Beneath the Surface

by Lynn H. Blackburn

  Was she going to die?

  25

  Ryan pulled into the emergency department loop at two in the morning. He ran inside.

  When he found Leigh, he was going to give her a piece of his mind for not answering his calls.

  After he kissed her.

  Priorities.

  The waiting room teemed with people, all of whom looked worse for wear, but not like they were about to die. Based on the way the last eight hours had gone out on the interstate, he could only imagine how crazy things had been here.

  The security guard waved him through and he made his way to the nurses station. He leaned over the desk and waited for Miss Edna to look up from the computer screen.

  “I see you standing there dripping all over my floor, Investigator Parker,” she said. “Do you need anything or are you looking for Leigh?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m looking for Leigh and want to stay out of your way.”

  “Haven’t seen her lately. Sure she’s back there somewhere. Go find your girl, but take that soggy jacket off and hang it in the break room first.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ryan hung up the jacket and turned to leave as Keri slipped into the room and slid down the wall, tears streaming. “Keri, are you okay?”

  “No.” She didn’t elaborate. “Please go away.”

  He was torn. He wanted to help, but he guessed Keri’s tears were either a result of a specific patient or a buildup from the stress of the entire evening. She might need a few minutes alone to pull herself together.

  Still, it rankled him to leave her there.

  “I’m fine, Ryan. Go find Leigh. And no, I don’t know where she is. It’s been a crazy night.”

  She wiped her face and leaned her head against the wall.

  “Okay,” he said. He squeezed her shoulder and earned himself a weak smile.

  He walked down one side of the hallway. No Leigh.

  Fear twisted in his stomach, but he fought against it. Wyatt Jenkins was gone. His evil couldn’t go any further. Leigh wasn’t in danger, and overreacting wouldn’t be good for their relationship.

  Their relationship. He liked the sound of that.

  His phone buzzed and his pulse quickened. Maybe—but no. Not Leigh. Gabe.

  “Parker.”

  “Where’s Leigh?”

  “What do you mean where’s Leigh?” Ryan asked.

  “I mean have you seen her? Talked to her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I need you to find her now,” Gabe said.

  “You’re freaking me out, man. What’s going on?”

  “Wyatt Jenkins wasn’t the killer.”

  Ryan stopped in the middle of the hallway. “What?”

  “Adam’s been working all day on Wyatt’s financials. Sabrina found some common IP address or something. I’m not sure how she did it, but somehow she figured out where the money came from. Wyatt’s been selling drugs. Lots of them. And when they followed that trail, they found video footage of him in Raleigh the night Leigh’s brakes were cut. He couldn’t have done it.”

  “What about the blood on the chain saw?”

  “Animal.”

  Ryan ran down the hall, bursting through each door. “Have you seen Leigh?” he asked whoever was inside.

  Every time, his question was met with the same answer. “No.”

  “Get Adam to track Leigh’s phone,” he told Gabe. “I’m on my way to the security office here to see if we can find her in the building.”

  “On it. I’ll call you back.” The urgency in Gabe’s voice scared him almost as much as anything else. Gabe was worried.

  Gabe never worried. About anything.

  Ryan ran to the nurses station and didn’t bother with the niceties. “Miss Edna, we can’t find Leigh. If you see her, please have her call me immediately.”

  Miss Edna’s expression went from annoyed to worried as he spoke.

  “You find our girl,” she called to him as he ran back down the hall.

  It took him two minutes to reach the security office for the hospital system. One of the guards was standing in the doorway. This guy had a deep tan. Must be the guy back from Hawaii. “Miss Edna called us,” he said. “She says Leigh’s missing. We’re pulling up footage from the ED now.”

  Ryan’s eyes burned at the sight of Leigh on the screen minutes after she arrived. She spoke to Miss Edna. Then raced down the hall. They traced her actions in high speed for six hours. At ten-thirteen she leaned against a wall for a moment, the expression on her face a mixture of fatigue and satisfaction.

  How he wished he knew what she’d been thinking about.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and it looked like she was texting someone.

  Then she looked up like someone had called her name. She made her way down the hall and entered room 23. She backed out of it within five seconds and bumped into someone. Then she reentered the room.

  Five minutes later, a scrub-clad person came out of the room with a stretcher. The body on the stretcher was covered with a blanket.

  Leigh did not follow the stretcher.

  And over the next thirty minutes, she did not leave that room.

  “Go back and follow the stretcher.” The security guard switched to a different camera and forwarded it to ten-fifteen.

  “There.” Ryan pointed to the monitor. Same person pushing the same stretcher.

  They followed the stretcher down the hall and into a different room. Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Leigh emerged in a wheelchair. The person pushing the wheelchair still had on scrubs and a mask, but Leigh appeared to be in street clothes. Her head was drooped, as if she were asleep.

  More cameras and angles showed the trek through the hospital and out the opposite side.

  “There are a lot of offices on this side of the building,” the security guard said. “Not many people use these entrances on the weekends.”

  His phone buzzed.

  “What is it, Gabe?”

