Georgie’s finger found the rusted edge of the nail. Thank you, Granny Dixon.
Slowly she rubbed the edge of the binding against the nail. Struggling for leverage, the nail sliced her palm sending a streak of burning fire through her arm. With a swift bite of the inside of her cheek she stifled her scream.
No pain, no gain.
39
The last choice was looking better and better.
Stalking across the back lawn towards the charred remnants of the guest house, Charlotte clutched the stained letter and torn envelope to her chest in one hand and clamped the phone to her ear with the other. “What are you saying?” She asked her grandmother.
“Instructions are simple, myshka. You follow. You gets little girl.” Baba drew a hissed breath through the phone.
Charlotte read through the typewritten instructions twice to her grandmother. “Baba, this is crazy.” Massaging her temples, she shut her eyes against the harsh skeleton of the home she’d shared with Georgie.
“The tea ladies, they say you do what bad people tells you. That how Russia work. That how zez mens works. Theys bad Russia. No compromise. Just do. Letter tells what do. You do. You get little girl. Simple.”
“Not simple, Baba. They want me to launder money. They want me to use my father’s legacy, his precious ballpark, to make their dirty, rotten money clean. How can I justify one awful deed to rectify a horrific one?”
“Because your blood demands your help. Little girl iz sister, no?”
“Yes…”
“You loves her, no?”
“You know I love her, Baba.”
“Then you make sacrifice. Blood cares for blood.”
In Babushka’s world things were simple. There was right and wrong, but not necessarily legal and illegal. Saving family justified any means. Charlotte wasn’t certain Georgie, or Mac, would have the same vision as her grandmother. But none of their opinions mattered. Not really.
“They used my father’s company stationary to demand we do the unthinkable. I can’t even believe you want me to consider it. It’s not only illegal, it is reprehensible, and I can’t, I won’t do it.” Charlotte glanced at the crumpled paper with the ultimatum branded on the Watershed Industries letterhead:
Ballpark = cash.
Your sister for $2 million USD cleaned.
No police.
Police = Death.
$5 million more cleaned by end of summer.
The message was clear.
Pay the ransom. Save Georgie.
Involve the police. Georgie dies.
And the whammy? Use the cash rich ballpark as a way to clean money. Not far off what Remy discovered her mother had accomplished in her gallery. And the similarities only proceeded to further link Mama to Georgie’s disappearance.
Regardless, whoever was advising the kidnappers understood the finances of the team well enough to know the initial request was the start-up of cash reserves the ballpark held at the bank, and the balance would be eighty to ninety percent of the ballpark’s food and drink revenue for the entire season. The Bombers drew decent crowds which hovered in the top twenty or thirty in attendance each year in minor league ball, but seven million dollars would nearly wipe out all of the funds associated with the concession stands smattered around the concourse, the only primary cash business.
The buyers at the gallery spent significant amounts in each transaction allowing for thousands of dollars, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, to be transferred between accounts with little notice. But the stadium was hundreds of thousands of small transactions, over months not hours. Even if the entire county believed the Bombers overcharged for soda and hot dogs, a week’s worth of receipts wouldn’t nearly translate to the cash movements of the gallery in a single show.
“Let’s say I could manage to get the cash into the ballpark, I could not get the cash back out and past all of the security loops and hooks we have in place to minimize in-house theft. It’s a clever idea. Using the American pastime to clean dirty money, but even the thought of helping these criminals, allowing their activities to continue to be funded, well, my conscience can’t survive it.”
“Charlotte, this iz hard. We all haz difficulty in life. You want little girl back, you follow instructions.”
“Baba whoever is behind this is linked to Watershed. They used my father’s letterhead. Do you understand? They’ve infiltrated the family business. Just like my gallery. I feel so exposed. So vulnerable. I can’t believe you want me to do something so deplorable. What would your Jesus say?”
“Jesus not in this.” Her grandmother’s phone disconnected.
Her grandmother was right. Jesus was not in this letter. Or in Georgie’s kidnapping. But Charlotte hoped Jesus, Georgie’s Jesus, her grandmother’s Jesus, Mac Taylor’s Jesus, maybe now her Jesus, too, was protecting Georgie and helping to find a solution to the seemingly unsolvable problem.
Unzipping her fleece, Charlotte slid the phone and the letter inside her shirt pocket to keep them dry against the drizzle misting the estate. She wished she could tuck Georgie, Savvy, Mac, and everyone she loved in her pocket. Protect them from the swell of danger threatening to overtake each of them. Swallowing against the tidal wave of fear, she lumbered the remaining fifty yards to the charred guest house.
Hung in the foggy winter morning gray, she could still visualize the warmth she felt in those walls. Even against her will, those four walls had been her refuge.
Her home.
When she’d arrived before Thanksgiving, she looked at the three-bedroom guest house as a prison. Self-inflicted torture to solve yet another crisis caused by her mother. If she could make it through the year, somehow remain untethered by emotional connections and evade the torrent of unending questions, she would have the money she needed to finally disengage from her mother for good.
Pay off Mama’s debt. Regain control of her gallery. Return to New York.
