by K. T. Tomb
He walked into the bushes and she couldn’t see his head or body anymore. As soon as she heard him peeing a lot, she scooped up the phone off the ground. She looked at the cracked screen, pressed the power button and turned it on. She pressed the phone icon and then the picture of the number pad. It was just like her mom’s phone.
She didn’t know the number of the hospital where her mom was. So, she quickly dialed 9-1-1 and when she heard him coming back, she put the phone down under a bush and ran a few steps from it.
She started singing “Let It Go” to cover up the dispatcher’s voice that was saying, “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
He was right next to her now. “You’re in a better mood,” he noted.
“Uh-huh! I am now. Let it go! Let it go!” she sang as loud as she could. In her head, she was thinking, Let me go!
“Come on, silly girl.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along the trail, trying to think of something to keep her mind occupied on something other than the growing chill in the air. The chattering of the squirrels from the safety of the trees above them gave him an idea.
After a few minutes of walking, he said, “Let’s play a game.”
Cassidy couldn’t believe he just walked away from his phone like that. Even one that he thought was broken. She silently thanked the baby Jesus for helping her.
“Hey, Cassidy, I said we can play a game.”
“I don’t want to play a game. I wanna go home. I don’t like camping.”
The tone of her voice and the way that she pushed out her lower lip made it obvious that she wasn’t exactly keen on playing a game, but he had to occupy her somehow or she would start crying again. He couldn’t stand the crying. He had already endured it for days. And nights.
“You’ll like this game,” he promised.
“What kind of game?”
“It’s a counting game.”
“Is it like the horse-counting game?”
He was startled again. “Sort of.”
While they had been driving, they had played a game where they tried to be the first to see the horses in the pastures and farms alongside the road and count them. At first, she hadn’t been very interested, but she couldn’t help noticing the horses and attempting to count them after a time, even when they had run out of horses. She was actually pretty sharp for her age. He was beginning to feel proud of her, as if she were his own daughter. Maybe she really was. The resemblance did not escape him.
“When is your birthday?” he demanded.
“June something,” she said vaguely, knowing the date, but keeping it to herself. Why does he want to know that? Her eyes darted around, looking for a place to hide.
“Do you hear that chattering sound?” he said, trying to distract her from those thoughts of fleeing that were written all over her face.
“Yeah.” He looked at her hard and it seemed like there was something he had forgotten that he needed to do. He wracked his brain but could not remember.
Her innocent blue-green eyes gazed back at him, fearful. He hated that look. He’d seen that look before…that fear. It was loathsome. The first time he had seen it, it had been in her mother’s eyes when he had knocked her down in that parking lot. He barely remembered that night, until his frat buddies had congratulated him later that night that his pledge had been accepted…the evidence, her engagement ring. “Joe loves Mary” had been engraved on the inside of the band. That engraving had begun his search for the woman who had scarred his face for life. To pay her back for what she had done to him.
The squirrel chattered again.
“Where’s the squirrel?” Cassidy said, to distract him from thinking of whatever was making him have that mad face.
He stopped and looked for the source of the noise. There was a gray squirrel about three branches up in the lower limbs of one of the many fir trees along the old deer trail. He knelt down beside her and pointed up into the tree.
“Do you see it?”
“It’s a squirrel. We have some in my yard.”
She smiled and stared at the small, quick animal as it darted back and forth around the trunk of a tree and peeped out from the other side and then scrambled to another position, continuing to scold them.
“The game is to listen for the squirrels and when you hear one, you try to find him. They’re sort of tricky and they move really fast. Sometimes they are even hard to see,” he said.
She was relieved to see the mad face go away so she kept him talking about the squirrels. “Why are they hard to see?”
“Because they try to hide themselves. The color of their fur blends in with the color of the trees. It’s called camouflage.”
“Camu-flog?” She tried out the word.
“Camouflage.”
He repeated the word for her.
“Why are they doing camouflage?”
“They camouflage because they are afraid that we will try to catch them and eat them.”
“We’re not going to eat the squirrels, are we?”
“Some people eat squirrels.”
“Eww! I don’t want to eat a squirrel.” The way she wrinkled up her nose when she said it was adorable. He wanted to scoop her up and hug her, but the last time that he had tried that, she had screamed and run from him and it had taken him a while to catch her and get her to trust him again.
“We won’t eat any squirrels.” He stood again and looked down at her. “You think you can find all the squirrels?”
“I found more horses than you did.” She beamed. “I counted seven and you only counted five.”
He’d let her win, of course. It hadn’t been important to him other than to provide a distraction for her.
“I’ll bet you can find lots of squirrels, too. Let’s go. There are more of them ahead of us.”
They left the chattering of the squirrel behind them and continued down the trail. In a moment, he heard more chattering. He saw the two animals and Cassidy froze, searching the branches of the trees around her.
