Cinderella's Big Sky Groom

by Christine Rimmer

  Lynn stood beside Mrs. Parchly, clutching little Jenny’s hand and shivering without her coat, as Ross called an ambulance and then the sheriff’s office.

  Once he’d made the calls, he beckoned Jenny. She let go of Lynn’s hand and went to him. Still crouching, so that his eyes and Jenny’s could meet on a level, he clasped her mittened hands. “Did you see which way the bad men went?”

  “No. Oh, no. One of them grabbed Sara by the back of her jacket…I mean, by my jacket…I mean—”

  “It’s okay. Settle down. Tell me slowly.”

  “I…um…Sara and me came out from the hall and saw the bad men. They were fighting with the lady.”

  “How many bad men?”

  “Two.”

  “Have you ever seen either of those men before?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. They had on those mask hats, like you wear when you’re skiing?”

  “Ski masks over their faces, is that what you’re saying?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Okay. Then what happened?”

  “One of them pushed the lady. She hit her head on the car and fell down. Sara got mad then. She started running toward them, shouting at them to leave that poor lady alone. Then the men started coming after us. Sara said, ‘Uh-oh. We better run.’

  “So we ran. Back the other way. But Sara was behind me then. And one of them caught her. I wanted to go help her, but Sara screamed at me to hurry, get away and get help. I ran. I didn’t look back until I got to our classroom. I…didn’t see where they went.” The sweet face started to crumple. “I don’t know where they went. I didn’t turn around again. I didn’t see. I only ran. I should’ve looked, shouldn’t I?”

  Ross held Jenny’s hands more tightly and stared hard into her eyes. “Jenny. Listen to me. You did just the right thing.” He looked up at Lynn and gestured with a quick toss of his dark head.

  She hurried to the child, gathered her up in her arms. Those small mittened hands closed around her neck. “I should have looked….” Jenny’s cold nose pressed against Lynn’s throat. She was sobbing now. Lynn felt the hot moisture of her tears. “Oh, what if we don’t find her? What if they do bad things to her?”

  “It’s okay, honey.” Lynn held Jenny tight. “We’ll find her. Don’t worry. She’s going to be all right….” Lynn realized she was murmuring the soothing words to herself as much as to the distraught child.

  Ross stood. “You’d better take her inside.” He turned to Mrs. Parchly, who wore an expression of horrified disbelief. “Does the school have a nurse?”

  Mrs. Parchly didn’t answer. She made a low, frightened sound.

  Lynn answered for her. “The nurse is only here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  Ross swore. “See if you can dig up some blankets, okay? Whatever you can find to keep this woman warm until the ambulance comes.”

  Lynn nodded, her nose brushing the soft little pom-pom at the crown of Jenny’s bright pink wool hat. “All right,” she said. Her voice sounded calm.

  But she didn’t feel calm. Inside, she was screaming.

  Screaming for Sara, with her fighter’s spirit and her unzippable mouth. Sara.

  Kidnapped.

  By two men in ski masks. Two thugs who thought nothing of roughing up a woman, knocking her unconscious to the ground and then leaving her there.

  Oh, God, Lynn’s heart cried. Sara! Where are you? Sara, please be all right….

  Lynn scanned the deserted parking lot, taking in the rows of cars, the silent trees. Steadily the snow came down, like something in a picture postcard, so pretty and white….

  “Go on, Lynn,” Ross said. “Get the blankets. I’ll stay here with the woman.”

  “Yes.” Lynn held the sobbing Jenny closer. “Yes, right away.”

  They went straight to the office, where Mrs. Parchly broke down. “Oh, this is terrible,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What have I done? I should have been watching. I shouldn’t have let them out of my sight.”

  Trish went right to her, led her to the cot in the small nurse’s cubicle down the hall. Lynn followed after, gratitude washing through her that Trish was here. Trish might be spoiled and self-absorbed sometimes. But she could be tough, too. She could keep her head in a crisis.

