Stolen Omnibus – Small Town Abduction (26 page)

“That we have the kidnapper’s phone number. And that we need him to track down the location of that phone before he gets rid of it.” Lena shoved Scott’s phone into Jake’s chest and walked over to the truck. She removed the automatic rifles from the back and placed them up in the cabin of the truck.

Ken walked over, this time the pistol in his hand. “Lena, if Scott didn’t bring your daughter here, then that means they have no intention of giving her back, no matter what.”

“I know.” Lena loaded one of the magazines into the rifle and clicked the safety to make sure it was off. She then checked the number of bullets in the magazine of her pistol.

“Then why don’t you just go to the press with what you have now?”

“Because then they’ll kill my daughters out of spite,” Lena answered, shoving the magazine with five bullets back into the pistol. “This gives me a leg up to try and stop them before they kill my girls.”

Ken grabbed Lena by the shoulder and spun her around. “I can’t go with you on this. I’ve held up my end of the bargain. Have the DA finalize my deal.”

Lena placed the pistol’s barrel under Ken’s chin. “There are no more deals. All there is now is this gun that’s pressed against your skin, and my decision on whether or not I should squeeze the trigger.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice to just above a whisper. “You’re going to help me get my daughters back. Or I tell the DA to drop any involvement you had in the case. Because who else knows about it besides me and him? No one. Now get in the fucking truck.”

She removed the pistol, and Ken sheepishly walked around her to the back door and climbed inside. She wasn’t sure how much help he would be, but she needed as many guns as she could get her hands on. If the bloodshed out here was any indication as to what she was walking into, then it was going to be one hell of a night.

“Got it!” Jake hobbled over, holding up his phone, and climbed into the passenger seat while Lena cranked the truck’s engine to life after a few churning sputters. “They traced it within a mile of an address off of old Highway 9. Longwood’s gonna meet us there with the cavalry.”

“How far?” Lena asked, flooring the accelerator.

“Forty minutes.”

Chapter 12 – 1 Hour Left

Despite Lena’s protest, Jake remained with them on the ride over. His cheeks were pallid and kept drifting in and out of consciousness, but the bleeding on his shoulder had stopped. The closer they drove to the location Longwood had given them, the more Lena realized just how much she’d need the sheriff department to back her up. Jake was in no position for any physical confrontation, and Ken looked ready to bolt the moment the opportunity revealed itself.

The GPS on Jake’s phone revealed their destination, which was less than a mile up the road. But from what Lena could see out of the rolled-down truck window, there was nothing. She picked up the phone from the cup holder and saw that they were practically on top of the area. “You’re sure this is where Longwood told you to meet up?”

Jake nodded. “Positive.”

Despite the confidence, Lena wasn’t sure if she believed him. Jake could barely keep his eyes open. She pulled off to the side of the road and grabbed Jake’s rifle out of the backseat. She climbed out while Jake and Ken remained in the car. She peered through the scope and scanned the horizon to her left and found nothing. She raised the rifle to the right and slowly drifted the crosshairs along the rolling plains until she saw the old farmhouse amid the acres of open land. When she lowered the scope it was nothing more than a speck, but when she gazed through the lens again, she saw two black sedans parked out front, the same make and model as the one that had chased down Jake. She was in the right place.

It took all of her willpower to not sprint to the house then and there, but she needed more men if she meant to get the girls out alive. “Where the hell is Longwood?” She peered into the truck, but Jake had his eyes shut. “Jake?” Lena dropped the rifle and shook her brother’s arm. He winced, and she let out a sigh of relief.

“So what do we do?” Ken spoke like a child as he sat curled up in a ball, tucked tightly into the corner of the backseat. The hand that held his pistol rested on his knee. “The longer we wait, the closer the clock ticks down to zero.”

“We move now.” Lena jumped inside the truck and parked it further off the side of the road. She gathered the weapons and ammunition in the duffel bag and slung one of the automatic rifles over her right shoulder, with the duffel-bag strap on her left. Jake tried to get out of the car, but Lena was able to walk to the other side and shut the door before he could even muster the strength to take off his seatbelt. “You stay here, keep an eye out for Longwood.”

