Heavy: A Contemporary Romance (32 page)

Cali

About
fifteen minutes after she’d come into the cabin, Mary Jones headed back up to join her husband. I had no idea of how long she would be gone, or even how long it would take for us to get to wherever it was they were taking us. In other words, if I was going to act, I had to do it now.

I stepped out of my hiding place and quickly checked on Thaddeus
. Thankfully, he was not restrained, probably because there was nothing on the cabin bunk to restrain him to. The cuffs, and the keys to them, were on the bed next to him. Thaddeus’s breathing was shallow and for the first time I allowed myself to worry about the quantity of drugs the little boy had been given. Should he still be in such a deep sleep? The Jones’s were crackpots, not doctors. Had they overdosed him? Was I in danger of losing him before I could save him?

Not an option
. Right now, I was all Thaddeus had, and I was not going to let him down.

I frantically searched the cabin for anything that might help us
. There was nothing – no phone, no weapon, no flare gun. Not a damn thing.

Then I noticed that the built-in bench behind the fixed table was also a storage box
. Lifting the vinyl-covered lid, I finally found something that might prove to be the answer to all my problems.

It was shaped like a bright yellow briefcase
and had the words ‘inflatable life raft’ printed on the side. This was it. This could work.

I hoped.

I read the instructions on the side of the yellow canvas case the raft was folded up in, and quickly saw it was just a case of pulling a cord and the thing blew up in seconds.

Perfect.

Only… how big would it get and how much noise would it make when inflating? Would I be able to do it on a moving boat, right under the noses of the kidnappers, without them noticing? Then how to transfer an unconscious child and myself into it safely?

I was in a state of panic and my mind addled with fear for Thaddeus, but I was also amazed at
how I was able to slow all my frantic thought processes down so I could think of everything calmly and collectedly.

The wind was
cold; the water was going to be freezing. I also remembered a fair bit of what Charlie had told us the day we came out here. Choppy waves and strong undercurrents one minute and glass-like smooth the next.

I took a couple of large black garbage bags out from under the sink
. I stuffed two blankets and a couple of towels in one. I stripped Thaddeus down to his underwear and put his clothes and shoes in the bag too. I paused for a second to make sure I didn’t hear Scary Mary returning. I could barely hear the mumble of their voices over the loud sound of the engine, but what I could hear told me they were still up top. The fact I didn’t know for how long made me return to my task at full speed.

There was one more life vest in the cabin, and I
wanted to put it on Thaddeus, but it was just too big for his little body. I then stripped down to my underwear, put the life jacket on, and placed my clothes in the garbage bag with Thaddeus’s. Tying the end together, I stuffed the entire thing into the second bag for extra protection.

Taking th
e handcuffs, I placed them around Thaddeus’s wrists.

“Sorry, angel,” I whispered, “It has to be done.”

Using the rope that had originally bound my wrists, I secured the compacted life raft to my waist and then hooked Thaddeus’s arms over my head and around my neck so he was hanging down my front. His head hung limply against my chest.

A small child and a life raft attached to my body slowed me down much more than I ever expected
. I still had the bag of clothes and blankets to add to that weight.

I had created a handle at the tied top of the garbage bag, and slipped it over my arm so both hands were free.

I was wearing nothing but underwear and a life vest, a small boy attached around my neck, a canvas bag tied to my waist, and a large garbage bag hooked over one arm. Yeah, definitely one of my more interesting looks. Was this off-the-rack enough for you, Tallulah?

I cautiously stepped
up the small staircase that led down into the cabin, and stuck my head out to look around. I felt Thaddeus stir against me.

I ducked back inside and looked at him.

“Thaddeus,” I whispered. “You awake, angel?”

“Cali?” he mumbled in a thick voice.

“We have to be very quiet, okay, angel? We can’t make a single sound, do you understand?”

The boy nodded his head at me and tightened his grip around my neck slightly
. He was still very weak and I was glad the handcuffs would hold him to me securely.

“I’m going to put us in the water, Thad
. It’s going to be very, very cold. But you still can’t make a sound, okay?”

“Are we going to see Daddy again?”

My heart flipped in my chest at his worried tone.

“Of course we
are, angel. If we’re very quiet, the bad people won’t hear us and we’ll be back with Daddy really, really soon.”

