by Dale Mayer
She gently stroked Becky’s hair, as that was almost the limit of her hand movement with her wrists tied up, while whispering in her ear, “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake up.”
They were in the back of a station wagon, driving down what was probably the same road heading back to town that they’d been on earlier. But it was still dark out. She’d been unconscious, but it had only been for a brief time. At least she thought so. She saw no sign of morning light.
She saw just the driver and nobody else with him to look after her and Becky. So the driver wasn’t expecting trouble out of the two of them. She’d love to prove him wrong. Before she had been taken and knocked out, Gemma thought she’d heard voices, and she couldn’t be sure what part her sister had in this. That she was involved at all just made Gemma even angrier. She also couldn’t identify the man who’d driven them away. Since she had been in the bedroom, along with Becky, it made sense that they’d been taken out the window. If only to not alert Galen and Zack. And where was Zack? She didn’t know when she’d last seen him.
Had they also hurt Galen? She’d find that very unforgivable. Not that these guys would give a shit. They’d already shot how many men now? And had they killed their own thugs?
She’d heard sounds of gunfire behind them as they’d left, and her stomach cramped to think who’d taken a bullet. It was just disturbing to think that any of this was going on at all. She’d come to realize that it didn’t matter what kind of excuses she made, her sister was just rotten to the core. It didn’t make sense that she would continue with this—unless she had really killed Joe. And Gemma had to believe Becky on that one. So, if Rebecca killed Joe, she would have to pay for that crime. So Rebecca could still be hoping to get out of that consequence somehow. The fact that Becky had seen her mother shoot her father was another very troubling detail. Rebecca kept denying it, but apparently she had been Joe’s killer. According to Becky. And according to the guy at the cabin.
If Gemma still had her phone, she could check the conversation she’d recorded secretly while they’d been talking. But she had no way to know if it had recorded properly. If nothing else it would be evidence for a trial. Although she couldn’t imagine having to be a witness against her own sister. Poor Becky. Gemma couldn’t feel the phone in her pocket, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Just then Becky’s eyes drifted open and then closed again.
“Becky, wake up,” she whispered gently. “Please, honey. We’re in trouble.”
Becky’s eyes opened, but her gaze was unfocused. “Auntie Gemma?”
“Yes, it’s me. I need you to listen carefully. We’ve been kidnapped, so you need to keep your voice very low.”
Becky’s eyes focused on her aunt’s face, and she looked around in shock.
But Gemma was waiting for that and held her firmly against her. “You can’t sit up because somebody is driving the vehicle. We don’t want him to know we’re awake, okay?” The car radio was on and producing just enough volume that she was hoping he couldn’t hear their whispers.
Becky looked at her with huge brown eyes swimming with fear.
Gemma nodded gently. “We were taken from the cabin. They hit you over the head. I’m so sorry, Becky, that I couldn’t stop them from hurting you. They hit me too,” she said, “but you were out for much longer.” Gemma reached up her hands, to show her that she was tied up, then gently stroked Becky’s hair. In turn, Becky stroked Gemma’s face.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“My head hurts, but I’m okay.” Gemma smiled gently. “I am, sweetie. I just don’t know how badly hurt you are.”
“I’m okay. Where are we going?” Becky whispered hoarsely. She laid her head down on Gemma’s chest, her arms wrapped around her.
Becky was just close enough that Gemma could kiss her forehead. “I don’t know, sweetheart, but we have to be ready.”
“I don’t want to be ready,” the little girl whispered. “I’m scared. I just want to go home. I want Daddy.”
Gemma’s heart broke at that. Needing her niece to focus on something, she asked, “Can you see if you can untie my hands?”
The little girl tried to sit up, but Gemma held her close. “We can’t have you rise above the seat,” she said. “We’re in the back. They just threw us inside, and, if we go higher than the level of the seats, they’ll see us.” She held up her hands again.
Becky twisted around and took a look, then set to work trying to untie them.
It was a surprise when she managed to get it undone. But, as soon as her hands were untied, Gemma snatched the little girl, laid her down, and whispered, “Can you work on my feet?”
The valiant little girl awkwardly bent over and twisted around and worked on untying her feet. Gemma at least had shoes on, whereas Becky was still in her nightclothes, and her feet were bare. Blankets were wrapped around them, so they had just been snatched up as they were, but it would have taken two men to do that. No way would somebody make a second trip. Becky managed to get Gemma’s feet untied, and the vehicle just kept going down the road through the night.
Gemma looked at her options. Finding her phone in her pocket, she smiled and sent a text. With her phone on mute, she checked her battery power. It was at 67 percent. She had to keep an eye on that. Then she sent Galen a second text, giving him the update that they were free but in a vehicle being driven by a single person and that both had been snatched out of the bedroom. Probably by two men. That she may have a recording of her sister and her goons. She was so relieved when she got a response a few moments later.
Leave your phone on. Will track you.
She smiled, returned her phone to her pocket, then laid back down again, a little more comfortable. She grabbed Becky and held her close, whispering, “Galen is coming for us.”
