Unplanned (A Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Novel Book 1)

by Alana Terry

  How in the world was she supposed to concentrate on science after getting a text like that? Well, he’d have to save it for later. She started typing to tell him she was off to class but stopped. Lab wasn’t over until noon. Could she really wait that long? Would she be able to focus on anything besides Rose? She was halfway down the stairs before she decided to call him back.

  “Hey, Kennedy,” he answered. “I got your number from Carl. Hope I didn’t wake you up or anything.”

  “No, I’m on my way to class, though, so I only have a minute.”

  He made a sound like smacking his lips together. “Well, I started browsing through our youth group roster when I came in this morning. We don’t have anyone named Rose, but if we assume she used a fake name, it looks like there are two girls who may or may not be our mystery caller.”

  Hope swelled in Kennedy’s chest like an over-inflated balloon.

  “Unfortunately, neither one is a perfect match.”

  Pop.

  “One is a homeschool girl who’s actually fourteen now. And the other is thirteen and was homeschooled until this fall when her parents enrolled her in private school.”

  Kennedy slowed down her pace as the science complex loomed into view.

  “Like I said,” Nick went on, “neither one is a perfect fit.”

  Kennedy sighed. Out of all the girls at St. Margaret’s … “Well, thanks for looking.” She tried not to let the disappointment creep into her voice.

  “Wait a minute,” Nick went on. “See, both the girls were in a drama last spring. We’ve got the whole thing on video. I was thinking, if you wanted to meet me here at the church I could show you the recording. Do you think if you heard her voice, you’d be able to tell if it was the girl you talked to?”

  Kennedy knew for a fact she could replicate Rose’s voice even in her sleep, since that’s all she had done last night in her dreams. “Yeah, I could probably do that.”

  “I’m here until three and then I’m off to one of the elementary schools for Good News Club,” Nick said. “Do you have time to come on by?”

  “I can take the T and be there by about one.” Kennedy’s backpack hung heavy on her shoulders when she thought about the full schedule ahead. “Would that give us enough time?”

  “Sounds perfect.” She could hear Nick’s smile from the other end of the line.

  “Ok, talk to you then.” She went to push the end button and saw her phone was already back down to half a battery after charging all night. Yeah, she definitely had to talk to her dad about a replacement. If she could find the time to get hold of him, that is. Kennedy wondered if her classmates from the East Coast realized how fortunate they were that they didn’t have to worry about time-zone issues.

  Kennedy saw Reuben waiting for her at the door to the science building and sped up. She probably wasn’t any closer to figuring out who Rose was, but at least others were asking questions, trying to help.

  The three hours of lab passed faster than they might have thanks to Reuben’s good nature and humor. For bits at a time, Kennedy forgot about the pregnancy center and her upcoming meeting with Nick. She found herself laughing with Reuben on her way out of class, and part of her wished Carl had never asked her to get involved at the center in the first place. She was here at Harvard for her education, and if it hadn’t been for some fortunate miracle and her lab partner’s charming personality, she couldn’t have made it through the past few hours without completely losing her focus. She was beginning to think that even if she had time for pregnancy center ministry, she didn’t have the emotional capacity to juggle it along with her schoolwork.

  “Want to grab some lunch?” Reuben asked. “I need to study more for calculus.”

  “I can’t, I’m off to St. Margaret’s, that church I visited. I have a meeting there.”

  “You’re not in trouble, are you?” Reuben asked, his tone almost defensive.

  Kennedy laughed. “No, nothing like that. We’re still trying to see if there’s any way we can figure out who called us the other night.”

  “That’s still got you worried, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Last night I kept jerking myself awake. I kept thinking I heard the hotline phone ringing again,” she admitted with a chuckle.

  “It’s because you’ve got a big heart, my friend.”

  Kennedy glanced at Reuben, expecting to see his familiar sarcastic grin, but his expression was warm, considerate.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “You know you can always come knock on my door if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.” She forced a smile so he wouldn’t think she was depressed on top of crazy. “I really appreciate that.”

  “What are friends for?” He elbowed her playfully on the side of her arm, and that old crooked grin spread across his face once more.

  “I better go,” she told him.

  The underground T station was nearly as dark as a solar eclipse compared to the bright midday sun. Kennedy paid for her token and stood on the platform to wait. She hadn’t expected to get so nervous. What if she heard one of the girls on the video and recognized Rose’s voice? They could go to the police. They’d have enough evidence to warrant an investigation, right? Especially if Carl got behind them. Maybe he could talk Wayne Abernathy into using his political sway to get the case open. But what if the girl’s uncle had already taken her to an abortion clinic? What if they were too late? Kennedy’s stomach tried flipping itself inside out every time she thought about it. Who would be sick and depraved enough to violate …

  “Excuse me. Did you drop your book?” Someone tapped her back, and a man in sunglasses held out a paperback novel. There was a small scar running from his thumb joint to his wrist. She scanned the cover. Historical, by the looks of it, with a pretty long-haired brunette wearing a velvet gown on the cover, something Kennedy’s mom might like. “No, that’s not mine. Thank you, though.”

