by Karen Leabo
Amanda tried not to let the horror show on her face. Henry planned to kill Terri, murder her. All this time, Amanda had thought Henry was basically good, a slow-witted, obedient nephew eager to please. But if he could kill another human being with not even a twinge of conscience...
“Henry, that doesn’t seem a very Christian thing to do,” she said, using one of his own favorite arguments.
“Oh, but it is,” he argued. “Terri is a sinner, just like the others. I’m meting out God’s justice.”
The others? “‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord,” she tried again.
“Yes, and I am his tool of vengeance,” Henry said. “The first time, I wasn’t sure. I mean, it was really an accident. I was supposed to drop off the sinner in Corsicana, but she woke up before we got there, and she started fighting me. I broke her neck. At first I thought I’d done something bad, but then I felt this...this goodness filling me up, like her life was coming into my body. And I felt strong and good, and I knew I’d done the right thing.”
Amanda wanted to throw up. She grabbed on to the door handle to steady herself. Henry was a murderer, and she was completely under his control. If she didn’t say and do exactly the right thing, he could easily consider her among the sinners and justify her death. She looked at his hands, gripping the steering wheel, and she swallowed hard.
“How many s-sinners have you punished?” she felt compelled to ask. “All of the girls?”
“All except Marcy. She died from hmm...—uh, I can’t remember the word, but she bled too much. We dropped her off the dam, Aunt Odell and me did. That was right before you came to the home.”
Amanda remembered. A young girl’s body had been found at the Cedar Creek spillway the day before Odell had kidnapped Amanda.
“Odell said she ought to have a decent Christian burial. I didn’t think so. She was a sinner, too.”
“Where do you put the bodies?” Amanda asked, masking the horror from her voice.
He flashed a self-satisfied smile. “In an old well in the woods. It’s wide and deep. Plenty of room in there. Room for ten, maybe twenty sinners. They’ll never be found.”
Now Amanda was sick. Her stomach rolled and she coughed, grateful that she hadn’t eaten in a long time. No matter how she tried to block it, she saw a vision of Terri being dumped down a well. And the baby? If Henry found Terri, what would he do about the baby?
That was it! “Henry, you can’t kill Terri,” she said suddenly. “If you kill her, you’ll be killing the baby, too. And while she might be a sinner, the baby is innocent.”
Her logic had an immediate and profound effect on Henry. He slammed on the brakes so suddenly that Amanda had to put her hand on the dash to keep from being pitched onto the floor. Then he just sat there, hands flexing on the steering wheel as his mouth worked silently. His face was a picture of torture.
“I can’t kill a baby,” he finally said.
Amanda relaxed a bit.
“That would go against everything Odell has done. She would never, ever forgive me. But if she finds out that I helped you escape...” Suddenly he turned on Amanda, an unreasoning rage pouring out of him. “It’s your fault! You’re the one who tempted me with your harlot’s ways. You made me wander from the righteous path.”
Amanda shook her head mutely. Her mind, frozen with fear, refused to give her the words she needed to defend herself.
He reached out and stroked her hair, almost reverently, then grabbed a handful and yanked.
She yelped in surprise and pain. “Henry, you’re hurting me.”
Seeming not to hear her, he pulled until she was sprawled across the front seat, then fitted his other hand around her neck. “Whore of Babylon!” he shouted, bending her head back so she was forced to look at his twisted face.
“I’m not a whore,” she objected as tears of pain clouded her vision. “I’ve repented. Henry, you mustn’t—”
His hand tightened on her neck, cutting off her words. “God is your judge, and He says you’re guilty.” Then, for just a moment, his expression softened, suffused with regret. “It won’t hurt for long, Amanda. Trust me, it’s better this way.”
Chapter 18
Austin was fifteen miles outside the town of River Rock, driving his Bronco over eighty, when his cellular phone rang. He snapped the device open with a frenetic flick of his wrist. “Corporal Lomax. Who’s this? What do you have?”
