Cole barreled down the gravel road faster than he’d ever driven it in a car. The ATV was light and powerful, the rear end breaking traction and sliding as he powered around curves. The headlights threw a glowing arc in front of him, enough light to see where he was going but not nearly enough for the speed at which he was operating the vehicle.
In less than two minutes he was at the intersection where the trail network crossed the public road. Bright yellow bollards were sunk into the ground to prevent anyone from driving a vehicle onto the trail. Laws be damned, that was exactly what Cole was determined to do. He drove the machine into a ditch between the road and trail and powered up the bank, bypassing the roadblock. He hit the throttle and the machine slewed sideways before straightening and rocketing down the trail.
At this time of night, Cole was not likely to find anyone else on the trail. It was always possible but he hoped they’d be running with lights just as he was. He soon found he was unable to make as good a time on the trail as he had been on the gravel road. The trail was narrower and full of sharp turns. This particular trail had once been a horse trail but never a railroad bed like the trail Amanda had last been seen riding.
It took him around ten minutes to negotiate this section of trail before dropping onto the wider, flatter abandoned railway. That put him about twelve miles outside of town. Cole pulled out all stops and nailed the throttle on his machine, pushing it up to nearly fifty miles per hour. On this wide trail, his biggest concerns were the occasional railroad trestles that narrowed the trail. Hit one of those and your dead body would be launched into roaring whitewater.
The first trestle came with plenty of warning. It was in a straight stretch and Cole barely slowed down. The transition from trail to trestle was more abrupt than expected and popped his machine into the air. He’d spanned half the length of the trestle before all his wheels were back on the ground. Had the trestle been in a curve, he’d likely have hit the side and wiped out.
After that lesson, he slowed for the next trestles, but ran hard between them. At the first stone overpass he got his hopes up until he saw it was Overpass Three. He wasn’t familiar with the trail system and had thought he might have been closer to town. He had a couple of more miles to go before he would reach the spot where Ben had been attacked. Somewhere between here and there, he had to find his daughter.
A little over two miles beyond Overpass Three, he approached Overpass Two. He slowed. This was the only overpass remaining between him and Ben. If that son-of-a-bitch had laid a trap for Amanda, it would have been here. Cole came to a stop directly under the stone overpass. He could see nothing amiss. Nor could he see his daughter.
He walked past it, scanning the ground in the beam of his headlights. He pulled out his phone and tried to call his daughter, hoping this was all some kind of misunderstanding and she was safe. The call connected and it began ringing. As the ringing continued, he noticed it sounded different. He froze and lowered the phone from his ear.
The ringing was coming from the bushes.
Cole drew his handgun and touched the switch on the tactical light. The beam flooded the surrounding brush with light. In that light, Cole caught the glint of a reflection.
A bicycle reflector.
With his heart pounding and horror surging, Cole crept closer to the bike. He saw a backpack. His daughter’s pack. He saw the glow of a dirty phone screen on the ground. He saw his picture and the word “Dad” on the caller ID. He ended the call.
“Amanda?”
He was begging. He was pleading. It was a cry to God that she be there but she was not.
“AMANDA!” he screamed. “AMANDA!”
Suddenly, there was the sound of vehicles skidding to a stop and flashing emergency lights in several different colors. Cole holstered his gun. Men with lights and guns streamed down the embankment. Other men wielded handheld floodlights from the overpass, illuminating the scene.
Officers shouted commands at Cole until one of them, a man with whom Cole had shot guns many times at Larry’s house, recognized him. His name was Thomas. Trooper Thomas.
“It’s the girl’s father!” the officer shouted. “He’s not our suspect.”
The cops rushed Cole, unleashing a barrage of questions for which Cole had no answers.
“She’s not here,” he kept repeating. “The bastard took her.”
“We’re on this,” Thomas said. “The kid snapped a picture of the guy’s vehicle at the store that day. We’ve got a tag number and an address on his home. We’ve got units on the way there now.”
