He cleared his throat. “Right. I’ll just make my last phone call and be right out. We can talk in the car.”
“Sure.”
Olivia turned and Wade stood. As she stepped out of the den, he walked to the mantel and stared at the picture of him and Justine, taken just a few days before she’d died.
Been murdered.
He felt his phone buzz and looked at it. A text message from Anonymous.
I have Amy. Walk out of the door and down to the boathouse. I’m watching you. If you speak to anyone, Amy dies.
Wade went still. He stared at the text, unbelieving. Was this a joke?
Who are you?
Another buzz brought a picture of his sweet girl tied to a chair, her tear-streaked cheeks flushed, eyes drooping, sleepy looking, but on the person who’d taken the picture. Wade’s heart stopped for a full five beats. His legs immediately went weak. He stumbled to the chair again. But no. He couldn’t sit. Couldn’t waste time. Couldn’t throw up.
He walked back to the mantel and gripped it, leaned his forehead against the edge, and took a deep breath. When he looked up, resolution ran deep and fast.
Help was mere steps away. Could he get a message to one of them? Olivia was outside on the porch talking to one of her employees. He looked around for a pen and paper, but saw nothing.
Anonymous
What are you waiting for?
He looked at Amy’s picture on the text again and paused. He knew that place. He knew where she was being held. But how to pass on the message? He looked back up to the family pictures on the mantel, picked up one, then the next and the next. Amy was in most of them. He and his parents in another when he was just an infant. He closed his eyes and fought the urge to scream, to rail against the unknown person doing this to him and his family. And knew he’d do whatever it took to rescue his child. But he had to find a way to leave a message. An idea formed.
His phone buzzed again.
Anonymous
You haven’t left the house. I’m watching. Go out the back door to the boathouse. Now. Your security is tight. Don’t get caught or Amy dies.
Wade
How?
Figure it out. Now go.
He had no choice.
His phone buzzed again. He looked at it. This time it signaled a call from Olivia. A text appeared at the top of the screen.
Anonymous
Don’t answer it. Put the phone in your pocket and keep going.
His fingers flew over the keys.
Wade
If I don’t answer, she’s going to come looking for me.
Anonymous
Fine. Make it good. I can hear everything you say. Amy wants her father to come rescue her.
After only a fraction of a second of hesitation, he pressed the button to answer the call. Could the person really hear? With technology these days, he couldn’t afford to take any chances. “I’m coming.”
“Where are you?”
“Just had a few more things I needed to put together. A few instructions about Thursday night, but I’m finished now. Just stopped in the den to . . . reminisce a little.”
“We don’t have time for reminiscing. I’m coming to get you to escort you to the car.” He heard murmuring in the background. “Wade, Katie can’t find Amy. Is she with you?”
“No.” He cleared his throat.
Another buzz. He lowered the phone to read the text.
Anonymous
Be careful what you say.
“Olivia? She’s around there somewhere. Check her closet. Sometimes she likes to hide there when she’s feeling anxious.” The words left a sour taste in his mouth, but he couldn’t say anything that would cause his stalker—and Amy’s kidnapper—to do anything rash. Like kill his daughter. Fear pounded through him. He wondered if Olivia could hear his thundering heart. He walked toward the back door of the house and paused to watch as security made their rounds.
“Okay, meet me at the front door, but don’t go outside yet.”
Too late for that.
Finally, when he could see no one who might spot him on the path to the boathouse, he moved. He swiveled his head from side to side, taking care not to be seen by any of the security as he darted down the hill, slipping behind a tree now and then to scope the area. He didn’t even feel stupid. Amy was waiting on him, scared and desperate. He wouldn’t let her down this time. “Dad’s coming, honey, just hang on,” he whispered under his breath as he waited for the guard in black pants and black T-shirt to move away. Wade had the advantage of knowing where to look and was able to skirt the edges of security until he reached the boathouse. A flash across the lake caught his eye, and he figured the person giving him directions had some high-powered binoculars trained on him.
He slipped inside the building and shut the door behind him.
Felt the same stinging sensation he’d experienced in the parking lot of the radio station. This time he didn’t bother to fight it. He simply sat down and waited for the darkness to close over him.
[36]
Olivia paced the front porch and finally gave up, went back inside to hurry Wade up, and found Katie coming down the steps. “She’s not there, not upstairs, not in the closet, not in her aunt’s apartment above the garage, not anywhere.”
A sick feeling started in the pit of Olivia’s stomach. “She has to be. No one saw her leave or I would have heard about it.”
“She said she was going to the bathroom and would be right back. I was helping her pack so I finished zipping up her suitcase. When she’d been in there awhile, I knocked on the door. She answered that she’d be out in a minute.”
“Wait a minute,” Olivia said. “She wanted to tell Stacy bye.”
“Yes, she asked. I never had a chance to tell her that she couldn’t because we had to leave immediately. I knocked several more times, then I went in. And she was gone. The door to the other side, going into the guest bedroom, was open.”
Olivia pictured the setup. Amy’s room shared a bathroom with the guest room Olivia had taken her nap in after the radio station explosion. “Why would she leave?” she muttered.
