Almost Dead (19 page)

CHAPTER 44

Jenny was at work, helping to develop a sleeping pill. The company had been waiting years for approval from the FDA on their new sleeping aid when it was reported by a neuroscientist who had reviewed thousands of pages of data that test subjects had been waking up multiple times during the night with dark thoughts. So it was back to the drawing board. There was no way to make a perfect sleep aid without residual effects, but that wasn’t Jenny’s problem.

There was a tap on the lab window.

She looked up, surprised to see Dwayne standing on the other side of the glass.

Jenny removed her goggles, mask, and gloves and stepped outside the lab. Their date night had worked out wonderfully. They had ended up going to the movie first—an action movie with a wonderfully sappy love story woven in. Afterward, they’d had dinner at Tres Hermanas. She had ordered carne asada and he had ordered chicken mole poblano, and then they’d taken turns feeding each other. It had been silly and romantic and fun.

It would have been a perfect night—except that Dwayne hadn’t bothered to kiss her at the door. He’d escorted her all the way to her front stoop and then said goodbye. Worse than that, he hadn’t bothered calling her on Sunday.

He doesn’t like you. You talk too much. He couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Even if he did, you never listen.

Her fingers rolled into fists at her side. She hadn’t heard the voice in twenty-four hours. Why now?

She concentrated on Dwayne. He was wearing dark slacks, a white shirt, and a skinny black tie. His long hair was tied back, but if he let it loose, he would look as if he belonged on stage with a guitar instead of in a research lab.

“I saw your car in the parking lot. You got here early today.”

She nodded. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I wanted to tell you what a great time I had the other night.”

“Really.”

“Is something wrong?”

Tell him to fuck off and leave you alone.

“The truth is I was disappointed that you left me at the door without a kiss. And then when you didn’t call the next day, I figured I must have imagined the connection I thought we had because—”

He kissed her right then and there, a quick peck on the lips, but still a kiss.

They were standing in the hallway. He looked both ways.

This guy is not the one for you. He wouldn’t kill a spider if it were biting him on the ass. Milquetoast, that’s what he is.

Her adrenaline soared. She smiled up at Dwayne, which prompted him to kiss her again—a little longer, a little better this time. His lips felt soft against hers. His woodsy cologne smelled nice.

He straightened, blushing. “Yesterday I had to go to a family reunion. I thought I told you that at dinner.”

She was losing herself in those blue eyes of his, falling under his spell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have time to call. My family is crazy. Do you have any idea how much chaos there is when you round up sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews and toss them into one room?”

“No,” she said. “I’m an only child.”

“Really? An only child . . . must have been nice.”

“It was fine,” she said. Another lie, since she had always wanted a sibling. But so what? He didn’t need to know everything about her after only one date.

“I would love for you to meet my family.”

She said nothing. Not because she didn’t want to meet his family, but because she had no idea how to wrap her brain around what he’d just said. He wanted her to meet his family?

He blushed again. “Too soon, right?”

“Not at all,” she blurted. “Not too soon.”

He smiled, the genuine kind of smile that told her he truly enjoyed being around her.

Now that she thought about it, he
had
mentioned something about having a family reunion to attend. She’d been too preoccupied with taking dainty bites and chewing with her mouth closed to pay attention to what he was saying. She felt like such an idiot. She’d lost sleep over nothing.

He gestured down the hallway. “I’m grabbing a quick cup of coffee from the lunchroom. Want to join me?”

She stared at him. Another awkward moment ensued, and that was putting it mildly. She was a big dork when it came to communicating with another person, especially someone she was falling for. “I’d love to,” she managed.

They walked to the lunchroom together, laughing and talking. A group of three more people was drawn into their conversation about the movie they had just seen. Jenny had never in her life experienced the sort of camaraderie she felt at that very moment.

It felt good. Better than good.

She had always been the loner in the cafeteria, secretly wishing someone, anyone, would sit next to her and strike up a conversation.

