by Kyle Mills
He wasn’t there.
Jennifer could feel her heart rate slowly increasing. After a few more seconds, she could almost hear it. The blood began to push through to her limbs, clearing away the lethargy that had overwhelmed her as she’d slowly lost hope.
The meaningless drone coming from Sara stopped short when Jennifer turned back to face the woman.
Closing her mouth was probably the only thing that saved Sara’s front teeth.
None of the elaborate fantasies Jennifer had constructed over the last week could compare to thee feeling of her fist connecting with the face that had tormented her and twisted everything in her life around. The face that had caused her father to go crazy and her mother to die. The face that she saw in the dark when she bolted awake at night.
Sara’s hand fell from her hair and she watched the woman stumble backward, finally falling hard in the middle of the room. She was on all fours trying to get back to her feet when Jennifer reached her at as full a run as the short distance between them would allow.
Sara tried to cry out, but it was strangled in her throat when she was nearly lifted off the ground by Jennifer’s bare foot.
A second kick, aimed at her head, glanced off her jaw.
Jennifer started to line up for another blow, feeling an indescribable sense of release as the burning in her stomach and the shaking in her limbs stopped. She wanted to kill this woman. She’d never wanted to hurt anyone before in her life, but now all she wanted was to feel this woman’s skull cave in beneath her foot.
There wasn’t time, though.
Instead of continuing the attack, Jennifer forced herself to use the momentum in her leg to jump over the woman and run from the room, slamming the door behind her and hoping desperately that it locked. Or, better yet, that she’d done too much damage for Sara to get up.
Which way?
To her left, the hall seemed to get darker, to her right, brighter. She picked right and began sprinting down the corridor, hoping the light was coming from the sun. She had to get out.
When the hall came to a T, she had to make another decision. Come on, Jennifer, she thought. This is your chance. Don’t go off half-cocked. What are you going to do?
The possibility of her walking out of there was most likely less than zero, she realized. She had no idea where she was, it was the dead of winter, and she was in her underwear. A phone. She had to find a phone.
She moved as quietly as she could to the first door she saw, trying to get control of her breathing before someone heard her. It was a bathroom. She ducked back out of it and padded down the hall to the next door.
An office.
She went in and closed the door quietly behind her. The phone was on an antique desk, neatly stacked with official-looking papers. She picked it up and dialed 911.
A recording started, prompting her to stay on the line.
“No,” she said quietly, hanging up the phone. She could already hear people in the hall.
She tried her boyfriend’s number. He had an answering machine—so even if no one was home, she could tell him enough for the police to find her.
A voice over the phone told her that she had to dial a one to reach that number.
The noises in the hall were getting louder as she depressed the hang-up button on the phone and redialed Jamie’s number as a long-distance call.
“Please enter your access code,” came a mechanical-sounding voice.
“Oh, God, please, no.” Tears began to run down her face as she punched in numbers at random.
“I don’t recognize that code. Please reenter it now.”
She depressed the hang-up button again, finding it impossible to catch her breath. The sounds in the hall were close now, clearly audible over her own panting.
She looked out the window. The brightness in the hall had been artificial—it was dark outside and she could hear the quiet whine of the wind. She leaned closer to the glass, reducing the glare, and saw that there was nothing out there, only low snow-covered hills and a pine forest in the distance. She’d freeze for sure. Probably in only a few minutes.
Jennifer looked over her shoulder at the closed door behind her and then back at the window. She couldn’t go back to that room. She couldn’t.
She was about to replace the handset and unlock the window when one last idea came to her. She crossed her fingers for a moment and then dialed another number, trying to ignore the increasing commotion outside.
It started to ring and was almost immediately picked up by a recording.
“Thank you for calling the Colorado Cyclist. If you have a touch tone phone, press one for sales, catalog requests, or product registration …”
It was the only eight hundred number she knew by heart. There was an access code for long distance, but why would there be one for toll-free calls? She pressed the key for the sales department just as the door flew open.
Holding the phone with both hands, she backed against the wall and screamed as the Mustache Man ran at her. When he got hold of her, she let her knees go limp and sank to the ground, protecting the phone with her body. He tried to reach around her and pry it from her hand, but there was no way for him to get a grip.
She felt his weight come off her for a moment and she twisted around, trying to grab him as he went for the cord.
It was too late. She saw the wire ripped from the wall and heard the connection go dead, but couldn’t bring herself to release the phone. It had been her only hope.
She struggled violently as he pulled her arms out from under her and pinned them behind her back, knowing that it was her last chance to fight before they threw her back into that empty room.
Jennifer heard the uneven clatter of running footsteps and craned her neck to try to see the person approaching, but she knew who it was. A splatter of blood hit the carpet in front of her as Sara dropped to her knees and swung a dawlike hand at her face. Jennifer braced for the blow, but the man holding her caught Sara’s hand before it connected.
