Strangers

by Crystal V. Rhodes

  The two best friends were inseparable. Brandon had told Sin that his son had been relentless in trying to get him to stop the coverage of the kidnapping so that Gillian could come home. The boy blamed the media for her having to stay away.

  “When all of this dies down you can come home,” Sin assured his daughter. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he didn’t know when that would be.

  “Okay,” was her plaintive reply.

  Sin sensed that she was aware that it might take some time. “I love you,” he replied.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Nedra’s sultry voice came to him from the other end of the line. Gillian had handed the telephone to her mother.

  “Hey, baby.” Sin warmed at the sound of her voice. “Our daughter sounds like a bird trapped in a gilded cage.

  “You can’t contain the wind,” Nedra said wisely, “but she’ll survive. Have you heard anything else about that poor man that was found beaten in that house?”

  Poor man? Sin didn’t address that one.

  “Nope, he’s still in intensive care. I called the local FBI office and nobody will tell me anymore about the guy they’re still questioning.”

  “So does that mean that he’s talking or not?”

  “It means that whatever happened, they’re not going to share it with me,” he said flatly. He planned on getting around that by calling some contacts that he knew. “How is everybody in Stillwaters taking the statement that Carla released?”

  Nedra sighed. “The aunts, uncles and cousins understand its importance, and are behind it. Aunt Ginny didn’t like the way that it was done. She collared Darnell, Thad and me, and said that she didn’t appreciate the secrecy and she knew that the whole thing was instigated by Darnell.”

  “I guess!” Sin snickered. “It had her fingerprints all over it.”

  His sister had done the research on missing children and had decided that minorities should be highlighted while the public’s attention was on the subject of kidnapping. She had brought the idea to the others. They had all agreed that the matter was an important one and should be revealed, even though the renewed attention could mean further delay in returning to their normal lives.

  “Was your aunt angry?” He knew that Ginny Little, the formidable leader of the Stillwaters clan, was one of the most even tempered people he knew; but even she could be pushed just so far.

  “She was hurt that she hadn’t been told until after the fact.”

  Sin could agree with that logic, but what was done was done. His main concern was the present.

  “I miss you, baby. Being away from you is killing me.” His need for her was consuming him. Not only did he need the comfort of her body but the strength of her presence. She was his rock.

  “I miss you too, love. You don’t know how much.” Her voice lowered to a mere whisper. “I ache for you.”

  Sin got the message. “In how many places?” he asked hotly, ready for some dirty talk.

  Nedra cleared her throat. “Your daughter is lying here in bed beside me right now.”

  “Great.” Sin drawled, trying to reel in his libido. He loved his daughter but— “Kick her to the curb.”

  “Shame on you,” Nedra snickered. “I’ll call you later and we can continue this conversation.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “It certainly is.”

  “All right, but we’ll be staying in L.A. another day to see if we can get a handle on whether that dude that we found is really one of the kidnappers. After that, I’ll be home. Tell our daughter not to get too comfortable because soon I’ll be the one lying in bed next to you.”

  “I can’t wait,” Nedra purred.

  Bidding her goodbye, he had to hang up before it became difficult to walk. Not only could he feel his nature rising, but he could feel his anger rising too. He wanted his old life back!

  His eldest son, Colin, had returned to Stanford and the media was still hounding him for an interview. Nobody knew when Trevor and Gillian could go back to school without a hassle. Nedra and he had been forced to run their businesses via Skype. As for his love life, it was being interfered with on all levels. Damn this to hell!

  He didn’t like it that his wife was expressing sympathy for the “poor” man who might have been responsible for all of this. If he was guilty, Sin had no sympathy for him. There was a time in his life that death would have been the man’s fate if he had gotten to him first. Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t for his wife’s influence where he would be.

  Nedra was his reason for living. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It was her goodness and her kindness that had made him a better man. She had chipped away at the hard shell that he had built around his heart as the result of being an orphan surviving alone on the streets. She had helped soften his heart in so many ways. Yet he still would have beaten Andy Vega to a pulp without a second thought if he had found that he was guilty of the kidnapping. As a matter of fact, he would kick the ass of that “person of interest” that they had in custody if given the chance.

  Yes, there was goodness and kindness in him that had been demonstrated in many ways. Still he couldn’t deny that there was a dark side to his personality and he had to work hard to suppress it.

  As he and Darnell had gotten to know each other better as brother and sister, he had found that this was one of the attributes they shared. Enemies had better beware. They took no prisoners. It made him wonder if the source of such a personality trait might have come from the parent they had in common.

  ****

  Hardman stirred, gradually slipping into consciousness. He had slept so long and hard that he was disoriented as he awakened.

  Swinging his legs around, he sat on the side of the bed until he could get his bearings. A glance at the clock showed that it was 6:00 in the evening. He had slept nearly an entire day.

  He flexed his knuckles. They were sore from the beating he had given Vega, but not bruised. He had used an old trick he learned long ago to get the information that he needed from the man, a sock filled with rocks. That and a little water torture had done the job. It was good to know that some of the old ways still worked. Vega had squealed like a pig.

