“I know. The first 24 hours…”
“The next two or three,” The doctor corrected. “If she lives through everything I’m doing, if she comes out of the sedative I gave her, If…”
“So she could still die?” Alex was suddenly filled with anguish he couldn’t fully describe. As if he’d been kicked in the stomach with a golf show and had a bowling ball thrown at his groin all while having his heart squashed in the very hand of Death himself.
He felt in danger of losing too much—of losing everything.
Sighing heavily, he grabbed Danny’s hand. “Pray with me?”
Saying nothing, Danny bowed his head. “God I know I don’t deserve this but I come to you now on behalf of Brandy. She is here now, in this condition because of me. I beg you, Father, please do not punish her because of my sins. Please. If there’s any mercy within you please don’t punish my family for the wrongdoings of the father. I am their leader, Lord. I am the one responsible and I ask that you punish me if punishment is needed. But please, please make my family safe. Amen.”
Raising his head, Danny looked solemnly at Alex.
“That prayer won’t get answered,” he said.
“What?” Alex said, shocked. “What makes you such an expert on prayer? I can’t remember the last time you were in a church.”
“It’s a selfish prayer,” Danny said. “You don’t want the guilt of your family’s death on your conscience. And because you think you couldn’t handle the pain, you’re asking God to spare you from it. I know you love your family, Alex. I do too and I pray for them just like you do. But God won’t answer that prayer. God won’t spare your family to keep you from crying.”
“Well then I guess we’ll just have to hope he answers yours,” Alex said, determined to avoid an argument.
“As you said, I haven’t been in a church.” Danny’s words were meant to be a jab and they worked. They hit the mark just as intended.
“Danny, I…” He didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t remember the last time I was in a church to be honest. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I don’t know which way is up. I’ve lost my compass. I’ve lost more than my family here. I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost direction. I’ve lost purpose. I’ve lost me!”
“No, you haven’t, Alex,” Danny said, calmly. “That’s kind of my point. You haven’t lost anything yet but you’re acting desperate. You’re praying in desperation, acting out of desperation. Even speaking garbage out of desperation. Alex, you’re right when you say I don’t go to church. And I know just enough aboutThe Bibleto make me dangerous to anyone trying to be actually follow it, but what I do know is a cop’s heart. You have it. In the bull riding world when they’re talking to each other, they say ‘Cowboy up’. I know it’s not a real thing, but Alex I think it’s time you Copped Up. Policed Up. Badged up. Whatever you want to call it. You might not have a badge but you were a cop all your life. You were born with a cop’s blood running through your veins.” Leaning in, his eyes narrowing, Danny continued, “Badge Up.”
Alex remained silent. He considered the irony of Danny’s words.
Danny, who had just days ago swore he was done, was now telling Alex he wasn’t allowed to be. He had a job to do.
“Badge up, Danny,” Alex finally said.
“Thanks to you,” Danny replied, “I am.”
Danny’s cell phone rang. It wasn’t much of a conversation on
Danny’s end. Danny only met Alex’s gaze one time, but it was enough to let him know that the call was about Lisa. Or at least about somebody named Mendez. Had they been found? Had they been found alive? Where were they now?
Clipping his phone shut, Danny sighed heavily.
“Alex,”
“We’re taking my car,” he interrupted. “Just tell me where we’re going and give me the details on the way.”
“You’re still not legally a cop, Alex,” Danny reminded him.
Clinching his jaws together, Alex narrowed his eyes. “You have the power to change that Danny. And I’m telling you that you can do it now or I can be illegal but either way I’m going to get my family back. Now, do I get them back legally or not?”
CHAPTER 28
Begin Again
The news was not good, but it was not bad. Confusing and uncertain, but not dire. Alex was no closer to finding his family. What had been found was another tape.
It had been left at the site of a car wreck. Worse than a wreck really. The cop that had first discovered it described it as an explosion.
A burned out mass of metal littering one of Gilmer’s many oil-topped back roads. This one connected to a grassy field that was hot, dry, brown and barren. There were no houses within sight but Alex remembered passing one or two on their way down the narrow, winding country road. He knew that there was one hidden behind a distant hill just out of his line of sight.
From left to right—pillar to post as the saying goes—there was a mess of burned out metal, plastic and rubber. Grass fires were still being extinguished several minutes after he’d arrived on the scene. As far as the eye could see car parts of indeterminate description littered the area. All that was left of a Pontiac Sunfire registered to the father of one Eric Reid. A wallet had been found confirming that Eric Reid had, at the very least, been in or near the vehicle at the time it exploded. His driver’s license and a credit card in the name of Samuel Reid were among the few warped contents that survived the carnage in any readable manner.
It had taken a while to track the connection down. Samuel Reid didn’t connect in the minds of cops that weren’t focused squarely on looking for Lisa. Eric was an afterthought to most of them. To Alex, it was a clue. A clue to a mystery he might not want solved.
His prayer had been selfish. That’s what Danny had told him. He did not want his family hurt because it would have been too much for him. Their pain would have been his agony. So in answering a prayer had God spared them by simply wiping them out in the blink of an eye?
