Stolen Omnibus – Small Town Abduction (16 page)

“Please, stop.” More tears squeezed from her eyes. She wasn’t sure if they were from fear or guilt. Probably both.

Scott had knelt once again, forcing his face into her line of sight. “He wanted to make sure that no one hurt you.” Scott’s words fell to the ground the moment they left his lips. They were dead. Just like her. “Even after everything he knew about your affair, his last wish was that you would live.” He stroked a lock of her hair then stood and shrugged. “But that was something I never agreed to.”

Scott raised the hammer, and Kelly screamed, finding her voice in her final seconds. Bone cracked against metal, and the scream muffled to a whimper. After that, the only noise was metal smacking against meat.

Chapter 2 – 14 Hours Left

The coffee in the Styrofoam cup was cold. The plastic seats in the waiting room of the sheriff’s station were stiff and uncomfortable. Lena rubbed the dark circles under her eyes as a few deputies walked past. They cast quick glances at her, but once they saw her staring back they looked away. It’d been like that all night. Despite the whispers and glares it was still better than tossing, turning, and waiting at home.

Every few minutes she’d look down at her hand to see it tremble. She wanted to blame the coffee or the lack of sleep, but she knew it wasn’t that. It was the rumble of a freight train speeding toward her. And it was gaining speed.

With each blare of the train’s horn Lena saw flashes of Carla Knox. Her deranged and hysterical face laughing as she pressed the end of her pistol to the side of Emily Foreman’s head, any reason impotent to break through the wall of insanity that she’d built around herself. The woman was willing to do the unthinkable, and caught up in the middle was that little girl. Except now, Emily Foreman was home. But Kaley wasn’t.

“Lena?” Deputy Longwood stepped around the corner. His head nearly touched the ceiling. “You can come back now.”

Lena’s knees popped when she stood. She lifted her legs and stretched, tossing the old coffee in the trash. It wasn’t waking her up anyway. On her walk she saw Jake in the cell, his head sunk low between his knees. He was alone.

The cell across from Jake, however, was still teeming with the oil workers who had been arrested on the charges of attacking her house. It was Longwood’s decision to keep them separate.
More for their safety than Jake’s, probably.

“Have a seat,” Longwood said, shutting the door behind him.

“I’ve been sitting all night.” Lena feigned the enthusiasm of energy, but she wasn’t sure she pulled it off. “So?” She’d crossed all of the t’s and dotted all of the I’s. But in the end, her brother’s release wasn’t up to her.

Longwood folded his long, slender hands on top of one another and leaned forward on her brother’s desk. “The judge granted Jake’s bail request.”

“So let him out.” Lena held out her arms, wondering what in the hell he was waiting for. “I’ve spent all night in this station, Chris. I don’t have any more time to waste. Kaley is—”

“Lena, you are not a detective!” Longwood’s voice boomed in the office and he rose from his chair, and for the first time since Lena had known him, his height looked intimidating. “What do you think is going to happen when I let Jake out of that cell? You think he’s going to put the badge back on and continue like nothing ever happened?” He slammed his fist into the table and rattled a few pens off the edge of the desk. “He has a murder charge hanging over his head!”

“C’mon, Chris.” Lena paced between the door and the set of chairs meant for visitors. “You think he did it? You really think that my brother, the same man that hired you, is capable of something like that?”

“He’s always had a temper,” Chris said.

“He’s not the bad guy!” Lena slammed the toe of her foot into the desk, shaking the computer monitors and toppling papers and stationary. Her foot throbbed, but the adrenaline overpowered the pain. “You know just as well as I do that it was New Energy that killed Reese Coleman. They’ve been behind everything! The spotty safety standards on their rigs, dumping illegal waste that has ruined dozens of lives.” Lena felt ropes of reason fray, madness pulling her apart. “They don’t play by the rules, Chris, and I can’t afford to either. I will not bury my daughter; do you understand me? I will not bury her!” She panted heavily. Her cheeks reddened and the stinging burn of tears filled her eyes.

Longwood’s expression softened. He lowered his head and gently thudded the desk three times with his left fist. “I know you’re right.” He collapsed back into his chair, rubbing his temples, and then pinched the bridge of his nose in concentration. “So what do you want to do, Lena?” He tossed his hands in the air and then they fell helplessly to his side.

