CHAPTER 15
Where the hell was Jane?
She’d left him a strange message about taking off in his truck and now she wouldn’t answer his calls. What the hell was going on? Cooper clicked his radio to signal the dispatcher. “Brenda, do you have Jane there with you?”
“No, Sheriff. I’ve been watching for her like you said, but no one’s been in at all this afternoon.”
“Copy.” He ran the route from the Quickstop to the station house in his mind. Four, maybe five blocks. What could have happened to her?
That was a question he didn’t want to think about.
Jane could smell his sweat now.
He held up a gun.
And suddenly she couldn’t look away from the hollow, black barrel pointed right between her eyes.
“I don’t want to shoot you here.” His voice had a surprisingly high pitch, but the fast-clipped New York accent was unmistakable. “There’s too many people around. Your street is like Grand Central Fucking Station, so we gotta get out of here.”
So this guy wanted to get away with it ... and he’d noticed the neighbors outside.
She wondered if she could distract him and make a run for it.
He shot a quick glance toward the door, then stepped closer to her and rammed the cold steel of the pistol to her forehead.
Explosive pain gave way to blackness as she fell back onto the bed and curled up. Her head ... she rubbed the knot already forming there.
“That’s just a little taste of what I’ll do if you don’t listen. One bad move on your part and I’ll shoot and run. I’ll be out of this hick town before any of those neighbors realize the noise wasn’t fireworks.”
Her head was still throbbing when he grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. “Move it. I don’t want to be hanging around when the boyfriend comes.”
Coop floored it down Sea Breeze Road, frantic to find her. He had waited with the rescue team on the beach until he’d gotten confirmation from Dale that the missing boy had been located, fine and dandy and with his auntie on the waterslide at Rodanthe.
“We got another incident pending. Stay on Alert Fifteen,” he’d told the guys from the Coast Guard as he’d jumped into the cruiser. Alert Fifteen kept the helicopter crew on call, ready to go back up in the air with a few minutes’ notice.
Cooper had hit the Quickstop, then the station house, where he’d confirmed that his truck was missing.
Then he’d hightailed it over here, thinking she might still be packing.
He hit the brakes and the cruiser screeched to a stop in front of his driveway, where his truck sat gleaming in the sun. Good ... she was still here.
He dashed up the walkway and took the porch steps two at a time. Her little string contraption was knocked out of place, so she’d been moving in a hurry.
“Jane! Where are you?” he called.
In the bedroom, he paused at the dark brown stains on the rug in a wild sort of zigzag pattern. The can of soda sat on its side, not far from her half-packed duffel bag. Using a tissue, he picked up the can and jiggled it. Still fizzy. It hadn’t been here too long.
“Jane ... sugar?” he called, searching the rest of her apartment, then bolting upstairs to tear through his place.
She was gone ... but his truck was here ... and so was her stuff.
Something had gone wrong.
And from that wild pattern of the spilled soda, he had to assume there’d been some sort of confrontation.
Fear tore at his gut as he pictured it.
The hit man had gotten her, right here.
But they couldn’t be too far away yet.
He pressed the radio to call dispatch. “Brenda, notify the Coast Guard copters that we need to conduct another air search. They’re to wait for me on the beach. We’ve got another missing person. Jane Doyle, age twenty-eight, brown hair, Caucasian, a hundred and five pounds.”
Beautiful, inside and out.
How could he have been so stupid? He should have responded immediately when she’d reached out to him.
“She never did turn up?”
“Looks like she’s been kidnapped, Brenda. Can you post the APB?”
“Kidnapped? Oh my land! Will do, Sheriff.”
“And I’m going to need some assistance here to canvass the neighborhood.” He gave her the address, then sighed, realizing they were stretched thin with deputies at the far reaches of town, just ending the missing child operation. “See if you can gather up the paramedics for me—Skeeter and Roman were out there today. They’d be a big help.”
“They’re still on the air. I’ll send them right over, Sheriff.”
Her head was throbbing and tears streaked down her cheeks unchecked, but Jane swallowed back her fear and kept her eyes on the road, determined to outsmart the man who’d cracked her on the head.
The brute.
With her hands tied behind her back, Jane couldn’t really sit back in the seat of the minivan, but she did have a clear view out the tinted glass windows.
Hope had burned inside her at the sight of Coop blazing down Sea Breeze in the cruiser, just missing them. The brute had howled in glee over that, and she would have kicked him if she’d thought she could do it and not be punished tenfold.
She didn’t want to piss him off. Let him stay calm and think he was in control until she had a chance to turn the tables.
Yes, he’d tied her up, but he’d left her cell phone in the pocket of her shorts. With enough time, she thought she could get to it and call for help.
