by Debbie Burke
Damn. She’d stayed just under the speed limit, signaled lane changes, drove like a little old lady on her way to church. She must have done something wrong to capture his attention. Unless the feds had ordered an alert to pick her up. She should have rented a car or taken Kahlil up on the offer to borrow his.
Guilt had to be broadcasting from her like the cruiser’s strobes. Not answering the door to the feds, hiding out at a motel, concealing money, packing a pistol. All these were the acts of a guilty person. She hadn’t sought out the insane situation she found herself in, yet running away made her look suspicious at best, guilty at worst. The trooper’s inner radar had to sense that.
The waiting, the suspense, her unknown fate were almost worse than being dragged out of the driver’s seat and cuffed. Well, maybe not quite.
The trooper approached again, handing her paperwork back. “Mrs. Lindholm, the reason I stopped you is your right taillight is burned out.”
“What?” Relief flushed through her like spring runoff. “Really? I didn’t know.”
He handed her a paper. “This is a warning for equipment violation, not a citation. As long as you get it fixed soon, there’s no problem.” Yet, even relating good news, his face remained stony. She sensed the warning covered far more than a taillight.
She accepted the paper. “I’ll fix it right away. Thank you.” Thank you for not taking me to jail. Thank you for not searching until you found my gun. Thank you for not preventing me from trying to rescue my son.
“You’re welcome. Afternoon, Mrs. Lindholm.” His voice sounded as chilly as his expression. No matter, as long as he let her go.
While she put the documents back, she watched the rearview mirror. The cruiser sat parked, strobes still beaming. Go away, man, catch speeders and drunks.
The phone rang. Kahlil. She answered, “It’s OK. Just a warning. I’m going to stop at an auto parts store up ahead and get a replacement bulb.”
“Good. I will stay behind and watch. Do not lead him to the motel. Keep driving around until he’s no longer following you.”
“Right.” She disconnected.
Tawny started the Jeep, turned on the signal, and cautiously pulled into the lane. The trooper followed.
Her churning stomach screamed that this was more than a polite warning.
A memory flicked in her brain, from years before when she and Dwight still owned the repair shop. Two Spanish-speaking mechanics had squared off in the yard, while other employees ringed them. Dwight had galloped out of the office, Tawny following. Fighting on the property was a firing offense he took seriously. Stepping between the men, he spoke Spanish in a low menacing voice, then touched the side of his eye with an index finger. Ojo. I’m watching you.
Looking in the rearview mirror at the highway patrol cruiser, she felt the warning heavy on her shoulders. Ojo.
Only she suspected this warning came from the feds, delivered courtesy of a state cop. We know where you are. We can pick you up whenever we want.
At any moment, an unmarked dark blue Crown Vic might appear.
Staying two miles under the speed limit, she drove to a nearby Napa store and pulled into the parking lot. The trooper continued on the highway, still regarding her as he passed by.
From under the rear seat of the Jeep, she dragged out Dwight’s toolbox, found a Phillips screwdriver, and removed the red plastic lens cover.
The bulb wasn’t burned out—it was missing.
She stared at the empty socket. Someone had purposely removed the bulb. To give cops an excuse to pull her over.
Her evil twin or the feds.
Feeling even sicker, she went inside the store and bought a replacement bulb. She installed it, screwed the lens cover back on, and stared out at passing cars. The Jeep might have more problems, invisible ones. They, whoever they were, might have put in a tracking device. Paranoia gnawed at her raw stomach.
She drove through Columbia Falls, spotting Kahlil’s car parked at a bank. He fell in behind, leaving a couple of blocks between them. No cops or unmarked sedans in sight. They continued through Columbia Heights into Bad Rock Canyon.
On the shoulder, ravens pecked at the insides of the dead deer Kahlil had hit. Tawny shuddered at the memory of shooting it.
She crossed the river bridge into Hungry Horse and passed the motel, keeping a constant look out. At the supermarket, she turned in, waiting and watching for several minutes before backtracking. Instead of parking in front of her room, she went around behind the motel, out of sight of the highway, and stopped near a dumpster.