“Sara, stop! She can’t be marked,” Jennifer heard him say.
Sara’s breath was coming in short gasps as she pulled away from the man and raised her hand again.
“Sara!”
Reason began to creep back into her eyes and she reached down and dug her fingers into Jennifer’s cheeks, pulling her head up farther. “You don’t ever touch me! Ever!”
Jennifer jerked her head to the left and got her teeth around Sara’s thumb. She felt the warm blood starting to flow into her mouth and heard Sara scream before everything went black.
54
“TURN HERE,” BEAMON SAID, LEANING OVER the front seat and pointing out the windshield.
“It’d be a lot faster to go up a couple of blocks. Your way would take us through a neighborhood.”
“It’s my dime.”
The cab driver apparently saw that as sound reasoning and swung the cab right. He slowed to under twenty-five miles an hour as the commercial area they had been driving through gave way to a quiet neighborhood of small, well-kept homes.
Beamon twisted around in his seat and stared out the back window. Other than the occasional middle- aged man turning his snowblower for another pass at his driveway, the street was pretty much deserted. Not that he really thought he was being followed. What would be the point? The church knew where he was going. Of course, they would do everything they could to reacquire him when he left the restaurant, but better to worry about that later.
When his cell phone started ringing, he sank back into the seat and dug it out of his pocket. “Hello?”
“Mark! It’s me!”
Ernie’s voice. She sounded like she’d shaken off the depression that had gripped her since Goldman’s death.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some good news for me. Tell me I’m right.”
“You’re right! In fact, not only do I have good news, but I have good news and better news. Which do you want first?”
“Give me the go
od.”
“The eight hundred number rang today.”
“You’re kidding,” Beamon said, jolting upright in the seat. He had pretty much agreed with Goldman that the chances of her software-update scheme working were about the same as G. Gordon Liddy voting Democrat. “What did they say?”
“They wanted to confirm that there were no problems with the actual encryption.”
“I trust you were very reassuring.”
“Very. They’re loading tonight!”
Beamon pumped a fist in the air, startling the cab driver, who had been looking in the rearview mirror. “That’s gonna be hard to beat, Ernie. What’s the better news?”
“I’ve got a recording of a call that went out from Albert’s compound. I think you’ll be interested. Let me try to patch it through.”
There was some clicking on the line, and then a woman’s voice announcing that he had reached the Colorado Cyclist and had some options. A tone sounded, then there was a loud crash, a scream that sounded like it came from a young girl, and an abrupt end to the call.
Beamon sat silently for a moment listening to his heartbeat. “That had to be her, Ernie. It had to be.”
“I read in the papers that Jennifer was a mountain bike racer. I called the Colorado Cyclist. They sell mountain bike accessories.”
“Fifty bucks says that if I hadn’t left all the files on this case in my condo, I could find all kinds of charges from that place on Jennifer’s credit card.”
“I don’t think I’d take that bet,” Ernie said excitedly.
“One thing bothers me, though.”
“Why would she call them?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking about that and I’m pretty sure I have an answer. If that is her, we know they’re holding her at the compound, right?”
“Right.” Beamon saw that they were only a few blocks from the restaurant. He put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and told the driver to circle the block.
“The compound is a long-distance call from where Jennifer lived,” Ernie continued.
“So?”
“The place I used to work at had a phone system that made you dial a code before you could call long distance—that way they knew if you were charging personal calls to the company. What if the church has a similar system?”
“So she called an eight hundred number,” Beamon said. “Clever girl. But why not just call nine- one-one?”
“I tried. Kept getting a recording. When I called the Colorado Cyclist, though, they got right on the line.”
It made sense. She somehow got past Sara and her lackeys and made it to a phone. She’d have limited time before they found her. She’d try 911 first and get a recording. She’d probably call a family friend next—maybe that iady with the beehive. But she’d find out that she needed a code. Then it would occur to her that she probably wouldn’t need one for an eight hundred number and she’d call the only one she could remember. Or if she knew a few, the one that had the fastest patch through to a human.
“It’s like I told you, Mark. God is on our side.”
“If that’s true, I hope He comes up with something a little better.”
“What? Better than this?”
“I already assumed that Jennifer was being held at the compound, Ernie. I just didn’t know what to do with the information. If the call was more concrete, I’d send it to someone I trust at the Bureau.” He paused for a moment, trying to think if there was anyone anymore. “But as it is, they’d never get a warrant—even if they bought into the theory.”
Beamon tapped the driver on the shoulder and waved his hand in the general direction of the restaurant.
“Then this is all for nothing,” Ernie said, sounding a little dejected again
“Hell no, Ernie! Things are starting to go our way. Shit, God’s probably just warming up.”
“Do you think so?”
“Sure. It’s been my experience that investigations are all about momentum, and we’re finally starting to get some. The only problem is, we don’t have much time to let it build.”
