by Brenda Novak
“We processed it from bumper to bumper and found nothing suspicious. No blood. No foreign strands of hair or other trace evidence. No unusual objects. No receipts. Nothing. I’m guessing whoever kidnapped these girls didn’t have to drag them from the car.”
“You’re saying they got out willingly?”
“It appears that way.”
“So maybe a fellow motorist flagged them down to ask for help? Or waved for them to get off the road because something was wrong with the car?”
“Or they saw someone they knew and trusted,” David added. “A guy one of them had met at a dance place. A friend from work.”
“That opens up a lot of possibilities.”
“This won’t be an easy problem to solve, Jane.”
She nudged Kate’s fingers away from the fruit salad she’d made for dessert. “What about the media?” she asked David. “Could they be of some help?”
“I’ve been in regular contact with them. They’re running the story again tonight.”
She’d have to record the news. “Maybe that’ll stir up some leads.”
“It always does—but I can’t promise they’ll be viable.”
“You’ve already interviewed all the girls’ neighbors, coworkers, friends?”
“Of course.”
“Can I get a copy of your file?”
“I don’t see why not. Just don’t mention that I passed it along.”
“I won’t.” She switched off the burner. The soup was ready. “Where are you now?”
“Home with the kids. But I have the file with me and I have a fax machine in the back room. You want it tonight?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
She laid the spoon she’d been using in the sink. “Fax it to TLS and I’ll pick it up after I get Kate fed.”
“Pick what up, Mommy?” Kate asked as Jane disconnected.
Setting her cell phone on the counter, she turned to her daughter, who seemed to be maturing more and more every day. “Some paperwork on my new case.”
“Your new case? You have your own case?”
“Yep. I got my first one this morning.”
Kate smiled brightly. Her wide dark eyes, thick brown hair and creamy skin—as well as the curves that were just becoming noticeable—promised great beauty. Her face reminded Jane of a young Brooke Shields, but she had little chance of being very tall, not with a mother who was only five foot four and a father who was five foot nine.
“So what’s your case about?” she asked as she slathered butter on her bread.
Oliver had gone to prison when Kate was three and had been killed shortly after he came out when she was seven, so losing him hadn’t affected her as much as knowing what he’d done. But it was hard to live in the shadow of such evil. Jane preferred to shield her daughter from the uglier details of the cases they tackled at TLS. “I’m trying to find two girls, possibly runaways.”
“How old are they?”
“Seventeen and eighteen,” she said, dishing up the soup.
“Why did they run away?”
“We’re not sure.”
She swallowed the bread in her mouth. “I hope you find them.”
Jane smiled. Maybe she’d been shortchanged in the husband arena, but having such a great daughter made up for it. For the most part, anyway. There were times Jane lay awake at night, remembering what it’d been like to love Oliver’s brother, Noah. Despite the betrayal that’d caused her so much anguish, he’d been a good man, the exact opposite of Oliver. Tall, handsome, strong, honest, giving. He’d owned her heart.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Quickly pulling herself out of the melancholy that threatened whenever she thought of Noah—their love, their mistakes, her heartbreak, his murder—she summoned another smile. “Nothing, why?”
“You had such a sad look on your face.” Her daughter’s lip came out in a pout.
Jane carried Kate’s soup to the table. “I’m not sad. We have a comfortable home, we’re both safe and healthy, I like my job and you’re doing well in school. You even get to spend every other weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Burke. What more could we ask?”
Again, the image of Noah drawing her into his arms, of their lips meeting, appeared in Jane’s mind. Not only did she miss his lovemaking, Jane missed his laugh, his conversation, his support. He’d been her life the entire time Oliver was in prison.
But so what if she no longer had the companionship she craved? If, after nearly five years of celibacy, her body hungered for a man’s touch? She didn’t have a boyfriend. And a casual encounter was completely out of the question. She was too afraid of what lurked beneath the smiles of the men she met. She’d once believed she’d married so well. Oliver had been a successful dentist. So pleasant. So friendly. So smart.
And an absolute sociopath.
Remaining single was far safer than seeking another relationship. She knew from experience that there were worse things than loneliness.
Malcolm was pretty sure he’d made a tactical error. He’d thought it would break up the terrible monotony to grab a couple of slaves, make them do his laundry, cook his meals and clean his house. He missed that aspect of being married more than any other. Emily had always kept a fine house.
But the free labor wasn’t worth the effort required to feed the girls and keep an eye on them. Since he’d taken them captive, they’d severely hampered his ability to live as he’d grown accustomed to living. He couldn’t go to Mary’s house and watch her, couldn’t gamble at the Indian casinos, couldn’t drive around with his police light pretending to be an undercover cop. It’d been difficult to get the chains he’d needed to restrict the girls’ movements, but he’d simply used handcuffs and rope until he could get to the hardware store. He was set up now—he’d even gotten them some old secondhand clothing—but he was so damned bored. And he hated not being able to move around with ease.
At least he could call his bookie and place a few bets here and there. And, fortunately, he lived in Turlock out in the sparsely populated boondocks among the dairies, orchards and tomato farms south of Sacramento. Otherwise, it would’ve been even harder to leave his victims unattended while he ran errands.
