Watched Too Long: A Thriller (Val Ryker Series)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “Did he jack us?”

  “Naw. Uber is expensive, homeboy. That’s why Jay-Z takes a limousine. Limo is cheaper.”

  “Shoulda burned his Uber ass,” Jet Row said.

  “You guys payin’ your part or not?”

  “Dawg Del Ray will pay you when we get back with the shorty.”

  “He gonna be too pissed off about his Prius to pay me. Man, I got that Leia figurine for my Bar Mitzvah.” He sighed. “Rabbi Schlomo is gonna lecture me for like five hours, man.”

  “Do we even know where this place is?” Sha Nay Nay asked.

  “You got the map.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Sha Nay Nay consulted his phone. “Less than a mile away. We have to go southeast.”

  “Which direction is southeast?” Bön Dawg asked. “Anyone got a compass app?”

  No one did.

  “Well, which direction are we facing?”

  Sha Nay Nay pointed forward. “This direction.”

  “You kidding, right?” said Bön Dawg. “Because you are the stereotype for uneducated inner city youth.”

  “Well, you’re the stereotype for assholes.”

  “See? That was an uneducated thing to say.”

  “And that was an asshole thing to say. Asshole.”

  “You the asshole.”

  “Naw, you the asshole.”

  “Both y’all are assholes, now shut it,” Hackqueem said. “Gonna be dark in a few hours.”

  “Grab some branches,” Jet Row said. “We can make torches.”

  “No one is making torches. Sun goes down in the west, so southeast is this way. We’ll keep it on the down low ‘till we get there. ”

  “And then?” Bön Dawg asked.

  “And then it’s on, brother.”

  Val

  Val made progress. Not very much progress, but progress just the same. She stared at the Goodwill pile and the pair of culottes she’d last worn in junior high, the only item she managed to add.

  She’d worked so hard to get the smoke smell out of them after the fire Dixon Hess had started in the middle of her living room. Those were dark times. Horrible times. Tragic times. But in the end, she, Grace, and Lund had survived. Most of the police and fire departments had survived. The town had survived.

  Maybe she should keep the culottes as a testament to all they’d overcome.

  Maybe she couldn’t do this.

  Maybe she should be honest with Lund.

  Plucking the culottes from the pile, she made for the door. In the hallway, she could hear the video from downstairs. The music sounded lame enough to be in a cartoon, only instead of the voices of animated autos, Val heard groaning, moaning, and the occasional harder!

  Had Lund lost his mind?

  She raced down the stairs. “Lund!”

  He jolted upright on the loveseat, nearly dumping Harry Jr. onto the floor. “What? What is it? Fire?”

  Always a fire with him. Go fig.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “What are you watching?”

  Lund blinked and squinted at the TV. “Aw, what the hell?”

  “DVD,” Sam said, waving the remote in the air.

  He snatched it away and switched the television off. “Sam, did you put that movie in?”

  “They were naked.”

  Val pressed eject on the player, plucked out Harry’s DVD, and walked into the kitchen to toss it in the garbage. “Let’s not tell Jack about this one.”

  “Are you throwing that out?” Lund asked. “It didn’t look too bad.”

  And that’s when a brick crashed through the kitchen window.

  Hackqueem

  “That’s it?” Sha Nay Nay said. “That’s your plan? You cut the phone line and then chuck a rock through the window?”

  “We coulda at least set the rock on fire,” said Jet Row.

  “Shh. Stay down. Now we wait for them to come outside and see who threw it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we go inside and snatch the kid.”

  “Which kid?”

  “What?”

  Bön Dawg was staring at the house with some plastic night vision goggles he got at his Bar Mitzvah but hadn’t sold on eBay yet.

  “They got two shorties in there.”

  “Two?”

  “And they were watching porn. Some freaky shit.”

  Hackqueem took the goggles, yanking Bön Dawg’s head to the side because the strap was around his neck.

  “Easy, man!”

  “Lemme see.”

