Unplanned (A Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Novel Book 1)

by Alana Terry

  “She’s been like this since we brought her in.” The driver stepped into the light. He was older than Kennedy expected, built like a boxer and mostly bald. He glowered at Kennedy before he set the girl down on the couch. Kennedy cringed but didn’t have time to think of all the germs and dust mites and rodents that probably made their home in its cushions.

  The child covered her face with her hands and drew her knees to her chest. “I need my dad.” Fitful sobs wracked her petite body.

  Kennedy sensed the men’s hopeful stares but forced them out of her mind. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be ok.”

  The girl kept her face buried, and her shoulders heaved. “I don’t want any more medicine.”

  Kennedy shot the two men a look, but they avoided her glare. “What’s she talking about?”

  “We have some pills. Doctor says it’ll make her feel calmer. Anxiety medicine.”

  Kennedy didn’t bother asking what sort of doctor would prescribe pills for a kidnapped child. “How long has she been here?” She forced an air of authority into her voice and stood up straight, stretching her spine tall.

  “Half an hour. Maybe more.”

  “Have you had anything to eat?” she asked the child, who cringed when Kennedy touched her shoulder.

  “She threw up on the way here,” the bald man grumbled. “Gonna stink up the car for weeks.”

  Kennedy reached out one more time. If she could only get her to look up … What had these men already done to her? “Here, let me feel your forehead, ok?”

  The girl glanced up, and Kennedy’s breath caught somewhere in the middle of her throat. She would have recognized that face anywhere, even without the pearl earrings. Heart fluttering, she did what she could to keep her expression neutral. She gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile. The girl’s brow was damp with sweat but didn’t feel feverish. Her collarbone strained with each irregular breath.

  “I need more light,” Kennedy told them.

  “Plug in the lamp,” the driver told his partner and jerked his flashlight toward the wall. Pain pulsed to the back of Kennedy’s head as soon as Dustin switched the light on. She blinked. The girl’s lips were outlined in grayish blue, and her mouth hung open in an inaudible little gasp. Her chest moved as if trying to inhale, but no air went in.

  How long had they said this had been going on? “Is there a shower here?” Kennedy heard the worried strain in her own voice. “Something that could make some steam?”

  “What good’s that gonna do?” the driver demanded.

  “It can open up all the airways. Help her breathe more evenly.” Kennedy bit her lip while the men looked at each other.

  “We don’t got a water heater.”

  The girl’s shoulders shuddered as her body attempted another jerky inhale. They had to do something.

  “Is there a way to boil some water?”

  The bald man shook his head, and the girl let out a long wheezy sob.

  Kennedy reached for her clammy hand. “You can go buy a face steamer. They have them at just about any drugstore.” Her heart was thudding loudly in her chest. Would they do that much? Would these kidnappers have the decency to help a little girl from suffocating on their mildewy couch?

  “Get over here.” The balding one gestured with his head, and both men moved to the base of the stairs and conferred in low whispers.

  Keeping one eye on the pair, Kennedy stroked the girl’s hair and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Is your name Jodie?”

  The child bent over. The wheezing sound from her lungs made Kennedy vicariously faint-headed.

  “Jodie Abernathy?” Kennedy asked again.

  A single tear splashed into the girl’s lap as her lungs forced a noisy gulp of air. Her breath was as choppy as a windy lake in the fall, but she didn’t respond.

  Kennedy wanted to hug her, to make her body into a shield that would ward off panic and terror. “It’s all right to be scared,” she whispered before Dustin stepped back into the light.

  “Face steamer, it’s called?”

  Kennedy nodded. She didn’t trust her voice. He returned to his partner.

  “I think we’ve talked before.” Kennedy kept her tone soft. She was afraid that saying too much might trigger another wave of panic. “Did you make a phone call from St. Margaret’s on Sunday?”

  Jodie sniffed and gave an almost imperceptible nod. A small jolt sent Kennedy’s heart galloping one more time.

  She had found Rose.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Do you know these men?” Kennedy had a hundred questions and probably less than a minute to ask them all.

