No One To Trust

She was just crawling toward the hallway when she heard a loud pounding on the front door. Bracing herself for the sound of Ralph’s barks, she prayed that he’d stay quiet. The pounding persisted, almost as if someone felt certain this was their hideout. “Open up!” a voice yelled as another ray of light swept through the windows in front—flashing over the shadowy furnishings in a way that made her feel like a hunted animal. Like someone’s prey. She remained frozen, cowering by a china hutch, and still a few feet from the hallway and the door to the basement. Praying for invisibility, she felt her heart lurch with each loud bang on the door.

“I know you’re in there!” a loud male voice boomed through the wooden door. Probably Krantz’s. “Come out, or I’m coming in!”

Seeing the light sweeping the other side of the house, Leah made her break through the darkness, quietly scrambling to the safety of the hallway, where she crouched against the wall and waited in fear while Krantz continued pounding and shouting. Certain he was about to kick down the front door, she tried to think—what could she do?

She reached up to try the doorknob to the basement, but it was locked. She suspected Jon and Ralph had gone down there and considered knocking on it, but was afraid it might get Krantz’s attention. And what if Jon opened it with a light on down there? As Krantz continued to pound and shout, she wondered if he really did have a search warrant—and if so, could he legally kick down the door? But then she decided that was just as bogus as him having an arrest warrant for her. But why had he made such a claim? What had been his real intent? And why was he so relentless in his search for them? Well, aside from the fact that they could both accuse him of attempted murder. That was probably more than enough to make him want to silence them.

Just when it felt as if her heart were about to hammer out of her chest, the basement door cracked open and she heard Jon whispering, “Come on. Hurry.”

“Wait,” she whispered back, watching as the flashlight swept through the front room again. Even though it didn’t reach into the hallway, she was too scared to move. Then, as it illuminated the other side, she slipped around the opened door, entered the basement and silently closed and locked the door behind her, then sat on the steps, trying to hold back tears of fear and desperation.

“You’re trembling,” Jon said in a low murmur as he put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m guessing it’s not from being cold.”

“Krantz is out there,” she reported in a hushed tone. “He’s beating on the door—right now. Can’t you hear it?”

“I thought I heard something, but I hoped it was you.”

“Listen,” she whispered frantically. “That’s him pounding—he’s threatening to kick the door down.”

Jon pulled her closer, holding her a little tighter. “There’s nothing we can do about that right now.”

“But what if he does break in?” she asked in a shaky voice. “What if he kicks the door in and enters the house?”

“Then we’ll get him charged with breaking and entering as well as attempted kidnapping, attempted murder, reckless endangerment and several other substantial charges that should get him locked up for a while.” Jon’s voice didn’t sound nearly as brave as his words insinuated. Not that she could blame him. She was so scared she felt sick to her stomach. “We’ve got so much on him that, once he’s convicted, he’ll be put away for a long time, Leah.”

“Not if he kills us first—that’s what he wants to do. I know it.” She let out a little sob. “What is wrong with him? Why is he doing this? Why won’t he just leave us alone?”

“Because we know too much about him.”

“What do we really know?”

“Just that he’s hiding behind his badge while breaking the law. That he’s a bad cop. That’s enough to make him worried. And my suspicion is that we’ve only scratched the surface with him. This guy has a lot to hide. Enough to make it worth his while to get rid of both of us.”

She didn’t doubt that. Even so, it brought no comfort. No hope. As they sat there clinging to each other on the inky staircase, she knew that her only hope—their only hope—was God. She prayed for God’s help—and for the faith to believe He really could deliver them from this madness.

FOUR

When the banging overhead finally ceased, Jon kept his arm around Leah, both of them just sitting there and listening to the silence. Finally he helped her to stand and gently guided her down the steep dark stairs.

“Careful,” he warned quietly.

“Do you think he’s really gone? That he gave up?”

“It sounds like it.”

“But why was he so insistent?” she continued. “Do you think he really knows we’re in here?”

“I honestly don’t see how.”

“Maybe we left footprints outside,” she suggested. “Our feet were wet and sandy.”

