by Linda Ladd
Maybe the woman he’d rescued could tell him where they were taking Claire. First, he had to get her out of there before more goons showed up. She needed medical attention. He had to get her to a hospital, and he had to go after Claire. Black’s face bloomed up inside Novak’s mind, and he cringed at the thought of telling him what had happened.
Novak sprinted back to the cabana. The woman was calmer now, inhaling deep, steadying breaths and holding her extended belly with both hands. Jimbo lay where Novak had left him, unconscious and bleeding. “Look, lady, I’m sorry, but we gotta get out of here right now. They got my partner, and I’ve got to get her back. C’mon, let me help you get up. Can you walk?” His voice sounded gruff and panicky, as if it came from someone else. He was shaking, sick to his stomach, and not thinking clearly. He felt on the verge of losing control and couldn’t quite get a grip.
The woman used the tabletop to push herself up. She looked weak but more alert than before. “They’ll come back,” she told him in a hurry. “They always come back, two or three at a time, and they’ll kill us if we’re here. They kill people, I’ve seen them.”
“C’mon, let’s go, nobody’s getting killed.” Except Claire, if Novak didn’t find her fast. She could already be dead and dumped on the side of the road. He braced the woman with an arm around her waist, but she sagged heavily against him after a few steps so he just scooped her up and ran for the garage. He left Jimbo where he lay. He wouldn’t come to for a long time. When he reached the Jeep, he carefully lowered the woman into the passenger seat, then rushed around the hood and jumped in the driver’s seat.
“Hurry, hurry, I just wanna go home, please, please, just take me home. I want to see my husband.” Huddled against the opposite door, the woman couldn’t stop begging and moaning. Any courage she had clung to was long gone.
Novak got the engine started, found the garage door opener, and pressed the button. As it rose, he backed out in a hurry, screeched to a stop out on the street, then turned and floored the accelerator. The Jeep roared and took off. Now that he was not a sitting duck at that house, the initial shock faded some. His mind was working fast, and he realized he might have a way to track her. There was a GPS tracking device sewn into the lining of his backpack, a fail-safe method for his friends to find him if he ever disappeared. It was in the back seat of that Lincoln. If they stayed in that car, if they left that backpack where it was, he could pinpoint their location.
Encouraged that he could find her, he was more concerned about breaking the awful news to Black. He had to tell Claire’s husband that she’d been taken right out from under Novak’s nose. He didn’t want to tell him; he wanted to get her back first, but he couldn’t wait. He needed Black’s help to find her. The woman with him had stopped crying. He was fairly certain she’d been drugged and still had some of it in her system. Her pupils had been dilated back at the house, and her vision seemed off, but she was okay for the moment. Thank God, she hadn’t gone into labor.
Novak sped through the quiet subdivision, past dark houses and empty intersections. He tried to remember the turns that would take him back to I-75. Nobody was tailing him, but that was the only good thing going on. He was wasting valuable time. Claire’s life depended on him getting to her ASAP. The woman beside him probably needed to be in a hospital, but her best chance was to stick with him. They wouldn’t have fed her drugs that would have hurt the baby and made an adoption difficult. She was doing better and didn’t seem to be in pain. She was just terrified with the terrible, grinding, debilitating anxiousness that came from being held captive by animals.
When he finally made it onto the interstate outside Naples, he headed back to Fort Myers but pulled into the first fast-food restaurant he came to and drove around back. The woman beside him seemed too exhausted to talk, both physically and mentally, maybe suffering from shock. Wendy’s was crowded with lots of cars, but the orange Jeep might as well have had a neon sign flashing on top. He pulled into a parking place between a pair of pickup trucks, jerked out his cellphone, and pulled up his backpack’s GPS signal. His hands were steadier now. God, he hoped that backpack was still inside that car. Chances were they wouldn’t notice it. He had weapons inside, so if they found it, they probably wouldn’t discard it, not unless they just ditched the car in a hurry without noticing it.
Cursing himself for letting this happen, he waited what seemed an eternity before the map popped up on the screen. He let out his held breath. The GPS signal was blinking, nice and steady. The Lincoln was headed due east toward the Everglades National Park. While he was gauging how far away he was and how long it would take him to get to Claire, his phone vibrated. He picked up in a hurry, hoping it was Claire. It wasn’t. It was her husband. Novak swallowed down a sick feeling and tried to be calm. He did not want to tell Nicholas Black what had happened. This was his fault. He had no one else to blame, and Black would blame him, too. He clicked on as he backed out and headed out of the parking lot. He turned back east toward the Everglades as Black’s worried voice came on. “Hey, Will. Is Claire with you? She’s not picking up, and I’m getting worried.”
Novak did not mince words. He didn’t have time to be gentle, anyway. “They’ve got her, Nick. But we can find her. I’ve got a way to locate her position. Where are you?”
“What? Who’s got her? Goddammit, Novak, what happened? Where is she?”
“The Skulls have got her, or I think it’s them. I guess they surprised her when she was waiting outside while I tossed Kellen’s house. Man, I swear to God I thought she’d be safe out there in the car. I swear, Nick, I didn’t think she was in any danger or I’d never have left her out there.”
