Tourist Trapped (32 page)

Vince pointed at the screen. “This one, you better hang onto. She’s a keeper.”

“She’s my boss, Vince, nothing more.” Was Amanda limping?

“Really…then why ain’t you wearin’ your wedding ring?”

Chad had forgotten he’d taken it off. “It felt like the right time.” He caught the shared smile between Vince and Sally.

“What?” Kate grabbed his left hand and stared at the white band of skin.

“They’re in the mall parking lot, they’re on their way. I repeat, they’re on their way.” One of the lookouts reported.

“Team, get ready to move. As soon as the kids enter their motel room, we execute,” Vince yelled over the din of milling bodies.

THIRTY-NINE

Friday December 18, Early Evening

Amanda couldn’t feel
her feet and gloved fingers, and chilled rain seeped through her waterlogged hat. Frozen to the bone, she kept checking for snowflakes. Darkness drizzled down with the raindrops and the floodlights blazed on, illuminating the red brick of the Ramada.

The earpiece crackled and she couldn’t understand the garbled voice, followed by a distracting, steady stream of static. Amanda yanked out the earpiece and shoved it in her coat pocket.

Two scraggly figures strolled down the street and into the motor lodge’s parking lot. “Jason, please, just for a minute?” Amid the boy’s protests, the girl ran across the street. “Excuse me, can I pet your dog?”

“Sure. Her name’s Fiona.”

The girl bent down and Fiona, tail wagging, wiggled over to her. “You’re so cute!” The child wore a dirty, too-small jacket and pale knees peeked out of ripped jeans. Her long, limp brown hair fell over her face.

“Skye, hurry up. It’s getting dark. You know the rules.” The boy paced on the sidewalk, reminding her of a dog trying to avoid the zap of an invisible fence. He, too, looked overdue for a haircut and an afternoon in a department store. This Raggedy Ann and Andy duo couldn’t be Cooper’s kids, could it?

The girl ignored the boy and continued playing with the eager little dog. “We have one like this. I sure miss her.”

“She’ll be happy when you get home.”

The girl rose, but her eyes remained on the enthusiastic terrier. The child’s lower lip trembled. “Maybe someday.”

Jason and Skye. The names Cooper had scrawled on the sticky note he left on his laptop. Before Amanda knew what she was doing, she grabbed the girl and held her tight. It wasn’t what she had been instructed to do, but her gut told her she had Cooper’s daughter in her grasp. No matter what, he was going to get her back.

“Skye, I’ve got Skye. Did you hear me? I’ve got Skye.”

The girl yelped and squirmed, but Amanda hooked her bad leg around the girl’s and pushed her through the bushes and against the Ramada Inn. Fiona jumped on them, excited over this new game.

“Let me go. Pleeeze.” The girl started sobbing. “We have to take care of Mom.”

What in hell? Cooper’s wife’s on the run, too?
“Your dad will take care of your mom, she’ll be safe. You all will be.”

“No—we’ll lose her—we almost did before.” The girl kept writhing, putting additional pressure on the stitches in Amanda’s leg. It felt as if they were going to rip out, like pulling the string off a thirty pound bag of bird seed. “My old teacher, she told the police and they tried to take Mom away. They were going to commit her.”

“Skye!” The splashing of feet through puddles grew closer and Amanda felt something jab into the small of her back.

“Let her go or I’ll have to hurt you,” the boy said.

“Not on your life, kid. I’m not releasing her until Cooper says I can. Shoot me, stab me, whatever. I’m. Not. Letting. Go.”

* * *

They watched the
kids cross the street, but Chad had known it wasn’t going to play out as planned when Amanda pulled out her earpiece.

“Shit—what’s she doing?” Vince had said.

“It probably wasn’t working right, Vince. Calm down,” Kate had said. “She’ll stick to the plan, won’t she, Chad?”

Not Amanda Sloane.

“Chad?”

They held their breath when Skye ran across the road and bent down to pet the dog. Bingo, they had her off guard. She wouldn’t think about anything other than the pooch for a while.

Then Amanda threw her arms around Skye and chaos commenced. The struggling pair veered outside the range of the cameras. They captured Jason running over, but he disappeared as well.

“Aw, hell—plan B, everybody, go to plan B!” Vince yelled and the horde hustled out of the hotel. Sally phoned the waiting squad car and the rest of them amassed with their teams. One group would contain Skye, another Jason and the third would track down and corner Danielle.

