Daddy Soda (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 1)

by Mira Gibson

  “When can we bring her back? How often should she come? I want her to get back to her normal self.”

  Judy looked at Cody for his directive.

  Turning to Hannah he said, “We’ll work it out. Maybe two, three times a week?”

  Judy smiled as though he'd pleased her and he hoped she wouldn’t let on their arrangement.

  “That certainly works for me,” she said, flipping her calendar open. “I can take her Tuesday? Thursday?”

  “Let’s plan on Tuesday.” Cody looked at Hannah for the green light.

  “Sure, definitely.”

  Smiles all around and Hannah went to Candice who had stilled into a corpse on the floor.

  She spoke low to Candice, but refrained from handling her. “Come on, girl. Time to go.”

  As Hannah collected her younger sister, Cody took the opportunity to approach Judy, thank her and reiterate under his breath that she should send the bill to his email address and he’d pay it.

  When they gathered at the door, Cody pulled it open and that’s when Judy remembered a critical detail.

  “One of the men had a snake tattoo.”

  Cody’s heart skipped a beat.

  “On his forearm. His sleeves were rolled up. Bear in mind this is Candice’s impression,” she warned. “A snake tattoo. That’s all she said.”

  ***

  As encouraging as Candice’s time with Judy had been, she spoke not one word when they stopped for ice cream, and seemed disinterested in putt-putt, rather spending the half-hour balancing on the wooden perimeter of each hole as she experimented with how far she could walk, heel to toe, before falling off. Cody did what he could to keep Hannah’s faltering spirits up, but they plummeted none-the-less. She hadn’t had an appetite for her triple chocolate scoop and seemed to apathetically lob her golf ball at every hole.

  By the time he drove them back to the house, Hannah’s mind was somewhere out the window and Candice took to unnerving him with her steady stare, though she aimed it at his hands.

  To Cody, she seemed like a girl who could come alive if only far from home. And her vacancy became more peculiar as they neared the shack.

  He shoved the gear shifter into Park and left the engine running, hoping for Hannah’s indication he could walk them to the door, or inside if that’s what she needed.

  She climbed out, offering him a listless smirk.

  Overcompensating, he said, “Today was fun,” and watched Candice slide out.

  He expected the door to slam, but Hannah leaned on it instead. “Want to check out the lake?”

  “I have time, sure.”

  Dusk had settled over the water, but the sky dazzled him, tangerine bleeding into pinks that faded into shades of dusty lavender, as he stalked across the frost-crisp lawn keeping up with Hannah.

  Candice had darted ahead for the dock, now padding across it so fast he thought she might run off the end and into the dark water.

  “The snake tattoo’s going to help, right?”

  “Absolutely,” he assured her, stealing a glance or two at her as they neared the shore. “Tomorrow I’ll run through the Police Database for anyone arrested with that kind of tattoo. It’s a starting point. Today was a big day for us.”

  She seemed to breathe a touch easier, gazing across the water, watching Candice when the girl stole their attention. She was on her knees, slapping at the water with her palms and belting out the long held tone Hannah had mentioned.

  In response, Hannah's cheeks pinched, wincing, and her mouth was a hard line.

  “Why didn’t they take her as well?”

  He didn’t have an answer.

  She shook her head, analyzing the fragments.

  The next thing Cody knew he was ducking, Hannah yelling and scrambling, his ears ringing from the shot. Someone yelled “Jesus” and he didn't realize it'd been him until he turned around to see who’d fired.

  Dale stood with his rifle aimed at Cody. He cocked it fast, hand flipping the spring lever. It clicked twice on the motion, ready to fire off another shot.

  His heart punched up his throat, looking into Dale’s coal eyes, but Cody straightened, showed his palms, cursing himself for his habit of never packing his weapon.

  Dale's voice was thunder when he spoke.

  “You took my daughter?”

