Shades of Truth

by Sandra Orchard

  “Can you describe her?” Ethan asked, knowing the answer. Brown hair, ponytail, green eyes, five-six. Kim. He could hardly breathe around the lump in his throat.

  Using his pocketknife, he sliced through the binds on the man’s wrists and ankles. “How long ago?” The thought of Kim in danger felt like a bullet, point-blank to the center of his chest.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Ethan whipped out a notepad and pen. “I need a full description of your assailant and the van he stole.” With a twenty-minute head start, Derk could have Kim out of the region by now, or holed up who knew where.

  “I didn’t see his face, but the van’s a white cargo. School-board logo on the side. License plate WODE 210.”

  Ethan pulled out his phone and relayed the information to the chief. “We can’t wait on wiretaps now. You’re gonna have to haul Lieutenant Adams in. Find out what he knows. Put Darryl on.”

  “I told you this would happen,” Darryl ranted into the phone. “This is all your fault.”

  “You listen to me,” Ethan said. “If you want me to find your sister alive, I need to know everything you know about this guy.”

  “Like I told you before, all I know is he did twenty-five years for murder. Got out three years ago. Name was Derk Vance.”

  Was being the operative word. A quick search had turned up nothing on the name—no car, no home, no credit cards or bank accounts. “So he’d be around fifty?”

  “Mom figured closer to sixty.”

  “Okay. What else? Did you hear any background noise that might give us a clue where he called you from? Think. Kim’s life could depend on it.” As if to punctuate his words, sirens whirred in the distance.

  “I saw a guy at the hospital one time that—”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Nothing like the news photos from the trial, but—”

  “What did he look like, Darryl?”

  “Short gray hair. Muscular build. My height. Expensive suit.”

  Sounded like the guy Kim suspected.

  “Ethan,” the chief interrupted. “I just got word the van’s been located. It was abandoned ten kilometers east of town on Highway 3.”

  “He could be running for the border. Alert the highway patrol and the border guards.”

  “Already done.”

  Ethan’s adrenaline surged. If Derk tried to cross the border with Kim, they had a fighting chance of stopping him. “Okay, while your men comb this place for evidence, I’m going to lean on that kid Zane you arrested for vandalizing Kim’s car.”

  “He made bail.” The chief relayed the kid’s address.

  “Okay, call me as soon as you’ve got Adams and his boy.”

  “You should know,” the chief said, his voice grim. “There were signs of a struggle in the van and blood on the road outside the rear door.”

  Ethan steeled himself against the image that rose in his mind. He swallowed hard. He didn’t need to know Kim was bleeding to know they were running out of time.

  Slowly, Kim became conscious of movement, but she couldn’t seem to pry open her eyes. An acrid smell seeped into her awareness. She tried to talk, but her tongue felt sluggish and too big in her dry mouth. The chair she was in bump-bumped, making her head loll forward and back and, try as she might, she couldn’t seem to tell her brain to hold her head steady.

  A bell dinged, and through slitted eyes she made out the blink of a circle of light. Her stomach jumped. How did she get here? And where was here? She tried to lift her hand, but a tight band gripped her wrist to the chair’s armrest. Something soft brushed over her skin. Then hands roughly grazed her sides as if tucking a blanket around her.

  “Where—” The word burned her throat, but only a moan escaped.

  “You’re waking up just in time,” a harsh, vaguely familiar voice said.

  What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she wake up?

  Someone yanked her ponytail and her head snapped back against the seat. Her eyes popped open.

  An older gentleman in a suit and tie smiled down at her, only his smile wasn’t at all pleasant.

  Her eyelids felt so heavy, her mind hazy. They seemed to be in a hospital elevator. And she was in a wheelchair. Good, because her head, her shoulder, every muscle in her body throbbed.

  Suddenly, the events of the morning crashed through her consciousness. Derk! The scream surged up her throat, but no sound came out. Her scalp burned as her hair went taut. She felt as if, at any moment, it would be torn out by the roots.

