See Tom Run (25 page)

Tom winced. It now hit home just how much his actions
twenty years ago had changed this woman’s entire life. He felt weak
and sick to his stomach.

What a selfish prick he’d been!

He was momentarily speechless. He wanted nothing more
than to explain to Mindy that he had changed since then, and if he
had it all to do again, he would never have left her in the lurch
like that. He would have offered to support the child and do the
responsible thing…

But all of this would just sound like so much drivel
to Mindy Conkel Gossett. Even if she believed him, which he doubted
she would, what difference would it make? What had happened had
happened—there was no turning back the hands of time.

“I’m so sorry, Mindy,” he said again.

“It’s okay, Tom. I’ve long since learned how to live
with it and get on with my life. We were both young and foolish
back then and I probably got what I deserved. The Lord saw to it
that I paid for my mistakes.”

Tom wanted to protest, but didn’t. At that moment, he
wanted to take Mindy in his arms and apologize a hundred times over
for ruining her life. And tell her that he didn’t deserve her
forgiveness, for what he had done simply wasn’t forgivable. And
that she was wrong in thinking that she deserved the miserable life
she had been living thanks to Charlie Gossett.

In fact, he wanted to tell her that if anyone
deserved to be punished for all of this, it would be his own lame
ass …

But Tom kept these thoughts and words to himself.
Instead, he decided that he would simply thank Mindy for seeing him
on such short notice, wish her well, then get back on road before
the storm hit.

And that is just what he did.

CHAPTER 21

There was a good four inches of snow on the ground by
the time he approached the Columbus city limits. Tom was thankful
for the lack of heavy traffic on I-71 as he proceeded north on the
slick freeway at forty-five miles an hour.

He tried Tracy’s home number and got
her voicemail again.
Shit!
he thought. Why hadn’t he ever stored her cell
phone number into his contacts? The battery strength indicator was
showing a single flickering bar. His power was all but
shot.

He cursed again and flipped the phone shut, feeling
like Captain Kirk unable to reach the Enterprise.

“We are in grave need of some dilithium crystals
here, Scotty,” he murmured to the Jeep’s vacant interior.

Tom planned on going directly to Tracy’s apartment
whether he reached her or not. He was about to crawl out of his
skin. He needed to talk to her—to let her know how he felt about
things.

He pulled onto the Hudson Street exit and headed west
at the light. When he reached Summit Street, he hung a left and
noted that none of the streets had been plowed or salted yet. It
looked like a ghost town.

And it was really dark.
Too dark,
in fact…

Tom slowed down and glanced at the windows of the
houses he passed by. No lights on. The streetlights weren’t even
lit.

The frigging power was off!

Déjà vu swept over him and Tom began to panic.
Suddenly, he felt like he was re-living his dream. Deep snow, no
traffic and no power. The sudden impulse to scream was strong, but
his curiosity was even stronger.

He flipped opened the cell phone.

It was as dead as a doornail.

The battery had totally died.

With his heart in his throat, he slowed down to a
crawl and began looking for Tracy’s apartment building. It should
have been easy enough to find, but the street was shrouded in
darkness and the houses were set back far from the street. He
finally reached the intersection of Holmes Road and spotted Tracy’s
apartment building on the corner. He pulled onto Holmes to access
the building’s parking lot located behind in the ally.

As he was about to pull into the ally, a car suddenly
sped out in front of him and fishtailed wildly before straightening
out and flying down Holmes. Tom hit the brakes hard to avoid
smacking into the careening car, sending the Jeep into a slide
before it came to rest against the curb.

Tom’s first reaction to the near-collision car was
shock, which gave way to momentary relief—

It meant he wasn’t the only person alive, which was a
good thing.

Tom backed away from the curb and drove the short
distance to the parking lot. He noticed Tracy’s car parked near the
end and pulled up beside it.

She must be home now!
he thought triumphantly.

Grabbing his coat, he stepped out onto the virgin
snow. In the weak light, he noticed that Tracy’s car was cleared of
snow and the windshield was wiped clean, indicating that she had
arrived home quite recently. He stepped past her car and headed for
the rear stairway of the apartment building, then froze in his
tracks—

There were no footprints leading away from Tracy’s
car. Nor were there any prints leading to the stairway from the
parking lot.

Tom turned and backtracked to Tracy’s car. When he
reached the driver’s side, he saw what appeared to be two sets of
footprints outside the door. But the tracks appeared to begin and
end there, which was impossible.

Tom tried Tracy’s car door handle and was surprised
to find it unlocked. He opened the door and felt heat escape from
inside. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since she had
gotten out—

A cold jolt of fear hit Tom like a sledgehammer. He
whirled around, slung open the passenger side door of the Jeep and
reached inside the glove compartment for the flashlight. He
switched it on and trained the beam on the ground between the two
vehicles. He suddenly realized why the footprints appeared to lead
nowhere when he spotted the second set of car tracks running
parallel to the Jeep’s.

Another car had been parked beside Tracy’s just
before he had arrived here. And Tracy had gotten into that car.

By her own will, or had she been forced?

The two sets of footprints implied the latter—

That car he had just seen fly out of the ally—he had
seen it before!

He hadn’t realized it at the time, but Tom was now
certain that it was the same car that had dumped the raped girl
into the ally that night!

Sh
it! And
now the bastard has snatched Tracy right out of her car!

Tom ran around the Jeep to the driver’s side and got
in, started it up and spun out of the parking lot in reverse.
Switching on his high beams, he followed the tire tracks of the car
onto Holmes Road and drove east.

Tom’s mind was racing as he followed the trail to the
intersection of North Fourth Street. How had this happened? How had
the rapist found Tracy in the first place? For that matter, did he
even know that she had witnessed his dumping of the girl’s body?
Tom was certain that the man hadn’t seen either of them that night.
Or at least it had seemed that way.