Still, he worried whenever he had to take that chance. He was leaving one of the girls alone right now. The other he had with him. He’d finally decided that if he had to run an errand, it was safest to take one along so he’d always have the other as leverage. That way, they couldn’t scheme together. They’d proven to be a lot smarter than he’d expected. Yesterday, they’d somehow freed themselves and almost slipped out the back door. If it hadn’t been so unnaturally quiet, if he hadn’t gone to check on them when he did, they would’ve been long gone.
But putting a captive in the vehicle meant traveling at night and staying in remote areas. It was a pain in the ass.
“You try anything while I’m in that store, I’ll kill you,” he warned the one named Marcie. He had her in the back of his van, gagged, hands cuffed to the sliding door, feet tied together with a rope. The supermarket was ready to close, so there weren’t many customers. But he parked around back just to be safe. He needed to buy some milk and eggs and bread or they’d go hungry tomorrow….
“If you’re gone when I get back, I’ll cut your sister up into tiny pieces before disappearing myself,” he told her. “I’ll be out of here, and your sister will be dead. Do you understand? Do anything, anything at all, to piss me off, and you’ll be signing her death warrant.
“Do you get it?” he snapped when she gave no sign of comprehension.
This time she made a frightened grunt.
“Good.” He tossed a ratty old blanket over her for added security. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be willing to put up with you, so I suggest you stay on your best behavior.”
She acknowledged this with another grunt, and he slid the door closed and hurried away.
His mind completely occupied with colle
cting groceries as fast as possible, he didn’t realize he’d forgotten his cell phone until he was standing in line at the checkout register. He usually placed it in the seat next to him as soon as he got in the van so it could sync with his Bluetooth. In California, it was illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving, and he couldn’t afford to get pulled over for something stupid. But leaving his cell behind with Marcie in the van was about as stupid a mistake as he could imagine.
“Son of a bitch!”
The woman behind him must’ve heard the curse. She frowned in disapproval, but he didn’t care whether he’d offended her or not. He’d left his damn cell phone in the car! He’d told Marcie not to try anything. Then he’d put temptation only two feet away.
Shoving his cart to the side, he abandoned his groceries so he could hurry to the exit.
His breaths were short, foggy puffs as he jogged around the building. At first glance, everything looked normal. Chances were she was exactly as he’d left her. He’d warned her, hadn’t he?
But as he crept up on the front bumper and peered through the windshield, he knew he’d had good reason to be worried. She’d managed to get her hands free, just as he’d feared. Her gag was down, too. He could tell because the lit screen on his phone bathed her face in an eerie glow—she was in the middle of placing a call.
If it was 9–1-1, they could trace the phone’s location using the federal government’s Global Position System satellites. Even if it wasn’t 9–1-1, the location of any phone could be traced by the signal it sent to the closest cell phone towers.
Jerking open the sliding door, he leaned in and wrenched the phone away. Then he turned it off, used his T-shirt to wipe it clean and chucked it as hard as he could into the field behind the grocery store.
Marcie had one hand still cuffed to the door handle. The other was bleeding because she’d forced it through the metal circle of the other cuff. But that didn’t stop her from pushing her legs through the opening and trying to get out.
Without warning, he slammed the door on her legs. When she arched back and cried out, he widened the gap enough that she could yank her legs in. Then he closed it tightly.
“I didn’t call anyone important,” she sobbed as he climbed behind the wheel.
If he’d had the time, he would’ve punched her in the face. “You lying bitch!”
“No, I swear,” she said. “I jus’ wanted to tell our older sister we’re okay. She don’t know where we’re at. I don’t even know…”
“You’re dead,” he promised but, careful to do nothing that would attract attention, he backed up, swung around and turned out of the driveway at normal speed. He had to get away from the supermarket before his vehicle could be spotted by whatever police unit had been dispatched. And he had to do it without creating a witness to his flight.
Four
The jangle of her phone came to Jane in a dream. She heard it ringing, but it had no relevance to her. It was someone else’s phone. Distant. Removed. Then silence—until a much more subtle disturbance woke her.
Opening her eyes to total darkness, she blinked. For months after Oliver had left her lying in her own blood, she’d dreamt she heard him in the hallway, coming to finish what he’d started. He always had a knife in his hand and the look of murder in his eyes. She knew that look because she was one of the few who’d seen it and lived to tell about it. The nightmare was so vivid she could smell him, feel the warmth of his body as he drew close, his fingernails biting into her arm as he dragged her up against him—
“Mom?”
Jane gasped. She could breathe. It wasn’t real. Oliver was dead. The noise that’d awakened her had been Kate. Her daughter was standing in the doorway. “Wh-what?” she said, willing her heart to slow its pounding.
Kate came to the side of the bed. “Didn’t you hear me? Someone’s on the phone for you. And she sounds like she’s crying.”
Who would call her in the middle of the night crying? Sheridan? Skye? Had there been an accident?
Alarmed, she threw off the covers and sat up. Then the memory of the day’s events snapped into place, along with the news snippet she’d watched before bed, and she realized that her caller could be someone else.
