I’ve already pulled out my phone. It rings once and Reagan says, “Lucien, please tell me everything’s okay.”
“It’s not. Rayanna’s gone. I need some information. Do you know Amy, Connor’s sister?”
“I know who she was, yeah.”
A ball of sick fear rolls around in my gut. “Was?”
“She’s been dead for a couple of years.”
Well, shit. Just my luck. “Do you know where Connor grew up?”
She snorts. “Well, hell yeah. Everybody does.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Lucien, his dad is a deputy sheriff in Yakima County. Biggest son of a bitch you’d ever have the misfortune to meet. Everything Connor ever did, Sonny got him out of. Do you think he’d come back here?”
“To the place where Daddy will protect his miserable ass? I absolutely do. I think it would be his first choice.”
“I’ve been sticking pretty close to the hospital, but I think if he’d been back around, I’d know it. Somebody would’ve seen him and would’ve told me. But I’ll ask around.”
“Thanks. Please let me know. And are you positive Carly’s safe?”
“Yes. Absolutely. If I weren’t, she’d be here at the hospital with me.”
“Okay. All right. Look, if you hear anything, and I do mean anything, call me. Please. We have to find her.”
“I will. I promise. You do the same.”
“I will. Tell Terry I hope he feels better fast.” Then the phone goes dead.
I can’t help it. Something doesn’t feel right, but I’m not sure what it is. There’s something rolling around in my head, something that’s tickling my brain, but it just won’t surface. I guess I have a weird look on my face because Clint says, “Lucien? What’s up? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. There’s something … I don’t know, Clint. But I’ll figure it out.”
“Okay. So I think the first line of defense is to find out where the asshole’s family lives and get a look at what’s going on there. I don’t know which one of us will―”
“Me. I’m going,” Brian pipes up.
Clint’s still shuffling through the file. “Okay. That works. You’re in real estate. People will buy that with no problem. So we need to get a location, go up there, and just take a little look around. I think that’s doable. It’ll give us some idea what we’re really dealing with.” Clint’s looking over everything we’ve got, which isn’t much. “You should probably go see Rayanna’s brother-in-law in the hospital, just touch base with them and tell them we were concerned about them. Sometimes that face-to-face stuff can help jog a memory.”
Brian nods. “Yeah. That’s true. I’ll go tomorrow morning.”
“What can I do?” Steffen asks.
“See what you can get from the courthouse in Kittitas regarding real estate, that kind of thing. Anything that will help. We need an overall picture of what we’re dealing with here.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, do her sister and brother-in-law own their home, or are they renting? Where does he work? Does she work? If she does, what does she do?” He wheels on me. “Lucien, they came here. Did they mention any of that?”
I have to think for a second. “Um, no. If they did, I don’t remember it.”
“Hmmm. That’s usually the first thing a guy mentions. That’s kind of odd.” Since he’s mentioned it, that is kind of odd. They wanted to know what I did, but I don’t remember asking him what he did and if I did, his answer was unremarkable. “I want a copy of Bacchus’s birth certificate, or at least to see it. Do any of those genealogy sites have those?”
“Some of them do,” Dave offers. “I’ve got a subscription to one of them. I’ll get on that. Do you have any idea on a birthdate?”
I shake my head. “Not a clue.”
“Well, I’d say he’s between thirty-five and fifty, so that’s a starting point, I suppose,” Dave says with a sigh.
Clint nods again. “Yeah. Census data too. That will help, but we’d have to pinpoint a location.”
“What about bank records?” Steffen asks with a grin.
“Oh, yeah. Anybody’s. See what you come up with.”
“Will do.”
“I guess I keep being the muscle?” Everybody laughs at Boone’s question.
Clint slaps him on the shoulder. “You do a good job of it, so I’d say yeah, by all means!”
“Works for me. I feel most at home with a shotgun in my hands. I’ll see if Brandt can help us out too. He’s here and he’s working for me, so the least he can do is pitch in.”