Till then, she had to bide her time and try to figure out where he was taking her.
“You know,” she said over the hot whir of the van’s engine, “if you take me to the police right now, they’ll reduce the charges.”
He shook his head and grunted. “That’ll never happen.”
They were heading south on Highway 12 and he was going under the speed limit. No chance of being pulled over.
“Can you turn on the air conditioner?” she asked, only to get him talking.
“Sorry, princess. This is the best we got.”
“You know I’m no princess. I work hard for the things I’ve got.”
“Well, that’s bonus points for you,” the brute said indifferently.
Her senses went on alert when he slowed the van, then made a right turn onto a familiar dirt road.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, though she knew where this road led.
“There’s a low spot here. Gets hit hard at low tide. The water comes in and washes all around it.”
Dragon’s Point, she thought.
“I know that place,” she said. “You’d better watch it or your car will get stuck out there overnight.”
“I got a chart of the tides,” he said. “I got it all figured out. You’ll be tied up when the tide comes in. In over your head, so to speak. And I won’t even have to waste a bullet on you.” He tapped his beefy fingers on the steering wheel. “The cops might even think it was an accident.”
Death by drowning.
She yanked her arms in an attempt to either stretch the bristly rope or work her wrists loose.
No such luck. Already her skin was sore and raw from the friction.
She tried not to think about the cell phone in the pocket of her shorts. He hadn’t noticed it before, and she might not be able to reach it, but it was still there. Her ace in the hole.
Her lifeline to Coop.
“A white minivan with New Jersey plates,” Cooper told Brenda over the radio. “Post a bulletin for a white minivan, male driver, thirties, about six-two and two hundred pounds, Caucasian, dark hair.”
Cooper had gotten the perp’s description from Becca at the Quickstop. Skeeter had learned that the man had also been seen poking around the van by Mr. Mitty. And the van’s Jersey plates had been noted by Mrs. Lang when she was watering her lilies.
People always saw more than they realized. For the first time, Cooper was grateful for his nosy neighbors.
“I’m getting on the Coast Guard helicopter now.” Coop spoke quickly, driven by a sense of urgency. “I’ll be switching over to their radio channel.”
“Copy, Sheriff,” Brenda said.
The blades began to whir, kicking up sand on the beach. He pulled on a helmet with a built-in radio system and stepped into the chopper, hoping his desperation to find her would not diminish his objectivity. It was never good to work a case you were involved in, but there was no way he was going to hand this over to another law enforcement agency.
He gave a thumbs-up to the pilot and the big bird began to rise.
“Just so you know, I’ve got my gun right here on my waistband, so don’t try anything cute,” he said as he pushed her toward the spit of land leading to Dragon’s Point.
Jane had been sorting through all sorts of things to try—none of them so cute. She had tried different strategies with the brute. She’d reasoned and cajoled and played the sympathy card. But when she looked in his eyes, there was no glimmer of compassion, no tiny light of humanity.
He was a contract killer and she was nothing more than a bounty to him.
“What if I wrote you a check for the amount of money you’re getting to kill me?” she said, only half teasing.
“Shut the hell up.”
She walked sullenly, the throbbing ache on her forehead a reminder of his penchant for violence. It wouldn’t pay to tangle with him directly.
They plodded through the sand on the narrow spit of land leading out to the rocky point. Slicks of water were already beginning to cut channels across the low-lying sandbars. Jane stepped over the puddles, wondering how well he knew Dragon’s Point. With his accent, he obviously wasn’t from around here.
“Why don’t you tie me up at the cove?” she suggested, knowing that the tide rarely came up over the rocks out on the point.
“Because the water might not get to you there,” he said. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The brute was smarter than she’d thought. He actually knew about the tides, and somehow he’d found out about Dragon’s Point.
“This is far enough,” he said. “Stop. Now.”
She paused at the edge of a tide pool. They were just out far enough to see the colorful sails of puffed kites moving parallel to the shoreline.
“Aren’t you worried about kite boarders seeing me?” she asked. “Or are you going to kill all of them, too?”
“Shut up. You’re going to be gagged and they’re not going to notice a woman sitting alone on the shore.”
He put a beefy hand on her shoulders and pushed down. “Go on, sit.”
She sank down onto one knee, then onto her bottom. Cold water seeped into her shorts immediately and she was cognizant of sitting on the left side to keep the cell phone as dry as possible.
Water splashed from his feet as he paced in front of her, considering. “Where’s the rope?” he said aloud, then cursed.
You left it in the car. The words burned on her tongue, but she kept silent.
“All right, stay there. I’ll be right back.”
Cold water cooled her legs and bottom as she stayed very still, watching him walk back toward the car. At one point, he turned and looked back to check on her, but she was frozen in place, still as a statue.