  “The drug paralyzes the vocal cords, among other things,” he said with a chuckle. “We wouldn’t want you screaming, now, would we?”

  Terror welled inside her until its sheer volume should’ve caused it to burst from her mouth. But only the barest whimper reached her ears.

  The elevator doors swished open, and Derk pushed her into a hallway. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” he said, his voice vibrating with feverish zeal. “I know I will.”

  Dimly, Kim recognized the posters on the walls. Posters she’d walked past every day for the past few weeks. And a new terror gripped her.

  They were going to Dad’s hospital room. Was Derk so demented that he’d force her father to watch him kill her?

  She tried to swing her head to attract someone’s attention, but he clutched her hair too tightly. Voices drifted from the nurse’s station at the other end of the hall, but Derk didn’t have to pass the desk to reach Dad’s room. Kim strained against the bindings on her arms and legs, but they were so tight her fingers had started to go numb. Or was that from the drug, too?

  Derk inched his fingers deeper into her hair, pulling her gaze to his. “Sit still like a good girl,” he cooed, his lips twisting into a sadistic sneer. He pushed the wheelchair into Dad’s room and shut the door behind them.

  Derk positioned her at the end of the bed and then cranked up the other end.

  Oh, no, did he intend to kill Dad, too? Crazed with fear, she fought all the harder against her restraints.

  Awakened by the bed’s movement, Dad struggled to throw off the grip of sleep, and there was nothing she could do to save him. Or herself.

  Like a faded movie, dreams of getting married and holding her first child flickered through her mind. Dreams that, since Nate’s betrayal, she’d pretended weren’t important. Dreams that she’d let flit momentarily through her heart after Ethan’s kiss, only to bury them all the deeper after learning why he was really here.

  Except now all she could remember were the dozens of ways he’d tried to protect her. And more than anything she wished she’d told him she loved him.

  Derk yanked open the blinds.

  The light stabbed Kim’s eyes, sending shockwaves through her already-pounding head.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Derk singsonged. “It’s time to say goodbye.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Ethan clenched his fingers into a fist and pounded on Zane’s door a third time. “Open up. Police.” What was the judge thinking, granting this punk bail? Any parentless eighteen-year-old who could raise that kind of cash had to be selling drugs.

  The inside door jerked open. Zane peered out the screen door, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “What’s going on?”

  Ethan pushed his way into the house. “Where’d your boss take Kim Corbett?”

  Zane’s gaze drilled into him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t work for nobody.”

  “Why else would you back off when he ordered you to drop the purse you already had in your grubby fist?” Ethan pulled a pair of cuffs from his back pocket. “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way.”

  Zane’s hands shot up. “Whoa, man. I’m tellin’ ya, you’ve got the wrong guy.” His ga
ze shot sideways as if he intended to bolt.

  Ethan grabbed Zane by the arm and twisted it behind his back. “Yeah? Mind telling me what you were doing in his black SUV? We know he paid you to threaten Kim Corbett.”

  “You mean the dude in the suit? He paid me to not mess with her. Said he had other plans for her. Gave me fifty bucks.”

  Ethan’s gut wrenched. “What plans?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  Ethan snapped on a cuff. “No?”

  “Hey. There’s no law against taking money to leave someone alone.”

  “I’m not taking you in for taking his money. I’m taking you in for conspiracy to kidnap, and if we don’t find Kim alive, accessory to murder.”

  “What?” Zane twisted against Ethan’s hold. “I don’t know nothin’ about a kidnapping.”

  Ethan snapped on the other cuff, turned Zane around, grabbed the collar of his shirt and got into his face. “Something tells me the judge won’t see it that way.”

  “I’m tellin’ you. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Then tell me where I can find the right guy.”

  “Get real. A dude like that’s not gonna tell a guy like me where he lives.”