Kahlil parked beside her and got out. “Good idea.” He nodded approval.
She gripped his arm. “Someone removed the taillight. It had to be intentional. To get the cops to stop me.”
He frowned. “I do not want to leave you like this but I must go to work. Unforeseen problem. Will you be all right?”
She nodded.
“I may not be back until quite late. Call me if you hear from your son.” He kissed her, a lingering one that made her tingle in spite of her tension. Then he left.
In the motel room, Tawny hung up the denim jacket with the cash sewn inside. To prepare for the trip to Helena, she packed her laptop and the thumb drive in the now-empty tote bag. She pulled the plastic bag from her dressy suit, ready for the morning. Jeep gassed. New taillight working. But what other unpredictable dangers lurked ahead? The spinning hamster wheel of her brain went into overdrive.
She lay on the bed and clicked through TV channels, seeking a mindless respite from nagging fear. Instead, she spotted a news ticker on the bottom of the screen: “Five soldiers missing in Afghanistan.”
Heart pounding, she grabbed the phone and hit the Rear Detachment number. It rang eight times until a recording came on. “We apologize for the inconvenience but a communication blackout has been ordered. Designated family members will be updated as soon as confirmations are available. At the tone, please leave your name and number and your service member’s identifying information.”
Communication blackout. Tawny knew what that meant. When a soldier died, all information was shut down until families were notified in person. Death notifications never came by phone. A bereavement team might be ringing her doorbell at this very minute. Should she rush home?
Voice quavering, she stammered out the required information, adding, “I am away from my home. If my son has been…” She couldn’t say the word. “Please, please call me at this number.”
Tawny ripped through TV channels, seeking more details. Except for the cryptic ticker line, news anchors kept busy debating fashion trends for the royal wedding. Enraged, she threw the remote across the room. It smacked against the wall, fell in two pieces, and clattered to the floor. Double A batteries rolled loose.
Dammit, now she’d owe the motel for a new remote.
The clicking signal for an incoming text startled her. She grabbed her readers and peered at the screen. From Neal!
Ransom 250K. Details to follow 48 hours.
A quarter of a million dollars.
An impossible amount of money but the ransom demand meant Neal was still alive! Captured, but gloriously alive. Thank you, God!
But, not necessarily. Horror rising inside her, she realized anyone could type a text on his phone. There was no way to confirm that Neal was alive unless she actually spoke to him. She might be ransoming his corpse.
No! She couldn’t allow herself to think like that. He had to be alive. She had to move forward with that belief. But before she turned over any money, she would insist on hearing his voice. If she found a way to raise the money.
Forty-eight hours.
She remembered Kahlil’s offer. But he might not have that much. Even rich people would be hard-pressed to come up with a mountain of cash so fast. If he was that wealthy, could he collect it in forty-eight hours?
Her conscience chafed at the idea of taking money from him, as kind and generous as he’d been, when she had no way of paying it back. A
t age fifty, with her pathetic job prospects, she’d never live long enough to earn $250,000.
The only way to be fair was signing over her house to him. She had to pray the feds couldn’t attach it. More than ever, she needed to talk to Tillman Rosenbaum. Tomorrow.
She checked the time. Seven-thirty, dusk outside. She tapped Kahlil’s number and listened to ringing. More ringing. He had always answered her before. Finally, an automated voice offered to take a message.
“Kahlil, I got another text from Neal.” She hesitated. Should she tell him the ransom amount? He might need every minute in the next two days to gather the funds. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to make such an outrageous request to a recording. Hi, this is Tawny, I need a quarter-million dollars in forty-eight hours. See ya. She decided no. “Please call me.”
The room shrank with each step she paced.
She called the Rear Detachment number again and listened to the same message about the communication blackout. “Sergeant Stuart, this is Tawny Lindholm. I just received another text from Neal. The kidnappers are demanding two-hundred-fifty-thousand in forty-eight hours. Please call me.”
