Stronghold | Book 1 | Minute Zero

by Jayne, Chris

  “After you’re out, call me, and then I’ll tell you the address. Just head towards Lewiston. We’re about 20 miles west.”

  Sandy nodded her eyes wide with fear. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I just want it to be over. I think for the first time I really believe that Willie had something to do with Tom’s death.” She paused. “I’ve been saying it and wondering about it, but now I know for sure.”

  “Don’t lose it now, Sandy. You’ll be safe tonight. Safe with me and Roger.” Louise shook her head, her eyes suddenly taking on a distant look. “This is crazy. You’re not going to believe what else is going on. Must be something in the stars. My sister…” Louise stopped talking.

  “What about your sister?”

  Louise opened her mouth to continue, then just shook her head. “Never mind. It’s complicated and it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is you and the kids. Just don’t make any mistakes today. Don’t be sticking big suitcases into your car. Don’t do anything today that attracts notice.”

  “I won’t.” Sandy nodded decisively then looked back at the clothes in front of her in the closet. “And now, I better get to work. Your brother-in-law? That’s one scary man. Don’t want him coming back in here and chewing me out.”

  “He won’t,” Louise reassured, but with a sick chuckle, she turned back to the toy shelf herself.

  The truck pulled away from Roger and Louise’s house, and just as Louise had predicted, as soon as the truck passed the end of the cul-de-sac, Willie’s truck and the SUV fell in behind them. She breathed a sigh of relief; it was unlikely that anyone was still watching their house. Why would they? That meant the plan she’d put in place with Sandy could be implemented. Still, Louise assumed that, human nature being what it was, Willie would not be able to resist coming back to their house and breaking in to look around. She could only hope that Sandy would heed her advice and get out right now.

  “Are they following?” she asked quietly. Sitting in the middle between the two men, she could not see anything.

  Roger took a quick sideways glance into the side view mirror. “Yup.”

  “I told Sandy to leave by the back door as soon as we were gone. Roger, she’s coming to our house. Tonight. I told her to get out today. She’s going to pick the kids up at the school bus and just keep driving.”

  “Good,” Roger said flatly. “She should have left weeks ago.”

  “Her mother bought her plane tickets, but they aren’t until next Tuesday.” Louise hesitated. “She told me she didn’t really believe until today that Willie really killed Tom.”

  “But now she does?”

  “That’s what she says.” She paused. “Do you think Willie’s going to try something? Once we get away from Bowenville, out on the highway?”

  Deacon shook his head. “No. The threat of being videoed was too much for him.” Deacon fished his phone from his pocket, cranked down his passenger side window, and stuck his arm out, holding the phone, pointing it back towards the following truck and SUV. “Gotta keep them worried. Thank God for cell phones with cameras.” He snorted. “Keeping America safe.”

  “Did you really video them? Before?”

  “No, not enough time to set it up. But they didn’t know that, and they couldn’t risk it.”

  Louise glanced out the windows as they passed down Bowenville’s main street. “We’re not coming back, are we?” she asked quietly. Before her husband could answer, she went on. “We were so happy here. At first.”

  “I know, Lou.” Roger sighed. “And I’m sorry. So ironic that everything your sister said about this place five years ago turned out to be true.”

  Louise winced at the thought of Lori, and the old saying, “It never rains but it pours,” flashed through her brain. She still hadn’t told her husband about Lori’s call the other afternoon. There were a couple of reasons for this, but the main one was sitting next to her in the passenger seat.

  In addition, Louise hadn’t been entirely sure Lori would follow through with it. Drive to Montana? It just seemed so implausible. Still, she thought as she glanced at her watch, it had been more than forty-eight hours since her sister had called from the husband’s great-aunt’s house. Lori had told her flat out she was turning off her cell phone, but would call again when she got a disposable phone.

  And now Louise had heard nothing for two days. She was getting very worried.

  Lori had been frantic and nearly incoherent when she tried to explain that what was being said on the news wasn’t actually true, and the truth was Louise didn’t know what to think about that. She tried to check the news the previous evening, to see if anyone had posted anything new on the death of the senator, but the internet at their house was sketchy, and last night it had been down altogether.

  She would check this evening, but Louise almost cringed when she considered everything that they had to do. She now had a truck full of furniture to unload. Obviously, Deacon and Roger would do the heavy lifting, but she still had to decide where everything would go. The rental truck had to be driven back into Lewiston and returned before six, or they would have to pay for another day. Now, to their tiny three-bedroom house where they already had one houseguest, four more people were coming - tonight.

  Louise was exhausted just thinking about all of it. And what if Lori actually showed up, with three - no four - more people as well? Louise couldn’t even think about that. As if to punctuate the situation, the baby in Louise’s belly kicked her bladder, hard.

  Chapter 21

  Saldata

  Wednesday

  1:00 PM Eastern Time

  Miami, Florida

  * * *

  “We got a hit after her picture hit the news.” Rossi was back, and he didn’t bother to hide his frustration as he looked at Saldata across the office. “It’s not good.”

  Saldata was expecting this. “She’s not in Miami, is she?”

  “A hotel clerk at a Country Suites in Gainesville IDed her. She was there around 11:00 on Monday night.” Rossi put his laptop on the desk, opened the lid, and hit a button.

  Saldata watched a grainy security video of a woman arguing with the desk clerk. It was definitely her. She was wearing the same stylish jacket and skinny jeans she’d had on when she was in his kitchen on Monday morning. There was no sound, but he didn’t need any. Dovner looked tremendously tired but also furious. Whatever she and the clerk were arguing about, Dovner lost.

  “Gainesville P.D. sent someone out to talk to the clerk,” Rossi explained. “She wanted to check in with no ID. He said no, wouldn’t give her a room.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She left.” Rossi shrugged. “We can guess she went somewhere else, but we’ve got no proof right now.” He took a deep breath. “There’s something else. She went to Vanderbilt University. In Nashville, Tennessee, and lived there for a couple years after college, still has friends there. Not a lot and from her social media accounts, no one that she’s in touch with very often, but she definitely still knows people. Knows the area.”

  Saldata considered this new information. When people went on the run, they almost always ended up going to some place they knew, where they felt comfortable, even if they hadn’t been there for a while. He inclined his head towards the computer. “And this was when?”

  “Around 11:00 on Monday night.”

  Saldata did a quick calculation. “Almost forty hours ago.” He grabbed for a notepad. “And if she even drove half of the time since then, twenty hours, and did 60 miles an hour, that’s 1,200 miles.” He lifted his eyes to Rossi. “How far is it from Gainesville to Nashville?”

  “Less than that.” The muscles in Rossi’s throat worked as he swallowed. “A lot less.”

  Saldata eyed Rossi coldly for a moment, then flipped to a map program on his computer. A few swift keystrokes, and he had answers. Nashville was less than 600 miles from Gainesville. Hell, that was a one-day drive. And 1,200 miles from Gainesville? Saldata typed q
uickly and cursed at the answers he was getting. 1,200 miles brought one to cities as far away as Chicago, Dallas, New York. Even Boston was just a few miles over that number. The Mexican border, for certain. And that was if she’d driven twenty hours out of the forty since she’d been spotted in Gainesville.

  However, if she’d driven thirty hours, Denver, Santa Fe, New Mexico, hell, even the Canadian border were all in reach. Saldata knew (because he knew things like this) there were still plenty of places people could quietly drive across into Canada at one in the morning without showing ID. “She could be anywhere.” Hell, he realized, he would not put it past her to have allowed herself to be spotted in Gainesville, and then turned around, driven past Miami and on to Key West.

  “What about the nanny?” Rossi asked. He flipped open a sheaf of papers. Saldata glanced at the top sheet quickly, which was a copy of a J-1 visa, while Rossi continued to talk. “Simone Moreau. Twenty years old, French citizen. Her father is Moroccan. Muslim. If we suggest terrorist ties, we could bring in Homeland Security.” Before Saldata could even respond, however, Rossi shook his head. “But I have to say, I wouldn’t recommend it. Right now, it’s a federal matter because Michaels was a senator, but we’re still mostly dealing with the local FBI office and Miami police. Homeland Security gets involved, and a lot more people will be asking questions.”

  “People over whom we don’t have the same control.”

  “Exactly.” Rossi fiddled with his papers. “I think we stay with what’s working. We’ve already got one hit from the publicity that the TV shows are bringing in.” He held out a piece of paper. “Meanwhile, I have a list of everyone on her social media account in Tennessee that she’s had contact with over the last year. We have an FBI guy up there who’s,” Rossi licked his lips, “trustworthy. I could…”

  Saldata shook his head. “Leave me the list. I will handle it. Every time we bring in someone else, more questions get asked.”

  “People are always more willing to talk to someone with a badge,” Rossi argued.

  “He’ll have a badge,” Saldata assured him. Rossi nodded and turned to leave, and Saldata decided it was time to fire a warning shot. “Your wife. She’s enjoying her vacation?” He paused. “Cruises are so pleasant.”

  Rossi froze and flinched as if Saldata had struck him. “Very much so,” he said softly, then went out the door.

  Chapter 22

  Lori

  Wednesday

  4:00 PM Central Time

  Norman, Oklahoma

  * * *

  “Mommy, I don’t feel so good,” Grace whimpered desperately. “Mommy…” That was all it took. That was all the warning Lori got. Grace vomited everywhere.

  Lori cursed silently with a word she tried very hard never to use around the children, even to herself. Immediately, the stink of vomit filled the car.

  Brandon started screaming, “Gross, gross.”

  In the rearview, Lori could see Simone flying into action. Typically, the au pair had been sitting next to Lori in the front passenger seat, but about an hour ago, Lori had put in another new movie, a recent remake of the “Godzilla” franchise. Normally, she would never have let Brandon, or Grace for that matter, watch something like that, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and the louder, more violent movies were keeping the kids absolutely enthralled for two hours at a time. She’d set the DVD player up on the center console and Simone had moved to the middle row captain’s chair to watch with the kids. Godzilla’s screeching roars sounded in the car, only making things more intense.

  “Oh merde,” Simone groaned. “It’s everywhere. We must stop, Lori.”

  Grace, realizing that she was covered in vomit, started to cry. “Mommy, I’m so sick,” she said pathetically.

  Up ahead, Lori saw a green highway exit sign. Her goal for this day was Oklahoma City, a roughly 600-mile drive from where they’d stopped the previous night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From the trip odometer, she saw that they were almost there.

  Norman, Oklahoma, the sign read, and then blessedly, the next sign listed that this was the exit for the University of Oklahoma. Lori released a sigh of relief. If she remembered correctly, the University of Oklahoma was a fairly big school. Universities meant a lot of hotels, and fast food restaurants, and tons of people coming and going. “We’re stopping, honey,” she reassured Grace quickly. “We’re stopping right now.”

  Twenty minutes later, their group was ensconced in a nice two-room suite at a Country Suites hotel. Lori had hit on a solution that solved the problem she’d had checking into their hotel Monday night in Gainesville. Every Walmart in the United States, as far as she could tell, had its own bank. She could buy a prepaid debit card there, which looked like the real thing, and load it with as much cash as she wanted. The card did not have a name on it, of course, but the second night, Simone had no trouble checking in to a lower end hotel in Baton Rouge with her student ID and the debit card, and this evening, in Norman, had been no different.

  Lori had instructed Simone to watch carefully when she checked in to make sure that her name was not being entered into some sort of computer or data base, but Simone had insisted that no, the man had only checked her ID to see if it matched the name she filled out - by hand - on the registration card, and then run the debit card. Since Lori had loaded it with nearly a $1,000 in cash, there was plenty of credit on the card.

  The hotel clerks simply required some sort of identification. They didn’t really care what it was, they just needed something. The problem the first night was that Lori had nothing at all. When Simone could show ID, even if it was just a student ID, that was sufficient.

  All the things, Lori reflected, that you never knew until you went on the run.

  The Country Suites was a bit nicer than the hotels they’d stayed in the previous two nights, but this one had a pool and a hot tub, and, Lori reflected gratefully, a customer-accessible laundry, which they were going to need.

  The bedroom in the two-room suite had two queen beds, plus there was a pull out sofa in the main room, which meant Simone would have a little privacy tonight. There was also a small kitchenette, with basic pots and pans, even a toaster and coffee maker. She had no idea how aggressively Saldata was looking for them, or what sort of help he’d been able to get from law enforcement, but simple logic said that the more they could stay out of sight, the better. With just a few simple ingredients, Lori could make a meal in the room’s kitchenette that would keep their group out of the public eye, plus save some money.

  Best of all, this room, on the ground floor at the back of the hotel, had its own sliding glass door, which led outside directly to where the Escalade was parked. They could unload and come and go without ever passing through the hotel’s lobby. She hadn’t even bothered to ask whether the Country Suites allowed dogs. Sasha was so good, Lori could slip outside with her after dark, with no one the wiser.

  Whatever moment of satisfaction Lori had felt, though, evaporated as she carried their cooler into the room, intending to store the perishables she’d bought - butter, eggs, et cetera, in the room’s refrigerator. Simone entered the main room from the bedroom, Grace’s soiled clothes in her hands, and a worried look on her face. “She is very, very hot.”

  Grace’s sick stomach, Lori had assumed, was nothing more than too much fast food and too much driving. Now, though, as she hurried into the bedroom and really looked at her daughter in the bed, she knew that assumption was wrong.

  She sank down on the bed and placed her hand on Grace’s forehead. Simone had been correct; Grace was burning up. “What hurts, honey?”

  “Everything,” Grace moaned. “My head, my stomach, my…” Grace reared up on the bed to a sitting position. Fortunately, Simone knew what was coming and snatched the ice bucket off of the dresser, just in the nick of time. Grace vomited again, considerably less than the prior time in the car, but still enough that it would have made quite the mess had Simone not been so quick.

  When the child w
as finished being sick, Lori took the vomit bucket from Simone and hurried to the bathroom. She dumped the contents in the toilet, rinsed it quickly in the tub, then grabbed a washcloth, dampened it with cool water and went back to her daughter’s bed.

  Too much greasy food could be cured by getting out of the car and eating something homemade. But if Grace was really sick, that meant doctors and insurance cards, things that Lori knew she had to avoid at all costs.

  So how sick was she? Lori considered the question. Kids got sick, and Grace always seemed more susceptible than most. If one child in the classroom came in with a cold, inevitably Grace would be next. In spite of everything that had happened, it was still only two days since Grace had been at school. This could easily be something she had picked up there.

  Obviously, if her daughter was seriously ill, Lori had to seek medical help. But right now, as irritating as vomit everywhere was, and as much as Lori knew Grace felt horrible, she wasn’t seeing anything different from a dozen other similar viruses over the last four or five years. Keep her hydrated, try to control the fever and headache with analgesics, hope for the best and for now, no doctors.

  “Here honey,” said Lori. “This will help.” She laid the cool washcloth on her daughter’s forehead. “I don’t have any ibuprofen or anything,” she said to Simone. “I have to find a store. Plus, with Grace sick, we can’t go out. I’ll cook dinner tonight and I’ll need to pick up a few things.”

  Simone nodded in response, never taking her eyes off of Grace.

  Brandon came into the bedroom behind them. “Can I go swimming, Mommy?” As soon as they’d gotten into the hotel room, they’d put a cartoon show on for him, to occupy him while they were unloading the car and settling Grace in. Lori looked at her son. Although she was thrilled that he wanted to do something other than stare at a video screen, she needed to put him off a bit longer.