Survivor: 1 (18 page)

Animal nodded, his face showing no emotion.

Tim turned back to Lisa. "You and Animal are going to
go out to see if the chick I saw standing outside the
restaurant is Alicia. If it is, Animal will know-she'll most
likely have her kid with her. If it's her, you and Animal are
going to go up to her and this is what you're going to tell
her." He told her, and Lisa felt nervous. It sounded so perfect, a plan masking altruism at its best. She held her emotions in and nodded as Tim regarded her. "We'll take
care of the rest. Got it?"

Lisa nodded. She looked out the windshield. "And
what if the woman isn't Alicia?"

"We'll drive around," Tim said. "We'll drive down that
street you mentioned, then we'll hit the YWCA. If we
don't find them at either place, it's over." He smiled at her.
"The game ends!

Lisa heard what he was saying but didn't feel the implications. She understood them-they would take her
back to that lonely mountain cabin by force and kill her
slowly in front of the camera-but she didn't let their
threats affect her. She had gone beyond that. She had
gone beyond feeling scared.

"I'll be right here," Tim said. "And remember what I
said before: If you scream or cause a scene or make a
break for it, we'll find you and we'll kill you later. Only
we'll kill you slowly. And we'll get hubby and baby, too.
You got me?"

Lisa nodded. The threat echoed in her mind; it didn't
seem real anymore. Nothing did. "Let's do it."

Animal opened the side door of the van and stepped
out. Lisa followed him and began to lead the way to the
front of the restaurant where, just three days before, she
and her husband had stopped to help a woman in despair.

Lisa was cursing herself the entire time for being too
chickenshit to do anything. The only thing she could
think of was that line of thought part of her conscious
mind kept whispering to her a few hours before: You were only thinking about saving your skin. You weren't
even thinking about your unborn baby, were you? You just
wanted to save yourself

It was that thought that kept running through her
mind, as well as her general fright, that kept her from
doing anything. It wasn't until they were back at the van
and Tim emerged to make the capture that Lisa sprang
into some kind of action. And what triggered it was
Animal-who had been walking behind her as the
three of them walked to the van (while Alicia carried
Mandy, who was strapped into her carrier)-as he
damped his hand over her mouth and attempted to
shove her in the van.

No! her mind screamed, and then she fought. Something deep and primal awoke within her and she struggled hard, more ferociously than she'd struggled when
Tim had abducted her back at that motel a thousand
years ago. Animal's left hand found her left wrist and attempted to bring it behind her back in a choke hold, but
Lisa moved with it, thwarting him. Animal panted.
"Thought we were just gonna let you go after this, huh?
Think again, cunt!"

She screamed but nothing came out of her mouth,
and then she saw the glint of steel and her eyes grew
wide. He pulled her toward him, hand pressed down
over her mouth, and he brought the knife up, and she
could dimly hear movement in the van as Tim tended to
Alicia and Mandy and she tried to forget the look Alicia
gave her when it all happened. She pushed all that out of
her mind and burst through it, fueled by a sudden explosion of adrenaline that seemed to give her extra strength.
The knife came up toward her throat, and then she bit
down hard on Animal's palm.

She felt her teeth pierce through his skin, and sud denly the hand was gone and she heard a yelp of pain.
His grip on her loosened, and she took this small window of opportunity to drive her elbow into him. She felt
it connect solidly with his solar plexus and she felt something hit her shoulder, then heard the link of metal as it
hit the ground at her feet. Animal's grip on her loosened
to the point of letting go as he doubled over, the breath
knocked out of him, and now she did scream. She let
loose with one motherfucking wail of a scream, and then
she was running. She screamed and ran toward the front
of the restaurant, ignoring the surprised looks of entering
restaurant patrons as they froze to look at her, and then
she was in the restaurant, screaming at the twentysome-
thing hostess to call the fucking police, and then she collapsed on the floor in a shaking fit of sobbing, not even
aware of the commotion around her and the excited
voices that accompanied it, not even aware of the van as
it peeled out of the parking lot and set off down Burbank
Boulevard heading for the freeway.