  Before he could answer, Dale squeezed the trigger. Space and time jumbled up and Cody felt a bullet zing over his head well in advance of hearing the deafening pop. Then he realized Dale had arched the barrel at the sky.

  “You hear me?”

  “I took her!" Hannah yelled. "Christ, stop shooting! Have you lost your mind?” She worked her way to Cody, but her heroics didn’t place her in front of him.

  “Have I lost my mind?” he challenged as though if anyone, she had. “My wife’s gone missing and you think I take kindly to my littlest girl disappearing?”

  “She didn’t disappear. She was with me.”

  “I remember you,” he told Cody, tone pricking up at their history. “Cody McAlister.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You work for the law now.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not welcome here.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Cody said, as the interval punches in his chest slowed.

  When he didn’t make to leave, Dale squinted an eye down the rifle barrel. “This is a don’t-tread-on-me town if you’ve forgotten.”

  Cody gave him a curt nod and started off.

  Then the front door slammed and Mary, using pissed stomps that sent her whole body jiggling, angrily rounded the house, as she charged at Dale. Like a bear protecting her young with the kind of fury only fearlessness could breed, she slapped the rifle barrel towards the ground then smacked an awkward blow to the side of his neck and claimed the weapon.

  Dale muttered, “Jesus!” and took to stumbling.

  What struck Cody most about the exchange was that it seemed strangely loving. Dale didn’t have to stumble a pace or two away, but he did. He was grinning. Was that pride? Mary took to popping the chamber open and shook the remaining ammo out then cracked the barrel back into place with a soldier's precision.

  “Get the fuck in the house,” she ordered and it was then that Dale attempted to save face.

  “Get him off my property. I don’t care how you do it.”

  Her stare was hard and from Cody’s perspective she won, though Dale was sure to look him in the eye and spit, punctuating his sentiment so there’d be no mistake what he thought of Cody. Then the grisly man made his slow way around the house.

  Mary approached, nursing the rifle like a newborn. Moonlight danced off her white-blond hair and she angled her piercing blue eyes up at him. If Dale had intimidated him, Cody had yet to feel relieved.

  “Why’s he hate you?” Her tone was genuine and it had him thrown.

  Hannah intervened. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”

  “He doesn’t usually shoot,” she went on, ignoring her sister. “What’d you do?”

  Flummoxed at the prospect of being candid with the girl, Cody offered, “We went to prom together.”

  “That’s not why,” Hannah said as though the very topic had her exhausted. “And I told you I’ll tell you later.”

  Hannah pulled him away and they started for his truck when Mary called out, “Warn me next time you come.”

  Yanking his truck door open, Cody realized he was furious. A teenaged girl had saved him, while he’d frozen, crapping his pants. Never again would he leave home without his GLOCK.

  Chapter Eight

  Cauterized.

  That was the word for it.

  She couldn’t remember where she’d heard the term. Had to have been Mary, her smart one.

  She could still feel her left hand. A phantom on fire every time she wiggled fingers that weren’t there.

  She tried not to glance over her shoulder at it, the stump. She tried to be grateful. His precision, the sterilization, t
he drugs he’d fed her before and after, the echo of which zinged through her bloodstream even now, and was often brought back to life every time the merciful one shared his pipe.

  She knew their names.

  Blake and Dalton and Travis.

  She hadn’t seen Dalton in a few days. He was the nice one. He’d read her parts of Paradise Lost and opened up to her about things. He'd given her a taste of what it might have been like if she'd had a son. She knew he was lonely. The essence of his loneliness had come through as he'd mispronounced words then realized his mistake sentences later, correcting himself. It had endeared her. A mother's fondness, he'd been so vulnerable, trapped here too, at risk of suffering a similar fate as her and he hadn't even known it. She prayed that wasn't where he was right now, off some place, suffering. She wondered if compassion was all she had left. Maybe he didn't deserve her sympathy. Maybe none of them did. It was impossible to make sense of this.

