The Silencer: A Bad Boy MMA Romance (23 page)

“See, mom, it’s safe,” he tried bargaining with her. “When Dad took me, nothing ever happened. I never got hurt.”

“I know you never did,” she said as she did a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table.

“Mom!” he slammed his hand down on the kitchen table to make her look at him. “Can I go, please?” His eyes were pleading with her.

She knew she had to put her fears aside for the sake of her children. There had to be some point where she could start to trust again.

“Okay,” she said. “But! I want you to take my cell phone and keep it on you at all times. You call me if you get lost, get hurt or if you get too tired to come back. Anything. You call me. Do you understand? I’ll come and get you.”

“Yeah! I understand,” he said heading out the door.

“Chase!” she called after him.

“What mom?” he asked, annoyed.

“You didn’t take my cell phone,” she said as she walked to the door to hand it to him. “Now, tell me. When or why will you call?”

“I know, mom, I know. If I get lost, hurt or too tired. I got it, mom,” he rolled his eyes.

“And one more thing,” she grabbed his arm to stop him from leaving.

“What?” he exclaimed, ready to go.

“Give me a kiss. I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too, mom.” He kissed her back. “Thanks, mom! You’re the best mom ever!” he raced out the door.

Smiling at how cute he was, she walked over to the computer and logged into their cell phone account. From there, she could track her phone using GPS and watch its movements at all times. Trying to remain calm, she took deep breaths as she watched the tracker on the phone make loops around the property. Every now and then, the tracker would stop, causing her to panic, and then it would start moving again. Oh, those boys, they can be a handful sometimes, she told herself. Watching the tracker move on the screen, she began to feel at ease. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do. She logged into her Facebook account and flipped back and forth between the tabs on her browser as she watched the tracker continue to move.

As she sat at the computer monitoring the tracker, she noticed that he’d made it to the other side of the property where the big hill was. The tracker sat there for several minutes not moving. Assuming it was another delay or glitch in the tracking system, she turned back to her Facebook page to share a quick recipe before turning her attention back to the tracker. She assumed by the time she posted the recipe, the tracker would begin moving again. It didn’t. Her eyes stared at the tiny red dot on the screen, still in the same position as it was before. Clicking on the refresh button at the top of her browser, she figured that it would help update the tracker. It didn’t work. She watched the tracker sit there. She anxiously waited ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Maybe he’s just taking a break; he’ll head back soon, she told herself.

At the thirty minute mark, she called him from the house phone. On the third ring, the phone picked up but all she could hear was breathing. Heavy, deep breathing. Not her son.

“Hello?” she said, trying to get a response.

“Hello?” she tried again.

“Who is this?” she began to panic.

“Is anyone there?” She knew someone was there; she could hear the deep, heavy breathing still on the other end of the line.

She didn’t want to hang up, but she needed to call her husband, and possibly the police. She needed to get to her baby! Before she could decide what she should do, the phone went dead. Silence. Dumbfounded, she stared at the phone in her hand. In a panic, she called Keith for the second time about the children in just a short period of time.

“Keith! Oh my, God! It’s happening again!” she screamed into the phone.

“What?” he asked, alarmed at the sound of her voice.

“I let Chase go out to ride his bike and I…”

“You what?” he demanded. His tone was hostile.

“I gave him my cell phone and told him to take it with him. I was watching it on the tracker, using the GPS. He didn’t know I was, but I was. He took all kinds of trails, went in loops and then stopped on top of the big hill. He never left it!”

He cut her off. “Ash, he’s probably taking a break. That hill’s pretty big, especially for his…”

“No!” she insisted. “I thought that too! He hasn’t moved for a half hour. I tried calling my cell phone and someone picked up, but it wasn’t him,” she began crying hysterically into the phone.

“Calm down. How do you know? What happened?” he coaxed her.

“On the third ring, someone picked up and was breathing hard into the phone, but it wasn’t him. Keith, I swear it wasn’t him!” she insisted. “You have to call the police! And watch the tracker for me. I’ve got to go out there and find him!” she said, determined.

Realizing what was going on, he demanded that she stay in the house and lock all the doors.

“You call the police and watch the tracker,” he barked at her. “I’ll go pick up the girls from dance class and bring them with me.”

“Hurry, Keith! Hurry! That’s my baby out there!”

§

When the police were notified of the event, they immediately called detective Roderick as they were familiar with the Marshall’s. The law enforcement officials arrived on the scene simultaneously. The detective knocked on the door. Scared to answer it, Ashley ignored it at first, but then realized it might be the police. She was shocked to see him, figuring only the police would come like the first time.

“Hold on,” she called through the door as she fumbled with the deadbolt and the lock on the knob.

