The Madison Jennings Series Box Set

by Kiara Ashanti

  “What the hell is going on?” he blurted as Maddie raced past him.

  “Tiffani—I mean It-tish something or other—attacked me at the park,” Maddie shot back. She ran to Dorete, who still had not recovered from the Taser. “Dorete, how do you feel? Can you move at all?”

  “M-my legs are just beginning to feel tingly.”

  “Try to move them.”

  She could tell Dorete was trying because she closed her eyes. Her leg moved after a moment, but Maddie knew Dorete would need help walking. She grabbed an arm and began to lift her up. “Aden, help me.”

  Aden walked over, gingerly stepping past the upside-down table, and grabbed Dorete on the opposite side of Maddie. “I got her, and whatever you just said didn’t make sense.”

  For the moment, Maddie ignored him and instead posed a question. “How did you get here?”

  “Dorete drove me here.”

  “Good, we have to go. Now.” Maddie let Aden carry Dorete while she grabbed her backpack from the floor. Looking through it, relief flushed through her when she saw a black electronic device still in it. She headed for the door, then paused. She retreated back into the room to grab the discarded baton and machete, then she scanned the floor for the Taser. “Come on, man, move,” she said to Aden, who was rooted in place like a tree. “We’ve got to go before the neighbors call the police, assuming they have not already. I don’t think this is that dude’s place.” She found the Taser in a corner, grabbed it, then rushed past Aden. “Come on.”

  “Wait, don’t we want the police to be called?” shouted Dorete at Maddie’s retreating back.

  “We don’t have time for that. Trust me.”

  Further questions ceased as the trio moved into the front yard. Indeed, a few people were lingering outside and looking in their direction. Not sure what to do, Maddie smiled as she brought the machete in close to her body to hide it from the onlookers across the street. She gave them a timid wave. “Sorry about the drama.” She followed up the remark with a backward thumb point at Dorete. “She and her boyfriend got into an argument.”

  It was a lame excuse, thin as watered-down milk. The adlibbed remark did not explain why Dorete was being held up or why Maddie held a crossbow, but it was all she had. Assuming the heavily tinted Infiniti SUV parked directly in front of the house was the car Aden and Dorete had driven in, Maddie headed straight for it and got in the front passenger seat. When she turned to see how close her friends were, she could see that Dorete could now walk on her own though she was still a little wobbly. Aden stayed next to her until she reached the driver’s side and got in the car.

  “Can you drive this thing?” Maddie asked Dorete as Aden got into the backseat.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Good. Let’s move.”

  Dorete started the car and peeled away from the house. She drove out three blocks before speaking again. “Where are we going? Why the fuck did Tiffani attack us? And what the hell do you mean she attacked you at the park? What the fuck!” screamed Dorete, close to hysteria.

  Maddie knew she had to explain and fast. “That wasn’t Tiffani—I mean it was. Dammit.” Maddie did not know how to explain everything and make it make sense.

  “Look, I’ve already told Dorry what we were doing and why you were at the park. Start from there,” said Aden.

  “OK,” Maddie answered. “Tiffani showed up at the park telling me that Tommy told her where I was, except as you know, I didn’t tell you guys what I was doing.”

  “Why is that, by the way?” asked Aden.

  “Because you would have tried to stop me. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d be tracking me. I only put on the tracker in case something bad happened and I went missing—which, obviously, I did,” Maddie said with a scowl. She went on, “Tiffani knocked me out somehow. All I remember is something over my mouth and a pinch on my neck.” She reached back to rub the area as if to emphasize the point. “I woke up handcuffed upstairs in that house. She’s working with the people who took the girls, including Lilly. And she’s actually a he.”

  “What?” Aden and Dorete screamed.

  Maddie ignored the question. “Look, you need to speed the hell up. There are gonna be cops coming here real soon. We can’t get stopped.” Maddie was satisfied with the feeling of faster-forward motion as Dorete held her overflowing doubts in check and heeded Maddie’s request.

