Bittersweet Chronicles: Pax (19 page)

As my eyes adjust to the light from the hallway, I see that it’s Lagazo himself who’s standing there, Nicky and another guard right behind him.

“Well, here’s our little insurance policy,” Lagazo says. “Sorry about the accommodations, I realize it’s nothing like your big place in Portland.” Then he laughs. I don’t answer, and with my ankles tied together it takes me more time than I’d like to stand.

Lagazo approaches me as I finally struggle to my feet. “You weren’t very forthcoming when you told me your family had money, now were you?”

I glare at him.

“I had no idea I was dealing with one of my favorite bands. I’ve been listening to your dad’s stuff for years.”

“Is that supposed to erase the fact that you’ve got me tied up in a closet somewhere?” I ask.

“Come on kid, it’s not so bad. I’ll make sure the guys give you a chance to hit the pisser every now and then, and Nicky here’s brought you some McDonald’s. Hope you’re not a vegetarian.” He and the other guys laugh while I struggle to overcome the urges to make him bleed, but I’m completely handicapped at the moment, and it’ll make my dad’s whole trip down here a waste if I get myself killed.

“Have you talked to my dad?” I ask as Lagazo turns to walk away.

He pauses. “The message has been sent. You should be out of here in the next twenty-four hours.”

I nod even though he’s not facing me. “How much?” I ask. “How much are you getting for me?”

Lagazo gives a bitter chuckle. “Want to know how much you’re worth? One point two,” he says. “The two is what Carly owed plus some interest. Since she won’t be working for me after all.”

“And thank God for that,” I mutter under my breath.

He turns around and looks me up and down, his lips twisting into a wicked snarl. “Didn’t Nicky tell you? She didn’t make it. Post-op something or other. Too bad. She would have really raked in the tips at my place.” He shrugs, and I feel my heart push hard against the walls of my chest before it collapses for good, sinking into the deepest recesses of my gut where the weight of it makes me want to vomit.

I stare at him, the blood rushing through my ears, and my arms and legs tingling as I struggle to take in a breath. Around me the air flickers like static on a TV, and my vision narrows to pinpoints, with Lagazo in the center.

“I’ll kill you,” I whisper to him. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll kill you.”

He looks at me, expressionless. “If you try, it will definitely be the last thing you do.”

Then he turns and walks out before the door slams shut and I’m left alone again.

**

Walsh

I step off the private plane in the dark of a steamy Alabama night. Ethan phoned ahead to get us cars and security, so the hanger we pull up in is empty except for a limousine and two big dudes with guns. Mike is right behind me, and Joss brings up the rear, talking on his phone to Dave, our manager, as they try to head off the damn press that’s sure to catch wind of this whole thing soon.

“Where’s Pax?” Mike asks as he looks around the big hanger, lit up like a fluorescent sun.

“I don’t know but he’d better be in the car,” I grit out, something very uncomfortable gripping my chest and refusing to let go.

I stride after Ethan, hitching my duffle bag higher on my shoulder as we nearly sprint to the car.

“Jason,” Ethan says as we reach the bigger of the two guys.

Jason shakes Ethan’s hand and then looks over his shoulder at me. “Mr. Clark?” he asks, his face grim.

“Yeah,” I hold out my hand to shake his, and I notice it’s sweating, and my heart is racing. “Where’s my son?” I ask.

“Sir, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s missing.”

In an instant, my world goes black, and I’m grateful that my feet are planted on flat concrete and Mike has stepped so close to me that he virtually props me up on one side. I hear Joss’s voice saying, “Shit, Dave, gotta' go,” and then he’s on my other side firing off questions that I’m too stunned to vocalize.

“What happened?” Joss snarls, “and I don’t want a summary, every damn detail.”

Ten minutes later we know that Pax has been kidnapped at gunpoint. My beautiful boy who I’ve loved and protected, and kept from all the bad things in the world for twenty-two years is in the hands of some two-bit Southern hood who thinks he’s going to walk away with my money and put my kid through hell.

Over. My. Dead. Body.

“So what’s our next move?” Joss asks after the whole sordid story has been recited. Ethan and Jason launch into a plan that involves a team of former special ops military guys, but no police, because the local cops are all on the gangster’s payroll.

