But he was lucky.
He lived on the same side of town as the airport. The cab fare was only twenty two bucks.
He gave the cabbie forty dollars anyway, relieved he didn’t have to walk.
Cab drivers typically aren’t shy, and most lack the social graces which would prevent them from prying.
“Gee, thanks, man. Hey, what happened to you, anyway?”
“Car accident.”
“Oh. Well, hope you feel better soon.”
“Thanks.”
Tony had hoped to find Hannah already home, greeting him at the door with the baby in her arms.
If she wasn’t he’d have to break a window to get into his own home.
His keys were another thing which had disappeared while he was held captive. Bud said he’d take care of Tony’s old Honda, still parked in front of Bud’s office in Norwood, until they could figure out how to get it back.
He rang the doorbell, just in case Hannah was home but didn’t hear the cab. The last thing he wanted to do was to just walk in and startle her, after everything else she’d already been through.
She didn’t answer, and he tried the knob.
Luckily it was unlocked.
But it wasn’t unlocked because Hannah was already there.
It was unlocked because the DHS thugs who ransacked it looking for information about Gwen Lupson weren’t even decent enough to lock it back after they’d done their damage.
Tony stood in the doorway, called out for Hannah, and surveyed the mess.
It looked quite literally like a tornado had blown through their house.
He finally accepted the fact he’d beaten her home.
But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Surely she’d be home with the baby soon, and this would give him a chance to try to straighten things up a bit in the interim.
Hannah was such a meticulous housekeeper, it would break her heart to see her home in such a state.
It hurt him tremendously to bend over. Even more to lift things. But he methodically began working his way through the living room, putting one item at a time back into its rightful place.
Chapter 56
Tony was halfway through the living room when a thought struck him.
He made a bee-line to the bedroom to inspect his underwear drawer.
Yes, his underwear drawer.
A police officer friend once told him the best place to hide valuables from burglars was in the back of a man’s underwear drawer.
Perverted burglars will sometimes search through a woman’s underwear for the joy of it.
But no self-respecting burglar, perverted or not, will put his bare hands on another man’s boxer shorts.
The bedroom looked just like the living room did.
Stuff was thrown everywhere.
The drawers had all been removed from the dresser, their contents rifled through, then placed upon the bed.
The dresser itself was lying on its back, apparently so it could be searched underneath.
Searched for what, exactly, heaven only knew.
His boxer shorts were rummaged through but still in the drawer.
And the things beneath them… Hannah’s best jewelry, Five one hundred dollar bills, their extra credit cards and debit cards, were still there.
The government team who went through the house was messy, but apparently honest.
One hour went by.
Then another.
Tony tried not to worry. He fought it. After the past couple of weeks he deserved to be worry free.
Moreover, he needed it.
Then his phone rang.
Not his cell phone, for that was long gone.
It was the home phone. The phone they almost never used. The phone they wouldn’t even have had except the cable company gave it to them for free as part of the package they signed up for.
Tony picked it up and said, “Hello.”
It was Hannah, crying her eyes out.
She was hysterical and making no sense at all.
“Honey, I can’t understand you. You’ve got to slow down.”
“Baby, I’m still in St. Louis…”
The words hit him like a brick. But not as bad as the next few.
“They never brought the baby. I don’t know what to do.”
Tony was equal parts stunned and crushed.
But he had to be strong, for Hannah’s sake.
“Honey, don’t leave the hotel. Maybe they just got delayed. Maybe they got lost. Maybe they’re still coming.
“But… but I need to see you.”
“What hotel are you staying at?”
“The Airport Executive in St. Louis.”
“Stay there. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t you dare go anywhere, even if they show up with the baby. Now that I finally know where you are, I don’t want to lose track of you again.
“Honey, you have to promise me you’ll stay there until I get there.”
Between sobs she managed, “Okay. I promise.”
She hung up the phone before she realized she hadn’t told Tony everything.
She’d tried calling her house a couple of hours before, but Tony wasn’t there yet. Having failed to reach him, she tried calling Gwen’s office in Phoenix.
Gwen wasn’t there, and the man who answered the phone sounded distant. Like he didn’t want to talk about her.
Hannah had asked for the only other person she knew in the Phoenix office. A woman named Candace Black.
“Hi Candace. This is Hannah Carson. I’m trying to get ahold of Gwen to make sure she’s okay. Is she there?”
There was a long silence, and then Candace whispered into the phone.