  Maddie reached into her bag and pulled out a black device. “Turn left up here.”

  “What is that?” asked Dorete.

  “I shot him with one of my tracking arrows. It makes finding a rabbit or deer easier after you shoot it. We can follow where he’s going and find Lilly.”

  “Tracker arrow? You’re taking this mission impossible shit a little too far, don’t you think? And what he? Tiffani?”

  “His real name is Id-disham. I don’t know how to say it, but it’s a Muslim name. He thinks he’s a girl, a no-no in Islam by the way, worse than being gay. Said he took me so he could redeem his family name, so someone like him could do Allah’s work. Damn, back up and take the right we just missed.”

  “I’m so confused. Are you sure?”

  “Walked out the shower right in front of me naked minutes before you showed up. So, yeah I’m sure. Turn left on that street.”

  Dorete frowned but headed in the indicated direction. “So, you’re telling me that not only is a girl I’ve known for years actually a he but that your first look at a schlong is from a tranny who wants to kill you?”

  “Wow, politically correct and able to focus on what really matters here,” replied Maddie, dripping sarcasm.

  Aden rubbed his temples. “I thought you said she—he, whatever—is working with the people that have Lilly, only you were there. And again, why aren’t we calling the police?” Aden practically shrieked the last part of the sentence.

  “What he said,” said Dorete in agreement.

  “He knows who I am. Like who I really am, Aden. I don’t know how he found out, but I think he went off script. Like I said, he told me he was going to kill ‘the girl that got away’ and it would redeem his family name somehow. But he said they had others. I’m betting he’s going to them right now. If he tells the people who have the girls and Lilly . . . I don’t know what they’ll do, but it will probably accelerate whatever plan they have. We don’t have time to call the cops and convince them. By the time we do—IF we could—Lilly could be dead.” Laser intensity glowed from Maddie’s eyes as she finished speaking. It scorched her friends.

  “We have to do this.”

  “And just what is it do you think we’re going to do?” asked Dorete somberly.

  Maddie did not have an answer. “I’ll figure it out when we get to wherever he’s going.”

  Dorete glanced up at the rearview mirror to give Aden a plaintive look. He simply shrugged.

  “Just one other question,” Dorete began. “What do you mean . . . knows who you really are?”

  Thirty minutes later, the trio pulled into a hilly and older subdivision. They had not seen the van nor had Maddie asked Dorete to speed up. She was convinced the van was no more than perhaps a mile ahead of them, and the tracker had a distance of two miles at least. Now, as they were pulling into a neighborhood, she felt certain that the male masquerading as a girl had reached his destination. The sun had set, and calls to Aden’s and Dorete’s phones had been ignored. Maddie did not want to even think about what was going on in her own parents’ heads right now.

  The radio unit started a shrill double beep. Since they were on a street with no turnoffs, she knew the van was close. “Park the car.”

  Dorete pulled over to the curb and parked in front of a small stand of trees between two houses. She shut the car off and turned to Maddie. “OK, we’re here I guess. What now?”

  “We find the van and . . .” She paused and looked out the window. They were in a neighborhood filled with large homes that looked a couple of decades old, the type of place people with a steady, wel
l-paying—if not affluent—job raised their families. It gave Maddie pause. She was no detective, but the neighborhood did not scream “terrorist hideout.” “Let’s just find the van.”

  She took a flashlight, a folding knife, and two arrow bolts from her bag. She slipped the knife inside a side pocket in her pants designed for hunting knives. She cocked the crossbow, then loaded a bolt. She slipped the other through her belt. Aden and Dorete exchanged a look before Maddie moved to exit the car. Before she could, Aden reached from the backseat and grabbed her arm.

  “So, that’s your plan: find the van? Then what? What are we going to do? Go after them with a little toy bow gun? We’re freakin’ in high school, not Delta Force.”

  Maddie narrowed her eyes and shifted them over to Dorete.

