by Dale Mayer
She gasped and moved suddenly and then realized this was dangerous as she was not very securely seated up here. She looked down at him, and he could see the relief on her face. He opened up his arms and asked, “Can you slowly make your way down?”
“Have the kidnappers gone?” she hissed.
“I hope not,” he said in a mild tone. “I’d really love a chance to get my hands on them.”
She stared at him and then realized what he meant. “I wouldn’t want you to take them on,” she said. “There were two of them.”
He just gave her a hard smile. “Perfect,” he said. “I could catch both of them at the same time.”
She noted that at least Hershey was with him, and then she slowly shifted from one branch to the other, until she was almost down to his level. She wasn’t sure how to jump down the last bit. But he reached up, and, with his help, she half fell, half jumped out of the tree into his arms.
“I don’t know how I made it up that far,” she said, when she was on the ground, staring up.
“Adrenaline does all kinds of things to help you get where you need to go,” he said, as he wrapped an arm around her and just held her close. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I hurt my ankle, but it should be fine.” She burrowed her face against his shirt. “When I woke up in that van …” she whispered, shaking her head.
“I know,” he said. “I phoned you at work several times and never got any answer. … Well, it’d be nice if you got a better description, that we can give the cops, but it is what it is,” he said. “They’re down there, checking out the van right now.” She nodded and he said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here, just in case the kidnappers circle back again.” Immediately she picked up her pace, almost running, still favoring her one ankle. He smiled, reached out a hand, and said, “It’s okay. Really, it’ll be okay.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not,” she said. “They sabotaged my vehicle. They kidnapped me, and I have no idea where they were taking me, but, if not for you, I wouldn’t have gotten out.”
He looked at her in surprise. “But you got away from them on your own,” he said. “You kept your head, and you did what you needed to do, and that’s what counts.”
She shot him a hard look. “It does, but this has to come to a head in order to blow up,” she said. “Those two men need to be caught, and whoever they were delivering me to needs to be caught too.”
“I get it,” he said. “We’re tracking down the nephew of the man in jail, Steve’s nephew.”
“Is he in town?”
He nodded.
“Then that sounds like the best suspect,” she announced.
“Oh, we agree with you,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that he’s around the corner.”
“No, he’s around a couple corners,” she said, the determination returning to her voice. “How dare he do that to me!”
He hid a smile, as she looked around in outrage.
“Where are the kidnappers now?” she snapped. “Sure, they’re on the run, but where were they before they attacked a helpless woman, kidnapped her, threw her in the back of a vehicle, and drove off? I don’t even know where I am.”
He walked her toward the white van. “Does this look like what you were kidnapped in?”
She frowned and nodded. The cops stepped out to the side, and he quickly introduced the both of them. The cop pushed his hat back off his head as he studied her. “You’re pretty damn lucky,” he said.
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said quietly. “I threw myself out the back of a moving vehicle. I’m just lucky we weren’t on a busy street, and another vehicle wasn’t coming from behind to hit me.”
“Like I said,” the cop repeated, “you’re lucky.”
She gave him a half smile for that.
“Any forensics or information available on the vehicle?” Rowan asked. The cops looked at him but stayed mum. He nodded. “Right, I’m not part of the investigation. So I don’t get to know things,” he said. “Can I take her home?”
“Does she not want to get checked out by the paramedics or the doctor?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve had enough of people for the morning. If I feel rough later on, I’ll go to the doctor or to the emergency room.”
“We still have to get a statement from you,” he said.
“I get it,” she said. “I really do. I just don’t want to deal with it right now.”
“The sooner, the better,” he said. She just frowned. “How about coming to the station tomorrow morning?” She nodded. “We’ll be here for a while. Did you see where the van came from?”
She pointed at one corner. “He came careening back around and parked here, but that was all I could see.”
“You have no idea where they were taking you?”
She shook her head. “No, I really don’t.”
“This is a suburb with a lot of smaller housing communities around,” he said. “No warehouse or commercial district.”
“So obviously they were taking her to a home,” Rowan said. “Somebody who lives here likely.”
“Or rents,” she said, “when you think about the nephew from the guy in prison.”
“And, if that’s confusing to you,” Rowan said to the cops, as he held out a business card, “contact the detective on this card. He’s in on the related cases.”
“Will do,” one of the cops said. “But you be careful, ma’am. You’ve been kidnapped once. Let’s not have you in the morgue next.”
Rowan heard her almost-silent gasp at his side, but he squeezed her fingers and said, “I’m taking her home now.” And then he added, “She won’t be alone until this is over.”
“Good,” he said. “Make sure you keep her safe. We’ll be in touch at the station tomorrow morning, if you can.”
“Or,” Rowan said, “you can come to the motel, where we’ll be staying, and you can get your statements then.”
