Chapter 12 #2
Someday, maybe soon enough in the future, they would talk—really talk.
He’d tell her how she was the first person he’d really cared about in forever, that she had made the past slip into the past for him—never forgotten, but set where it should be within his heart, his soul, his ability to function … his life.
And she’d talk to him, he knew. He felt he understood what he’d learned from her: In her life, she’d known a different fear—a fear that the mask she wore for the world would slip, especially if she dared become too involved with a lover.
But that night, talking was something that would come later.
The time they shared was, Zach determined, the best therapy.
Because for just a little bit of time, his mind shut off to the maze and the puzzle that stretched before them.
Soon enough, his alarm rang.
Skye leapt out of bed like a gazelle. “Shower. And it’s day. Don’t you dare—oh, wait! I have my own shower. Let’s move!”
“Aye, ma’am, aye!” Zach replied. He rose and walked into the shower, drying and dressing quickly.
They were out in the kitchen area almost simultaneously.
“I want to call the hospital, see if Cathy and the driver are doing well. And, of course, if we’re able to speak with Cathy yet. And—”
“Start by calling Gavin. If my instincts about him are right, he’ll already be back in the office. I’ll cook today. I can scramble some eggs and throw some cheese in them, and I’m excellent at hitting a toaster button!” Zach said.
“Great. Thanks!” Skye said.
Zach headed to the refrigerator and then the stove, finding the frying pan and starting the eggs.
He could hear her speaking and thought he should have just asked her to put the phone on the speaker, but it didn’t matter.
They’d need to sit down and eat, and she could tell him anything she’d learned then.
“Okay, well, you started off being right—Gavin was in the office.” She joined him in the kitchen, going for plates and silverware and glasses for juice. He poured coffee cups between stirring up his egg mixture.
“Thankfully, both the real driver and Cathy are doing well; he was already able to see the driver—the man knew nothing at all. He was simply attacked by a witch; and after his head was hit and he finally came to in the hospital, he was sure he imagined he was hit by a witch. And Cathy … Gavin said that she’s a weepy mess.
She’s swearing she’ll never touch drugs again as long as she lives.
The Sizemore couple has halted all tours for the week.
They’re horrified by what happened and are ready to take a loss on the whole thing—and they’re stunned that Nick Sandoval turned out to be a mental case, under the spell of someone, and they haven’t a clue who that could be.
Sandoval had been with them for a month. ”
“Seemed fine when we met him for the tour, too,” Zach reminded her.
She nodded.
“But I guess that’s how you get away with what you’re trying to get away with—you target victims, but you find the right lieutenants to be beneath you,” Skye said. “The thing is, Nick believes all the rubbish he gave us.”
“All right. There is someone out there with a major plan. Somehow the plan has to do with kidnapping people who are vulnerable, or can be made vulnerable. At first, they’re drugged—and threatened.
We find out about more people being dragged into this all the time; except, of course, it doesn’t seem as if anyone with real power has been swept up into this.
Whoever the leaders are, they aren’t taking chances with someone they can’t drug or brainwash into complete pliancy,” Zach theorized.
“Here’s what’s so aggravating. At first, I thought we had it!
We knew that Patricia and Jeremy were brought through the forest. But that area was searched top to bottom, another little green army toy was found, and the answer is that they came through to the road on the other side—and drove somewhere.
Then, last night. Of course, Ned Sandoval knew exactly where the trolley waited during the few minutes between the driver being on call and the guide letting him know that they were ready,” Skye agreed.
“They are using the forests,” Zach said. “And we have every ranger and every patrolman in the area aware of what is going on, and how it’s going on, and still …”
Skye reached across the table and set a hand on his.
“Hey, you stopped me from getting too down last night, and we looked at the good, instead. We did save lives. We do have Nick Sandoval. And we, at least, put a good kink in the operation. What gets me again is that they seem to know what they’re doing.
Wearing the witch costumes—in Witch City, no less—and leaving no prints, no DNA, and somehow managing to avoid traffic cams as well.
So that either makes one look in the direction of someone very familiar with law enforcement, like a cop, an officer, an agent—”
“Or,” Zach said, “someone who really knows how to collect the right programs off the zillion things streaming online these days, easily available by computer or TV or even podcast.”
