“Yeah, well, that’s not happening anymore. Get me my clothes.”
Tom’s expression communicated his intended threat: “Your way, or the easy way.” The nurse responded by handing Tom his street clothes, which were folded inside a pinewood wardrobe.
Though his legs were wobbly and his balance dramatically compromised, Tom managed to keep the phone close to his ear while he dressed. The pain wasn’t too bad. It was hardest to ignore when he looked down to pull on his jeans and put on his shoes. The room spun as though everything in it were water in a bathtub going down a drain. He shook his head to refocus his thoughts, but that only ignited embers of pain into a flash point.
Gritting through the agony, Tom managed to catch something Jill said.
“Mitchell, take me home… please….”
Take me home. Where could they be?
When Tom was fully dressed, the duty nurse objected once again. “Mr. Hawkins, we can’t authorize your leaving.”
Tom staggered toward her, pushing his way by the woman, who blocked the door. “You don’t have to authorize it,” he said. “Just don’t try to stop it.”
He would have taken the elevator down from the third floor but didn’t want to risk dropping the connection. He could call Jill back, but he worried that the phone’s ringing might put her in deeper peril. So he took the stairs, though his steps were shaky and each footstep felt just the way he expected it would after surviving a major car accident.
Horrible.
“Jilly, come on. Give me something, and I’ll come get you,” Tom whispered into the phone.
The more he moved, the stronger he felt and the faster he moved. He exited through the stairwell door and into the deserted parking lot of Catholic Memorial Hospital.
Tom stood statue still, with his eyes closed and the phone to his ear. He waited for something that would inspire his next move. Some tidbit of information he could act upon. He remembered the GPS location app installed on Jill’s phone. Tom accessed the FamilyWhere app on his Android-powered smartphone, and when he got what he wanted, Tom felt a thousand miles away, though at best he was only a short cab ride’s distance from her.
“You’re scaring me…. I’ll scream….”
Tom heard Mitchell Boyd speak for the first time, and the boy’s words pierced him with fear.
“My dad’s in his office. He can’t hear you scream.”
Tom saw a cab pulled to a stop by the emergency room entrance, some fifty yards from where he stood. He raced over to the cab, careless of the pain that exploded inside him with every stride.
The cabdriver acted surprised that it was Tom who had jumped into his cab.
“Hey, I’m here for a Mrs. Wilcox. You her?” He let out a mocking laugh; obviously, the answer was no.
“Yeah, I’m her,” Tom said. He gave the driver Roland Boyd’s home address. The driver appeared ready to protest, but one look at Tom in the cab’s rearview mirror must have convinced him that Mrs. Wilcox could find herself another ride. Once the cab got moving, Tom closed his eyes tight and cupped the phone to his ear with both hands. “I’m coming, baby girl,” he whispered. “You hang on, and I’ll be there soon.”
“Can you drive faster?” Tom asked the cabdriver.
“If you pay the speeding ticket.”
Tom thought better of it. “No. Don’t get pulled over,” Tom said. “Get me there as fast as you can.”
Tom leaned back against the cab’s hard vinyl seat and closed his eyes. His headache was worsening.
His mind sped through different scenarios. He needed to formulate a plan with the best odds for success. Sergeant Brendan Murphy had single-handedly made it a no-go to contact the Shilo PD.
Tom called Roland’s home number. Roland answered on the third ring.
“Roland, it’s Tom.”
“What do you want, Tom?”
“Is my daughter there?”
“She’s here.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s with my son. They’re in his room, hanging out. How are you feeling?”
“Roland, I need you to forget about our issues. I need you to just think of me as a father. Forget anything else you suspect, or believe. Now, Jill called me. She sounded like she was in trouble. Can you please go check on her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Roland! Please. Just check on her.”
Roland sighed into the phone. “Hang on,” he said.
One minute passed… then two.
Roland got back on the phone. “They’re fine,” he said.
“Did you speak to my daughter?”
“She said she was fine,” said Roland.
“Did you see her?”
Roland sighed again. “No. The door to Mitchell’s room was closed. But they said they were fine.”
“Roland, I need you to check again. I need you to open the door to the room and make sure she’s all right.”
“You know what, Tom? I’ve got other things to do with my time than listen to your paranoid delusions about my son. I think whatever pain meds they gave you have gone to your head. You have a good night. Glad you’re all right. Now, get some rest.”
Tom didn’t say anything more. Roland had hung up on him.
Chapter 54
Tom decided his course of action well before the driver turned his cab onto Route 101A. The cab took the right-hand exit for south Shilo. Tom had no plans to try and reestablish contact with Jill. But when he got to Roland’s home, he’d attack the way an unconventional warrior was trained to wage a war.
The three characteristics of Navy SEAL mission planning were bottom up, extremely flexible, and short fused. By the time conventional forces finished developing their preliminary course of action briefs, a SEAL could be geared up, out the door, and engaging the enemy. Tom had been trained to think fluidly, to respond to information that could lead him from a dry target to one of high value.
Roland’s mistake was failing to establish visual confirmation of Jill’s well-being. Tom knew something was wrong. He’d heard the panic in her voice. He had no choice but to assume Jill was under duress when she claimed to be fine. That meant she needed to be extracted from the threat.
That was his one and only mission.
Tom kept his plan simple. He would enter through the front door with force, address any threats encountered, and exit with his daughter the way he came in. If there was time, he’d devise a backup plan before engagement. He’d learned that almost no plan survived first contact with the enemy. One of the SEALs many mottos evoked their ruthless determination. “The only easy day was yesterday!” His daughter was the objective. Anybody who stood in his way would be met with violence of action.
From what Roland had relayed, Tom believed his daughter was in Mitchell’s bedroom. He suspected the two were alone. Mitchell wouldn’t have risked attacking Jill otherwise. But if anybody became an obstacle, Tom would act decisively to ensure that the objective was safely extricated from the premises. No, not the objective, Tom reminded himself. His daughter.
Tom could drain himself of most emotion.
Just not all of it.
Tom mentally constructed a probable sequence leading up to his daughter’s phone call. Jill had gone to Mitchell Boyd’s house.
Why?
They were still seeing each other. Still involved. She knew that Tom disapproved. That was why she kept the relationship a secret from him.
Why didn’t they go to Jill’s house? he asked himself. He was in the hospital, and her house was empty.
Mitchell was a known womanizer, that was why. He wanted to show off in his domain. He wanted to impress her. To seduce her.