Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

  Lori studied the map carefully and made notes, laying out a driving plan that had them covering 600-700 miles a day. Her goal for today was Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about 600 miles. Then, the next day, Wednesday, Oklahoma City, around 650 miles. Then, Thursday, all the way to Denver, which left a final 675 miles to push through on Friday, putting them to Lewiston, Montana, on Friday night.

  This was Tuesday morning. Yesterday morning at this time, she was just getting up, dreading taking Brandon to school. Now she was on the run for her life, trying to keep her children alive. It didn’t even seem possible.

  Tears welled into Lori’s eyes, as she glanced up and saw her two children, her dog, and Simone all sleeping peacefully. Life or death. People said it all the time. “It’s a life or death situation.” Lori realized, for the most part, people who said it had absolutely no idea what it meant. How it felt to know that making the wrong decision could quite literally kill your children. Suddenly, the coffee she’d been sipping was incredibly sour on her stomach.

  Resolutely, she snapped the laptop closed, and stood, steeling herself to wake everyone up. Then her eyes fell onto the items she had gone back into the Walmart to buy last night. She had one more thing to do.

  Chapter 16

  Saldata

  Tuesday

  2:00 PM Eastern Time

  Miami, Florida

  * * *

  Raoul Saldata was a very disciplined man. Most days, by two in the afternoon he’d already been at his desk for more than eight hours. But today, he’d gotten nothing done, as he’d continued to wait the entire day so far for news that had not come. He felt ineffective and helpless, and he hated it. It made Raoul Saldata very, very angry.

  The woman - and her two helpers - were out there. All had seen Senator Michaels at his home, and now the woman knew for certain that the entire tale put out publicly was a lie.

  He couldn’t find any of them. Such a small thing. And a small thing like this could bring down his entire operation.

  He should have ordered pizza for the dinner.

  There was a knock on his office door. He’d been expecting this caller. The only surprise was that it had taken this long.

  Garth opened the door, admitting the assistant chief of Miami police, Nico Rossi. Saldata didn’t like the man, though he had been a faithful associate for more than ten years now. That might all be changing now. Saldata would say nothing of course, but he knew that Mr. Rossi had unexpectedly taken his three children out of school this morning and put them and his wife on a last minute cruise deal, leaving the port of Miami right about now. The wife probably had instructions to get off the cruise ship at the first stop and to not get back on. Not that it would make a bit of difference if Saldata wanted to find them.

  Saldata’s desk was angled so he got the best view of the waterway out of the window, and he did not turn to greet his guest. “Mr. Rossi. I sincerely hope you have some good news for me.”

  “I’ve got nothing for you.” Rossi didn’t bother to mince words. “Since she hit the bank yesterday afternoon, she’s dropped completely off the grid.”

  Saldata said nothing. It was a tactic he used often. Left to their own devices, most people would tell him everything he wanted or needed to hear. And later, they would never be exactly sure how it had happened.

  Rossi did not disappoint. As soon as the silence grew awkward, he started talking again. “We can’t wait any longer. The principal from her children’s school has called the precinct three times already today. This is not a street girl that can disappear with no one noticing. What happened at the school was a mistake.”

  He took a deep breath and continued. “While we know the names of the other employees who were at your party,” before Saldata could even ask, Rossi provided the information, “they also seem to have disappeared. Ms. Dovner appears to be staying ahead of us.”

  Saldata was not so polite. He was also brutally honest. “The bitch has been ahead of us since she drove up the driveway yesterday.”

  “We have to find her. And to do that we need to go public.”

  Since Saldata had come to the same conclusion, he had no real objection. Still, it was better to make Rossi fight for it. Then, if things went sideways, the blame could be laid at his doorstep. “No,” Saldata argued, “too messy. We must keep this under cover.”

  Rossi slipped into a handsome leather wing chair, across the desk from Saldata. “So far your name has been kept out of it. No one knows Michaels was here. But if people start looking for Dovner, there’s only so much I can do. Her employees know the party she did Sunday night was here. Mr. Saldata, look at me.”

