The day in the office dragged by as he tried to remember that Sydney heading out for coffee was for the best. He ignored the nagging voices telling him he was right the first time. It wasn’t easy but he managed to avoid the urge to call Sydney and grill her about her plans. That wasn’t the kind of husband he wanted to be. At lunchtime he popped open his small cooler and, though he was starving, reached only for the napkin. As he unfolded it he smiled at the swirl of his wife’s familiar handwriting. Clearly influenced by their conversation last night, the napkin read, Even when you don’t believe it, you’re worth the trouble. I love you.
That was what Sydney did for Chris. She reassured him of his own worth in their family. At first glance most wouldn’t think that necessary for a man of Chris’s background and confidence, but it was. He couldn’t count the hours of sleep he’d lost staring at the profile of his wife’s face lit by moonlight and wondering if he’d done her more harm than good by falling in love with her. His son was bound to him by blood and had nowhere else to go, but being with Sydney was a choice he’d made. It gnawed at him whether or not that choice grew from a selfish seed.
When, by late afternoon, his phone hadn’t beeped or chimed or buzzed with a message or phone call from Sydney, he could hold out no longer. He dialed her number and readied himself for her “I told you so” speech about her lovely afternoon with a new friend. Instead all he heard was three rings and her voicemail. It turned the rock of worry in his stomach to a boulder. She always picked up.
Scrolling through his phone, Chris pulled up the phone number to Anne Stoke, the mother of Zack where Little Chris was spending the afternoon. When that call went unanswered as well he shot to his feet and raced for his car. Maybe he was overreacting. There was a damn good chance he’d storm through town looking for his wife and son and end up with egg on his face, but that didn’t matter to him.
His heart was banging hard against his chest as he pulled into the driveway of Anne’s home and skidded to a stop. In his life he’d had guns pointed at his head and countless threats of death; constant danger was nothing new for him. But either age had begun wearing down his nerves or the idea of losing his family was enough to scare the hell out of him. Likely it was the combination of the two that had him pounding relentlessly on poor Anne’s door.
When it swung open Chris instantly felt like a fool when a smiling Anne greeted him with a chirping hello. Clearly nothing was wrong.
“Hi Chris, what are you doing here?” the tall freckle faced woman asked.
“I just wanted to see how things were going with Little Chris and Zack. Are they having fun?”
The smile slid off of Anne’s face and was instantly replaced with a look of confusion. “Little Chris isn’t here. Sydney called me this morning and canceled. She said he wasn’t feeling well and he’d be staying home with your brother today.”
Chris had heard the expression about the blood draining from people’s faces but this was the first time it happened to him. Taking the time to explain everything that was worrisome about what Anne had just said would only slow him down, and he couldn’t afford that. He nodded his head, mumbling something about his slipping memory and headed for his car, backing out even more quickly than he’d pulled in.
Sean was in rehab. He would be for at least another thirty days. Little Chris hadn’t shown any signs of being sick the night before, and if he were, Sydney’s first phone call would have been to him. Something really was wrong.
Chapter Three
“Jason, I need your help. Sydney and Little Chris are missing,” Chris yelled into the phone as he barreled down the road toward his house. He’d had this man on speed dial since entering witness protection. Jason was his point person for any issue that arose. The problem was they didn’t always agree on what could be called a real emergency.
“Is this like the time the two of them went to the supermarket and she forgot her phone? Because you were pretty convinced that time she’d been abducted. I all but called in the National Guard for that and I looked like an idiot.”
“I’m serious this time. She was supposed to meet some woman for coffee after dropping Chris off at a friend’s house to play. I just went to that kid’s house and the mom said Sydney canceled this morning. Her excuse was Chris was sick and staying with Sean for the day. Sean is in rehab and Chris isn’t sick.”
“So maybe she lied to get out of it. People do that you know. Have you been home yet?” Jason’s gruff voice was getting less interested by the second.
“She’s not picking up her phone, but I’m on my way there now. I’m telling you something is very wrong. Please don’t wait to get people looking for her.” Chris felt his voice quaking with desperation, and he did nothing to hide it. If he looked weak in Jason’s eyes it didn’t matter to him.
“Are you at your house yet?” Jason huffed, sounding downright bored at this point.
“I’m rounding the corner now,” Chris said anxiously as he craned his neck to be able to see his house.
“And?”
“Her car is in the driveway,” Chris said as the lump in his throat finally felt like it was breaking up.
“Talk to you later, man,” Jason laughed and then Chris heard the phone disconnect. He tossed his phone down on the passenger seat of his car and worked to catch his breath.
Pulling his car in behind Sydney’s, he tried to decide how much of the story he’d tell her. Would he go into the details of how ridiculously scared he was or would he glaze it over and try to minimize how much he’d over reacted.
With quickness in his step, he hopped up the front steps and reached for the front door but it was already ajar. Both Little Chris and Sydney knew how important the alarm system was. They’d never be careless enough to leave the door open. Whatever weight had been lifted off him at the sight of his wife’s car in the driveway was back the moment he saw the door open.
