Stolen

by James Hunt

  When Jake reached around to his back she shuddered, thinking the handcuffs were near. But when he extended the small revolver to her, she froze.

  “Take it.” Jake grabbed her hand and forced the pistol’s grip into her palm. “Keep it tucked under your shirt. Don’t let them get close enough to pat you down. And only take a shot if it’s the last resort. Understand?”

  Lena stared at the silver pistol, which was heavier than she expected it to be. She nodded and slowly tucked it in the back of her waistband as instructed.

  “Keep them talking. It’ll give our shooters time to find an open spot. But the moment we hear any gunshots or screams, we’re coming inside.” Jake wrapped his thick fingers around her shoulders, and she felt him shaking, or that could have been her. She couldn’t tell. He hugged her and kissed her cheek.

  Lena smiled nervously and then stepped around the truck’s open door and toward the barn. Despite her racing pulse, she found that her feet were slow to move. The headlights from the squad cars cast her shadow long and tall over the front of the barn, and it grew larger with each step. She knew the size was only a trick of the light, but she hoped that it frightened whoever was inside.

  The pistol was bulky and awkward and dug into her back every time she swung her hips, but she drew a small amount of courage from its presence. When she finally reached the barn door’s entrance, she hesitated. The moment she stepped inside her life would change, and it would either get better or worse. There was no middle ground here. Fear, hate, anger, despair, every bad thought and feeling she’d ever had flooded her mind. But despite what she was afraid of finding, she stepped through the door.

  The light from the police cars flooded the cracks of the old barn and revealed small snippets of what was inside. Bales of hay, a rusted tractor, empty wooden stalls, and in the middle of the floor the light-blue sedan, which still had its parking lights on and was puffing exhaust. All four car doors were open, but from where she stood she couldn’t see anyone inside.

  “I’m here.” Lena placed one foot in front of the other, scanning the darkness. She crunched over decaying bits of hay and the loose topsoil. She kept her hands close to her sides, wanting to reach for the pistol and the security it provided, but denied herself the reprieve.

  “Stop!” The voice was shrill and panicked, but Lena complied, freezing in place as if the next step would be her last.

  Lena tried to pinpoint the voice’s origin but lost it in the darkness. “Just come out, and no one has to get hurt.” She remained frozen, craning her neck, and her vision sweeping across the barn. “Just let my daughter go.”

  Feet shuffled to her left, and when Lena turned she stared down the barrel of a pistol. She followed the hand to the shoulder and then examined the face of the woman staring back at her. It took her a second in the dark of the barn, but eventually her eyes adjusted. “Carla?”

  The sweat on Carla Knox’s face shimmered from what light penetrated through the cracks in the barn walls. Her right arm held the pistol, and her left held the neck of Emily Foreman. “They can’t get away with it, Lena.” Dark circles rested under her eyes, but her glare was alert and wild. “They hurt my family. And now I’m going to hurt theirs.” She pulled the little girl, who sobbed quietly, closer to her and put the gun to her head.

  Lena held up her hands, keeping them both where Carla could see. She moved slowly, afraid that any jerk or movement would trigger an event that neither would be able to undo. “Carla, you need to let the girl go.”

  “What about my daughter, Lena? Are the tumors that are killing her kidneys and liver going to let her go? Is my husband going to wake up from his coma? Are the burns he received from the rig explosion going to disappear?” Carla shook her head. “We tried talking to them. We tried doing it the right way, and look where it got us.” She pressed the end of the pistol harder into the girl’s head. “Look what happened to you. They took your daughter.” She smiled. “So I took one of theirs.”

  Despite the lunacy dripping in Carla’s tone, those same thoughts had crossed Lena’s mind as well. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A daughter for a daughter. Wasn’t this the daughter of the same man that led a coup to kill her and what remained of her family less than an hour ago? Didn’t this girl’s mother publicly denounce every attempt that she made to bring New Energy to justice? It was. But those injustices lay with her parents. Not the girl. “Carla, Emily had nothing to do with what happened to your daughter, or your husband. And she most certainly didn’t have anything to do with what happened to my daughter.” She looked down to Emily’s face and saw the steady stream of tears flowing down the girl’s cheeks. “This isn’t going to help anyone.”

