by David Wood
“I’ll walk you there.” The young man offered his hand. “Tariq.”
“Kaylin.” He had a strong grip, but his hand was surprisingly soft. “I appreciate it, but I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble because of me.”
“It’s all good. Which way’s your ride?” He stayed right beside her, shielding her from the view of passing vehicles. As they walked, he told her a little bit about himself. He was a high school senior and hoped to attend Citadel next year. She told him that she was a Navy brat, which elicited a nod of approval.
As they neared the spot where she’d left her car, she looked down the street and gasped. The carriage was stopped on the side of the road, and someone was pushing Andy into a waiting vehicle. Another man, tall, barrel-chested, with short, ash-blond hair was talking to the carriage driver, who turned and looked back down the street, spotted her, and pointed. The man turned, his blue eyes locked on her, and he started in her direction.
They want to take me too! Her heart pounded and she nearly stumbled.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Tariq pushed her behind him and made a beeline for the man. “Get in your car and go.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt because of me. Just run.” She couldn’t believe this was happening, and she certainly hated that she’d gotten an innocent young man caught up in it.
“Just get in your car, alright? I got this.”
Kaylin fished her keys from her purse with trembling fingers and struggled to unlock the driver’s side door.
“Hey, lady! I need to talk to you!” The unfamiliar voice must have belonged to the man who was coming after her.
“Yo man, what’s up?” Tariq stepped in front of the larger man as Kaylin pulled the door open and slid inside.
“Get out of my way.”
“I said, what’s up?” Tariq gave the man a hard shove, but he barely budged. Kaylin slammed and locked the door, and promptly dropped the keys. Spewing curses, she retrieved them and started the car. Outside, Tariq was grappling with her would-be abductor. Horns blared as she gunned the engine and backed blindly out into the street. The man broke loose from Tariq, shoved him away, and ran toward her car.
She spun the wheel, did a donut in the middle of the street, and floored it, heading the wrong way back up Church Street. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she saw the man quickly give up the chase, and run back to the vehicle in which they’d put Andy. She wondered why the driver had not given pursuit, but then she saw bodies twisting and jerking inside the car. Andy was trying to fight them so she could get away.
Her inattention almost cost her. She returned her attention to the road in time to see a van blowing through the yellow light, coming right at her. She yanked the wheel hard to the right, going up on the sidewalk as the van shot past her, the stunned driver staring at her as he whizzed past.
Back on the road, she took another look behind her and saw the man who had come after her reach the car, draw a gun, and point it through the window.
She lost sight of the vehicle as she turned back onto Market Street. She gunned the accelerator, flew past the Powder Magazine, and blew the red light as she turned onto Meeting Street, skidding through the intersection, and barely missing a taxi cab, which swerved and took out a garbage can on the corner. She hoped no one got her tag number, but an appearance in traffic court was small potatoes compared to kidnapping.
By the time she turned onto Broad Street, she finally dared to hope she was not being followed. She prayed Andy was alive, and that the man had drawn the gun only to get him to stop fighting. Her eyes clouded with tears as she thought of the gentle professor fighting for his life.
She finally breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled into the parking lot of the Charleston Police Department Administrative Building. She knew someone there she could trust, and hopefully he could help her, Andy, and Thomas.
Chapter 3
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Captain Ray Gerard tapped his square chin with the envelope Andy had given to Kaylin. A friend of her father, Hartford Maxwell, during their Navy days, he had remained close to Kaylin after her father's passing. “Your boyfriend is overdue returning from the Amazon and you think he's in trouble.” Kaylin nodded. “But the only evidence you have is this.” He held up the manila envelope.
“I know it sounds crazy, but putting that aside for the moment, Andy was definitely kidnapped. I watched it happen.” She winced at the fresh memory and thought of the gun the man had drawn. “He might even be dead.”
“Yes, about that.” Gerard looked down at his desk, perhaps not wanting to meet her eye. “We can't file a missing person report just yet. Andy hasn't been gone long enough. What I did do was put out an alert, giving the description of the vehicle and the passengers. Hopefully something will turn up."
Kaylin knew the odds were slim. She had been so surprised by the entire incident that she had not gotten a good look at the car. The best she had been able to tell the police was that it was a silver sedan as if there weren't thousands of those out on the road. She had been able to give a fair description of one of the men, the one whom Tariq had confronted, but not the driver.
“I don't know what to do now. I don't feel safe going home, but I also wonder if I'm being foolish. This all really has nothing to do with me, except for the fact that I’m dating Thomas. But I don’t know anything about his expedition.”
“Well, if this thing,” Gerard taped the envelope, “is of any significance, and I don't see how it could be, the people who've kidnapped your friend might come after you if they find out if you've got it.”
“But I no longer have it. That was the whole point of turning it over to you.”
“Even if they find out you’ve given it to me, they’ll figure you at least looked at it. They might want to make you describe it to them, or to stop you from telling anyone else about it. Either way, you could be in danger. Do you have anywhere you can go? Is there anyone you can stay with for a couple of days?”
