Chapter Four
More than Simple

Day Four
Sunday, May 4, 2008

Hideout – 9:00 am

Sheila washed the dishes mechanically. How the hell did she get herself into these things? Her entire life was one mess after another. She sighed as she placed the plates into the dish drainer. It was the only time she could really think. Most people thought it was odd that she liked washing dishes so much. It was a mind numbing experience that she didn’t have to think during. Her body took over and she could just forget about everything. Or like today, she thought about things that she normally didn’t devote any thought to. And her mind today was on the two kids down below.

She looked out the window at the bright day that had dawned. It was going to be warm again, but she’d be stuck here inside all day no matter what. At least there was a nice view from all the windows in the place. They were surrounded by trees and shrubs. They were probably an hour’s drive or more away from any form of civilization. When she’d driven here the day before, she had wondered what he was up to. He’d disappeared completely the week before, and for a week Sheila had been dodging questions from her father about what had happened to him. Then she’d gotten the call that was nothing but coordinates. She knew it was him. Of course, when she got here he was furious with her because she hadn’t come soon enough. As she thought of it, she rubbed her ribs, wincing still at the pain from the bruises that were just starting to turn purple.

She felt horrible now that she knew why he wanted her. Those poor kids, stuck down there with nothing until she got here. Joe didn’t want any part of them except to nab them. He told her that he would kill them if he got too close to them because of his anger at their parents. Sheila didn’t know why it wasn’t enough for him to simply be free of prison. She thought that getting out would be enough for him. She also thought he was getting out for her. For the last three years, they’d communicated with each other and made plans for his escape. She coordinated with her father for him, and now that he’d escaped he’d backed out on the deals she had made for him. Perhaps she ran to him when he called because she was as afraid of her father as she was of Joe, or maybe she as more afraid of her father.

Sheila started putting away the clean dishes. Had it really been all her life that she’d spent afraid of one person or another? She shook her head as she put the last of the breakfast dishes away. She had to make sure to not get attached to those kids. She knew what Joe had planned for them, so she had lied when she told them she didn’t know what was going on. She knew that this was a game to him. That was why she was in charge of the kids. He didn’t want to tip his hand too soon.

She bit her lip and went to the living area where Joe had his equipment set up. There were all sorts of equipment set up. She didn’t have the slightest idea what most of it was. She knew that most of it was to keep him from being traced. He sat at the computer he had set up, checking on things that he was keeping track of. She had no idea what he was doing on there, but to ask would be a bad idea.
“You get the brats fed?” he asked gruffly as she entered.

“Yeah, sure did,” she answered, picking up the newspaper from the coffee table. “After starving for a couple of days, they’re making sure they don’t miss a meal. Of course, I wouldn’t either were I in their position.”

He snorted. “Good. Still giving them the meds?”

Sheila didn’t like keeping them drugged up. “Yeah. Why do we have to do that? They can’t get out, and no one is around for miles…I don’t see…”

“No, you don’t fucking see, Sheila,” he said turning around quickly. His eyes flashed dangerously and she caught her breath.

She backpedaled toward the kitchen. “Yeah, okay, you’re right, I shouldn’t…”

He stood up slowly and stepped toward her. “This is my fucking plan, you nosy bitch. Don’t push me. I already told you when you got here that I have no room for mistakes. You’re going to damn well do what I say, when I fucking say it, or I’m going teach you a lesson in not listening to me. Do you really want me to send you back to your daddy? I’m sure that would be a good homecoming after everything you had him do for you recently.”

“Joe, it was for you, all of it, you know that!” she stammered, clutching the newspaper to her chest, her heart thrumming in fear.

He snorted and stepped in front of her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her against the wall. “Maybe so, but it cost him a shit-ton of money to do his little girl a favor when she asked, even if it was to my benefit. You honestly think he would forgive you when you come back and say that your lover has run off and refused to hold up the bargain you made for him?”

