by Jenna Night
A patrol car moved down the alley. This was the oldest part of town and businesses along the street had been added slowly, over time, and before there was much in the way of city planning. As a result, the alley was not exactly a straight line. You couldn’t stand in one spot and see the whole length of it. Plus, the various trash cans and stacks of recyclables, not to mention delivery containers and pallets out here, didn’t help. Streets intersected the alley in both directions. And all of the businesses had back doors. Someone could have just grabbed Daisy and yanked her into any one of the buildings.
Martin had already jogged a short distance in each direction looking for Daisy while he’d been on the line with the 9-1-1 operator, but he’d gotten no indication of which way she’d gone. Mentally, he was kicking himself for not staying by her side. He knew that wallowing in regret right now wasn’t productive, but it threatened to overwhelm his thoughts, nevertheless.
“We don’t know what happened, but I’m going to start with the theory that her disappearance is related to Beau Daltrey and Ivan Bunker, because that seems likely,” the sergeant said. “Tell me, how would they have known where Daisy was? And why do you think they’d have chosen to come out of hiding to grab her right now?”
“We thought Daltrey and Bunker might have a connection to this area so we started asking around,” Martin answered. “We must have struck a nerve somewhere. I guess the hit men were watching us and we didn’t notice.” And that realization was another reason Martin wanted to kick himself.
“What businesses did you visit while you were canvassing the neighborhood?”
Martin impatiently rattled off the names while Cruise jotted them down.
Over the sergeant’s radio, Martin heard a sheriff’s deputy with a K-9 reporting their arrival on scene at the diner.
“Do you have anything with Daisy’s scent on it?” the sergeant asked.
“Let me look in my truck.” Please, Lord, let Daisy have left something there, Martin prayed silently as he dashed through the diner, where uniformed officers were questioning the patrons, and out the front door. He ran past the police dog handler and her K-9 and raced down the street to his parked truck. He yanked open the door and spotted a pair of knit gloves she’d worn earlier in the day when the air was still chilly.
He hurried back to the diner and then out the back door to the alley exit where the sergeant, dog handler and the barking, excited K-9 were waiting.
He gave the gloves to the handler, who held them out for her dog to smell and was somehow able to communicate to the animal that Martin, despite his scent being on the gloves, was not the person they were tracking. After a few whiffs, the canine started moving eastward down the alley. The dog pulled forward at the end of a long leather leash, whining with impatient excitement. The handler, Martin and Sergeant Cruise followed.
Martin had gotten what he’d desperately wanted—a lead on which direction to look. But at the same time, he couldn’t help dreading what they might end up finding. The hit men had already murdered Jimmy Nestor at the rec hall. Authorities in Miami had been in the process of charging Daltrey and Bunker with murder when they jumped bail. Martin and Daisy must have been close to finding them this morning. Daisy was a talented, determined tracker with her finger on the pulse of her town. The fugitives had a lot to gain by her death, and not much reason to keep her alive.
The K-9 led them down the twists and turns of the alley, crossed the street and kept going on the other side. The dog headed to a spot behind an industrial trash container where there were drops of blood. Martin’s heart fell to his feet.
The sergeant keyed his radio and directed a couple of his officers to meet with them in the east end of the alley.
Martin barely had time to recover from the fear that had sent his pulse pounding in his ears when the dog yelped and took off again, trotting toward a dilapidated building with covered windows.
The large loading-dock doors that faced the alley were locked into place. The cops fanned around the building, covering all sides, while the dog pulled insistently toward a side door. The sergeant tested the door and found it unlocked. He drew his pistol and officers were put into place beside him with long guns.
Because Martin wasn’t a law enforcement officer, he was ordered to move back and wait until the cops made entry. As soon as the officers made entry, and didn’t face resistance, he followed them through the door. He saw an overturned chair, a few items on the counter and nothing more. Daisy was nowhere in sight. The weight of disappointment nearly crushed him.
But then the dog pulled its handler toward a door that looked like it led to a closet. When Cruise opened the door, Martin was right behind him. He saw Daisy, crumpled on the floor, moaning and barely conscious. He dropped to his knees and prayed, “Please, Lord, let her be alive,” as he pulled thick tape from her mouth and nose.
She gasped and began to thrash around. He put his arm under her shoulders and knees, lifted her and carried her out into the room, where he gently set her down on the floor and saw the blood on her shirt for the first time. He heard Cruise behind him calling for an ambulance. Meanwhile, Martin leaned down and pressed his cheek against hers, holding her hand while speaking softly into her ear, telling her that he was there, that she was safe and that he would take care of her.
He felt her eyelashes flutter against his cheek. Seconds later she sucked in a deep breath, opened her eyes and started mumbling something about her mom.
There was no telling what Daisy had been through in the ninety minutes since she’d disappeared from the diner. The trauma must have her trapped in some kind of waking nightmare. “I’m here with you,” Martin repeated, thinking she was calling for her mom because she’d forgotten that Shannon had been kidnapped.