“Dammit, Pax,” I mutter, scrubbing my hands through my hair. Always with the independence thing that kid. He’s been this way nearly since the day he was born. It was always so hard on Tammy. She wanted to mother a kid, take care of a baby, but from the very start Pax only wanted to prove he could do it on his own.

Whether it was climbing the play structure or making a science fair project, Pax didn’t want anyone to help. When he was born I remember thinking that he was going to have everything I never did—fancy schools, exotic vacations, the best that money could buy,
and
all the time that I could devote. That kid was the absolute light of my life, but I didn’t realize then that kids don’t always follow your plans, and while all I wanted was to give Pax the world, all he wanted was to conquer it on his own.

And now that need to conquer everything himself has gotten him kidnapped. Even knowing the danger he was in he couldn’t resist the chance to try for one last recording deal before he escaped town.

“What did you say the name of the label is? The place he was taken from?” I ask.
      “Five Star records,” Jason answers.

“Yeah, I know them,” Joss says. “Regional, but they work a lot with Crown in New York. We met one of their guys when we did that benefit in Atlanta a few years ago.”

“They’re history,” I say, my gut churning with acid. “I want heads to roll, and the place crushed. I don’t care what it takes. Call everyone we’ve got influence with and blackball them. Get an investigator to find out what’s dirty in their finances, because someone there was obviously working with the kidnappers, and my guess is they owe the gangster money. Once we’ve got the information, hand it over to the cops—the FBI—whoever handles this kind of shit.”

Jason nods. “I’ve already got guys at my firm looking into it, we’ll find the connection, I promise you.”

“Don’t worry, brother,” Joss says, a grim look on his face. “Five Star records won’t come out the other side of this one.”

“So now we just what? Wait for the ransom demand?” Mike asks, irritation lacing his words.

“I’m afraid so,” Ethan says, giving me a sympathetic look. “It shouldn’t be long, my guess is they know when you were scheduled to come to town. Why don’t we go to the hotel, get some food sent up, and try to rest until we hear from them?”

I look at Mike and Joss. “What the hell am I supposed to tell Tam?” I lean an arm against the roof of the car and let my head fall, the agony of it all washing over me in waves.

I feel Joss’s hand on my shoulder. “Mel’s there, let me explain it to her and she’ll tell Tammy. You need to focus on Pax, and it’ll be better for Tammy to hear it from someone in the same room.”

I look up at him and Mike, the guys who’ve been with me through every triumph and tragedy in my life. Sometimes as bystanders, other times as major players. But no matter what, they’ve been there. They are indelibly etched into the layers of my existence, and now they are here for this—the single most frightening thing that’s ever happened to me, because I know without a doubt that if Pax doesn’t come back to us healthy and whole, Tammy and I won’t recover from it.

I push off the car and take a deep breath. “No, I’ll call Tammy. Mel’s there, and I know she’s ready to help Tam out, but I need to be the one to give her the news, and I’ll be the one to tell her that he’s going to be fine.”

Mike puts an arm around my shoulders. “And he is. He’s going to be fine, and we’re going to get him back.”

I nod. “And then we’re going to make that son-of-a-bitch pay. No one hurts my kid. No one.” The other four men nod, faces dark with emotion, bodies tense with the frustration that’s driving us all right now.

We pile in the limo, and head out of the airport, into the lush Southern night. Once we’re in the car, quietly speeding along the highway, I pull out my cell phone. I look at the screen for a moment, envisioning Tammy in our family room at home, the new puppy curled up beside her on the sofa because she’ll have let him up there since I’m not around to scold the two of them.

I know Lyric will be there too, and I hope, for her sake, that Tammy can hold it together. My little girl isn’t so little anymore, but she’s still not old enough to think about her brother being taken away. I don’t want her to be scared when I can’t be there to comfort her.

Finally, I press the screen over Tammy’s name, and listen as the line rings twice.

“Hi,” Tammy says, breathless like she ran to grab the phone. “How is he? I want to talk to him.”

“Hey sweetheart,” I answer, my heart cracking wide open as I steel myself for what comes next. “Is Mel with you?”

If suspicion made a noise I’d be hearing it now.

“She’s right here. What’s happened, Walsh? You have to tell me.”

