A Promise to Protect (Logan Point Book #2): A Novel

by Patricia Bradley

  “I don’t know.” She paused. “No, too old sounding even through the synthesizer. Why?”

  “The ice cream truck is missing. It’d be a good way to get three boys out of the park.”

  “No. You’re looking in the wrong place. TJ would never get in some ice cream truck willingly. He knows better.”

  Leigh was right. Josh and Jacob would never go anywhere with someone they didn’t know either—he’d told them enough horror stories to ensure that. “I still want to know where that truck is,” he said as police cars converged onto the park and deputies spilled out of their cruisers.

  “Can I stay with you until you find them?” Desperation cracked her voice.

  “As long as you stay out of the way.” He turned away from her as a deputy slapped a radio and microphone in his hand. “Get a set of these to Wade and Andre,” he said.

  Half an hour later, there was still no sign of the boys or the ice cream truck. Ben spoke into his mic. “Anyone check the restrooms?”

  Andre responded. “I’m near them now. I’ll check.” A minute later, he was back on the radio. “I’ve found the driver, and he doesn’t look good. Is Dr. Somerall with you?”

  Ben called for an ambulance even as Leigh took off running toward the restrooms. Andre met them outside the men’s facility. “He’s in here.”

  “You stay here,” Ben said to Leigh, then entered the men’s room. The driver he’d seen earlier lay unconscious on the concrete floor with his hands bound in front and duct tape around his mouth. Overhead, the fluorescent light flickered, casting the room in an eerie light.

  He knelt and removed the gray tape then took his pulse. Steady. Just like his breathing. He started to untie his hands and noticed a wire from the plastic zip tie around the boy’s hands to a lump under his uniform shirt. Slowly, he unbuttoned the shirt, his fingers freezing at the second button. The wire led to two sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest.

  Sweat popped out on Ben’s face. Bradford County’s bomb squad was nonexistent. As it was, Ben was the only one in the department who’d even had any training in defusing a bomb. He spoke into his mic. “Evacuate the park. We have a bomb.”

  He took out his cell phone and speed-dialed his dispatcher. “Call MPD in Memphis. Get their bomb squad here. Now.”

  Leigh tried to push past Andre, and Ben held up his hand. “Don’t come in here. The guy has explosives strapped to his chest.”

  “I need to check him out.”

  “No, you don’t. What you need to do is get out of here so I can assess this situation.” One wrong move, and they all could die. She glanced at him, uncertainty in her eyes. “Please, Leigh. You can’t help him. His pulse seems fine, breathing too. He’s probably been drugged. So please leave.”

  A no formed in her face. “Think of TJ,” he said. “When we find him, he’ll need you.”

  She nodded slowly and backed out of the men’s room. Ben turned back to the driver. A patchy beard barely covered the acne scars on his face. The kid couldn’t be over twenty. Skinny too. Probably wasn’t much of a match for his attacker.

  His dispatcher’s voice sounded in his ear. “The MPD bomb squad is mobilizing. ETA is thirty minutes. I’m patching them through to your radio signal.”

  Immediately another voice sounded in his ear. “What do you have there, Logan?”

  Sweat stung Ben’s eyes. “Unconscious victim, his hands bound with a plastic zip tie that connects to two sticks of dynamite.”

  “Do you see a timer?”

  “Not yet. I’ll have to unbutton his shirt to expose the complete bomb.” Ben examined the shirt and saw no evidence of wires attached to the front of it. He took a deep breath and unbuttoned the shirt halfway, fully exposing the dynamite. “No timer. And no detonator that I can see.”

  “Where do the wires lead?”

  Ben chewed the inside of his lip as he followed the wires that were attached to the blasting cap in the sticks. He pinched his brow together as the wires disappeared under the shirt where it was still buttoned. The boy groaned as Ben gently tugged the buttons loose. “Don’t move,” he said as the teen’s eyes fluttered open. “You have a bomb on your chest.”

  The teenager’s eyes widened.

  “It’s going to be okay. Just be still,” Ben said. He unfastened the last button, exposing the end of the wire where it was taped to a card on the kid’s stomach.

