"Can't you see, Jackson? Harrison has been behind this all along! He wants to hurt Rachael!"
Jackson blinked at me. Geez, what did Rachael see in this guy? I told him that her life was in danger, and he just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
"Uh, did you hear me?"
"It's all sounding a little bit farfetched, Pippa."
"What’s so farfetched about any of this? You think it's more believable that Rachael has been harassing Chloe's defense lawyer? She wouldn't do something like that."
I shook my head and forced myself to sit up. "Fine," I said, pulling at the tubes feeding vital sustenance into my veins. "If you're not going to do anything about it, then I am going to have to do it myself!"
"Wait!" he yelled, putting a hand up as he rushed to my bed. "You're pregnant for crying out loud, Pippa. You can't do that."
He was finally acting like a real human being. I could tell from the look on his face, the way his eyes were darting about with worry, that he was finally starting to believe I was telling the truth.
"Come on!" I said, begging him. "You have to get the message to Rachael. I can't do it! I'm trapped here! Stop her before she gets to Harrison's house!"
Jackson nodded slowly and started to walk out of the room.
"I'll see what I can do," he said. "But you realize that Rachael is in big trouble, don't you?"
I just stared at him. "Yes," I whispered. "I do realize that."
She was in very big trouble indeed. Rachael was about to walk right into a trap.
Chapter 13
Rachael
There was blackness again when I woke. I tried to scream but there was tape over my mouth. It was like there was a blindfold over my eyes, it was so black, but I couldn't feel any material on my face.
Where am I? I couldn't figure out whether I had been hit on the head, just passed out, or been made to inhale something that caused me to lose consciousness. Either way, it wasn't good. I was trapped. And my hands were tied behind my back. I tried to move my feet. They were held together by something as well.
Then I realized I was moving, being thrown back and forth, hitting steel. I was in a moving car—more specifically, in a trunk.
I tried to scream again but no sound would come out. I tried to kick but my ankles were tied together.
Calm down, I tried to tell myself. Don't panic. Panicking would only use up more oxygen and it wouldn't allow me to think. I needed to find a way to escape before we reached wherever we were going. The middle of nowhere, I guessed. A place where no one would ever find my body. A place that no one would ever think to even look.
"LET ME OUT!" I tried to scream but it came out muffled. I knew it was in vain anyway. It didn't matter if I was heard. Harrison was never going to let me out of the car.
I laid there for what had to be at least an hour, trying to think of a way to escape, when the car finally stopped and the trunk opened. I let out another muffled scream, about to let Harrison have it, as I twisted my body to try and kick him in the face.
Then I saw the face. It wasn't Harrison. It was Ricky Pink.
That was when my heart stopped beating. It was black out, night, but with the moon, it was so much brighter than being locked in the trunk of the car that my eyes burned and I had to squint to see. We were in Pottsville. We were at Ricky Pink's cabin.
Ricky pulled me out of the trunk and dragged me toward the cabin. I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed the fact that we hadn't searched it properly. Angel must have been here all along.
But we did search the cabin. I even looked under the bed.
I was still being dragged when I opened my eyes and realized that we had gone right past the cabin. I twisted my body around desperately, trying to see where we were headed, where he was taking me.
My heart started thudding. There was a shed, at the back of the property.
I remembered something that Harrison had said, talking about the night that he'd come home and Angel had been missing.
"I searched everywhere, even the shed that she never went in."
We hadn't looked in the shed.
But now, I knew that was where Angel was. And I was about to join her.
I tried to scream, but it was too late. There was no one to hear me even if I could be heard.
Ricky Pink opened the door and pulled me inside. He ripped the tape off my mouth. "No one is going to hear you out here anyway," he said before slamming the door shut again, leaving me there to breathe in the dirt and dust disturbed by the door slamming so heavily.
The shed was nearly as dark as the trunk had been. Suddenly, I heard a voice. There was someone in there with me. The voice was coming from the other side of the shed.
"Angel?" I yelled. "Are you okay?"
It was a male voice that replied. "No, it's not Angel."
Harrison.
I breathed in quickly, coughing out the dust while my eyes adjusted. "What are you doing here, Harrison?" I whispered raspily. Ugh. My voice sounded like I had swallowed glass. I desperately needed a drink of water.
Harrison's face was dirty and looked even more leathery than usual. "I'm sorry, Rachael," he said softly. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."
I let out a raspy laugh. "You didn't mean for any of this to happen? Yeah, right. So why did you call me, Harrison?" I asked. "What kind of game are you playing?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "Ricky made me call you. He knew you were onto him. I knew the only way to get you to come see me was if I admitted you were right about Callum Jones."
I turned around and tried to see out of the only window of the shed. It was tiny and covered in a dirty film that I couldn’t wipe away. I couldn’t see anything. I turned back to face Harrison in the dark. "Ricky has Angel?" I asked him. "Harrison, what’s going on?"
He was silent for a moment. Finally, he spoke.
"I got a call from Angel today."
My mouth fell open. "From Angel?"
"She told me... She told me that she was up here, with Anna and Ricky, and that she needed me to come and get her." Harrison shook his head. "I was so stupid. I fell for it."