“Yeah, I know.” I clear my throat and when I continue my voice is halting and raspy. “I love you,” I say.

“I love you too. Where’s my baby?” she whispers.

“Here’s what happened…” I answer, as the night rushes by outside the tinted windows, and the hope rushes out of my broken heart.

**

Pax

I spend the next few hours alternating between sleeping and numbness. I’ve just been dealt the hardest blow of my life and I can’t feel anything. No sorrow, no fear, just this overwhelming sensation that nothing matters much—not being rescued, not seeing my family, not recording deals or where I live. I don’t care about any of it. All I can do is lie on the hard cement floor and remember the words, “She didn’t make it. Post-op something or other.”

At some point I wake up and finally hear noises. There’s a TV somewhere and the noise is coming through the vents in the floor, and as I scoot closer I can hear the newscaster:

“Word has come from a reliable source that the son of Walsh Clark, drummer for the band Lush, has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. While the family has declined to comment, and Lush publicists are not returning phone calls, sources say that twenty-two-year-old Pax Clark, who has been living in Bittersweet, Alabama using the alias Pax Reed, was kidnapped late yesterday and is being held for one point two million dollars in ransom.

“Reports coming out of the Birmingham International Airport say that three of the four members of Lush—Walsh Clark, Joss Jamison, and Mike Owens—landed there in a chartered jet last night along with their security team. No one has seen the three since then.

“We’ll keep you updated as the case progresses.”

I lean back against the door, as my mind calculates everything I’ve just heard. If word is out, Lagazo will want to wrap this up quickly. Either he’ll be turning me over to my dad very soon, or he’ll be putting a bullet in me. The numbness in me sparks with a new sensation, and I suddenly realize I’ve found a purpose. I don’t care what happens to me after today, but I won’t leave here without taking out Lagazo first. I want revenge, I want blood, I want him to know what it feels like to be afraid you’re going to die.

When I think of Carly in that hospital bed, fighting to survive, taking her last breaths, possibly thinking that I’d abandoned her, that I hated her, I can’t bear it. And I know the only thing that’s going to help is to see Lagazo lying on the floor with his life leaking out of him the way hers did.

I stand up and grit my teeth as I pull against the ropes around my wrists. The fibers dig into me, peeling my skin off in uneven layers. I don’t care, I just keep pulling, wiggling, stretching, and pulling again. It takes probably ten minutes, and my hands and wrists are bloody, but I finally get one hand loose, and then I’m able to undo the rest of the bindings. When I’m free, I start feeling my way around the room, finding shelves with things on them that smell like cleaning supplies. I’m searching for something that will create enough chaos that I have a chance to do what I’ve planned.

At last I come across a big plastic jug. I lift it and unscrew the cap, the strong smell of chlorine bleach wafting out immediately. This will do it, I think, before I continue feeling around the shelves searching for things that will help my plans. Eventually, I find a garden hose, and a trowel of some sort that I use as a knife. When I’m done, I’ve rigged up something that will make whoever walks in here next wish they hadn’t. I take my invention, and I hold it close, waiting in the corner, in the dark, for the final scene to play out.

**

When the door swings open again the light is too bright for me to see who it is, but I don’t hesitate, I point the hose at the guy’s face, and blow through the other end, spraying his eyes with bleach. It’s Nicky, and he howls in pain as he drops to the floor. I lunge for him, my eyes finally adjusted to the light, and I manage to grab the gun out of his hand, exhilaration coursing through my veins. I stumble over his body as he continues to scream, and part of me feels remorse, but then Carly’s face flashes in my mind, and the remorse turns to rage.

I exit the closet and find myself in a hallway that leads two directions. Both are blind, ending in doors. I go left, but just as I reach for the handle the door flies open, and Lagazo is standing an arm’s length from me, one of his guys behind him. I lift the gun and point it at him, my heart hammering like mad.

“You ever used one of those things, kid?” he asks, a lazy smile crawling across his face.

“No, which makes me all the more dangerous, I might pop one off accidently,” I answer, wiggling it around in front of me.

He shrugs, but takes a step back, his hands held out to his sides. I follow him, and we move into a storefront, obviously not used for retail sales, but with the odd appliance and car tire lying about.