Damn it, Daniel thought. Why hadn’t that occurred to him when the first threat was left inside the bookstore? “That’s quite a thought.”
“He’s likeliest to have known Hannah’s ex probably had money, too. I don’t like to think it, but—” Elias’s phone rang. “My mother. Her condo is right over there, you know.” He jerked his head just inland.
“So she’s watching the show. Talk to her. Looks like one of my officers has something to say, anyway.” Daniel strode away, leaving Elias alone in the shadowy parking lot.
*****
Looking toward the ambulance, Elias hesitated, but there was a lot he couldn’t say in Ian’s hearing.
Leaning against the fender of the closest car, he called his mother back. When she answered, he said immediately, “We have Ian safe, but he took Hannah.”
“Oh, no,” she murmured.
“He wore a mask every time Ian saw him. We’re no further ahead identifying this creep than we ever were.”
“I wouldn’t have called,” she said, “but I’ve been thinking.”
Hearing a burst of voices, he turned his head, but it was only a bunch of tourists talking excitedly, not the cops. “And?” he prompted his mother.
“The year Fletch lived with us. I could tell your friendship had soured. I was almost sorry I’d taken him in, but…”
“You did the right thing, Mom,” Elias said, knowing she couldn’t have done otherwise. Not his mother.
“After the car accident, I’d see him looking at you with this… I don’t even know how to describe his expression. I convinced myself I was imagining it, but…”
He pushed himself away from the fender of the car. “Now you know you weren’t.”
“I’m afraid so.” She sounded troubled. “Do you remember how convinced he was that he and you were being scouted by college football programs?”
He frowned. “Come on, Mom. We all used to talk about that, but we knew we were kidding ourselves. None of us were the kind of superstars that would have made anyone bother coming to a Cape Trouble High School game.”
“You knew you were kidding yourself. I’m not so sure Fletch did.”
“It’s not like he couldn’t go to college without an athletic scholarship.” Damn. Elias realized he sounded defensive. Because he’d never acknowledged the damage he did do to a friend?
“That’s true. The university was generous with need-based aid, and he picked up some local scholarships.”
The ones Elias hadn’t. He winced.
“It’s just…” Her hesitation was telling. “He hungered to be someone important. Don’t you remember? He was so crushed when he ran for student body president in middle school and was beaten by…I don’t even remember who.”
Elias didn’t either. He’d thought the student council was a joke. “You’re saying he’s convinced that, if he hadn’t gotten injured in the accident that was my fault, he’d have been the starting running back at the U of O, had alumni fawning over him, been too successful to ever need to come back to Cape Trouble?”
“Probably all of that,” she agreed, “but what’s really to the point is that he thinks he’d have been a star running back his senior year of high school, he’d have been able to swagger because he was being scouted, and he’d have gotten the girl.”
“Who I nabbed right out from under his nose,” Elias said slowly. He tipped his head back and stared up at the night sky. He hadn’t remembered until now, but one of the things that had dealt the death blow to their friendship was the angry edge in Fletch’s voice when he gave Elias a hard time for having been elected Prom King. He wouldn’t let up with it, even after Elias lost his temper.
Perfect symbolism, he thought now; Fletch in the crowd with… Who had he taken to prom? A face rose from the recesses of Elias’s memory. Andrea Kobernik. Like Lauren, she’d been a cheerleader, nice enough, but too shy to have ever been the center of attention – or elected Prom Queen. Rumor had had it that she asked him to prom.
Because he wasn’t good at making a move on a girl even then? Or because the only girl he wanted was already going with his good friend, Elias Burton, prom king?
How oblivious could I be? Elias asked himself.
So there Fletch had been, just another face in the crowd since he had played only a single game of his senior year thanks to that damn car accident, watching Elias being crowned up on the stage with Lauren, the girl he’d wanted.
A disappointment most kids would have shrugged off, but corrosive to a boy who hadn’t grown up in a home with any stability, who’d maybe never received love and support from his parents. Who desperately wanted to be somebody.
