HAUNTED: The Chase Ryder Series Book 2

by Ho, Jo

  Fueled by the knowledge that they needed his help, Bandit ignored his own fears and threw himself at the cell door. He slammed against the metal using the full force of his body. The doors rattled — they did not seem to be that well made — but the door remained firmly closed. Ignoring the pain that shot through his body, Bandit moved to the back of the cell to get a running start and HURLED himself at the door again.

  The cold metal hit him like a wall but stayed locked. He landed hard on his feet. Whimpering, Bandit held up an injured paw and licked it when a sound from across the room caught his attention. He turned to find Pixie staring at him. Her eyes glittered as she flattened her ears onto the back of her head. Prancing up to the cell, Pixie nudged the door with her nose.

  Bandit barked, yes! She was helping him!

  Though they had never liked each other before, Bandit was thrilled that Pixie was now his friend. Excited, he chuffed in encouragement and lowered down onto his stomach. He barked instructions at her, letting her know that the way to open the cell was on the bench. He described the object as best he could as Pixie went over to investigate. She jumped up onto her two front paws so she could see onto the counter.

  Daintily, she picked up the metal bar Xavier had used to destroy Bandit’s iPad. Bandit barked twice, no that isn’t right. She dropped it down with a clang, then nosed around the bench with Bandit barking more, the closer she got in their version of “hot and cold”. Finally, she picked up the remote Bandit had seen the others use to open his cell. He bounced up and down on his paws, ignoring the pain that shot up his right front leg.

  Yes! That was it!

  Pixie moved her nose over the button but stopped short of pressing it.

  Bandit barked at her to do it, but she deliberately set the remote back on the bench and made a noise that sounded like laughing.

  Bandit froze, shocked to the core. She was taunting him! She had no intention of helping him at all!

  Hurt and confusion flooded through him. What was wrong with her? Why was she such a bad dog? He never got the answer to his question, however, as Xavier came into the room. Seeing Bandit limping in his cage he frowned, displeased.

  “What have you done to yourself, dog? Have you been trying to get out? I hope not. I can’t have you hurting yourself — I need my specimen undamaged.”

  Seeing Pixie across the room, Xavier shot her a look. “You best not have been upsetting him, or it's back into the tank for you.”

  At his words, Pixie cowered and shook, backing away from him. She seemed genuinely scared, causing Bandit to feel even more confused. Why did she help him if she was scared of him? Nothing about her actions made any sense.

  Xavier scanned the room until his eyes settled on those heavy chains he had brought in with him before. Grabbing them now, he came towards Bandit with them.

  Moments later, Bandit found himself with one heavy chain around his neck and four around each of his paws, each of which were now secured to the ground. Bandit could only stand, sit, or lay down, but other than that he could not move. Whimpering, he hung his head in misery.

  Xavier nodded, satisfied with his work. “There. You can’t move, therefore you cannot hurt yourself.”

  Dick came into the room carrying the drink called coffee that Bandit knew Sully liked, but he stopped when he saw him. Seeing that he looked uncomfortable with what he had done, Xavier took the coffee from him and took a sip before speaking. “He’s fine, besides it’s the only way to make sure he won’t hurt himself. It looks far worse than it is. I did the same to Pixie for years while I was training her and look how well she turned out.”

  Bandit suddenly realized that these were the very chains that had caused the scars on Pixie’s body. Even in his despair, he felt sympathy for her. No dog should ever be chained up like this, no matter how bad they were.

  Xavier drank more of the coffee as he studied scans and charts as Dick watched Bandit from across the room guiltily. Having seemingly forgotten his threat of only moments ago, Pixie now wove herself between Xavier’s legs, desperate for affection, but the older man grew tired of this very quickly and kicked her out of his way.

  Hurt, Pixie slunk off into a dark corner as she watched Bandit with those angry black eyes.

  79

  Sully

  Well, on the plus side Bandit was safe. In a big cage essentially, but safe.

  Sam and I were stuck in our own prison, with those cable ties that were clasped pretty tight around our wrists. Thankfully Dick had left our hands bound in front of us so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could have been. Still, we were in quite the predicament and I wasn’t sure how we were going to get out of this.

  I had been trying to wrap my head around what we’d been told. Not the Emma thing — that I had bolted down and filed away for another time. I knew if I focused on what Dick had done, the anger and resentment would bubble over and consume me. I could not afford for that to happen so I willed myself to move past it. I would deal with that when I had the luxury to.

  And so it was that I now found the vet in me taking over. What Xavier had done to Pixie defied all natural laws and was madness at best. In spite of Dick’s grand talk, Xavier wasn’t any better than his old partner had been. As far as I was concerned, they were both as deluded as each other, though Xavier was worse in my book. At least Forbes had been suffering from a disease which would have soon debilitated him. From what I could see, Xavier was wrecking lives and torturing animals for his own ego… he had to be taken down.

