Untraceable (35 page)

“
Call Micah,” Jeanie
stated, picking up Trent’s cell from the dash.

“
Nah, Jeanie. God, with
everything he’s been through, I don’t want to add this stupid shit
to his worries. Listen, I’ll take the boat and go to the other side
and—”

“
No, Trent! You don’t know
who’s over there, or how many are over there. Besides, I’m sure
they’d hear the boat motor.”

“
I won’t use the outboard;
the trolling motor is silent. I just want to sneak up through the
woods and see what’s going on. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“
Yeah, well what if it’s a
bunch of punks empting the house?”

“
Then I motor back here
and we’ll call the sheriff’s office and let them handle
it.”

Trent backed the trailer and boat down
into the lake as Jeanie watched nervously. When he pulled the truck
out, he told Jeanie to wait in the truck and keep an eye out. “If
you see anyone heading this way, get the hell out of here and
I’ll—”

“
I’m not going to leave
you!” she stated on the verge of tears.

“
Jeanie, I know these
woods like the back of my hand. If you see them heading this way,
you get out of here and call the sheriff. Hell, I’ll just hide in
the woods; they’ll never find me.”

“
Take your shotgun,” she
said, pulling it up from behind the seat.

“
Nah, baby, I don’t want
to scare the shit out of them. Hell, like you said, it’s probably
just a bunch of punk kids with their daddy’s boat.” He leaned in
and gave her a kiss and started to walk away.

“
Your phone,” she said
trying to give it to him.

“
Jeanie, you know good and
well once I hit halfway of that lake there isn’t any signal. I’ll
be okay—stop worrying.”

~:~

Jonathan opened the bedroom door and
walked in carrying my lunch. He smiled slightly. Since he had
revealed that his actual job had been to protect me, he was
considerably kinder when we were alone. I still didn’t trust him,
and I certainly didn’t plan on being his travel companion to New
York. He refused to say anything else about the Capo dei Capi, but
he did admit that he had been medicating me at night with Ambien so
I would sleep. He said he checked to make sure it was safe for
pregnant women before giving it to me. Considerate of my captor? I
suppose in a way, but I knew it wasn’t Ambien he used that first
time when I passed out in the swing. He’d also been quietly asking
me about my relationship with Micah when he would sit and wait for
me to finish my meals and stretching breaks. He seemed genuinely
puzzled as to how I could love someone like Micah. Today was no
different as he watched me eat. I told him I found his newfound
curiosity about Micah strange.

“
I simply do not
understand how someone with such a brutal history can be, as you
say, gentle and different on the inside.”

“
Jonathan, you of all
people should understand it,” I stated, finishing a small bite of
sandwich. “I’ve seen multi-sides to you. No one is ever one person
all the time. We all have a hard and a soft side, even if we’ve
never exposed it to others; it’s there. I know the kind of person
Micah was trained to be, but I also knew early on, someone very
good was hiding inside of him. He’s the most beautiful thing in my
life.”

I could tell he was still deep in
thought, an expression of incomprehension etched between his
furrowed eyebrows as he unlocked my restraints and connected me to
my lead.

“
Is this really still
necessary?” I asked.

“
Per ora, mia
bellezza.”

I understood the last words, ‘my
beauty,’ but I wasn’t positive about the first words, so I guessed,
“For now?”

He smiled one of the kindest smiles I
had seen on his face since I’d met him.

“
I would love to teach you
more Italian. Yes, you are right, ‘For now…my beauty,’” he repeated
in English. “Leese, what if you change your mind? What if something
between you and your husband changes your feelings about him, and
your relationship ends? Would you ever consider a man like myself?
Italy is a breathtaking country. I would love to take you
there.”

Huge red caution flag instantly
appeared in my thoughts; New York might become the least of my
worries. “Jonathan, I—”

“
Please, call me by my
real name.”

I shook my head, trying to keep the
tears down where they belonged, “I can’t; I don’t want you to ever
be that other person around me. Micah and I have been through hell
and back. If something happened that was horrible enough to ruin my
relationship with him, I don’t know if I could survive it. I think
too many people use the word love when they don’t mean it. They
enjoy a relationship with someone, but the first bump or two in
their path and they realize it wasn’t real love—and they move on.
Micah is my forever love. Could our relationship end? We’re human
and full of flaws, so sure it could. Would it hurt me the rest of
my life? Absolutely. He is the only one for me. At the risk of
sounding cliché, he’s my soul mate.”

He gave a small sigh and seated
himself on the chair by the bed.

I could tell my heart-felt speech
either didn’t completely sink in or it was more than he was
prepared to consider. I turned and started for the bathroom when
something caught the corner of my eye. My heart slammed so hard
against my ribcage that I inhaled involuntarily.

“
Are you all right?” came
his concerned question.

I know my face was drained of color
when I turned. I dropped my hand to my stomach and fumbled for
something to say, “Ye—yeah, I—I just—the baby kicked the crap out
of me—that’s all,” I lied. It wasn’t the baby at all. From the
upstairs bedroom window I could see a small splash of color on the
other side of the lake; a familiar faded yellow truck was parked by
the launch. I was certain that the men downstairs couldn’t see it
because of the woods, but there was another window at the top of
the staircase. If one of them came up, or if Jonathan looked out
the bedroom window, it might catch their sight, too. God, it felt
like my pulse was about to pound out of my temple—in a literal
sense, like instant migraine! They’d kill him. Oh my God; if he
came up to the house, these men wouldn’t hesitate to blow Trent
away! I had no clue what to do.

“
Are you sure you are all
right?” Jonathan asked again and started to rise.

