Black Jack: A nail biting, hair-raising thriller (Jack Ryder Book 4) (8 page)

M
ay
2016

What started out as a sweet reunion scene, soon turned out to be a complete nightmare. Troubles began once the Hawthornes wanted to leave and take Betsy Sue with them. Of course the girl refused to leave.

Her begging and pleading eyes landed on me as they pulled her arm. I tried to smile and let her know it was all right, that she was going to be fine, but the terror in her face was disturbing.

She can’t stay here forever, Jack. The girl needs to be with her parents. And you have a wedding to plan, remember?

Mr. Hawthorne ended up grabbing the snarling and fighting Betsy Sue in his arms and walked out to the car with her over his shoulder. I watched with a thumping heart as they drove away with the little girl.

It felt awful.

Shannon walked up to me as I stood in the window still looking out at the empty road in the direction where the police car had disappeared.

“You think we’ll ever see her again?” I asked.

“Part of me hope we won’t,” Shannon said.

“And the other part?”

“Wants to run after that car and tell them to bring her back here.”

I looked at my bride to be and felt such deep love for her. She was holding Tyler on her arm.

“You feel that too huh?”

“I couldn’t stand the way they carried her away like that. And she clearly didn’t know who they were. Did you see that look on her face? She was so confused. Shouldn’t she be able to remember them?”

I shrugged and caressed my drooling son gently on the cheek. “I don’t know. It’s been five years. She was very young when she disappeared. No one knows what’s going on in that little girl’s mind and what she’s able to remember and what she’s not. I mean being taken from her parents five years ago must have been quite the trauma for her. Maybe she blocked out all memories from before then simply to survive?”

Shannon put her head on my shoulder. Tyler was fussing and she tried to make him calm down. When she didn’t succeed I told her to hand him to me. I looked into he eyes of my beautiful baby and wondered how I would react if he was kidnapped.

I couldn’t even finish the thought.

Shannon’s hand landed on my shoulder. “We have done everything we can. There really isn’t anything else we could have done. I mean the girl is back with her real parents.”

I nodded and kissed her. We had to let it go. Both of us.

“So should we order in?” I asked.

“Or…” Shannon said with glistering eyes.

“Or we could go out!” I said. “Now that Betsy Sue isn’t with us, it’s a lot easier.”

Shannon threw herself in one of the old couches, her Ipad in her hand. “I’ll find a place. Somewhere that is fun for the kids too.”

“Oh what about the Pirate House? Someone recommended that to me,” I said. “It’s supposed to be haunted and everything.”

“What place around her isn’t?” Shannon said and I couldn’t stop thinking about Betsy Sue and the boy she said was constantly by my side. I didn’t believe in ghosts yet I felt a chill run down my spine while Shannon called to make reservations for us.

M
ay
2016

The Pirate’s House was a restaurant that had been there since 1753. The small building adjoining the Pirate’s House was said to be the oldest house in the State of Georgia. Situated a block from the Savannah River, The Pirate's House first opened, as an inn for seafarers, and fast became a rendezvous for bloodthirsty pirates and sailors from the Seven Seas. Here seamen drank their grog and discoursed sailor fashion on their exotic high seas adventures from Singapore to Bombay and from London to Port Said.

At least that’s what the sign at the entrance said. I was reading it while we were waiting to be seated at the very popular place. The kids were already running all over the place, yelling and acting like pirates stomping the old wooden planks and talking to the pirate statues like they were part of the game. Well my kids did. Angela stayed close to her mother as always, looking dazzled and amused by Austin’s goofiness.

A guy dressed up like a pirate approached them and started telling the tale of how the tunnels underneath the restaurant were used to transport shanghaied seamen to the boats. They were drugged and captured at the Pirate’s House, then shuttled to waiting pirate ships via a secret tunnel where they’d wake up far out to sea.

“Stories still persist of a tunnel extending from the Old Rum Cellar beneath the Captain's Room to the river through which these men were carried, drugged, and unconscious, to ships waiting in the harbor,” he told them making his voice scary and piratish. “A Savannah policeman - so legend has it - stopped by The Pirate’s House for a friendly drink and awoke on a four-master schooner sailing to China from where it took him two years to make his way back to Savannah.”

“Wauv,” Abigail exclaimed while Emily scoffed from where she was standing leaned up against a wall, her bangs covering most of her face, her hoodie pulled up. She was wearing way too much clothes for such a warm evening.