  There were, indeed, two children in the living room. Some cute little girl, and some ugly boy that looked a lot like a teddy bear.

  And the porn was off the hook. Hackqueem didn’t know the human body could do shit like that.

  “Are we grabbing the boy or the girl?” Hackqueem asked Jet Row.

  “Hell if I know.” Jet Row had gathered up a pile of pine needles.

  Hackqueem kicked the pile over. “Okay. We take them both. Jet Row, Sha Nay Nay, go around to the other side of the house. You grab the girl. Me and Bön Dawg are gonna snatch that Teddy Ruxpin-looking bastard.”

  “Teddy who?” Bön Dawg asked.

  “Didn’t you have a Teddy Ruxpin when you was a kid? Talking bear? Read you stories and shit?”

  “I had a Tickle Me Elmo. Used to scare the crap outta me. Little red dude be laughing like Satan got inside him, all shaking and giggling and going mental. Had nightmares ‘till I was fifteen, homes. Then my moms got the diabetes. Bad times. Why you gotta bring up bad times?”

  “Shh! Dude is coming outside. Damn. Big dude.”

  “He doesn’t look so big.”

  “Look at his arms, man. He’d break yo ass in two equal pieces.”

  “I could take him,” Hackqueem said. “Ain’t no thing.”

  “Who’s there?” said the big dude, shining a flashlight their way.

  “Dude is huge! Run!” Hackqueem ordered.

  And so they ran.

  Val

  Val had strapped on her Serpa holster with the Glock 17 inside. She kept it there; the children wouldn’t be able to pull it out, and neither could anyone else except her. That was the point of a Serpa holster.

  “Anything?” she said to Lund as he scanned the treeline with a Maglite.

  “I don’t see anything. Might have heard some talking. Hard to tell.”

  “Someone threw the brick, right?”

  “That would be my guess. Wind isn’t quite strong enough to lift a brick.”

  Sometimes Lund had a weird sense of humor.

  “I’m going to call it in,” Val said.

  She backtracked to the kitchen and found the children standing in the middle of the cardboard box jungle, holding hands.

  “It’s okay,” Val told them.

  “Dickhead went poo-poo,” Sam said.

  Harry Junior said, “Blabooga!”

  “He’s stupid and he smells,” Sam said.

  “I’m going to use the phone,” Val told them. “You guys stay right here.”

  She picked up the princess model in the kitchen, dialed the station.

  No sound came out of the receiver.

  Val tapped the hang up button, like they do in the movies whenever the phone doesn’t work. But it stayed dead.

  “Phone doesn’t work,” Val called to Lund.

  “Try your cell.”

  Val tugged it out.

  “No bars,” she told Lund as he came back into the house.

  She watched Lund dig into his own pocket and check.

  “Me, neither,” he said. “We’d better make sure the doors are locked.”

  Hackqueem

  He tripped on some sticks, and the cell phone jammer went flying. It should still work; the jammer blocked radio signals for about fifty yards. But if he lost it, he’d be in deep shit. Hackqueem squinted, trying to spot it in the dark. He didn’t want to turn on his flashlight because he didn’t want that bi
g white dude to see him and break him into two equal pieces.

  Del Ray was gonna be pissed. First the car, then the jammer. According to Del Ray, those things were damn expensive.

  Hackqueem wondered what punishment he’d have to face when they got back. Del Ray was pure psycho when it came to disciplining his men. And rumor was T-Nail—the general they’d busted out of prison—was even worse.

  Back when he was a new jack, Hackqueem had to brave the gauntlet. They called it a rum runner. Ten guys beating on you, and if you fell down you got kicked to death. He ended up in the ER and still had scars. It was used for gang initiation and for punishment. Hackqueem didn’t want to go through that shit again.

  But maybe he wouldn’t have to. This wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one who set the Prius on fire. Jet Row could take the heat for that screw-up.

