two

“I’ll kill you if you touch her,” Maddy screamed into the phone instead. She envisioned what they might do to her daughter and giant tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t have much money, but whatever I have, it’s yours,” she pleaded.

“We don’t want your money.”

“Then what? I don’t have anything of value.”

“First of all, let me make myself perfectly clear. If you tell anyone about this or call in your cop friends, your daughter will never see the light—”

“I won’t,” Maddy interrupted. “Just don’t hurt her.” Her voice cracked.

“Her chances of seeing the sun rise tomorrow depend entirely on how you cooperate with us. All you have to do is unlock the front door and put this cell phone along with your own phone and your gun and the keys to the cells in the back room on the desk. Then go into the ladies’ bathroom. Lock the door and wait fifteen minutes. If you do that, your daughter will never know we were here. If not …”

Maddy’s mind raced. Were these Bernardi’s friends coming to get him out? The last few times Gino had been arrested for drunk and disorderly, his lawyer had posted bail before the ink had a chance to dry on the sign-in sheet. Or maybe it wasn’t Gino they wanted to spring. Maybe it was the other guy. He wasn’t a local. Was it possible they were looking for something in the police station? If so, what? And how did they know Jessie was at her grandmother’s?

“What’s it gonna be, Madelyn?”

The distorted voice jarred her back to the critical decision she had to make. She was way out of her league here. Shit! She’d only been an actual cop for three months.

In a flash, Maddy made the decision. She opened the bottom drawer and pulled out her purse. She had to call her brother-in-law. Colt had been the head of Vineyard’s police department for many years and would know what to do. “How can I be sure you won’t hurt her?” she asked, hoping to stall while she frantically searched for her cell phone.

“You don’t,” the voice replied. “It’s a gamble you have to take, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to call anyone on that cell phone you’re digging for.”

Maddy dropped the purse with a thud, her eyes scanning the room, coming to rest on the security camera in the corner. Flanagan said it had gone on the fritz earlier that day, and the company was sending someone up from Dallas in the morning to fix it. The red light was off. So how did he know what she was doing?

“That’s right, Madelyn. I can see everything, so it wouldn’t be real smart to fuck with me.” He paused before adding, “Unless, of course you prefer living alone.”

She covered her mouth to stifle the sob welling up in her throat. This was not a spur-of-the-moment breakout. This guy had planned every detail. Gino must have friends in high places.

“Tessa?” Maddy did a three-sixty, but her sister was gone. She was all alone and talking to a potential kidnapper. Or worse.

“I’m waiting, Madelyn.”

Maddy blew out a breath. This was a no-brainer. Her daughter was a helluva lot more important than making sure some slick gangster wannabe stayed locked up for the weekend. When his lawyer returned on Monday, he’d be sprung faster than an overwound clock anyway.

“When do you want me to do this?”

“Now would be good. My guy at Gramma’s house is just about due for a fix, and he always gets major jitters when that happens. Wouldn’t want his trigger finger shaking. Know what I mean?”

She pulled the cell phone out of her purse and slammed it on the desk along with the other one she’d been using. Reaching across her body, she unholstered her Glock and placed it next to the phones. After a final glance around the room failed to turn up the location of another camera anywhere, she unlocked the main door and sprinted to the bathroom.

Once the door closed, she searched for something she could use as a weapon just in case the caller had more on his mind than freeing Bernardi. She spotted a mop in the corner, cursing under her breath at her vulnerability without a gun. But she’d had no choice.

She grabbed the mop and crouched in the corner behind the door. If someone did come in, at least she would have the element of surprise.

Unless there’s a camera in here, too.

She did a quick scan but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The smell of Clorox mixed with mildew caused her nose to crinkle, and she pushed the mop away from her body.

Good Lord! Don’t they ever clean these things?

Minutes passed with no sound, and Maddy was beginning to believe one of the guys would pop in, laughing his butt off. Rookie cops always got harassed, and she was due. She wondered who it would be? Flanagan? Rogers? Most likely candidate was Danny Landers. He was the practical jokester of the station. Probably called the minute he finished the sweet potato pie at his folk’s house.

Let’s just see who surprises who, Danny, boy, she thought. It wouldn’t be so funny when the mop connected with his crotch, and she sure as hell was going to make sure it did. It would serve him right.

She stiffened her back against the cold tiled wall when she heard a faint sound on the other side of the door. Leaning closer, she listened to the muffled voices.

Probably Danny and the other guys getting ready to march in and scare the crap out of me. She tightened her grip on the mop.

Please God, let it be Landers. A twisting in her gut told her it wasn’t.

Then a loud shot rang out, followed quickly by two more. Maddy jumped up from her corner, nearly tripping over the mop. She pushed at the door, giving no thought to what danger lurked on the other side.

It didn’t budge.

She lowered her shoulder and jammed it into the door again.

This time she was able to open it enough to squeeze through past her desk that had been shoved against the door.

