Lone Witness

by Shirlee McCoy

  The hallway was almost empty, the stairwell silent as he entered it and bounded up the flight of stairs. He planned to run to Tessa’s room, see if he could figure out the path she’d taken, but something on the stairs caught his attention. A piece of surgical tape had been dropped in the center tread of one of the steps heading to the fourth floor.

  Another was two steps above it, lying near the baseboard on the landing. Aside from those two pieces of tape, the stairwell was free of debris or litter.

  He’d seen surgical tape in Tessa’s room.

  He’d watched her pick it up and set in on the table she’d knocked over. Was it possible she’d grabbed it and was trying to leave a trail?

  If so, it was a short one.

  And, it was leading up.

  FOUR

  Tessa hadn’t learned much from her mother, but she had learned how to fight. From her grandmother, she’d learned everything else—how to cook, to clean, to be respectful.

  How to take turns, to wait and to be patient.

  She was using those last two skills now, biding her time as she was dragged up another flight of stairs by the man who’d forced her from her hospital room at gunpoint.

  He had it pointed at her side as they ascended, the barrel snagging on her shirt as they sprinted upward.

  She reached in her pocket, trying to tear off more of the surgical tape she’d snagged from the table as he’d rushed her from her room.

  She wasn’t sure what she had thought she could do with it. Leaving a trail like Hansel and Gretel didn’t seem like a good plan for staying alive. Currently, though, it was the only plan she had.

  “What are you doing?” the man growled, his light-eyed gaze dropping to her pocket, his red hair standing in wild tufts around his head. He was on something. She recognized the signs. If she played it smart, she might be able to use that to her advantage.

  Then again, her mother had always been paranoid when she’d been high. It might be more difficult than she hoped to find an opportunity to escape someone in that condition.

  “Nothing,” she responded, keeping her hand in her pocket and continuing upward. They would reach the door to the roof soon. She wasn’t sure what he planned to do to her once they were there, but she didn’t think it would be anything good.

  “What’s in your pocket?”

  “Just this.” She pulled out the tape, because she didn’t want to give him an excuse to search for it.

  He snatched it from her hand and tossed it away.

  It rolled down the steps and stopped on the lower landing.

  “There. Now, we don’t have to worry about that anymore, do we?” he sneered, jerking her up the next few steps, the gun still pressed to her side.

  “We wouldn’t have to worry about anything, if you would let me go,” she responded.

  “Sorry, lady. I can’t.”

  “Why not? I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t even know you.”

  “This isn’t about what you know. It’s about money. I need some. Some guy offered me and my buddies some.” He shrugged, the gun slipping a fraction of an inch away. “Here we are.”

  “What guy?”

  “You ask a lot of questions for someone who has a gun pointed at her heart.”

  It was now pointed at her hip, but she didn’t point that out to him. “If I’m going to die, I’d like to know why.”

  “Who said you were going to die?”

  “You have a gun. You’re taking me up to the roof. I can’t see this ending any other way.” She shuddered, trying to drag her feet as they passed the seventh-floor landing and headed toward the fire door that led to the roof. It was an emergency exit, and she prayed the alarm would sound as they moved through.

  That might be the distraction she needed to knock the gun from his hand and escape.

  “You have a point, but if you think I’m planning to shoot you, you’re wrong. This is going to be a suicide.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. You got knocked on the head. You got confused about your life, and you decided to end it. You waltzed up to the roof and took a header over the side of it.”

  “You actually think people are going to believe I killed myself?”

  “I don’t see why not. Those football players with the concussions do it.”

  “How much were you offered to do this? I’ll offer you more,” she said, hoping that greed might motivate him to release her.

  “Nice trick, lady, but I’m not falling for it. If you offer to pay me, and I accept, you’ll be on the phone with the police as soon as I let you go.”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t tell anybody about our bargain.”

  “Of course you won’t. You’ll be dead,” he replied coldly, his nearly colorless eyes raking her from head to toe.

  “I mean, if you let me live.”

  “I know what you meant. I don’t really care what you meant. I’m being paid good money, and I can’t see turning on the person who’s paying me. If I do, I could end up with a price on my head.”

  He shoved his hand against the crash bar of the door, but it didn’t open.

  The door didn’t open.

  He tried again, the gun slipping from Tessa’s side as he shoved his weight against the metal bar, his wild cursing covering what sounded like someone ascending the stairs.

  Tessa didn’t dare glance down and call attention to what she’d heard.

  “They locked it,” he muttered. “They probably put the whole place on lockdown. I should have had my buddies kill that cop to make certain she kept her big mouth shut.”

  “We can still get up to the roof. I’ve picked locks before,” Tessa said. “Do you have a credit card or...?”

  He backhanded her, and she flew against the door, stars dancing in her periphery as she slid to the floor.

