Chapter 24 Lincoln
We entered back into the hotel room, and the girls got to work. Liam reached out and reassured me that no carriers were attacked last night, which was a relief. I needed some kind of good news.
After 2 hours of listening to them go back and forth, I understood why Laynie and Charlie were such good friends. Charlie is witty, passionate, and insightful.
“We narrowed it down to 14 houses. So what do we do now? Knock on the doors?” J.C. asked.
“You’re not doing anything. Send me the addresses,” I said.
“Wait, a second, you’re not going alone,” Charlie said as she stood up.“I’m coming with you.”
“It’s way too dangerous for you, Charlie. You already know they’re looking for you. You’ll be making yourself an easy target.”
She clenched her fists at her sides. “I am going,” she snarled.
J.C. spoke up from behind her, “It’s going to be dangerous Charlie, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“Everything bad has already happened to me. You two don’t need to protect me. You don’t even know me.”
“Well, I can’t go,” J.C. whispered. I knew J.C. was afraid, and any normal person would be. She didn’t want to be caught up in this shit. I know it gave her flashbacks of our abusive father’s outbursts and triggered her PTSD.
“You shouldn’t go,” Charlie said. “We will need you here, anyway.”
“You aren’t going. Neither of you are. I’m not going to spend my time worried about you, when I am looking for Laynie. It’s too much.”
Charlie snatched the addresses from J.C.’s hand and stormed out of the hotel room.
“Fuck.” I followed her out the door.
“I’ll be here,” J.C. called as the door slammed closed.
I followed behind Charlie down the flight of stairs. She peered over shoulder and rolled her eyes when she saw me.
“You’re annoying me!” she called out.
“Not as much as you’re annoying me!” I called back in the same whining tone.
She suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and I almost slammed into the back of her. I waited a moment to see what was wrong, and I heard voices coming up the stairs.
“It’s fine Charlie, keep going.” I could tell she was panicked. She gripped the railing of the stairs so hard the whites of her knuckles showed.
I moved in front of her and motioned for her to follow. She did, and we passed two men on the way down. They were hotel workers. If Charlie got spooked that easily, what was I going to do with her once we found the correct house? She was going to be a pain in my ass.
When we were outside the hotel, Charlie placed her hood over her head, hiding her face.
“I will not let anything happen to you,” I said, trying to reassure her.
She scoffed. “I don’t need your protection. Hotels just creep me out.”
We walked to the car at the back of the hotel. She put the addresses in her phone and told me which way to drive.
“As much as you think you know, my friend, you know nothing about her.”
I nodded in agreement. She was right. I didn’t know the Laynie she once knew, and she didn’t know the Laynie I knew now.
“You know her dad died last year? Heart attack.”
I sucked in a breath trying to process what she just said. “She doesn’t know,” I said, more of a statement than a question.
“No, she doesn’t. I saw the news article. ‘Dad mourning the disappearance of daughter, dies of a heart attack years later.’ Her dad was a sweet man. He loved her so much.”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought of how devastated Laynie would be when she found out. Just another stab to her heart. I allowed the silence to fill the car until she spoke again.
“She’s a good girl, you know? Never did anything illegal. She didn’t even give boys the time of day. She was driven and passionate.” Charlie paused for a moment. “Was she okay? Tell me what she was like.”
I hesitated. She was a shell of her former self, and I knew this would devastate Charlie. I chose my words wisely. “She is sad. I can see glimpses of the girl you described, but they come and go. She is in there, though, and we are going to get her back.”
“Yeah, and right when we do she is leaving this hell hole city and never coming back. She should have never left Tennessee.”
“What about you? Don’t you want to leave?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
My throat tightened as I swallowed. I didn’t want Laynie to leave. I wanted her with me.
“What is her mom like?” I asked.
“Her parents were in their 40’s when they had her. She has an older brother named Levi. Her mom is a sweet woman. She loves baking and gardening. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like her mother.”
She sounded like she had a lot to go home too. A home, a mother, a brother, and a life. Why would she stay in the city that destroyed her life?
We pulled up to the first address in Queens. The home was a brownstone with several stories.
“What’s the plan?” Charlie asked.
“We’re going to watch the house. It should be easy to identify by who is coming and going. If we try to make contact, we’ll be recognized.”
“This is going to be a long day,” Charlie said as she leaned her seat back.
I texted J.C. letting her know the plan and the house we were at. She looked up the information on each house, but we couldn’t base the results on this. This shit could happen at a fucking politician’s house. No one could be ruled out. It took two hours for someone to finally enter and pull up to the house. It was a young mom with a baby and a toddler. No way this was the house. We both agreed to move on.
After the 6th house and it being 2 am, I decided it was time to go back to the hotel. Charlie fell asleep several times during the lookouts. “Remind me not to depend on you as a lookout. I’ll be chopped up and in the Atlantic Ocean by the time you realize I’m gone.” I smiled at her.
She punched me in my shoulder and I could see her mouth tugging up to a smile. “Shut up, asshole.”
“You hungry?”
“Starving.”
We got some Chinese takeout and ate in silence for a while.
“I want to ask you something and I want you to be honest,” Charlie said.
“I’m always honest,” I said, putting a bite of fried rice in my mouth.
