Chapter Four
Stan watched Joyce for two weeks to find her patterns, so he’d know the best place to make a grab and go. He’d lined the van to sound proof it and darkened the windows. Had toys and a special juice he’d mixed himself, for the kid. All kids liked juice and this one mixed with that cherry children’s cough syrup would make the kid sleep. He didn’t want to have to listen to, or deal with the kid.
Surprised to see her leaving work early today, he chose to follow her. She’d changed the pattern. But that could be good if no one was expecting her so early. He parked down the street and watched her go into her apartment and then watched the sitter come out, get in her car and drive away.
The timing was right. He felt it in every cell of his body as he moved the van to the graveled area behind the apartment building and parked. Exiting he made his way to her door.
Didn’t take much to break in, as flimsy as the locks were and no deadbolt on. For someone who’d run away to California and changed her name to hide, she wasn’t very safety conscious in her own apartment.
He moved into the apartment quiet and slow, listening.
She was in her bedroom humming a song for the kid who was singing nonsense words to her tune.
Had it been his kid, he would’ve told her to cut that shit out. Boys didn’t need to learn that stuff. He’d raise his boys the way his daddy raised him, so they’d grow up tough and hard and not be mama’s boys. He had a feeling this kid was going to be a screamer. Kids screaming in restaurants and our in public drove him nuts. No way was he going to listen to that in the van.
He stepped into the room and moved quiet behind her. She was putting the squirming kid into pajamas while the kid clearly didn’t want to be still that long. She was too busy and focused on her kid to notice Stan until he was right behind her. Then his hands were on her, one over her mouth and the other around her neck.
He knew how to make her pass out, and once out, she’d be like a rag doll, easy to tie and carry. Within minutes he had her trussed up and slung over his shoulder. The boy started crying and reaching up for his mama. Stan ignored him. All kids cried and the neighbors would’ve heard it before.
In the living room, he laid her down on the couch and then went back for the boy. He pulled the water bottle out of his pocket and opened it; ready to pour the juice into one of those kiddie sip cups he’d seen on the table by the bed. Taking the lid off he saw it was empty. He poured the juice in.
The kid had quieted, watching him. He then toddled over and reached for the cup. “Juice,” he said.
So the kid could talk a little bit. “Yeah. Juice.” He handed the kid the cup and the boy started to take a drink. Then he remembered his mother. “Mama,” he said, and he toddled into the other room to look for her. “Mama.”
Stan followed the kid into the living room carrying the cup. “Mama is sleeping. Taking a nap.” He held out the cup. “Here is your juice.”
The boy took the cup and then carrying it, went over to his mother and laid his head down on her arm, still holding the cup which now tipped, leaking juice out on the floor. “Mamma nite nite,” he said, his head still next to his mama as he patted her with his other hand.
“She’s tired,” Stan said. “Drink your juice.”
The boy picked his head up, looked at Stan for a minute, and then took another drink.
How long is it going to take the kid to drink that juice? Too long already.
His patience was already shot.
****
Pippa didn’t hear him until his hands were on her mouth and her neck, cutting off her air and making everything go black. The last thing she remembered was her son’s face looking up at her as her ex husband’s voice said in her ear, “I’ve waited three years for this. But you couldn’t wait on your husband. I’m back and the waiting is over.” Then she went out like a light.
She woke, looking for her son and not seeing anything but the darkness in the van. Stan was driving and she hoped he wasn’t drunk. If Ben was in the van with her, she hoped he wasn’t drunk. She hoped he hadn’t hurt her baby.
“You’re probably wondering where that little boy is right now,” Stan said. “I’m taking good care of him. And I’ll continue to take good care of him if you don’t give me any trouble.”
He’d gagged her and she couldn’t speak so she had no way to answer him.
Turning up the radio, he started singing to ‘Patience’ by Guns and Roses. She didn’t know if that was supposed to be for her benefit or his.
She glared at him because she could not speak and thought let the mind games begin. Only this time you will not win because I’m stronger than I used to be. And I have a son to be strong for.
****
Diesel stood outside Pippa’s apartment ringing the bell, but no one answered the door. Then he knocked loud three times. She wasn’t home.
