Retreat

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “Thanks, Paul. I really appreciate this.”

  “I’ll be fine running things until tomorrow night. Go on, do what you need to do.” Paul ushered him out the door. Rick thanked him again and left the office.

  He stood outside Paul Westcott’s office, giddy with relief and excitement. No need to pack a bag. He had his wallet and keys. All he had to do was head out to the employee parking lot, get in his car, and get going.

  As Rick left the corporate area and made his way through the grounds and to the employee parking lot, he tried to subdue his sense of eagerness, trying not to appear that he was giddy with excitement.

  * * *

  No sooner was Rick out the door than Paul was back at his desk, calling Glenn on his cell phone. He kept an eye on the door to his office, his ears attuned to any sound from outside in case Rick decided to come back, but he was lucky. He heard Rick move down the hall and out the corporate area just as Glenn picked up. “What’s up, Paul?”

  “Change of plans,” Paul said. “You locate Shane and Jackie yet?”

  “Doug and I are enroute to their suite now.”

  “Get Mike in on this too,” Paul said. “And listen to me carefully...”

  CHAPTER 2

  Eleven Months Ago

  Joe Taylor was in Casper, Wyoming, at the County Deeds office at City Hall, doing some research.

  He’d flown to Casper the day before and stayed at the Courtyard Marriot. After dinner, he’d done some research in his hotel room utilizing the material Dean Campbell had found. It hadn’t taken much to see the pattern in the reports Dean had submitted to him, and after getting all his notes in order, he’d called it a night and gone to bed.

  This morning, after coffee and room-service breakfast, he’d showered, gotten dressed, and drove his rental car to City Hall. Once there, he asked the front desk clerk if he could have access to the County Deeds records for some real-estate research. The clerk, a young Native American woman, directed him to the County Deeds office and introduced him to the clerk who manned it, a bored-looking older man named Roy Jenkins.

  “County records for the time periods you’re interested in are stored along that far wall.” Jenkins indicated the area with a sweep of his arm. His craggy face was weather-beaten, giving him a tired appearance. He was wearing tan slacks and a white button-down shirt. Stick him in a cowboy outfit and he’d fit right in with the Old West stereotype. “Photocopying machine is in the little cubicle by my desk. Need anything, just ask.”

  Joe Taylor thanked him, then got to work.

  Riffling through the records hadn’t been as tiresome or as tedious as he thought. It took fifteen minutes of diligent searching to find what he was looking for. When he did, he pulled out the deed in question and looked at it, frowning. He consulted his notes, checked a few things off, jotted down some other notes, then placed the notepad in his back jeans pocket along with the pen. He fingered the deed, debating on if he wanted the photocopy. He glanced at Jenkins reclining behind his desk, reading a magazine. The cubicle that contained the photocopying machine was out of sight’s way. The caretaker would know he was making a photocopy and nothing more. Joe closed the drawer where he’d found the deed and headed to the cubicle, the deed clenched in his right hand.

  Five minutes later, with a copy of the deed in his briefcase and the original back in the drawer where he’d found it, Joe Taylor headed back to his hotel room, his mind racing, feeling a sense of dread.

  CHAPTER 21

  Shane Daniels’ head hurt.

  He stood at his bed eyeing the half-packed suitcase, feeling unmotivated. Jackie’s crap was still all over the place. The room looked like her closet had exploded. Why did women insist on taking their entire wardrobe with them on vacation? Shane never understood that particular aspect of the female animal. Actually, there wasn’t much of anything he understood about women except they liked clothes and shoes the way he liked football, money, and pussy. And they were goddamn moody when it was their time of the month.

