“Good luck with that,” he said, letting them win but sitting up the second their hands left his body. “The boys are out there, and that bastard’s got ’em…”
“Who? Who’s the bastard?” The doctor stood in front of the door, acting as a human barrier.
“Man who should have died a long time ago,” Evan said, standing up. “Now, shove me down again and I’ll file for assault. I am leaving. Now.”
“Mr. Dyer, if I have to have you restrained I shall. You are in no condition to walk down the hall, much less go after missing people.”
“You don’t understand. It’s me he wants. Me, not them. I will not let them get hurt or worse because you’ve decided to play God. If I’m what he wants, then that’s what he’ll get.”
The rush of footsteps drew closer. “Evan!” Rachel said, throwing her arms around the man she loved. “Oh, God, what’s…what’s going on? First the kids, then this.”
“Rachel,” Evan said, pulling away from her. “I know who has the boys.”
“They called. It’s some Southern guy, the accent’s obvious.”
“Wait, he talked to you?”
“Well, yes…you, you didn’t answer your phone, so…”
“Oh, shit.” Evan reached for his coat. “That means he got the number from one of the kids. The thought of them anywhere near him…I can’t. I have to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Babe, remember I said I made some mistakes in college?”
Rachel nodded.
“This was one of them. I had a friend, see…”
“I know. Frank told us. I know about the pills.”
“And I’d like to know about them, sir,” the doctor said, still standing in front of the door. “You are severely resistant to antianxiety drugs, and that is precisely what you need right now.”
“Over two years of heavy alprazolam use will do that to you. Plus amphetamines.”
Rachel’s eyes grew wide. “Xanax. And Adderall.”
Evan nodded. “Adderall to focus through the work, Xanax to calm down and get my mind off the miserable life I had. I’m not proud of it. That’s why I didn’t want to take the job at the school—if it got around I was a recovering addict…”
“Rosa would understand. But forget that now—who is this guy?”
“He used to be a friend. He was my dealer. I couldn’t steal from the pharmacy I worked at. I ended up owing him money. Not a lot, but enough. He wanted me to give him access to the pharmacy stock where I worked. I said no. Eventually he told me he was coming for it anyway, and one night I got a call telling me to show up and let him in.” Evan sighed, sinking back down onto the bed. “I ran there and came clean with the head pharmacist instead. When my…when he came, the police were waiting.”
“He went to prison.”
“Yes. But his family had money. They had cut him off, but they didn’t want a scandal. Lawyer got him bail, and three weeks after I testified someone attacked me in my apartment. I was lucky to escape with my life.” Evan showed her the thin scar. “That’s when I threw what little I owned in that old truck and ran for it. I didn’t quit running until the engine died not a mile from your house.”
“Oh, my God,” Rachel said. “Was it him? In your apartment?”
“No. But I know he paid for it. I called the court once, just before I met you, to see if he’d been sentenced. Ten years, he got. But somehow, he got out.”
“He said…he said to hit redial on your phone. A life or death call, he called it.” Worried fingers ran through tangled waves of red hair. “Evan, what are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna get the kids back. Whatever it takes, I’m getting them back.”
Chapter 32
Riley was starting to get annoyed. The job was turning south fast, and the little money they had left from the initial robbery was going down the throats of these new people, people so large and imposing they made Charlie look like a rag doll. Several cases of beer had cropped up, and the Cajun spice man continually had a fifth in his hand. Riley thought it was scotch, but he wasn’t sure. The food he’d bought to go around for three people was now feeding eight, and that wasn’t counting the baggage in the basement.
“Could these assholes eat any more?” he groused to his cousin, who was leaning against a marble countertop in the kitchen. “Swear to God those brats downstairs are eating more than we are.”
“Be hard for ’em to do, seein’ as we got the food up here. They’re lucky they get a drink of water and maybe a couple bites of somethin’. More than we’re gettin’, that’s sure,” Charlie pointed out. He too was getting annoyed, more with their employer than the new arrangement. “I’m not seein’ the payday we were promised, Riley. Best for us to cut and run, you ask me.”
“I got too much invested in this,” Riley admitted. “Used the last of my start-up money buying food we’re not eating.”
“Well, shit,” his cousin groused. “There goes Hawaii.”
“Yeah. If only Dayton had stuck to the plan, gotten our shit done first instead of jumping the gun and calling these assholes in. I mean, it sounds like there’s a payday when you talk to the Cajun dude, but it ain’t looking like there is one to be had.” Riley’s eyes kept floating toward the door. “You know, I say if we ain’t getting paid on this job, why the hell should anyone else be getting paid?”
“Thought you had too much invested in this, Riley.”
“I do. But we could always take off with those brats, or at least one or two of them, make those assholes in there pay us to get them back. Seems like they need ’em more than we do, you ask me.”
“Not a bad thought,” Charlie agreed. “But where we gonna stash ’em? Not like we got another roof to duck under or a room with soundproofin’ and a lock.”
“I found a nice place, not ten miles from here. Passed it up before because it had an open field before the woods. It’d work for our purposes.”
“Got locks?”
“Put ’em in on the sly. Thought we might possibly need a back-up plan.”
