Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Panic threatened Chanda when the ugly brown van skidded to a stop right in front of her and the gorgeous, kind-hearted woman.
What had she said her name was? Wonder Woman seemed appropriate at the moment she pushed Chanda to the ground and stepped closer to them.
She wasn’t about to get herself involved in a fight—because she sure as hell didn’t know any self-defense moves other than to kick a man in the balls—but she could dial nine-one-one. She dug her phone from the outside pocket of her purse without taking her eyes off what was happening five feet in front of her. Fortunately, Chanda knew exactly where to press the buttons on the side of her smart phone to open it without looking at it.
Asit came to life, she had a second thought; they might hear her calling for help and that would bring attention to her. Maybe then they’d come after her. She cowered closer to the back tire and made her body as small as she could.
“Shut up, bitch.” The man’s broken English was gruff and even more threatening because she couldn’t see him. But he sounded far too close. “You’re worth big money to Pablo Valez, and we intend to collect.”
“Remember the plan. You grab her and I jab her,” the other man yelled. “We’ll throw her into the van. Then we can collect our money and get the fuck out of here.”
Oh, my God. They area trying to kidnap her.
Chanda stared down at her phone. She really should call the police. But they’d hear her. She was so close. She certainly didn’t want to get kidnapped, too. No one would be willing to pay money to get her back. She could understand someone wanting to get the wealthy woman back home. Her clothes alone cost more than Chanda made in a month. Maybe two months these days.
There was no way she could defend herself, say nothing about the statuesque beauty, but she might be able to help the police find her. She turned her phone camera onto the video mode and as silently as possible slid underneath the SUV trunk, tilting the phone up to get as much as she could in the shot. As a graphic designer, she’d taken several photography classes and knew how to get the most out of her cell phone camera. She couldn’t get much of their faces because of the ski masks but as one man grabbed for her guardian angel, she’d pulled up on the bottom of his mask as though to rip it off his face.
Chanda focused in on the man’s neck tattoos. The guy tried to pull away her grasping hands, and Chanda noticed tattoos on the back of his. Thinking quickly, she zoomed in on them, but he moved too quickly. She wasn’t sure she’d gotten enough to identify the ink.
The second man grabbed the woman’s hands and had them secured in zip ties faster than Chanda had ever seen anyone cuffed, not that she’d seen many people cuffed except on television. Her immediate focus went to his bad teeth peeking through the small mouth hole of the mask.
She didn’t want this man anywhere near her. He gave her the creeps. She glanced around to be sure there was no way either man could see her underneath the car. Just to be sure, she quietly curled her knees up to her chest while holding the camera as steadily as possible. She felt as though her whole body was shaking with fear.
The woman continued using her legs and got in several good kicks before the second man grabbed her arm and shoved a needle into her bicep. She went limp almost immediately. With one man holding her shoulders and the other her feet, they had her into the van in seconds.
The sound of the side door closing sealed the thoughtful woman’s fate.
Chanda felt terrible about what was happening right in front of her but knew realistically there was nothing she could do.
Thinking quickly, she focused on the rear license plate before the kidnappers sped out of the parking lot.
Now that they were gone, her heart pounded so hard she could hear every beat in her ears. She’d never been this scared in her life, even when the doctor had told her she had a congenital heart defect and would need surgery sooner rather than later. Eventually she’d replace the useless valve that lived within her body since birth and tried to kill her with every heartbeat, but those men had been mere feet away and so much bigger than her. They were much stronger, too. She could never have defeated them. Hell, she probably couldn’t even have hurt them. They’d have her dead long before her heart gave out.
Even if Chanda had gotten the opportunity to call nine-one-one, there would have been no way the police could have been there in time. The whole incident took only a few seconds. To prove it to herself, she glanced at the timer on her video. Forty-two seconds. That’s all it took for two men to kidnap a woman in a grocery store parking lot in broad daylight.
The men were gone. The brown van was gone.
Melina was gone.
Melina—that was her name, Chanda remembered excitedly and quickly congratulated herselfherself.