Elias shook his head. How could he not have seen the animosity that must have eaten away at Fletch for all these years? Or had he just not looked, because the guy had long since faded from his radar?
Not liking himself very much at the moment, Elias went in search of Daniel Colburn.
*****
To cut out any awkward explanations of who Elias was in relation to Hannah, Daniel took on the task of calling Ian’s father, although Elias stood within earshot, shoulder propped against a wall in the deserted hospital cubicle they’d been told they could use for privacy.
Grady Cline answered the phone with a grunt.
Asleep. Still wired, Daniel had forgotten how late it had gotten.
“Mr. Cline, this is Chief Daniel Colburn, in Cape Trouble.”
A silence was followed by a more coherent sounding, “What is it?”
“We’ve recovered your son. He’s battered and scared, but otherwise fine. Unfortunately, the kidnapper not only got away with the money, he abducted Hannah, we believe at gunpoint.”
“You believe?”
“He was smart setting up both ransom drops. We took what precautions we could, but it wasn’t enough.”
“The FBI should have been involved. They know what they’re doing.” The lean on they was subtle, but there.
Daniel gritted his teeth even though he was already kicking himself. Yes, he should have pushed harder for Hannah to let him bring in the FBI team that specialized in child abductions, especially after the first debacle. But he’d let her make the call, and now she was the one paying the price.
Had Elias heard that? At least he’d been decent enough not to express the same sentiment.
Yet. Maybe because he was kicking himself, too.
“Perhaps so, Mr. Cline,” Daniel replied after giving himself a moment. “Hannah believed strongly she would endanger Ian by taking that step. In a community this small, working with outside law enforcement without anyone noticing is a challenge. We have good reason to believe the kidnapper was watching her.”
Hannah’s ex made grumbly sounds Daniel disregarded. Finally he asked where Ian was.
“We made the decision to keep him overnight at the hospital. He was checked out here by a doctor and wouldn’t have needed to stay, but it seemed like the safest temporary alternative.”
“I suppose I’ll have to come and get him.”
He’d have to come and get his own son? Daniel blinked. He hadn’t liked the guy after their earlier interaction, and liked him even less now. He glanced at Elias, whose eyebrows had shot up just before he gave an emphatic thumbs down.
“Thank you for offering,” Daniel said carefully, “but I think for the moment it would be best if he remained here in Cape Trouble. I’ve already spoken to him about what he experienced when captive, but I have hopes he’ll remember more that may help us find his mother. Also, he’s traumatized enough, I think he needs to stay close. He’s pretty scared for his mother.”
The discussion continued briefly. Cline wanted to take charge, but didn’t actually want his son, if Daniel was diagnosing correctly. Think how disruptive he’d be, dropped into that perfect little family. To his credit, Cline kept offering, but he surrendered without much of a struggle to Daniel’s argument that, for now, Ian would do best in the care of familiar friends.
T
his was a call Daniel was glad to end.
Obviously steaming, Elias said, “How can he not love his own son? A kid as great as Ian?”
Daniel only shook his head, even as he wondered if Elias had known how gone he was over Hannah’s son.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hannah pried open eyes that felt gummy and stared at the rough, concrete wall only a few feet from where she lay. At least she wasn’t in the dark, although this wasn’t daylight. An overhead light, she guessed.
A groan escaped. Her head throbbed so painfully, she was afraid to move. The rest of her hurt, too, but not like her head. Finally, she lifted a hand and cautiously explored with the lightest of touches.
Huge lump above her temple. Goose egg. And blood. She peered at her fingers. The fresh streaks of blood must be from her head, but her whole hand was also crusted with mostly dried blood.
What happened? She closed her eyes again and saw disconnected images and feelings. Lights in the darkness, too far away. Sliding door. Walking through quicksand that sucked at each foot. Just walk, and shut up. The weight of the duffel bag straining her shoulders. One flash. Come to me. Falling. Mommy, Mommy! Punching, clawing, hanging on. Run! Run, Ian.