“Got a pencil?”
“Oh, Tony.” Austin realized he had long since lost his professional objectivity. He was barely rational. But he kept visualizing Caro in various situations, none of them pleasant, and the tormenting thoughts made him wild with the need to do something, hear something. He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and found an old gas receipt to write on. “What’s going on?”
“I have an address for Odell Beaman. And I just talked to the sheriff down there, Don Fowles. He knows the place, and he’ll meet you there with all the backup he can muster. The closest FBI field office—”
“What the hell?” Austin interrupted, slamming on the brakes to avoid rear-ending a white truck stalled in his lane. A gaggle of women swarmed around the disabled vehicle. They all looked up and began waving and shouting frantically.
“What’s going on?” Tony asked.
“Ladies with car trouble. Hell, I don’t have time to play Sir Galahad now,” he muttered. He was starting to pull past them when a familiar pair of neon leggings caught his eye. The woman wearing them, who had her head stuck in the truck’s engine, looked up, and Austin slammed on the brakes again.
She stared at him in disbelief.
He dropped the phone and was out of the car and to her in a split second. “Caro, thank God.” Relief coursed through him like a raging river. Without a second thought he pulled her to him and held her, reassuring himself that she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. Her body was soft and warm against his. He pressed his face into her hair. She smelled like...smoke?
“Ouch! Let go, let go!”
He released her immediately. “Are you hurt?” he asked, scanning up and down her body.
“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Your concern is touching, but right now there are more pressing matters than my health. We have to get these girls to a safe haven, and then we have to find Odell and someone named Henry and two missing girls, one of them Amanda. Where’s your phone?”
“In the car. But if you’re calling for backup...” He cocked his head, listening. “Hear those sirens?” Moments later two county sheriff’s cars crested the hill, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Overkill, in Austin’s opinion.
One of the girls burst into tears. Another whined that she had to go to the bathroom. The new arrivals screeched to a halt and jumped out of their vehicles, reminding Austin of an outtake from Smokey and the Bandit. One of the men swaggered over importantly.
“What’s going on here?”
Caro, heedless of her rather bedraggled appearance, stepped right up to the man. “I’m Corporal Carolyn Triece with the Dallas Police Department,” she said smoothly, though she declined to offer her hand. “These girls have been held captive, some of them for months, by a woman name Odell Beaman—”
“Yes, we’ve been apprised of the situation,” the sheriff’s deputy said, eyeing Caro speculatively. “We were just over at the Beaman place. Quite a setup.” He looked at the white Suburban, then back at Caro. “You’re the one who was snatched this morning? And you escaped? And you took all these girls with you?” Skepticism quickly turned to admiration.
Caro wasn’t about to bask in any praise. “Look, we don’t have time to chitchat. Odell and her nephew Henry are still at large and two girls are missing.”
With a minimum of fuss she took control of everything and everybody. Her first order of business was to transport the girls to safety, dividing them up and directing them into the squad cars. A local police car from River Rock arrived, along with an unmarked car driven by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy. Caro gave
orders like a pint-sized General Patton. The others jumped when she spoke. In other circumstances, Austin would have found it amusing. Now he was just grateful for her competence.
“You say the Suburban was the only car parked at the Beaman place?” the local cop asked.
“That’s right,” Caro said.
“That means Henry’s old green truck is out and about somewhere,” Austin pointed out.
“Damn, I thought they were all on foot,” she said. “Get the license number from DMV, if possible, and put out an APB. These people are armed and dangerous as hell. What are the chances of getting a helicopter?”
“I’ll call in one from Dallas,” Austin said. Aside from that small contribution, he just stood back and watched as Caro took firm control of what used to be his investigation. A couple of weeks ago that would have bothered him, but somewhere between losing Caro and finding her again, he had also lost all desire to be a hero. He just wanted this thing over.
