Chapter EIGHT
Sandy fell asleep in Jack’s arms on the couch. She was exhausted. Even if it hadn’t been for the fact she hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours, the constant, relentless onslaught of emotion and fear was like running a marathon.
Jack glanced at his wristwatch. Eleven o’clock. He wasn’t sure what Sandy’s phone call did to Eugene’s original timeline as far as contacting them again. Likely it pushed everything back. The bastard wouldn’t put her out of her misery any time soon. Not tonight anyway, of that Jack felt certain. He eased his arm out from under Sandy’s head and covered her with a cashmere couch throw he found on the floor.
His back ached and he was so tired himself he could probably sleep on the tile floor of the kitchen without any problem. But wherever he slept tonight, he had one last thing to do before he could rest.
According to his recent missed calls Mia had called the day before. Jessie had also called him earlier this evening and he’d let it go to voice mail. He hated to drop out of Mia’s life like this but, dammit, he promised Sandy to keep it close to the vest at least until they had the ransom demand and knew what they were dealing with.
He slipped out from where Sandy now snuggled against him and moved to the darkened alcove off the kitchen where there was a small table and one chair. It looked like the kind of thing kitchen designers figured homemakers would use to write out household bills or thumb through recipe books with a single cup of coffee.
Do people really have such simple lives where they do that somewhere in the world?
He sat down and dialed Mia’s number. She didn’t go to bed early. He wasn’t worried about waking her.
“Hello?” Mia’s voice was cautious. He knew her caller ID had told her it was him.
“Hey,” he said, trying to affect a casualness he didn’t feel. “Where are you? Are you driving?”
“I’m running a quick errand,” she replied briskly.
“At eleven fifteen at night?”
“That’s right.”
“Look, Mia, I know you’re mad and I’m sorry for blowing you off the other night. I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”
“Gee, I’ll bet you can.”
There was the Mia he knew and loved. Unfortunately, it was also the Mia who wanted to boil him in oil and throw him off the Peachtree Plaza in a burlap bag.
“You’re not going to love hearing this,” he said, “but I can’t talk about what’s going on right now.”
“No problem.”
“Mia, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way you’re being. I told you, I’m in the middle of something right now.”
“Sure, I get it.”
“It’d be great if you could just trust me.”
“Is that really what you want, Jack? Or do you really want me to fade into the background? Because now that we’re actually communicating again, this would be a good time to just tell me straight.”
Jack couldn’t believe, after the day he’d had, that she could actually make him feel like laughing. Then again, it was probably because he was repressing the angst that threatened to overpower him all damn day. He was just flat losing it.
“What I want, Mia,” he said, taking a controlling breath. “is for you to remember it’s me and dial back the insecurity. I’m in a situation—”
“Let me help.”
“No. No, thank you. I’m handling it. All I really need from you is your patience for a little bit longer. That’s all.”
“And you still…want us to be together?”
“What? Are you kidding? Are you really asking me that?”
“I’m sorry. I guess I have an overactive imagination sometimes. I promise you there will be times when you’ll be glad of it, but—”
“Jack? Are you in here?” Sandy stepped into the room and snapped on the light. “I woke up and you were gone. Who are you talking to?”
Jack stood and held a hand up, palm out, to Sandy.
“She woke up and you were gone?” Mia said on the other line, her voice frigid with shock and fury.
“I’ll be right there, Sandy,” he said to Sandy before turning back to his phone. “Mia? I have to go. But we’re good, right?”
She hung up on him.
Ask a stupid question. Jack felt the day’s weariness settle into his bones and drift all the way down to the floor.
Jack led Sandy back to the living room, where he draped a knitted afghan across her knees. It was a homely thing, not store-bought, and he wondered if Vernetta had made it. Sandy had never been much into crafts or needlepointing when he knew her.
“Was that your girlfriend?” she asked meekly.
“Probably not at the moment.”
“Well, she’s a lucky girl.”
Jack hesitated, then went back into the kitchen. “I wish you’d let me call the police,” he said over his shoulder.
“Jack, I can’t. He said he’d let her die if I did. I can’t take the chance.”
Jack put the kettle on and got two mugs out. He returned to the living room and stood in the doorway. “The cops have ways to track his phone and locate him. Ways we don’t have access to.”
“I just want to give him whatever he wants,” Sandy said, “Please let’s play it his way, Jack. Please.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “The problem is, since we know who it is there’s no way he can escape. He must know that. What’s to stop us from calling the police as soon as we get Twyla back?”
“Will we have to prove he took her?”
“I think the bag of money he’s found with plus Twyla’s testimony will probably suffice.”
Sandy chewed a nail and her expression intensified. “That’s not good, is it? Him knowing I know it’s him. I shouldn’t have called, should I?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack lied. “We need to focus on what we’ll do when he finally calls with his demands.”
“If he calls.”
Jack returned to the kitchen and poured the boiling water over teabags in the two mugs. He could tell Sandy was holding on to the coming phone call as the lifeline that would bring her daughter home safe. It was an illusion, but there was no real point in telling her that.
