J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! Thank you especially to everyone who left reviews on the previous chapter: MargaretA66, Candylou, ErinJordan, angelicalkiss, max2013, and caseykam! I'm glad I was able to get this chapter out a little faster this time, but it's going to be intense for basically the rest of the book after this. I hope you enjoy the ride! God bless!
Chapter XVII
Sam picked himself up with a groan as he watched the suspects' car speed away. His arm felt like it was on fire, but it was more the fact that Joe was a prisoner in that car that had elicited the groan. He could hear the police sirens approaching, but he knew that by the time they arrived, the suspects would be too far away to track down. So he did the first thing that occurred to him, not caring that it probably wasn't the wisest option: he jumped in his car and took off in pursuit.
He was afraid that the damage to his car was going to hamper its operation, but after a few anxious moments, he was satisfied that there wasn't anything preventing the car from working. He pressed down on the gas pedal, trying to keep the car ahead in sight. The driver must have seen that he was pursuing them, because the car sped up. Baitesville was a small town and it wouldn't take them long to get out onto the open highway. That meant the car ahead could speed more, but it also meant there would be fewer opportunities for it to lose its tail.
Sam fumbled for his phone, which he had put in the middle console. It was too dark to see anything inside the car, and even if he could, Sam didn't dare take his eyes off the road. It was a painful minute or so as he steered with his injured arm and dug through the console with his good one. He pulled the phone out and used voice commands to tell it to call 911 so he could put both hands back on the wheel.
A moment later, a female voice answer, "911. What's your emergency?"
"There's been a kidnapping and attempted murder," Sam replied. He hoped it was still only an attempted murder. "I'm in pursuit of the suspects' vehicle, northbound on…" He paused to watch for a street sign as he went through an intersection. "…Bryden Avenue. I just crossed Fourteenth Street. The suspects are traveling in excess of fifty miles an hour. There's no traffic, so I'm going to continue following them as long as I can. The vehicle is a black Subaru Outback." He quickly added the license number.
"Please stay on the line," the dispatcher told him. "I'll have a police unit head for your location immediately and then I need more information." There was about a forty-five second pause before the dispatcher came back on the line. "What is your position now?"
"Still on Bryden, just crossing Ninth."
"A unit will try to intercept the suspects before they get out of town," the dispatcher assured Sam. "How many suspects are there?"
"I saw two. There could be more if they didn't get out of the car."
"You said this was a kidnapping. Do they have a kidnap victim with them?"
"Yes. A male, twenty-one years old, blond, blue eyes, about six feet tall."
"Okay. Are they armed?"
"Yes. They both have handguns. I'm not sure about the caliber or if they have any other additional weapons."
"What's your name, sir?"
"Sam Radley. I'm a private detective from Bayport."
"All right, Mr. Radley. Please stat on the line and keep me updated about your position. Unless there's something else that's urgent for my officers to know before they stop this person, it can wait until you're able to stop moving."
"Right. I still have them in sight. I just crossed Seventh."
Sam guessed that the lower the street numbers got, the closer to the edge of town they were getting. The kidnappers must be making a beeline for the edge of town. Sam could hear sirens, but they all sounded like they were behind him. At that rate, they would never be able to intercept the kidnap vehicle before it got out of town.
He was crossing Fourth Street now. There wasn't much more time. Sam glanced down at his arm. The way it felt, he was glad he couldn't see it. He was starting to feel light-headed. He shook his head, telling himself he just needed to hang on long enough for the police to take over.
Third Street. There were no more traffic lights ahead. There weren't many lights of any kind ahead. In the pale light of the approaching dawn, Sam thought it looked like open road ahead.
Suddenly, the sound of icy snow being propelled against the sides of the car startled him. He realized he had drifted over too far to the side and his outer tires had gotten into the snow on the edge of the street. He couldn't keep going much longer. The light-headedness was getting worse.
The mishap had made him slow down for a moment and had gotten his attention away from his quarry. When he looked up, the other car was gone. Sam smacked the steering wheel in frustration and let out an accompanying exclamation.
"What's wrong?" the dispatcher asked over the phone.
"I've lost sight of them." Sam quickly explained what had happened.
"I need you to pull over to the side of the road immediately, Mr. Radley," the dispatcher told him. "I'll send a police unit and an ambulance there."