  Jackie’s time of the month had come three days ago, and she’d become intolerable. Unfortunately, because she never self-medicated when she was on her period, she wouldn’t leave him alone, either, which meant Shane had to drink that much more just to tune her bullshit out. Now he was feeling the effects of it. Last night’s shindig at the Bent Creek lounge had been a rip-roaring success. That Parker Goode asshole had been there, eyeing him from the bar like he was ready to start something, but Shane had ignored him. He’d been too busy trying to cement his new friendship with Alton Hawthorne, who sat on the board of a major energy company. Alton was at Bent Creek with his wife, celebrating their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Mrs. Hawthorne had retired early, but Alton had stuck around to have some fun. Shane had spent the evening with him at a table with three other people: Blair Jackson, David Sterling, and Bruce Roth. Sterling and Roth were bankers, Jackson was simply a rich kid who’d inherited his daddy’s money. They were all good guys, though; they liked to have fun. Having fun was what Shane was all about.

  Well, that, and some serious networking with the end goal of boosting his total net worth. Mustn’t forget that.

  Shane rubbed a hand over his face, contemplating what to do next. Check-out was in four hours, but he wanted to hit the road now. They had reservations at the Hilton Garden Inn for the evening. They would take a shuttle to the airport the following morning. Shane wanted to get there before the sun went down. But the way Jackie was dragging her fat ass, they wouldn’t make it out of their room until shortly before check-out time.

  “I’m gonna finish packing and take my suitcase down to the concierge,” Shane said.

  “Why can’t you just wait?” Jackie was in the bathroom, applying her makeup. She’d been applying her makeup for the past hour. Maybe it was a good thing it was her time of the month. If not, she’d be stoned on Oxy and would still be in bed. “I’m almost done, and then I can get my stuff together and we’ll both go.”

  “You’ve still got stuff in the closet,” Shane said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’ve got shit all over the place.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Shane flashed his middle finger in her general direction and stepped away from the bed. He looked around at their suite. Jackie’s clothes spilled out of various drawers; the closet was still filled with blouses, shirts, coats; her shoes were still on the shoe rack in the corner. The three suitcases she’d brought were mostly half empty and lay in the corner of the entryway. He knew if he offered to help her pack, she’d only yell at him. His shit was already packed and ready to go. So what could he do for the next few hours?

  “I’m gonna go down to the lounge and have a drink,” he said.

  “You go do that,” Jackie answered from the bathroom.

  “I will.” Shane grabbed his wallet and the room key card. He paused for a moment. Jackie was still in the bathroom, applying her makeup. She’d probably applied different layers already and then wiped it all off in a pathetic attempt to start over. Whatever. Let her amuse herself. She knew that if they didn’t leave in the next hour, he would make things extremely difficult for her. They’d had this conversation before, during past trips. Those hadn’t ended well for Jackie, either.

  Unlike most hotels, five-star or otherwise, the suites at Bent Creek were built more like small luxury apartments. The entryways into each suite were just that—entryways, with a small alcove for storing empty suitcases. Beyond the entryway was a living room furnished with a sofa, two easy chairs, and a small coffee table. The kitchen and a breakfast nook lay to the right; the breakfast nook was furnished with a table that seated four; the kitchen was stocked with a refrigerator, a four-burner electric stove, the drawers and shelves stocked with an assortment of pots and pans and various utensils for those guests who wanted to prepare meals in the privacy of their suites. Beyond the breakfast nook/kitchen was a doorway that led to the bedroom on the left, and a large bathro
om on the right. Shane looked toward the entryway and said, “I’ve got my cell phone with me. Give me a call when you’re ready to get going.”

  “I will,” Jackie said from the bathroom.

  Shane started making his way to the door when there was a series of sharp raps on it. Visitors.

