Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (3 page)

We reenter the hallway with the photos
on the wall.  Multiple doors line the long space.  We walk past a bathroom and
the master suite before arriving at two closed doors at the end of the hall.  While
Cindy opens the door on our left, I’m drawn to the door on our right.  There’s
nothing particularly special about it except for the small wooden object
hanging on the door.  It’s the size of a Christmas ornament and in the shape of
an M.

“This is her room?” I ask
breathlessly.  Up until this moment
,
I hadn’t even
considered the fact that there would be tangible pieces of Morgan
in
this house
.

Cindy nods slowly.  “We haven’t been in
her room much since she was taken.  Even after all these months
,
I refuse to disturb it.  I have to believe she’ll be back in there
someday.”

My hand involuntarily reaches out to
grasp the handle.  “Is it okay if–”

“You can go in.”

I hold in a breath as I open the door. 
My heart seems to stop completely as I turn on the light and take in the room
that is so Morgan.  The walls are covered with magazine clippings, barely
letting the white walls show through underneath.  They are words, phrases, and
pictures that seem randomly chosen, but I can tell they are carefully selected,
making a statement, evoking different emotions.  I see in each one of them, in
their chaotic but orderly beauty, all the complexities I’ve seen in Morgan.

The pink and yellow bed sheets are
ruffled and
hanging off the
bed, likely left just as they were the last morning she woke up in this house. 
Books are piled high on her desk and nightstand.  Her dresser is strewn with
all sorts of makeup and jewelry.  Colorful clothes and an overflow of shoes
spill out of her closet.  It’s the quintessential teenage girl’s bedroom.  It’s
only missing the girl.

“You really care about her, don’t you?”

My body jumps slightly at Cindy’s
sudden intrusion into my moment with what exists of Morgan in this room
,
but I remain silent
.  I don’t have to answer her question. 
She already knows the truth.

I notice a high school yearbook
seemingly discarded on the floor and can’t help pick
ing
it up.  I flip through the pages, inhaling th
e
fresh printed paper smell.  There are bookmarks where Morgan
appears in the pictures: the varsity basketball and volleyball teams, the
debate club, a group of fans cheering at homecoming, and even a close-up shot
of Morgan with her arms around the shoulders of two friends, full-on grins and
laughter visible in that frozen moment of time.

I can’t take my eyes off that last
picture.

“This is what I took away from her,” I
say quietly.  “She had a wonderful life, and I ruined it.”

“Mark ruined it,” Robert counters from
the doorway, slipping his phone into his pocket
,
“
and
she may have looked happy in those pictures, but she wasn’t
completely content.  She always wanted more space and freedom than I was
willing to give her.”

I nod and smile solemnly. 
Morgan would
be relieved to know that her dad understands this about her.  It would help
ease her guilt about all that’s happened.  I just wish she was
in this
room
to hear it.

I flip to the back of the yearbook and
see that every inch of space is covered with scribbles and signatures, people
congratulating
Morgan
and saying they’ll miss her and
that they should keep in touch.  An entire army’s worth of people signed her
yearbook.  That’s the full extent of how much the people in her life cared
about her.

As I’m closing the book to set it back
down, something falls out from between the last few pages.  It’s a wallet-sized
photo of Morgan, her dark blond hair in perfect placement just past her
shoulders, her body expertly posed
up
against a tree
in a white V-neck shirt.

I set down the yearbook on the floor
where I found it and pick up the fallen photo with a trembling hand, panic
rising in my chest the longer I stare at it.

I need to be with her.  She never
should have been taken again.  We were supposed to be together and safe
,
but I can’t even
protect her
now
.  I
don’t have a fucking clue where to find her.

A soft touch pushes my hand toward me
until I’m clutching the picture against my chest.  I turn my head to see Cindy
standing next to me.  She maintains the hold of her hand over mine for a moment
and smiles at me, though I can see the tears glistening in her eyes.

“Why don’t you keep that?” she offers.

I’m rendered speechless, though I’m not
sure if it’s from the fact that this woman is being so caring toward me or if
it’s because I get to take a piece of Morgan with me.  I’m happy to embrace
both things.

It takes a moment for me to clear the
constriction in my throat before replying.  “Thank you.”

Her Loyalty

∞

She stayed by my
side.

The only one.

My unwavering
supporter

when the rest of
the world forgot about me.

I was ready to
falter until she came to me,

bled for me,

suffered and
sacrificed.

Until the last
moment my eyes gazed upon her,

she fought for me.

∞

By the time Robert walks into the guest
bedroom to get me the next morning
,
I find myself exhausted. 
I feel run-down and disheveled inside and out.  Robert doesn’t look much
better.  I wonder if he’s had even one restful night of sleep since his daughter
was taken.

I don’t know how he’s done this for
four months.  It’s been less than two days and I’m already a wreck without
Morgan.

