by K. J. Dahlen
Chapter Fifteen
Sable stood under the warm water and let it cascade over her entire body. Closing her eyes she tried to clear her mind of the past few days’ events. She wanted to forget if only for a moment the chaos she’d been through. Rolling her head she just enjoyed the sensation of the warm water. Suddenly a feeling of despair washed over her. She had been blasted with so much information she never asked for about her family and it threatened to overwhelm her. She had been happy before and now she didn’t know if she could ever feel happiness again. Bits and pieces of the past flashed through her mind and she had to duck under the water to wash the tears away. She just stood there and sobbed and only when she couldn’t cry anymore, did she lean back against the wall.
Finally she reached for the shampoo and got down to business. She was fully aware of the time and she knew Max wanted to shower as well.
Moments later she was toweling off and she thought she heard a noise from the living room. She frowned and listened but didn’t hear anything else. Dressing quickly she was reaching for the door when the door was pushed open and someone came rushing at her. She tried to scream but the person pushed a towel into her face.
Sable tried to throw her head back, but the other person was too strong. As the smell of chloroform hit her she tried not to breathe it in, but the towel was held firmly against her face. She tried to see the face of the assailant, but he was wearing a hooded shirt.
She fell against him a few minutes later. He threw the towel on the floor and picked her up. Carrying her out of the house through the back door he placed her in the front seat. Glancing quickly into the back seat he saw that Greg Reardon was still unconscious. Slamming the door shut he moved around the car to the driver’s seat and got inside. He chuckled as he glanced at Sable.
“Gotcha bitch and this time you won’t get away,” he muttered to himself as he reached down and started the car.
Nick listened to the ringing and grew concerned. It wasn’t like Max to ignore the phone. He hung up and dialed Sable’s number. After the fourth ring it went to voice mail and Nick growled as he hung up. Brandi was just coming out of his bathroom and Nick pinned her with a look.
“Something is wrong. I can’t get a hold of Max or Sable.”
“Let’s go.”
A few minutes later they pulled up to Sable’s house. Nick had shut off the headlights and cut the engine as he pulled around the corner. If there was trouble he didn’t want anyone inside the house to know they were there. They climbed from the car and cautiously made their way to the front door. The lights were on inside and they could hear the TV but they couldn’t hear anyone talking.
Nick reached for the doorknob and tried to turn it, but the door was locked. He motioned for Brandi to go around to the back. He turned and went the other way, and when they got to the back door they were surprised to find it wide open.
“Damn it,” Nick growled as he hesitated. He looked at Brandi and nodded. Leading the way he went inside. Gun poised he made his way from room to room. When he saw Max lying on the floor, Nick looked at Brandi and motioned her toward Max. When she knelt to check him out, Nick continued to search the rest of the house. When he didn’t find Sable anywhere he holstered his weapon and joined Brandi.
Max was crumpled on Sable’s living room floor. The attack must have taken him by surprise. The lamp that had hit him was lying on the floor beside him. Blood smeared the base of the lamp and was beginning to pool from the gash on the back of his head.
“How bad is he?” he asked.
Brandi looked at Nick and said, “He’s alive, but we need to get him to the hospital.” She glanced around, “Did you find Sable?”
Nick shook his head. “No.” He held up the towel from the bathroom floor. “This tells its own story. It reeks of chloroform.”
Brandi hung her head. “Damn, he got to her anyway.” She looked directly at Nick and said out loud what they both feared. “You know he’s going to make sure to kill her this time, don’t you?”
Nick nodded. “I know but we have something going for us that he doesn’t know about. Sable is wearing a GPS disk. We should be able to find her before he has the chance to kill her.”
Brandi nodded to the weapon still in Max’s holster. “He didn’t even have time to grab his gun.”
“I noticed that. Oscar must have rushed him from behind.” Nick commented. “He must have been waiting for her inside the house when they got here. He wouldn’t have taken them both on so he waited until they separated and then blitzed Max and then Sable.”
Brandi nodded. “I think this was the last place Sable expected to find him.”
“They wouldn’t have searched her house. They probably should have but they didn’t.”
Nick reached for his phone to call an ambulance when it began to ring. He frowned and answered the call. After listening for a moment he began to swear. “All right, get an ambulance over to Sable’s house. Max got blitzed from behind and we’ll meet you at the hospital in a few minutes.” Nick closed the phone and looked at Brandi.
“That was Quentin. Oscar got to Greg Reardon. He’s missing as well. His mother said he went to get a cup of coffee and never came back. When the officer went to check on him, all he found was a coffee cup on the floor and a blood smear on the wall.”
“Damn,” Brandi swore. “He’s trying to murder the whole family isn’t he?”
“That seems to be his plan.”
Nick’s mind ran over every scenario he could think of as they waited for the ambulance to arrive. He ran the gamut from bad to worse and back again. Then he began to pray that Sable would keep her head and not want to play games with this guy. She had a habit of putting her own life at risk just to catch the bad guy off guard. She’d done it more than once with Oscar and it cost her dearly in the end.
He hoped she would remember that they had a way to find her this time and that this time she wouldn’t just be left to die.