  “No.” Jodie sniffed again.

  Kennedy didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she let out the next torrent of queries. “Are you hurt? Did they make you do anything you didn’t want to do? Did they … did they force …” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Jodie shook her head, and relief radiated out of Kennedy’s core all the way to her fingertips, warming her whole body.

  The older man stomped up the stairs. “Don’t let them out of your sight,” he called down.

  Dustin didn’t look over at Kennedy and Jodie. “I know.”

  Kennedy watched the older one pass out of view. Was he going to get the steamer, then? Jodie’s breathing was a little quieter, and Kennedy hoped he wouldn’t change his mind. She held Jodie for several minutes, keeping her eye on Dustin, who stood at the bottom of the stairs scowling.

  She ran her hands through the girl’s hair. “How are you feeling?”

  “Thirsty.” Jodie was quieter now and hiccupping.

  Kennedy caught Dustin’s eye. “I think she might be dehydrated.”

  He stared at Jodie for a few silent seconds. “I have some water bottles upstairs,” he finally mumbled. “I’ll get one when Vinny gets back.”

  Kennedy sucked in her breath. “What about the bathroom?” She tried not to wince when she remembered the taste of the sulfur water from the tap. “Could she get a drink there?”

  “Whatever,” Dustin huffed.

  “Do you think you can stand by yourself?” Kennedy asked. She needed a chance to talk to Jodie privately. She stood up and then paused. Would Dustin come over and stop her? After a moment of waiting to see if he would protest, she helped Jodie to her feet, and they shuffled together to the bathroom.

  “Do you have any idea who these guys are?” Kennedy whispered once she shut the door. “Even a guess?”

  “Uh-uh.” Jodie’s wide eyes blinked in the flickering light from the bulb.

  “Are you having a little easier time breathing, at least?”

  Jodie scrunched up her face. “I just …” Her shoulders heaved with another choppy breath. “I just want my dad.”

  Kennedy didn’t want to think about Wayne Abernathy and what his role might be in this whole scenario. “I’m sure you do.” She should try to get more information. She should keep on asking Jodie questions until eventually the pieces fell into place. But she couldn’t. Not when the little indent of Jodie’s neck quivered each time she tried to inhale.

  Kennedy rubbed Jodie’s back. “Can you try to drink a little water?”

  “I want my dad.” Jodie took a noisy gasp in, and Kennedy paused to see if she would start hyperventilating again.

  What could she say to keep her from panicking? There had to be some sort of encouragement, some sort of comfort she could offer. “You go to St. Margaret’s, right?”

  Jodie nodded.

  “Well, you know how Pastor Carl and your Sunday school teachers are always talking about giving your worries to God?”

  “Yeah.” The response was appropriate, but Jodie didn’t sound at all convinced.

  “It’s a good idea. He’s here with us, you know.” Kennedy wondered how long they had before Dustin ran out of patience. “The Lord’s watching us right now. And I think he’s going to help us get out of this.” There was no real faith behind that
last statement, but Jodie’s body relaxed a little. “Do you know any Bible verses?” Kennedy asked.

  “Psalm 23.” Jodie wrinkled her nose when Kennedy turned on the water.

  “Psalm 23’s a good one.” Kennedy did her best to infuse her tone with encouragement while Jodie cupped her hands and took a small drink. “Do you want to say it together?”

  Jodie took a slow breath in and kept her face scrunched up after she swallowed the water from the sink. “The Lord is my …”

  “That’s enough.”

  Jodie and Kennedy both jumped when Dustin banged on the door. Kennedy wasn’t about to see how far his generosity ran. She stepped out of the bathroom, grateful to see he wasn’t wielding his gun. “We were just finishing up.”

  He grunted in response.

  Kennedy led Jodie back and didn’t flinch when Dustin cuffed her left hand back to the metal hook that stuck out of the wall. He frowned at Jodie, and Kennedy wondered if he would cuff her, too. Would that start off another panic attack?

