“Here, put these on,” said Ellie Mae, and handed her a pair of sweatpants that said Pawleys Island down the side.
Daisy Mae pulled the sweatpants up over the gown and cinched the extra-large waistband until it was snug on her newly shrunken belly.
“Imma git that wheelchair and git you and baby Darren outta here.” Ellie Mae crept into the hallway and slunk down to the chair.
A few seconds later she rolled it into the room. Daisy Mae slumped down into it with the baby swaddled snugly in her arms. Ellie Mae slung the overstuffed bag of baby products over one of the handles and grabbed the two large drinks.
Without much fanfare, they marched down the hall, showing matching bracelets to the front desk. Through the nursery window they could see the nurse who had been trying to kidnap the baby earlier. Her face lit up with alarm and she gestured wildly toward the trio, saying something to the doctor who was holding up a baby by its legs.
“It shows show that you’re supposed to be here until tomorrow,” the nurse at the desk said and frowned at her computer screen.
“Yeah, well, the doc said little baby Darren here is advanced and can graduate early.” Daisy Mae smiled her best honor roll mother smile.
Of course, she was faking it; she had no idea what that kind of smile looked like.
“Well, I’ll have to check it…” the nurse was saying while tapping on her keyboard.
“Here, gimme that!” Ellie Mae grabbed the scanner from the desk and shone the laser on her sister’s and the baby’s bracelets.
The door buzzed and they shoved their way through.
They slid sideways out into the hall and hurried down to the valet stand. Ellie Mae proudly produced a ticket and within minutes the just-out-of-high-school part-time-looking valet retrieved their brand new, fire engine red, jacked up, decked out Jeep Wrangler Unlimited and handed them the keys. Daisy Mae climbed up into the passenger’s seat and carefully strapped herself in, snugging the baby in behind the shoulder strap.
“Nice ride,” said the valet, his hand out and obviously expecting a tip.
“Bet yer ass it is,” Ellie Mae said and looked down and smacked his hand. “Don’t eat no yellow snow!”
They both cackled hysterically as the Jeep roared to life. Just as they pulled away, a security team bumbled their way out the door. They were out and gone in a matter of minutes.
Ellie Mae watched them get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror as Daisy Mae shot a bird at them out the window.
“Where to, sis?” Ellie Mae asked.
“I got Darren’s phone number right here.” Daisy Mae was unfolding a small piece of paper. “Let’s see where he’s at.”
27
Can You Hear Me Now?
Troy Clint Bodean pulled his straw cowboy hat off his head and flung it on the kitchen counter. He filled two glasses with water from the refrigerator door.
Laura Kate Starlington was pacing back and forth in the living room on the verge of hysteria. She was running her hands through her hair, brushing it back from her face.
“They’ve got her. They’ve got Karah.” She was starting to cry. “There’s a crazy dude in my house and Karah is gone. We’ve got to call the police. I’ve got to find Chesney’s number. This is crazy. What the hell…”
“Now, just slow down, little lady,” he said and handed Laura a glass, “and tell me what’s goin’ on.”
“I’m not thirsty, Troy! There’s a strange man in my house and someone’s kidnapped Karah!”
She smacked his hand, sending the glass crashing to the floor and slinging water all over him. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
She rushed over to the broken pieces and crouched down. She was gingerly stacking the glass in her hand when she broke down and started sobbing.
“Here,” —Troy sat the remaining glass of water down and eased his hand under her arm helping her up— “let’s get that later.”
He helped her to the futon and sat her down. She shuddered with each breath, gasping as she cried. “I don’t understand,” she sniffled. “Why? Why Karah?”
Troy shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s a pretty girl. I guess this kind of thing happens to pretty girls.”
He looked through a window that faced Laura’s place. “let’s get that dude out of your house first.”
Jumping up the stairs three at a time, he called down to her. “Be right back.”