  “Adam says Leigh’s phone last pinged in the area of the hospital, but it’s been powered off. He can’t find it.”

  Ryan filled him in on what he had seen on the video footage.

  “I’m on my way,” Gabe said.

  Ryan didn’t bother arguing with him. He was too busy watching the screen in silent horror as Leigh was rolled out into the pouring rain and loaded into the back of a minivan. The kidnapper—he refused to think of him as a murderer in this case—folded the wheelchair with quick movements and tossed it into the back of the minivan before running to the driver’s side. Within seconds, the van disappeared from view.

  “Can you get any sort of read on the license plate?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s obscured,” the guard said. They tried to see it from several angles, but it was caked with dirt. Between the dirt and the heavy rain, they couldn’t even tell what state had issued the tag.

  The guard turned to him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “With everything going on, we’ve been focused on the ED tonight.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. We, uh, we’re gonna need that footage.”

  The guard who’d been finding all the correct cameras waved a hand at him. “Already on it. Probably take me an hour, but I’ll have it on a flash drive ASAP. Or I can email it somewhere . . .”

  “Dr. Sabrina Fleming.” Ryan pulled her contact information up on his phone and read off the number. “Ask her how she wants it.”

  They were going to owe Sabrina a year’s salary by the time this was over. He didn’t care. He’d pay her out of his own pocket if she could find this van.

  He stumbled out of the room.

  How? What had they missed? Who was this mystery person in the mask?

  He racewalked back to the ED. “Miss Edna, where’s Keri?”

  “Oh, hon, she went home a little while ago. Lost a patient.” She clucked her tongue. “I told her to skedaddle. Things are busy, but not anything we can’t handle.”

  His phone
rang again. Sabrina. “Tell me you’ve got something good,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Ryan. Truly. I was trying . . .”

  “None of this is your fault. Don’t go there.” He gave her the description of the van and the time it left the hospital.

  “We’ll find it,” she said.

  He walked to room 23. A young patient sat there with his mom. He looked dazed. She looked exhausted. “I’m sorry, do you mind if I look around the room for a moment?”

  The poor mom barely had the energy to lift one shoulder in assent. He walked around the room. Nothing obvious. He grabbed the trash cans and slid them out into the hallway. He dumped out the bag with the sheets and bedding. A thud grabbed his attention and he pawed through the pile with no regard to germs and bodily fluids.

  Leigh’s phone rested at the bottom.

  He powered it on. Pulled up her text messages.

  She’d been sending one to him . . .

  Hey . . . You need to know that I had a crush on you in high school. I used to daydream about you asking me to the prom. Or asking me to the movies. Or dinner. Or even just to walk down to the dock and watch the stars. You may think I’m reacting to the trauma of the past few weeks, but if I had to go through it all again, as long as it brought you to me, it would be worth it. Be safe out there, and quit worrying about whether or not I can handle being with a cop. As long as you’re the cop, I can handle it. I lo

  The text ended there. Had she been going to say she loved him?

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at her phone. At some point, he heard Gabe calling his name. When he looked up, Gabe came straight for him and pulled him into a bear hug. “We’re gonna find her, man. I’ve got everyone on it. We’ll get her back.”

  Leigh woke with a pounding headache and a kink in her neck that she worried might never be straightened out.

  At least she was alive.

  The relief lasted the three seconds it took her brain to remember what the killer had done to his victims.

  Maybe she’d have been better off dead.

  She blinked her eyes. Nothing. Either she’d gone blind or the room was black as pitch. At this point, it didn’t matter. One way or the other, she couldn’t see a thing.

  She assessed her environment as much as she could. She was lying on her side on something hard. Probably the floor. She couldn’t move her hands much. With every movement of her arms, the ties that bound her wrists dug further into her skin. Her ankles were bound as well, but she was able to swing them forward. Nothing that way either. At least she wasn’t in danger of plunging to her death if she moved too far in one direction or the other.

  It was chilly, but not frigid. A mustiness and earthiness permeated the air. Was she underground?

  She gritted her teeth against the pain, stretched her hands out, and rolled back onto them. Wood. She might be underground, but she wasn’t lying on dirt. Maybe a cellar of some kind?

  She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. She pulled at the threads of her memory, but all she could snatch was a masked face and flashes of the hospital hallways as she’d been pushed in a wheelchair. She strained to recall leaving the hospital but couldn’t drag anything from her subconscious.

  If it was still nighttime, that might explain the total darkness of her dungeon. And the silence. What she wouldn’t give for the blissful white noise of her ceiling fan, the whir of the dishwasher, the hum of the furnace.

  She couldn’t think about heat. Or soft beds. Neither of those things would help her right now. Although if she survived to experience them again, she would never take them for granted.

  She assessed her physical condition next. She would have welcomed a heated blanket, but she wasn’t so cold she feared hypothermia. Yet. And while her body ached, no particular sensation made her suspect she had a broken bone.

  She could breathe. Definitely a positive.

  She could swallow. Wiggle her fingers. Toes. She could feel the surface underneath her, so she hadn’t lost total feeling in any of her extremities. Although every one of her limbs felt like it weighed one hundred pounds each, she could move them if she concentrated. All good signs. And the heaviness should lift as the drug continued to wear off.

