ON The Run (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 6) (Redemption Thriller Series 18)

by John W. Mefford

  She shook her head. “I told you earlier. I’ve been in this hellhole the entire time. The only thing I’ve seen outside of this dungeon is the room you came in from. I angled my head one time and could see a bunch of pictures on the wall. I think most are girls.”

  “They are. I was looking for my—” I held back.

  “Who is this Nicole person?”

  For whatever reason, a wave of emotion engulfed me. I paused the sawing for a moment. I’d been going at it with everything I had. I was sweating; the muscles in my arm and shoulder ached. I took a couple of seconds to gather my breath—and my sanity—and I put my whole body into the sawing. A moment later, her leg was free. I quickly grabbed the final rope, attached to her wrist, and began to cut through it.

  “You never answered me,” she said.

  My nerves were frayed, my energy depleted. My protective shell was nearly nonexistent. “That’s my wife. Nicole.”

  “You think he kidnapped her too?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I sawed a few more times. “I think he killed her.”

  She gasped. “When? How?”

  I continued. “Three nights ago. Someone assaulted her on a bridge. I was watching from a restaurant. It was dusk. I couldn’t see much, not until I saw her falling from the bridge and into the river below.”

  Tears burst out of my eyes, but I kept working on the rope, harder, faster. Anything to divert my attention.

  “Ozzie, I’m so sorry. And you think Harvey did it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. He knew her, I know that much. And she’s in one of his pictures on the wall.”

  She made a whimpering sound. I immediately stopped sawing and looked up. Had I hurt her?

  “What?” I asked.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think he was here at the house with me when your wife was killed.”

  “I didn’t say he personally killed her. I think he hired someone. And he also made it look like I did it.”

  “The cops think you killed your own wife?”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I guess I hope he’s the one, just so you can get some peace.”

  “I have a daughter. It’s about more than inner peace. I can’t go to prison. I can’t be without my daughter.”

  She sniffled. “I can’t wait to see my dad and mom.”

  I could make someone’s life better, right now. I went back to sawing.

  Out of nowhere, a blunt instrument rammed my rib cage.

  Willow screamed. “Oh, God—no. He’s back. He’s going to kill us both!”

  30

  It felt as though my lung had been kicked to the other side of my chest. I doubled over. When my eyes opened, I saw a baseball bat.

  “Ozzie Novak, how’s life treating you these days?”

  I looked up, saw the bushy mustache and oversized belly of Harvey Reese. I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t breathe.

  “And Willow, my dear, why are you wanting to leave so soon? I thought we were enjoying each other’s company.” He spoke like a hotel employee. His calm was unnerving.

  He patted the side of her cheek. “I see that Nicole’s husband has tried to cut through your ropes. At least one is still intact. I knew my rope-tying skills would help me out someday.” He chuckled so hard his belly jiggled.

  “You’re a fucking pervert!” She spat right in his face.

  He untucked his shirt, wiped his face. “Oh, sweetie, you are going to pay dearly for that mistake. I might have to force Ozzie to sit here and watch me take care of business with you…in a way you’ve yet to experience.”

  He grabbed her by the back of the head and pulled her closer.

  “Get away from me!” She swung her free arm, smacking her open hand against his face.

  “You little bitch.” He picked up the bat. He was about to hit her!

  I pushed out a breath, swung my leg around, and kicked the bastard straight in the gonads. He dropped the bat and fell to the ground. At that moment, Willow tugged on her rope and broke free.

  She tried jumping over him, but he still had the wherewithal to grab at her ankles. I reached over and punched his gut. He released her ankle.

  “Run, Willow. Get the cops.”

  She screamed and ran off.

  I pushed myself up just as he grabbed the bat and swung from his position on the floor. I lurched to the left, but the bat clocked my knee. The pain in my rib cage was quickly forgotten—my knee, however, felt like it had been shot with a twelve-gauge.