“That might work too,” he said, as he pulled out a card and handed it to him. “Stay in touch. And I need your information as well.”
Rowan quickly wrote his and Brandi’s cell numbers and the room number at the hotel on the back of a Titanium Corp business card and handed it off. “That’s both our phone numbers and our names.” He then ushered Brandi over to the side, where he had his rental vehicle. Once they were safely inside with Hershey in the backseat, Rowan looked at her and asked, “You okay?”
She stared at her hands, and he could see they were trembling. He reached across and gently held the hand closest to him and said, “This is shock. Now that everything’s over, that’s the first thing to set in.”
“It’s a stupid reaction. And belated,” she said.
He chuckled. “It always is.”
“So why does it happen?” she asked.
He realized that she was just making conversation, something to keep her mind off her body’s involuntary reflexes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I imagine it’s the body’s way of releasing a lot of the adrenaline. You go hard and fast, and then you crash.”
“Well, I crashed,” she said. “I’ve definitely done that part. I don’t even think my boss knows where I am.”
“Do you want me to take you back to your job so you can talk to them?”
“I have to do something about my vehicle,” she said.
“We’ll start there,” he said, and he drove her toward her lab. A long driveway headed in, and he could see a vehicle parked off to the side.
She stared at it. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with it.” She looked in her purse for her keys.
“A flat tire for one,” he said.
“I know that, but did they slash it?”
“Not likely,” he said. “That would mean being right beside the vehicle while you were driving it. No, they probably stuck something in the tire, like a nail, that took time for the air to leak out.”
“So what do I do?”
“Call for a tow,” he said, “or,
if you have a spare in the trunk, I can switch it out, and we can drive it to get the tire fixed.”
“There is a spare,” she said. She hopped out and limped around the front to where the car was and pulled out a spare in the back.
“Most people don’t have full-size spares anymore,” he said.
“Grandmother was pretty much a stickler for some of these things. She didn’t put any trust in the new half measures that others did.”
“Don’t suppose you have a jack, do you?”
She rummaged around in the back and brought out a jack. He nodded and said, “This is a good start.” And then she handed him a ratchet for the lugs. It took about twenty-five minutes, and he had the tire switched out. He tossed the one with the hole into the trunk. “Do you want to get this fixed right now?”
“If they’ll slash my tires again,” she said, “then we should.”
He chuckled at that. “You know I certainly won’t disagree with you. It just is not too usual to see anybody planning for another attack.”
“It’d be foolish if I didn’t,” she said. “Just think about it. So many people and so many attacks are involved in this mess already.”
“I hear you,” he said. “Let’s go back to the motel then, check on the puppies. We’ll look for a repair place on the way. If we don’t see one, we can do a quick internet search.”
“I’ll call my boss on the way.”
Back in the motel parking lot, he said, “We’ll make some phone calls to see what we can find.”
She nodded and followed him up to the room. There the pups had destroyed a roll of paper towels and had somehow gotten to the toilet paper too. He stared in shock at the white that littered the floor. But Brandi started to laugh. He looked at her sideways. Tears rolled down her face, as she curled up on the couch, howling with laughter. It was pretty funny, but it wasn’t that funny, and, just as quickly, her laughter turned to tears.
He sat down on the couch, pulled her into his arms, and just held her. When her sobs finally ran out, she looked over at him and whispered, “Sorry.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “That was nothing, and it was good for you. You obviously needed to let go of some stress.”
“It’s been a pretty rough couple days.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s been a pretty rough month or two,” he said gently. “You can’t be strong all the time.”
“I want to be though,” she said. “My grandmother was.”
“She had a lot of experience getting there,” he said. “It’s not like you’ll get there overnight.”
“True enough,” she said. She wiped her eyes. “We had a little bit of breakfast, just leftover peanut butter and bread from my place. Now it’s past lunchtime.”
“No,” he said, “it’s actually just coming up to lunchtime.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Really?”
“Yes, it’s not very late at all. It’s only noon.”
“It feels like days have gone by,” she said.
“To be expected,” he said. “A lot has happened, but it’s not a big deal, the time. Do you need food?”
“Yes,” she said, “that would help.” She glared at him. “But I don’t want a burger.”
He grinned at her. “What’s wrong with burgers?” he said. “I love burgers.”
“I love burgers too,” she said, “but not every meal.”
“Okay, well, we have to take the tire in anyway. We also need to take the dogs out so they can go to the bathroom. We’ll find a place on the way for lunch. I saw a tire shop four blocks over, and an Italian place about four blocks on the other side of that.” By the time he pulled into the restaurant, and they got out and walked inside, she was looking brighter. He smiled at her. “Will this do?
She looked up at the Italian restaurant and laughed. “After the day I’ve had, this is perfect.”