“No, Hannah. Gwen is gone. The government has been here a hundred times looking for her. They were doing surveillance in the street in front of the office, hoping she’d show up. Now they’re gone, but we still don’t know where she is.
“I’m afraid she’s joined the missing.”
Hannah had started crying at that very moment.
She’d believed Rebecca. She’d signed those papers to let the government off the hook for everything they’d done, all the turmoil and pain they’d caused.
She believed Rebecca when the woman told her that her troubles were all over.
She bought it all, hook, line and sinker.
Now it was painfully obvious her troubles had just begun.
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Thank you for reading
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 2: A National Disgrace
Please enjoy this preview of
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 3: A Nation Gone Crazy
The Yellowstone Event Book 3: A Nation Gone Crazy will be available worldwide in December 2017.
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It wasn’t the first time Marilyn Petty had gone against the system.
She’d been fired from her job at a big branch bank for opening fraudulent accounts, then passing hot checks all over town to shop for her shoe and purse obsession.
When the checks first started bouncing she went ahead and honored them, using the bank’s money. Eventually she had to close them down, causing real people to wonder why bank accounts they never had were being charged off and ruining their credit.
She could have gone to prison for that, but she had an ongoing affair with the bank’s auditor.
He found evidence she only did it once and she was given a break.
In fact, she’d done it over a hundred times over a two year period.
She was fired two years later from her job as a home improvement store manager.
It seems she had several friends who were dopers and always desperate for cash.
She had a habit of leaving expensive tools outside the back door on an unlit dock on occasion.
Her friends would take the tools and bring them back to the store one at a time during regular business hours and return them.
“It was a gi
ft,” they’d say, “and I don’t really need it.”
Or, “I bought it and my wife told me to bring it back.”
“Yes, sir. We can take care of that. Do you have the receipt?”
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Then we won’t be able to give you a cash refund. The best we can do is give you a gift card for the full amount.”
“That’s fine. I shop here all the time anyway.”
The doper would take the gift card for, say, two hundred dollars. He’d peddle it to any number of unscrupulous contractors or laborers for half its face value: one hundred dollars.
He’d then split that amount with Marilyn. She’d get fifty dollars and he’d spend the other fifty on heroin.
She only got caught because one of her doper friends was busted on an attempted murder charge and needed something to bargain with.
Despite a very blemished record she was able to get a job with the federal government. Sure, she had a spotty past. But so did a lot of others who did under-the-table contract work for this particular agency.
They asked few questions because the less they knew about their contractors the better. It was more important they find people who’d do anything they were asked to do.
Regardless of who got hurt.
Marilyn once had her own son, who fell victim to SIDS ten years before.
She was so distraught she gave in to a friend’s suggestion she turn to drugs to ease her pain.
For a long time she relied on anti-depressants to help her want to get out of bed every day and keep trudging on.
The anti-depressants led to an addiction to pain pills.
Then pain pills and alcohol.
She overdosed once but made it to the hospital in time to be saved.
And she made the mistake of telling an emergency room nurse she wished she had just died; that it would have been better for all concerned.
She was taken to a mental health facility as a suicide risk, and not released for six weeks.
By that time she’d gone through withdrawals and had taken a big step in defeating the pills.
But she’d convinced herself, during the process, that she was worthless as a human being.
She didn’t care whether she lived or died. In her mind she was the worst human being ever to haunt the earth.
So perhaps there was some damage to her psyche which caused her to do what she did.
Maybe a lingering hole in her heart that had to be patched.
Or maybe she was just a bad seed who wanted something she couldn’t have, and never really accepted it until the right opportunity came along.
Marilyn herself didn’t even know why she did it.
She just did.
When she was given her outbrief by Rebecca, she was told this particular job was over. She’d never see Rebecca again, as was usual protocol, since the contractors never worked with the same team twice.
“We’ll sever all ties as soon as I walk out that door,” Rebecca told her. “Your final paycheck will be deposited in your bank account tomorrow. The agency will contact you when they have more work for you.”
She slipped Marilyn a piece of paper which contained an address.
“Your final task is to deliver the baby to this address. It’s a hotel near the airport. The baby’s mother will be in the room waiting for you.
“Don’t answer any of her questions. Don’t provide her any information. Simply hand her the baby and walk away. Any questions?”
“No ma’am. Piece of cake.”
At first Marilyn fully intended to accomplish her mission.
Then it dawned on her.
