Claiming What's His (36 page)

             
She heard a rustling noise and she stopped dead.  She pulled out her gun, bring it close to her chest and her fingers at the trigger, ready to aim and shoot.  She glanced around, trying to locate anyone. 

             
There was no one in sight.

             
She then heard a faint moan further down. 

             
Fingers at the ready, she followed the noise until it subsided then stopped.  She carefully listened, trying to mentally filter out the wind whistling and the leaves rattling.  Then the moan started back up again and she picked up the pace, gripping her gun firmly between her hands. 

             
Sam approached an alley between two retail buildings where the store dumpsters were located.  The moans seemed to be getting louder down that alley.  She slowly crept down until she saw a pair of shoes by the dumpster. 

             
The closer she walked, the closer it had revealed more.  She saw that they weren’t shoes but a person’s feet.  She quickly walked over and crouched down.

             
It was Lynn who was lying beside the dumpster.  She had a big gash on her head and she was bleeding profusely.  Her face had been beaten badly and she had dark bruises along the length of her arm. 

             
She moaned.

             
“Oh my God, Lynn, who did this to you?” Sam asked softly as she shifted hair off Lynn’s forehead.

             
Lynn’s heavy breathing picked up and her lips moved.

             
Sam moved her eyes there, hoping to make out the name of the person who would do such a thing.

             
Her lips smacked a couple of times before she breathed out what sounded like “Hines.”

             
When she asked her to confirm it was indeed “Hines,” she shook her head before her head rolled to the side.

             
Sam shifted her gun to her left hand and pulled her phone out with her right, dialing nine-one-one.

             
“Hang on, Lynn.  Help is on the way,” she murmured softly to her.

*******

              Ten minutes later the police and ambulance arrived and the street was crowded with people hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on, holding their phone up to what she was assuming was for either a picture or video. 

             
The EMTs strapped Lynn to a gurney, loading her up to the back of the awaiting ambulance.  Within a few minutes the ambulance headed the street, the loud siren screaming in the night as they transported Lynn to the hospital.

             
Chuck emerged from the group of crowds that stood behind the yellow ‘caution’ tape, heading straight towards me.  He stopped directly in front of her and asked, “Want to tell me what happened?”

“I didn’t see anything.  I was walking home from the office, heard some moaning down the alley, followed it and found her unconscious.”

              “Do you have any idea who could’ve done this?”

             
Sam shook her head.  “Not sure, but when I asked her, the name I heard her say sounded like ‘Hines.’”

             
His head tilted to the side.  “Hines?  Do you know who that might be?  A boyfriend, maybe?”

             
She shrugged.”Maybe, but I don’t know anything with that name, first or last.”

             
Chuck looked down to his notepad and muttered, “If you can think of anything else, give me a call.”

             
She nodded.  “Sure.”

             
Chuck reached up to talk her arm.  “Let me give you a ride home.”

             
Sam took a step back and shook her head.  “No thanks.  I’ll walk.”

             
“Sam, it’s late.  Let me drop you off,” he insisted.

             
“No, really.  I’d rather walk, gives me time to think about things.”

             
Chuck sighed.  “Okay, but be careful.”

*******

              Sam walked through the door twenty after two when she noticed the lights were still on.  She looked around and saw that Alex was on the phone.  She shut the door and he whirled around and growled, “She’s home.”

             
He hung up the phone and threw it on the couch, stalking to her, his eyes flared with anger.

             
“Where the hell have you been?  You were supposed to wait for me at the office.  I’ve been waiting here for hours.  You’re not answering your phone.  What if something happened to you?” he shouted.

             
He definitely was angry and he had every right to be.  She didn’t call to tell him she was leaving and she didn’t call to tell him that she found his ex-girlfriend in an alley.

             
But she couldn’t do this now.

             
She shook her head with exhaustion.  “Something did happen.  Lynn was attacked tonight and left for dead by the dumpsters,” she whispered, having that feeling she had for victims – pity.

             
His anger wailed and it shifted to worry.  He walked up to her and cupped her neck.  “Are you okay?  Why wasn’t I notified?”

             
She shook her head again.  “I don’t know why you weren’t notified.  It was across the police band.  But, I’m fine, just tired.  I’m going to take a quick shower and go to bed.”  She pulled his hands off her and moved around him.

             
“Sam, we need to talk,” he called after her.

             
“No.” 

             
Sam didn’t wait for his reply when she walked around him, heading to the room.  She felt his stare behind her as he followed her in.  She reached the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head.  She tossed it towards the hamper, not checking to see if she made it in or not.  Her hands went to the button of her jeans when Alex spun her by the elbow.  His arms wrapped around her middle, bringing her to his body as he dipped his face.