  She was hungry, but not ravenous. That could be a leftover effect from whatever drug she’d been given to knock her out, but it could also mean it hadn’t been that long since she’d been taken.

  Had anyone even noticed her absence?

  On a normal night they would. But tonight? Assuming it was still tonight. Regardless, this night hadn’t been in the same hemisphere as normal. It had been without a doubt the worst night she’d ever had since going to work in the emergency department—and that was before some lunatic made off with her.

  She’d held off as long as she could, but now she allowed Ryan’s image to flood her mind. He’d been there all along, on the edge of every thought, but she’d refused to allow him to take his accustomed spot—front and center.

  But he took it now. His strong chin. His five o’clock shadow that made an appearance by three every day. His black wavy hair. His dark brown eyes. Eyes she had hoped to be lost in for the rest of her life.

  She allowed herself to venture into territory they hadn’t explored yet. She knew he was the only one for her. He always had been. Every guy she’d ever dated had failed to measure up because each one had been in competition with the man of her dreams.

  And when he moved from the dream world to reality, he’d been even better than she’d imagined.

  He would be frantic when he realized what had happened.

  And losing her . . . it would consume him. He would take responsibility for it. He would blame himself, and it would destroy him.

  Oh, he would fight it. He would try. For Rebecca. For Caleb and Zoe. But his life would never be the same. He’d spend all his free time trying to find her body. A body that was probably going to lose its head, hands, and feet at any moment.

  Father, please. Please help him. Help him know it wasn’t his fault. That I don’t blame him. That no one should blame him.

  She lay there until the pain in her arms drove her to risk sitting. Her head continued to clear. The fog from whatever that drug was dissipated and with it went her acceptance of her impending doom.

  “No.” Her voice was rough and scratchy. The word came out more whisper than defiant battle cry.

  But that’s what it was.

  She would not sit here and wait for this madman to take her. She had no idea what she’d ever done to make him come after her, but he was going to have to work a lot harder than this if he wanted to dump her body in an unmarked grave.

  26

  Ryan finally agreed to return to the sheriff’s office after they’d interviewed everyone on the clock that night. All were accounted for. There was nothing left to do but look at the entire case in light of this new evidence.

  Gabe followed him, headlights shimmering in the rain that continued to fall. He knew Gabe was following him to be sure he went straight to the office and didn’t go do something rash.

  But what else could he do?

  Their only suspect was dead, and as it turned out, he wasn’t their killer after all.

  His windshield wipers slammed back and forth in a violent rhythm, struggling to keep the water off the glass. He pounded his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Why?” he yelled as loud as he could. No one could hear him.

  Maybe there was someone who could.

  No. He knew he could. But would he listen? Would he act?

  “Help me!” He screamed the words. “Please. Help me find her.”

  He knew other people were praying. Rebecca was praying. Half the church had probably already been pulled from their slumber with the call to storm heaven with prayers.

  His prayers probably wouldn’t make much difference. They were barely even prayers. More like the frantic cries of a desperate man.

  Although the apostle Peter hadn’t mince
d words. When he had gone walking on the water and then had started to drown, he’d called out, “Save me.”

  And what was it Jesus had said to him? “O ye of little faith.”

  “God,” he whispered, “it’s hard to have faith when people are so . . . so . . . bad.”

  Although Jesus did say he’d come to save the sick. That the well didn’t need a physician. All those bad people . . . he’d come for them.

  He’d come for the Clay Fowlers of the world. For the Wyatt Jenkinses.

  And for the Ryan Parkers. The guys who didn’t like the way God played the game, so they got mad, took their ball, and went home.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. No yelling or screaming this time. A statement of fact. None of this made any sense.

  He pulled into the parking garage beside the sheriff’s office. Gabe parked beside him.

  Help us. He put the prayer on repeat in his mind as he braced himself for what he would find when he got inside. Help us.

  The homicide office had been turned into the command center for the search for Leigh Weston. Whiteboards, files, and laptops were everywhere. Sabrina had taken up three desks. Adam had moved to the desk beside her.

  Like Cinderella after the clock struck twelve, Sabrina had returned to her typical attire of sweatshirts and skinny jeans. But it wasn’t the attire that startled Ryan.

  Sabrina was a mess. She looked up when he came in, swollen-eyed and shoving a collection of used tissues into a trash can.

  “I’m sorry, Ryan.” She tried, without success, to stifle a sob. “I missed something. But I’m going to find this beast.” Her lips flattened into a tight line and she yanked a fresh tissue from the box with so much force the box flew across the desk.

  Anissa wasn’t in much better shape. No tears or sobbing, but her glacial demeanor was almost as terrifying as Sabrina’s breakdown.

  “We’ve called everyone in,” she said. “The captain’s approved all the overtime we need. I’ve got our best video guy combing all the security footage at the hospital. He’s trying to find the masked person on the tape. Hasn’t had any luck yet, but if anyone can find it, he will.”