  Frowning, Shane continued to the door and peered through the peephole. Standing in front of the door was Paul, the head of Security. Shane didn’t know his last name—why should he know the last name of every Tom, Dick, and Harry that worked here? Paul was with another guy, probably his partner. The first thing Shane thought was this had to do with that hot little tart that worked at the restaurant, that waitress, Anna Something. Shane and Jackie had ridden her ass hard the entire time they were here, and he knew the little bitch had complained about them to some of the higher ups at Bent Creek. The girl was a worthless piece of shit. Thought she was better than everybody. You didn’t play that with Shane. It was best if you knew your place in life. You knew your place, you did just fine. If you didn’t, you deserved everything you got. Shane and Jackie had dished it out to Anna, but it was well deserved. It pissed him off that the little bitch would complain to her superiors. In past years, Shane had gotten more than a few wait staff and maids fired for that.

  Shane paused at the door, his mind racing. Bent Creek hadn’t fired Anna, but he knew they’d come close. The only other reason he could think of why Paul would be up here was the ruckus he’d helped cause last night at the lounge. Was Security here to escort he and Jackie out? They fucking better well not be. Putting on his best smile, Shane opened the door. “Hey there,” he said, taking a slight step into the hall. “I was just heading out.”

  Paul and the other guy took a step forward, forcing Shane back and he realized there were actually four security guys here—the other two had been standing out of range of the peephole. Before Shane knew it, one of the other security guys was on him. He drove his fist into Shane’s mid-section, doubling him over. Shane felt the breath whoosh out of him and he crumpled to the floor, curled up in pain. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t say anything, even as Paul hoisted him to his feet and his partner applied a vice-like pressure to his shoulder, and then he was out like a light.

  * * *

  Brian Gaiman had circled around the Bent Creek grounds and was standing well within the shadows, watching the east end of the employee suites, wondering if he should risk sneaking back onto the property in an attempt to find Carmen.

  Since escaping the north end of the property, Brian’s first instinct had been to get as far away from his former prison as quickly as possible. He’d run deep into the woods, not knowing where he was going, totally off course, his internal compass completely turned around. He’d been panicked, and he’d had to force himself to stop and survey his surroundings, try to get a sense of where he was. All he knew was that he was in the woods. He still had no idea he’d been held on Bent Creek grounds—he was operating on the assumption he’d been taken off the property and was being held somewhere else. With that in mind, he was sure there was a road somewhere, even a path that led to his former prison. He had to find it.

  This had led Brian to head back through the woods. He had to get a better look at the building he was held captive in. He made his way through the woods slowly, aware of every sound, the chirps of the birds fluttering through the trees, the soft crunch of leaves and twigs as he stepped through the lush forest. As he drew closer to the edge of the woods, he became more cautious. He peered through the dense foliage, getting a better glimpse of the buildings, and he watched it silently for a while to make sure nobody was there. There was no sign of activity, so he drew closer until he was about twenty feet from the edge of the forest. He found a large moss-covered tree and darted behind it. Only then did he take a good look at the building he’d just escaped from.

  From this angle he had a good view of the building and the surrounding grounds. What he saw shocked him.

  He recognized it instantly. It was the north-east corner of the Bent Creek Country club grounds.

  Brian Gaiman watched the area with bated breath, his mind racing. He’d been abducted on the opposite end of the grounds, near the employee quarters. Whoever had taken him had then driven him six miles around the circumference of the property, ushered him in that building, tied him up and gagged him, then thrown him into that empty freezer, next to a running freezer with dismembered human remains.

  What the fuck is going on here? Brian thought. He had no idea what purpose this building served. He’d seen it before; it stood apart from the main section of the country club, which was where the restaurant and one of the bars was located. Brian had watched the area for thirty minutes but nobody showed up, not even a staff employee performing some maintenance duty. After a while, Brian eased back into the woods and thought about what to do next.

  He had to get out of here. That was paramount. But he also had to find Carmen and warn her. He’d only gotten a glimpse of the bodies in that freezer, and he hoped Carmen wasn’t among those that lay butchered like slabs of flank steak. If she was alive, he had to find her and get her out of here.