I’m amazed at everything my friends are willing to do to help me. It’s astounding, really. A few weeks ago I didn’t even know these people. Today, they’re volunteering their time and, honestly, doing some things they probably shouldn’t, all to help me. I’m beyond grateful.
We’re interrupted by Melina announcing that dinner for everyone will be ready in about an hour and telling the guys to get all their family members there to eat. Phone calls are made, another round of whiskey is downed, and I sit back and try to relax, but I can’t. My mind is consumed with thoughts of her, the scent of her hair, the twinkle of her eyes, the softness of her body against mine. Why would she sneak out the back way from the building and do this? She wouldn’t. Not unless she thought Carly was in danger. And I know she did.
But I’m pretty sure the only one in danger is her.
* * *
Boone and Melina volunteer to spend the night at my apartment because Brian wants me to come home with him and Cirilla. I can tell they’re worried about me. I’m worried about me. I tried to eat something, but my throat just closed around it and I wound up choking and sputtering. I’m getting liquor down. That’s good enough.
Morning comes and Brian gets dressed and heads out. All we can do is wait for him to find something, anything, and get back to us. He checks in with Cirilla about noon while he’s eating a sandwich at a little deli somewhere near Kittitas. I’m not sure what he says to her, but I hear her say, “I’m sure there’s more than one.”
But at two o’clock, the world explodes. My phone rings and I answer to my brother’s voice. “Lucien? What is Reagan and Terry’s last name?”
I sit there for a minute and try to think. “I can’t remember.”
“Is it in that folder full of information?”
“Maybe. I never noticed. Hang on.” I carry the phone with me to the guest room and dig through my stuff. “It’s not here. I must’ve left it at Boone’s, or Clint may have it.”
“I need that name. I’m reaching a dead end here.”
“What do you mean, a dead end?”
“I can’t find a guy named Terry at the hospital if I don’t have a last name.”
“Oh. Gotcha. I’ll find it and get back to you.”
My next call is to Clint, and he does have the folder. “Let me see … Looks like it’s Easterly.”
“Thanks. I need to call Brian back. Talk to you soon.”
“It’s Easterly,” I tell Brian when he answers the phone.
“Okay. I’m back to the drawing board. Call you in a bit.”
In the meantime, I get a text from Steffen saying he found some stuff he’ll bring to our meeting that evening. Dave says the same. Maybe between what they’ve found and what Brian finds, we’ll figure something out.
And that’s when it happens. My phone rings and I answer, “Yeah, brother. What did you find?”
“Nothing. There’s no guy named Terry Easterly in a hospital around here. Matter of fact, there’s no guy named Easterly in a hospital, Terry, Terrance, or otherwise. And I checked the surrounding counties. No Easterly in the hospital.”
“That’s weird.”
“Did she call you from a hospital phone?”
“No. Her cell. Maybe I should call―”
“No. Don’t call her. I’m coming back.”
“Dave and Steffen turned up some stuff,” I tell him.
“
Good. We all need to compare notes. I’ll be back as fast as I can get there. Go on to Boone and Melina’s and I’ll meet you there. Get the guys to come too.”
It takes him about two hours to get back from Kittitas, so we’ve got plenty of time. By the time I get to Boone’s, Steffen and Dave are already there, and Clint pulls in right behind me. I walk in the door and hear a car behind me. Brian. We’ve all converged at pretty much the same time.
Nobody’s really talking. The faces in the room are grim, and I feel like I’m falling down a deep, dark hole with no ladder. The light at the top is getting smaller. Something’s wrong, very wrong, and I still can’t figure out what it is. “Okay, who’s first?” Clint asks.
Brian lifts his hand. “Me. I went to every hospital around there and Rayanna’s brother-in-law is not in the hospital. Anywhere. Lucien says Reagan called from a cell, not a hospital phone.”
“That’s weird,” Steffen says.
“Yeah. I thought so. I didn’t know their last name, so I had to call Lucien and he found it in that file. It’s―”
And I jump when Dave’s hands land hard on the tabletop. Everybody stops and turns to look at him. “It wouldn’t be Easterly, would it?”