Unsure of how to approach her, he’d decided on the direct approach. Too much time had gone past between their meeting, if this was truly the woman he dreamed about so many nights away in other countries, doing his job. If she was his fairy princess and this was his baby, dancing around it would just waste more time. If the boy was his son, he didn’t want to waste another minute. But now she wasn’t here to approach. He’d have to adapt and adjust his plan. He went back down the stairs, got in his truck and headed for the grocery where she worked.
Intel they’d gathered said, she worked six days a week at the grocery store checking groceries and then took a night class from seven to eight thirty on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights. It being Wednesday and nearly seven, she should’ve been home from the grocery by now to leave her son with the sitter.
Her pattern was broken.
He scowled at the clock and wondered what had caused her to change her pattern. Starting the truck, he backed out of the parking lot and headed for the grocery. He’d have to see if she was still at work, and if she wasn’t he’d have to ask if she’d been at work today and when she’d left. She wouldn’t have gone to class with her son. The course she was taking was court transcription and there’d be no way she could do that with a child in her arms.
Maybe the boy was sick and she’d taken him to urgent care.
He hoped nothing bad had happened to either of them. But he was getting that feeling in the pit of his stomach when something went wrong. And that feeling which was battle tested had never been wrong. Not even once. He’d learned long ago to trust his gut. And the more the minutes ticked on, the more his gut was sending out those warning signals.
Driving to the grocery store, the feelings only increased. He parked, walked inside and looked for the manager.
The man was in his office, on the phone. Diesel waited for him to hang up. When he did, Diesel said, “I’m concerned about my friend Pippa. She works here as a checker.”
The manager frowned and said, “Concerned? Why?”
“She didn’t arrive home tonight.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Pippa’s. She usually comes home and then goes to that class she’s taking after the sitter arrives. But she never came home tonight.”
Concern for Pippa changed the manager’s facial expression and body language. It also redirected his attention to finding Pippa. “Did you try her cell phone?” He had his phone in his hand and started to dial. “I sent her home an hour early because we were slow and I had too many checkers standing around. She should’ve been home a long time ago.”
The phone went immediately to voice mail and the man frowned deeper.
“She’s not answering. She must not have her phone turned on.” He shook his head. “That’s not something she does because of Ben. In case the sitter has to call her. She never turns her phone off.”
Diesel froze. Ben? That was his father’s name. “I thought she called him Marcus.” When were you going to give me that bit of Intel, dad?
“Who did you say you were again?”
“I didn’t.” He pulled out I.D. showing his name and his military credentials, such that he was able to divulge about himself.
“And you know Pippa how?”
“I believe I may be the boy’s father and I believe something has happened to Pippa.”
The manager started dialing the phone again. “I’m calling the police.”
“Good. You do that.” Diesel then went silent. He’d be gone before they ever got there. Disappearing was something he excelled at. Infiltration was a specialty of his. But searching for, hunting for anyone or anything, for that he’d call on his SEAL brother, Hunter.
He was out the door and on his phone to Hunter before the manager even finished the call to the police. And within just a couple minutes he was gone, as if he’d never been there.
Retracing her probable and usual route from her work to home, he talked to Hunter, explaining the situation.
“Give me every bit of info you have, down to the smallest detail, even if it appears unimportant,” Hunter said. “You going to her apartment to search?”
“Headed there now.” If there were anything in that apartment that could clue them in on where she might have gone, he would find it.
At her apartment again, he ran up the apartment steps all the way to the top floor without being out of breath and stopped at her door. He tried it, believing it would be locked, thinking he might have to break it down to get in, but it swung open with an easy push.
Damn. If I’d done that when I was here before, I wouldn’t have wasted time at the grocery store.
The door squeaked and he scanned the first room and then stepped inside.
There’d been a struggle.
A table lamp lay broken on the floor, a bowl of cereal o’s had spilled and scattered all over the floor. A child’s juice cup, which must’ve been cranapple or some kind of berry had spilled onto the beige carpet leaving a stain which reminded him too much of blood. Though it wasn’t blood. He’d seen plenty of spilled blood and knew exactly what the color of blood looked like. Whether it was freshly spilled or blood that had been there a while.
He moved to the kitchen just off the first room. Clean, nothing spilled or broken here. Remarkably clean for having a baby in the house. Her purse sat on a kitchen chair. He went over to it and looked inside. If her cell phone was inside and turned off, he’d have his answer to why a call wouldn’t go through.
No cell phone.
