gun! Drop your gun!”
Jess looked into Richard’s eyes. Either of them could have changed things at that moment.
But they didn’t.
Plan B. She jammed the accelerator to the floorboard. The sedan lurched forward, broke through the wooden gate, and raced onto American soil.
Richard shot at Jess’s car again. As she’d known they would, the guards returned fire.
Jess mashed the brake, jerking the sedan to a stop behind the solid walls of the U.S. Customs station. Applying pressure to her throbbing, bleeding arm, she managed to open the back door and unsnap Anna’s seatbelt. She slid the hysterical child onto the pavement and held Anna close, shielding her, until the deafening gunfire stopped.
In the brief silence, Anna’s screams became wailing sobs. Jess struggled to rise while holding the girl despite the searing pain in her arm, and stumbled back to view the scene at the kiosk. Richard lay on the ground, blood running from his mouth, lifeless eyes staring straight at her. Her first thought was, Thank God.
Jess’s anger flared. He’d chosen to die rather than let Jess take Anna. He’d intended to get all three of them killed. Instead, Peter’s father breathed life no more.
At that moment, Jess felt no remorse. Maybe she would be sorry some day, when Peter asked, “Why did you let them kill my father?” But not now.
CHAPTER SIX
A FEW DAYS LATER, Jess joined Bette, who sat watching Anna on the Land of the Dragons playground. The family resemblance was unmistakable. Both were clearly from Betsy Martin’s gene pool. In Anna, Jess saw some hint of Richard too. How could a wonderful child have emerged from two such damaged parents?
The woman Jess had seen outside Betsy’s house the night of the shooting was there, too. Maria Gaspar’s youngest daughter and Anna were friends. Both girls were on the playground.
“She looks happy, doesn’t she?” Bette asked, with a wistful tone. Anna was in counseling and taking medication which the psychologist hoped would help her to work through the traumas she’d endured at her parents’ hands.
To reassure her, Jess said, “Don’t worry so much. She’s young. With luck and love, she won’t remember most of it.”
A tear rolled down Bette’s cheek. Her lips quivered. “She won’t have much to remember about her mother.”
Jess closed her eyes against tears of her own. She had risked her life so that Anna might thrive. Now, all she could do was hope. “It’s up to you to keep Betsy alive for her.”
“We’ll help, too, Bette,” Maria said, giving Bette’s shoulders a hug and meeting Jess’s gaze over Bette’s bowed head. “Carlos has been like a father to Anna for a while now, anyway.”
Jess nodded her agreement to this imperfect arrangement. Together, they watched Anna climb the rope ladders and slide down the dragon’s tail, laughing when she landed on her butt in the sand.
“Betsy was so smitten. And he loved her, too.” Bette stopped, bewildered. “What went wrong?”
Jess rubbed her sore arm to stop its pulsing. Like Richard’s effect on Anna, Jess’s wound would hurt for a long time and leave a permanent scar. Jess needed no reminder of the hole in her heart where Peter lived, but welcomed the pain and would welcome the scar, too. She’d narrowly escaped Richard twice. She never intended to forget that, or to make the same mistake again.
She rejected sweetening the truth. To defeat Richard forever, Bette must do her part. “Betsy knew he was dangerous before she married him. She ignored her instincts and deceived herself. I’ll help you, but the best thing you can do for Betsy now is to make sure Anna doesn’t repeat that pattern.”
And I’ll be watching.
THE END
CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Governor Helen Sullivan
Oliver Sullivan
Eric Sullivan
Special Agent Frank Temple
Sheriff MacKenzie Green
Ben Fleming
Milton Jones
Ryan Jones
Investigative Journalist Jess Kimball
Peter Kimball
News Photographer Mike Caldwell
David Manson
Party Chairman Ralph Hayes
Arnold Ward
Vivian Ward
Matthew Crawford
Marilyn Crawford
Matthew ‘Mattie’ Crawford, Jr.
and
Tommy Taylor
The future is not in the hands of fate, but in ours.
- Jules Jusserano
PROLOGUE
Thornberry, Florida
Monday 2:00 p.m.
