Yet, as he pointed his car toward Tiffany’s condo, where they would rendezvous and head out, he envisioned Ellie escorting Chris and Caleb to the bus stop, dropping Colton off at her neighbor’s, and heading off to class, and a sense of longing swamped him. She’d said she had her final exams this week, he thought, recalling how she’d studied by candlelight. Damn, he admired her! But admiration and desire weren’t enough for a woman like Ellie. And Sean had never been, would never be, a one-woman man.
Gunning the motor of his 1969 Pontiac GTO, the car he drove when he wasn’t working, Sean roared past Ellie’s exit and kept right on going. The morning sun shone brightly in a flawless blue sky. He was as free as a bird to fly, yet thoughts of Ellie still kept him captive.
Knocking at Tiffany’s condo door several minutes later, he ignored the voice inside him that insisted he didn’t want to be here. And when Tiffany opened the door wearing nothing but an apron, he was glad he’d ignored it. “Well, hello,” he exclaimed, drinking in the vision she presented. The frilly little apron failed to cover her pert breasts, which peeked out on either side of the bib. The hem fell to her thighs, hiding the dark pubic hair she kept neatly groomed.
“Come on in, big fella,” she purred with a come-and-get-me grin. Turning away, she sashayed down the hall with nothing covering her naked backside but a tempting little bow.
With a quick glance behind him, Sean stepped inside and shut the door.
“Caleb, quit,” Ellie begged, reaching over the back of her seat to put a calming hand on Caleb’s knee. “Leave the baby alone!”
The blare of a horn jerked her gaze forward, giving her just enough time to slam on the brakes as a white delivery van pulled out into the street ahead of her. Dear Lord, had she just run a stop sign and nearly killed them all?
Startled, adrenaline tingling in her extremities, she scolded herself for not paying more attention. She was punch-drunk from lack of sleep. She’d taken her biology exam this morning, after studying last night until dawn. Then she’d gone straight to work waiting tables till supper time.
Then, picking up the boys from Belinda’s, she’d headed back to the junior college instead of home in order to submit an extra-credit assignment she had hastily written on her break at work. The exam had proven tougher than expected, and without some extra-credit work, she was afraid her grade in the course would kill her GPA, which, in turn, would ruin her hopes for an academic scholarship for next semester.
“We’re almost there,” she added, speeding along the narrow rural road, a shortcut to the college. The van in front of her seemed in no particular hurry to get anywhere. She peered around it, hoping to pass, but the double- yellow line, plus the tall, dark pines and ditches filled with evening shadows dissuaded her. “Come on,” she muttered in exasperation.
She glanced at her watch, not altogether certain her instructor would still be there to take her assignment.
Fishing her cell phone from her purse, she divided her attention between the keypad and the road, calling Professor Sloan to tell him she was running late. “I’ll be there in five minutes,” she promised, hearing impatience in his reply.
The brake lights on the van flared, and Ellie braked abruptly, laying the phone on the seat before it caused her to get into an accident. “Christopher, how much homework do you have tonight?” she asked, wondering at the odds of tucking in early. God, she was tired!
Through bleary eyes, she watched in puzzlement, scarcely hearing Chris’s reply, as the rear doors of the van opened right in front of her, and two strangers leapt out and circled around either side of her car.
It wasn’t until her front doors opened simultaneously and her dome light illumined their menacing faces that reality penetrated Ellie’s haze of exhaustion. Shock pegged her to the seat as the stranger on Christopher’s side hauled her son against him and thrust a gun to his head. “Get out, woman,” he growled with an ugly snarl, “or this is the first kid to die.”
In the same instant, a thick arm coiled around Ellie’s neck, hauling her against a sweaty frame. The barrel of a gun gouged her temple. “Out with you,” he muttered, tugging her from the car.
Ellie grabbed the steering wheel. Her senses expanded to take in everything at once: the pocked face of the stranger grasping her son, his deep Southern accent, the nauseating odor emanating from the arm encircling her neck, Christopher’s pinched and breathless expression of horror, Caleb’s complete stunned silence, and Colton’s soft sleepy snores.
