Public Displays of Affection

  “Will do.”

  They have to be all right.

  “Wait—call Ned Preston down the street. I told him everything. He may still be at home and he could get to Charlotte and the kids quicker than anybody—tell him to get them out of the school, then call with a pickup location for Rich.”

  “Done. Do not move, Joe. If you move, I’ll kill you myself, and I’m not kidding.”

  “I’m going back for them.”

  “Dammit, Joe! Five minutes! I need five minutes to take care of this before you commit fuckin’ suicide. It’s an order—stay put and call me back in five!”

  The line went dead.

  Joe looked at his watch and began counting the seconds.

  She was in no mood for games, and Charlotte rubbed her forehead with force, hoping the pressure would prevent her head from exploding.

  She called the kids once more. Not even a giggle from behind the pine trees. Nothing.

  Charlotte took two halting steps toward the van. Both side doors were shoved open. Their stuff was in there—Hank’s ballet bag, Matt’s Game Boy, and one of Justin’s sneakers—but there wasn’t a sign of the kids.

  She stood utterly still, feet planted on the driveway, hands at her sides, suddenly feeling as if she were the only object on the surface of the earth that wasn’t starting to spin. At her core she was calm, but everything around her began to gain speed, spin faster and faster…

  Why did Justin take only one shoe? Why had Hoover been barking like that? Where was Joe?

  Then her gaze landed on the three bobby pins scattered on the empty seat, right next to the little band of purple flowers Hank had worn in her hair. Then she saw the strands of red curls.

  Charlotte went cold. She felt the urge to vomit.

  From somewhere far away she heard a car squeal into the drive, but she could only stare into space as Ned’s words reached her.

  “Thank God! We need to get you guys out of here!”

  Her body was shaking violently by the time Ned gripped her by the upper arms. She stared at him and Bonnie, not really seeing them, as Ned continued to shout at her.

  “Charlotte! Where the hell are your kids?”

  She tried to open her mouth to speak, but the words were lodged in her throat.

  Ned snatched a piece of paper off the steering wheel. Charlotte heard him start to read it aloud, then stop himself.

  “We’re too late” is what he said instead.

  They didn’t even have time to scream.

  Somebody had smacked Matt across the face and put a hand over his mouth and he’d watched a man do the same to Hank and Justin. Then they threw them in the backseat of a car. Then the driver hit the gas even before the other guy jumped in and pulled a gun on them. Then the doors locked.

  And they’d all just sat there in the backseat, crying, and Matt was thinking, So this is how you get kidnapped; then he got a real good look at the men. He caught Justin’s eye and they both said it silently in their heads—we were right!

  Then, while they drove, one of the men told them the weirdest stuff about how some kid played third base on the Garvin Glass Little League team, his sister’s stepkid or something. Matt didn’t recognize the name and didn’t know what this had to do with anything and was too scared to pay real close attention anyway. Plus, his nose was bleeding.

  Now the three of them were locked in a walk-in kitchen pantry in some empty house with Justin’s dad’s face on the sign out front. It was totally dark in there. Every once in a while they heard the guys talking to each other in Spanish in a nearby room, but otherwise it was silent.

  “They gonna kill us, Mattie?”

  How was he supposed to answer that? He couldn’t very well come right out and tell his baby sister that, yes, he was pretty sure they were going to die. But he couldn’t lie to her, either. If they were going to at least try to get out of this, they needed to work together.

  “I think that’s their plan.” Matt heard sniffles and immediately regretted his answer. “Don’t cry, Hank.”

  “That’s not me. It’s Justin.”

  “I only have one shoe,” Justin said in a small voice.

  Matt felt sad for his friend. “I know.”

  “I want my mom,” Justin said.

  “I want my mama, too,” Hank said. “And Joe.”

  “Yeah,” Matt agreed.

  After a few seconds, Hank said, “My tutu is itchy and I gotta pee real bad. Where am I supposed to pee?”