             
“Talk to me.”

             
She stayed quiet, her hands pushing against his chest, her eyes looking away.  His hold tightened, making her press her hands to his chest, pushing away.

             
“Look at me.”

             
Her eyes went to his.

             
“Talk to me.”

             
“I need a shower.”

             
“After we talk.”

             
“No, now.  It’s been a long day.  I’m tired, I’m filthy, and I stink of garbage.  I need a shower.”

             
He looked at her for a beat then sighed.  “Fine.  Shower, then talk.”

             
Not a chance. 

             
After she showered, she planned on going straight to bed and sleep until next week.  But all she could do was nod.

*******

              When she stepped out of the bathroom, Alex was nowhere in sight.  She went to the door, her towel still in her hand trying to towel-dry her hair, and glanced outside where his office door was open.  She quickly, but quietly, turned around, tossed the towel in the hamper, got into bed under the covers, pulled the covers up to her chin and sighed peacefully.

             
She was just about to fall into a deep sleep when the covers were yanked off her and a hard body covering hers.

             
She instantly jolted awake to Alex’s face directly in front of hers.  “Talk.”

             
She closed her eyes, turning her head away from him.  “You should’ve seen her.  They beat her up.  Her eyes were swollen shut, her nose was bleeding, her lips were busted, scratches all over her body, and her clothes torn.  There was blood all over her face.  She was barely breathing when I found her.  As much as I hate her, I would never want anything like that to happen to her.  The fear I sensed from her was the same fear I felt when I was kidnapped, except she got the worst of it.”

             
“Babe.  It was very unfortunate with what happened to her.  There’s nothing more you can do for her.  She’s in the hands of the doctors now,” his voice calm as he rubbed over her chilling arms.

             
“Yes, there is,” she started then promised, “I’m going to find those bastards.”

             
Alex hand stopped and he gave her a squeeze before he sighed.  “Any idea who could’ve done this to her?”

             
“She did utter what sounded like ‘Hines’ when I asked her.”

             
Alex shot up in bed and his eyes glowed as he stared down at her.  “
Hines?
  Could it be
Haynes
that she was trying to tell you?”

             
Sam slowly sat up with Alex moving back.  Her eyes were wide with shock and she nodded.  “Possibly.  It does sound close.”

             
He picked up the phone and brought it up to his ear.  “Chuck, I think Lynn Summers was trying to tell Sam that it was Haynes, not Hines.  And the only Haynes I know of his Joseph Haynes.  I think they were possibly dating, though I can’t confirm it.”

             
Sam rested her hand on his thigh and gave him a squeeze.  He rested his hand over hers and returned the gesture.

             
“Yeah.  Yeah.”  He disconnected and threw the phone on the nightstand with a loud clatter.

             
“What did he say?”

             
His eyes moved to hers.  “Said he’d look into it and send someone to check out Haynes, get his alibi.  Meanwhile, Lynn is out of surgery.  Couple of broken ribs, swollen eye, and lots of bruises.  They’re having someone watch her until she’s conscious and can answer a few questions.”

             
Sam breathed a sigh of relief.  “That’s good that she’s okay.”

             
“More news.  The checks cleared and it was Brown who deposited it into his account.  But the second the check cleared on his end, it automatically wire transferred into another account in the Cayman Islands.  It’s gonna take some work but I already contacted some people who owes me favors and are gonna try to get us a name.”

             
“At least we got one of them.  It’ll only be a matter of time before Haynes’ name pops up.”

             
“You think it’s him?”

             
“Yeah I do.  Brown isn’t the smart guy of any bunch.  He has to be the one doing the grunt work without realizing that he’s the one leaving bread crumbs.  There has to be at least one other person who is behind all this that has more brains than Brown.”

             
He nodded.  “You’re right.  But I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s Haynes.  He doesn’t have a record, never missed a day at work, and nothing suspicious about him except those business trips to Dallas.  It could’ve been that our office had some issues and Haynes was the only one available to go.  Was it just that one month that you found?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Then there’s really nothing too out of the ordinary.”

             
“I just have a hunch about it,” she told him as her voice began changing because of her annoyance that he wasn’t willing to follow up on her hunch.

             
“You can’t just have a hunch and start incriminating people.  You need evidence.”

             
Grr.

             
“Alex I know that.  It’s just... it’s something I can’t shake.  I don’t know how to explain it.”  And she really didn’t . 

             
It was a nagging feeling that kept telling her that Haynes was it and that he was the brains and Brown and even Lynn were caught in the middle of his scam.

             
She ended the conversation by settling into bed, turned her back to him, and brought the blanket up to her shoulders.

