Blood Sport (8 page)

Twenty
-Seven

The men he’d sent to recover the boy stood silently in front of him as he paced back and forth angrily in his living room. Throwing the cigarette he was smoking into the empty fireplace behind him, he turned to them again. “What the hell were you thinking? You were supposed to get the boy, no one else.”

“She recognized me
, boss. I couldn’t just leave her there.”

“How did she recognize you? She doesn’t know you.”

The man visibly squirmed “Well, I sorta met her in town last week, in the coffee shop.”

The boss got closer to him and stood mere inches from him before hissing into his face
, “What do you mean you met her in the coffee shop? The rules are you never, ever, go into town. Are you telling me you broke those rules?”

The man nodded, not looking up to meet the boss’
s eyes. “I was driving through town and I needed the bathroom so I stopped.”

There was no warning as the boss struck out,
hitting the man across the side of the face with the back of his hand and sending him stumbling to his knees. “You couldn’t use the side of the road like anyone else?” he shouted, covering the man in spittle. “Get him out of my sight. Now,” he shouted to one of the other two men. He would decide what to do with him later. For now, he had to worry about the woman. He couldn’t let her go; it was too late for that. “Clay, not you. I want you to go and get the woman and bring her to me.”

He l
it another cigarette and walked over to the window that looked out across his farm. It was a real working farm and how he made his legitimate income now that he was retired and his parents were long gone. He’d grown up here and although he’d worked in town for years, it was always assumed that when his folks got too old to look after it, he would. And so he had.

They hadn’t known about his external interests, and it hadn’t been until they were gone that he’d been able to become more than just a spectator.
He’d spent years converting the farm, making it perfect for his needs, and in the process becoming one of the biggest players on the scene. He was not about to lose it all without a fight.

“Get your hands off me!”
He heard her scream before he saw her as she was dragged down the corridor and pushed into the living room.

“
You bitch!” Clay shouted as he hobbled into the room after her limping.

The b
oss laughed. “You’re a feisty thing, aren’t you? Haven’t changed a bit.”

He watched as she went completely still, searching his face before recognit
ion slowly dawned. “You!”

“It’s been a long time
, Kat McKay. How have you been?”

“I don’t believe this. You bastard!”
She tried to lunge at him but Clay grabbed her around the waist before she could reach him.

“
I am sorry about this. You weren’t supposed to get caught up in it. It was only the boy I was after.”

“That’s supposed to make it
better?”

“No, I don’t suppose it does.” He waved at Clay to let her go. “But you’re here now and what happens next is up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

The ringing of his phone interrupted them and
, turning his back on her, he took the call.

“What news?” He listened for a moment
. “Good to know. Phone me as soon as you hear anything else.” Terminating the call, he turned back to Kat.

“Where were we?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”
He smiled. “I would say I enjoy it but that’s only part of it. It makes me a hell of a lot of money, too.”

“You enjoy hurting kids?”
She was still in shock. “But you used to
teach
them!”

“One doesn’t exclude the other
,” he said, laughing. “Besides, there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a sport. You wouldn’t believe how many of us there are.”

She felt sick listening to him.

“I’m just one chapter. There are many more spread across the country. Hundreds of kids.”

“A
sport?” she made herself ask. The longer she kept him talking and the more details she learned, the better chance she’d have of figuring out a way to get out of here.

“Well
, yes. There’s horse racing, football, NASCAR. This is no different, really. If you have a winning fighter there’s a fortune to be made.”

Kat couldn’t believe that this man, this man who had taught her in high school, was this monster. He’d been one of her favorite teachers
; actually he was a firm favorite with most students, with his friendly manner and interesting lessons. She couldn’t believe that all the while this monster had been hiding within him.

“Anyway, enough about that
. I don’t expect you to understand.” He stepped toward her menacingly. “I do expect you to tell me everything you know, though.”

“Tell you what
, exactly? There’s nothing to tell.”

“What do the police know? How much did the boy tell them?”

“He doesn’t know anything to tell them. You should know that. He’s a kid. A scared kid. Why couldn’t you just leave him alone?”

“I couldn’t run the risk that he knew anything that would lead the police to me. That’s why you need to tell me exactly what he told them.”

“You honestly think I’m going to help you? Go to hell,” she hissed.

The b
oss nodded to Clay. “Go and get the boy. I’m sure he’ll help us make her talk.”

“No!” Kat cried out. “Leave him alone!”

“Then you need to tell me everything they know.”

There wasn’t much to tell but she told him, every last thing she could think of
, holding nothing back.

“There, that wasn’t so hard
, was it?”

“What’s going to happen to us now?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied before telling Clay to take her back to her cell.

He was pleased. What Kat had told him confirmed the information his source had given him. They had no
idea about him or the farm. He would just give it a bit of time for all the initial activity to die down and then he would get rid of her. It was one thing keeping a group of kids prisoner, but he didn’t want to keep an adult captive. Especially one as smart as Kat. He remembered her from high school, and she’d been one of his brightest students. He wasn’t about to risk that she could somehow escape. No, far better that the threat she posed be terminated once and for all and she could then be disposed of in the same place all the bodies had been disposed of over the years. One of the benefits of having a large farm; there were plenty of fields.

