“Okay, that’s settled,” said Carla Ryan-Belle, who was chairing the meeting. “It sounds like everybody should be out of the reach of the media and the paparazzi.”
Nedra had called Carla on their return home with the girls. A few hours later her best friend was on the Reasoner’s doorstep with her husband, Jacob, and their twins.
Carla owned a Public Relations agency in Berkeley and was skilled at handling the media. The families had decided that she would serve as their contact and spokesperson.
As Dana sat among the others, she was buoyed by the feeling of euphoria that surrounded her. Like everyone else, she couldn’t stop smiling.
Before the meeting began, Nedra’s mother had offered a rousing prayer of thanks for the safe return of the girls. She had cited it as a miracle and living proof of the power of prayer.
Dana couldn’t disagree. Although she didn’t attend church on a regular basis, her faith in the Almighty was strong. She was certain that there had been some kind of divine intervention.
Dana was so glad to be in Carmel with her family. Agent Conway had invited her to join him on his flight to the Peninsula to assess the situation. She had asked James if he wanted to accompany them.
“You were headed to northern California anyway,” she reminded him.
He took her up on her offer, but declined to meet her family in person.
“I’ve got too much to do,” had been his excuse.
The plane had dropped him off in San Francisco before taking her to the Monterey Peninsula. Dana and he had hugged goodbye at the airport and had exchanged contact numbers with promises to keep in touch. They weren’t sure if that would happen, but they had been through a lot together in a short time.
By the time that Dana arrived at the Reasoner home, the girls had been debriefed and were asleep in Gillian’s room She had rushed upstairs to see them. Nia had abandoned the bedroom in which she had been placed and had joined Gillian in her bed where she was snuggled up beside her cousin. Tears streamed down Dana’s face at the sight of the girls lying safe and content.
Returning downstairs where everyone was assembled, she was filled in on the details of the girls’ escape. Gillian emerged as the heroine.
“The FBI said that they thought it hadn’t been long between the time they arrived and the time the kidnappers left,” Darnell informed her. “Gillian had covered the fact that she and Nia had escaped so well that it probably took them a while to discover that they were gone.”
“That’s my baby!” Sin had proudly bellowed.
“And my niece!” Darnell added. She and Sin gave each other a high five.
Every person in the room was elated. One of their own had delivered a blow to crime and everyone wanted to tell the story of their little she-ro.
“You should have seen her, Dana!” Nedra’s eyes were glowing with happiness. “When we picked them up Gillian was so mad that she wanted to go to the house with the FBI, and I quote…”
“Kick some butt!” The two sets of parents said simultaneously. The room filled with laughter.
“We had to drag her away from there,” said Sin. His eyes met his wife’s eyes. Their transition from the deepest despair to this absolute high in such a short time was astonishing.
Dana’s heart was full as she got caught up in the euphoria. “So she knew exactly where the kidnap house was located?”
“Would you believe that the little rascal left a trail of rocks and sticks along the way which lead right back to the house?” It was Thad’s turn to brag about his niece.
“The officers said that nobody would have really noticed them if she hadn’t used them as markers.” Like everyone else in the room Sin was in awe of his daughter’s ingenuity. “On top of that she had written a description of the house for the authorities.”
Dana was impressed. “The kid’s a genius.”
“And we’re never going to hear the end of it,” Colin Reasoner piped in.
“She’ll be bragging about this for years.” Trevor groaned.
Although both of the brothers’ comments were said in jest, everyone present knew that there was truth behind the words. Modesty was not one of Gillian’s strong points.
Bev nodded. “She’s a Stillwaters, that’s for sure,”
There were no denials. They were from a family that instilled tenacity in their children. Gillian had learned her lesson well.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent planning media strategy and the families’ exodus to the Stillwaters homestead where they could be assured of privacy. Dana planned to go with them.
“We’ve got to increase security around here, especially since the kidnappers are still out there,” Sin insisted.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Dana and Ray exchanged a look. It was she who put their thoughts into words.
“I know exactly who we can get to do just that.”
****
When the cell phone on the night stand rang, James was asleep. He was so exhausted that he could hardly raise his head off of the pillow. He had arrived at his hotel room, showered and gone straight to bed. Although he had been asleep for hours, it still didn’t feel like it had been long enough.
Groping for the intrusive instrument, he hoped it wasn’t a work emergency.
“Hello?” His voice was graveled from exhaustion.
“Hi, James, I need you.”
Recognizing Dana’s voice he sat straight up. “Tell me when and where.”
CHAPTER 9
It was the muffled voices that woke him up. Groggy, the man who had registered at the L.A. hotel as Thomas Hardman, let the sound settle into his consciousness. He hoped that the voices would go away, but they grew louder. He opened his sleep laden eyes and traced the source of the annoyance to the door that stood as a barrier between his room and the one next to his.
When he checked into this mid-priced hotel, he did so to avoid the possibility of bumping into anyone who might have known him in the past. The circles in which he used to socialize wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this. It wasn’t a fleabag, but it wasn’t luxurious either. He had figured it would be filled with wide-eyed tourists excited about being in Los Angeles, and he planned on blending in as one of them.
