Richard Hale - Frozen Past

“Yes. I know,” Victoria said. “I won’t let that happen. Dammit Emory! You know I’m the most informed of any one on this case besides Jaxon.” A pause. “You can’t!” She hung her head and then picked it up again, angrier. “I will not have what is between us endanger this little girl’s life! Can you live with your decision to pull me off of this case? If she dies, I will blame you for the rest of my life!” Silence for a few seconds as Jaxon tried in vain to hear Holt’s side of the conversation, but all he heard was noise. “Yes.” She looked relieved. “I can live with that. Twenty four hours is plenty.” She was about to hang up when he must have said something else. She nodded to herself and then said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

“That didn’t sound too good,” Jaxon said.

“It didn’t start very good, but I got what I need. He gave me twenty four hours to produce some results or he’s pulling me off.” She stood. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

“Where too?”

“Quantico,” she said. “They’re analyzing the tape there and they have some footage we need to see.”

“What is it?”

“Apparently there is a picture that flashes up briefly in the video. Invisible to the naked eye, but they were able to freeze it.”

“Did they say what the picture is?”

She nodded. “It’s a house.”

An hour later they were in a room at Quantico and the man talking to Victoria held a manila envelope in his hand as he chewed the fat with her. He didn’t seem to feel the urgency that Jaxon was feeling and it was getting to him. His head throbbed from the drinking binge and though he had taken a handful of aspirin, it remained a distracting spot of pain just behind his eyes.

“Vick, we need to get moving,” Jaxon said, finally.

The man stopped in mid-sentence and turned to Jaxon as if seeing him for the first time. Victoria covered. “He’s right, Tom. Sorry, we need to stay on top of the time. We only have…” she looked at her watch. “Twenty two hours.”

“I thought you had three days,” Tom said.

“Three days-twenty two hours-two minutes,” Jaxon said. “What difference does it make? This little girl is in a horrible place and the quicker we get to her the quicker she’ll be away from him. Now, show us the damn picture.”

She glared at him but didn’t say anything.

Tom said, “Alright,” and took the picture out and laid it on the table.

Victoria took a quick breath in and Jaxon felt a jolt run through him as if he had been hit by 110 volts.

“I take it, you two recognize this place?” Tom said.

Jaxon looked at her and she said, “Shit.”

Luke was in his parents’ room standing in front of the bureau next to the bathroom. John and Jimmy had gone home for a bit while Luke rested. He needed to get moving, but his body wasn’t cooperating. The headache was still going strong and now the dizziness had returned, though not quite as bad as in the hospital.

He had sent Worthington a message on Facebook, but the man had not responded. Luke was worried he may have calculated wrong. Maybe the asshole wasn’t going to be tricked into giving his position away and if that was the case, Luke was hopelessly out of the loop. He didn’t have the resources the police and FBI had. His only ace in the hole had been Bodey Jenson and his software.

Closing his eyes and picturing Ellie in his head only made things worse. He couldn’t seem to think of her without seeing her tied to that chair, reading the message and sobbing uncontrollably. He clenched his fists and opened his eyes. Looking into the mirror that was over the bureau, he stared at his face. What he saw shocked him. He didn’t recognize it at first. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and black smudges were visible under them as if he had bruised them. His hair was sticking up in large clumps and his clothes were wrinkled and stained. They had been the clothes he had been wearing the night Ellie was taken.

His mouth was set in a thin line and his brow creased in a permanent scowl. He looked ten years older. The world started to spin again and he grabbed on to the edge of the bureau and steadied himself. It passed in a few seconds and he took a deep breath. Opening his father’s sock drawer, he pushed the black and brown and grey and white socks around until he found what he was looking for. The gun felt huge in his hands, but the weight, pleasantly solid; powerful. He looked at himself in the mirror again as he held the weapon and didn’t like the small grin on his face. He turned away and carried the weapon into his room.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he popped the clip out and checked the ammo. It looked full. His dad had said the Glock held fifteen rounds but he didn’t know if his dad had fired it the other night. The police had returned it to Deana and she had placed it in its hiding place. Everybody knew the gun was there.

He carefully popped out each round and held the small brass cache in his hand. Fifteen exactly. Dad had never gotten a shot off. He pressed the bullets back into the clip and then rammed the clip home. His dad had gone over the gun again with him the night before Worthington had shown up and Luke felt good he had insisted on it. The gun felt foreign in his hands, but not so alien he couldn’t make it do what it was made to do. He just hoped he’d be able to hit something with it. Namely Worthington.

His phone rang and he looked at the caller ID. He answered Jimmy’s call, turning the weapon over in his hands, feeling the weight of the metal. It made him feel powerful.

“Anything yet?” Jimmy asked.

“Nothing.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Nothing we can do,” Luke said. “We’ll have to wait until he gets the message.”

“Do you think he’ll answer?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He can’t let a kid challenge him like that and not answer. His ego is too big.”

“He’s smart though. He may just keep quiet. You know, like radio silence in a battle.”

“He’ll call.”

“If he doesn’t?”

“He’ll call.”

“I know you called him out, but what did you say exactly?”

“I called him a pussy and said he couldn’t hide from me. I would be coming for her and I wouldn’t stop until he was lying on the ground bleeding and dying while I piss in his face.”

“Damn. Yeah, that’d piss me off.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“It’s our house,” Victoria said.

“Your house?” Tom asked.

“Well, it was,” Victoria said. “It was our first place. Michael was born there.”

“You two are married?”

Victoria looked at Jaxon and said, “We were.”

Tom turned to Jaxon and said, “You’re Jaxon.” A statement, not a question.

“Come on, Vick,” Jaxon said. “We’ve got to move.”

They both turned and started to walk out.

“I thought you wanted to see the video,” Tom shouted after them.

“We’ve seen it already,” Jaxon shouted back.

“If you find anything else in it,” Victoria said, “Call my cell. Thanks!”

In the car, Jaxon jammed the accelerator to the floor and put the lights on. His car was still his and they couldn’t stop him from using what he had. It took only thirty minutes to make the trip from Quantico to Herndon where the house sat. 90 to 110 MPH got you there fast.

“She’s not going to be there,” Victoria had said on the way.

“I know.”

“We’ve got to try anyway.”

Jaxon knew she was just affirming what they both already knew.

“He’ll have left another clue,” he said.

She nodded, knowing this to be true. She turned to look at him. “I hope we can figure it out.”