Sheila swallowed. He was right of course. Her father had funded Joe’s escape. He’d paid the bribes, paid the blackmails, and it was his resources that allowed Joe places to hide and ways to disappear. In return, she’d struck a bargain with her own father that Joe would be a part of his organization, putting his skills to use there in Vegas. Then he disappears completely, leaving her father high and dry and out of a lot of money. Before she’d skipped town at Joe’s request, he was already getting angrier and angrier. He’d already called one of his men to find him, but Sheila knew that when Joe wanted to disappear, he did so very well. This of course was a source of even more anger for her father. When he couldn’t have him located, it made him all the more angry with Sheila.

“Please, Joe, I’m doing all I can…I’m just thinking of what’s best f-for them. I know what I-I’m talking about, Joe. You can’t k-keep giving them…” she stammered.

Joe’s eyes flashed again, and Sheila sucked in a breath and steeled herself for the coming blow. The next thing she knew, she was picking herself off the floor, staunching the blood from her lip with the back of her hand. Tears squeezed from her eyes from the sharp, stinging pain.

“Do not question me,” he said looking over her as she stood up. “You may know something about these drugs, but so do I, and I won’t be questions by a know-it-all slut like you. I want them addicted, Sheila. Don’t presume I don’t know what they do. You know as well as I do they’re not going to fucking live to deal with it. They’re a part of this game as long as it’s convenient for me. Then, like any other pawn, they’ll be sacrificed.”

He returned to his seat before the computer. “Get the hell out of here; I don’t want to see your face until you can learn not to question me.”

Sheila headed to the bathroom to clean up without another word. Why did she do these things? She knew better than to ask him questions about what he was doing or to question his plan. She was so stupid. Why didn’t she ever learn to control her mouth? Ever since she was small, she’d done stupid things like this. Talking back to her father or mother, questioning or not doing what she should seemed to be her lot in life. If she would just do what she was supposed to, she wouldn’t be punished. She dropped the bloody toilet paper into the toilet and flushed it, watching it spin around. She swallowed, looking in the mirror, her lower lip already swelling and turning purple. She should be used to it. She spent most her life with a busted lip or nose, it seemed. She pulled a bottle of Valium out of the cabinet and popped one. As she put it back she looked over the assorted drug bottles, all of which she’d stolen one at a time from the doctor’s office she worked at. She turned and headed to the bedroom and threw herself across the bed, trying to forget about everything, if only for a little while.

Kim Houshold – 3:30 pm

“Mara?” Don queried from the doorway of the bedroom.

Mara looked up from the laundry basket. “What is it, Don?” she asked dully.

The twins sat on the floor at the end of the bed playing with their ball while their mom folded the laundry. They were too young to really know what was going on, but they had been extremely quiet ever since CJ’s disappearance, though. They had asked several times for their “sissy” but Mara and Don just told them she was away. It seemed to satisfy them.

“I just got a call from Rich. They don’t think he’s working locally. There just isn’t anywhere in the close area that he could be hiding them at. The police have searched all the possible areas but there was no sign of him. The Highway Patrol is on alert for any cars matching the description we got from the Truman boy and his girlfriend, but so far all the stops have come up to nothing,” Don relayed, sighing.

Mara nodded slowly. “He still hasn’t contacted anyone.”

Don sighed and sighed again. “I know. I know what he’s doing. He’s making us sweat. He wants us to worry that he’s already done something to them. He wants us to wait until he’s ready. Unfortunately, we have nothing to go on until he tries to make contact. At least then we can try to trace him.”

Mara looked over slowly. “You know as well as I do, that won’t work.”

Don swallows and turned away. “I know. I know.”

Don remembered all too well what had happened when Joe had escaped after the court marshal. That was part of the classified file. He’d broken free, killing several MPs in the process and taking several more people hostage. They’d managed to bring him down, but not before he’d killed the hostages he took. He couldn’t contain his rage. He hadn’t always been like that. When they were training together, Joe had been the mildest and the calmest among the unit. In fact, Randy had been the hot headed one out of all of them. But something had happened to Joe over there, something that twisted him.