  He laughed, and my rage went through the roof. I was tired of fucking around. I threw my knee toward his gut—he blocked it with the bat. I’d expected that move. I grabbed the barrel of the bat and rammed it into his forehead. His eyes crossed for a second, and his knees became wobbly. But I didn’t wait for him to fall. I grabbed him by the shirt and threw him to the ground, sending my elbow into his chest on the way down.

  “Harvey, you sick fuck, why did you kill Nicole?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Harvey! Answer me, dammit!”

  “I don’t know anything.” He was still rubbing his damn eyes.

  “Talk to me, Harvey!” I shook him until he pulled his hands away from his face and opened his eyes.

  “Leave me the hell alone,” he said. “You broke into my house.”

  “What? You fucking kidnapped this girl! You’ve raped her, treated her like garbage! How many others have you kidnapped?”

  He pressed his lips shut, looked away.

  The kidnapping and sexual assault was beyond reprehensible, but I couldn’t waste this precious time. “Harvey, tell me about how you found the person who killed Nicole?”

  At first, he didn’t move or say a thing. But that didn’t hold long. A smile began to play at the corner of his lips.

  My jaw quivered from anger, but I couldn’t rip the limbs off of him. Yet. I needed more information, more evidence. “Was this the biggest jolly you’ve ever had, Harvey…finding someone to kill Nicole, making it look like I did it?”

  “I did no such thing.”

  I grabbed him by the shirt, balled up my fist. “You better start talking.”

  “Or what? The almighty Oz is going to beat me up? Give me a break. You can hit me, break a few ribs, whatever. Your wife…she turned me down. She deserved to die just like all the others.”

  “You fucking—” I stopped. Were those sirens? I flipped my head around and looked into the bedroom. Blue and red lights were flashing through the front shades.

  Crap!

  “Where’s your laptop? What’s your email address and password?”

  The sirens rang in my head.

  “That’s right,” he said. “The cops are here. You planning on sticking around long? Oh, I bet they would be so excited to see you. They might even forget I exist.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I couldn’t get caught. Not yet.

  “When I get evidence that you killed Nicole, you’re going to fry. The death penalty, Harvey. And I’ll be on the front row, clapping, cheering them on when they stick that needle in the IV.”

  He shook his head and looked away.

  I got to my feet and made my way into the bedroom, when I realized my only escape was going out the back. Home of Cujo. He wasn’t going to catch me this time, either.

  Grabbing my backpack, I ran out the back door like a bat out of hell and hopped the fence into the neighbor’s back yard.

  31

  It didn’t take long for me to remember that my hip, knee, and ribs had not magically been repaired. I dropped back to more of a hop-fast walk to cover the ground behind the homes. I had to climb over a few other fences, but I made steady progress.

  A quick glance over my shoulder. The red and blue lights painted the dark sky. By now, they probably had Harvey Reese in custody and were beginning to hear Willow’s harrowing story. Part of me wanted to stick around, try to get another chance to talk to Harvey, try to find specific e
vidence that linked him to Nicole’s murder. But wanting something doesn’t make it happen. Staying in Waterbury would only get me arrested.

  I made it to the grocery-store parking lot without incident, slipped into Melissa’s Accord, and shut the door. I gripped the steering wheel, breathing hard. I couldn’t stop thinking about Harvey’s smug expression. I tried to remember the things he’d said. In my current mental state, I could only remember sound bites, and it didn’t really mesh.

  Right after he belted my ribs with the bat, he’d started off with: “Ozzie Novak, how’s life treating you these days?” Those words and his tone made me feel certain that he was the one behind the murder.

  But once I’d turned the tide and taken control of the situation, what really made my blood boil was the way he began to smile after I asked him how he found the person who killed Nicole. I wanted to tear him apart. Screw the cops, the investigation, the due process of law. I was the judge, and I knew what he’d done. I didn’t want to wait and give him any opportunity to deny it, to wiggle out of the charges with the aid of some sleazy lawyer.