“Detective Roderick,” she said as she opened the door. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“What’s going on?” he asked her.

As she began to tell him the story while they stood in the living room, he listened to her with his fingers stroking his beard; arms folded.

“And you’re saying that he’s missing too?” he questioned.

“Yes!” she promised.

“You know, it’s getting hard to believe that you’re the only person with two missing children’s cases, right?”

Flabbergasted, her jaw dropped. “What are you saying?”

“It just seems a little odd that you’re the only one in all of Jasper County that has two missing children. And only—what, 6 or 7 months apart?”

“If you’re saying that I’m making this all up, I won’t hear of it!” she asserted.

“Sure, Mrs. Marshall,” he said humoring her.

“I swear! I can prove it!”

“How’s that? Most people don’t have proof of a missing person. They just have evidence that the person isn’t around. Show me how he’s missing,” he asked pointedly.

“Look,” she said, walking to the computer. She pointed at the monitor. “Right here. I gave him my cell phone to go out riding his bike. After he had left, I pulled up the online tracker and watched him via GPS. He stopped right here and hasn’t moved since…” she hovered her mouse of the dot. It displayed the time and date of the last known movement. “Since, 5:28 PM.”

This piqued the detective’s interest. Maybe she was onto something, he thought, as he stared at the time stamp on the computer screen. Or she’d conveniently placed evidence there for the police to find. Either way, they were going to get to the bottom of this.

“I’ll send some of my men out there to check,” he said as he examined the monitor. “Is that on the south side of the property?”

“Yes, it is. It’s where the dirt trail ends if you go right out past the second outbuilding,” she informed him.

As the police cautiously approached the big hill, they saw Chase’s bike lying on the ground. Drawing their weapons, they advanced closer. At the top of the hill, they recovered Ashley’s cell phone. It had a black and pink case, just as she’d described. The men spread out, calling the boy’s name as they searched for him. He was nowhere in sight, and there was no real sign of what may have happened. They retrieved the phone and the bike as evidence before heading back to the house.

Detective Roderick, Keith, and Ashley waited for their return on the front porch. The girls were frantic inside the house. As the police stepped onto the porch, one of the officers held up her phone.

“Is this yours Mrs. Marshall?”

The minute she saw it, she knew that it was. She nodded her head. The detective took it from the officer and tried to enable the screen, but it was password protected.

“Mrs. Marshall, can you unlock your phone, please?” the detective asked.

She took the phone from his hand and entered her password. Together, they looked through her phone for any signs of communication. There were no text messages sent or received, but they did see the call that Ashley claimed she had placed from the home phone that was answered at the time the tracker stopped. He clicked on the details of the call, which was 42 seconds long. Everything seemed to match her account surrounding the second disappearance, but they were openly skeptical.

§

This time, the police took both of the parents down to the station for interviews. The girls came along and waited in an isolated area of the police station with the junior detective, Shayna Johnson. Keith and Ashley were separated as their interviews were conducted. The police were suspicious that one or both of them may have been involved in the disappearances. Detective Roderick and another senior detective conducted the interviews simultaneously. They were each asked about their whereabouts, their knowledge of the events, their friends and family as well as any enemies they had.

While they were setting up the interviews for Keith and Ashley, junior detective Shayna Johnson spoke with the girls. She asked them about their relationship at home and how their parents were. The only thing the girls complained about was being cooped up in the house all summer after their baby brother went missing. Other than that, they didn’t have a bad word to say about their parents. They bragged about Ashley and her home cooked meals and talked about how hard their dad worked. Although, Shayna noted that he wasn’t their biological father. The girls had mentioned it during their interview.

As the interviews were in progress, the police worked on obtaining a copy of the call logs from both, Keith and Ashley’s, phones. Every aspect of their allegations checked out. The officers also acquired smudged fingerprints from the phone, and most frightening of all, a picture of Chase from the phone’s photo gallery. He was lying on the hill with a dirty rag next to him, eyes closed. Someone had apparently taken this picture of him. This was clearly not a kid who wandered off as they’d originally suspected. The local police knew this was a much more in-depth case than they were equipped to handle. They called in the state police, who contacted the FBI. It would take experts to crack this case if they had any hopes of getting to the bottom of things.

Chapter 7

Over the course of weeks, detectives Roderick and Johnson work the case interviewing various family members and acquaintances. It seemed as they went through their leads, potential suspects were eliminated one by one. Crossing off names on their list, they begin to grow frustrated. They were running out of time—and people to talk to. Law enforcement noted that the family didn’t appear to have any enemies, aside from whoever was responsible for the boys’ disappearances; if the events were even related. It was still possible that the baby had wandered off. Ashley’s ex, Billy Hayes, had moved to California not long after she’d left him, and Keith’s mom lived too far away. Plus, her work schedule would have prevented her from being in the area at the time the boys went missing.

