“How long you been here?” he asked.
“Not long.” She closed the door and tugged on the bra strap that had fallen down her shoulder beneath a dingy grey tank top. “When did you get out?”
That was a tricky question. “Not long ago.” He figured the less she knew, the better and easier this would be.
“You want something to drink?” She shuffled toward the kitchen.
Stroud knew he didn’t have time to get reacquainted with his sister, nor did he really have the desire to, so he was going to need to expedite this reunion. “Sure, just some water, thanks.” He spotted a used needle on the side table and looked for a bag of heroin, but didn’t see any nearby. What he did find was a bottle of OxyContin.
While his sister’s back was turned in search of a clean glass, he opened the bottle and took out two of the pills. Stroud used the bottle to crush the pills into powder and swept the dust into his hands. As far gone as she was, he didn’t think two would do her much harm, except keep her out for a while, which was what he needed.
“Here.” Shannon returned with a glass of water and sat down on a folding chair next to the stained floral sofa where her brother sat.
“How long has it been since you last used?”
She furrowed her brow as though insulted by the question.
“I don’t really give a fuck. I’m just asking ‘cause I wouldn’t mind getting a little lit myself, but I don’t want to do it on my own.”
“Oh. I could use another hit.” She walked toward what was probably her bedroom.
Stroud grabbed a nearby spoon that looked as though it had been used for last night’s dinner and poured some water into it. He mixed the powder with the water and then dipped the syringe into the mixture, using the plunger to pull as much of it up as he could. He knew this would be dangerous and originally just wanted to drop it into her water, but he was running out of time and she wasn’t drinking any water.
Shannon soon returned with a dime bag of tar and fresh supplies and sat back down. “This is all I got left, if you want some.”
“Shit yeah. I’ll take some of that.” Stroud held the needle in his hand, tucked inside his palm and approached her. It was risky, but she was only half-alert as it was and her reflexes would be slow, probably non-existent, so he decided to take his chances.
She tied two condoms together and began to wrap it around her arm for a tourniquet.
“Here, let me help you with that.” Stroud slapped the crease of her elbow where several injection marks were visible to plump up the vein. “Like old times, eh?” He locked eyes with her for a moment of distraction and with his other hand, pushed the needle in, emptying its contents into her arm.
She reared back, her eyes immediately dilating and her back arching. “What the fuck?” She peered at him in shock.
“You’ll be fine. Your tolerance must be high as fuck.”
» » »
Kate stood inside the empty halls of the school dressed to blend in and hair that matched the style of Sophie Curtis. Her classmates, according to the principal, didn’t know what was going on, nor why she was taken out of school today. Kate’s presence wasn’t likely to trigger any questions because up close, she looked nothing like the young girl whom she was portraying. But from a distance, from Lyle Stroud’s distance, she could pass.
The final bell echoed in the halls, doors flung open, and kids spilled out into the corridor. Kate disappeared into the herd and followed them through the doors and out into the open. “I’m outside,” she whispered in her earpiece.
Two teams were posted in front of the school; WFO agents who had to hustle to get there in time and Nick and Dwight, who waited in his SUV two blocks down where Sophie would normally walk.
“Nothing yet over here,” Nick answered through his headset. The other two teams responded in kind. “Damn it. Where is he?”
“He’ll be here; he has to be.” Dwight looked through the passenger window to the side view. No one was behind them. “He could’ve gotten rid of the Olds, in fact, I’d wager on it.”
“Still, we should see someone lurking around. He’d stand out like a sore thumb.”
Kate continued down the wide concrete path that opened up just beyond the gates of the school. She hoisted the backpack further up on her shoulder. No one questioned her, so she must have been on the right track. Either that, or they just didn’t care, which was also likely in a school full of thirteen and fourteen year olds who scarcely looked up from their cell phones.
“I’m leaving the grounds, heading west.” Kate made the turn and was now walking in the direction of her partners. “Still nothing?”
