by Dale Mayer
She stared at him in shock. “I don’t have any provisions in place.”
The detective looked at her and gave a hard smile and said, “Guess what? It’s time for you to change that.” He then turned and walked away.
She turned wordlessly to stare at Rowan. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and whispered, “Calm down. I’m sorry, but he’s right. Now your life is in danger too. It’s even more in danger when somebody finds out how much money you have inherited.”
“And how will they find that out?” she asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I can tell you is that there are ways and means. What we have to do now is protect you and keep you safe.”
Brandi left directly from the bank to go to work, as if she could escape this latest event, and he watched her leave with misgivings. He stood with the detective in the bank’s parking lot. “How will you get back?” the detective asked him.
“I’ll walk,” he said. “It’s only a couple miles. And Hershey here and I could use the exercise.”
“I can give you a lift back partway, if you want,” he said.
Rowan hesitated. As much as it was a good idea in some ways, he had been looking forward to the walk. But getting Hershey used to people and having a few minutes to talk to the detective and to build a little more of a bond was also a good idea. He nodded. “Sure, if you’ve got the time.”
“Of course,” he said, as they put Hershey in the back seat, and Rowan took the passenger seat. “What’s the address?” They drove out of the parking lot, heading toward the motel. “I have to take a turn about a block and a half from the motel anyway,” he said.
“Perfect,” Rowan said, “and then we’ll probably head up into the green space in the back.”
“Anything else weird going on?”
“You mean, outside of the guy who was in the parking lot?”
“What guy?”
“I didn’t tell you about him? I must be thinking of reporting to my boss.” He quickly filled in the detective and remembered he had photos too. “I got pictures of his license plate and his face,” he said. “I thought I sent these to you.”
“If you sent them by email,” he said, “I haven’t even been to the office yet.”
It was hard for him to realize that, for some people, these kinds of jobs were nine-to-five. In Rowan’s world, there was no such thing as nine-to-five jobs. When a problem arose, it was dealt with. And if it wasn’t, then you couldn’t go home until the job was done. It was just hard to compartmentalize for him.
“How long are you staying in town?” the detective asked.
“Long enough to sort out what’s going on in her world,” he said. “I don’t feel good leaving her.”
“And yet you came after the dog, right?”
“Yes, I came for the dog,” he said. “However, after having found Brandi, Brandi’s dog, and her pups, it’s obvious that so much more is going on here than we first thought. We’re not exactly getting anywhere though. Did your convict have any family?”
“We’re looking into that,” he said.
Rowan made a mental note to check in with Badger as soon as he got back to the motel. “At least we have some of the issues solved,” he said. “We know there is a coin collection. We know where it is and who’s to inherit it.”
“Which just means, if somebody really wants it, her life is even more in danger.”
“Only if somebody knows how to get ahold of the coin collection. If they don’t know where it is, killing her won’t give them the answer.”
“Unless they have a talk with her first,” the detective said.
Rowan winced at that, but he nodded. “Good point,” he said. “Did you come up with any forensics from her apartment?”
“Not that I’ve heard so far,” the detective said with a yawn. He gave a hard headshake and said, “Again, I haven’t been to the office. I’ll check it out when I get there.”
He dropped Rowan off a little bit away from the motel. Rowan, with Hershey at his side, headed down the street toward the front entrance to the motel and then walked right past it to the green belt behind it. If nothing else he would go for a decent walk to loosen up his joints and the dog’s too.
As they walked, Hershey picked up the pace, obviously eager to be on a walk. Rowan could have brought the pups with him, and maybe he should have. Chances were, they had probably pretty well eaten his motel room by now. He groaned at that and decided to head to the room to put the pups on their leashes and take them outside for a bit too. As soon as he got to his room, he found them curled up in a ball in the center of the bed, and they woke up at his entrance. But the bed didn’t seem wet anywhere and the rest of his rooms appeared to be more or less intact. He put their new leashes on their new collars that he’d picked up. Then, with the three dogs moving slowly, he headed back out to the green space.
There he stopped every few seconds for the pups to enjoy being out. It was one thing to take a feral puppy from the outside to domesticate it, but it was another thing to take the feral from a pup. He wanted them to have a decent balance to their lives. And that would take a little time. As he walked along with the dogs, he texted Badger, looking for any updates, and told him about the bank visit this morning. When Rowan’s phone rang, he saw Badger was calling. “What’s up, Badger?”
“She’s a very wealthy woman now,” Badger said. “You’ll have to keep an eye on her.”
“Well, I would if I could,” he said. “She took the morning off to go to the bank, but she insisted on going to work.”
“Do you know if she’s checked in at work yet?”
At that, Rowan paused. “No. Not yet. It seems like we’re skirting around the issue but not getting to the heart of the problem.”
“I see that a lot,” Badger said. “You’re still missing some key information.”
“Like, who killed the grandmother and the lawyer?”
