Beside Still Waters (26 page)

             
All was silent, though.  Finally, he put his hand on the door handle.

             
Suddenly, he froze.  Something wasn’t right.  He tilted his head.  Was that the sound of a footstep?  He let go of the handle and slowly turned around.

             
Three guys in their twenties stood scattered in the alley, each with a gun trained on him, each well out of reach.
             

             
“Can I help you guys?” Jeremiah asked.

             
“Manny here does not drive his taxi into the alley unless he has a problem he needs taken care of,” one of them spoke up.

             
Jeremiah glanced up and belatedly saw the tiny, half-concealed security camera that was trained on the entrance to the alleyway.

             
There was no use in bluffing.  Two seconds would show them that Manny was unconscious.

             
There was nothing within his reach that could be used as a weapon.  He turned his eyes back to the one who seemed to be in charge.

             
“What are you doing here?” the man demanded.

             
There was only one thing to do.  Jeremiah had to allow himself to be captured.  Nothing in him liked that plan, but he didn’t see how he had a choice at this point.  In order to get out of this alive he would have to kill all three men before one of them could kill him.  If he survived he still wouldn’t know where to go to find Cindy.  On the other hand, if they took him hostage, they might take him to wherever Cindy was being held.  “Please,” he said, raising his hands into the air.  “I’m just trying to find Cindy Preston.”

             
“Why you want find her so bad?” one of the guys asked.

             
Jeremiah blinked.  They were holding Cindy because they wanted something from her, something they thought she could get them but was reluctant to.  He needed to make himself a bargaining chip that they thought they could use to get her to talk.  He only hoped that whatever condition she was in Cindy would be able to figure out what was happening and play along.

             
“Because I’m her husband,” he said.

             
They all stared at him for a moment and then the one said, “Put him in the car.”  He then pulled out a cell phone.

~

             
Cindy heard Mr. Black’s footsteps on the stairs outside the room a moment before he came in.  She wanted to scream in frustration.  She had been hoping for more time.

             
“So, I made a couple of quick phone calls, but I didn’t have to make many.  It turns out the driver, Manny, just made an unscheduled stop and my men are going to check it out and ask him some questions.”

             
Her heart thundered.  What would he tell them?  Surely the truth, that she was just an innocent tourist who had no way of knowing what it was that he had given her.  She could feel her shoulders bunching as she strained at her restraints.

             
Move, now, now, now!
she was screaming at herself.

             
Mr. Black’s phone rang.  “That should be them right on schedule.”

             
He listened for a moment and then he began to chuckle.  The sound sent chills up her spine and she couldn’t help but feel that whatever had happened it was very bad news for her.  After a minute he hung up.

             
“Well, it turns out they’re going to have to wait a few minutes to talk to Manny.  He was knocked out cold.”

             
“Oh?” she said, still not sure why he was chuckling.

             
“But my men did find one very interesting thing.  Or rather, one very interesting
person
.”

             
“I don’t understand,” she said.

             
His grin broadened.  “We just captured your husband.”

16

             
Cindy stared at him in shock. 
Husband?  Before she could open her mouth to say that she wasn’t married, she forced herself to stop and think.  Who would make such a claim and why?

             
The answer was so simple. 
Jeremiah, they had to be talking about Jeremiah.  She could think of no one else who would possibly make such an outrageous claim.  What was he doing here though?
  He had to be there to find her, rescue her.  But now, apparently, he had been captured.
 
That meant he was in as much danger as she was.  She suddenly felt like she was going to be sick all over again. 
Her head swam, and before she quite knew what was happening she said, “I don’t believe you, show him to me.”

             
Mr. Black chuckled.  “You’ll see him soon enough.  And when you do, you’ll have five minutes to tell me everything I want to know before I kill him.”

             
“No!  You can’t do that!”

             
“Your choice,” he said.  “I’ll leave you to think about that,” he said as he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

             
She was in total darkness.  Her emotions were yo-yoing between hope and despair, joy and terror.  Jeremiah had come for her, he had come to find her.  Maybe he was working with the police.  Her thoughts flashed to Kapono and she could feel her cheeks growing hot.  Was it even possible that she was thinking about how embarrassed she’d be if the two of them met?

             
Her heart was racing even as her mind was going a million miles a minute.  Had Jeremiah really come to find her himself?  She couldn’t imagine a police officer saying something like that.  And it was an old joke between her and Jeremiah harkening back to the time the serial killer had put her in the hospital and only family had been allowed to visit.

             
But why would he have risked everything to come find her?  In the next breath she thought about her crazy drive up to Green Pastures camp to try and save him and she understood.  This was what you did when you cared for someone.  You risked it all to help them.  Would she have been content to sit back and do nothing if he was the one who vanished.

             
No!
everything in her seemed to cry out.  Maybe the old her would have, but not the new her, not the her that knew Jeremiah.