  “What he said,” responded Dorete. “I get what you’re saying about trying to convince the police. I wouldn’t believe you, but Aden’s dad would.”

  Maddie shook off Aden’s hand. “You want to call your dad or 9-1-1, go ahead. There doesn’t have to be a ‘we.’ You can stay here. I’m going out there,” she said, stabbing a finger in the air, “to find my friend.”

  Aden cursed under his breath, then turned to Dorete. “I’m not letting her go alone.”

  “Well, I’m not staying in the car alone in this creepy neighborhood. The pretty blonde always gets it in the movies when she does that.”

  “That’s usually because she just gave it up in the movie,” Maddie retorted, her tone caustic as acid.

  “Good thing I’m a virgin then. Let’s get this over with.”

  Maddie placed a hand on each of them and looked them straight in the eyes. Seeing that both were resolute, she reached into her bag and gave Dorete the Taser. She handed Aden the retracted baton. He looked at the pink cylinder of metal with a scowl. Aden handed the baton back and took the machete.

  “If I have to fight, I’m not doing it looking like Tinkerbell.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes and exited the car.

  The street went up and down like a continuous “S” that rose higher and higher. As they crested one hill, Maddie spotted the van and ran over to it. She whipped her head around to see if anyone was looking at them, but the darkness prevented her from seeing too much. She inched over to the van’s front window and took a quick look inside. Empty.

  Kneeling, she turned to Aden and Dorete, who had held back a ways, and she signaled for them to kneel as well. When they did, she turned on her flashlight and pointed it at the street around the van. A flash of silver caught her eye, and she crab walked over to it. A few feet from the van, her arrow bolt was lying on the ground. She turned and waved Aden and Dorete forward.

  “Is that the arrow?” Aden whispered when he reached her side.

  “Yeah. He must have pulled it through or out somehow, which had to hurt.”

  “So, how do we find him—I still can’t get used to thinking of Tiffani as a he.”

  In answer, Maddie doubled-clicked the button on the flashlight. The light changed from a regular white light to blue. She extended its range and pointed. “Like I said, he pulled it out. Not only did that hurt, the wound would have started bleeding again.”

  Aden cast his eyes in the direction she was pointing. He saw droplets glowing in the bluish cast of the flashlight. He gave Maddie a puzzled look.

  “Blood-tracking mode for hunting,” she answered in response to the unspoken question.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” said Dorete.

  Maddie ignored the statement and started following the blood trail. It led to a ranch-style home set back from the street with dense tree cover in the front yard. It was the only house they had seen that was not two stories tall. It also had the largest yard of the houses they had walked past. From the street, they could see a large swath of open yardway to the right of the house with a smaller structure behind it. The blood went through the entrance of the metal gate and into the yard, not toward the front door of the house.

  Without a word, Maddie eased the gate latch up and walked through. She held it open as Aden and Dorete followed. She took her time closing it, not wanting to make any noise that might alert anyone in the house. By then, she had turned the flashlight off. She knew that any moving light would make someone in the house, or in one of the other homes, look outside. She was pretty certain where the blood was going to lead, even if it left her puzzled.

  She walked through the yard with as much stealth as possible and kept an eye on the house. There were only two windows on the side, presumably bedroom windows, but no lights on inside. That did not mean no one was home, but it did make Maddie confident enough to think that their quarry, and more importantly, Lilly and company, were not inside either.

  When they reached the smaller building behind the house, Maddie again knelt close to the ground. Aden and Dorete matched her, not needing to be told. Maddie cupped her hand around the top of her flashlight to reduce its illumination as she turned it back on. As she directed the diffused light toward the door of the building, she saw blood.

  She turned her eyes to the building, which looked like an overly large shed. Now, they were in a trickier situation. There was no telling who or what was behind that door. Plus, it did not seem large enough to hold a bunch of people.

  Frustration swirled inside Maddie. A part of her admonished herself for aiming at the boy instead of the truck. The bolt could have buried itself in the van’s side, allowing Not-Tiffani to drive directly to where they were holding Lilly. By wounding him, he must have decided to come here for first aid or something. It was the only thing she could conclude.