  “Damn, Joe—they got the Tasker kids.”

  “What?”

  “Took ‘em right out of the driveway. Neighbor kid, too.”

  “Charlotte?”

  “No. She’s at the house. Look, there was a ransom note.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You for the kids. The FBI’s hostage negotiators are on the way and—”

  Joe hung up the pay phone and ran to the police department reception desk, knowing this was going to be a delicate sell without his badge.

  “My name is Special Agent Joseph Bellacera, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and I need a patrol officer immediately. It’s an emergency.”

  Charlotte had regained some of the feeling in her hands, but Bonnie still held the paper bag to her mouth and repeated the instructions to breathe slowly. The last time Charlotte had hyperventilated like this, she’d been in labor with Hank.

  That memory caused her to burst into tears again. She ripped the bag from her face, crumpled it, and tossed it into the bed of marigolds near the garage door, where someone had apparently propped her up.

  The driveway was jammed with cars. The FBI was there, and so were a bunch of guys in black ball caps and windbreakers slapped with three huge white letters: DEA. And now there was a Minton Police squad car screeching up to the curb and she didn’t understand—the note Ned had read to the agents specifically said no police. And the neighborhood was swarming with them!

  Joe.

  She watched him run across the lawn and cut through the sea of men in suits and windbreakers and squat down right in front of her—so close that she could see that his eyelashes were wet. He shook when he squeezed her hands in his.

  “I’ll get them, Charlotte.”

  How she hated him for endangering her family! She hated him for leaving! But he was back, and the relief flooded her, bringing with it a small bud of hope.

  She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hold him.

  She wanted to tell him all of that, but she was drowning in fear. The fear was stronger than anything else, and it was pulling her down.

  Then she felt his kiss on her lips and his breath on the side of her face.

  “I swear to you, nothing will happen to your children.” His whisper was rough and he clutched her hard to his chest. “I will make sure they come home to you.”

  Joe pulled away, and as he lanced her with his dark gaze she understood that he was saying good-bye—that he fully expected to trade his life for the lives of her kids, just like the ransom note said. “I love you, Charlotte.”

  She nodded then, able to get her mind around one pure thought, one true feeling—that she loved this man with her heart and soul. She always had and always would.

  “I wanted all of us to love each other, Joe.”

  He nodded, tears streaming down his cheeks. “We do, baby. We already do.”

  That’s when the DEA agent who seemed to be in charge walked up behind Joe, put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a gentle voice. “We don’t have much time.”

  Joe shared the photos with agents and reread the note, scrawled in black felt tip marker on a piece of ripped notebook paper.

  Pretty Lady: Have Agent Joe Bellacera here in two hours for exchange. No police or your children will die.

  Every single word in that note filled Joe with anguish. The expression “Pretty Lady” made him sick to his stomach.

  “What’s the best guess on the timing?”

  “I got here just a little after nine,” Ned s
aid. “Charlotte said she’d been inside for no more than five minutes, so I’m estimating the abduction occurred about four minutes before nine.”

  Joe’s mind raced—it was already 9:37. Every minute the kids stayed with those animals brought them a minute closer to dying. He couldn’t afford to let his thoughts wander to Steve and Reba and Daniel. He couldn’t look at Charlotte, sitting cross-legged in the driveway, her face contorted with fear and grief. He couldn’t even think that this was all his fault—what good would that do now?

  And what good would it do to admit that Roger had been right—that he’d had no business getting involved with Charlotte and her kids?

  He and Cincinnati Field Office Supervisor Rich Baum had already had a little private chat: There were only two ways this situation could have a happy ending. One, FBI snipers could take Guzman’s men at the exchange before Joe and/or the kids got killed; or two, if they could figure out where the kids had been taken—and get there in time—they might be able to use the element of surprise to get the kids out alive.

  The only problem was that no one even knew which way they’d turned on the state highway. The neighbors saw nothing.