Becky whispered back, “Good. I like him.” And then, in her tiny voice, she asked, “Is he coming now?”
“Yes. He’s coming now, but it’ll take him a bit.” She held her close and whispered, “Stay positive, honey.”
“Did my mommy do this?”
“I don’t know how much of this is her doing,” Gemma replied, her heart breaking for the horror her niece had been through, “but she’s involved to a certain extent.”
“I didn’t want to think my mommy was bad.”
“Bad is a hard thing to say,” she said. “You know your mommy loves you.”
“But she loved Daddy, and she shot him.”
“Are you sure you saw that?”
She nodded. “I did, but she said I was dreaming.”
“Of course.” That explained the little girl’s confusion and the uncertainty in her statements. And so typical of her sister. Rebecca had always been great at twisting things around and making you wonder if you’d actually heard what you thought you’d heard. “Unfortunately those tricks won’t save her now,” she said.
“What’ll happen to me then?” Becky questioned sincerely.
“Nothing. You aren’t bad, and you didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said.
“But she’s my mom. If she’s bad, am I bad?”
Gemma winced at that because a lot of people certainly believed that the sins of the parents were handed down to the children, and she didn’t want Becky thinking that she had inherited those bad things because of her mom.
“I don’t think that at all,” she said. “You are a beautiful little girl, and your heart is good.”
“I don’t like hurting people,” she said.
“And you don’t like being hurt either, do you?”
Becky shook her head. “No.”
“Unfortunately you know a lot about what happened.”
“But I don’t want to know,” she said. Her voice hardened. “I don’t want to have to tell people what she did.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell somebody,” she said. She looked up at her and said, “I could record it.”
“Tape it,” she whispered. “Then I don’t have to t
ell anyone.” Wincing at that because she also knew her battery was an issue, she pulled out her phone, turned it on Record, and said, “Go ahead.”
“I watched my mommy shoot my daddy,” she said. “Then he fell down and landed at the bottom of the stairs. She was fighting with another man in the living room, and they were talking about the man killing Daddy first. This man had been to my mommy’s bed many times. I saw him there and other men too.”
“Do you know who your uncle is?”
“Yes. His name is James. She was sleeping with James too. But I think there was somebody else.”
It broke Gemma’s heart to hear her little niece say this stuff. “Did your mom treat you okay?”
“When she wasn’t yelling at me, yes. She said we had to look after ourselves, or nobody else would.”
“You know that’s wrong, right? Because I will always look after you,” she said.
“Good,” she said, “because I think I’m a bad person now.”
“And that’s not true,” she said. “You’re not. Did you ever hear your mommy make plans for a new life?” And her heart broke a little more when Becky nodded. “You have to say yes or no, sweetheart.”
“Yes,” she said. “We were moving to the US. And we’d have a big house with a swimming pool. I really want the swimming pool.” Her voice turned sad. “I guess there’s no swimming pool now, is there?”
Inside, Gemma wondered what the chances were that she could find a place with a pool just for the little girl because she had no doubt that she would end up being the one who raised her now. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “That’s not today’s issue.”
Becky nodded. “Am I going to jail?”
“No,” she said, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But I didn’t tell the police what she did to Daddy. I lied.”
There was a moment of silence while Gemma looked for the right answer. “And why did you lie?”
“Mommy said to because she would get in trouble. Then she kept telling me that I didn’t see what I saw, that people wouldn’t believe me, and that I’d get into trouble for lying.”
“So she told you one thing, then told you something different, and then something different again?”
Becky hesitated and then whispered, “Yes.”
“She’s good at that, isn’t she?”
“She’s very good at that.”
At that point, she turned off the recorder. “If you can sleep,” she said, “do it. I don’t know how far of a drive we’ll have, but we’ll need our rest.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll just stay here and keep you safe.”
“You need rest too. When will Galen come?” Becky whispered as she snuggled in closer.
“I trust that Galen’s on his way,” she said. “You should too.”
“Is Zack okay?” she asked.
“You tell me,” she said. “Have you ever heard anything about Zack?”
“Only that Mom said he’s an idiot, and she only wanted him around for as long as he was useful.”
“I forgot how difficult your mother could be. Do you like Zack?”
“I like him,” she said. “He’s nicer than the others.”
“I think Zack’s okay,” Gemma said, deliberately not asking about the others.
“I don’t think Mom was sleeping with him,” she said.
“Not for a long time anyway,” she said. “It was before your daddy.”
“Oh.” She stopped and then whispered, “It’s not right to sleep with men like that, is it?”
She didn’t have a clue how much her little niece understood about sex and the term “sleeping with men.” She shrugged and held her close. “Let’s try not to judge. Your mom is who she is.”
“Is she going to jail?”
Gemma winced at that. “It’s possible, yes.” Because, of course, she should go to jail if she had killed Joe. He had been a good man. He didn’t deserve to have the woman he absolutely adored turn on him.
But then that was Rebecca’s specialty. To make men fall in love with her, then turn that love into something so dark and so nasty that they were twisted up and messed up forever afterward.
She was grateful Zack appeared to have gotten out of the cycle. “We’ll just wait and see.”
