“So, I would like to put Zanna—Suzanne Kilkenny on the lawsuit. They are pursuing her for another thirty thousand dollars, and this has to stop.”
“I wish she wasn’t joining us, but I understand why.”
“Now. I’m going to give you the resources.”
“Excuse me?” Addi and Jim both said it.
“I’m going to have my financial manager contact you, and my own personal lawyer, but you will have resources through them. The financial manager will set up a regular salary for you, and give you some latitude on how to run this case.”
“How is that…I mean…” Jim was stuttering and Addi was staring.
“You see, I’m quite wealthy, and I want to help Zanna get beyond this. Her SCT, that is stem cell transplant, has the potential to hold her chronic neutrophilic leukemia from reoccurring or mutating into myeloma for close to twenty years. We’re on year two. And I don’t want to hear from these damn people again. Ever.”
Addi swore, “You paid for her SCT!”
I nodded.
Jim shot to his feet, and I could see earnest tears in his eyes as he held out his hand to me. “Thank you, Madeline. Thank you. These victims deserve their justice, and this will help me so much to get them what they deserve and get that horrible place shut down.”
While Jim and I wrapped up the business of getting Zanna on the lawsuit, and I got him on the phone with my financial advisor, Addi just stared at me.
She was about to unleash a million questions at me. I held my hand up to stave off her questions until we were out of the bank and into the car.
And we almost made it.
“Hello, Madeline.”
I whirled around at that voice.
The world went black.
I was about to walk down to Patrick’s house when there was a bang on my door.
Patrick stood there, looking disheveled.
“Have you seen Addi or Delia?”
“I was just about to head down to you to ask the same thing. They went into town to take care of something this morning.”
“They’re not back.”
“Patrick, she’s not answering!” Jess yelled at him running down the street. She glanced at me. “Neither is Delia.”
“Something is wrong,” Patrick and I chorused.
“Of course, it is,” Jess said. “But—”
She was cut off my her phone ringing with Garrett’s number on the screen. She swiped to answer. “What? Oh. Really? Shit, hold on.” She held phone out to me.
I grabbed it. “Yeah?”
“Quentin just called from the bank. He saw someone come after Delia. He called the police, but by the time they were there, there was no sign of them. He could still smell someone who had Delia’s familial scent.”
I froze. “Holy shit. Jess, do you know Delia’s uncle?”
“Uncle Chuck the Asshole?”
“That’s him.”
“He’s in jail, though, isn’t he?”
“I’d put money on him escaping. Garrett—”
“I’m hanging up to call the sherriff right now. I’ll find out if he’s broken out. I’m going to assume that we’re looking for Charles LaPlage?”
“Something like that. I’ll call Mitchell and get that confirmed. We’re going to head into the city and talk to Quentin and see if we can possibly sniff them out.”
I clicked the phone off and handed it back to Jess. They followed me back into the house where I picked up the landline handset and paged down through recently dialed. Delia had been calling her parents and brother regularly—and we’d had the cell tower go out the week before. She used the house phone.
Both of the numbers were in there, and I picked the one with the Massachusetts area code. I put it on speaker, and it rang only one.
Mitch’s concerned voice came over the phone. “What’s wrong, M.”
“Mitch, it’s Jason. We got a problem.”
“Where’s Madeline?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know. She and Addi went to the bank this morning, apparently, and hasn’t come back. The manager said that he though he saw the two of them get attacked outside, but he didn’t get out there fast enough to see what happened or where they went.”
“Shit.”
“Your uncle’s name is Charles LaPlage?”
He coughed. “No. It’s Charles Aaron Hoengaard.”
I wrinkled my brow, confused. “But he’s your dad’s brother, isn’t he?”
“We changed our name after… She didn’t tell you the whole story, did she? I keep telling her she can’t play this shit so close to the chest.”
I looked over at Jess who was able to text Garrett the name as fast as Mitch said it.
“She hasn’t said anything, Mitch.” Jess leaned in. “Even I didn’t know LaPlage wasn’t your last name.”
“We were kidnapped by Uncle Chuck one summer. Neither Delia or I knew we were being kidnapped, or that we were being held for ransom. We got bored and tired in Florida and bought tickets to go home. Chuck was pissed because his two little million dollar prizes had just walked away.”
Jesus, this uncle was nothing but trouble.
“Why is he kidnapping her?”
His answer was short. “We’re rich.”
“That’s it?” Patrick asked. “I mean, I’m rich too. Could he be after my money?”
“No,” Mitch said. “He would have taken you. He wants the money and Madeline and I are finally old enough to access to the trusts our parents set up. It’s not the whole thing, but he’s a greedy asshole.”
“Mitchell. How much money?”
“Right now?” He took a deep breath. “About eighty million. He’ll get her to transfer the ownership to him.”
“Excuse me?” I coughed.
“That’s just her personal trust. There’s a larger estate, which is what he really wants. If he has someone with her, he’ll threaten the other person. Mom and Dad will sign it over to get her out.”