  The thought of the human bodies in that freezer made him wonder whose remains they were. He’d recognized one of them—that fat office worker guy. But the others? He was pretty certain there had been more than one set of human remains in there. Was there a serial killer operating on Bent Creek grounds? If so, who? It had to be a fellow employee. Brian wondered if it was somebody from the kitchen crew. There were two sets of crew that manned the kitchens; Chef Munchel oversaw both, one which catered exclusively to the guests, the other which was the employee bar-and-grill on the south-east corner of the grounds, almost the opposite direction of where Brian had been imprisoned. The employee bar-and-grill was manned by a guy named John Lansdale, a pretty good cook who would grill a mean steak. Brian had been in both Lansdale’s and Munchel’s kitchens plenty of times to perform various maintenance duties and hadn’t seen anything weird or out of the way in either man. Both kitchens contained their own freezers in their respective storage areas, and the area Brian had escaped from definitely wasn’t either of them. The room with the two freezers was contained in a small building catty-corner from the main structure. When Brian had first started, he was told by Paul Westcott that he did not have to concern himself with maintenance duties in that building, so Brian hadn’t given it much thought. When he’d escaped, he realized the door had been locked from the outside. That told Brian that a staff member was responsible.

  Brian’s first thought was that it was Wayne Sanders. He’d met the Board Director half a dozen times, and the man gave him the creeps. While he was always dressed in a crisp, stylishly cut suit, he had all the grace of a stalking praying mantis. Wayne wore wireless glasses that perched on his beak of a nose, and his bald pate gave off a shiny veneer. His finely chiseled features gave him the impression of something sinister. If Brian was a casting director for movies, he’d have cast Wayne as Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs. He had that aura about him; highly intelligent, calm, a man that commanded respect, one who was a leader. But beneath that there was something dangerous.

  Okay, Wayne is pretty creepy, Brian thought. But let’s not get sidetracked. Your first point of business is to find out where Carmen is and, if she’s here, get her and yourself the fuck out of this place. Worry about Wayne later.

  With that mission in mind, and with his sense of location now established, he set off to traverse the perimeter of the country club to access the employee living quarters.

  And now he was here, trying to come up with a good game plan.

  Brian had kept well within the shadows of the woods on his journey to the south end of the property. He’d noticed the shuttle bus ferrying people down the long, winding drive toward the front gate, more so than usual. That meant today was check-out time. He’d been held captive for almost three days.

  Was Carmen still here? Brian liked to think so. Maybe she’
d already left on a shuttle bus with the other employees, worrying sick and wondering what had happened to him. While that was the most likely scenario, Brian had to be sure. His maintenance partner, Charlie Thompson, would still be on the grounds. Charlie had worked the private event last year and was pretty sure he was going to work it again. If so, Charlie would be in his room, pounding back some brews and watching TV. Charlie probably thought he’d either skipped out or had been let go. If Brian could sneak onto the grounds, get into the employee wing and find Charlie in his room, he’d ask if Carmen was still on the grounds. Maybe Charlie would help him. Surely he’d wonder what had happened to him.

  With that thought in mind, he crept toward the outer perimeter of the woods. He scanned the buildings and noted the security camera mounted on the roof. He looked around for another one; the closest was about fifty yards to his right, but it was pointed in a different direction.

  Brian watched the camera closest to him and decided that if he jogged about ten yards to the left, he’d be out of the camera’s range. There would be another camera beyond that, at the corner of the property, but it would be trained on the south-east end. With that in mind, he set off in a mad sprint toward the employee wing.

  He reached the building and flattened himself against the wall. Charlie’s room was on this side of the building. Brian’s key card was among the items missing from his pockets, so he couldn’t use it to access the building. He would have to creep along the wall, find the window to Charlie’s room, and knock on it, hoping Charlie was there. If Charlie wasn’t there, maybe he could get the window open somehow and climb in.

  With that plan in mind, Brian began inching his way down the building. He counted down the windows as he went past each one, and when he got to Charlie’s he paused. He mentally tracked down each window to make sure he was at the right one, then he knocked on the pane of glass with his right hand.