Cole was trying to calm down, trying to push back the shakes from the repeated adrenaline surges. They asked him a lot of questions about his daughter and whether he had any idea who the man who took her might be. Cole mentioned the strange call Fox had gotten that prompted him to call Amanda and warn her.
“Who’s Fox?” Thomas asked.
“My daughter’s stepfather,” Cole said.
They asked Cole for a full name and contact info for Fox, which he provided.
“The crime scene folks will be here most of the night looking for clues,” Trooper Thomas said. “You might as well go home. We’ll call you immediately if we find something.”
Cole dismissed that. Like he could go home and wait? That wasn’t happening. Then it hit him that he had his own set of problems.
“I may need units at my house.”
“Excuse me?” Thomas said. “Do you think you need protection from whoever this is?”
“Not hardly,” Cole said. “Just before I got the call about Amanda, I confronted two guys at my house. They were sneaking around looking in windows. I thought they were trying to rob me. One of them drew on me and I put him down.”
“You shot him?” Thomas asked.
Cole nodded. “Killed him.”
“Why didn’t you call it in?”
Cole shrugged and gestured around him. “I was getting ready to. Then the call came about this. My daughter’s boss called me.”
Thomas sighed. “Get in the damn car. We’re going to your house.”
“I need to look for my daughter,” Cole said.
“There’s nothing you can do. We got this.”
“What about my ATV? I can’t leave it here. Someone will steal it.”
“Then get on it and meet me at your house. Go straight there and do not get off that thing until I get there. Do not touch a thing. Do you still have the weapon on you?”
Cole nodded.
“Hand it over,” Thomas said. “It’s evidence.”
Cole sighed and did as he was told.
“Go straight home,” Thomas reminded him. “Right now. I’ll meet you there.”
Cole went to his ATV and cranked it up. For a moment he considered ignoring the cop’s warning and racing into town but how would that help? He didn’t know where to go or what to do. As much as he hated to admit he had no control in the matter, he had to let the cops handle this.
After a much slower drive back up the trail, Cole reached his house nearly at the same time as Trooper Thomas. There were two cars already pulled into his driveway behind the trooper. One was from the local sheriff’s department, the other was an unmarked cop car with local tags. Thomas was out of his car, still talking on his radio. Two deputies were scrambling up the drive, lights out and pistols drawn.
“That picture the boy took of the license tag led us to an address in Charlotte,” Thomas said, anticipating Cole’s question. “We issued an amber alert for your daughter and that vehicle. We don’t think there’s any way the suspect could have covered that many miles yet but I have a team closing in on the house. If he returns there, we’re going to pounce on him. They’re working on a warrant now. If we can get the warrant, we’ll get people on the inside.”
“What if that’s not where he’s headed?” Cole asked.
Thomas shrugged awkwardly, not wanting to give consideration to that option. “That’s even more reason to get people on the inside. We’ll see what we can dig up about this guy. But we don’t give up hope and we don’t quit looking.”
“I should be out there looking for her,” Cole said.
The trooper shook his head and held up a hand toward Cole. “If you shot someone then we have business here. Now calm down and walk me through what happened.”
Cole paced around, trying to calm down.
“Start at the beginning. Where were you?”
“On the porch,” Cole said. “I was having a beer.”
“You’ve been drinking?”
“One fucking beer,” Cole spat. “On my front porch. Didn’t expect I’d be killing anyone tonight.”
“Keep going.”
“I heard feet on gravel. At first I was pissed, thinking it was my daughter.”
“Why would that piss you off?” Thomas asked.
“She wanted to ride her bike home but I didn’t want her out there after dark. Ben, the kid she works with at the bike shop, was supposed to give her a ride home. But when I heard those steps, I thought she may have ridden home anyway.”
“Was she prone to doing things like that?” the trooper asked.
Cole shrugged. “No, but we’re still feeling each other out. Her mother died and she’s only been here with me a couple of weeks. We’re still sorting out our boundaries.”
The trooper nodded, but didn’t appear completely satisfied with the answer. “So what happened next?”