I could almost hear him running a hand down his face. “I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but that money means nothing to any of us. None of it means a thing to us if we don’t have family and friends. She will give it all up to save Addi.
“But Chuck…Chuck will kill them both no matter what. And with that money, he’ll disappear. You can’t let him get his hands on that money—he killed his wife and daughter in Florida and he killed a new wife and son in Alaska. He’s probably killed more than that, too.
“You have to stop him. If he gets the money, he kills Madeline and Addison. And gets away with at least six murders, if not more.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. “No wonder you didn’t want her here.”
“Do you need me? I can be there in a few hours.”
I shook my head and realized he was on the phone and couldn’t see that. “No, we’ll be good.”
“Whatever you need, if you need anything, text me and I will get it to you. I don’t care if you need a fucking Sherman tank, I will get it there.”
Jess leaned into the phone. “Mitchell, text me immediately if you feel anything, at all. Any twitch or twinge. You know my number.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Jess said the goodbye, and we ended the call. I looked at the three others in the room with me, and took a deep breath.
“Where do we start?”
My arm was numb.
Worse, my head was pounding like someone was inside with a sledgehammer, trying to get out.
“Don’t move.”
I couldn’t move. But I appreciated the warning. It took me a moment to place the voice over the hum in my head.
“Addi,” I whispered.
“Chuck smashed you in the back of the head with a what I swear was a brick. He tossed you up on his shoulder, and dragged us to a car.”
“Where is he?”
“He pulled over. He drank all morning waiting for us. So he had to piss, as he inelegantly put it. Someone told him we were going to be th
ere, I just haven’t figured out who yet.”
“Surveillance.”
“No.” Addi’s lips were barely moving. “He’s good, Delia. He parked this shit boat in the grocery store lot across the street. Too far from their cameras, too.”
“I hate Uncle Chuck.”
“He’s coming back,” Addi said. “Play unconscious. I’ll bait him into the conversation again. You have to hear what this ass is saying.”
I wasn’t against that. I really felt like just going to sleep, but I had to hear what Uncle Chuck was up to. I knew it wasn’t going to be a damn good thing.
The whole car shook as he climbed in. I could smell the alcohol on him, too, as he let out a rousing belch. I hated this man with all I had to hate him with.
“She awake yet?” He stomped on the gas at the same time he turned the engine over.
“No.” Addi’s voice was laced with emotion, and she let out a few sobs. “What did you do to her? She’s still unconscious.”
“I should have killed her, but I need that money.”
“What money?”
There was a pause and I guess that Chuck looked back at her. “Don’t play stupid, girl. Her money. The money. All that damn green that her and her brother, and that shit bag, cheap ass brother and his whore wife have.”
I was glad to see he hadn’t changed. At all. Dirt bag.
“I’ve known Delia for four years and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Please. They’re filthy fucking stinking rich.”
Now I was going to have to explain everything to my friends.
“How does kidnapping us get you the money? Since she’s unconscious, she can’t sign anything.”
“She’ll wake up eventually. And if she wants me to save your life, she’ll sign it all over. If my stupid fucking brother wants his daughter back, he’ll sign over the money.”
“I don’t understand why you think there’s this much money.” I felt Addi shake her head.
“See? They’re all liars and cheats. All of them. Family is everything, family is the only thing, and not sharing wealth with your family is wrong and cruel.”
I coughed. I couldn’t hold it in. The smell of his alcohol combined with the stench of exhaust just finally got to me.
“Oh, my niece the bitch is waking up, finally.”
I blinked a few times, and tried to get the pounding in my head to settle enough to sit up. Addie helped me to right myself and adjust in the seat.
I looked in the rearview and stared at my uncle Charles Hoengaard.
He looked terrible.
Heavy circles under his watery eyes. Yellow rimming the whites of them, and a sallow color to his skin. Scraggly salt and pepper scruff stood in for the beard he always used to have.
I squinted. “When did you break out of jail?”
“Watch your mouth, girl.”
I tried to rub my head, but found my hands were tied. I brought them both up and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Oh, fuck off, Uncle Chuck.”
“I’ll punch your lights out, you brat.”
“How did you find me? We’ve moved, we changed our names, we had no contact with anyone you would know. Not even the law enforcement that put you where you belong.”
“You really think I didn’t know exactly where you were all this time? You think that there’s no one in prison system to get me information? I was biding my time, trying to come up with a way to get to my miserable ass brother. And then lo and behold, someone slipped in the information that a LaPlage had written a massive check in Juneau.”
The check. For Brandy’s cabin. I wondered why the woman had said she enjoyed working with the LaPlage family again. I figure she was talking about the bank as a whole—but this asshole had someone pose to find out the information. The first check for twenty thousand would have triggered, and the second check would have confirmed it.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
“So what do you want? What do you need to let us go?”
“Your money. All of it. Transferred to my accounts. Or I’ll shoot your little friend here, right through the head.”
“I have no doubt you’ll do that, either.”
