by David Archer
She felt a vibration in one of her pockets and the smallest glint of hope lifted her spirits. She had her phone in her pocket! God bless her past self for never carrying a stupid purse with her! She didn't know where she was, and she wouldn't know any time soon, but if she could just call her brother and father, they could trace her call! All she needed to do was reach her stupid phone!
She tugged her wrist with all the strength in her body. She needed to get her hand free, she just had to grab her phone! She pulled and pulled her wrist until she was certain that it had to be bleeding. It was on fire, but she didn't care. Things would be a lot worse if she didn't reach her phone. She pulled and tugged, ignoring every shooting pain in her wrist, ignoring the pounding in her head that still raged on despite her stubbornness. She pulled, and finally, her wrist broke free.
She let out a single laugh of pure relief and achievement as she realized she'd finally done it. She spared only a second for celebration before reaching for her phone. She brought it to life, momentarily blinded by the light that shone from it. She checked the time, taking some relief in noticing that only a few hours had passed since she left the substation. She took in the number of texts and missed calls, all from her dad and Jason and Station Commander Motley, and was happy that at least they knew she was missing. And just as she hit redial, a door burst open and light flooded into the room.
Angela quickly took in the fact that she was held in a basement. There were stairs in front of her and a door at the top had just opened. A tall man stood in the door and casually made his way down. She was just as shocked to see his face as she was hours ago when she was first taken. She knew this man, she saw him every day at the café, and she would have never in a million years thought he was capable of doing something like this. And yet, here he was.
"I'm sorry to do this to you," the man said as he walked closer. "It's just… from the very first time I laid eyes on you, I knew you were the only one for me."
Angela didn't respond. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she tried as subtly as possible to tuck her phone back into her pocket.
"I'm also sorry for last night," he continued. "I never meant to hurt you. Never. I've only ever wanted to be with you, but you'd be gone soon. You were going to leave me. I can take watching you go around with that so called 'boyfriend' of yours, but I couldn’t stand for…"
“Angela!” a voice erupted from the phone. Angela froze, her eyes open wide. The man in front of her stared down at her and finally noticed that her wrist was no longer tied. He grabbed her and reached into her pockets, and she tried with her one hand to hold him off, but her attempt was pointless. He picked up her phone and stared just for a second at the screen. He then threw it at the wall, where it broke in two before he let out a scream.
"How dare you!" he screamed at her as he strode toward her again. "You heartless bitch ! I'm trying to give us a better life!" His face was now only inches away from hers. "Isn't that what you want? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us ? Why do you love to see me suffer ?" He raised his hand to strike her.
Angela couldn't help the flinch or the whimper. She ducked her head, shut her eyes, and a scream came out as she waited for the blow, but it never came. She dared to open her eyes again, only to see the man stagger backwards. His hands were over his mouth and his eyes were wide open. He looked as if he had just witnessed the most horrifying thing in the world.
"I’m sorry," he whispered. "I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, so very, very sorry…" He kept mumbling apologies to her as he continued to back away. Angela could only stare, her chest heaving and her heart racing.
The man suddenly started looking around the room frantically. Upon finally finding his target, he ran toward it. With his back to Angela, he picked up his object and prepared it. He then turned back to his victim and quickly walked toward her again, the mumbled apologies continuing to flow from his mouth with no hint of stopping. As he got closer, Angela realized what he was holding was a syringe that was now filled with a clear liquid.
"No, don't," she finally dared to say.
"I'm sorry, I really am…" With one hand, the man in front of her grabbed her free wrist and held it down to the arm rest that she had just freed herself from. Angela struggled and tried to protest, but that didn't stop the man from bringing the needle into her arm. "I'm sorry, but you didn’t leave me a choice," he continued to mumble. Angela's eyes started to close, the same words constantly ringing in her ears, "Sorry, so very sorry…"
Chapter 20
The day kept moving along at a slow, slow pace. Seconds ticked by like minutes, and minutes felt like hours. Each tick of the clock mocked the entire department, it almost screamed at them, continuously telling them they were one second closer to losing Angela forever.
Lewis’ phone rang, and he picked it up to glance at the caller ID. Instantly, his heart leapt into his throat when he saw that it was Angela’s phone that was calling. He answered immediately, but the line seemed dead. He called out, “Angela?”
A few seconds later, the phone went dead for real, and all he had heard were some scuffling sounds. The trace had gotten nowhere. He was frantically trying everything he could think of, but to no avail.
Then, surprising everyone, Floyd McCoy walked into the command center, with a nearly panicking Steven Winters trailing along behind him. Floyd was a big man, in all respects of the word. He was tall, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a naturally big build. Steven Winters looked tiny in comparison, and was every definition of average in appearance.
As the pair walked toward Jason’s desk, every eye in the substation turned to them. Eventually, Lewis and Jason looked up and saw Floyd approaching. It wasn't quite the reunion Chance was expecting, as Lewis glared and stormed toward Floyd. Jason tried to hold him back and calm him down, but Lewis brushed him off. They met in the middle and the yelling started immediately.