Right now it sounded as though two of those tourists were next door arguing. From the sound of it they were right against the door that separated the rooms because their voices were no longer muffled. They were loud and clear. He could hear every word. Great! To top it off the boisterous duo were staying in a corner room which meant that he would be the only recipient of their noisy outrage.
“Man! We gotta get outta this town!” Voice #1 declared.
“I told you to calm down,” Voice #2 stated loudly. “Nobody knows who we are. We have a plan and we’re going to stick to it.”
“A plan that’s going to get us caught!” Voice #1 sounded desperate.
Caught? Hardman lifted up on his elbows. It sounded as though he had ended up in a hotel containing more than tourists.
“Caught with what?” Voice #2 sounded incredulous. “We didn’t go to the drop site…”
Drop site? What were they talking about? Drugs?
“Because those damn kids got away!” voice #1 shrilled angrily.
“You’re right about that,” growled Voice #2. “We should have killed them both!”
Huh? It didn’t sound like drugs. Fluffing his pillow behind his back, Hardman sat up.
“Man you’re talking crazy!” Voice #1 screamed.
“No, I’m not crazy,” Voice #2 answered with deadly calm.
“That would have been a major mistake.” Voice #1 sounded certain. “Right now, we’re home free. We don’t have any money that anybody can trace...”
“You got that right!” Voice #2 spat bitterly. “And since there’s no evidence against us and nobody knows who we are, we’ll stick to the plan . Go on back to work as if nothing happened and keep your mouth shut.”
Voice #1 uttere
d an expletive and then shrilled, “Let me go! You ain’t runnin’ nothin’ now. I’m outta here!”
There was a loud thump against the wall that separated his room from their room. Hardman assumed that one of the men threw the other one against it. Whatever was said next was muffled. He could only imagine that Voice #2 was issuing Voice #1 a threat of some kind. He’d witnessed the scenario many times. He had even taken part in a few of them. His only concern was that if something illegal had occurred involving these two jokers the authorities might show up and he didn’t need that. Maybe he had picked the wrong place to stay after all.
Yawning widely, he stretched and scooted down on the bed. His entire body felt like lead. Exhaustion had claimed him earlier and he had fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Glancing at the clock by his bedside he wondered if the time could be right. If it was, he had been asleep nearly 24 hours.
Answering the call of Mother Nature, he stumbled into the bathroom, took a shower, and brushed his teeth. When he returned to the bedroom it was quiet next door. The issue between the two men must have been settled or maybe they had decided to check out. He hoped it was the latter.
While he was ironing his clothes, he decided to turn on the TV. The news was on. A voice drifted from the set.
“This is to the people who had the audacity to touch our child.”
Hardman’s head snapped up. The voice sounded familiar. He looked at the television screen. The eyes of Darnell Cameron stared back at him.
“The FBI is hot on your trail, but they should be the least of your worries.”
He stilled. What was going on? From the look on Darnell’s face there was no doubt that she was angry.
“If they don’t find you, rest assured that my husband and I will.”
Abandoning his ironing, he perched on the end of the bed directly in front of the TV screen, giving it his undivided attention. The camera was focused on a tight shot of the famous singer as she looked into the camera.
“The federal government might run out of time and money to put into tracking you down, but we won’t. We’ve got more than enough of both to hire the best detectives in the world to find you, and we will. So my advice is for you is to turn yourself in to the authorities, because believe me, you will fare much better with them. If you choose not to, I swear to you that as long as you walk this earth we will have people out there tracking you down. We will track you into hell if we have to and we will find you.” Her voice deepened. “That’s a promise.”
He leaned closer. What was this about? The camera returned to the two news anchors.
“That was a statement from superstars Darnell Cameron and Thad Stewart. The message is addressed to the person or persons who days ago kidnapped their five year old daughter, Nia, and her eleven year old cousin, Gillian Reasoner.”
“What?” Hardman leaped to his feet.
“The girls escaped from their captors and the hunt for their abductors has been on ever since.”
His heart pounded in his ears as he refocused his attention. It seemed as though he had slept through the news story of the year. Flipping from station to station, he found every channel inundated with the details of the abduction and the escape.
There were pictures of the abandoned farm house in which the little girls had been kept. Each station gave a tour of the house. They showed the tiny room in which the children had been kept and the bathroom window from which they had escaped, re-enacting every moment. They retraced the trail on which Gillian Reasoner had left clues which led the FBI to the kidnap house.
The family that had helped the girls was paraded before the cameras. The husband and wife were hailed as heroes, and they would be presented with a substantial financial reward by the girls’ grateful parents.
Between commercials, he hurried down to the lobby to purchase a newspaper hoping that it might contain even more details about the crime. They were sold out.
When he returned upstairs a news anchor was reporting that the Stewarts and the Reasoners had gone into seclusion. Their spokesperson had informed the media that no photos of the girls would be released and that there would be no interviews with them or with family members. Hardman was disappointed.