After rearranging the bits of memory until they flowed, Hannah felt satisfaction even as dampness leaked from her eyes. She had saved Ian.
Finally, with a supreme effort she rolled all the way over. Her head tried to explode, but she closed her eyes long enough for the agony to subside, before she opened them again. The wall in front of her now was bare wallboard. A hole that looked as if someone had punched it didn’t quite allow her a peek out. Although maybe she could punch through, until she could squeeze between studs. And then…?
The silence felt heavy, making her suspect she was in a basement. Basements often had only one entrance and exit – stairs up to the main floor. But there might be windows high up, or a wooden hatch. She’d seen those.
Right now, the idea of so much as sitting up was more than she could imagine.
Patrick Fletcher, she thought, stunned. Call me Fletch. How many times had she heard him say, “Trust me?” Every time she had a question while looking at real estate, too often during contract negotiations. She had – mostly – trusted him. As far as she knew, she’d paid a fair price for her house, and had never regretted the terms of her lease for the business, either. But she’d never one hundred percent believed in his personable, confident front, either. He was a little too friendly, in the way of successful salespeople.
No, she’d been drawn to a man so detached, she had sometimes wondered if he would even recognize her if they came face to face on the sidewalk or in the grocery store. And look how he’d come through.
Apparently her instincts were trustworthy.
Hannah winced at the choice of words. Reliable. That was better.
Time to try sitting up. If there was a way out of here before he came back, she had to find it.
*****
Elias wanted desperately to join the search for Hannah, but separating himself from her son hadn’t been possible so far. They had yet to figure out what to do with Ian. Elias shared Daniel’s worry that the asshole might try to grab Ian again. From what the boy described, his abductor had been trying to hold onto him. Taking him home didn’t seem like a good option. And Elias no longer had a home.
Not something he could think about now.
Ian might have liked staying with Mrs. Stanavitch and Jack-Jack, but an old lady couldn’t protect him. The way he clung to Elias every time anybody walked into the hospital room, sending him to stay with a stranger wasn’t an option.
And, damn it, every time he looked at that wan face with the ugly bruise and the bald head with a couple of scabbed nicks where the razor had caught skin, Elias remembered the gabby, bright-faced boy he’d just been getting to know. The ache in his chest never subsided. To think he’d worried about whether he could deal with Hannah’s kid if they started a relationship.
A sympathetic nurse had provided a disposable razor so Elias could shave that morning. That hadn’t helped a lot. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had more than snatches of sleep. The mirror showed hollows and bones, and what would first appear to be a pair of black eyes.
Where was Hannah? In that same basement room? He knew she was scared, but was she hurt? He was tormented by the possibility Fletch might rape her. An ultimate form of payback. Even as Elias distracted Ian with board games and drawing, he couldn’t wipe from his mind pictures of her tied up, gagged, unconscious, bloody. Not dead. No. Fletch would want that final act to be spectacular.
Did he have any idea that he was even a suspect? Did he think he could go back to his life, shaking his head in dismay whenever anyone mentioned Hannah?
Rage wasn’t conducive to clear thinking, but for the first time in his life, Elias couldn’t step back, observe, use emotions without being clouded by them. It was teeth-grittingly hard to nod his approval of the crude perspective Ian had achieved in his current drawing of the basement room. Elias’s every attempt to get Ian to draw something less stressful had met with a brick wall.
“I remembered something,” the boy said suddenly.
Elias felt himself point like a setter. “Yeah?”
“When I peed in the toilet, I could see outside. There was this little window up high.”
This was the first time he’d mentioned a window. So – daylight basement, after all. “And what could you see?”
“Kind of long grass.” He wrinkled his nose. “Mr. Nolt on our street hardly ever mows, and Mom says some of the neighbors get mad.”
Elias had noticed the dandelions.
