Before He Takes

by Blake Pierce

  “Think you’ve got it figured out?” he said. “Good for you. But you will never understand it. Never. The need to be loved. The need to be—”

  “On your knees,” she said.

  He obeyed her here as well. Slowly, with her gun still trained on him, Mackenzie reached into her inner coat pocket with her left hand. She pulled out her phone and quickly pulled up Ellington’s number. She called it but only got a series of clicks.

  She briefly eyed the display while doing her best to stay focused on Harry Givens. No service. There was only one little dot of signal and here in these woods, that seemed as good as totally empty. It was a wonder the text made it through.

  “Calling your partner?” Harry asked. “Are you frightened of me? Scared to try to take me in on your own?”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  Her eyes remained on Harry the entire time, the gun no more than six inches from his head. He started to shift his hand, and she barked:

  “On your knees! Turn around and raise your hands slowly where I can see them. In the air. NOW!”

  Her heart pounded as she watched the man she felt certain was the kidnapper. He slowly turned and did as she said.

  She reached back and pulled out her cuffs. She leaned over and slapped one end on one wrist, wrenching one arm behind his back.

  She then lowered her gun just a bit as she reached up to wrench the other wrist down.

  And that was her mistake.

  Suddenly, Harry Givens was moving. His right hand came slightly down and over in an arc. Mackenzie suddenly saw something shiny in his hand and that was enough cause for her to pull the trigger.

  She knew right away that her shot went high. He had moved too damned fast and her flinching had caused her aim to waver. Rather than hitting Harry high in the shoulder, she barely grazed him. She could actually see the fabric of the sweatshirt tear.

  With his free hand, he swung down, and she saw now that he had been hiding a small hammer up his sleeve. It slid down, its shaft fitting perfectly into the palm of his hand, and then he caught it and swung for her knee.

  Her knee exploded in pain. She screamed, buckled, and went to the floor. Her phone clattered beside her. She raised her gun, but before she could get her arm all the way up, Harry threw a knee onto her chest. The air went out of her with painful force as his hands found her wrists and tore the gun away from her.

  He was then kneeling over her, a leg to either side of her chest. She saw the hammer in his hand, and he was bringing it down again.

  This time, she was able to block the blow. His force was incredible, though. While she managed to block off the hammer, she still caught a forearm to the face.

  Then the hammer was coming down again. This time it caught her in the left side. She powered through the pain and threw an elbow up before he could raise his arm again. It caught him in the soft padding of his underarm but knocked him back just enough so that she could scramble out from beneath him.

  She tried getting to her feet but her left leg wouldn’t support her. She went to the floor and right away felt the hammer striking her again. This time it caught her in the back. She let out a shout as a flare of agony swept through her entire back. She felt something give, a twinge of sorts that felt like a pinch.

  A pins-and-needles sensation flared through her entire body. She let out a scream of pain that surprised her. For a terrifying moment, she worried that he had done some irreparable damage to her spine…that she’d try to fight back only to realize that she was paralyzed.

  Fortunately, she could still move. But slowly. So slowly that she was unable to avoid the next attack. This one was going for her head. She managed to move her neck just in time; rather than smashing into her forehead, the hammer bounced off of her temple. Pain exploded across her face and she started to see white flecks.

  She had no idea where her gun was.

  Mackenzie felt a cold, creeping dread wash over her. She had an awful rush of inevitability. She was helpless now, too wounded to fight back against this monster. If he didn’t kill her outright, things were about to get bad very quickly for her.

  With her world spinning, she reached out for the only thing she saw: her phone. She grabbed it with a shaking hand and began to type:

  Fowley’s nei

  She felt another blow of the hammer, and she involuntarily pressed the SEND button, delivering—she hoped—the portion of a text to Ellington.

  Harry stomped down on the phone. It shattered, a few pieces flicking Mackenzie in the face.

  She tried scrambling to her feet or at least away from him. Maybe she could get to her gun while he was distracted with beating the hell out of her. But it felt impossible to draw a breath. Her ribs ached, her back felt like it was going numb, and the right side of her face was a mess of pain. And just as she was able to register all of this, there was a new pain…one that seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Givens was grabbing her by the hair, jerking her to her feet. The pain was too unbearable to fight against it. She had to get to her feet to lessen the pain. Just as her scrambling feet found the floor, she felt herself shoved hard into the wall. The right side of her face caught the impact and this time, she couldn’t help it. She let out a cry of pain that she was ashamed of but shit…this was getting bad.

  She was dazed, dizzy, and knew that she could pass out at any moment. She felt him pulling her by the hair again and she did her best to fight against him. He swatted her hand away and pushed her again. It all happened so quickly that the world was a blur, her dizziness only making it worse. So when the push sent her sprawling forward without a wall to stop her, she was confused when she continued to fall.

  She fell hard on something wooden, something cold. Outside, she thought. He opened the door and pushed me outside.

