Cristina rolled her eyes.
Now what did I do? She might as well be speaking in tongues.
The man turned to me and extended his hand. “I’m Brice. You must be Ivy.” His white teeth looked like slotted glow sticks.
“How do you know my name?” I asked with a tentative handshake.
“Cristina and I have been talking for a few minutes. Feels like we’ve been friends for months.” He chuckled and gave her a quick wink. She laughed too, almost reflexively. Was this the same Cristina? My Cristina was usually in your face. Some might say she was a little rough around the edges. I’d seen her softer side, especially around the kids we helped, but this flirtatious, silly thing with the hunk of the month….hell, maybe she’d already downed a beer.
I did a quick once-over of Brice. Tank top, khaki shorts, muscles on top of more muscles, and a model-like smile.
“By the way,” Brice said, “you don’t have to worry about Cristina buying alcohol. Cristina told me she’s eighteen. I just turned twenty-one. I’m a junior at UTSA.”
“He plays tight end for the Road Runners.” The tone of Cristina’s voice was like a smitten schoolgirl. I was beginning to feel like this was some type of out-of-body experience. Cristina was far too streetwise to fall for some pretty boy. On top of that, she’d recently been dating another person—a girl. One who had more tats and piercings than Brice had muscles.
One word came to mind: fickle. That was Cristina.
I felt my phone buzz, and it obviously wasn’t Cristina texting me. Maybe it was Saul. Now that I thought about it, didn’t we have some type of city event we had to attend tonight?
As I lifted my phone, I heard a symphony of beeps all around me.
It was an Amber Alert. I read the message on my phone.
Seguin, TX AMBER Alert: LIC / JSG2908 (TX) Late model Red Nissan Rogue
Seguin was thirty-five miles east of San Antonio. I jerked my head around to look out to the parking lot. The man was backing his car away from the curb. It was a red SUV. And I picked up the last three digits of the license plate: 908.
I grabbed Cristina and ran to my car.
8
Ivy
By the time Cristina and I reached my car, the red Rogue was at the exit to the gas station. The man behind the wheel flipped his head around and looked at us. Then he peeled away, hooking a right onto the street.
“What are we doing?” Cristina asked from the other side of Black Beauty—my nickname for my old Honda Civic.
“Amber Alert. Get in,” I said, slipping into the front seat. I started the car as Cristina shut the door.
“Oh yeah,” she said, looking at her phone. “I got the same message. What does this have to do with us?”
“I’m almost certain the guy who kidnapped the little girl just tore out of the parking lot.”
“Almost certain?”
Pushback. Just what I needed.
“Call nine-one-one, give them our location, tell them we’re tailing the guy who was just mentioned in the Amber Alert.”
“But where is he?” She swiveled her head left and right.
I ignored her for a moment as I pulled out of the lot and punched the gas. I could see the red vehicle pass through a green light just ahead.
“Red car, just in front of us.”
“Right. I see him.” Cristina tapped the phone a few times, put it to her ear. “Yeah,” she said into the phone. “Want to report that my friend and I just spotted the car in the Amber Alert.” A brief pause.
“Put it on speaker phone,” I said, increasing my speed.
Cristina tapped the screen and held it between us. Just then, the light turned yellow. I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and leaned my back against the seat. The light turned red. I was already moving at over fifty miles an hour. I saw a truck to my right enter the intersection. “Hold on!”
“What the fuckkkk!” Cristina yelled as I swerved left. The truck jerked to a stop as horns blared all around us.
But we made it through unscathed. “Sorry,” I said, with a quick glance in my rearview.
“What is going on?” the operator asked.
“Just trying to catch up to the pervert who has that little girl in the back seat of his Rogue,” I said.
“Where are you?” she asked
Traffic congested the roads. I tapped the brakes, swung across two lanes to get past a slower car, and then cut around a garbage truck and sped up. The Rogue was up ahead but seemed farther away now.
“Uh, we’re on Aransas,” Cristina said. “We went right out of the gas station.”
“Right? Sweetie, I need more information than that.”
I jumped in. “We’re heading west. We just passed the Palmetto intersection.”
“Thank you. Let me put this in the system.”
There was a pause for a few seconds. I continued swinging Black Beauty in and out of the lanes. I got lucky at the next intersection and hit a green light—albeit at a high rate of speed.
“Look out!” Cristina yelled.
A massive RV pulled onto the road. No time to break—I jerked the steering wheel to the left.
A horn from behind me. I looked in my blind spot and saw a silver pickup twisting as it hit the brakes. Just inches before we barreled into the RV, I squeezed my Civic through the small opening.
“Damn, you’re a crazy woman. Have I told you that?” Cristina shouted. I caught a glance of her face—it was almost as white as mine.
“Please don’t put yourself or other motorists in danger,” the operator said.
Cristina and I traded a quick glance. No way would I let this pervert get away. God knew what he’d do to her once he found a safe spot away from anyone who could protect the little girl. I’d been abused throughout my seventeen stops in my foster-home tour. This abuser we could stop—we had to stop.
“He just hooked a left,” Cristina said.