But even if the man had spotted Tracy and Tom
watching him from the shadows, why would he wait until now to
abduct Tracy? Hell, how did he know that she lived here—that she
would be at this particular place on this particular night? It
didn’t make sense—

Unless …

Tom pulled north onto Fourth Street. He realized that
there was at least a half-dozen sets of tire tracks running along
the well traveled street as he headed toward the light on Hudson.
When he reached the intersection, he strained his eyes to see where
the maze of tracks led.

The thought returned as he mulled over which way to
turn at the light …

What if the man had been shadowing Tracy all this
time since that night, just waiting for the perfect time to nab
her? And now he was going to see to it that she never told the
police what she had witnessed?

Tom grimaced. In the true spirit of his unabashed
selfishness, he had essentially allowed Tracy Adams to become an
open target to a brutal rapist. By going his merry way to avoid the
muck and mire of any potential life-ruining consequences, he had
left the poor girl alone and vulnerable to one uber-scary son of a
bitch.

Nice going, Tom, you lowlife prick …

And now there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do
about it. There were crisscrossing sets of tracks leading in all
three directions beyond the light: straight-ahead, to the left and
to the right.

Got a coin? he asked himself in desperation.

Aware that the odds were against his catching up with
Tracy’s abductor, he resolved to do what he should have done in the
first place.

Call the cops.

He reached for his cell phone, flipped it open and
saw that it was still as dead as it was before. Swearing to
himself, he turned left and headed toward Summit Street again. He
drove too fast and nearly rear-ended a car as he pulled up to the
same pay phone he had used to call 911 the night of the crime. He
jumped out and fumbled in his pocket for a quarter, grabbed the
handset and dropped in the coin. There was no dial tone, just utter
silence.

Shit!

Tom slammed the phone down onto the hook so violently
that his whole arm hurt. Then a weak smile came to his face as an
idea came to him. He headed back to Tracy’s apartment building, got
out and ran up the rear stairway. Outside her door, he knelt down
and ran his fingers along the bottom of the threshold until he felt
a seam in the siding. He pulled out on the seam and groped around
until he felt the key wedged between the siding and the wood. He
withdrew the key and plunged it into the keyhole.

Tom had learned about Tracy’s secret hiding place for
the spare key the night they had gotten drunk at a local club. They
had returned to her apartment only to discover that she had locked
herself out. He could still see the sly grin on her lovely face as
she produced the key and giggled so hard that she could hardly get
it into the keyhole.

Tom opened the door and stepped inside. He cursed to
himself as he realized he should have brought his flashlight. He
headed blindly toward the kitchen in the darkness, picking his way
from memory. He reached the kitchen, located the gas stove and
turned on one of the burners. In the pale blue light, he fished
though all of the drawers until he found a flashlight.

He turned on the light and saw the wall phone mounted
near the doorway. He picked up the phone and started to dial 911,
glancing at the “things to do” dry erase board mounted beside the
phone. Tom’s heart skipped a beat as he read Tracy’s even
handwriting:

Columbus P.D. 4:30. Detective Collins.

So that’s what had happened, Tom thought. Tracy must
have made an appointment with the cops to give her statement on the
crime earlier today. And somehow the perp found out and came after
her!

Tom pressed in the three numbers. The phone was
dead.

Of course.

He replaced the phone and debated what to do. He
could drive to the nearest police station, but wasn’t even sure
where it was located. Then another idea came to him.

He recalled that Tracy had a second cell phone that
she had planned on giving her grandmother the next time she visited
her. He could only hope she hadn’t yet made the trip to the nursing
home in Toledo. If he could find that phone and it was charged up,
he would be in luck.

Tom dashed out of the kitchen and entered the living
room. The last time he had seen the phone, it was plugged into the
wall near the entertainment center. He walked over and shone the
flashlight around but didn’t see it. He opened one of the drawers
and spotted the phone lying on top of the clutter. He nearly cried
out in joy.

He pulled it out and pressed the power button. There
was a brief pause before he heard the welcome chime and saw the LCD
screen glow brightly.

After it booted up, he observed the battery status
bar. Fully charged. And he had three bars of reception.

Tom punched in 911 and held his breath. After two
rings, there was a connection.

“What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice said.

” I want to report an abduction.”

“When did this abduction occur and who was
abducted?”

“It was just a few minutes ago,” Tom replied. He
hesitated before continuing, realizing that he was about to spill
all of the beans. He no longer cared.

“Tracy Adams.”

“And what is your relationship to the victim?”

Tom nearly hung up, but knew he couldn’t. He was just
going to have to go all the way with this. “I am a friend of
hers.”

“And your name, sir?”

“Tom. Tom Grayson.”

“Where did the crime occur?”

“Just outside Tracy’s apartment. It’s on Summit
Street. Please, you have to send a cop before it’s too late!”

“I will, sir—just a few more questions. Do you know
the make and model of the abductor’s vehicle?”

“Yes, it was a late model gold-colored Ford Taurus.
It had Ohio plates.”

“Did you happen to get the plate number?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Can you give me a description of Ms. Adam’s
abductor?

Tom recalled the man he had seen the night of the
original crime. “White, tall and lanky. About 6 feet. Medium
build.”

“Hair and clothing?”

“He had really short dark hair, like a burr cut. I
didn’t see what he was wearing. Please hurry and get the cops over
here!”

“I’ve already radioed the police and they are on
their way. You are at 2342 Summit Street, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Did you see which way the vehicle was headed when it
fled?”

“East toward North Fourth on Holmes. Then it had to
go north on Fourth since it’s a one-way street. I’m not sure where
it went from there.”

“Fine, sir. Please stay where you are until the
police arrive.”