  She reached out for the railing. He was there right away, grabbing her arm and twisting it. She was being pushed forward, unable to fall because his grip on her right arm was so tight. He was leading her through the snow, around the side of his house. The cold bit into her, not nearly as sharp as the world of pain that engulfed her body.

  The cold might be the best thing for me. Might keep me from passing out.

  As her dizziness continued to tilt the world, she saw the two sheds coming into view. In the world of tilted white, the sheds looked almost abstract.

  What the hell are you doing? she asked herself. Fight back. Get your shit together and fight back!

  She tried wrangling her right arm free but the mere motion of it sent a flare of terrible pain along her back. Something’s out of whack back there. Something bad…fighting back might not even be an option.

  She tried halting her feet, digging them into the snow to stop Givens from moving her forward, but that didn’t work either. When her knees locked up, her back bent forward and sent another flare of pain racing up her spine. She tried to endure it, locking her legs and holding it as long as she could.

  Givens responded by yanking her arm up behind her and driving one of his elbows into the center of her back. The pain was immense. Mackenzie would have fallen to her knees if he hadn’t been holding her arm.

  Before she knew it, he was shoving her hard against the closest shed. He fumbled with a lock, opened the door, and she fell in.

  She tried getting to her feet, but he was on her again. He had gone back to her hair, sending ripples of pain along her scalp and flaring up the pain along the right side of her face. The shed was dark so as he led her into it, she could see very little. He was leading her to something square-shaped that seemed to stick out in the darkness. Whatever it was, it had some sort of a door on it that he fumbled with, using his free hand while still pulling her hair with the other.

  A cattle crate, she thought.

  He put his mouth to her left ear and whispered in what was supposed to be a comforting way. “The fight in you…I like it. I think you’re my favorite so far. I can’t wait to break you in.”

  With that, he shoved her hard insi
de the crate. Blindly, and with the last reserve of courage and strength she had, Mackenzie stuck her left arm out and caught the side of the door. When he tried pushing her in, she grabbed his hand. He pulled away, but not before she latched on to his thumb, gripped it, and twisted as hard as she could.

  There was a sharp click as his thumb broke. He screamed in pain and in one last act of violence, kicked her hard in the back. She screamed, the pain nearly unbearable, and went sailing into the crate. She collapsed against the back, her entire body nothing but a knot of pain that radiated from her spine.

  He slammed the front of the crate. She was enveloped in darkness, with the exception of three rectangular shapes in front of her where the softer darkness of the shed came through.

  He was still whimpering on the outside and gave her crate a hard kick. “You broke my thumb,” he said. “I’ll see that you pay for that. With the others, it’ll be nice and romantic. But with you…I’m going to make you bleed.”

  With that, he stormed away. She could hear him go, his footfalls like thunder in the shed. He slammed the shed door closed behind him and then there was only the sound of his footfalls retreating in the snow.

  Mackenzie was shuddering, trying to make sense of the pain in her back. Worse, she felt naked. She had no phone and her gun was gone. She was trapped, unarmed, and very likely hurt worse than she had ever been in her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When some semblance of rational thought centered itself in her mind again, Mackenzie took a moment to go over her condition. She went over her injuries one by one, trying to take on the role of a physician.

  First, her left knee. She knew it was not broken or fractured. But he had definitely done some sort of damage there. She couldn’t even put half of her weight on that leg without the knee buckling. Then there was her face. She could already feel swelling there. There were signs of blood and as far as she could tell, she could still work her jaw just fine, though it was a bit sore. So nothing serious there. Next, her ribs. The soreness from his kick was already fading so there was nothing to be concerned about there. But it was her back that had her the most concerned. It hurt to sit up straight, so she could only imagine what it might be like to stand. She could move her arms and legs—other than the hurt knee—just fine, so she assumed whatever injuries she’d suffered were not too serious.

  Maybe it’s just muscular, she thought. Or maybe I strained or pulled something. Either way, getting out of here is going to be a bitch. I can only hope my text to Ellington went through before that asshole trashed my phone.

  She scooted to the front of the container and looked out. She could just barely see the edges of the shed door. She then backed away and tried to make out the back of the door to the container. She could see nothing, so she ran her fingers along the edges of it. Within a few seconds, she was pretty sure the entire locking mechanism was inside the door and along the outside.

  As she did her best to think of a way out, a voice interrupted her. It was frail and almost a whisper but still scared the hell out of her.

  “H—hello?”

  Mackenzie went back to the front of the container. She looked back out through the slats but saw no one. She was pretty sure the voice had come from the left, just out of sight.

  “Hello,” Mackenzie said. “Who’s there?”

  “My name is Missy. Is he—”

  She stopped here, as if uncertain of whether or not she wanted to finish asking the question.

  “Missy Hale?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “My name is Mackenzie White. I’m an FBI agent. We’ve been looking for you.”

  Missy let out a choked little laugh that lacked humor. “Well, I guess you found me.”