Kaylin sighed. “I'll get a hotel for tonight, and then maybe I can stay with friends. But what about Thomas? Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“If your friend Andy is right, and Thomas didn’t follow his planned path, I don't see that there’s much anyone can do, short of going down to South America and asking around. But even that would probably be a waste of time, especially since we don't even know for certain where he started his expedition.”
“But there’s got to be some way you can help!” Kaylin realized she was grasping at straws, but the thought of Thomas being in trouble and her doing nothing to help was more than she could bear.
“Kaylin, I want to help you, I really do, but we're just a local police department. We don't have any international connections, and even if we did, what would I tell them? A professor is missing in the Amazon? That happens all the time. What if they were to ask me for his itinerary, and I tell them we don't think he followed it, but we have this here clue...” Once again, he held up the envelope and gave Kaylin a meaningful look.
“I understand.” She wished she could keep the disappointment from her voice. Gerard was a good man, and she knew he would do what he could. Unfortunately, in this situation, what he could do was not much. “I suppose I'll try the dean of his college, and maybe my congressman's office. I have to do something.” She rose from her chair, shook Gerard's hand, and thanked him for his help.
“I really wish I could do more for you, but my hands are tied. I will keep up the search for your friend Andy, though.”
She assured him that she understood, and gratefully accepted his offer of a police escort to a nearby hotel. He walked her out to the lobby and they made small talk for a few minutes, and she promised to drop by for dinner with him and his wife sometime soon. A young officer walked her out to her car and followed behind in his squad car. Her mind was abuzz with a swarm of confused thoughts and jumbled questions. What should she do next? Was Andy okay? Where was Thomas? And, perhaps most impor
tant, what should be her next move?
Jay Newman watched Gerard leave his office with the blonde and escort her down the hall. The moment they turned the corner, he looked around to make certain no one was watching. Certain he was in the clear, he hurried to Gerard’s office and tried the door. He was pleased to find it was unlocked, and he slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
A manila envelope lay on the desk. He had seen the girl carrying it when she entered the captain’s office. It must be the one to which the message had referred. Jay opened it and removed the single item it contained. He frowned. What was this and how could it be important? Not his problem. He laid it on his desk, snapped a couple of pictures with his iPhone, and slipped it back into the envelope.
Knowing time could be short, depending on how long Gerard took walking the girl out, he hurried back to the door. Easing it open, he peeked out and was relieved to find that the hallway remained empty. Closing the door behind him, it occurred to him that he should have just stepped out of the office acting normally, as if he’d simply been looking for the captain and had not found him in his office. All of this cloak and dagger was not for him. If he hadn’t needed the money, he would never have agreed to help these guys.
“Detective!” Gerard’s voice boomed down the hall. “Are you looking for me?”
Newman was proud of how calmly he turned around to face Gerard, who, despite nearing mandatory retirement, still could intimidate him with a mere glance. “Yes, Captain, I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help you with that young woman’s situation.”
Gerard fixed him with an appraising look, but then his stony features cracked into a smile. “Don’t bother with that one. She’s all broken up over her missing boyfriend.”
“You mean the guy that was kidnaped?” Newman’s heart raced. Perhaps he could glean some useful information from this conversation, which could mean more cash, and hopefully being shut of these guys sooner.
“No, a different fellow. Went on a university field trip and got himself lost.” Gerard smirked. “College man. We’d all be better off if everyone had a mandatory tour of duty in the service after high school. It made a world of difference for me.”
Newman had heard Gerard’s pontifications on mandatory service more times than he cared to remember. He thanked the captain, reiterated his offer of help, which elicited another smirk from Gerard, and returned to his cubicle.
He wasted no time in sending the photos to his contact number, and wasn’t surprised when he received a response less than a minute later.
CALL ME
This was not a conversation he could risk having overheard. He hurried to a small, single-head restroom near the break room and locked the door. Inside, he turned on the water and retreated to the stall before making his call.
“You sent the wrong attachment.” Not so much as a hello. “What the hell is this picture you sent me, anyway?” The voice belonged to the man who had first contacted him with the business proposition.
“No, really, that’s it. That was the only thing in the envelope.”
“The next two words out of your mouth had better be ‘April Fool’ or else my employers are going to be very unhappy with both of us.”
“I’m serious.” Newman forced himself to remain calm though his heart was racing. What kind of people had he gotten himself hooked up with? “That is what the girl turned over to my captain.”
“And you’re certain it was the right envelope?” Suspicion lay beneath every word. “If you’re messing with me, you won’t see one penny of the money. And that’s only if they take the news well. If they don’t…”
If I don’t get that money, certain other people are going to be after me, too. Either way, I’m toast, Newman thought. “I’m one hundred percent sure. I saw the girl take the envelope into the captain’s office.”
“Fine.” The caller gave an exasperated sigh. “What about the back? You didn’t send me a picture of the flip side.”
