by Mary Stone
The sweet little pistol had been waiting for this day. I’d purchased her within hours of learning that Colleen was gone.
Generally, I wasn’t much of a gun man. I preferred to work with my hands. So far, they hadn’t let me down. But I knew I’d need some assurance of cooperation when the right time came. Humans were wired to escape threatening situations. You could never let them forget who was in charge.
I was the alpha dog now. The reality of my success brought a smile to my face.
Sure, kidnapping two people at once was stressful. And no, this was not the original plan, or even the modified original plan.
But I could work with whatever I was given, and I had.
Philip Baldwin was originally supposed to…of his own accord, of course…travel to his countryside farmhouse outside of Richmond and “commit suicide.” The poetic justice would have been beautiful, considering that he’d driven Colleen to do the same.
But hers had been real. She’d lost herself in a deep, black hole of misery and made the ultimate decision to end her own suffering. The piece of shit doctor shaking to hell in the trunk was to blame.
He was finally, finally going to pay.
“Albert…” the redhead started in again, “you can’t possibly believe that you’ll get away with this. You’re smarter than that. The hospital is under intense scrutiny right now from law enforcement, the media, and even its own employees.”
“I’m aware. And yet, here we are.” My snarky reply was nearly a shout, and I hated raising my voice. My father had been a yeller. When he was around, anyway.
This Dr. Trent was an obstinate one. She liked to talk. She liked to talk too much.
“But they’ll find us, Albert. You know they will. The FBI won’t stop…certainly not now that you’ve taken one of their own.” She lectured me as though I were a child.
That calm, slow bullshit might work great on all her wacko patients and three-year-olds, but I wasn’t crazy. And no psychobabble, smooth-talk tactic was going to throw me off the path of vengeance.
An eye for an eye…
“Eyes on the road,” I barked. “I’m counting on them finding you, Dr. Trent. You can be sure of that.”
I didn’t doubt that she gathered my meaning. She had a Ph.D. after all. Had to be a sharp one, this woman. Which was genuinely funny. Some might even say ironic. The beauty of the matter came down to this…all the brains in the world wouldn’t save either of my highly educated traveling companions.
I snorted, enjoying how well my plan had worked. “For all those damn badges, a pissant orderly like me was still able to get this far. Two dead women. Not a single glance my way. All eyes on that whimpering pussy back there.”
I’d known Philip Baldwin was highly claustrophobic long ago. I knew a lot of things about that man. One of my first ideas had been to leave him to die in a box in the woods. Give him his worst nightmare experience, stretched out over four to five days of deadly dehydration.
But that wouldn’t do, and I’d written off the scheme. I needed to behold Philip’s suffering with my own eyes. And then I needed to watch him die.
I peeked through the hatch. If the doc didn’t stop shaking soon, he might go into an actual convulsion of some sort.
That was fine. As long as it didn’t kill him, what did I care? The good doctor could have a damn seizure extravaganza back there, and I’d just grab a bucket of popcorn and watch the show.
“In fact, good ole Phil made my job just about as easy as pie with his ridiculous decision to get rid of most of the cameras.” I pounded a fist against the back seat. “I know exactly why you don’t want anyone watching you, you sick son of a bitch.”
The redhead glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were green…bright green, and she was rather attractive in comparison to most of the females I worked with in that shithole hospital. Too attractive.
There were a lot of nutjobs packed into that building. A lot of sex-deprived lunatics, and most of them rapists. She would have been pounded by some crackpot’s hungry ding-a-ling eventually, and I guessed, killed shortly after.
The same fate Evelyn Walker was headed toward…but for drastically different reasons.
Evelyn’s face had resembled a waterlogged foot while the little firecracker driving this car had one of the perkiest sets of tits I’d ever laid eyes on. I could almost guarantee she was on the unspoken “waiting to be jumped” list amongst the patients.
Some nutso would have gotten to her for sure. What a waste.
At least I was giving her life and death meaning before the crazies got their cocks into her and god knows what else.
She was lucking out, really.
“Why exactly does Dr. Baldwin hate video surveillance so much, Albert?” Was this woman unable to just shut the hell up?
I may have put the wrong person in the trunk.
“If you think I’m telling you anything, you’re out of your damn mind. Spendin’ too much time with the wackadoodles. That’s what your problem is.” I wasn’t angry, and I still refused to yell. There was no call for bad manners, even now.
A lady was a lady.
She was quiet for a minute or two, but not nearly long enough. “Maybe you could at least tell me why you hate Philip so much? Did he do something to you in the past? I’ve heard he’s hell to work for.”
I resisted the urge to grab her hair and give that pretty little head a hard shake. I met her eyes in the rearview mirror, shooting her my fiercest stare. “I know what you’re doing, and you’d be better off giving up now. Nothing you say, and nothing I say for that matter, will change the outcome for that asshole.”
I didn’t add “or for you.” She was driving. I wanted her relaxed.
“He is an asshole, Albert.” Those pretty greens reappeared in the rearview mirror. They seemed sincere. “I mean, everyone knew the rumors. But the very first conversation I had with him, if you could even call it a conversation, proved right away that the gossip was true. I can barely stand him either.”