“Where?” the operator asked.
“Uh…” Cristina looked at me. She didn’t know directions, not unless she used her phone.
“It’s Hackberry. We turned south.”
“Thanks.” The operator paused a few seconds and then said, “We have units en route.”
I executed the left-hand turn and could now fully see the license plate on the back of Rogue. We were closing in—the traffic must have slowed him down.
“He’s right there,” Cristina said, smacking a hand against the dashboard. “Come on, get this hunk of shit moving.”
Just after avoiding a hoard of cyclists, I saw I-10 up ahead. I knew if the man in the Rogue made it to the interstate, he’d be able to leave my old Civic in the dust, and then he’d likely jump off at an exit and get lost in the city until things died down. We only had a few seconds to stop him.
“He can’t get on the interstate heading that way.” Christina pointed to her right—which was west.
The Rogue’s brakes lights turned red. “He’s going under the overpass. Probably going to turn left and hop on the interstate going east.”
“East, yeah,” Cristina said.
I passed a small side street and noticed a police car with its lights on.
“Here comes the cavalry,” Cristina said, looking over her shoulder.
“The what?” the operator said from the phone.
I jerked my car left.
“You’re in the wrong lane!” Cristina yelled.
I knew it was my only chance to catch the pervert. Cars veered away from me as I held down the horn and sped forward while everyone else was braking.
“You’re not going to…” Cristina anchored a hand on the car roof and started yelling.
I didn’t hit the brakes until the Rogue began to turn left onto the frontage road. I veered left—aiming to cut off his path.
“What the…?” Cristina hollered.
Now just in front of the Rogue, I slammed on the brakes. He swerved right but jerked the car to a stop just as the corners of our cars tapped each other. As I
swung open my door, the police car pulled to a stop on the other side of the Rogue. Two cops jumped out with guns at the ready.
“Stop, don’t shoot,” I said, running around Black Beauty. “There’s a little girl in that car.”
“Get down, lady,” the cop with sunglasses yelled.
I reached the back door, but it was locked. Inside, I saw the girl crying. The cops yelled out instructions.
“Open the door,” I called out to the man behind the wheel. “It’s over.”
He was reaching inside his glovebox.
“I think he’s got a gun!” I yelled.
“Get out of the way, lady!” the cop screamed again.
I smacked my hand on the back window. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”
The man in the car pulled his hand out of the console. Did he have a gun? Fuck! Panic rippled through my body. “Stop! Don’t hurt the girl,” I said, pounding the window.
A second later, he got out of the car with his hands raised.
With the back door now unlocked, I swung it open. The red-faced girl was screaming uncontrollably, reaching out to me. I leaned over and unbuckled her just as I saw the cops grab the man and throw him to the ground. The girl bear-hugged me, all the while screaming. It was complete chaos.
“Are you okay?” Cristina ran up next to me.
“Fine.” I held the little girl tightly as I walked around the car.
One cop had his knee in the small of the man’s back. He was pulling the man’s arm back and cuffing it while the other cop had his weapon aimed at the man. The cop—the one with sunglasses—glanced in my direction.
“Lady, you could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Please help me,” the man lying on the ground said.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” the little girl yelled.
It was his daughter. Must have been a domestic issue. But he still could have been abusing her.
I tried to calm the little girl as the cop finished putting the cuffs on the man, got him to his feet, and walked him to the police car.
“I’m telling you, I was trying to save my daughter. This is a crock of shit.”
“Yeah, right,” the cop said. “Shut up and get inside.”
“Please listen to me. My daughter is in danger. You can’t take her back to her mother. Both of my daughters are—”
The cop shoved the man in the back of the police car and slammed the door shut.
The little girl cried until she had no more tears.
9
Alex
I stopped only once on the way to LA to use the restroom. While inside the gas station, I considered asking if I could borrow their phone. But as I saw patrons coming in and out of the store and noticed ever more people and cars bustling about outside, I wondered if Carter and Nixon might have one of their team members following me, purposely blending in to keep tabs on me.
Was I being overly paranoid? Maybe. Maybe not. My thoughts were all over the place. My usual barometer of “reading the situation” was off-kilter. Nothing about this kidnapping and ransom-related task followed a typical pattern of behavior. Then again, with Erin at the center of all this, I knew my unpredictable emotions had taken dominance over my logical brain.
I picked up a small package of donuts with the cash Carter had given me for the trip and got back into my car—a forgettable Chrysler 300 that had to be ten years old. A few minutes later, just on the north side of the City of Angels, I was snarled in traffic.
I put in my status call to Carter. With no introduction, I opened the call by saying, “I hit traffic going into LA.”
“Are you following the directions?” he asked.
“Yes. But I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get to this place near LAX.”
“I expected as much. I’ll let your contact know you’ll be late.”
“Are you going to tell me who this contact is?”
“You don’t need to know that. The only thing you need to worry about is getting the two boxes back to the compound without incident. You do that, you get your kid back. You don’t, well…” A pompous chuckle. “I think you know the answer.”
“Will you at least let me talk to her on the phone?”
