Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

He thought about it. “I want a Happy Meal.”

  Lori knew she had no choice but to ignore him. With every passing second, the possibility that Simone’s license plate would be sent out on an all-points bulletin, or whatever it was they called it, grew. “Follow me,” she commanded to Simone.

  Lori jumped into the Escalade and considered her options. She knew a way to get back to Sylvia’s house taking mostly side streets and back roads. The quickest way of course, was the way she’d come, but that went right back past the school, and there was no way she’d do that. They were surely watching for a blue Toyota at this point.

  Half an hour later, Lori pulled down Sylvia’s cul-de-sac. Simone was behind her in her Toyota, having travelled neighborhood roads and side streets the whole way. Lori keyed opened Sylvia’s garage door with the opener clipped to the sun visor. Michelle and Sal had arrived and followed Lori’s instructions, but with Lori’s Range Rover and Michelle’s car already in the garage, there was only room for one more car. Lori quickly motioned to Simone, indicating that she was go into the garage. While Lori didn’t really want to leave any cars outside, certainly the safest car to leave in the driveway was the one that actually belonged at the house, Sylvia’s Escalade.

  Five minutes later, Lori was sitting in Sylvia’s breakfast nook with Michelle, Sal and Simone. Brandon and Grace were watching Sylvia’s widescreen TV in her family room, thankfully far enough away from the kitchen that the sharp-eared and curious Grace would not be able to overhear the conversation. Everyone looked at her expectantly, and Lori looked back at them in silence.

  Barely two hours had elapsed since she opened the door and gone into the Saldata kitchen. Two hours, and Lisa’s whole life felt different. Felt, hell. It was different. And now, sitting here with the people she felt she had to protect, she hardly knew where to start.

  First things first. She looked around the table. “Everyone needs to turn their phones off.” All three of them looked surprised at the request, but no one argued. Then Salvadore, immediately grasping where this was going, nodded his head sharply as he flipped his phone off.

  Sylvia had a small television in her breakfast nook. Lori hit the power button and searched through the guide, locating a major national cable news channel. Just as Lori guessed it would be, the senator’s death was big news.

  “Let me just watch this a minute,” she told the others, but after only brief seconds, it was clear that they were still not offering any new information. The reporter was sticking with the same basic outline she’d heard on NPR nearly two hours ago. The senator was dead as a result of a random carjacking gone wrong. A regrettable accident, but an accident, nevertheless. After only the briefest discussion of the circumstances of the shooting, the reporter immediately launched into an analysis of what Senator Michaels’ death would do to the political balance in the U.S. Senate. Lori realized she was watching a very cleverly crafted version of “There’s nothing to see here.”

  Michelle lost her patience and interrupted. “Lori what is going on? You didn’t bring us here to watch TV.” She gestured towards the television. “I mean, I’m sorry the senator is dead, and I admit it’s creepy that we just served him last night, but what’s that got to do with running to the car in my sweats?”

  Lori turned to Simone. “The man they’re talking about? Senator Kyle Michaels? We served a dinner last night that he was at. In his honor.” Lori realized that the French girl didn’t quite get the use of honor. “The dinner was for him,” she clarified.

  Simone looked as confused as Michelle. “That is so sad,” she said carefully.

  “I want you all to listen carefully,” said Lori. Without mincing any words, fighting down nausea as she described it, Lori told her three employees exactly what she’d heard and seen when she went into the Saldana kitchen. As she relayed her story, their faces went from confused to horrified.

  After Lori finished, Michele was the first to speak. “You’re sure it was the senator?”

  Lori nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. Last night wasn’t the first time I’d met him.” She licked her lips and forced herself to go on. “In spite of the blood and everything, I’m sure.”

  “Then why,” Simone gestured towards the television, which was still on with the sound turned down, in the background, “are they saying he is dead?”

  “I don’t know. And I’d be willing to bet,” she took a deep breath, her eyes brimming with hot tears, “he’s dead now. But he didn’t die on South Miami Boulevard at 3:00 this morning.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sal stated. “Why can’t you just call the police?”