Brad Miller sat in the Lexus as the garage door opened to
his and Lisa's home, feeling a numbed sense of detachment.

The day had gone by in a blur the brief arraignment
and dismissal of his case; filing a missing persons report
with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department; then a late
breakfast at some restaurant with his parents and
William Grecko as they all tried to console him. Well find
her, don't worry. SheW be all right. Well get to the bottom
of this.

Brad had told William Grecko that if they wanted to
find Lisa they needed to do one thing: find Caleb Smith.
He had something to do with this. Brad knew it. But
Grecko told him it was going to be tough. As far as any body knows, Caleb Smith doesn't exist. ft's probably an
alias of some sort and the guy's long gone by now. For all
we know, he might not have had anything to do with Lisa
disappearing.

Brad had wanted to leap over the table and throttle the
smug sonofabitch, but his parents were there, and then
they were joined by one of the detectives Grecko had
called. They had talked some more, and Brad had mostly
listened to the conversation, simmering in his anger at
the lawyer and the detective, silently screaming at them
to get the fuck out there and find her! Then they had
driven back to Orange County with Brad's father driving
the Lexus. They had gone to his folks' house first, and that
was when Brad knew he had to get some kind of plan going. If the police weren't going to do anything about finding Lisa, then he would. He would hire a private detective
if he had to. But he would find her.

He felt a little better after coming to this realization,
and he had told his folks he was going to go home. His
mother had been against it-she seemed to think he was
on the brink of a nervous breakdown and might harm
himself. Brad dismissed it. "I'm tired, Mom. 1 haven't
showered in three days and I'm tired. I want to go home
and take a shower and go to sleep. Maybe if I get some
rest, I'll feel better."

His father had felt that was for the best too, so both parents had escorted him back to the car and helped him
with his things. They watched as he drove away.

Now as he pulled the car into the garage he realized
that for the first time since this whole nightmare started
he was actually starting to think in a positive manner.
First things first: Get a shower and a good night's sleep.
Take aValium if you have to, but get a good eight or more
hours of sleep. Then tomorrow we'll tackle this thing
from all ends. Maybe he would do some calling around and find a good private detective. He would spare no expense. 'Thank God he and Lisa had been made partners
in their respective firms this year, because the extra income they'd been throwing into savings was going to be
dearly needed.

The garage door whirred dosed behind him. Brad
sighed and got out of the car. He retrieved both bags
from the trunk and trundled them through the laundry
room and the kitchen. He'd get them both upstairs and
then he'd-

He was just crossing the living room with the suitcases
when the telephone rang.

He rushed to the phone after dropping the bags in the
entry hall. "Hello?"

"Brad?" It was Lisa. She burst out sobbing.

"L.rsa!" Brad's voice broke. "Oh my God, Lisa, what
happened-where are you?"

"Oh Brad, thank God you're home." Lisa was crying
hard, and Brad could hear voices in the background
over the line. It sounded like she was calling from an office or something.

"Lisa, where are you?" Brad's own nerves were on edge
at the sound of her voice, and he thought, Thank God
she's all right.

"I'm in Burbank," Lisa said. "At the police station ... I
don't know ... near ... I don't know where this fucking
police station is! It's in the valley-"

"Stay right where you are!" Brad said, his mind racing.
"I'm leaving right now!"

"Oh Brad!" She started crying again. Hearing her
voice, hearing her break down like that, broke Brad's
heart.

"I love you, Lisa," Brad said, his throat choking up. "I'm
leaving now."

Another voice came on the line. "Mr. Miller? I'm detec tive Morse. Your wife is fine. We're having her transferred
to USC Medical Center to have her checked out, but
physically she looks okay. She's been through a terrible
ordeal, though, and.. "

The minute the conversation was over, Brad hung up
and was racing back to the car, then peeling out of the
garage and down the street to the freeway, his heart racing with anticipation at seeing his wife.