“But the back patio is already wet and sandy. Plus it’s mossy,” he said. “I can’t imagine any footprints would show up.”

Leah wanted to believe him, but the sound of Krantz yelling kept echoing through her head. At the foot of the stairs, Leah thought she could see a very faint light in the room. As they moved closer, it seemed to be flickering like a flame. Was Krantz going to burn them out? “What’s that?” she asked in alarm. “That light? Where’s it—”

“It’s okay,” Jon said soothingly. “Just a candle. Not visible outside. There are no windows down here.” He led her around a corner where she was surprised to see a small yellow candle bravely burning in a glass jar in the center of a wooden crate that appeared to be serving as a makeshift coffee table in front of a shabby-looking couch and a couple of wicker chairs.

“The light’s nice,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t even see it from the stairs.”

“Good.”

By the candle’s flickering flame, she could see by the trails of dust that things had been moved around. Probably to make it more comfortable—as if they might be down here awhile. But what if Krantz broke in—and started shooting? Perhaps they should barricade the door, too.

“Have a seat,” Jon said gently.

She sat down in a wicker rocker, hugging her arms around her middle and trying to shake off the terror still seeping through her. “I don’t understand why Krantz is so driven. He really sounded as if he plans to break in here—as if he wants to kill us.”

“Well, if he does, the alarm will go off.”

“The alarm?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah. My parents’ security system. But it might not help much...since it’s the police department in town that will be notified. And Krantz might end up fielding that call for them.”

“And he’d tell them it was a false alarm,” she surmised.

“Probably.” Jon reached for a metal baseball bat leaning against a cardboard box. He swung it up, smacking it into his open palm as if it were a weapon—and not just a youth’s toy. He pointed the bat to a small “arsenal” of other random pieces. A plumbing wrench, a long metal pole, several large kitchen knives, some lengths of rope and a roll of wire, along with several other slightly threatening-looking pieces. He must’ve collected them while she was cleaning up. But, really, she couldn’t see how they’d be much use against Krantz.

“In case we need to defend ourselves,” he said apologetically as he set the bat down. “Hopefully we won’t.”

“Hopefully.” She shuddered to imagine using those “weapons” to ward off real firearms or even a SWAT team. Even if Krantz was a lousy shot, he could hit them eventually. Or one of his buddies would.

“I can’t think of any reason Krantz would focus only on this house,” Jon said. “My guess is he’s just hitting up every house along this road. He’s probably pounding on every door, just hoping to see or hear something that reveals our whereabouts. He’s probably hoping he’ll get Ralph to bark—to give us away.”

“Speaking of Ralph, where is he?” she said suddenly. “Why wasn’t he barking?”

“I put a tranquilizer in his food while you were cleaning up. He chowed down and passed out within minutes.” He pointed to a crate where Ralph was nestled in an old army blanket. “Poor guy was exhausted. He probably didn’t even need the pill, but we won’t take any chances. And I’ve got another one already mixed into some dog food just in case he wakes.”

“Good.” Leah let out a long sigh, willing herself to relax. “This all feels so crazy and unreal—like we just got pulled into some weird crime TV show.”

“I know. I keep trying to figure it all out. Kind of makes my head hurt. And more than figuring it out, I want to figure a way out. I’m just not sure what it is.” He explained how he’d been working on his car the past couple of days. “So it’s not running at the moment.” He shared the other various plans that he’d been concocting, but they all had fatal flaws.

“But can’t we fix your car?” she asked. “I mean, we’d have to wait until the cop cars stop patrolling in order to drive safely out of here, but—”

“My carburetor is in about a hundred pieces,” he said glumly. “It was having problems on the trip down here. I thought I’d be clever and fix it myself.” He explained how he and his dad had torn apart and reassembled numerous cars over the years. “It didn’t seem like a big deal...at the time. And it’s not, except that it’ll take hours to put it all back together.”

“How long?” she asked eagerly. “What if we go work on it now? Maybe I can help.”