This might be her one and only second chance to be a mother.
The baby’s real mom had already been severed herself.
She had no way to contact Rebecca again, even if she tried.
And she’d been warned that trying would mean serious prison time.
All the way to the hotel Marilyn pondered her chances of getting away with it. She went back and forth.
On the one hand was the chance to have another baby to replace the one she’d lost years before.
On the other hand, kidnapping was an offense that could send her to prison for the rest of her natural life.
In the end it was the truck driver who made the decision for her.
He cut in front of her just before she took her exit to the hotel, forcing her to stay on the highway.
She took that as a sign from God Himself.
Oh, sure, she could have taken the next exit and circled back.
But she was convinced this was her destiny.
By the time Hannah finally realized she’d been had; that her baby wasn’t coming after all, Marilyn was already out of Missouri and headed for Michigan.
Looking forward to being a mommy again.
*************************
If you enjoyed
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 2: A National Disgrace
You might also enjoy
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON
Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
*************************
Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.
His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?
No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter, that word might well be “average.”
If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.
And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck, and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.
To research what he believed was the pending collapse of mankind.
Twenty three years earlier, Scott had done two things that would change his life forever. Even back then, he was just an average Joe. He’d had plans to become a doctor, but his average grades weren’t cutting it. So he dropped out of college halfway through his junior year.
He’d have loved to have married a beauty queen, but his average looks certainly did nothing to attract any. Neither did his average amount of charm. So instead he started dating Linda Amparano, who was a sweet girl but somewhat average herself. They seemed to make a perfect, if slightly vanilla, couple.
The second thing Scott did that year was buy a dilapidated self-storage unit on the north side of San Antonio. It was one of those places where people rent lockers to store their things when their garages have run out of space. Or their kids go off to college. Or when they just accumulate so many things that they’ve run out of room to put them all.
Pat, the guy who sold the property to Scott, was a friendly enough sort, but not a businessman at all. He didn’t understand some of the basic principles of running such an operation.
Not that Scott was an expert. At least back then he wasn’t.
But even back then, Scott knew the value of curb appeal, and that a fresh paint job and a few repairs could attract a few more customers. And a few more customers would help supply money for advertising, and special offers, and long-term lease discounts. No brainers, actually.
So by the end of that year, two things happened. Scott had turned around the business and turned it into a money-making operation. And he married Linda.
The pair said their vows on December 17th of that year. It was bitterly cold that day. The coldest December 17th on record for that part of Texas.
If the cold was an omen, though, neither of them saw it. If either of them had, and had gotten cold feet, their lives would be so much different today.
But they just laughed it off, as young couples in love are wont to do. And they went ahead with their nuptials and started their lives together and never looked back at that cold day
in December when they ran headlong into a marriage that shouldn’t have happened.
The marriage lasted nine years. It produced two great sons, so there was that. And Scott and Linda remained friends. That was something else. So there was a good legacy, of sorts, left behind by their mistake that cold December day.
Scott adored his boys. There was Jordan, his oldest, who was intelligent and talented and a bit of a goofball. And there was Zachary, who Scott was convinced would someday become a scientist or a highly successful engineer. Zach was always taking things apart and making other things with them. His curious mind never stopped working, and he loved exploring new things and new ideas. Zach was sweeter than a bucket of molasses. He was everybody’s best friend.
Yes, Scott was lucky as a father. No problems with his boys at all.
He was also lucky in that he lived in Texas at the time of the divorce. Texas wasn’t an alimony state. So he wasn’t saddled with monster alimony payments like his brother in Atlanta was. His brother Mike was divorced the same year as Scott, and was ordered by the court to pay forty percent of his before-tax income to a wife who had cheated on him multiple times.
No, Scott had no such problem. He paid child support, of course, and was always on time with it. And he doted on his boys and bought them nice things.
But since he didn’t have to pay alimony, he was able to take that money instead and use it to build his business.
After the first storage facility was turning a healthy profit, he was able to buy a second. Then a third. And with each one he followed the same business model. He’d do some cosmetic improvements to attract a few more customers. Then he’d turn that additional income into air time on the local radio station, or ads in the local paper. Getting the word out drew more customers, which in turn would supply more money for special deals and discounts. Which would provide more money for another new facility.
It was a business model that had served him well.
And now, twenty three years later, Scott Harter owned a chain of thirty one storage facilities spread throughout San Antonio and nearby Houston.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 2): A National Disgrace Page 19