No bodies had been found at the site of the car wreck. There was no evidence of freshly dug graves nearby and no signs of life. Nothing that would suggest Lisa or anyone had been in or near the car. Not a single footprint. It was all too clean. Too perfect for scene that was otherwise littered with chaos.
So where were they?
A cell phone found in a nearby ditch was probably the property of the Reid family as well. It had been “bagged and tagged” but they couldn’t do many tests on it in the field. The last call recorded on it had been made to 911. At or around the time the 911 call was logged from someone claiming to be Eric Reid.
In all of his years as a cop, Alex had followed many slow-moving cases. So many strings of clues that taunted him with their mysteries, denied him the solution to their many riddles. Murder after murder, domestic disputes and a short stint with a narcotics investigation that netted one of the largest narcotics busts in Longview history. He’d been a part of some investigations that moved too quickly for his liking and had more than his share of slow investigations, through which he would’ve loved to have slept.
In all his years, he couldn’t remember a time when he was more anguished; more frustrated with the pace an ongoing investigation was taking. But then again he’d never been in such a personal circumstance before. This was Alex’s family. Checkmate was not an option in this game. Losing meant more than just a criminal escaping justice.
Checkmate here could manifest a very real and very horrific end.
A cell phone, a burned out shell of a vehicle owned by a man named Reid. A man who, according to investigators, was missing.
Husband, wife and son.
A family in peril. Two families in peril.
The strange coincidence was not lost on Alex, nor on Danny. Cop instinct was not to tie too many things together without evidence. No two cases were connected without a clear connection. To Alex, the evidence might be circumstantial but it was evidence nonetheless. An
d it was as clear as day.
Lisa kidnapped by Agents Tucker and Morgan. Abdullah and Ibrahim. Dumb and Dumber. Whatever their names were. Agent Morgan turns up dead after being found in the area of a kidnapping reported by Eric Reid. A car registered to Sam Reid found burned and destroyed on a back road of Gilmer. Sam Reid known to have a son named Eric. And a videotape—pristine and undisturbed—found propped up against the burned out remnants of the Pontiac Sunfire.
And two families in peril.
As they waited for a unit to arrive with a portable video viewer, both Alex and Danny kept coming back to that one simple fact. Two families.
How many more, Danny had wondered out loud. God only knew. They’d bombed the police station. They’d bombed the Wal-mart for crying out loud. What would stop them from taking over the entire state of Texas?
God claimed vengeance for himself. As his anger grew, Alex’s prayers became all the more selfish. “God, I pray that you use me for your vengeance,” Alex whispered. “I pray not that you will be the arm but you will let me be the hammer that strikes these animals down. In your name I pray.”
“Careful what you wish for there, Alex,” Danny said, interrupting Alex’s train of thought. “When this is all over you just might not want that prayer answered either.”
“You sure are becoming an expert on prayer these days aren’t you?” Alex snapped, with a bit more anger than he had intended.
Instantly his eyes offered an apology to which his throat couldn’t give voice.
“Just call me Reverend Danny,” he said, winking.
A police cruiser pulled up, lights but no sirens. The officer did not exit his car. Rolling down his window, he simply handed a small video viewer to Danny, who had walked away to meet the cruiser.
A short verbal exchange and the cruiser headed back up the road, no lights, no sirens.
“Who’s got the tape?” Danny shouted. Alex raised his hand. He’d been holding the tape for some time. Old habits died hard, he thought.
Even for Danny.
“Let’s view this puppy,” Danny said, taking the padded envelope from Alex.
The viewer was small, but remarkable in the level of detail. The backdrop reminded Alex of a projector screen used to view films during his elementary school years. The man standing before the screen was dressed entirely in black. He carried only a large knife. Alex was no expert on fighting weapons. All he could think was how the shiny blade reminded him of a machete’s big brother.
“Captain Peterson,” The man on the tape said. “You have not learned your lesson. You and your leaders have not bowed down before the truth of Islam. The blood of your citizens is on your hands. God willing.”
Danny stopped the tape.
“What are you doing?” Alex said. “Keep going.”
“I’ve heard the guy on this tape before.”
“What? Where?”
“He sent me a tape to my office. An audiotape but it’s his voice.”
“Danny, we’ll play ‘This Is Your Life’ later. This idiot has Lisa and Christina. Now play the stinkin’ tape!”
The tape resumed.
“Captain Peterson. Your crusaders still litter the lands of Islam. Your infidel brothers and sisters have not heeded our warnings. From across your shining seas we have spilled the blood of the infidels, Allah be praised. Still you occupy our land. You intrude on the kingdom of Allah. You test the wrath of the one true God.”
As the speaker paused his psychotic diatribe, the camera panned down to a small cage. Inside were three frightened children. They couldn’t have been much older than Christina. They might even have been her age or younger. Alex couldn’t be sure. The only things of any certainty were the petrified looks on their faces.
The camera still panning, unsteady, a voice could be heard speaking to the frightened young girls. Alex couldn’t make out the verbal exchange, but he was certain it was designed merely to frighten the innocent souls more than they already were.
