Desolation Point

by Lisa Phillips

  A man answered the phone. “Deputy Maxwell.”

  “Who is this?”

  “If you want your father back, you’ll come to the bowling alley.”

  “That’s it?” she said. “I show up, and you give him back to me?”

  Drew shifted closer. His body was warm. Even though they weren’t touching, it was a comfort to her. She wanted to sink into his embrace, but things were insane. If she didn’t have focus, she wasn’t going to be able to do this.

  They had no help, unless Mark showed up fast or the state police sent an army. And the clock was ticking. Who knew what they were doing—or planning to do—with her father?

  “If you don’t show up, I guess you’ll never find out. Will you?”

  She gritted her teeth together. “You’ll probably just kill him, and then us too?”

  Drew set his hand on her shoulder. Behind her other shoulder, the security guard got close. An entirely different sensation than Drew being there. She shifted away from him, closer to Drew. His hand slipped across the back of her shoulders, and she collided with his side. He held her there.

  “I want to speak with him.” She had to know he was at least still alive.

  “He’s unavailable right now.”

  “Then too bad. You get nothing.” She balled her free hand into fists, nursing the anger. “You should have left him in the hospital. Now you’ll have another death on your hands.”

  “Is that right?”

  She took a breath. “I want to speak to Laney. Now.”

  He chuckled. She thought she recognized the voice but couldn’t be sure. “Guess you don’t know what we want.”

  “I’m not playing your game.”

  “Then you best show up.”

  The line went dead.

  . . .

  Drew hit SEND on the text so Mark would know where they were headed. In a couple of seconds, he got a reply.

  Twenty-five minutes.

  He relayed that to Ellie as they crossed the street, headed for the bowling alley. She shook her head. “That’s a long time.”

  He agreed. “Too long to wait.”

  They halted at the side door, and he eyed the surveillance camera in the loading area. Were they watching? Either they already knew he and Ellie were there, or they would soon enough.

  He pushed the door open, and she went in first. He had no problem playing a protective role here. Ellie had the weight of her badge behind her actions, even with what these people had tried to do. What they’d been doing for years. Subverting the law for their own financial gains.

  They moved into the main hall inside of the bowling alley. Most of the lights were out, except for runners down the sides of the lanes.

  “Dad!”

  Drew spotted what she had seen. What she now raced toward. Her father was slumped on the floor in the center of the room. She knelt beside him. “He’s alive.” Her voice carried back to Drew.

  “Good.” He didn’t go to her, though.

  Out the corner of his eye he saw movement. By the time he glanced over, the movement was gone. He checked all corners. Hiding spots. In the darkness there could be any number of people in here.

  Drew held his gun loose in his hand. Providing cover fire would be his role here. Though the last thing he wanted was to get into a gunfight with Ellie exposed like that.

  He called out, “Can you move him?”

  “No. We need help.”

  They could carry him out together. But something about this didn’t sit right with him. Drew took half a dozen steps. Put himself out in the open. Then he called out to whoever was waiting. Hiding. “Come out, now.”

  No one moved.

  “Lay down your weapons and come out where we can see you. This is over. Let’s not make things worse before it’s over.”

  He took another step.

  The lights flickered on. Multicolored strobes flashed in a rhythm, the ones used on cosmic bowling night. Ellie dipped into shadow, and then reappeared, though she hadn’t moved at all.

  The strobes spun and swirled, destroying any chance he had of spotting anyone.

  Still, there was nothing making noise much above silence.

  He called out again. “Let’s end this before—”

  Music came on. It was like being in a concert when even that was turned up too loud. He winced. Ducked back into the shadows. Wherever they were, he’d have to root them out.

  He wanted to call to Ellie to stay put, but figured she would likely remain with her father. He hoped.

  God, help me.

  He skirted the edge of the room to look for anyone hiding and made his way around the perimeter. Take out the stragglers first. Work his way to whoever was calling the shots.

  The first man rose up in front of him. Drew grabbed the guy. He dipped his head, rotated his shoulders and flipped the man over him and onto his back on the floor. Out cold. He pulled zip ties from his pocket, ignored the ones that spilled onto the ground, and tied the man’s hands behind his back.

  The next one never even saw him coming.

  Drew wrapped an arm around his neck from behind and put the man in a sleeper hold. It wasn’t long before his body slumped, and Drew laid him on the ground. Secured his hands.

  The third got in a punch. Drew hit him on the temple with his weapon, breathing hard. Sweat rolled down his back under the vest and dampened his T-shirt.

  He sucked in a few full breaths and continued on. How many were there? Enough for an ambush, and yet they’d waited out of sight. For what?

  Drew neared the office. Was the person in charge inside? Calling the shots one step removed wasn’t the way Drew worked—which was why he had no employees. When he did get Craig as a protégé, things were going to be different than the way his Uncle Merrick had done things. Some of his crazy ideas about what made a man strong were just insane.

  He prayed for Ellie and her father. For the chance to show Craig what his life was like. To find another person who would fully understand Drew Turner-North, and who he really was.

  He wanted that chance.

  And the chance to tell Ellie how he truly felt.

