Stolen

by James Hunt

  Lena hesitated for a moment, her fingers dangling over the top of the weapon. When she reached for the pistol’s handle it felt heavier than she thought it would. She tucked the weapon into her pocket, and Jake once again grabbed her arm.

  “You don’t use that unless there isn’t any other way. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” Both stepped out of the truck, and Lena shuffled her feet quickly across the sidewalk. A heightened sense of awareness took control, and it stemmed from the weight of the pistol she felt clanging against the side of her leg. Lena recognized a few of the streets in the surrounding neighborhood. Flashes of her days as a user replayed in her memory. All of the wasted time and money she had spent down here was enough to make her sick.

  An old woman passed Lena on the street. Her head was down, and her clothes were ratty and dirty. Her skin was weathered from a lifetime of street walking. The grimace she flashed was nearly toothless, and the teeth she did have were crooked and rotting in her blackened gums. She gave Lena the once-over then returned her dazed eyes down to her feet.

  Lena shifted her glance from the old crow to Jake. In another reality, that could have been her on the streets. She was lucky to have had him when she finally decided to get clean. There wasn’t anyone else she could call. No one else that she could lean on. If it weren’t for Jake, god only knows what would have happened to Gwen.

  Jake stopped at the corner of the store and waited for her to catch up. “You ready?”

  There was a flutter in Lena’s stomach, and her pulse had skyrocketed. “Yeah.” Jake stepped inside first, and she followed close behind. The plan was to speak as little as possible. All they needed was confirmation of who had purchased the bullets. Once they had that, then they’d be gone.

  The inside of the store was small. A scent of metal mixed with old wood filled the air. Near the cash register, an old man flipped the pages of a newspaper. Hundreds of guns were planted on the wall behind him. It wasn’t until both Jake and Lena were at the counter that he finally acknowledged them. “What do you want?”

  Jake placed both hands on the edge of the countertop. “We need to take a look at your security tapes.”

  The old man scoffed, and Lena saw that he had a few missing teeth of his own. “Who the fuck are you?” He squinted his eyes at both of them. “I don’t see any badges. Get the fuck out of my store.” The newspaper crinkled as he turned the page and returned to his articles.

  Lena watched Jake’s right hand curl into a fist and then strike the old man in the face so hard that it knocked him off the stool he was perched upon. Blood poured from his crooked nose and onto his shirt as he moaned in pain. “What the hell?”

  Jake hopped over the counter and lifted the old man off the floor and slammed him against the back wall, where a few of the guns fell from their perches. He looked back to Lena, who stood there with her hand in her pocket and realized that she gripped the pistol’s handle. “Go lock the door.”

  Lena froze for a moment, staring at the old man squirming under Jake’s hand. She released her hold on the steel in her pocket and flipped the Open sign to Closed and slid the bolt lock into its secure hole.

  Grunts and crashes echoed behind her, and when she turned, Jake had flipped the old man to his back across the counter, where he flapped his arms and legs like a turtle on its shell. Jake gripped his throat. The old man’s face turned a bright red.

  “Now, this is what’s gonna happen, old man.” The muscles along Jake’s arm rippled, keeping the squirming gun-store owner in place. “We know you sold some armor-piercing rounds a few days ago. All we need to know is who bought them. We’re going to show you some pictures, and then you’re going to tell me if they’re the men who purchased the bullets. Got it?” The old man gargled something, and Jake released pressure on the man’s throat. “What was that?”

  “Fuck you!” Spit flew from the old man’s lips along with the curse.

  Lena hovered close by. She reached into her pocket, past the revolver, and removed her phone. She showed him the first picture. It was Ken Lang. “Was it him?”

  The old man stayed quiet, his cheeks a light shade of purple now. Jake picked him up and then slammed him back down on the wood. “Answer her!”