  BOOM!

  His muscles slackened even as the boldly written letters taunted him. He sucked in a shaky breath. “I think it’s a hoax,” Ben muttered into the mic and relayed what was on the card. At least he hoped the bomb wasn’t real.

  “Ben!” Andre’s voice overrode Ben’s. “They’ve found the ice cream truck. It’s parked outside the jail.”

  “Are the boys in it?”

  “Randy is checking now. And I’m on my way. Leigh is going with me.”

  He prayed to God that this nightmare would not get worse.

  “Am I going to die?” The words rasped from the boy’s throat.

  Ben jerked his attention back to the boy. “Not today,” he said. “But be still until the Memphis bomb squad gets here. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I ain’t got a clue. I came in here to go to the bathroom, and next thing I know you’re telling me there’s a bomb strapped to my chest.”

  His radio crackled again, this time with Randy’s voice. “They’re here. Trussed up like calves at a branding. But Ben, they’re unconscious.”

  “All three of them?” he asked and held his breath.

  “Yeah, all three of them.”

  If the boys were harmed in any way . . . He clenched his jaw. “Dr. Somerall will be there soon to check them out, but go ahead and untie them. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Uh, Ben, there’s a note pinned to TJ’s chest.”

  “Read it, but put latex gloves on first.”

  “I can read it without touching it. It’s a nursery rhyme. ‘Three blind mice, three blind mice. See how they run, see how they run. They all ran after the ice cream man who could’ve killed them with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as three dead mice?’”

  “Are you sure they’re breathing?”

  “They’re definitely breathing.” Randy paused. “Who would’ve done something like this, Ben?”

  He didn’t have an answer to his deputy’s question.

  The ambulance arrived with its lights flashing at the same time that Ben pulled into the county jail parking lot. The blue and white ice cream van had been parked on the side lot where it could easily be seen. Randy had the boys on the ground while another deputy rigged lights for the area, and Leigh knelt beside TJ. Ben pulled on latex gloves and took the card Randy handed him while Leigh accepted the stethoscope a paramedic handed her and listened to TJ’s chest then moved to the twins.

  “How are they?” he asked.

  “All pulses and respirations are fine.” She handed the stethoscope back to the medic. “Take their blood pressure and notify ER we’re bringing them in,” she said, then turned to Ben. “How’s the driver?”

  That was one of the things he admired about Leigh. Her calmness and care for another person even though her emotions had to be on a roller coaster. “Scared, but okay. The bomb was a dud.”

  Her shoulders visibly relaxed. “Thank goodness.” She nodded toward the card he held in his hand. “What’s that?”

  “Uh . . .” He wished he could shield her from the message. He held it where she could read it. “It’s a note from their kidnapper.”

  Leigh’s face paled. “Why?” She whispered the word.

  “I wish I could tell you.” He examined the note. Same type paper that was taped to the teenager’s chest, and the nursery rhyme had the same bold strokes. He sniffed it and blinked at the pungent odor. Just like the other note. He identified the scent—blue permanent marker.

  The paramedic approached, and they both turned toward him. “We’re ready to transport. On
e of the twins is rousing from whatever they were given.”

  “How are their vitals?” Leigh asked.

  “Near normal. Are you riding with us?”

  “Go with them,” Ben said. “I’ll call Emily and send her to the hospital.”

  As Leigh followed the medic to the ambulance, he turned to his deputy. “What do you have so far?”

  “Just the boys and the note,” Randy said. “No one saw the driver, so we don’t have a description. I found them on the floor.”

  Ben surveyed the area. Whoever kidnapped the boys probably entered from the side street, an alley really. And he parked where the truck would be seen sooner than later, so he didn’t want the boys to die of heat stroke. The boys weren’t the target. He was. The whole setup was to make Ben look incompetent.