  “Because the assistant chief of police in Miami was at Saldata’s last night. Because to do something like fake the death of a senator takes a lot of political power. Because I am afraid I wouldn’t survive long enough to tell the truth to the right people.”

  Awareness washed over Michelle’s face and she nodded slowly. “Shot resisting arrest.”

  “Something like that,” Lori agreed. She looked at Sal. “Did you hear anything last night? What were they talking about?”

  Sal shook his head, his expression distant as he obviously tried to recreate the previous evening. “I don’t know what went on. I mean, the senator seemed fine at first, but then one of the last guys that came in? As soon as he got there, Michaels shut up like a clam. Barely said a word for the rest of the dinner.” Suddenly, Sal’s face washed with a look of astonishment. “And you know what else? I just remembered something.” He snapped his fingers. “‘Bout midway through, Michaels gets up, I assume to go to the can. And right away, another guy follows him. I honestly thought that they were going together to, you know, spend a little special time together. It’s none of my business, but I did think it was pretty tacky that a senator would leave dinner to… Well, who knows what? But when the senator came back in,” Sal snorted, “it didn’t look like anyone had had a happy ending.”

  “What do you think happened?” Lori asked.

  “Maybe Michaels was thinking of trying to make a run for it.” Sal shrugged. “Make a phone call? Who knows? And the guy that followed him didn’t let that happen. Whatever, it didn’t look good. There was a lot of tension at the table,” he finished.

  “It doesn’t matter now, not really, but we have to figure out what to do.”

  “And you think we’re in danger?”

  “I do. I really do. I know it.” Lori looked into her employee’s eyes with complete candor. “Michelle, someone called the school looking for me while I was standing in the office getting the kids. The phone rang and,” her voice caught as she pictured the scene, “the secretaries tried to stop me. We barely got out of the parking lot before some cop cars pulled in. That was barely an hour from the time I was at Saldata’s. One hour, and someone had already figured out where my kids go to school and gotten the cops there.” Lori’s voice trailed off.

  “To what?” Michelle asked.

  “To intercept me? To grab the kids? Who knows? But they’re definitely looking for me.”

  Michele and Salvadore exchanged a meaningful glance. “Do you think they are looking for us?” Sal asked.

  “Maybe not now, but if they can’t find me?” Lori left the question open. “Other than the people who were actually at the dinner, you two are the only other people who can place Senator Michaels at that house last night. Someone might want to hide that.”

  Michelle gestured at the house around them. “Whose house is this? Are we safe here?”

  Lori nodded. “For now, I think so. Sylvia’s husband was Jack’s grandmother’s brother, so their last names aren’t the same. Jack’s been dead six years. It would be quite a stretch to connect me with her. I’m sure eventually someone might be able to, but for now, yeah, I think we’re safe here.”

  Behind Lori, a small voice floated into the room. “Mommy! Did you get the pizza?”

  “No Brandon, not yet.”

  He wandered in from the television room and looked at her accusingly. “
You promised me. I wanted a Happy Meal and you promised me.”

  “I know I did.” Lori paused. “Maybe we could all use some lunch.” Abruptly, Lori slumped. Just the decision of whether or not to order the pizza seemed overwhelming. Suddenly, she couldn’t see anything in front of her but the tortured man, couldn’t hear anything but his screams. The calm demeanor that had carried her through for the last hour snapped. Without being quite sure how it happened, she was shaking and sobbing.

  Brandon looked at his mother, his face crumpling. “I just wanted some pizza, Mommy. I’m sorry.”

  Simone jumped up from the table and rushed to the crying child. “No, it’s fine. It’s not you, Brandon. I’ll get you pizza.” She hurried Brandon back out of the room.

  Michelle stood and wrapped her arms awkwardly around Lori. “We’ll get through this. We’ll figure it out.”