“We’d need to cover all the windows in the garage to keep light from going out—that alone might look suspicious. And even if it went smoothly, it could take all night. Even then, I’m not sure it would work. Some of the pieces looked pretty worn. I was going to call in to town to see if I could get some parts delivered out here.”

“Your phone,” she said. “It works here?”

“Not in the house. I have to go climb up onto this rock—it’s about a quarter mile down the road—just to get one bar, and even that’s dicey if the weather is bad.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips. “But we could do that, couldn’t we? We could go try your phone... I mean, if the cop cars aren’t parked out there.”

“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “We could. And I’m thinking we should call the state police first. But only when we know it’s safe to get to the rock. It’s kind of exposed to the road.” He pointed to some food on the makeshift table with the candle. “Maybe we should eat something first. Just to fortify ourselves...you know, for whatever lies ahead.” He handed her a box of rye crackers as he cut some slices of cheese. “Sorry there’s not much to choose from. I just grabbed what was handy.”

“And you’re certain no one knows you’re here in this house?” she asked as she helped herself to an apple and bit into it. “No neighbors or anyone who could help?”

“Pretty certain. Ralph and I got here on Saturday—the same day we spotted you running on the beach.” He shook his head. “Here I was kicking myself for not getting your name...and now here you are stuck with me.”

She made a weak smile. “I don’t mind being stuck with you.” She just wished the circumstances were different. “So no one saw you coming or going here?”

“I got groceries on my way here,” he explained. “Then I parked my car in the garage. And other than walking on the beach—and I always use the back door for that—I haven’t left the house.”

“You say this is your parents’ house—do they know you’re here? Any chance they could help somehow?” She reached for a piece of cheese.

“They’re on a two-week cruise to celebrate their fortieth anniversary.”

“Sounds nice.” She sighed.

“How about you?” he asked. “Will anyone notice you’re missing?”

She shrugged. “Probably not... Not for a while anyway.”

“Did anyone know where you went to run?”

“I mentioned I was going running to a friend at work. But I didn’t say where.” She frowned. “Stupid... I know.”

“And there’s no one who’d go out looking for you? No husband or boyfriend? No roommate?”

She peered curiously at him. It almost felt as if he were fishing. “No,” she said firmly. “No husband. No boyfriend. My life’s been pretty busy the past couple of years. No time for that sort of thing.”

“Right.”

“But I do live with my great-aunt.”

“So she’ll know you’re missing?” he asked hopefully.

“Probably not. She’s elderly and I live in an apartment over her garage. We can go days without seeing each other.”

“Oh.” He frowned.

“How about you? Anyone who will wonder where you are? Any significant other?”

“I could probably be missing for a week and no one would notice.”

“That sounds rather sad.”

“Well, it’s because I took some time off work. You see, I was house-and dog-sitting for my parents in Portland and it seemed like a good opportunity to have a break. So I brought Ralph to the beach. I planned to stay for a week or two.”

“That must be nice.”

“What?”

“To be able to take a week or two off from work...to come to the beach whenever you like.” It sounded like a different world to Leah. One that she couldn’t help but envy.

He shrugged. “The truth is, I was thinking about quitting my job. I told my boss I needed time to think about it.”

“Didn’t you say you were an attorney? Or was that just to make Krantz worried?”

“I am an attorney. But I work in a firm that mostly practices corporate law. Not really what I’d planned to do with my life.”

“So what did you plan to do with your life?” She took a drink of water.

“I wanted to be an artist.”

She blinked as she set down the water bottle. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much everyone’s reaction.” He frowned. “But I’ve always been into art. Drawing and painting and even some sculpting. My parents talked me into getting my law degree. They’re both attorneys. They figured if I finished law school, I’d have something to fall back on if my artistic abilities didn’t pay off. But between law school and working, I haven’t been able to pursue art at all. That’s why I decided to take some time away. And it was easier to do with my parents out of the country.”

“Until you got mixed up with me and Krantz.”

“Speaking of Krantz, I think I’ll slip up and see if he’s cleared out. Maybe this is our chance to go use the phone.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said quickly.

“Okay, but you wait in the hallway until I know the coast is clear.”