And then he wanted to take Caro Triece to a Caribbean island, preferably one with no phones, and stay there with her for a month or two. He would never let the woman out of his sight again. That’s something, he thought, suppressing a grin. A couple of weeks ago he’d wanted her as far away from him as possible.
“Get the lead out, Lomax, we’re rolling,” Caro said, abruptly obliterating his brief moment of fantasy as she climbed into the passenger seat of his car.
He shook his head to clear it and slid behind the wheel, appalled at his own stupidity. He wasn’t exactly on Caro’s A list, and not likely to share an island with her any time soon. He’d let her down. He’d almost gotten her killed, and she would probably never forgive him.
He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself.
“River Rock’s straight ahead, ten miles,” she said, sounding suddenly weary. “Did you get the directions to the police station?”
“Yeah. Right at the third street past the flashing yellow light.” The local cop shop was to serve as Command Central, from which Caro would direct the search for Odell, Henry and the two girls.
As soon as he was cruising at seventy, he looked over at Caro. Her eyes were closed, her face tense with obvious pain. Then he saw the problem.
“Caro, your hands...” They were red and blistered, and in places completely raw. He remembered the smokey smell of her hair. “There was a fire?”
“A small one. It’s no big deal.”
“Like hell. You’ve got third-degree burns, and that’s nothing to mess around with. I’m taking you to the nearest hospital.”
“No, you’re not,” she said firmly. “I’ll go later. Dammit, Lomax, I’m not missing the end of this.”
There was an almost pleading note in her voice, and Austin knew he had her. She recognized that her injuries were serious enough to warrant concern, and if he pressed he could get her to a doctor. But he understood her need to see the operation through. After all she’d suffered, to miss finding Amanda and arresting Odell would be like reading a book with the last page torn out.
“Okay,” he said.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“How did you know where I was?” she asked. “For that matter, where did all those other guys come from?”
He explained about Odell’s careless phone call and Chloe Krill’s confession. “That narrowed it down to a general area, but the rest was pure luck. Tony had just tracked down an address when—”
The phone rang again as if on cue.
“Go ahead, answer it,” Austin said. “It’ll be Tony, wondering what the hell I’m doing.”
With a shrug, she picked it up from between the seats. “Corporal Triece.” Whatever Tony said in response brought a smile to Caro’s lips. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m okay, no thanks to you bums.” Her smile faded. “I know, Tony.... No, I don’t have time to explain it all now. We still have a few loose ends here. We’ll get back to you.” After a few more assurances that she was fine—which was a blatant lie—she hung up. Then she looked at Austin reproachfully. “I shouldn’t have said that—about you being a bum. I know it was an honest mistake—”
“It was a first-class screw-up.”
“It was that damn body mike, wasn’t it? The wire came loose.”
“Yeah.” He appreciated her attempt to pin the foul-up on something other than his miserable hide. “The body mike, a Coke truck and total ineptness on my part. I’m sorry, Caro. I don’t know what else to say, except that it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever run another undercover operation.”
“Cold days come along in hell every once in a while,” she murmured.
He started to ask her what she was talking about, but before he could even take a breath she cursed.
“Lomax, you just missed the turn.”
He put on the brakes. “What turn?”
“That fork back there. The highway into town went left and we went right.”
“Nobody told me about any damn fork,” he grumbled, throwing the car into reverse. Then he stopped and stared into the distance.
“What’s wrong?” Caro asked, immediately sensing his alertness.
“That speck of green up ahead. Looks like a green car...or truck.”
“Yeah...” Suddenly she was all business. “I’m glad we’re in an unmarked.”
“I’ll just drive by casually....”
It turned out to be an old truck, suspiciously similar to the description of Henry’s. A big dog was the vehicle’s only occupant, but both doors were open like the driver and passenger had vacated in a helluva hurry. The gun rack held a shotgun.
Austin stopped the Bronco, and he and Caro both got out to check over the abandoned vehicle. But the dog, a bloodhound, had other ideas. It growled menacingly, protecting its territory.
