21 Hours

by Dustin Stevens

  "You get it?" Lex asked.

  I pulled the bag across the front seat and held it up for them to see. I slammed the door shut behind me and circled around to the front with it gripped in hand.

  "Oh, thank God," Lex whispered and rushed forward, her arms extended. I handed the bag over without pause and she tugged the zipper open and rifled through it. "Did you thank him profusely for us?"

  "Yes.”

  "Did you tell him we'd have it back to him first thing on Monday?"

  "I did. He just waved a hand and said to call if we needed more."

  "Must be nice," Mama snorted. Her eyes held the same glazed red look as Lex, but her cheeks were dry. Her clothes and hair were different than when I'd seen her earlier, meaning she'd cleaned up before returning.

  Once when we were kids, she was working in the garden and nearly sliced her thumb off with a hand trowel. Before bringing her to the hospital, my father insisted she make herself presentable before going to town. It was a maxim that had stayed with us all ever since.

  "What happened to your hand?"

  I held up my casted left hand and rotated it for her to see. "Broken bone. Nothing serious."

  Normally she would have demanded a detailed account and asked if I wanted homemade soup. Now, she just nodded. "And your face?"

  "Same nothing serious.”

  Again, she nodded. "Did it help?"

  I offered a slight twist of my head. "It's a lead. If this money drop doesn't work..."

  Beside me Lex drew in a sharp breath, a small whistle escaping her. She made one last pass through the bag and once content it was all there, zipped it up. "How much does he know?" she asked, ignoring my comment.

  "More than I wanted to tell him," I admitted. "He was a little upset Ricky didn't call or come by himself, even more so when I refused to stay and have a drink."

  "You told him so you could get out of there," Lex whispered.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "It felt a lot better than trying to fight my way out with their money."

  Lex shook her head. "No, you did the right thing. I just haven't really told anybody yet. I keep hoping this thing will resolve itself before it gets out and gets any more...real."

  I knew exactly what she meant. I'd spent every minute since branding a day and a half before laboring under the same thought.

  "Why are you guys out here?” I asked. “What's going on?"

  Lex pulled the bag in close to her chest and wrapped both arms around it. I could see fresh blood lining both of her thumbs as she plopped down beside my mother and stared out over the parking lot. "I couldn't take any more of the Borden’s. The longer this drags on, the more comments they make."

  "Comments? About what?"

  Lex continued to stare straight ahead, but said nothing. Instead she shook her head, her ponytail swinging behind her.

  My mother followed her gaze and said, "They think this happening and you showing up here aren't a coincidence."

  My eyes bulged so hard it pulled me towards the bench. "They think I have something to do with this?"

  I made no effort to hide the vitriol welling inside me or the incredulity oozing through my voice.

  Both my sister and my mother stared straight ahead, saying nothing. My right hand balled into a tight fist as I turned and gazed out with them. I drew my mouth tight to keep from saying anything and breathed through my nose.

  Up until thirty-six hours before I was tucked away in rural Wyoming branding cows. I barely ever returned to Ohio and only interacted with four people there with any regularity. Two of them were within three feet of me. One was sitting in jail. The fourth I was currently trying to find.

  "I would kill myself if it meant keeping that little girl safe," I seethed, just loud enough for them to hear. "Hell, I've spent all night damn near doing just that."

  "I know," Lex said.

  "Nobody's blaming you," Mama whispered.

  "It's sound like those sonsabitches are!" I shouted, extending a hand towards the hospital. Both of them fell silent, their gaze remaining on the parking lot. I lowered my arm and hooked my thumbs in my pockets, staring hard at the ground.

  I had to calm down. People tend to get out-of-control when they're angry. I couldn't afford that right now. Those bastards would get told, just not right now.

  "What about the police?" I asked. “It looks like they've got an army hidden around here somewhere.”

  My voice sounded a lot more even than I felt.

  "They've set up shop in the cafeteria," Lex said. She pushed back the sleeve on her left arm and checked her watch. "It's a little after twelve-thirty. We should go in. They'll be waiting for us."

  I nodded and stepped aside to follow them. Neither one made any effort to move. Both stared up at me.

  "What?" I asked, casting my eyes from one to the other.

  "We got another call while you were gone," Lex said.

  The ball pushed itself back to the forefront of my stomach. I tried to keep the anger that was already just beneath the surface from bursting forth at not telling me sooner. The fact that they hadn't meant bad news. "What did they say? Did they up the asking price?"

  My mother shook her head.

  "No," Lex said beside her. "They said they want the money in a single bag dropped into the dumpster behind the Sawmill Road Applebee's. One person. Alone. No cops."

  The line sounded like a cliché. Something didn't feel right.

  "These guys watch too many movies.”

  "They also said they're already in place and they'll know if we try anything," Lex said. Her voice broke just a bit on the last line, the pain evident.

  My eyes flitted from one to the other. "Okay?"

  "It's got to be you," my mother whispered.

  I made a face before I even realized it. "What do you mean it has to be me? There's a room full of police in there. This is what they're trained to do!"

  "The caller said no cops," my mother replied.

  "So I'll loan one of them a pair of jeans! You think these guys know every single officer on the force?"

