Stolen Omnibus – Small Town Abduction (23 page)

Mark returned back inside the house and immediately grabbed his phone, which he’d left on the kitchen counter. No missed calls. He clicked Lena’s number and felt his heart leap into his throat. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.” But it only continued to ring until the voice mail came on. He hung up and tried again. Same result. “C’mon!” He tossed the phone across the countertop, where it skidded to a stop three feet away. He tapped his forefinger on the granite kitchen counter rapidly. He looked back at the phone then to the dirt path where Ken had left in the taxi.

“Dad?”

Mark turned around. Gwen stood at the end of the hallway to the bedrooms, still in her pajamas from the night before. “Hey, you all right?”

“Is Mom coming back soon?” She spoke as if she were a child. Her eyes were large and her cheeks slightly puffy from the long day of remaining in bed.

Mark glided across the kitchen tile and wrapped Gwen in his arms. “Soon enough.” He kissed the top of her head and walked her over to the couch. “You hungry at all?”

“A little.” Gwen collapsed onto the soft cushions, which bobbed her up and down softly before she curled up into a ball. “Do we have any pancake batter left?”

Mark smiled. “I’ll check.” But when he turned to leave for the kitchen he saw something out of the only front living room window that wasn’t boarded over with plywood. Cars. Five of them. The first pulsating reaction was that Jim Foreman had returned with his gang of oil workers, but Jim Foreman was in jail, and he would have thought the deputies out front would have deterred any further petty, violent spats between New Energy employees and his family. And he was right. Except the men in the cars slowing at the press gate at the entrance to the dirt road were not employees of New Energy.

The tinted windows of the sedans were lowered, and the barrels of automatic rifles were thrust from the open spaces. A brief roar of panicked screams filtered through the air before they were all cut short by gunfire.

The deputies that watched from the police line at the front of the dirt road were gunned down before they even had a chance to pull their weapons, and the deputies that were standing in the front yard stormed into the house as both Mark and Gwen stood frozen in shock, staring at the sedans now racing at a breakneck pace down the dirt road.

“Go to the bedrooms and lock the doors.” The first deputy inside went to Gwen and pulled her from the couch as the first sedan screeched to a stop in the front yard. He practically flung her into Mark’s arms as the second deputy shut and locked the door behind him. “Go!”

It wasn’t the deputy’s voice that prompted Mark to run, but the first bullet that splintered the plywood that covered the shattered windows where Jim Foreman and his goons had decided to redecorate the house. He dragged Gwen down the hall, and the two tucked themselves away in the bedroom. “Get under the bed.”

Gwen trembled as she crawled underneath while Mark immediately went to the gun safe. Shaky fingers twirled the combination dial as the gunfire outside sounded as if they were reenacting the D-Day invasion.

The world around Mark had grown completely silent. He felt his heart thump in his chest. He curled his fingers around the steel of the rifle in the safe, and it slipped from his sweaty hands when he removed it. He fumbled it again when he picked it up off the ground, and kept low on his way to the door. He craned his neck around the doorway and into the hallway toward the front of the house, or at least what was left of it.

The fading glow of sunset shone through the hundreds of bullet holes that had pierced the plywood covering the windows. The door was splintered and a few hard shoves away from disintegrating into nothing more than toothpicks. Both deputies crouched low on the floor, left impotent by the relentless gunfire.

The thunderous rain of bullets suddenly ended, and the two deputies lifted their heads, frantically tossing hand gestures back and forth. Mark looked to the back door and noticed the dead silence that followed the gunshots. The hardware, the precision, the coordination—these people weren’t going to stop until the house and everyone inside was leveled to the ground. Mark thrust his hand under the bed. “Gwen, we have to go!”

She hesitated, shock controlling her now, but Mark grabbed her arm and pulled her out from underneath. Tears streamed down her face, and Mark shoved her into the hallway, using his body to shield her as he hurried both of them to the back door. “Keep low, keep quiet, and don’t stop running until I tell you to drop.”