Like an old habit, he reached down to his hip for the weapon he’d long since stopped carrying. At Sydney’s urging it was now in a safe at the top of their bedroom closet, requiring both a code and a key. The bullets were all in a second safe located behind his nightstand. It was a completely illogical way to store a weapon when considering a break-in or hostage situation. But Sydney had been unwavering in her stance on weapon storage with children in the home. There was no amount of arguing Chris could do that would get her to change her mind. Now as he thought about what might be occurring in his home he wished he’d fought harder for something more practical.
He pushed the front door open the rest of the way and reached for the first thing he thought he could use as a defense. The umbrella wasn’t the most common weapon of choice but Chris knew if he was fueled by the adrenaline of protecting his wife and son he could fight off anyone with virtually anything. Raising the floral patterned umbrella up over his head he stepped silently through his living room, listening intently for any noise. The instinct of a less experienced man would be to call out his wife’s name, but giving up the element of surprise would be a big mistake.
There was still a chance this was a big misunderstanding. Maybe Sydney would step out from the bedroom after forgetting to shut the front door and Chris would look like a fool aggressively holding an umbrella. But suddenly that small bit of hope evaporated. As he rounded the corner toward his bedroom his foot lost traction on the hardwood floor, and he had to brace himself against the wall to keep from falling. Looking down he let out an audible gasp as he identified the slippery substance as blood. Next to it was a familiar cast iron skillet he’d cooked a hundred Sunday morning breakfasts in, stained with more blood.
In his past he had become an expert on how much blood tended to come from a dead body. Much more than one would think. Though it was little solace in this terrifying moment, the blood on the floor was not the amount you’d find under a corpse, but it still meant someone had been bleeding in his house. Dropping the umbrella he stormed into his bedroom and began shouting his wife’s name.
“Syd! Are you here? Syd, answer me,” he cried out, pushing open every closet door and diving down to look under the bed. Reaching for his phone, he remembered he’d left it out in the car. Cursing himself, and Jason’s casual reaction to the situation, he unlocked both safes, loaded his gun and darted back outside to dial.
“They’re gone,” he barked when Jason answered the phone. “The door was open, there is blood on the floor, and they’re gone.”
“Slow down, Chris. I’ll get some Marshals to you now. They’ll be at your door in twenty minutes.”
“I won’t be here,” Chris answered as he turned the key in his ignition and the car came roaring to life.
“Where are you going? You need to stay put.”
“Sydney met a woman at karate yesterday and that’s no coincidence. I can be at the karate studio in five minutes and have answers about her in ten. Have your Marshals meet me there.”
“Don’t lose your shit there. It won’t help anything. We’re going to find them, Chris, but you have to keep your cool,” Jason’s pleading voice was lost on Chris, whose ears were ringing with fear.
“Just get your ass here, Jason. Get your Marshals because if I have to do this myself, whoever is responsible is living on borrowed time. You know what I’m capable of.” Chris hung up the phone without waiting for a reply from Jason. He didn’t need a warning, a lecture, or any excuses. He needed answers.
Ignoring the posted speed limit and a few stop signs, Chris made it to the karate hall in record time and miraculously in one piece. Looking down at his feet as he ran up the sidewalk, he saw there were still traces of blood at the bottom of his shoes. He forced his mind to deal with only what was within his control, and right now getting any answers he could about the mystery woman Sydney had plans with was most important.
“Rafi,” Chris shouted, and every head in the studio turned his way. Ignoring the rules about taking off his shoes, he plowed right across the room. The instructor was a short man but carried himself like a giant. His slick-backed black hair and rat like eyes made him just intimidating enough for all the kids to do what he said, but at this moment Chris wasn’t afraid of anything, not even interrupting a class.
“Chris, I’m in the middle of instructing here. Can you please take your shoes off at the door and wait for me to take a break?” Rafi didn’t hide his aggravation, and as Chris stormed closer toward him he took a defensive stance.
“I don’t have time for that. Something’s happened to Little Chris and Sydney. They’re missing. I need you to tell me about the woman who was here yesterday talking to Sydney. I need to know everything you can think of.”
“What do you mean they’re missing?” Rafi asked, waving his class away with his hand. They obediently moved off the mat and toward the back of the room to the other teacher.
“Someone took them and I think the woman who was here yesterday talking to Sydney might have something to do with it. They were supposed to meet for coffee today. What can you tell me about her?” Chris was short of breath as he motioned with his hand for Rafi to hurry up and tell him what he knew.
“I wasn’t here yesterday. Kai taught the class. I’ll call her and see if she remembers a woman talking to Sydney. Come sit down in my office.” Rafi hustled toward the back room where his office was and Chris appreciated his urgency. A man who spent most of his life learning to fight clearly lived in a state of readiness. He dialed his phone and when he got voicemail slammed it down.
“She didn’t pick up. I can start calling the parents of the other kids in Little Chris’s class. Maybe they remember Sydney talking to someone new.”
“Here’s my cell number,” Chris said, pulling a business card from his wallet. The second you reach someone who can give me information call me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have no idea. But I can’t stay here. There was blood, Rafi, at my house. Something bad has happened.”