She listened intently as she waited in the shadowy hall, but other than the gentle sound of the surf, she could hear nothing. Was it possible that Krantz had given up on them? She didn’t think so.

“Come on,” Jon called from the kitchen. “Let’s make a break for it.”

He led her out the back door, quietly locking everything behind them. And then he took her out to where the property overlooked the ocean. “We’ll have to pick our way along the back side here,” he explained, “going through the neighbors’ yards. Too risky to be near the road.”

It didn’t take long before they reached the place where the bluff gave way to a rocky rise and Jon showed her the way to climb up to the top. “Stay low,” he warned quietly as he shielded the light from his phone with his hand. “And keep an eye on the road. You see anyone, just nudge me and I’ll stop talking. Okay?”

“Got it.” Hunched down, she stared out toward the road, which, like everything else, was blanketed in fog. She could hear the sound of his phone and then he was asking for the number of the Oregon State Police—and being connected.

Leah listened to the conversation, hearing Jon telling the dispatcher where they were located and that they were in danger. Unfortunately the dispatcher was insistent upon sending out the local police.

“No,” Jon said firmly but quietly—and for the second time. “Don’t do that. We need the state police to—”

“The protocol is to inform the local police. They can get there sooner,” she said stubbornly. “I’m going to contact them now.”

“But we don’t trust the local police,” he argued. “Please, send out a state trooper and—”

“I am already connecting to your local dispatcher,” she said. “If the local police need us for backup, we will be—”

“No, that won’t—”

Leah elbowed him sharply as the lights from a car shone from around a corner. Even in the fog, she could see the reflective paint that implied it was a police cruiser. And not far behind it came what appeared to be the unmarked car. Probably manned by Krantz. She doubted that the cops could’ve heard them—unless their windows were open—but if a cop directed a spotlight up here, they would be easy to spot. “Get your face down,” she hissed at Jon. And together they huddled against the rock, waiting for the cars to slowly move down the road.

“That dispatcher was worse than useless.” Jon pocketed his phone.

“Who else can we call?” she whispered.

Just then a searchlight came washing over their rock, sending shivers of fear through Leah as she crouched low.

“Come on,” Jon whispered, grabbing her hand. “We better beat it—fast.”

Back on the bluff, he led her farther up and they worked their way past darkened vacation houses until they came to one clear at the end of the row. “I don’t like damaging other people’s property,” Jon said as he picked up a large stone. With a crash he sent it through the front door’s window. “But hopefully they’ll understand, and I’ll pay for repairs.” He reached through the broken glass and opened the door, leaving it barely ajar. “Let’s go,” he said as he grabbed her hand, leading her down to the side of the bluff and onto the beach.

“Why did you do that?” she asked as they picked their way through a rocky area, clinging to the side of the bluff for cover.

“A smoke screen.” Still holding her hand, he was leading her down the beach—heading south again.

“Oh, yeah. To throw them off.”

“Might buy us some time. If they were distracted long enough, we might be able to make it past them and try walking to town.”

“Do you think you could make it with your leg?” She noticed that he was limping.

“It hurts, but I think I can press through. The problem is that we’d have to take the main road. It’d be too rough to go cross-country. Not with the brush and swamps that run through here.”

“Hey, what about my car?” she said suddenly. “Do you think it’s still where I parked it? Maybe we could use it to get away.” Of course, she knew this was pretty ridiculous. Her old Subaru couldn’t outrun a police car if they were pursued.

“It’s probably been towed.” He paused to listen to something up above them, and she held her breath, waiting.

“If we got my dad’s ATV running, we might make it to the jetty, then hike out on foot from there. But if we were spotted, they could easily pick us up on the other end.”

“What should we do?”

“We need a good plan.” He reached for her hand, leading her up the side of the bluff. “Let’s go home and see if we can come up with something.”

But before they could turn up the rock stairs that led to the house, they saw a pair of headlights on the beach, coming steadily toward them and sweeping a searchlight back and forth across the width of the beach as it approached.