  Lena gripped the old man’s collar as well, shoving the phone’s screen closer to his face. All of the desperation and fear and anxiety and frustration transformed into an anger that she hadn’t felt since her days as an addict. The grip of addiction curled its bony fingers around her mind, and she reached into her pocket and removed the pistol. She felt Jake’s eyes on her as she placed the pistol against the man’s temple, but he didn’t stop her.

  The old man stopped shaking once the barrel was pressed against his skin, and he winced when Lena jammed the pistol harder into his skull. She showed him the picture one more time. “Was this the man that bought the bullets last Tuesday?”

  The old man paused for a second then shook his head. Lena felt the grip of madness loosen slightly. At least she knew Ken was telling the truth now. She thumbed through the photos until she came upon a picture of Scott Ambers, which she showed him. “Was it this man?”

  The old man squinted then shook his head.

  Lena frowned, moving the picture closer. “You’re sure?”

  The old man nodded.

  Lena removed the pistol from Pete’s temple, and her arms fell to her sides as she slowly backed away. Who else could it have been? If it wasn’t either of them, then the line of suspects that wanted to harm her and her family stretched for a least a mile. And she didn’t have access to the photos of every employee of New Energy.

  “Lena,” Jake said, still holding the old man down. “Get the cuffs out of my back pocket.”

  She nodded and fished the pieces of steel out. But when Jake reached for them the old man thrashed wildly and slipped out of Jake’s hold and ducked back behind the counter.

  The next few seconds happened faster than any moment of Lena’s life. The old man leapt from behind the counter, wielding a shotgun. The barrel was aimed at Jake, who had lunged forward to try and stop him. But the gap between the two was just too far.

  Almost on instinct, Lena raised the revolver from her side, the sights of the gun lined up at the old man’s chest. Just before he managed to shoot, she squeezed the trigger. The gunshot blast and the old man’s grunt of pain were simultaneous. The shotgun fell from his hands, and he dropped to the floor with it.

  Jake jumped over the counter and snatched the weapon out of the old man’s reach, but it wasn’t necessary. Blood oozed from the wound and a lifeless stare was plastered on Pete’s face. Lena clutched the revolver with both hands, her arms still rigid and aimed at the wall where the old man had once been, where there was now only a splatter of blood. There was a slight ache to her ears and head from the noise of the gunshot, but there was also an overwhelming sense of numbness.

  When Jake stood from behind the counter, there was blood on his sleeves. He picked up the cash register and slammed it on the ground. The crash snapped Lena out of her daze, and the pistol dropped from her hand. “Oh my god.”

  Jake removed the cash from the register and stuffed it into his pockets. “We’ve got less than five minutes before police show up, maybe more if no one heard the gunshot, but I doubt it. Give me your phone.” He held out his hand, but Lena didn’t move. “Your phone, Lena, now!”

  She reached into her pocket and handed it to him. He dialed a number, and she watched him untuck his shirt and wipe down the register, cleaning it of his fingerprints. He kept the phone pressed to his ear for a few seconds then hung up and tossed the phone back to her. “What was that?”

  Jake walked over to the door and started wiping down the edges of the handle where Lena had grabbed it along with the closed sign. He looked in the corners of the room for any cameras but found nothing. “When the authorities check your phone records after this is over, they’ll see that you called 9-1-1.” Jake picked the pistol off the floor and stuffed it in
to his pocket. “C’mon, we need to go.”

  “But why—”

  “We have to go now, Lena!” Jake grabbed her arm, but Lena couldn’t take her eyes off the bloodstain on the wall behind the counter. All of the drugs she’d taken, all of the alcohol she had drunk, all of the times she’d blacked out, only a handful of them involved violence, and even those instances were nothing more than some shoving or a few punches thrown.

  But now there was a dead man behind the counter. It wasn’t over drugs, or alcohol, it was to protect her children. She had done that. She had killed him. Now, even if she found Kaley, the authorities wouldn’t let them stay together.