  Joe was about to discuss sniper placement with the FBI agent in charge when another car pulled into the drive. LoriSue Bettmyer got out of her BMW along with what looked to be a street person. The closer they got, the more the guy looked like Jimmy.

  “What in the world is going on?” LoriSue’s fists rested on her hips, and Joe watched her eyes fall on Charlotte, then widen in horror. “Where’s Justin?”

  Rich Baum stepped forward. “Mrs. Bettmyer, it seems that your son—”

  “Where is he?” LoriSue’s voice hit a supersonic screech just before she began to sob. “Oh, my God!”

  “What’s this about?” Jimmy demanded. “Where’s Justin?”

  Rich seemed too flustered by LoriSue’s hysteria to answer, so Joe told the parents as calmly and quickly as he could, storing for later the obvious fact that Jimmy had just had the snot beaten out of him and was wearing something straight out of someone’s home garage. “We believe all three kids were taken as hostages. We are doing everything we can to determine where—”

  “Hostages?” they both screamed.

  Joe and Rich wasted at least five precious minutes getting the Bettmyers calm enough to listen to all the specifics they could give them. When they were done, Jimmy mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like “holy shit” and looked around in a panic. Then he said to Joe, “Can you describe these guys?”

  It struck Joe as an odd question, but he asked one of the FBI agents to give Jimmy the photo of Guzman’s men.

  Jimmy took it in one bloody hand, and Joe watched the edge of the photo tremble. Jimmy looked up, his eyes full of what Joe identified immediately as guilt.

  Ned put a hand on Jimmy’s shaking arm. “Do you recognize them?”

  Several agents heard Ned’s question and gathered close. Charlotte and Bonnie pushed into the circle. LoriSue raised her head from Rich Baum’s jacket and glared at her husband. “Jimmy?”

  “I know where they are,” he whispered.

  Between them, they had four bobby pins, a penknife, three shoelaces, a safety pin, and a half bag of Nerds. It wasn’t much, Matt knew, but it was a start.

  They’d explored every inch of that dark pantry with their hands and discovered a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall just inside the door. They’d determined that the wooden shelves were removable. They found a metal towel rack on the inside of the pantry door.

  They’d also explored the doorknob and door frame, figuring that the men had somehow jammed the door from the outside, because the knob turned freely and there was no bolt or lock that they could find.

  So the challenge was how to use the resources and information they had to get them out of there.

  Justin suggested using the pocketknife to unscrew the door hinges, which would have been good, except that they couldn’t get to the hinges when the door was shut.

  Hank suggested using the shelves to beat down the door, which was stupid, because they’d make such a racket that the men would know what they were up to and be waiting for them even if they managed it. But Matt thanked her anyway, figuring she didn’t need to hear that her idea sucked eggs.

  He was wondering how they could use the fire extinguisher to their advantage when he heard the men’s voices coming closer, getting louder. It sounded like they were arguing.

  “Do you think now’s a good time to tell them I need to use the bathroom?” Hank asked. “No!” he and Justin said in unison.

  Joe studied the papers in his hand, immensely grateful that LoriSue had snapped out of it long enough to suggest her office fax over a copy of the listing, which included a floor plan, photos, and a detailed description of the property. Within moments, it all arrived via the portable fax machine in her car, and with that one stroke of luck the odds had shifted dramatically.

  There had been no time for a search warrant and this wasn’t exactly a textbook operation, but they had little choice. He and Rich Baum had instructed the FBI to back off, let them go in alone. The fewer agents at the scene, the less likely anyone would be spotted. And now Joe and Rich were on their stomachs in the tall grass behind a storage shed to the southeast of the house, about to go in.

  They’d seen no movement through their binoculars and hadn’t heard a sound. Yet they knew they were in there—the car Jimmy and LoriSue had described sat in the circular drive out front. What Joe and Rich were still debating was whether to go in now or jump the men as they left.