Twenty
-Eight

“Do you think this has anything to do with what happened to Daniel?”

Finn was s
itting on the couch in the living room at Jamie’s house. He’d come here straight from where they’d found Kat’s car to deliver the news.

“I don’t know Jamie, it’s too early to say at this stage but I’ll be honest, I
’ll be very surprised if it’s not.”

Jamie nodded. “Of course it’s connected. You know that as well as I do
. What else could have happened?”

Finn just looked at her. She was right and he knew it.

“So they were just coming from the therapist’s office?”

“It was Daniel’s first
session today. They had to have been on their way back.”

“It can’t have been blind luck that whoever took them knew they’d been on that road. They must have been watching them.”
This realization made Finn question his judgment.
Should I have given them some kind of protection?
He quickly shook this thought off, though. There had been no way of knowing that this would happen If he started down the road of self-blame he would lose focus and he couldn’t afford to do that right now.

“Have you seen anything unusual
, Jamie? Any cars hanging around?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing at all. And I would have noticed
. It’s not like we’re on a main street out here. Any unusual cars would have stuck out like a sore thumb.”

Finn nodded his head in ag
reement. She was right.

“We need to get hold of the CCTV from the therapist’s office. If that
was the last place we can definitely place them, then chances are fairly good that whoever took them was there, too. There would have been no other reason for Kat to be on that road, so they must have followed her there.”

“Finn, you have to find her. I can’t lose her
. She’s all I’ve got.”

“Jamie, I promise you I’ll find her.”
And he would; he just wished he could promise that he would find her alive.

***

Without the chief, the responsibility was weighing heavily on his shoulders. It’s wasn’t that he didn’t know what needed doing; it was more that he just wanted to be out there doing it rather than directing things, which is what he was doing now. As the last place they were known to have visited was the next town over, he’d reached out to his counterpart there. As a bigger town, he’d been able to spare some of his own men to assist in the search as well as agreeing to take on the task of getting hold of the office staff from the therapist’s office and get hold of a copy of the CCTV. As soon as they had it, they were going to bring it over to him.

He looked
around at all the faces looking at him and was pleased to see that they all looked as concerned as he felt. “Okay, this is where we’re at. CSI is processing the scene and will be recovering the vehicle. They’ll contact us immediately if they find anything that could help us. For now, though, all we know is that Kat and Daniel were traveling back from a visit to Daniel’s therapist’s office and were in a car wreck and have vanished. We have to assume it was deliberate from the damage to the car and the paint found.

“
We also have to assume it has something to do with Daniel’s original abductors.” He paused to look down at his notes. “We have no leads on them at all. What we do know is that this wasn’t a case of a single child abduction. From what Daniel was able to tell us there were several more kids held with him and those kids were still alive when he last saw them.”

He’d
made copies of the photos of all the boys that Daniel had identified and now he handed them round. “These photos are how the kids looked when they were taken, but some are quite old now.” He didn’t know if it would be of any use but just having the photos would make them all realize what was at stake.

“I want all of you out there knocking o
n doors. Unfortunately, Daniel couldn’t tell us where he had come from or how long he’d been out there, but we do know it had to have been close because he couldn’t have gotten far in the state he was in. I don’t care if you wake people up, or if these are people that you’ve known all your lives. Poke around, check outbuildings and, if they’ll let you, go in and check houses.” He stood up from where he’d been sitting on the corner of a desk

“
Okay, that’s it folks. Get out there, keep in touch and report back anything you think is out of the ordinary. Anything at all.”

The sounds of chairs being pushed back and the murmur of conversation followed him as he walked into the
chief’s office before closing the door behind him and shutting it all out. It felt strange sitting in the Chief’s chair but he needed the quiet to think, to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

Quiet wasn’t what he got
, though, as the phone in his pocket started ringing, the sound very loud in the silence of the room. Pulling it out, he saw that it was Sally.
Damn!
He’d left her cleaning up and with a promise that he would call her and let her know what was happening. That had been hours ago. Sheepishly, he picked up. “Hey.”

“Hey
, you. Everything okay? I’ve been worried.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry
. I know I promised to call but things sorta got out of hand here.”

“Oh no!”
He could hear the concern in her voice. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Actually
, yeah.” He filled her in on what had happened, trying not to sound as worried as he felt. She was bound to be affected; she’d grown attached to Daniel, too.

“Oh, that poor boy! And Kat! Can I do anything?”

“No, there’s nothing you can do. But I’m not going to make it back tonight, I don’t think. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly
. No apology necessary. You need to find them. Do you want me to stay?”

He didn’t. And it wasn’t because he had no idea when he’d get back, it was because all he could think about was
how he would feel if he lost Kat. “No, better not. I have no idea when I’ll be back or how long for. I’ll give you a call when I have any news, okay?”

“That’s fin
e. Take care and bring them home, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

He ended the call and sat for a moment looking at the now silent phone, frustrated with himself. He could try and kid himself that the only reason he couldn’t stop thinking about Kat was because she was missing, but he would be lying to himself. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since she’d first come back to town. Yeah, he didn’t know if he could forgive her, but that didn’t stop the way he
felt.
Now was not the time for such thoughts, though; he had to find them before it was too late.