“No. He’s not here, Kate. Just keep walking in the direction of the house. He might be hanging back until you get further away from the school,” Nick replied.
“Ten-four.” Kate continued along toward the Curtis home, passing Nick and Dwight without acknowledgement. “Where are you, you son of a bitch?” Kate was nearing the Curtis home. “What should I do?”
“Go inside. It’s over. He didn’t show.”
Kate looked behind her, one last glance to confirm Stroud hadn’t been following, but no one was there. They’d baited the line, but he wasn’t there to take a bite. She unlocked the front door and entered, relocking it behind her. “I’m in.”
“Kate, we’re going to make another pass, see if we can spot him. Just stay put.” Nick turned the wheel and pulled away from the curb. “Let’s hit the next block over and then come back up here,” he said to Dwight.
“What about the teams at the school?”
“Give me one more pass, then we’ll call it,” Nick said again in his earpiece.
» » »
Lyle Stroud hung back from the school far enough not to raise any red flags. He retrieved the binoculars and aimed them at the school’s exit. Double-checking the time, he’d made it with not much to spare. Taking care of his sister took longer than he anticipated, but no need to get riled up about it.
The school buzzed with the ending bell; a horrible, loud buzz that he could hear from this distance. “Jesus. No wonder they want to get the hell out of there.” He zoomed in his binocular lens for a better view. The kids tumbled out, randomly and happily. He kept a look out for the girl, the one who’d held that ribbon so boastfully in the picture. A smile crept up on his lips. There she was; plain, innocent. She waved goodbye to her friends as she began her trek home to a place where she would drop her things, kick off her shoes, and plop down in front of the TV or phone or computer and vegetate for hours, until her parents came home from work. But not today. Today, Lyle Stroud was in town and he was looking for her.
He started up the car when she was far enough ahead not to hear the engine and began to follow her. His palms clung to the wheel, sweaty from the excitement and the heat. The air conditioner blasted on his face, but it did little to soothe the burn in his stomach. It was the burn that drove him further, risking more than he ever had before.
Only a block behind her, he made a quick right when she looked back. “Damn it.” Stroud quickly turned the car around and returned to the T-crossing. Before pulling out, he made sure she wasn’t looking back again. He would have to take care not to get too close. He saw that she was wearing headphones, probably listening to the shit music they played today. This would work to his advantage. The street in front of him cleared and he pulled back out onto it. She was farther ahead now, but he could still see her well enough.
He was going to have to make his approach before she reached home. That would complicate things far too much and he’d already planned this out with meticulous care. The time had to be now and so Stroud pressed the gas just enough to hasten his arrival. Three hundred, two hundred, now one hundred feet behind her. She didn’t turn around this time. One last look to ensure no one was nearby and Stroud pulled to the curb, thrust the gearshift into park, and launched out of the car. He rushed up behind her. She turned around and panic masked her face. But Stroud knew she was too late.
The girl’s world darkened instantly and Stroud lifted her from her feet and rushed back to the car, which was, at most, twenty feet away. He ripped open the passenger door and tossed her inside like a rag doll.
Lyle Stroud started the car and with tires inadvertently squealing, he pulled away, his treasure secured inside.
» » »
“I thought he’d be there, damn it. It was our one chance to get a step ahead of him instead of the other way around.” Kate felt deflated as she slumped on the sofa.
“So did I, Kate.” Nick joined her. “It was a shot in the dark, but we had to try.”
“Should we hang around the soccer field and hope he shows up there?” Kate asked.
“I just don’t know how he’d know that’s where she’d be.”
“He could’ve been watching her for a while. Maybe he knows her schedule.”
“Fuck! Fuck!” Nick pounded the sofa cushion before taking a breath. “We keep the family in the safe house and we keep working on finding the others. That’s all we can do now. I’ll touch base with Mason and see if she’s made progress. You do the same with Vasquez and let’s hope to hell we find out who those kids are.” His cell phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. “Scarborough.” He paused. “What? Are you fucking serious?” He pushed to his feet. “No, God damn it! No!” He lowered his phone.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“That was Mason. A 911 call came in about a missing girl. The picture matched one of the other kids and she was notified within minutes about the match. God damn it, Kate, he went after someone else.”
