Chapter Nineteen #2
backup?” She put the phone to her ear. “Yes, Tanya. I need to put a BOLO on
Jessica Fellows and a man named Martin Gladen.” She sighed. “Yes, I think they
are criminals. That is what the BOLO is for. I’m going to secure Olivia. No,
it’s not because of her boyfriends. Stop with the gossip and get it done. This
is serious.”
She glanced up at Keane. “I need to make some calls. Could
you go and get her? I know it’s a public place, but I would rather we had eyes
on her.”
Keane dropped his basket. Coffee would have to wait. Morgan
was right. He needed to lay eyes on her. She was only a couple of aisles over,
but he shouldn’t have allowed even that. “Yeah, I’ll get her and take her back
to the ranch. You can meet us out there. Garrett’s been working with a private
investigator. She might have some information that would help your case.”
That was when he heard it. Such an odd sound, and muffled by
the Beach Boys blaring out of the speakers. A sizzle and then a thud.
He stopped, listening. What had happened? Why did he know
that sound?
Morgan had gone pale. “That sounded like a stun gun.” She
left her basket behind, and she started jogging. “What aisle was she on?”
“Olivia,” he yelled over the music.
His heart started to race. Maybe they didn’t hear what he
thought they had. Maybe it was a light fritzing out. Maybe it was something,
anything but a stun gun hitting Olivia.
He ran up and down the aisles, pushing through when he had
to. Panic started to bubble up, threatening to take over. He searched the
store, looking for that wild mop of red hair.
He got to the back of the store and saw Morgan standing
there. She had her cell in her hand.
“Sheriff, we have a problem. Olivia Barnes-Fleetwood has
been taken,” she said.
Keane’s phone rang. He pulled it out, praying it was Olivia.
It was Olivia calling to tell him she’d stepped out for a moment and was
waiting by the truck and then he would hug her and spank the hell out of her.
Her backside would be red. He would never let her out of his sight again.
“Liv?”
“No, it’s me,” Garrett said. “Hey, you need to be careful.
Ruby’s here and she thinks this is about way more than Scott Whittiker.”
Keane’s hands started to shake.
They were already out of time.
* * * *
Garrett felt his stomach drop as Keane spoke.
“They took her.”
Ruby sat up and grabbed her cell phone.
“What do you mean?” The words didn’t make sense. He’d seen
them an hour and a half ago. He’d kissed Olivia and teased her about not being
gone long. She promised him they were just going to the feed store and a
grocery. She’d rolled her eyes about being escorted, but they weren’t letting
her walk around alone until they figured out what was going on. It was the
middle of the day. There wasn’t any real reason to worry because Keane was with
her.
Keane’s voice came out on a tortured rumble. “I mean she’s
not here. I left her alone for a couple of minutes to pick up some cream and I
met with Deputy Morgan and now she’s gone. We think they took her out the
back.”
“Deputy Morgan? She’s gone?” His brain couldn’t process it
right now.
Ruby had stood up and was pacing. He vaguely heard her
talking to someone she called Harlow.
“No, Olivia.” Keane said the words with a finality that
forced Garrett out of his haze. “They took Olivia. From what I can tell they
used a stun gun on her. She didn’t scream out my name. I don’t think she had
time to fight.”
Ruby looked at Garrett, her face a professional mask. “I
need to know where she was and how the police think they took her out. This
town still has some traffic cameras, I think.”
“I heard that,” Keane said. “Who’s with you? Put me on
speaker.”
Garrett did as he asked. “Ruby Lockwood is here, and she
thinks she knows what’s going on. She doesn’t think it’s Scott. Jessica Fellows
started working for Gladen Farms.”
“That’s what Morgan figured out, too. She doesn’t think
Scott is the real guy behind this. She thinks it’s Gladen,” Keane replied.
So they were all on the same page. “How long has she been
gone?”
“No more than a couple of minutes, but they could be
anywhere.”
He’d never heard that level of panic in his Master’s voice
before. “Where are you? Ruby wants to cut into the traffic cameras.”
“We’re at the GrabItQuick,” a familiar voice said. “I’m
Deputy Morgan. I’ve already called it in, but I warn you our traffic cams don’t
always work. The county put them in thinking it would be a great source of
revenue, and then the governor made it impossible to use them to write tickets,
so the county no longer cares about them.”
“But they didn’t shut them off?” Ruby asked.
Garrett was still reeling. “Olivia is gone?”
“They’re still on, but if they malfunction, no one cares and
I don’t think the cameras in this store have worked in forever, but I’m going
to try,” Morgan said. “I need to find the manager.”
“He was with Olivia,” Keane replied, sounding stronger, as
though he heard Garrett’s horror and responded with the strength they needed.