  “How?” Once the dam had burst, Lori was barely keeping herself from collapsing into hysterics. “How?” she asked, her voice even more shrill. “If I report this to the police, even if they do go to Saldata’s house, I bet you there won’t be any body. There won’t be any blood. And somehow four hours from now, Senator Michaels’ body will be in a morgue somewhere. I’ll look like a lunatic and my kids and I will be out on the street with no protection. How long do you think I’d stay alive?”

  Sal agreed, nodding somberly. “She’s right, Chelle. There’s no place in Florida that’s safe for her to report this. Probably not anywhere in the South. Whoever Saldata is, you need to go someplace where he has no influence. Then, you just walk into an FBI office and tell them what you saw.”

  “With my kids? With Brandon and Grace?” Lori’s sobs were abating, but that didn’t mean the situation looked any better. “And what if they don’t believe me? If there’s no proof that a crime has been committed, no one’s going to offer me any protection. They might say they’ll look into it. But then what? I’m on my own in Washington DC, or New York or Boston? And what about my company? It took me six years to build Top Hat up to where it is now.” The thought of that was so nauseating that she wanted to vomit. No one knew how hard she had worked to create something she could rely on to support herself and her children.

  She glanced at her watch. “I’ve already blown off my meeting with Meredith Wilson today. I’m sure she’s pissed. If I leave town I have no job, no income.” Lori felt grief and fear rising up again, threatening to boil over.

  “Do you have any family who could take Brandon and Grace? Hide them maybe?” Michelle asked. “While you figure out what to do.”

  “You know my mom was killed in a terrorist attack when I was a kid.” Michelle and Sal both nodded. It was common knowledge though it wasn’t mentioned often. “My dad’s remarried, lives in Hawaii. He’d help me, but how would we get there? I’d have to buy plane tickets and if they’re watching me, I’m sure a transaction like that would be the first thing they’d look for.”

  “What about your husband’s family?”

  Her husband had been half Korean, the son of an American diplomat and his Korean secretary. Her husband’s father had been dead many years, and his mother, in spite of the fact that she had married an American, had always hoped Jack would marry a Korean girl: she had never approved of Lori, and had moved back to Korea years ago, right after Grace was born. Lori hadn’t seen her since Jack’s funeral. At first, she’d she dutifully sent pictures to her regularly, but lately she’d stopped doing that for reasons she couldn’t think about right now.

  Viciously, Lori forced herself to stop that train of thought.

  Sylvia, of course, was her husband’s family. Jack’s American grandmother, his father’s mother, and Sylvia’s husband were brother and sister, but that was the end of it. Other than that, she was alone.

  “So, you don’t have anyone that will help you?” Michelle persisted.

  “Not really,” Lori said. But even as she said the words, she knew it was a lie.

  Chapter 9

  Lori hung up Sylvia’s phone, almost shaking with relief. Her sister Louise, after getting over her surprise at receiving a random call, had immediately agreed that coming to Montana was Lori’s best choice. Over the last several years, the two sisters had gotten in the habit of calling each other only on their birthdays, Christmas, and, unfortunately, the anniversary of their mother’s death. Lori hadn’t been entirely sure about how she’d be received, but as soon as Louise understood that Lori and her children were in real danger, she hadn’t bogged the conversation down with useless questions. When Lori had made it clear that driving was their only option and that they needed to leave immediately, Louise had cut the call short and said, “You better get going then. Stay safe, call me as soon as you can.”

  One thing that Louise had mentioned during the brief call was the bombshell that she and Roger had left that whacko-crazy commune where they had decided to move right after they got married. Lori had known, from the moment she’d heard about it, this could not end well. “Traditional families,” “Old-fashioned values.” It all sounded great in a brochure, but Lori’s alarm bells had started ringing as soon as she heard about it and they’d never stopped. Louise hadn’t given her much information in the brief phone call, but it sure as heck sounded as if Lori had been right about the place all along.

  Lori’s elation over that fact was short-lived though, and reality hit hard as she walked back from the small home office towards Sylvia’s kitchen where Michelle, Salvadore, and Simone were staring at the TV.