  There was a pipe in the room Sam had been staring at for close to a minute now. I tried to think how it could possibly help our situation but failed completely. After Dick had left, she had sat quietly beside me. I figured she must be pissed at being caught out like this, what with being a sheriff and all.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, you didn’t know this would happen,” I said, I thought, helpfully. She looked at me, an exasperated expression on her face.

  “You think I’m concerned about our situation here?” she said.

  “Well, sure. We’re tied up and locked in a room. They took your gun and everything else we had of use. I don’t see how anything short of a miracle will get us out of this.”

  She moved on to her knees and stood up gracefully, one brow arched in challenge.

  “A miracle, huh? How’s this for a miracle?”

  With that she raised her clasped hands high over her head then she swung down fast and forcefully… With a snap, the cable ties broke loose and clattered to the ground. And just like that, Sam’s hands were freed. I gaped at her, astonished.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  Sam shot me a triumphant grin. “Gravity and physics my friend. When you swing your hands down with so much force and pull them apart on the downswing, the cable ties can’t take the force and snap. This is survival 101 training. Haven’t you seen the Youtube videos?”

  “Like you ever watched Youtube until Chase got you doing that.” A thought occurred to me next, causing me to frown at her. “So the whole time he was tying us up, you knew you could get out of it. No wonder you didn’t seem afraid.”

  She gestured at me. “You try. Just get them as high above your head as possible and swing down fast and furiously whilst trying to pull your hands apart.”

  I tried to get up onto my feet but I wasn’t half as graceful as she was when she had done it. I staggered to my feet clumsily was probably a better description of what I did. Once I was up, however, I did as she instructed and goddamn if it didn’t work. I was amazed.

  “It’s lucky he didn’t tie our hands behind our backs. Then we would have been in trouble,” she said.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” I replied. “We still need to find a way out of this room.”

  “Well, let’s get searching.”

  80

  Chase

  After we’d eaten, we sat there at the table drinking coffee and chatting.

  Once I had given them my creativ
e explanation of events, Harold and Margaret hadn’t bothered me with any more questions about my life. Instead, they seemed happy to just talk about theirs.

  They were childhood sweethearts I learned, having met at high school. They were married young and had five kids by the time they were in their 30s. Sadly, one of the kids had died at a young age. Some horrible illness they had said. They explained that their son, Stephen had been sick his whole life forcing them to spend their entire fortune on his medical bills, as they desperately tried to find something that would help him. A cure never materialized, however, and eventually they lost that nice big home they had saved their entire lives for.

  After Stephen had died, they downsized and moved to Wilmington where it was cheaper — though far less safe — to raise their other kids. They were heartbroken and had never really recovered from it. It wasn’t the physical bricks and mortar aspect of losing their house that they missed, but the memories they had shared with him there. They could never be replaced and this being before the time of phones with video cameras, they only had pictures of him. I remembered how Sully had been when I had met him. He had been clinging on to his wife’s memory by hoarding her things. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for Harold and Margaret to have let go of the only home they had known with their son.

  Seeing as I had started to feel down by their story, they quickly explained that though their funds had diminished greatly, they considered themselves blessed to have seen their remaining kids grow into happy and healthy people who went on to have kids of their own. Margaret had been so proud when she took out her purse and showed me several photos of their whole family that she kept in her purse.

  I was amazed not just by the sheer number — there must have been at least forty of them — but by how close they all were. Here they were at Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then at one of their grandkid’s birthday parties. The family even threw summer get-togethers at a campsite where folk flew in from all across the country. These were highly organized affairs that included scheduled events like a performance show and sports. They even made itineraries for them. I mean, who were these people?

  I’d never met my dad or anyone from his side of the family. My mom didn’t get on well with her family either, so I had only really met one aunt a few times. She lived in Arizona and had a lot of pets was all Mom would tell me. She didn’t mention her often, but whenever she did, she had this look on her face. I knew what it was straight away even if she could never admit it — she was jealous of her sister. From what I knew of her, she had a happy life and a loving husband. Apparently that was all my mom needed to know to be envious of her enough to cut her out of our lives.

  I had looked down at Margaret’s family, at the army of people that she called family and wondered what it must be like to be surrounded by people who loved you.

  Suddenly I realized what I was thinking and felt immediately awful. Sully loved me and Bandit too. Even Gideon… probably. And of course, Sam and Zeb. I felt bad for my moment of ungratefulness. You know how they say if you are never grateful for what you have, you will never have enough? I saw it on an Oprah rerun once and it had stayed with me ever since. I mentally reminded myself that my life was very different now, and that I should be grateful every day for that.

  We’d been in that diner for hours now. I had told them I didn’t need a babysitter, but they refused to leave until my family got here. Harold said they had been coming back from visiting their daughter who only lived a couple of hours drive away near Cleveland, so they were in no hurry to get home. Her oldest was just heading off to college and they had gone to give him money towards his tuition. They had just sold Margaret’s car — which was much nicer and newer than Harold’s — to pay towards his school costs. As they had told me this, I regretted all the food I had put away. I took in their appearance, finally able to see how their clothes were patched several times over. Here I was eating like crazy when money was a concern for them.