She saw and heard and felt everything.
“No,” she wheezed as the stricture about her neck tightened, and the stranger tugged harder, pulling her upper body out first.
With the Impala still in gear and her foot on the brake, Ellie groped for the shifter and knocked it into reverse. At the same time, she jackknifed her hips, straining to reach the accelerator, but the man holding Christopher lunged across the seat, twisting the key in the ignition. The engine died before her car even rolled a few inches.
“That wasn’t very smart, bitch. Take her out,” he snapped at his companion. “We gotta go.” With that, he thrust Christopher deeper into the seat and got in beside him, slamming the door shut.
Palms coated in sweat, Ellie’s grip slipped as her assailant tugged her violently free, choking her in the process. No! she screamed in silent denial as he dragged her, kicking and clawing, from the driver’s seat. With equal violence, he flung her out into the oncoming lane.
Ellie’s cheek struck the rough pavement. Dazed by the impact, she rolled sluggishly to her knees, gaping with disbelief as the man hurled her purse at her and leapt into the seat she’d just occupied.
Ellie staggered to her feet. “No!” she cried, lurching toward the car. He slammed the door in her face, muting the sound of Christopher’s and Caleb’s cries. Ellie beat on the window. She reached for the door handle but not before the lock engaged. Even as she screamed for them to stop, both the van and her car began to pull away.
Desperate to reach her crying children, Ellie clung to the door handle. She refused to let go, screaming hoarse demands, peering through the shadows to memorize the driver’s face. As the car sped up, she broke into a sprint, her gaze now fixed on the fat fingers gripping her steering wheel and the ink stamped over his first knuckle.
Her legs wheeled beneath her, her feet scarcely touching the ground as the car pulled her forward. For several seconds, she managed to keep pace. Then, with a roar, the car shot forward, tearing the handle from her grasp, spilling her with bone-jarring force onto the rough pavement, where she rolled and skidded to a stop.
Stunned by the impact, the breath knocked clean out of her, all four limbs abraded and bleeding, Ellie stared in silent horror as the blurred taillights of her vehicle grew smaller and dimmer, then disappeared altogether.
Chapter Three
Colty was crying again. The man in the passenger seat up front waved the gun that glinted in the dark and said to Caleb, “You’d better find a way to shut that baby up.”
Chris usually took care of Colty when Mama was busy, but Chris was stuck up front, squashed between Ugly Man and Sweaty Man. Caleb spared a glance at Colton’s red, wet face. He couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the road right now.
He’d been memorizing the way for hours now. But with all the rights and lefts they’d just taken, still following the van, he really needed to concentrate. Paying attention to your s’roundin’s was important, ’cause then you could never really get lost. At least that’s what Mr. Sean had taught him.
“I can help the baby,” offered Chris, and the two men shared a look.
“What do you think?” Ugly Man asked Sweaty Man.
“His diaper’s just wet,” Chris added quietly.
Mr. Sean used to say that Chris was a good negotiator, ’cause he used his words.
“We’re almost there,” said Sweaty Man. “We’ll put ’em all in the back of the van.”
Almost where? Caleb wondered. Then he wondered if his mo
m would be able to catch up to them. Thinking about her running beside the car, yellin’ and cryin’ and beatin’ on the window made his stomach hurt worse than when he knew he had to go to school.
The car’s headlights shone on a sign that read jones lake state park, and they slowed down to turn in, driving into woods that were pitch-black and scary. Suddenly, Caleb had to pee real bad. These men weren’t gonna kill them, were they?
Sweaty Man drove past a playground that looked creepy in the dark, then a picnic shelter. Starlight twinkled on the surface of what looked like a lake. “Stay in the car,” said Ugly Man, and both men got out.
Slick as a snake, Christopher scrambled over the front seat, taking Caleb by surprise. “Take this,” he whispered, thrusting something cold and hard into Caleb’s hand as he started unbuckling the baby from his car seat.
