by Mark Stone
My second call was decidedly less normal. Jonah had given me more than just the info on the dating app. He’d given me the last number called from Charlotte’s phone. It was strange. The rest of the numbers were all there, all untouched, including the time Charlotte accidentally called me as she gave that couple directions. The fact that this number and the two times it was called from Charlotte’s phone had been tampered with, did much to cause it to stand out.
I needed to find out who or what I was dealing with. I needed to come at this with as much information as possible. So, I grabbed my phone and called the number Jonah had found on Charlotte’s phone, late hours be damned. I blocked my number first, though. I saw little need in giving whoever was about to be on the other end of this line a way to get back in touch with me. This was a one-way information grab, and I intended to keep it that way.
The phone rang twice and then went to a voicemail. I narrowed my eyes as I listened to it.
“You’ve reached Bennett’s Butcher Shop. We’re either with another customer, otherwise unable to come to the phone, or you’ve called after hours,” the voice on the other end of the line, a voice that sounded like it came from an old lady, spoke to me. “Please leave us a message, and we’ll be happy to get back to you. As always, we appreciate your business.”
The machine beeped and, instead of leaving a message, I hung the phone up. Okay. So, that was weird. Of all the things I might have been expected to find on the other end of that line, a butcher shop wasn’t among them.
Scanning the number again, quickly as I turned into the parking lot of the hotel, I saw that the area code wasn’t from here. Putting my car in park, I did a quick Google search and saw that the area code in question came from Jacksonville, much further North in the state than I was used to going and on the complete opposite side of Florida. That didn’t make any sense. If Dustin was responsible for this, and he was from St. Petersburg, what would he be doing calling a butcher shop in Jacksonville? What would he be doing calling a butcher shop at all? If he had just hurt someone or, God forbid, done worse than hurt someone, what would make him call a damn butcher shop? It didn’t make any sense.
Another quick Google search found an address and phone number for Bennett’s Butcher Shop, as well as operating hours. It opened at nine in the morning. So, if all of this hadn’t been sorted out by then, I’d give the place a call.
As it stood, I needed to deal with the stuff in front of me right now, which was a grimy outdoor hotel (probably more of a motel) with one of those bright neon signs that buzzed whenever it was glowing.
I grimaced as I stepped out of the vehicle. This place looked like it belonged in a horror movie. The idea that Charlotte might be trapped in one of these rooms was enough to send me to my knees. I didn’t fall to my knees, of course. Charlotte needed me up and running. Still, the urge was there.
I cleared my throat and looked at the information Jonah had texted me. Dustin had checked into room 212. I scanned the area, looking for the room. As I found it, a woman in a short skirt with teased out hair and a lot of makeup on came walking toward me.
“What are you looking for, Cowboy?” she asked, shooting a smile that spoke more of sadness than anything else.
“My friend,” I answered, flashing my badge at the woman. “A tall redhead with green eyes. She’d answer to the name of Charlotte. She’d have been brought here late last night.”
The woman shrunk away from me as she looked at my badge. “I haven’t seen any Charlotte,” she said as she practically ran away from me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, blinking as I watched the woman’s high heels slap against the paved parking lot. “I don’t know what’s happened to you in your life, but there are other options.”
She didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect she would. Still, I had to say something. I had to let her know I could help her. This wasn’t the kind of stuff you saw in Naples. Of course, we were outside the city limits now, and not everywhere was as bright, breezy, and sunny as the Gulf town I called home.
Taking a deep breath and turning my attention back to the room in question, I started across the parking lot toward the door.
As I did, I heard screeching on the pavement. Looking up, I saw a huge brown car with its headlights on round the corner. It was coming fast, it wasn’t slowing down, and it was aimed at me.
11
Standing in the parking lot, watching that old brown monster of a car lumber toward me, my body seemed to freeze. Now, I wasn’t the type of cop who was bad on my feet or slow to react to issues. One of the main things they teach you in the academy is how terribly important it is to be prepared for anything and everything that might come your way. The field is an unpredictable place, and you need to be nimble of mind and body to make it through a job like this one.
Still, there was something about tonight. There was something about what I was doing, about who I was looking for, that stripped me of both my ability to think clearly and my sense of wellbeing. I knew I needed to jump out of the way of this car. If I didn’t, it would run me the hell over, and very likely leave me a flattened puddle of blood and bones on the parking lot. What if Dustin was the person driving the car, though? What if he did have Charlotte held captive, and she was right there in the front seat? What if I was the only thing standing in the way of this man leaving town with the mother of my nephew? What if jumping out of the way gave this man a free shot to take her away forever?
I swallowed hard as the blaring headlights drove toward me at breakneck speed. My mind was swirling, and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just stand here. I knew that. If Dustin and Charlotte were actually in this car, then me getting myself killed wouldn’t help her chances of getting free. I could have pulled out my gun and pointed it at the vehicle, but I wasn’t sure I had enough time. What was more, if I was wrong about who was in the driver’s seat (It was impossible for me to tell from this angle and distance), I would be drawing my weapon on and possibly firing at an innocent person.
