Stolen Omnibus – Small Town Abduction Read online

  The cell across from Jake, however, was still teeming with the oil workers who had been arrested on the charges of attacking her house. It was Longwood’s decision to keep them separate. More for their safety than Jake’s, probably.

  “Have a seat,” Longwood said, shutting the door behind him.

  “I’ve been sitting all night.” Lena feigned the enthusiasm of energy, but she wasn’t sure she pulled it off. “So?” She’d crossed all of the t’s and dotted all of the I’s. But in the end, her brother’s release wasn’t up to her.

  Longwood folded his long, slender hands on top of one another and leaned forward on her brother’s desk. “The judge granted Jake’s bail request.”

  “So let him out.” Lena held out her arms, wondering what in the hell he was waiting for. “I’ve spent all night in this station, Chris. I don’t have any more time to waste. Kaley is—”

  “Lena, you are not a detective!” Longwood’s voice boomed in the office and he rose from his chair, and for the first time since Lena had known him, his height looked intimidating. “What do you think is going to happen when I let Jake out of that cell? You think he’s going to put the badge back on and continue like nothing ever happened?” He slammed his fist into the table and rattled a few pens off the edge of the desk. “He has a murder charge hanging over his head!”

  “C’mon, Chris.” Lena paced between the door and the set of chairs meant for visitors. “You think he did it? You really think that my brother, the same man that hired you, is capable of something like that?”

  “He’s always had a temper,” Chris said.

  “He’s not the bad guy!” Lena slammed the toe of her foot into the desk, shaking the computer monitors and toppling papers and stationary. Her foot throbbed, but the adrenaline overpowered the pain. “You know just as well as I do that it was New Energy that killed Reese Coleman. They’ve been behind everything! The spotty safety standards on their rigs, dumping illegal waste that has ruined dozens of lives.” Lena felt ropes of reason fray, madness pulling her apart. “They don’t play by the rules, Chris, and I can’t afford to either. I will not bury my daughter; do you understand me? I will not bury her!” She panted heavily. Her cheeks reddened and the stinging burn of tears filled her eyes.

  Longwood’s expression softened. He lowered his head and gently thudded the desk three times with his left fist. “I know you’re right.” He collapsed back into his chair, rubbing his temples, and then pinched the bridge of his nose in concentration. “So what do you want to do, Lena?” He tossed his hands in the air and then they fell helplessly to his side.

  “I want you to stay out of the way.” Lena leaned forward, and she watched her shadow slowly crawl over Longwood’s body. “If New Energy doesn’t want to fight fare, then so be it. I’ll give you what I can, but if I have to choose between the law and my daughter I’ll choose Kaley every time.” Lena spun around and placed her hand on the door knob.

  “Lena.” Longwood stood, and she turned. “Keep me in the loop. At least with what you can. I’ll keep looking for Kaley though. I promise.”

  “Thank you.” Both Lena and Longwood marched to the cell where Jake was being held. The iron hinges groaned when they were opened, and Jake stepped out. Lena wrapped her arms around him, and after the quick embrace Longwood led the way to an empty room. He opened the door and let them inside, giving them some time alone.

  The sat next to one another at the table, and Lena reached for his hand. “How are you holding up?”

  Jake gave her hand a light squeeze. “I should be asking you that.” He lowered his voice. “How much time do we have left?”

  “Less than fourteen hours.” If she wanted to be exact, it was thirteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and twenty-nine seconds. “I posted your bail.” She stood, still holding onto his hand, but it fell back to the table when they separated. “What are you doing?”

  “Lena, I’m a liability. I’ve been brought up on charges for murder.”

  “You and I both know that you didn’t do it.” Lena watched his face and studied the small twitch at the corner of his mouth, along with the lines that carved a grief-stricken expression along his cheeks. “Did you?”

  “No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “But I did break the law. I found Reese Coleman’s body a few days ago. And I put it on New Energy’s property to cause them more trouble.”