  “What has he done to you?” Mackenzie asked, dreading the answer and what it might mean.

  “Nothing yet,” she said. “He put a gag around my mouth earlier today. Another agent was here. When the agent left and he came back to take the gag off, he talked to me like he…like he was trying to be sweet. Talked about making love to me.”

  “But he hasn’t physically hurt you?”

  “Not since braining me with a hammer on the side of the road.”

  Mackenzie noticed that the more Missy Hale spoke, the more coherent she seemed. She also seemed to be getting rather angry. Silence fell between them and Mackenzie listened for the sound of puppies—the sound Delores Manning had heard. But they had fallen quiet for now, nursing or asleep elsewhere on the property.

  “Do you know if there are others here?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I think there might be at least one more,” she said. “I’m not sure, though. I always heard him talking somewhere else…somewhere outside of this shed.”

  “Have you heard dogs?” Mackenzie asked. “Puppies, maybe?”

  “I thought I heard some little squeaking sort of noises like a small animals. I guess it could have been puppies.” She stopped here, and then, her voice returning to its low and vulnerable state, she added, “Are we going to get out of here?”

  “I’m certainly going to try. My partner may be on the way at any moment.”

  If that damned text went through…

  She started to wonder what might happen if the text didn’t make it through. She figured they’d give her about an hour to an hour and a half before they started to wonder why she hadn’t yet returned or, at the very least, called. Another half an hour or so would pass before anyone went out looking for her—and with the way things were going at the station with Ed Fowley locked up, it would likely be Ellington. And then, of course, there was the matter of finding her. And if he had already been out here to Givens’s property today, this would probably be the last place he’d check…if at all

  In other words, if that text didn’t go through, she was screwed. And even if it did make it through, there were no guarantees. She hadn’t even been able to send the entire message.

  As much as she hated the thought, it was all on Ellington now. All she could do was wait. And that was somehow the most painful thing of all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Ellington was sitting in the conference room with Roberts and Wickline when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Bateman was still trying to milk information out of Fowley, whereas Ellington had just about everything he needed. He, like Mackenzie, was starting to have some doubts that Fowley was the man they were looking for. He was in the middle of looking through Fowley’s old police reports when his phone broke his concentration.

  It was a text from Mackenzie. But not a text that made much sense. Right away, the peculiar nature of it sent him into panic mode. He got to his feet, rereading the strange message.

  Fowley’s nei

  What the hell is that supposed mean?

  Whatever it meant, it seemed to be an incomplete text. Something was either wrong or she was in an extreme hurry. Neither option was a good one.

  Leaving the conference room, he called her. The line clicked uselessly in his ear. It did not even go to voicemail.

  He ran to the front of the office, to the reception area. He saw Roberts and a few other officers sorting through paperwork. “Roberts, I need a car.”

  “You, too? You know Agent White already took one.”

  “Yes, I do. I need to meet her. It might be urgent. So can you please just loan me a car?”

  She seemed to sense the urgency in his voice because her somewhat annoyed look evaporated at once. “Yes, of course. Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  But he looked back down to the text and felt worry churning in his stomach.

  ***

  He had no idea what the text was supposed to say but the fact that Fowley’s name was in it directed Ellington back to Skinner’s Reach Road. He carefully drove the borrowed patrol car down Fowley’s driveway for the second time that night. He peered across the snowy yard and the snow-capped trees. His headlights were still on and the car’s heater was w
orking overtime.

  He parked the car and wasted no time going into Fowley’s house. He looked everywhere, rummaging through the house in a hurry. He called out to her several times but got no answer. It took less than three minutes for him to realize that she was not in the house. He headed back outside and continued his search in the shed outside.

  Again, there was no sign of her.

  He went back outside and scanned the yard. There were so many prints from their earlier trip out here that it was hard to tell if any of them were new. While the snow had almost stopped coming down completely, it had already done its damage.

  As he scanned the yard, he noticed the faint glow of light through the stripped trees. He supposed that was Fowley’s neighbor, Harry Givens—the fellow he had visited today.

  Two sheds in his backyard, he thought.

  The contents of Mackenzie’s text came back to him like a slap to the brain.

  Fowley’s nei

  Was she trying to type the word neighbor?

  “Shit,” he said.

  He sprinted back to the patrol car and shifted into reverse. He left Ed Fowley’s driveway in such a hurry that the back end fishtailed in the snow. When he finally had it corrected, he sped up the driveway, kicking up snow and slipping tires the entire way.

  This is it, he thought. Givens is the guy.

  He’d ignored his instincts earlier in the day. He’d be damned if he’d do it again. He didn’t even bother with trying to be discreet, even though he knew that was the smartest play. He sped through the snow, covering the brief space between the two driveways as quickly as possible. He turned onto Givens’s property and again started down a driveway he’d already been down once today.

  He parked the car, leaving the engine running. He walked quickly to the porch, drawing his Glock. He heard soft music playing inside, some old honkytonk nonsense.