He slid apart the doors to his bedroom closet and pulled the string to turn on the naked light bulb. Standing on his tiptoes, he reached up on the top shelf, fingers scraping the edge of an old Sperry Docksiders box. Finding solid purchase on the top of the box, he pulled it off the shelf and down into his hands. He blew a slight coating of dust off the box and placed it on the end of his bed. He took a deep breath and opened the box.
Inside it, wrapped in an old desert issue tan t-shirt, was a Beretta M9. Been a long time, he thought, staring at the nearly new looking handgun.
Troy picked it up out of the box, checked the safety, and ejected the magazine… two rounds. That should do it. He slid the nearly empty mag back home. He checked the safety again, pulled his shirttail up, and slid the gun into his waistband. He closed the box and put it back up on the closet shelf.
He padded back downstairs to find Laura on the phone. She was less animated and was nodding her head.
“Okay. Yes. I don’t know. I guess he’s still in there. Okay. No, I didn’t see her in there. No, no screaming… nothing like that.”
He couldn’t hear the other caller, but assumed she must be talking to the police. She saw him come into the room and walked toward him, still talking into the phone.
“Okay, I’m just next door. Yes, I’m with Karah’s boyfriend, Troy. Okay, hang on.” Laura took the phone away from her ear and hit the mute button. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Cop?”
Laura nodded.
Troy took the phone. “Y’ello?”
Nothing.
He shrugged at Laura. “Nobody there.”
She took the phone, unmuted it, and handed it back to him.
Troy tried again. “Yello? Can you hear me now?”
On the other end of the phone, a man with a calm voice, said, “Yes, hello Troy?”
“Yup, this is Troy.”
“Okay, good,” the man said. “This is Officer Chesney Biggins of the Pawleys Island police department. I’m a… good… um, friend… of Laura’s.”
“Pleasure, Officer Biggins.”
“Call me Ches,” he said. “Listen, from what I can gather, Karah has been kidnapped?”
Troy looked over at Laura and turned away from her. He lowered his voice.
“I reckon that is the situation,” he drawled, “and apparently there’s a dude still in the house.”
He peeked over his shoulder at Laura and lowered his voice.
“Maybe waitin’ on Laura to kidnap her too.”
“That very well could be the case,” the officer said matter-of-factly. “I’m on my way. You and Laura need to sit tight. Do not approach the man. Do not go into her house. In fact, if you have a vehicle, you may want to consider leaving the island for a while.”
Troy pulled a key ring from his shorts pocket; it held the key to his beach house and a key to his pickup truck.
“Yeah, um… about that,” —he shoved the keys back into his pocket— “I’ve been meanin’ ta get that battery looked at.”
“No worries,” the man on the phone said, “just stay in the house. Lock the doors. No one gets in. I’ll be there ASAP.”
“Thank you, officer.”
“Call me Ches.”
“Gotcha.” Troy held up a thumbs up sign to Laura. “Thanks, Ches.” He ended the call and handed it back to Laura. “Pretty nice guy,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“He said for us to just park our be-hinds here and wait it out.”
“But what if Karah is still in there?” Laura motioned toward the house. “We have to at
least find that out.”
“I thought you said she wasn’t in there.”
“Well, I didn’t see her… or hear her for that matter. But she could’ve been tied up, or gagged. Shit, I left her in there with that man.”
She started crying again. “Troy, you have to go over there and see if she’s there.”
Troy sucked his teeth and absent-mindedly brushed his hand up the back of his shirt, checking to see if the M9 was still there. He took a deep breath and went into the kitchen. In one long gulp, he swallowed the glass of water he’d left sitting there. He picked up his cowboy hat, ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it back. He sat the cowboy hat on top of his head.
“Here’s the deal,” he said, and turned to Laura, pointing to the sliding glass door facing the beach. “When I go out that door, lock it and bar it behind me. Go upstairs and don’t come out until Officer Ches gets here. You get me?”
Laura nodded. “Be careful, Troy.”