  Reluctantly, Saldata turned, his weight causing his desk chair to creak.

  Rossi continued, his voice earnest. “Every parent at the school knows there was a lock down and that Lori Dovner was involved somehow. If we don’t give them a story, people are going to start making up their own. She saw something she shouldn’t have and she grabbed her kids from school because she thought they were in danger. The police were there to help, but she didn’t know it. We have to make that the new story.”

  Saldata toyed with a handsome pen on his desk. He was still furious at the miscalculation that had led him to call Rossi, who then had a detective and multiple officers at his door within ten minutes, but how could anyone have predicted the woman would not call 911? “What do you suggest?”

  “A simple story, but one that will hold. Ms. Dovner and the senator were acquainted, friends. We can even hint that she was his mistress. After meeting at a party on Sunday night, which just happened to be at your house, they went out. He was shot and now she and her children have disappeared. If the press thinks she’s in danger, it’ll be on every news show within an hour. Miami mom sought in senator’s murder.” He paused. “Witness to senator’s murder and children now also missing. That sort of thing.”

  Saldata hated admitting weakness, and even in a case like this it was hard for him to concede he did not have the answers, but he needed to know Rossi’s opinion. “Where do you think she is?”

  Restlessly, Rossi got up from his chair and walked over to the broad window, shaking his head. “We’re checking her cell phone records, but it’s tough. She used her cell for her business, so there are hundreds, actually, thousands of calls. Customers, employees, friends. She definitely called your housekeeper yesterday morning.”

  Saldata grunted in response. He’d already assumed that Rodriguez had given Dovner the gate codes, but his earlier thought - that the woman would have to be eliminated - had been reconsidered. At this point, until Dovner was found, nothing else in Saldata’s life could change. The woman had come and gone this morning, and if she’d noticed the new dining room furnishings (and how could she not have?), she’d said nothing. Garth had even mentioned that the housekeeper had asked if the caterer had gotten her purse, so now Saldata knew the reason she’d come back. “But no family?”

  “Her mother is dead. Her father lives in Hawaii with a new wife and young children, and she has a sister in Montana. That’s all we’ve been able to find. No one local. And she doesn’t seem close to either the father or sister. Talks to her father a couple times a month, and to the sister a couple times a year.”

  Saldata considered Dovner’s options. She couldn’t use her car; even if she swapped out the license plate somehow, the broken back window was a dead giveaway. She also couldn’t use her credit cards to rent another car or buy a plane ticket. He repeated his question. “So, where is she?”

  “Best guess? She’s hiding in a friend’s basement. Right here in Miami. And once this hits the national news, half the people in the United States will be looking for her. All we have to do is find the friend and we find her.”

  Something about that felt wrong to Saldata. He’d been surprised by Lori Dovner more than once in the last twenty-four hours, and he didn’t like surprises. She’d taken $4000 out of the bank, a big risk and a lot of money if you were hiding with a friend. Still, there
was nothing he could do to prove that theory was wrong until he had more information.

  Saldata heard a buzzing in his desk drawer. It was a phone that was kept charged always, that was used to exchange calls with only one person. Most people who knew Saldata in any way intimately assumed he was the boss, but that assumption was wrong. There was always another boss, and now his had questions. He looked up at Rossi. “I need to take this.” Without another word, he turned his desk chair back away and opened the drawer.

  Nico Rossi took the hint and let himself out.

  Chapter 17

  Lori

  Tuesday

  4:00 PM Eastern Time

  Biloxi, Mississippi

  * * *

  Lori quietly cursed the clamshell packaging around the pay-as-you-go cell phone she’d bought. They should just sell box cutters with every one of these things.

