Daniel swept the beam of his light in front of him, praying not to have it pass over a body. If Hannah had been killed on his watch…
“Ian?” he called again. “Are you there? Hannah?”
A small voice called, “Mommy?”
Daniel’s flashlight found him. A little boy, turning in bewildered circles.
“Ian,” he said quietly, lowering the light so as not to blind the boy, “I’m a police officer. Don’t run away. You know me. I’m a friend of your mom’s. Chief Colburn.”
Ian was brave enough to stay where he was even though he probably couldn’t see Daniel. When he crouched in front of the boy, that tremulous, tear-thickened voice said, “Where is Mommy?”
Daniel had to say, “I don’t know. But we’ll find her.” Alive, pray God.
*****
The drive had been grim. All Elias knew was that Hannah was on the move with the money, that police were maintaining radio silence, that Daniel had to maintain complete silence, which meant not using his cell phone.
Having reached the city limits, Elias pulled over and called Holbeck. “What’s the latest?”
“She headed out onto the beach by the Surfside.” Sean sounded grim. “Daniel has police officers spread out there, but not like we could have if we’d known where the drop would take place.”
“I’m going there.”
“Don’t get in the way.”
Elias stabbed the screen and put the Land Rover in gear. He accelerated, once again too fast, but he had to be available if… He didn’t let himself finish the thought.
He arrived to chaos. Flashing lights atop police cars along Schooner Street, not just in front of the Surfside, but at intervals for a quarter mile or more each direction. An ambulance blocked much of his view of the garish white light cast by floodlights onto the beach. People stood in clumps everywhere, staring.
Heart bursting, he braked behind parked cars and leaped out, not caring who he’d blocked in. He ran toward the ambulance. A female paramedic stood between open back doors, leaning inside until she saw Elias coming.
“Sir.” She tried to block him. “You need to step away—”
“Mr. Burton?” It was a child’s tremulous voice.
“Ian?”
The little boy struggled to sit up on the gurney. In the bright overhead light, his shaved head gleamed even paler than his blanched face. “They can’t find Mommy! Not anywhere.”
His terror redoubled, but Elias glanced at the paramedic. “I need to get in with him.”
“Are you a relative or—”
Elias ignored her and vaulted into the back of the ambulance. He sat beside the freckle-faced boy, seeing the purple swelling on one side of his face. Ian flung himself at Elias, who wrapped his arms around him in a protective embrace.
“We’ve been so scared for you.”
“I kept thinking Mommy would come, but she didn’t know how to find me. Except tonight, she was there even if I couldn’t really see her. She yelled at me to run. I didn’t want to, but I did, and…and…” He gulped for air and tipped his head back to look up at Elias, tears running down his face. “I heard the awful man say, ‘If I can’t have him, I’ll take you.’ And…” His fingers bit into Elias’s back. “I couldn’t hear her anymore and it was dark but that police officer came. And he promised he’d find Mommy, but I don’t think he has.”
“Listen to me.” Shoving down his own terror, he waited until Ian calmed enough to sniffle and nod. “It took us days to figure out how to lure the bad man into bringing you somewhere we could get you away from him. Just because Chief Colburn hasn’t found your mom yet doesn’t mean he won’t. There are police officers all over the place looking.”
The boy’s head bobbed.
“Has Chief Colburn been able to talk to you yet about what you remember from the time the man used Jack-Jack to lure you into the alley?”
The freckled face crumpled again. “Uh uh. And…and the man said he killed Jack-Jack.”
“He lied.”
Ian went completely still. “You mean…”
“I mean Jack-Jack is safe with Mrs. Stanavitch.”
“Really? You saw him?”
A lump in his throat, Elias nodded. “One of your mom’s customers found him wandering in the road a few blocks from the store. He brought him to us. Mrs. Stanavitch has been so scared for you, taking care of Jack-Jack makes her feel better.”
“Oh.” The small body sagged. “Why would he say that?”