  Lynn passed Jenny to Trish as soon as Trish had made the secretary comfortable.

  “What in blue blazes is going on?” Trish demanded.

  Quickly, Lynn explained the situation.

  Trish sank to a chair, cradling Jenny, who by then was crying for her mother. “It’s all right, sweetie-pie,” Trish crooned. “Shh, it’s okay. Your mommy will be here. She’ll be here real soon….” She pointed to a cupboard. “The blankets are in there.”

  Lynn grabbed three of them, as well as a pillow, then whirled for the door again.

  “Take my coat,” her sister called after her. “It’s on that rack right by the door!”

  Lynn grabbed the coat, shoved her arms into the too-short sleeves and went out again.

  She heard the sirens in the distance just as she reached Ross’s side. Together they wrapped the blankets around the still-unconscious woman. Ross lifted her head enough to slide the pillow beneath it. When he pulled his hand away, drying blood clung to his fingers.

  “Oh, God…” Lynn whispered as the sirens screamed their way toward them.

  Ross sent her a steadying glance. “It felt like only a surface cut. And it’s not the blood on the outside that’s the problem, anyway.”

  She nodded. She knew her first aid. It would be the blood caught beneath the skull, causing uncontrollable swelling, that could end this woman’s life.

  “What’s happening here?” Lynn looked up. The principal, Mrs. Taggert, was standing over them. Trish must have alerted her. She knelt beside them. “Mrs. Sheppard…dear God.”

  Ross looked up. “Your secretary says she’s a teacher.”

  “Yes. Mrs. Angela Sheppard. She just left my office, not ten minutes ago.” Mrs. Taggert glanced toward the entrance to the parking lot. “There’s the ambulance. Good.”

  The white van, lights flashing, came toward them. The sheriff’s department SUV was right behind it.

  They took Angela Sheppard, who remained unconscious, to Whitehorn Memorial Hospital.

  Recently elected sheriff Rafe Rawlings collected statements from everyone. In the meantime, his partner, a new deputy, Shane McBride, secured the parking lot and then scoured the area for signs of the two masked men and the stolen child. Shane didn’t find much, but he did discover Angela Sheppard’s purse, under the car, right near where she had fallen.

  Danielle and Jessica McCallum arrived to pick up their daughters before Rafe and Shane had finished their work.

  Lynn would never forget the look of utter desolation on her dear friend’s face when they told her that her child was missing. Danielle remained calm throughout. A deadly, terrifying kind of calm. Sterling McCallum, Jenny’s adoptive father and a special investigator in the sheriff’s office, appeared a few minutes later. After a quick session with the sheriff, the deputy, the principal and Ross, where the others brought him up to speed on the situation, he insisted that Danielle go home with Jessica and Jenny.

  At two-thirty, Ross left to return to his office.

  He took Lynn aside before he went.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

  She nodded.

  “I’ve got appointments at three and four o’clock, but I’ll come to your house as soon as I can get away.”

  She only stared at him, wondering what that meant, if he was putting out some hope for the two of them now—or if he just wanted to be certain that she was keeping it together, that emotionally she was managing to deal with the horror of Sara’s disappearance.

  He peered at her more closely. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I am fine.”

  “All right, then.” And he was gone.

  A few minutes later Lynn volunteered to take the prostrate Mr
s. Parchly home. She stayed there with the secretary until Mr. Parchly arrived at four. Then Lynn drove to the McCallums’ house, where for two hours she sat at the kitchen table with Danielle. Jessica made sandwiches. Lynn ate hers by rote, hardly tasting it, worried sick about Sara, hoping Jenny would come through this all right.

  Jenny’s pediatrician, Carey Hall Kincaid, had already dropped by to see the child. Now Jenny was resting in her room, her dog Sugar in bed with her, a special treat, which Jessica had allowed because of the circumstances.