“Stay positive, Sandy,” he said as he walked back to the living room and set the mugs down on the coffee table. “He’ll call and it’ll be to your cellphone. As soon as he does, put it on speaker.” He held up his phone. “I’ll record it with my phone so we can replay it as many times as we need to. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’ll be something in the background that’ll tell us where he is. You never know.”
“Okay,” she said weakly, the steam from the mugs rising in the air between them.
“Can you get your hands on money on short notice?” he asked.
She looked at him in confusion and then glanced away, as if trying to find the answer in the air over his head. “I keep some money in the house,” she said finally.
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand.”
Jack whistled.
“It’s not that I don’t trust banks, I just felt safer with it here.”
Good reason for a bodyguard anyway. He sat down next to her and took her hand. “We’ll get through this, Sandy. The waiting is the hardest. We’ll get her back.”
“I just can’t believe this is happening.”
“I know.”
Sandy squeezed his hand and emitted a long sigh. After a moment, she spoke again. “I used to see your mama in the neighborhood,” she said softly, “shopping or gardening or waiting for the bus.”
Jack felt his stomach clench when she said that. Somehow he knew what she was going to say.
“So many times I wanted to tell her, ‘Miz Burton, you have a grandbaby.’ I mean, with you gone, Jack, and no kids and then Steven…well, so many times I wanted to tell her that.”
“Shhh-hh,” he said, holding her close. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the
right time. Not for Twyla or you or Mama or anyone. Nobody’s fault. And it’s not too late. We’ll get Twyla back and Mama will know her.”
Sandy looked up at him, her eyes glistening with tears, her lips full and inches from his own. “Are you sure, Jack? Are you sure you don’t blame me?”
“Nobody’s to blame,” he said firmly. Unless it’s me.
“I wish I’d chosen you, Jack, all those years ago. I was crazy not to. How I wish to God I’d chosen you.”
*****
The worst of it was Mia could tell Jack was lying. Even without seeing him, even without touching him. It was as clear as if she had him in front of her, his eyes shifting around everywhere at once, his fingers drumming on the counter, sweat popping out all over his face.
She winced at the memory of the woman’s voice that had invaded her conversation with Jack: Darling? Where are you? I woke up and you were gone from our bed.
Bastard! Was Jack really trying to keep Mia on tap at the same time he was screwing his ex-girlfriend?
Mia kept the car pointed due west and tried to distract herself from the conversation.
Wasn’t not knowing better than what just happened? No, she had to admit, it felt better that he’d at least called. Not knowing wasn’t better. It just wasn’t that much worse than the truth.
The voice his ex-girlfriend used with him was intimate. It was a bedroom voice. A voice that had shared many secrets and felt secure and comfortable claiming him at any time of the night—even when he was on an obviously personal phone call. Does she know about me? Did Jack even bother to tell her about me?
A car honked at her and Mia realized she was drifting into the turn lane. She quickly pulled back into her lane.
Focus, Mia, she admonished herself. There’s a long night ahead and you cannot afford a repeat of the flashlight lady and the mastiff. You need to pull off tonight without a hitch.
Her phone buzzed. “Hey, Sam,” she said, answering it.
“Where are you?”
“Fifteen minutes away. Will you be there tonight?”
“No. But tonight’s definitely the night. Do you know where to park?”
“I figured on the south side of the lake? I can hike over the pasture and along the shore. There’s no moon tonight.”
“Can your camera shoot in the dark?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Good luck, Mia. I’m counting on you.”
Mia pulled off I-20 onto Thornton Road in Lithia Springs. When she glanced at her GPS on the dashboard, she also caught a glimpse of the dark form of her Glock pistol on the seat. She didn’t know if she’d need it tonight, but she felt better knowing she had it.
A couple of turns later, she took a hard right onto Pine Valley Road. The road was paved, but just. No streetlights and just her car’s parking lights to warn her of the upcoming twists and turns in the narrow backcountry road. She felt her energy level flutter and accelerate in her throat as the dark closed in around her.
All I have to do is get close, not be seen, get the pictures, and skedaddle. Easy peasy.
The lake came up fast and she barely had time to shut her lights off before she found herself facing the feedlot across the water. She wasn’t at the widest part of the lake, and as she sat in her darkened car she reasoned it wouldn’t take more than thirty minutes to walk the shoreline to get close enough to the dumping ground. Fortunately, when she’d ridden by it today she’d seen a metal cistern—about a hundred feet high—not far from where Sam thought they were polluting.
There wasn’t enough moonlight to allow her to see the cistern from this distance, but once she got closer it would help her know where she was in relation to the drop zone.
She grabbed her Glock and slipped out of the car. The Canon PowerShot hung from a strap around her neck. She’d never used it, but the advertising promised it could shoot in low to no light. Tonight would test that claim. Big time. She left her phone in the car and instead used a small penlight flashlight to pick out a path just a few feet ahead of her. Once she put her gun in the back of her waistband, she stood on the bank and listened, knowing sound should carry across the water. For now, except for the chirping and humming sounds of competing crickets and katydids, it was quiet.