As soon as they were done with their talk, Rowan headed to the motel, already calling Brandi on her cell phone, but he got no answer. He left a message and then called her again ten minutes later. By the time he made it back to the motel, he was worried. He called one more time and left a message, telling her to call him … now. He tossed his phone on the counter and stared at it. Had she even told him what company she worked for? He dredged his brain, grabbed his phone, and called Badger back. “I need to know where she works,” he said. “I haven’t heard from her.”
“On it,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
Rowan put on the teakettle for a cup of coffee, wishing he had taken her to work himself. When the phone rang, he snatched it up, thinking it was Badger.
Instead it was her.
“I don’t know where I am,” she whispered, “but I’m inside a panel van.”
“What happened?” he snapped.
“I was pulling in the long drive up to work,” she said, “and I got a flat tire that veered me off the side of the road. I parked and was going to walk to work and then get somebody to come help me, when these guys shanghaied me. They threw something over my head and tossed me in the back of another vehicle. I got transferred once more. Now I don’t know where I am,” she said.
“Did they take the road toward your work?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I suspect that I’m heading toward my old home, but I don’t have any reason to know that.”
“And there’d be no reason for them to do that,” he said. “Can you identify anybody or anything?”
“It was a panel van,” she said. “Without windows, like a service van, but, other than that, no. I didn’t see anything.”
“One or two men?”
“Two.”
“How long ago?”
She hesitated and then said, “Maybe twenty minutes?”
“And you’re just calling me now?” he asked in outrage.
“They hit me,” she whispered. “I blacked out.”
“Shit,” he said, h
is anger growing.
“I think I’m okay though,” she said, her tone still apologetic.
“I’ll get satellite on this,” he said, “and we’ll get you. Don’t worry. I guess you don’t know anything else, like the license plate, right?”
“It happened so fast,” she said. “I saw the van pull up with two guys, and I assumed they worked here too, were stopping to be Good Samaritans. Next thing I knew, I was in the back of the vehicle.”
“Okay,” he said. “How much battery power do you have on your phone?”
“It’s full,” she said. “I plugged in the charger in my vehicle on the way to work.”
“And nobody can hear you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The panel van has a wall up against the front seat, so I’m separated from them, in the back, with all the tools.”
“Tools?” he said. “Anything you can use as a weapon?”
“If I knew what to do with them, yeah, lots,” she said. “There’s hammers and pliers and all kinds of shit.”
“And they didn’t tie you up?”
“They did,” she said, “but not very tight. So I got my hands out of that. I’m looking at my feet, and they are tied up still, but you’re right. I need to get those free. Hang on.”
She set down her phone, and he heard her doing something. “What are you doing?”
“I found a cutter. I’m cutting the rope on my feet.”
“And can you open the back door?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you know that could be damn dangerous too.”
“Open up just one side of the door,” he said, “and leave the other one locked so you don’t get pulled out.”
“Great,” she whispered, “and what’ll that do for me?”
“It’ll tell us if you’re in town, and it might tell you where you are.”
“Will it also warn the driver that the door is open?”
He thought about it for a minute and then said, “Yes, you’re probably right.”
“So, is that really what I want to do?”
“Only if you can jump free,” he admitted.
“Feels like it’s slowing down,” she said.
“Be careful. You don’t know if it’s slowing for traffic or turning into someplace, in which case you want an opportunity to get away.” Next thing he knew, he heard a startled shriek and then heavy breathing as she raced somewhere. “What’s going on?” he roared.
“No time to talk,” she said, crying out in agony. “I’m out of the vehicle. I’m trying to hide. I’ll call you as soon as I can.” And, with that, the phone went dead. He swore and called Badger.
Chapter 13
That was probably the most foolish thing—or the bravest thing—that she’d ever done in her life. Brandi was behind a tree, gasping for control of her breath and wincing at her sore ankle. She hid as much as she could in the greenery. The vehicle appeared to have gone around the corner, without noticing that she was gone. But she knew they’d be back, and she couldn’t stay here, or they would find her.
She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. She definitely saw houses but not much in the way of a street, yet a big field was on the opposite side. She didn’t recognize anything here. Her best bet was probably to get in among the houses. Yet, if her kidnappers came back around, and she was on a sidewalk, they could just run her down. And the field offered no cover. But up ahead were trees along a creek or a river.
Grimacing, she quickly hobbled forward, staying as low as she could, in case the van came racing back—which she didn’t know why it wasn’t here already. She made the cover of the trees just as the van came careening around the corner again. She quickly texted Rowan to say she was safe in the trees along a creek. Her kidnappers were now looking for her.
He wrote Go high.
She looked up. It was a good idea, but she wasn’t the best at climbing trees, although one had lots of low foliage. Putting the phone in her bra, she quickly scaled up, until she was about ten feet aboveground, and there she sat, retrieved her phone, turned her volume way down, and sent Rowan another message about where she was now.
Okay, he typed. Keep your phone on. We’ll locate you with it.