  The thing to do, the thing that would salvage this mess, was to make sure they got the kid. Del Ray and T-Nail could forgive all the other stuff. But if they messed up grabbing the kid, all four of them would be dead. Nailed to the floor, or scalped, or minus some vital and much loved appendage.

  It made a brother contemplate the consequences of his life choices. Hackqueem hadn’t ever thought much about going legit, but at least with those white collar jobs you could leave without dismemberment, and maybe even get some kind of severance package. Stocks and pension and health benefits. If Hackqueem left the C-Notes, all he’d get is his ass beat. And he’d lose body parts. Try to crip walk with toes cut off. B-ball ain’t easy without all ten toes. He didn’t want to try a fadeaway jumper with both little piggies gone.

  He stayed low, moving fast, grateful for his toes, circling the house and coming around the other side. That’s when he saw a flickering orange light.

  “Ah, hells no.”

  He ran around to the front, saw the moving truck parked there, all lit up like a Christmas tree.

  A burning Christmas tree.

  And so he slapped himself in the forehead in disbelief.

  Jet Row

  “Take that, truck! I warned you not to play me!”

  And so the truck burned.

  Hackqueem

  He came up from behind the truck, and saw some kind of crazy-ass giant pry bar on the ground next to it. Made of silver metal, with a spike on the end. He picked it up, and it was heavy.

  Ahead of him, oblivious, was Jet Row, lighting matches. Hackqueem came up from behind and smacked him in the back of his head.

  “What the hell you doing, fool?”

  “Burnin’ it down, homey.”

  “Why you setting fire to a truck? How is that part of the plan?”

  Jet Row scowled. “Damn truck tried to play me, man.”

  “Tried to play you?”

  “Truck is all parked there, like, look at me, I’m a truck. What you gonna do, set me on fire? So I did.”

  “Now what you think gonna happen when the fire department comes, Einstein?”

  Jet Row’s eyes got wide, like he just saw Jesus. “Firemen come, we burn them up, dog.”

  He took out his lighter fluid and started to soak a brick.

  And so Hackqueem took off, putting distance between him and that crazy cracker fool.

  Val

  Val liked living in the country. She could keep the horses on her property. She had privacy, a rare thing for a public official in a small town. And ever since Old Man Meinholz had passed away and Lund had inherited the dairy farm next door, she hadn’t had any annoying neighbors to deal with.

  Unfortunately that last plus had just turned into a minus.

  “No one is going to see this fire,” Val said, stating the obvious. She, Lund, and the kids were peering out the living room windows that faced the road, light from the flames flickering across their faces.

  “Kasdorf might,” Lund said. “Not that he’d call for help or anything.”

  Val’s only remaining neighbor lived on the other side of a forested bluff, yet he seemed to notice everything around him. Unfortunately he also hated police and wouldn’t call 911 if his life depended on it.

  When they’d ducked back in the house, she and Lund had immediately doused all the lights and double checked the locks. As a cop, Val had always been mindful about security. And as a cop who’d been through all she had, she was downright paranoid. She was reasonably sure no one could get in the house without her knowledge, but she’d still rather have the cavalry on its way. Instead, they were on their own.

  But what were they facing?

  So far, a rock through the window and a flaming truck. This didn’t seem like the work of some criminal mastermind. Or even someone with a plan of any kind. This seemed like kids. Or maybe someone Val had arrested, who held a grudge.

  “You assessing the threat level?” Lund asked, as if reading her mind.

  “I’m pissed off, but not fearing for my life yet. No firearms. No attempt to do grievous bodily harm. So far, vandalism, and destruction of property. They could be here to taunt me. Could be random. Or it could be that gang McGlade told us about.”

  “What’s our move?”

  Val chewed her lower lip. “The truck isn’t going to blow up.” She was pretty sure things like that only happened in the movies.

  “Boom!” said Samantha.

  “Fibbababaa fritos!” said Junior.

  “Of course not. Gas vapors burn. If it gets hot enough, the tank will melt, the gas will ignite. But no explosion. And it was down to only a few gallons anyway. Not much wind, it’s far enough away from the house and barn. It should just burn itself out.”

