Breathless (Meadowlarks) (19 page)

“Damn
it,” he said, his voice low and breathy. “How much money?”

“Four hundred and fifty thousand. Which, is an odd number, yes?”

“Yes, it is. Usually it's an even amount, no fifties.
Usually
, that is...”

I smile
d at my similar thinking. “I thought so too. Then when I really thought about it, I realized that my son had that much money, short of two thousand dollars, in a bank account.”

Detective Campbell didn't ask where the money came from, but I told him anyway.

“Dane Sullivan has paid a lot of money for child support over the years, it's all gone into an account for Isaac. So, how would this person know that? And approximately how much would be in there?”

“Where are you now?” he ask
ed.

“Maine.”

“Maine? Oh, Lord...you're doing what I was afraid you would do.”

“I'm being a mother, Detective. I'm doing what any parent would do.” I choke
d back the tears. “I will go to the ends of the earth to find Isaac, and I would gladly die trying.”

“I'm going to fly to meet you there, don't say no. I know
its way off protocol, and not my jurisdiction, but—My Mama raised a good country boy, and I'm going to help you get your son back.”

I sob
bed. “Thank you, Detective. Thank you. Call me when you get to Augusta.”

“I hope it's not too late, Riley.”

“Me too.”

I end
ed the call, and got out of the van I had parked in the lot of the DS Industries building. I wasn’t even to the giant desk in the middle of the lobby before Dane was at my side, escorting me toward a bank of elevators and pushing the button to call it down to us.

It open
ed, and he gently pushed me in with his hand on the small of my back. I turned around when the door closed and glared at him.

“Tell me what's going on,” I sa
id, raising an eyebrow. “I'm not fucking stupid.”

“What?” he ask
ed, looking
somewhat
surprised.

“You have something to do with this, Dane. I just know it. But what I don't know, is
why?
” I crossed my arms. “Why would you take him from me? Don't you see what this is doing to me?”

“Riley, I did not take Isaac. How can I spell this out for you?”

“Then where is he!” I started to cry again, exhausted and frustrated.

Dane trie
d to pull me into his body again, just like he did at the park when I had my meltdown, but this time I pushed away, not wanting a millimetre of his skin on mine.

The elevator door open
ed, I stepped out onto the vast stone floored office, and the walls were stark white with rich black furniture everywhere. Very clean, very modern, very anal.

Dane
moved ahead of me, past a large reception desk with a beautiful woman with long black hair sitting behind it. She looked up and smiled at him and then darted her eyes to me. I smirked, following on his heels and thought about how much she looked like I do.

He's such a weirdo.

Behind the closed door of Dane's office, which, by the way, was even more ridiculous than the entire building and everything else that I imagine was in it. Floor-to-ceiling windows, more black furniture and a vast array of miscellaneous items on a huge built-in shelving unit. A few trophies, photos in fancy frames, crystal awards for a successful business, et cetera.

I walk
ed along the shelves, looking at each item and absentmindedly picking up the soft ball that was randomly sitting on its own small shelf.

“So, tell me what you know,
” I said, coldly, rolling the ball in my hands.

“Are you going to throw that at me?”

I laughed. “Maybe.”

“Well, I'd rather you didn't. It's Isaac's.”

The ball dropped from my hands and rolled a few feet before stopping against a giant leather ottoman.

“
What?
”

“It's from his first softball game.”

“Why do you have it? How did you even get it?”

“I was there, I'm always there.”

“Okay, I can't take this anymore! You're just screwing with my head, over and over again. Tell me why you're here, why you've come out of the darkness and appeared in my life again. And why the hell you have my son's baseball!”

He walk
ed over to me and bent to pick up the ball, then placed it back on the shelf. “I've always watched from a distance. Not wanting to interfere, but wanting to know what my son was like and what I've been missing out on. Seeing, yes. But not living a life with him. With you.”

My scrunched up face
didn’t move, and my mouth couldn’t speak.

“I'm going to get him back, that's all you need to know. Then you can live out the rest of your life with Isaac and your daughter, in Cowboy Town with your little plaything.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, tell me how you're going to get him back. What do you know?”

“I know where he is.”

My heart stopped beating. “Tell me.”

“Give me a few hours to get more information. Please, it's all I ask.”

Dane loosened his tie, sat back down at his desk, and turned on his laptop.

I plop
ped down in a ridiculous plush chair, slinging my heavy bag on to my lap. For the second time in two days, I was planning my escape from him—from this office.

Dane type
d the keys on his laptop, and occasionally glanced over to where I was sitting, but he didn’t say a word. When his phone rang, he pulled it from the inside of his jacket and turned his chair away from me.

“What?” He answer
ed, his voice clipped.

I
sat up, gathering my courage to bolt.

“I told you, don’t fuck around with me…” he growl
ed into the phone.

It’s now or never.

I got up from the chair, and crept across the gigantic office. When he noticed me out of the corner of his eye, I held up my index finger. “Bathroom. One minute.”

He exhale
d, and looked at me like he was going to turn green, jump out of the window and start smashing all of Augusta.

I frown
ed and mouthed
please
to him.

Dane’s eyes close
d, and when they opened he quickly nodded at me, and continued his phone call.

My fingers tremble
d when I reached for the door, but I opened it and sprinted until I was past my doppelganger receptionist.