  And only one person in Bradford County would risk going to jail to do that. Jonas Gresham. Another thought niggled Ben’s brain. Or someone who wanted his job. That was an angle he hadn’t pursued. He shrugged off the thought, hating the suspicion that accompanied it, and followed Randy to the back of the ice cream van. The double doors stood wide open, exposing the stainless steel interior. “Go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Dust everything. If there’s a fingerprint that doesn’t match the driver, I want to know who it belongs to.”

  He took his cell phone out and dialed Taylor Martin. “How soon can you meet with me?”

  “I cannot believe you boys climbed in that ice cream truck.” Leigh slid the stethoscope in her pocket. The three boys had been put in a room with three beds and seemed no worse for wear from the Versed found in their bloodstream. Whoever had administered the short-acting drug used for sedation had known what they were doing. “TJ, what have I always told you about talking to strangers?”

  “Yeah, Twins.” Emily crossed her arms across her chest. “I’d like an explanation as well.”

  Ben stepped closer to the beds. “Did you forget those stories I told you?”

  The boys hung their heads.

  “We won’t do it again,” Josh whimpered. At least Leigh thought it was Josh.

  “But the man was so nice,” TJ said. “He gave us a free cup of Dots.”

  Leigh exchanged looks with Ben and nodded to the question on his face. Since she hadn’t found an injection site, she’d already surmised the boys had received oral Versed. Now she knew how—in the small BB-sized ice cream pellets TJ loved so much.

  “Can you describe this man?” Ben asked.

  TJ and the twins shared a look, then TJ shrugged while the twins shook their head.

  “Do you remember anything about him? Was he old or young? Tall?”

  The boys flinched at his sharp words.

  “Biting their heads off won’t get any answers,” Leigh said. She took TJ’s hand. “Think about it. Was he as tall as me?”

  He thought a minute then nodded. “Not as tall as Ben, though.”

  “Good. What color hair did he have?”

  “He had on a cap!” one of the twins cried. “You know, like you wear in the winter.”

  “Yeah, we thought he was cold,” the other twin said. “And he didn’t smell good.”

  “And he had a big nose,” TJ added. “And a mustache. A brown one.”

  “I don’t think his nose was real.”

  “Why do you say that, Josh?” Emily asked.

  “’Cause he kept trying to fix it, you know, like it was trying to come off, and he’d push it back.”

  “I didn’t see him doing that,” TJ said.

  “That’s ’cause you were trying to get all the Dots.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “If one of my deputies took you down to the station, do you think you could help Miss Maggie draw a picture of him?”

  “Yeah!” the boys cried in unison.

  “I’m coming with TJ,” Leigh said. He wasn’t going anywhere without her. Not today and not tomorrow . . . not ever if this madman wasn’t caught.

  Ben’s headlights cut through the darkness as he turned onto the red gravel road that led to Jonas Gresham’s house. He had zero evidence that Gresham had kidnapped the boys, but his gut feeling drew him to the white plank house around the curve.

  “You think he’s home?” Andre asked.

  “Don’t know. If he isn’t, maybe Mrs. Gresham will tell us how long he’s been gone.”

  He pulled into the drive, his lights flashing on Gresham’s old Chevy parked under the giant oak beside the house. He parked in front of the dimly lit house and stepped out of the truck, and the oppressive heat and humidity of August enveloped him. The air was breeding a storm.

  With Andre pointing the way with a Maglite, Ben walked to the porch and rapped on the door. The smell of fried chicken wafted through the open door. Someone was cooking late. He rapped again, and a backlit figure moved toward the door.

  “Sheriff?” Mrs. Gresham cocked her head. “You’re not here to tell me another one of my boys is dead, are you?”

  Ben’s throat tightened, and he shook his head. “Looking for your husband. Is he around?”

  She turned slightly and yelled over her shoulder. “Jonas! Sheriff Logan’s here to see you.”

  Before she could leave, Ben said, “Mrs. Gresham, how long has your husband been home?”

  She stared at him with dull eyes. “Why?”

  “Don’t you be talking to the sheriff, woman. Ain’t none of his business what I been doing.”

  A nerve twitched in Ben’s jaw. “Mrs. Gresham?”

