Diners, Dives & Dead Ends (31 page)

As I looked around, my pulse
began to race, but this time out of excitement, not fear.  Turns out the large
library where I met with Sullivan was a fake.  This room, this windowless, hidden
room, was the real study.

A small desk stood front and
center.  No books, no tchotchkes, no smooth clean surface.  This desktop held
neat stacks of papers and folders.  Which I quickly began leafing through. 

They contained mostly
spreadsheets and cost projections—thank you, accounting class.  I searched the
drawers, starting with the shallow center one and found an old photo.  A boy
who looked very much like a young Sullivan with a boy-band haircut stood next
to a smiling woman with gold eyes.  His mom?  I ran my finger over the picture. 
Next to it was an old school ladies Timex, the kind you have to wind.  The black
imitation leather band was creased and the watch had stopped at eleven
forty-seven.  These were the only personal items I found in the house.  I
pulled the drawer out further.  There were USB drives.  Four of them.  I
snatched them and stuck them in my utility belt. 

The second drawer held three
files neatly stacked.  I flipped through them.  They were labeled Packard
Graystone, Axton Graystone, and Rosalyn Strickland.  Without taking the time to
read them, I shrugged the backpack off my shoulders and stuck the files inside.

I looked in the lowest
drawers, which contained hanging file folders.  I quickly sorted through them,
pulling out files of the most notable people in Huntingford, including Councilman
Beaumont and Martin Mathers, the Chief of Police.  I shoved those into the
backpack as well, zipped it up, and slung it back on my shoulders before
stepping out of the study.

Click
.  I jumped at the sound, my hand flying
to my throat.  I froze, waiting for more but it was only the heater kicking on. 
Warm air blew over my head.  Crap on a cracker, now I suddenly needed to pee. 
With shaky hands I opened the door and eased back into the hallway.  I paused
to listen, but all I heard was the laugh track from the television. 

I had no idea how long I had
been searching the downstairs.  It felt like hours.  Roxy should be waiting for
me by now.

I snuck back to the kitchen,
the backpack weighing on me as if filled with rocks.  Every sound magnified. 
The clink of the USB drives in my belt, the squeak of my left shoe on the
tile.  I sucked at this.  Roxy wasn’t there.  I opened the basement door and
listened, but it was dark and I didn’t hear anything. 

Panic crept up and the sweat
and the heat made me lightheaded.  I quickly ran down my options.  Go upstairs
and keep searching for Axton or stay in the kitchen and wait for a henchman to
pop in for a snack.  I spoke into the mike on my headset.  “I’m in the kitchen
and Roxy isn’t here.  I’m going upstairs now.”

I crept back out into the
foyer.  The television blared from the living room, but I didn’t dare peek into
the room to see who, if anyone, was there.

Keeping as close to the wall
as I could, I tiptoed up the stairs.  Once I reached the top, I looked back down
to reassure myself no one followed.  With my gaze still on the bottom step, I
walked forward and ran into Roxy.  Literally.  We knocked our heads so hard it
made an audible thud.

She gasped.  “Shit, Rose,
that hurt.”

“You were supposed to meet
me downstairs,” I whispered.

“I’ve already checked this
side of the house.”  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.  

We crept down the other hall,
me in front, Roxy right behind.  Muffled voices sounded from a room up ahead. 
I stopped dead and Roxy slammed into me. 

“What the hell?” she mouthed.

“Voices,” I mouthed back. 
“Could be Ax.”

“Might be Henry.”

The door was ten feet away. 
I couldn’t make out words, but it sounded like two men.  Henry?  Axton?  Henry
torturing Axton?  I’d already come this far.  I motioned with my head, and as
quietly as I could manage, I walked toward the voices.

I turned off my flashlight
and tucked it back into my belt, then pulled out my Sparky.  I looked at Roxy
and nodded.   

Stepping closer to the door
I held up my index finger.  One.  I held up my second finger.  Two. When I held
up my ring finger I twisted the door handle and burst into the room.