“She wouldn’t. Someone had to take her,” Katie said.
“But they would have had to come in the house to get her, and we both know no one got in.” Olivia paced, thinking. “She simply had to leave on her own.”
Katie frowned and shrugged. “But why? What could compel her to walk out the door when she knows the danger?”
“Her friend. It had to be. She snuck out to go meet her.”
“Then we have to find her—and fast. Let’s go tell Wade.”
Olivia took off down the hall with Katie following her. Olivia’s phone buzzed. It was Haley wondering where they were.
Olivia
Amy is missing. Start looking for her. Tell the others to start searching and call in the dogs. She can’t be far yet.
Haley
On it.
Olivia burst into the den. Only to find it empty. She stopped and frowned. “He’s not here.” She knew she was stating the obvious, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“And the doors leading out to the porch are wide open,” Katie said.
Olivia’s bad feeling grew to mammoth proportions. “He was supposed to come straight from the den to the front door, get in the car, and go. We would have passed him if he were coming to the front door.”
“We need to search the house.”
“No we don’t. He’s not here and neither is Amy.”
Katie stared at her and Olivia felt a wave of nausea and horror sweep over her. “She’s done it,” she whispered. “She’s got them. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. And we’ve got to find them. Fast.”
Wade woke slowly. At first he let his mind stay blank. Then the text picture of Amy’s scared and tearstained face came to mind, and his heart thumped while he breathed a prayer for her safety. Please, Lord.
He took inventory. Hands tied or taped in front of him. Sti
ll sleepy. Warm. No, hot. Too hot. He maneuvered himself around until he could feel his back pocket. He gave a grunt of disgust when he found it empty. Whoever had drugged him had taken his phone.
Amy. He had to get to Amy. Where was she?
He looked around even as he strained against his bonds and fought the effects of the drug. Where was he? His eyes landed on the far wall and his heart stuttered in his chest. A table was pushed up against the wall. But that wasn’t what caught his attention. It was the rows and rows of pictures. From the top of the table to the top of the wall. A huge collage consisting of hundreds of pictures.
Of him. All of him. He squinted and thought he saw one of him with his wife from years ago. Only she had a red X slashed across her face.
He swallowed as he took it in. Disbelief pounded in his mind.
“Amy,” he whispered.
A surge of adrenaline burst through him and he tugged once again. But he had no strength, no control over his muscles for now. He ceased his useless struggle, blinked, and lay still. He knew how this would play out. He would be groggy for another couple of hours. Then it would be time to fight.
Olivia paced the den, thinking. Law enforcement officers had swept the grounds and the house. Katie had called in two FBI agents she’d worked with in the past. Neighbors had been questioned and a BOLO released to the press. Olivia knew Wade would hate the attention he’d face if he came home. When. When he came home. He and Amy. They would come home.
God, please . . .
Yes, she was even willing to start praying again if that would do any good.
Bruce Savage sat on the couch staring into space, his face drained of color, the pallor making him look ten years older than the last time she’d seen him.
The door opened and one of the officers entered with a bag and a cell phone. “We found these in a little clearing. Do you recognize them?”
Olivia took the phone encased in the plastic bag. “This is Amy’s,” she said softly. She pressed the button and started going through her messages. The very first ones jumped out at her. Texts from Stacy. Olivia pulled her personal cell phone from her pocket and dialed Stacy’s number.
The number rang four times and went to voice mail. She hung up and walked over to lay a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “I need Stacy’s mother’s number. Do you have it?”
Bruce blinked. Then nodded. “Yes.” He handed her his phone. She looked up the number and dialed it.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Abbott, this is Olivia Edwards, Wade Savage’s bodyguard.”
“Yes?” A distinct cooling. Olivia supposed she could understand that. She’d been questioned at length and caught in a lie. A lie that had nothing to do with Wade, but still she had to be embarrassed.
“Is Stacy there?”
“No. She’s not.” And I’m not telling you where she is. Olivia heard the silent statement loud and clear.
“Mrs. Abbott. Amy and Wade have disappeared. Do you think you could cooperate with me?”
“Disappeared?” The coolness was gone. “Why didn’t you say so? What happened?”
“We’re not sure. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. The officers found Amy’s phone with several text messages from Stacy’s phone about meeting her at their special place.”
“Right, the little clearing in the woods.” She sounded much more willing to talk now. “Stacy’s in her room. Hold on a second.” Olivia heard her call for Stacy to come here. “Honey, do you have your phone? Did you text Amy to meet you at your place?”
“No.”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Um . . . I can’t find it. It disappeared while I was at church.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. It was in my purse, but when we got home and I looked for it, it was gone. I didn’t want to tell you. I was hoping I could find it before you found out. But it hasn’t turned up yet.”
“What have I told you about—”
“Mrs. Abbott?” Olivia interrupted.
“Yes?”
“It’s not Stacy’s fault. I think someone stole her phone for the whole purpose of using it to lure Amy away from the house.”
“Oh. Oh my word. I can’t believe that.” She truly sounded like she couldn’t. “Okay then. I won’t fuss at her.”