As the camera finished its panning motion, a loud bang could be heard off camera. Screams from two children as they jumped, fearful of the brutal sentence meted out on their tiny cellmate. Alex and Danny watched in horror as a second shot rang out followed by more screams and finally a third shot. Something in the background but Alex couldn’t be sure what. Something like screaming off camera.
He couldn’t get past the image that seemed frozen on the small video screen. Though mortified beyond comprehension, Alex felt almost afraid to look away. Simultaneously, he wondered what was holding his stare as desperate wishes for escape filled his horrified soul.
Surely he had not just seen three children murdered on videotape.
The camera panned fully to the speaker who could now be seen holding a small handgun in one hand and the very same giant machete in the other.
“Their names were Sarah, Echo and Michelle.” The speaker said.
How he knew that, and why he felt the need to share it, both maddened and confused Alex. Enraged him. If there was a word for it, that was about as close as he was going to get at this moment.
What he felt truly defied definition. In that moment he would have choked his best friend if it meant he could have ridded himself of the very rage, chaos, confusion and emotional destruction that was littering his soul.
“Do you grieve for them Captain Peterson?” The speaker now seemed to be taunting Danny. Alex gazed only a millisecond at him.
Judging by Danny’s icy stare and pale complexion, the taunting seemed to be working.
“Bet I do, you sick piece of slime.”
“Do you grieve for the women and children killed by your infidel crusaders in the lands of Islam? Just as your brothers and sisters have spilled blood in the land of the Great Prophet, so too shall we spill blood until all that remain of the infidels drown in it.”
“Just tell me what you want, you idiot,” Danny said, speaking to the tape as if the terrorist idiot could hear him.
“He wants us to die, Danny,” Alex said. It didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist. But then Alex was reasonably sure Danny’s question had been somewhat rhetorical in nature. Alex understood the anger and frustration all too well. Just tell me what it’ll take for you to face me man to man. Fist to fist, toe to toe, Alex thought. Let’s settle this like two adults.
“Your mothers will bury their sons and daughters. Today and every day, mourning will reign in the land of the infidels. Now and forever you will witness the power of Allah. It will never stop. As long as one infidel lives, there will be blood. Before long, yours will be spilled Captain Peterson.”
Stopping the tape again, Danny made a motion as if to throw the tape recorder. Before he could follow through with his rageful action, Alex snatched the small device from Danny’s hand.
“Now they’ve done it,” Danny growled. “Now they’ve gotten personal!”
“It’sbeenpersonal, Danny. You’re just catching up with the rest of the class.”
“Yeah,” he said, still raging, his face turning bright red. “But now the suckers have threatened me directly. Gonna come down here acting all big and bad? Kill some innocent kids! Break into your home? Kidnap your family? My family! Well I think it’s about time we give them a Texas-sized infidel welcome. I think it’s about time we showed them how personal we can get! They want it to be personal? We’ll make it personal! You with me?”
“Lead the way, Captain Peterson.”
CHAPTER 29
Crusaders
Lisa’s thinking was cloudy. She could not focus on a single thought for any length of time. Her vision seemed fine at first but shapes and images floated before her eyes that she knew could not truly be there. The voices of people long dead seemed to be filling her mind.
As if reaching out from the grave, voices from the past intruded on her present thoughts.
Pain and illusion populated her thoughts, pushing rational coherence aside. Confusion ran rampant. Pain and illusion. Were they one in the same?
/> “I think it’s time you learned who is in control, Mrs. Mendez,” Dr. Death hissed, as he squatted next to her. Slowly, methodically, he ran his course, sticky fingers through her matted hair. As he grazed her scalp, a sharp stabbing pains shot through her skull down into her neck and shoulders. She flinched just as the painful lightning bolt coursed through her hip down into her foot.
Dr. Death smiled his taunting, maniacal smile. For the first time, Lisa smelled something weird on him. It smelled like new clothes scent. That was what it reminded her of anyway. It was as if the clothes he was wearing were fresh off the rack. Judging by the look of them, that couldn’t have been the case, but Lisa grabbed hold of this scent if only to give herself a life preserver to keep from drowning in the sea of pain and confusion.
Lifting Lisa, he again directed her to the door.
“No!” she screamed, weak, but determined she didn’t want to leave her family.
“You’ll be back with your family soon, Mrs. Mendez,” Dr. Death said, grabbing her sore shoulder tight enough to send another lightning bolt of pain coursing through her. She lost her balance as her knees buckled under the pain. She hit the ground with a hard thump, nearly spilling face first onto the hard floor.
Her legs throbbed from hip to toe. Her shoulder suddenly felt like it had been ripped from the socket.
Pain was draining her of what strength she had left. Clearly this guy knew what he was doing. Even if Lisa didn’t.
Instinctively, Lisa wiggled and wrestled against Dr. Death’s grip.
Over and over she shouted “No!”
She didn’t even see the gun until the shot rang out. She was intimately familiar with the pistol in his right hand however. A 9mm. It looked very similar to the gun she’d strapped on most of her police life. Being on this end, however, was a much different experience. He had angled the gun upwards. Part of the ceiling tiles had been blasted to shreds, but the millisecond fear that her daughter had just been killed had not come to fruition.
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