For the first time in her life, she felt like somebody.

CHAPTER 45

Not only had Kitally switched cars with her mom; she’d invested in a crazy-ass pair of military binoculars with 160X magnification and high-quality optics. Hell, even parked much farther away, she could see the details of the moth’s wings on Mr. Chalkor’s front window. An easy-to-use sliding lever made it possible for her to switch from 30X to 160X in an instant. With the touch of a finger, she could sharpen the focus.

Just as she was beginning to get the hang of using her new toy, the Chalkors’ garage door opened and a car pulled out. Mr. Chalkor was in the driver’s seat. Nobody else was in the car with him.

Frustrated with how much time she was putting into this case, she was determined to get plenty of supersharp, incriminating pictures of him using his supposedly injured arm, and get them
today
. She put the binoculars to the side, turned on the engine, and followed him, careful to stay far enough back so he wouldn’t spot her.

He merged onto the freeway. She stayed with him. It was three thirty in the afternoon, and she was scheduled to meet with Lizzy and Hayley in thirty minutes. She decided to follow him for ten minutes. If he didn’t exit the highway by then, she would have to try again on another day.

As she drove along, her thoughts drifted to the firestorm at Lizzy’s wedding that had nearly killed her and had killed three people and left Jared in a coma. Kitally hadn’t known Jared Shayne well, but she knew that Hayley had respected him and Lizzy had loved him.

Life could be so sad. Kitally knew that firsthand. She’d had a little brother once. They were inseparable. Her family used to travel all over the world, so often that they were more than brother and sister—so seldom knowing anyone else, they’d had to be each other’s best friend wherever they went, too.

It was on one particular trip that all of their lives changed forever. They were traveling through Buenaventura, the main port of Colombia in the Pacific Ocean. Her father was usually doing business when they traveled, but on this fateful day, their family of four had decided to get out and enjoy the sights, get outside with the people.

Kitally was eight at the time, her brother six. She could still remember the smells of this strange new city as they followed their parents, always two steps behind, close enough to reach out and grab hold of their mother’s skirts if need be. Kitally had been hungry that day. While her brother’s attention was easily caught by all the barefoot kids playing in the street, Kitally’s attention was on the smells: fried rice, chicken and tortillas, savory beans on every corner.

The trouble began when her brother spotted a merchant on the other side of the busy street. The man wore a colorful shirt and he was flinging a handcrafted boomerang into the air. The toy would fly toward the hot sun, almost out of sight, and then suddenly it would be back in his hand again.

It seemed liked magic.

The man yelled something in a language she didn’t understand. And then he wriggled a finger at her brother, a gesture that translated well in any language. “Come here,” he was saying to her little brother.

Kitally tried to stop Liam, but he was strong for a six-year-old. Stubborn, too. Instead of going after her brother, she reached for her mother, only to be scared out of her wits when she realized she’d grabbed hold of a complete stranger.

The woman had looked at Kitally with dark hollow eyes and then smiled, a wide, toothless grin.

Kitally hadn’t meant to scream, but that’s what she did. She was eight. She was lost, and she was scared. Screaming at the top of her lungs had done the trick. Both her mother and father were at her side in an instant.

And when they saw that her brother was missing, they went into high-alert mode. Kitally pointed across the street, but the boomerang man was no longer there. She looked to the sky, to the street, back to the sky. Her mother pulled her along as they followed her father. They wove through hot crowds of colorfully dressed people. Hands reached out as they hurried along, screaming for Liam. A street band played music, using old tin pans and wooden crates. Dogs walked around aimlessly, all ribs and wiry hair.

They spent the first day looking in every shop, talking to every vendor. Kitally was interrogated by her mother and father, over and over again until the words coming out of her mouth were robotic and held no meaning.

