He then laid a hand on Sophia’s shoulder and gave her a gentle shake.
“Wake up, honey. We need to walk out of here and call your daddy.”
Amy’s fear that the drug she used to knock the children out had caused her to weaken its potency. She had diminished its strength too much, and it only took a little prodding by Owens to stir Sophia.
Sophia opened her eyes and looked around groggily. By the strange and eerie light of the approaching blaze, Sophia saw that her sister was chained to the other end of the bed she lay on. The sound of movement coming from behind made Sophia turn her head around, and she beheld the pale, drawn face of Owens.
When he smiled down at her, Sophia screamed.
CHAPTER 28
Matt was still at Amy’s home. He had left his car in the same visitor’s spot that Dave Owens had used the night before, then, Matt walked around the back to knock loudly on Amy’s door. There had been no answer and no sounds of movement from within. With nowhere else to go to look for her, Matt sat on the ground with his back leaned against Amy’s rear door, and waited.
He had gone to sleep without knowing it, but woke when Jimmy pressed the cool steel of a gun against his head.
“Where are the girls, Matt?”
Matt stared up at Jimmy with huge fear-filled eyes. As those eyes began to cry, Matt spoke.
“I don’t know where she took them. I swear it.”
Jimmy used his other hand to take out his phone and call Jake. He knew that Pierce’s phone would be monitored and likely out of his possession.
Jake answered on the second ring.
“Tell Rick that I found Matt.”
“That’s great news, Jimmy, but it looks like Dave Owens has the girls.”
“Owens? Are you sure?”
“No, but he was near the house recently. What’s Matt’s story, and where are you?”
“That’s something else I want you to tell Rick. I think this thing has another player besides Owens. Her name is Amy Lowe.”
***
After cleaning out her car, Amy had driven back home to see what things looked like. From the rear of a gas station, she could get a look at her home by using the same binoculars she had used to spy on Pierce’s farmhouse.
When she saw no police cars or signs of trouble, she smiled. She assumed it meant that Matt was doing his part and keeping quiet. That was excellent. If the boy played dumb for just a few more hours everything would work out fine.
Amy did see one strange sight. It was an unfamiliar pickup truck parked in the lot. She gave a little shrug. It didn’t mean anything. One of her neighbors had hooked-up with someone in a bar or had a relatives or a friend staying over.
She looked a little longer and then lowered the binoculars and climbed back in her car. Had she been looking from a different angle, she would have spotted Matt’s jeep, which was hidden behind a neighbor’s van. And had Amy gazed through the binoculars for just a few seconds more, she also would have seen Jimmy and Matt walk out from the rear of the building.
But, Amy didn’t look long enough or from enough angles, and so she left thinking that everything was all right.
She got back in her car and headed for the cabin. She assumed that Sophia and Rosa were still asleep, but she wanted to be there when they woke. She had a disguise, a dark wig and glasses. It was a simple disguise, but it should fool a five and six-year-old.
Amy drove towards the cabin, blissfully unaware that she was now on the FBI’s radar.
Matt had babbled enough to Jimmy while sobbing to let the authorities know that Amy had taken the children. The thing was, Amy no longer had them, Dave Owens did.
Owens didn’t want money; his ransom would be paid in vengeance.
***
Dave Owens smiled at Sophia and Rosa in an attempt to calm them. It did little good.
Rosa had been stirred awake by Sophia’s scream and scrambled across the bed to hug her big sister. Sophia clutched Rosa as if she were her mother, but Rosa was the first to calm down and speak to Owens.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Dave.”
“Dave.”
“Yes?”
“Our daddy will beat you up if you don’t take us home.”
“I have a bigger problem than your father. You can’t see it from where you are, but there’s a fire outside and it’s getting closer.”
Sophia tried to pull a hand free from one of her cuffs and failed.
Owens held up a key. Amy had left it hanging on a hook downstairs.
“I’ll unlock you, but I want you to promise you’ll stay near me. If you run off and get lost you may burn to death.”
Sophia nodded, then pointed at Rosa’s ankles. Amy had cuffed Sophia’s wrists but had shackled Rosa’s ankles so that the child could move nearer to her sister.
Owens smiled at the gesture.
“You want me to free your little sister first?”
“Yes please,” Sophia said.
“Why?”
Sophia gave a little shrug.
“I’m the biggest. Mommy says I have to watch out for her.”
“Your mommy is right,” Owens said. He freed Rosa and then Sophia. The girls insisted that they had to go to the bathroom. Amy had left a toilet training seat near the bed. It was fastened atop a 5-gallon bucket, and the bucket contained cat litter.
The makeshift toilet reminded Owens of something he had once put together for a family camping trip when his girls were very young. Thinking about the good times he and his family had on that vacation made him choke up a bit. When he recovered, he told Sophia and Rosa to use the bathroom that was downstairs.
He had raped and slain teenage girls as young as sixteen, but he wasn’t a child molester. He had no desire to see the children expose themselves as they urinated.
Once on the ground floor, where they could see through the windows, the girls spied the red glow in the near distance and their eyes widened in wonder.