A chill sweeps over me. “How did you know?”
Dave has a look of dread painted on him that makes it hard to breathe. “Because I pulled Connor Bacchus’s birth certificate from Families Are Found dot com. That’s his mother’s family name.”
“Oh, shit,” I hear Clint mumble.
“Well, guess what I found?” Steffen says. When we all turn to look at him, he throws a piece of paper into the middle of the table. “Banking records. Somebody deposited ten thousand dollars in Sonny Bacchus’s bank account last month.”
“That’s a lot of money for a bunch of hicks,” I spit out.
“Yeah. I think so.” I watch as he pulls his laptop from his bag. “Now that we have a last name, let me do a little digging.”
“So we know Reagan’s husband is somehow related to Connor’s family. Not sure how, but they are,” Clint recaps.
“I’ll see if I can find Terry and put that together,” Dave says, pulling out his own laptop.
“Bingo,” Steffen whispers. “The ten thousand dollars came from the account of one Terrance Easterly.”
“But for what?” Boone ruminates out loud. “What could they possibly owe Sonny for?”
“Guys, we’ve got a problem,” Steffen announces abruptly. “Guess who Terry Easterly works for?” Every head in the room pivots. “He’s a deputy jailer in Kittitas County.”
“But Bacchus’s dad’s a deputy sheriff in Yakima County,” I counter. Suddenly, it’s like I can hear the gears whirring in my brain and every trip lever clicks into place. I get it. I totally and completely get it, and I feel faint. “Oh shit.”
Clint peers into my face. “What?”
“Reagan said Carly was safe because her neighbor’s husband is a deputy sheriff. But it’s not her neighbor.”
Boone’s golden complexion is white. “Holy shit. They engineered this whole thing.”
“Oh god. Yeah. But why? The ten thousand dollars? Why would they pay Sonny ten thousand dollars? For what?”
A silent scream rises inside my head when it all comes together. “To get rid of Rayanna. To get a jail employee here to break Connor out and to get rid of Rayanna.” I turn to Dave.
Boone’s eyes are wide. “Why?”
“Because they want custody of Carly. They have no kids of their own. As long as she’s alive, there’s a chance she’ll regain custody. This whole thing, letting Carly come here? It was to find out where Rayanna was living, to see what kind of security we might have, to see what they needed to do to pull this off. I have no security system. We were getting pretty comfortable with things the way they were, and we weren’t vigilant like we had been. We let the fox into the henhouse and didn’t even know it.”
“Fuck.” That’s all Clint says.
I can barely breathe. I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid in my life. He’s going to kill her―that’s why he took her. Our only hope may be if he decides to play with her for a few days before he does her in. But that’s not what usually happens, and I know it. “What do we do now?” I ask, but my voice sounds small and thready in my own ears.
“We’re going to remove their bargaining chip,” Clint announces as he stands, then turns to Boone and says, “You got some rifles?”
“I’ve got half a dozen rifles, and plenty more where those came from.” The big outdoorsman stands too. “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?”
“Yup,” Clint says without hesitation. “We’re going to kidnap a little girl.”
Chapter Thirteen
I’m the only one Carly knows, and I know she’ll come with me if I tell her to. Clint’s plan is simple enough. It’ll probably throw all of us into trouble, but we all decide that if it saves Rayanna’s life, we’ll take our lumps and probably share some jail cells together.
“We all know what we’re doing, right?” Everybody nods. “Okay. Here we go.” I climb into the van and start it up. God only knows if this will work.
When I pull up around the corner from the school, I have no idea where to even start, but we do know there will be a recess pretty soon. I can see the playground from where I’m sitting, and I’ve got a pair of the strongest damn binoculars I’ve ever seen, courtesy of Boone’s store. I’m also wearing a mic, courtesy of Officer Littlemeier. He knows what we’re up to, and he’s going to be our contact with the FBI. All I can do at this point is wait.