EVEN AS HUMID JULY heat strangled the small central Florida country church, its sanctuary overflowed with bodies drawn by scandal’s stench like vultures to carrion. Whether they were genuine mourners or nakedly curious, Governor Helen Sullivan had lured them with her only son’s open burial service, hoping to unmask her son’s killer, for only then could Eric rest in peace.
Since the death of her son and his best friend Ryan Jones three weeks ago, media of every stripe had branded sixteen-year-old Eric a drunk driver, spoiled by indulgent parents, ruined by wealth and privilege. “Governor’s Son Kills Best Friend in Early Morning Crash,” read the worst of the headlines, though none granted Eric any presumption of innocence as they fueled the scandal.
Publicly, Helen had not contested the lies; instead she implemented today’s desperate plan.
While lines of strangers filed past her husband and Helen, Special Agent Frank Temple of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement stood close by, hands within easy reach of his weapon, scanning the church, seeking anything unusual or out of place. Valencia County Sheriff MacKenzie Green’s deputies stayed in constant visual and electronic contact with Temple’s security detail.
After filing past Eric Sullivan’s reconstructed body, the spectators approached his parents. “I’m so sorry,” they said. Or, “He’s in a better place.” A few dared to pat Oliver’s shoulder or caress the governor’s arm.
“Thank you,” Helen responded each time, accepting full blame with every false condolence.
Be strong, she thought, standing rigid behind her black veil, braced against waves of grief renewed by those few offering sincere compassion. Helen had lived her entire life in Thornberry, the small town in Valencia County some forty minutes northeast of Tampa, not far from Lakeland. In this thin slice of old Florida, threatened by the ambitions of politicians and developers and largely populated by residents holding fast to their simpler way of life, people chose to think the best of their neighbors. To these friends and colleagues, Helen could not trust herself to speak with composure, so only nodded and endured.
But most spectators came from more remote locales and for ignoble reasons. She studied each stranger in turn, divining whether they paid only mock respect, committing features to ineradicable memory using all six senses. She noted and analyzed their features, the dark perspiration circles under arms and on shirtfronts, makeup melted and congealed in creviced faces. Body odors mixed with deodorants and perfumes thickened the heavy air and forced short, rapid breaths, leaving her asthmatic lungs starved for air and her balance unsteady. She paused her mission only to raise her inhaler to her mouth or wipe her palms on her husband’s soaked linen handkerchief.
During a brief pause between attendees, Oliver put his hand on her shoulder and directed her attention to Ryan’s grandparents, who sat in a pew with a tall, sandy-haired man Helen didn’t know.
“I don’t see M
ilton,” Oliver whispered.
Milton Jones, Ryan’s father, was consumed with misdirected grief that pierced Helen’s heart all the more because of their long shared history. She’d spent the better part of four years helping Milton while his wife Ruby died of cancer. His sorrow had been endless then, and seemed bottomless now.
Helen looked around the church. “Over there,” she gestured by inclining her head, noticing that Milton’s wrinkled suit barely touched his scrawny limbs. He looked as fragile as an incompetent scarecrow amid the murder of crowing reporters.
Milton had already granted several interviews to the tabloid press and scandal shows. They’d flattered him seeking to learn what Helen refused to reveal. He’d used each as an opportunity to blame Eric and Helen for Ryan’s death, vicious accusations that remained without rebuttal.
Neither Milton nor the public knew that the crash was not Eric’s fault—that he had not ignored or missed the stop sign. Within the first forty-eight hours investigators found an inexpensive but sophisticated tracking device on the bottom of Eric’s vehicle, purchased with cash and therefore untraceable. A partial fingerprint on it matched none in law enforcement databases.
Shortly after that, Helen’s friend, Sheriff Mac Green, found the killer’s video camera mounted at the crash site. Helen flinched each time she watched the monstrous semi mash the CRV’s passenger side and wrap the smaller vehicle around its bumper in a deadly embrace, knowing a few seconds more and the CRV would have crossed State Route 50 safely, and Eric and Ryan would be alive. The sick bastard had recorded Eric’s murder in sharp hues and high-fidelity sound, every second of the fatal crash meant to torture his parents with vivid images they could never escape.