  "What if they do?" Lex asked. The comment stopped me in the middle of my rant, my right hand still in the air. Her face turned to me, moisture stinging the bottoms of her eyes. "What if this is a major child abduction ring? What if they have people on the inside?"

  I swallowed hard and blew a breath out through my nose. This was not my role. I had to make my sister see that grief was clouding her judgment.

  If she wasn't going to listen to me, I would try a different tact. "There's no way Watts will go for this."

  Lex hugged the bag closer to her chest. "Does that mean you will?"

  "It means what I will do is a moot point. There's no way she'll let this happen."

  "But does it mean if she says yes, you will?" Lex pressed.

  I exhaled again. Two gazes studied me, neither person moving at all. This was not my place. There were professionals sitting not fifty feet away trained for this. There was an investigator in there that already had her eye on me.

  "Yeah, I'll do it."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lex handed the bag back to me and led all three of us inside. She kept her arms folded, but moved purposefully, a woman on a mission. My mother fell in right beside me, her hands holding the tan sweater closed in front of her.

  The hall was deserted as we walked through, the three of us spread like geese in a V. One out of every three lights in the ceiling above us was on, the others dark. Long shadows stretched across everything, conveying a sense of both silence and apprehension.

  My boots echoing off the tile was the only sound in the hallway as we marched past a deserted information desk and on towards the cafeteria. A generic plastic sign affixed to the wall directed us where to go, but my sister's practiced feet led without even bothering to glance at it.

  The door to the cafeteria parted easily as we pushed through, a small groan rolling out of its hinges. At once the room turned to look at us. Over a dozen of
ficers in black uniforms stood in a loose circle going over a large white printout spread flat on a table. In the center of the group was a young man in jeans and a Radiohead t-shirt, his hair buzzed into a tight crew cut. His cheeks were ruddy and he repeatedly rubbed his palms along the front of his jeans as he stared at us.

  Beside him was Watts, her suit jacket off and her sleeves rolled to the elbow. She regarded us warily as we approached, her eyes settling on me and the bag in my hand.

  I tapped Lex on the shoulder and handed it off to her. With a jerk of my head I motioned towards the front of the cafeteria. "I need coffee. Be back in a minute."

  "You just don't want to be the one to break the news," Mama hissed.

  "You're right," I agreed. "It has to look like it came from Lex. I'll be back."

  We were both right. The idea had to start and end with Lex. As the grieving spouse and concerned mother she was the only one with enough juice to convince Watts to let me go. Of course, I also wanted no part of that woman staring me down as Lex made the request.

  After seeing the greenhorn they planned to use though, I had a much better feeling about the odds of the switch going down without a fight.

  The cafeteria was deserted as I walked in. Empty coolers stretched along both walls and a barren salad bar ran through the middle of it. A soda machine and a coffee machine stood side by side, each humming and throwing soft light out into the space.

  I fished a dollar from deep in my pocket, fed it into the machine and ordered a large black. A second later a cup dropped down into the dispenser and a steady stream of liquid ran into it, filling it just shy of the brim. Without pause I grabbed it up and took a long pull. It tasted more like the swill we made while riding trails than the high-end stuff I had earlier with Lex, but it was hot and caffeinated.

  My body reacted the way I hoped it would.

  Armed with a fresh jolt of energy I walked out into the cafeteria. On one side my mother and Lex stood, their faces firm. Across from them was Watts with her hands on her hips, looking stern. Behind her was a legion of officers, all casting looks between one another. Everyone looked nervous except for the young man in jeans, who seemed relieved.

  I walked up slowly to the group, careful to shuffle my feet so my boots didn't reverberate against the floor. I could feel several sets of eyes boring into me as I approached, but pretended not to notice. Instead I took another long pull of coffee, sliding in beside my mother.

  "This is my daughter and this is my money," Lex said, her voice hard. "I would feel better knowing that we're not violating the only rule this guy laid out for us."

  "With all due respect ma'am, you have to let me do my job," Watts countered. "And my job, the job I was trained for and have spent years doing, is to bring your daughter home."

  "I'm not saying you don't know what you're doing," Lex shot back.

  "In order for me to bring your daughter home, you have to let me run this investigation my way," Watts said, her voice rising to drown out Lex's comment.

  Big mistake.

  If there's one thing that is never a good idea, it's to talk down to an O'Connor. I took another swig of coffee to hide the small smile on my face. Beside me, my mother coughed into her hand. Watts was about to get her ass chewed and we both knew it.

  Lex took a long breath and leveled her eyes on Watts. "Your investigation? With all due respect, so far I haven't seen any sort of investigation. I've seen a dozen people sitting around, drawing a check from my tax payer dollars, waiting for a phone call. A phone call that came to me. A phone call you claim couldn't be traced."

  "Now Miss Borden..." Watts tried to interject.

  "So far I can't see where you've done a damn thing. If I'd never called you at all, we wouldn't be one inch further away from finding my daughter. This is my money, she is my daughter, and that is my husband lying in a coma in there."

  Tears began to line her cheeks as she swiveled and motioned to me. "And he is my brother! If I say he's the one that drops off the money, then he's the one that drops off the damn money!"