Axton and the bald henchman
sat on the edge of the bed with their backs to us.  They faced a TV and held controllers
in their hands. 

All this time I’d been
worried about Axton, and here he sat, playing video games. 

Irritation, relief, and joy
flowed through me as I walked forward and zapped the bald guy in the back of
the neck.  He gave a little grunt and slumped forward, but I caught him by the collar
of his jacket before he fell off the bed.

Roxy shut the door and walked
into the room behind me.

Axton, surprise on his face,
looked over at the bald man, then up at me.

“Rose,” he cried.

“Shhh,” I said.

“Rose,” he whispered.  The
controller was still in his hand as he threw his arms around me.

“We’re getting you out of
here.”  I turned to Roxy.  “We need to tie this guy up and gag him.”

She nodded and pulled a rope
out of her tool belt.

“You guys are like covert warrior
women and stuff,” Axton said.

I put my fingers to my lips
in the universal shushing motion.  “Axton, help me get this guy to the floor.”

“His name’s Ron,” he said.

Together we got Ron down on
the ground and flipped him over on his stomach.  Roxy trussed him up with her
rope while I looked around for a gag.  The queen bed was the only piece of
furniture in the room, so I used one of the pillowcases.  Roxy took another
rope and secured the pillowcase in his mouth, tying it tightly behind his head.

“Let’s see if he’ll fit in
the closet,” she said.

“Good idea.  Axton, help me
with his legs.”

Ron blinked up at us, dazed,
as Roxy grabbed under his arms and pulled.  Axton and I each took a leg, and
pushed, scooting him on his butt into the empty closet.

After we tucked Ron away, I
scrutinized Axton.  He looked a little shaggier than normal, but otherwise
fine.

“Are you all right?  They
didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“I’m okay.”

I smiled at him and he
smiled back.

“Enough with the love fest,
can we get out of here already?” Roxy asked.

“Okay, right.  Do you have
your pepper spray?”

She dug it out of a pocket
on her belt and held it up. 

“I’ll go first, since I have
the stun gun.  Axton, you go second, and Roxy will be behind you.”

“Be quiet and stay close to
the wall,” Roxy told him.

Slowly, quietly, we made our
way out the bedroom and down the hall.  I peered around the corner at the top
of the stairs.  We were in the clear, so I motioned with one hand for Roxy and
Axton to follow me.

I sidestepped my way down
the stairs, my back so tight against the banister, I might be bruised for life. 
We were halfway down when a man stepped out of the living room and blocked our
clean exit.  It was the guy who sat next to me in the car when Henry kidnapped
me, the one with cold eyes who slipped the blindfold on me.

“Oh no, now we’re all
captured,” Axton said.

“What the hell?” the guy
asked.  He flipped one side of his jacket and reached behind his back. 
Probably for a huge ass gun that could blow a huge ass hole through my liver.

“NO!” I screamed.  I charged
down the remaining steps and zapped him straight in the Adam’s apple.  His bulk
twitched forward as he crumpled and he nearly took me with him on his way
down.  As it was, I had to struggle to free my right foot from his meaty thigh. 

“Rosie, you are kicking ass
tonight.”  Axton slapped me on the back.

“We gotta go,” Roxy said.   

Body shaking, heart
pounding, adrenaline spiking, I stepped over the still conscious but unmoving
cold-eyed guy, and waved Roxy and Axton on like a third base coach. “Go, go,
go.  This guy’s won’t stay down forever.” 

Roxy grabbed Axton’s arm and
dragged him toward the kitchen, me only three steps behind.  Then the alarm
sounded.  Every light turned on and the loudest, most high-pitched wailing
blared through the house.

“Go, go,” I yelled as loud
as I could. 

Roxy flung open the back
door.  Floodlights lit up the backyard like it was opening night at Busch
stadium.  They flew through the doorway, sprinting across the yard without
looking back.

