Not Dead Yet (26 page)

They marched out of the bathroom with more energy than when they had walked in.  They found Jack leaning against the truck.

“That was quick,” Jack commented.

“Our friend’s life might depend on our being quick. Besides, that bathroom’s disgusting. Let’s move, you slug!” Lu ordered. 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Okay, so how do we get back to the farm?” Lu asked.  “We had that damn tarp over us and couldn’t see anything.  How are we going to find the place?”

“Good question,” Jack agreed.  “I remember the truck turned off the road to the right when we pulled up to the store.”

“Yeah, so do I,” Lu said.  “That gets us a whole fifty feet.  What then?”

“I wish I’d paid attention to how many times the truck made turns,” Colleen said.

“There was no way to know we’d need that information,” Lu said.

“I guess we just get on the road and figure things out as we go,” Jack suggested.  “Keep a good lookout for anything that looks familiar from when we first drove out to the farm from the sheriff’s office.” He turned the truck around and headed in the direction from which they had come.

They drove for several miles, and luckily there were no roads that intersected the one they were on.  There were a few farm roads, but they did not look familiar.

“Do you hear that?” Colleen asked.  “Open the window and listen.”  They did so.  “There, do you hear that?” she asked again.

“No,” Jack and Lu answered, looking a little bewildered. 

“Sirens,” Colleen said smugly. “I bet they’ll lead us to the farm.”

“I don’t hear anything.  Wait – now I do, very faintly.  How the hell did you hear that?” Jack asked her, impressed.

“Years of practice.  I know this’ll come as a surprise, but I was a bit of a juvenile delinquent.  Never got caught though, because I could hear the cops early and split,” she replied.

“You’re so talented,” teased Lu. “Should we stay here and wait for them to get here, then follow them to the farm?” she asked.

“No, we need to keep going in this direction.  The sirens are going away from us,” Colleen said.

“How can you tell that?” Jack asked.  “I can’t even hear them any more.”

“Well if you got this heap to move a little faster, you might be able to hear them soon,” Colleen said.

“Oh, I’ll get her moving,” Jack never could resist a challenge.

A few miles down the road, the sirens were easier to hear. 

“I hope they sent all of Fort Leonard Wood,” Colleen said, referring to the nearby military base.

It was easy to spot the side road to the farm, thanks to the tire tracks from a battalion of assorted emergency vehicles.  Parked all around the farmhouse were sheriff’s patrol cars from the local county and three neighboring counties, four highway patrol cars, two fire trucks and an ambulance. 

An excited tall, skinny kid who looked much too young for his uniform held up his hand and told them to “Halt.”  From the look on his face, this was more than likely the first time he had ever gotten to say that. 

“Sir,” the kid tried to sound official, “you’ll have to vacate the premises.  We have a hostage situation here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack explained patiently.  “We were the other hostages. And we’re the ones who called the deputy.  He’s expecting us,” he added firmly.

“Oh, I guess I can let you pass then,” the kid replied uncertainly.

Jack drove forward before the kid could change his mind.  He parked next to the deputy’s car and walked, hunched over, to him.  Lu and Colleen looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and went over to join Jack, bending over in case they were shot at from the farmhouse.

“Y’all looked a sight better the first time I saw you.  Why’d you have to go and try to be goddamn heroes?  If you’d told me you found them out here, I would have been happy to come check things out,” the deputy complained.

“We were trying to come get you,” Lu explained, “when the Psycho Brothers ambushed us.”

Colleen had a fist-size bruise on one side of her face, from being punched by Donald.  Both Lu and Colleen were disheveled, with scrapes, bruises and torn clothing.  Jack’s face showed dark marks from being pummeled by Donald and Nathan.  He had a lump on his head from Nathan cracking him with the rifle. All three had rope burns on their wrists. 

“Y’all want to get looked at over to the ambulance?” the deputy offered.

“Go on over and get checked out,” Jack said to Lu and Colleen.

“I’ll see my own doctor when I get back to town,” Lu said.