  Joe’s vote was to go for it. He knew all too well the way Guzman’s men thought—they’d probably kill the kids before they even left the house. That way, if they didn’t nab Joe or died in the attempt, they’d already have made their point.

  His only prayer was that it hadn’t happened yet.

  It appeared a kitchen window had been broken to gain entrance and Jimmy had said the only furnished room in the house was the second bedroom on the right upstairs, but the kids could be anywhere. Joe knew they could be tied up, drugged, injured, or even stuffed in the trunk of the car. The men who took them were capable of anything.

  Joe shoved away the gruesome images and handed Rich the key to the front and back padlocks, another gift from LoriSue. “Let’s go in here.” Joe pointed to the floor plan, tapping his finger on a laundry room entrance off the kitchen.

  Rich nodded, and they began to move, low to the ground, taking cover behind every bush or tree they could find along the way, then hugging tight to the house as they crouched beneath the windows, weapons drawn.

  Joe covered Rich for the five seconds it took him to ease off the padlock and open the door. Rich slipped inside and Joe followed.

  An instant after entering the small laundry room, the men heard voices and moved toward the door that led to the kitchen. The first words of Spanish that registered with Joe turned his blood to ice.

  The men were just feet away, in the kitchen, arguing about whether to murder the children. One said the kids were friends with his nephew and should be spared, and the other said he didn’t care—the children could identify them, and he planned on being able to enjoy his halfmillion dollars in peace.

  While they argued, Joe cracked open the laundry room door just a fraction, enough that he and Rich could scan the kitchen for any sign of the kids. That’s when he noticed a wooden shelf shoved up under the doorknob to what was probably the pantry.

  Joe looked at Rich to be certain his partner saw that the children were likely in the pantry, and watched with approval as Rich did just what Joe had already done—calculate at what angle they’d have to shoot to miss the pantry door. Rich nodded to Joe to indicate he understood.

  Just then, the argument escalated, and Guzman’s men began to hurl loud insults at each other. Joe signaled to Rich that it was time to kick in the door.

  Joe took a deep breath, feeling the sharp rush of adrenaline in eve
ry muscle fiber of his body, his mind focused on only one thing: getting the kids out alive. On the silent count of three, the two agents slammed the soles of their shoes against the door and sent it flying.

  “Freeze! Federal agents!”

  Joe saw that one man cradled an assault rifle and was opening the pantry door. The man was momentarily confused at the intrusion but then spun toward Joe with the gun. Joe fired before the other man could, and he fell backward from the force of the single bullet in his forehead.

  At the same time, Rich shot the second man in the back of the knee as he tried to run. Then the screaming began.

  Joe raced to the kitchen pantry and flung open the door the rest of the way. There was Matt, frozen in position, standing guard with a fire extinguisher, his face displaying the unflinching scowl of a warrior.

  Hank and Justin huddled together on the floor behind Matt’s legs, screaming their heads off.

  “It’s all right now, Matt.” Joe touched the boy’s white knuckles, clutched tight around the extinguisher’s metal handle. “It’s okay, Matt. I’ve got you.”

  Rich worked quickly to disarm and handcuff the second man, then radioed for an ambulance. Then he pulled the first man’s body around the corner out of view of the children.

  Joe reached down around Matt and placed a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe now.” She wouldn’t stop screaming.

  There was blood all over the kitchen floor, spreading around his feet, and Joe realized they’d have to carry the kids over it.

  “C’mere, Matt. Let’s go. We’re getting out of here.”

  Matt would not let go of the fire extinguisher, so Joe just grabbed him and hoisted him up in his left arm.

  “Hank! C’mon, slugger—we need to move.”

  Hank raised her head, her terrified eyes softening when she realized it was Joe. Then she jumped up and climbed his body like it was a piece of playground equipment. Joe held her tight.

  Rich helped Justin to his feet and stroked the boy’s hair. He told him to grab on.

  Joe said, “Don’t look, kids. Do you understand? Keep your eyes closed.”