“Your mom ever read the story of Little Red Riding Hood to you?”
Ian nodded.
“Remember when the big bad wolf says, ‘The better to scare you with, my dear?’”
“But I was already scared,” the five-year-old whispered.
“Yeah.” Damn, Elias was afraid he was crying, too. He pulled Ian closer. “Me, too. Me, too.”
But however scared Elias had been before, it was nothing to what he felt now. Hannah was gone.
*****
Ian is safe. Hannah clung to the knowledge as she stumbled over the sand, the gun barrel digging into her back as her captor urged her to greater speed. She would have willingly traded herself for her son if she’d been asked. If she didn’t survive, Ian had. He’d have a chance to go to school, become the artist Elias thought he might be or something else entirely. Love a woman, have children of his own.
The bitter part was that he would have to go live with Grady. Ian would always be the outsider in that family.
She was hampered from any attempt to escape as much by the duffel bag, which he had forced her to carry again, as by the weapon. Her arms and shoulders ached. She wondered if her legs would give out the next time she stumbled. Her knees and the palms of her hands and random other places burned. An ankle hurt as if she’d injured it when she fell on the rocks. Somehow, she plodded on.
The lights of oceanfront structures grew closer. Sirens sounded, too far away to do her any good. Just as far away, voices called her name and she saw flashlight beams, scattered over the vast, dark beach, as small as the stars in the night sky. She desperately wanted one of flashlight beams to touch on her…but something told her this evil creature wouldn’t hesitate to shoot and kill a police officer.
Much nearer were the lights in the old motel near the Surfside. People had been drawn outside of their rooms by the activity and the sirens. Foolish, foolish, to go outside to watch a manhunt.
But she and he stayed in the darkness.
Her foot skidded on a hard surface and a hand gripped her arm just above the elbow. She had almost walked right into a sliding door. The room beyond was dark, and no patio light had been turned on. He opened the door, the metal making a gritty sound as it moved. He shoved her in and closed the door behind them. The lock clicked.
Propelled by that grip on her arm, she cried out when her hip collided with a sharp corner.
“Shut up!” he snapped.
She made out the shapes of furniture in the room and thought she was in a house, not the end unit at the motel as she’d first thought. One of those shabby cottages butting up to the point, she realized, as if it made any difference.
“Move it.”
They walked straight through the cottage and out a front door. He popped the trunk on a car sitting in the driveway, grabbed the bag from her and tossed it in. Shoved by the gun barrel, she awkwardly climbed in, too.
A masked face stared down at her, eyes glittering through the holes cut out for them.
“You disappointed me, Hannah. Trust is big for me. You betrayed mine.”
Trust. What she’d seen in the note clicked. I know you.
Too quickly for her to protect herself, he changed his grip on the pistol and slammed the butt into her head.
*****
Expecting to see the female EMT sitting with Ian, Daniel rounded the back of the ambulance. He came to an abrupt stop when he saw the man holding the little boy, his blond head bent over the poor kid’s shaved one.
“Me, too,” Elias murmured. “Me, too.”
Daniel cast a glance at the hovering EMT, who shrugged. “I tried to stop him,” she said in a low voice, “but Ian seemed to want him, so…”
“Good call.”
Reluctant to interject himself, Daniel stepped forward anyway. “Elias. Ian.”
Both jerked and lifted their heads to look at him. He was stunned to see that the cool man he’d thought he knew had wet cheeks. As if made self-conscious about being caught crying, he used his shirtsleeve to wipe his face.
“Did you find Mommy?” Ian’s voice quavered.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said gently. “Not yet. I think you can help us.”
“Me? But it was dark.”
Daniel smiled a little. “I know it was. You might be able to help us figure out who the man who took you is. And it’s possible that he will lock up your mom in the same place he held you.”
The poor kid looked heartbroken. “But…but I don’t know where it was!”
“May I come in there and talk to you?”