It had all come out in a guilty rush. There was a brief instant of shocked silence as Black absorbed the seriousness of Claire’s predicament. When he spoke again, he sounded calmer than Novak did. “When? Do they want ransom? Have they called you?” His voice cracked a little. “Is she still alive?”
Novak wanted to tell him that he would never let anyone hurt Claire, that those guys had no reason to murder her, but he couldn’t. They had every reason to kill her. She was investigating them, and now she could identify them as her abductors. “Yeah, they called but they didn’t put her on. Listen, Nick, I know where they are. They are driving east on the Everglades Parkway right now. I’ve got them on GPS coming from my backpack that’s still in the car.”
“Thank God. Give me those coordinates. I’m going out there and getting her.”
“You can’t do it alone, Black. You got to meet up with me out here on the interstate somewhere, and we can catch them before they get too far away or find that signal.”
“I just flew in to Fort Myers. I’m still at the airport. Have they threatened her? Tell me exactly what they said when they called, tell me their exact words.”
Novak admired Black’s calm demeanor because his own was nowhere to be found. Black’s voice sounded different, though, hard, uncompromising. Black would have bloodlust in his eyes, whether Novak could hear it or not. He was not going to tell Black what the abductor had said, not if he wanted Black to remain composed. “He just said they had her. Claire’s going to be okay, I know she will. They surprised her out there; they had to. She’s way too savvy, and she was watching the house and waiting for me. I don’t know how they got the drop on her. I can’t believe they did.”
Now Black sounded shaky. “Oh, my God, I knew in my gut something like this was going to happen. That’s why I headed back early. Look, I’m calling in the state cops, right now. We need to stop that car and get her out.”
“Wait, wait a second. The cops will take forever to get organized, and even if they put out a BOLO, they won’t find them in time if they’re already out in the Everglades. Those guys will definitely kill her and dump her out there if they think the cops are already after them. You need to find a helicopter. We can get there faster and put them down before they can hurt her. We
need to do this ourselves, Nick. I want a piece of those guys. I want to put them down.”
“They better not lay a finger on her. Where are you? I’ll get the helo out there and we can go get her.”
“I can’t just sit here and wait and waste time. I’m rolling out on I-75 south right now. I’ll keep you posted on where I am. This time of night, you can set the chopper down in a parking lot along the highway. That’s the fastest way we’re going to get to her.”
“We ought to make it out there in fifteen minutes tops once we get back in the air. What are you driving?”
“Orange Jeep Wrangler. Bring your weapons, Black. We’re going to need them.”
“Hell, yeah, I’ll bring weapons. If they hurt Claire, I’m going to kill every last one of those bastards.”
“Just make it fast, because if they find that backpack, we’ll never find her. Unless, maybe, the car rental has a way to track their car. We can try that, if we lose my signal. Listen, Nick, I’ve got a woman with me, another one of their victims that I rescued at that house. She’s almost ready to deliver her baby, and we need to get her somewhere safe.”
“I’ll have my pilot take her to the hospital in the Jeep. I can fly us. Just tell her to hold on.”
Black hung up, and Novak hightailed it on the interstate, keeping a worried eye on the GPS signal. That blinking dot was Claire’s lifeline to them and the only thing keeping Novak’s nerves in check. Despite what he’d just told Black, he was horrified. Those guys had kept the poor woman next to him chained up and shackled when about to give birth. They were worse than savages. No telling what they’d do to Claire. Maybe they’d already done it. Maybe they had thrown her out into some swamp. Maybe the alligators had already torn into her body. What if that was the plan to dispose of her? No, he slammed a brake on his own morbid thoughts. He couldn’t let himself think that way. Claire was smart. She had escaped worse situations using guts and experience. She would fight for her life. She would stay alive for that baby.
He drove hard. As they flew along, he realized that Claire’s pregnancy might work to her advantage. Those guys were in the baby-peddling business, as repulsive as that was. Claire’s baby meant money in their pockets. Time passed, and Novak felt like he was getting nowhere. He pressed down harder on the gas pedal and kept his eyes latched on the road ahead. Claire would be the same way before this was over. Traffic was sporadic, and his speed swallowed up the miles. It looked as if the Lincoln wasn’t too far ahead of them now. He glanced at the GPS screen again. It blinked steadily. They could get to her in time. Novak had to believe that.
The woman dozed off with her head against the window and then roused and looked behind them, no doubt expecting to see Harley-Davidsons chasing them. When Novak saw a Home Depot sign ahead, he turned in at the next exit. The store was closed, and he drove around back and parked where Black could spot the Jeep from the air. The parking lot was lighted up, but there were no power lines and plenty of open space to land the chopper. As soon as he turned off the ignition, he got out and phoned Black with his own GPS coordinates.
After that, he and the woman sat together inside the car, saying nothing. Now that they had stopped, she was nervous again, trembling with delayed reaction or possibly PTSD. She had suffered enough to cause anybody a breakdown, but she was holding up somehow. He needed to talk to her, get any information that he could.