  Shaking her head, she turned to her friends and waved them toward the side of the building’s door. She pointed her crossbow and moved to it. She listened first for voices on the other side, then grabbed the handle and pushed the door open. She pushed hard so that it would startle whoever was inside.

  But as Maddie pointed her crossbow through the open door, all she saw was an empty room.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  A red, blinking light bounced off the television and distorted the moving images of men chasing a ball on a grass field. Rashad frowned and glanced at the offending strobe light set into the wall. “Qusai, check the monitor,” he barked.

  A slender man of Jordanian descent unfolded himself from the couch, huffing as he did. The kitchen was adjacent to the family room area, where the television was located. A wall separated them, and Qusai kept his head turned around with his eyes on the television as he headed in that direction. He stayed that way until the wall forced him to turn his head forward and glance down at the screen of a laptop placed on a table. He frowned.

  “Rashad, you better look at this. It is Ihtisham.”

  “Why would I need to take a look at that useless dog,” Rashad shouted from the other room. “This ulalaat il-Haya of an official,” he said, referring to the fứtbol referee on TV, “is a better man than Ihtisham.”

  “I agree. But something is not right—I mean, more than usual.”

  An indecipherable growl sounded through the wall followed by stomping. Rashad appeared a moment later. He twisted the laptop around to look down at it. He frowned and looked at Qusai. “Is that a robe he is wearing? What is he holding against his shoulder?”

  Qusai placed a finger on the screen to point to a spot behind Ihtisham. “That looks like blood on the floor.” Words fled the men as they contemplated the image and its possible implications. Qusai was the first to react. “Get Maleek, quick! I will meet Ihtisham at the garage entrance.”

  Rashad spun around and stomped into the next room. “Bae! Go with Qusai. You,” he said, pointing to one of the men seated on the couch, “get the weapons.” Confident his orders would be followed, Rashad disappeared behind a door.

  Qusai moved farther into the house and headed toward a door that led into a two-car garage. The length of the space was larger than normal, allowing a good six feet between the wall and the front of two parked vehicles. A lar
ge, green air-conditioning unit stood at the far end of the empty space. Qusai and the men behind him stared at it as intently as they had when watching fútbol on television.

  Rashad and Maleek reached the garage door just as the air-conditioner unit slid silently to the side and Ihtisham crawled out of the space. His face was ashen, and blood covered the right corner of his pink robe. He looked up at the assemblage of men before him and croaked out, “Uncle, I am sorry. We are undone.”

  Maleek directed Rashad and Qusai to place Ihtisham on the table. Ihtisham’s shoulder was bleeding profusely, but at first glance it did not look critical, only painful. Maleek would have preferred to attend to the boy upstairs, where the captives could not see, but all their first aid was in the basement. Someone handed him a towel, and he placed it on Ihtisham’s shoulder.

  “Stop moving. Let us bind it first, then you will explain yourself.”

  Ihtisham nodded and tried not to cry out as his uncle cleaned the hole in his shoulder. He still could not believe that bitch on wheels had managed to escape and shoot him. As his head lolled backward, he caught glimpses of the jailed women looking over at him. His eyes narrowed as they zeroed in on Lilly. Lilly stared back with a hint of a smile.

  She knew nothing, of course, but still it felt like a declaration. “I know who did that!”

  Anger burned away the pain he felt, and he started to push away Maleek’s hand. “Stop it,” Maleek ordered. “I am not finished yet.”

  “We don’t have time. She knows.”

  Maleek froze before speaking. “Who knows?”

  Ihtisham paused. “Madison.”

  Menace wrinkled Maleek’s face. “What does she know and how?”

  Ihtisham could not stop the shiver of fear that rolled through him. It forced his next words out in a rush. “She knows I’m involved, and she knows the last one is alive. She found out when I kidnapped her.”