“I realized there was more than one person from the sound of the steps. I hadn’t seen a vehicle and I didn’t hear anyone rolling a bike so I figured it wasn’t her.”
“Got a body up here!” squawked a voice from Thomas’s radio.
“No shit,” Cole said. “I thought I already mentioned that part.”
The trooper gave Cole a hard look. “This will go faster if you aren’t a dick about it. The faster we get done here, the sooner we can all be out there looking for your daughter.”
Cole took a deep breath and forced it out slowly.
The trooper leaned toward the mike clipped to his collar. “Gunshot wound?”
“Looks like three,” the deputy replied. “There’s a handgun laying by the body too.”
The trooper didn’t take his eyes from Cole the entire time, gauging his reaction to the deputy’s information. “Roger that. Let’s get a line up around the scene and start looking for casings.”
The trooper released his mike and looked at Cole. “How many rounds did you fire?”
“Three rounds, three hits.”
“Where did you get your gun from?”
“It’s my concealed carry.”
“Do you always carry it?”
“It doesn’t provide much protection if it’s sitting on the dresser,” Cole said.
The trooper gave Cole a warning look. “Did he get off a shot at you?”
Cole thought. “I think so. It was kind of chaotic. He drew on me and the training kicked in. I double-tapped him but he didn’t drop and didn’t release the weapon. I felt he still presented a threat to me. I fired again and it caught him in the upper chest.”
“Training?”
“I take regular firearms training and I shoot frequently. You know that.”
“What about the second suspect?”
“I lost him in the confusion. He bolted as soon as the other guy drew a weapon. I heard him running away but I didn’t see a weapon on that guy.”
“When exactly did the dead guy draw on you?”
“I was on the porch. I stayed behind the edge of the house and watched them. They were feeling the hoods on the vehicles and looking in windows. When I saw that, I hit them with the strobe on my tac light. The guy drew immediately and I had no choice. I was afraid for my life.”
Cole was saying all the right things. They may question him extensively but Cole had no concerns that he’d end up in jail over this. Not in this part of the state. Not when the events surrounding the shooting were so clear cut and the intruder was armed.
“Trooper Thomas?”
It was the radio again.
“Go ahead,” the trooper replied into his mike.
“I think we might need to give the FBI a heads up on this.”
“FBI?” the trooper asked. “On what grounds?”
“Investigator Johnson was checking for identification. He found a document holder around this guy’s waist. There was cash, two driver’s licenses, and two passports. Same picture, different names. There’s also a backup gun.”
“What are the names?” the trooper asked, wondering if it might have been someone he crossed paths with before. “Anyone familiar?”
“Nothing I can pronounce. Looks like he’s from Syria.”
Cole came alert. “Syrian? I thought he looked Hispanic or something.”
“Are you sure?” the trooper asked into his radio.
“I ain’t sure of a damn thing,” the deputy said. “But the investigator says this might be an FBI matter so I’m going to call it in.”
“10-4,” the trooper confirmed, releasing the mike button. “What the hell would a Syrian be doing at your house, Cole?”
“Fuck if I know,” Cole said. “Can you check with the Charlotte cops and see if there’s any developments? This is killing me.”
“You can sit in the passenger side of my cruiser if you need to sit down,” Trooper Thomas offered.
“I appreciate that but sitting is the last thing I want to do right now. I’m a nervous wreck.”
“We’re doing everything we can, Cole. We know who has her and we’re going to bring her home.”
Cole started losing it. He was crashing. He half-sat, half-collapsed onto the seat of his ATV. “You don’t understand. She’s been living with her mother. I lost her for five years and I just got her back. I can’t lose her again. I just can’t.”
Despite Cole’s murderous rage at the man who abducted his daughter, despite his desire to search the ends of the Earth for her, despite everything, a sense of utter hopelessness and futility settled over him. There was nothing he could do. Just when they were on the verge of learning to trust each other again, she was yanked away from him. Only this time, he didn’t know where she was and had no idea how to bring her home to him.