             
She felt a lump in her throat even as she tried to force herself to calm down.  Whatever happened next she was going to need to be alert, ready to make a move the moment she could to try and help them both escape.  She just prayed that Jeremiah had a plan.

             
She renewed her struggles against the ropes that bound her.  In her fervor she briefly considered trying to break or dislocate her thumb.  She’d heard that helped with handcuffs, but she didn’t know if she could make it work with the ropes with the way they were crisscrossed.  And she was going to need to be as clear-headed as possible very, very quickly.

             
She kept working at them, though, until her fingers were raw and bleeding from the constant chafing and contact with the rough rope.  Jeremiah was coming.  He was on his way.  That’s what Mr. Black had said.  And she needed to be ready when he got there.

~

             
Riding in the backseat of the car between the two thugs Jeremiah was sorely tempted to try and escape.  He forced himself to breathe, though, reminding himself that this was his best shot at actually finding Cindy.  He thought of the tracking chip inside his sock and hoped that Kapono and other officers wouldn’t be far behind when he did find her.  He was glad now that he had agreed to wear it even though it went against every instinct he had.

             
The drive seemed to take forever.  The mere fact that they hadn’t knocked him out or blindfolded him attested to the fact that they had no intention of letting him live.  The same would almost certainly be true of Cindy.

             
The best he could do was watch and be patient.  When the time came to make a move it would have to be done swiftly with no mistakes.  Both their lives depended on it.

             
When at last they were pulling into a parking spot near a dock he thought of the entry Uncle had had in his books about the big boat man.  Sure enough at the end of the pier he could see a yacht bouncing up and down on the waves.

             
The guy on his left stuck a gun into his side.  “You move, you say a word and you get it and so does your old lady.”

             
For all that Jeremiah was sure the guy was serious, he was also an amateur.  The way he had the gun angled a bullet would miss all the major organs.  Again Jeremiah had to remind himself of his purpose and not just take the gun away from the man and beat him with it.

             
For all he knew Cindy wasn’t on the boat and they were going to have to sail a distance to get to her.  Plus, there was an awful lot of ground to cover between the car and the ship and even if he went into the water if there was any kind of lookout they’d become suspicious quickly that no one was coming from the car.

             
So he forced himself to nod and tried to look frightened and submissive.  At least the frightened part was true, not for himself, but for Cindy.

             
All three of the thugs had piled into the car with him, leaving Manny still unconscious in his taxi.  That was the one thing going in his favor.  None of them knew that he could be dangerous when pushed and Manny would have been happy to swear to that.  He also still had the penlight in his pocket.  There were a couple of ways he could use it as a weapon if he really had to.

             
They got out of the car and a few steps later they were walking down the pier.  The leader led the way and the other two each had hold of one of Jeremiah’s arms.  He grit his teeth in frustration.  It would have been so simple to knock them both into the water, take a quick step, and snatch the gun from the waistband of the guy in front of him.

             
Again, though, he had to force himself to remain calm and to not act on his impulses.  This wasn’t about his freedom.  It was about Cindy’s.

             
He could hear the creak of each wooden plank beneath their feet, the lapping of the ocean waves, the trill of a bird.  All his senses were growing sharper.  Soon he would have need of all of them.  There was only one way this was going to end, one way it could end.

             
And he tried not to think about what would happen afterward when he and Cindy made it back to California and she could no longer look him in the eyes without seeing a monster.

             
The boat was getting nearer.  Twenty feet.

             
He was going to make all of them pay for taking Cindy.  Fifteen feet.

             
He was going to personally hunt down anybody who had been involved with her kidnapping in any way.  Ten feet.

             
And he was going to blaze her name across the island so that everyone would know that she was not to be touched.  Five feet.

             
And then he would tell her the truth. 

~

             
Cindy felt the rope give way.  She twisted and wriggled her right wrist until she was free.  She dug her fingernails harder into the knots still binding her left hand to the back of the chair.  Her fingernails were tearing and bleeding and it felt like they were on fire.  Her hand was shaking from the exertion and cramping from the dehydration.  And above her on deck she heard the sound of many footsteps, walking.

~

             
Jeremiah stepped onto the boat and it was all he could do to remind himself to play the part of frantic, concerned husband. 
Harmless
, frantic, concerned husband, he amended.

             
A man was standing in front of him, white shirt opened at the neck, a pair of Dockers on.  “So, the little wildcat has a husband.”

             
Rage roared through Jeremiah and it passed leaving him shaking.  The adrenalin was controlling him which was bad, but he could at least use it for his act.

             
“Please, where is she?  You haven’t hurt her, have you?  Look we don’t have a ton of money, but whatever we have, it’s yours.  I just need to see her.”

             
The man sneered.  “You really think this is about some stupid ransom?”