Hissing her frustration, Daisy grabbed a fistful of the front of Martin’s shirt and struggled to sit up. “I’m trying to tell you that my mother is here,” she rasped. “I heard her.”
Martin glanced at the sergeant. The cops hadn’t done a sweep of the entire building, yet.
“Just listen for a minute,” Daisy said, “and you’ll hear her, too.”
Cruise signaled to the other officers to stand still and be quiet.
Martin could hear a faint voice. He glanced at Cruise, who nodded in return. He’d heard it, too.
Martin and the K-9 handler waited with Daisy, while Cruise and another officer cautiously started down the dark hallway and were soon out of sight. Martin squeezed Daisy’s hand, afraid to wrap his arm around her shoulder again now that he knew it was injured. He heard the sound of a door being broken down, and then he heard Shannon Lopez’s voice.
Daisy burst into tears of relief, and Martin almost did, too. Moments later, Mrs. Lopez hurried down the hall, calling out, “Daisy? Are you here? Is it true?” She stepped into the room, pale and bruised and a little unsteady on her feet.
“Mom!” Daisy held out her arms toward her.
Shannon’s gaze fixed on the blood on Daisy’s shirt, and her steps faltered. “Honey, what happened?”
“I’ll be okay, Mom,” Daisy said, impatiently waving the arms she was still holding out toward her mother.
Shannon dropped down so that she could wrap her arms around her daughter. “Thank You, Lord,” she said over and over. “Thank You.”
“Amen,” Martin said.
Hearing him, Mrs. Lopez reached for Martin and gave him a hug, as well.
Cruise gave the two women a few precious minutes to reunite, but then the ambulance arrived. He insisted that both women be transported to the hospital, but he wanted to talk to them before they left.
Daisy told him about the abduction and relayed the snippets of phone conversation she’d overheard as she’d drifted in and out of consciousness while locked in the closet. “It sounded like the thug who grabbed me was paid by Ivan Bunker to do it.” She glanced at her mom. “I think they paid
him to keep Mom here, too. He talked to Bunker about getting paid for other business. I don’t know if this guy is connected to the mob they worked for down in Florida, or if he’s just some criminal lowlife that was willing to help them out. At some point, I heard him tell someone that the cops were getting close and that he ‘isn’t going to prison for nobody.’”
“So that’s probably when he left,” the sergeant said.
A paramedic and EMT came into the room and moved toward Daisy and her mother.
“Mom, are you okay?” Daisy asked. “I’m so sorry I got you into this.”
“Stop that,” Mrs. Lopez said, reaching over to brush her daughter’s hair out of her eyes. “This is not your fault. And I’m proud of you for going after criminals and bringing them to justice.”
Sergeant Cruise asked several questions as the EMT started taking Shannon’s vital signs and the paramedic examined the wound on Daisy’s shoulder.
As it turned out, Shannon had had no idea that Daisy was in the building when she’d initially started hollering for help. She’d just been able to hear that someone was there and she’d called out in desperation. After the shoot-out at the mall, she’d been shuttled around as the criminals tried to evade the police before she was brought here and locked in a small windowless office. The kidnappers had given her food and water, so she was in decent health. But she’d been under no illusions about the fate they had planned for her.
Cruise cut short his interview for now, so the women could get medical treatment. But he wanted to question them both further as soon as they were cleared by a doctor.
“I’m so glad we found you,” Daisy said. “At least this nightmare is over.”
Tears filled Shannon’s eyes. “Oh, honey, I wish that were so.” She sighed deeply. “I heard the men who kidnapped me talking to someone on the phone. From their tone, it sounded like the person they were talking to was their boss. I knew they meant to kill me, because they didn’t seem to care what I overheard.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and reached for Daisy’s hands and gave them a squeeze before letting go. “The person they were talking to said they have to kill you. They have to do it to send a message to anyone paying attention that they can handle you so that their criminal syndicate doesn’t look weak.”
Martin looked at Daisy and prayed quietly, “Lord, please don’t let that happen.”
FIVE
“It’s true, you can’t keep a good woman down,” Sheriff Russell said to Daisy as she stepped into the examining room at Beckett County Hospital with her Stetson hat in her hand. She glanced around and offered a nod of acknowledgment to Martin, Shannon and Daisy’s aunt Jessica, who were also jammed into the small room.
Daisy raised her hand in a half-hearted greeting. She was sitting on the edge of the examining table, dressed in clean clothes that Millie had packed and had Alvis drop off at the hospital for her. She was swinging her feet a little bit, feeling impatient and ready to get back to work.
Five hours had passed since she’d been rescued at the warehouse. She was cranky and had a pounding headache. And she was more determined than ever to find Beau Daltrey and Ivan Bunker and get them locked up. Part of her wanted to go after the jerk in the alley who’d grabbed her and taken her hostage. But he was not a bail jumper and tracking him wasn’t her job. That was for the police to take care of. Still, she couldn’t help imagining doing it herself.
“Have you found the creep who kidnapped me?” she asked the sheriff.