The police were reluctant to share many details of the case with them. The Marshall’s grew exasperated. They felt as though they were the suspects, when in fact, they were the victims. The problem was, they didn’t have a clue as to who could, or would, be doing this. Ashley felt as though the ghost of her father was coming back to haunt her. He’d been the only person to threaten to take her children. But she knew telling the police her fears was not an option. They already thought she was crazy; she didn’t need to give them a reason to make them think she was a straight up lunatic. How would you even explain that to the police? She imagined how the conversation would play out.

“Yes, Detective Roderick. Once upon a time ago, my psychopathic, drug-using father threatened he’d do something like this.”

“And where is he now?” the detective would ask.

“Oh, well, he died years ago. Before he even knew that Bryce existed, and maybe before I ever had Chase.”

“Let me get this straight. Your dead father, who knew nothing about either boy, came back from his grave and kidnapped them?”

“Well, I’m not saying that exactly….”

Yeah, telling them the story definitely wasn’t in the cards. She did, however, share her fear with Keith one night.

“Keith,” she said as they worked together folding laundry. “If I told you something, do you promise not to think I’m crazy?”

“Well, I’ve always thought you were crazy,” he lightly joked, “but go ahead.”

“Okay…” she started.

“Wait, before you start, can you give me those hangers over there? I don’t want my shirts getting wrinkled,” he interrupted her.

“Here,” she handed him the hangers. “Now, what I was going to say… Never mind. It’s stupid,” she stopped herself.

“No, tell me. What were you going to say?”

She looked at him and began telling him what her thoughts on the whole thing was.

“I was going to say that I feel like my dad’s ghost is haunting us. Like, he was the only one who ever threatened to kidnap the kids. Do you remember that?”

“How could I forget? How many times have we moved and kept our information private?”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said. “But, I really feel like his threats are coming to life. I know it’s dumb to think that because he died years ago, but I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Yeah, didn’t you get your mom’s obituary in the mail right after we had Chase?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, and he just turned eight,” he grabbed another shirt out of the basket. “So if your mom’s been dead for eight years, he’s been gone even longer.”

“I know. I told you it sounded silly.”

“Not silly. When someone traumatizes you the way that he did, it’s natural to remember threats that they made. Don’t you remember anything they taught you in the Safe House?” he teased.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Okay, I’ll shut up and stop being stupid now.”

After the chores had been done, Keith asked her if she was ready to go to bed.

“Ash, the house is pretty clean and all the laundry is folded. Can we go to sleep yet? I’m exhausted,” he stretched his arms as he yawned.

“Yeah, let me finish picking up in here,” she said as she picked up all the coats and book bags off the floor and hung them on the coat rack. “We can go to bed in a few minutes. Will you stay down here with me?”

“Yes, I’ll stay down here with you and protect you. I am, after all, your big, strong husband,” he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the neck.

By the end of the night, they were both wore out and fell fast asleep in their beds. Ashley fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of how her boys vanished into thin air. But her sleep was broken by Chloe screaming at the top of her lungs. She sharply jabbed Keith in his side, waking him as she scrambled out of bed to get to her daughter.

As they were rushing out of their bedroom, Chloe was panic-stricken, saying there was a man in her room. She said he had tried to kidnap her. Keith hurried to her room to see if he could find the intruder. The girls waited in the hall, listening to what they could. Keith came out of her room, scratching his head.

“Are you sure you didn’t just have a bad dream?” he asked his daughter.

“No! It wasn’t a nightmare! There was a man, and he was trying to take me out of my room. He came in through my window,” she swore.

Keith walked into her room. There was no signs of an intruder. He called out to her. “Come here,” he said, motioning for them to follow her back into her room.

Unwilling, Chloe stayed with her mother, frozen in fear.

“Come on baby,” Ashley encouraged her daughter. “Your dad wouldn’t tell you to go where it wasn’t safe.”

She followed her parents back into her room. Keith pointed at the window.

“You said he came in your window?” he maintained her story.

“Yes!”

“Chloe, your window is barely cracked. How would anyone fit through it?”

“I had it barely opened because you guys think we live in an igloo and have the heat on so high. I don’t know how he fit through it, but he did,” she contended.

“But do you see my point? No person, not even your mom, could fit through it. I think you had a bad dream,” he explained.

“Mom,” she turned to Ashley, “I didn’t have a bad dream. I promise! I swear on my life! There was really a man in my room.”