  She didn’t even know what day it was or how many weeks had gone by. Had it been months? Without sunlight time moved slowly.

  Thinking their names gave her a sense of strength. Blake, Dalton, Travis, Kendra. She’d never liked the sound of her name; it’s consonants too pointy to roll smooth of the tongue. The vowels sounded aggressive. That’s why she’d given her girl's soft names, ones that sounded feminine.

  She felt safest in the fetal position; her back to the wall, eyes on the door, but the angle at which her hip met the sleeping bag was causing a dull ache. Pain swelled in the joint and radiated down her legs, up her spine.

  Digging her heels into the cement floor and pushing her shoulder against the wall, she inched her way up. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back, cable ties wrapping her elbows, so leaning her back to the cold wall wasn’t a picnic, but it helped ease the ache out of her hip. Her feet were bound at the ankles just above her boots, hogtied was the name for it, or maybe that was only when the feet and arms were bound together. If she made it out of this, she’d ask Mary.

  The only light she had came through a crack under the door, but her eyes had long since adjusted.

  Kendra said a silent prayer that if she ever got out of this she’d live a clean life, be genuine about her church attendance and not just use the hour to let her mind wander. And she’d do better with her girls; demand to get back in Hannah’s life.

  She wished to God she had a little fight left in her. She’d wasted it in those first few days. She’d kicked and screamed and spat in their faces. Damn fuck-up kids. She’d only wanted to score. They’d tricked her into this nightmare.

  Then the man had come and taken her hand. Kendra had tried to make sense of it, but it made her mind reel. So many weeks lost down here. What the hell had changed that they’d done this to her, taken her hand?

  She’d never seen his face.

  He hadn’t spoken.

  And she knew he’d come back.

  How the hell had Blake, Dalton, and Travis gotten roped into this?

  She should’ve never met them in the woods.

  Kendra scanned the room like she’d done a million times before - thin sleeping bag beneath her, nothing but bare cement across the floor, a few metal shelves so rusted out you’d probably get Tetanus if you touched them. The walls were brick, as bare as the floor. She didn’t have a hope in hell for a weapon.

  Her best bet was to wait until only one of the kids was standing guard, get him in here, and kill him. But, Christ, how? Use her teeth like a wild animal?

  Sitting upright as she was caused the stitches in her lower abdomen to strain, pull at the skin, pinch. So leaning into the wall, she muscled her way up, got to her feet, stretching her legs. She felt a touch light headed, but soon the feeling passed.

  Inching like a penguin she cleared her sleeping bag and made her labored way to the shelves, inspected the metal rungs closely, one then the next, working from the highest shelf then further and further down.

  When she reached the rung third from the bottom she saw it, flat head jutting ever so slightly out from the brick wall.

  Fucking hell, it was a nail.

  She breathed deep and stilled her mind as though the kids beyond the door might read her thoughts if she got too excited.

  Memorizing its exact location and attempting to visualize how she’d grasp hold with her good hand, Kendra was imbued with a fresh wave of her fighting spirit. She pivoted, shifting her weight between her feet in a shuffle until her back met the metal shelving. Then she lowered down, knees bending, thighs burning, metal rungs digging into her back, grazing hard against her spine.

  The angle was awkward and painful, but she slapped and flapped her hand at the bricks, sweating hard in the effort to locate the nail, and eventually the rough brick texture gave way to a smooth flat head.

  She clipped her fingernails under its head, assessed it already had a good centimeter clearance from the brick, and began prying the rusted little motherfucker out of the wall.

  It did not want to come.

  But there was no way in hell she’d give up. Just feeling it in at her fingertips sent her heart racing. She could tell it was a big nail meant to lock in support beams behind the brick.

  She clamped for it, pulled, but her fingernails slid off. Again she clamped for it, fingers aching, and pulled. Was her mind playing tricks on her or had it budged?

  Keeping at it though her fingers cramped and her palm stiffened into a claw, Kendra thought of her girls.