He couldn't get to USC Medical Center fast enough.
What would. have normally been a forty-five-minute or
more drive took Brad less than thirty minutes. It was a
miracle he made it to the hospital at all; his mind was
completely focused on Lisa and reuniting with herseeing her, touching her; holding her close to him. He
barely paid attention to his driving. When he arrived at
the hospital, he pulled into the first available spot and
leaped out of the car, racing toward the hospital with
bated breath.

When he burst into the lobby, he went directly to the
receptionist desk. "My wife Lisa was just brought here!
She was kidnapped and-"

A uniformed officer who was standing near the receptionist desk stepped forward. "Brad Miller?"

Brad turned to the officer. "Yeah. Is Lisa okay, is she-"

The officer nodded at the receptionist and a security
guard who had approached. "She's fine. Come with me."

Brad barely noticed as the officer gave him a visitor's
badge and led him through a seemingly endless maze of
corridors. He could hardly keep his emotions in check.
He'd cried briefly on the drive over, the thought that he
had almost lost her had hit him hard. He still couldn't
grasp the concept that she had been given a second
chance, that she was safe. He had to see her.

They reached the emergency ward and the cop nod ded at a nurse who was standing at the nurse's station.
"This is Brad Miller," he said. "Lisa's husband."

The nurse held out her hand and smiled. Her features
were calm and reassuring. "Mr. Miller, I'm Candace Thorton. Come with me."

Brad followed Candace on trembling legs. She opened
one of the doors to a triage unit and Brad's eyes fell on
the figure lying in the lone bed in the center of the room.
"Lisa!"

The figure looked up, and at first Brad thought he had it
all wrong, that it wasn't Lisa dressed in a white hospital
smock lying in the hospital bed. The woman who looked
at him from across the room was too pale, heavy dark cir-
des under her eyes, her blond hair a stringy mess, the skin
stretching tightly over her bones, her face weathered. This
couldn't be Lisa. Maybe they had it wrong; maybe the
men who had kidnapped her had tracked her to the hospital and snuck off with her, replaced his wife with this
wraithlike stick figure who looked like she had been
through hell and back and-"

"Brad!"

It was hearing the sound of her voice that confirmed it
for him. The minute he heard it, he knew The face, still
pretty but bearing the emotional and physical strain of
the past few days, the dark circles under her eyes from
lack of sleep. It was Lisa, all right. There was no question
about it.

Nothing else mattered to Brad at that moment-not
the nurse or the cop that he barely noticed, who was sitting in a chair near the bed, not even the cop who had
met him at the receptionist desk or the doctor that came
in to talk to him. All that mattered was Lisa, the confirmation that she was alive. He didn't care about anything
else at that moment; those people did not exist for Brad
as he quickly crossed the room to Lisa's bedside and swept her into his arms, the tears coming so strong and
so sudden that he didn't even bother trying to stem their
flow. He let it all out, let the tears come, let himself cry
his heart out as he held her close to him, not wanting to
let her go, not wanting to lose her ever again, and Lisa
cried against his chest and he let her, everything outside
of their little world nonexistent right now as he held her
and told her he loved her over and over again and that
everything was going to be all right.

They had just finished filming when the shit started going down.

Tim had thrown up at least twice during the shoot. He
couldn't help it; he'd never seen anybody get done like
that before, and he had never seen a baby get done before, either. That was the worst. They'd actually kept the
baby's mother alive and tied up while Animal did it, too.
Her hands tied behind her back, legs lashed together,
her mouth gagged tight, she'd been forced to watch in
anguish as Animal ... even thinking about what Animal
had done to that baby made him sick.

Tim took a deep breath, closed his eyes, trying to gain
control of himself. He had to keep telling himself that in
the grand scheme of things, he didn't give a shit. Nearly a
quarter of a million bucks was riding on this gig, split
three ways between him, Al, and Animal. That was a lot
of dough for one night.

But then, every time he tried to tell himself that, Alicia's terror-stricken eyes, her anguish, stabbed into his
conscious. He had watched her as she watched helpless, powerless to do anything, and in doing so was transported back to when he had been in her shoes.