by Dale Mayer
“To remove the threat, you have to remove the threatened end result,” he said, “usually going after the people behind it. So, for example, say somebody wanted control of your family’s company and needed to redistribute shares for control of the company. They become this new dark horse, somebody put into power in a company.”
“Sure,” she said, “but it’s written down that my parents can’t do that without giving the two of us the first option to buy all the shares.”
“But that’s spelled out in their Last Wills and Testaments, right? As an inheritance?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, their shares are to be divided evenly between the two of us.”
“So, what if your parents were just killed outright, not changing their current wills?” he asked quietly. “Who then has enough shares to take over the company?”
“Well, nothing would change because my sister and I would vote the same.”
“Is your sister heavily involved in the shareholders’ meetings?”
“Yes, she is,” Rosalina said slowly, not wanting to go in that direction, with her sister deemed guilty.
“And, if you’re not here,” he said, “who will get your inherited shares?”
She immediately pressed her lips together.
He nodded slowly. “Your sister does, right?”
Rosalina took a slow, long, deep breath. “Yes,” she said, “my sister does.”
“Making your sister a very wealthy, very powerful woman in the company.”
“I still think you’re wrong,” she said, sliding deeper into the blanket and curling back up again.
“No,” he said. “You don’t think I’m wrong. You hope I’m wrong,” he said, “and that’s an entirely different thing. You are very intelligent. Put that brainpower of yours to work and look at your sister. Look at everybody around your sister. Figure out if this is something she would do or could do. Don’t just go on feelings.”
“Normally I never have feelings to go on,” she muttered.
“That’s because you’ve kept yourself so strapped down. You’ve kept all that emotion rolling underneath that hard shell of yours to the extent that you’ve never really been allowed to express it.”
“You don’t know me that well,” she said. “You can’t say something like that.”
“Sweetheart, I know you better than you know yourself,” he said ever-so-gently. “You were that child who wasn’t loved, in your viewpoint. You were the spare, but, since you were perfect, it served only to highlight how much the child they really loved was damaged and just showed how much more help she needed.”
Rosalina couldn’t stop the sob that choked the back of her throat at his words.
“Your childhood would have been nothing but catch-up, trying to prove to your parents that you were worthy of their love. And nothing you did was ever good enough in your opinion because nothing you did ever made you feel like they loved you the same as they did Melinda. Which is true. They loved her because of her disabilities. They loved you because of your abilities. Different kinds of love but both are love, in your parents’ own ways. So it wasn’t a competition. You didn’t want it to be, yet you couldn’t stop trying to reach for the same thing. If we were in any other scenario, and I didn’t know who you were,” he said, “you would be my prime suspect, the one who looks the most guilty in all this.”
“Seriously?” She sat up straight.
He looked at her and smiled. “Who is the one who gains the most if your parents go?”
“We already went over this,” she said. “The two of us.”
“And your sister’s already been through an ugly divorce. She’s got another marriage happening, and she’s frustrated and frightened. The world sees her as less than, doesn’t it? So your parents have given her an awful lot more support, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if and when you see the actual share division, you will find that they’ve given her a little bit more.”
“Well, maybe they have,” she said, “but I don’t need the shares.”
“But the world expects you to react like everybody else, and that means you would want those shares. So, maybe you’re the one who’s angry. Maybe you kidnapped your parents to make them change their wills.”
“But I would never do that,” she cried out.
“I know that, and you know that, but that doesn’t mean anybody else knows that.”
“You’re just grasping at straws,” she muttered, flopping herself back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. “It was tough growing up,” she murmured. She’d been quiet for a long couple moments thinking about the lonely nights she had stayed in her room, while her parents sat with her sister, who was tormented by nightmares.
“You became self-sufficient, capable, and independent because you didn’t have a choice. The more you did so, your parents realized just how much you could do without them, and they backed off even further, right?”
She nodded slowly. “I don’t think they did it on purpose though,” she whispered.
“No, of course not. They were parents, and they needed to split up their time as equitably as they could,” he said. “And, with one child needing so much more of their care, obviously the other child would either learn to thrive as an independent or would suffer and would end up with a condition or mental instability that demanded the parents give them more attention. You chose to go the other route and isolated yourself, becoming stronger and stronger.”
“Not so strong, if you can see that inner child so clearly,” she said. His analysis was very invasive, and yet he wasn’t doing it in a way to hurt her. He just stated the facts, and she appreciated that because facts were what she was comfortable dealing in.
“When you realize that you’ll never get the same love from your parents as your sister, you convince yourself that you didn’t need it in the first place,” she said. She thought of all the hours she had spent at school plays or assemblies, getting awards upon awards, just hoping to see her proud parents in the audience, only to find their spots were empty. Because her sister would have needed the hospital or another of her PT sessions.
