She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,213

the shotgun around and brought the butt of the stock down hard on the side of the man’s head—two hits, fast and hard. He collapsed, unconscious.

Preacher sat up, out of breath and beat. He rubbed at his sore neck. “Get him inside. We gotta tie him up.”

From the back seat of the GTO, a little girl poked her head up—all long blond hair and blue eyes.

8

Fogel shook her head and stomped across the large white room to the door at the back. She found it to be locked. She beat on it with the back of her fist. “Open this door immediately!”

Back at the reception desk, the blonde was on her phone again. Crouched over the desk, half standing, speaking to someone.

Fogel began keying random numbers into the security pad.

A red LED came on, and the panel buzzed.

She beat on the door until the LED turned off, then entered more numbers.

When the panel buzzed for the fourth time, she cursed under her breath and went back to the reception desk.

The blonde woman looked up at her and smiled. “May I help you?”

“I don’t know what bullshit kind of game you’re playing, but you’re interfering with a ongoing homicide investigation, and you’re dangerously close to getting arrested for obstruction of justice.”

The receptionist cocked her head to the side and frowned. “Did somebody die?”

Fogel had enough. She rounded the desk and pulled her handcuffs out from her back pocket. “Stand up and turn around. You’re under arrest.”

On the opposite end of the large white room, the door opened and a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a stark white three-piece suit stepped into the waiting room. “Detective? Please come with me.”

9

I found rope in the garage.

I also found a white Chevy Suburban.

When I told Preacher about the SUV, he glanced back at the dead man on the floor next to Stella’s sleeping body. Cammie followed his gaze from the man on the floor to the sofa, the shotgun still trained on Hobson. “That her?”

“Yep. And her boyfriend here is Jack Thatch.”

“Eddie and Katy’s kid?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be damned.”

I finished the last knot on Hobson’s ankles and stood. The frustration building. “Where the hell is my father?”

The little girl had followed all of us into the house but hadn’t said a word. She was behind her mother, her arms wrapped around her leg. She shrunk back when I spoke. I didn’t care. “If the two of you know what’s going on, you need to tell me.”

Preacher raised both palms. “What happened when you got here?”

I told them.

For the next thirty minutes, I explained everything that had happened since finding Stella in the club in Fallon. I even told them about Leo Signorelli and the man I killed at the hotel. I didn’t leave anything out. I didn’t care anymore.

Dalton said they spoke to my father less than three hours ago.

“So he’s here?”

“He was,” Cammie said.

The man on the floor killed him.

That’s why he’s here.

“We need to search the property. He could be hurt somewhere, dying,” I said.

Preacher and Cammie exchanged a look, and I knew exactly what they were thinking. These people had no desire to hurt my father. They only wanted him dead.

I shook my head and started for the door. “I’m looking.”

“We all look,” Preacher said. “It will be faster. Cammie, you take this house. I’ll check the guest house. Jack, you get the outbuildings.”

I found my father tied up in the back of the woodshed.

Not dead.

Not yet.

10

Fogel followed the man in the white three-piece suit through the door into a long hallway—white walls, white ceiling, white marble floor. Everything was so white, it was damn near blinding. They passed three doors (all closed, all white) before the man ushered her into the only open door on the left side.

“Please, take a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee, or perhaps something to eat?” the man said, closing the door behind them.

The office was also white.

Ceiling. Walls. No windows.

The only color came from a framed photograph on the desk—a young man wearing a blue graduation gown, pointing at a diploma.

The man in white smiled when he noticed her looking at the picture. “That’s my boy, William. He graduated from Penn State last month, and I’m proud to say he will be joining us here as part of the Charter family next week. Graduated top of his class. Quite an overachiever, that one.”

He pointed at one of the two empty chairs in front of the white desk. “Please, sit.”

Rounding the desk, he lowered