  “Why?” Lena’s voice was exasperated as she glided back to the table, planting her palms over the cool metal surface. “The vote had already happened, you didn’t have to—” But then she stopped. The night of the vote on her bill triggered a memory. “That’s why you weren’t at the town hall that night.” She lowered herself into the chair absentmindedly. “You were moving the body then, weren’t you.”

  “I wanted you to have some insurance.” Jake ran his hands through the thick crop of short hair. “I wasn’t sure if the bill would pass, and I knew how much you’d put up with, how much you sacrificed. I thought if a body turned up on New Energy’s property it would give you something else to attack them on. I thought that this would be the nail in the coffin for them. I thought we could turn the tide.”

  It wasn’t Jake’s confession that surprised her. He’d always been quick to act, quick to anger, quick to make the emotional action, but she’d never been as angry with him as she was in that moment. “That was the dumbest thing you could have ever done.” She watched him wince at his words. “You didn’t think New Energy wouldn’t have some excuse already prepared for something like that? You don’t think they could have wiggled their way out of tampering with evidence? You don’t think—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is getting Kaley back.” She reached for his hand. “I tried doing this lawfully, and it didn’t work. If I want my daughter back then I’ll have to play by their rules.” Her voice whispered. “I need you with me.”

  Jake exhaled, then squeezed her hand. “So, no announcement to renounce the bill?”

  “No.” Lena shook her head and stood to pace the floor, scratching the crook of her left arm. “Not after I saw the look on Carla Knox’s face in that barn. If there’s a chance that whoever took Kaley is half as crazy as she was then I’m not betting my daughter’s life on the word of some psychopath.”

  Jake leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed and his arms crossed. “What are you thinking then?”

  “New Energy took Kaley as leverage. All we need to do is find our own,” Lena answered. “We need someone on the inside. And I know of at least one person who owes me.” She just hoped that Jim Foreman would talk.

  ***

  Ken noticed that his knuckles had whitened and once again eased his grip on the edge of the podium. They ached. His head ached. Everything ached. And the shouts from the reporters below only exacerbated the problem. “Yes, you in the front.”

  A young woman extended a tape recorder, her red hair pulled tight in a bun at the very top of her head. Her cheeks were flushed a light pink from the thirty minutes everyone had been standing outside. “The Hayes camp has been adamant that your company has something to do with Kaley’s disappearance. You can’t ignore the fact that the kidnapper’s demands mirror how your company has publicly felt about Representative Hayes’s bill.”

  Ken leaned into the microphone. “We are in the business of energy. Not kidnapping. I cannot state this any clearer than I already have. We did not take Kaley. We wish Representative Hayes all the best and have cooperated with law enforcement with every request. And if I’m not mistaken, her brother, Sheriff Cooley, was just arrested on charges of murder! Murder of one of our own workers!” Ken pounded the top of the podium with his fist. “And, yes, we will be seeking retribution for that atrocious crime!”

  Every reporter looked at him with the same trepidation, and Ken straightened his tie. Blood rushed to his head, and he closed his eyes, trying to shake it off. “That’s all the time I have for questions right now—”

&nbs
p; A truck roared through the grass parking lot. Oil workers quickly jumped from its path, the driver neither slowing nor diverting his trajectory to avoid the crowd. Reporters scattered just as tires skidded across the grass and dirt. An old man stepped out of the truck. Lumps and bruises covered his face, and one of his eyes was completely swollen shut. All of the reporters took a step back but still thrust their cameras and recorders into the man’s face as he walked past, all of them asking who he was. But Ken already knew.

  “You!” Mr. Lanks thrust an arthritically deformed finger in Ken’s direction. “I told you and that thug you brought to my farm that I’m not selling!” Spit flew from his mouth, and he stopped just short of the podium. “You know what he did? Do you know what this company did?” The reporters leaned in, pictures were snapped, video recorded. “They came to my house. Beat me. Threatened my family and said that if I didn’t sell them my land, they were going to kill me!” He set his one good eye on Ken just as security came up behind him, dragging the old man away as he kicked and screamed in defiance. “You won’t get away with this! You hear me? You won’t get my land! Ever!”