"You really are a stubborn old bastard, aren't you?" Lewis demanded.
"Careful, Lewis," Floyd calmly responded, though it was clear in his eyes he was not to be tested. "I've had a very long day."
"You just couldn’t let the damned case go!" Lewis shouted. "And now you've dragged Steve into it as well!"
"I never forced anyone to do anything," Floyd said, his voice still calm. "Look, we can talk about this later. I just want to focus on helping to find Angela, or have you already forgotten she's missing?"
Lewis glared. "Excuse me?" he asked incredulously. "You haven't even been here!"
"And whose fault is that? You should have called me the minute you thought Angela was in danger, not after she's already been taken!"
"The only reason we didn't call you earlier was because Angela was so set on leaving you out of it! She didn't want to interrupt you during a case. Think about that for a second. Your own daughter didn't want to contact you when she was in danger because even she knew you're too damned pig-headed to drop a case!"
"Guys!" Jason called out. The two other men hadn't even noticed him approaching them until just then. When they finally took in their surroundings, they noticed everyone was still staring at them, including Chance, Pete and the others. Steve had drifted away from their argument, sticking closer to Jason.
"This isn't important," Jason continued calmly. "What's important is finding Angela, and we don’t have time to be arguing, so why don’t we just all work together to try and find Angela?"
There was a moment of silence and the tension in the room could have been cut with a knife. Finally, Lewis and Floyd let out a sigh and joined the rest of the group. Jason introduced Floyd to Pete and Chance, and Pete assigned tasks. Carol and Tina would catch Floyd up on what they knew so far, and maybe even try to convince him not to stick his nose into the case (though they already knew their attempts would be futile). Steve was to work with Josie over Skype to try and trace Angela's call, or find any other leads. Josie could also bring Steve up to speed in that time. The rest would review surveill
ance videos, past interviews, and revisit crime scenes to determine if they missed anything before.
* * *
It had been hours of continuous work. It was getting late, but none of them felt they had accomplished anything new. Now that Floyd and Steve were up to date, nobody wanted to stop working, even though they weren’t sure how to proceed with the investigation. They kept looking over everything they knew about the case and tried to match up what they could with potential suspects.
Pete, on the other hand, had sent Jake, Tina, Chance and Carol home to get some rest an hour earlier. Lewis, Jason and Floyd weren't happy about it, but Pete simply told them that nobody was of much use when they were half asleep. Roberts had fallen asleep at the table just over twenty minutes ago. Pete didn't bother to wake her up.
Steve was in the IT lab, still on a video call with Josie, who was not happy. She had answered all of Steve's questions about the case and what was going on with Angela, and she had even answered all of his questions about how she was able to track down his IP address, despite his best efforts. The answer, of course, was that she was one of the best computer hackers there was, and Steve was impressed. They had worked together to try and track the phone, but it was a bust. The call didn't last long enough and only told them that it had come from somewhere inside the city. The radius that did come up was consistent with the geographic outline that Jake had come up with, but it didn't give them any new information. Since then, the two techs were looking at all the surveillance videos of each abduction, trying to see if they missed something.
"I feel like I've watched this video twenty times," Steve said in regards to Zoe Castellanos' abduction. He had originally been in charge of Angela's abduction, but he quickly found that too hard to watch.
“I know I have,” Josie muttered from her side.
“I just can’t stand this. I should have been here, dammit, not out chasing around the country on a cold case that won’t ever be solved!”
“Steve, it's not your fault. You were doing what you thought you needed to do. I can't guarantee Angela won't be mad that you were investigating her mom, but… you were just trying to help.”
Steve hesitated for a moment. "Can I tell you something? Something you can't tell anyone? Especially not Lewis or Jason?"
Josie froze. “As long as it doesn’t impact the case, sure.”
"It wasn't Floyd's idea to try to reopen Angie's mother’s case. It wasn't mine either. Angela was the one who needed to know. About two months ago, I woke up really late at night and went downstairs to get some water. I saw Angela on my work laptop, she was trying to get into the police department files. I talked to her about it, and she told me that she needed to know what happened to her mother. She’d already talked to Floyd about it, and he said he’d be willing to come out of retirement to help, but he wasn’t sure how to begin.” He sighed. “So she asked me to help, and I did.”
“That’s how you ended up hacking the LVPD computers?” Josie asked.
Steve nodded at the camera. "Yeah. Station Commander found out, somehow, that someone was hacking into the server, and when he found out what case files were opened, he told Floyd. Floyd came down and asked me about it, to see what I could figure out I suppose, and it only took him a couple of minutes to figure out that I was involved, and that meant Angie was. So the three of us were working the case together. It's been two months and the only lead we had was a potential witness that we tracked to San Antonio. That's what we've been doing the past two weeks, and we're still no closer to finding the killer."
“So Angela knew exactly what you two were doing?”
Steve nodded. "The only reason she wasn't with us was because she had that research job interview."
“That's why she didn't want to call you in earlier, then,” Josie said. Steve just glumly nodded his head in agreement, but then his eyes took on a new look.