Keith and Ashley weren’t sure what to think. Not only was the property crawling with cops these days, but the media had picked up on the story. It was near impossible to get away from it. The girls couldn’t go to school, Keith couldn’t go to work; Ashley was barely able to leave the house to go shopping. They were all frozen.

“Okay, honey, I’ll let the police know,” Ashley lied to her daughter in an attempt to calm her. “Go on back to bed now. It’ll be okay.”

“I’m not sleeping in that room again!” she protested.

“Fine. Sleep in Brooke’s room or you can go to the couch. But it’s bedtime.”

Back in their bedroom, Keith and Ashley tried to make sense of Chloe’s claims. There was no way anyone could’ve made it into her room without being detected by the police who were watching them regularly. They’d set up 24-hour surveillance around the property shortly after Chase disappeared. By this point, they knew each officer by name. One thing was sure, Chloe seemed convinced that a man was in her room. They didn’t know what to believe anymore. Nothing made sense; not to them, and not to the police.

§

Both of the boys were horrified and frozen in fear as they clung to one another. Traumatized by their kidnapping, they didn’t know what to do. They were too young to plan an escape from their captor. As they held onto one another inside the dark closet with a slatted-wood door, they knew they had to stay silent. They were told they weren’t allowed to make any noises, and if they did, they’d pay for it. Scared of what might happen to them, they complied with the rules. Chase worked hard to keep his baby brother silent so they weren’t punished. Bryce often cried, missing his home and family. Chase missed them too, but he was old enough to know that they better listen.

Through the wooden slats, they could see the man watching television and periodically looking at the computer. Chase noticed that he seemed to always watch the news. That was boring; he wished the man would at least turn on cartoons so they had a little something to enjoy. One evening as they stayed locked in the dark closet, the boys could see their pictures on TV. He couldn’t quite hear what was being said; but he’d heard their names and when he looked at the screen, he saw two square photos of them. Though he didn’t understand it, he knew better than to ask the man why they were on TV. He hoped it was his parents looking for them, despite what the man had told them.

Bryce began crying, as usual, and Chase tried to hush him the best he could. He wrapped his arm around his baby brother in the cramped space and whispered to him; telling him not to worry because he was there with him. Bryce continued to whimper, even with his brother’s attempts to keep him quiet. The man could hear them making noise from their living quarters, inside the closet. He began to holler back at them to keep it down in there.

“You two better be good boys and stay quiet as I told you!” he called to them.

Bryce began crying harder at the man’s loud voice. It scared him. The man scared him enough, but his voice was gruff. Not soft and gentle like his dad. The man started walking towards the closet. Fear set in both of the boys as he drew closer. He bent down, eye level with the boys.

“Were you watching that television?” he commanded.

Too scared to answer, the boys remained silent; frozen in place.

“Well, your mom and dad stopped looking for you,” he sadistically laughed. “And you know what they are saying about the two of you?”

Again, the boys didn’t answer. They only looked at him.

“They’re saying that you two are some awful kids. The worst there are!” he growled. “And they’re saying that they’re glad you two assholes are gone! They don’t want you anymore. Not your mom, not your dad and not your two evil sisters. But I have you now!” his voice boomed.

The frightened boys began shaking. They didn’t know what to think now. Their parents had quit looking for them and said they were bad boys. Sadness set in as they realized nobody was ever going to come save them. The man told them so. They’d be stuck in that closet forever. The man held his face up against the slats of the closet door, allowing the boys to see his face better.

“I know all about your sisters, too!” he hissed. “They’re a couple of rotten girls. They’re wicked and they steal things. I’ve seen them doing it before. Someone needs to beat their ass and teach them a lesson or two! If you boys ever tried something like that, that’s what I’d do. I’d beat your ass,” he snarled at them.

Chase and Bryce both began crying. They didn’t like hearing bad things about their sisters. The girls always took care of them when their mom was busy. Chase recalled Chloe putting a bandage on his knee one day when he fell walking up the porch stairs. His knee was bleeding, and their mom was busy changing Bryce’s diaper at the time. His sister cleaned him up, put a bandage on his boo-boo and gave it a kiss. She made it all better. But this man was telling them bad things that their sisters had done. If a grown-up tells you, it has to be true.

“But you two are good boys. And good boys deserve rewards,” he looked at them. “And Bryce, you were such a good kid before your bubby got here. Why don’t you teach him how to be a good boy, too?”

Bryce tightened his grip on his brother, holding him tighter. The man scared him. He was big, loud, and mean.

“Now I want you boys to do me a favor,” he instigated. “You two need to stay quiet like good boys. I have to go out for a little bit,” he stared at them. “And if you’re good while I’m gone, I’ll feed you when I come back. But if you’re bad, then that’s bad news for you.”