“Thanks, babe.” The time on her clock radio indicated it wasn’t the middle of the night as Jane had thought. It was only ten-thirty. She’d been asleep for half an hour. “Go back to bed,” she told Kate, but her daughter didn’t leave. Understandably curious—they didn’t receive many calls like this—she sat on the edge of the bed as Jane brought the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Ms. Burke—Jane?”
It wasn’t Skye or Sheridan. It was Gloria, as she’d suspected. “Yes?”
“They jus’ called me,” she blurted, so breathless she could hardly speak.
Jane cleared her throat to eliminate the rasp of sleep. “Who just called you? Latisha and Marcie?”
“Marcie, I think. I couldn’t tell for sure. She was talkin’ so low I could barely hear her.”
The mind-numbing fatigue fell away like a cast-off shirt. “What’d she say?”
“She say, ‘Gloria, you gotta help us.’ I say, ‘Where are you? Tell me where you’re at an’ I’ll be there.’ An’ she say, ‘I don’t know.’ So I told her to hang up and call 9–1-1. But she say she already tried that an’ they put her on hold while they sent a cruiser.”
“A cruiser’s good.”
“I know, but she was so terrified she panicked. She hung up and called me. I told her, ‘Give me some clue, baby. Help me find you.’ But she was cryin’ so hard she couldn’t talk. All she could say is, ‘Oh, God, he’s here!’ Then the line went dead.”
Jane’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins. The girls were alive. But where? In what condition? And who had them?
“Someone has ’em both,” Gloria was saying. “She said us. I heard that much. They’re alive, but I don’t know for how long. We gotta find ’em!”
Jane clutched the phone tighter. If they were alive, they needed someone better than her. Just hearing about Marcie’s call—Oh, God, he’s here—made Jane’s own past rush up on her like a wave surging from behind. She tried to beat back the fear, but with little success. She’d already broken into a cold sweat.
“Hello?” Gloria cried when she didn’t speak.
Drawing a deep breath, Jane forced a calm she didn’t feel. She had to pretend she was everything Gloria thought she was, had to act as if she knew what she was doing or she’d be letting her client down. What good would it do to add to the poor woman’s panic? “Have you contacted Detective Willis?” she asked.
“I called the number on his card, but it went straight to voice mail.”
Of course it did. Jane hadn’t been thinking when she’d asked that question. Detectives were basically on call twenty-four hours a day, but that didn’t make them available to the general public. “I can reach him at home,” she said. “Did your phone show the number Marcie called from?”
“It did. It wasn’t blocked. I got it right here, on my list of incoming calls. But I already dialed it at least a dozen times, and I can’t get anyone to pick up. A recording comes on, saying the voice-mail box hasn’t been set up yet.”
Jane wished Gloria hadn’t done that. The ring might’ve alerted Marcie’s captor to the fact that she’d made a call. But she didn’t want to make Gloria feel bad for doing what anyone would want to do under the circumstances. “Give me the number. If we’re lucky, I can find the owner via a reverse directory. Or maybe David can get the information from the phone company.”
Gloria’s voice shook as she dictated each digit, but she was careful to enunciate.
“I’ll call David and get back to you,” Jane promised.
Throughout the conversation, Gloria had held up admirably, but now she broke into tears, as she had in Jane’s office. “Can you find ’em? You gotta find ’em. Right away. I can’t live without ’em. They all I got.”
And you’re counting
on me? Jane was hoping that aborted call to 9–1-1 had been more helpful than it appeared. Maybe it was just a matter of time before they heard from the police. Maybe the cruiser dispatched by the emergency operator had arrived….
Maybe she’d be able to believe that if whoever had taken Marcie and her sister hadn’t appeared while Marcie was using the phone.
“I know. I’ll talk to you in a few minutes,” she said, and hung up.
Movement from across the bed startled her. She’d become so engrossed in the conversation, she’d forgotten her daughter was in the room.
“What is it, Mommy?” Kate asked, creeping closer.
“Someone needs help.” Jane took her daughter’s hand. As usual, having Kate beside her made her grateful that they were alive and together. The situation five years ago could’ve ended very differently. But after Gloria’s call, even Kate’s reassuring presence couldn’t keep the doubt that plagued Jane from striking deep.
Maybe Ava’s right about me. Maybe Oliver put me through too much, and now I don’t have the nerve to do this job. She felt physically ill at the thought of what might be happening to Latisha and Marcie. Somehow she couldn’t imagine Skye or Sheridan or Ava taking it this personally. They all seemed to face every challenge with cool resolve.
Kate snuggled closer. “Those girls who ran away? Are they the ones who need help?”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t run away?”
“No.”
“Are you going to rescue them?”
Jane rubbed the back of her daughter’s hand against her cheek. “Do you think I’m capable of rescuing someone?”
Kate reached up to kiss her cheek. “You saved me, didn’t you?” she said. “You can do anything.”
A lump rose in Jane’s throat. “I’ll do my best,” she said. Then she sent her daughter off to bed and called David.
Hey, you there? He wrote me again tonight. Around dinnertime. But I had to rush off to a meeting for a school fundraiser and this is my first chance to get back online.
Hello?