  Although the time passed as pleasantly as it could under the conditions, my mind kept drifting to Bandit. Until he was safe, I couldn’t relax. I found myself drumming my fingers on the table in agitation.

  When both the breakfast and lunch shift had gone to be replaced by the evening staff, the door finally opened as Gideon came rushing in. I shot to my feet, so ridiculously happy to see him. I leapt up from the table and threw myself at him before I even realized what I was doing. His arms went to encircle me and he squeezed me right back. We were holding each other for a few seconds before I suddenly got all embarrassed. Gideon and I hung out all the time, but we didn’t really touch so this was kind of a big deal. We stepped away from each other, me blushing furiously while he looked suddenly awkward.

  “And this must be your brother then, as it obviously isn’t your father,” came Harold’s voice. It sounded like he was trying hard not to laugh.

  “No, I am her... brother,” Gideon said unconvincingly. “Our dad couldn’t get here because of…” He stopped suddenly, looking at me for help, not knowing what cover story I had given them. I rushed in to fill in the gaps.

  “Court. Dad’s in court. That’s why he couldn’t make it, but my brother is here now so that’s great and we should get going.”

  I turned to Harold and Margaret then, suddenly feeling desperately sad that I would never see them again. They really were decent people in the world I was learning this every day. I threw my arms around the two of them, much to their shock but they hugged me right back. “Thank you so much,” I whispered to the two of them. Margaret had tears in her eyes as she patted me on the shoulder and smiled.

  “You get on back to your family dear. I’m sure your dad or whoever he is, is looking forward to having you back.” She had a twinkle in her eye. It was the first time I realized that neither of them had been buying my story, yet still they had sat with me and paid for all that food, even though they knew I was lying the whole time.

  My mind was literally blown.

  I turned to Gideon. “Do you have any money? I ate a ton of food so we need to pay them back.”

  Harold and Margaret shook their heads, aghast. “Oh no, dear, we don’t need your money. You keep it. It was a pleasure to help you.”

  “But,” I argued, “what about your grandson? You just said you sold your car to pay for his schooling.”

  “We’ll be fine sweetheart, we always have been, and we will again. The Lord has a way of providing. Bless you for offering though, child. Tell your dad he raised you well.”

  I smiled at them feeling myself tear up. If only they knew.

  “We better go,” Gideon said.

  I nodded. “Thank you again, for everything. Bye.”

  I followed Gideon out the door when I suddenly turned back around. “Wait, what’s your surname again?” I asked.

  Harold looked surprised and curious but he answered. “Bartlet. Why?”

  I shook my head. “No reason, I just wanted to know who I owed this kindness to.”

  And with a last smile that I flashed at them, Gideon and I left the diner.

  81

  Chase

  The car Gideon had brought with him was in better condition than the Bartlet’s. It had leather seats and air conditioning, something I usually adored but barely appreciated right now. I wanted to know everything that had happened since I had left that morning.

  Gideon explained what they knew, but it wasn’t until he came to Zeb that I started asking questions. I was stunned by what had happened to him, but most of all I felt guilt, guilt that I wasn’t there in his time of need. Since I had arrived at his ranch, Zeb had been there for me the whole time. From Forbes’ death, Zeb had never complained about Bandit and I suddenly living in his home, not once. Instead, he had become the grandfather I’d never had so the fact he was in a hospital unconscious with none of us by his side, that killed me. I tried to be strong, however, because despite how awful I was feeling, it couldn’t compare with Gideon’s pain. His initial relief at seeing m
e had faded somewhat. Now I could see just how stressed and tense he really was.

  I borrowed his phone and called the hospital to check on Zeb’s progress, but nothing had changed. It took some convincing to get them to give me any updates since they said family only and I had no proof that I was until I described Sully and Gideon to them.

  After I finished with the hospital, I tried calling Sully but his phone went straight to voicemail. I felt a moment of panic as this wasn’t usual. What if the bad guys had gotten to them? I was about to say just as much to Gideon when I realized that it was more likely that Sully had turned his phone off so it wouldn’t ring if the bad guys were searching for them. You always saw this in the movies when people were trying to be stealthy but suddenly their phone would start ringing at just the worst time possible. I knew Sully and Sam were smarter than that, however. At the first sign of danger, they would have switched it off. Still, I wanted to get a message to them to let them know I was safe, so I sent Sully a text message that simply said, “left the diner.”

  I figured, worst case scenario if someone had gotten hold of their phone that message wouldn’t mean very much to them and it would not warn them that we were on our way.

  Having done as much as I could with the phone, I studied Gideon’s profile. His jaw was clenched tightly, and I was getting really concerned that he would literally bust a gut or something. “You want me to drive?” I offered. He looked at me skeptically.

  “I didn’t drive 5 hours to save you only to die now, so no thank you.”

  “If we crashed it wouldn’t be my driving but your teaching that would have done it,” I retorted. It felt good to bicker. It felt normal, like we weren’t driving towards our impending doom. But the conversation died down as quickly as it started. It was too much effort to joke around especially when we were both so concerned for our family.