“I have to go now. If you or Stacy should hear anything from Amy, will you call me right away?”
“Yes, of course.”
Olivia gave the woman her number, then handed Bruce’s phone back to him. She filled him in. “Where’s Martha?”
Bruce rubbed his face. “She . . . uh . . . she . . . I don’t know. She was feeding all the officers, and I think when she realized they weren’t going to find Amy and Wade right away, she went to her apartment. She was crying when she walked out.” He shook his head and stared at the wall again. The poor man was in shock. He stood and walked over to the mantel. “Did you or anyone else mess with the pictures?”
Olivia frowned. “No sir. Not that I know of.”
He flipped one up that had been facedown. “This is one of Wade’s favorites. Why would he lay it facedown?”
Olivia walked over to look at it. “That’s the one that he has on the desk at the radio station. He told me it’s one of his favorites.”
Bruce nodded. “It’s one of the last pictures taken of him and his mother together. He wanted to buy the property to build this house on, but the owner wasn’t interested in selling.”
“So he got the next best thing.”
“Yes.”
Alarm bells jangled in her mind. “I didn’t notice the picture when I was talking to him earlier in here, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t turned down.”
Bruce frowned. “It’s definitely strange. I noticed it right off, but just ignored it. But I’m thinking that it might be a serious mistake not to take note of it.”
“Could it be a message?”
Quinn stepped into the room. “We’ve got a subpoena for Wade’s phone. Text message transcripts, et cetera. Until then, we’ll keep looking. I’m heading out. It’s been six hours. Bruce’s phone is rigged so that if he gets a ransom call, it’ll be recorded and traced. Officers are monitoring it. Right now, we can keep looking, but we’re in the ‘wait for someone to contact us’ phase.”
Bruce’s face almost crumpled and Olivia placed a hand on his arm. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. She knew he was praying.
Quinn gave her a short nod. She knew what he was thinking. If they didn’t find Wade and Amy soon, they might not find them at all. At least not alive.
Bruce stood beside her, his worry a palpable thing, but his now unflappable expression intrigued her. She kept watching him, curious. It had been her experience that most people who found themselves in such a tense, emotionally charged, adrenaline-inducing situation flipped out. They got angry, laid blame, tossed out orders, went hysterical, and required sedation. But not Bruce. He stayed silent, his lips moving every so often in what she decided was prayer.
She left him alone and just stood beside him, thinking, offering him her support and letting him know she was there.
She found herself almost praying that his prayers worked, but she felt too unsure, too disconnected from God to even feel like she had the right to pray. She’d pushed him away and had purposefully kept him out of her life. She felt too ashamed to ask him for help now.
Olivia knew her career change had been the right choice, but watching the officers do their job earlier had her on edge and wishing she were a part of them. But she wasn’t. Not really. Not anymore. Her friends on the force supported her and respected what she did, but she was no longer on the team. The team that stormed buildings and rescued kidnap victims.
“Do you believe in God, Olivia?” Bruce asked her.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes.” What made him bring that up?
“Do you believe he has a purpose in everything?”
“That one I’m
not sure about.”
“I am.”
“Really?” He truly wanted to talk about this now? “What purpose could there be in my parents dying in a plane crash? What purpose is there in your wife dying or Wade’s wife dying? What purpose is there in this whole situation?”
“I don’t know, but he does, and I guess that has to be good enough for me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll ever have that kind of faith.”
“Well, maybe when you’ve lived as long as I have, you will. But keep in mind it’s not something that just happens by osmosis. It’s like any other relationship. You have to work at it. You have to get to know God on a very intimate level in order to have the kind of faith that will withstand the storms life throws at you. It’s a good thing that we only have to have the amount of a mustard seed. Sometimes that’s about all I can find.” He shrugged. “You won’t find even that much, though, if you treat him as the enemy or simply a passing acquaintance.”
That struck a chord. “Is that what I’ve done? Pushed him away so that he’s only a passing acquaintance now?” Of course it was. She’d admitted it to herself just a few minutes ago.
“I think so. But he’ll take you back anytime you’re ready. He doesn’t hold grudges, just open arms.”
Olivia stared at him. His son and granddaughter had most likely been led into a trap by a killer and here he was comforting her, offering her a spiritual hope that she’d figured was lost forever. It nearly shattered the last barrier she’d managed to keep up around her heart.
Bruce picked up the picture that had been laid facedown. “What are you trying to tell me, Son?” he whispered.
Amy sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She swiped the tears from her face and stared at the ceiling from her position on the bed. She’d awakened to find herself in a room that looked almost identical to the one in her house. In fact, when she’d first woken up, she’d thought that was where she was. She’d figured she’d just had a bad dream and no one had sprayed anything in her face and no one was stalking her dad.
Then she’d gone to open the door and found it locked. Then the window that had cement blocks in place of the glass. When she’d realized she was trapped, she’d pounded on the door and screamed until she was hoarse. And no one had come. She stared at the vent above her head and slowly sat up. Would it work? Could she do it? Was it big enough?
Always Watching Page 24