It happened on day when they were performing a recon mission. It was a simple thing, just scouting some buildings in the area close to their station point. Joe was on the front with Daughtery and Carrolle. Don and Randy had taken up points outside. Don, who was the medic of the group, rarely every went at the front, and Randy, who was the team leader, usually watched the other guys’ backs. That was how they’d always done things, mostly because they were always on their own when they were on their missions. It worked. As long as it worked, in their jobs, the military never questioned it or imposed any other rules on them. They got the job done.

But something had happened in that ancient building they’d come across. Things were normal enough, contact was held via the radios they carried just fine until they heard Joe whisper “No, leave me alone…”

Then, everything went wrong. The guys came out as they should have, and when asked, Joe didn’t know what they were talking about. He claimed to never have said anything, it must have been interference. But after that, Joe was never the same. He wasn’t the calm, easy going guy he’d always been. He was quick to anger, and even quicker to violence. It seemed he was unreasonably touchy with both Randy and Don. Neither of them could figure out why it was. It was as though he was holding back barely restrained rage.

All of this ran through Don’s memory in a second. He shook his head and headed back to the living room to wait for the phone to ring. He’d turned off Fur Elise, and changed it to the annoying regular ring tone. For some reason, he wasn’t in the mood for music.

Heights Houshold – 5:55 pm

Aleen poked at the food on her plate, one hand propped on her left hand. Her mom sat across from her, and her dad at the head of the table, like usual. But all three of them were very conscious of the single place at the table that was empty. There was a great silence, and no one wanted to break it. Each one of them glanced at the empty seat now and then. And so the silence grew moment by moment. The emptiness was welling deeper and deeper and there was nothing to be done about it.

“Don’t play with your food, dear,” Terri said gently to her daughter.

Aleen looked up. “What else am I supposed to do with it? I’m not hungry.”

Randy sighed. “You should eat, Allie. It’s not going to do any good for you to lose your strength by not eating.”

Aleen pushed her mashed potatoes into a mountain on the Corelle white plate. She stared at the difference between the color of the dinnerware and the potatoes. How many times had Michael managed to break one of these “break resistant” plates? That’s why her mom had bought this Corelle stuff. She could easily replace the broken pieces. Hell, they sold it at Wal-Mart now. True, he did break less of these than the old stoneware plates her mom used to buy, but somehow he could still manage to break them. She snorted. She couldn’t take the silence any more. The huge silence that had built around the subject that no one wanted to mention was strangling her.

“I’m going to my room,” she said and stalked off.

Randy laid his fork down on his plate and dropped his head into his hands, rubbing his face. He ran his hands over his short blonde hair and sighed again. The waiting was killing him. Like Don and Mara, the Heights knew exactly what Joe was going to do. They knew how he’d handled the last hostages he’d taken just as well as the others had. He’d been the one to go in with the assault team. He’d found the bodies of the hostages. He maybe knew even better than Don what Joe was capable of doing.

“She’s upset,” his wife said slowly, standing and collecting the plates. “I should have kept her home from the band practice today. All she did was answer questions about what happened since someone leaked it to the news yesterday.”

Randy nodded. He wished he could get his hands on whoever had leaked the information. But there were too many sources in the police or dispatch department that could have done it. Luckily for Don, his two younger kids were still at home. Aleen was a sophomore, and very active in several activities, including the concert band. They had an end of year concert soon, and they’d had a practice on Sunday instead of Saturday because of a parade they had attended Saturday afternoon.

“Should we keep her out of school tomorrow?” he asked as Terri picked up the last of the plates and put them on the counter.

She turned back, putting a hand on her hip and thinking. “Does it really matter?”

Randy nodded. “I guess not. It’s a waiting game now. He’s got us right where he wants us, truth be told.”

Hideout – 8:40 pm

Michael stared at the completely nondescript ceiling again. There really wasn’t much else to do. It had been a silent day, really. Both of them felt strange, somewhat drugged. Sheila had said that there was some kind of sedatives that they were being given. How lovely, he thought. It was stupid, it wasn’t like they could get out anyway. He turned his head to the right to see CJ laying on her bed staring at the ceiling as well. Whatever they were being given seemed to affect her more than him.

“CJ?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah?” she answered.

Michael cleared his throat and resumed staring at the ceiling. “Did you notice Sheila’s lip today?”