  They went over the few facts that the sheriff and the deputy had discovered. Jessica added that Rafe Rawlings and Shane McBride had already begun gathering what information they could on the history of Angela Sheppard. Maybe something in the woman’s past would tell them why two thugs in ski masks might have been after her. Better yet, perhaps she’d regain consciousness soon and tell them herself.

  Carefully they all avoided speculation about where Sara might be right now, though Lynn felt certain the scary subject was foremost in each of their minds.

  Danielle grew somewhat agitated as the time crawled by. She wanted to be at home, she said. Maybe, somehow, Sara or the men who had taken her would try to reach her there. Jessica reminded her that Rafe Rawlings did have a deputy stationed at her house, that the man could handle anything that happened there. But Danielle said she needed to be there, just in case; she had to be the one to answer if an important call did come in.

  Sterling came home at five minutes of six. He had no news, but asked Danielle if she had a recent picture of Sara. They would put it on a flyer and run off several thousand. Then tomorrow they could start calling around, asking everyone they knew to come in and pick up a stack of the things, to plaster all over every available bulletin board and telephone pole for miles around.

  Danielle stood. “I have her school picture. At my house—which is where I’m going now.”

  “I really wish you’d stay with us,” Jessica suggested one more time.

  But Sterling said, “She’s right. If a call does come in, she should be there to answer it.”

  Danielle spoke to Sterling again. “If you’ll follow me over there, I’ll give you the picture.”

  Lynn offered to go along, to stay with her for the night.

  Danielle shook her head. “Go on home now. I’ll have the deputy there with me, if I need anyone.”

  “But—”

  “Lynn. I’m all right. And I’m used to handling things on my own.”

  Lynn looked at her friend’s pale, set face and wondered about Danielle’s husband. Where was the man? Would Danielle try to reach him, now that their child was missing?

  Lynn wanted to ask. But she feared that such questions would only dredge up more misery.

  “You’ll call me. If there’s anything…?”

  “You know I will.”

  Lynn got into her Blazer and went home. The snow had stopped by then, leaving a few inches of crystalline whiteness layering the yards of the houses she passed, and piled along the curbs in muddy mounds.

  At home she found Ross’s Mercedes parked in front of the house—and Trish’s little compact waiting in the driveway.

  She discovered them both sitting in the living room. Neither looked overjoyed at the presence of the other.

  Trish announced sourly, “He said you were expecting him. So I went ahead and let him in.” She stood. “Where were you?”

  “At the McCallums’ house. With Danielle.”

  “Danielle. That poor woman. How is she?”

  “She’s holding up incredibly well. Considering.”

  “Thank the Lord for small favors,” Trish declared. She cast a sideways glance at Ross, then spoke to Lynn again. “Walk me to the door?”

  “Trish. You don’t have to leave.”

  Trish only waved a hand at that remark. Lynn followed her to the entrance hall, where Trish leaned close and spoke in a whisper, for Lynn’s ears alone. “You’re still in love with him. I know that. And you know what? I think he’s just crazy over you. I think you better take him back.”

  Lynn made a face at her sister and pitched her voice equally low. “A few days ago, you said you hated him.”

  Trish shrugged and leaned close again. “He’s not my favorite person in the world, I admit it. But hey. If you love him, well, you’re my sis and I want you to have him.”

  Lynn wished it could be that simple.

  Trish seemed to think that it was. “Sometimes, Lynnie, the best way to get what you want is to just go ahead and go after it, you know?”

  It was Lynn’s turn to shrug. She touched her sister’s shoulder fondly. “I was so grateful today, that you were there.”

  Now Trish was grinning. “Kept my head pretty good, didn’t I?”

  “You were terrific.”

  “That poor little Sara. Lord, I hope she’s all right. How’s Mrs. Parchly?”

  “She’ll get through it. We all will. Somehow.”

  “Amen to that.” Trish pulled open the door and paused on the threshold, where she whispered some more. “I mean it. You want that man, you take him. He’s a goner. I can see it when he looks at you.” Her green eyes gleamed. “And he does have all that nice money, you know. Now, I’m not saying a girl should marry a man for his money. But all in all, I personally would rather be rich.”

