Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

  “Why don’t you sell?”

  Roger opened his mouth but Lou’s voice interrupted, low and hard. “Because that prick,” she whispered, obviously thinking about the children, “Willie Bowen has marked down the remaining lots to less than what we paid for ours.”

  Roger continued, “When we bought in, the property deal was you got four acres and a three bedroom house for $300,000: $150,000 down, fifteen year mortgage. And the Bowenville bank…”

  “Which Willie owns,” Lou interjected sarcastically.

  “Holds all the mortgages,” Roger finished. “There’s about a 150 homesites left of the original 800. He’s reduced the price to $250,000 and, only requiring a $100,000 down, and is now building four bedroom houses instead of three.”

  Deacon understood perfectly. “So why would anyone buy an existing property from someone who wants to sell?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Right. Unless you’re willing to mark it down well below what you paid for it.” Roger rubbed the bridge of his nose. “And even then, we found out, because Bowenville bank holds all the mortgages, they have to approve the buyer unless someone’s got the cash to pay for the whole thing.”

  “After we get the rest of our things, then we can look at our options.” Lou looked down at her pie. “And none of them are very good.”

  Deacon could tell his sister-in-law was near tears. “Don’t worry, Lou. We’ll get your furniture.” He looked at his nephew. “And your racing car bed.”

  Lou leaned back in her chair, a look of bliss on her face. “I can’t wait to get my bed back. Sleeping on an air mattress isn’t going to cut it much longer.” She chuckled. “Every morning Roger says he’s going to have to bring in a winch just to get me off the floor.”

  Deacon did not share the humor. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He looked straight at his brother.

  “I’m telling you now, Deacon. I’m telling you now.”

  Deacon closed his eyes, fighting down the urge to punch his brother in the face while simultaneously understanding the pride that had led his brother to say nothing. Whatever had caused this situation, he was here now and he’d do his best to help his brother solve it. Deacon suddenly felt a bit concerned. He was supposed to be back in Virginia on Monday, fourteen days from now. Would his two-week leave be enough time to really help Roger? He hoped so.

  Into the silence came Tony’s piping voice. “Uncle Deke, you want to see my kittens in the barn? They’re really cute.”

  Deacon glanced back and forth between his brother and sister-in-law, sensing that this might be a good time to make himself scarce. “Sure, Tony. Sure. Lead the way.” When Deacon and Roger had pulled up Roger’s driveway, Deacon had been eager to see his sister-in-law and niece and nephew and had paid minimal attention to the surroundings. Now, walking out to the barn with Tony, he took greater note of what was around him. Roger had described his new property as a dump, and with a clear-eyed view, Deacon saw nothing that indicated that was an exaggeration.

  Whatever money Roger had managed to put his hands on had obviously gone to absolute necessities: a new chicken house, fences that looked freshly repaired in multiple places, bright clean hardware on the barn doors. But elsewhere, nothing had been done. The house’s porch itself had four tightly looped strands of rope running from one upright to the next, apparently the only thing preventing the three-year-old from falling off. He’d just seen the first thing he’d fix.

  In the barn, Tony led the way to a back corner, where a small calico cat had made a nest for herself in an abandoned toolbox. She showed no reaction to the boy, but as soon as she saw Deacon, she spit and hissed, arching her body into a bow.

  Immediately, Deacon stepped back. “She doesn’t know me, buddy. I don’t want to scare her. Just bring me one of the kittens.”

  Tony immediately turned to retrieve one of the kittens, all the while quietly reassuring the mother cat that Uncle Deke was a “good guy.” Deacon wasn’t sure how useful that information was to a cat, but she let Tony take the small kitten with no more hissing.

  He carried it up to Deacon. “This is Blossom.”

  Deacon took the tiny animal carefully. Its eyes were open, but it still appeared very young and it immediately curled into Deacon’s hand and seemed to fall back asleep. He tried to remember how old cats were when they opened their eyes. Two weeks maybe? “Who picked out that name?”