“Come on.” Grabbing her hand, Jon pulled her behind a driftwood log, throwing her to the ground as he flopped down beside her.

With wet sand in her face, Leah felt like sobbing—would this never end? And what if they’d been spotted just now? Her heart was pounding in her ears as she saw the light sweeping the beach, going back and forth like in a prison yard. And if they’d been seen, they’d be easy pickings down here on this desolate stretch of beach. No one would hear the gunshots. No one would call the police. And if their lifeless bodies were dragged out into the ocean, there would be no sign of them by tomorrow. They would be taken out with the tide. She shuddered as she desperately prayed for protection.

FIVE

After the car was a safe distance down the beach, Jon led Leah back up to the bluff and, seeing no cars or cops in sight, they snuck into the back of the house.

“I want to pull out a file my mom’s been keeping,” he told Leah after he locked the doors. “You go ahead and check on Ralph. If he’s awake, urge him to eat some more. It might make him sleepy.”

“What kind of file?” she asked as they stood in the dark hallway.

“I just remembered something my mom told me recently. She’d been saving articles related to what she believes might be a human-trafficking ring in the Northwest. Particularly around here.”

“Human trafficking—seriously—in Cape Perpetua?”

“I know, it sounds a little far-fetched. Especially considering most people think Cape Perpetua is one of the safest beach towns on the Oregon Coast. My dad thinks my mom’s being overly dramatic. But I’m beginning to wonder.”

“Interesting.”

“So I’ll be digging around for a while. You stay down there with the door locked. Don’t open it unless you know it’s me.”

“Right.” Her voice sounded small and shaky.

“We’re going to be okay,” he told her.

“How do you know that?” she asked in a doubtful tone.

“Because I believe it.” He reached over to place a hand on her shoulder, suppressing the urge to pull her toward him in a comforting hug. “We can outsmart them, Leah. I know we can.”

“Well, you must be a whole lot smarter than me.” She made an attempt at a laugh, but it actually sounded pretty sad.

“Go check on Ralph,” he told her. “And lock the door.”

He waited to hear the sound of the lock clicking into place, then, staying low, he crept out to the kitchen to retrieve a flashlight from the junk drawer. He also pocketed some extra batteries and even got the small battery-powered radio that his mom kept tuned to a local station just in case of tsunami warnings, and set it by the door to the basement. Then, with the flashlight in hand, he crept into the small room next to his parents’ bedroom. They used this space as their study. Although they both claimed that work was outlawed at the beach cabin, one or the other was usually caught going over a legal case from time to time. It was like a family joke and a natural consequence of two attorneys in one marriage.

One wall of the study was filled with a bookcase, and a large corner desk was situated by the window. The right side was used by his dad, and the left was his mom’s. Both of them kept old-fashioned file cabinets—a habit that Jon used to make fun of but something he was thankful for now as he used the flashlight to peruse through his mom’s cabinet. It didn’t take long before he found a manila file folder marked Human Trafficking in bold black ink. Tucking it under his arm, he was about to go down to the basement when he saw headlights moving down the road again. Would they never give up?

He crouched beneath the desk, remembering the glass window he’d smashed and hoping that he’d get the chance to make it up to the homeowners—that he’d live long enough to apologize and explain. But why hadn’t that house kept the police busy for longer? Wouldn’t they have searched it, turned it upside down? Or did it simply allow them to remove one possible cabin from their list of suspects? Perhaps he should’ve left more clues around, or chosen a larger house with more spaces to search through—although that would probably trigger a security alarm. But that might be a good thing if it sent additional cops out here. What was the chance that all the Cape Perpetua cops were crooked? They couldn’t be—could they?

When the room became pitch-dark again, Jon quietly crept out and down the hallway. He was tempted to pull the drapes in the front room, but worried that might be a tip-off. Then he remembered the upstairs bedroom that he’d been using to paint in. Hadn’t he pulled the shades down in there this afternoon when the sun got too hot? He tiptoed up the narrow staircase and was somewhat relieved to see that this room really was sealed off from the light. Not that they’d want to hide out up there, but it would be a change of pace from the dank basement.