“Who would want to hurt them? Sydney is so well liked here and Chris has loads of friends. It doesn’t make any sense.” Rafi twisted his face up in confusion.
Chris felt the knot in his stomach pull tighter. Of course it wouldn’t make sense to anyone because they’d all been living this pristine life of normalcy. But Chris’s past was so tainted by darkness, its catching up with him seemed almost inevitable. “I don’t know. I just need to find them.”
“I’ll start making calls. The store across the street has security cameras that point over this direction. Maybe they can show you some footage from yesterday. I’ll call you the instant I have something helpful.”
“Thanks, Rafi.”
“And, Chris, if I can help in any other way let me know. I’ll be honest with you, karate teaches us self-control and discipline, but I also know how to kill a man before he has time to blink. If someone’s hurt Sydney or Little Chris I’d be happy to put my skills to good use.”
With a sturdy handshake sealing that offer up as a deal, Chris headed for the door and toward the store across the street. It was a run-down convenience store with a flashing neon light in the window. Rafi was right; over the door was a camera that faced the street toward the karate studio.
Chris yanked the door open so hard he thought it might come loose from its hinges and end up in his hand. The bell jingled above his head and nearly fell to the ground.
“I need some help,” he barked as he charged the cashier’s counter behind which was a long-haired, tired-eyed clerk. She had the look of a hippie and the responses of a pothead. “You have cameras out front. I need to see the footage from yesterday.”
“Can’t do that,” the clerk said with a shrug of her bony shoulders.
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. A crime’s been committed and you might have video of the perpetrator. Give me the footage.”
“You a cop or something? I watch television, I know you need a warrant.” The woman didn’t move from the stool where she was perched casually, twisting a long lock of her snarly hair around her finger.
“I’m not a cop so I don’t need a warrant.” Chris reached his hand to the back of his belt where his gun was tucked. If he pulled his gun now and demanded the video footage he’d be stepping across a line he couldn’t come back from. It would be entirely worth it to get his wife and son back, but was now the right moment? Luckily he didn’t need to find out.
“Chris,” Jason shouted as he stepped into the store. His messy dirty blond hair and unshaven face were proof of how quickly he’d sprung into action to get here. “What’s going on?”
“They’ve got a camera that points at the karate studio. They must have footage of the woman Sydney met yesterday. It’s the only lead we have. I think she could be involved somehow, even as a decoy. But Peace-flower here won’t give me the tape.”
“He needs a warrant,” she snapped back as she threw the peace sign, then turned it quickly to the middle finger.
“You know what I don’t need a warrant for?” Jason snapped, slamming his hand down on the counter in front of her. “Searching your shit-box car out there and finding your stash of weed. Or walking right behind this counter and emptying your pockets. I’m a U.S. Marshal. You really want to see what I’m capable of?”
The woman quickly dropped her finger down and jumped off her stool. “You can only watch the footage here, I can’t like download it or anything. The machine is practically antique.”
As the three of them walked to the back of the store into the small office, Chris felt like there was still hope. As long as he was hunting down a lead he was going to believe they were alive.
Chapter Four
The footage was grainy and mostly unhelpful but it did indeed show a woman standing outside the karate studio and stepping in right behind Sydney and Chris. She was wearing a long black coat and a wool hat, making it difficult to see anything distinguishing about her.
The buzzing of Jason’s phone gave Chris hope for a new lead. That was fueled by Jason’s upbeat sounding
response even though Chris couldn’t hear what was being said. When he hung up the phone he shared the positive news. “I just heard from the guys on the scene at your house. The blood they found isn’t the same blood type as Sydney or Little Chris. It’s someone else’s blood.”
“Can they run DNA to see who? The list of people who’d want to hurt me this way is long. We need a way to narrow it down,” Chris asked impatiently.
“That’ll take some time but I put a fire under their ass about it. Let’s just be glad the blood isn’t your wife’s or son’s and try to figure out where we go from here. I’ve contacted all the local law enforcement agencies about Sydney and Little Chris but I’ve stopped short of putting out an Amber Alert. You know that once this goes national when we bring Sydney and Little Chris home you’ll be in even more danger than before. People will actively start hunting you again. I’d like to give this a couple hours before we turn the national spotlight on.”
“I want my family back. I don’t care if I have to turn myself over to every deadbeat who has it out for me. This could be related to people who were put in jail after I left Edenville. Their families might be seeking revenge. It could be people I bought weapons from or sold them to who went down in the wake of me leaving.”
“We’re doing all we can. Sydney’s cell phone has been turned off and the battery probably has been removed because we can’t track it. We’re canvassing your neighborhood asking if anyone saw an unfamiliar car in the area that morning. Knowing the vehicle they are in will help us.”
The familiar sing-song ring, something Sydney put on Chris’s phone and thought was cute, began to chime and he fumbled it to his ear. “Chris, I’ve got Kai here and she remembers the woman talking to Sydney yesterday.”
Saving Love (The Piper Anderson Series Book 8) Page 2