Stone Cold (5 page)

Can’t wait until June 30.

Talk t       u soon,

     nah         y

The words came out slowly. He read it over and over again hoping that each time it would read differently, that somehow the blanks would be filled in.

Even with parts of the message missing
, Conall knew it was meant for him and it was from Hannah, the girl he hadn’t been able to erase from his mind. The girl he’d met little more than several days ago who he might never see again.

Her picture
, although smudged, was the only part of the letter that was still intact.

“How could all of the vital parts of who she is and how to contact her be missing from this paper
? Ugh!”

In frustration, Conall picked up the nearest thing to him, his cell phone, and
without thinking, threw it against the wall.

The throw caused him to lean too far back in his chair.
His arms and legs flailed as the chair tipped over, sending him head first to the floor.

The knot on the back of his head had grown to the size of an egg. As he rubbed it he reached for what was lef
t of his cell phone. It was in four pieces. The front and back covers along with the phone itself, plus the battery cover had come off and the battery was dislodged.

With
the pieces reassembled, Conall turned the phone on to make sure it still functioned. At the same time, he had a vision of something that had happened earlier that day.

“
Jack took a picture of Hannah’s email with his phone and then he threw the paper away.” Conall’s thoughts were spinning at warped speed.

“
He has her picture, her name, and who knows what else from the letter. It may have been more intact before he crumbled it up and threw it away. He probably knows more about her than I do.”

All through dinner and the next day Conall was deep in thoug
ht. Aside from the fact that he’d decided to steal Jack’s phone so he could hopefully locate Hannah, he had a burning question on his mind that wouldn’t stop nagging at him.

“
Is he a dangerous enough person who plans to seek and find Hannah and do who knows what to her?”

C
onall was fairly certain that Mr. Barnes was in fact up to no good. He could’ve given the paper back to the medical personnel at the scene to go with Liz’s belongings. Instead he chose to take it and stole the information for his own use. He then discarded the paper with zero regard for its owner.

Conall
felt that his initial instinct was accurate when he came eye to eye with this man. He thought Jack was pure evil. He wasn’t about to let an innocent girl be harmed as a result of something she was completely unaware had happened with her email. Maybe this guy wasn’t going to waste any more time on Hannah but he wasn’t about to take that chance.

Conall
still didn’t know where to find Hannah to warn her. What he did know was that he had to find Jack and steal his phone before he could use the information to track her down. He was sure if Jack found her, he planned to force her into what he referred to as “the European market.” He had an idea of what that meant and it wasn’t good.

He spent the rest of the evening
making plans and realized he needed help to pull this off.

The next day, Conall enlisted
his two closest friends, Bobby Conti and Shawn Calahan, to help him find Jack. He figured the most logical area to begin looking would be near the scene of the accident. He could tell by the clothes Jack wore that he had money and probably lived in Manhattan, maybe in a penthouse apartment.

Having lived in
Manhattan his entire life, Conall was familiar with many of the upscale buildings. He and his friends patrolled the streets around these apartments for the entire weekend but there was no sign of Jack.

Late Sunday afternoon
, dejected by their unsuccessful pursuit, Conall, Shawn, and Bobby decided they would resume their search Monday after school. While waiting for a cab, his friends began shadow boxing with each other. Just as a cab was approaching, the overzealous shadow boxers bumped into Conall, knocking him from the curb into the street. The cab came to a screeching halt inches from his face. As he scrambled to his feet, without warning, he had a flashback to the day of the accident.

When he and Liz hit the ground he looked up
at the cab and the first thing he saw was the cab’s ID number in black letters above the front bumper.

The boys
grabbed Conall by the arms and guided him into the cab that nearly hit him.

“Man, are you okay? You look like you’re
in a trance or something,” observed Shawn.

“
Yeah I’m good. As a matter of fact, I just had a flashback to the day of the accident. The cab’s number was 315. Instead of staking out the streets again on Monday afternoon, we can go to the cab company and ask to speak to the driver of that cab.”

It was almost certain that the
driver would remember where he’d picked up his passenger who was with him at the time of the accident. Maybe he’d be able to provide some clues to help the boys determine where Jack lived.

*****

That night, Conall was too exhausted from the stakeout weekend to fight sleep. Even so, his mind drifted to how he happened to be following Liz Tanner that day.

Around lunchtime
, Conall was on his way to the school office to get an early dismissal pass for a dentist appointment. He was not too thrilled about getting his teeth cleaned but it was better than having to be in school so he was eager to get the pass and leave. He knew his dentist would be more than happy to give him a note saying his appointment was delayed and there was no time for him to return to school after. The sooner he got to the appointment the sooner it would be over and he’d be able to spend the rest of the afternoon doing whatever he pleased.

It appeared as though the office was temporarily empty when he arrived
, so Conall slipped into the adjoined bathroom to relieve himself. Liz must have been there but had leaned over to pick something up from the floor and didn’t see or hear him enter the office. As he was about to exit the bathroom, Conall overheard Liz talking to the principal’s secretary, Tracy Thompson.

“I’m going to lunch now and when I get back remind me to show you this sweet note I received for one of our
students. He met a girl on the Ellis Island ferry during yesterday’s field trip and now she’s trying to find him!”