“Always am, little darlin.’”
He took a quick peek through the window and, satisfied that no one was looking, he hurried out the door. He heard it slide closed behind him and then the click of the lock.
He jumped down the deck stairs that led under his house and shuffled through the dune that connected to Laura’s place. When he crawled over the railing under the house, he stopped and listened.
Nothing. Quiet. He eased himself up the stairs to the deck at the back of the house. When he reached the top, he stopped and listened again. The only sound was the rush of waves crashing on the beach… good cover for his approach, but also good cover for the man who might still be inside the house.
As he army-crawled across the deck, his right knee throbbed and he had a mild flashback to Afghanistan. He could still hear Harry Nedman screaming, legs torn off from an I.E.D. The explosion had shot a piece of shrapnel into Troy’s knee, completely severing his ACL. Under heavy machine gun fire, he’d rolled Harry up onto his back and crawled through the sand back toward the chopper, praying to God that there wouldn’t be another bomb in the sand. Harry didn’t make it back to base and Troy never went back into combat. Here he was, light years away from the desert, on a beach house deck, and crawling again.
He carefully opened the screen door on the porch. It squealed mildly, but probably not loud enough to hear inside. From here, Troy could see that a curtain had been pulled almost shut across the sliding door. There did appear to be a four-inch opening between the jamb and the drape where he could see in… if he could just look without attracting any attention from the dude inside…
He crawled past two brightly painted rocking chairs, one with a Longboard beer design and another with a Harpoon IPA picture. The wind kicked up and the chairs started rocking back and forth. He froze. He heard a thumping sound from inside and… was someone moaning? When the sounds quieted, he inched closer to the opening in the drapes. He was just about to peek around the edge when a huge engine growled from in front of the house on the road. He heard a throaty rumble and then the sound of voices shouting.
“DARREN!” a loud female voice called. “Where you at?”
Then the horn started honking. It blared over and over again in between the shouts.
“HEY!” the woman yelled again. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Troy stopped crawling. Do I know that voice?
The honking sounded closer. It sounded like maybe they were pulling into the carport under Laura’s house. Gall-dangit, thought Troy. He jumped up and ran, slamming the screen door back and leaping down the stairs toward the beach. No sneaking down under the house and scooting across the dunes now. He hit the sand and didn’t look back. Someone was definitely here. He waddled through the loose sand, knee screaming in pain. He grabbed the handrail of his own steps and took them two at a time, hopping as fast as he could.
At the top of the deck, he grabbed the door and yanked. Locked. Dangit. He’d forgotten that he told Laura to lock it. He ran back toward the side of the house away from Laura’s to where the kidnapper and the car had been, and took the stairs down under his house. His old Chevy pickup was there and he hauled himself up (on his good knee) and threw himself down into the bed. He was pretty sure they couldn’t see him from next door. Sliding the cowboy hat off his head, he peeked up over the bedrail of the truck. A huge red Jeep was in the carport under Laura’s house, probably the kidnapper’s backup or maybe the kidnapper himself coming back for Laura. He subconsciously tapped the gun in the back of his waistband to make sure it was still there. Then he remembered his cell phone. He tapped out a message to Karah’s cell (Laura had it upstairs with her).
-“Laura, it’s Troy. Open door downstairs.”
-“How do I know it’s really you?”
-“Just ask Ches.”
-“K, be right down.”
Troy peeked over the truck bedrail again and listened intently. He could hear muffled voices, but nothing he could make out over the sound of the ocean. His knee pounded and he thought about Harry Nedman losing his legs to that dang I.E.D. back in Afghanistan. He wondered if it was time to move on again. Pawleys Island hadn’t proved itself to be very quiet and he needed some quiet to drown out those flashbacks from the war. He’d been one of the lucky ones…
“Troy,” Laura hissed from the door, “come on!”
He rolled himself out of the truck and limped up the stairs. When he reached the top, Laura was frantically waving him in.