  “I did. The other ones are Tulip, Marigold, and Rosie.” He shrugged. “They can’t walk so well yet, but in a couple of weeks Mom says they will be playing all day.”

  Deacon handed the kitten back to his nephew. “Here, why don’t you give Blossom back to his mom? We don’t want her to worry.”

  Tony replaced the kitten, then walked over to a metal water bowl. “It’s my chore to make sure this bowl has water all the time.”

  “Good. It’s good to take care of your animals.” Deacon paused, feeling a bit guilty about pumping a five-year-old for information, but he tamped down his misgivings. “Tony, are you happy here?”

  Tony turned back to his uncle, then shrugged and looked down at his feet. “Not really. I was s’posed to go to kindergarten this year and play T-ball, but now I’m home schooled. And Frankie Kaplan was my best friend, but I hardly get to see him. And,” he scuffed his toe in the hay-strewn dirt of the barn floor, “Mommy cries sometimes. She misses her friends, Daddy says. And I miss my toys, and my train set, and everything.” He shrugged again. “Hannah doesn’t care, though. She’s just a baby.”

  “We’re going to get all your toys back, Tony. I promise.” That was the easy part. Solving the rest of the problems, Deacon reflected, might be a bit tougher.

  Chapter 14

  Lori

  Monday

  11:00 PM Eastern Time

  Gainesville, Florida

  * * *

  Lori wasn’t sure she could put one foot in front of the other. She was emotionally and physically exhausted, and she felt as if her day, the worst day of her life, wasn’t anywhere near over. The all-night Walmart loomed in front of her. To Lori’s overwhelmed eyes, it didn’t look like a store, it looked like a fortress. It was nearly midnight, they’d been driving for nearly six hours, reaching a generically suburban area outside of Gainesville, Florida, filled with strip malls, chain restaurants, and big box stores. It should have been the perfect place to stop.

  Lori had had a serious reality check when she tried to check into a hotel in a chain she’d stayed at multiple times. Even when she said she was paying cash for the room, the clerk demanded ID and a credit card for “incidentals.” When Lori told him that her wallet had been stolen, he still refused to give her a room. She was forced to go back into the car, and tell the exhausted Simone and the crying Grace (Brandon was, thank heaven, already asleep) that they could not stay here. Just finding places to stay, she realized, was going to be a lot harder than she had assumed.

  At the next establishment, a much lower end chain, they tried a different tactic. Simone went in and rented a room with cash. She told the clerk she had no credit card or any ID other than a student card. He grunted, barely taking his eyes off the ball game to glance at her student ID, then she wouldn’t be able to make a phone call or rent a movie, and handed her a room key. The signage in the check-in area never mentioned pets, and Simone didn’t ask.

  At least they had a room, albeit a musty one. Lori allowed herself one luxury: she took a hot shower while Simone walked the dog. Then, with Simone, Brandon, Grace and Sasha safely behind locked doors, Lori was ready to make a foray into the Walmart. Before she did so, she went into a large full service gas station and convenience store and bought a nondescript ball cap and the largest pair of sunglasses she could find. With her distinctive golden red curly hair bunched completely under the ball cap and the sunglasses on, she knew she’d be hard to spot.

  Once in the store, though, she barely knew where to start. During the six hour drive from Miami to Gainesville, Lori had run through every “on the run” a
nd “escape” plan she could think of, and staying out of the public eye and away from cameras was a big part of it. She was going to buy breakfast bars, sandwich fixings, canned soups, cold cereal, and hot dogs; when they could cook a meal at a rest stop it meant that their group did not have to walk into a restaurant.

  Making that decision was fine, but every time she bought one thing she realized she needed something else: hot dogs meant ketchup and buns. Canned soup meant a can opener and a saucepan to cook it in. Peanut butter needed jelly, which needed a knife to spread it. Before she knew it, her grocery cart was entirely full and she had not even moved to the clothing area, where she had to buy a couple basic outfits for each of them, as well as underwear, something to sleep in, and socks. In the housewares section, she bought pillows and some blankets to have in the car. In the personal care section, she bought, basically, everything.