Owens pointed towards the bathroom and told them to hurry and do their business. Sophia and Rosa were in the bathroom for only a minute or so before coming back out and staring up at Owens.
He showed them his gun. If he was expecting it to frightened them, he was disappointed. Pierce hadn’t taught his daughters to shoot at such a young age, but they had seen his service weapon their whole lives and thought of guns as tools.
Although very young, they weren’t foolish. They understood that there was a wide difference between their toy water pistols and the weapon Owens displayed.
Sophia and Rosa clasped hands.
“We’ll be good and walk with you, but you have to take us back to Mommy and Daddy,” Rosa said.
“If I do, will you tell your daddy to beat me up?”
Rosa nodded.
“Mm-hmm, but just a little.”
Owens laughed, then bent over in agony. With her other hand, Sophia reached out and touched his face.
“Dave... are you all right?”
Owens saw the compassion in the child’s eyes and marveled at it. He turned away from Sophia’s caring expression and headed for the door.
“Let’s go, and stay close.”
The smoke outside the cabin was growing and resembled fog even more than it had before. Owens knew that they couldn’t go down the road where his car had been, and so he led the children in the other direction.
Each step was an effort, as he felt horrible and the pain in his abdomen seemed to have spread to his chest. But no, it was just the smoke. He had always been sensitive to wood smoke and it was affecting his breathing. When the weakness he’d been feeling returned, he slowed his pace.
Sophia and Rosa soon passed him, even with their short strides. Owens let them. They appeared to be staying close to him, and where could they run off to anyway?
After rounding a curve on a hillside, Owens felt a moment of panic. There was a red glow ahead, indicating that the fire had jumped and cut off their exit. He told himself that
it must be a separate fire and that there was a path around it.
There was no path and never had been, but there was another cabin. The second cabin was older than the other one, appeared deserted, and had been built at the base of a thirty foot rise. Had there been no flames at all, Owens couldn’t have made the climb to safety.
The only way off the road was the way he had driven in, the way that was now blocked by an inferno. In the nearby vegetation, numerous fires were sparking from the scattering of hot ash drifting down. Any attempt to walk across the vast fields bordering the road would be dangerous, as the smoke was thickest there. Owens could easily imagine himself becoming hopelessly lost until overcome by smoke or trapped by flames.
The sound of a plane engine made Owens look up and he saw just a flash of metal in the night sky. Next, there came an odd sound from the area where his car had been parked, as a deluge of water landed on a section of the growing blaze.
Help had arrived.
“Let’s head back, girls. We’ll leave once they put the fire out.”
Sophia and Rosa led the way back, as Owens was having trouble walking at all. He felt exhausted, felt as if he had just run for miles, and when his foot hit a rock that was sticking out of the dirt, he went down on his hands and knees.
The girls stopped. They looked back at Owens, who appeared too weak to stand, and then they gazed at the road ahead of them.
Sophia released her sister’s hand and walked over to check on Owens.
“What’s wrong, Dave?”
“Why didn’t you two just run away and leave me?”
“Daddy says to help people when we can.”
“Your daddy never helped me,” Owens said, and found a tiny finger pointing at him. It was Rosa.
“Don’t say bad things about our daddy!”
Owens looked at Rosa and there was true fury in her young eyes.
He laughed, made it to his feet, and took a faltering step.
“Whatever you say, little lady, but let’s get back to the cabin.”
Owens stumbled along, and as he did so, he became convinced that he wouldn’t die of cancer. Judging by the rising heat and intensifying glow, he and the girls would soon burn to death.
CHAPTER 29
Amy brought her car to a sudden stop as her mind began to reel.
She was nearing the exit that would take her to the cabin when she realized that she was smelling smoke. That was followed by an awareness of the reddish glow off in the distance to her left. Before she could take meaning from it all, the traffic along the Garden State Parkway came to a stop.
A fresh angle revealed to her that the red glow was a fire, while the smoke was coming from the approximate location of the cabin.
The girls! Amy thought. Oh dear God, I have to get over there and save the girls.
It was a fine thought, but the roads were blocked by stalled traffic on her side of the highway, while a state trooper barred entrance to the exit she needed.
Amy sobbed as time passed and the glow through the trees grew brighter, she had no desire to see those girls come to harm, and especially not the torture of a death by fire.
The roadway on the other side of the concrete divider was absent of traffic. The north bound lanes had been diverted as the south bound traffic began to creep forward, Amy assumed that it too was being redirected onto an exit.
She was so sick with worry about the girls that she nearly hit a car that merged into her lane. That vehicle, a black sports car, went slower than the other vehicles, and Amy found herself falling behind the pack.
When the helicopter landed on the other side of the highway, she thought that perhaps it was there to airlift someone to safety.
Then she saw the badges and the guns.
Before Amy knew what was happening, she was lying on the road surface and being handcuffed by the man who had been in the sports car. He had identified himself as an FBI agent.
As they tugged her to her feet and walked her towards an unmarked sedan, Amy overcame her shock. She was about to open her mouth and protest when she stopped herself.