“Did you see anything? Is she still over there? What’s going on?”
“I never saw inside.” Troy pointed his thumb toward her house. “Somebody just drove up in a big red Jeep. You know anyone with a car like that?”
Laura shook her head.
“Then it’s likely that the kidnappers are still in your house.”
“And Karah?”
“I couldn’t hear any screamin’ or anything,” he said and walked into his living room, closing the door behind him, “so they probably took her away somewhere and they’re waitin’ on you to come back.”
Laura slumped down on the futon and started crying again. “Oh my God. First dad and now Karah. Why is this happening to me?”
Troy took his hat off and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know, little darlin’, but we’re gonna get her back and figure all this out.”
He limped into the kitchen, dug out a Ziploc back, and began to fill it with ice.
“Where’s Ches at?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Almost here.”
“Good.” Troy sat down at the kitchen table, propped his leg up and put the ice pack on his knee. “Let’s sit tight and wait for the cavalry.”
Laura nodded. “You think she’s okay, Troy?”
“I do, little darlin’,” he said, hoping he sounded convincing but not at all convinced himself, “I do.”
28
Sayonara, Jackass
Darren regained consciousness to the sound of a horn blaring somewhere outside the house. His head was pounding and his entire body ached. Feverous shakes racked his bones and his vision was cloudy.
He propped himself up on his knees to assess his current situation. He’d come to this cursed house to grab the blonde bitch but she’d elbowed him in his good eye and now both were swollen and oozing pus. And to add insult to injury, she’d slammed the door on his left hand… his good hand. He’d already lost a few digits from the right and he was sure he’d felt his middle finger come off his left when the door closed on it.
But that wasn’t the worst of the situation. His left hand had been positioned at the exact height of the handle when she’d slammed the door. Somehow, the bones of one of his fingers had gotten jammed into the bolt hole and the door was stuck shut. He’d tried to open it, but couldn’t grasp the knob well enough with his blood slicked, finger-lacking right hand. The more he tried to turn it, the more slippery it became.
“Mutha fookin’ bitch,” he growled, and slumped back down.
Before he’
d passed out, he’d reached into his pocket for his cell. It was a burner phone Victor had handed them to use for communication during the search for Troy and the hat. With his right-hand situation—missing digits, wrapped in a blood-soaked gauze, and sore as hell—he’d squeezed the phone a little too tight and it had jumped out of his hand. It bounced twice and landed about five feet away. His left foot could barely graze it, but that was all.
He laughed and thought absently that it was a maniacal sound. He knew he was on the edge… who wouldn’t be with all that happened to him. He wondered if he was going to die here… oozing out blood from almost everywhere.
“Ain’t this jus’ grand?” He slumped further down.
The good news was that his left hand (the one stuck in the door) was elevated so the flow of blood had basically stopped. The bad news was that it was starting to go numb and he was cramping badly in his shoulder. He decided that eventually he was going to have to just bite the bullet and rip his hand free from the door… but not yet. He would rest a few minutes, gather what little resolve and strength he could, and then—
His thoughts were interrupted by the squeaking of the screen door on the back porch. The drapes were pulled so that only a slit of light showed through the sliding glass door that led out to the beach. He could hear the gentle thump of someone walking, or maybe crawling, out on the deck. He blinked away the sweat beginning to drizzle into his eyes and squinted hard into the light. And then, there it was… the hat… the God forsaken straw cowboy hat. It was low to the ground and looked as if someone was about to peek into the house. Must be Troy.
He drew in a breath, about to scream at Troy, when the sudden clomp of heavy footsteps sounded on the steps leading up to the door he was stuck in.
“DARREN!” a loud female voice called, “where you at?”
Then the horn started honking again. It blared over and over again in between the shouts. Darren jerked his head back toward the sliding door. Troy was gone… his money was gone. If the stupid cowboy had any sense in him, he’d be on the first flight out of South Carolina. Shit.
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 15