Sam didn't try to argue. He pulled over and turned off the ignition. Then he leaned forward and let his head rest against the steering wheel. A second or two later, he heard a couple of police cars, their sirens blaring, speed past him. They were still in pursuit of the other car. Sam prayed that they'd have better luck than he had.
HBHBHBHBHB
"It doesn't make sense to me," Officer Burns was saying as he drove the patrol car with Frank in the passenger seat shortly before dawn. "How could this Alyssa Roche person get out of some high security jail over in…Where was she in jail, anyway?"
"I don't even know for sure," Frank admitted. "It was all very classified. I'm guessing she was either still in Ziyou or she was extradited to the United Kingdom or another European country that might have better security than Ziyou, considering that country's been a political mess for awhile now. They weren't going to tell anyone who didn't have to know where she was going to be so that Black Rose would have a harder time getting to her."
"Wherever she was, how could she get back into the U.S.?" Burns continued. "I mean, maybe Black Rose could have pulled something off if they found her, but I thought she was working against them. If they got to her, I would think they would have killed her instead of helping her get home. But against all odds, here she is in Bayport, following Lisa Prito around for no clear reason, which means that maybe Black Rose hasn't been interested in Lisa this whole time, after all."
Frank rubbed his chin. "You're right. It doesn't make much sense. The only thing I can think of is that maybe Alyssa's trying to get information from Lisa, something that will help her take down Black Rose. Or maybe…This is just a wild guess, but what if Black Rose did get Alyssa out of jail. They tried to kill her, but she escaped. That might be making Black Rose feel vulnerable, so what if they're doing a purge of potential witnesses against them? That's why they killed Darcy. They could be trying to kill Lisa, and Alyssa could be trying to warn her."
"Creeping around and following her instead of just talking to her is a strange way to do that," Burns said. "Besides, didn't this Alyssa try to kill you and your dad and your brother, all as part of her cover that she was still with Black Rose? She might technically be on the right side, but she doesn't care much about anyone else who's on the same side. It doesn't make sense for her to bother warning Lisa."
"That's true," Frank conceded. "Then maybe Alyssa's watching Lisa, waiting for Black Rose to make a move against her. Alyssa might have some retaliation of her own planned when they do."
Burns shook his head slightly. "Maybe. It's possible. Almost anything is possible. We don't know much about what's going on at all. Not to make a massive understatement, but I'll be glad when this all over."
"You're not the only one," Frank replied. "And then we've got to figure out where this thing with Phil fits in, too."
"Maybe it's exactly what it looks like," Burns suggested. "Maybe someone just really doesn't want Phil looking into Darcy's murder. It's not like he doesn't have any idea what he's doing. He's tagged along on enough of your cases, he could probably learn enough to make someone nervous."
"Yeah, but in this case, that 'someone' has a high probability of being Black Rose," Frank replied dourly. "At least they didn't kill him. I'm glad for that, but they must have figured they had something to gain by it."
A minute or two later, Frank's phone rang. For a second, he was afraid it was Callie or Joe or one of his parents or even Phil with some new horrible turn of events. Instead it was Chief Collig. Frank relaxed a little. It was probably just something to do with work that Collig didn't want to broadcast over the radio.
"Frank, we just got a call from the Baitesville police." Collig's serious tone told Frank that he had been premature in calming his fears that something terrible had happened. "I want you and Burns to come back to the station immediately."
HBHBHBHBHB
"My shoulder!" The man sitting next to Joe in the back seat of the SUV had one hand clapped over his right shoulder while the other hand held a gun that was pointed toward Joe. Joe could see the gleam on it every time they passed under a streetlight. The man himself was in shadow, propped up against one end of the seat while he had Joe sit as far as possible to the other side. No doubt, that was so he could keep on moaning and groaning about his injured shoulder while minimizing any risk of Joe attempting to wrestle the gun from him. The constant moaning did give Joe enough of a sample of his voice to identify him: Angelo Beretta.
"You didn't care how much pain Tony was in," Joe told him with so much venom in his tone that he almost didn't recognize his own voice.
"Shut up!" Angelo shouted. "Or I'll shoot you right now!"
"Would you calm down?" the woman in the driver's seat shouted at him. "We might need him for a hostage. Radley's still alive and it looks like he's trying to chase us. We might need the Hardy kid as a hostage if Radley or the police catch up to us."
"If Radley catches up to us, he's going to regret it!" Angelo declared. "He shouldn't have shot me. Nobody was supposed to shoot me!"
"Would you shut up yourself?" the woman said in an annoyed tone. "It just grazed your shoulder. It's a scratch. You'll live."