Amy stayed silent and decided to keep her mouth shut no matter what. As horrific as it was, the children dying in a fire was an accident. They might already be dead, and if they were, admitting her guilt and going to prison would help no one.
***
Amy was transferred to a nearby State Police Barracks where she was seated in a room with a wide window that overlooked the highway. There was a coffee maker, a microwave, and several tables with chairs. It was a break room, not an interrogation room, and Amy wondered why that was so.
They had taken her cuffs off as well, but had assured her that she wasn’t free to go. The first agent was a woman who spoke to her in a soft voice and used an understanding tone. Amy ignored her.
Then, there were two burly male FBI agents who barked at her with commanding voices, while listing the charges she faced, along with the penalties that would accompany those crimes.
Their threats were interspersed with Matt’s pleas shown to her via a video call on a laptop. Matt told Amy that she had to help the FBI and tell them where the girls were.
Amy answered it all with silence. If she said nothing to them, they could do nothing to her. All they had was the word of a teenage boy.
An esteemed law professor Amy had met at a party, once told her that most suspects in serious crimes incriminated themselves in some way during the interview process. The man had claimed it was the main reason that the police recorded every word a suspect uttered.
Amy believed that was true. After all, the words, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” were a part of The Miranda Warning. Those words were also followed by two questions, questions which were surely there to entice you to speak.
Tears fell from Amy’s eyes. Tears for Ricardo Pierce’s daughters and tears for herself.
Found guilty of kidnaping or not, Amy knew that she would never be rich. The self-pity was so great at one point, that if she could have, she would have run towards the flames and ended it all.
***
Pierce was still shaking his head in confusion as he sat with Jimmy Drake in the rear of a FBI vehicle. Despite the misgivings of the Agent in charge of the kidnapping investigation, Pierce was going to the State Police barracks to speak with Amy. He promised the FBI that he would remain calm and only plead for his daughters safe return.
Amy Lowe? Why the hell would Amy kidnap my daughters?
Pierce had learned about Amy’s preference for young lovers years earlier when she had hired Jimmy to stop a blackmailer. Still, Matt had just turned sixteen, and gender differences aside, she was still using the boy.
Matt had sworn innocence in the kidnapping, but admitted to letting Amy inside the house.
Pierce didn’t give a damn about the how and why, he just wanted his daughters back. Before leaving, he had sworn to Val that he would bring them home safely, and it was a promise he planned to keep.
An FBI agent named Simmons met Pierce and Jimmy at the front gate of the State Troopers barracks and once again stressed to Pierce how important it was for him not to show anger. He was also told to avoid intimidation and that the main goal was to get Amy to talk.
There were hopes that she would respond to Pierce since they had once been so close.
Simmons stared at Pierce.
“You’ve stated that you’ve had no contact with the woman in nearly two decades, would you like to change that statement?”
“No, Agent Simmons, I would not. It is the truth.”
“Do you have any idea why she would target you?”
“No, as I said, it was she who dumped me all those years ago. If anyone should harbor bad feelings it would be me.”
“But you won’t express those feelings in that room, Detective, understood?”
“Understood, but tell me, do you have any idea where she might have been headed?”
“No, but we will. Appar
ently, Professor Lowe pays her tolls with cash. That makes her a little more difficult to track, but we’re on it. If I had to guess, she has another partner, possibly the fugitive David Robert Owens.”
Pierce shook his head as a confused look appeared on his face.
“How did Amy become involved with Dave Owens?”
“We don’t know. They may have had a connection before his conviction, and once he escaped, he went to her for help.”
That didn’t sound right to Pierce, but it also didn’t matter, what mattered was here and now. After Jimmy wished him luck, Simmons opened the door and Pierce was in the same room with Amy Lowe for the first time in nearly twenty years.
***
It’s over. Dave Owens thought, as he looked around at the landscape surrounding the cabin.
There were flames in all directions, some at a distance, while in the south, the fire was very close. The temperature had risen dozens of degrees by the time he and the girls had made it back to the cabin, while hot ash ignited small fires all around them.
Owens had seen the plane return several times and dump more water or fire retardant, but it seemed too little too late. Even after a second plane joined the fight, the fire still spread because of the wind.
Something took hold of his right leg, and then his left. It was Sophia and Rosa. In their fright, they clung to him.
“Let’s get into the cabin, girls. The air may be better inside and there’s water as well.”
Owens had put away the gun during the walk back and so the girls each took one of his hands. He was a stranger to them, an odd and frightening one at that, but he was an adult and his size gave them comfort.
Owens collapsed on the sofa after entering and felt his strength diminish even more. He had closed his eyes as a jolt of pain knifed through his middle, and when he opened them, Sophia was standing before him.
The little girl was holding a bottle of water out to him.
“You look sick. Do you have any medicine?”
Owens smiled grimly.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
He thanked Sophia for the water and she went over to the window where Rosa was looking out at the firefighting planes.
Angels (A Detective Pierce Novel Book 3) Page 13