Chad didn’t know if he should hug Amanda or wring her neck. He ran out of the room, terrified that Skye and Jason would escape again. And yet, it was the first time anyone had gotten this close. For at least a moment, Skye was almost within reach.

He tore through the lobby, tripping over an elderly couple’s luggage. He reached out with his bad arm to steady himself and the movement greeted him with a stabbing pain down his bicep.

Chad dodged parking lot traffic and made his way to the back of the hotel. Amanda had Skye plastered against the building, the dog circling around the legs of both females, winding the leash around them. Jason stood next to Amanda. He had a stick jammed into her back.

“Your dad’s here to rescue you,” Amanda said.

“Tell him to go home and forget about us. He’s got to leave us alone,” Jason said.

Chad froze.

Two teams circled his kids, and another team surrounded Danielle’s motel room and pounded on the door. A uniformed policeman escorted the manager up to unlock it.

“Your dad loves you and wants you back with him. He’ll take care of it,” Amanda said.

A blood curdling scream ripped through the air. “Let go of me, you animals! Get out of here! Leave us alone!”

“Mom!” Jason shouted. “They’ve got Mom!” He turned to run across the street, but two team members grabbed him. “Let go of me—Mom, I’m coming!”

“Jason?” Chad eased up to his son. “I’ve been looking for you such a long time. My gosh, you’re so tall. I barely recognize you.”

“Dad, you’ve got to get out of here.” Jason pulled at the hands holding him.

“Son, I’m not going anywhere without you. Why don’t you want to come home?”

“Cooper, is your wife depressed?”

Amanda. He adored the woman, but did she have to know his wife’s story right now? “Can we discuss this later?”

“It’s a full-time job, isn’t it? Keeping somebody safe,” Amanda said.

What is she getting at?

“Has she gotten better?” Amanda said.

“No,” Skye said.

“How long have you been hiding her?”

Skye stopped struggling. “Four years.”

A startled Amanda threw a glance at Chad and then refocused on Skye.

“How long have you been away from home?”

“Five years.”

“Fiv—oh my. Sweetie, let your dad take care of all of you.” Amanda rested her cheek on Skye’s scalp. “It’s time for somebody else to be in charge. Skye, you need to be a kid again.”

It started to make sense. No wonder Chad couldn’t catch them; they didn’t want to be found. He realized where Amanda was going. “So what happens next?” he said.

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“Well, if this has been going on for four years, will it be the same for the next four?” Chad said.

“And how about the four years after that?” Amanda said. “Are the two of you going to dedicate your lives to hiding your mother? No proms or college? Never falling in love and getting married? Spending year after year in some motel in the middle of nowhere, going unnoticed by society? Is that your plan?”

Skye went limp and Jason plopped on the ground and dropped his head to his hands. “The police tried to take her away. We thought we were doing the right thing,” Jason said.

Chad knelt over Jason. “It’s okay, son. We’ll take good care of her.”

A wild-haired, thrashing Danny emerged from the motor lodge, her screams slicing through the cold, soggy night air. Four off-duty officers held onto her.

“Go ahead, these two aren’t going anywhere,” Vince said.

Kate and Peter hurried to the kids and Chad ran across the street and up to the second floor to find his wife twisting against restraining hands. Terror swam in ocean-blue eyes that had once twinkled with delight at Jason’s first steps, at a crawling baby Skye trying to keep up with Maggie. Eyes that had brimmed with love when he proposed.

Her screeches reminded him of the frantic calls of a neighborhood beagle that had been cornered by a pack of coyotes. So scared. So hurt.

“Danny?” As if pulled by a puppet string, his hand reached out and caressed her cheek.

Recognition settled into her eyes. “Chad?” Her hands dropped to her sides and she grew still. “Are you really here?” Her fingers reached out, slowly traversing the space between them, finally resting on his chest, over his heart. “I can feel you this time.”

Dull, ebony hair hung in greasy strings around hollow cheekbones. He wondered how her scrawny neck could hold up her head. A food-stained gray sweatshirt hung from her thin shoulders. Her tortured psyche and gaunt physique reminded him of Miriam. Two women mourning lost children.

Danielle reached out and draped her arms around his neck. The pungent scent of days of accumulated body secretions assaulted his nose, but he held her. “Help me, please, Chad,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m so tired of the voices.”

Five years of his family’s lives lost to a tragic game of “Hide and Seek.” With anything but a happy ending.

* * *

“It’ll be okay,
I promise.” Chad squeezed Danielle’s hand once more before the officer closed the door to the squad car and whisked his wife to the hospital.

