The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller (31 page)

And nothing happened.

I pushed it again. Nothing, again. Damned thing was broken, and Bill was coming up quickly to the end of the track. I could push him onto the other track manually, but that meant having to run alongside him. I looked up at the hooks rolling past with their spear-like tips angrily tossing back and forth, clawing at the air. Telling me to stay away.

I couldn’t. I’d spent my whole life terrified of my own blood, and in the process became terrified of living. Not anymore. My anger had arrived; it was strong, it was powerful, and it would drive me through this. I’d use it to make sure that bastard never took another breath.

I found a screwdriver sitting on top of a machine, stuffed it in my back pocket, handle first. I caught up to Bill, ran ahead of him, and reached for the manual wire. He kicked out and wrapped his legs around my neck, squeezing hard. Now he was dragging me along the ground by my neck, choking me. I reached up, tried loosening the grip, but he was holding on tightly, his boots locked together. I pulled the screwdriver from my pocket and buried the end in his thigh. He shouted and his leg twitched, releasing his hold, dropping me to the floor.

Bill continued on, grunting in pain, now barely a foot from the juncture. I rushed up beside him, pulled the manual wire, and forced him onto the other track just in time. He swung in the other direction and began moving away from me. Suddenly, the hook released, dropping him into a chute. When I got there and looked down, I saw him laying face up, eyes wide open, with a metal stake pushing up through his chest.

And covered in blood.

But I had no time to revel in his death, because I was bleeding too, the red running wild from my body. My vision blurred and I began to shiver. I knew these were all effects of severe blood loss. It wouldn’t be long now.

I staggered back toward CJ, leaving a trail of blood along the way. I think she said something, but I didn’t hear it; I was too focused on ripping the duct tape from her arms, legs, and waist.

And that was the last thing I remembered.

Chapter Fifty-Five

My eyes shot wide open.

The packing plant was gone, replaced now by white light—in fact, everything was white. And clean. It took me a moment to realize I was lying in a hospital bed.

I looked up and saw CJ standing beside me, head tilted, watching me with studied concern.

I smiled.

She did, too, and then in a soft voice, said, “How you doing there, kiddo?”

“Pretty lousy,” I said, “but thanks for asking.”

She smiled wider, brushed a hand across my forehead, pushing the hair away from my eyes. “You know, that was some pretty crazy stuff you pulled back there. You almost died.”

I frowned, closed my eyes, nodded.

Another voice said, “You know, being a hero is not such a great idea.”

I opened my eyes. “Sully…
holy
…how did you…?”

CJ grinned. “I found your phone on the floor while they were loading you into the ambulance. It rang, so I answered it.”

“Guess who?” Sully said, with a wave and a smile. “So I had to come see for myself if you were all in one piece.” Then he said, more seriously, “And I’m glad you are.”

“He flew out here right away,” CJ added.

Sully pointed to me. “I warned you not to take that bastard on yourself—so what the hell do you go and do?”

I looked at CJ and gave her a scolding grin.

She said, “Guilty, but you’re partly to blame.”

“Me?”

CJ put a hand on her hip. “It seems once again you’ve been holding back on some very crucial information. Doing that guarded thing. The bleeding? Good
Lord
, Pat. You want to explain why you never told me about it? And you’d better make it good.”

“I didn’t want you to worry?”

Her voice had a little anger in it. “I never would have let you do half those things if I’d known.”

“Which is the other reason why I didn’t tell you.”

“They had to revive you twice,” she said. “The second time you almost didn’t make it.”

I struggled through my memory. It was all coming back to me now, the rolling chicken fight with Bill, seeing him dead. I looked up at CJ. “It was worth it putting that bastard to the metal. I’d do it again.”

She fought back a smile, and her eyes began to glisten. Then, barely above a whisper, she said, “He was going to kill me first.”

I turned my gaze toward the window and nodded, squinting against the harsh sunlight.
Alive.

Then I felt CJ’s hand gently cup my chin. She turned my face toward her and looked into my eyes. Hers were full of tears.

She said, “Thank you, Patrick.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

It was time to head home.

Suddenly, the thought of going back to my empty apartment didn’t seem so bad anymore. I wondered why. Maybe Corvine, in some way, had managed to correct that distortion for me.

Maybe life had.

But there was still one final matter weighing heavily on my mind, and I couldn’t leave until I took care of it.

I rode Highway 72 to the 24 exit, parked in the lot, then went inside. The woman’s expression brightened as soon as I walked through the door.

“Is he still here?” I asked, worried she might say no.

She nodded. “He sure is.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Wonderful. Want to see him?”

I felt my smile widen. “Yeah.”

She got up, then hurried toward the back.

A few moments later, she was standing in the doorway, leash in hand, and one big happy-looking dog on the end of it.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was a completely different animal. About ten healthy pounds heavier now, he had a full-bodied coat that was slick and gorgeous, and an expression that told me he’d finally tasted happiness.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I was smiling so big that my ears began to hurt, and then to my surprise, felt tears fill my eyes.

He brought his gaze to mine and jutted his head forward a notch, mouth hanging open, almost as if making sure he was really seeing things right. Then his expression changed into a flash of enthusiastic recognition.

