by Dale Mayer
“So we make it look as if the doctor did it.”
The woman stared at her in surprise.
Zadie shrugged. “Surely that would be easier to do than have you be responsible.”
The woman stared out across the window and shook her head. “No,” she said, “there is no place for you to go.”
“You let me worry about that,” Zadie said slowly, leaning up so that she sat against the back wall, and she studied the woman’s face. “I promise I won’t come back here.”
“No,” the woman said, “you won’t, but you’d send somebody.”
“But I don’t have anybody,” Zadie said. “You know that.”
“Your parents.”
“They are prisoners in their own right,” Zadie said harshly. “I made the mistake of coming to see my mother, who may be very ill.”
The woman stared at her in surprise. “We heard nothing about this. Why didn’t we?”
“It won’t make the news,” Zadie said with a wave of her hand. “You know what that’s like. They don’t want anybody to play on their sympathies.”
“This is true.” She turned abruptly, headed out the door, and called back quietly, “I will think on it,” slamming the door hard behind her.
Zadie sank back on the bed. She’d done what she could; she didn’t think it would be enough, but it was a start. It was actually a chink in their armor. Maybe, just maybe, Zadie could make that work.
*
“Do we have any idea if they snatched her from the property?” Zack asked.
“The satellite only gave us vague details of vehicles coming and going, nothing showing where they snatched her.”
“No tracker anywhere to identify her on the move?”
“She has her phone supposedly, but we are not getting a trace on it.”
“Is that because it’s not turned on or because it’s not traceable?”
“Let’s just say it’s not coming up anywhere.”
“But the tracing is still ongoing, correct?”
Bonaparte nodded. “Correct. It’s possible her phone is dead, or she is someplace where there is no reception. No way to track her.”
“Makes sense if she was a prisoner.”
“Any chance she is still in the same place?”
“Of course there is a chance,” Zack said, “but she could just as easily have been moved.”
“So we need a better way to track her then.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Door to door?”
“That will take too long,” Zack said with a shake of his head.
“Deliveries? Too many vehicles at one spot, something to track activities at any particular house?” Bonaparte asked.
“We are working on that,” he said. “What we do have is the estimated time of her kidnapping. We have two delivery trucks and a landscape company coming and going from their property where the parents are under house arrest.”
“So we start there,” Bonaparte said.
“Already started,” Zack said.
“We’ll be boots on the ground, set up a moving perimeter, a continuous watch at the property for the first few hours,” Bonaparte stated, “to make sure nothing is going on there that we don’t know about. Meanwhile Levi can get the rest of his crew to do the background checks and figure out what’s going on by tracking and cross-referencing the employees at the estate.”
“I think Zadie’s disappearance is related to that place.”
“Fine,” Bonaparte said. “We’ll stash the car a mile away and get us both fitted.”
“Good enough.” Zack checked his phone for satellite imagery and brought up the layout of the property. “The residence has a fair number of trees, lots of coverage.”
“Yes, but we need to be in a position where we can actually do something, in case we see something important,” Bonaparte reminded him.
He nodded, zoomed in on the image, and added, “Even along this back entrance, there are quite a few trees. It’s a huge property.”
“Close to twelve acres,” Bonaparte said. “And that will be the problem. Because we could block ourselves into a corner and may miss whatever is happening on the other side.”
“A four-man team would have been good about now, but it’s just the two of us, so we’ll keep our comms open, and our surveillance moving.” Zack frowned. “You are hardly a size to hide.”
“In the dark,” he replied humorously, “I’m just a bigger shadow.” And he gave Zack a big fat grin. “Besides, they won’t really see my size until they are too close.”
“If you say so,” he said. “More satellite will be good, along with getting suited up.” And by that he meant armed. And, with darkness having settled in, Zack headed to the back corner of the property, while Bonaparte took the front corner.
They would head in opposite directions on a slow patrol that should last one hour around all twelve acres. That wasn’t exactly a slow patrol. But, considering that they had to cut through some of that acreage to go behind the house and then check out the front yard, that process meant for a shorter overall distance.
As soon as Zack got into position, he set himself up some pointers to sort out his location. Being in the middle of darkness made it easy to lose track. He checked on the stars, oriented himself securely, checked on the horizon to make sure he knew what it would look like from this spot, all the way around, then headed along the back of the property.
A fence surrounded the house, and this surprised him greatly. But then maybe that was just a standard around there. If they had domesticated animals, that made sense, but he highly doubted that here. Maybe this property was picked as a good place for house arrest because of that fence.
Zack headed slowly toward Bonaparte’s position. He heard various birds moving in the night. He thought a bat flew close to his ear. Wasn’t too much of a surprise, particularly now, as they would swoop down in the night, looking for bugs. As Zack made his way from tree to tree, outside of Mother Nature, there wasn’t a sound.