  “They’re not saying anything new,” Salvadore announced.

  Lori watched for a second. “They’re not going to,” she said, “because it’s all made up anyway.” Her stomach felt sick again as she remembered the terrible scene in the Saldata dining room. “He never left Saldata’s house last night.”

  Simone was watching Lori warily. “What did your sister say?”

  “She said we should come. We go to Montana and then once we’re there she and her husband will help me figure out what to do.”

  That was a small lie, Lori allowed, since Louise’s husband Roger’s name had never actually come up in conversation. Or maybe that wasn’t entirely accurate. Lori was pretty sure that Louise had said “we” at least once.

  It didn’t matter. She was in danger; her children were in danger. She had friends in Miami, lots of them, but they would be too easy to find. She could not risk involving any of her local friends, all of whom had children.

  After their mother’s death, Lori’s father had moved himself, Lori and Louise out of a city they had loved but now had nothing but sad memories, and they’d grown up in a new community in New Jersey. But it had never felt like home, and Lori had lost touch with most of the people she’d known from those school years. There were a couple college friends she connected with regularly on social media, but that very fact would make them easy to find. And the friends she’d more or less fallen out of touch with? How do you call someone up and say, “I know I haven’t talked to you in a while, but I have a madman chasing me. Can I hide with you and your family?”

  No, Lori had to be honest. The very things that she had disliked about her brother-in-law, his “take charge” personality, the fact that he owned numerous guns, the fact that he had taken her sister to the middle of nowhere, were the very things that she needed right now.

  “What about us?” Michelle asked.

  Lori sank down at the table in the breakfast nook. How much danger was the couple actually in? Because Lori specialized in smaller, intimate occasions and cooked the majority of the food she served at any event in the client’s home, she had no office or commercial kitchen that someone could break into for information. All of her employment records were on her computer, and that she had with her. Someone with enough legal power, like the FBI, could probably get the tax records she filed last year, but that would take a while. Plus, if she were on the run, finding and hurting her staff was pointless. Right now, she had no proof of what happened in the Saldata ho
me. If her staff started to disappear, any story she told the authorities would seem a lot more plausible. Still, except for the other guests, Michelle and Sal were the only people who could actually verify that the senator had even been at the dinner party, so it would be naive to think they were not at risk.

  Quickly, she explained her thinking to the couple. “Do you have any place you can hide for a few days? Once I get to the FBI, having witnesses that actually can place Kyle Michaels in Saldata’s house is going to be critical.”

  Michelle and Salvadore looked at each other for a long moment. “I guess we could go to my brother’s place in Georgia,” Michelle answered slowly. “I can work anywhere.” Michelle was a free-lance romance writer, and Lori was fairly sure that Salvadore didn’t have any work other than what he did for Top Hat, which, from where she sat right now, was a thing of the past anyway.

  “That’s a good idea, and I think you should go now.” Lori nodded decisively. “There is absolutely no way anyone could know your names yet. Go home, pack some stuff, and head out of town. I’m going to get a throw away phone, but I’ll have your numbers. I’ll stay in touch and as soon as I get to my sister’s, I’ll call.” Lori thought about everything they always said to do in the movies. “Don’t call people, don’t use your credit cards.”

  “How long will it take for you to get there?”

  Lori realized she had no idea. The only thing she knew was that it was freakin’ far. “Your phone is probably still safe, actually,” she said to Salvadore. “Can you look at a map?”

  Salvadore thumbed his phone back to life. “Where is it you’re going?”

  “It’s near Lewiston, Montana.” At least, that was where the commune was. Lori wasn’t actually sure how far from there Louise and Roger had moved, but for now that town was close enough to get a rough idea.

  Salvadore whistled. “Dios mio,” he muttered then lifted his eyes from the phone screen. “2,470 miles.”

  “You sure?” Michelle turned to Lori. “That’s too far to drive by yourself.”