"Fell for what?" I whispered.
"Fell for her tricks. I should have known better. She just wanted to lure me here, lock me up. Like I tried to lock her up."
I shook my head and interrupted him. "Angel wouldn't do that. Not to her own father. Come on, Harrison, if Ricky made you call me, don't you think he could have also made her call you?"
His eyes suddenly brightened a little. "You don't think Angel wants to hurt me?"
I took a deep breath and tried to free my hands, which were still tied behind my back. "I wouldn't go looking too relieved," I said. "Angel is still in trouble. Ricky Pink has her."
Harrison's face fell. "We've got to get out of here," he said. "We need to find Angel."
I banged my head back against the wall. We had to get free. I had to think. But some things just weren't adding up.
"Why would Ricky Pink be asking for ransom money?" I asked. "He knows that you were about to declare bankruptcy," I murmured.
Harrison's face reddened. "How do you know about that?"
"Anna told me," I said. "When I was here. And Ricky was right beside her! He knows you don't have any money."
"The only person who knew about that was Angel herself," Harrison said quietly. "But Angel knew something else..." His voice trailed off.
"What? What did Angel know?"
"She knew I was going to declare bankruptcy. I think that's why she was stealing. She was worried that we were suddenly going to be in the poorhouse. When I found that jewelry in her room and grounded her, she was furious at first. But then she told me how worried she was. So I reassured her that I had a plan. I was going to... I was going to... Oh my god..." Harrison seemed so distressed by whatever realization he'd just had that he could no longer get any words out.
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"I told her that I was going to sel
l the house. We were going to move away from Belldale." Harrison shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. "She was so angry. When I told her that was the only way to get the money we needed, she said she didn't believe me. Said I had plenty of money just laying around."
"So she wanted to see if you were telling the truth," I whispered. "So she ran away with her friends, pretended she'd been kidnapped to see if you'd pay the ransom." She must have been hiding out here in Pottsville for a while. Until...
I looked at Harrison. "Why were you so focused on Callum Jones?"
"I can't stand the guy," Harrison spat. "I fired him, and next thing I know, he goes and defends the woman who killed Olive!"
I was shocked. I leaned forward, at least as much as I could under the circumstances. "Callum Jones was doing what?" I asked.
"He was defending Chloe. That woman you hired."
I'd suddenly figured it out. "I was the target all along, Harrison."
"What are you talking about, Rachael?"
"She blames me for her mother's death. She wanted to teach me a lesson." I looked at him. "Think, Harrison. Before she disappeared, was she talking about me at all?"
Harrison looked around wildly for a moment. "Yes. She was. She kept talking about what a great detective you were. How grateful she was that you found her mom's killer."
"Ha!" I cried out. "Trying to put ideas in your head... She would have known that as soon as she went missing, I would be the first person you would turn to." I shook my head. "And now look where I am. Look what happened."
"Rachael, I'm really sorry. I never knew any of this. I had no idea that this is what she had planned."
I stared off into the distance. "I don't think she had this part of it planned, Harrison. I think she was just going to hide out here for a few days, waste my time, teach me a lesson."
I was sure Harrison was a second target. Worrying him, making him think his daughter was kidnapped. She was mad at him, mad at him for selling the house, grounding her, being an overprotective parent. She wanted to get back at him as well, just as much as she'd wanted to get at me.
And we'd both fallen for it.
I rolled my eyes. Teenage girls, huh?
And that was just the problem. Teenage girls. "Angel must have just been up here hiding, until something went wrong with her plan." I looked at him gravely. "Anna must not have known about Angel and Ricky in the beginning, but then she must have found out."
Harrison exhaled heavily. "What are you saying, Rachael?"
"I'm saying that Angel is no longer faking her kidnapping. She is here. Anna and Ricky have her. And who knows what they're going to do to her." I pulled at my tied wrists. "Or to us," I whispered.
Chapter 14
I gasped. "Can you hear that?" I asked Harrison.
He held his breath for a moment. "What?" he asked.
"Footsteps," I whispered. "It must be Ricky. He's coming to get us. Maybe he's already done with Angel, and we're next."
I could see from the look on Harrison's face that that was the absolute worst thing I could have said. Intent on righting the situation somehow, I rolled in front of the door and tried to block it from opening while whoever was still on the other side. "Get away!" I screamed, pushing my legs up against the door to try and hold it. The person on the other side wasn't particularly strong.
"Rachael?"
It sounded like Pippa's voice. How could that be, though?
"Rachael?" she called again, sounding more desperate this time. "Are you in there? It's Pippa! Please, let me know."
"I'm in here!" I screamed, rolling away from the door again. I must have been completely covered in dust by this point.
With my feet away from the door, Pippa was finally able to barge through it. "Rachael! Are you okay?"
I just stared up at her, my mouth agape. "Pippa, shouldn't you be in the hospital right now?"
She leaned over a little bit, clearly short of breath. "Yes, I should be. But this was important. Don't worry, I stopped for a burger along the way."
"Pippa!" I scolded her. One burger wasn't going to cure her!