             
He settled as well by pulling her back to his front and his face in her hair.

              Sam stood from behind her desk, shut down her computer and reached into the drawer, pulling out her holstered gun and phone and clipped the holster to her belt.

             
She had been at the office since the early hours and had spent all morning there, going through everything she had – the car, the hotels, the post office box and the checks.

             
Then she had Brown who tried to kill her at the office. 

             
Then Haynes bailed him out of jail after the first attempt failed.

             
There was that trip that Brown and Haynes took to pick up the fake charity checks at the post office.

             
There was the Daisy’s surveillance that had the voice that had Haynes there with someone.  It could’ve been Brown but she had no idea what he sounded like.  Even Alex and Nick didn’t know.  Dean said he had only met that man once but they hadn’t spoken a word.

             
The trip to Teasers had been a dead end but the fact that Lynn was with Brown and another man had Sam thinking that that could’ve been Haynes.

             
Sam paced back and forth wondering if she had missed anything else.  She had everything that she knew of and now there was one more thing she needed to figure out.

             
She grabbed her stuff, turned off the lights and walked out the office, locking the door behind her.  She pulled out her phone and dialed for Chuck but got a busy tone.

             
She turned and stopped to look around.

             
It was the weekend and she found it odd that there weren’t many patrons walking the streets.

             
She walked down the stairs and headed to her car.  She made it two steps before she heard footsteps walking closely behind her. 

             
She reached to grab her gun but before she even got her hand around on it, someone hit her on the back of her head as everything around her went dark.

*******

              Her head was throbbing.

             
It hurt.

             
Sam was nauseous.

             
Someone had knocked her out in front of her office and now she was bound in a chair with her hands tied behind her back.              The nagging pain traveled from the back of her neck up to her head. 

             
It felt like it was going to explode.

             
Sam tried moving her head, slowly swinging it side to side, only to have the pain worsen.

             
She groaned.

             
“You’re awake.” 

             
That voice.  Sam had heard it before.  It was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t recall where she had heard it from.  It wasn’t from the office, even though she couldn’t recall all employees’ voices.  But, she had heard it before.

             
She forced her eyes to open which luckily it did.  Her vision was slightly blurred, but she made out the outline of the man talking. She blinked several times to readjust her sight, and slowly, her view came into focus and she saw the man stand before her.

             
Brown.

             
She knew he had to be one of them. 

             
She groaned again.  “What did you do to me?”

             
“I surprised you from behind and butted you with my gun.  Brought you here to our hideout.”

             
“I’m really tired of getting kidnapped,” she told him.  “Did he say ‘our’?”

             
“Yeah.  Me and my partner.”

             
He had a partner.  She knew he wasn’t too smart or bright to handle this on his own.  So, obviously, with his position, there had to have been someone else who was the brains behind the operation. 

             
And her money was still on Haynes.

             
Sam needed to find a way out or get someone to help her.  Not knowing how long she had been gone, it was possible that the guys thought she was on another coffee run or staking out more bad guys for new clients.  She needed to keep asking him questions to buy time for anyone to find her.

             
Hopefully someone was out trying to find her.

             
The Conrad boys should be.

             
Alex better be.

             
She looked around the room and took in what she gathered.  She was in a small room, possibly about a hundred square feet, wooden panels boarded across the only window in the room with torn curtains still attached to a crooked rod.  There were scraps of paper on the carpet floor and empty beer bottles and cans sat along the now-yellowish walls.

             
Her eyes slid to Brown’s.  His eyes were already on her and it seemed he had been watching her since they started talking.  His eyes were dark and intense and not in a good way.

             
Sam cleared her throat and croaked, “Where am I and who’s your partner?”

             
“You’re at my mother’s home.  She’s dead and she left me this piece of junk.  I’ve been trying to sell this crap piece of a house but having a hard time due to the market.  And you’ll meet my partner soon enough.  He was really happy I got you here, even though I was tempted to dispose of you.”

             
Shit. 

             
Shit, shit,
shit
.

             
This wasn’t good.

             
He was going to kill her.  He
wanted
to kill her and he wasn’t happy that he wasn’t able to.  They were going to put a bullet in her, dump her body at the bottom of the lake, and have her carcass feed the little fishies.

             
“Well thanks for not killing me immediately.  But, there is something I wanted to know.  Why did you attack me at Conrad?  Was it because of the same reason as now?”

             
“No, I didn’t know who you were at the time.  Plus, that was an accident.  Thought you were some thief trying to steal company property.”

             
“An accident?  Even though I announced who I was?” she retorted.

             
“Didn’t hear you with my earbuds on.  Had the game on and didn’t want to miss anything.”