I had one choice. All I could do was jump out of the way and follow the car. If I saw that I was wrong and Dustin wasn’t the person in the driver’s seat, I could double back around and come back to the room in question. If I did see it was him, though, it would hopefully lead me right to Charlotte.
Leaping out of the way, I saw the car jerk hard to the side of the parking lot. It slammed into a parked truck, hitting loudly and sending the airbag jutting out toward the driver’s face.
I landed on the pavement, hitting my shoulder as I landed. I yelped out a little, but couldn’t afford to do much more than that. I needed to move quickly. Turning over, I pushed myself up and turned to the car, which smoked from the hood. Running toward the door, I pulled it open. The man in the front seat, a blond man with wrinkles around his eyes and a freshly busted lip sat there with his face against the deployed airbag.
I recognized the man seating in front of me from the picture Jonah had sent to my phone. I had been right. It was none other than Dustin. With a start, I pushed the man backwards and looked at the passenger seat, a new sense of urgency filling me.
Blinking through what was becoming quite a bit of smoke filling the cab, I saw the seat was empty. My heart sank as I looked into the backseat. It too was empty. Charlotte was nowhere to be found.
“Damnit,” I muttered, grabbing the man by the collar and pulling him out of the car. As I dropped him onto the pavement and pulled him away from the smoking car, a horrible thought crossed my mind. Rushing back to the car, which was going to blow at any minute from the looks of it, I hit the trunk button. The idea that a person as good and kind as Charlotte could have ended up in a creep’s trunk was disgusting. Still, I had been on the job long enough to know that disgusting was a part of everyday life sometimes.
Rounding the car, I looked into the trunk. There was a crowbar, a couple of magazines, and a child’s car seat. Charlotte was nowhere to be found, though. As I continued to look, though, I
saw an air tank…a compressed air tank.
“Oh God,” I muttered.
Swallowing hard, I rushed back to the man, trying to get him and pulled him as far away from the car as possible. I would have to be quick, though. As I neared him, I heard a loud sound behind me and then felt a force at my back. It was hot and hard and pushed me forward. I was too late. A spark somewhere had caused an explosion, and I was right at the cusp of it.
I slammed hard against the pavement, and this time I wasn’t able to brush off the effects of it so easily. I saw stars and swallowed the metal taste of blood as the ground came up to meet me, kissing me hard on the mouth.
I heard something crack and felt a sharp, debilitating pain run through both my nose and jaw.
My eyes fluttered closed and though I tried as hard as I could to stay awake, it was no use. As much as I might have wanted to stay conscious and finish this, sleep took me, and I was powerless to stop it.
12
The next thing I knew, I was swimming. It didn’t make any sense, of course. I had been in a parking lot, planted against the pavement and unable to stop myself from falling unconscious. It was the middle of the night and unseasonably cool for Florida, even in this time of year.
I hadn’t been in the Gulf. I hadn’t been swimming with the warm sun beaming down on my bare shoulders, and I certainly hadn’t been moving as quickly as I could toward a beautiful pier on the beach.
Nonetheless, here I was. My heart was full, my mind was free of the heavy, pressing thoughts that had been weighing it down, and they had been replaced with something light, with something true and amazing.
As I swam toward the pier, an act I’d done countless times in my youth and more than a few times since my return to Naples, a figure began to take shape.
At first, I couldn’t tell just who I was looking at. The sun was in my eyes, forcing me to squint as I bobbed up and down in the warm Gulf water. The water of the Gulf was always warm, somehow. It was almost like magic, just like this feeling that danced through me right now.
As I grew closer, the figure came into view, and I knew her. I knew those legs. I knew that smile. I knew that long red hair and those hands that waved to me as I neared them. They were hands I’d held more times than I could have ever accounted for, hands I’d kissed, and hands I’d loved.
Charlotte sat on her pier, her long legs dangling toward the water, her cherry red hair blowing in the breeze. It occurred to me that I had accomplished my job somehow. I had put myself through hell trying to find her, and all the while, she was right here. I was coming right up to her. It was over.
Only, it wasn’t. I kept swimming, kept splashing toward the pier. No matter how hard I pushed, though, no matter how much effort I put into my motions, I didn’t get any closer. I kept swimming, kept fighting against the water, but it seemed as though none of it mattered. I wasn’t getting any closer. For all my attempts, for all the effort I put into this, Charlotte was still far away.
Suddenly, the bright sun faded, the sky clouded up, and the water got cold and choppy. That didn’t make any sense, though. The Gulf was never cold. The Gulf was always inviting. That’s why people loved it so much.
I looked over at Charlotte. She still sat there, her legs dangling toward the water. Only now, the smile had left her face. She wore a pained expression, one of fear, one of agony.
I doubled my efforts, pounding so hard against the water that my joints burned like fire. It was no use. Nothing I did mattered. It felt as though nothing I would ever do would matter.
The clouded sky turned even darker, dropping into night. Now, I was in black water. Now, the Charlotte that sat on the pier did so with tears running down her face.