“If I don’t have to go to jail with Mom, can I stay with you?”
Gemma took the opportunity to hold her as close as she could and whispered against her hair, “Always.” And, with that, Becky snuggled in deep and relaxed.
*
“We have to find them,” Galen said. Zack was running GPS from the passenger side, while Galen pushed the vehicle as fast as he could, the headlights off to hide them from their prey, so he was driving in the dark on the rough unlit road. Unfortunately they weren’t gaining. “They can’t be too far ahead, but I see no sign of them.”
“Well, they are. We’ve also got Tim to thank for taking care of those bodies too,” he said.
“That Tim guy’s very interesting.”
“As long as he does his job, I don’t care,” Zack said. “He’s been good to Gemma.”
“They don’t want cops on the property.”
“I know. I think they’ll move the bodies into the vehicle and move them somewhere else.”
Galen thought about it and then said, “Send him a text and tell him to take them to Joe’s cabin. That will at least put them in another location, tying them all to Joe’s murder investigation. Or at least to have the local cops open up an investigation into Joe’s murder.”
“Will do.”
Galen hated to think that both Becky and Gemma were now missing. The real kidnappers might keep Becky safe, but Galen was pretty sure Gemma would get tossed into a ditch somewhere. Apparently the sanctity of life didn’t matter to anybody in that group. “I also think that bloody bitch Rebecca got away clean too. Need to track her down and fast.”
“I’m not surprised,” Zack said. “She’s a survivor, always has been.”
“You should have shot her years ago.”
Zack snorted. “Believe me. I was tempted.”
“I’m not at all surprised.” Up ahead of them, he thought he saw something go around a corner. “That can’t be them ahead of us.”
“Well, it’s somebody, but it’s not Gemma.”
“Interesting. Maybe it’s our mystery shooter and Rebecca.”
“If that’s the case, go faster,” Zack said, his voice harsh. “I’d like to see that bitch one more time.”
“She’s in this up to her neck.”
“I see that. Believe me. Nothing’s quite so plain as the light of day afterward.”
It was a bit cryptic, but Galen was pretty sure Zack was more or less saying that he now saw Rebecca for what she really was. Galen picked up a little bit of speed, swinging wide around a corner, and it shot him a little bit farther ahead.
He could see the vehicle ahead, and it’s almost as if they saw him behind them and were trying desperately to get away from Galen and Zack. But the driver was pushing his vehicle as fast as he could go. But then, so were they. The driver was also still running in the dark, but now Galen was clearly gaining on them.
“You’ve got the advantage of being in their tailwind,” Zack said.
“If I can just get close enough,” he said, “I’ll turn on my headlights, so we can see who it is.”
“I’m pretty damn sure I know who.”
“Has Levi got satellite on it?”
“Stone’s tracking them. He’s also got a location for Gemma. About ten miles away.”
“Interesting. Wonder where they’re going.”
Zack said, “Rebecca could be as amiable as she wanted to be, but she’s always thinking in the background.”
“She’s devious and out of control,” Galen bit off. Zack didn’t say anything. Which was probably a damn good thing. “As long as you’ve not got anything to do with her at this point,” he said.
&n
bsp; “I’ve told you time and time again, I don’t.”
“I hear you, but, when somebody like that gets their claws into you—”
“That’s not me,” Zack snorted. “Not any longer.”
“Good,” he said, and he left it at that.
He was gaining a little bit at a time, and, when Galen thought he was close enough, he put on his high beams and shone them right into the back of the vehicle. Definitely two heads, one female on the side. The other vehicle hit the brakes momentarily, probably blinded by Galen’s high beams. And it was just enough for Galen to catch up that little bit. And now they had a license plate.
Zack quickly reeled it off to Levi’s group. It came back as a rental. “Interesting,” Zack said. “We didn’t see that sticker before. They’re tracking down who rented it.” After a short pause, Zack added, “It came back to the company owned by James.”
“So now we have Joe’s brother renting a vehicle over here. Do we know if he’s here or not?”
“Checking now. Don’t forget. It could be anyone from the brewery, but, from what we know, James is the most likely suspect.”
When Zack’s phone buzzed back and forth, it was all Galen could do not to ask questions with every exchange. But it was what it was.
Finally Zack said, “James entered Switzerland fourteen hours ago, confirmed. He’s traveling with his son. Supposedly heading to a property in Bern. Reason given was for a holiday, not business.”
“And still could have hopped a plane under an alias and been in Germany in one hour. So he could have been here for all this latest chaos, but he wasn’t in the country for Joe’s murder.”
“Do you really have any doubt who killed Joe?”
“Nope. Not after Becky said she saw it.”
“That’s got to be tough, to see your mother shoot your father,” Zack said.
“Yeah,” he said. “None of this has been easy on her. It makes no sense, and she’ll have trouble sorting it all out in her mind afterward.”
“Sure enough. But she’s a great kid. She’s resilient.”
Just then the vehicle ahead slowed down. Galen watched as they appeared to lose power all at once. The vehicle pulled off to the side. “Interesting twist. What the hell?”