             
Terrific.  She could’ve died that very night because Security Guard of the Year over there was listening to a game and didn’t hear her when she called out her name to the footsteps she had heard that night.  Instead, he had tried to choke her to death.

             
“If you thought I was a thief, why didn’t you just take out your taser and taze me instead of choking me?  I know you have one since it’s a standard issue at Conrad.”

             
“I did bring out my taser and I was getting reading to tap you with it, but you were struggling too hard against me and I was afraid you were going to get away so I just tried making you pass out which, from what I heard, you did.  Anyway, regardless of the outcome, you got me fired.”  His eyes flashed with anger, but that was nothing compared to how angry she was.

             
“I didn’t
get
you fired.  You got yourself fired.  You shouldn’t have been neglecting your job and you should have been paying attention to the surroundings and not listening to the game.  Haven’t you ever heard of TVO?  Or Hulu?  But, apparently that game was more important anyways since you nearly killed the Vice President’s girlfriend and the President’s best friend’s daughter!”

             
“Shut the fuck up!”
he shouted with frustration.  He raked his fingers in his hair and stomped out of the room, probably to calm himself down.

             
Thank God.  She could sure use the quietness to plan something.  With his voice chattering nonstop, she couldn’t get a single thought in, only that she had to
keep
him talking to
stay
alive.

             
Actually, she didn’t need to anger the man any more than he already was.  It would only give him more reason to kill her quicker.  What was she thinking?

             
Sam was sitting in a chair with her hands tied behind her back.  She needed to work the ropes and loosen them.  As long as she was able to get her hands free, she could then work her legs quicker (rather than the other way around).

             
Brown mentioned earlier about a partner.  Who was it?  Who was the brains behind this operation of theirs and what did they want with her?  Was it for ransom?  If it was, it wasn’t as if her family had that kind of money anyways.

             
Moments later, Brown returned, but his anger was still present.

             
Ignoring his vibe, Sam jumped right into it.  “What does your partner want with me?”

             
“He didn’t say.  I’m assuming he wants his fun with you before he feed you to the sharks,” he told her.

             
Oh swell. 

             
She wasn’t going to feed the little fishies but the big sharks.  Big sharks with big, sharp teeth.

             
Keep talking, Sam,
she told herself.

             
“So what do you plan on doing afterwards?” she asked as she wriggled her arm behind her.

             
“I shouldn’t be talking to you.” His voice starting to sound a little agitated.

             
“What does it matter?  You said I’m going to die anyways.  Might as well tell one person where your secret will be buried with the shark bait.”

             
He stared and thought about it for a moment before he spoke again.  “Good point.  I plan on taking a nice, long vacation with my cut.  I haven’t had one in ages.  Maybe go to the Caribbean for about a month or so.  Then maybe head down to Mexico where my money would last longer.  Perhaps open my own business.”

             
Sam had to keep him talking.

             
“What kind of business?”

             
“Don’t know yet. Convenient store, liquor store, whore house – there’s many options.”

             
Ugh.  Whore house?  Did he seriously say that to her?

             
“And what about your partner?”

             
“Don’t know about him, but I did hear him say something about Switzerland.  Too cold for me.”

             
Curiosity was winning her thoughts when she thought of their money situation.  “Do you have that much money saved up?”

             
“Don’t need to,” he replied.

             
“What do you mean?  Did you win the lottery?”

             
“I wish but it was closed to it.”

             
It sounded a lot like the stolen money, but she needed his confession.  “Then how exactly?”

             
He shook his head and waved his hand.  “Can’t tell you.”

             
Sam sighed.  “Bernie, we’ve been through this.  You can tell me since I will be fed to the sharks soon.”

             
Brown opened his mouth when a bark came at him.

             
“Shut up, Bernie!  You talk too fuckin’ much.”  The voice came from the other side of the room behind Sam.  That voice also sounded familiar to her.

             
The rubber sole from a pair of shoes squeaked against the tile floor, bringing him closer and closer.  He walked out in front of Sam.

             
Haynes.

             
So he was involved in all of this
, Sam thought.

             
He stopped in front of her and stared.  He was wearing a black tee shirt, fades jeans slightly ripped on the knees and thighs, and a black pair of sneakers. 

He had a smug look across his face that told her he was satisfied about her current situation.  “It’s so nice for you to join us, Sam, considering the circumstances.”

She smirked.  “Is that so?  I don’t see anything nice about it.  I’m tied to a chair and can’t scratch my ass.  What do you want with me anyways?”

He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, looking to the ground as if he was deciding whether he should tell her or not.  He then stopped in front of her and told her, “I want you to go away with me, of course.  We could travel the
work, drink a little wine, fuck under the stars…”