  But then he denied that he was involved in the killing. “I don’t know anything,” he’d said. The words hammered my brain for a few seconds as I tried to reconcile all his other signals. And then there was the photo of Nicole and the fact that he’d kidnapped and raped Willow—hell, maybe he’d done the same thing to the other girls.

  I leaned back in my seat and started the engine. I was questioning everything, including my instincts, and not in one specific direction. My opinions bounced against theories like ping-pong balls dancing in a lottery bucket. Nothing stuck, however. My frustration intensified to the point where I could feel it buzzing through my whole body. I needed to run this by someone. Mitch was my best bet—my only option, really. He might have heard back from his buddy at the US Attorney’s Office. And maybe that friend could work with us by ensuring the Waterbury investigators were looking not just at evidence related to Harvey’s crime against Willow and other girls, but also into Nicole’s murder and the associated setup against me.

  Get to Mitch’s house. That was my goal. With any hope, I’d get there before midnight—he’d admitted to always working late—and we could have our discussion tonight. I had to make progress. Quickly. I knew an invisible timer existed, and at some point, my freedom would end. I could feel that moment looming ever closer.

  I shifted the Accord into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main four-lane road. I blended in with the light traffic and motored about a half-mile—until I saw flashing lights in my rearview mirror.

  “No, no, no!” I said out loud, staring into the mirror. A police car was about a hundred feet behind me and closing quickly. I hoped…prayed that he was on his way to Harvey’s house. Wait, that was in the other direction. Whatever. Maybe he was rushing to a car crash up ahead or some other crime scene across town.

  I had to find out before he got too close, though. I saw a left-turn lane and veered into it. I completed the U-turn and swung my head over my shoulders to see if the cop was braking to make the same U-turn or speeding ahead.

  I saw red brake lights.

  Fuck!

  Why were they after me? The pedophile prick, Harvey Reese, was back at his house. After finding all of those pictures on Harvey’s wall—and God only knew what else after a thorough search of his place—the Waterbury Police Department would have countless threads that required investigative attention.

  And then I remembered Melissa. I was driving a stolen car. I should have known better than to press my luck.

  I whipped the steering wheel right at the next side street and then planted my foot hard against the gas pedal. A car had started pulling out of a parking lot onto this side street but jerked to a stop when they saw I wasn’t slowing down. The driver lay on the horn as I whizzed by at more than fifty miles per hour. A quick glance in my rearview. The police car had just turned onto the street, the headlights bouncing up and down—moving at a high rate of speed.

  I darted my eyes all around, looking for an escape. If this were Austin, I’d know all the shortcuts and hidden coves. But this was no place like home. I’d have to wing it. I waited until the last possible second, slammed my foot onto the brake, and hooked a quick left. I could feel some type of grinding within the car. For a brief second, I thought the Accord might lift up to two wheels. I somehow kept it grounded and then had to avoid two parked cars. I realized homes surrounded me, but they were more compact than in Harvey’s neighborhood. This could work to my advantage—but I had no idea how.

  The cop whipped onto the street, and a second later, I made another turn, this one to the right. This exercise went on four more times, my speed increasing with each one. I just hoped like hell that no people or pets stepped into the road.

  On my fourth turn, the cop car had still not made it to the third street. Driving like a maniac had paid off momentarily. After I made that final left-hand turn, I screeched to a stop on the left side of the residential street. I grabbed my backpack, hobbled across the street, through the front yard of some home, heading straight into a black abyss—their back yard.

  I then heard two things very clearly: first, screeching tires, probably from the cop car, and second, a growling dog.

  Not again, dammit!

  I ran through the yard as fast as I could, given the increasing pain in my many injured body parts. This dog was much lower to the ground than the last one—looked like a chow—but as quick as a June bug. He nipped at my heels, nearly tripping me. My bag dropped off my shoulder, and his jaw clamped down on it. I tugged on one end of the backpack, but he only dug his paws into the ground, ripping his head left and right, doing what he could to take it from me.