  “You’re wrong!” Carla screamed and yanked Emily with her as she took a step back. “You may be willing to give up, but I’m not. I’m doing what needs to be done. I’m doing what you never could.”

  “Dammit, Carla, listen to me!” Outside, Lena could feel the guns aimed at the barn and knew what it would mean if bullets started flying. “If you hurt that girl, it will weigh on you for the rest of your life. It will follow you to your grave, and what happens to your family then? Who’s going to take care of Rick and Sadie when you’re behind bars? What would they think if they saw you right now?”

  Carla’s harsh grimace was replaced with the thoughtful expression of someone weighing the odds of their future. The type of decision where consequences stretched beyond the scope of one life and permeated dozens of others. For a moment, Lena thought she’d reached her, but just as quickly as the moment came it passed. “Rick would understand.”

  “But what about your daughter? What about Sadie? What if someone had a gun to her head right now? Wouldn’t you want the person to let her go?” It was the last lifeline that Lena could think to throw, and she prayed that Carla would take it. She took a step forward, both her hands still in view but her mind wandering to the back of her waistband, trying to calculate how long it would take for her to pull, aim, and shoot. She’d had practice with a weapon, but nothing like this, and she didn’t trust herself to make the decision. But she may not have a choice.

  “My daughter has had a gun to her head for the past two years. She already has one foot in the grave, as do all of the other kids that New Energy made sick.” Carla straightened her back, lifting her chin, keeping the pistol’s barrel pressed against Emily’s head. There was a calmness to her voice, like when someone who was insane found all the reasons to justify their actions. “What does one more dead kid matter?”

  “Carla, no!” Lena lunged forward as the gunshot rang out, and she collided with Carla’s body, and the two hit the ground, Lena landing on top. The ring from the gunshot lingered, and in the light of the headlights she saw the shine of the pistol still gripped in Carla’s hand. She yanked it from her grip, and Lena felt something warm on her left arm. In the dark it was hard to tell what it was, but the moment the barn doors burst open with a flood of light and the officers funneled inside, she saw that it was blood.

  The cry was involuntary, and for a split second Lena wasn’t sure who’d been shot. Hands pulled her away from Carla’s body. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer in her chest, yet she felt as if she couldn’t move—that was until she heard the second scream.

  Lena looked to her right and saw one of the officers with Emily in their arms. Her face was beet red, and specks of blood dotted her shirt, arm, and cheek. She was screaming her head off, but from what Lena saw the girl was unharmed. She looked back to Carla and noticed the hole in her chest just before a team of medics blocked her body from view.

  22

  23 Hours Left

  It was an hour before Lena was allowed to leave the barn, and then it was just to be taken back to the station, where she’d prepare her official statement. She didn’t remember much of the ride back, other than the fact that she was exhausted. The majority of her brainpower was focused on reliving the same half second in the barn. She saw Carla’s lifeless body on the
bed of hay and dirt. The pair of eyes that had been so angry, so focused, now so empty.

  At least the girl had survived with little more than a few bruises and the emotional trauma that would require more therapy than the girl could ever want. But she was alive, something both her parents would be thankful for.

  Lena crossed her arms and held onto herself tightly. While the Foremans’ girl would soon be returned home, her daughter was still missing. And if she were to ever see her again, what would happen? Another hostage standoff? A gun to Kaley’s head while some negotiator made promises to some unstable mind that they couldn’t keep?

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Hayes?” The deputy driving her back to the station glanced at her from the rearview mirror. He was a young man with kind eyes.