“’Cept this was even longer,” Ian said, frowning in thought. “And I could see a fence, all gray and splintery, and a little bit of another house.”
“What color was the other house?” Elias asked in the closest thing to an easy-going tone he could manage.
Ian’s forehead stayed wrinkled. “Sort of brown, but kind of yellow, too. It was an ugly color.”
Elias whipped out his phone and went straight to a website that showed color chips for oil paints available for sale. A cross between mars yellow and raw umber, they decided. “Sort of like mustard—” the face Ian made expressed his opinion of the condiment “—but more brown.” He hadn’t been able to see it that well, and the awful man got mad if he didn’t hurry, so he couldn’t say if the paint job was fresh or the unfortunate color was a result of fading.
Elias stepped out in the hall and called Daniel, who sounded as weary as he felt. He perked right up at the description, however.
“We’ve looked at damn near every house for sale in the county,” he said. “Fletcher could have a key to any of them. Ian’s description may ring a bell for someone who’s been looking. Smart kid,” he added in approval.
Yes, he was.
Twenty minutes later, he and Ian were playing Clue Jr. instead of another repetition of Chutes and Ladders when his phone rang. Daniel again.
“Nothing on Hannah,” he said. “But it turns out the father of one of Ian’s buddies at his daycare is a deputy. He and his wife and their son are coming to get Ian. He’s promised to stay home to protect him. I should have asked you first, but I thought you could at least use a break. And we can’t keep him in the hospital forever.”
“No. That sounds good.”
Ian looked suspicion. “What’s good?”
Elias explained.
“I bet it’s Walker. He’s one of my best friends, and his dad is a policeman. He talked to us one time and let us get in his police car so we could see the lights and everything.”
“Have you ever spent the night with Walker?”
Ian’s uneasiness showed in the way he shook his head. “I never spent the night anywhere. Except at a hotel with my dad, ’n that was a long time ago. I don’t remember so good, except I wanted to go home.”
“But you’ve played at Walker’s house before?”
Ian nodded vigor
ously. “Lots of times.”
“Good.” Elias smiled. “Try to have some fun, okay, even if you are worried?”
“Can’t you come, too?” Ian asked.
He shook his head. “I need to help look for your mom. But I promise I’ll call tonight, and you can call me anytime if you’re scared or just want to say hi.”
Ian obviously felt shaky about the new plan, but his enthusiasium grew once his buddy showed up with his parents. He liked the idea of going to McDonald’s for lunch, too.
“Good bribe,” Elias murmured to Walker’s dad, who grinned.
“Bribery plays an important role in preventing conflict with your child.” He sobered. “I’d rather be hunting for Ms. Moss, but Chief Colburn seems to think Ian is still at risk.”
“It’s a possibility. The guy didn’t want to let him go.”
After sharing phone numbers, he walked them to a family-style van and gave Ian a last hug. “See you soon.”
Watching the van drive away, Elias felt something unfamiliar. Maybe akin to what parents felt when they left their kid on the first day of kindergarden. Or leaving them at the dorm for freshman year of college.
Parenting, he had begun to realize, demanded a whole lot of sacrifice.
Elias was damned if that kid was going to have to grow up without his mother.
When he drove out of the parking lot, he was still trying to decide where to start. It was a sure bet Fletch would make his next move in a place that he believed held meaning to Elias. Over the years, they’d had a dozen favorite hang-out spots. Some they’d been able to reach on their bikes when they were kids. Others required a car and a hike, but were hidden away enough they’d been able to drink or smoke a joint or get naked with a girl.
He didn’t know what he expected to find…but his gut said he needed to take this trek down memory lane.
*****
Daniel suspected Elias was on a wild goose chase, but he didn’t say so. Elias knew Fletch better than any of the rest of them, and at least he was staying in touch. He and dozens of other people. Daniel’s main job was coordinating the massive hunt, so his phone rang constantly. The word he heard most often was “nothing.”
Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) Page 22