SEVENTEEN
D
etective Mason met
them in the precinct lobby and wasted no time. “I’ve got patrols set up in the vicinity of where the girl was abducted and we know he’s got himself another vehicle.” Authority resounded in her voice as she began to lead the way back to her office. “The call came in from the area of Manassas Park, right on the edge of our jurisdictional boundary.” She regarded Kate with a baffling gaze. “Nice hair.”
Kate almost forgot about her brief and unnecessary change of appearance. “We thought he was going after Sophie Curtis. This was my idea.”
“Don’t beat yourselves up. He may have spotted the trap while you were setting it. The timing was close and you did what you could with the time you had.” Mason now stood behind her desk. “At least Sophie’s safe. Now we need to find her.” She slid the photo of the girl who had just become Stroud’s latest victim. “This is Chloe Schaffer. Dispatch got the call from 911. Her grandmother told the operator she hadn’t returned home from school and was worried in light of the news coverage of Stroud. Chloe had been staying with her due to her parents’ impending divorce, which had turned ugly. The grandmother lives nearby the parents’ home and so Chloe was living with her until things with her folks settled down.”
“There’s our answer,” Kate said.
Nick glanced at her with some concern. “What answer?”
“TV. Why don’t we get these pictures in front of the news cameras? Get their faces out there so someone can identify them.”
“It would work,” Dwight said. “The problem, though, is Stroud himself. Right now, we have the advantage. We know he has a plan. Those kids’ pictures get out in front of the public, he won’t go after them. He’ll change his plans—randomly go after others and we won’t know who they’ll be.”
“That doesn’t help us out right now with finding Chloe. He’s got her and he’s trying to stay a step ahead of us. We can’t let that happen. He won’t take his time with her. We’ve got a day or two at best to find her and to ID the other two kids. If we can’t, then one of them will be next and Chloe will be dead,” Nick added.
» » »
Upon his return to his sister’s home, Stroud had hoped she’d still be passed out and he proceeded to drag Chloe inside. If she wasn’t, she’d be in for one hell of a shock. And the girl was strong. It took more strength than he’d expected to get her under control, but she was afraid and that fear would keep her in line. He pulled her back toward the bedroom where he’d moved his sister so she could sleep it off, but on entry, a rancid, vomitus odor wafted toward him.
“Shit!” Stroud yanked the girl toward the bed and he leaned over his sister, checking her pulse, but he already knew. Her mouth was foamy and it suddenly became clear that she’d asphyxiated herself and probably because he’d shoved too much into her veins. He was no stranger to the hard stuff and he knew how dangerous it was to shoot oxy like that, but he thought she could take it.
Chloe screamed at the sight of the woman on the bed.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Stroud tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her back into the hall. This was unexpected, but there was nothing he could do for Shannon now.
He pushed open the door of another bedroom where he’d already made accommodations for his prey while his sister was otherwise occupied. The bed had been secured to the floor and he tossed her to the ground at the edge of if where a pair of handcuffs lay. Stroud shackled her to the leg of the frame. “Stay here and don’t even think about making a sound or I’ll fucking kill you.”
» » »
An officer rushed through the doors, past inquiring eyes, and made his way through the corridor holding something in his hand. “I need to find Detective Mason.” His was not a request, but a demand to another officer roaming the hall whom he happened upon.
“She’s with the Feds in the command center.” The officer continued past him, glancing back with his coffee in hand.
“Thanks.” The young cop entered the command center, which was really a conference room decked out with computer equipment and monitors since the Feds brought in everything they could to catch the man who had evaded them thus far.