  My mother stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Lex, drawing her in. Lex folded herself around the bag and pressed in tight to my mother's chest, trying to stem her crying. I remained motionless.

  A tall man wearing Sergeant's bars and a clipped moustache turned to Watts and said, "He's just the drop-off guy. Somebody has to walk the money up there and put it in the dumpster."

  Watts sighed, but said nothing. She was obviously steaming and trying to keep from tearing into Lex. She couldn't let the men see her back down, but she couldn't fly back at a woman facing everything my sister was.

  A pudgy guy with thinning brown hair and a poor excuse for a beard added, "The caller said no cops. There's no way in hell anybody's mistaking this guy for a cop."

  Under normal circumstances I would have taken offense to the comment. At the moment, I was finding it hard not to find the entire scene a little humorous. The tough detective tried to squash the wrong person, got steamrolled, and now her team was attempting to cover for her.

  If finding Annie wasn't the most important thing in the world at that moment, I might have let it all play on a little longer. As it were, I didn't have that luxury.

  "Look, I'm not trying to step on any toes here. I don't know what I'm doing and I don't even know where the Applebee's on Sawmill Road is. Detective Watts, why don't you drive my truck? I'll ride shotgun and make the drop."

  Every eye turned to stare at me except for Lex. Her face was still buried in my mother's sweater.

  Watts studied me. I could tell she didn't like it, but knew there wasn't a ton of options.

  "Lex?" I asked.

  Lex pulled herself free from my mother's grasp and nodded. Her face was red and shiny as she wiped the back of her sleeve across her nose. "Yes," she whispered.

  I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was a quarter to one, a little over twelve hours to go. If all went right, it wouldn't take nearly that long. "Detective?"

  Watts stared at me for several long seconds. She pursed her lips and put a hand on her hip, doing her best to relay extreme agitation. It was working. "Do I have a choice?" she asked.

  I said nothing. I knew she wanted to bait me into being the bad guy here. I had extended her enough courtesy on this one, I wasn't going to make myself a sacrificial lamb.

  She grabbed her jacket up from the chair back beside her and turned to the others. "You all have a two minute head start. The plan is still the same. Get into position. I'll be right behind you with Cowboy in his truck."

  The room scattered like flies, all of them swarming to every available exit. She waited until they were gone before turning her ire on us. "I don't appreciate you putting me in that position in front of my men."

  I ignored the comment and jumped in before she further angered my mother or sister. "You're welcome for me giving you an out."

  Her mouth dropped open to respond, but I cut her off again, tossing her the truck keys. "Time's up. Let's go."

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Jesus, how the hell do you drive this thing?" Watts snapped. I watched as she swung the truck through a wide left turn, arms flailing as she went. She handled the thing as if it were the wheel on a clipper ship, wildly over-correcting in both directions as we fishtailed down the road.

  Thank God everything was deserted at this hour or we would have really been in trouble.

  "You realize this is an automatic with power steering..." I said, letting my voice trail off. It's not like I was asking her to drive a five-speed tractor or a racecar with a hot-foot shifter.

  "It's also the size of a damn bus," Watts said.

  A small smile grew on my face in the darkness. Outside, an Arby's and a couple of branch banks slid by, all of their windows dark for the night. "So that's what it is. You're used to driving a Matchbox car. Let me guess...Miata?"

  Maybe I was playing to stereotypes a little bit, but I purposely picked a known male car. She wore a suit, ca
rried a gun, worked as a detective. She might not be the most badass woman I'd ever met, but she was in the top five.

  Watts gave me a nasty sideways glance, picking up on the insinuation. "Funny. How about we spend these next twenty minutes in silence and then I can dump you back at the hospital and be on my way, huh?"

  I was under her skin. Good. She'd spent the day holding no bones about her low opinion of me, now I could take a few minutes to repay the favor. For some reason, despite where we were going, I had a feeling it wasn't going to amount to anything anyway.

  "Are you still upset you pissed off the wrong woman and got your hand slapped in front of a room full of people back there?"

  The scowl was still there, but she didn't bother turning to look at me. "No, I'm more pissed about having to work with an ex-con."

  So there it was.

  She'd gone through my files that afternoon, saw what was in there. Lucky for me, I'd spent enough time around law enforcement in prison to see the ploy coming. She was setting a trap, trying to flip the power dynamic back in her favor. "Well, you know what they say, best way to catch a criminal is to use a criminal."

  Watts glanced my way, fighting the truck as she made a left onto Sawmill Road. "You've seen too many movies."

  "As have you if you think one little comment was going to make me lose my cool or start spilling my guts," I fired back. My eyes were focused outside the passenger window but I could feel hers on me.

  So much for a working relationship. I was just hoping to keep things civil moving forward.

  "What really happened to your hand?" Watts asked.

  So much for civil.

  "Car accident."

  "I took a look when we got in. There's not a scratch on this rig. Nothing big enough to cause a gashed head and broken hand anyway."

  "Wasn't in my truck," I said. "Don't you know how badly these things handle in city limits?"

  "So who's car were you driving?"

  "My sister's."