“I’m not letting you go over there by yourself.” It was the first bit of grit that she’d seen from him since he’d been shot.

“I won’t be alone.” Lena looked over to Ken, who stood with his shoulders slumped, a wide-eyed look of bewilderment and fear plastered on his face. When she turned back to Jake, his mood didn’t improve. “You can’t even walk. You’d die before we even made it to the house.” When she reached for his hand, it was ice cold. “If the girls don’t make it out alive, then neither do I.” It was a reality Lena couldn’t escape. With Mark gone, her fate was tied to that of her children. In life, or in death.

Jake nodded. “Then make it out alive.”

“I will.” Lena kissed his forehead and turned to Ken, and they started their slow jog to the house. The closer they moved to the structure, the further they lowered themselves to the ground for cover. By the time they were five hundred feet out, they were crawling along the grass, concealed by the tall blades.

Lena dragged the duffel bag behind her, and she and Ken remained side by side. They stopped at the fence that encased the structure’s perimeter. She slowly raised her head and got a look at the front of the house. There was a porch, but she saw no guard on duty. She looked back behind her and still saw no other cars on the road. Wherever Longwood was, she wouldn’t be able to wait for him.

Lena lowered herself back down and grabbed Ken by the collar. “There’s no way to know how many people are inside. But they don’t know how many people we have outside.” She handed him one of the automatic rifles. “You circle around back and start firing into the rear of the house as a distraction. When you start shooting I’ll storm the front while they’re trying to figure out how many of you there are. You just keep darting in the grass and shooting. Don’t let them see you. Got it?”

“And what if no one comes?” Ken asked, his voice dry and cracking.

“Then just keep shooting until someone does.” Lena watched him leave and then spied the front of the house one last time before she began her approach. Most of the yard was unkempt and overgrown with the wild, tall grass, but a large patch in front of the house where the cars were parked was completely dead and would expose her too easily. So instead, she maneuvered to the side of the house where the cover of the tall grass stretched all the way to the front porch.

When she neared the house she removed the magazines from the duffel bag along with everything that she could carry on her person and waited for the gunfire from Ken. Her eyes were glued to the drawn front shutters and closed door as she waited for anyone to step outside. But it was oddly quiet.

A few minutes passed, and Lena began to wonder if Ken had ditched her, gone back to the truck and tossed Jake out and left them on their own. But then she remembered his own self-interest and knew that without her he didn’t have a future, and neither did his family.

The gunshots finally came, and Lena felt her body tense. She tucked the rifle tight against her shoulder and aimed for the open door. Gunfire echoed around the open plains, but there was no charge out the front, no stampede of confused or bewildered goons that spilled outside.

Maybe they were waiting for her, saw her in the bushes, and they were just toying with her and waiting for their time to strike. But the longer she heard Ken’s firing in the back, the less likely she thought that to be true.

With no movement inside that she could see, Lena jumped from the tall grass and sprinted to the front door. She backed up against the wall, rifle in hand, and reached for the doorknob. She gave it a light twist to see if it was unlocked then shoulder-checked it open.

Through the sight of the automatic rifle Lena stared down a dark hallway where dusty old furniture lined both sides of the walls. She squinted into the darkness, the sunlight outside disappearing with only the light of the moon and stars spilling into the doorway.

The floorboards gave a light groan, though she wasn’t sure if anyone could hear her steps over Ken’s continued gunfire, as he ran back and forth in the tall grass. Lena pressed forward, rifle raised, and veered into the first room on her left. She scanned it—more old furniture and a fireplace. No Kaley. No Gwen. Nobody.

Her heart rate spiked, and she started to think that she’d made a mistake coming here, that it was just another trick.
But then why were the cars still out front?
Another room was coming up to her left, and this time when she turned the corner Lena was able to see three lumps on the floor. Bodies.

Guns were still at their sides, and the blood pouring from their lethal wounds still looked fresh. Lena lowered her weapon slightly, and her heart continued to pound wildly in her chest. And then, between the gunfire, she heard moans. They were soft, nearly inaudible, but they were there. She left the room and the bodies and hurried farther down the hall toward the back of the house.