“Me too,” Colleen agreed.  “But you need to get that knot on your head looked at.”

“I’ll be all right,” Jack brushed her off.  “Right now I just want to get Theia away from that madman.”

“Now you leave that to us,” the deputy said officiously. “We’ll handle it.”

“If you’d handled it when we asked you to, Theia wouldn’t be a hostage right now,” Lu accused.

“By the way, sir, my sister, the person we came looking for, is over there in the barn,” Colleen pointed.

The deputy looked over at the barn and back at Colleen, confused.  “How come she isn’t with you all?”

“Because she’s dead,” Colleen snapped.  “Donald and Nathan tortured her to death while you sat in your air conditioned office.”

“Oh,” the deputy said, embarrassed.  “I am so sorry for your loss.  Look, this is a quiet county.  We’re not used to things like this.”

“Neither was she,” Colleen quietly commented.

Jack wrapped his arm around Colleen.  Lu squeezed her hand. 

“What’s going on inside the farmhouse?  Is Theia still alive?” Jack asked.

“Don’t know.  Bastard won’t talk to us.  Let me try again,” the deputy swung his bullhorn up to his mouth.  “Come out of the house. Give yourself up. We have units from four counties here. Surrender and things will go easier for you. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”

“Fuck off,” came from the house.

“Well, that’s a start,” said the deputy.  “Rude, but it’s a start.”

“Ask about Theia,” Jack pressed.

“Is the woman still alive?”

No answer.

“If we don’t verify that she is alive, we’ll start firing teargas,” the deputy warned. 

Still no answer.

“Anybody know who he is?” the deputy asked. 

“He’s her ex-husband, and he’s supposed to be dead,” Lu began.

The deputy cut her off with a baffled look.

“Long story.  Surprised us, too.”

“Has he got a name?”

“Foster,” Lu responded.

“Send her out, Foster, and we can cut a deal,” the deputy offered.

“Now, how did they learn my name?” Foster asked Theia, amused by the game.

“I don’t need a deal,” Foster yelled to the deputy.  “I didn’t do anything wrong.  The guy who was with her killed the two brothers, tied up Theia and me, and took off with the two other women.  He’s your culprit, not me.  I’m an innocent victim. Can you send someone in here to untie us?”

“No he didn’t—all three of them are right here with me.  So cut the bullshit and send the woman out.”

“Does Foster have any family?” the deputy asked Lu. 

“I don’t know.  Why do you want to know that?” Lu asked, frowning.

“Sometimes it can be useful in hostage negotiations if we can get family on the phone.  Did Theia ever say anything about his family?”

“Not that I remember,” Lu replied.  “If she did mention anyone, she certainly never mentioned any names, so I wouldn’t begin to know how to contact anyone.”

Inside the farmhouse, Foster turned to Theia and gave her a sick grin.  “Your whore hopper is here.  What a beautiful twist of fate.”

“No one’s coming out.  You come any closer and I’ll kill her,” Foster yelled to the deputy.

“We’ll be together for eternity, dollbaby,” he whispered to her.

“No, we won’t!” she retorted.  “I’ll be in heaven and you’ll spend eternity in the bowels of hell!”

“How dare you speak to me that way!”  Foster snapped, outraged.  “I created you.  You’re nothing without me.”

“You’re confused, Einstein,” Theia countered.  “You are nothing without me.  I was living just fine without you.  In fact, you barely crossed my mind.  You, on the other hand, have thought of me a hundred times a day for the last five years.  Who needs whom?”

“Why are you speaking to me this way?” Foster looked baffled. “This isn’t what you’re supposed to do.  You’re supposed to beg and plead for me to forgive you, and to let you live.”

“If I did beg and plead, would you let me go?”

Foster snorted.  “Of course not.”

“Then why should I beg and plead?”

Foster stared at her, confused.  “But I planned every detail and this is all wrong!  You’re messing it up.  You’re supposed to beg.”

“Screw you, if I’m going to die anyway, I’ll be damned if I’ll beg.  I’ll keep my dignity, thank you,” Theia finally showed the backbone that had gotten her through years of marriage to Foster.