She screamed something, a word I couldn’t understand. Still, I felt as though if I could, if I could only decipher what she was saying to me, it might hold the key to saving her. It might allow me to finally bridge this gap.
I wouldn’t bridge the gap, though. My arms grew tired, my legs became useless, and my heart felt as though it sank to the bottom of the gulf.
Then, the rest of me did.
I fell under the water, pitch black and without air. I was going to die here, going to lose everything in my quest for this woman. And the worst part of it was that I was going to fail anyway. I’d lose it all for nothing. She’d die right alongside me.
That was when it all ended.
I woke with a jolt, my eyes adjusting to what I already knew were the fluorescent lights of the hospital. Lord knows I had woken up in enough hospital beds to know the feeling by this point. Sighing, I lifted myself up, only to feel aching in my joints, a pounding in my head, and the unmistakable sting of an IV dug into my hand. I thought about what had just happened in my head, the dream that had jarred me back to consciousness, and shuddered. It wasn’t real, thank God. That didn’t mean reality was any less hard to take, though.
Blinking and swallowing hard, trying to coat my dry and itchy throat, the memory of what had happened came rolling back into my mind like a wave. There had been an explosion. The car Dustin crashed right in front of me went up in flames, and the force of it sent me colliding with the pavement. I must have passed out, and I must have stayed out while I was loaded into an ambulance and brought here.
Looking over, I saw the light of a new day shining through the closed blinds, and my heart sank. It was the middle of the night when I went to confront Dustin about his connection to Charlotte. The fact that the sun was up now meant I had been unconscious for at least five or six hours and that could be devastating.
Hours were like months when it came to a missing person’s investigation. Charlotte was out there in the wind, and I had been sleeping.
“Dillon,” a familiar voice came from the doorway. Looking over, I saw my grandfather. He held a tray of food- what looked to be a turkey sandwich, a pack of plain potato chips, and one of those green gelatin molds that I wouldn’t even eat when I was a kid. “How are you feeling? The doctor said you broke your nose.”
I reached up toward my face and felt the bandages and metal thing pressed against my nose. Suddenly, I remembered the crack as my face slammed against the pavement. It was a bad scene, and a broken nose wasn’t something I wanted. Still, it was far from what I was most concerned about right now.
“Charlotte,” I said, swallowing again, realizing I was as thirsty as I’d ever been. “Where’s Charlotte?”
“We’re looking,” my grandfather said, shaking his head and walking toward me with that damn tray. “You need to try to eat something.”
“I don’t want to eat something!” I said loudly enough that a ringing ran through my head, causing it to ache anew. “I need to find Charlotte.”
“The whole damn police force is looking for Charlotte,” Grandpa answered. “What you need to do is rest.”
“I can’t rest,” I said, throwing the covers off myself and leaning further up in bed. “She’s out there and that man knows where she is.”
“What man? Dustin Reynolds?” Grandpa asked, setting the tray on the counter beside me.
“Yes,” I said. “Has anyone talked to him? Has Boomer been here?”
“No,” Grandpa said, sighing loudly. “When the ambulance got there, you were the only one at the scene. I guess Dustin, whoever the hell he is, didn’t get as much of the force of the blast as you did. You must have taken the brunt of it.”
“That sounds familiar,” I muttered, my hands clutching into fists on my lap. “We have to find him. I think he has Charlotte.”
“They’re looking for him too,” Grandpa said. “Jonah gave all the information he got from Charlotte’s phone to Boomer. He’s not happy with you about not bringing this to him, either, and I can’t say I blame him. If you’d have followed protocol, you might have that man in custody right now.”
“Or I might have waited so long that he’d have left with Charlotte,” I said.
“Except that he didn’t have Charlotte,” Grandpa said. “They checked hi
s room. They checked what was left of the car. There was no sign of Charlotte or any evidence that he was holding anyone. They dusted the hotel for fingerprints, but given the sheer amount of prints they found, it’ll take a while before they can say whether or not any of them belonged to Charlotte.”
Grandpa stepped toward me. “Everything’s been happening really quickly, Dilly,” he said. “I just wanted to say, because I haven’t had a chance to, how sorry I am that this happened. I know how much that woman’s always meant to you.”
“You have said it,” I answered. “Even if you didn’t say it with words, you said it.” I looked up at the man who had taught me more about growing up than anyone in my life. There were tears in my eyes. “She tried to get rid of Isaac.”
“What?” my grandfather asked, his eyes narrowing. “What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t sound right to me, either, but that’s what Justin said. “Apparently, Charlotte came to him a little while back and asked about terminating her parental rights.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why she would do that. I just- I feel like, if that’s true, maybe I don’t know her at all anymore.”
“Do you think that’s true?” he asked, his face hardening. “In your gut, do you believe she would ever want to get rid of her kid?”
“I really don’t,” I answered, more sure about that than anything.
“Then there’s more to it,” Grandpa said. “You’ve got good instincts, son. The best I’ve ever seen, maybe. If you don’t believe something, there’s probably a damn good reason for that.”