In the darkness Lena saw kitchen cabinets through a back opening, and suddenly the gunfire outside stopped. She hastened her pace, nearly sprinting, and when she entered the kitchen and raised the rifle with her finger on the trigger, she nearly screamed.

Kaley and Gwen were tied and bound in chairs stationed right next to one another. Tears streamed down their faces, and gags muffled their crying. Lena sprinted to their side, kissing their cheeks, reaching for the ropes around their hands, ankles, chests, and bodies. “I’m going to get you out of here—” It was the piece of steel pressed against the back of her skull that froze Lena in place, but it was the voice that sent chills down her back.

“Kick the rifle away, Lena.” Nick kept a shaky hand on his gun, but his voice remained steady. “Raise your hands slowly and place them on the back of your head.”

“What are you doing, Nick?” Lena kept her eyes on her daughters, both of whom still had gags covering their mouths. “This is—”

“You’re not in a position to make any demands!” Nick barked the words viciously. “Not anymore. Now stand up.” Lena complied, and the pistol remained glued to the back of her head. “Turn around. Slowly.”

Lena spun, and even though it was dark, she could still recognize her ex-husband’s features. Stubble covered his face, and he’d dyed his hair. He’d also exchanged the dirty rags she’d last seen him in for a nicer pair of duds. A steady stream of questions flowed through her mind, clogging the funnel to her mouth until one of them finally squeezed through. “Why?”

“You left, Lena.” Nick pressed the end of the pistol into her forehead, and the girls whimpered behind her. “You started a new life, and you left me behind. You got everything you wanted. New job. New house. New husband. New daughter. And my daughter.” His voice quivered on the last word.

The front of Lena’s skull started to ache from the pressure of the pistol. “You were working with New Energy? This whole time?” She paused. “You took Kaley?”

“And who would you have rather taken her? Hmm?” Nick arched his eyebrows and leaned forward, adding more pressure to her skull. “One of the men I killed in the living room? Scott Ambers?” He shook his head. “No. She was safer with me.”

Lena spied the gun on the floor where Nick had told her to drop it, but Nick must have seen her look because a blinding pain struck the side of her face, a thousand tiny knives stabbing her along her jaw accompanied by a blinding white flash in her vision. She touched the spot where Nick had struck her and felt blood.

“You pissed a lot of people off, Lena.” Nick pointed to Gwen, who was crying hysterically now. “And it put our daughter in danger. Scott tracked me down when they did a history check on your past indiscretions. I’d gotten into a lot debt with Hugo Reginald and they told me all I had to do to wipe it clean was take Kaley. If I didn’t they said they’d kill me and then kill Gwen anyway. What was I supposed to do?”

Though she couldn’t see him, Lena could hear the thick phlegm and tremble of his voice as the realization struck her. “You bought the bullets from the store in Bismarck.” Lena slowly reached her hand for the rifle, hiding her motion as she pretended to struggle to stand up. “So now what? You’re going to take her? Run away? Gwen doesn’t want to be with you, Nick.”

“But she needs a father now more than ever.” Nick smiled more evilly than anything she could have imagined. There was joy in the smile, joy in the face of murder. “Mark couldn’t protect our daughter. You thought he was stronger than I was, but he wasn’t. I proved that.”

“You fucking bastard!”

“You should have just let me stay in her life, Lena!” Nick gripped the pistol with both hands and placed his finger on the trigger. “But don’t worry. I’ll take good care of them after you’re gone.”

The blast of the gunshots thundered in the kitchen, but while Lena shut her eyes and winced, she felt nothing. When she opened them Nick lay in a pool of blood, and Longwood stood with a gun in his hand. Longwood rushed over and patted Nick down. “Lena, are you all right?”

But Lena was already at Gwen and Kaley’s side, ripping apart the restraints, all three of them crying. Longwood stepped over to help, handling Kaley’s restraints, and she was the first out. Lena kissed her daughter’s cheeks, and the little girl cried when Longwood lifted her up and away from the scene. “Your mom has to get your sister out, sweetheart. Just hang on.”

Everything felt too surreal, and even with Nick dead and them out of danger, all Lena could think about was trying to get out of the house. “Did you see Jake out front?”