  Then, she hit the electronics section. The trip so far had been trying: Brandon had been bored out of his mind before they’d gone two hours and spent most of the last four (before he fell asleep) kicking the back of Lori’s seat. The only way they would make it to Montana with Brandon still alive was to get him a wide selection of toys, games, and entertainment. To that end she bought a portable DVD player that would run off a car charger, and a small stack of DVDs. She winced at the price tag, but saw no option. Something like a tablet, where he could play games would be great, but that would require an internet connection, so was out of the question.

  By the time she added markers, coloring books, chapter books for Grace, cars for Brandon, an Etch-A-Sketch, PlayDoh, a stack of trashy magazines for Simone, and a higher end pay-as-you-go phone for herself, she was pushing one cart and dragging another and the final price tag was a whopping $700. Had anyone ever spent $700 at Walmart unless they were buying a television? She doubted it.

  The cashier eyed her up and down. “Going on a trip?” she asked archly.

  Lori mumbled a response, cringing. So much for staying on the down-low; this was a transaction that this cashier would remember for the rest of her life. But the only thing she said was, “And a ten pound bag of ice, please.”

  Alone, in the Walmart parking lot near Gainesville, Florida, at nearly 1:00 AM, Lori Dovner nearly collapsed. But somehow, she made it back to the car, and grimly packed the ice and the perishables she’d purchased into the cooler. Finally finished, she collapsed in the driver’s seat and realized…

  … she’d forgotten something.

  So tired she was swaying, she went back into the Walmart, and bought sewing scissors and a box of black hair dye. This time around, she went to the self-serve cash registers, praying that the cashier she had previously didn’t spot her.

  Finally, she drove herself back to hotel. Entering the room, only Sasha greeted her with a weak tail wag, as if to say, “Hey don’t you know how late it is?” Simone and Grace, asleep in one bed and Brandon, in the other, never stirred. Lori eyed the bed - a double, not a queen - containing Sasha and Brandon skeptically. She had no idea how she was going to find room with a fifty pound boy and a hundred pound dog, but somehow she did, and against all odds, on the worst day of her life since her mother was killed, she was unconscious before her head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 15

  Lori

  Tuesday

  5:00 AM Eastern Time

  Gainesville, Florida

  * * *

  Lori’s reprieve didn’t last as long as she might have liked. At 5:00, with the sky still completely black outside, she woke, used the bathroom, and tried to fall back to sleep, but a little more than four hours of sleep was enough to take the edge off of her terror and exhaustion. Back in the bed, now terribly aware of how tightly she was sandwiched between Brandon and Sasha, she dozed only fitfully, grim images of screaming blood-soaked men and car windows shattering in a rain of glass never far from her mind’s eye. Every noise she heard outside her room was Raoul Saldata.

  At 6:00 she gave up, and got out of bed. Dawn was not far off, and, as horrific as the thought was, Lori realized they needed to get on the road. It had taken almost six hours to drive from Miami to Gainesville yesterday, covering about 350 miles; that was barely 10% of the total trip, and Brandon had been losing his mind. How would they ever make it all the way to Montana? Lori thought of the loot that was stashed out in the car, particularly the DVD player. At least that, with the coloring books and toys, would keep the children occupied for a while, and she could always take them into another store and let them pick out some new DVDs or more toys. Still, the number of miles remaining - more than 2,000 - seemed insurmountable.

  She wished she had more concrete knowledge of how the whole tracking and surveillance system worked. On TV and in the movies, it looked instant and all-powerful. A team of people sat in a huge room, with screens and monitors, reviewing satellite video and security camera feeds and computer networks, but in this case, was that reality?

  She knew she couldn’t use credit cards or an ATM or drive her own car or make a call on her cell phone. She knew she had to stay away from places where there were video cameras. But what about some of the other things? How much power and ability did someone like Saldata, even if he had FBI agents in his pocket, really have to find her?