Mark cracked the back door open and confirmed that the coast was clear. “Hurry.” He shuffled Gwen and shut the door behind them just as the two deputies in front opened fire. The return of gunfire brought with it the frantic adrenaline that powered him past the fatigue of the week. He looked back to the house just as they entered the tall grass, shoving the blades of wild wheat aside, Mark keeping Gwen in front of him on the run.

The automatic gunfire returned as the house grew smaller behind them, and Mark shoved Gwen to the ground, hiding them in the thick grass fields. Mark pressed his finger to his lips then looked up at the fading evening sky. If they could just wait until dark, it would give them the cover they needed to make a run for it.

Two quick screams followed by two short bursts of gunfire ended the battle, and Mark slowly raised his head to the thin top of the grass cover. A gust of wind shifted the wheat, and through it he saw the back door of the house open, where three men with sunglasses spilled outside with machine guns in their hands. Mark ducked back down and froze.

Shouts filled the evening air, but the words weren’t English. The assassins sprayed random gunfire into the field, and each step brought them closer to their position. Mark repositioned the gun in his hands, sweat pouring from his palms, which slid along the metal of the weapon. He at Gwen, who had shut her eyes, her hands balled into fists and her body completely flat against the ground. He reached with his left hand and placed it over hers.

Gwen opened her eyes at the touch, and Mark smiled. He wasn’t at the house when Kaley was taken. He never got the chance to try and save her, and it was a reality that had tortured him since the abduction. But he could do something here. He could give Gwen the time needed to make a run for it. He could save her.

“When I shoot, stay low and keep heading away from the house.” Mark whispered the words so quietly that he couldn’t even hear it himself. The residual ringing of the gunfire and the continued shouts of the thugs overpowered his voice. He watched Gwen’s eyebrows grow closer together and her mouth drop in confusion. He drew in a breath and forced the word out louder as he pointed away from where the goons were approaching. “
Run.
”

Mark pushed himself to a knee, and he felt Gwen’s hand grab his shirt, and panicked nonsense poured from her lips, but he had already shifted right, heading away from Gwen’s location and making sure that any gunfire that would be sent his way wouldn’t hit his daughter. He placed his finger over the smooth curve of the trigger, squinted one eye shut, and squeezed.

The bullet missed wide right, but it served its purpose as a distraction as all three thugs returned fired. Mark sprinted across the open fields, cutting a path through the tall grass, screaming and turning to shoot back every dozen feet.

The shots were sporadic, and Mark never expected to actually hit anything. He just needed to buy Gwen time. When he turned around on his next pass he saw all three sprinting toward him, and then he saw one of the cars pull around the side and enter the field, flattening the golden strands of wheat.

What sunlight remained reflected a glare off the windshield, blocking the driver from view, and Mark fired into the glass, hood, and grill of the car, only hitting his mark a few times before he veered a hard right. The car followed, and Mark felt the burn in his lungs and muscles with every step. The noise of gunfire and the roar of the engine hastened his pace, but he wasn’t fast enough to escape.

A bullet connected with his lower back, and he tumbled forward. The gun flew from his hand, and he belly-flopped onto the ground, skidding across the dirt and grass. When Mark opened his eyes the adrenaline masked the pain at first, but it didn’t last more than a few seconds.

The soft tissue of his back had been replaced with concrete, and any attempt to move it brought with it a stabbing pain. He remained flat on the ground and curled his fingers into the dirt, feeling the gritty texture jam underneath his nails.

The gunfire ended, and the roar of the car engine faded as well, but both were replaced with the foreign tongue made even more untranslatable by the otherworldly pain that plagued him. Sweat had broken out all over his body, and his cheeks had grown pallid. He tried the simple task of lifting his head, but even that was too much of an effort for what life he had left.

He saw the rifle lying in the grass a few feet from where he’d fallen, but the line of sight was suddenly blocked by the black pant legs of his pursuers and their polished dress shoes. Mark strained his eyes to look up and saw two of the three shooters hovering above.

One of the polished shoes flew into Mark’s side, and his mind suddenly came alive with a thousand knives digging into his skull. A white-hot flash of light blinded him, and he felt himself open his mouth but heard no noise as his entire body seized and spasmed.