He really wanted to get up to the house. After he’d done three revolutions of the property, he sent a message to Bonaparte, saying that, on the next round, he would check out the base of the house.
Bonaparte sent back a question mark.
Zack just sent him a thumbs-up. By the time Zack reached the point where he would break their patrol, he slipped into the yard, using as much of the tress and the landscape as he could to cover his tracks, and made it up against the house.
He knew from their intel that the parents were being held upstairs, and he knew that there were guards. He had seen several of them out in the front, but nobody was patrolling the property. A large veranda entrance was at the rear of the house, and he’d seen several people come out to have a smoke, tossing the butts onto the brick walkway and going back inside.
He skipped along the edge so he completely merged into the brick base of the house. The first twelve feet were all brick; after that, it appeared to be a combination of brick and maybe stucco or adobe. He wasn’t exactly sure what the differences were in this part of the world.
There were windows at ground level but not too many. He crept all the way around and saw four different windows he could easily access, one on each side of the house. But someone had boarded up three of them. The fourth one appeared to be glass, but he couldn’t see inside. It was too dark. Even giving his pupils time to adjust, Zack still could see nothing. He made his way back to the boarded-up windows and pulled off one piece of rotten wood to check behind it. And again found nothing to see. Except that the glass was broken. With the boards completely removed, and, using his sleeve to cover his hand, he removed some broken glass so he could look inside. If nothing else, it was a way to get the daughter out of here.
He quickly sent several photos back to Bonaparte. He sent a message back, asking if Zack was going in. With an affirmative answer, he cleared enough of a space through the broken glass window that he could creep inside and pulled the wood back acro
ss the hole. Then he jumped to the floor. He could hear rustling in the basement, probably rats and mice living down here. He quickly did a walk around, holding out his arms to check the size of the room. It was small, maybe ten by twelve, and then he found the door.
With the door opened, he slipped out into a hallway. He stopped to give his eyes a moment to adjust, but it was sheer darkness down here. He could see shadows in the walls, recessed to show other rooms, but nobody appeared to be here. No lights were on.
He heard music drifting down from upstairs, but no further sounds were down here. Just to be sure, he did a quick search and got to the next room—empty—where a second boarded window was, and the glass was broken too. The third boarded window was to yet another empty room. Two of the windows had bars on the inside of the windows.
As he rounded the fourth side of the house, he came up against a locked door. He turned the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. He heard a noise on the other side. But no window was in the door. He waited a few minutes and then whispered, “Hello?”
To his shock and amazement, a woman whispered back, “Hello?”
Chapter 3
Zadie had no clue who was there. But if it was anybody other than her guard, she’d take it. “Who’s there?” she asked in her native tongue then repeated it in English, her tone low and short.
“Are you Zadie?”
“Yes,” she cried out in surprise.
“I’m here to rescue you,” he said.
She shook her head in surprise. “How did you even know I was missing? I haven’t reached anyone.”
“Your parents.”
She leaned against the door in relief. “There’s a guard, his brother-in-law, and a sister-in-law involved,” she said. “I don’t know who they are but saw her in the kitchens where my parents are being held. They kidnapped me from the grounds of the estate. I don’t have any cell service down here.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I’m trying to open your door.”
“It’s locked,” she warned. She stepped back as she heard something at the door. There was a sudden click, and then the door opened. She turned her phone on and held the faint light up to see her rescuer, a stranger. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He stared at her, letting her shine the light on his face. Then he said, “We don’t have time for this.” Up above they heard footsteps and people coming down the stairs. He swore and said, “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll stay here,” she said. “Just don’t forget me.”
He stepped out of the way into the closest room where she watched him leave, knowing she’d never get the door locked again. She quickly closed it, knowing he needed time to get away immediately. With the door closed, she sat back down again, wondering if they would notice that the door wasn’t locked.
She curled up in bed, wondering what else might have caused them to come check on her. When the door burst open, she acted as if she’d just woken up in surprise. Lights flashed on her and then around the room. “What’s the matter?” she asked, struggling to sit up, rubbing her eyes.
“Nothing,” her guard said, and he stepped outside, slamming and locking the door again behind him.
She heard him downstairs doing a sweep, and she had no idea if her rescuer had found a good hiding place or not. The fact he had found her said he had some skills. But were they enough?
Anxious, she waited for someone to return. Outside she heard the guards yelling back and forth. “Nobody is here. False alarm.” She had no clue what noise could possibly have alerted anybody. Then she heard someone speaking about somebody walking outside. She wondered about that too.
She listened intently as the footsteps all went back upstairs. And it seemed an interminably long time before a scratching noise came on her door again. She crept over and whispered, “Hello?”
“It’s me. Stand back.” He unlocked the door again, standing there like a badass.
She stared at him in shock. “How did they miss you on the search?”
He smiled and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“I have no shoes or coat.”
“Grab one blanket,” he said.