She stared at her phone and smiled because, of course, she didn’t know how to do that, but he would. With her phone on, she peered through the trees to see what the van was doing. The kidnappers had pulled off on the side, and the two guys were walking around. They stopped at the field and searched. One pointed over to one side, and then they shrugged, and he pointed to the trees by the creek. “Shit,” she whispered. Of course they’ll come here. This was where she would have come, which was where she did come, so, of course, they would come in this direction.
She held her breath as her kidnappers raced forward along the creek line. One passed underneath not four feet from the tree she was in, and she just held her hand and her phone against her chest and made her breathing soft and quiet. She lost sight of them, but they had to be somewhere close by. She didn’t have a clue what they wanted with her either, since they hadn’t said anything.
“Ron, let’s go up this way.”
“We need to split up,” Ron said. “You go up one way, while I go the other.”
“If you say so,” he said. “Come on. We don’t have any time. We were supposed to drop her off ten minutes ago.”
“I’ll see you in fifteen then.”
They both split in separate directions.
She texted Rowan. One guy is called Ron. They split up just a few feet from me, one going up the creek, the other going down. Apparently I was supposed to be dropped off ten minutes ago somewhere. The van is parked along the street by the open field.
We’re looking for it came his reply.
She held her breath and just waited. Her ankle was throbbing and pounding, but the pain was livable. Considering the alternative, it was very livable. Talk about a shit day. The whole month had been a nightmare. She didn’t recognize either of the men, and this time they didn’t have masks on, but she hadn’t caught a very good glimpse of them either. Tall, young, white—that’s all she could say. One had brown hair; the other one had darker hair. She’d sent those simple descriptions to Rowan and wrote Sorry, I couldn’t see any more.
T-shirts, jeans, jackets, coats, coveralls?
Jeans, T-shirts, one blue, one white. Sneakers both. No visible tattoos. Younger, under thirty. And that was about all she could dredge up. She had no idea how long it would take for anybody to locate her, but the two men came racing back her way in what seemed like maybe fifteen to twenty minutes.
“No sign of her,” the one said.
The other swore. “We’ll get shit for this.”
“How the hell did she get out anyway?”
“We shouldn’t have put her in the back,” he said. “That was just stupid.”
“We didn’t think about it though, did we? We just grabbed the vehicle and picked her up. We didn’t think about it.”
“We should have kept her up in the front.”
“Then she would have been seen on any of the cameras, and, if we got pulled over, we really would have been screwed. At least in the back and unconscious, she would have been fine.”
“Yeah, well, unconscious didn’t work, did it?” he snapped. “And that vehicle is stolen, so it’ll be picked up pretty damn soon anyway.”
“Well, I’m not walking back,” he said. “So let’s go grab it, and we can take it to the mall or something and ditch it.”
“Yeah, let’s go, but you’ll have to call the boss.”
“Not me,” he said. “We know pretty well where we lost her. We can bring a team and just search the area.”
“Idiot, we are the team,” he said. “There isn’t anybody else to help.”
“Wasn’t the whole team hired?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s got a ton of money to be paying too many people.”
“Hell, I’m not even being paid,” he s
aid in disgust. “This is returning the favor.”
“Yeah, well, me too,” the other guy said. “I’m not going back to the slammer for that crazy guy. He’s in jail, and that’s where he should stay.”
“Neither am I,” he said. The two men stopped, looking at each other, and Ron said, “You know?”
“Yeah, I know. So we should book it in the opposite direction.”
Just then a cop car came around the corner, sirens on, and she watched as the two men dove into the brush. She wanted to call the cops and tell them that the guys were up here. But she could already hear the kidnappers thrashing across the creek and disappearing on the other side.
The cops pulled up beside the kidnappers’ vehicle, and she sent Rowan another message. Cops are at the van. It was stolen this morning. The two men are not going back to the vehicle. They’ve crossed the creek and taken off. They were repaying favors from some guy in jail.
Good, Rowan typed. Maybe Steve, the guy who killed your grandfather. We’ll contact the police.
“Good enough,” she whispered to herself, and she sat here and waited. At least she thought she was alone. Noises were down below, and that terrified her. She didn’t want to look to see, in case the kidnappers were back, but she thought they had crossed the creek. Still, that didn’t mean that one could have come back around again. Hell, if he could curry favors by delivering her, then that would help the kidnappers out a lot right now. With her heart slamming against her chest, she heard footsteps approach. She closed her eyes, gripped her phone close, and held her breath.
Rowan crept through the trees, looking for any sign of where she’d gone. He had seen no sign of anyone, and, so far, he’d avoided the cops down at the corner too. He knew that 9-1-1 calls had already been forwarded to them, but Rowan wanted to find Brandi first and foremost. And then he heard a motion above. He smiled, shifted his gaze so he could see through the boughs of the branches above, and there she was—holding her phone tight against her chest, her arms crossed, huddled up against the trunk of the tree. “Brandi,” he whispered, “I’m right here.”
