Chapter Forty-One

Saturday seven p.m.

  

Since getting in the house was a bust, the man decided to target the files in storage. Luckily, there was another unit just down from Carraway’s that was available. And the place was old school, requiring the renters to supply their own padlocks instead of a more modern, keypad activated system. One set of bolt cutters would take care of the lock on Carraway’s unit. The man knew he’d be on film, but if he covered his face, they wouldn’t know who he was.

The tricky part was the vehicle. The place allowed the renters to pull their cars up to their units to unload or load. He’d need to do this to carry out the plan. But he needed a vehicle that couldn’t be linked to him. Hence, he needed to steal another. The last time, he’d gotten lucky. Instead of leaving their pet dog at home like they should have, the morons left the car running with the air blowing so their beloved pooch wouldn’t suffer from the heat. Prime pickin’s, as his grandmother used to say. Pop the lock, dump the dog, which was a small reward in and of itself, and he was gone.

This time he trolled the local big box store lot for a vehicle suitable for the task. His requirements were simple: old enough not to have an alarm but nice enough not to be noticeable. Something around twenty years old was perfect, and given that there were a lot of people still suffering from the crash of 2008, there were a lot of older cars on the road. Who could afford a new one when the income wasn’t there?

And then he found what he was looking for. A Ford Ranger from the early nineties. It was perfect. Faded paint but still decent. He parked on the opposite side of the lot, strolled down the sidewalk in front of all the small businesses also renting space in the shopping plaza, walked into the big store on one side and out the other. The Ranger was still there but he felt he had to work fast. The lock popped quick and he opened the door. It was clean and smelled like air fresheners. He guessed it was a little old lady’s ride.

The automatic transmission confirmed his guess. Most of these small trucks back then had manuals, from what he remembered. He hot-wired it and the engine kicked over. He slid to the passenger’s side, propped a foot on the wheel, and used all his strength to break the steering interlock. When it popped, he slid back, put it in reverse, and backed out of the spot.

  

Saturday, seven p.m.

  

Harmony couldn’t see Maureen, but hoped she was close by. The room she’d been locked in had its own bathroom, but there was only one door and it was locked on the outside with a round plate covering where the knob would be inside the room.

There were also cameras in opposite corners of the room. She’d once tried to cover them but “he” came in soon after, slapped her across the face so hard she saw stars, and uncovered them. After that, she wanted nothing more than to put him out of his misery. It only occurred to her in a vague notion that he hadn’t violated her physically and she was grateful of that. But the threat was there all the time. He could do whatever he wanted to. He was stronger and he had her locked up. She relied on him for food and water. There was a faucet and commode in the bathroom, but he could cut the water to the place at any time.

The room had no windows. It had no furniture. Nothing but a sleeping bag and pillow on the floor. The bathroom had cheap soap and shampoo, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a washcloth, and towel. He’d taken her purse away and made her change into sweats and a t-shirt. Every day, he’d give her a fresh set. No shoes. No underwear. No makeup.

He had total control of her. He’d already violated her sense of security. If he ever decided to take the rest of her, there wasn’t much she could do to stop him. She’d already made the decision that if he tried, she’d fight as if she were fighting for her life, which she would be. He would have to knock her unconscious or kill her. That would be the only way.

What bothered her the most was not knowing how to get in contact with Maureen. If Harmony managed to get out of the room, she’d know to look for the other woman. Her fear was that Maureen wouldn’t know to do the same. She knew she had to get free first and get to Maureen.

  

The man pressed the remote control and watched as the garage door opened automatically. When the opening was big enough, he drove through, parked, and pressed the button to close the door. He didn’t want any nosey neighbors to see what he was doing. In the bed of the truck, he loaded the boxes he’d prepped for this. It looked like he was just dropping off some things in his storage unit.

He thought about checking on the women, but decided he didn’t have time. He needed to take care of the files and he needed to do that now.

  

Harmony heard the garage door open and steeled herself. The man didn’t come to her room every time, but when he did it wasn’t good. Instead, she focused her energy on a plan of escape. The room had no windows and no other doors. The one to the bathroom had been removed. All the vanity doors and drawers had also been removed. Even the mechanism that flushed the toilet had been removed. The man had shown her the way he wanted her to flush it—by filling a small, plastic trash can with water and pouring it down the commode. It would send the waste down the pipes.

The room had a light fixture that was mounted close to the ceiling and she had no way to reach it. The light switch cover was glued to the wall. In fact, all the electrical outlets had been blocked off and plastic plates had been glued over them. The carpet was really a rug that she could roll up, exposing bare concrete flooring. It was as if he’d spec’d the house to be able to jail people.

The only thing in the room that might have some use was the wood trim along the bottom edge of the wall. She’d worked on every corner and found one with a slight gap. It was all she had to work with, and since she had plenty of time, it was what she did. To avoid the watchful eyes of the cameras, she would shut the light off. The man had thought of a lot, but he hadn’t thought of everything or he would have chained her to the wall.