“There he is!” She laughed and pointed. “Wait! There are two! A mama and a daddy squirrel!”
“You’re right, there are two of them!” Though it had obviously done the trick when it came to distracting her, he hoped that he hadn’t chosen a game that would slow them down too much. “I’ll bet there are more ahead. We don’t want to watch them for too long, because it will make them really scared.”
“We don’t want to scare them,” she agreed.
She started walking again and increased to a trot ahead of him on the trail. When she got to a rise, she waited for him and looked at him with those intelligent blue-green eyes that were so much like his.
Damn it! How can I possibly kill her now?
Chapter Five
Special Agent Zack Donovan couldn’t sleep. Actually, he didn’t plan on sleeping. Not now, anyway. Mary’s sister Grace had gone home hours ago and he and Mary had talked a little more until he suggested they should both get some sleep and continue the investigation in the morning.
“Why are you sleeping at my house?” she had asked. “To protect me? Or watch me?”
“Both, but also, to investigate. I can work from anywhere. I may as well be here where I can ask you things and get closer to finding Cassidy.”
“So, you are watching me. I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”
“You’re not, but there seems to be a small risk that you would go out and buy another gun and start shooting up the city and asking questions later. Or maybe just the first thing. I’m more than just your babysitter. I’m an investigator. You hold things in your head that I am going to pry out of you to help find your daughter. I will also keep you from going on a shooting rampage.”
She had seemed satisfied with that answer. “Come on, now. In all my life, I’ve never done anything like that.”
“You threatened to go get another gun and find the perp on your own, so I am your keeper, for now.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Only because I wouldn�
�t know where to go, though.”
“People do strange things when their children are kidnapped. Believe me, I have seen the toll it takes on the parents. They do snap sometimes. Divorce, suicide. Assault on suspects, each other, and even on innocent people. Blowing surveillance for us. You name it.”
“I wouldn’t do any of that.”
“Good to know, but I’m not leaving, Mary Gordon.”
“I thought you might say that.” She had sighed. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thank you, Mary,” he said.
She’d gone off to her room to cry herself to sleep. He let her.
Well, it was very early morning and her sniffling had died down. Three a.m. to be exact.
Zack was on Mary Gordon’s couch with a blanket and pillow, eight feet from her half-open doorway that led into her darkened bedroom. He was actually waiting for her to fall asleep so he could leave the house.
Finally, all was still in her bedroom, and when he peered through the darkness, he could see a lumpy shape in her bed that looked like a slender woman sleeping. He didn’t hear snoring, but maybe she didn’t snore.
Now, it was time for him to get something done. Something he didn’t have permission to do. Something he could lose his job over.
Zack listened carefully and didn’t hear a sound in the house except for the ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantel. It was then that he got off the couch and shucked his suit and tie. He stood in the cool, dark living room in his black boxer briefs and unzipped his overnight bag.
He took out his black sweat suit and black knit watch cap and put them on as quietly as possible.
He heard the floor creak.
“Mary?” he whispered, reaching for his holster on the couch where he had put it while he changed clothes.
“Yeah, don’t shoot me,” she whispered.
“Where are you?”
“Right next to you.”
“Why can’t I see you?”
“I’m dressed in black, too. I saw what you were doing so I smeared black eyeshadow on my face. Where are we going?”
He turned on the living room lamp on the end table. She was wearing black exercise clothes, a black ski hat with her hair tucked in it, and a black down vest. Her face was smeared with black makeup.
“We are not going anywhere. I am going next door into the foreclosed house.”
“I thought you were waiting for a search warrant. And a key from the bank.”
“I don’t need any stinking key.”
“Wow, you’re breaking in?” She whistled low. “This is so cool!”
“Keep that on the QT. Burglary isn’t really what I usually do, but this is an emergency.”
“I won’t tell, but believe me, that house has been empty. Why are you doing this? Do you really think that rapist was next door, watching me? Watching my daughter?”
“Yes. Or I wouldn’t be breaking in.”
Mary shuddered. “What will your superiors say?”
“Calder is not my boss. I am above him and he’s a dweeb. He always lets paperwork slide until Monday. I checked. He hadn’t even filed the request yet for the search warrant. I need to get in that house tonight, Mary.”
“Oh, my God,” Mary said. “What makes you think he was there?”
“Everything. Think about this. He messed with your clothes dryer so you would have to go outside with Cassidy and use the clothesline the next time you had wet laundry and found out that your dryer wasn’t working. He would have to be watching you from somewhere, right? And then he would get his car ready and run out into the back alley and throw a snake over your wall.”
“You’re right. This gets more and more bizarre. What did you say about the dryer? That he sabotaged it?”
“Yes. He took the thermal fuse out of your dryer. I checked. It’s missing.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Nope. Not kidding. I’m so anal that no other special agents want to be my partner.”
Mary raised her eyebrows. “They should thank you for being so thorough.”