“What are you thinking?” Brandi asked as she watched the different expressions on Nick’s face.
Nick shook his head. “I’m trying not to think the worst.” He glanced down at Max. He looked at his watch, “Where the hell is that ambulance?”
Brandi shook her head. “It’s only been a minute or so. You have to give them time to get here.”
“Time is something we have very little of if we expect to get Sable back before he kills her,” Nick grumbled.
Brandi sat back and thought for a moment. Then she nodded and said, “I don’t think he’ll kill her quickly.”
“What makes you think that? Right now he’s very pissed at her and he could slice her throat without even thinking about it,” Nick said.
Brandi shook her head again. “I don’t think so. He wants her to fear him and what he plans to do to her. He wants her to feel the fear she felt as a child when he put her down in that well.”
“How do you know that?” Nick asked.
“He’s been building up to this for a long time,” Brandi explained. “He has some sick need to feed off the fear of others. He loves to imagine the terror he places his victims in. Think about it for a minute. He put a four year old child in an abandoned well with a dead man and walked away. He knew she was alive and terrified when he put her in there and when he came back she was gone. He put Maggie in the same well and walked away. She was still alive and terrified when he left her there to die. Then he told us where to find her, knowing the location of the well was locked inside Sable’s terror-filled mind. He didn’t know if she would remember anything of that horror. This was his way of ensuring that she did.” Brandi paused when she heard the faint sound of help coming there way. She looked back at Nick. “I don’t think he’ll kill her right away. He wants her to feel the terror of being abandoned in a place she can’t get out of this time. He’s going to put her somewhere and just walk away, leaving both of them there to die a slow and terrifying death.”
“Well not this time,” Nick vowed. “We can
hopefully track her down and find him there as well.”
Brandi looked out the window and saw the red flashing lights outside. She turned to Nick and said, “You go find her and bring her back. I’ll go with Max to the hospital and once he’s in the hands of the doctors, Quentin and I will join you to bring this monster down.”
Nick nodded. “Let’s hope the GPS disk in still on her.” He got up and walked to the door. “Watch your back. He may stash Sable and Greg and then come after the rest of us. We know too much about him now and he won’t forget that.”
Brandi nodded. “Don’t worry about me. Just go find Sable. I’ll have other people around me all the time. He won’t find me alone.”
Nick stood back and let the EMT’s in the house. He nodded at Brandi and walked out to his car a few minutes later. The drive to the office took forever but finally he turned the corner and pulled into a parking space. He rushed inside the building and went directly to his office.
Rummaging through his desk he found the base unit for the GPS disk he’d given to Sable earlier. He walked it over to Quentin’s desk and plugged it in to his laptop computer.
He waited impatiently for the GPS system to fire up. A few clicks later he began scanning the screen. Using the wireless mouse he moved the screen all over the city looking for a red dot. When he didn’t find one, he grew frantic.
“Damn,” he growled as he began the search again. He paused and took a deep breath. He forced himself to calm down and began the search again. Still he found no red dot.
“Come on Sable where are you? Where did he take you?” He muttered to himself as he scanned the screen again.
The door behind him opened and Nick glanced over to it. Quentin and Brandi rushed in. “We got here as soon as we could,” Brandi told him.
Nick nodded and stood up. He motioned for Quentin to take his place. “I’ve scanned the city twice and I can’t find her.”
Quentin checked the GPS tracking unit and then checked the system on his laptop. He typed in the correct codes and waited for the proper system to come up. “You had the wrong file on the board. This is the right one.” He mentioned as a different view of the city came up on the screen. Quentin began a city wide search while Nick and Brandi waited impatiently.
“Well…” Nick finally said.
Quentin heard the urgency in his voice but he knew he couldn’t rush the search. If he did he might not find her. Chicago was a big city and a single red dot could be hard to find.
Finally he found what he was looking for. A single red dot blinked for a moment and then was gone. Quentin stayed his hand and waited for it to blink again. The wait seemed to take forever but finally the red dot blinked again and he had a location.
“I found her.” Quentin told them.
“Where is she?” Nick asked and he leaned over the chair staring at the screen.
“She’s inside the water treatment plant on the other side of Olive Park. Not far from the well we found Maggie in,” Quentin told him.
“Let’s get there before he kills her and just walks away. If he leaves the area, we may never find him,” Nick said.
Quentin grabbed his laptop and joined the others. Nick sped off toward the address.
Chapter Sixteen
Sable moaned as she came to. Turning onto her side she felt sick to her stomach. She tried to open her eyes but she couldn’t seem to focus. She drifted off again only to come back to reality again. She struggled this time to open her eyes, but all she could see was darkness.
The nausea was back and she had to lie still for a moment. When it subsided, Sable turned her head and looked around. She tried to sit up but her head didn’t want to cooperate. It was dizzy and the nausea she felt earlier returned with a vengeance.
She moaned again and this time she heard an echo. She tried to focus but the effects of the chloroform still lingered. It took her a few more minutes to clear her head. When her head was clear, she tried to look around the room again. This time the darkness was shadowed and she could see a little better.