  “I guess your death doesn’t have to be a suicide for me to get paid.” He raised the gun and pointed it at her head. “Sorry about this. I’m not much for killing, but a man has to do what a man has to—”

  She lunged for his knees, throwing her weight into his legs and sending him crashing down the stairs. The gun exploded, the bullet ricocheting off the metal door and slamming into Tessa’s shoulder.

  She barely felt it.

  She was too busy crab-crawling down the stairs in pursuit of the gun that had clattered to the landing below.

  She almost made it.

  She was steps away, trying to get to her feet, dizzy from the blood that was oozing down her arm.

  The gunman righted himself and charged toward her, hands out and face red with fury.

  She screamed, kicking him in the stomach as he fell on top of her, his hands around her throat.

  A million memories filled her head—Patrick throwing a vase, knocking her down, straddling her body with his hands around her throat.

  How many times had she lived through this?

  She wasn’t going to die at the hands of a stranger when she’d survived the violence of a man who’d claimed to love her.

  Was she?

  Please, God, don’t let me die.

  She clawed at his hands, darkness edging in.

  And then he was gone, lifted away and slammed against the wall.

  People were calling out, hollering through the once-silent stairwell, and she was lying on the steps, staring at the ceiling, blood seeping from her shoulder, her ears still ringing from the gun’s report.

  “You’re going to be okay,” someone said, and she realized Henry was kneeling beside her, his eyes more gray than blue, his hands gentle as he pulled fabric away from the bullet wound.

  “Where is he?” she replied, pushing his hand away and sitting. She felt woozy and grabbed his arm, holding herself steady as she tried to find the gunman in the crowd of people.

  “Handc
uffed and heading down the stairs.”

  “He said he had friends. He said something about having them kill Kayla.”

  “They’ve been apprehended.”

  “Someone hired him. It had to have been the kidnapper.”

  “I know,” he responded. “We’re going to question him, see when he was hired, and where. Hopefully, the kidnapper is still hanging around.”

  “Is Everly okay? They didn’t try to get to her, did they?” she asked.

  “Tessa, we have everything under control. I promise you that.”

  “Then why does it feel like everything is out of control?” she asked, her teeth chattering, her body shaking. She felt cold to the bone. Colder than she ever had before.

  “Because you’re scared,” he replied.

  “I’m not scared. I’m terrified,” she responded. She thought he smiled, but a doctor shoved in beside him and pressed a thick pad of gauze against the wound.

  “I think it’s just a flesh wound,” Tessa said. “So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home.”

  “You’re going to be fine, but you’re not going home. Not yet,” the doctor said.

  She wanted to argue, but her eyes drifted closed.

  When she opened them again, she was on a gurney being rushed through the hospital corridor. Henry was jogging beside her, holding her hand and talking to a tall stunning woman dressed in a black suit and pale purple blouse.

  “What’s going on?” Tessa asked, and the woman responded.

  “You’re going to surgery.”

  “I don’t think I need surgery.”

  “Based on the amount of blood you’re losing, I’d say you do,” Henry replied grimly.

  “But, I really think I’m okay,” she said, or tried to say—her mind was fuzzy and the world spinning.

  “Hun?” a nurse said, leaning down so she could look in her eyes. “Is there anyone you want me to call? Family? Friends?”

  She wanted there to be.

  She did.

  She wanted to know that someone was waiting for her, praying for her, anxiously waiting to see her when she was finally out of surgery.

  But the only people she could think of were Betty and Ernie, and they were her bosses. Not her friends.

  “No,” she responded, and she saw the pity in the nurse’s eyes as she was wheeled through the double doors that led into the operating theater.

  * * *

  Henry waited until the double doors closed, and then turned to face Wren Santino. She’d arrived at the hospital just as the chaos had begun and had sent Jessica to protect the girls and his in-laws while she assisted in locating and freeing Tessa.

  Despite their race upstairs, she didn’t have a wrinkle in her suit or hair out of place.

  “I want this guy caught. Today,” he said, somehow keeping rage from seeping into his voice.

  “We all do, but anger isn’t the way to make it happen,” she responded.

  “Who said I’m angry?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “I don’t blame you, but it’s not going to change what happened. The kidnapper hired a few thugs to do what he couldn’t. They almost managed it. Those are facts. The other fact is, they didn’t. Tessa is going to be okay.”

  “And, if we can get them to talk, we may get an even better description of our kidnapper.”

  “They’ll talk. Eventually. For now, we’re going to put safety nets in place. We’re going to make certain your family is protected. We’re going to make certain Tessa is. We’re going to continue our hunt for the kidnapper. Today or tomorrow or the next day. Eventually, we’ll find him.”

  “Eventually isn’t good enough when the guy has already kidnapped and victimized five little girls.”

  “Yesterday wouldn’t have been good enough. No day except the day before he kidnapped his first victim would be. But achieving that would be impossible, so we’re going to focus on doing what we can.”

  “Right. What’s the plan?”

  “How about we send your in-laws and Jessica back to their place? You and I can go to the local precinct and have a chat with the guy who shot Tessa.”