She quickly snatched up a blanket, wrapped it around her, and, leaving the door closed, as if locked, followed him silently through the basement, only able to see him in front of her. The rest of the floor was so dark; it was void of light. When they got to another room, he spoke again. “This window is broken and doesn’t have bars. I will lift you up, and you go through the window and wait for me on the other side.”
Before Zadie had a chance to make a sound, he boosted her up and popped her through. She fell out of the small window ledge onto the grass below. Immediately she untangled herself from the blanket. The blanket had stopped her from getting cut; by the time she had the blanket off and on her feet, he stood beside her.
He quickly tossed the blanket back inside and replaced the wood that covered the broken window. “Now,” he said, “we have to be beyond careful.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“We have absolutely no cover from here to the tree line,” he replied to her look. “This is where it gets dicey.”
She whispered in a low voice, “They saw someone outside. That’s how they knew that somebody was probably inside.”
“No,” he corrected. “That’s how they worried somebody might have been inside. Now we have to make sure we get you away from here before they can confirm it.”
She looked back. “I should have brought the blanket with me.”
“No, don’t worry about it. They’ll know soon enough how we got you out.”
She winced at that. “Do we just run as fast as we can?”
“How tired are you?”
“I’m exhausted and terrified,” she said. “However, believe me. When it comes time, I’ll be able to run, just not too far.”
He pointed to a series of trees, about one hundred yards away. “Can you make it there?”
She looked up to see a flashlight shining above. He immediately pulled her flat against the house and held a finger against her lips. He pointed to a cloud moving across the sky. “When the moon goes dark, we will go like bats out of hell,” he murmured.
She nodded, her breath caught at the back of her throat as she watched the clouds drift across the moon. She could hear him counting down beside her.
“Four, three, two, one, go.” And they raced into the night.
Zadie ran as hard and as fast as she could. The cold basement room she had endured over the last few days—plus her lack of food—had already taken a lot of her energy, but the panic she felt at being recaptured lit a fire to her heels. She stumbled several times, but her savior always pulled her forward again until she regained her feet. By the time they reached the trees, her head pounded, and pain seized her chest as it tried to rise and fall. She struggled to catch her breath. Collapsing to the ground, Zadie rolled to her side, pulled her knees against her chest, and gasped for air. “Did we make it?”
“I’m checking,” he said.
She watched as he peered through the trees back at the house. The same house her parents were in. She couldn’t believe she was still here, still in the same damn place. Were they okay? Was her mother okay? From where she lay, it seemed the same. She needed to get out of here, make a new plan, and see how to get her mother out of her prison, possibly with the help of this new guy. Her previous plan would no longer work, what with the house-arrest guards and now this inner element of kidnappers involved, all at the same house.
She understood the two brothers wanted to get their father out of jail, but, according to the one woman, the father was somebody who shouldn’t come out of jail. It made little sense why they kidnapped Zadie when she was already a captive. But, as usual, more than one game plan was happening here, involving different political ideologies, she presumed. She lay on the ground, wondering if her body would ever feel normal again. For all the debilitating cold she experienced inside, a weird numbness
now spread up her legs.
Finally her rescuer dropped beside her and asked, “Are you okay? We have to get out of here.”
“I’m okay,” she lied. “Help me to my feet.”
He reached down, she clasped his forearms, and he helped her up. “We will go around the back,” he said. “We can’t risk staying here any longer.”
“I know,” she said. “They have some sentries around, and another two guards were looking after me, but also a woman is with the two jailers. I don’t think she would come outside.”
“They will have more men around. Let’s go.”
She did her best, really she did. She thought she was in great shape physically, but he was moving too fast, too steadily ahead of her. Even with her best efforts, she fell behind.
Immediately he corrected his pace, and he whispered, “Come on. You can do this.” He reached out a hand, and she grabbed on, as if it were a lifeline.
“Says you,” she said. “Where the hell are we going anyway?”
“Off this property into a couple estates on the other side. I’m not out here alone. I do have a partner. We have a vehicle not too far away.”
At the sound of a getaway car, she almost cried with relief. Every step was bone jarring. “I’m not feeling too well,” she gasped. The stitch in her side made it difficult to breathe.
He slowed his pace to a walk, and she bent over double, gasping for breath. “It’s hard when you go past the normal pace,” he said. “We have to get your breathing back down, before we can speed up again.”
She just nodded.
He kept walking, nudging her forward, not allowing her to stop longer than a few seconds. She really needed a ten- or a fifteen-minute break, but she understood why she couldn’t have it. She said, “Are we going straight to the vehicle?”
“In a roundabout fashion,” he responded. He pulled out his phone and quickly sent several messages as he kept walking. “Damn it.”
He seemed to be one of those incredibly solid people who could continuously multitask. She knew she texted better when she was stationary or sitting down. She marveled at all those people who could do it while walking or even running. For her, doing such would have caused her to fall.