She gave no hint that her heart was racing and her mind was reeling with possibilities.
Run!
No, she couldn’t run to safety back on the land. She would never get past him.
But she could run out to the point and hide amid the boulders. That would buy her some time.
And her cell phone ... maybe she could use it to call for help.
She waited a full minute after he dropped from sight, then angled herself up off the sand and bolted for the rocks. Running was difficult with her hands bound behind her, but she focused on maintaining her balance as she plunged through tide pools and scaled the rise up to the jagged point.
The boulders slowed her progress, but she felt a glimmer of hope when she reached the more secluded area. She climbed to a spot where sand had collected between two massive boulders and dropped down to her knees.
Sweat beaded on her forehead as she groaned and stretched her hands around to her side pocket. She couldn’t reach inside, but she could feel the phone through the fabric of her shorts.
Every cell in her body strained as she massaged the phone to the edge of the pocket, pressing, pushing, scraping it to the opening of her pocket.
How long had it been?
The brute would be back any second.
“Come on,” she breathed, her finger sore from the pressure. One more push, one more inch ...
“Dispatch to Coast Guard One.”
Cooper jerked away from the helicopter’s window as Brenda’s voice came over the air. “Coast Guard One, copy.”
“Jane is at Dragon’s Point, Sheriff. She’s out on the point in the rocks. The male suspect is in the vicinity of the parking lot, but she says he’s coming back. Armed and dangerous.”
“Dragon’s Point!” Coop shouted to the crew, but the aircraft was already banking to the left. The pilot had been listening on the same radio band.
“Copy,” the pilot said.
“Brenda,” Coop said, trying to picture the scene, “he left her on the Point? He’s coming back?”
“He went back to the car for rope and a gag, she thinks. But he’s going to be mad when he comes back and finds that she’s moved her spot.”
“And you’ve dispatched law enforcement on the ground to the Point?”
“Got two units on their way,” Brenda said.
“Thanks, Bren. Copy.” Coop moved back to the window and thought through approaches. He could drop down to the water, but he couldn’t bring a gun if he did that. They could buzz the perp if they spotted him far enough away from Jane, but the man was armed. Would he fire at the helicopter? And what if he had Jane hostage?
“How do you want me to approach?” the pilot asked over the radio.
“From inland ... the parking area,” Coop responded. “Let’s see if we can ward the abductor off.” And keep Jane safe. Let the bastard slip away; this was all about saving Jane.
The wait was agonizing.
Adrenaline thrummed through her as she peeked out over the rocks at the glassy water of the sound, trying to think of a way to escape as two kite boarders floated past.
“Help!” she cried. “Help me!”
They were too far away to hear her.
A guttural curse floated on the wind and she glanced down toward the path.
The brute crashed through the tide pools, furious that she was gone. His head twitched right and left as he scanned the horizon and...
Had he seen her?
She ducked again, and the air was rent by gunfire. Stones pinged nearby as bullets hit rock.
He was shooting at her.
Her body shook as she hobbled down onto her side, trying to stay low. But she imagined him running toward her, ready to fire. How many yards separated them?
And she was a sitting target.
All these months on the run, trying to hide and keep moving, and it had come to this.
A low growl sounded in the distance. She tried to focus on that noise, imagined it as a soothing mantra of normal life. A tractor on the road? A small fishing boat?
It grew louder, chopping the air overhead. A helicopter. She squinted up against the sun and spotted it—a Coast Guard helicopter. Was it still searching for the missing kid?
She wanted to jump up and try to signal, but she couldn’t risk drawing fire from the brute.
Still ... the helicopter gave her hope.
She hobbled up to her knees and peered over the rocks.
The brute saw the aircraft, too ... and he realized that they could see him.
In one move, he holstered his gun and turned toward the parking lot ...
Retreating.
A sob of relief quivered from Jane’s chest as she pushed to her feet. They had saved her!
Tears of relief blurred her vision and she blinked them away, eager to see the aircraft circling overhead.
The copter hovered, descending over the cove. When it reached its lowest point, a rope ladder dropped out and a uniformed officer began to descend.
He was at least fifty yards away, but from his lithe movements and his strong, broad shoulders, she recognized him.
Coop.
Her heart swelled with love for this man, her protector, her soul mate. Tears streaked her face as she watched him drop into the water, wade into shore, and climb the rocks.
Coop had come to rescue her.
“Miss Jane?” His gaze combed over her, concerned, tentative. “Are you okay?”
“I am now.”
He touched her shoulders gently, then cradled her in his arms as she sagged against him.
“Don’t ever let go,” she whispered. “Don’t ever let me go.”