The room was little more than the size of her office. It smelled of dust and decay. As she looked around she could see that she was sitting on the floor. She swiped the floor and felt the dust and grit on her fingers. Looking at the walls around her, she could tell there were windows behind her. Windows meant you could see outside.
Sable got up and carefully moved toward the windows. She tripped over something and landed hard on the floor. Pushing herself up she glanced back at what she tripped on and found she was looking at Greg Reardon’s face. Cursing the darkness around her she felt around his body for a pulse. Finally her fingertips found the vein along his neck.
She was relieved to find he was still alive, but his pulse was weak. She looked at him closer and found a deep gash in the middle of his forehead and dried blood running down the side of his face. She patted down his body for something she could use to help them and in his right hand front pocket she found a cigarette lighter.
She flicked it open and struck the flint. The burst of fire lit the room. Holding it above her head she took stock in what she found. The room was an office of some kind. She could see a desk and filing cabinets over on one wall. She turned and looked at the windows again. She stood up and with the aid of the lighter she walked over to the windows. There was something over them. Looking closer she found that someone had nailed wood over the windows. Moving to her left she found that one of the heavy panes had been broken. She tried to peek out through the planks of wood, but she couldn’t see a thing outside.
She continued her search grids around the outer walls. The walls were made of laminated steel and when she found the door, she tried the doorknob but it was locked. She banged on the door and called out but the sound just echoed back at her.
Sable tried not to panic. Feelings of déjà vu flooded into her mind. He had gotten to her again and left her to die somewhere where no one could hear her screams. Some out of the way place where no one would be able to find her for years if even then. She slid to the floor and for a moment Sable gave into the overwhelming panic she felt. She began to sob.
So caught up in her own grief Sable missed hearing footsteps coming down the hall. The footsteps stopped outside the door and Oscar pressed his ear against the steel panel and listened for any movement inside the room. He thought he heard something but he couldn’t be sure what it was.
He knocked on the door softly. “Sabella, are you there? Have you awakened from your little nap?” he spoke softly.
Sable’s head jerked toward the door. She crawled a little closer and pressed her ear to the steel panel.
“Sabella, can you hear me?” He called out a little louder.
Sable kept her silence. She didn’t want him to know she was awake yet.
“Sabella,” he called out and banged the door. “Come on girl, wake up,” Oscar yelled.
Sable jumped when his hand pounded the door but she didn’t say anything.
He pounded the door again and this time something hanging on the wall dropped down making a crashing noise. Sable jumped and let out a yelp.
“So you are awake."
“Yeah, I’m awake,” Sable finally admitted. She sat down on the floor and leaned against the door. “What do you want?” she finally asked.
He chuckled. “I’ll bet you never thought I’d get to you again, did you?”
Sable let him have his moment of triumph. He had been able to get to her easily enough. Her hand came up and brushed against her chest. She just remembered the GPS disk Nick had given her earlier and she smiled. Oscar wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. This time she had friends coming to rescue her and he didn’t know it. She just had to keep him here long enough for Nick and the others to find them.
“So tell me something, which one are you, Richard or Micah?” Sable called out.
“Does it really matter?” he asked.
“No I don’t suppose it does,” Sable admitted. “Although I think Richard w
as the smarter of the two of you.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked after a moment or two.
“I think the murdering part came easier for Richard. He was the one with the axe to grind against the Reardons.” Sable told him. “Micah had an easier life, I suppose, the way he grew up with all that money and privilege while Richard had nothing, not even a last name.” By now Sable understood Richard a little bit better. She purposely kept her comments low and to the point.
“The Reardon name never meant that much to Micah,” Oscar told her.
“Oh, I think it meant more to him than he ever let you believe. After all he married my mother, and if the name didn’t mean that much to him, he never would have given it to me,” Sable pointed out.
“Did Maggie tell you that?”
“No, we found the license on the Texas state internet pages,” Sable told him.
He chuckled. “I wonder how the old man is going to react to that news. Gabriel isn’t one that likes to have his nose rubbed in dirt.”
“Who says he’ll ever know? I already have a last name,” Sable commented. “I don’t want the Reardon name.”
“You don’t have a choice. Micah made sure of that.” He growled at her.
“Sure I do. I don’t have to call myself Reardon,” Sable said, waiting for his reaction. She listened very closely and she wasn’t disappointed.
He hit the door. “You are a Reardon. Micah made you one when he married your mother. And you’ll die a Reardon.”
“You’re wrong. If I die they’ll put the name Quinn on my headstone. My name is Sable Quinn.”
“Your name is Sabella Noel Reardon. That’s the name I’ll have tattooed on my chest when I leave you here to die,” he told her.
“What makes you think I’ll die here? I got away from you once, I’ll do it again,” Sable taunted him.
“Oh you’ll die here this time. Both you and Greg Reardon will die here. I killed Gabriel and I’ll kill you too.”
Sable laughed. “You are pathetic. You might have beaten up an old man, but you didn’t kill him. Gabriel Reardon is alive and expected to recover from the beating you gave him.”