“What do you think?” Skye asked.
“Okay, if someone is culling all these people, to what end? I mean, this isn’t something where we’re going to discover a cult leader like a Jim Jones or a David Koresh.
Our suspect knows what they’re doing is illegal.
I mean, when you’re trying to sway people to a way of thought, you do it through growing a ministry.
This person—no, you’ve seen two. These people are planning something.
And the only thing that makes sense is doing something drastically illegal and using the victims as pawns, as shields; or in other words, their hostages are their means to get away with what they’re planning.
That doesn’t suggest a kid who learned how to make a bomb by watching TV—or even excelling in class. ”
“Someone frustrated with where they are in life,” Skye said. “Smart, savvy about the world—and Salem and even Halloween.”
“And movie witches,” Zach added. “All right, we’ll get Gavin on it.”
“All right, Gavin, yes. But get him on it. Get him on what—exactly?”
“Finding out what a massive heist might be. And how innocents might be used as shields or pawns for the thieves to get away with it.”
She nodded. “Good plan. Okay, let’s get to the station. I want to talk to Nick Sandoval myself. Then go to the hospital so we can see Cathy.”
“Pick up, head out,” and Zach did so.
When they were in the car on the way to the station, Skye turned to him and said, “I don’t know why, but I want to get back to the monster store. I’d just like to have more time.”
“It’s still closed; I’m sure we can arrange it,” Zach said.
“And I’ve been thinking …”
“Always good,” he said.
She grinned at him. “Sometimes good! But okay, we’ve been fixated on the forests. That’s because they use the forests to slip away with people, to hide them. But we’ve had so many people out, people who know the woods.”
He laughed. “Lots of forests. Just because you live in the area doesn’t mean that you know the woods. Hey, I have a cousin who grew up in Homestead, Florida. Talk about places to leave a body—the Everglades.”
“Well, I don’t think they’re going from Salem, Massachusetts, to the Everglades!” Skye said. “My point is that there are huge warehouses and such all over the area, some of them abandoned. There are some businesses that never did recover from the pandemic.”
“If they are using an abandoned building, it’s an abandoned building with woods nearby. I saw Patricia and Jeremy—they were in the darkness. Someone was speaking to them in the woods.”
“Good point. Maybe there is a big warehouse or even a big house somewhere that’s on the verge of the woods or in the woods … They’re somewhere out there, Zach!”
“That is true,” Zach agreed.
“Another plan,” Skye said. “I think I said it before—though sometimes the downside is I think that what’s in my head has come out of my mouth.
I want to go through the woods in the direction Nick was taking Cathy last night and get out to that road.
And if we’re lucky, I may see whoever it was who was coming to get them. ”
“Right. We may see—sorry, you may see a car there, parked off the side of the road, waiting.”
“Wow, and if we could get Angela and the team back home comparing a car, if we can find it, to traffic cams, we get a good enough shot for facial recognition on the driver and have somewhere else to go!”
“Okay,” Zach said. They had reached the station. “How’s this? I’ll talk to Gavin; we’ll both watch you with Nick from the observation room.”
He hesitated before getting out of the car and he turned to her.
“This is … I mean, somehow in the middle of this strange situation, you made the night the most beautiful I might have known in my life—and yet here we are, amazingly, right back, thinking hard, in, yeah, what I think of as our twisted mess.”
She smiled and said softly, “Yeah, I must admit, I’m glad I was so thirsty last night! Never knew what a bottle of water could do for me.”
He laughed softly. “Back to twisted life.”
Out of the car, they headed into the station, running into Detectives Berkley and Cason, who were on their way out.
“Hey, you two, quite the night!” Vince Cason said. “And all we did was walk around and around the Bolton house, around and around the forest, talking to rangers—”
“Well,” Connie Berkley interrupted, “we did speak with a number of rangers. We know that the witch who took Jeremy and Patricia walked all the way through to the road. It was almost a perfectly straight path—”
“As straight as you can be, through a tangle of trees,” Vince interrupted dryly.
Connie groaned. “A straight path—looping around a ton of trees—from the house. They’re driving somewhere with the people they kidnapped. And I guess that the kid last night was planning the same thing.”