She looked at me in distress. "Well, Jackson wasn't going to do anything! I had to come here and do it myself."
"You did?" I asked in disbelief. "Because I can see the lights of police cars." Pippa stood back and the lights shone right into my eyes, practically blinding me.
"Well, Jackson is actually here," she said. "But I had to drag him along. When he got to Harrison's house and all the lights were off, he came back to the hospital. I told him about this Ricky guy and Jackson already knew about him from a jewelry robbery that he was investigating."
I looked at Harrison. "The jewelry, Harrison! Angel didn't steal it! Her stupid boyfriend must have stashed it in her room! And she couldn't tell anyone the truth!"
Harrison looked at the ground, a little ashamed of himself. "I don't think I've been a very good father."
There was no time for a pity party. Pippa bent down and freed my wrists, then I did the same for Harrison. "Come on," I said, helping him to his feet. "Come and see your daughter."
Sulking and a little bruised, Angel was in front of the cabin, illuminated by police lights, as Jackson placed a blanket around her shoulders. "You're okay now," he said.
I walked straight over to them and pushed past him. In the background, I could see Anna in handcuffs, being led to the police car, Ricky Pink following suit behind her.
"Why did you do it, Angel?"
She looked at the ground and shrugged. She clearly didn't want to speak to me.
"Angel, you owe me an explanation, at the very least!"
Jackson took a step towards me. "Rachael, I think—"
I glared at him. This was not the time to be cautioning me. "Let me speak to her," I said fiercely.
He held up his hands and backed off.
I looked at Angel's distraught face. In a way, I did feel sorry for her. She'd thought she was playing a harmless prank. Or, harmless enough. She probably thought she was safe up here with the guy she thought was her boyfriend, safe because Anna didn't know the truth. Angel couldn't have known that when Anna found out, the prank would no longer be a prank. It would become real. Too real.
"Angel," I said, a little more gently. "It's okay. You'll be taken to the hospital soon. But please, tell me why you did this? Didn't you realize that I could end up getting hurt? Or were you actually hoping that I would be?"
She looked up at me sharply and finally spoke.
"You were the one that hired Chloe in the first place."
I let out a heavy sigh. She was full of teenage angst and blame. I understood. "But I'm not the reason she killed your mom," I said. "Angel, I was the one that found out that Chloe was the one who did it. I was the one who solved the mystery of your mother's death. Did I really deserve to go through all of this?"
She looked up at me and bit her lip. "No," she said, her voice shaking now. "I'm sorry." There were tears in her eyes and she was shivering. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "I never thought that Anna and Ricky would do this. They had me locked up for days in that shed." She began to cry. "They only took me out when Dad arrived." She began to sob. "I never meant for him to get involved. Anna just wanted to hurt me as much as possible when she found out about me and Ricky. I begged her not to do it. I begged her to leave Dad out of it. Oh, this is all my fault."
I watched as Anna was pushed into the back of the police car. Never underestimate teenage girls.
"You should talk to your dad, Angel," I said, sighing, before I walked away and left her there.
Once everything had settled down, and Pippa was well on her way back to the police station, it was only Harrison and I left, with Jackson and a uniformed officer searching the cabin for evidence.
Harrison reached out his hand for me to shake. After staring at it for a second, I took it.
"Thanks, Rachael," he said. "For everything. And I'm sorry."
I shook my head.
"Angel is safe now," I said quietly. "That's all that matters in the end."
"And don't worry," Harrison said. "Angel is going to be in big trouble for all of this."
I smiled weakly. "Don't go too hard on her, Harrison. I think she needs support right now. She's been through a lot." I started to walk away and then turned and said one last thing over my shoulder.
"She's only a teenage girl."
Epilogue
I hesitated a moment, staring down at the name badge and wondering if I really ought to hand it over. At the top, it had Simona's name. At the bottom, it read "Assistant Manager."
"Hand it over then," Simona said. "Let's make it all official."
She pulled it from my hands before I had the chance to hand it to her and pinned it to her chest. I sighed. It was official.
From the other side of the bakery, Pippa stared at us. She was packing up her things. Her last shift. For now. Officially replaced.
"For now," I mouthed at her.
Pippa smiled at me. I had never seen her look happier or more content. For a brief moment, an emotion took over me that I rarely felt. I didn’t even recognize it at first. My heart beat faster, and my stomach felt a little sick. Jealously. Pippa, my crazy fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants friend, was going to be a mom. She seemed more stable and mature to me in that one moment than I had felt in my entire life.
She walked over to us and shot me a look. "So have you done it yet?"
I frowned at her. She'd just seen me handing the badge to Simona. Or, rather, having it snatched from me.
"I'm talking about cashing the check," she explained. "The one from Harrison."
I sighed. I almost felt guilty accepting money from him, knowing that they might lose their house. Knowing how much Angel wanted to stay. "The money sure will come in handy, though," I said.
"You earned the money," Pippa said firmly, before she picked up her box of belongings and walked to the front door.
Simona looked at me. "You will take the money, right?"
Catering and Kidnapping: A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery Page 9