Charlie’s round face started to spread into a thoughtful smile. “I’m likin’ this idea more and more. I got a few bucks left from my cut.” He glanced toward the living room, where their current employer was partaking in a bottle with their new partners. “You got a couple of blades?”
“Nicer than what you got. Took ’em off that big fellow when no one was looking.” Riley pulled the knives in question off his belt, each one having a nearly four-inch blade. They were sharp to the touch. “These should work nice, yeah?”
“Very.” Charlie leaned in. “We’ll do it tonight.”
* * *
Dayton sipped the Cajun’s scotch. It was bitter, and not as smooth as the vodka he preferred when hitting the hard liquor. “Not one for scotch, huh?” his drinking companion asked, grinning a drunkard’s grin.
“No. I prefer vodka.”
“Russian crap.”
“Prefer the French stuff, myself. The Swedes aren’t bad either.”
“Nah. Scotch, drink of kings. Never met a decent man that couldn’t drink scotch.” The man took a draw from the bottle, its contents now half empty.
Dayton shook his head. “I gotta make a call,” he said, walking outside. The noise level in the house had tripled in the last twenty-four hours, and it made doing business difficult. He punched in a number and let the device ring. “This is Evan,” came the crisp greeting on the other end of the line.
“Hello, Liam. Heard you weren’t feeling well. All better?”
“Where are the boys?”
“Listen to you, all worried. They’re fine. Not one hair on their heads harmed.”
“I want to talk to them.”
“You can want a lot, but it’s not happening,” Dayton scolded. “No, it’s my turn. I want you to listen to me, very carefully.” He paused for effect. “Listening?”
“Yes,” the voice on the other end ground out.
“I want you to go back
to that house of yours. I want you to wait. Someone will be by to pick you up. And then we’ll talk more.”
“The kids?”
“They’ll be waiting for you to follow directions. Not ever something you did well, last I recall.”
“How do I know you haven’t killed them? I could just tell you to go to hell.”
“You could, but you won’t.”
“No. Prove they’re alive, and I’ll come. No fuss. Otherwise I spill everything, and it’s over.”
“I spoke to your woman. Pretty thing. Bet she’d be unhappy to get a call telling her where to pick up three corpses. What do you think?”
There was silence. Dayton sighed. “Fine. I’ll have one of them talk to you. Just sit tight and wait. But be ready when we come. And Liam? Be alone. You have this troublesome habit of making friends at bad times.”
“I’ll be there. If I don’t hear from you in one hour, I’ll assume they’re dead.”
“Fine. See you.” The line went dead. Dayton sighed again. Should have told him to bring money, he thought. The Cajun’s payday notwithstanding, Liam still owes me over a grand from before.
Chapter 33
“That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, lad,” Frank said as Evan hung up the phone. “There’s no guarantee this fellow won’t kill you before you ever lay eyes on those boys.”
Evan looked out at the small throng of people beginning to assemble at the Parker house. The hospital had allowed him to discharge himself against medical advice, throwing his doctor into a fit of apoplexy. Frank, Jesse, Eric, and Rachel tried in vain to convince him that following the wishes of the kids’ abductors was not only a bad idea but a suicidal one. At the nearby kitchen table, Mark and Penny Long sat with Sam’s brother and sister, their eyes pleading for some kind of explanation.
“Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.” Evan shook his head, looking at the families of his tenants. “This is all my fault,” he said to them. “They never would have been taken if…”
“How is this your fault, Evan?” Mark Long asked. The gray in his beard was beginning to show, and his round glasses framed two bright blue eyes. “This man was supposed to be in prison.”
“How did you know that?”
“The police talked to us,” Sam’s sister Leslie said. “They explained that someone with a grudge against you had taken Sam and the others. They didn’t get into why, though.”
Evan took an empty seat. “I knew about a robbery attempt when I was in college. I managed to let the place know what was going on and the would-be robbers were caught. One of them had been a friend from grade school, and he wasn’t used to hearing the word ‘no.’ And Mark’s right—he was supposed to be in prison.” The young man looked at Frank. “What happened there?”
“Well, no one’s entirely sure, but it looks like he managed to get paroled early due to overcrowding. No real behavior problems, model prisoner.”
“He did know how to turn on the charm when it suited,” Evan remembered.
“Do you think he’ll hurt the boys?” Penny Long asked. The woman hadn’t slept since she’d found out nearly three days ago that Josh was missing.
Evan shrugged. “Dayton—that’s his name, Dayton Spaulding—he’s more of an ‘I’-centric kind of guy. If the kids become baggage, he might. But he won’t as long as they’re useful to him. Right now, they’re useful to him.”
“Because you’ll go to him?”
A blond head nodded. “Whatever it takes. The biggest mistake I made was running from all of this. I should have ended it in Carolina.”
“I, for one, am glad you came here,” Sam’s brother Loren said. “Every time Sam calls I can hear how much you’ve done. I remember this kid that could get around but was real shy, didn’t like socializing much. And now look at him.” The tall man smiled. Evan noticed the slight similarities between this man and his tenant. “He’s turned out so well.”