As evening descended, he ordered his meal from room service, not daring to move from his spot in front of the television, fearing he would miss something. Later that evening he ventured out to find a newsstand and purchased a copy of every publication containing the kidnap story.
Going through them meticulously, he found plenty of old pictures of Darnell and Thad, but there was only one faint photo of Sinclair Reasoner that he could find. It offered a grainy glimpse of his profile as he was entering a building. It seemed that there had been some sort of scandal years ago involving him and some drug cartel. At the time, his lover had been the pastor of a church in Oakland, who was also a noted anti-drug activist. She was now his wife.
Hardman raised an eyebrow at that bit of information as he studied a picture of Nedra Davis Reasoner posing regally in her religious garb. She was classy and she was a beauty. This Sinclair guy had good taste. The couple had three adopted children. The little girl who was abducted was the youngest.
There were no pictures of the Reasoner children or of Nia Cameron-Stewart in any of the publications. Hardman swallowed his disappointment.
He was engrossed in reading about the abduction when he heard the door to the room next door open and close. There was the muffled sound of voices, but they were more subdued this time.
He sighed in disgust. Hopefully, it wasn’t the quarrelsome duo. If he was lucky new occupants were in the room. If not, he hoped the battling bozos had settled their dispute so that he could get some rest. It wasn’t until he was getting ready to turn the newspaper page that he remembered what their heated discussion had been about.
****
“The crowd outside of the gate is growing,” James reported to Dana as he patrolled the perimeter of the Reasoner property located high above the Pacific Ocean. “It’s wild out there.”
It had been forty-eight hours since the story of the kidnapping had reached the media, and the frenzy was on. Dana’s brother- in-law, Ray, had volunteered to stay behind to help in any way that he could while James secured the homes of both families.
Ray was staying at the Cameron-Stewart home. He had invited James to set up his temporary quarters there as well.
As a couple, Darnell and Thad shunned the bright lights of Hollywood and lived a relatively quiet life on the Monterey Peninsula in the picturesque town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. The road that led to the cul de sac on which they lived was obscured by a grove of trees and nearly undetectable to anyone unfamiliar with the area. The high gate at the street’s entrance served as a barrier to any invasion of privacy or further advancement. Yet in the wake of the publicity that followed the abduction, the media and paparazzi had found the superstars’ Shangri-La. The invaders were inventing all kinds of creative ways to break through the gate’s protective barrier.
James had been both pleased and surprised when his security company had been hired to protect the Stewart and Reasoner properties. He had pulled his most trusted personnel from their L.A. office to assist in the effort, but early indications were that he might have to fly in additional personnel from New York.
“It’s a free for all out here. The security company that patrols the neighborhood has their hands full outside the gate,” he told Dana. “My people are stationed discretely inside the cul de sac.”
What he didn’t tell her was that every employee of the security company, that presently patrolled the cul de sac, was being investigated by the FBI to see if any of them might have been involved in the kidnapping. Keeping that company’s personnel outside of the gates was part of a strategic plan. The authorities didn’t want to arouse suspicion among the employees. His own company’s personnel had already been investigated and cleared by the FBI.
“Did you get Sin and Nedra’s house secured yet?” Dan
a wanted to know.
She was referring to the motion lights that James had recommended be installed on the Reasoner property. While he had found the Stewart property secure with its high, gated wall and state of the art monitoring system, the Reasoner house proved more accessible. Only the bluff high above the sea at the back of the house where he now stood offered an obstacle for potential trespassers. The rest of the property was vulnerable.
“It is being secured as we speak,” James told her. “The only problem that we have now is those blasted news helicopters flying overhead.” He looked up in time to see yet another one headed his way. He groaned into the receiver, “Speaking of the devil.”
As he spoke, James started walking toward the house. He had wanted to enjoy the spectacular view ocean view, but that wasn’t to be. While the trees lining the grounds kept the copters from landing, the bold invaders did get close enough to make a lot of noise. Dana could hear the racket on her end of the phone line.
“And how is Ray holding up?” There was a hint of amusement in her inquiry. Dana knew that despite having been married for a couple of years, Bev and Ray still acted like amorous newlyweds. They hated being away from each other. Her sister, who was with the rest of the family in Stillwaters, was already complaining about missing him. She wondered if Ray was doing the same in Carmel. From the chuckle on the other end, she guessed the answer.
“If you mean is he bugging me about getting this over with so that he can get back to Bev, then he’s not holding up very well. As a matter of fact, if he doesn’t stop whining I’m going to strangle him.”
Dana laughed. She really liked this man.
As James walked to the front of the Reasoner house and headed down the long driveway, he thought the same about Dana. This sophisticated, impeccably dressed woman with the superstar relatives was anything but haughty. During the short time that they had spent together in her office, he had found her to be quite down to earth. After they parted, he wasn’t sure that he would hear from her again, but he was certainly glad that he had.
Strangers Page 6