“He was standing with her when I went to the back to grab the creamer. He was
going to show her where the makeup aisle was. He should have been there.”
Ruby’s eyes closed, and she shook her head. There was
resolve in her gaze when she opened them again. “Stephen Gunderson?”
“That’s his name,” Keane agreed.
“He’s on a list of people I watch because they have beef
with the Barnes-Fleetwood family,” Ruby replied. “I quietly monitor the socials
of those people. Stephen doesn’t have much, but what’s there is bitterness. He
feels like the Barnes-Fleetwood family killed his birthright.”
“What?” Garrett was so confused. “Olivia has nothing to do
with some grocery store.”
Ruby waved him off. “It’s a long story, but here in small
towns those stories don’t die. They simply sink into the collective
consciousness until they’re legends.”
“Wait,” Keane said. “That’s him. That’s Stephen.”
There was a rustling sound, and for a long moment Garrett
prayed this was all one big mistake and Olivia walked in healthy and whole.
Then Keane’s voice came back. “I think you need to meet me
at the station house. Fast.”
Garrett was already on his feet.
Twenty minutes later, Garrett stood outside the
interview room watching the lanky man in the chair as he yawned.
“Has he said anything?” Garrett asked.
Keane had given him a hug when he’d run in, but there wasn’t
time for comfort. They needed to figure out where Olivia was.
What had she already gone through?
“Not much. He says he doesn’t know anything,” Keane replied.
“Morgan thought coming down here might open him up a bit.”
Ruby walked into the interview room. Gabe had given them a
ride in so Ruby could work on her laptop and Garrett could make a painful phone
call.
“Do what you can, Garrett,” Jack Barnes had said, sounding
grave but resolute. “Remember there will be time to panic later. Right now she
needs you calm and cool. Let Ruby do what she does, and I’ll have some people
working on it from Dallas.”
Calm. Cool. He needed to listen. The truth often hid.
“I think I’ve got some footage,” she said as Morgan took a
seat, too.
Stephen Gunderson sat up. He was still in his uniform and
looked bored with the process. “I told you. I showed her the aisle she was
looking for and then I went to check out a customer.”
“Good. Then you’ll have a receipt for the time we’re talking
about,” Morgan said, her face an impassive mask. “Ruby, you can look that up,
right? Stephen, let me introduce you to Ruby Lockwood. She’s a private
investigator and excellent with a keyboard.”
For the first time restless energy stirred around the
manager. “I don’t have some fancy system.”
Ruby didn’t look his way, simply kept staring at her laptop
screen as she typed. “You use an inventory system that’s tied into the
point-of-sale system. Old but reliable. Also easy to slip into. You didn’t
register a sale for the fifteen minutes before or after we think Olivia was
taken.”
He frowned as though figuring out this wasn’t going to be as
easy as he thought it would be. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can,” Ruby replied simply. “I have a warrant
and everything.”
Garrett had been busy. So had Jack Barnes. He’d told Jack
exactly what they legally needed to ensure the evidence they found would hold
up. Jack had made some calls, and Ruby was now a consultant and Morgan had her
warrants.
“Morgan put out BOLOs on Jessica Fellows and Martin Gladen,”
Keane said, his eyes still on the two-way mirror and the view it offered them.
“You identifying that watch worked wonders. Ruby managed to figure out only a
hundred were sold in the US, and only a couple in Dallas, including to Martin
Gladen.
“Good. I assume they’ve put out something about Olivia.”
They were keeping each other calm. It was easier now that they were physically
together.
“Yes, but they could be anywhere by now,” Keane replied
flatly. “They could be on their way to Dallas or Austin, or they could head for
the Louisiana border.”
It was frightening to think how easily she could disappear.
“How could they plan for this? They couldn’t have known where she would be this
morning.”
“Unless they put a tracker on her cell phone,” Keane said
with quiet certainty. “That’s why they shoved it into the truck we were
driving. It wasn’t to set us up. That was a bonus. I bet Gladen shoved it into
the car because he wanted to be able to track her. Hell, maybe they’ve been
tracking her for a while now. They could have done it at any time when we
weren’t looking.”
“I don’t know anything,” Stephen swore.
Ruby turned her laptop around, showing him the screen. “You
don’t know this woman? She walked into your store five minutes after Olivia
did. See. You waved to her. Or were you telling her where to find Olivia?”
Stephen’s face turned a florid red. “That’s Jess. We went to
school together. Of course, I know her. Know her way better than Olivia since
she was too rich and fancy to think about attending a public school.”
Keane growled a little. “They bullied her. Of course she
didn’t want to go to school with them.”