He thought everyone had gone when he came out
of the office and he was surprised to find Deputy Carver still hadn’t left. He had his back to him and he could see he was on his cell phone, talking animatedly. Deliberately closing the office door hard, he watched as he quickly put the cell phone away. “Sorry boss, had to make a quick call.”

Finn resolved to have another talk to the
chief about this kid when he was well enough.

“And it was so important that you had to make it now rather than get out there and do the job you’re paid to do?”

He could see that he wanted to make some sort of sarcastic retort, but the look on Finn’s face must have been enough to tell him that it wasn’t a good idea and he kept his mouth shut. “No? Well, get out there then. You’re no use to me sitting around here.”

***

The deputy from Charlton charged with obtaining the CCTV had finally arrived and he and Finn were both sitting in front of the TV in the main squad room.

“Thanks for getting it so fast
,” Finn said to the deputy as he took the disk out of his bag.

“No problem
, though the woman I dragged out of bed to let us in to get it probably wouldn’t agree.”

Thankfully, the
chief had invested some of the budget last year in getting them an up-to-date media set-up that would allow them to review the footage. Precious hours, or even days, could have been lost if they’d had to get someone else to do it for them. Putting the disk in, they selected the timeframe when Kat and Daniel had been due to arrive and, sure enough, there they were. They watched as Kat parked her car in the lot and they walked across the asphalt to the main doors to the center where the therapist was located.

It was odd watching them like this, their movements jilted and puppet like on the feed. The cent
er had several cameras, but Finn was only interested in the one pointing at the car lot, deducing that if they had been followed they would have been unlikely to have been followed actually inside the building.

“
Okay, now slow it down,” he told the deputy.

“What are we looking for?”

Finn sighed. “I don’t know. Anything that looks out of place, anyone acting strangely. I’ll guess we’ll know it when we see it.”

***

It was a cup of coffee and a severe case of eye strain later that he finally spotted it. It wasn’t what was there; it was what wasn’t there. They were just watching the tape of Kat and Daniel leaving when it hit him.

“There!”
He pointed at the top right hand corner of the screen. The front half of a red pick-up was just visible reversing out of a parking spot, just after Kat’s car had left the lot.

“What about it?”
The deputy looked confused.

“Go back to when Kat and Daniel arrived.”
He was right; he just knew it.

Play
ing the footage back again from the moment they arrived, they watched that corner of the screen and not long after Kat parked her car, the red pick-up arrived.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see what’s so special about it
. There are lots of red cars in the lot coming and going throughout the tape.”

“I know that
,” Finn said impatiently, “but keep your eyes on that one and keep watching it until Kat comes out again.”

They watched the tape again in silence. “Do you see now?”
The deputy shook his head. “Look at it. You can only see the front half of the vehicle but you can see the cab. From the moment it arrives until the moment it leaves again, do you see anyone getting out of it?”

He could almost see the light go on in the
deputy’s head. “No, because no one did!”

“Exactly
. Now why would you drive into a parking lot and just sit in your truck for an hour and then leave again?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“That’s them.” Finned jabbed his finger at the screen. “That’s who ran them off the road.”

“
Okay, but now what?” The deputy leaned forward and squinted at the screen. “There’s no way of making out the license. The angle is wrong. It’s pointing away from us.”

Finn’s heart sank. He was right
; even with enhancement they wouldn’t be able to see the plate as it simply hadn’t been captured.

Finn’s hand slamming down on the desk made the deputy jump. “Damnit
! Why is nothing going our way?”

“But who’s saying this is the first time they followed her
, though?”

Finn stilled.
He was right! Why hadn’t he thought of that?
He clapped his hand on the deputy’s shoulder. “Good point. If he was caught there he may well have been caught somewhere else, somewhere where we can see the license plate.” He thought for a moment. “He hasn’t been out of the hospital long and I know that Kat has only been into town a couple of times since he has.”
Good news for us for a change,
Finn thought. “I’ll give Jamie McKay a call and find out if she can help us narrow down our search window. Then we can contact anyone in town with CCTV and see if they’ve caught anything.”

Feeling energized
, he went to his office and called Jamie. As he suspected, Kat had only been into town twice since Daniel had come out of the hospital, as far as Jamie was aware. One of those visits was just yesterday when she’d come to collect the property records. “We’ll start with her visit yesterday as it was the nearest in time to the actual attack. There were two places she visited yesterday, apart from here: the council offices and the coffee shop,” he instructed the deputy. “You go to the council offices and get their footage and I’ll go and grab the coffee shop’s. Get back here as quickly as you can.”

“Will they be open now?”
The deputy checked his watch “It’s only five a.m.”

Finn realized with a start that he had completely lost track of time. “No
, they won’t. You’re right. The diner opens at six, though, so I’ll head over there as soon as it opens. We’ll have to wait until a bit later for the other footage.”

He was waiting at the glass doors of the diner
when it opened promptly at six. He didn’t want to get his hopes up; he wasn’t even sure they had CCTV.