Raising the mop in an offensive position, she made her way to where the desk had been, aware her every move was probably being watched. She spied the keys to the cells lying in the middle of the floor next to her cell phone, but there was no sign of the other phone or her gun.

An icy chill sliced through her body. She needed a weapon, and she needed it now. She raced to Colt’s office where she knew he kept a forty-five locked in the bottom drawer. Trembling, she felt under the desk for the key taped behind the leg, and when her fingers touched it, she ripped it from its hiding place and quickly opened the drawer.

With the gun finally in her hand, she made her way to the back room, taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. A quick glance at the camera focused on the cell area revealed nothing unusual, yet, a sudden sense of overwhelming doom washed over her.

The minute she opened the door, she tried to convince herself the shots were only fired to scare her. Halfway to Bernardi’s cell, she knew they weren’t.

Charging through the already opened steel door, she felt the nausea bubbling in her throat when she saw a man’s body sprawled on the concrete floor, a crimson river flowing beside him. She bent down and rolled him over, unable to stop her scream as she stared into the eyes of a very dead Gino Bernardi. She felt for his carotid, hoping to find a pulse, knowing she wouldn’t.

Jumping up, she moved to the next cell only to see the other prisoner in a sitting position against the wall, his county-issue orange jumpsuit sporting a growing red ring. Two fingers on his neck revealed a pulse, weak and racing but still there.

Running from the cell, she reached for the phone on Landers’s desk. After telling the 911 operator to send an ambulance ASAP, she called her mother-in-law, her fingers now shaking so badly she could barely dial the number.

After several rings, a sleepy voice answered.

“Sandra, where’s Jessie?” Somehow she managed to sound semi-calm despite the ball of fear churning in her gut.

“Asleep in her bed,” Robbie’s mother said after hesitating a few minutes. “Maddy, what’s the matter?”

“Go check on her!” Tears fell unchecked down Maddy’s cheeks. “Now!” She tried to slow her respirations with deep slow breaths, but the silence on the other end was maddening.

“She’s sound asleep. Maddy, what’s going on?” Sandra repeated, her voice escalating an octave.

“Wake her up,” Maddy commanded. By the time her mother-in-law came back on the phone, she’d already made several bargains with God.

“Here she is.”

“Hi, Mom.” Jessie’s sleepy voice was like music to Maddy’s ears. “Nana said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Oh, God, Jess. Are you alright?” Maddy heard the child’s sharp intake of breath as she yawned.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Maddy stifled the cry that threatened to escape her lips. No use terrifying her child. “Tell your grandmother to take you to her bedroom and lock the door. I’m calling Tom Rogers now and having him swing by the house to take a look. Don’t come out of the bedroom until he says it’s okay.”

“Maddy?” Sandra apparently grabbed the phone from her granddaughter. “What the hell is going on?”

Maddy repeated the command, adding, “It’s probably nothing. I’ll tell you about it when I talk to you after Rogers checks out the house. Keep the door locked. Do you still hide a key under the flower pot on the patio?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll let Rogers know. Stay in the room until you hear from me.”

Maddy found Tom Rogers at the diner and related part of the story, telling him only what was absolutely necessary. She hung up just as the paramedics charged into the station with a stretcher. Her mind racing, she watched them assess the wounded man and start an IV. When he was on his way to County Hospital, she remembered she hadn’t called Colt and dialed his number, again using the phone on Landers’s desk.

“Maddy, what’s wrong?” The concern in Colt’s voice was apparent. A call from the police station in the middle of the night couldn’t be good.

“Colt?” She heard her sister’s sleepy voice in the background.

“Bernardi’s dead.”

“I’m on my way.”

The phone rang as soon as she’d disconnected from Colt, sending a shiver of fear up her spine that only intensified when Tom Rogers’s name popped up on caller ID.

She took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before answering. “Please tell me everything’s okay,” she begged.

“Other than your daughter and your mother-in-law being scared shitless, everything’s fine. I’ve checked all the nooks and crannies in this place and found nothing. No trace of anyone ever being here.”

“Thank God,” she whispered before lifting her eyes upward and promising to go to church more often.

“Do you want me to come back to the station now?”

“No,” she shouted into the receiver. “Stay there until you hear from Colt. He’s on his way in now.”

She hung up and sat down in Danny Landers’s chair. Within minutes she heard the siren from Colt’s police car and breathed a sigh of relief. Her brother-in-law would know how to make sense of all this.

She walked back to the cell block and took one more look at Bernardi, noticing that the trail of blood had snaked its way to the wall and puddled. The metallic smell reached her nostrils just as a shiny black object on the edge of his bed caught her eye. Slowly, she walked into the cell, being careful not to step in the blood around the dead man’s head.

The nausea resurfaced. Jerking her head around, she puked into the stainless steel sink. The shiny object was a gun. Her Glock.