  He shrugged and went on. Kennedy wondered when she’d have time to start the next mystery her mom ordered her from Amazon. She glanced at the clock in the subway station. If she had planned ahead, she would have brought Crime and Punishment to read while she waited.

  The redline train finally arrived, and after the short ride, Kennedy walked the last few blocks to the church. Her insides trembled a little when she stepped into St. Margaret’s again. Some kind of psychosomatic response, she told herself and ignored the uncomfortable quivering. She was wearing a long-sleeved blouse covered by a loose sweater. At least Nick wouldn’t see how much she was shaking.

  She sped up as she neared his office. Now she was there, she wanted to look at the videos and leave. Nick’s door was slightly ajar, but she knocked anyway and waited for him to call her in. He was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Jesus smiling and drinking a Coke. “Boy, you look tired,” he exclaimed.

  She gave him a surprised look, and they both laughed.

  “I’m sorry. Let me try that again.” Nick cleared his throat. “Kennedy, hi. How are you? Do you want some coffee?”

  Kennedy accepted his offer. She knew she must look as awful as she felt. To complete the picture, she had accidentally fallen asleep last night with her contacts in, and her eyes were now bright red as well as itchy. She couldn’t remember the brand of eye-drops her dad got her the last time that happened, and she added it to her list of questions to ask him.

  “So, I got the video up.” Nick fidgeted with his pen. “Unfortunately, I watched it again, and Harmony has a few lines, but Alicia doesn’t actually talk.” He slid the cursor until somewhere about halfway through the video. “All right, here’s where we hear Harmony.”

  He pointed his pen to a confident-looking teenager on the side of the screen who exclaimed in a melodramatic voice, “I don’t see why we have to do anything for her at all.” The audio was pretty poor quality, but Kennedy shook her head right away.

  “That’s not her.” The girl in the recording was bold. Outspoken. She could handle the spotlight in
a way Rose almost certainly couldn’t.

  “All right. That was easy.” Nick scrolled to another part of the video and leaned forward. “Well, here’s what Alicia looks like. You can see her there behind that boy with the mike.”

  Kennedy squinted at the screen.

  “If I remember right,” Nick continued, “she’ll come up front a little bit later in the show so you can get a better look.”

  He skipped ahead. “There. This gives a pretty good picture. I just wish we could hear her voice.”

  Kennedy frowned at the image. “Is this the highest resolution you’ve got?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  She leaned forward. The girl wasn’t as petite as Kennedy pictured Rose, but there was a shy look in her eyes. “Would you say she’s pretty quiet?” Kennedy asked.

  Nick nodded. “Yeah. Unless she’s with her brothers or sisters. Those kids are like little Shriners when they get together, just without the hats.”

  “Shriners?”

  “You know, those funny guys in parades …”

  The last parade Kennedy had seen was when she was about six, but she didn’t say anything. It was just another one of those cultural references any other American her age would catch onto right away. Just another reminder she wasn’t quite at home at Harvard as she hoped.

  “Anyway,” Nick went on, “Alicia’s pretty quiet when she’s by herself, but she can get rowdy when she’s with her brothers and sisters. Her mom just had a new baby if I remember right. Makes nine or ten altogether now.”

  Kennedy had grown up as an only child and couldn’t imagine that many kids running around one house. “And she’s the one who’s fourteen?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kennedy peered at the photo one last time. Could you tell if a person was abused or not just by looking at a picture?

  “Good family, you’d say?” she prodded.

  “Yeah, I think so. Carl knows them pretty well.”

  “She said she was thirteen on the phone.”

  Nick shrugged. “I just thought it was worth mentioning, since their whole family is homeschooled.”

  Kennedy didn’t say anything but sat staring at the monitor. There were at least a dozen girls on stage. Why couldn’t one of them be Rose?

  “That’s not her, is it?” Nick finally asked.

  She let out her breath. “I don’t know. Part of me wants it to be, but …”

  He clicked off the monitor. “Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. Kennedy knew she should go, but she was so tired.

  “I know you’re busy with school,” Nick added tentatively, “but we have youth group on Tuesday nights. If you wanted to come by tomorrow, I could introduce you as a new helper for the junior high girls …”

  “What? Go in undercover?” Kennedy chuckled even though she didn’t find the situation at all humorous. She wondered what her parents would say about the whole situation. Would they be proud of her trying to protect someone so helpless and vulnerable as Rose? Or would they tell her to mind her own business and focus on her studies? She had the feeling they would approve of her volunteer work until her grades started to suffer for it. She had already spent Friday afternoon at the center and Sunday at St. Margaret’s. Now she was here again, and Nick was talking about her coming back tomorrow for youth group.

  “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “I really wasn’t planning to get this involved in the first place.”

  “Yeah.” Nick drummed the pen against his desk. “I know. Carl’s really stressed out about it all, too, what with the election and everything coming up.”

  “What’s the election have to do with it?” Kennedy asked. Two months in the States and she was already sick of American politics.

  “Well, Abernathy is a high-profile candidate. Lots of people love him. And just as many hate him. We’ve had journalists poking around, attending services, asking Carl questions.”