  Mr. Lanks’s rant faded the farther security pulled the old man back, and the moment he was out of earshot the herd of reporters returned their attention to Ken.

  “Does New Energy have a comment about these new allegations?”

  “Who was the gentleman referring to as the thug?”

  “Why would New Energy resort to such violence?”

  “If your company is threatening residents with their lives, why is it hard to believe that you wouldn’t kidnap Kaley Hayes to help defeat the oil bill aimed to further regulate your business?”

  The questions came quickly, one after the other, two at a time, three at a time. It was all Ken could do to keep up with who was hurling them at him. “The man is clearly hurt and confused, and we’ll delve into this situation immediately. Again, this is all the time I have, and when I know more, so will you. Thank you.”

  The roaring inquiries followed him all the way to the office door and then lingered outside for the next several minutes before security escorted the reporters off the premises. Inside, Ken kept all of the lights off and pressed his face into his palms and sat at his desk. He slowly ran his fingers back through his hair, feeling the grime of the past few days. He hadn’t showered, hadn’t shaved—he’d barely eaten. All he could feel was the slow, suffocating hands tightening around his throat. He couldn’t shake them. They followed him everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before they pulled him back into an abyss that would swallow him whole.

  Ken’s cell phone rang. He didn’t answer. The desk phone rang. He let it go to voice mail. The back-and-forth calls repeated for another ten minutes before there was a pounding on his door, which he refused to answer.

  Eventually, security forced it open, and Scott Ambers stepped inside, instructing the security team to leave the two of them alone. Ken didn’t look up at Ambers as he paced methodically across the carpet, only stopping when he stood directly in front of Ken. “You have work to do.”

  Ken kept his head down, an edge of frustration in his voice. “You told me they wouldn’t go to anyone. You told me that it wouldn’t backfire, and I told you, more than once, that it would.” He glanced up. “You can only push people so far before they push back.”

  “Mr. Alwitz hired you to handle these PR situations.” Scott’s dead-eye glare was only compounded by the darkness of the room. “Now, get up.”

  It was the way a parent would have addressed a stubborn child who’d just thrown a tantrum in a grocery store. “I’m not going to do this for you anymore.” Ken felt his head tremble when he lifted his face. “I quit.”

  Scott lowered himself to Ken’s level. There was no anger on his face, no rage, no disappointment, only a man who knew he had the winning hand. “You have two options right now. Option one: you get off your ass and get back to work, trying to figure out a way to spin this in our favor. Option two: I walk out the door, get on a plane, and go to your family’s house. I break through the front door and find your wife and your son, and hurt them. And I continue to hurt them until you agree to option one.”

  The hands on Ken’s throat continued to choke him, and he struggled for breath. He was paralyzed. Flashes of Tommy and Sasha struck the forefront of his memories. Their faces became bruised and beaten, warped by Scott’s fists. “I’ll go to the cops. I’ll tell them everything.”

  “You could,” Scott said, nodding and tilting his head to the side. “But that won’t bring your family back from the dead.”

  And there it was. Everything had come full circle. The entire reason he’d reentered this line of work was to keep his son alive. To keep his family fed. But what was that old saying? It’s always your favorite sins that kill you? Except they wouldn’t kill him. They’d kill his family.

  Ken pushed himself up. His body trembled from adrenaline. He walked over to the phone on his desk and picked it up. He just needed to buy himself a little more time. He dialed the number. Three rings. Mr. Alwitz answered. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  Chapter 3 – 13 Hours Left

  It took some haggling, but Lena finally managed to convince Longwood to let her speak with Jim Foreman. There were two stipulations: the first being that Jake couldn’t be present, and the second being that Longwood himself sat in on the conversation. She agreed.