  Frustration ripped through Ethan’s chest. Every second lost could be Kim’s last. He should’ve gone for Kim the minute Darryl told him about Derk’s threats. He should’ve listened to her in the first place and never arrested her brother. What good had it done him?

  None. None at all.

  He tightened his grip on the kid’s shirt, letting his stop-at-nothing resolve blaze from his eyes. “Tell me what you do know.”

  The kid paled. “He s-said…” Zane stuttered and looked away.

  “What?” Ethan gave him a shake, forcing his mind to stay focused on the kid and not imagine what Derk could be doing to Kim. “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to teach her old man a lesson.”

  The hospital.

  Ethan unsnapped the kid’s cuffs and raced from the house, praying he wasn’t too late.

  Kim strained against the duct tape clamping her to the wheelchair as Derk zip-tied Dad’s wrists to the bed rails.

  Dad was groggy from being awakened from a medicated sleep and didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong.

  Derk cuffed him across the cheek, and tears sprang to Kim’s eyes. “I said wake up.” Derk shoved Kim’s wheelchair up to the bed. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to your precious daughter?”

  Dad’s eyes fluttered once, twice, and then finally stayed open. He looked about in confusion, but when his gaze settled on hers, a warm smile curved his lips. “Kimmy,” he whispered.

  Kim tried to smile, but the drug slackening her muscles made it feel like a grotesque imitation of the real thing. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she couldn’t even raise her hand to wipe them away.

  Dad seemed to have a peculiar kind of tunnel vision that only saw her in the room. “Kim, what’s wrong?”

  She tried to answer, but managed nothing more than an indecipherable grunt.

  “I’m afraid she can’t talk right now,” Derk gloated. He drew out a long, lethal-looking knife. Sunlight glinted off the blade. Slowly, as if savoring the way she froze at his touch, he stroked the blade’s tip across her bottom lip. “But if you’d prefer to hear her screams, that can be arranged.”

  Dad lurched forward, only to be ricocheted back by the pull of his tied arms. His breath came in short gasps, and Kim guessed his physical pain was as acute as his emotional. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m hurt that you don’t remember me, old pal. Don’t you remember my visits?”

  As if Derk had pulled a plug, the panicked rage drained from Dad’s face. The emotion that replaced it looked eerily familiar. She’d seen it in Ethan’s eyes. Guilt.

  “Ah, so you do remember me, I see. As for what I want—” Derk stroked his fingers through Kim’s hair, and when she jerked away, he laughed maliciously. “I want payback.”

  Dad’s fingers groped for the call bell. “I’m sorry I left you. I’ll…I’ll make it up to you. Please, just don’t hurt my family.”

  A wicked gleam lit Derk’s eyes. “Should you tell him, or shall I?” he said to Kim, and then laughed at his sick joke when her screaming retort dribbled out as a pathetic whimper.

  “Right, I’d better tell him.” His beady eyes fixed on Dad. “Your offer is too little too late, old pal. I chose to exact my pound of flesh another way.”

  Derk clamped his hand on her head.

  Kim’s breath caught. She shrank back, her gaze riveted on the knife. He was going to cut her. Here. Now. In front of Dad. No, Lord, please protect me.

  Derk tilted her head sideways and caressed the blade down her cheek and throat.

  Blinding fear rushed over her.

  His lips curved wickedly. “I figured it’s only fair that you should experience what I felt—despised and betrayed by those closest to you.”

  “Please,” Dad pleaded. His fingers caught the cord of the call bell and inched the button toward his hand.

  Kim held her breath, terrified that Derk would notice, too.

  “Don’t make Kim pay for my mistake,” Dad went on.

  Derk ripped the cord from Dad’s hand and yanked the other end from the wall. “Haven’t you read your Bible, preacher boy? Children pay for the sins of their fathers.” Derk pressed the tip of his knife into Kim’s cheek.

  A scream of pain surged up her throat.