“Okay, Cali,” Thaddeus replied sleepily, resting his head on my chest again.

Taking a deep breath, I slipped up the stairs again.

Mary was sitting with her back to us next to Josiah, who sat in the driver’s chair
. They seemed very focused on the empty black ahead.

T
he ladder on the side of the boat was towards the back on the right. If one of them even glanced to the side, there was a chance they would see me in their peripheral vision.

I’
d worry about that when and if it happened. No going back now.

I moved excruciatingly slowly along the right side of the boat, careful to not make any sudden or heavy movements
. The wind blew my hair into my face and caused the garbage bag to buck against my body, making a rustling noise that I didn’t think could be heard over the sounds of the motor and the waves.

I looked out into the inky black of the night, unable to see the shoreline in any direction
. I hesitated for a second as I considered whether I was putting us potentially in even greater danger. Then I thought about the intentions of Thaddeus’s kidnappers. I was going to take our chances against the elements than over them. I’d seen what a gun could do firsthand and I wasn’t going through that again. Not when Thaddeus was involved.

I climbed over the side of the boat, turning on the ladder so I was facing the backs of the evil duo
. I slowly lowered my cargo and myself down until I was up to my knees in the icy cold water, never taking my eyes off the Joneses.

When Thaddeus’s feet touched the freezing water he opened his eyes in shock
.

“Take a deep breath, little man,” I whispered, using his father
’s term of endearment for him. “We’re going in now and it’s going to be cold.”

Before he could answer I lowered us both quickly and sort of jump-fell back into the water, holding us both below the surface for a few seconds, the black bag
and the life vest the only things keeping me afloat.

Thaddeus bucked and struggled, the shock of the cold causing him to scream
underwater. I clutched the bag as he wrestled instinctively against me. I raised my head above water and my own breath sucked right out of my lungs from the icy chill.

Thaddeus stopped struggling once he got his head above water, his coughing quelling his screams
.

“Take a deep breath, angel,” I said,
treading water frantically while watching the lights of the boat move farther and farther away from us into the night.

Thaddeus began to tremble violently and my body was doing the same
. I needed to get him out of this water now.

Can you keep still for me, Thad
? I need to get our raft inflated.”

He didn’t respond and I hurried to complete my next task
.

I hadn’t quite thought this part all the way through, unfortunately
. The choppy waves, the debilitating cold water, the fact I had a body strapped to mine, didn’t exactly make it easy to untie the life raft from my waist. In the end, I couldn’t. My fingers were just too numb. I was, however, able to remove the folded plastic from its bag.

“Try and move around to my back if you can, Thad,” I gasped, struggling to keep us both afloat now
. “Try and be as still as you can.”

He seemed incapable of speech, but the terrified little boy made a valiant move to get behind me
.

I pulled the cord on the life raft, and it began to expand and take shape.

Once it was inflated, getting the garbage bag into it was more challenging than I thought.

“
Thad…deus,” I stuttered, my teeth chattering so violently it affected my speech. “Try and… climb up… my back and… into the boat.”

“I
… can’t, Cali,” he stammered back.

“Yes you can, baby
. I know you can do it. You’re a ninja, just like Daddy, aren’t you? I’ll push you, too, okay?”

Thaddeus gave me a weak nod and s
omehow we managed to get him into the boat, his whole body convulsing in a terrifying manner.

Without his weight around me, I was able to get the garbage bag in behind him, but struggled for a few minutes before I got myself up there
, too. It was without a doubt the most exhausting thing I’d ever done in my life. All the while, I was keeping an eye on the receding lights of the Jones’ boat as it moved away into the distance.

With shaky hands
, I pulled the handcuff keys out of my bra and freed Thaddeus’s wrists. His lips were blue and his breath was coming in short pants. I rubbed his arms and legs vigorously before tearing open the black bag and grabbing a towel. I scrubbed his entire body, pulling off his underwear. His eyes were closed and I wasn’t even sure he was completely conscious at that moment. I hastily got him dressed in his jeans and T-shirt, placed the towel down to sop up some of the water in the boat, then wrapped him tightly in a blanket.

“We’re going to be okay, little man
. You hear me? We’re going to be okay. I promise.” The statement might have been more convincing had my teeth not been chattering as much.

“I’m so cold, Cali,” his little voice peeped up.

I was so relieved that he was not unconscious; I grabbed him to me and held him tight.