  Mary.

  Christ, she was a pretty girl no matter how much she wrecked her hair, and so damn strong, too. A lion tamer. Wouldn’t any daughter of Dale’s have to be?

  Lord, the circumstance she’d survived before she brought Hannah into this world - soul-murdering conditions, the kind that kept scarring even after you got out. And here she was again, like time was an endless circle she’d no hope of escaping.

  Hannah had tried to find out about it. She’d asked. Even the thought of it now, her blue eyes, otherworldly, asking and asking every time she'd gazed up at Kendra, tore a hole in her heart. Kendra should’ve never hinted and if she’d done one thing right in her life it was that she’d never given in and told her about it. A person didn’t look at you the same after hearing something like that; didn’t matter if they were your own flesh and blood.

  Kendra scraped at the nail and it eased out a good inch then jammed as her fingers slipped off, her fingernail breaking high at the quick. It smarted something fierce. The tip of her index finger took to throbbing. She rode the sting then felt for the nail again, pulled. It was stuck tight. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger, and tried tiny circles. If the brick was old enough and corroded, it'd crumble and turn to dust in the wake of the metal nail, so she kept at it. And kept at it.

  Chapter Nine

  Sunlight had her room at the Super-8 ablaze. Stark orange, it sliced in sideways like it was screaming not to be swallowed by the horizon, the silent night to come.

  Hannah squinted through the glare, as she pressed down on a heap of tangled clothes, forcing them into her suitcase. If she could flatten them to the rim she’d have a prayer at zipping it up all the way around and not just the one side she'd managed. The battle had been going on for too long.

  The door to her left was wide open in case the maid needed to get in and fix it up for the next guest. An icy breeze blew through teasing her hair out from behind her ear. She tucked it back, cursed her clothes into submission then had another go at forcing the zipper around.

  Knuckles rapped the doorframe and without glancing up she said, “Do your thing. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Then she heard Cody’s distinct voice, “It’s me.” His eyes bounced from the bed, which was more or less made, to her suitcase as she shut it successfully, to the dresser and counter tops no longer littered with toiletries and lady products. “You’re leaving?”

  “I am.” Off the questioning cock of his head she said, “Can’t afford to stay the rest of the week.”

  “S
o you’re staying a week?” he asked like he’d prefer to know her date of departure. “Where are you going to sleep?”

  As she sat on the bed, Hannah looked him over and noticed a black satchel hanging from his right shoulder.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Stop deflecting,” he ordered, tone a bit stern for her taste.

  “I don’t have an extra fifty-five a night to stay in a shitty motel. I already burned a hundred bucks or so. It’s not like I can pull another four hundred out of savings. I don’t even have savings.”

  She thought she caught him doing fast math so he could have an idea of when she would be heading out.

  “Until Wednesday?”

  “Thursday morning. It was as much time as they’d give me.”

  Cody wrapped his mind around that, adjusting to the timeline, perhaps coming to terms with the fact she’d be gone soon. His hands were planted on his hips, causing his shoulders to square at her, making him appear a bit bigger. He searched her expression, maybe trying to figure out how she might feel about leaving when the day came.

  “It is what it is,” she explained.

  “You’re not staying at the house, are you?”

  Hannah sighed and wondered why she’d prefer his approval. “Mary offered.”

  “He took shots at us,” he said, suddenly staring at her like she had two heads.

  “He took shots at you,” she corrected. “And he wasn’t trying to hit you, just make a point.”

  “Well, I received it. Loud and clear. He’s dangerous.”

  “I know.” Hannah watched the light shift over him, creep down his piercing green eyes that gradually muted as the sun sank into the tree line far beyond the window. “I can’t explain it in a way you’ll understand, but I have to be there, money aside. It was hard to hear Judy break it down how she did, but she’s right. Candice isn’t getting what she needs. I feel like if I’m there she’ll get used to me, open up, maybe tell me more.”