Conall opened the door ever so slightly just in time to see Liz
holding up the pink paper for Tracy to see on her way out the door. As soon as she was gone, he exited the bathroom and Tracy gave him the early dismissal pass. From what he’d heard Liz say about the contents of the note on the pink paper he was certain he was the intended recipient. It described his encounter with Hannah the previous day, to a tee.

Once out of the school building
, Conall started walking to his dental appointment, all the while the excitement building about what was written on the pink paper. Maybe he would go back to school post appointment after all. Liz would be back by then and she would certainly give it to him when he went to the office to sign in.

*****

There were droves of people on the street that day but Conall was oblivious to their presence. All he could think about was getting his hands on that paper. He meandered in and out of the crowd, barely avoiding body contact with every step. As he walked, something bright directly ahead caught his eye. His gaze focused in on a pink object about a block ahead. Upon further inspection, he realized it was Liz and she was reading the message on the pink paper while she walked!

It was time for him to see what was so interes
ting about that message. He’d catch up to her and she’d have no choice but to give it to its rightful owner. With increased pace he began closing in – 100 feet, 75, 50 feet. He was so close he could see the white stitching on her jacket.

Con
all was several feet behind her when the unthinkable happened. Liz had reached the curb still engrossed in reading the contents of the pink paper. Without thinking or looking up, she stepped off the curb into the path of an oncoming cab. With no time to think, he lunged forward to bump her out of harms way and ended up crashing to the ground on top of her. When he looked up, the cab was right in front of him and he saw its ID, 315, on the bumper.

Conall’s instinct was to get up and run. Being a very private and shy individual from birth, h
e had no desire to become known as anyone’s hero nor talk about what had happened. He decided it would be best if he disappeared into the crowd that was rapidly gathering, but not until he made sure Liz was going to be okay.

Everything happened so fast that no one really got a good look at him. All the
reliable witnesses seemed to be able to do was agree that Liz was saved by a young boy wearing a royal blue jacket. The news reports dubbed him “mystery boy” and so far he’d remained anonymous.

When he thought the coast was clear, Conall
had returned to the curb where it all began and pretended to be just another onlooker. He saw that the paramedics had arrived and were attending to Liz. He came to a stop behind a dark haired young businessman in a black trench coat who’d just gotten out of the cab. Conall could see him on his cell phone as he paced back and forth, glancing at Liz here and there with an irritated look on his face.

As he conti
nued to move through the crowd, Conall overheard the businessman’s conversation.

“This is Jack Barnes. Plans have changed. There’s been an unexpected delay so I won’t be able to pick up the girl an
d transport her as planned. My client is going to be very upset that he has to wait longer to get what he paid for so make sure you take care of this right away. Call my secretary to cancel my flight and reschedule it for tomorrow.”

Never one to miss a
nything, Conall made a mental note that the name Jack Barnes sounded like a good name for a newspaper reporter.

He finally stopped
directly across from the scene.

“Did anyone
see what happened here?” Conall looked straight ahead at Liz waiting for someone to answer his question.

“I heard that two boys were trying to steal her purse and pushed her in front of that cab.”

“No, that’s not what happened. I saw her talking to a friend and she tripped and fell in front of the cab.”

The crowd of people continued to lament over what
had actually happened, none of whom were correct much to Conall’s satisfaction. As far as he could tell he was in the clear.

As he watched the paramedics and civilians helping Liz, he remembered what had created this accident in the
first place.

“Miss Tanner had
been reading the pink paper at the time.”

The
crowd of people gathered around Liz and the paramedics had grown so large that Conall had to dodge and weave his head around to see through the massive amount of legs and feet. Add that to the high level of paper debris that littered the streets every day and it would be a miracle to find the paper in question. He hoped she still had it in her hand and that the paramedics had put it with her belongings for transport to the hospital.

From Conall’s position on the curb his eyes
eventually locked onto Jack Barnes. He was no longer on his phone but was staring at Liz and made a lunge for something close to her body. It was clear by his body language he’d missed his target, whatever it was. Not to be denied, he angled his way through the crowd in Conall’s direction, eyes toward the ground with outstretched arms and hands. Jack was right in front of him now.

Still nervous about his identity being compromised, Conall stepped off the curb to appear smaller and stared straight ahead. His breath was shallow as he hid behind the human barrier formed all around him.

He could see Jack from the corner of his eye, bent down at the curb. For a second, he lost sight of him through the crowd. Suddenly, he was distracted by someone who had grabbed his ankle and was trying to move his foot! The harder they tried to move it the harder Conall resisted. Before he could look, the perpetrator had risen and was standing eye to eye with him. It was Jack!!

“Could you ple
ase move your…,” Jack began to speak and again Conall’s instinct to run kicked in.

When Jack touched him, he’d
instantly gotten a bad feeling. As he lifted his foot, he took a quick look at his shoe before taking flight. Unbelievably, he’d been standing on the pink paper since he’d stepped off the curb!

Twenty feet or so into the crowd, h
is next thought stopped him dead in his tracks.

“
What did Mr. Barnes want with the pink paper? Was he retrieving it for Liz?” Conall wondered aloud as he spun around and peered through the crowd to see what Jack had done with it.