Her Dangerous Promise - Part 4: (Romantic Suspense Serial)

by Stryker, Ashley

  “Try the binoculars.” Mrs. Jorgenson perched on her recliner across from him. It rotated on its base so she could face the window too.

  “Mrs. Jorgenson,” Thom raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you done this before?”

  “I’m part of the neighborhood watch,” she twittered proudly in her high-pitched warble. Her short legs swung inches above the floor with excitement, like a child’s. “You’re not working with a rookie.”

  He grinned at her. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  The Yorkie barked and balanced on its hind legs, pawing the air.

  “Petey likes you.”

  Thom reached to pet him but Petey snapped at his fingers. “I’d hate to see how he treats someone he doesn’t like.”

  “Petey, behave yourself,” Mrs. Jorgenson scolded but Petey ignored her shrill rebuke.

  Thom picked a slice of ham from one of the sandwiches and tossed it to the dog. He snatched it from mid-air and gobbled it down. Licking his lips with his too long tongue, Petey sat his furry rear on Thom’s sneakers and leaned heavily against his ankle.

  “See,” she said, “I told you he likes you.”

  Thom glanced across the street. Mary ran the vacuum cleaner attachments over her furniture. While he enjoyed watching her hips swish with her movements, Thom pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Brad. I’m in position. Over.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Jorgenson clapped. “Just like on Law and Order.”

  The radio crackled silence.

  “Brad,” Thom said, “do you copy?”

  Nothing.

  Thom stifled the first curse word that popped in his head and instead muttered a censored, “Rats. He must have forgotten to turn it on.”

  Mrs. Jorgenson myopically blinked at him. “They would never do that on Law and Order.”

  “We can’t all be as efficient as the guys on Law and Order.”

  “So I see,” she tsked. “You should call for back up.”

  “No need,” he assured her. “It’s just a little glitch.”

  “Do you want me to run over there and tell your partner to turn on his radio?”

  Thom pictured little Mrs. Jorgenson tottering over and tromping right up to Brad’s location, pointing him out to anyone watching. He got up. “No, I’ll do it.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Jorgenson hopped up and trotted after him on her short legs like Petey to the back door. “But on Law and Order they would—”

  Thom turned around and she crashed into him. “I got it, really.” He caught her by the elbows before she fell and broke her hip. “I’ll be back in a minute or two. You’ll see.”

  “If you are sure…” She put her delicate fingertips to her mouth and if she had any fingernails she probably would have been biting them.

  Thom crept through three backyards to distance himself from the scene before crossing over to Mary’s side of the street. Twilight cloaked him in the shadows. He sincerely hoped none of the neighbors noticed him trampling through their property and reported a peeping tom. By crossing the street several houses down, Thom hoped that if Adam Fielding was hiding nearby watching Mary’s house, he wouldn’t notice a man casually strolling down the block. Once across the street he glanced around for any sign. He saw no one. He figured if Adam showed up at all it wouldn’t be until late, after Mary and all her neighbors went to sleep. The lenses of the binoculars poked through the blinds of Mrs. Jorgenson’s front window, pointing at him. He waved and a tiny hand stuck between the blinds and waved back. He smiled to himself. Mary was right. Mrs. Jorgenson could liven up a tedious stakeout. Still, he’d have to explain to her about keeping a low profile. Anyone making a casual glance at her house would see those binoculars.

  Thom jumped the fences across the backyards back toward Mary’s house. This was Brad’s first stake out and forgetting to make sure his radio was on and turned to the correct frequency was a rookie mistake. He hadn’t been the first on the force to commit that faux pas but he hadn’t expected it of Brad. That’s why he’d tapped him to help—that and the fact he didn’t mind the unofficial nature of the assignment.

  Over the wire, Thom heard Mary chatting away. She was doing the dishes, he guessed, from the clatter of the plates. From what he remembered, she hadn’t had any dirty dishes in the sink. She must have pulled them down from the cabinet to give herself something to do. Going stir-crazy in there, he thought, shaking his head.

  Thom maneuvered along the back fence of each yard until he reached Mary’s. The detached garage at the back of her yard opened on an alley. Brad was supposed to be holed up in the narrow passageway between the chain link fence along the side of the yard and the garage.

  As he jumped over the last fence, Thom whispered Brad’s name.

  He could see him lying on his stomach, facing the back of Mary’s house. The deeply shadowed spot offered an excellent hiding place.

  “Brad,” he said louder as he crouched down beside his ankles, unable to move further without stepping over him. He shook Brad’s foot but still received no reply. “Oh no.”

  Staying down, Thom crept over him as best he could in the narrow space. He was sprawled face down on the dried mat of leaves that had accumulated there. Thom pulled out his flashlight and shone it on his face. A red welt burned on his temple with a thin trickle of blood still dribbling down his face.

  He slipped his fingers inside the collar of Brad’s shirt and felt his neck for a pulse. It was there, strong and steady.

  Over the headset he heard Mary talking about how badly the litter box needed cleaning. She was still safe, for the moment.

  Thom pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. Brad needed an ambulance and he needed back up. Adam was in the area.