“Now, come on, fella, we won’t hurt you,” Caro said.
“Uh, Caro, it’s a girl dog.”
“Whatever. Austin, you know dogs. You make friends with her.”
“Not likely. I’m as fond of my appendages as the next—hey, did you hear that?”
“Yeah.” A high-pitched scream had erupted from the woods. Austin reflexively drew his gun from his shoulder holster. Caro had a gun, too, a tiny stainless-steel revolver. He didn’t even want to know where she’d been stowing it, or why.
They exchanged a look. No words were necessary. They split up, heading into the woods a hundred feet apart so they could confront their adversary from opposite directions.
Austin heard another scream. Within seconds he’d found the source, a young woman who was struggling to remove a large man’s hands from around her throat.
“Freeze, Police!” Austin bellowed.
The man—Henry?—did in fact freeze, raising his head like a wild animal caught in a hunter’s gun sight. He stared at Austin with burning, malevolent eyes that weren’t entirely human.
“Let her go,” Austin said.
He realized with a start that the bedraggled girl was Amanda Arkin, though she didn’t quite match the pretty, perky Amanda in the photograph Austin had memorized. She stopped struggling and stared at Austin with pleading eyes. Austin was both relieved to find her alive and terrified she wouldn’t remain that way for long unless he handled this just right.
“Let her go,” he repeated. “It’s all over now, Henry.” From the corner of his eye he saw a movement. Caro was approaching from behind Henry, quiet as a cat. Austin had to struggle not to look at her or show by his expression that they had company.
With practiced precision she struck, giving the back of Henry’s knees a karate kick. The attack surprised him enough that he loosened his hold on Amanda. That was all the girl needed; she managed to pull away from him. Henry turned in confusion to see what had assaulted him. Austin was on him like a cannonball, knocking him to the ground.
The man was huge, but he was panicked, thrashing around with little coordination. Austin put a knee to Henry’s back and with two lightning-swift moves he had the man’s arms immobilized. “I’ve
got him,” Austin said, now with one knee pressing down on Henry’s neck. The prisoner kicked wildly, but he wasn’t going anywhere. “In my glove box I have some handcuffs.”
Without a word Caro went to fetch them.
Amanda stood a few feet away, breathing heavily and rubbing her throat.
“Are you okay?” Austin asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” she replied in a trembling voice.
“She has the devil in her,” Henry said, his words muffled because his face was pressed into the spongy ground.
“Don’t we all?” Austin countered, shaking his head. It was apparent the guy was pretty disturbed, but at least he had stopped struggling. “You’re under arrest, bud, and that means you have the right to remain silent. You understand?”
“Like on TV?” Henry ventured, sounding now more like a scared little boy than an attempted murderer.
“Exactly.” Austin rattled off the rest of the Miranda warning.
“You’re going to put him in jail, aren’t you?” Amanda asked, growing agitated. She stood several feet away, her gaze riveted on Henry. “He’s a murderer, you know.”
“Almost,” Austin said, conjuring up a smile for her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“No, not me,” she answered impatiently. “He killed four girls and stuffed their bodies down a well.”
Austin’s smile froze on his face.
Caro returned just in time to hear Amanda’s revelation. Her eyes grew as big as poker chips. “Did you do that, Henry?”
“They had the devil in them,” Henry offered, as if this were a perfectly acceptable defense for murder.
“Holy God,” Caro said. Something had finally shocked the unflappable Carolyn Triece.
She pulled a thin plastic strip—Flex-cuffs—from a cellophane package and handed it to Austin, who then busied himself securing Henry’s hands. Meanwhile Caro talked softly with Amanda, trying to reassure her, explaining that her friends from the Good Shepherd Home were safe.
“Except for Terri. We have to go back and get her,” Amanda insisted, close to tears. “She’s having a baby all by herself in this terrible shack....”