  Instead, he went back to the wall by the stairs and spent the rest of the time before Vinny returned fiddling at the tool table and glancing at the stairs every so often. Kennedy’s mind spun in multiple directions at once. What she really needed was more time to talk to Jodie about Wayne Abernathy, about his campaign, about any enemies he had made. She had read enough political thrillers and watched enough action movies with her dad to know a desperate candidate could do about anything, even stoop to kidnapping. But why had they grabbed Kennedy, too?

  Her brain raced ahead, whizzing and gyrating. Puzzle pieces arranged themselves up in perfect rows faster than she had time to connect them all. A hot shower, that’s what she needed. A hot shower, some tea, and a notebook to jot down all her questions. Right now, she felt she could fill a whole composition book with them.

  “There weren’t no face steamers there.” The voice pierced the silence and made Kennedy wince. Vinny glowered down from the top of the stairs, his face set into an imposing scowl.

  Jodie’s tiny body quivered as he stomped down the stairs. Every step seemed to take twice as long as it should.

  “It will be all right,” Kennedy whispered, wondering if Jodie could guess how terrified she was, too.

  At the couch, Vinny crossed his arms and scrutinized Jodie. “She looks better.” Kennedy couldn’t tell if Vinny was making a simple observation or if he had decided Jodie’s condition was no longer serious.

  Kennedy stared past his ear and clenched her sweat-drenched palms. “Well, that’s the funny thing with asthma. Sometimes it gets better all by itself, and sometimes it gets so bad you’ll end up in the hospital.” She wondered if her roommate Willow would be impressed with her improv performance. Whatever happened, she couldn’t let them take Jodie back upstairs alone. They had to stay together. Are you listening, God?

  Vinny’s phone rang, and he stomped off to the far wall to answer it. Jodie breathed in deeply. “I don’t really have asthma.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Kennedy spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “But if they think you need more help, like you’re sick or something, they might let us stay together longer.”

  Jodie nodded and her hand crept toward Kennedy’s.

  “They’re probably not going to hurt us.” Kennedy hoped her voice sounded more confident than she felt.

  When Vinny got off the phone, he jerked his head, and Dustin joined him for another conference out of earshot.

  Kennedy waited a minute until the men were absorbed in their hushed whispers. “When did you get here?”

  “Just this morning.” Jodie wiped her nose with her palm. Kennedy thought she had made a mistake in asking. Would Jodie start hyperventilating again? But she needed answers. She had to strain her ears to hear what Jodie said next. “I went to my uncle Anthony’s to babysit. He was going to be out late, so he wanted me to stay overnight.”

  Revulsion bubbled up Kennedy’s throat. “Do you spend the night with your uncle very often?”

  Jodie shrugged. “Only since my aunt died. Sometimes he’s out late and needs help with Charlie.”

  Kennedy focused her gaze straight ahead and waited until the swell of suspicion and disgust settled back down in her gut. “So does your uncle know you’re here?”

  “No.” Jodie’s eyes grew wide. “They came about an hour after he left. And I don’t know what they did to Charlie.” Jodie buried her face in her hands. “They might have hurt him.”

  Kennedy couldn’t imagine being a thirteen-year-old and shouldering such a weighty responsibility. “Whatever happened isn’t your fault.” She prayed the Lord would give her the right words to say so Jodie could truly believe it.

  “But he’s so little. He just turned one last month.” Jodie’s voice hardly lifted over a whisper but was laden with terror. “He must have been so scared, and I wasn’t there …”

  “You don’t know if anything happened to Charlie, right? I mean, maybe he’s just fine and safe at home.”

  Jodie shook her head. “But then he’s all by himself. He doesn’t even walk yet.” A little sob forced its way out her throat.

  “Well, maybe your uncle stopped by to check on you. Or maybe he called and you weren’t there, so he went home. We don’t know.” Kennedy’s whole torso was quivering again, but she hoped Jodie wouldn’t notice. Her mind was spinning again. If Jodie’s uncle reported her missing, that would mean people were looking for them. They might get rescued, after all. She didn’t want to raise Jodie’s hopes, so she kept the thought secret and suggested, “Why don’t you say a prayer for Charlie?”