“And then your parents can do the same or I’ll kill you.”
“Also, not shocking.”
Addi was staring at me with wide eyes. She mouthed words at me. Are you nuts?
I shrugged. Uncle Chuck was a sociopathic serial killer. There was no reason to take him at anything but his word. There was a reason we changed our name after that summer.
“You gonna sign it over, girl?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Smart.”
The rest of our drive was quiet. I was half thinking about how to hide some of the accounts from him, and half occupied with how to get out of this mess. I honestly didn’t care if I did have to sign it all over—keeping Addi alive was the only option.
We bounced through the south end of the city, and off onto a crappy firebreak that looked like someone had just plowed it through a few weeks before. It eventually led to another road, and that one climbed the mountain there. The cut in the trees had been made to circumvent the road to that point.
This bastard had been planning to kidnap me for a while. He had plans.
He had someone in the bank.
I wanted to swear, loudly. Someone in that bank knew him, and gave him my information. I had a million questions for him, but I kept my mouth shut.
I had to get us out of this. It could be days before anyone figured out we were missing.
The massive piece of shit vehicle that Chuck was driving bounced and crashed over some moguls in the road before pulling to stop in front of dilapidated house.
He tossed the door of the massive, ancient Cadillac open. Where had he gotten this thing? Juneau didn’t seem like the kind of place that would lend itself to the impracticality of what amounted to a pimp-mobile. Especially not one from the early ‘90s.
The seat flipped forward and Chuck grabbed the rope tying my hands together. He hauled me out, unceremoniously tossing me against the car. Addi was trying to climb out, hoping to prevent any damage to herself. The girl could break so easily, literally.
She’d gotten herself up so Chuck’s yank merely helped her out of the car. Addi leaned next to me as Chuck slammed the door and walked to the trunk.
I held my fingers to my lips. I didn’t want to give him any kind of ammunition against us. She seemed to understand.
Closing the trunk, Chuck now had a shot gun and a brown bag. The bag was clearly full of his beer, and the shot gun was pointed at us.
“Move.”
Walking with our hands tied, we headed for the building.
13
Quentin leaned against the side of the building with the rest of us, and pointed up.
“That camera didn’t see him. I just had it fixed two weeks ago, and I’m getting the footage pulled up. It’s all stored off site, so it takes a few minutes. I just wish I had been a half a minute faster extracting myself from the customer.”
I waved him off. “Not your fault. But I don’t scent either one of them on this side of the building.”
“Where else could he have stashed a vehicle?” Jess asked, looking around. She wandered to the edge of the building and I could smell her disappointment. “Oh, shit. There’s a huge grocery store lot over there.”
I trotted over. No matter how many times I was in the city, I always forgot how close together everything was. And sure as shit, there was a huge parking lot for the strip mall that had a grocery store in it.
“So, we canvas.” Garrett, ever the alpha, leaned up from the wall. “We started asking people if they saw anything out of place today. We started asking if anyone in that strip mall has a security camera.”
Patrick nodded, vigorously. He was terrified for Addi, but was doing his best to hide it. “Contact the coyotes. We’re way south and they’re just out of town at Turner Lake.”
“I�
�ll get Dad on that, and the rest of us can split up and start looking.”
“You’re awfully calm, Jason,” Jess said to me quietly as we crossed the street. “Patrick is a mess.”
“You’re calm, too,” I retorted.
She smirked. “I suspect it’s because we both know what kind of bad ass bitch Delia really is. She’s going to do whatever she can to survive.”
I returned her smirk. “Bingo. That woman is no one to be trifled with, and I think that Uncle Chuck is going to regret having taken them.”
“I think you’re right.” Jess elbowed me. “We just need to find her. And I don’t know the first thing about Uncle Chuck.”
“You’ve known her for how long?”
“Four years. Almost five. As open as she is as a person, she’s closed-mouthed about a lot of other stuff. Like where her family’s money came from. I always thought she was a trust fund baby, but if Chuck doesn’t have any money…”
Those were my questions too. I had seen her write out a fifty-two thousand dollar check. That wasn’t pocket change. It also wasn’t time to really think about that stuff.
“We need to think like a criminal,” I said, as the four of us walked down the sidewalk.
“Juneau is like one of the worst places to commit a crime,” Garrett said. “There are no highways out, what few roads there are dead-end in the trees halfway up a hill. If you can find a track that takes you out, you need to have an off-road vehicle.”
Patrick covered another angle. “The water cuts off any of those escape routes, and since we’re in high tourist season, the coast guard and harbor patrol are all over the waterways.”
“And flying is tracked by the FAA, even irregular flights with last minute departures,” I concluded.
“What about the cruise ships?” Jess asked.
I shook my head. “Controlled ingress and egress. You have to have a card on and off and they check you against a picture that you have taken right away when you get on. Even I have an ID card on file with them in case I need to get on the ship for some reason. You can’t walk on and off those.”
“Not even the cargo?” Jess was amazed.
“That’s even more controlled.”
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