And, if it came down to her sister’s ballet lessons or Rosalina herself getting an award, her parents would smile and tell Rosalina that she’d get another award. Then it would be hands down Melinda’s dance lessons. These were just the facts of Rosalina’s childhood world, and she’d long since gotten used to it. Until Gavin sat there at the table with that well-intentioned, smooth-talking voice and brought all these little bits and pieces out of the shadows and into the light. She didn’t like what she saw.
“Was she always manipulative then?”
“Always,” Rosalina said sadly. “She sees her disability as something that makes her so much less. Thus her insecurity is so vast and deep that she requires everybody to give her so much more, all in order to fill up that well of insecurity. But she’s really a nice person when you get to know her.”
Gavin gave a bark of laughter at that. “Well, I haven’t seen that side of her,” he said. “The person I met wasn’t somebody I would choose to spend any time with.”
“I know, right? Nobody ever sees that better side of Melinda, who she is with my parents,” she said, laughing. “When she wants to be, she can be very nice. I have seen it at times.”
“Was she actively hateful toward you?”
“Oh no,” Rosalina said. “Distant and cold. Calculating, as if trying to discover how she could make me look worse and herself look better. I think that’s a safeguard of any child, just trying to make the world happen for themselves. I don’t blame the young girl she was.”
“No, of course not. Because you’re right. Every child tries to manipulate their environment to make their situation the best it can be,” he said. “So, no, I don’t blame the child at all. But you can certainly take a closer look at the adult and realize how much better she could have been. If you get to blame anybody, blame that version of Melinda.”
“You see? That’s t
he difference between me and the rest of the world,” Rosalina said, as she rolled over to look at him with a small smile. “I don’t have the time or the energy to blame anyone. I just moved on and found a passion, and that’s where I spend all my time and effort.”
“And I bet that alone,” he said, “probably made her even angrier.”
She nodded, pulling the covers up to her chest. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Yes, it definitely did.” She heard the note of satisfaction in her voice that she couldn’t even begin to contain as she let herself drift off to sleep.
Rosalina continually amazed him. Not only was she always willing to see her sister in a better light but Rosalina was also willing to avoid blaming anybody for her childhood and her life growing up. It was an interesting combination of personalities that she presented. She hid behind her intelligence. Those busy eyes of hers seemed to see everything—yet only as she looked outward. She refused to look inward.
Maybe because the pain was so intense or maybe because she already knew what was inside and felt it was lacking. Either way, she fascinated him. She dozed gently on the bed, not even six feet away. He had shifted so that he could keep an eye on her, to make sure any nightmares didn’t overwhelm her while he worked on the laptop.
He’d been given the link to the vehicles coming and going from the warehouse. According to the cameras, a nine-minute glitch started at 1:15 p.m. this afternoon. A vehicle had come in; the two people had been dropped off, and the vehicle had left again. But having a glitch like that just meant Gavin now had a specific time. A place to start searching for the vehicles that came through the nearby busy intersections.
It didn’t take him long to narrow it down to a small green van. Not new, not necessarily old, but a fairly nondescript delivery van. One similar in size and shape to the one that had kidnapped the four of them in the first place. So, where had this van been in the meantime? Zooming in, he managed to get a license plate number, which he quickly put into the chat box with his orders. And then he kept looking to see where it traveled next. He managed to track it across most of the city, at least the downtown core, where it disappeared into a massive parking structure. He waited, keeping track of the vehicles coming and going. The green van didn’t leave for another seven hours.
He frowned, typed the address into the chat box, and wanted to know who owned it and were there any living accommodations inside. Now Gavin watched as the green van headed up and went in the opposite direction from where the couple had been left. So, had Rosalina’s parents been there in the warehouse that whole time? Maybe it was a delivery job? The parents were picked up from wherever they had been originally stashed and removed to the warehouse, and then the delivery person went home for the night? So the next day was a whole different business day, potentially onto his own world? Whatever that was.
Gavin thought about what the one longshoreman had said—the one who had pulled a gun on Gavin. So these guys couldn’t be trusted as to anything they had said earlier. And no cameras were in the warehouse, which also made him pause. Who would know how many cameras and where the cameras were located if they weren’t involved? Unless somebody hadn’t given a damn and just cut the electronics. If you cut the electricity and took out the security line and the internet feed, that was an easy way to make sure you got everything disabled.
But, if her parents were just lying there, unconscious on the floor, tied up, that meant somebody had taken them from the van, carried them in, and left them for somebody else to pick up later. And yet, by the time Henry had driven them there, the parents were already missing. So somebody else had come and picked up the parents and had taken them away before all hell had broken loose.
Gavin kept searching for another vehicle that would have removed the parents from the warehouse property. And it really pissed him off when he realized it was less than an hour before he had arrived. He caught sight of a black truck with a canopy leaving the docks that he hadn’t seen anywhere along the area. It had gone in the direction of the right warehouse, but then Gavin had lost track of it.