  “Stop,” Dad cried out. “What do you want from me?”

  “You’re not listening. I…want…you…to…suffer. You sit in your ivory tower and pretend you’re this perfect person. But tell me, what kind of person abandons their friend in his hour of need?”

  Kim’s thoughts veered to Ethan. By now, he must know Derk had kidnapped her. He’d torture himself for not preventing it. If she didn’t survive, he’d never forgive himself. Never.

  And it was all her fault.

  Dad’s face turned even more ashen as Derk delighted in detailing how he’d corrupted Darryl into recruiting drug pushers.

  His anguish tore at her heart until she didn’t think she could hurt any worse. She’d utterly failed him. She wished she’d never been born.

  “Don’t ever think that,” Dad said fiercely.

  Kim’s gaze snapped to his. Was he talking to her or Derk?

  Tears clung to her father’s eyelashes. As if he’d read her mind, he whispered, “Kimmy,” and she felt herself enfolded in the warmth of his love. “God always has a plan.” Dad’s eyes slipped shut. His body stilled.

  No!

  Ethan raced up the stairs two at a time to the hospital’s fourth floor. The ward was in chaos. Doctors and nurses rushed past and disappeared into room twelve.

  Kim’s father’s room.

  Ethan’s pulse roared in his ears as he skidded to a stop outside the door.

  “Time of death, six forty-five,” the doctor said solemnly.

  A moan ripped from Ethan’s throat.

  A nurse lifted the blanket over Mr. Corbett’s face. “Look at this, doctor. His hands have been tied to the bed rails.”

  Ethan plowed into the room, flashing his badge. “Did anyone see a man and woman leave this room?”

  “Not exactly,” one of the nurses spoke up. “But I noticed a well-dressed gentleman pushing a woman in a wheelchair toward the elevator.”

  Ethan raced for the stairwell, shouting over his shoulder that they were not to touch the body until an evidence team cleared the room. Hurtling down the stairs, he called the chief and updated him on the situation.

  “We haven’t been able to locate Adams,” the chief said. “His wife cla
ims he left for the gym at five-thirty. His shift started ten minutes ago, so if he doesn’t show soon, we’ll have to assume he knows we’re on to him.”

  “And that he’s listening to the police scanner to help Derk stay one step ahead of us,” Ethan added. By the time he hit the exit, his lungs were burning. He scanned the parking lot for a black SUV—something he should’ve done when he arrived.

  Metal clanking on pavement sounded to his right. An overturned wheelchair with duct tape clinging to its armrests.

  Drawing his weapon, Ethan ran toward it.

  In the distance, sirens screamed. Then sounds of a struggle erupted behind the Dumpsters. A man cursed vilely.

  His heart in his throat, Ethan stepped into view.

  A man fitting Derk’s description drove a blood-tipped knife straight for Kim’s head.

  Ethan trained his gun on the guy’s back. “Drop the knife.”

  At the same time, Kim grabbed Derk’s arm with both hands, locked her elbows and braced herself against the side of the SUV. But her experience with physical restraints was no match for a 240-pound man.

  Ethan closed the distance, his gun leveled on Derk’s back, looking for a shot that wouldn’t go clear through into Kim.

  Derk drove the knife toward the SUV, wrenching Kim’s arms over her head. He scooped his free arm around her waist and pulled her away from the vehicle. In an instant, he was behind her, shielded by her body and dangerously close to breaking her hold.

  Kim’s arms shook viciously under the strain. Her eyes reached out to Ethan, screaming for him to do something. Any second her elbows would snap and the downward force of Derk’s arm would drive the knife into her back.

  Rage exploded inside him. He charged toward them and speared the muzzle of his gun into the base of Derk’s throat. “I said, drop the knife.”

  Derk’s hand immediately opened. The knife glanced off Kim’s shoulder and fell harmlessly to the ground.

  Kim released her grip on Derk’s arm and sprang away from him.