“Well it’s true,” I said addressed to her. “That there are actual tunnels underneath Savannah.”

I had heard about the tunnels myself but had always been told they were used for the bodies of people who succumbed to yellow fever. Through an underground network they were put in the tunnels and moved to prevent panic aboveground.  Still another tale tells of runaway slaves hidden under the floor of the First African Baptist Church, and then ferried out of harm’s way via an Underground Railroad. I didn’t know what to believe. Savannah was a place of myths and legends and the Savannahians master storytellers.  With a location this steeped in history, there was no shortage of compelling plotlines and colorful characters. 

This place was no different.

“Even now, many swear that the ghost of Captain Flint still haunts The Pirate’s House on moonless nights,” the pirate ended his a tale just as our table was ready and we were seated in a private area like I had asked for, to make sure Shannon could take off her hat and relax for a bit. And so she could breastfeed if she needed to.

I tipped the lady extra and she went on with a happy smile.

The kids got menus that they could shape into pirate hats and paper-earrings and color while me and Shannon looked at what to get. Tyler had fallen asleep on our way here and stayed in his car seat, slumped down deep in dreamland. I just hoped he would stay there until we were done eating. We could use a nice night out with the kids without his meddling for once. He was adorable, but also exhausting.

“I’m gonna get myself a steak,” I said and then added an pirated “arrr”

Shannon laughed. The kids seemed more embarrassed, especially Emily who was hiding behind her menu.

“I’ll have some Southern Style Catfish,” Shannon said. Then tried an “arrr” of her own. It received a laugh from her own daughter. Mine didn’t know how to pity-laugh.

It was all the way it was supposed to be. It felt great to be back to normal again. If you could ever call this crazy family normal.

P
USH
: A tie; the player and dealer have hands with the same total.

M
ay
2016

Shannon was happy. It had been a tough couple of days with Betsy Sue in the house, knowing her story and everything, and it hurt thinking about it. But now Shannon had finally let it go, finally she was back with her family enjoying every one of them.

Jack’s kids were being rowdy as always and every now and then she wanted to say something to Abigail, but she held it back. This was not the time or place. It was still Jack’s battle to fight. Later when they were more used to Shannon around, when they moved into the new house, she might listen to Shannon.

The house. Oh the house. They had owned the property for almost a year now. They started building the house after Jack’s plans and the drawings he made with the architect, but the house wasn’t done yet. It was about to drive all of them nuts. The house was there. There was a roof on and everything, but then there was the issue of the plumbing, then there was the electricity. It still didn’t work properly and they hadn’t been able to move in yet.

Soon, they said. Very soon.

They had said that for months now. It was getting tiresome. Shannon couldn’t wait to move in and start living in the house that Jack built for her.

All good things come to those who wait.

She was hoping that they’d be able to move in before the summer, but was trying to not get her hopes up too high. Until now they had all been living in Jack’s apartment and it was getting a little cramped. Emily was spending most of her nights at the motel that Jack’s parents owned next door and that had helped a little.

Shannon ate her catfish while looking at Emily who had ordered a fish but barely touched it. Jack didn’t see it, but Shannon did. The girl cut out the fish into small pieces, and then pushed them around on the plate making it look like she had eaten. She was getting really good at hiding it, it was almost scary.

“Can we get dessert, dad, can we pleeeeeaaaase?” asked Abigail and as usually she got her way. The kids were served chocolate ice cream and soon bouncing off the walls of the small private room.

Luckily Tyler slept through everything. At least Shannon didn’t have to worry about him. Jack put his arm around her shoulder.

“Do you want a dessert too?” he asked.

“I can’t,” Shannon said.

“Ah come on,” he said. “You look great. No need to worry.”

“I have to be able to fit the dress,” she said. “They just finished it. I can’t make anymore adjustments to it.”

“Oh, well I could do with some chocolate ice myself,” he said. “Arrr.”

“Dad it’s not funny anymore,” Abigail said. “It never was.”

Jack ignored her. “How about you Emily? You love chocolate cake. They have that with vanilla Ice-cream?”

Shannon could have screamed. How could he ask her that? Did he not see that she hadn’t eaten? Did he not see her?