  “And leave her here without any protection?”

  “She’s in surgery. There are police officers in the lobby, and we’ll make sure there are several assigned to escort her from surgery to recover in her room.”

  It was a good plan. In theory.

  In actuality, he didn’t like it.

  There’d been police and security guards all over the hospital when Tessa was abducted from her room.

  “I’d feel better sticking around and keeping an eye on things myself,” he said.

  Wren looked surprised, but didn’t argue. “That’s fine. I’ll go to the precinct, and I’ll give you a call if we get any helpful information.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s both save our thanks until we have this guy behind bars. I’ll go down to Everly’s room and let Jessica know what’s going on. You want me to have the girls come up here to say goodbye?”

  “Sure,” he responded.

  “All right. They should be up in a few minutes. I’m heading out as soon as I fill Jessica in. If anything comes up, call.”

  “I will,” he said as she walked away.

  The corridor fell silent, and he dropped into a chair that sat against the wall. It had been a long morning for all of them, and he wanted to make sure the girls were still doing okay. He also wanted to make sure Tessa stayed okay. The gunman hadn’t been hired to kidnap Everly. He’d been hired to silence her rescuer.

  Tess was the one in real and immediate danger. Not the girls.

  As much as he wanted to escort the girls home, go to the Provincetown Police Department and question the gunman and his friends, he was more concerned about keeping Tessa safe.

  She’d risked her life for his daughter.

  He wasn’t going to let her lose it.

  Eventually, they’d find the kidnapper. For now, she was his top priority.

  All’s well that ends well.

  That’s what his mother used to say when things got tough and the electricity or water were turned off for the umpteenth time or they had empty cupboards for the second day in a row. As soon as she scraped together enough money from her two jobs to pay the bills or buy the food or fix the old car their landlord had given her, she’d smile and say that all was well that ended well.

  She’d died four years before the girls were born, her body ravaged by cancer, but her joy still firmly in place.

  All’s well that ends well, and this will end well for me. No matter what the earthly outcome. She’d whispered that as she was lying on her deathbed, and he’d known she’d believed it. She’d had the strongest faith of any person he’d ever met, her love for the things of God overshadowing all that she said and did. She’d raised him alone when his father had walked out and filed for divorce. Henry had been three. Much too young to remember anything about the man. As far as he knew, his mother had never received a dime of child support. He couldn’t recall ever getting a card or a phone call from the man whose surname he shared. His mother had gotten pregnant at sixteen, married at seventeen and had been a divorced single mother by the time she’d turned twenty. She’d never complained, though. She’d worked hard. She’d done the best she could with what she had.

  And she had really believed everything would always turn out okay.

  He wanted to be the same. He liked to believe his faith was as strong as hers. That, no matter what, he could look at his life and say all is well that ends well.

  But things wouldn’t have been fine if Everly had disappeared. Things wouldn’t be fine if Tessa died because she had kept that from happening.

  That was the truth.

  His truth, anyway.r />
  Tessa had said she was okay, but he’d seen the bullet hole and the blood pulsing out of it. It had gone straight into her shoulder and probably hit the bone. She’d have a long recovery ahead, and Henry didn’t plan on letting her face it alone. He’d heard her response when the nurse had asked if she had family. For whatever reason, she was alone in the world. Or, had been.

  Now, she had him and his family.

  They’d make certain that she recovered, that her medical bills were paid and that she didn’t suffer financially while she was rehabbing.

  It was the least they could do for her.

  That and make sure she was safe, that the man who’d been slipping under the radar, hunting in the darkest hours of the morning and stealing children from the safety of their homes, didn’t do what his hired thugs had attempted—silence her.

  FIVE

  Tessa walked to the diner her first day back at work.

  Not because she had to. Because she wanted to prove that she could.

  She left the house the same way she had four weeks prior—dressed in her winter coat, the diner key in her back pocket, her purse slung over her shoulder. She checked the lock twice before she stepped onto the path and hurried through the quiet streets, her heart pounding double time, her mind flashing back to that moment when she’d seen Everly being kidnapped.

  It was almost enough to make her return home, but she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t live in fear. The three men who had been apprehended at the hospital had insisted they didn’t know who had hired them. They’d refused to give a description. They’d refused to cooperate with the police. All three had been booked on charges of attempted murder. All three would stay in prison until their trials.

  That didn’t make her feel safer.

  Neither did Henry’s assurance that the kidnapper had left the Cape and was on the run. The Jeep he’d used during the attempted kidnapping had been located in New Hampshire three days after Tessa had been shot. The police had dusted for prints and pulled several that they hoped would get a hit in the national data banks. They’d also been able to pull two sources of DNA off a gun they’d found beneath the seat. One was Tessa’s. The other DNA belonged to an unknown male. They were running that through national data banks as well. Henry said they were even working with several DNA-ancestry companies to see if there were potential matches there.