“Listen, please try to relax. I’m armed, and I know how to protect you if they show up here. You’re going to be okay. I’ve got a helicopter coming, and as soon as it lands, there’s a guy who’s taking you to the nearest hospital where you can get help. This nightmare is over for you. You’ll be fine, just hang in there with me a little longer.”
“I’m not going to any hospital. They’ll find me there, and they’ll kill me. They told me that. They told me I wasn’t the first pregnant woman they’d kidnapped. They sounded proud of it. I just want to go home. Please, just let me go home. Let me call my husband.”
“You need a doctor to check you out. We’ll take you someplace safe, I swear.”
“There is nowhere safe. Please let me call my husband.”
Wringing her hands, she licked dry lips. She was edging up on another run of hysteria. He could see it coming. Novak had to get her talking. He didn’t even know who she was. “What’s your name?”
“Allison DiFlorio.”
“Okay, Allison, we can call your husband right now if you want, but first you need to help me. Please. They’ve got my partner, and she’s going to have a baby, too. You know better than anyone what they’re going to do to her. Are they going to wait till she has her child before they kill her? That’s what you said they were going to do to you, right? Please, just help us find her. You’re going home. She’s not going to be that lucky if we don’t get to her soon.”
Allison looked so pale and ill, he feared she was about to pass out. “They’re going to chain her up. They’re going to keep her in the dark all the time, night and day, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll make her take little white pills and then she’ll go to sleep and wake up confused. If she fights back, they’ll beat her on her back with a belt. She’ll stop resisting when they threaten to punch her in the stomach.”
Novak felt sick. He couldn’t stand to think of them doing that to Claire. Allison began to cry, and the tears poured out until she almost choked on them.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that, Allison. Nobody should have to endure that.” When Novak tried to comfort her with his hand on her shoulder, she cringed away and wept harder. The floodgates had opened, and her pain was out. It wasn’t going to stop soon.
Novak tried to remain patient. He did not have time to let her work out her fears and heartbreak right now. He had to have answers if they were going to find Claire. “Please, Allison, you’ve got to tell me everything you can to help me find Claire before her husband shows up. Is there anything, any little thing you remember that could lead us to where they might take her?” She just kept crying, and Novak set his jaw. She was traumatized, but he had to get through to her. “Are you from around here? How fast could your husband get here if we call him?”
That did it. She wiped her tears and looked at him. “I’m from up in the Panhandle, Pensacola Beach. I was blindfolded most of the time.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Are we still in Florida? It looks like it, maybe?”
“We’re on the outskirts of Naples heading east toward the Everglades.”
She didn’t trust him. He could see it in her eyes. “How do I know you’re not one of them? How do I know you’re not taking me back there?”
That didn’t make sense, but she had every reason to be confused. If he’d been through what she had, he wouldn’t trust anybody, either. “Do I look like one of them? Have I treated you the way they did? Are you tied up and blindfolded?”
“No, but some of them don’t look like they’re in a gang. Some of them look like you.”
“Who? Do you remember any names?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve got to be scared out of your mind. I would be, too. How about this? Here’s my cellphone. Call your husband now if you want, but I hope you’ll wait until Nick gets out here. He’s a doctor, and he can check you over and make sure you don’t need to go to an ER. After that, you can tell your husband where to pick you up. Does that sound good? It won’t be long now. Let me ask you a few questions. Please, try to remember anything that can help me.”
“Like what? I was sick and scared and blindfolded. Everything’s all fuzzy in my head. I can’t even think straight now.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I’m just so tired. I don’t think I can hold on much longer. Please, just let me talk to my husband and let him know I’m okay, and then I’ll try to remember something to help you. I promise.”
“Okay, just a minute.” Novak poked in Allison’s name on his pho
ne, and it didn’t take long to find a missing persons report online. She had gone missing five weeks ago, while at a beach shopping mall. There was a half-million-dollar reward for her return.
“Your family’s offering a big reward for you.”
“You can have it. Just let me go home.”
Novak figured Allison’s kidnappers had brought her to that stash house because they wanted the reward. They were probably waiting for the baby to be born. These men weren’t just stealing babies out of Central America; they were abducting expectant mothers here in the States. Most of them probably ended up dead after giving birth. Allison had been lucky to have a reward or that’s what would’ve happened to her. She had her face hidden inside cupped palms now. She was an emotional wreck and physically exhausted. She was going to need a lot of therapy to get through this ordeal, she and her husband both. She was lucky Novak had shown up at that cabana.
“I know how hard this is on you, Allison. But we need to get these guys and make sure they don’t do this to someone else. We’ve got to make them pay for putting you through hell. You’re the only one who can help us do it. I need you to tell me how they do things so we can shut them down.” Novak waited. She remained silent. “Please, just tell me how they got you? Can you do that?”
She didn’t look at him and kept her face averted. The story finally came out in halting words. “I needed some things for the baby, so I drove over to the mall. It was late, almost closing time. I guess eight o’clock. I got finished and was about to get in my car. There was this dark blue panel van beside me. It has a white stripe down the sides. I didn’t think anything about it. It was dark, but I had parked under a lamppost. The mall was still busy, and people were coming and going. I didn’t even think about being in danger. I was thinking about the baby and what else I’d need when I brought him home from the hospital.”