Slowly, watching where she stepped, she began moving along the water’s edge. Even though it was October and the temperature had dropped steadily since the afternoon, she felt warm in her turtleneck and hip-length barn jacket.
Probably nerves. She walked steadily for ten minutes, and then stopped to listen. Each time, she was rewarded with only the relentless roar of insects serenading a night lake in autumn. But nothing human. No voices. No car doors slamming. No sounds of metal grinding against metal as barrels of waste product sluiced into the pristine Pine Valley Lake.
Was it possible Sam was wrong about all this? Could he be less whistleblower and more paranoid megalomaniac? She shook off her doubts. It didn’t matter. He was the client. If there was something to photograph, she would photograph it. If not, she wouldn’t. The check cashed the same regardless.
She resumed her slog around the top portion of the lake bank to where she remembered the feedlot perimeter was located. She pulled her turtleneck away from her neck and wiped the perspiration from her face. As soon as she did she felt a chill breeze invade her sweater and she promptly shivered.
Again she stopped to listen. Again nothing. But now she could see the ghostly structure of the water cistern not thirty feet away. That meant the dumping zone—if indeed that’s what it was—was only fifteen feet beyond. She moved cautiously until she was next to the cistern and then dropped to her knees to wait. She looked at her watch. Not yet one a.m.
Settling into a comfortable seat of tall reeds at the foot of the cistern, Mia pulled the camera around and removed the lens cap. She pointed it in the direction of where she’d seen the tire tracks earlier and looked in the viewfinder. She followed the camera’s path up the hill toward the feedlot in the direction where a car or truck would have to come.
The truck coming down the grade didn’t even bother dimming its beams. Involuntarily, Mia jerked back against the cistern, although the headlight beams weren’t directed near her at all. They did, however, make it easy to see everything in the truck’s path.
Mia got into a crouching position and waited, her hands slick with sweat now. Her heart pounded in her throat. Two men jumped out of the cab of the small pickup truck while another turned the truck around in the small gravel space until it was backed up to the lake bank. The men spoke at normal levels, not bothering to hide their voices or the fact they were there. Mia photographed each of them from different angles as they directed the driver of the truck until it stopped, poised on the bank.
She had to get closer to get the pictures that would show unmistakably what they were doing. Sensing the men—it sounded like two Hispanics and a white guy—were distracted by their task, Mia edged past the cistern to the first clump of bushes bordering where the truck was.
Just as the men began to dump the first barrel into the lake, Mia fired off a series of shots—a veritable video testimony of what they were doing. I’m getting it! I’m getting it all!
Unfortunately, taking multiple fast shots one right after another differed from the single shots she had been taking in that the sound of the shutter snapping at rapid-fire intervals was as loud as a machine gun in her ears.
Even the katydids stopped to listen.
And the three men certainly did.
Chapter NINE
Mia pulled the camera away from her face in time to see the nearest man whirl around and lunge for her. She let go of the camera and scrambled to her feet, letting the camera hang from her neck. She threw a handful of dirt into the man’s face as she twisted around to run.
Sputtering and cursing in Spanish, he grabbed for her. Strong, harsh fingers latched onto her jacket and tugged her back. She wriggled out of the jacket and had just enough time to wrench the gun from her waistba
nd and turn on him. By then, all the men were running toward her.
“Stop right there,” she shouted.
They didn’t stop.
Maybe they couldn’t see the gun?
She pointed her weapon up and fired. They stopped. Two even put their hands in the air. One reached for a cell phone in his pocket, while keeping his other hand in the air, his eyes never leaving Mia.
She was breathing so fast and loudly she was surprised she could hear anything at all over the sound. Her mind spun. Her hand felt slick as she held the gun on them. Now all she had to do was walk backward the half-mile through the dark and the bushes without tripping or shooting anybody.
That was when she saw the flume of water arc toward the men, spraying the foreground where they stood. Looking up, there was just enough light in the sky to see the hole in the cistern where the water gushed out in a forceful and steady torrent.
*****
Would Eugene call?
If he didn’t, it meant he probably intended to kill Twyla all along. Gilstrap couldn’t possibly let her go if she’s seen him. And besides, where could he hide? Unless he had a bayou cave or swamp hideout somewhere on the Florida panhandle or in the Glades—and even then the dogs would likely find him—there was no place he could run where the cops wouldn’t get him.
That means it’s not about the money. Jack tightened the last bolt on the new surveillance camera over the front door. And that is not surprising. But if it’s about torturing Sandy—if that’s really his motive—how much satisfaction can he get by not seeing her agony? So that doesn’t make sense either. It’s true Jack didn’t know Eugene Gilstrap well, but he didn’t strike Jack as overly bright. Would he try to exact revenge on a woman where he’s not able to see the results? Jack climbed down the stepladder. It had been a long night. He was glad it was behind them.
Now would be a great time to have some boots on the ground in Valdosta. Someone he could talk to about Gilstrap. But aside from his mother, there really wasn’t anyone. In fact, until two days ago he didn’t even have a relationship with Sandy. And asking her now would only result in the unhelpful venting of her emotional bitterness.
Complete Mia Kazmaroff Page 48