The Guarded Widow (25 page)

“I’ll wait in the car,” Ron muttered dryly.

With a shake of his head, he watched Gavin plow his way across the room in order to reach Olivia in time.

While the crowd began chanting in unison as they counted down the last ten seconds until midnight, he reached for Olivia and forcibly brought her body up against his. Smiling sensually, she lifted her eyes to meet his as Gavin lowered his mouth to her waiting one. Confetti flew, horns blared and people cheered, but lost within each other’s arms, neither Olivia nor Gavin could hear the New Year’s celebration exploding around them.

Maddy grinned at her sister’s reflection in Mulligan’s bathroom mirror.

“That was quite a kiss,” she told Olivia with a wide, knowing grin.

Before leaving with Ron Barton, Gavin had made Maddy promise him she would not allow Olivia out of her sight.

Not even to go to the bathroom. So here the two sisters were, standing shoulder to shoulder, squashed inside Mulligan’s cramped restroom.

“Maddy, I appreciate you taking me home but …”

Her words were cut off by a hostile glare. “Don’t you dare thank me. Just let me say my goodbyes and then we’ll be off.”

They walked out of the ladies room together and were walking back over toward their table, when Olivia’s cell phone rang inside her small purse.

Worried, she immediately whipped out the phone and read the numbers on the display.

Why would Dad be calling me so late? She wondered with apprehension already churning tumultuously within her stomach. She rushed into a quiet hallway, hurrying to answer the call before it ended.

“Hello, Dad? Are you ok?” Olivia asked him, concern clipping her words.

Nothing could have prepared her for the violent wave of fear which gripped her heart when she heard Johnny Johnson’s voice, instead of her father’s.

“Why Olivia Jones, it’s a small world isn’t it? I was just getting to know your Daddy,” he sarcastically drawled.

Gasps of panic erupted from her lips, making him sound pleased as he asked, “Did you like the Christmas present I left for you? Now that was a sweet little nightgown you were wearing. Must’ve been a chilly night, huh?”

Johnny experienced a fresh spear of lust as he, again, envisioned her sprawled across the couch with her nightgown stretched taut across her breasts.

“Your Dad and I are waiting for you to bring me those policies. If you don’t get them to me by sunrise, your father will die. He’s a very sick man isn’t he?”

Olivia whirled around to watch Maddy, who’d just returned to the table to pick up her purse. Then she leaned up against the wall of Mulligan’s restaurant in order to better support her buckling knees.

Closing her eyes, she willed herself to steady her voice before answering him.

“I found them. I can bring them to you. My dad is very ill, from diabetes. He’ll die without food or his meds. I’ll bring these to you, but you need to let him go.”

Johnny glanced toward the small room where the old man was bound and gagged.

He grinned, licking his thick pudgy lips in anticipation of seeing her soon.

“We’re in a hunting cabin near the water at Little Pine State Park. You need to come alone,” he stated before abruptly ending the call, the wordless warning issued by his threatening tone of voice.

Olivia raggedly sucked in three deep breaths.

She momentarily debated calling Gavin, but then she saw Maddy hurrying toward her. Within those few brief seconds, whether it was a mistake or not, she decided not to breathe a word about the phone call until her Dad was safe.

Although she’d remained unusually silent during the drive home, Maddy just thought her sister was exhausted from the late New Year’s Eve party. When they arrived at the house, Olivia opened the car door to climb out and paused, giving her sister a weak smile.

“I love you, Maddy. Please know I’m doing what I think is best.”

Assuming she meant her relationship with Gavin, Maddy nodded.

“We don’t need to have this discussion. It’s your life.”

Stifling tears as she entered the house, Olivia shut the door behind her and leaned back against it to look around at the home she shared with her children. No one will know where I’ve gone, she realized in horror before quickly deciding to leave a note, just in case something went wrong.

After raking through a kitchen drawer to locate a pen and paper, she hastily scrawled out a note and left it lying on the counter. She raced upstairs into the guest room, carefully shutting the door so the light would not wake up Gavin’s parents.

Inside the closet, she opened the safe and removed the one floppy disk and all the false policies. Clutching the manila folder and disk as though her life depended on it, she looked down at her clothes and realized she needed to change.

So she crept down the hallway to the laundry room and selected a sturdy pair of jeans and a modest shirt from the pile of folded clean clothes on top of the dryer.

Then she took everything downstairs to change.

Once dressed, Olivia rummaged around in the coat closet and found an older pair of sneakers. When she spied Luke’s metal baseball bat, she paused, staring at it long and hard before deciding to pick it up.

Then she swung it under her arm and carried it out to the SUV with the disk and policies.

Vibrations, coinciding with the shuddering sound of the garage door opening, woke Elsa Rafferty up. That’s odd, Gavin and Olivia had taken his truck, she thought groggily. Just as she rolled over to go back to sleep, the garage door sounded again as it closed. Overcome by an intense need to satisfy her curiosity, Elsa wandered downstairs to the kitchen.

She walked over, swung open the interior door that led into the dimly lit garage and peered out with narrowed eyes. Now why would they come back and then leave with the SUV? Shaking her head in confusion, she quietly closed the door and turned around to go back to bed.

Then she saw the note on the kitchen counter. Elsa picked it up and as she silently read Olivia’s erratically written words she gasped aloud, not once, but twice. Fumbling as she reached for the telephone, she clutched the sheet of notebook paper to her chest as she frantically punched in the number for Gavin’s cell phone.

Speeding down pitch black, isolated rural roads, Olivia tried to prevent her mind from continually theorizing all the possible outcomes of going after her Dad on her own. In an attempt to quell her fears she decided, I’m just going to march in there and give Johnny Johnson what he wants. Then I’m just going to leave and take my Dad home. It’s as simple as that, she thought with a defiant lift of her chin.