CJ snorted. “How could I miss it? It looked like a purple Christmas bulb on her mouth when she brought lunch, and not much better at dinner. You think this Joe guy hits her?”

Michael thought for a minute. “Yeah, I think he does. Kinda dude he is, all fists and fury, I wouldn’t doubt it. He bagged you quiet like, right? See, mine didn’t go as planned, which is why my face looks like road pizza.”

CJ kind of giggled, stifling it with her hand.

Michael propped himself up and looked at her. “What’s so funny?”

She propped herself up and looked at him. “It’s just, ah, never mind,” she said, flopping back onto the bed.

“Hey, wait a minute, you can’t just do that to me!” he exclaimed. “What is it?”

She turned her head to the side again and gave him a gentle smile. “It’s just the way you put things. No matter how shitty things are, you’re always upbeat. It makes me smile.”

Michael smiled to himself and laid back down, putting his hands under the back of his head. “Well, at least I’m good for something.”

It was silent for a long while. CJ wasn’t sure what to do with him. She felt something, like a strange pull towards him. She vaguely remembered seeing him around campus, and she had found out that he knew her from biology. But he sat in the back, so she probably had never paid any attention to him. Besides, she thought herself unnoticeable. She wasn’t extremely pretty, and she wasn’t extremely skinny, which to CJ, meant that no one would pay any attention to her. This Michael guy probably dated everything that wore a size three he could find and successfully get into the pants of.

“So, you got a girlfriend worried about you?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

She heard him snicker. “Nah, haven’t met the right one yet. Most of them can’t stand my addiction.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “Your addiction? Like drugs or alcohol or something?”

He turned and looked at her with a serious face. Then his face split into a wide grin. “Nah, nothing like that. I like games.”

She thought for a moment. “Games? Like sports?”

She watched him shift, obviously uncomfortable suddenly. “Nah, they’re called rpgs. Um, you know. Tabletop games.”

Suddenly realization dawned on her. “You mean like Dungeons and Dragons?”

Michael nearly sat up so fast that he fell off the bed. “Um, well yeah. Do you play it?”

She smiled. “I’ve played a couple times. My dad used to play when he was younger. Still got all these old books he pulls out now and then tells me all the cool stuff he did with his buddies. Slaying orcs, saving maiden elves, killing dragons, and all that stuff. He used to let me read in his books and showed me a couple times how to play it, but never known anyone else that did it.”

Michael as suddenly dumbfounded. He sat stunned for a moment. She knew what D&D was. Oh my God, she knew what D&D was.

“So you don’t think I’m a complete loser or a geek?” he asked timidly.

She frowned and looked at him. “Well of course not. It’s a game, not like you run around with a pocket protector and classes put together with electrical tape…”

He laughed at that. “I guess you’re right. It’s just, a lot of girls really get put off by it.”

She sat up and looked at him. “Why is that?”

He fidgeted again, a little uncomfortably. “Well, the few girlfriends I’ve ever have had think it’s either stupid or they get jealous. They feel like I should be devoting my time to them, and not to some game. But I just don’t like watching stupid movies or bowling all the time. I like to really get away from reality you know, where I can be whatever I want, and do whatever I want. Just have fun.”

He looked at CJ and realized she was propped up on one elbow staring at him with a slight smile on her face, and an almost understanding look on her face. “What? What is it now?” he asked.

She blinked a couple times. Dammit. He noticed me staring at him, she thought. “Oh nothing, I was just thinking how dumb those other girls have been. I mean come on, other guys go out drinking and doping up when they aren’t with their girls, at least they knew where to find you… I wish I’d had that with the guys I’ve dated. Of course, they’re usually in it for one thing, and when they don’t get it, they’re gone.”

Michael nodded. “Yeah, a lot of guys are like that. A shame too, they didn’t know what they were missing.”

With that, he flopped back down and rolled onto his side. Within moments, he was asleep. She stared for a few moments before she turned off the light. Maybe her head was fuzzier than she thought. She curled up against the wall and slept, though tonight, it wouldn’t be quite the dreamless sleep she was hoping for.