"It wasn't supposed to happen!" Angelo shouted, turning his attention away from Joe for a mere second.
Joe recovered himself slightly in that second. "It seems to me like you're even with Sam, considering you shot him in the arm. In fact, all things considered, you've still done a lot worse to us than Sam…"
He never got the chance to finish the sentence. Angelo slammed his gun into his face. Instantly, Joe's eyes watered and he had to close them. He'd heard a disheartening crack and he felt blood coming from his nose.
"I don't want to hear another word out of you, Hardy!" Angelo snarled. "Not one! If you so much as groan, I swear I'm going to shoot you."
It didn't occur to Joe to disbelieve him. He sucked in his breath and ground his teeth together to try to keep from making any noise. For all the times he'd had to use his fists to defend himself, he had never gotten a blow that hurt as much as his nose did now. He held his hands over his nose and he could feel the warm, sticky blood on them.
"Take it easy," the woman advised her partner. "We keep him if we need him for a hostage, but as soon as we're done with him, you can put a bullet in his head and you won't have to worry about him being a smart mouth."
"I don't see why we can't just do that now," Angelo grumbled. It turned into another groan. "My shoulder."
"Enough about your shoulder," the woman said. "That's the least of your problems now. Once the FO hears that you bungled another hit…"
"I bungled it?" Angelo protested. "This was as much your fault as mine!"
"Oh, all right. This is on both of us. The point is, we were supposed to kill both of them."
"So we'll kill this one at least, and then when I get my hands on Radley…"
The woman let out such a fierce growl of annoyance that she almost sounded like a wild animal of some kind. A wave of horror passed over Joe. He felt cold, cold right through to his very heart. His hands were bloody. For an instant, he felt as if he was back, half a world away, in an old, abandoned monastery…
"Oh, God…" he murmured, shrinking down into the seat.
"I told you, I didn't want to hear another word out of you!" Angelo shouted. Then he scoffed. "Besides, God's not going to help you now."
"Angelo, I swear, if you don't start coming up with some answers soon, he's not the only one getting shot," the woman declared.
"Why do I have to come up with all the answers? I thought you were the brains, Alyssa."
Alyssa. Of course, Joe realized. That was the voice he'd almost recognized. At least, almost. Before, she had been putting on her act of being a friend. Now her voice was as hard as steel and dripping with hate. If there had ever been a voice that could be characterized as complete evil…Well, apart from the voice Joe had heard in Ziyou. He kept his hands over his eyes. He almost expected he would see that very monster sitting on the seat next to him if he dared to open his eyes. He wanted to pray, but he couldn't think of any words. He didn't make a noise, but if he was to vocalize his thoughts, it would have been nothing more than a long, desperate scream.
Don't be afraid.
Joe knew he hadn't really heard the voice. After all, it wasn't something Angelo or Alyssa would have said, and it wasn't either of their voices. Joe knew the voice at once and it startled him into forgetting his fears. He opened his eyes and looked around the car. It was just him and Angelo and Alyssa, the two of them still screaming at each other. Joe must have imagined the voice, some residual "logical" part of his brain whispered, but he didn't really believe that. He knew what he had heard.
"Tony?" he whispered.
"How many times do I have to tell you to shut up?" Angelo raged at him.
"We lost Radley now," Alyssa announced. "You really can shoot him next time he says a word."
"I ought to shoot him right now." Angelo pulled the hammer back on his gun.
Again, Joe wished he could pray, but he couldn't. All he could do was silently, wordlessly beg for help. The only words that he could manage to form in his head were: Tony, I can't pray. Please do it for me.
He expected any moment to hear the report of a gun and he wondered whether he'd feel anything. Even if he was killed instantly, would he feel something? There would still be a split second between the bullet hitting him and his death. Would it feel like a split second to him, or would it be an eternity?
But the shot never came. Angelo lowered the gun slightly. "Maybe we'd better find out what they want. As long as he's alive, we can always kill him later. Since we didn't get Radley, maybe they're going to want him alive for something."
"I guess it couldn't hurt," Alyssa admitted. "Unless he causes a shred of trouble. Then I'm all for finishing him here and now."
"Agreed," Angelo said.
Joe let out a shaky breath as he realized that he'd gotten a reprieve for a little while at least. He let his head fall back against the headrest and he turned to look out the window. In the western sky, he could see the faint light of dawn just coming into the sky.