  Whether she felt the same or not, he didn’t know. But he wanted her to know how he felt. After all, she knew him now in a way not many people did. Maybe that would grow to more. God, that’s what I want. If it was His will, Drew would get them all through this.

  The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  A man came out of nowhere. The arm that swung at him came from the dark too late for him to weave his head to the side. White light flashed across his vision. His leg buckled. He bent the knee of his other leg and then pushed off the ground.

  He launched his body at the man, and they hit the thin carpet on the floor. Momentum carried them over and over. Pain exploded in his hip. His knee. He cried out but got a grip on the man. Enough to twist the guy’s arm back far enough that he was the one to cry out this time.

  Drew leaned on the man’s back, careful not to put weight on his knee.

  The music cut out, as did the flashing lights. Then regular fluorescents switched on.

  “Drew!” Ellie’s voice rang out, high and full of fear.

  He finished securing the man he’d brought down and then stood. She was in the center with her father where he’d left her. Alan Franz held her arm, his gun pointed at her chin.

  Fear rushed through him. It was like having an ice bucket dumped over his head. Or the time a semi had drifted across the center lane, right at him. The split second realization that everything in his world was about to change.

  God had saved him from that semi. And so many other things that should have killed him. Or could have killed him. Would he do that now, or had Drew’s time run out? Was he going to watch Ellie die, an end to God’s goodness in his life?

  Drew stepped over the man on the floor and out toward the bowling lanes. “Okay.” He held his hands up.

  Ellie craned her neck back. Franz had it in his grip. Her ho
lster was empty, her gun discarded too far for her to reach.

  Franz said, “Drop that gun.”

  Drew didn’t want to, but what was the alternative? He bent and laid it down, wincing at the feel of his hip and knee. “Okay, it’s down. Now let her go.”

  The man who’d shot Simon Mills grinned. His suit was rumpled. Hair askew. A murderer who had lived in their town this whole time. Hiding behind the scenes, doing whatever he wanted. Believing he would never get caught.

  “It’s over,” Drew said. “Let her go.”

  There was a rush of movement behind him. Ellie’s eyes widened. Drew didn’t have time to turn. Something hard slammed into the back of his head.

  Black swallowed him up, and he felt his own body hit the ground.

  Chapter 18

  Everything in her screamed. It took a second, then the sound emerged from her mouth. As though her body had to catch up with what her mind was experiencing.

  The man who’d come up behind Drew and struck him stood over his body. Her partner was out cold. She could see the glistening wet on the back of his head. Blood.

  Franz gripped her elbow. “Shut up.”

  She forced herself to quit screaming. On the floor close by, her father moaned. Her gun. She couldn’t reach any of them.

  Franz dragged her back. Farther away from what she needed. Who she needed. Her dad. Drew. More tears rolled down her face as she struggled against Franz’s grip. He hauled her along. She kicked at his leg with her boot heel. Would the other guy shoot her? Franz winced but kept going, shoving the gun against her ribs. “I’ll shoot you.”

  Then why didn’t the bank-manager-turned-murderer just do it? “What do you want?”

  “Just keep moving.”

  “I don’t have land,” she said. “I’m not going to sell you anything.”

  He glanced back, the gun still pressed painfully against her side. “Bring him.”

  She tried to twist back. Pain lanced through her side. She gritted her teeth and managed to look behind her, far enough to see the man who had hit Drew haul her father onto his shoulder. He followed them, leaving Drew on the floor.

  They were bringing her father?

  They were leaving Drew and bringing her father.

  Franz called out again. “Kill that one!”

  Her foot clipped a stair and she fell, landing on her side on the steps up to the food court area. Franz pulled on her arm. “Get up!”

  Could she stall long enough for help to come? Mark was on his way, right? Or maybe Drew could rally and fight back against them. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. She had a gun pressed to her ribs. If she did anything other than what the bank manager told her to, he would not miss.

  Ellie planted her hands and got her feet under her. She tried to breathe, tried to figure out how this was going to go and what she was supposed to do.

  There was nothing in her training about being kidnapped at gunpoint by someone you’d gone to about maybe getting a mortgage. Franz was supposed to be an upstanding member of the community.

  A gunshot rang out. She turned and saw a pistol in the hand of a man who stood over Drew’s body. “No!”

  He shoved her toward the door.

  She stumbled again.

  He pushed her on, toward a van. She hit the passenger door and turned. “Did you force them all to be part of your group?”

  “Get in.”

  “You killed Simon Mills, and now Drew is dead, too. What else have you done? The receptionist, maybe? Did you kill Natalie Barnes?” It was all she could do to keep her thoughts in line, to keep her voice from completely breaking. The way her heart had just done.

  She had to challenge him. Let him know she wasn’t going to go down without a fight—one that would end with him in handcuffs.

  “I thought that was ruled a suicide.”

  She said, “Rulings can change.”

  Obviously the sheriff had been pressured into making that call. Who knew what the evidence indicated? She was going to look into that personally.

  If she got out of this alive.

  A shadow landed on the sidewalk as Laney slid the door open. Her friend’s features were dark tonight, as dark as the night sky.