Newman froze. Had he even looked at the back? Surely he had taken a quick glance to see if anything was there. He must have looked at it, seen nothing, and just taken pictures of the front. In any case, he wasn’t going to tell this guy that he might have overlooked something that simple. No way was he going to make this fellow any angrier than he already was.
“The back was blank. What you’ve got right there is everything.” He held his breath, wondering what the reply would be, and what it might bode for his future well-being.
“All right, whatever. I don’t get why this thing is such a big deal, but that’s not for you and me to decide. We do need to make sure this is the real thing, and the girl didn’t pull some sort of switch on us. I’ll check her place. You find out if she might have decided to stay somewhere else.”
It was a good thing Newman was in the head because he felt like he was going to throw up. He’d agreed to provide information, not help track down and interrogate innocent women. He hoped the man had nothing in mind more serious than an interrogation. He swallowed hard. “I understand. Do you have her name?”
“Yeah, it’s Kaylin Maxwell.”
Thirty minutes and the walls were already closing in on Kaylin. She sipped a cup of hot tea, which was not bad for a complimentary hotel brand and tried to relax. It was lunchtime, but she had little appetite.
Her conversation with Thomas’s dean had been a waste of time. The man claimed to have no connections in South America but promised her he would “ask around.” The call to her congressman’s office was equally fruitless. She’d left a message with a skeptical-sounding aide, who asked that she email him with the details so he could look into it, whatever that meant.
Now that she was calm enough to reflect, she felt like a fool for panicking when the man had come after her, and letting a teenager fight her battle for her. What happened to the tough, self-reliant girl her father raised? She’d been in worse situations before. Since she and Thomas had become serious, she had allowed herself to get soft. Why, she didn’t even carry her .380 in her purse anymore. It was still in her glove compartment where it had lain for a couple of years now. What would her father think if he could see her right now, cowering in a hotel room, hoping other people would solve her problems for her?
No more of this. It was time to take action. She took out her phone and scrolled down to the D’s. There was the name, still there though the two of them hadn’t talked in… she didn’t know how long. What if he had changed his number? No, that wouldn’t be like him. Never mind. She’d call him later. Telling herself she was putting first things first, and not being chicken, she called her neighbor, Amber. Perhaps she could safely go home and get her laptop, clothes, and personal items.
Amber picked up on the first ring.
“Hi Amber, it’s Kay. Would you mind taking a peek over at my apartment and seeing if things are… all right?”
“Sure. Your key’s hanging right here. I’ll go check it out. Is everything all right?”
“No! I mean, I think things are okay, but no, you don’t have to go inside. Just take a look and see if things look… normal.” She was feeling a little foolish. What exactly did she want Amber to look for? Masked men hiding on the balcony? The door kicked in? “You know what? Don’t even worry about it.”
“It’s no problem. I’m already here. Besides, what are next-door neighbors for?”
“No, really. Forget about…”
Amber’s scream cut her off in mid-sentence. She heard the clatter of a phone falling to the ground.
“Amber!”
The call ended. She punched up the number again, but no answer. She tried again and, this time, it went straight to voicemail. That sealed it for her. She snatched up her purse, the only item she had with her, and headed for the door, calling 911 as she went. She gave the operator an abridged description of the phone call and the scream, making it sound like she and Amber had been on the phone when Amber screamed and the line went dead. She worried that the incid
ent she described would not seem serious enough to merit police attention, but the operator assured her they would check it out.
The elevator reached the first floor, the doors opened, and she hurried toward the side entrance nearest the spot where she had parked her car. As she passed the front desk, she heard someone say, “Kaylin Maxwell’s room, please.” She jerked her head around in surprise and caught a glimpse of a tall, lean man in a navy suit. Distracted, she bumped into an elderly man who was engrossed in a large print novel.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, hurrying away.
“Not at all,” he called to her. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
She glanced back to discover she had caught the attention of the man at the counter, who was now following after her.
“Ms. Maxwell!” he called. “Hold on a minute! Please!”
She banged through the door and hurried out to the parking lot, once again cursing her high heels and vowing to wear flats for the rest of her life. She was just slamming the car door when she heard the man call out to her.
“Wait! I’m with the police!”
She locked the door and turned to see him approaching, holding up his shield and identification. She let her shoulders sag and lowered the window an inch.
“I didn’t mean to freak you out.” He tucked his badge into his coat pocket. “I’m a detective. Can we talk?”
“First, you can send someone to my apartment. I think my neighbor is in trouble.”
“I know. I mean, I came to tell you not to go home.” He leaned down, putting his face inches from the window, and lowered his voice. “You’re in danger.”
Kaylin tensed. “How did you already know about my neighbor? I just called it in maybe two minutes ago.”
“I didn’t.” She was certain he was lying. The way his eyes shifted to the left as he spoke, his demeanor, even the sound of his voice set off alarms. “I just wanted to warn you about going home. If something has happened, then I guess I was right.”