“Assholes are everywhere. You got one, and so do I. Doesn’t mean we’re bad people. But that guy…he’s the bad type.” Heat spread throughout my body as the rage kicked in. “Heartless. Sneaky.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to argue with that, Albert.” She flashed me a small grin in the mirror, and I reminded myself that she was working me.
Even using my name over and over. Getting familiar. Creating a connection.
More psychobabble, in my humble opinion.
Refocused, I poked her seat hard with the pistol again. A sweet little reminder that we weren’t friends. We were never going to be friends.
“Yet he’s the rich guy. He’s the successful one. He’s the one still breathing in air through his damn lungs. That’s how things work in this world, Dr. Trent. I’ve accepted that.”
I was beginning to feel melancholy. Thoughts of Colleen were distracting.
“You’ve accepted what the world has done for him, but you can’t accept what he did to you?” She posed a rather pertinent question.
“What he took from me, you mean…” I fought against the lump forming in my throat. Now wasn’t the time for emotions, but how I missed my sweet Colleen. I could still imagine her happy, sparkly blue eyes and hear her high-pitched yet somehow never annoying laugh…
“Just try a sip, Al. Come on. Don’t be a spoil sport.” Colleen pushed her girlie, floofy-looking, whipped cream topped Frappu-whatever toward me.
“I don’t even like coffee. You know that, Col. Why waste an eighty-thousand-dollar beverage on your simpleton, backwoods brother?” I returned the drink back her way with a gentle nudge.
She found this hilarious, and her laugh carried through the entire outdoor seating area, attracting glances from a bunch of prissy college kids nursing their own too-fancy-to-spell lattes of choice.
I didn’t know how she could stand being surrounded by all these arrogant, spoiled jerks…day in and day out…but she managed. Colleen
was smart. So much smarter than the rest of our family.
She was special, and she was going places. She’d probably be laughing the whole time she spent getting to those destinations too. She’d always been so damn happy.
People just naturally flocked to her.
“Okay, okay.” The blues turned serious, and she bit her lip. “So, I have to tell you something, but you promise me first that you won’t say a word to Mom. Promise.”
“Like I tell Mom anything, ever,” I scoffed, making it clear that I was offended. “Gimme a break. I’m older, but I’m not that old. I promise. There. Now what?”
She grinned and leaned over the table a bit. “I’m dating someone.”
I raised an eyebrow. Why would I give a crap? Colleen was always dating someone. Big whoop.
“And?” I waited, skeptical at best.
“He’s one of my professors.” She giggled and clapped a hand over her mouth.
I instantly didn’t like the sound of this guy. I was almost positive that professors dating students was against some sort of oath or…whatever. And aside from the rule breaking, what kind of creep tried to date his students anyway?
“That sounds like a really bad idea.” I didn’t want to be too harsh. She was so damn giddy about the announcement. She must really like the dude.
“Well, duh,” she returned, not offended in the slightest. “My best ideas are always bad ones. And he’s only thirty-two, so stop worrying. He’s not like grandpa old.” Still with that giant smile.
I shook my head. “I would like to state, for the record, that I officially disapprove.”
She laughed again. “I didn’t exactly expect your applause, Al. I just wanted to tell you. It’s exciting.”
“He’ll lose his job if the board finds out,” I reminded her. I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure that this was true, but the notion sounded accurate.
“And then we’d be able to date openly. Win-win situation.” She took a giant slurp of her Frappu-doo-dah-day and waved at some girls walking by.
I thought of our father…that giant piece of shit who’d left when we were tiny little kids. Colleen had been too little to truly understand that “Daddy” did that because most men were total and complete jerkwads.
They cared about their dicks and not much else. Dad left for another woman. He was okay with seeing his wife and children destroyed as long as his cock was happy.
This guy…this professor asshole. He probably wasn’t much different.
I wanted to warn her and somehow convince her that she was being stupid. Make her realize the perv was taking advantage of her in a real creep-ass way, but I let the subject drop.
The worst that could happen to her was getting her heart broken, and that honestly might be the only way she’d ever learn to not do something this ridiculous again. Colleen had always let her feelings lead her around like a blind puppy.
At some point, she had to grow up.
But I was her big brother, not her parent and not her priest. She knew about tons of stupid stuff I’d done. Me giving a lecture would be laughable, if anything.
And besides…look at that smile. My sis was living her life and having some reckless, college-girl fun. As long as that smile stayed on her face, I was willing to look the other way.
“What did he take, Albert?” Dr. Trent’s pleasant voice brought me back to the present.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been away with her…with my little sis.
The redhead doctor was still peering at me in the rearview, which I didn’t appreciate. But she was also still driving on the ordered route and appeared cooperative and calm.
I probably had only been gone a second or so.
“He took—”
I attempted to speak, relieved as the fury began to cast its shadow over the sorrow. I’d allow myself time to mourn after. After I’d completed my task.
After I’d avenged my sister.
“He took…your job? Your money? What?” The lady doctor’s voice wasn’t soothing anymore. She was digging, digging, digging…
“He took her!” I hated myself instantly for yelling, but dear god. This woman wouldn’t shut up.
