Jax held up his hand to halt our movement, and he crept forward and peered in the window and checked the door, then returned to us.
“Door’s locked. Lights are on in a back room. Ryan, Han, Omar, come with me around the back. Hayden, Cobalt, you two stay out front. Hide against the side corner and watch. Text if you see anything. Put your phones on silent.”
I watched the four men sneak around toward the back of the building. It was only minutes, but it felt like hours.
A car pulled up in front. One of the ferry mechanics stepped out. He was wearing jeans this time, but it was him. He was unmistakable. He was holding several large Subway sandwich bags. He bypassed the front door to the dry cleaner and used a key to open an unmarked door just beyond the entrance. As he went inside, I slipped over to the door and put my toe at the bottom, preventing it from shutting all the way and relocking.
Cobalt was right behind me. He whispered, “I texted Jax.”
We looked at each other. I tipped my head toward the stairs and Cobalt nodded. I was thankful he was my watch partner, because none of the others would have agreed to follow the mechanic. But I was running on adrenaline and desperate to help Sapphire.
The door opened to a set of dark stairs. It appeared they went up to the apartment above the cleaners. We crept up, one silent stair at a time, until we were about halfway. We could hear voices and stopped to listen.
“Are we ‘spose to feed her?” said a man’s voice.
“Don’t think so,” answered a second. “We’d have to take the gag off. She could scream.”
“She’ll miss dinner.”
“Yeah. But she’ll be home by breakfast.”
“And we’ll be on a ferry. When this is over, I’m askin’ for a big raise.”
“Yeah. With the client list, they’ll both be rollin’ in the dough.”
“Some of that dough ought to be ours.”
“No kidding. I signed up for guard work, not to watch a murder.”
“Man, that was horrible.”
A third voice entered the conversation. “What’s so horrible about bashing someone over the head?”
“Are you kidding?” said the first. “The scream, the blood. Horrible.”
“You idiot. That’s ‘sarcastic irony.’ Remember what that means?”
“Ohhh. Yeah. Means the opposite. So even though you did it, you still thought it was horrible?”
“Shut up and eat your sandwich.”
I recognized that deep, gravelly voice. It sounded like Kerbie, the helmsman. It was possible that the third voice was the other mechanic.
I could not believe what I was hearing. This wasn’t a possibility of danger. This was real danger. Cobalt held up his phone to show me that he had sent another text to Jaxson. We crept further up the stairs.
We remained still and quiet at the top of the landing. I was hyperventilating, so I tried to access my yoga breathing to keep it under control.
At that exact moment, the alarm beeped on my phone. A reminder to feed the cats their dinner. I fumbled to shut it off, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Kerbie Gomez flung open the door, the two mechanics, Gronk and Shrek, right behind him. Kerbie grabbed my arm and yanked me into the room. The mechanics grabbed Cobalt.
Kerbie snatched my phone out of my hand and threw it on the floor. Then he stepped on it with the heel of his boot.
The mind is a funny thing sometimes. My immediate thought was that I was glad I had purchased phone insurance. Then I snapped back to the reality of the moment.
We were outnumbered—three enormous men against me and Cobalt. One man continued to hold Cobalt with his arms behind his back. The other two pushed me into a chair and secured my arms with zip ties. Then they shoved Cobalt into another chair and tied his arms and his legs to the chair.
“Where is Sapphire?” I shouted.
“Dammit. She’s a screamer. Gag her,” said Kerbie.
The second man put a piece of duct tape over my mouth. Cobalt was sitting silently, watching.
Then the room was anything but silent.
The door slammed open. Jaxson, Ryan, Han, and Omar burst into the room. Three of them held guns, pointed. Omar was in a fighting stance, with his fists up.
“Hands up!” yelled Jaxson. “Now! Hands up!”
The deputy came around behind them and secured all three with handcuffs, then instructed them to stand against the wall.
Han and Omar began opening the doors to the other rooms.
“Found her!” yelled Han.
I was trying to turn my head to see inside the room where Han was yelling from. Jaxson had removed the tape from my mouth and was cutting the zip ties from my wrists. I got up and turned around just as Han was coming out of the room, with his uninjured arm—still gripping a gun—around Sapphire’s shoulders. She looked frightened but appeared unhurt. She ran over to me. I stood up and enveloped her in a massive hug. Her body was shaking and she started to cry.
The two mechanics were flustered. They were yelling at Kerbie.
“It’s all your fault!” shouted one. “If you’d of left the captain alive, we’d have found the box! We were close!”
“You’re such a damn hothead!” hollered the second. “Bashing her ruined the whole plan!”
“And stealing the girl was stupid! Didn’t you think they’d go crazy to find her? She’s a Caldwell, you idiot!”
“You cost me my raise!” the first man howled.
The mechanics were too worked up to realize that they were throwing Kerbie under the bus. He realized it though.
“You two shut up!” bellowed Kerbie. He was turning as red as his hair.
36
It had only taken me a week to write up the cover story and pull together the first issue of the paper. The story was so gripping that it was easy to sell ads to the local businesses. I was proud