“Beg, damn you!”

“Kiss my ass.”

Foster jumped and stomped around the room, throwing a tantrum like a two year-old.  He picked up one of the nasty, vermin-chewed upholstered chairs and threw it against the far wall.  Theia was reminded of a time when they were still married and he had ripped two sets of sliding glasses doors out of their frames during an insane rage.  Foster stopped as abruptly as he had started, turned around and walked back over to Theia.

“I’m going to start this over.  This time, do it right,” he pointed his finger at her.  “Here we go.  Ready?  After today, we’ll be together for eternity, dollbaby,” he said deliberately.

“No … we … won’t.  I’ll be in heaven and you’ll be in the bowels of hell.  You’ll have to spend all of eternity feeling the way you have for the last five years, and knowing that you can never reach me, never see me again, never talk to me again, never do this again,” Theia looked down at the golden gown she wore.

Foster bellowed like an animal that had just been impaled by a spear.  He pounced around the room, hunched over, his eyes like those of a wild animal. Shaking his fists in the air, he bellowed again, then ran around the room, turning over furniture, ranting and cursing.  He ran over to Theia, put his face right in hers and hissed, “Now you’ve gone too far.  I’m going to carve up your boyfriend and you’ll have to watch.”

“I’ll trade her for Jack,” Foster yelled to the deputy.

“No!” Theia yelled, but Foster held a scalpel to her throat before she could say more. 

“One more sound out of you and I’ll slit your throat,” he snarled, lightly grazing the skin just enough to cut her, about an inch long.

“You’re going to kill him,” she whispered.

“Of course I’m going to kill him.  I’m going to kill both of you.  The last thing each of you will see is the other one dying.”

“I can’t do that,” the deputy yelled back in his bullhorn. 

“I’ll go,” Jack said to the deputy.

“No, I can’t allow you to do that.”

“He’s right, Jack,” Colleen said.  “There’s no point in both of you being killed.”

“Your confidence in me is overwhelming,” Jack responded.

“We don’t know what weapons he has in there,” the deputy said.  “But if you go in there, you’re giving him another weapon to use against her.  He’ll be able to manipulate her by threatening to hurt you.”

“So we’re supposed to just sit here and wait until he kills her?” Jack asked, exasperated.  “I can’t!  Damn it, what’s the point of all my training if I can’t even help her?”

“Were you in the military?” the deputy asked.

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

Jack exhaled slowly, maintaining eye contact with the deputy.  “Overseas security.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about.  Jack,” he urged.  “You know the odds.  He’s likely to kill her no matter what we do.  There’s no point in your being dead, too.”

“There’s no point in my being alive without her,” Jack replied. “I’m going in.”

“No, Jack!” Lu pleaded.  “He’ll kill you.  He’ll shoot you before you get to the door.”

“Lu, you know I can’t just sit here and let him kill her.  I have to do something. I would never do this if she were a stranger, but what am I supposed to do?  I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to save her.”

“You picked a fine time to fall in love,” Lu muttered, brushing a tear, which everyone pretended not to notice.

Grabbing the deputy’s bullhorn, he announced, “I’m coming.  Send her out.”

“They get her when you’re here,” Foster replied.

Jack stood up from where they were all huddled. Waiting a moment and hearing no gunshots, he stepped out in the open.  Multiple metallic clicks indicated law enforcement personnel were taking their guns off safety.  He took a deep breath, realizing how moronic it was to think he could just walk up to the door ad rescue Theia, that instead he was going to be shot where he stood and Theia would still be in the hands of Foster. One completely wasted grand gesture.  When had he become such an idiot?  Hadn’t he sworn to never care this much about any woman?  It made both him and her vulnerable.  Every odd was against him.  He had a concussion and had been beaten up by the two brothers while shackled – not exactly in his best fighting form.  He was unarmed.  And he was walking right into a hostage situation with a mentally disturbed person in control.  From his experience, he knew Theia was going to die, that he should accept that as an unavoidable loss.