Emily shook her head and leaned back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. Shannon felt a pinch in her heart. She could see how Emily’s hands had gotten so skinny. The bones were too visible. She wondered how she looked underneath all that clothing. Shannon realized it was going to be up to her if anything was to be done about Emily’s condition.

Jack ate his ice cream and they paid. Shannon put on her big hat when walking back through the crowd. All it took was one person recognizing her before hell would break loose. Shannon knew it was vital that no one saw her here. The press would hear about it and make a circus out of their wedding.

Tyler started fussing as they walked towards the entrance. The kids stopped to look at some door that another pirate told them was magical. Shannon felt the pressure of Tyler’s demands and Jack saw it on her face.

“Just go out to the car with him while I gather the kids,” Jack said.

Shannon carried Tyler in his car seat out through the front door of the restaurant, leaving all the chaos behind her. It had gotten chili outside and Shannon took her jacket from around her waist. To use both her hands she had to put Tyler down on the porch. She put the jacket on and as she turned to grab the handle of the car seat, it wasn’t there.

M
ay
2016

At first when I heard Shannon scream I thought it was part of some gimmick in the restaurant. Someone screaming pretending to be a ghost or to have seen one. I laughed and gathered the kids. We walked towards the entrance when I heard it again. This time it was a lot more serious and I realized it wasn’t part of a show put on by some people working here. This was real.

It was a nightmare come true.

My eyes met hers when she opened the door to the restaurant and stepped inside. “Did you take Tyler?” she asked her voice trembling.

I shook my head, panic starting to emerge in the bottom of my stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you take him? Did you come out and grab him?”

“No. I have been in here with the kids, trying to gather them. You took him outside, remember?”

“He’s not there,” she said. “He was there, and then he wasn’t.”

It sounded like she had lost it. Her voice was calm like someone in deep shock. I had seen it before and it scared me even more. “What do you mean he isn’t there? Didn’t you hold on to him?”

“I had him in the car seat, carrying him outside on the porch. Then I felt cold, put the seat down to put on my jacket. When I reached down to grab the handle, it wasn’t there. He was gone.”

“Oh my god,” I said and stormed outside on the old wooden porch. I looked to both sides of me trying to imagine being Shannon putting on my jacket.

Why on earth did she turn away from him? Why didn’t she keep an eye on our baby?

“Tyler?” I asked as if he was able to answer. I walked around the porch to the other side of the house, my heart throbbing in my chest. Cars were coming in and others leaving the big parking lot in front of the restaurant like nothing had happened. I felt like yelling at them, stopping them and searching them for my baby.

Where are you little man?

“Do you see him?” Shannon asked as she came out behind me.

I shook my head and rubbed my hair frantically. “No. Where did you put him down?”

“Over there,” she said and pointed at a spot next to the door. “I put him down right there, I think.”

“You think? You think?” I asked a little more aggressively than I wanted to. “Please do try and remember, Shannon. Did you put him down over there or not?”

“Maybe it was over here closer to the door. I don’t remember Jack, I don’t remember exactly where it was!”

“Think, Shannon,” I said.

I stormed into the parking lot and started searching around the cars. I spotted a lady who was unlocking her car holding a box of food in her hand. “Hey!” I approached her. She looked afraid of me. “Have you seen a baby in a red car seat? Maybe seen someone carry it somewhere?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “No.” She hurried up and opened the car door and got in. I sighed trying to ease up the panic slowly spreading in my body. I stared around me. Nothing but a sea of cars lit up by streetlamps. Cars were constantly coming and going. Someone ought to have seen at least something, right? A baby doesn’t just disappear, does it?

I spotted Shannon standing still at the porch staring at the same spot where she said she was almost certain she remembered putting the seat down. I felt anger and found it hard to control it. I ran back towards her yelling.

“Come on! Shannon. How could you let this happen?” I yelled to her face while raising my arm angrily.

Startled Shannon ducked down with a shriek protecting her head with both of her arms.

I gasped and pulled back.

Oh my gosh. She thought I was going to hit her, didn’t she?

“I am sorry,” I said. I backed up angry at myself now for being so insensitive given her past with a violent ex-husband. I knew better than this. I was just so scared.

Shannon whimpered, then broke into tears. “I’m so sorry, Jack. I am so sorry. I lost him. I lost our baby.”

I kneeled next to her and pulled her into my embrace. I was fighting my own tears but didn’t allow myself to cry.

“No.
We
lost him. And
we’ll
find him. Together.”