For one brief second, she held her phone to her chest and questioned her choice of fight or flight. She might have been able to slip completely away, unseen by the kidnappers. Maybe. But she’d never been good at sneaking around. Even as a child, she’d been terrible at hide and seek.
Glancing around the parking lot from her hiding place under the SUV, she watched a woman’s high heels follow a cart to a car across the way.
It was over.
She had witnessed a kidnapping. Had video of it.
She stared at her phone.
Her mind couldn’t function. What should she do?
Her heart was beating too fast. She checked her smart watch for her heartrate. One hundred forty-six. That was too high. Her cardiologist had told her that whenever it went above one thirty-five, she needed to sit down.
Chanda giggled inwardly. She was lying down…underneath an SUV.
She forced in deeper and deeper breaths until she could count to four on the way in and eight on the way out. Within two minutes her heartrate had slowed to one hundred thirty. Wonderful! She was on the way down.
Heart attack averted, she could now concentrate on her next steps. She needed to call the police and let them know what happened. She also needed to upload the video she’d taken of the kidnapping and send it to the police.
As blood returned to her extremities, she also realized she needed to get out from underneath the vehicle. Inching her way to the side farthest from where the action had taken place minutes ago, she began planning her next steps. She’d sneak out from underneath the SUV and casually stand as though she’d dropped something and just picked it up. She’d then casually walk around the back of her car and shut the trunk. It was still open from loading her few bags of groceries…and the additional bags the kind woman had purchased. She’d then casually walk to the driver side, casually unlock the door, and slide in behind the wheel. That’s where she’d make the call to the police station.
That was a whole lot of casual. She wasn’t sure she could pull off any of it.
Chanda tried to stand as soon as she cleared the edge of the fender, but her shaky legs kept her crouched. That was probably a good thing, she told herself. She could look around and see if anyone was watching her. She peeked through the back windows of the SUV and didn’t see anyone. Not a soul. For a busy grocery store, she was surprised how few people were in the lot. Only one customer trekked toward the store several rows over.
The woman across the aisle had finished loading her trunk and left her cart behind the car next to her. Bitch. Everyone hated lazy women like her. The cart collection spot was only fifty feet away. She could walk her little butt those fifty feet and properly deposit her shopping cart.
Emboldened by anger, Chanda stood to her full height. Now, to muster some of that casual she promised herself, she took a deep breath and checked her heart rate one more time. Thank goodness. It was below one hundred. She slowly inhaled through her nose and would swear she smelled hot tires. Had they peeled out of the parking lot? She couldn’t be sure. What other memories had she already lost of the incident?
She strode to the back of her car and gently closed the trunk while deep in thought. Were they going to sell Melina? She was certainly beautiful enough. Chanda had heard about women being sold into the sex trade but most of them seemed to be in their teens or early twenties. Melina appeared a decade older, closer to her own thirty-two years.
No, her new acquaintance had screamed of wealth. She was gorgeous beyond belief with the confident, almost regal way she carried herself. They’d wanted her for her money. Perhaps her captors wouldn’t hurt her for fear they wouldn’t get all their money.
Chanda had the door opened and was behind the wheel before she mentally registered her actions. She had done exactly as she’d planned. She turned on the car before she baked in the Southern Texas heat, cranking the air conditioning on full blast.
She needed to call the police. But maybe she should look at the video to check if they could even see anything.
No. The kidnappers were getting away in the brown van with Melina.
Before she could change her mind, Chanda dialed nine-one-one.
“Killeen Emergency Services. What’s your emergency?” the man asked in a crisp voice.
What was her emergency? The emergency was over. But was it? Not for Melina.
She swallowed what little spit she could gather from her dry mouth. “I…I just witnessed a kidnapping.”
“Ma’am, can you tell me where you are?”