As she flipped on her turn signal and merged the SUV onto the state highway which would lead her to Little Pine State Park, she sincerely hoped it would be as simple as she planned.

Gavin was holding open the plate glass door of the twenty four hour convenience store, for Ron to follow him out, when his cell phone rang. He noted Olivia’s house number on the screen and the corner of his mouth lifted.

She must be wondering how much longer I’ll be, he mused.

Smiling, he leisurely answered the call.

The shock of not hearing Olivia, but the distraught tone of his mother’s voice, sent his mind racing wildly. Time seemed to stand still as he stopped dead on the sidewalk, listening to his mother’s frantic words.

“Mom, what is it? I can’t understand what you’re saying. You’ve got to calm down,” he told her, firmly.

Ron paused with his hand resting upon the door of the police cruiser. He glanced at Gavin, noting a fierce frown had settled over his partner’s face.

“Mom, slow down. What do you mean Olivia isn’t there? She took her car? She left a note?” He repeated his mother’s words, in disbelief.

“Mom, just read me the note, word for word,” he commanded as he propped his hand up against the convenience store’s brick wall to steady himself.

Head bent down in concentration, he tried to absorb every detail of her words as she read Olivia’s note to him. Then swearing vehemently, he slammed his phone closed.

“What the hell is that woman thinking?” Gavin roared as he marched over to the driver’s side door of the police cruiser, plucked the keys from Ron’s hand and told him to get in the car.

“Dude, this is my cruiser. I’ll drive it,” Ron argued, levering his body against the door to keep it shut as Gavin tried to pull it open.

“Get the hell out of my way, Ron.”

“What’s going on? What did your Mom say?” Ron demanded once Gavin had finally managed to shove him aside.

He was already behind the steering wheel, shoving the key into the ignition.

“Johnson’s got Olivia’s Dad out at Little Pine State Park, in some cabin down by the water. And for some damned reason, she left with the policies to meet him. Alone!” Gavin yelled out, hitting the steering wheel.

Enough said, Ron thought as he raced for the passenger seat.

Midway around the front end of the car, the full implication of Gavin’s words sunk in. As soon as Ron’s rear hit the vinyl seat, he exploded. “What the hell? Since when have you known where those policies were?”

Instead of answering, Gavin cast him a wary glance. Wordlessly, he flipped on the cruiser’s flashing lights and then pealed out of the convenience store parking lot.

Now, was not the time for this discussion. No matter what, Ron was going to be pissed at him.

“Dammit Gavin, answer me! How long have you had the policies? Why didn’t you turn them over to me or the Feds?” Ron asked, fixing a belligerent stare on his friend.

Gavin clenched his jaw tight as he navigated back roads at dangerously high speeds. Ron’s menacing stare finally won out.

“Look, I made her a promise that we’d wait. We were planning on giving them to you today. I don’t feel like trying to explain it right now. It’s going to be a least thirty minutes until we can get there. I need time to think.”

“Damn! What were you thinking?” Ron muttered angrily, jerking his head away to stare out the window.

With more pressing concerns weighing his mind than his best friend’s anger, Gavin decided to just ignore Ron for the time being. Almost immediately, his imagination began conjuring terrifying images of Olivia being raped, beaten or murdered. With a death grip on the steering wheel, he decided to just focus his full concentration on the long dark roads ahead of him. For the first time in his adult life, Gavin prayed. Silently, he pleaded with God, begging Him for Olivia’s safety.

After following a narrow serpentine road throughout the State Park, it seemed an eternity until Olivia finally spied the reflective blue signs indicating the nearby lake. Slowly, she drifted onto the shoulder of the road, pulling in just beyond a stone lane which she desperately hoped would lead her toward the hunting cabins and her father.

I’ll leave my car here and try to sneak up on him, she thought as she removed the information Johnson coveted, along with the metal base ball bat.

Then ever so gently, she shut the door to the SUV.

Every sound she made seemed louder, exaggerated by the deathly still silence.

The predawn hours fostered a suffocating darkness, but she didn’t dare return to the SUV for the glove compartment flashlight. The hard crust of snow on the ground crunched loudly underfoot as she began walking down the lane, straining her frayed nerves and attuning her senses to the shadowy hidden world around her.

In the distance, she saw one of the cabins had a light on within. So Olivia chose to move off the lane and follow the perimeter of it toward the small cluster of cabins, trying to remain unseen. Off the well traveled path, she stumbled over a rock and attempted to muffle a cry of surprise as she landed hard upon her hands and knees.

The cold temperature made the impact with the jagged snowy ground sting, painfully. Mad at herself, for creating extra noise, she slid her leg around to rub a bruised knee cap. When her foot collided with the menacing rock a second time, she deliberately ran her hands over the icy ground to find it. Then wedging her fingers underneath, she wiggled the rock out of the frozen snow and dirt and shoved it deep inside her coat pocket. Pleased with her new found weapon, she bent down again to collect the baseball bat and scattered insurance policies.

Johnny Johnson was kicked back in a rickety chair with his boots propped up on a pitiful excuse for a kitchen table, casually sipping on whiskey as he waited for his guest to arrive.

He cocked his head once when he thought he heard something moving around outside the cabin. Then his face split into a terrifying grin, when he knew for sure that he’d heard the distinct sound of frozen snow crackling underfoot. Still grinning, he cast open a dark paneled door which led to the small room where Walter was imprisoned.

As a narrow beam of light washed over the slumped unconscious form bound to a chair, Johnny drawled cheerfully, “Company’s arrived.”

“Gavin, I need to call this in now!” Ron was annoyed because he’d already allowed his partner too much time to brood over the potentially explosive situation. He placed a call to dispatch, asking them to forward a message to their contact with the FBI.