  “I didn’t even realize he attended here. I thought he just showed up yesterday to pray.”

  “No.” Nick stretched his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “His family’s been coming here for years. He and Carl knew each other back in college, or something like that.”

  “Where is Carl?” Kennedy asked, looking around as if talking about him should make him materialize in the doorway.

  “It’s his day off. Well, technically, at least,” Nick answered. “I think he and Sandy are cleaning up the center. I guess there was a lot of graffiti …”

  “I was there.” Kennedy didn’t want to remember those slogans on the wall. If she didn’t have her Russian literature class later in the afternoon, she could stop by Elm Street and offer to help. Why couldn’t there be an extra five or ten hours packed into every day? She stood with a sigh. “Well, thanks for showing me the video.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” Nick stood up awkwardly, as if his body didn’t know if he wanted to take the extra steps to walk around the desk or if he would see her out from where he was. He held up his hand. “Thanks for coming in. Sorry we didn’t …” He frowned. “Sorry it didn’t work out. But God knows where she is, right?”

  Kennedy forced a smile even though his words were a little too optimistic for her current mood.

  God, if you know where she is, how hard would it be for you to give us a little clue?

  She hugged her sweater tighter across her chest as she headed back out into the brisk autumn afternoon.

  CHAPTER 10

  Once Kennedy got back to her dorm, she spent half an hour before class studying for the next day’s calculus test. She munched on dry Cheerios and thought about her meeting with Nick while she worked on her practice problems.

  St. Margaret’s was a big church. Why should it be so hard to find one girl? There should be at least a few dozen families who homeschooled, right? And none of them had a thirteen-year-old daughter? It didn’t make sense.

  When it was time for her to close her books and head to her Russian lit class, she still wasn’t any closer to an answer. Maybe she should call Carl, see what he said. She had gone over her phone conversations with Rose hundreds of times already. Had she forgotten something — one little detail that could solve the whole mystery? During class, she listed each particular she could remember about the phone call and only heard half of what the professor said.

  Reuben texted her that evening to see if she wanted to study math over dinner, but she feigned a headache and went back to her room. She really would have a migraine by the end of the night if she kept this up. She plopped down in her desk chair and heaved open her huge calculus book.

  She gaped at the first problem for over ten minutes before she finally gave up. Maybe she should email her mom. Kennedy opened up her inbox. After gazing at the screen for another few minutes without typing anything, she finally shook her head and went to the St. Margaret’s website. There had to be some kind of clue.

  There was a little search box on top of the home page. Kennedy knew she wouldn’t get any hits, but she typed in Rose anyway and waited for the computer to tell her the search term hadn’t been found. She was wasting time. She still had to spend another hour or so on her practice problems if she wanted to be ready for her calculus test tomorrow, and she was now officially behind in Crime and Punishment, which she needed to finish in a week along with a ten-page research paper.

  She followed the links to the photos page. There were plenty of pictures from the youth group, even though none of students’ names were listed. What was she doing? Did she really expect staring at photos of strangers would help? Besides, if Rose was part of Nick’s youth group, wouldn’t he have been able to identify her?

  But what if Rose only came to St. Margaret’s with her family on Sundays? It would be impossible for anybody at a church that size to know everyone else. So how in the world could they find her? She thought for a moment about calling Carl, but he had been through so much the past two days. Now he and Sandy w
ere probably going crazy trying to get everything ready for Thursday’s dinner to celebrate the center’s opening. It was going to be fancy, and having Senator Abernathy speak would draw a lot of people in as well, she suspected.

  Some music. That’s what she needed to focus. She typed in the address for her favorite online radio station. She still had to get those calculus problems finished.

  The website loaded slowly, so she went back to the St. Margaret’s page while she waited. She had taken almost all Advanced Placement classes during her senior year in Yanji and still graduated with a 4.0. So far at Harvard, she hadn’t gotten lower than a 92 on any test or assignment. She could handle culture shock, weekly lab write-ups, and still find time to read a mystery or two a month. Why couldn’t she track down a single girl? It wasn’t like the city was overrun with homeschooled thirteen-year-olds named Rose. Maybe she would take Nick’s suggestion and visit the youth group tomorrow night. Her study group was meeting until about 5:30. What time did Nick say she should come?

  She clicked on the St. Margaret’s calendar of events. Youth group. Tuesday night, seven to nine. Well, she might make it. If she wasn’t already behind in every single class by then.

  Something on the bottom of the calendar caught her eye. Homeschool group field trip. Tour of the State House. Straightening up in her chair, Kennedy searched to see if there was more information about the homeschool group. She finally found a quick blurb under the women’s ministry tab:

  Our mission is to provide support to the homeschooling families in our congregation. We offer fellowship through field trips, cooperative learning experiences, and a quarterly homeschool moms’ support group. Contact Vivian Abernathy for details.

  Abernathy? What if …? No, it couldn’t be ... She did a quick google search for Wayne Abernathy. Her computer was running slower than normal, but by the time the image of his family finished loading, she had already read the caption.

  Wayne and Vivian Abernathy with their two children, Noah (age 16) and Jodie (age 12).