Kit’s and Stuart’s warnings came back to her about the government’s policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. The call to the family liaison was probably a waste of time. Even more foreboding, Kit had said kidnappers usually killed their victims anyway.
Utter helplessness made her legs weak. No way could she reach her son, rescue him, and destroy the bastards. Nothing to do but pray.
And answer the text. Neal and the kidnappers waited for her response. She rehearsed answers in her head.
I’m trying.
Too wishy-washy. Needed to sound positive, that she would pay, that his life would be spared.
Working on it.
Better but vague, indefinite.
I will do anything.
More positive but sounded too desperate, begging. The kidnappers might even increase the amount if they believed she had given in to their demands too easily.
She couldn’t negotiate worth a damn. That had been Dwight’s forte. Why wasn’t he here with her? She flopped face down on the mattress, pounding the pillows till her arms ached with fatigue.
Finally, the right words came to her. She tapped out the return message: I will have it in 48 hours. Hang in there, son.
* * *
Tawny’s anguish played over the audio monitor to Kahlil’s earpiece. Her plaintive cries to her husband, her son, to the kidnappers, to God, wrenched his chest. When she’d called him, he longed to answer but resisted. Unavailability at a crucial time played a vital part of the plan.
Tawny’s panicked state of mind needed to be maintained, with desperation at a maximum. The traffic stop by the trooper ratcheted up her paranoia, as Kahlil had intended when he gave the instruction to tamper with her car. He could not allow her rationality to raise questions or doubts. She needed to be completely malleable and suggestible. When he stepped in with the solution, her gratitude would overwhelm all judgment.
The kidnapping was a hoax. The author of the pleading texts was not her son but himself, as he increased the pressure with each new message. Her calls to the Army had been redirected to his colleague, posing as the family liaison.
The surveillance report he’d received yesterday confirmed Tawny’s son lay relaxing on a beach in Dubai, entertaining beautiful young women during his leave, perfectly safe and quite content.
Tawny’s worry was based solely on an illusion.
But he’d underestimated the difficulty of monitoring her pain. He could not bear to listen any longer to the keening sound of a mother’s heart breaking, He removed the earpiece.
Chapter 10 – Ransom
A soft knock on the motel room door woke Tawny from fitful nightmares. Four-fifteen in the morning. She slipped the revolver from under her pillow, put on a robe, and peered through the peephole.
Kahlil.
She replaced the gun before opening the door. He hadn’t said anything but the weapon seemed to worry him.
He looked weary, eyes sunken in dark shadows, stubble thick, vertical lines cutting his cheeks but his smile radiated with joy at seeing her. He kissed her deeply. “I am sorry to wake you.”
“Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t sleeping much anyway.” She closed and double-locked the door behind him.
He took her hand. “Your son?”
She sank on the bed and handed him the phone with Neal’s text. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to speak the ransom amount to his face any more than she’d been able to leave it on his voicemail.
He read the screen. “Forty-eight hours,” he murmured.
“Less than forty left.” As she waited for his reaction to the amount, her heart jolted with erratic beats.
He encircled her shoulders with one arm, pulling her close. “My poor darling.”
The question caught in her throat. It must be too much. Why doesn’t he say so? No, I don’t have $250,000 to give you.
He pulled his own phone from his pocket. Removing his arm from her, he swiped, tapped, and flicked through various screens. Without her glasses, she couldn’t follow but the blurry images appeared completely different from her phone. Using only his thumbs, he typed so quickly she marveled at his dexterity. She would never operate Lucifer with such ease.
The question hung between them. She longed for his answer, yet dreaded it.
She forced herself to sit still while every fiber, every nerve jumped under her skin. One eyelid began to twitch. The colored lights of his screen twirled like a kaleidoscope in her flickering vision. Her stomach spasmed, threatening to revolt. She fought back nausea.