It was Mama’s cell phone! Caleb looked down at it in amazement. “Hurry, Caleb. Go out that way,” whispered Chris, “and run for the trees. You call nine-one-one while I carry Colty. We gotta hide while they’re busy!”
Flashing him a grin, Caleb shoved the door open and made a run for it, his little legs pumping hard to escape.
But Chris wasn’t so fast. Looking back, Caleb saw Sweaty Man grab his brother by the collar and yank him back.
Caleb ran faster. Dodging the sharp branches, he pushed 9 and 1 on the cell phone. Then he pushed 4 by mistake. Dang it! He could hear Ugly Man crashing through the woods behind him.
Ugly Man grabbed him by the hair.
Ouch, that hurt!
“No!” Caleb swung around with his fist. Ugly Man shoved him, and he ended up lying on the leafy ground, kicking. One of his shoes fell off, but he still had the cell phone. Ugly Man slapped him hard across the face, and blood spurted from his nose. Caleb brought up his arm to protect himself, and that was when Ugly Man saw what he had. He snatched the phone away, hauled Caleb to his feet, and marched him back to the others with just one shoe on.
He was shoved into the van they’d been following. Chris was already in the back holding the baby on his lap. He took one look at Caleb’s nose and started crying.
“Don’t cry, Chris’fer,” Caleb told him fiercely. “It ain’t gonna help nothin’!”
Chris handed him one of Colton’s wet wipes.
Hearing a motor rev, they both peered outside as their old car rolled away from them.
Sweaty Man got into the back of the van and pointed a fat finger at them. “Don’t you give us any more trouble, you hear?” he growled.
In the distance, Caleb heard a mighty splash.
Ugly Man jumped into the front of the van, breathing hard. “Let’s go,” he said to a third guy, the driver.
They peeled out of there, bouncing back onto a paved road. “What’d you do with the cell phone?” Sweaty Man called up to his friends.
“Tossed it into the woods,” said Ugly Man.
His companion gave a worried grunt.
“How much farther?” Ugly Man asked.
“’Bout four hours.”
Caleb heard Chris sniffle. His big brother had tried and failed to get them out of this mess. It was up to Caleb now. He’d just have to think and act like Mr. Sean.
When he grew up, he was gonna be just like him, and no one was going to mess with his family.
Sean ignored his phone as much as possible when he was on leave. He avoided the television and radio, anything to keep from hearing that the world was falling apart without him holding the line, killing the bad guys. By day three, he had no idea what kind of bad shit was going on where, and it was starting to nag at his conscience.
He needed to come up for air.
“Hey, Tiff,” he said as they sat at an outdoor table of a restaurant overlooking the James River. “I think I’m gonna head back today.”
She barely glanced up from the roster that listed her tee-off time. “Sure, whatever,” she said with a shrug.
He spent a second comparing her self-absorption to Ellie’s selflessness in giving her boys a better life. “Good luck,” he said, laying a twenty on the table to cover the check. “You’re a good sport,” he added, bending down to give her cheek a parting kiss.
His comment drew a quizzical look from her, but he was already striding away, heading to their unit to pack his stuff. Then he jogged down to the parking lot, relieved that they’d driven separate cars.
The pampered life Tiffany led was fun to escape to now and then, but real life, as Sean knew, was a world filled with hardship, duty, and honor. Meals Ready to Eat didn’t come with room service, and his personality was too dynamic to stay cooped up in a series of hotel rooms and trendy hot spots like this one.
It wasn’t that he missed Ellie and her boys. Nah. He just had the habit of checking up on things, was all. Hell, he needed to drive by his other rentals while he was home, too.
As he slipped into his sun-warmed GTO, he reached for his cell phone and discovered the battery had died. No problem, he’d just charge it on the way home. He turned on the radio, only to be driven crazy by the endless chatter of commercials. Popping in his favorite CD, he departed Kingsmill Resort, driving just over the speed limit to get the one-hour road trip behind him.