She rolled her eyes. “Are you in love with Laynie?”
I stopped chewing for a moment and stared at her. Her expression was hard.
“I’ve only known her a week, but I feel strongly about her.” I said.
“So why did you go see another woman after seeing her in that basement? How could you do that?”
I tossed my chopsticks into the little white box and closed my eyes. “Because I’m a fucking idiot. I felt frustrated, and I needed a release. I am not Laynie’s boyfriend.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. But how would she react if she found out?”
I didn’t respond because we both knew the answer.
“I just need to find her. All the good I thought I was doing has backfired on me and her.”
Charlie didn’t respond and stared out the window. “I don’t want to go back to the hotel. It feels like a waste of time. We should keep going, but just take turns sleeping. The more time we waste in that stupid hotel room, the longer it’s going to take us to find her. Think about it, she’s right here somewhere,” she said while shaking the paper of addresses.
“You’ve never been to Alek’s home?” I asked.
“No. He never chose me. He chooses the weaker girls, the ones who look innocent and scared. He loves that shit.”
I swallowed hard, thinking about why he chose Laynie. She wasn’t weak, but she was innocent and submissive.
I drove to the next house and parked outside. Unlike the others, it was a standalone house. It had an iron black gate around the front and the right side was circular like a tower, while the left side held the square design of a home. It was two stories and brick with white trim. This house, although in Brooklyn, had to be worth millions. This could be it, Laynie could be in there right now. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I had to resist the urge to storm in there, guns blazing. It was imperative that I was smart. I had Charlie with me.
“Do you think this is it?” she asked. She must have been thinking the same as me.
“I don’t know, but we are going to find out.”
I dialed J.C, and she picked up right away.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, what did you find out about the house on President street?”
“President street, let me check, let me check.” I could hear her typing. “Owned by a Jackson Montgomery, 52 years old. He owns a consulting firm. Not married. He bought the house 14 years ago.”
“Okay, got it.” I hung up the phone. Single rich man, living alone. This could be it.
An hour passed before we saw movement. Charlie didn’t fall asleep this time.
A man pulled up to the house with a woman. She seemed drunk or possibly drugged. He was looking over his shoulder as he entered the house.
This has to be it. “I’m going in.” I opened the car door but Charlie grabbed my arm.
“Wait! We need to be smart about this. How many men could be inside? What will you do? We should go together.”
“Laynie will never forgive me if I let something happen to you,” I argued.
“I’m tougher than you think, and anyway, you don’t own me. I can do whatever I want.” She stared at me, daring me to argue.
“Fine. Let’s sneak around the backside of the house first and see if we can get a good visual. Do you have your gun?”
“Always,” she said.
We jumped the iron fence in the front of the house and crept to the back, keeping our heads low. The back was beautifully manicured, with hedges in the shapes of animals. We used the large structures of the bushes to sneak up on close to the house without being detected. I couldn’t see anything inside because the lights were off.
“What do you want to do?” Charlie whispered.
I ignored her and tried the knob on the french doors in the back, and of course they were locked.
“I can pick the lock,” Charlie said as she pulled out a multi-tool from her pocket.
“What are you? Inspector gadget?”
“Go-go gadget motherfucker,” she said when the doorknob turned.
Damn. I was impressed.
I walked in first and grabbed onto Charlie’s hand as she followed behind. I could feel her resistance to my touch, but I didn’t care. I had to protect her. It took my eyes a second to adjust to the dark and realize we were in the kitchen. I heard a T.V. coming from upstairs. We both had our guns drawn, ready for whatever waited inside. We crept through the kitchen and noticed nothing. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing. We needed to hurry, in case they had a silent alarm. Just as we rounded the corner, the man who had entered the home earlier stood over the girl on the couch. I halted, and Charlie collided into my back. The commotion alerted the man.
“Who’s there?” he called out.
I stepped into his view.
“What the fuck? Who are you? Get out of my house or I’m calling the police!” he yelled. I could tell he was afraid, although he tried to hide it.
“Who’s the girl?” I asked.
He looked down at the girl on the couch. “Just a girl I met at the bar. Do you know her? I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“Is anyone else here? In the house?”
“N-no. No one.”
I motioned to Charlie, “Go check up stairs. I’ll wait here.”
Charlie didn’t hesitate and climbed the stairs with her gun pointed in front of her.
“Are you going to kill me?” the man asked.
I tilted my head and smiled. “Should I?”
“I swear I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
Maybe he wasn’t, but I didn’t want to take the risk.
“Call an Uber for her. Now. Do you know her address?”
He fumbled with his phone for a few minutes. “She was staying at the hotel where the bar was.”
“When they get here, you’re going to help her out to the car. I’ll be watching. If you don’t, I’ll come back in here and blow your face off.”
He nodded, and I saw beads of sweat building on his forehead.
Charlie came back down the stairs. “It’s clear.”
“Let’s go.”
We left through the back door and quickly got back to the car. I didn’t wait around to see if the Uber came, but based on his reactions, I’m sure he will send her off.
“Fuck!” I banged my open hand on the steering wheel a few times.
“We’re going to find her Linc,” Charlie said, trying to sound reassuring.
“Yeah, but will she still be alive when we do?”