He moved into the bedroom and then the bathroom. Nothing looked out of place in either. In her bedroom, a crib was set up in the corner and her bed took up the middle of the room. A changing table stood next to the crib. No longer in use, she now used it as storage and piles of neatly folded baby clothes sat on top of it. Back into the front room again, he noted there was no television, no radio, just books and a basket with yarn and crochet hooks.
Her life centered on her child. Everything about the place said a mother and her baby lived here. He felt very much out of place here. Like an intruder. Which he was.
He’d entered many homes before, some with women and children. But he’d never felt so much like an intruder until now. This woman was trying to create a good home for her son. His son, if he was to believe his father. And the gossipy friend Pippa worked with.
His dad had suddenly turned detective before he’d flown back home and decided to find out about the woman and the baby. According to the friend Pippa worked with, Pippa didn’t know who the father was.
If Pippa was the woman he thought she was, then there was a very good reason she might say she didn’t know who the father was. She didn’t know his name. And he hadn’t known hers. Until recently. He could’ve been angry with her about having the baby and not telling him, except for those facts. But if she was hiding because she didn’t want to tell him, that was something else. And if that were the reason, then he’d have more than a few words to say to her about that. Fathers had rights too and his son was not going to grow up without his father in his life. No way in hell.
Between his connections and his SEAL training she hadn’t stood much chance of hiding from him, if hiding was what she was trying to do. Even though technically speaking, SEAL’s weren’t supposed to be digging around on their own time and using government resources and manpower to achieve their own goals.
Pippa’s friend had let loose that Pippa had been trying to hide from an ex who might hurt her if he found her. An ex who was not only an ex husband, but was an inmate at one of the prisons. Tex had turned up the fact that the man had just been released a few weeks ago.
Even if Pippa wasn’t the woman his dad now insisted she was, and the boy wasn’t his son, she needed to know that her ex was free again, so that she’d be aware. For her own safety and precautions. No court ordered document would protect her if a violent man like her ex came after her.
That was never going to happen. He wasn’t about to let anything happen to Pippa, whether the boy was his or not. It would give him immense pleasure to wipe scum like her ex off the face of the earth. No woman deserved to be treated as Pippa had been.
Court documents had been easy to find and read. It was all there. The pictures of her neck where the man had squeezed showed bruises where you could see the finger marks.
Diesel would take pleasure in breaking every one of the man’s fingers, and showing him just what that squeezing would’ve felt like to his wife. And Diesel knew how to exact pain without killing. Though he was a trained killer, courtesy of the United States government, killing would be too fast for scum like Pippa’s ex. The man had served time for felonious assault and was now out of prison.
Had he tried to contact Pippa? Had he found her?
If he found her, he’d find the boy too. Which meant his son might be in danger. Diesel needed to find Pippa, and now.
After driving the route she would have taken more than once and going over Pippa’s apartment, Diesel was at a dead end. He drove onto the base and ran over everything again in his head. It was time to call Wolf and to see if any of his brothers were free to help him find the woman of his dreams who seemed to keep slipping through his fingers.
He made the call and the answer didn’t surprise him. SEAL’s were brothers and looked after their own. And that included their family members.
Wolf was the first to step up before he even had to ask. “Hell yeah, we’re with you on this. And we’ll find her bro. You know as a team we’re unbeatable.” Wolf added. “Come down to Ace’s. We’re all here.”
Turning around, he drove off the base again and headed to Ace’s Bar. He made record time and managed to avoid a ticket.
Inside they were all seated at the table, Wolf, Tex and Hunter each sat having a beer.
“We’ll find her quicker than anyone else could,” Tex said before Diesel had to explain. Hunter nodded in agreement. An expert in computer skills, Tex could hack into any computer and find out anything.
And Hunter? His name said it all. He lived for the hunt. Game, people, anything he set his sights on as his intended target, he found, took down and delivered what he targeted. “We’ll find them.”
Diesel didn’t know of any other men more qualified to help him than these three SEAL brothers.
Popping another antacid, he went quiet, as he’d grabbed another as if eating them like candy.
“You all right, brother?” Wolf clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Never seen you need those before.” He gave a friendly squeeze saying, “You know you could sit this one out and let us handle it. You’re too close to it.”
“No way.”
“All right then. Let’s go for a thirty-minute run. You’ve got to do something while you wait. Tex will let us know as soon as he has something.”
“I know he will.”