  “I’m fine.” It was a lie, but the last person she wanted to speak with about it was a stranger. She leaned her head back against the leather seat and closed her eyes. The light vibrations of the road were soothing, and it wasn’t long before the weight of her eyelids grew too heavy for her to open them. The images of Carla’s body flashed in her mind, but when she finally drifted off to sleep her dreams had replaced Carla’s face with Kaley’s.

  Lena watched as her daughter was tied and bound, a gun to her head, her cheeks red, and she was crying, just as Emily had been. She pleaded with the kidnapper, who had remained faceless in the shadows of her dream. But no matter what she said or how hard she begged, the end of the pistol remained glued to the side of her daughter’s head.

  “Her death is on your hands.” The shadow smiled, and a finger pressed against the smooth steel of the trigger and squeezed. The muzzle of the pistol flashed, and the crack of the gunshot awoke her from the nightmare. Lena panted heavily, and her body was covered in sweat.

  The car had stopped moving, and when she noticed the surrounding cars in the parking lot she found the deputy’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “Hey.” The deputy retained the same kindness as before. “We got here a little bit ago, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Lena wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Thanks.” She unbuckled the seat belt, and the officer let her out of the back door. Her head was foggy, and her limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated from the quick, deep slumber. A floodlight clicked on, and she squinted as she and the deputy walked through the station’s back door.

  The sheriff’s office was still busy, but with most of the deputies still out at the barn dealing with the fallout of the standoff, it wasn’t nearly as full as she’d seen it over the past couple of days. The entrance through the back relieved her of the pain of having to deal with the reporters, but she was forced to walk past the jail cells, where Jim Foreman was still being held.

  Lena stopped when she saw him. He sat on the cot that rested a few feet off the ground, far too thin and narrow to provide any actual comfort while sleeping. His head hung low between his shoulders, and he was hunched over with forearms on his thighs. He didn’t realize she was standing there until the deputy behind her spoke up.

  “Mrs. Hayes?” the deputy asked.

  Jim Foreman lifted his head, and the dreary pair of eyes came alive, and those lifeless hands clenched into fists. “You bitch.” He jumped from the cot and sprinted toward the bars. He slammed his heavy body into the iron door, and it rang with a dull thud.

  “Back away from the door, Foreman!” The deputy stepped in front of Lena and moved his hand to the grip of his pistol.

  But despite the order, Foreman didn’t retreat. “You think you can sit on your high horse and destroy my family? Take my livelihood?”

  Lena stepped around the deputy to get a better look at him, realizing that no one had told him about Emily, how she was safe and on her way back to his house to be with his wife. A part of her wanted to tell him to fuck off, but the parent inside knew the horrible torture of the unknown. “Emily is fine.”

  The anger on Foreman’s face diluted. “What?”

  “We found her in a barn off of Highway 9. It was Carla Knox that took your daughter. She’s dead now. But Emily is heading back to be with your wife. She’s probably arriving now.”

  Foreman lowered his hands from the bar and looked to the deputy, who simply nodded in confirmation. He stumbled backward from the door, his shoulders sagging, and bumped into the rear wall, where he slid to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

  What he was crying for, Lena wasn’t entirely sure. It could have been the overwhelming feeling caused by learning that his daughter was safe, or the guilt of falsely blaming Lena and her family for what happened to him, but whatever it was, Lena didn’t stick around to find out. She maneuvered around the desks and found Mark, who was still speaking with a deputy in the bullpen of desks outside Jake’s office. The moment he made eye contact with her he left his seat and rushed to her, wrapping her in his arms. The two rocked back and forth, and Lena leaned into him, the way she used to do whenever she felt the need to drink, or shoot up, or smoke, the way that she never could with Nick.

  “Are you okay?” Mark cupped her face, his eyes slightly watery. “I heard what happened over the police radio.”

  Lena kissed his palm and nodded, her own eyes watery. “She’s still out there, Mark.” Her lower lip quivered. “My baby’s still out there somewhere.”

  “Well, now that the Foreman girl is safe you can make the announcement.” Mark said.