  With everything else that she had to do that morning, she’d decided to leave opening the phone she’d bought at Walmart the previous night until they got in the car, and so far, she hadn’t really needed it. Filling up with gas right before they pulled out of Gainesville, she’d bought the most expensive Road Atlas sold in the gas station. The maps were detailed and were all that were required to get them on the right road at least for today. But now, taking a break from driving, she wanted to use the phone’s internet features to check news and weather.

  Unfortunately, the phone’s package was not cooperating. Maybe the phones didn’t actually work, she told herself cynically, but because no one could ever get them out of the packages, the company was never found out. She wondered if she could chew it open. Realizing it was hopeless, she set the package in her lap before she hurt herself. She was going to have to wait until their next stop to get the scissors or a knife, which were both packed in the very back of the car, underneath several other things, and that was the end of it.

  Sitting back in the seat, she looked at the landscape outside her window. She’d never been to Alabama before, but it looked a lot like Florida: flat, green, and water everywhere. Today’s route had been easy. Almost immediately after leaving their hotel, they’d taken I-10 west, and stayed on that for almost 400 miles, picking up I-12 in Mobile, Alabama.

  Or, Lori corrected, it could have been easy, if they’d had two drivers. Today Lori had discovered something she had not known, and unfortunately, discovered it the hard way. Simone had never driven any distance at all and never on four lane roads like the interstates, called “autoroutes” in France. She hadn’t had her own car in France, and any time her family went anywhere, her father drove. Since coming to America as an au pair, her driving had been limited to taking herself to community college and taking the kids to activities, all in the immediate area of Lori’s home.

  She was frightened and uncomfortable around the tractor-trailers, gripping the wheel in terror whenever one roared past them. And a whole lot of them were roaring past, because Simone seemed incapable of driving faster than 40 miles an hour. Lori had told Simone to stay in the right lane and to maintain her speed right at the limit. A bit slower was fine, but just as driving too fast would make them conspicuous, moseying along the interstate twenty miles below the speed limit not only would add hours to an already horrifically long trip, it was dangerous. Yet, every time Lori looked over at the speedometer while Simone was driving, she saw the number creeping slowly lower.

  This morning, after only about a half hour break, and needing to tell her about five times to speed up, Lori took the wheel back. Simone simply could not be allowed to drive 45 on the interstate. They’d get stopped by a cop in a heartbeat, and whatever relaxation Lori should have gotten by not driving was destroyed by having to watch Simone every second. At the same time Lori had to wonder at the insanity of trying to force an inexperienced driver to go faster - on the interstate - with her children in the car.

  But now, it was nearly 3:00 in the afternoon, Lori had driven almost eight hours and nearly 400 miles today, and that was on only four or five hours of fitful sleep. Fortunately, on this go-round, Lori had hit on the idea of showing Simone how to use the cruise control. Set at a sensible 60 miles per hour, the cruise system seemed to be doing a much better job of helping Simone than Lori’s nagging had done. They still had another 150 miles to go before Baton Rouge, the place Lori had designated for tonight’s stopping point, and hopefully Simone could drive the whole way. Maybe, just maybe Lori could close her eyes for a few minutes.

  “Mommy, I need to pee.” Brandon’s voice piped from the back seat. “Right now.”

  Lori’s eyes snapped open, and she turned to look at Brandon in the captain’s chair behind the driver. “You just did. When we changed drivers. That wasn’t even half an hour ago.”

  Brandon looked at her blankly. The concept that he had just urinated was utterly meaningless to the five-year-old, clearly no more relevant than if Lori had told him he didn’t need to eat today because he ate last week. “Well, I need to pee again.”

  Grace was coloring a detailed design from an adult coloring book Lori had found. Without looking up, she said, “Just stick it out the window. No one would care.”

  “Grace!” Lori was shocked. Where in the world…

  “No, I can’t do that,” Brandon insisted, clearly taking his sister’s suggestion seriously. “Because if the window would come up by accident, then my wiener could get chopped off.”

  “Brandon! Stop.” Lori turned fully around in the seat to eye her daughter. “Why would you even say something like that?” It didn’t help that next to her, Simone had started to laugh.