He spotted his boss, Detective Mason, standing next to the man he knew to be Special Agent Scarborough. “Detective, I have the video.” He handed her the flash drive. “This is from the past eighteen hours, from various locations.”
They were well behind the eight ball and Nick hoped that someone caught Stroud on video so that they might know where he was headed and what he was driving. “Let’s load it up.”
“You mind?” the officer asked a woman who appeared to be FBI, as he didn’t recognize her to be one of his own.
“Here.” Agent Vasquez, who had recently arrived at Nick’s request, reached for the drive and inserted it into the laptop. Within moments, the files appeared.
“They said the files are labeled by date and time.” The officer pointed to the first one. “So this would have been from 12:01am on the 21
st
.”
“Got it.” She looked to Scarborough. “I’m going to need help going through these. This will take too long for one person.”
“Agreed.” Scarborough scanned the room. “Agent Reid, Agent Jameson.” He waved them over. “We need some help sorting through this surveillance video.”
“Where did this come from?” Dwight asked.
“We have a lot of public security cameras, particularly around the City Center, but we also have access to VDOT cameras and those are included here too. Since you guys have gone all apocalyptic on this, everyone wants to be sure and cooperate,” the officer replied.
“Let’s split up the files and each take a section,” Nick said. “Until someone calls the hotline for the Amber Alert, this is all we’ve got to find Chloe.”
» » »
Chloe Schaffer rubbed her sore cuffed wrist with her free hand because she’d already done a pretty good number on it. Her struggles had caused it to swell from yanking it around and the scratches were deep enough to draw blood.
Her only thoughts were of getting out of here before that man came back. The moment replayed in her mind, taunting her. She shouldn’t have had her headphones on. How many times had her mother told her it wasn’t safe while she was walking because she wouldn’t be able to hear cars or sirens? All this time, she thought her mother was just being over-protective, as usual. Since she and her dad split up last month, her life had been a living hell and all she had was her music and listening to it helped soothe the pain they were causing her.
Now she was here and her parents probably figured she was missing. Chloe knew she had to get out of here or she would die. That man wasn’t going to let her go—not ever. She saw it in his eyes.
Looking around, there seemed to be nothing she could use. Nothing that would break the cuff. Nothing that she could throw to break the window and escape. On second glance, the window had bars on it anyway. Even if she’d broken it, the bars would’ve stopped her for sure. She knew what men like him did to kids. She was almost twelve and was far more perceptive than she ever let on to her parents. Thanks to the internet, she could get her hands on all sorts of information. Not that it would help her now. Chloe closed her eyes to think. How could she escape? And if she did, where could she go? He’d kept her in the foot well of the passenger seat when he shoved her in the car. She had no idea what direction he drove or how many miles. Time had no meaning because fear took over everything—her mind, her body. She didn’t know how long they’d traveled. Still, if she could just break free. Someone would help her, right?
She pulled her arm in attempt to drag the bed. What a stupid idea. Of course that wouldn’t work. God, why did she have to be so stupid sometimes? Chloe squeezed her eyes tightly, angry at her carelessness, angry at her parents for not being home. Grandma must be so upset right now. Chloe felt bad for her because she loved her so much. She was her only grandchild and they were very close. She’d helped Chloe through much of this past month, insisting none of her parents’ divorce was her fault.
“But what about this, Grandma?” She shook her head. Chloe looked again at the metal bedframe to which she was unwillingly attached. The leg was bolted to the ground. She scoffed. “Of course it is.” So thinking she could drag the thing along was stupid because it was bolted to the wood floor.
“I guess you’re stuck here, Chloe Schaffer.” She stared at the ceiling, her eyes glazing over the little white balls stuck to the top, like the ceiling at Grandma’s. What’d she call it? Popcorn or something? She guessed it sort of looked like popcorn, but really it looked more like beads to her.
It was then that an idea struck. What if he let her out to go pee? Would she have a chance to escape then? Maybe, but it wasn’t likely he’d let her out of his sight for long. Even to go to the bathroom. And if he did, she’d have to rely on there being a window-one that didn’t have bars on it. Still, what choice did she have?