  “Did you pay for the extra insurance?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t risk anything happening to my stein collection.”

  Yeah. That would have been a tragedy.

  “Anything else left inside?” Val asked. At least the destruction of some of Lund’s endless stuff might be an upside.

  “A few boxes of tools I was going to drop off at the station.”

  “Marshmawows?” Sam flashed a coercive little smile Lund’s way. “Mmm, marshmawows.”

  “Mabopppaa!” Junior agreed.

  “That’s a good idea, Sam. I love toasting marshmallows. Maybe later.”

  “When?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see, when?”

  “After we go upstairs,” Val said. “You three can watch a little television in my bedroom.”

  Lund crooked a brow. “Our bedroom?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “Figure out what’s going on.”

  “Alone? Not a chance. I’ll take care of it.”

  “This is not the time to be macho, Lund.”

  “Seems like a pretty good time to me.”

  “And the kids? Who is going to take care of them?”

  “You.”

  Val let out an exasperated breath and turned to Sam. “Would you rather watch TV with me or David?”

  “David! David!” said Sam.

  “Mar-boro!” said Junior.

  “Did Harry Junior just say Marlboro?” Lund asked.

  “If he did, he’s talking about you, and your affection for flannel shirts and Stetsons. So it’s unanimous.”

  “I don’t have a Stetson.” He pointed at Junior. “But you and I are going to have a talk about the dangers of smoking.”

  “Upstairs,” she said.

  Lund took Sam, leaving Val to deal with Harry Junior, Samantha was right about the little boy’s scent. His hand towel diaper sagged heavy under his belly. Holding him away from her body, she managed to get him upstairs without incident and settled the kids in front of the old tube television. While Lund tried to find a channel suitable for children out of the nine million available, Val unstrapped her Glock and Serpa holster and gave it to him.

  “You remember how to draw the weapon?” she asked.

  Lund looked at her, eyes crinkling. “Are you mansplaining something to me?”

  “W
hat?”

  “I read the term in Cosmo.”

  “Why the hell are you reading Cosmo?”

  “I picked up an issue about moving in with your boyfriend. Thanks to their handy tips, I made it painless for you. Don’t you think?”

  Val struggled to keep from rolling her eyes. “Just remember to press the button on the holster when drawing the weapon, And if you start telling me stories about the Kardashians, we’re done.”

  “Roger. But did you hear Kim and Kanye might be splittsville?”

  “Lund…”

  “Gotcha. No Cosmo.”

  Val ducked into her office and made for her gun safe. She punched in the combination—028469—and turned the wheel, reminding herself to tell Lund the number, so he could open it as needed. Inside, she kept two long guns, Grace’s Glock, and various ammunition.

  Val pulled out a Remington 870 tactical shotgun for herself and considered the shells. She put a bandolier of buckshot around her shoulder, but loaded the gun with non-lethal rounds Kasdorf made for her, something he called seasoners. They wouldn’t kill, or even maim, but they were a damn powerful deterrent. Val had used them to good effect with some visiting black bears who were more interested in the horses than she was comfortable with. The bears removed themselves from her property, in search of easier pickings. Hopefully, the shells would do the same for her current pests.

  She loaded the shotgun with seven shells, and put on a belt of ten more. Then she crept back downstairs, going into a state of hyper-alertness. Val moved easily through the darkness, weapon ready, knowing the layout of the rooms without thinking. This was her comfort zone. Not toddlers. Not relationships.

  Police work, she understood.

  Eight feet into the living room, Val took an angle on the sliding glass door. Knees bent, she stepped to the side, opening her field of vision bit by bit to the yard. Eventually, she could take in the entire yard, spotting whoever was outside before they spotted her. The sky was cloudy, cloaking the moon, but with the glow from the burning truck in the front yard and the darkness indoors, it seemed as bright as twilight.

  She took a step.

  Saw nothing.

  Took another step.