When it showed up again, it was driving slowly, but Gavin had no way to know what or who was inside it. However, with the license plate number, he could hopefully track it down. As he dropped that one into the chat box, he got the green van’s license plate data from Lennox.
Plates are stolen. Need more details on the vehicle if you can. I presume it wasn’t a black truck?
Small green delivery van. Gavin quickly went back and took a screenshot and popped it in.
So the license plates were stolen, but that didn’t mean the vehicle was. Pretty easily, anyone could switch license plates. People often thought that was the best way to throw off the police. But they didn’t realize that the police often had methods of finding out whose vehicle it was anyway. Gavin went back to searching for the black truck on the traffic cam feeds. Then he brought up an image of it and added it to the chat box. Need to know where this one is too.
Those are the license plates for a van.
Maybe for the green one I saw earlier? So they switched both plates?
Yes. Immediately came an address, name, and picture ID of the person who had it insured.
Gavin noted it was an older woman, maybe in her late seventies. He checked for a birthdate and soon confirmed she was seventy-nine. Well, she wasn’t likely driving it herself, Gavin entered.
Lennox popped up and said he’d run a history on her family and friends.
Gavin replied and asked for more information on the black truck, telling Lennox it may have been the vehicle that took away the couple.
It belongs to Johnston’s mother. Lennox confirmed and the chat box disappeared.
Gavin studied the information in front of him on the woman. A little more research came up with the fact that she was a longtime resident, had type 2 diabetes, and used to be a schoolteacher. She had retired a good twenty years earlier. That explained the purse and sweater in the vehicle.
“Good for you,” he said, “a life well lived and hopefully a retirement well enjoyed.”
He kept muttering to himself as he worked his way through the rest of the camera feeds, trying to find images of the sides of that truck as it left. He had a search set up, and images flashed constantly, as the computer went from one camera to another, until finally Gavin saw the black truck leaving the outskirts on the north side of town. He switched to a satellite feed to see if he could pick up anything on it.
And then it headed into another town, where Gavin switched to street cameras again. Then he caught sight of the canopied black truck driving into a long driveway among a bunch of trees. Then it stopped. He took note of the address and popped that into the chat window, then looked at his watch to see what time it was, as a road trip was about to happen.
But he wouldn’t leave Rosalina alone. Neither could he trust Steve and Melinda. As much as Gavin wanted to think the family could stick together until he cleared the other two from some involvement in the kidnappings—which at the moment he sure as hell could not—he wouldn’t leave Rosalina alone or with those two. He texted Shane, who replied, and they shared a quick exchange. Where are you?
On the way back to the hotel.
Good.
Why?
Road trip.
What about Rosalina?
No idea. Suggestions?
Take her with us.
Not sure that’s a good idea.
Leaving her behind is a worse one.
Gavin sat back and stared as he contemplated that because really it was a simple case of just the two options. They took her with them, or they left her behind. But, if leaving her behind would put her in danger, then the better option was to take her along. He could also put an armed guard on her, but that might piss her off, and there wasn’t any guarantee that she’d be any safer, particularly if the guard had anything to do with Steve.
Gavin didn’t want to think his old friend was up to no good, but Gavin had seen it happen time and time
again. So he just didn’t trust Steve enough in this situation, especially where he had personal stakes involved. Ten minutes later a rap came on the door, so he got up and let Shane in.
“Where are we going?” Shane asked, as he threw a bunch of gear into his bag.
“I saw a green van leave from the warehouse, about the time of that 1:15 p.m. glitch, probably when the parents were first taken to the warehouse. But then, about an hour before Henry brought us there, a canopied black truck left the longshore area, probably with the parents inside. I tracked him from Oahu to the north side and up to the next little town, where they’ve turned in to a long driveway up on the far side.”
“Oh, good,” he said.
“Not necessarily because I couldn’t confirm that anybody was in the back between the smoked windows and the overhead canopy.”
Shane stood with his hands on his hips as he thought about it. “And, of course, no cameras were around the warehouse building.”
“Exactly. Cameras were there but have been smashed. The van that delivered them had stolen license plates, from the black truck with the canopy. So the license plates had been switched.”
“What we need then is to find that black SUV from the crime scene.”
Gavin gave a bark of laughter. “Believe it or not, the cops are on it.”
“They should be on all this, but are they?”
“If they aren’t, we are,” he said, “so it doesn’t really matter. Is anybody getting upset with us?”
“Only like today, when we show up somewhere and leave dead bodies behind.”
“Right. I figured. How did the interviewing go?” Gavin asked Shane.
“The guy with the bum arm, thanks to you, clammed up as soon as he got medical treatment,” Shane said. “He’s not willing to talk. We have his name and his ID, his rap sheet and his list of known associates,” he said, “which I shared with the chat window, but it doesn’t mean necessarily a whole lot yet.”
“Good,” Gavin said, “it’s something at least.”
“I didn’t waste my time on the sniper. I knew he wouldn’t be talking. What we still need though is something a whole lot more than this.”