“I want you to stay out of the way.” Lena leaned forward, and she watched her shadow slowly crawl over Longwood’s body. “If New Energy doesn’t want to fight fare, then so be it. I’ll give you what I can, but if I have to choose between the law and my daughter I’ll choose Kaley every time.” Lena spun around and placed her hand on the door knob.

“Lena.” Longwood stood, and she turned. “Keep me in the loop. At least with what you can. I’ll keep looking for Kaley though. I promise.”

“Thank you.” Both Lena and Longwood marched to the cell where Jake was being held. The iron hinges groaned when they were opened, and Jake stepped out. Lena wrapped her arms around him, and after the quick embrace Longwood led the way to an empty room. He opened the door and let them inside, giving them some time alone.

The sat next to one another at the table, and Lena reached for his hand. “How are you holding up?”

Jake gave her hand a light squeeze. “I should be asking you that.” He lowered his voice. “How much time do we have left?”

“Less than fourteen hours.” If she wanted to be exact, it was thirteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and twenty-nine seconds. “I posted your bail.” She stood, still holding onto his hand, but it fell back to the table when they separated. “What are you doing?”

“Lena, I’m a liability. I’ve been brought up on charges for murder.”

“You and I both know that you didn’t do it.” Lena watched his face and studied the small twitch at the corner of his mouth, along with the lines that carved a grief-stricken expression along his cheeks. “Did you?”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “But I did break the law. I found Reese Coleman’s body a few days ago. And I put it on New Energy’s property to cause them more trouble.”

“Why?” Lena’s voice was exasperated as she glided back to the table, planting her palms over the cool metal surface. “The vote had already happened, you didn’t have to—” But then she stopped. The night of the vote on her bill triggered a memory. “That’s why you weren’t at the town hall that night.” She lowered herself into the chair absentmindedly. “You were moving the body then, weren’t you.”

“I wanted you to have some insurance.” Jake ran his hands through the thick crop of short hair. “I wasn’t sure if the bill would pass, and I knew how much you’d put up with, how much you sacrificed. I thought if a body turned up on New Energy’s property it would give you something else to attack them on. I thought that this would be the nail in the coffin for them. I thought we could turn the tide.”

It wasn’t Jake’s confession that surprised her. He’d always been quick to act, quick to anger, quick to make the emotional action, but she’d never been as angry with him as she was in that moment. “That was the dumbest thing you could have ever done.” She watched him wince at his words. “You didn’t think New Energy wouldn’t have some excuse already prepared for something like that? You don’t think they could have wiggled their way out of tampering with evidence? You don’t think—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is getting Kaley back.” She reached for his hand. “I tried doing this lawfully, and it didn’t work. If I want my daughter back then I’ll have to play by their rules.” Her voice whispered. “I need you with me.”

Jake exhaled, then squeezed her hand. “So, no announcement to renounce the bill?”

“No.” Lena shook her head and stood to pace the floor, scratching the crook of her left arm. “Not after I saw the look on Carla Knox’s face in that barn. If there’s a chance that whoever took Kaley is half as crazy as she was then I’m not betting my daughter’s life on the word of some psychopath.”

Jake leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed and his arms crossed. “What are you thinking then?”

“New Energy took Kaley as leverage. All we need to do is find our own,” Lena answered. “We need someone on the inside. And I know of at least one person who owes me.” She just hoped that Jim Foreman would talk.

***

Ken noticed that his knuckles had whitened and once again eased his grip on the edge of the podium. They ached. His head ached. Everything ached. And the shouts from the reporters below only exacerbated the problem. “Yes, you in the front.”

A young woman extended a tape recorder, her red hair pulled tight in a bun at the very top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed a light pink from the thirty minutes everyone had been standing outside. “The Hayes camp has been adamant that your company has something to do with Kaley’s disappearance. You can’t ignore the fact that the kidnapper’s demands mirror how your company has publicly felt about Representative Hayes’s bill.”