When the pain finally passed and the white flash cleared from his eyes, he once again saw the brightly polished dress shoe that had trampled the bed of grass he lay upon. The sound of a car door opened, and the polished shoes stepped out of the way, their owner saying something in his native tongue then laughing.

Mark heard footsteps and when they stopped Mark strained his eyes to look up and saw the barrel of a pistol. It wavered slightly, and Mark only saw his face for a second. At first he thought his mind was playing a trick on him, some cruel joke. “You?” He coughed, spitting up blood, which sprayed the flattened golden blades of grass.

Anger replaced astonishment, and the lightest color of pink returned to Mark’s cheeks. “You fucking son of a bitch. Give me back my daughter! Giver her back right n—”

The bullet sliced through his left temple and exited the rear right back of his skull. Mark’s body went limp, and blood oozed from both ends of the gaping hole the bullet had left behind. The polished shoes returned, picking up Mark’s body and throwing him into the trunk.

***

Gwen listened to the muffled shouts from her position in the grass where Mark had left her. She covered her mouth with the palm of her hand as tears streamed down her face at the sound of the gunshot that ended Mark’s voice. The violent sobs choked out her ability to move, to think, to do anything but lie flat on top of the itchy grass and hide until she was either killed or found.

But there was the quietest echo of a voice in the back of her head. The words it whispered couldn’t be heard at first, but just the tone of the voice made her feel better. It was the voice of her mother. Slowly, she stretched one arm forward, along with one of her legs, and crawled. Her stomach barely lifted off the ground, and it continued to scrape against the dirt as she evaded the men shouting behind her.

Every pull of her arm or leg forward, every time she pressed her shin or forearm into the dirt, she assumed it would be her last. The people hunting her would see the grass move, or she would come across a snake to make her jump and scream, but with every inch her confidence grew. Tears cleared from her eyes, and she quickened her pace.

And the farther she moved away from the chaos behind her, the more her courage grew. Her breathing steadied along with her arms and legs. Every few dozen feet she glanced behind her, making sure whoever it was trying to kill her wasn’t following.

More of the same foreign language echoed over the plains, and Gwen froze when she heard the throaty roar of the car engines crank to life. She slowly craned her neck back around, and between the narrow blades of grass, she saw headlights penetrate the encroaching darkness. The beams of light cut through the field surrounding her to her left and right. And then she heard the soft crunch of the grass as the cars inched forward, searching the field.

Gwen hastened her crawl. She stumbled forward a few times, her chin digging into the hard earth with each fall. But there was no pain with these scratches, no sense of feeling in any limb or vessel of her body. Only one thought propelled her, and it was wedged at the forefront of her mind.
If they catch me, I’m dead.
She pushed through the grass blindly, foregoing any semblance of camouflage and hoping that her movement of the grass would be mistaken for the wind.

“
There!
”

She was wrong. Gwen pushed herself off her knees and sprinted. When her head popped up out of the tall grass she didn’t look behind her, or when she heard their shouts, or the gunfire, or even the heavy roar of the engines, which were pushed to their limits off road. She simply ran.

But when the first car circled her and blocked the path to nowhere, she veered left, only to be tackled to the ground by one of the armed men as the rest of the goons circled like sharks in the open water.

A heavy force suddenly slammed into her back, and she smacked face-first into the grass and dirt. At first the vicious hit blocked all sound through the horrendous pain, but the longer her face was buried in the dirt, the clearer the sounds became. It was laughter.

A light tickle of hot breath brushed against her ear when her captor whispered his foreign language, which Gwen now recognized as some type of Spanish. His meaty palm and fingers kept her face pressed against the earth, limiting her view to the roots of matted grass. Twice she tried to free herself, and twice she was rewarded with a punch to the side of her ribs. After the second hit, she submitted. There wasn’t any escape now.

But the longer Gwen was kept there on the ground, the more she grew frightened of what they meant to do to her. What were they waiting for? Were they going to kill her? Take her? Or something worse? She swallowed the fear and tasted the gritty dirt that had made its way into her mouth.