As he neared his home in Virginia Beach, Ellie’s exit came up on him, daring him to test his newfound self- restraint. He wasn’t in any danger of doing something inappropriate, so why not? Besides, he was curious to see how she and the boys were spending their Saturday.
But as he pulled into her driveway moments later, he realized her car was gone. No one was home.
Well, shit. Disappointment left him sitting gloomily in his seat. It was then that he noticed all the blinds on her windows were drawn. Usually she only covered her windows at night, preferring by day to let the light stream in. An uneasy premonition skittered through him, prompting him to push out of his car to investigate.
Knocking at the door, he listened to the anticipated silence, found a key to her house on his key ring, and let himself in. Normally, he wouldn’t dream of marching right in, but his gut churned with uneasiness, which he needed to put to rest.
The scent of stale milk was the first thing to hit him as he crossed the threshold. His disbelieving gaze lit upon the overturned sofa cushions, the toys strewn across the carpet, and Ellie’s scattered schoolwork. “Ellie?” he called out as the realization that something awful had transpired yanked his scalp tight.
He raced to her bedroom, terrified he’d stumble across a body or something equally awful. At her door, he drew up short, astonished to see her mattress ripped from its frame; drawers were yanked from her dresser, their contents thrown helter-skelter about the room. Even her ragged nightgown lay in a mangled heap. “What the hell?” Sean breathed.
Reeling, he returned to the living room to haul open the drapes. Bright spring sunshine flooded in. His gaze went straight to Belinda’s car, parked next door.
Belinda would have answers, he thought, abandoning the house to jump the fence between the properties. He rapped on Belinda’s front door, breathing hard.
Her stricken countenance as she opened the door confirmed his worst fears. “What happened?” he demanded.
Belinda’s red-rimmed eyes puddled up. “Ellie’s at the jail,” she replied, clutching her two-year-old daughter. “Her boys were snatched from her Thursday night. It’s all over the news. She says two men pulled her from her car and took off with the boys, but now the media’s sayin’ that maybe she killed them,” she added, her double chin quivering. “But I know she didn’t.”
Stunned, Sean could only stand on her front stoop and stare over at Ellie’s house and the empty driveway. “No,” he rasped. Those boys were her life. How could this happen to her?
Without a word, he swiveled and ran for his car, revving his engine before he’d even shut the door. He shot backward out of Ellie’s driveway, calling up the people who would care most if Ellie found herself in a crisis: Solomon and Jordan McGuire.
“Why the hell have
n’t you answered your phone?” Solomon snarled in his ear in lieu of a greeting.
“The battery died. I just charged it,” Sean replied. “Where’s Ellie? What’s going on?”
“She’s at the police station on Leroy Drive. She’s been staying with us at night. The police haven’t arrested her but they’re keeping her there all day.”
Sean gripped the steering wheel harder. Shit! Ellie had to be out of her mind. “I went by her house just now,” he confessed. “Belinda told me everything.”
“It’s all over the radio, dumb ass. Every news station in town is covering the abduction of three little boys, and you’re too busy fucking around to notice?”
Solomon was clearly too irate for Sean to point out that taking leave was his idea. “I’m heading to the station to be with her right now,” he grated, stopping at a red light. “What’s this about the media trying to say Ellie did it?”
Solomon made a sound of disgust. “That’s ridiculous. She was thrown out of her car on Harper’s Road by two guys who drove off with the boys.” In the background, Sean overheard the distinctive wail of an infant.
“I suppose Jordan’s pissed at me, too,” Sean surmised. “You didn’t tell Ellie where I was, I hope?”
“I said you were on leave, and I couldn’t track you down.”
Sean pinched the bridge of his nose. To think all this time she’d been going out of her mind. He could not believe that her boys had been kidnapped. Who would do such a thing? It was fucking unreal.
He gunned the accelerator as the light switched to green.
“By the way, the police want to question you, too.”
“What?”
“They want to know where you were the night the boys were taken.”
Too Far Gone Page 4