Several minutes later, he shut down the phone. “There,” he said, setting it on the bedside table.
The suspense tortured her. She had to ask but all that came out was a croak. “What?”
He turned to her with a casual air, as if he’d spent the last minutes playing a video game. “It is done.”
“What is?” she choked.
“I have put the wheels in motion to marshal various accounts with different banks. The money will be available quite soon.”
She stared at him, disbelief nearly slapping her to the floor. “You mean, you’re going to pay the ransom?”
“Of course.”
“But it’s so much. I didn’t expect you to…”
He regarded her with his head slightly cocked, frowning. “Did I not tell you I would? Do you think I would break my promise to you?” He put his arms around her, pulling her to his chest. “My treasure, if your son can be saved, I will do anything in my power to make it happen.”
Tears gushed from her eyes. Her heart, so constricted seconds before, felt ready to burst with joy. She sobbed until his wet shirt clung to his skin.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “You must stop crying so I can take a shower and shave off these terrible whiskers.” He rubbed his jaw.
She clasped his prickly face between her hands. “They are not terrible. They’re beautiful whiskers.” And she kissed them all over until her lips were raw. Pain didn’t matter.
Only saving Neal mattered.
Chapter 11 – Kid, I’m Gonna Make You a Star
Tillman Rosenbaum swept into the hotel lobby like a swashbuckling actor from a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular. Tight black curls crowned his head. Well over six and a half feet tall. His jaw jutted forward, lower teeth in front of the upper ones, like a narrow-faced bulldog. A three-piece suit fit his lanky frame flawlessly, the color a garish shade of gold. The only wardrobe accessory missing was a cape.
An underling trailed after him, taking notes on an electronic tablet.
The lawyer’s baritone voice boomed and long arms gestured as he reeled off requirements for a conference room. “Seating for a hundred, minimum, check? You verified gluten-free options with the caterer, right? Are the badges ready for pre-pays? Is credit card processing available for walk-ins? I don’t want another screw-up like that ba
r luncheon. Two screens for PowerPoint.”
Tawny watched from an inconspicuous table in a quiet corner, nursing a latte. When she’d arrived at 10:30, she spotted Rosenbaum’s name and photo on a scrolling video sign as the keynote speaker for a CLE luncheon, whatever CLE meant.
People clotted in groups, chatting, chins lifted with confidence, wearing nametags with lots of initials like JD, LLM, JSD. Most of their outfits looked as if they’d just finished a tennis set or nine holes at the country club.
Tawny had worn her elegant funeral suit and heels, hoping to make a good impression on the lawyer, but now she felt conspicuously overdressed among the casual-chic crowd in snake-print sneakers and designer jeans. She’d stuffed her cash-laden denim jacket in the tote bag with her laptop and wished she could change into it to blend better with the surroundings.
In the midst of such a high-powered group, Rosenbaum held a place at the top of the food chain. How could Tawny afford him? If the lawyer’s fees gobbled up all the money the feds had seized from her, how did that help? She’d be broke either way. Was this a wasted trip?
Rosenbaum finished with the assistant and made his way across the lobby, stopping for a few words with several groups before striding straight toward her. How had he recognized her?
She rose from the table and held out her hand, looking up at him, way, way up. Being tall herself and wearing heels, she rarely needed to crane her neck back this far. “Mr. Rosenbaum—”
“Mrs. Lindholm, why are you blocking my calls?” Nearly black eyes snapped in his long thin face.
“Sorry?”
“I’m squeezing you in as an accommodation to Kit Albritton, who, by the way, holds you in very high regard. If you’re my client, I need to get in touch with you at all times. If you don’t accept my calls, I can’t assist you.”
“Mr. Rosenbaum, I’m not sure what you mean. I called you and left messages but I never received any calls from you.”
“My point exactly.”
His rapid-fire accusations unnerved her. Had this trip been a big mistake? “I have my phone with me at all times. My son has been kidnapped. The phone is my only link to him. If you, or anyone else calls, I answer.”