  He turned on the television and watched the local and national news. The kidnapping was still a headline story. Other than the “person of interest” remaining in custody, there was no additional information from that end. What was new was a statement that had been issued by Darnell Cameron and Thad Stewart. After the anchorman repeated it, the broadcast cut to a story about missing children.

  As Hardman channel surfed, it seemed that nearly every TV news division was stumbling over itself to disprove the accusation that they racially discriminated when it came to missing persons.

  In the space of a few hours, reporters had scoured the country for missing minorities and were featuring them and their distraught families on air. The vignettes were familiar and tugged at the heart strings. They were also long overdue.

  Hardman was proud of Darnell and her husband. They were using their celebrity to try and make a difference. What an amazing young woman Darnell had turned out to be. No doubt she had gotten such compassion from her mother. It certainly had not been from him.

  He didn’t like to think about Darnell’s mother. It hurt too much. As for Sinclair’s mother, he still didn't have a handle on that one. His only clue was that Sinclair was older than Darnell, and he knew that she was in her thirties.

  The age difference meant that the liaison with Sinclair’s mother must have happened when Hardman was in his teens. The reality was, before Darnell’s mother there had been no woman in his life that he had loved. Whoever this woman was, she had to have been a temporary dalliance.

  He was snapped out of his musings by another news flash. A reporter was standing in front of an all too familiar house stating that a man had been found inside beaten nearly to death. The man was in intensive care, but the motive for the beating had not been determined. Robb
ery had not been ruled out

  Vega’s name, his age and place of employment were provided and that was it. Like countless others, he had been relegated to a few lines on the morning news. There was no mention of his being tied to the kidnapping and that omission put Hardman on alert.

  He had been surviving too long in the underbelly of society not to be able to read between the lines when it came to the law. The authorities were holding something back. Perhaps the “person of interest” that they had in custody had done some talking. If so, Hardman had better make his move so that he could get to the next prick before the cops picked him up.

  As he headed for the bathroom to shower, he felt no sense of urgency. If Vega lived, he doubted if he would ever speak again. Even if he could all, Vega could tell anyone was that a masked man beat the crap out of him until he told the names of all of the people involved in the kidnapping of the Stewart and Reasoner children.

  As for the “person of interest”, he was as guilty as hell. Hopefully, the law would take care of him. However, if that didn’t happen and the man was unlucky enough to get released, then Hardman planned on tracking him down and seeing to it that he paid for what he did with his life.

  As Hardman stepped into the steaming hot water, he felt exhilarated. It was good to know that years of self imposed exile had not dulled his skills. They had merely been laying dormant, waiting to rise again.

  CHAPTER 19

  “He was only fifty-eight years old,” James said sadly as he stood in the middle of Nathan Webb’s office. Ray stood beside him as James looked around the orderly space that had served as his partner’s second home. He couldn’t count the nights that he would look into this office and see Nate’s feet propped on his desk, while he read a report or did research for a case. That would be no more. His friend, his partner, his father figure was dead.

  “I’m sure he would have gone to a doctor if he had known that he had a heart defect.” Ray hoped his words were consoling, but he doubted if they could be. Nate’s death had left James devastated.

  From the moment James received the telephone call about his partner, he had been walking around in a daze. He couldn’t believe that the man who had helped get him off the streets, who had helped guide his life as a young man, who he admired more than any other was gone—suddenly and without any warning. How could it be?

  James had been called because his name and number had been found in Nate’s wallet as his next of kin. The officer had used Nate’s telephone to call him.

  Dana had gone with him to the morgue to identify Nate’s body. His friend’s death had resurrected all of the pain that James had felt when Regina and Pookie died. He hadn’t cried since they died, but he sat on a bench outside of the morgue and shed long forgotten tears. Dana had been beside him.

  It was she who called Ray. He met them at the hospital and escorted them back to the Come Right Inn. While James called to make arrangements to transport Nate’s body back east, Dana made arrangements to fly back with him and Ray decided that he would go too.

  He hadn’t known Nathan well, but he did know James, and he could see that he needed his support. He asked Bev, to accompany him. Sin flew back to Stillwaters to be with his family, and the unofficial effort to track down the abductors was put on temporary hold.

  That had been a week ago and the memorial service held yesterday for Nathan Webb had been simple and tasteful. Later today, James was scheduled to fly back to the West Coast with Dana, her sister and Ray. He had stopped by the Webb Starr office to pick up some files before leaving. Ray had volunteered to go with him.

  As they moved through the office, James shook his head as if to dispel the reality of Nate not being there. Walking over to one of the metal file cabinets labeled dead files, he opened a drawer.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you find what you’re looking for?” Ray moved deeper into the room and leaned against the edge of a large metal desk.

  “I just need some papers out of here,” James answered flipping through the files looking for the one that he needed.