  Jodie dried her cheeks. “Do you really think that would help?”

  Kennedy swallowed down her doubts. “I’m sure of it.”

  “You want me to pray right here?”

  Kennedy glanced at Dustin behind the workbench and Vinny on the phone. “Don’t worry. They’re not paying attention.”

  “All right.” Jodie collected her breath. “God, please help Charlie not to be really scared. And we hope he’s at home right now and that someone’s there playing with him so he stays happy. Amen.”

  Kennedy wondered at the simplicity of this prayer compared to the hour-long discourses she was used to hearing back in Yanji. Somehow, she figured these few sentences meant as much to the Lord as a whole treatise would have. Kennedy was about to add a prayer of her own when Vinny slammed the phone back into his pocket and stomped toward the couch, fists clenched, eyes glaring. She felt Jodie’s whole body go rigid next to her.

  “All right. Your little coughing fit’s over. Time to take your medicine.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Jodie shut her eyes and shook her head weakly. “I don’t like those pills.”

  “I didn’t ask if you liked them,” Vinny snapped back. “Open your mouth.”

  “How many are there?” Kennedy asked when she saw more than one in his hand.

  “Four. She’s gotta take them all at once.”

  Kennedy had never heard of a dose that large for anxiety meds, especially for a child as small as Jodie.

  “I don’t like them,” Jodie moaned again.

  Even though her hand was still cuffed to the metal ring, Kennedy tried to position herself a little in front of Jodie. It wasn’t hard since Jodie scurried behind her, scrunching herself up in between Kennedy and the couch cushion.

  “Do you take these regularly?” Kennedy asked. If these men expected her to care for Jodie when she was hyperventilating, she was going to keep up her air of medical superiority at all costs. All the clues from the past few days — the phone, the uncle, the clinic, the kidnapping — played out in flashes in Kennedy’s mind. They were racing to set themselves in logical order, and the closer she got to the full picture, the more dread grew and made its home in the center of her gut.

  “My uncle gave me one after church.” Jodie was curled up in the couch, and Kennedy could hardly hear her. “It made me throw up.”

  “What medicine is it?” Kennedy
tried not to cower in front of Vinny, whose scowl radiated both impatience and contempt.

  “I already told you. It’s for anxiety.”

  Kennedy saw the hateful gleam in his eye. He was probably armed like his partner. She felt as nervous as she had as a child when she went ice skating on a frozen pond, trying hard to balance, all the while expecting the ice to crack beneath her at the slightest shift in weight.

  “Can she take them after she eats something?” Kennedy tried to speak confidently without being too abrasive, either. “That might help with the nausea.”

  Time. Kennedy needed more time. Time to think. Time to sort out all her thoughts. And a snack for both of them wouldn’t hurt, either.

  Vinny’s expression may as well have been etched in granite. “She takes them now.”

  “I don’t need them anymore. I don’t feel anxious at all.” Jodie’s voice was a pitiful little yelp squeaking out from behind the couch cushion.

  “Your uncle Anthony says you need them.”

  At the mention of Jodie’s uncle, Kennedy felt the floor had been slipped out from under her, like those inertia magic tricks when the magician pulls off the tablecloth.

  “My uncle?” the child squeaked. “He knows I’m here?”

  “We’ve been in contact,” Vinny answered gruffly. “And he wants you to take your pills.”

  Kennedy scratched her cheek. Jodie’s uncle. So he was involved. Thoughts collided against each other in Kennedy’s brain as the pieces of the puzzle zoomed into place. The uncle. The same man who had overheard Jodie’s phone call to the hotline phone. The same man who wanted her to get rid of her baby. Kennedy eyed the white tablets again as warning alarms screeched and squealed between her temples, unleashing a torrent of adrenaline and pure rage. How far along had Jodie said she was in the pregnancy? Five months?

  Kennedy kept herself positioned squarely between Jodie and Vinny. “She can’t take those.”

  He reached out to push her out of the way, but Kennedy slapped the pills out of his hand. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head to the side. Before he picked up the fallen tablets, she tried to sweep them away with her foot.