I’d taken just two steps
outside, when someone slammed into my back and knocked me to the ground.

My face scraped the flagstone
tile, my right cheekbone taking the brunt of the fall.  My earpiece shifted and
I felt my shirtsleeve tear. 

Cold Eyes hauled me off the
ground by my backpack, and with my back to his chest, he wrapped one arm around
my neck, the other around my waist, and carried me into the house. 

I reached up and smacked at
him as hard as I could, but he seemed impervious.  I stopped hitting him and
clutched the edge of the stainless steel refrigerator, but my puny fingers and
the slick surface were no match for his mile-high frame and huge muscles. 

He lumbered through the
kitchen, the alarm continued to wail, and I kicked back against his shins.  I
tried to claw at his arms, but had no nails, since I had nervously bitten them
off earlier.  I shifted my head to the side and tried to bite his arm through
his suit jacket, but all I got was a mouthful of fibers. 

As we passed through the
kitchen and into the foyer, I grabbed a decorative china bowl off the credenza
and hit him on the side of the face.  He simply grunted and the bowl fell to
the ground and shattered.  He tightened his hold.  Between his arm constricting
my throat and the other arm squeezing my ribs, I thought I was going to pass
out.  Then the front door burst open and Sullivan rushed in, covered in pink
and green splotches.

His gaze took us in.  Me
gasping for air, Cold Eyes squeezing me like a boa.  Sullivan hiked his thumb
over his shoulder.  The henchman simply released his hold on me and I fell
straight to the floor, flat on my ass as Cold Eyes made his way out the front
door.

I stared at Sullivan, coughing
and wheezing, as I rubbed my throat.  I didn’t run.  Blatant fear, excruciating
pain, and the mind-numbing shrill of the still blaring alarm kept me rooted to
the floor. 

When it abruptly stopped, the
quiet was as deafening as the alarm had been. 

“Rose,” Sullivan said.  I
blinked, as if I had just come out of a trance, like my name was the magic word
that set me free.

I scrambled up and ran back
to the kitchen and out the door as fast as I could.  I sprinted across the
lighted yard and into the woods.  “I’m coming,” I said in a scratchy shout,
hoping my headset still worked.  “It’s Rose.  I’m coming.”

I tripped over stumps, fell
on my already bruised knee twice as I ran in what I hoped was the right
direction.  When I burst through the trees, I saw Eric standing next to the SUV
with the door open.  With hands on his hips, his head swiveled from left to
right, searching for me.  When he finally saw me, he cupped his hands around
his mouth.  “Come on, hurry up.”

No shit.  What did he think
I was doing, taking a stroll?

I clambered into the car and
hopped over the back seat into the cargo space with Roxy, accidentally kicking
Axton in the head.  Eric climbed into the car after me.

Steve pulled out of the
shallow ditch so fast, Roxy and I tumbled against the cargo door.  With a grunt
I rubbed my shoulder, but didn’t care about the pain.  I was just so grateful
to have made it out of the house in one piece.

No one said a word until we
were huddled around Axton in Eric’s living room.  He sat on one of the
loveseats next to me, with Ma and Roxy sitting on its twin.  Eric and Steve
copped a squat on the floor.

I told them about playing
catch and release with the psycho henchman while Eric grabbed a blanket from
the bedroom and draped it around my shoulders.  “Thanks.”  My voice was raspy.

“Sullivan didn’t try to stop
you from leaving?” he asked as he resumed his seat.

I shook my head.  My neck
was sore, my ribs bruised, my face was swollen, and my shoulder throbbed, but
as I looked at Axton, I was more content than I had been in over a week. 

“When we saw the SUV pull
into the drive, we set off the alarm,” Eric said.

Steve looked up at me.  “I
grabbed the paintball gun from the cargo space and ran through the woods.  The
second Henry and Sullivan got out of the car, I nailed them.”

“So that’s why Sullivan was
covered in pink and green splotches.  You’re my hero.”