  Finding it, he lifted the file from its place and was about to close the drawer when a sealed manila envelope behind the folder that he had pulled caught his attention. There was a large yellow post it attached which read: “Take to California”. Written under those words was the date that Nate had flown into LAX. Looking puzzled, James pulled the packet from the cabinet.

  “I wonder how that got back in there,” he said absently.

  “What?” Ray asked with disinterest as he glanced at his watch, anxious to leave so that they could meet Bev and Dana at the airport.

  “I think that Nate meant to take this with him.” James held the envelope up as he took the post it off of the name that it was obscuring.

  Ray became restless. “Hey man, we have to get going. It’s getting late.” He looked up to see James staring at him.

  “What?”

  James thrust the envelope that he was holding toward him. He pointed to the two words printed neatly across it.

  Ray read them and froze. The name written on the folder was his.

  ****

  The house in which Sin’s daughter and niece had been held was located in the middle of a foreclosed farm. He hadn’t appreciated how isolated the area was until he actually drove here.

  Fields that should have been lush with crops were brown and barren, providing an unhampered view of the surrounding landscape. It was easy to spot anyone approaching the house from all directions. It was a perfect setting in which to keep two kidnapped children.

  Sin walked around the boarded up house, fighting the urge to burn it to the ground. Starr had planned on coming here to see the place before his partner’s untimely death, and Sin was to come with him. Since that plan had been curtailed, he had decided to come alone.

  As luck would have it, an emergency at Sin’s office had forced him to leave Nedra and their children in Stillwaters sooner than expected and he had flown back to the Peninsula. While there, he had been determined to stay in his own home.

  Despite the weeks that had passed since the abduction, there was still a substantial media presence at the cul-de-sac entrance. Sin had donned a Webb Starr uniform under the guise of being one of their employees in order to get back and forth to his house undisturbed.

  Earlier today, after attending a meeting that had lasted way too long, he had shed his business attire, slipped into a pair of jeans and had driven way beyond the nearby city of Salinas to the infamous hostage house.

  Sin had not been satisfied by the still photos the authorities had shown his family of the place. His curiosity had not been satisfied. He wanted to see the place for himself.

  Time had not lessened the rage he still felt about the abduction. It consumed him. Nedra was satisfied that they had their daughter back and she wanted him to let the whole thing go. Sin knew that was impossible, not until justice was served.

  Under the guise of being an investigator from Webb Starr, Sin had followed up on calling the doctor whose name and number had been on the prescription bottle in Andy’s medicine cabinet. That had turned out to be a dead end. The doctor worked in a clinic, and all Sin got out of him was that Andy wasn’t a regular patient. The doctor didn’t know if anyone had ever accompanied him to his medical visits and he didn’t know anything else about him except that the prescription that he had written was for allergies.

  Since that was a bust, Sin was here today hoping that perhaps he could find something—anything—that would help with the case, although he doubted it. The place had been thoroughly examined and he was sure that not much had been missed. Still it didn’t hurt to try.

  The yellow tape that had been put around the crime scene weeks ago was still there, weathered worn and flapping in the occasional breeze. The front door was boarded and a pad lock had been attached. He assumed the same was true for the back door.

  Following the dirt path around the perimeter of the house, Sin could see that it had been w
ell traveled by many. Not only had the authorities walked this path, but so had the media, the paparazzi and a curious public. He was surprised there was no one else out here today.

  When he reached the back he found that although the door was boarded, it wasn’t padlocked. Sin shook his head. What was it with people leaving these backdoors so vulnerable? He studied the lock for a few seconds. It was a simple, singular cylinder. No problem.

  Returning to his car, he looked through the tools in his trunk, found the perfect one and a flashlight and then returned to the back door. It took a few minutes for him to pick the lock. In his youth he could have been inside in less than sixty seconds. He was rusty.

  Using the flashlight, he walked through the darkened house. As he wandered through the place, light streamed through slits and knotholes in the plywood boards on the windows aiding his progress.

  Stopping at the closet size room in which Gillian and Nia had been imprisoned only added fuel to the fire. As he took photos of the room and of the bathroom from which they had escaped, he was more determined than ever to see that everybody involved in the kidnapping was caught.

  ****

  James looked across the aisle at Ray who was looking out of the airplane window. He appeared to be staring into space. Bev Cameron Walker was asleep on her husband’s shoulder. She had been aware of her husband’s change in demeanor when he and James had met her at the airport. She had asked him what was wrong

  James knew that Ray hadn’t been truthful when he told her nothing. Whatever was bothering him had to do with the envelope that Ray had asked him to transport in his briefcase. It was obvious that he didn’t want Bev to see the envelope that had been found.

  It wasn’t difficult for James to conclude that what was inside contained was information gathered from an investigation that Nate had done for Ray. It had to be prior to the Webb Starr merger, because the file cabinet in which it was stashed contained Nate’s old cases. James hadn’t been privy to its contents. Finding the envelope had rattled his friend. He had been subdued since its discovery.