"Can you do me a favor?" he asked suddenly.
“Like what?” she asked cautiously.
"Angie mentioned something a while back, when we first started looking into her mother's case, about a babysitter she had back then," Steve continued. "Lewis always said they didn’t use one, because Angie was a good kid and could take care of herself by that time. Everyone thought maybe she just remembered wrong; she was only eight, after all. But the guy we met in San Antonio said he actually did remember someone who claimed to be a babysitter going to the house around that time."
Josie looked at him. “Who was this witness? Somebody who was close to Lewis and his wife?”
Steve nodded once again. “Yeah,” he said. “Chuck Bayer. Chuck was a teenager back then, and he did a lot of odd jobs around that area. Lewis hired him to build a greenhouse that summer, and he was still working on it when Molly was killed. He said there was a young guy who claimed he was there to babysit Angela a couple times around then.”
“So you're thinking whoever the babysitter was that Angela and Chuck remember could be the guy who killed her mom?”
"Well, we think it’s worth looking into,” he said, “but we don't know anything about him. Chuck didn’t know him, and didn’t remember him at all until I happened to ask if he ever knew anything about Angie having a babysitter back then. Trouble is, it was a long time ago. Chuck doesn’t think he ever got the guy’s name, and can’t remember what he looked like.”
“Let me see if I can find anything,” Josie said. “I doubt it’s related to this case, but you never know, right?”
"Really? You don’t mind?" Steve asked.
“Not at all,” Josie said, “but let’s worry about finding Angela, first.”
"Okay," Steve agreed.
They kept working for another hour, but finally, even they decided to take a fresh start the following morning. All they could hope for was that the killer kept to his original MO; that would mean they still had almost six days to find Angela alive.
* * *
Chance thought Gabriella seemed to be in a better mood as she helped Grandma make dinner, and there were brief moments when she almost seemed to be back to herself.
“Hey, there,” he said, smiling as she came and put her arms around him. “You seem to be in a pretty good mood. What brought this on?”
Gabriella leaned back in his embrace and looked up at him. “Memories,” she said. “I spent the day going over old ones with Enrico, and suddenly I started to recall some other things.” She grinned, and there was a twinkle in his eye.
Chance’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really, now?” he asked. “Like, what kind of things?”
She giggled like a schoolgirl. “I remember a lot,” she said. “I was talking to Enrico about how I used to have a crush on him, and I said something about how he always went turkey hunting, but he stared at me like I was crazy, and it hit me that it was you who likes to go hunting. I could remember when you got the scars on your chest, from the bear attacking you. And as soon as I rembered that, all of a sudden a thousand other things came flooding back to me.”
She suddenly kissed him, and Chance’s eyes got even bigger. “I remember, Chance,” she said. “I remember how much I love you, and I remember Robin being born, I remember so many things!” She leaned close to his ear. “And I remember,” she whispered, “how much you like it when I...”
Chance choked and pushed her back to look into her eyes, which were alight with love and happiness. He stared a second longer, then reached out and pulled her close. He held her for a long moment as tears of happiness clouded his vision, but then he recalled the day he had just come through.
He sat down and began to tell her everything that had happened, and she could see the grief on his face. She was heartbroken over Angela’s abduction, and volunteered to come back to work the next morning to see if she could help, and Chance sighed.
“We could probably use another hand,” he said. “If nothing else, you might keep track of who is doing what. I think we’re doing everything that can be done, and the most important thing any of us can do r
ight now is say a prayer.”
“We will,” Gabriella said. “And I need to get back to work, to doing something to help. Enrico has helped a lot, but he has to go home and get back to his own job, but he won’t go unless he’s sure I’m going to be okay.” She kissed Chance on the cheek. “Let’s go and show him, okay?”
* * *
Angela woke up in the same dark room she had found herself in before. For just a moment, she had hoped she would wake up to find herself home at last with her family, but deep down, she knew those were just dreams. She still had no idea how long she had been gone; all she knew was that it was dark and she had a killer headache. Somewhere deep in her logical mind, she knew what that headache meant, but she was doing her best not to believe it. She had been repeatedly drugged for what she assumed must be a day or more by that time, and it was likely that her body was becoming dependent on them. The headache was undoubtedly a symptom of withdrawal, and that terrified her.
She was also naked. She remembered hearing her dad say that the other victims showed signs that they had been kept naked, like irritations around their private parts from not being cleaned after using the bathroom. She looked down and realized that there was a bucket under the chair, and could tell that the seat was cut out. Her bladder suddenly found that to be a relief, and she let go.
I have to get through this, Angela thought to herself. It wasn't that she didn't trust that her father and the sheriff would find her, because she did. She just didn't trust that they'd find her before things got a whole lot worse.
Angela sighed; sarcasm wasn’t going to help this situation. Giving him the silent treatment had only angered him, and sarcasm would probably make it even worse. She couldn't even imagine making a serious attempt to reason with him; he was clearly past that stage.
What else could she do? Kiss his ass until he let her go?
Now, wait, she thought. That might not be such a bad idea.