Chloe called out. “Hey?” she paused. “Hey? I need to pee.” The thought had occurred to her that she could scream at the top of her lungs, but she was afraid of him and he would kill her if she did—he already said so.
“What? What the fuck do you want now?” Stroud’s impatience was palpable as the door flew open.
“Can I go to the bathroom, please?” She shrank back in fear, but raised her shoulders again. “I have to go pee. Please.”
Stroud moved toward her, retrieving a key from his pocket. He unlocked the cuff from the bed and helped her up, dragged her more like.
She winced at the pain from the tight squeeze he placed on her forearm but refused to utter any sounds.
“You won’t get out of there.” Stroud leaned into the bathroom and pointed to the window. “Bars.”
Chloe didn’t say anything and quickly realized her plan was about to fall apart. She went inside and he closed the door.
“You have sixty seconds.” Stroud’s voice echoed inside the bathroom.
She didn’t have to pee—at all. She just stood there, waiting for something to happen, an idea, anything that would get her out of here. He wouldn’t keep the door shut for long if she didn’t start to go to the bathroom, so she pulled her pants down to her knees. Resting her arms on her thighs, Chloe felt something in her right pocket that rested against her ankle. She reached down to feel. A coin. It was coin wedged into the deepest corner of her pocket. A dime? Maybe. Something small, definitely not a quarter. Chloe knew right in that moment how she was going to escape this lunatic.
She pulled her pants back up and flushed the toilet, not that anything came out, and then washed her hands. “I’m done.” She reached for the handle but he pushed it open, catching the toe of her tennis shoe.
He pushed harder until she moved it, but the damage had been done. He’d jammed her big toe, but no matter, Chloe knew what needed to be done.
Stroud returned her to the tiny bedroom with its single bed and cuffed her to the frame again. “You’d better keep quiet. I swear I’ll kill you if you make a single God damn sound.” He closed the door behind him.
Chloe reached with her left hand and shoved it into her right pocket. There it was. A dime, just like she thought. And it was the perfect size to unscrew the bolts that kept the bed secured to the floor. The only problem was that she didn’t know how much time she had before he would return. An hour? A half-hour? Who knew? He would show up when he was good and ready based on what she’d seen from him so far. So either she waited until the inevitable was over and he left her for the night, or try like hell to get out before that happened. She preferred the latter and it was a risk she was going to have to take.
Her fingers were nimble and strong, mostly from the time she spent blogging on her computer. This was something she’d remind her mother of when she escaped, not if, because she wasn’t about to give up now. The dime fit perfectly in the straight-slotted bolt, but it was difficult to turn. Her fingers pressed hard and became white until the screw gave way just a little. She’d gotten it started.
Chloe continued to loosen the bolt, not knowing how much time she had before he made another visit. It would be hard to hide her progress if he came in before she was done. There wouldn’t be time to tighten it, but she had to stay positive and pray that wouldn’t happen.
Her fingers ached with each turn now, but it couldn’t last much longer. At least an inch was already sticking out and how long could this thing be? She kept at it, turning faster and faster, glancing at the door between each turn. The bolt was wobbling now, she had to be close. “Come on, come on.”
The bolt fell out. It was done and while she wanted to admire her handiwork, there was no time. She pulled her knees under her, twisting her wrist in a painful and awkward position, but it was the only way to get leverage on the bed and lift the leg.
With her right hand, she gripped the metal leg and lifted. It hadn’t raised much and she looked to see what the problem was. She noticed that all the legs were bolted tightly and it would take more force to raise this corner up enough to slip her cuff from beneath it.
Chloe tried again, pulling harder this time. Her right hand flattened to the ground so she could slide it out. Higher, she pulled and finally, her hand slipped from beneath it. She was free. Chloe scrambled to her feet, searching the room for a way out. It was going to have to be the window, but how could she get past the bars?