  A crunching sound drew his attention. Thom raised the beam of his flashlight in time to see Adam Fielding coming down on him with a broken broom handle. Without room enough to maneuver, Thom’s attempt to dodge backward failed.

  The blow caught him across the side of his face, knocking him back, leaving him dazed. The sparkles dancing in front of his eyes hadn’t completely cleared when the second strike found its mark.

  Thom slumped down on top of Brad. His last thought, to shout a warning to Mary, faded before it could reach his lips.

  Chapter Four

  Mary skimmed the cat litter with her scooper and ferreted out all the stinky landmines Fizgig left her. He’d been productive and her plastic grocery bag was a quarter of the way full when she completed the job. Of course, with a newly cleaned litter box at his disposal, Fizgig hopped in, wiggled into position and stared meditatively into the middle distance. Mary sighed and waited for him to finish the job and bury the lump to his satisfaction, before mining it out of the sand and adding it to the collection.

  “You like having a clean bathroom, don’t you Fizzy?” she asked the cat. Fizgig shook himself, fluffing up his gray coat of fur.

  Mary tied off the top of the shopping bag and balanced it on top of the overfilled garbage can. “Listen,” she said to Thom over the wire she wore, “I’m going to run the garbage outside real quick. Okay?”

  Mary waited and listened for the phone to ring. She gave Thom thirty seconds to call and object while she closed up the garbage bag with a twist tie.

  “Speak now or forever hold your peace.” She said, surprised Thom didn’t object and then smiled to herself for using a line from a wedding ceremony. Talk about your Freudian slips. After only a few days her thoughts already drifted toward matrimony. The very fact her subconscious picked those words implied hope, perhaps even faith, that the danger would pass, that tomorrow would come. Mary clung to that hope and her love for Thom and felt strengthened by them.

  Still no call.

  “I’ll be right back in a second then.”

  Mary hoisted up the garba
ge bag and maneuvered it out the back door. Her back porch light illuminated only part of the backyard, leaving the narrow space where Brad hid in darkness. Mary scanned the black stillness of that niche but could not see him. “Good job,” Mary mumbled. She mused to herself how playing Hide and Seek as a child could teach a person how to conceal themselves so effectively that even as an adult the skill proved effective when lives depended on it.

  As a teacher, it never ceased to amaze her how all the diverse curriculum of youth remained relevant into adulthood. Every few years the school board fought for funding to keep their music, art and physical education programs. Maybe she could turn her experience into something positive by sharing the story with the PTA about how Blind Man’s Bluff and Hide and Seek helped the police catch a kidnapper.

  Mary held the garbage bag out away from her and marched it around the side of her house where she stored the big army green municipal garbage can between pick-ups. She dropped the bag inside and let the lid fall with a satisfying thump.

  A second thump echoed in the night.

  Mary spun around with a jump. She could see no one in the yard. The sound had seemed very close. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps some trick of the night made a loud sound at a distance seem like a soft sound close by. Then again, it might have been Brad. Mary squinted at the space between the garage and the fence, hoping to see Brad wave apologetically but saw nothing.

  Suddenly, Mary felt the icy stillness so acutely her skin ached. With Thom across the street listening in and Brad hiding only yards away, she expected to have some sense of being watched, or even just a feeling that she was not alone. The air around her hung so still, as if no one else existed in the world to breathe it and disturb the calm even slightly. She felt alone. Dangerously alone.

  Unable to shake her unease, Mary crossed quickly to her back door. Quietly, she went back inside. With a last look through the window at the backyard, Mary locked herself in.

  Touching the power pack of the wire on her back, Mary tried to reassure herself. “I’m back inside now,” she told Thom. “I have to confess, I wish you were with me right now. I’ve got a bad case of the heebie jeebies.”

  Softly, Mary walked across her kitchen toward the living room. She’d hoped to see Fizgig sitting on the counter, waiting for her to offer him a treat but he’d abandoned her, too.

  Her earlier musing about Hide and Seek suddenly crept over her like a chill. She did feel like she’d just counted to one hundred and everyone had hidden from her. She knew Thom hid across the street watching slyly through the blinds. She knew Brad cloaked himself so deeply in the shadow of the backyard that Mary couldn’t see him, even knowing where to look for him. Now Fizgig concealed himself in one of his secret spots where he would watch her patiently as she tore through the house trying to find him, only to stroll out with a yawn and a stretch whenever she gave up.

  Mary whispered, “Ollie, Ollie, ox in free.” She listened to the muffled silence that replied. She felt overwhelmingly singular, with hidden eyes everywhere, watching her.

  “Fizgig,” Mary called softly and cringed at the volume of her voice in the stillness. “Come here, little man. Come to Mommy.”

  She crept on tiptoe two steps down the hall toward her bedroom. “Do you want a cookie? Come here and Mommy will give you a cookie.”

  A wicked shudder of nerves tore through Mary even as she froze with sudden fear. She’d left every light in the house on. The hallway light, now switched off, offered no illumination to the bedroom beyond. The doorway yawned into a cavern of darkness as black as death.