Simple.
But nothing in life was ever simple. Not in her life.
Gliding her fingers along the blistered surface of the front porch, she wondered, what if she hadn’t called Remy? Never suspected her mother’s lying and stealing? If she had turned a blind eye to the corruption corroding her business? If she’d left the closet door closed? Would she have even accepted her father’s death-bed deal? Would Remy be awake? Would her sister be safe, annoying her with non-stop praise and worship music?
Charlotte would give anything to hear her sister singing her “Jesus Music”. To have her best friend only a phone call away. To have said good-bye to her father, properly and in person. But choices made were history. They could inform the future, but they could not be rewritten. She could only allow their repercussions to inform her next steps. For Georgie’s sake, hopefully her next steps would be wiser than the steps she’d taken in the last six months.
The mist fattened to pellets of sleet, clinging to Charlotte’s all-weather jacket and melting through her fleece lined leggings. Chills sprinkled her body, driving a round of breath-stealing shivers to run through her veins. No closer to an answer, she began to plod the swampy overgrowth back toward the main house. Perhaps, Savvy’s warm cider or stiff chicory coffee would be waiting and at least warm her body. The fear laced chill seeping into her soul might not defrost for a decade.
The rain-ice mix quickly turned the twenty-minute walk to near impassible terrain. Charlotte sought shelter under an ancient live oak. An old root cellar stood to her left.
Something in the peeled paint and warped boards sped her heart to a sprinter’s pace. A vague memory of escaping another of her parents’ violent arguments chased across Charlotte’s memory. Racing out the back door, shimmying through the propped cellar door, and charging down the shaky steps. The zigzagged lines of drying herbs stifled the air in the tight space, but her nearly four-year-old body wiggled through the maze and found refuge under a crooked shelf not three feet off the ground. With her short arms wrapped around her head and her eyelid
s sealed shut to block out the echoes of her mother’s screams, she didn’t hear the cellar door slide shut or notice the light evaporate from the room. But hours later, with no sign of a grown up or air free from the dank must of thyme, oregano, and sage, her tears turned to panicked prayers to the God she’d learned about in Sunday School.
Charlotte didn’t know how long she was trapped in that tiny root cellar before Uncle Rayburn found her huddled under the shelves. She remembered his thick arms feeling like steel pillows against her cheeks and the burn of fresh air filling her lungs.
A twig snapped and yanked her from the long-ago memory. Hairs on the back of her neck shot to attention as the feeling of being watched poured over her. Slowly pivoting, her focus darted across the field to the woods and back toward the skeletal remains of her home, but she saw nothing. Not a bird or a squirrel in sight. Sagging against the tree, she sucked in a deep breath wishing she had Mac with her.
What?
She shook her head.
Crazy thought, needing Mac to lean on. Her nerves were too much on edge. She couldn’t manage to walk to and from the main house without devolving into a panic. How could she ever think she could handle a multi-million-dollar transfer for Georgie’s safety without help?
Pressing away from the moss-covered tree trunk, she stepped toward the main house mentally flipping through the potential plans to help save Georgie. With a glance toward the guest house, she saw a quick flash in the corner of her eye, then a flat board cracked her across the face. Tumbling forward she felt the flesh rip from her hands against the rough bark of the live oak. The wind thrust out of her lungs with the force of her knees landing. She tried to focus on the blurred horizon. Cloudy, with a tinge of red.
Darkness slid like a hood over her eyes. She fought. The darkness won.
40
The wintery mix of rain and sleet crusted against Mac’s windshield, lowering visibility to only a few feet on the road ahead, adding to the agonizing frustration from the futile trip to Charleston. The hour and a half drive had slowed to a crawl due to the late winter storm and his mind turned to prayer. But formal words didn’t come. He had nothing left but a sorrowful plea to raise. One filled with his desire for Georgie’s safe return, and the continued hedge of protection he prayed around Charlie.
The tip to the harbor patrol was clearly a diversionary tactic. But why? What purpose could someone have for pulling them from Colin’s Fancy? Had they accidentally come close to finding Georgie? To putting an end to the current crisis? Was she closer to home than any of them thought?
He started calling Charlie as soon as they recognized the couple the shore patrol brought to them weren’t connected to the case. Her phone rolled to voicemail. He’d tried nearly twenty times. Something was wrong.
He avoided calling the main house. Fear she wouldn’t be waiting for their return rode shotgun with the hope she was drinking Savvy’s over-cinnamoned, hot apple cider and waiting for an update from the wild-goose chase.
The concept that both sisters, the two women his best friend had left in his care, could potentially be missing with no leads was incomprehensible to Mac. The desperation in his spirit placed pressure on his gas pedal and he felt his tires spin with the extra speed.
The theme to a popular cop TV show shrilled through his car. His lips twisted in grimaced delight at Georgie’s ringtone programming. He pressed his hands-free button to answer the phone. “Yes, Murphy.”
“You might want to slow down, Counselor. You won’t do anyone any good in a ditch.”
“I can’t get in touch with Charlie. Her phone keeps rolling to voicemail.”
“Have you tried the main house?”