  Ken kept his distance from Mark at the house. He always made it a point to make sure there was some form of a barrier between the two of them. But with Mark seemingly refusing to move from the kitchen, and Ken’s growing thirst, that rule was about to break.

  Mark’s eyes followed Ken all the way to the cabinet, where Ken removed a glass and then stepped over to the fridge. Ken glanced behind him as he filled his cup and saw Mark’s eyes still locked on him. With his cup full he quickly turned on his heel and made a beeline for the couch.

  “It’s more than just your life that’s at stake.”

  Ken stopped just before he reached the edge of the living room. He turned around. The lamp hanging from the ceiling cast the features of Mark’s face in harsh shadows. He clutched the glass of water with both hands and took one step forward. “Mr. Hayes, I can’t imagine—”

  “No, you can’t.” The words were cold and harsh. Mark stood up and stepped around the table. Ken looked back to the door and the deputies out front. Though he wasn’t sure how much help they were going to be. “The people you work for are evil men. Some of the worst bastards I’ve ever seen. And you chose to work for them. You chose to help them. You used your slick words to trick people into thinking that what you were doing was helping them. But you weren’t. You were only helping yourself. Just like you’re doing now.”

  Ken bumped into the recliner on his retreat. “You’re right. I knew the type of people I was working for. I’ve always known it. I didn’t care about who was in the path of my steamroller. It was a job. And the job needed to be done. But you want to know another truth?” He paused. Anger took hold, and after all of the shit that he’d been through he didn’t care about the man in front of him. He didn’t care about Lena Hayes, or Kaley Hayes, or the oil company and the profits they hoped to obtain with their land deals with some foreign investor half a world away. He just wanted to get to his family. “I can imagine what this is like for you. I know the fear that’s gripped your senses and controls everything you do. You can’t escape it, you can’t stop it.” Ken clenched his fist tight and raised it between the two of them. “You just have to take it.” He lowered his hand. “Yes, your family is in pain. And, yes, I helped the men who most likely took your daughter. But if I had been told that’s what they planned on doing, I would have walked out a long time ago.”

  A residual anger lingered, but Mark’s expression had softened. He took a step back. “Have you ever lost a child?”

  Ken deflated, taking a seat on the recliner and burying his face in his palms. “Not yet.” Mark took a seat on the adjacent couch, and Ken leaned forward. “He’s sick. The name of the disease doesn’t have any vowels in it, so I can’t pronounce it, but it’s fatal. It attacks the brain stem and slowly shuts down basic cognitive and motor functions until you’re nothing but a vegetable.” The words hollowed him out, and he was barely able to even whisper after that. “He’s nine.”

  “Is there a cure, or treatment?”

  “No cure. And the only treatment we’ve been able to find is in Europe. A lot of what we’re trying is experimental. It’s not cheap. That’s why I took the job.” Ken offered a light chuckle. “It’s funny—I haven’t talked about it out loud in a while. No one at New Energy knew, at least no one that mattered.”

  “How long has your son been sick?”

  “Three years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ken looked to Mark on the couch. The last bits of anger were gone. All that remained was the shell of a man who’d lost a daughter, and who would do anything he could to get her back. “And I’m sorry about Kaley.” He rubbed his hands together. “Do you think your wife will be able to do this? I’ve worked for these guys for the past three months, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of people so willing to do anything that’s necessary to get what they want.”

  “Well,” Mark said, shaking his head, “you don’t know Lena very well, then.”

  Ken’s pocket buzzed. It was Scott. He’d ignored it for the past twelve calls. He couldn’t put it off any longer. “I have to take this.” He walked out front then to the side of the house, out of the earshot of the deputies. The phone vibrated in his hand, and Ken took a breath before he answered. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I had to run a couple of errands in town. What’s going on?”

  “You need to get back to your office. Now.”

  The call clicked dead, and Ken lowered the phone wearily. He leaned back up against the side of the house, the cloth of his shirt catching against the concrete siding. He looked to his hand, which trembled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wedding ring. He twisted it onto the shaking left hand and made a fist, forcing the trembling to stop.