Chanda looked around. Where the hell was she? She had no idea of what the address was. “I’m in the parking lot of the H-E-B grocery store. These two men wearing ski masks jumped out of the ugly brown van and grabbed Melina. She fought them but the one guy jabbed her in the arm with a needle and she collapsed. They picked her up and threw her into the back of the van. They’re gone. But I do have part of it on video. She shoved me down and I crawled under the SUV.” It seemed once she got talking, she couldn’t shut up.
“What email address can I send the video to?” All Chanda wanted to do was upload the video and get the hell out of there. Glancing at the front of the store, she added, “You might want to see if they had video cameras on the parking lot.”
“Ma’am, I have officers on the way. Are you in a safe place?”
Brows pinched, she glanced around her car. “Yes, the kidnappers are gone. Melina shoved me down on the ground and stood between me and them, not that I think they wanted to kidnap me. Nobody’s gonna pay money to get me back.”
“Ma’am, what’s your name? I’d like to call you by your name rather than ma’am.”
Should she give him her name? Or simply back out of this parking space and get the fuck out there?
“Ma’am, may I have your name, please?”
She glanced down at her still shaking body. What the hell. She wouldn’t be able to drive with her hands shaking that bad. “Chanda. Chanda Reiser.” She automatically asked, “What’s your name?”
He chuckled. “Well, Chanda, Chanda Reiser, in the three years I’ve been on this desk, no one has ever asked me that. My name is Joseph Cogan. Pleased to meet you. Now, Chanda, are you in a safe place?”
“Yes. I’m in my car. And of course it’s safe. The kidnappers are gone. They drove away in an old brown van. Not the kind that moms with lots of kids drive. This one didn’t have any windows. I’m pretty sure I got a close-up of the license plate.” Thinking that they were now on a first name basis, she asked again, “Joseph, what email address can I send this video to? It’s kind of a big one. Forty-two seconds long.”
“Chanda, the officers are almost there. Whereabouts in the parking lot are you? What kind of car are you driving?”
Joseph asked a lot of questions.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, resigned to the fact that she was going to have to talk to the police. Her gaze strayed to the pharmacy across the street. Her mind wandered in that direction. Would she have enough time to run over there and get her prescriptions before the police got there? Would she have enough money to pay for them? She glanced around the car.
Where the hell was her purse?
Without thinking, she automatically opened the door and jumped out of the car, racing back to where she and Melina had been talking.
They’d watched the van approach too fast and leapt between these two cars. Chanda looked around on the asphalt for her small black purse.
Nothing.
Then Melina had shoved her down. Chanda squatted and spotted her purse, the contents spread over a three-foot area. Cursing, she shoved her phone in her pocket and went to her hands and knees crawling on the hot, dirty pavement gathering her belongings.
“Chanda, can you hear me?”
Oh, shit. She forgot about Joseph. After picking up her lipstick, a tampon, and a tube of mascara that had rolled several feet away, she scooted back to where Melina had shoved her. Had that only been a few minutes ago? It seemed like hours.
“Chanda. Are you still there?”
Digging deep into her pocket, she retrieved her phone. “I’m here, Joseph. I’m sorry. I couldn’t find my purse because it wasn’t in the car. It was scattered over the parking lot.” She opened the top and mentally took inventory. When she found her small wallet, she let out a sigh of relief. Double checking, she opened the portion with bills in it and recounted her money. Once again, she hoped it would be enough for the new medicine.
“Chanda, do you see the police cars yet?”
She stood and saw two familiar white and blue Killeen cruisers pull into the lot from the street.
“I see them. I’m over a few more rows walking back to my car.” She wasn’t about to wave to them and feel like a total fool.
“Chanda, there are several women in the parking lot. Can you help them out by giving me a description of yourself that I can relate to them?”
Glancing down at her clothes, she realized just how disheveled she looked. Mentally shrugging, she probably looked exactly like what she’d been doing, crawling around on ugly pavement. “I’m the strawberry blonde a few rows over wearing a light blue T-shirt and faded blue jeans with dirty shit from my knees down where I hid underneath an SUV.” She didn’t need to tell them about rescuing the contents of her purse.