“Not yet. He’d broken into that building, had no legal right to be there or utilities connected, so we can’t identify him that way. Based on your description, sheriff’s deputies and Jameson Police patrol officers are out looking for him. Most likely he has a criminal record, so by morning we should have some mug shots for you to look over.”
“I’ll know him when I see him, believe me.” Daisy’s professional ego was bruised by the fact that she’d been overtaken by a single assailant. Later, she would go over every detail of what had happened multiple times, taking away every possible lesson to make sure that never happened again. The only other thing she could do was identify the kidnapper, testify against him in court and make sure he went to prison where he belonged so he couldn’t hurt anybody else.
The sheriff glanced at Daisy’s shoulder. “How many stitches did you need?”
“None.” She shook her head, felt a little queasy and immediately stopped. “The cut wasn’t deep enough to do any serious damage, so they just taped it up. And they checked out my head. No major damage there.”
“That’s what you say,” Martin teased.
He was trying to lighten the mood, because that’s what Martin did. People who didn’t know him well thought he was a simple, unfettered, easygoing guy. Daisy knew better. Yes, he was those things. But he was also more. Martin watched the people around him, paid attention to how they felt and what they cared about. He read a lot and was interested in many things. But he kept a lot of that hidden, letting only bits and pieces slip out occasionally in conversation. Daisy thought it might be due to his verbally abusive father and critical, sarcastic mother. She’d interacted with both of them a few times over the years, and each time, within minutes, she’d found herself silently giving thanks in prayer that Martin’s great-aunt and -uncle had stepped into his life when they did, showing him love and acceptance and leading him to faith. They had done a lot for him, but there were still emotional knots inside him that were tight, and he wasn’t willing to let Daisy, or anyone else, apparently, ease them.
“Honey, if he’s trying to say you have a hard head, he’s right,” Shannon said to Daisy. “And that’s turned out to be a good thing.” Shannon Lopez laughed and walked over to Martin to give him a hug. One of many she’d given him over the afternoon, along with multiple offers of thanks for alerting police so she and her daughter could be rescued.
Martin had accomplished what he’d set out to do: taken a dark moment and made it a little lighter.
Seeing her mom with Martin brought back a lot of memories of good times over the years when Martin had come to the house to hang out with Aaron, and later to visit Daisy and her mom. Barbecues, holiday gatherings, lazy afternoons spent fishing at one of the local lakes. She’d felt that spark of attraction each time she’d seen him over the last year or so. But he’d never seemed to feel the same way. It had hurt then when he hadn’t responded the way she’d wanted him to and it stung now. Which was dumb, because she’d already given up on Martin feeling the same way she did. About a hundred times, or so it sometimes seemed.
“This is my aunt Jessica,” Daisy said to the sheriff, making the introduction between the two women in an attempt to shift her thoughts away from Martin. “My mom’s going to be staying with her for a while.” Shannon had spent several hours with law enforcement today, detailing how she’d been kidnapped from her front yard and later, after the shoot-out at the mall, had been taken to the abandoned industrial building and locked up.
The sheriff nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
Shannon didn’t have any significant physical injuries from her ordeal and that was good news, but Daisy knew her mom was bound to experience some emotional fallout in the aftermath of all that had happened once she had a few quiet moments to process everything. Being with her sister, Jessica, would be good for her. This would not be a good time for her mom to stay home alone.
An employee from the hospital’s administration office walked into the room with some information for Daisy to look over and acknowledgments for her to sign.
“I’m going to head home to my apartment as soon as I finish with this,” Daisy said to her mom. “You and Aunt Jessica might as well head on out of here. Get some rest. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “Have you told Aaron about any of this yet?”
Shannon looked away for a moment, then turned her gaze to Daisy. “I have
not. I was thinking it might be best to wait a little longer, maybe even until all the bad guys are captured. I don’t want to upset him when there’s nothing he can do.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Daisy blew out a sigh of relief. “But you know, when we do tell him, he’s going to be annoyed that we waited.”
Shannon shrugged her shoulder and flashed a grin. “I’m the mom. I don’t care how big he is, he is not telling me what I should do.”
After kisses and hugs, with everyone being careful of Daisy’s injured shoulder, Shannon and Jessica left.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with your aunt, too?” Sheriff Russell asked after they were gone. “According to what your mother overheard, you’ve got a mob hit out on you now. That’s no small thing. Maybe you need to hide somewhere for a while.”
“There’s a good chance that somehow they’d find me there. I don’t want to bring danger to my mom and my aunt and my aunt’s family.” She told the sheriff about her paid informants at the convenience store and hair salon behaving strangely and refusing to help her. “At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on. But now I’m starting to get the picture. I’m thinking Daltrey and Bunker have mob money to spread around in town to get them the help they need.”
“And they might be threatening people who normally help you. But how would they know who those people were?”
Daisy crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s something I haven’t figured out, yet. All I know is my mom is safer away from me, and I’m safest with armed bounty hunters.” She looked to Martin for reassurance before she realized what she was doing. He held her gaze and nodded, giving her the sense of comfort that she craved right now. And then she felt that spark, that something-more-than-friendship feeling. She couldn’t get away from it even though she really wanted to.