A sudden burst of energy broke him free, propelling him right toward me, slipping and sliding his way along the slick, linoleum floors. He leaped up, threw his paws over my shoulders, and with furious excitement, began licking my face, my ears, my neck…anything he could cover. Then, he pulled back for a moment and held my gaze, watching me smile through tear-filled eyes. He gave one of those sideways tilts—the canine equivalent of a shrug—and then went back to work, licking the tears from my cheeks.

“I think he likes you,” the receptionist said with a wink.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to speak around his canine kisses, “who ever would have thought?”

She smiled. “Sometimes a little love is all it takes.”

No truer words…

She told me the poor thing had been abused and neglected for years. The talk around town was that Flint kept him chained to that post ever since he was a puppy. Day in, day out, nobody paying attention to his needs, physical or emotional.

All alone in this world.

“Where’s he go from here?” I asked, still kneeling and running my hands through his fur.

The receptionist shrugged and frowned.

And that was the beginning: A whole new life.

For us both.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The mighty lion tumbled.

Warren Samuel Strademeyer, the beloved senator, was exposed for the entire world to see. A kidnapper. A murderer.

The trial lasted nearly a month, and I sat through every minute of it, listening to all the lurid details. It would have felt like some horrific movie, only it was all about me.

Warren and Jean’s peculiar connection to the notorious Bill Williams was finally revealed. As it turned out, they both knew him. He also grew up in Rose Park, Georgia. While Warren and Bill were never friends growing up, he knew exactly who to call when he needed someone to carry out my kidnapping. Warren had the money, and Bill had the mind for it; they were a perfect match. I never figured out whether those horrible stories Jean had told about him were actually true, and to be honest, didn’t want to.

Flint Newsome was another one of Warren’s casualties, albeit, a very shady one. During my kidnapping investigation, Warren had paid him to lose the evidence—well, the boot print, anyway—but he couldn’t just take that; it would have seemed too obvious. So he paid Flint to take it all, hide it for a few days, then return it, minus one very important piece, of course.

Apparently, Newsome owed somebody money for a bad gambling debt and figured he could dig into Warren’s deep pockets to get it. Around the same time we started investigating in Corvine, he called Warren, trying to blackmail him, saying he still had the boot print, which he’d kept in his safe all these years. He chose the wrong man. Bill was already in town, and Warren gave the go-ahead to get rid of him. Bill took the print and then Flint’s life.

Camilla never had a son named Benjamin. It was Patrick, and he hadn’t died when I was two. He died while she was a pregnant, unwed sixteen-year-old. Warren convinced her to abort the child, then later sold her on the idea that I could be a replacement for him.

But I couldn’t, even after she gave me his name.

It only took the jury about four hours to come back with their verdicts. Kidnapping, murder for hire, obstruction of justice, and evidence tampering—guilty on all counts. No mercy from the judge, either, who gave him three consecutive life terms. The distinguished gentleman from Georgia became inmate number 23433-068 at Talladega Federal Correctional Institute in Alabama.

I watched as they loaded him into the van headed for prison. A horde of reporters and photographers jockeyed around me for a good position, all trying to capture the moment. Just before getting in, Warren looked up at the commotion, and our eyes met briefly. Somewhere in the unspoken conversation between us, we knew that this was really the end. Then he climbed inside and the door slammed shut.

I never saw him again.

Warren died of a massive heart attack after serving less than twelve months of his sentence. Of course, the press covered it heavily. I watched file video taken while he was in prison and barely recognized the man, saw a mere shadow of the powerful politician I’d once known. Though he’d only been there for the better part of a year, it might as well have been twenty. Bound, shackled, and shuffling along, he was at least fifteen pounds lighter, appearing disheveled, diminutive, and weak. The once-burnished silver hair had turned ashen, as had the flawless, tanned complexion. Gone too were the custom tailored suits, once his hallmark, now traded for a drab prison uniform. A pathetic image if I’d ever seen one: the picture of a man who’d lost it all. A man waiting to die.

I chose to continue living as Patrick Bannister. Nathan Kingsley seemed like a fable to me, a story I’d never read. Nathan may have been the name I was born with, but Patrick was who I had become. I stuck with what I knew.

And it seemed that Patrick Bannister was destined to become an overnight celebrity…for all the wrong reasons.
Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours Mystery
: I appeared on all of them, but even
that wasn’t enough to quench the public’s insatiable thirst for the unsavory. It was hard to go anywhere without flashbulbs shooting off in my face, the tabloids constantly hounding me, the attention reaching a fevered pitch. For a while, I spent a good part of my time hiding out. Eventually, fresh new scandals hit, and the press moved on from me. I was finally able to begin my new life, assimilating it with the old—the one I’d never come to know. The real one. Nathan Kingsley never really died, and Patrick Bannister never really lived. It took me some time to come to terms with the irony, that my entire life had been nothing more than a lie. Warren and his clan of misfits had robbed me of something essential, something that most people take for granted: an identity, a sense of self—and the worst part of all, just to save his lousy career. Of course, in the end it did just the opposite.

The fact that my kidnapper was also my father would be a burden I’d have to bear. I would live with that. Seeing justice served made it a little easier. Finding out that Camilla wasn’t my mother, for some reason, didn’t seem quite as hard—maybe because she never felt like much of one to me, anyway.