  She opened her mouth, wanting to make a sound, wanting desperately to call to Thom but her throat clamped closed as if some great fist squeezed around her neck. Her hands flew out to her sides and pressed against the walls on either side of the hallway to prevent her from sinking helplessly to her knees.

  From the depths of her bedroom, the figure of a man stepped out from behind the door. He was a pure black shadow against the paler darkness of the room. The Grim Reaper in human form.

  Mary’s heart slammed against her ribs and seemed to stop. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Her eyes struggled to focus on the outline of the figure that moved slowly forward but swimming speckles of light danced before her.

  As he crossed the bar of light from the partially closed bathroom door, Mary could see he held Fizgig tucked like a newspaper under one arm. The flash of a long blade gleamed from the other hand.

  Mary stumbled backward into the living room. “Thom.” She choked out the single word. Sucking in a shaking breath she forced herself to focus and called louder, “Thom!”

  The man stepped into the full light of the living room. This was Adam Fielding. Even though she’d never laid eyes on him before, she recognized the man who’d held her hostage and had curled up beside her like a child. The man who’d strangled her and beaten Nancy. She’d been right about the details she’d told Thom but she never put them all together. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have pictured the man who loomed before her now.

  More muscular than she’d imagined and a bit taller, Adam’s physical presence exuded malice. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt pulled tight around his face, Unabomber-style. Thick eyebrows knit angrily over his sharp eyes. There was no hint of the developmental condition in his face. Wide scratches marred his left cheek near his eye where Nancy left her mark of defiance. His lips, too large for the dimensions of his features, twisted in a pure expression of hate.

  “You made a promise,” he growled. There was no mistaking his voice. Mary would never forget that voice. Her strength melted and drained like water out of her limbs. Adam brandished the knife under the cat’s chin. “You lied.”

  Mary screamed, “THOM!”

  Chapter Five

  Dread saturated the air like a thick, black oil slick but Thom pressed onward. Each step compelled him closer to the terror but he couldn’t turn from it. Police and men in suits conferred in solemn voices outside Tammy Jo’s home. Thom slipped passed them unnoticed.

  As he climbed the incline around the side of the family home, two officers led Tammy Jo’s mother, with her hands cuffed behind her, the other way.

  The earthy fragrance of freshly tilled ground flavored the morning air. Thom rounded the corner of the house. In the backyard the recently planted flowers wilted in a heap of muddy topsoil. A hole less than two feet deep marred the garden like a pockmark. The void in the Earth mirrored the void he felt inside.

  Thom ached to run away, to escape the truth. The muscles of his legs locked in anguish, preventing his escape. With a heart wrenching moan, he noticed the black plastic body bag. The man beside it zipped it up slowly and unable to resist, Thom’s gaze followed. The flaps came together as the zipper growled hungrily up, consuming inside the black shroud the shape of a young woman. First her long legs vanished, and then her dirt smudged dress. Her narrow wrists, bound with clothesline and unnaturally purple, rested sedately over her stomach.

  A scream boiled inside Thom’s chest. He bit on his fist to block its escape but Thom couldn’t stop himself. His eyes slid up to the woman’s face. Her dirt packed blond hair matted around her lovely face. Only this time, she wasn’t Tammy Jo.

  This time she was Mary Seeton.

  “No!” Thom cried, his voice as torn as his heart.

  A tender hand rested on his arm. “Thom.”

  He turned toward the woman beside him and blinked. “Tammy Jo?”

  Tammy Jo smiled. Her beautiful features were unmarred and peaceful. Sun burned in her hair, casting a soft glow all around her. “She needs you Thom.”

  He turned back to Mary. Her eyes opened and darted about in panic.

  Tammy Jo stepped back away from him. “Go to her, Thom. Go to her now.”

  From the body bag, Mary reached for him.

>   Thom lunged forward and grabbed her bound hands. He tugged her toward him but the body bag twisted tight around her like an anaconda in a strangle hold.

  “Help me!” she gasped, clutching to him.

  He embraced her around the middle and struggled with all his might to snatch her out of the body bag.

  She screamed, “Thom!”

  The scream ripped through Thom’s head like a thunderbolt. He jerked awake but immediately fell back on his side. His head hurt worse than the time during his rookie year when his patrol car slipped on an icy road during a high speed pursuit and collided head-on into a bridge abutment.

  Gradually, he became aware of his surroundings. First and foremost was the pain, which seemed to soak into and distort all his senses. Pushing the aches aside as best he could, he opened his eyes.

  The darkness was close and smelled of sweat and motor oil. Most sounds were muffled. But not the voices.

  Thom tried to reach up to touch the ear where the voices talked so loudly but his hands were pinned behind his back. Twisting around, Thom managed to sit up on the metallic and grooved ground beneath him.

  Pale light coming from the right faintly illuminated his surroundings. The light shone from a street lamp and it spilled through the windshield of a van. Besides the two captain’s chairs up front, there weren’t any seats. Thom struggled to get his feet under him but they were bound too.

  His ankles were crossed and secured with several layers of duct tape. From the hot sticky feeling across his mouth preventing him from speaking, Thom suspected a strip of duct tape covered his mouth as well. His wrists were crossed and no matter how hard he twisted, the bonds held him fast.