I’d just begun to believe that maybe she’d finished pestering when she spoke again. “Colleen Hester.”
My head whipped up. Had she just spoken my sister’s name? Occasionally, I heard things that I later realized were only in my mind. Not often enough to think maybe there was something wrong in the ole noggin, but often enough to fog me up.
Surely, she hadn’t said—
“Albert? Did you hear me? Does this have anything to do with Colleen Hester?”
She did know. These federal bastards had made the connection, and they were still letting Philip Baldwin walk free.
I ground my teeth together, fighting the urge to grab Dr. Trent by the back of the neck. Instead, I leaned close enough that my breath moved the strands of her hair. “I think you mean Colleen Rice Hester…my sister.”
26
Philip tried desperately to slow his breathing.
Slow. Steady. In. Out.
As a physician, he knew he was experiencing a severe bout of claustrophobia, which he’d developed from classical conditioning. Or, more simply, childhood trauma.
As a human…as that traumatized child now living inside of a grown man’s body, he only knew that breathing was becoming impossible. He was going to die in this trunk.
Trickles of sweat slid down his face in incessant rivulets. The jet-black was too much. The darkness swallowed him whole. Unforgiving. Never-ending.
Trunk. You’re only in a trunk. Just a trunk.
But Philip wondered if this trunk would become his coffin. No one escaped coffins. They were sealed…buried…designed for the dead.
He wasn’t coming back. He was going to die here.
Or maybe he’d passed over already. Maybe the trunk was long gone, and the afterlife was nothing but blackness and walls. Maybe not even death could free him from this suffocating, hellish nightmare.
“I’m going to be here forever…” he mumbled into the rough trunk carpet.
His perspiration now mingled with tears.
There were voices he recognized as Dr. Trent and the orderly who’d assaulted him. He was still in the land of the living, sporting an excruciating head wound. He may have a concussion, but that didn’t matter while he was trapped in this vehicle with an obvious maniac.
And what were they saying? Trent was asking questions. God, how he hated that woman. But now she was his only companion, his only hope of getting away from the psychopath who’d nearly cracked his skull with his surprise attack.
A lightning bolt of pain shot through his temples. Had such a vicious strike been necessary? And why? He recognized the man as a hospital employee, an orderly. Albert.
And that was where his understanding stopped.
The panic tightened its savage grip. His head throbbed.
Did the dead have headaches? Would the pain be eternal as well as the darkness?
One of the trunk walls moved slightly, letting in a beam of beautiful light. Philip grasped at the blindingly bright opening with desperate madness, only to have his fingers slammed by a ruthless fist.
Albert…Albert…Albert wouldn’t let him out of here.
Why?
“Al…bert! P-please! You have to let me…” The wall closed, cutting him off from the living once more. “No! Albert! Let me out!”
Neither of them was listening. Their muffled voices continued on, as though he wasn’t even there. He wasn’t real anymore.
I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m dead.
He couldn’t remember how to breathe now. Out. All oxygen was abandoning him, just going out and never returning.
The merciful light shone through a crack again, and he cried out with joy.
Not a coffin. This is not a coffin. You’re in a trunk, Philip. The trunk of Dr. Trent’s car.
“Why are you doing this to me?” The hyste
ria in his voice sounded foreign…wrong. Surely this was all happening to someone else.
“Why don’t you think back a bit, Doc?” Albert barked through the crevice. “Think about your days in private practice, long and hard. See what you come up with.”
Philip’s head pulsed in agony, and the world went blurry for a moment.
Albert the orderly was angry…so angry. Because he’d done something…wrong…in private practice…?
Philip struggled to picture his old office. Light gray walls. Large windows. Plants. His patients liked the plants. They found them calming.
What did you do, Philip? What did you do to earn yourself this punishment?
“Tell me what I’ve done!” he shrieked at the hateful man. “Tell me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Someone was crying. Sobbing. Someone was in this trunk with him, wailing endlessly. He had to make them stop…hush…so he could think.
But the weeping emanated from him. And he’d done something bad.
What did you do to earn yourself this punishment, Philip?
“Wow. It’s really that hard for you to remember, isn’t it? Try a little longer, Phil. Think about everyone you’ve ever let down in your lifetime. Might take you awhile, considering the kind of man you are, but who’s at the top of that list?” Albert slammed the hatch shut again.
Blackness. Back into the abyss…except the trunk had changed…morphed into a closet…
Coats crowded over his head, reminding him of crawling spiders and slithering snakes. He ran panicked hands through his hair to rid himself of the attacking creatures.
The closet smelled of sweaty shoes and soiled jackets. Just like a trash can. The closet was just like a trash can.
Daddy put you in the trash again.
“Let me out!” he screamed, hearing his father’s imperious, raspy breathing on the other side of the door. “Please! I’m sorry!” Surely Daddy wouldn’t leave him in here as long as last time. That had been the most terrifying twenty-four hours of his entire ten years of life.
“You should be sorry! And you’re gonna be sorrier! You sit in there and think, boy! What did you do to earn yourself this punishment? What did you do, Philip?”