  30

  6 Hours Left

  The city landscape was well in the distance, but Lena couldn’t stop looking behind her. She kept waiting for the flash of red and blue lights, but they never came, no matter how many times she turned around. She shifted in her seat and saw the bloodstains on Jake’s shirt. She started to mouth something, but no words would come out. She leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes. “I don’t know how we get out of this.”

  “We don’t.” Jake took a breath and exhaled quickly. “We continue with the plan. We have Ken set up a meet to exchange the dirt we have on New Energy for Kaley. And it needs to happen soon.” His eyes flitted to the rearview mirror.

  The gunshot replayed in her head, but the only thing that concerned her at the moment was making sure that Kaley and Gwen had at least one parent out of jail to take care of them. “We can’t go back to the house.” Lena straightened out in her seat. “It won’t take long for the police to put together the death and our disappearance. We need to keep Mark out of this.” She reached for her phone and scrolled to find Ken’s number. “Once the news gets hold of that man’s death, whoever did buy those bullets will know we’re on their trail. And that won’t be good for Kaley.” A few rings, and Ken answered.

  “Did you get what you needed?” Ken’s voice was raised an octave, a healthy dosage of both fear and hope in his tone.

  “You need to leave the house before the authorities lock my property down.”

  “What happened?”

  “The less you know the better. Set up the meeting with the New Energy executives. Tell them what you have. Extortion, the waste dumping, murder, all of it. Tell them I’m willing to spill all of it if Kaley isn’t returned.” She took a breath and waited a second for her mouth to catch up with her brain.

  “But what about—”

  “Just do it!”

  “All right. We’ll need a place to meet beforehand to go over everything.”

  “And it needs to be off the radar.”

  “I know a place.”

  “Good. And when you leave, don’t let the press see you. Text me the location when you’re there.” The call ended, and Lena dropped the phone in her lap. She brushed her hair back, clawing her nails into her scalp, letting out a long, slow breath. “You think the owner was lying?” She looked to her brother, relying on his years of profiling and interrogations. She’d had her own experience in the field, but he was the expert.

  A pause. “No.”

  “Shit.” Lena punched the dashboard. “Shit, shit, shit!” Each curse was accompanied by another sm
ack. Her hand throbbed when she was done, her knuckles a bright, fleshy pink.

  “If you want to end this and make the announcement, then we need to do it quickly,” Jake said, his eyes continuing to drift between the road and rearview mirror. She knew what he was looking for. Police. “You’re not going to get another chance at it if we wait.”

  “No. We may not know who they hired to take my daughter, but we’ve got their dirty laundry, and I know they don’t want it aired out to dry.” Lena looked to her left hand, which lay upon the armrest, shaking. She pumped her hand into a fist a few times, but still it remained, voicing the doubts her lips were afraid to speak.

  “Listen,” Jake said. “We need to get our story straight for what happened back there. People saw you leave with me, and if they manage to subpoena any witnesses, then they’ll identify you at the scene of the crime. There weren’t any cameras in the building, none that I could see at least, so until they can prove anything, it was me who shot the gun owner.”

  It was a mixture of shock and anger that flashed across her face. “No! Jake, you can’t—”

  “Damnit, Lena, just listen!” The outburst made her jump, and Jake repositioned his grip on the wheel. “You can’t go to jail. The girls need you. Mark needs you. The town needs you.” He looked over, the lines carved into his face like a piece of granite. “I’m already on my way out. I tampered with a crime scene, manipulated evidence. No judge is going to let me keep my badge after what I did.”

  “I won’t let you do that.” Lena forced her voice to steady.

  “I can, and I will.” His voice softened. “Everything you’ve been through. Everything you’ve sacrificed. I won’t let you throw it all away. You still have your girls. You still have the legislation. You still have a job to do.” It was hard for Lena to see from the view of his profile, but she thought he turned his face away to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye.