by Dawn Edwards
I stood after I was done with my business, looking around, but I didn’t see any toilet paper.
‘Did I say you could stand, cunt?’ she yelled at me, slapping my face, causing me to turn and crash into the metal wall, feet and hands still bound, pants around my knees. My head hit the wall, and I used my ab muscles to steady myself leaning into the wall, wincing from the pain in the side of my head. I looked down at my pants, only for Lisa to respond with a huff, ‘Ugg, you’re so useless. Spoiled little princess.’ I was thankful that I had on one of my old Harvard hoodies that was rather large on me now, but it covered my ass and the top part of my thighs. It was also loose, holding my small bump that was getting harder and harder to conceal.
It was only last night that Drew and I had the conversation about telling my family of our special news now that I was just entering my second trimester. We were waiting for Abby to finalize everything with the District Attorney’s office, as I didn’t want to be wearing an ankle monitor when we delivered the news. We thought it would have all been sorted out within a few days, but a week on, it felt as if they were dragging their feet. I didn’t want my family to worry about me any more than they already were. I could only imagine what they were all going through at the moment. Even though I didn’t know what time it was, I was pretty sure that my family knew I was missing. Jose would have called Drew right away. I wasn’t stupid, I knew he was there to watch me as much as I was there to keep him out of trouble.
I was leaning up against the metal wall, watching Lisa move the bucket with my urine out of the way to a corner by the door. She then walked back towards me, causing me to tense up and sink further into the wall, wishing it would swallow me whole.
'Oh calm the fuck down,' she laughed an evil laugh. 'Don’t think of trying anything, unless you want your pants kept down.’ I shook my head to acknowledge her. It wasn’t like I could try anything even if I wanted to. I hated that my hands were bound behind my back; I was completely vulnerable and unable to defend or protect myself or my belly.
She bent over and pulled up my pants, but they got caught on my butt, which was still large compared to the rest of my body. ‘Looks like you didn’t lose that fat ass after all,’ she spit out and reached behind me to pull them up over my behind then moved her hands along the top of my pants to the front to pull them up the rest of the way.
But once again, there was a barrier, my baby bump.
I had been hoping that my sweater would conceal this, but she lifted up my sweater and looked at my stomach. It was clear I was pregnant. I was far too thin to have a stomach that looked like mine did. She let out an audible shocked gasp, rose slowly and looked me in the eyes, anger radiating through her.
‘You fucking bitch,’ she screamed and hit me in the face again before she started pacing around the small room she had sequestered us in, muttering things to herself that I was unable to make out.
‘No, no, this can’t be right.’ That I was able to understand. ‘You just came back last week. You can’t be that far along.’ She looked to my stomach, she was trying to rationalize that there was no way I could be carrying Drew’s baby. Perhaps that would be the best-case scenario for me. Or perhaps since she was obsessed with Drew, she’d want his child to be unharmed, that he’d want his child safe. ‘You stupid whore, did you really think that you could trick him into being with you by pretending you’re pregnant with his child?’ She looked at me. ‘Answer me, bitch,’ she screamed, slapping me again.
I tried to speak but the gag was in the way. She pulled at the gag. ‘Don’t even think about yelling, I promise you, you’ll regret it if you even so much as think about it.’ She loosened it. ‘Besides, there’s no one around for miles, it’s useless, just like you.’
As soon as the gag was off, I took a few deep breaths, the first in so long that I was panting as I’d just ran a marathon.
‘Can you bind my arms in the front?’ I begged.
‘Why, do you think you can protect the bastard inside you?’
I let out a sob. ‘Please, you can have Drew, please just don’t hurt the baby.’
‘It is his?’ she screamed at me, but I didn’t get a chance to answer her before she took a deep breath, and a second later she was talking sweetly, almost in a dreamlike state. ‘Did he tell you we were together?’ I nodded, he never told me per se, but I knew, I wasn’t about to egg her on by telling her he didn’t talk about her. ‘He loves me,’ she went on, ‘He just needed some time, so I gave it to him. He was on his way back to me when you showed back up last week out of the fucking blue to ruin everything.’
I stared at her, willing my face not to give anything of what I was thinking away, like the fact that this chick was seriously delusional and seemed certifiably insane. She continued to pace back and forth in front of me.
‘I’m thinking that it’s time you go away, and this time I'd prefer it was a more permanent arrangement.’ She stopped and looked at me with a crazy-ass look in her eyes. ‘I mean, the police already think you’ve skipped town again. They’re not going to be so stupid a second time as to waste valuable resources on some spoiled bitch who doesn’t want to be found.’
CHAPTER 36
DREW
I heard a light rapping at the bedroom door. I turned over to see light pouring in from the living room. ‘Drew?’ Breton’s voice came from the almost-closed door.
I sat up. ‘Yeah, man,’ I called back as he opened the door. ‘Anything?’
‘Not yet, we just got here,’ he told me. ‘We’re going to start setting up.’
I nodded, ‘Let me splash some water on my face and I’ll be right out.’
I ended up taking a much-needed quick shower and changing into pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
When I walked out to the living room, two other guys were setting up computers on the large table in the dining room, and Breton was in the kitchen making coffee. ‘I just placed an order for breakfast sandwiches and shit from uber eats.’
I took a seat at the island and watched the two guys in my dining room hooking up equipment.
‘Nyall, Tom,’ Breton called out and the men looked up and stopped what they were doing to join us in the kitchen, taking the cups of coffee that sat next to me. ‘This is Drew, my best friend and Jessa’s husband.’
They both extended their hands and I shook them. ‘Nice to meet you,’ Tom told me.
‘Nyall helped with getting Jessa off the boat,’ Breton offered, and I looked up to the massive guy.
‘Thanks, any leads on getting my wife back?’
‘Not yet. We weren’t able to do much on the airplane, we had spotty satellite internet, but the software we use needs pretty fast internet. We’re just setting it all up now, should be ready to go in another ten minutes or so.’
‘Catch us up,’ Breton asked, taking a seat next to me as the two guys went to set up the equipment in the dining room and Breton opened up a laptop that was in a pelican case.
I told them what had happened; the play by play. Tom asked some follow-up questions from the next room, making mental and written notes.
What was found, why I thought it was Lisa, the cops and the bitchy Detective Landry.
‘She’s a hard-ass,’ Breton said. ‘I went to school with one of her kids back in the day.’
I was operating on autopilot, regurgitating the information as I knew it, drinking my coffee only because it was in front of me and eating when Breton reminded me. I had been up less than an hour and I was already pacing. I tried to check email and text with Joe, but my mind was everywhere other than with work. I tuned out the news that was on in the background. Thankfully, this incident hadn’t made it to the news; there were strict instructions from the DA to keep this limited in scope for the time being.
We had already gone through a Public Relations nightmare. I would need to call Zoe soon to let her know if Steve hadn’t already. I didn’t think he had, as Zoe would have called me right away.
Steve and Colleen arrived
shortly before nine in the morning with more food and coffee. The detectives showed up not long afterward.
‘What’s going on here?’ Detective Landry asked, seeing the small operations station set up on my dining room table, looking at everything with an evil scowl on her face.
Steve walked into the dining area. ‘This is my nephew Breton and his co-workers, and they are assisting on the case.’
‘I know who he is,’ she looked at Breton with a death glare, ‘I want to know who authorized this.’
‘Do you know where the fuck my cousin is?’ Breton asked, not even bothering to look at her and kept typing away at his keyboard.
‘We are working on it…’
‘How? Tell me what leads you have, who are your main suspects, what kind of car were they driving, what direction did they go?’ He drilled her with multiple questions.
He finally looked up at her. ‘Well?’
‘It is an ongoing investigation…’
I stepped in, ‘Do you have any updates for us?’
She looked at Breton and the two other men. ‘Not at the moment.’
‘Then why the fuck are you even here?’ I spit out. ‘My wife is missing and you are wasting everyone’s fucking time to tell us you have no updates?’
‘Drew,’ I felt Steve’s hand heavy on my shoulder, pulling me back.
‘No,’ I shrugged him off. ‘I’m done being Mr. Nice Guy. I’ve played nice all along, while she has been a pain in our ass for a week now checking in on us as the most inconvenient times. We’ve been more than cooperative, and now that she has an actual real job to do, finding my missing wife, she’s taking the piss…’
I threw my hands up in frustration and stormed out of the room, not able to look at her any longer.
‘I think its best that you leave,’ I heard Nyall say in his authoritative tone. ‘We will call you when we have more information.’
‘Excuse me?’ the detective bellowed, sounding appalled. ‘Who the hell are you tell me to leave an active crime scene? I am the detective here, not you.’
‘Then go do your fucking job and find my cousin and her kidnappers,’ Breton quipped.
I could hear everything from the kitchen, where I stood next to Colleen, who was scrolling through news sites to ensure Jessa’s kidnapping hadn’t leaked. I could see the detective move to look over Tom’s shoulder to his screen. He didn't make a move to stop what he was doing or to shield the screen; it was all code, and unless she was a hacker, she’d have no clue what they were actually up to. They had explained it to me earlier and it was still foreign.
They have hacked into Lisa’s phone, bank accounts, personal and business, and her social networks where they found a few leads. Breton was the one who was trying to ensure this was entirely Lisa and rule out the Taggarts or their associates completely.
‘What is this?’ she asked, looking at the screen.
‘None of your business,’ Tom sneered, clearly sick of this bitch’s shit also. She could try and power trip all she wanted, but she had nothing on Nyall, and I think she knew it, as he was still standing, staring her down with his arms crossed in front of him.
‘Like I said, you go do your thing, we’ll do ours. If we need you, we will let you know,’ Nyall reminded her.
‘If you need me,’ she looked at him. ‘I’m the detective, you need me.’
‘Just like the Cahills needed you to prove Josh’s death wasn’t a suicide and you ignored them, just like that. College girl needed you to investigate her rape and you shamed her. Stellar track record there. Like I said, if we need you, we’ll be in touch. But if you don’t mind, we have a job to do.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘That’s classified.’
The detective had the audacity to laugh at Nyall, ‘Classified my ass, you are clearly not American and all you are doing is playing on a computer.’
Now it was the guys turn to laugh at her. ‘Playing on a computer, ok then…’
‘I will only ask you one more time to tell me what you are doing and who you work for before I arrest you for interfering with an active investigation.’
‘You have no grounds or evidence to arrest us, and we never said we had anything to do with the investigation. We work for a UK securities firm, and I can assure you, the office of Homeland Security knows we are here and likely what we are doing. I suggest if you want to keep your job that you leave right now. Otherwise, I have no problem emailing the DA some Easter eggs you think you did a good job in hiding.’
I saw the blood leave her face, and she looked around before she composed herself. She looked back to me. ‘I’ll be in touch, Mr. Cameron.’
‘You do that,’ I stared at her as she walked out the front door.
Nyall sat down and started working on his computer again. None of the guys talked for a while. ‘What do you have on her?’ Steve was the first to speak up.
Nyall shook his head, ‘Nothing, but someone like her, it’s clear she has more than one skeleton in her closet.’
‘And Homeland Security?’
‘I used my passport and entered legally, of course they know I’m here. They also know every other person who lands. Maybe I was flagged because I was Special Forces and have been contracted by them in the past, but who knows, I personally didn’t care. I could have told her everything, this isn’t classified, Jessa is a civilian. But she is a power-hungry bitch, and I don’t play games with people like her. We are here to get Jessa back as soon as possible, and all she was doing is wasting our time.’
It was just before lunchtime. I was upstairs trying to keep my hands occupied by painting trim for the master bedroom when I heard Tom yell, ‘I got it!’
I dropped the brush in the small container, not even bothering to cover it, and rushed downstairs to find everyone, including the Cahills, gathered around Tom’s computer. There were just lines and lines of code, but apparently Breton and Nyall knew what it was they were reading.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means her new boyfriend is out of town and she’s watching over his business, and I’d bet my left nut Lisa has her there.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Chatham,’ Breton told me, and the Cahills and looked to his co-workers. ‘It’s up the Cape a bit, near a marina.’
They pulled it up on Google maps, and it looked secluded as if it was mainly used for boat storage around the perimeter of the property, and likely used in the winter with a few dozen self-storage lockers in the middle of the property.
‘Call the detective back,’ Colleen offered, desperate to get her daughter back.
‘No,’ Nyall shook his head as he stood. ‘I’ll have her out of there before they can even get here to look over the evidence. They’re sloppy, and I can’t trust working with amateurs.’
‘But what if you need back-up?’
‘Tom’s all the back-up I need,’ Nyall assured her. ‘Besides, from all this, it appears that she’s working alone, we can subdue a lowly barmaid.’
I had no doubt they could. I was also very aware that this was child’s play to them compared to what they did on a daily basis.
‘I’m coming,’ I demanded in a tone that told them it was non-negotiable.
‘As long as you understand that I’m leading this. If I order you to stand down, I need to trust you will. I can’t worry about you when my mission is to get to her.’
I swallowed, but simply nodded.
Nyall and Tom made quick work to pull all their gear from a bag that was stashed in the front office. Within five minutes, they were fully dressed, decked out in military looking gear. A vest I assumed to be bulletproof, but fuck, I was hoping that wasn’t necessary, cargo-type pants that had various tools and gadgets in the pockets, a belt with more tools and a gun, and an earpiece. Aside from missing an automatic weapon slung over a shoulder, they looked very much as if they would blend into one of the Military SEAL shows I enjoyed watching.
I’d never again be able
to watch them with the same relaxing ease I once had. This shit was now too real for me.
Breton stayed behind at the house with the Cahills and was doing ground operations, which I’d come to find out was what he typically did on missions. I drove them in my truck to the address that was programmed into my Google Maps app on my phone. The estimated time was thirty-eight minutes, however, it felt so much longer. I just wanted to get to Jessa, to make sure she was ok and that our baby was too.
‘Do a drive-by first,’ Nyall instructed me from the front passenger seat, while Tom was sitting behind me. ‘We want to make sure there are no cameras.’
I went at a slightly slower speed, but not slow enough to be suspicious. On the second pass, they held up devices to the windows with a small screen that was detecting electronics in the area.
‘We are go on my end,’ Tom indicated.
‘Go on my end too,’ Nyall agreed. ‘Pull up to the gate over there.’ He pointed to the gate that was closed, but as we got closer, we saw that the chain was cut. I assumed that was what she needed to borrow the bolt cutters for the other day.
I pulled into a space that was out of view of the main alley leading to the few rows of storage lockers. ‘We stick together; if I were her, I’d have her near the back, somewhere in the middle. Bret, talk to me.’
I was the only one without an earpiece, so wasn’t privy to most of what had been said on the drive out here. ‘Ok, thanks,’ Tom nodded.
‘What?’ I looked between the two of them, following behind them as they walked to the left side.
‘Based on the rental agreements, there are two that are empty towards the back in the second row from the left,’ Nyall relayed the message to me.