“Were you able to play the audio I sent you?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“It was something, that’s for sure. We’ll know if it’s gonna do us any good within the hour.”
“I listened to it. I can’t believe the godless whores we’ve chosen to run this country.”
“Who’d you think ran it?” Beamon said as the cab eased to a stop in front of the brightly lit façade of Antonio’s Italian Ristorante.
“Look, I gotta go, Ernie,” Beamon said, digging in his pocket for the quickly thinning envelope of cash. “Great work, hon. We’re gonna win this thing. Don’t worry.”
“How are you, sir,” the host said, holding a hand out for Beamon’s coat. “Do you have a reservation?”
“I’m meeting someone. Last name’s Renslier.”
He ran his finger down the book in front of him for a moment. “Ms. Renslier arrived a few minutes ago. If you’ll wait for just one moment, I’ll take you to her table.”
Beamon watched him as he opened a closet and picked out a hanger for the red parka that had been serving him so well. “There aren’t any private parties or anything going on tonight, are there?”
The host looked a bit confused. “Private parties?”
Beamon knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t help himself. “Yeah. Like, no one called and rented the whole place out for tonight, did they?”
“No, not tonight. We do parties like that occasionally. We also have private rooms available. Make sure you give us a call at least a week ahead of time if you want one, though.”
Despite the host’s assurances, Beamon couldn’t help studying the faces of the diners as he weaved through them on the way to the back of the restaurant.
There were definitely Kneissians there. The annoying, fresh-scrubbed optimism that oozed from every pore all over their well-coordinated outfits gave them away. Most were couples, though, and many had tediously well-behaved children with them.
Beamon nodded his thanks to the host and slid into the booth across from Sara Renslier and a man he’d never seen before. The scar emanating from his mustache was exactly as Ernie had described it, though. Beamon reached across the table. “Greg Sines, isn’t it? I don’t think we’ve met.”
The man’s eyes bored into him as he put a death grip on Beamon’s hand. He’d seen that look more than a few times before. It said, “One day I’m going to tear your heart out with whatever blunt instrument happens to be handy.” With few exceptions, every man who had ever looked at him that way was either dead or in jail. Hopefully that record would continue with this asshole.
Sines tucked some kind of hand-held device—probably a rig that checked for wires—into his pocket and left without a word. Beamon looked around him and, confirming that he was in the smoking section, lit a cigarette. “Nice to see you again, Sara.”
She looked different. The light in this part of the restaurant was set at a level more conducive to mood than discerning detail, but the heavy makeup was an obvious departure from the look required of Kneiss’s minions. The other thing, less apparent and possibly a trick of shadow, was the slightly lopsided look to her face.
“Hurt your hand?” Beamon said, leaning a bit to the side to get a better angle on the line of her jaw. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she had been punched in the mouth.
Sara looked down at the new white bandage wound around her thumb. “An accident.”
Beamon tried unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. Now he knew how Jennifer had made it to the phone. He really had to meet that girl one day.
“So, Sara,” he said, letting cigarette smoke roll from his mouth as he spoke. “What do we talk about?”
“We could start with the fact that we both have something the other wants.”
Beamon was surprised at her directness. “I know what I have that you want, but what do
you have to give me?”
“Your life back.”
He’d hoped for a different answer. “My life?”
She nodded and took a piece of bread from the basket on the table. “I’ve heard rumors that the molestation allegations against you may be false, and I could probably find proof of that if I were to put some of my people to work on it. I also may have access to information regarding your credit and some friends at the IRS who could be helpful to you.”
“And my job?”
She took a small bite of the bread, more as a nervous gesture than from hunger. “Of course that’s in the FBI’s hands now. I do have friends who might be able to help. Friends who have some weight.”
Beamon nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I would also be happy to make a donation to your legal defense fund—you may need attorneys, and they can be expensive. Of course, if you were to simply choose to take early retirement, whatever was left in that fund would be yours.”
He couldn’t resist. “How much are we talking about?”
“What do you think you would need to mount an adequate defense?”
“Uh, five million,” he said, pulling a number out of the air.
To his surprise, nothing at all registered on her face. “I think that sounds reasonable.”
Beamon leaned back in his chair and waved down a waiter. “Jim Beam on the rocks, please.” He pointed to Sara, but she just shook her head.
He had to admit, the woman knew how to put a tempting offer on the table. Of course, it would take him a while to adjust to retirement, but he figured he could get used to being a wealthy man of leisure. And with his reputation dusted off a bit, Carrie would probably be back in the picture. Maybe he could try his hand at being a househusband/full- time stepfather? Learn to bake.
Nah.
“I want the girl.”
“The girl?” Sara looked mildly amused. “Oh, yes. Jennifer Davis. The girl you think Albert for some reason kidnapped and is holding in his dungeon.”
“Kneiss is dead.”