Chad tore back across the street. He wanted to grab his son and hug him until the kid couldn’t breathe. After five years, Jason stood next to him. He patted the boy’s broad back, amazed that this young man was his son. Hard to replace the burned-in image of a ten-year-old boy with the teenager in front of him.

“Jason, taking care of your mom isn’t your responsibility. She and I are your parents; we’re supposed to worry about you, not the other way around. I’m sorry you had to carry this burden. The two of you had to grow up way too fast, but now it’s time to come home with me. Let’s figure out what comes next.”

Tired, old eyes looked back at Chad and they twisted his heart. Although in his spurt, his sallow-skinned son had little muscle tone—the logical outcome of a kid who spent year-after-year holed up in a motel room. Chad shuddered to think what the kids had lived on.

So slowly almost imperceptible, Jason leaned over and rested his head on Chad’s shoulder. Chad wrapped his arm around his son and the young man sighed so deeply it shook his entire body. Chad choked back tears as he put his other arm around Jason and held him.

He then looked up at Skye’s tear-stained face, his daughter still pinned in Amanda’s choke hold for adolescents. He smiled and extended one arm. Amanda released the child and she ran over, hugging her dad, the three of them embracing.

“I wanted to go home so bad.” The dam opened and Skye sobbed, the tears bubbling up from her soul. “But Mom needed us to keep her safe.”

Vince thanked the team for their help and sent them on their way, but he and Sally stayed with Chad, along with Kate and Peter. They planned to remain close until the family landed in Chicago. A friend of Vince’s had agreed to fly them all to Seattle and they’d book a commercial flight from there. The original goal had been to exit Oregon as quickly as possible to minimize the chance of Danielle somehow stealing the kids again. The plan had been to keep Danny in Portland and have her parents fly in, but now he realized he couldn’t leave her alone. She’d have to come with them.

“Sally, we’ll need another ticket, and would you tell Beatrice and Herb they should meet us in Chicago?”

“Will do.” Sally swiped the screen of her smartphone with a hand that also held Fiona’s leash.

The pup leaped on Skye and she petted her. “I can’t wait to see Maggie.”

Did he tell her now, or wait until they arrived home? It probably would be better now. The house would be deathly quiet when they returned, so maybe giving them a little time to adjust would be best.

“Skye, I hate to tell you this, but Maggie passed away, about six months after you left.”

“No!” The tears swelled again. “What happened?”

“Maggie had cancer, and the vet said she was too sick for treatment.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. “We can never replace her, but maybe we can find another pup who’d want to live with us.”

“Dad, how about Grandma and Grandpa—and Nana and Papa?” Jason said. “Are they okay?”

“Yes, Jason, all of your grandparents are fine and they can’t wait to see you.”

“Do you love Mom?” The weary eyes searched Chad’s. “Can you forgive her and take her back? Can we be a family again?”

“I don’t know, Jason. Your mom has a lot to work through. I think we all do.”

Chad’s fingers twisted around the spot that once held a wedding ring, scanning the departing volunteers for one in particular. “Vince, where’s Amanda?”

“She left, said she had to get back to Chicago.”

Back to her old life. Back to Matt.

“Let’s do the same.” Two weeks ago, having his kids safe at home was his entire world. But, since the trip to Cancun, Chad’s life no longer remained that simple.

* * *

“Tell me they’re
dead, Jonathan.” Sweat trickled down Gordon’s scalp and around the ear holding the Bluetooth earpiece. He cranked up the incline of his treadmill. Pinpoints of light from the edge of Lakeshore Drive glowed up toward his sixty-eighth floor condo. The shadows of night had engulfed the city, street lamps and headlights dazzled in the black void, like a field of jewels.

“Police are posted at the hospital and the hotel, sir.”

“Not my concern. How many have been handled?”

“The plan required dealing with Ms. Sloane first and she disappeared.”

Gordon gripped the treadmill’s rail and squeezed until it felt as if he had embedded his fingerprints into its cold, metal surface. “Again? How did you lose her?”

“We caught her hailing a cab in the middle of the night and followed her to the airport. She boarded a flight to San Francisco and there had been no trace of her until we found her in Portland, Oregon tonight. She’s booked a flight back to Chicago.”

“Forget the rest of her family. Get back here and handle her.”

“Sir, I don’t think we can wait. Today we were able to extract Ms. Jasmine Peter’s keys from her person. We found evidence in the office that they’ve linked you with Command Commodities.”

Gordon’s gut roiled. He wanted to castigate Jonathan for his incompetence, but now wasn’t the time. “Where’s this woman?”