  Suddenly, Lori wondered if she’d made a serious miscalculation. She and Simone both had American drivers’ licenses and Brandon and Grace didn’t need identification to fly. Did they really need to drive all the way to Montana? Lori had looked once at flights to visit her sister, long ago, before things got tense between them. If she remembered correctly, the choice then, with Lori in Miami, was Miami to Denver, and then Denver to either Billings or Bozeman, Montana.

  They’d already come too far from Miami to go back, but what about Atlanta? She knew they were almost to the Georgia border, and she didn’t think it was more than a few more hours to Atlanta. There were certainly flights from Atlanta to Denver. What would happen if she just walked into the airport in Atlanta and paid cash for tickets all the way through? Would they get off a plane eight or ten hours later in Montana, with no one the wiser, or would harsh-eyed men in dark suits with earpieces and big guns intercept them before they made it through security?

  She didn’t even know, in these days of internet travel sites and all the security, if someone could just walk into an airport and buy a ticket. Not only did she not know, how could she find out? There wasn’t exactly a website, fugitives_r_us.com where you could just look things like this up. And none of those considerations addressed Sasha. To fly with the dog, she’d need to buy a crate and get vet papers faxed to her. Lori shook her head; that was too overwhelming to say nothing of risky. And she was adamant that she was not going to leave her dog.

  All things considered, it seemed much safer and far more “off the grid” to just stick with her current plan. Even if someone figured out she might go to her sister’s, whom she’d barely spoken to for over five years, driving there was probably the last thing someone would expect her to do. Who drove nearly 3,000 miles with two kids? No one, that’s who.

  Stretching, Lori looked around, and realized that this lower end hotel chain had no coffee makers in the room. Maybe I’ll call room service, she thought cynically, and sighed. Quickly pulling on the jeans she’d discarded to crawl into bed, she shook Simone awake. “I’m taking Sasha out and getting coffee.”

  Simone rolled over drowsily, then her eyes snapped opened as she obviously remembered what had happened and why they were in a hotel room. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes.” Lori nodded. “Sleep a little more, if you can. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” Then, she thought to herself, at least maybe one of us won’t feel as if she’d gotten run over by a truck.

  Half an hour later, Lori slipped back into the hotel room with a bag of breakfast sandwiches, orange juices, and coffees. She’d had to tie Sasha to an exterior table when she went into the fast food restaurant to order, but fortunately the seven-year-old shepherd was easily the calme
st dog on the face of the planet and had done nothing more than watch Lori attentively through the glass.

  Sasha immediately jumped back onto the bed next to Brandon, who didn’t stir, and, Lori noted, neither did Simone. Fine, she thought, let her sleep a little longer. Lori hadn’t asked Simone to drive at all last night, but today, with Lori going on not even five hours of sleep, Simone would have to drive at least part of the day. Lori knew they had to get moving but, before they did, she wanted to look at some things on her computer.

  She hesitated just a second before opening the case, remembering her thoughts right before she’d left the hotel room. Could a computer be tracked? She’d said no to that question yesterday, when Salvadore asked at Sylvia’s house. As long as she didn’t send an email or buy anything, as long as she just browsed the internet, she didn’t understand any way her computer could be located. And she really needed to check a few things.

  Taking a deep breath, Lori opened the laptop and brought up a maps program. Ten minutes later, she had a plan.

  The most direct route from Miami, Florida to Montana was a fairly straight diagonal, through Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City, before turning west at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. But, Lori reasoned, while she had not been close to her sister Louise for years, she still was her only close relative other than her father, who was in Hawaii. And if someone guessed she was going to Montana and had some way of watching the roads, taking the most direct and logical route might be a mistake.

  Quickly manipulating the map program, she laid out an alternate route. What she came up with was 100 or so miles longer, but the path she mapped out took them west almost immediately this morning, through Tallahassee, Florida, then on to Mobile, through Shreveport, west to Dallas, then north to Denver. This route didn’t rejoin the most direct route until they were almost in Montana. For some reason she could not put her finger on, she had an incredibly strong sense that this was the right choice.