  Grace continued to color. “Because then we wouldn’t have to stop.”

  “I’m not going to do it, Mommy,” Brandon insisted. “I don’t want my wiener to get chopped off.”

  So exhausted was Lori, that she barely stopped herself from blurting her first thought, which was she did not want his wiener to get chopped off either. Good grief, she barely stopped herself, had she almost said that? This was going nowhere good. “Fine, we’ll stop,” she sighed. Plus, she realized an advantage: she could find something to open this damn clamshell phone package because she really did want to get the phone open. Lori looked up, and luck was on her side for once. A green highway sign advertised the next exit, and only a hundred yards beyond it, a blue sign listed multiple fast food restaurants and gas stations. “Pull off here,” she said to Simone.

  Ten minutes later, as they pulled out of the truck stop, Lori noticed a strip mall directly across the highway, a large sign proclaiming that there was a Goodwill store there. So far, the DVD player she’d bought had been a huge success, but the DVDs at Walmart, most nearing $20 a pop were too expensive to buy more than a couple. Maybe people donated DVDs? Lorie hoped there would be more cartoons and kids movies for a reasonable price. It would be worth the time to stop.

  “Pull in here,” she told Simone. Fortunately, the Escalade had a feature where she could leave the car running by remote and still lock it, so she didn’t have to worry about Sasha in an un-airconditioned vehicle.

  As they prepared to walk into the shop, another storefront two doors down caught Lori’s eye. “International calling and Internet” the sign proclaimed. “Calls, 10 cents a minute.” The sign was translated into Spanish, Arabic, and at least one Asian language that, from the script, Lori thought might be Vietnamese or Korean.

  “Take the kids into the Goodwill,” she told Simone. “See if they have any DVDs or toys. And if they have any shoes, try to find a second pair for both of them.” At Walmart the previous night, she had forgotten that a back-up pair of shoes, particularly when you had a five-year-old that liked to walk through puddles, was critical.

  Seeing the International calling storefront had reminded Lori of something she was worried about and she walked briskly towards it. Sylvia. No sugarcoating it, she’d just stolen Sylvia’s car, and while she knew for a fact that Sylvia would have given it to her in a heartbeat, Lori had to communicate with her. One never knew what mig
ht happen. Sylvia could get sick or bored in Italy, and decide to come back from her vacation early. She wouldn’t be able to reach Lori to pick her up at the airport, so she’d take a cab, come home to her own car missing and Lori’s Range Rover with the back glass broken parked in her garage. She’d call the police in an instant.

  Plus, Lori knew, Sylvia had another friend, Nina, to whom she loaned the Escalade on occasion, when Nina’s grandchildren came to town. For all Lori knew, Nina could show up looking for the car. No, as much as Lori did not want to make any phone calls, she knew she had to tell Sylvia something.

  Entering the international calling store, Lori looked around. There were a dozen or so booths along one wall, divided by glass partitions. Callers were chattering animatedly in three of them. Lori could hear Spanish for sure and something else she didn’t recognize.

  Was this even going to work? Then she realized a complication. Sylvia had told her that her phone did not work in Italy and, if Lori needed to reach her, she was to call Sylvia’s sister Julia. Lori knew Sylvia’s number by heart, but to get Julia’s she would have to turn her own cell phone back on again and put the SIM card back in. It would only be for a few seconds, but could she risk it?

  As she stood there considering her options, her gaze fell on a long row of computers in the center of the room and another possibility occurred to her. Sylvia loved Facebook. About two years ago Lori had shown her how to get on the social media app, and Sylvia had never looked back. Photos, recipes, restaurant check-ins, Sylvia managed it all with the skill of a fifteen-year-old. Lori couldn’t get on her own Facebook page, she was sure that would be too risky, so actually communicating through Facebook was out, but if Sylvia was on Facebook, she’d be checking her email as well. Far better to send an email, Lori realized. That way, she’d get it the next time she turned her computer on.