  Nausea rolled through Ellie’s stomach. “How could you—”

  Franz shoved her.

  Ellie’s shins slammed against the edge of the van and she fell in, crying out. Pain ricocheted through her. All those bruises. Cuts. Injuries. More tears gathered, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She was done being weak. Drew was dead, and after all this time, she was done hiding her pain beneath a façade that wasn’t real.

  Ellie roared in frustration. “Why are you doing this?”

  Franz stood at the open van door, gun pointed at her. “Scoot in.” He shifted the hand holding his gun to point it at Laney. “Or you both die.”

  Laney sucked in a breath.

  Ellie scrambled farther into the van. The other man dumped her father beside her. Franz slid the door shut and got in the passenger seat. “Drive!”

  They swayed as the van driver—Deputy Coughlan—hit the gas. Laney’s body leaned against her, the pressure of her friend’s weight adding to her injuries.

  “Get off me.”

  “Sorry.” She shifted, enough to quit leaning on Ellie. “I’m sorry.”

  Ellie moved to stroke her father’s cheek. “You should have thought about that before you joined up with these people.” She gritted her teeth, pushed off the floor of the van and sat up to lean against the side. “These murderers.”

  “I didn’t want this, Ellie. You have to know that.”

  She ignored the tears in her friend’s voice. “Do you know how many criminals say that to me? But only after they’ve destroyed people’s lives.”

  “I know what I’ve done.” Laney looked away.

  “Why?” she asked. “For what?”

  “Money of course. How do you think my business stays afloat? My dad was part of the group. I inherited the position after he died.” She sucked in a breath and kept whispering. “It’s not all bad. When they’re done with a mining project they make the area a wilderness sanctuary. They donate money to schools and scholarships.”

  “And their own pockets.”

  “Without it, I’d be bankrupt. I would have had to close my doors.”

  Like that was a reason to join up with people like Alan Franz, whose end game was hurting others. Not that they hadn’t been actively doing so all along. Sure, people who’d sold their lands had been compensated, like Brad and Sheila currently in Acapulco. But what had that compensation cost them? Sheila hadn’t wanted to move. She’d been forced out.

  Some residents had no doubt lived on land that’d been in their family for generations. Who thought about that cost when they wanted mining and then a wildlife sanctuary? As though doing that made it all okay.

  At the end of the day, Laney and her friends were lining their own pockets. They weren’t out to benefit anyone else.

  “I thought you were a good person.” Ellie stared at her friend, desperate to see something beyond the words she thought Ellie wanted to hear. “I trusted you.”

  Tears spilled down Laney’s cheeks. “El…” her voice broke in the middle of Ellie’s name.

  Her heart squeezed. But it was too late for Laney to feel bad. She was too deep in this to get the privilege of feeling guilty. That wasn’t going to change all that she was responsible for. And maybe Ellie was just jaded, dealing with criminals more than she did regular folks on most days. So many of them talked a good game. They just said what you wanted to hear.

  Maybe Laney was having this change of heart because Alan Franz had threatened to kill her, as well as Ellie. Or because she was finally seeing that things had gone too far. Maybe her remorse was genuine.

  But Ellie couldn’t accept it. Not right now, not when her father was lying beside her unconscious. When Drew was back at the bowling alley, dead from that gunshot.

  There was no room in h
er heart to work through this. She needed help.

  God, Drew needs Your help. Even if he was already dead, she could still pray, still hope.

  So do I.

  Wherever they were going, and whatever was going to happen when they got there, Ellie knew it wasn’t going to be good.

  She leaned over and touched her father’s shoulder.

  Would any of them survive this?

  . . .

  Pain. So much pain. Was this what Ellie had felt when she was shot? Point blank range, closer than she’d been hit.

  Consciousness swam in front of him, his brain attempting to fire when it also wanted to shut down completely. The man stood over him and had laughed.

  Shot him, and then laughed.

  Some joke.

  “This is gonna be fun.”

  Then he’d dragged Drew into the office and left. What on earth? Drew patted his pockets, grateful his thoughts had finally settled down. It was like trying to think through the fog of a concussion.

  Ellie was gone.

  He’d heard her scream. She thought he was dead, but he was alive and determined to find her. There was no way he’d leave her to Alan Franz. Alan would destroy her life the way he’d done to so many others.

  No phone. They had to have taken it. No knife. No other weapons. Where was Mark? Shouldn’t he have shown up already?

  Drew heard movement in the hall outside the office. Time to move. He grabbed the edge of the desk, planted the foot of his good leg and hoisted himself to stand. Though, not without the little hop required to get his balance. Now he just needed a weapon.

  He moved to the door. When the man entered, Drew grabbed the door and whipped it forward. The wood smacked the man in the forehead.

  Drew hit him again, then grabbed his wrist—the one holding the gun. The same gun he’d fired at Drew’s chest just for fun. The man slammed back against the door from his side. It glanced off Drew’s shoulder, but he ignored it and wrestled for control of the gun.

  Everything blurred into a wash of sensations. The smell of sweat. Movements became instinctual, as life and death hung on the edge of a knife. Fights were about so much instinct they were often over before Drew even really contemplated the fact they’d started.