  I looked up. The police lights splashed red and blue against the dark sky—right where I’d parked my car. Within seconds, they’d be headed in this direction. They had guns. I didn’t. And if they knew I was Ozzie Novak—the same man accused of murder, the same man who was considered “dangerous”—I knew I was toast. Even with two good legs, I couldn’t outrun a bullet.

  A whoop, whoop noise made the chow squeal and run off. The sound had come from the police car. Not sure what that signaled other than for me to get the hell out of Dodge. I flipped my backpack over my shoulder and started running. Halfway into my sixth stride, I hit a brick wall. Literally, a brick wall.

  I fell flat on my ass, but quickly got to my feet when I heard the growling chow approaching. My heart felt like a jackhammer was stuck in my chest. From the ground, I could see the top of the wall against the glowing sky. It stood at least eight feet high and ran left and right as far as I could see. Had to be some type of major retaining wall.

  The barks grew closer. A quick glance behind me revealed not only the dog but a flashlight darting between the two homes. Could it get any worse?

  I flipped around, got a running head start, and vaulted upward, bouncing one foot off the brick, using my momentum to spring myself higher until my hands had a firm grip on top of the wall. The dog pawed my shoes for a second, but I quickly tossed myself over the barricade and landed on two feet. It felt like a metal spike had just been wedged into my hip.

  I was standing next to a street. Four lanes, but no cars heading in my direction, two cars moving away from me. I pulled the blue ball cap from my backpack and slipped it on as I walked down the sidewalk. My adrenaline spigot was wide open. I took in three gulping breaths, trying to slow the tide of my pulse. It wasn’t easy. I saw another section of homes up ahead, maybe a hundred yards. I’d get to that point, find a dark, quiet place with no dogs around, and think about my next steps. Peacefully.

  I was about halfway to my destination when I put my hand on a metal railing. I realized then that I was on a small bridge. I looked down as I walked. There was a small ravine, some rocks, maybe a stream. I could see both banks; it wasn’t very wide. But the bottom was all black. I couldn’t tell if it was a ten-foot drop or a thirty-foot drop.

/>   Headlights hit my eyes. I jerked my head up. A car had just turned onto the road. I used my hand to shield my eyes from the direct light, hoping to determine if the car had lights on its roof. I could see nothing. I waited a few seconds, gauging my options. If I continued in this direction, I might be running right at a police car. If I flipped around and ran back to where I’d hopped over the fence…well, that was obviously not an option.

  But too much had gone wrong for me to think this was just a random car.

  As I gripped the metal railing, an idea popped into my mind. I slipped through the fencing while keeping hold of one of the two horizontal metal poles. A quick glance downward—nothing but darkness.

  Here goes nothing…or everything, as the case may be. I scaled down one of the vertical support beams until I was clutching the side of the bridge with my hands, the rest of my body now dangling like a…well, a person hanging from a small bridge.

  A second later, a car drove up and stopped. I could see the top of it. It was a police car. Could the cop see my hands? Had he seen me drop over the side of the bridge?

  Blood and oxygen raced through my body. The near-constant physical and emotional stress made my stomach feel queasy…as in, I was about to throw up. Then, I thought I heard a car door. Without looking up, I quickly shimmied my hands leftward, looking down every other second, hoping to see the side of the incline so I could release my grip and drop to the ground, momentarily escaping the cop. But it was still all black.

  Crap!

  A quick glance up. I saw no one, only the headlights of the police car. Maybe I hadn’t heard a car door, after all. My arms began to feel the strain of holding my body; my stomach continued with the somersaults. Uggh.

  Maybe the cops were sitting in the car. Had they seen me go over the side, or had they just thought they saw something in the darkness? Maybe they were calling for backup.

  My stomach… Holy shit, I was about to blow chunks. My hands started to sweat, my mouth began to water.