  “Sheriff, that truck set under that tree all day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I don’t want my supper to burn.”

  “Satisfy you, Logan?” Gresham’s lip curled into a snide grin as he stared through the screen door.

  “Are you saying you haven’t left your place?”

  “That’s right, and the missus will verify it. Now, if you ain’t got no more questions . . .” He turned his gaze toward Andre. “I’d ’preciate it if you and your deputy would get off my porch.”

  Ben rested a hand on his sidearm. “You’re not even curious why I’m here?”

  Gresham lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “Figure somebody done somethin’ that shows you ain’t fit to be sheriff. Right?”

  Gresham had kidnapped the boys. There was no doubt in Ben’s mind. He leveled his gaze at the old man. “You’re going to make a mistake. And I’ll be there when you do.”

  “Why, Sheriff, I ain’t got no idea what you’re talking about. Good night to ya.” Gresham turned and sauntered away from the door. Before he disappeared into another room, a snigger reached Ben’s ears.

  19

  Sunday morning the smell of fresh coffee drew Leigh from sleep. Sarah must be up. She threw on a robe and hurried down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” said Sarah.

  “Morning.” Her glance slid to TJ, and she treasured in her heart the sight of him sitting at the table in his pajamas. If anything had happened to him . . .

  “Mom! Hurry. We don’t want to be late!”

  “You better be worrying about getting yourself dressed, young man.” After yesterday, she would never complain about his high-powered sentences. She glanced at the clock. Only seven. Ben had said he’d be here at eight-thirty. Ben. Was the Ferris wheel ride a dream? She let the memory linger as she walked to the coffeepot. “We have plenty of time. Can I have a hug this morning?”

  TJ rolled his eyes, but he left his plate of bacon and eggs and came over to hug her.

  “Thank you, young man.” She pressed her lips together and swallowed the lump in her throat and noticed that Sarah’s eyes were awfully bright and wet-looking.

  Sarah half-coughed and half-cleared her throat. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “Just coffee right now.” She poured herself a cup and stirred in a splash of creamer. “Remember what you promised me last night, TJ?”

  “Mo-om.”

  “Terrible things could’ve happened yesterday, son,” Leigh said.

  Sarah ruffled his hair as
she picked up his empty plate. “And not just to you. When you didn’t come back, I about had a heart attack.”

  He dropped his head. “I won’t ever talk to strangers again.”

  Leigh didn’t want him afraid of people. “It’s not about talking, TJ. It’s about going off with them. Or getting in the back of a truck or in a car. I hope you learned a valuable lesson yesterday.”

  His eyes grew round. “I did. I promise.”

  “Okay, go get your bath.”

  “And your clothes are on the chair by your bed,” Sarah added.

  Leigh took her coffee to the table, listening for the sound of running water. Once she was certain TJ couldn’t overhear, she said, “I’m afraid the kidnapping didn’t make a big impression.”

  “I noticed that.” Sarah joined her at the table.

  “Why should it? They slept through the whole thing, and when they woke, everyone treated them like royalty.”

  Sarah raised her hand. “I for one am guilty. But I was so happy they were okay.”

  Leigh leaned and put her arm around her friend. “I want to thank you for being here. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Pshaw. Go on with you. You’re like family.” Sarah blinked rapidly as tears rimmed her eyes. “If you weren’t going off to Baltimore, I’d sell my house and move up here. Get my own place, of course.”

  Baltimore. It was what she wanted. Wasn’t it? “It’s been my dream for so long,” she said.

  “But you’re needed here at Emily’s clinic.”

  Leigh thought of the petite, eighty-five-year-old grandmother who came to the clinic Friday with an elevated pulse. Leigh had run a simple blood test and discovered her potassium level was dangerously low. But anyone could’ve found the problem. “Dr. Hazelit will be here.”

  “I heard Emily say he was retiring.” Sarah poured each of them more coffee. “And how about Ben? I see the way he looks at you. The man is in love with you.”

  Leigh’s heart warmed. But a future couldn’t be built on lies.

  “And I already know how you feel. When are you going to tell him about—”