“I have to get back in the water, angel
. I have to pull the boat to shore. You stay under the blankets and everything is going to be all right.”

I was terrified the Joneses were going to come back to look for us, and drifting around directionless wasn’t going to keep us out of their evil clutches.

Thaddeus nodded at me and closed his eyes. I strapped him into the raft with shaky fingers and then slipped back into the icy water before I could chicken out and change my mind.

I gasped as the cold water enveloped my body once again
. Moving my arms and legs rapidly to keep my blood flowing as much as to stay afloat, I looked in every direction to see if I could locate a shoreline.

The waves were not as rough or uneven as they had been when I’d first inflated the raft
. This was good news as Thaddeus was not heavy enough to keep the life raft balanced. There was no sight of land in any direction through the ink-black of the cloudy night and, while my body began to numb to the cold, my next fear was that it was going to start to rain at any moment.

So
, I randomly picked a direction and did what my body had grown accustomed and trained to do over the last month or so. I swam.

Thatch

“We’ve found a place called Sam’s Boat Repair and Marina on the Southeast side of Lake Mead,” Bernie shouted into his headset to be heard over the sound of the propellers
. “I’m pretty sure the police will be starting their search from that location, too.”

I nodded a
t him, as the helicopter they’d rented from God knows where began to make it’s descent on a landing pad near the large body of water.

A few minutes later and we were in a
Town Car heading towards the place Bernie had mentioned. Over the lake and to our left, we could see a couple of helicopters with floodlights and several boats, searching the lake.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” I
asked, my knuckles white as I gripped the door handle.

“I honestly
don’t know how effective it would be to get a boat and conduct our own search,” Brock answered. “I can have a boat here within the hour, but nothing equipped with the search equipment the police are using now.”

“
My suggestion,” Bernie added, “is that we stick as close to the search mission control as we can. At least we’ll get any news as they do.”

“Anything’s better than sitting at home doing nothing,” I said in response
.

Brock looked at me and sighed
. “If that was meant as a jab for the way I handled Cali’s last kidnapping, point made – and noted. I handled it badly and I might never get over my shame. I’m trying to make up for it now.”

Our car came to a stop outside the gates of Sam’s Marina and there were about ten police cars both inside the entrance and parked just outside the gates.

“I’m sorry, police only,” one of the uniformed cops said to us as we hurried up to the gates.

“
It’s okay, let them through,” Detective Johnson said, appearing from our right. “I guess it was too much to hope that you’d all stay at home quietly,” he added as he motioned for us to follow him into the boat yard.

There were several police vans parked near the docks, their doors open and men sitting inside monitoring computers and other such equipment.

“You got here pretty fast,” Bernie said to him as we came to a stop next to one of the vans.

“Helicopter,” Johnson answered
. “Same as you, I assume.”

“
Have there been any updates?” I interrupted. I didn’t give a fuck how the man got here; I just wanted to know where my loved ones were.

“We found the Joneses about five minutes ago and have them in custody
. Your son and girlfriend were not on board.”

My heart leapt and sank all at the same time
. I almost threw up.

“What does that mean?” I asked hoarsely.

“From what I’ve been able to gather from the unit currently holding them, the Joneses reached their intended destination, but when they went down to fetch your son, he was gone. At this point, my guess is that your daughter,” he turned to Brock, “somehow managed to stow away on their boat and get the boy off. We are currently sweeping the lake for a sign of them.”

“How long will they have been in the water
if that is, in fact, where they are?” Brock asked in a concerned voice.

“About forty minutes
. All hope is not lost yet though, sir. According to the man who rented them the vessel, there was definitely a life raft on board and, according to the search party, no raft was found on board.”

“I think we’ve found them, sir,” one of the men in the back of the van exclaimed excitedly
. “Chopper Two is reporting they’re picking up a child and woman now. Sir,” the man added, his voice switching from excited to serious, “they’re heading straight to Lake Mead General. One of them is in pretty bad shape.”

“Let’s go,” Brock said, already heading towards the car
. “You’re welcome to come with us, Detective.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Johnson replied
. “I’m going to wait for the Joneses to be brought in first.”

“Which one was in bad shape?” I asked in a quiet monotone.

“It’s not clear, sir, sorry.”

I nodded to him then hurried back to the waiting
Town Car.