“You’d think,” he said.
“How do you know about dryers? The parts, I mean?”
“I am well-acquainted with all things electric and electronic. Back in the day, when I first started with the FBI, fresh out of the military, I defused bombs.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I guess I’m kind of annoying to others because I check out every possible lead—a lot of the non-obvious things that I check out and see through to the end are often false clues, though.”
“But you do solve crimes, right?”
“Sure. I’m really good at it, too. But I have to sift through a lot of chaff to find the wheat. It was just a hunch about the dryer, but it played out. Most times, I check clues and they turn out to be red herrings. You know, false leads.”
“So,” Mary said slowly, “he was in my house and he found out I sleep with my daughter and a gun in arm’s reach. And so, he disabled my dryer, probably while I was out shopping or something, so I would have to use the clothesline, right?”
“Yes. He wanted you away from your gun when he snatched Cassidy.”
Mary said, “And then, he threw a defanged rattlesnake over the wall and while I was busy saving my daughter from it, he used bolt cutters to snap the padlock on my gate and snatch my daughter.”
“Pretty much. But since your padlock was on the inside of the gate, right…”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Mary, so that meant he had to pre-plan cutting the padlock off and making it look like it was still secured.”
“Oh, God. He’s been in and out of my house a lot. And in my yard.”
“He made himself at home, all right, getting a drink of water from a paper cup in your bathroom. He probably used your bathroom, too, and looked through your medicine cabinet, etc.”
Mary shuddered. “I feel so violated.”
“You must lock your gun away when you leave your house, right?”
“Yeah, I usually do and I have a trigger lock so no one can break into my house and use my own gun against me. I have a concealed carry permit, but I also have a gun safe in the floor of the master bedroom closet, under a wire rack that holds my shoes. There’s a little scatter rug over the floor safe.”
“Okay, our other agents did not find that gun safe.”
Mary smiled. “That’s because you didn’t go in my bedroom and look.” She raised her eyebrows. “I’m coming next door with you to watch you break into that house.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Please, Zack? I need to know if he was watching me all this time. Watching my daughter.”
“He was. I just need to see it for myself, and try to pick up more clues. If he was there, maybe he left something behind. Something we can use to locate him.”
“Would he do that?”
“Oh, yeah. He wants to be caught. Subconsciously, he wants it to happen.”
“Are you sure, Zack?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He left the paper cup behind with his DNA. He’s smart enough to know better. This is an intricately plotted kidnapping. Not random. He likely knew what he was doing when he left that paper cup in your bathroom wastebasket.”
“So, it’s not a random kidnapping. Why does he want my daughter?”
“That’s what I need to figure out.” He paused. “You really want to come with?”
“Yes.” Mary hyperventilated a bit.
“Stop doing that. There can’t be any hysterics or crying. We’re going to go in, look around, and get out. Otherwise, you can stay here and cry by yourself.”
“Okay. No crying. Deal,” she said and offered her trembling hand. They shook hands somberly. He squeezed her hand gently before he let it go.
“Leave your phone at home. I’m leaving mine, too. I don’t want the FBI knowing I went next door, or you either.”
“Of course. They can track my phone, too.�
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“Count on it. There’s now software on your phone that sends your location every so often unless you shut it off.”
“I figured. Good to know.”
“So, Mary, when we get in there, you have to stay beside me. You can’t walk around by yourself. I don’t want to shoot you by accident if I see your reflection in a mirror or your shadow or something.”
“Eek. Okay.”
“If I can’t locate an open window, I’m going to pick the lock. Then, after I get us in the house, you’re going to stay on my left. So I can keep track of you and protect you if necessary, I am going to hold your right hand in my left one and have my own right hand free in case I need my gun. If I tell you to get down, immediately let go of my hand, squat down and stay down until I tell you to get up. Even if there’s shooting.”
She gulped.
“Scared?”
“Yeah, even though I know he isn’t there now.”
“Still with me?”
“Yeah, I’m not sitting in this house by myself while you go next door. I am curious as all get out about what’s in that house.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Got some gloves?” he suggested.
“Sure,” she said.
“Put them on. You don’t want to leave fingerprints anywhere over there.”
“Gotcha.”
He put his gloves on, too, thin, flexible ones that let him handle his gun.
“If we find something in the house, do you have to tell the FBI you broke in?”
“No, Mary,” he said patiently. “More than likely, I will not document what I find. But whatever it is, I will use it to find your daughter.”
“Thank you for risking your career to break in, to help find Cassidy before it’s too late.”
“Her life is a priority. You may see me break a couple of rules in the next day or so. Keep it all under your hat. Her life depends on what I secretly call ‘the unfettered investigation.’”
Her mouth made a big O as he took her right hand in his left and said, “Remember, for your own safety, always stay to my left. Don’t let go of my hand unless I drop it or tell you to get down.”