“Josh too. He loves living there. Can’t wait to tell us all about something he learned from you or Remy or Sam,” Penny added, wiping away a tear. “He’s such a handful, I know, but we’ve never regretted taking him in.”
The word choice puzzled Evan. “Taking him in?”
“We adopted Josh when he was five. His birth mother was ruled unfit, and with no father in the picture, he would’ve fallen through the system. I was a social worker before he came along, which is how we got him. His diagnoses came six months afterward, and for certain he’d have never found a home after that.” Penny’s face was wet now, and Rachel’s was as well. “Once we found out we couldn’t have our own kids, we just decided to make Josh ours.”
“I…I didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter. Josh is our son.”
“Excuse me,” Rachel said, her throat filled with emotion. She hurried out of the room, and Evan almost ran after her.
“Let her go,” Penny said. “Give her a minute.”
“Still, these kids shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes.” Evan glared at the phone. “It’s been nearly an hour,” he said. “Why hasn’t he called?”
“Give it time,” Officer Baker called from the kitchen. “We still need to finish hooking up the trace equipment.”
“Better hurry. You’ve got ten minutes.”
The air in the old house was thick with anxiety and anticipation. “Please, God, let them call,” Leslie said, gripping her younger brother’s hand with worry over their youngest sibling’s fate.
A blaring, nerve-wracking chirp bleated from Evan’s phone. Jesse rolled his fingers as a sign to let the phone ring, and after the third ring he motioned for Evan to pick it up. “Yeah?” he snapped into the line. “I want proof.”
“E-Evan?” The sound of Sam’s voice rang through the line, and Evan immediately put the device on speaker. “Evan, are you there?”
“Sam!” Leslie cried.
“Sam, are you okay?” Loren asked, nearly cutting his sister off.
“We…we’re okay. For…for now. Evan, what’s…?”
“It’s okay, Sam. You let Remy and Josh know I’m coming for you, all right?”
“Well, well. Touching, Liam.” The sharp Southern voice on the phone put everyone in the room on edge.
“I’ll go,” Evan said. “Whatever you want. Just let them go.”
“We’ll talk about it. Same place I said earlier. And Liam? I need cash. About ten thousand should do nicely. Get it together and be ready by nightfall. Remember, be alone, or your pretty lady gets a call of her own.” The line went dead.
“He’s…he’s all right,” Loren said, clutching his sister’s hand. “Sam’s okay.”
Evan looked at the Longs. “Josh is too, I’m sure of it. Remy’s more than likely watching out for both of them.” Then he looked at Frank. “It’s just about three,” he said. “How long would it take to get ten thousand dollars together?”
“Three hours, at least. Why?”
“Then I need to go to the bank. I’m sure I’ve got about half of the amount, but the other half…”
“Take mine,” Rachel said, coming into the room. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained, but she was composed. “I’ve got about three.”
“We’ll cover it,” Leslie said. “Sam’s dad can cough up something to help.” The young woman placed her phone to her ear. “Yeah, it’s Leslie. Tell him that Sam needs ten grand, by four o’clock today. Have him call me if he’s got a problem. And Delia? It has to be by four o’clock today. He waits, he’ll have more than a scandal on his hands.” There was a pause. “Thanks. Bye.”
“I wouldn’t want to cross you, lass,” Frank said.
“Neither did my birth father, the idiot. I’m better off. I just wish my stepdad saw his own son the way he sees me and Loren.”
“We are all just a barrel of secrets, aren’t we?”
Evan smiled a sad smile. “We are indeed.”
Chapter 34
“There now, you see? That wasn’t so hard.” Thick hands slammed into Sam’
s bruised shoulder, and it was all he could do not to wince in pain. He stumbled a little, the force of the slap too much for him to compensate for.
“Didn’t think a blind man could see,” another voice, this one gruff and commanding, chortled. The smell of beer and liquor filled the space where Sam stood, and it was enough to make him nauseous.
“Least he’s not armed,” a third voice piped up, this one belonging to a black man. Sam knew there were different tones in certain ethnic backgrounds that couldn’t be overcome, and it was helpful to him in figuring out what a person might look like. The nineteen-year-old had been blind since birth, so colors were an abstract to him, but he could pick out a tone of voice almost instantly. “Not gonna give us trouble, are you now? I seen you, waving that white stick of yours.”
The young man stayed silent. “Asked you a question,” the black man said, grabbing his arm roughly and pulling Sam out of balance. He tried reaching for something to break his fall, but the grip on his arm held his bound limbs in place. “Not gonna try anything fancy, right?”
“N-no, sir,” Sam replied, his voice barely a whisper. The space exploded in loud, drunken laughter. His stomach turned a little, and he could feel his nerves tense. “Please, j-just leave me alone…”
“Leave you alone? No, I don’t think so,” another voice called out, the one with the thick Southern accent. “My old friend seems to have taken a liking to you, God knows why, and I’d like to see the attraction.”
Oh, God, Sam thought. Please don’t let him…
“My associates say you can get around pretty well, for being blind as a bat.” The Southerner chuckled at his own joke. “I’d like to see that.”
In the House On Lakeside Drive Page 16