When I made it to
the minivan again, I received a
Stop being so fucking stupid
text from Dane
.
I ignored it and drove back to the marketing building. This time I parked across the street, and sunk low in my seat...waiting…for anything.

I flip
ped through picture after picture on my phone again, smiling and choking up at the ones of my sweet Isaac. I came across a photo of myself, wearing that coral dress when I was at my parents’ house without Alex months ago.

He asked me to take this picture and send it to him. The woman in the picture isn’t who
m I saw in the rear view of the minivan…she’s a complete stranger. The eyes of whom I saw now were empty—cold, and completely lacking any sort of grip on reality.

It’s like living in a dream—no, a nightmare. One that you claw at the sheets and thrash in your bed to wake up from…but so fa
r, I’m still inside this terror and I’m wide awake.

I should
have called Alex, I missed him so much, and I’m sure he was missing Scarlett like crazy. I felt awful that I took her away from him, but I thought she would be safer in my parents’ home while I tried to find Isaac.

While I was
been sitting there, in my reverie, I hadn’t realized until it was pulling away, that there was a black Mercedes in front of the Stuart Match and Gleese building. I checked for traffic, and pulled on to the street behind it, following it. Praying that Celeste and Aldo were in it again, and they lead me to where I thought—I hoped, Isaac was.

“It was them talking,” I whisper
ed to myself, remembering the night at my parents’ house when I saw Celeste talking to a mysterious man. What I can’t understand is how they knew each other, and why they were together. When she was still wearing that monstrosity of a ring, obviously still married to my Uncle Wesley.

The Mercedes ma
de its way onto the Interstate, and I followed closely behind it, but remained a few car lengths in between. After about seven miles the car turned off a ramp, and I followed still. It curved again onto a street and I shadowed it once more.

We were
in the suburbs, rows of houses with only a few feet of space between them lined the streets. The car still kept going, turning here and there, and picked up speed when the houses started becoming further and further apart.

Townhouses
morphed into gated mansions in the blink of an eye, and I pulled off the road when the black sedan curved into a driveway and waited for a gate to open, letting the car in.

Once the gate
was closed, I got out of the van and ran up the street, peering through the trees for any visual on the car. I saw it parked in front of a house with towering pillars and red rose bushes lining the house like a moat.

“I got you, bitch
,” I whispered at the sight of Celeste.

She step
ped out of the car, and moved into the house.

I scaled the fence.
Thanking my father for his keen interest in Charlie’s Angels on TV when I was a kid; man, they made it look so easy. I fell down the other side of the fence, letting out a whimper when I landed hard, but I brushed off the pain and quickly got to my feet. My purse was so heavy around my body. The money was weighing me down in so many ways. But if I was right, and I prayed with all my might that I was; Isaac was there, and I was going to run out of this place with his arms wrapped around me instead of this fucking purse full of money.

A tiny smile flashe
d on my face when I slowly opened a screened door at the side of the house. I guess not all rich people lock their doors.

While I
did not grow up without money, I hadn’t grown up in a house like that one. The floors were all marble, or some other stone, the walls were lined with creamy rich wallpaper with a damask print, and everything else is white. Blatant white—sanitary white.

I
had to cover my mouth when I crept into the house farther and saw the great room. There, in the middle of the room, was the whitest sofa I had ever seen. I pulled my phone out and found the photo that the kidnapper sent to me of Isaac.

“I knew it,” I whisper
ed, covering my mouth with my hand again.

A shrill laugh barre
led from an upstairs room, and I scurried out of there before I was caught. Finding a maintenance closet off the kitchen, I leaned back into the darkness against brooms, mops and jugs of cleaner.

“It’ll all be over soon, sexy,” a man’s voice
said.

“Not soon enough. This was such a headache, all of it,” a woman
said. Her tone is so familiarly skanky, I knew it belonged to Celeste.

“We’ll be sitting
sweet, sexy. Don’t you worry that pretty head of yours.”

“Ha. Pretty?” She
said. “Honey, I’m a fucking vision!”

I snort
ed to myself.

“Anyway, enough of this. He’ll be here with the money, then we’ll take the puny amount from that black-haired bimbo and kiss Maine goodbye!” Celeste laugh
ed, and the man, who I could only assume was Aldo chuckled and sighed loudly.

How
was I planning on getting out of there with Isaac? I didn’t have a gun, I didn’t have anything remotely like a weapon. Unless you could count the household items I was currently surrounded by.

Fuck
.

“Well, you sure took your sweet time!” Celeste bark
ed. “We don’t like to wait.”

“You didn’t really give me a lot of time, now did you? It’s not like I have millions in the drawer of my desk.” A man
said, before a door slammed.

Dane.

“Hand it over, handsome.”

“Where’s the boy?” Dane growl
ed.

“He’s fine, don’t worry about that just yet. Let’s have a drink to celebrate, yes?”

“Fuck you. Give me the kid. Enough of the bullshit.” Dane bit out. “And Aldo, you little motherfucker—you better take this and run
very
fucking far away.”

Aldo ma
de a whining noise and laughed.

I close
d my eyes, knowing how much that must have made Dane want to explode. He hated being antagonized, and I was sure handing over millions of dollars to those two wasn’t top on his list either.