At ten fifteen, I hear a bell and doors open to dozens of shouting, screaming, laughing kids. They spill out onto the playground, a lively bunch, and I start scanning them. It takes me about three minutes but I finally spot her. She’s wearing bright pink leggings, a little pink, yellow, and blue striped top with a ruffle around the bottom, and those damn athletic shoes that light up when they walk. Talk about a neon sign.
I straighten my fake uniform, take out a tool belt and an electronic clipboard―dead, of course―and head that direction. The playground flanks the front walk on both sides. At some point as I walk, she’s bound to look up and see me. And I’m not wrong.
When I get to within ten feet of the entrance to the walk, Carly and another little girl run up to the fence. “Lucien! What are you doing here?” she asks, jumping up and down and clapping.
“I have to work on something inside the building. Can you point out where I go in?”
“Yeah. See that door right there? Just go in and there’s an office inside there. The lady with red hair is Mrs. Yardley. She’s very nice. She’s the secretary. Mr. Morgan is the principal. He’s kinda mean,” she says with a frown.
“Is there a gate in this fence? So maybe I could come in and hug you?” I ask. To my relief, her little friend has gotten bored with the conversation and wandered away.
“Yeah! Over on the other side,” she says, and I can see it. It’s on the end of the fence that meets the building, but I’m in luck. It’s totally out of sight of the front door. These people are obviously idiots.
“Can you come over here with me? Just run over there and wait for me.” There’s a teacher standing near the door, and I wave to her as I head around the corner of the building. “Got a furnace problem,” I call out to her and wave, and she just waves back.
I walk on past the gate and lean up against the side of the brick building. There’s another building right next door, and it’s so close that no one could see me from the street. The other side of the building is the same. It’s a small city school in a small town. Security isn’t their strong suit, I see. “Where’d you go?” I hear a little voice say.
I step up just enough that she can see me. “I’m right here. I need to work on the furnace. Do you think you could come help me?” I watch as she looks back at the teacher, then shrugs. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Sure.” God, I hate doing this to this poor child, but if
it will save her mother’s life, it’ll be worth it and she’ll understand later. She opens the gate carefully and steps out, then closes it behind her. “Mrs. Williams will be mad if she finds out I left the playground.
“But you know me, so it’ll be okay,” I tell her and she nods. “Give me a hug. I’m so glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you too. Where’s Mommy?”
“At home. Would you like to go see her?” She nods enthusiastically. “Then help me with this real quick and we’ll go see her.”
“Okay.” I hand her a wrench and we step over to a metal box on the side of the building. It has nothing to do with the furnace―probably some old meter box―but she doesn’t know that. “Hmmm. That’s the wrong tool. Let me see …” I murmur as I go through my tool belt.
About that time, the bell rings. “Uh-oh. I have to go in. Mrs. Williams will be mad if I’m late from recess.”
“I thought you wanted to go see Mommy?”
She stands there for a few seconds, thoughtful, and then says, “Yeah. I do. I’ll explain to Mrs. Williams later.” I hand her another wrench and point to an old fitting, and she tries to slip the wrench onto it as I peer around the corner of the building. The kids will go in and it will be about a minute and a half before they figure out Carly’s not with them.
As soon as the door closes on the last child, I grab her hand. “Let’s go see Mommy now, whaddya say?”
“Sure!” Instead of taking her hand, I just grab her up and run straight toward the van. She’s laughing and squealing the whole way, and so far, nobody has come out the door.
We’re in the van and rolling down the street before I see a soul. As I round the corner in the next block, I see someone at the playground fence, but I don’t know who it is. It’ll be another minute or two before the cops are called, and by then, we’ll be long gone. I squeal up into the parking lot of a building about two blocks away and slide to a stop beside a red van that has a carpet cleaning logo on the side. The side door slides open and I look to Carly. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going? Who are these guys?” she asks as I grab her and leap into the van.
Eternally Yours: Bliss Series, Book Six Page 25