The police assured her parents that almost all kidnappings ended with a ransom. Her parents took turns searching the city. If her mother went in search of her brother, Kitally was left with her father sitting by the phone. Her father never stopped asking her why she hadn’t stopped her brother. She had no answer, so she would just cry. But the truth was, Liam was fast. She spent many weekends chasing after her little brother. She rarely caught him. But that wasn’t good enough for her father. He blamed Kitally. She’d seen it in his eyes the first day Liam had gone missing. To this day, she saw the blame in her father’s eyes.

Mostly, she knew better—knew she wasn’t to blame, she was just a kid herself—but still, there were times when she felt the weight on her shoulders and blamed herself, too. Her brother had been her responsibility, and she’d lost him.

Chalkor exited the freeway. Lost in thought, Kitally nearly missed the exit. They had been driving for well over fifteen minutes, but she hadn’t been paying attention.

They were somewhere in Rancho Cordova. There were lots of warehouses and a few deserted office buildings. He pulled in front of a warehouse. After he climbed out of his car, she lost track of him. She waited a few minutes before she got out of her car, bringing her keys, cell, and her camera and leaving everything else behind.

The back of the building was framed with a chain-link fence. Trash and debris littered the property. She had two choices: climb over the back of the fence and look through one of the windows, or go to the front of the building where Chalkor had parked and risk being seen.

She opted to climb the fence. It wasn’t so bad. Took her less than a minute.

She hadn’t realized the windows were so high until she got up close to the building. Even on her tiptoes, she couldn’t see inside. From the street, she’d seen discarded pallets and other trash on the side of the building, so she walked that way, figuring she could prop one of the pallets against the wall and climb up on it to see inside.

That’s exactly what she did. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered inside. The warehouse looked old and abandoned. Dirty and corroded industrial shelving covered one side of the building. The inside looked dim and dusty. Rusty nails were sprinkled about on the floor. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling lights like the Spanish moss she’d once seen hanging from trees in South Carolina.

She couldn’t see movement, though. Not one sign that Chalkor was even—

A strong hand gripped the back of her collar and yanked her off the pallet, and then another clamped over her mouth. She bit down and ended up gagging on an old rag he had wrapped around his fingers. Although she couldn’t see his face, she knew it was Mr. Chalkor.

He dragged her around to the front of the building. She screamed, but the sound came out muffled. Her arms were trapped beneath his forearms. She kicked her legs and flailed about like a newly caught fish, but he continued on, unfazed.

They were inside the warehouse. It was cold and dank. The cement floors were stained with oil and grime. When they reached the door of a small windowless room that looked as if it might have once served as an office, he pushed her in. When he tried to grab her camera, she fought back with a kick to his side and another to his groin.

He ran out the door, slamming it shut before she could catch up to him.

A lock clicked in place. She could hear a chain being dragged across cement.

“Let me out, Mr. Chalkor. You’re going to go to prison for a very long time if you don’t.”

She banged on the door and then kicked it as hard as she could near the lock, hoping to jiggle it loose. “You
will
regret this. I have pictures, proof that you came here. You’ll never get away with this.”

More kicking and pounding.

“My friends know where I am, Mr. Chalkor. The people I work for will be here in a matter of minutes, so you might want to let me out while you have the chance.”

Bang!

That was the distinct sound of the main warehouse doors clanging together.

How could she have let this happen? How stupid could she be?

She looked around. A second look revealed that the room was too small to have ever been an office. It was eight-by-eight at the most. Low ceiling. No windows. She’d left her bag in the car.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

She pulled out her key and pressed the alarm. She walked the entire room, holding the key at various heights and at different areas of the room, pushing the alarm over and over. Nothing.

To make matters worse, nobody knew where she was. She’d promised Lizzy more than once that she would never follow anyone by car for more than a few miles. She was never to get out of the car unless she called it in and told someone else where she was. She was never to leave her cell phone behind. She pulled her phone from her pocket. At least she had her phone. No service. He must have known that, too. The bastard did his homework.

That’s when it dawned on her. Mr. Chalkor had planned the whole thing. He’d led her here.

He had her right where he wanted her.

She was screwed.