  Longwood led the both of them into a conference room, and when Lena saw him sitting in the chair with the cuffs around his wrists, restrained to his chair, she thought the anger over what his family had done had left her. She was wrong.

  There wasn’t a fiber in Lena’s being that didn’t want to leap across that table and choke the life out of him. But there wasn’t time for that. Jim Foreman would get his day in court. She swallowed the rage and focused on the task at hand. She needed to know what Jim knew.

  Jim looked up, a sheepish expression of sorrow plastered on his face. “If I had known—”

  “But you didn’t know.” The room cooled from the icy tone. Lena saw the goose bumps along his arm. She wasn’t cold, though. The blood boiling in her veins made sure of that. “You’re going to miss a lot of moments in your family’s life, Jim. First the stunt with the riots, now an attempted murder charge?” Lena shook her head. “It’s going to make it very hard for your lawyer to convince a jury that you weren’t in your right mind. A one-off can be disproved. You’ve developed a pattern.”

  Jim’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes still on the table. “If I could take it back, I would.” He dared to lift his eyes and look her in the face. “I don’t have any excuses.”

  Lena had seen enough clients in her attorney days to recognize someone who didn’t want to put up a defense. They knew what they had done was wrong, and they were ready to accept the consequences. “You’re looking at up to ten years in prison. But I still have my contacts over in the DA’s office. I could make a call on your behalf.” Behind the sullen eyes she watched the wheels slowly turn. “It would go a long way with the jury if the person you tried to kill testified on your behalf.” She stepped around the table, stopping at the corner, where she drummed her fingers. “If you make it worth my while.”

  Jim raised his eyebrows. His words were slow, and his voice jumped an octave. “What do you want?”

  Lena circled around the back of his chair, then took a seat in the chair adjacent to him. “I want dirt on New Energy. I want to know what they’re hiding. I want to know why they’re so afraid of my bill that they would risk kidnapping my daughter. I want justice, Jim. For me, and for all of the families they’ve hurt. Including yours.”

  Jim writhed uncomfortably in his chair. “If you’re asking if I ever received any official orders from my bosses to do what I did… I didn’t. But the boys upstairs didn’t make it any secret when they shared their feelings about you.” Jim shifted his glance between Lena and Longwood. “My rig manager was one of them.” He took a la
rge swallow and then looked down. “He kept talking about how you were trying to screw all of us over.”

  “You must have heard someone say something.” Lena refused to believe that an organization as large as New Energy was able to keep all of their dirty laundry from flapping in the breeze. “Something at the bar, something at lunch.” She curled her fingers into fists, the encroaching cold of desperation rearing its ugly head. “Something!”

  Longwood stepped closer. “Lena.” When she looked over, he had his hand on the grip of his pistol, the top strap of the holster already unsnapped. “Take it easy.” He kept his voice calm, but it failed to quell the storm that had started.

  Lena gripped Jim by the collar, twisting the fabric of his shirt. She raised her fist in the air, ready to beat what she needed to know out of him. When she caught her reflection in Jim’s eyes she saw a woman she didn’t recognize.

  But just as quickly as her outburst began it ended. Longwood pinned her arms behind her back and shoved her against the wall. The cool concrete sizzled against her flushed cheek as she impotently tried to break free of the deputy’s hold, screaming. “Tell me! Tell me where she is!”

  “Lena! Stop!” Longwood spun her around and kept her pressed against the wall. His longer fingers curled into her like knives, and he had to squat to get to her eye level. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Grief slowly overtook the rage, and tears burst from Lena’s eyes. Longwood’s grip loosened, and she slid to the floor. When she looked up at, Longwood’s hand was off the gun, and he repositioned the strap over the pistol. She looked to Jim. “If you ever wanted to clear your conscience, now’s the time.”

  Jim took a breath, closing his eyes, his hands balled into fists. He scrunched his face in concentration, and Lena clasped her hands together and prayed. “Wait.” Jim opened his eyes quickly. “Reese Coleman. He was doing something for the company. Something that got him into trouble.”