Having been given permission, he hopped in and sat on the floor, legs bent, arms resting on his knees, facing Ian who kept a death grip on Elias.
It became clear the boy didn’t know any more than they did about his abduction. He’d heard Jack-Jack barking and he told Mom but she was busy and said it couldn’t be, so he opened the back door just to be sure, because sometimes Mom was wrong.
“Yeah.” Elias squeezed the thin shoulder. “Everybody makes mistakes sometimes.”
Ian sniffed. “And then he grabbed me and he threw me in the back of his car. He hit me!”
Muscles spasmed along Elias’s jaw.
“I musta gone to sleep or something, ’cuz I don’t know what happened after that. When I woke up, I was in this room without any windows, and the door was locked. It was cold and scary.”
“Did he leave a light on for you?” Daniel asked.
Ian’s head bobbed. “It was up high, and I could see wires. It was just a light bulb. There wasn’t any switch, so I couldn’t turn it off even if I wanted to.” His shiver told the two men how terrified he would have been in the dark.
Daniel considered him. “Cold, huh? Did you have blankets?”
He nodded. “There was a mattress on the floor.” His forehead crinkled. “It was like a garage.”
“Concrete floor?”
“Uh huh. And some of the walls, too.”
Basement, was Daniel’s conclusion after he wrung more description out of Ian. Above had been open beams, with what was presumably insulation stuffed between. Two walls were concrete, two wallboarded in but with “cracks”. Unfinished, as was often the case with basement rooms used for storage, laundry and the like. Ian had been able to hear squeaking sometimes, when somebody walked around up above.
“Old house,” Elias said quietly.
Daniel nodded. Newer ones in the area were rarely built with basements anymore. Daylight basements were more typical of the houses in Old Town. Had whoever put up the walls deliberately created a room with no windows? Very possible for a kidnapper – but from other things Ian said, Daniel didn’t get the impression the room had been build that recently. The cobwebs had scared the boy, and the wallboard had been dented and dirty, he said.
“Okay, you’re doing great,” Daniel told him. Ian had relaxed, leaning trustingly on Elias. “Did he ever let you out of the room?”
“Only when I had to go. You know. There was kind of a bathroom. It didn’t even have walls! Just wood with nothing between. It only had a toilet and a sink. Not a shower or anything! And it was real dirty.”
Framed in with studs, but never finished.
Ian wrinkled his nose. “He stood there and watched me.”
He hadn’t been able to hear anything at all while he was in the basement except the footsteps, and sometimes a sort of mumbly voice from upstairs.
“So tell me about him,” Daniel said.
The bad man always wore a black sweatshirt with the hood up and a mask. Sounded like a ski mask, fleece rather than knit. The fact he’d remained careful suggested he had intended to let Ian live, which was one positive in this mess. Ian hesitated over eye color, deciding the bad man’s eyes weren’t really brown, like his, or blue like Daniel’s or gray like Elias’s. They were just kinda…eye colored.
Hazel, was Daniel’s mental note. Which only fit half or more of the population of Burris County. And some shades of brown might fall under Ian’s classification, too.
The man was real tall and strong, too. Since most assault victims exaggerated their attacker’s size, that part of the description was a maybe. Elias seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he had Ian think about when the two of them had walked side by side, and compare that to walking beside the bad man. Ian seemed pretty sure it was about the same.
Ron Campbell and Patrick Fletcher were both around six feet, Fletch possibly a little taller. Either would seem “strong” to a little boy. DMV records indicated Fletch’s eyes were hazel, Campbell’s brown – but Daniel had spent enough time with the city council member to be able to picture brown eyes flecked with enough yellow, he’d have called them hazel, too.
“Did he have hair on the backs of his hands or his arms below the cuffs of the sweatshirt?” Elias asked unexpectedly. He shoved up the sleeve of his sweatshirt to reveal gold hair on his arms. “Lots of men have at least a few hairs on their fingers, too.”
Ian stared. “You don’t.”
