My role in this done for now, I looked over at DB and his team who began giving out orders.
“I’m sending the coordinates of the cabin to your phones. Cut and paste them into a search and one of the map sites online will bring up the area,” Raoul shouted, tapping the screen of his phone. “DB, where do you want people to be?”
Squinting at the screen of his phone, DB assessed the area around the cabin with Garrett looking over his shoulder. “What do you think, Garrett?”
“You’ve got dense trees around it. If they split up into groups of two, spread them out around here,” he suggested, making a shape like a C around the area behind the cabin. I don’t know what ground foliage we’ve got, but there should be enough cover. We’ll come in from the front with Jarrod. He’s expecting him and thinks he’s got this, so if we go here and here, we can come in behind Jarrod and get him while he finds Elodie and Gloria.”
Nodding at his brother’s suggestion, DB split the group up into twos, with me being teamed with Leo. With a final nod to everyone, we got into our cars and headed to the lake. It felt like it took forever to get there even though it was only ten minutes outside of town, and by the time we parked up I’d sung Swing Low, Sweet Chariot so many times in my head that I was now calm and focused.
“You ready?” DB asked, walking up beside me as we started making our way to the cabin.
“You have no idea how ready I am.”
GloriaI was sitting on the floor in a tiny pantry that had a thick metal door on it, but there was enough room for me to rock Elodie who was still whimpering.
The things I’d seen this man do today would haunt me for the rest of my life. The cold brutality that he’d beaten Maude and Katy with was unnatural, and the look in his eye was like the devil had taken him over.
“Yeah, man, I need it. No, I don’t care where you have to get it from, I need a hit,” he shouted as he spoke to someone. Through the gap between the door and the floor, I could see his shadow moving back and forth as he talked into the phone. I knew he’d been speaking to Jarrod earlier when he’d pointed his gun at where I was sitting with Elodie in the living room and had then pointed it at the door to where we were now, slamming it shut behind us once I was inside and only giving me a second of light to glance around the space. “Look, I’m just waiting for a delivery and then I’ll be down. Make sure you’ve got it.”
After that he was silent, but the shadow continued moving like it had been until I heard him walking away. I couldn’t sit here and do nothing.
Gently putting Elodie on the floor, I leaned down so that my mouth was beside her ear. “Don’t be scared, ok, ‘Lodie. Auntie Gloria will get us out of here.”
Any other one-year-old would be screaming or panicking, but not Elodie. Like the precious cherub that she was, she whispered back, “Yeah.”
I’d seen the handle of something poking out of a box in the far right corner of the room before he shut the door, so I slowly reached over and grabbed it. It was attached to something much heavier than I thought it would be, but when I felt the flat circular surface of it, I smiled.
A cast iron frying pan – one of the old style ones that weighed a ton.
Getting up onto my knees, I whispered again, “Stay here for Auntie Gloria. I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t want to leave her, but I didn’t want to risk anything happening to her, so I had to do something and this was all that I could think of.
Leaning against the metal door, I almost rolled my eyes when it opened. The guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing!
It took a couple of blinks to get used to the light, but then my eyes adjusted and I looked around the room for a place to wait. On the left side of the small living room was a cabinet with a small gap between it and the wall. Because he’d enter on the opposite side of it, he wouldn’t be able to see the space until he was in front of it. That’s where I was going to go.
Walking as quietly as I could across the floor, I thought of all the times I’d had physical fights with my sisters. My twin really was a bitch, so those fights had been intense and heated. I was going to imagine her face when I hit him, that way I knew my swing would be a good one.