“I don’t want to worry Savvy if she’s not sitting right beside her.”
“Would she have left for any reason?”
“No.” Not unless she was following her own hunch to find Georgie. Rescue her sister on her own. If that was true, why hadn’t she come to him?
“Do you think she made the call to the harbor patrol?” Murphy’s question added another layer of concern to Mac’s worry. Pressing the gas pedal to the floor, he prayed for an answer to the spiraling situation. Only God could help Georgie and Charlie.
~*~
“Georgie?”
The whispered voice drew Georgie from her freeze-frame position she’d assumed when the door opened a crack.
“Cole?” Scooting to sit, she squinted to focus on the form moving closer to her. “How are you here?”
He squatted in front of her. His hands shook as they gently stroked her hair and down her shoulder. “Are you OK?”
“I’ll be fine.” She snapped her wrists apart. The remainder of the plastic binding separated with a crack. Blood from the cuts opened by the scrapes against the nail trickled down her hands, clotting into cracks against her knuckles and palms.
Cole flipped open a pocketknife and slit the matching binding from her ankles. “Can you stand?”
“I can do anything. Just get me out of here.”
Cole leveraged his arms under her to help her stand. She wobbled into him but forced her leaden legs to shuffle forward.
Wrapping a long arm around her quivering frame, Cole tucked her to his side and tugged her toward the open cellar door.
Icy wind slammed against Georgie’s shaking body. She instinctively snuggled deeper into Cole’s embrace, leaning into his heat and strength. Focusing on each step, she shivered with the slap of sleet slashing through the dark. She sucked in a lung-filling breath of the chilly night air and lifted her gaze to the haze of lights in the distance. The main house was ablaze like a lighthouse signaling home.
“Are you OK to walk to the house?” Cole asked.
Georgie nodded. Sucking in her bottom lip, she quickened her pace, breaking from Cole’s protective grip. The bolts of pain shooting up from her ankle were annoying, but she wouldn’t indulge in the suffering. She was free. She had a mission. She had to discover who was behind her kidnapping. She would do everything in her power to ensure they were never free again.
41
Cade whipped his car to a stop, his bumper nearly kissing Taylor’s SUV. Jumping from the car, he hustled to catch the lawyer who was taking the front steps by twos. “Taylor.” Cade shouted, but his voice was muffled in the wiping wind.
“Let him go, Murph,” Dylan said. “He’s got to see if she’s in there.”
Cade nodded. He also wanted to know if Charlotte Dixon was lounging in the breakfast nook or if she was chasing her own lead. Or something much worse. Hunching his shoulders against the pounding sleet, Cade followed his partner into the house.
The few cops who remained were spread around the large dining room table. From unfortunate past experience, he knew they were cataloguing every lead the team had compiled in the last twenty-four hours to try and determine where Georgie was being held and by whom. And, if the kidnapping, with no ransom note, had twisted into something more sinister.
Cade’s worry was outpacing his logic and the systematic compiling of clues.
They had received no direct demands from Georgie’s captors. No demands likely led to one outcome. His mind twisted reality with unquenchable hope, his heart unwilling to accept the thoughts his Quantico trained brain was forming.
“Don’t go there,” Dylan said.
Cade nodded, lifting his gaze to the still swinging kitchen door. With a press of his hand to the thick wood, he stepped into the warmth of the room and the shattered weeping of Savvy Boudreaux.
Wrapped in the wide arms of the family attorney, Georgie’s aunt shook with unspoken reality.
Cade searched Taylor’s expression.
Charlotte wasn’t here, strengthening the theory she was connected to Georgie’s disappearance.
“We’ll find her. We’ll find both of them,” Taylor said.
Cade took in the swing of Taylor’s gaze, shifting to the frost covered window stretched across the length of the kitchen. He squinted to see what drew Mac’
s attention and noticed two figures huddled together, moving toward the house.
“Who’s out there from our team?” he asked Dylan.
Dylan shrugged and shuffled toward the backdoor peering through the fogged window. “All of our guys not in the dining room are still driving back from Charleston.”
Cade tapped Dylan’s shoulder, and his partner moved out of his way.
Stepping back into the cold, his breath collapsed in his lungs. “Georgie?” Running to the end of the porch, he sidestepped down the slippery landing and rushed across the back lawn. Her curls swirled wildly around her head, and his heart pounded with the realization his deepest fear was being overridden by his heart’s hope. With a sliding stop, barely a breath’s distance between them, he placed his hands on her shaking shoulders. “Georgie?”
Tears flooded her cheeks. She fell into his open embrace. Clutching her to his chest, he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. Her body shivered against his and he wished he could absorb the physical pain he could see plastered across her frame.
She pressed out of his embrace and lifted her gaze to meet his. Her face was swollen and red. Flashes of deepening purple were beginning on the edge of her right eye. A deep cut ran the length of her forehead. A quick glance to the hands clasping his, registered the caked blood stretched across her wrists and hands.
“Georgie, where were you?”
“In the root cellar. Near the creek.” She lifted a shoulder. “Cole rescued me.”
Girls of Summer Page 21