Robert observes me as he unlocks the
handcuff
s
, allowing me to sit up properly on the bed.
 
“This is what it feels like.  The empty feeling.  The lack of
sleep.”  He walks toward the door and looks back at me wearily.  “It doesn’t
get much better.”

It irks me that he’s making me feel
guilty about the four months he’s already had to spend away from his daughter
,
but it’s impossible to be angry with the man.  He’s right.  I’m
experiencing exactly what he’s had to endure, and I’ve only had a small taste
of it.

“There’s a clean towel for you on the
counter in the bathroom.  Breakfast will be ready in ten.”  He walks out the
door without another word.

I rub my hands over my face drowsily
before heading to the bathroom for a quick shower.  By the time I’m dressed and
in the dining room
,
Cindy is just bringing plate
s
of pancakes and sausage to the table.  When our eyes connect
,
she smiles at me.

Breakfast is
quiet
again
.  I’m still not completely
comfortable being in this place.  It doesn’t make sense for me to be here,
especially without Morgan.  I wonder what Mark was thinking when he left me
here.  He must have thought Robert would turn me in.  Maybe he
expected Robert
to
kill me
as he threatened to do over the last phone
call at the prison
.

I doubt he expected the
washed-up
criminal and the decorated detective to combine forces against
him.

We don’t waste any time getting out the
door.  Robert loads two large duffel bags into the trunk of a black sedan.  One
bag sounds soft, most likely clothes and supplies, but the other makes loud
clinking sounds as he moves it.  I suspect he has a small arsenal in that bag.

I’m about to move around the car to the
passenger side when Cindy approaches me and grabs my arm.  She gives me a
serious look, staring at me with a glint of fear and uncertainty in her eyes.

“Please bring her back, and keep an eye
on him, too.”  She nods to Robert near the back of the car.

It’s scary to know that she’s
entrusting these tasks to me.  She’s relying on me to put her family back
together again, and I have to try.  It’s the least I can do after everything
I’ve done to them.
 
“I will.”

And then she hugs me.

I wasn’t ready for the embrace, not
expecting it in the slightest, but she holds me there tightly.  She grasps on
to me as if I’m the only piece of her daughter left and she’s about to let me
slip through her fingers.

Morgan is the only other person who has
shown this kind of affection toward me
in years
.  It
only makes me miss her more.

When Robert’s heavy footsteps approach
from behind us
,
Cindy instantly pulls away.  With one
glance at
Robert,
I can tell he still doesn’t fully
trust me and that he thinks I have no business touching his wife, even
if
she’s the one who
initiated our
embrace.

“Get in,” Robert instructs, and I don’t
hesitate to comply.

As I get settled in the car
,
I can
’t
help
watching
their goodbye.  Cindy kisses her husband for a long moment, holding
both sides of his face as tears rush down her cheeks.  He holds her in his
arms, caressing her back, giving her comfort.  I can’t hear the words he’s
saying
,
but I know what they would be.  I’ve said the
same things
repeatedly
to Morgan
since
the moment I met her at the prison. 
It’ll be okay.  We’ll get
through this.  Don’t worry.  Everything will be fine.

Except it isn’t.  Everything is far
from fine.

I have to look away, staring out the
passenger side window at the stone wall that separates the Whitford’s yard from
their neighbor
’s property
.  The modern houses continue
one after the other
around
the cul-de-sac.  Everything
is so domesticated here, completely foreign to me.

A couple minutes pass before the
driver’s side door opens and Robert takes his seat.  Cindy waves goodbye to us,
the sadness on her face replaced with a genuine smile as we back out of
t
he driveway.  I smile back at her, hoping I can keep my word to
bring her daughter back home and into her arms.

Robert doesn’t say a word to me as we
drive
for hours
.  It’s a painful silence knowing that he
has a lot to say to me but can’t or won’t s
peak
any of
it.

In the silence of the vehicle
,
I take the time to think about where we’re going, who we’re going
to talk to, who I can threaten to tell me where the hell Mark is.  Anger starts
to overwhelm me as I sit in th
e
seat.  I need a wall
to smash my fist into
, o
r maybe Mark’s face.

It’s what I thought about all night
:
w
hat I will do to him when we find him.

I start to feel a little nauseated when
we
leave Arizona and
hit the New Mexico border.  I’m
heading right back into the heart of it, back to retrace my steps with Morgan,
to find someone or something to help us.

We
arrive in the town where Morgan and
I met Jack’s friend, Tony Russo, who ultimately betrayed us.  After directing
Robert through a few wrong turns
,
I finally see the
building where it all happened.  My heart
races
as we
approach it.  Some unreasonable part of me thinks for just a second that Morgan
could still be inside, that they may have taken me from this place but not her.

By the time we’re parked a little
further
down the street
,
I’m about ready to run out
of the car and tear down the walls of this place.  Anger flows through me,
overpowering the disappointment I still feel that I so stupidly fell into
Mark’s trap here.