“I do,” Daniel said, and held out a hand.
The little boy pondered those few, curling strands. “I won’t have to have hair on my hands, will I?”
Elias smiled. “You might. It’s normal, just like having to shave is for a man.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw.
Ian looked dubious, but nodded. His face worked as he appeared to be thinking. “It was brown,” he said suddenly. “He had more hair on his hands than Chief Colburn does.”
Darker brown, too, they concluded, which, if true, finally ruled out Jeff Lee, who had sandy hair.
More interestingly, the man talked to him in his regular voice. And, yes, it sounded familiar to Ian. Unfortunately, because he spent a day or two a week at his mother’s shop, he’d probably heard every man in town speak.
“All right,” Daniel said at last. “I need to talk to Elias for a minute, Ian. Is it okay if I ask the nice woman in the uniform to keep you company?”
Panic widened his eyes as he looked up at Elias. “You’re not leaving, are you? You’ll come back?”
“I will.” Elias smoothed a hand over Ian’s head. “Promise. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
Ian took a deep breath for courage and nodded. Elias tucked blankets more securely around him before hopping out of the ambulance after Daniel.
The two men walked a distance away from the ambulance and the crowd, apart enough from the action that nobody seemed to be looking at them.
“I didn’t get a chance to say how sorry I am about your house.”
“Thanks.” Elias cleared his throat. “Right this second, a building doesn’t seem very important.”
Daniel rolled his shoulders. “This was a disaster. He got away with the money and Hannah. I’d say I fucked up, except I don’t know what else I could have done.”
“How did he get her off the beach?”
He shook his head. “We were spread too thin. He couldn’t have knocked her out, she had to be cooperating.”
“Because he pulled a gun on her.” Elias sounded as if he’d had to drag every word out of a deep well.
“And because she would do anything to draw him away from Ian.”
“I want to kill him.”
Daniel wasn’t deceived by the calm voice. “Arresting him is my job, but I understand.”
After a moment, Elias nodded acceptance. Or maybe it was just a nod that meant nothing.
“Anything Ian said ring bells for you?” Daniel asked.
“Because I now know he ha
s brown hair?”
Daniel sighed. “Earlier, after you were called to go out to your house, I sent officers to locate a bunch of these men. Jeff Lee – I haven’t looked at him as hard as I maybe should have. Ron Campbell and Patrick Fletcher.”
“And?”
“Lee is supposedly over in Portland. After a neighbor told Officer King, he then called Lee’s cell phone, which was answered by a woman who handed it to him. Unless she’s in on it…”
Elias spoke up. “His hair is too light, anyway.” Says a five-year-old, they were probably both thinking.
“Both of the others have done a disappearing act.” Daniel was not happy they’d been able to pull it off. Expecting Hannah to get the call anytime, he had sent two of his young officers in search of Campbell and Fletcher mid-morning. It appeared neither man had been at work or home all day or had yet to show up this evening. Phone calls had gone unanswered, messages not returned.
“I had a thought on the drive down here,” Elias said abruptly. “Not about motive. I might have pissed Campbell off the once, but we’ve had next to nothing to do with each other since. Fletch…we were friends since grade school.”
Daniel zeroed in on the ‘were’. “Are you still?”
“Friendly acquaintances, I guess you’d say.”
Absorbing that, Daniel prodded, “The thought?”
“This guy got into my house tonight. You heard about the painting?”
“I did.”
“He got into Hannah’s locked business, too.”
He must be tired, his thinking molasses slow, or he wouldn’t have had so much trouble reconstructing the timeline in his head. “It wouldn’t have been hard to sneak into Hannah’s office, borrow her keys and make copies. Stop by later in the day, return her keys.”
“That’s true. But he might not have had to. Fletch sold me my house. He sold Hannah hers, and arranged the lease for the space Sweet Ideas occupies. At some point, he’d have had keys. I never changed the locks, and I doubt she did, either.”
Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) Page 21