  With everything that happened she’d completely forgotten about the kidnapper’s demands. But her earlier resolve of whether it would be effective enough to incite any change was in doubt. She kept thinking of Carla’s eyes and the acceptance of her fate. “She was going to kill that little girl.” The words tasted bitter on her tongue. “And she didn’t care. What if the person who took Kaley is like that? What if they don’t care if she lives or dies regardless of what we do?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  Lena separated herself from Mark and walked backward, shaking her head. “You don’t know that.” He wasn’t there. He didn’t see what she had seen. The others were right—renouncing the bill wasn’t going to be enough. She needed to find the kidnapper. And she needed to do it before they reached the same level of lunacy as Carla Knox.

  The body was on a gurney, covered with a sheet, and placed in the back of an ambulance. The barn walls were covered in blue and red lights, giving a temporary paint job for the old structure. Beyond the cluster of police vehicles from two counties there was nothing but the open plains of North Dakota. And somewhere in that dark void was Jake’s niece.

  Jake watched the ambulance depart toward the highway and kept his eyes on it until he couldn’t see the lights anymore. He tilted the rim of his cowboy hat up and scratched the flesh where his forehead met his hairline.

  “Hey, Sheriff?” Longwood asked.

  “What’s going on, Deputy?”

  “I was hoping I could get a ride back to the station. I rode over here with Davis, and he’s heading home after this.”

  “Yeah.” Jake slapped Longwood on the arm and pointed to the passenger side of his truck. “I need to get back anyway.” Jake radioed the rest of his team to wrap it up, and he left behind two units with the forensics team to finish.

  Jake kept his elbow propped up against the window and leaned back in his seat, with his right hand on the steering column. He stroked the stubble under his chin and knew that he was long overdue for a shower and a shave.

  “How are you holding up, Sheriff?” Longwood always had sincere concern in his voice whenever he spoke.

  It was a trait that Jake didn’t possess, and it took him a while in their professional relationship to realize that the man really was genuine. “I’ve been better.”

  “Any headway on Kaley’s case?”

  “I’m tracking down a few leads in Bismarck,” Jake answered. “How’s the Coleman case going?”

  Longwood shrugged. “Still waiting to hear back from the lab about some fibers that were found on the body, and so
me video footage out near Highway 8.”

  Jake felt his stomach lurch, and he felt his mind wander to the rifle on the gun rack behind him. “Video footage?”

  “North Dakota Wildlife set up a night-vision camera near the highway where our suspect started the walk to the New Energy property to dump the body. Apparently they’ve had a lot of bear sightings in the area, and they set it up to see if they needed to add any new road signage. Haven’t heard back from them, though. Might be nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said, his mouth dry.

  The remainder of the drive back was quiet, and when Longwood got out of the truck, Jake lingered behind. “See you inside.” The car door closed with a heavy thunk, and Jake chewed the already-raw nail of this thumb and reached for the glove compartment. Crumpled-up receipts, gum wrappers, and insurance information spilled onto the floorboard, and Jake reached his hand inside and pulled out a black mask. He bunched up the cloth in his hand and swung his door open. He found the Dumpster out back and tossed it inside.

  When Jake entered the station he passed Jim Foreman and his cohorts in their cells. They cast him a few dirty looks, but when Foreman locked eyes with him, he saw the puffy redness under the man’s eyes. “They told you about your daughter?”

  Foreman nodded, and his eyes watered. “Sheriff, I—”

  “Save it for your lawyer.” Jake took a step closer to the bars. “There’s gonna come a day when I’m not wearing this badge anymore. And God help you if you cross my path when that happens.” Jake left Foreman to his weeping and found Lena and Mark in his office. Mark sat in the chair by his desk, and Lena had her arms crossed and was leaned up against the wall. Jake removed his hat and hung it on top of the coatrack. “How’d it go?” As he sat down he watched Longwood at his desk, his phone to his ear, jotting down notes from a message left on his voice mail.