Chapter 14
“This is perfect,” Brandi said. She rubbed her arms, trying to chase away the chill, and walked inside, with him right behind her. As they sat down, a loaf of French bread came their way with some garlic butter.
He ordered coffee and menus. And then he picked up his phone.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I need to update Badger,” he said. “I told him that you were safe but haven’t given him a full update yet.”
“Did he help find me?”
“He sure did. We had to track your phone.”
“Well, at least I had a full battery,” she said. “Something that you can help me to remember to do, keep my phone charged.”
“Absolutely,” he said, “because we don’t want you in that situation again.”
“Of course not, but it’ll be hard not to, until this is over.”
“So let’s find a way out of it.” He had updated Badger, and then he set aside his phone, as the waitress arrived with coffee and menus. He took one look at the menu and smiled, “I’ll have a burger.”
At his side, Brandi gasped. “You will not,” she said. “You can have some pasta.” He gave her a look. She nodded. “You can’t live on burgers. Besides we’ll probably go back to the burger place later tonight or tomorrow.”
He considered that, nodded, and said to the waitress, who was watching them with an amused look, “Fine. I’ll have spaghetti and meatballs.”
With their orders taken, and Brandi working beside him on the loaf of French bread, she asked, “What do we do now?”
“Badger is looking for the nephew. I’d love a chance to talk to our inmate.”
“Is that possible?”
“Likely, but he’s in southern California.”
“Oh,” she said, “so maybe not so likely.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “although how far away is it?”
“Not sure which prison he’s at, but there’s a federal penitentiary about half a day’s drive from here maybe,” she said and shrugged. “Not that bad. I’m obviously not going back to work today.”
“I think you should take the rest of the week off,” he said quietly.
“I was thinking that too, “she said. “I need to go in and talk to my boss though.”
“Can you call him instead?” he asked.
Making the decision, she reached for her phone and dialed him.
“Hey, what the hell happened to you?” her boss said. “You weren’t answering your phone. When you don’t show up for work, I worry.”
“Somebody sabotaged my vehicle and then kidnapped me,” she said boldly.
She heard a heavy gasp on the other end of the phone. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Why?”
“It’s related to my grandmother’s murder,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure I understand all of the ins and outs of it yet either.”
“Your grandmother was murdered?”
“Yes, I thought she died in the fire, but apparently she was already dead by the time the fire reached her.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” he said. “Jesus, what a mess.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So I need to take the rest of the week off. I’m pretty shaken up.”
“Not a problem,” he said instantly. “You’ve got several weeks’ vacation coming too, if you need a longer break.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Right now it just feels like everything is against me.”
“With good reason,” he said. “I’m sorry. You know we will do anything to help you out. You’re one of our best employees.”
“How about helping me out with a transfer?” she asked drily. “California isn’t exactly my favorite state at the moment.”
“That’s not an issue,” he said. “We’d be sad to see you go, but, as long as you’re staying with the company, it would be a lot easier for everybody. Where would you like to go?”
She said, “I don’t know yet.”
“New Mexico is hiring,” he said. “That would be no problem.”
“Same position?”
&
nbsp; “Let me bring up the openings there,” he said. A moment later he chuckled and asked, “How about a promotion?”
“Is there one?”
“Yep, head of the lab,” he said. “I’d certainly recommend you for that position.”
“And I might even take it too,” she said, “if I were offered it.”
“Well, let’s get you an application in, and I can add a note, saying that you were looking for a transfer to New Mexico anyway.”
“Whereabouts is it?”
“Just outside Albuquerque,” he said. “Really nice area there.”
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s an internal application and what is needed.”
“It doesn’t matter what’s needed,” he said. “I’ll contact him myself. If you’re sure, that is.”
“Hell no, I’m not sure,” she said, “but I’ve lost everything here, and I didn’t even tell you, but the place that I was renting, it was completely ransacked. I have a suitcase, and that’s it.”
“You know something?” her boss said. “Sometimes, when life does this to you, you got to just think that, maybe, you’re not meant to be here.”
“As long as you mean not meant to be in California versus not meant to be on this planet,” she said, “then I’d agree with you. Which is why I’m wondering about a transfer. I just need a fresh start somewhere.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Take off the rest of week, and check in with me after you do that.”
“Thanks so much, Scott.”
She hung up, sat back, and stared at Rowan. “There’s actually a position—that’s a possible promotion—out of New Mexico,” she said slowly.
His eyebrows shot up, as he looked at her in surprise, and then asked, “Would that be tempting?”
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “Well, upwardly mobile and better wages would definitely be potentially interesting,” she said.
“Also you mentioned that you’re not into heavy winter. New Mexico is kind of up and down. Winter comes there, but it’s not that bad,” he said. “As a bonus, Albuquerque is beautiful.”