Ken leaned into the microphone. “We are in the business of energy. Not kidnapping. I cannot state this any clearer than I already have. We did not take Kaley. We wish Representative Hayes all the best and have cooperated with law enforcement with every request. And if I’m not mistaken, her brother, Sheriff Cooley, was just arrested on charges of murder! Murder of one of our own workers!” Ken pounded the top of the podium with his fist. “And, yes, we will be seeking retribution for that atrocious crime!”

Every reporter looked at him with the same trepidation, and Ken straightened his tie. Blood rushed to his head, and he closed his eyes, trying to shake it off. “That’s all the time I have for questions right now—”

A truck roared through the grass parking lot. Oil workers quickly jumped from its path, the driver neither slowing nor diverting his trajectory to avoid the crowd. Reporters scattered just as tires skidded across the grass and dirt. An old man stepped out of the truck. Lumps and bruises covered his face, and one of his eyes was completely swollen shut. All of the reporters took a step back but still thrust their cameras and recorders into the man’s face as he walked past, all of them asking who he was. But Ken already knew.

“You!” Mr. Lanks thrust an arthritically deformed finger in Ken’s direction. “I told you and that thug you brought to my farm that I’m not selling!” Spit flew from his mouth, and he stopped just short of the podium. “You know what he did? Do you know what this company did?” The reporters leaned in, pictures were snapped, video recorded. “They came to my house. Beat me. Threatened my family and said that if I didn’t sell them my land, they were going to kill me!” He set his one good eye on Ken just as security came up behind him, dragging the old man away as he kicked and screamed in defiance. “You won’t get away with this! You hear me? You won’t get my land! Ever!”

Mr. Lanks’s rant faded the farther security pulled the old man back, and the moment he was out of earshot the herd of reporters returned their attention to Ken.

“Does New Energy have a comment about these new allegations?”

“Who was the gentleman referring to as the thug?”

“Why would New Energy resort to such violence?”

“If your company is threatening residents with their lives, why is it hard to believe that you wouldn’t kidnap Kaley Hayes to help defeat the oil bill aimed to further regulate your business?”

The questions came quickly, one after the other, two at a time, three at a time. It was all Ken could do to keep up with who was hurling them at him. “The man is clearly hurt and confused, and we’ll delve into this situation immediately. Again, this is all the time I have, and when I know more, so will you. Thank you.”

The roaring inquiries followed him all the way to the office door and then lingered outside for the next several minutes before security escorted the reporters off the premises. Inside, Ken kept all of the lights off and pressed his face into his palms and sat at his desk. He slowly ran his fingers back through his hair, feeling the grime of the past few days. He hadn’t showered, hadn’t shaved—he’d barely eaten. All he could feel was the slow, suffocating hands tightening around his throat. He couldn’t shake them. They followed him everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before they pulled him back into an abyss that would swallow him whole.

Ken’s cell phone rang. He didn’t answer. The desk phone rang. He let it go to voice mail. The back-and-forth calls repeated for another ten minutes before there was a pounding on his door, which he refused to answer.

Eventually, security forced it open, and Scott Ambers stepped inside, instructing the security team to leave the two of them alone. Ken didn’t look up at Ambers as he paced methodically across the carpet, only stopping when he stood directly in front of Ken. “You have work to do.”

Ken kept his head down, an edge of frustration in his voice. “You told me they wouldn’t go to anyone. You told me that it wouldn’t backfire, and I told you, more than once, that it would.” He glanced up. “You can only push people so far before they push back.”

“Mr. Alwitz hired you to handle these PR situations.” Scott’s dead-eye glare was only compounded by the darkness of the room. “Now, get up.”

It was the way a parent would have addressed a stubborn child who’d just thrown a tantrum in a grocery store. “I’m not going to do this for you anymore.” Ken felt his head tremble when he lifted his face. “I quit.”

Scott lowered himself to Ken’s level. There was no anger on his face, no rage, no disappointment, only a man who knew he had the winning hand. “You have two options right now. Option one: you get off your ass and get back to work, trying to figure out a way to spin this in our favor. Option two: I walk out the door, get on a plane, and go to your family’s house. I break through the front door and find your wife and your son, and hurt them. And I continue to hurt them until you agree to option one.”