Dana Lynn - Plain Retribution

She drew a large gulp of oxygen into her lungs. She hated talking about this, and hadn’t for years. Not even to Jess. But now she had to. Because Holly was in trouble.

“Ten years ago, when I was fifteen, I went out with Holly and three other girls from her school. Ashley Kline, Brooke Cole and Jasmine Winters. Ashley and Jasmine were older and had just graduated. Ashley was driving her mother’s van and pulled over to help some guy who seemed to have broken down on the side of the road.”

Abruptly, she stood and moved away from the officers. Memories of that day pulled at her, dragging her under. So much bad had come from one simple act of charity—stopping to help a stranger. Miles slowly got to his feet.

“Maybe we should go to the station.”

She shook her head. She could do this. “No, I’m fine. There was just one man. He looked innocent enough. But he wasn’t. He hadn’t broken down. He was high on drugs and had stolen the car. When we stopped, he pulled out a gun and forced his way into the van and drove us to his house. He kept us locked up in the basement for two days. Until we were found.”

She stopped. The memories were hitting hard and fast now. Overwhelming her. She could feel the cement wall against her back, smell the damp moldy basement.

Miles approached her carefully, as if he expected her to bolt. “I’m sorry you went through that,” he signed. “And I hate that I have to ask you to relive it, but—”

“I understand,” she interrupted. “It’s for Holly.”

“The man who abducted you, do you remember his name?”

As if she could ever forget. “Terry Gleason.”

“Terry as in Terrence?”

She shook her head. “Just plain Terry.”

Miles turned his head. Sergeant Jackson must have asked something. Miles nodded and then returned his focus to her. “The other girls, did they know the man?”

“I think some of them might have known him. Jasmine seemed to. She was the oldest. Already eighteen. And possibly Ashley. I don’t know about Brooke. But I don’t know from where. I didn’t really know the other girls. And none of them could sign. Only Holly.”

“You said you were fifteen? Did you still go to school together?” Miles pressed his lips together. She could almost see the thoughts running through his mind.

“No. I was still Amish back then so I only went to school through eighth grade.” Regret surfaced, but she pushed away the feeling. Now was not the time. “The deaf program was a small group of students in a public school with a teacher of the deaf. Most of us went to her for Language Arts. The rest of the day, we were in classes with hearing kids and interpreters. Jess, Holly and I were the only three girls in the program. Jess left soon after I did to go back to her home school. That’s when Holly started to hang out with the older girls. I met her again a few years later. I was in the middle of my Rumspringa.” She signed “running around,” using the direct translation. That was the only sign for the word she knew.

“Whatever happened to the man who kidnapped you girls? Please tell me he went to jail.”

She nodded. “He went to jail. So it probably wasn’t him. I testified at the trial. My parents did not want me to. Law enforcement and trials are not something Amish people usually get involved with. But I couldn’t not testify.”

Miles nodded, sympathy deep in his eyes. “Did all five of you testify?”

The dark hole she kept closed in her mind started to open, letting a few images spill into her brain. She slammed it shut, but some things could never be unseen. “Not all of us. Jasmine was strangled the day we were rescued.”

Miles paled. His jaw hardened. Jackson’s lip curled and his nostrils flared.

“I had never seen such evil. He left the rest of us after he had killed her. The police came while he was gone. Two officers. He came in behind them and attacked them with a bat. After one fell, the other knocked him down and handcuffed him. I didn’t learn until the trial that the other officer had died from a blow to the head.”

The officers looked at each other. Some kind of communication went between them. Their expressions darkened.

Miles puffed out his cheeks. She thought he resembled a blond chipmunk. Then he let out the breath and her pulse fluttered. This was no cute little boy. The man who stood before her was all cop, and his eyes were fierce. She trembled at the way his gaze sharpened.

“I need to find out what happened to that man. And if he is still in jail. That was ten years ago, so there is a chance he’s free now. Not a very good one, seeing as an officer and one of the girls died. But I’m not comfortable not knowing everything.”

Miles asked a few more questions, making sure he had the names of the other girls spelled correctly, and that he had the dates written down both of when they were taken and when they were found. Then he closed his notebook. “Our focus now is finding Holly. We’ll pull Holly’s driver’s license photo from the database. Send it around to see if anyone recognizes her.”

“Wait.” He raised a questioning eyebrow. “That picture is almost four years old. She’s lost weight and changed her hair.”

Darting back into Holly’s room, she grabbed Holly’s tablet and clicked on the photo app. She used her finger to scroll through the pictures until she found the one she wanted. Perfect. It was recent enough that it had Holly’s new trendy haircut.

She rejoined Miles and Sergeant Jackson at the table and handed over the tablet.

Miles took the tablet and held it so Jackson could see it, too. “That’s Holly,” she signed, and pointed at the laughing girl. Miles smiled, but his eyes narrowed. He had something else on his mind.

A second later, he proved her right. He tapped a second picture. When it filled the screen, he pointed to the girl next to Holly and signed, “Who’s this?”

“That’s Ashley. It must have been taken a few years ago, because she and Holly don’t hang out anymore. They had some kind of argument over a man they had both dated.”

“Ashley—” he checked his notebook “—Kline? Holly’s friend from high school?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

He handed the device to Sergeant Jackson, continuing to sign as he spoke so that Rebecca would know what he was saying.

“Do you recognize her? I know I have seen her face somewhere, but can’t place it.”

Sergeant Jackson took the tablet and studied the photo. A frown etched itself into his face as he considered the image.

“Yeah, I have seen her before. But I don’t know where. We need to get the pictures to the station, have them compared to the database. Could you email these images to us? Or maybe we could take the tablet, in case there are better images?”

Miles’s hands flew as he interpreted. When he finished, Rebecca nodded. “Will Holly get the tablet back?”

Miles exchanged glances with Jackson. “If it’s at all possible, we’ll return it,” he signed. What he didn’t add was that it all depended on if they found Holly alive. It was in their expressions. She shivered. Please, let Holly be okay.

“I’m going to send those pics in now, actually,” Miles interjected. Jackson raised his eyebrow. “That way they can start looking for Holly, and run a search on Ashley. But we will still need to hold on to the device, just in case.”

Rebecca took the tablet back and shared the selected images in a text with Miles.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the images. Then he fiddled with his phone some more. “Done. I sent them in.” He put the phone back in his pocket.

His watch lit up. She started. She recognized it as one of those new high-tech watches. It was neon green. Funny. She didn’t often see people her age wearing watches. Watching his blond hair flop on his forehead, she decided it fit him.