  “Get out of here.”

  With a wink and a chuckle, Trish went on her way.

  Lynn took a minute, standing there in the front hall, to gather her nerve. Then she marched back into the living room, where Ross was waiting.

  He’d left his seat at the end of the sofa and wandered over to the old upright piano in the corner. He was studying the cluster of family photographs arranged in a variety of ornate frames on the high-backed lid.

  Lynn drew to a halt several feet from him.

  He turned to her, and she saw the yearning in his eyes. Her heart rose. Yes, she thought. Say it, Ross. Oh, please, say the words….

  But then he only gestured at the photographs. “Your father was a handsome man.”

  She contained her disappointment and answered him in kind. “Yes. And a good man, too.”

  “Blue eyes. Like yours.”

  “That’s right.”

  “This piano…?”

  “My mother’s.”

  “Do you play?”

  “Not as well as my mother did, but I have been known to pound out a tune or two now and then.”

  A silence fell. He seemed not to know what to say next.

  So she went ahead and challenged, “What is it, Ross? Why are you here?”

  He answered too quickly. “I was worried about you.”

  “Well, I’m just fine. You can see that.”

  He looked doubtful—or maybe it was only that he didn’t want to believe her. If he believed her, then to his mind he’d have no reason to linger.

  “You’ve returned my shoe—or at least, I know where it is now.” On the floor of her classroom. Where she’d dropped it when she threw herself into his arms. “And I’ve just told you, for about the tenth time, that I am fine. There’s no real reason for you to stay. Unless you want to stay.”

  He took a long time to reply. And when he did, his voice was harsh and low. “Damn it. You know what I want.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you just reach out and take it?”

  He closed his eyes, turned his head away.

  “Ross. Please…” She took a step toward him.

  “No,” he said. “You can do better than someone like me.”

  “Oh, Ross. If you’ll only—”

  He silenced her by raising his hand. “I’d better go now.”

  “I’m not asking you to go.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He muttered, “Good night, Lynn.” Then he strode around her and right on out the front door.

  She gave him ten minutes. Then she went after him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Twenty-six minutes later, she was knocking at his d
oor.

  It took him about three more minutes to answer. She forgave him for that. After all, it was a big house.

  “What in hell are you doing here?” he growled when he finally opened the door.

  “Lovely to see you, too.” And it was, actually. He had switched his boots for moccasins and traded his fine sweater and slacks for a pair of faded jeans and a gray sweatshirt. “You look comfortable.”

  “I was getting there.”

  “Past tense. You mean, the sight of me has made you uncomfortable?”

  “What do you want, Lynn?”

  “I believe we’ve been through all that. May I come in?”

  He didn’t budge.

  Maybe he needed to hear a few cold, hard facts. She decided to provide them.

  “Ross. There is a child I love out there somewhere in this cold winter night. She could be hurt. She could be—God forgive me for saying it—she could be dead. If she’s alive, I know she is terrified. Every time I think of her, I want to scream. I want to tear out my hair. And I want to do what you did when you found out your wife was cheating on you. That is to say, I want to throw up.”

  He was glowering at her. Lynn didn’t let that stop her. “In addition to that lost child, there is a woman alone, without that child, her child. And without her husband. With only a sheriff’s deputy and a telephone—a telephone that most likely is not ringing—to keep her company tonight.”

  A gust of icy wind blew across the wide front deck. Lynn shivered, pulled her coat closer around her. “I told you I was fine. Well, compared to that child and that woman, I am. And I have been thinking. Sara is alone, except for the cold-blooded monsters who took her. And Danielle is alone—because, she said, she’s used to being that way. But I don’t want to be alone, Ross. I want to be with you.”

  Lord, it did look as if, just maybe, she had gotten through to him. He wasn’t scowling anymore.

  He asked, very quietly, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am. Now, would you please let me in? It’s cold out here.”