“
No, I’m fine—really, I
am,” I said motioning with my hand for him to stay seated. I gave a
nervous laugh, hoping he’d believe me. “It’s just that he kicked me
so hard I almost peed myself.”

He gave a small chuckle and then
settled back into the chair.

I headed into the bathroom
and wedged the door with my shoe. Jonathan was used to me doing
that, so there was no reason for him to be suspicious. I looked out
the bathroom window. Trent was sneaking up one of the footpaths to
the house.
Oh my God!

~.~

Jeanie watched Trent cross the lake,
her nervousness mounting as her vision of him became smaller and
smaller. What if these weren’t ‘punk kids?’ What if these were
‘friends’ of Micah’s? Jeanie was recalling the kind of life Micah
had been rumored to have lived before Leese. What if these people
were mafia? They wouldn’t take too well to Trent spying on them.
Matter-of-fact, she was pretty sure they’d shoot him on sight. “I
can’t take it!” she finally stated out-loud.

Jeanie was out of the truck and
running full tilt along the east side of the lakeshore. She had to
get to Trent and convince him to leave. She couldn’t take the
chance that these people might be the kind who would hurt him. The
lake was big and getting around it wouldn’t be easy. The beach area
shrank to nothing as she stumbled and tripped over Cypress knees
and vegetation. It slowed her down, but didn’t stop her as she
moved into the edge of the woods; Jeanie kept running.

~:~

When Trent finally looked up to the
window where I stood motioning to get his attention, he froze. I
swear, from his expression, he truly thought he was seeing a ghost.
I was giving him the signal to stop and go back, but somewhere in
his moment of shock, he must have realized I was a hostage not an
apparition. He continued toward the house.

“
What are you doing in
there?” Jonathan stated.

I hadn’t heard him get up—and he was
standing on the other side of the bathroom door!

“
Answer me, Annalisa. You
are not using the bathroom.”

I glanced at my reflection in the
bathroom mirror; my face was whiter than the paint on the walls.
Damn!

I slipped my foot back into my shoe
and opened the door. “I—I don’t feel so good,” I stated, hoping
beyond hope that he would be so concerned about me that he wouldn’t
look out the window. “Can you help me back to bed?” I didn’t have
to fake my trembling.

He swallowed harder than anyone I’d
ever seen, and for the first time I saw an expression of absolute
terror on his face as he uttered the question that I knew he feared
more than a bullet.

“
Are you in
labor?”

“
N—no, I don’t think so. I
mean, I don’t know. I’ve never had a baby before.” At that point, I
think he was honestly about to freak.

He was supporting me, walking me
slowly back to the bed when he turned his head briefly—and he
stopped.

Shit! He saw the truck. When his face
turned back toward me, all the fear was absent.

“
Tell me who it is,” he
stated with deadly seriousness.

“
Please, Jonathan, don’t
hurt him.”

“
I know it is not your
husband. He would not have been foolish enough to leave a vehicle
where it could be seen. I will only ask once more. Who is
it?”

“
His name is Trent. I
swear to God above, he’s just a friend of ours. He’s not mafia;
he’s just a backwoods, country boy who likes to fish on the lake.
I’m begging you with my whole heart;
please
don’t let them kill
him.”

“
I have a feeling your
ignorant, bumbling friend may have just given us our perfect
opportunity. Get in the bathroom and stay there,” he
commanded.

I reached out and clasped Jonathan’s
hand in both of mine.

He paused as our eyes locked on to
each other’s.

“
Please, Jonathan, show me
another side to you—don’t hurt him.”

“
I make no promises. Stay
in the bathroom; get down in the bathtub if you can.”

“
Undo me,” I
begged.

“
No. Go now!”

Suddenly he was shouting Italian and
ripping open the bedroom door. There was nothing else left other
than to do what he told me. I knew why he wanted me in the tub:
bullets were getting ready to fly. I ran for the bathroom with
tears flowing down my cheeks. When I stepped inside, I had to clamp
my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. There was Trent
crouched on the roof just outside the bathroom window, motioning me
to unlock it.

I could hear the men running
upstairs.

I was so scared that my fingers felt
as if there wasn’t any strength to even turn the window latch. It
had been a long time since that latch had been opened, and for a
moment I was afraid that Jonathan had super glued it shut. I felt
it pop under my hand at the same time I heard Jonathan telling the
men to look out the upstairs hall window. Then he said something
that froze me in place.

“
Look across the lake!
Gavarreen is here; give me a gun!
”

Why the hell was he telling them that
it was Micah?

“
Fuck you! You’re not
getting a gun!” I heard one of the men say. From the sound of the
voice, it was the one who I was certain was in charge. “Dice, you
and Stan stay with Giovanni. Torry, we’ll take the airboat to the
other side and see who the hell is here. It’s
not
Gavarreen.”

The latch turned and the window
started to rise on its own. Trent had already removed the screen
and he was lifting the window higher. Damn! It sounded so loud as
it went up! I was praying that with all the shouting outside the
bedroom no one heard it.

Trent reached in to take my hand when
he realized I was tethered to a steel lead.

He climbed inside.

I was panicking. What would Jonathan
do to him?

“
Shhh,” he whispered,
popping open a leather case on his belt. I knew what it was; Trent
always carried it on him. It was one of those multi-tools. There
was one big advantage in working for the power company—Trent always
carried something to cut a wire.

I heard more angry words and shouts,
and the sound of some men moving down the stairs. The front door
slammed as Jonathan continued to instill fear in the two men in the
upstairs hallway.

“
I am telling you, it is
him!! Gavarreen will kill all of us! You
know
I am the only one who can take
him out. Dice, are you ready to face down Gavarreen? Give me a gun
or prepare to die.”