The line went dead.
“Fuck!” I slammed my fist against the steering wheel. Tears pooled in my eyes. For the next several minutes, while crawling along the freeway, my thoughts about Erin’s safety ate a hole in my stomach.
Echoes of her screams that I’d heard on the audio recording replayed in my mind over and over again, each one ripping into my soul. I’d let her down. If there was one basic function parents were obligated to perform, it was to protect their children. Nothing else came before it. I’d spent too much of my adult life trying to pursue bad people while ignoring my own children. How could I do this to my precious Erin?
Guilt consumed me, as those screams kept clawing at my insides. I cried out loud and violently smacked the passenger seat, not stopping until I broke into a sweat and could hear my heaving breaths.
As I squeezed the steering wheel, images flashed to the front of my mind—of what Erin might be experiencing. Drugs being forced into her body. Beatings. Rape. It would not only rob her of her innocence, but the experience might completely break her…even kill her. My mind was racing out of control. If I couldn’t stop the abuse, then I had to feel what Erin was feeling. The flood of pictures didn’t cease. Every time a new one hit, it felt like a spear had punctured my body. The more I thought about her and what she might be going through, the more I felt myself spiraling into a dark place.
In between my sobs, I gasped for air.
Red lights snagged my attention. I pounded my foot on the brake, and the Chrysler rocked to a stop just inches from the back of a FedEx truck.
Crap. I loosened my death grip on the steering wheel and looked around me. I was surrounded by traffic. Above me, dusk had painted the sky in a deep purple. Erin loves purple.
I took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. My shoulders slackened, and I could feel my unrelenting tension drop out of the red zone.
As the pace of the congested traffic picked up, I turned my thoughts about the situation to more positive ones. Erin had recently demonstrated an inner resolve and a level of maturity that, to be honest, caught me off-guard. It wasn’t there all the time, but it was more than a quick flash. Some of it, I realized, was a desire to be more independent.
It was as though she’d consciously told herself, “Show Mom you can be responsible, even deal with a little adversity, and she’ll release the reins a bit.”
She’d read me perfectly—I’d done exactly as she wanted. Had I screwed up? Or was it simply the natural evolution of a girl growing into a young woman and a mom allowing her to do so? I’d been her age. At the time, my dad was a lush and I thought my mom was dead—turned out she was being held captive against her will in a cult compound. My dad pushed me, though, to be better than anyone else in tennis and in school. I kicked the asses of everyone I faced.
I recalled going to Erin’s tennis match a couple of weeks back. She’d developed a killer serve, but I also saw something that shocked me. She didn’t play it safe with dink-and-dunk shots like she had her first couple of years. Instead, she demonstrated this go-for-it-mentality, hitting each groundstroke with ferocious intensity. She’d win a serve game and then toss the balls to her opponent on the other side of the net with this unshakeable confidence. It had reminded me of…me.
Maybe Erin was a lot stronger than I realized. Maybe she could hold on until I got to her. She can. She can. Traffic broke up, and I picked up some speed. For whatever reason, my emotional outburst had emboldened me, at least for the time being. I turned on the radio to distract my thoughts. It was tuned to an AM news station. Lots of traffic reports. I was on Interstate 110 heading south. But the traffic reporter kept using the term “the” in front of every major thoroughfare. The 110. The 405. The 213. It was really strange. I looked up and saw a sign for Los An
geles International Airport—LAX. It was eleven miles to my west, and just beyond that was the coast. I’d always wanted to visit California. But not like this.
I hit South LA and saw signs for Huntington Park and Inglewood. I drove farther and saw more signs for South Gate, Lynwood, and Compton. Then I saw the one I was looking for—Gardena.
I exited at Marine Avenue and headed east. To my left, I saw a sign for Hustler Casino. Nice. And I thought I’d left the land of casinos back in Las Vegas.
I maneuvered through the neighborhood and pulled into a rocky driveway of a small home. It was almost completely dark now, but a single light bathed the front porch in yellow. The house wasn’t falling apart, but it would never be used on any websites to draw tourists to sunny LA.
I got out of the Chrysler and looked around the neighborhood. Two men were walking a big dog at the end of the block, just two houses down. They didn’t look my way. As I walked up to the porch, I could hear dogs barking in the distance. Again, I wished like hell I had my Glock on me. I knew, regardless of any impediment, I had to complete this task. If anything happened to me, then Erin and Becca would be doomed.
Don’t go there, Alex.
I walked to the front door and didn’t see a doorbell, so I knocked twice.
A moment later, the door opened a crack. It was dark inside, but I saw a chain above a man’s head. Mostly, I saw an eyeball.
“What the fuck you doing, bitch? You’re supposed to go around back.”
He slammed the door shut.
10
Alex
Crap. I’d forgotten about the back-door part. I scooted off the porch, started up the Chrysler, and eased down the driveway. I got out of the car, passed through a fenced gate, and made my way to the back door. Before I knocked, the door opened.
“You a cop?” The man was about my height of five-six. The whites of his eyes practically glowed in the night. His brown shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a hairless, concave chest.
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