Robert moves to the trunk and digs
through the bags.  He pulls out a large knife and sticks it into a
sheath
already attached around his belt with his firearm.  The
Glock
9mm
pistol
has hardly left his side
since my arrival at the Whitford household.

The hesitant look on his face when he
looks up at me confirms that this man is still having difficulty trusting me. 
He can’t expect me to go into this unarmed, though.
 
“I
need a weapon.  Give me a
pocket
knife.  Anything.”

With a quick sigh
,
Robert reaches in the bag and does me one better.  He hands me a
switchblade and my own 9mm
pistol
.

I nod my thanks to him, putting the
switchblade in my pocket and checking the slide on the gun to get a feel for it
before loading a bullet into the chamber.  Robert hands me two extra
magazines
before taking his own extra ammo.

I’m feeling empowered now.  Having a
gun back in my hand and this hatred and adrenaline pulsing through me
creates
exactly the
internal
drive I need in this
search.  It’s fueling me, willing my body to get in there and do whatever it
takes to find something to lead us to Morgan.

Robert closes the trunk.  “Let’s go.”

Though
I’ve
shared multiple meals with this man and lived in his house for
over a
day,
this is the first time I feel like an equal to Robert. 
I’m no longer the dangerous criminal and he’s no longer the
law-abiding
detective.  We’re just two men on a desperate search to find the
missing piece of our lives, the most important piece, the only piece that
matters.

I take the lead up the empty sidewalk,
approaching the entrance to the industrial building with my gun trained ahead
of me. 
Upon reaching t
he hollow metal door
, I
find that it’s
locked but
the handle jiggles slightly
in my grasp
. 
It’s
loose, making the
door less secure.

“Stand back,” I warn Robert.

We both back up a few steps before I
plunge forward
,
kicking my foot into the door.  It
doesn’t budge at first, but with each successive kick it starts to give way. 
With one final blow against it
,
the door swings open
and
crash
es loudly
as it hits the wall inside.

Moving quickly and quietly
,
I enter the room where Russo’s doorman greeted us.  The room is
dark despite the daylight trickling in from the cloud
ed
windows and the open door.  The hallway we’re about to walk down
is even darker.

Robert touches my shoulder from behind,
handing me a small pocket flashlight that, despite its tiny size, emits plenty
of light from its LEDs.  I grab the flashlight in my fist to shine the light in
front of us
and help
steady
the aim of the gun in my
other
hand.

I stop to check some doors as we move
down the hallway
,
but the rooms are all empty, dark,
and silent.  It’s becoming clear to me that there is no one here, which is as I
expected but still causes some disappointment within me.  At the very least we
need to find some evidence of where
everyone
could
have gone
from here or where they could be now
.

I think back to
two days ago
when I was last here, to the path the doorman took us on to get to
the office where
everything
went down.  It doesn’t
take long for me to find it.  I open the door cautiously, more afraid of the
memories that wait for me behind it than the threat of someone actually being
there to attack us.

After I flick on the light, I find the familiar
metal desk and chairs in the middle of the otherwise empty
concrete
space.  I see exactly where I had been sitting with Morgan on
my lap, where she made her statement of loyalty and devotion to me by showing
the other men in the room that she was mine alone
just
before she was asked to join Russo on the other side of the desk.

I never should have let her go.  I
should have returned her loyalty by insisting that she stay by my side, by
showing everyone in the room that I wasn’t about to share her with any of them
and
that she was indeed mine.

I move around the desk and get a
perfect view of where Russo threw Morgan back into the waiting arms of his men. 
I remember the moment of panic I felt at seeing this, the relief I experienced
when I realized a fake kidnapping was
all part of the escape plan
, and the absolute terror that seized me when I figured out there
was nothing fake about it.  I relive with vivid detail the moment that Mark’s
own men grabbed me and held me back while Morgan screamed and cried.

And then I remember her disappearing
through the door, and I start to lose it.

Bracing myself on the desk, I hold my
other arm up to my forehead and squeeze my eyes shut.  With a couple deep
breaths and a shake of my head
,
I emerge from the
memories and am back in the moment.

“You okay?” Robert asks with concern.

I give him a look that betrays what I’m
about to say.  “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

I ignore Robert’s comment and move
toward the door where they took Morgan.  We’re heading into new territory now. 
I have no memory of what happened after she disappeared from my view.  All I
remember
is
the heartache and
fury
and being injected with a sedative
, t
hen
I woke up on Robert’s doorstep.

Shining the light around the floor and
down the
dark
hallway on the other side of the door
gives me nothing.  This part of the building looks just as abandoned as the
rest of it.  It’s clear that this was never Russo’s place.  It was just a
meet-up point, a venue for Mark’s betrayal of me to run its course.