Unspoken Fear

by Hunter Morgan

  Rachel opened Mallory's bedroom door and flashed the beam quickly over her bed, just to be sure she was there. The diffused round beam caught the form of her little body curled up in her bed under a tangle of sheets. Rachel continued to move the beam across the room. Everything was as she had left it when she and Noah had kissed Mallory good night, assuring her that Mattie would be all right. Nothing was different, except that the night-light and the room air conditioner were both off.

  Satisfied, she passed the beam over the room one last time. As she moved it, she must have wiggled the batteries because it went off again. "Come on," she groaned softly, shaking it.

  The flashlight came back on, directing the light directly on Mallory's bed. That was when Rachel realized something wasn't right. Not trusting her own judgment, she started to walk slowly toward the bed, beam fixed on the rumpled covers that looked just like Mallory's sleeping form.

  Only not quite....

  Reaching the bed, she put out one hand, expecting to feel the warmth of Mallory's little body. An arm, a leg, maybe her hip. But the blanket collapsed under Rachel's touch. Mallory wasn't there. It had just looked like she was because of the way the sheet and blanket were piled.

  Rachel felt a flicker of apprehension, but she squelched it. There was no need to panic; her daughter was here somewhere. The little imp was probably on the floor on the other side of the bed. When she was younger, Mallory had fallen out of bed in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Or maybe she was curled up in her chair, asleep. In the large closet where the door was always propped open with a doll-house?

  But as Rachel checked each possibility, her heart raced a little faster.

  Mallory wasn't in her room.

  "She's probably downstairs with Noah," Rachel murmured aloud, in the hopes of convincing herself.

  The storm probably woke her, Noah got up with her, letting Rachel sleep. Rachel had always known he would be that kind of father. Together, they must have gone downstairs to investigate the electricity situation.

  More determined than afraid now, Rachel went back into the hall, letting the lousy flashlight lead the way. Normally, she walked around the house in the dark. She didn't need a flashlight. But tonight, she did.

  "Hey, guys?" she called softly as she came down the stairs, flashlight in one hand, railing under the other. She could hear the battery backup for her computer beeping, but otherwise the house was silent. "Noah? Mal?" Her voice got louder as she reached the bottom of the staircase, that unnamed dread growing again.

  No one answered.

  "Noah?" she called loudly. She turned right, entering the hall, passing the spare room and the bathroom on her way to the utility room. She flashed the beam of light. The dryer was open, clothes visible. There was a laundry basket on the floor and another on top of the washing machine. No Noah or Mallory, and the door on the breaker box was closed.

  "Noah, where are you?" She walked back out into the hall, checking the spare room and the bathroom on her way back to the kitchen. Now she was scared.

  Where were they? She looked around the kitchen, flashing the light beam that seemed to be getting dimmer. Chester was asleep under the table. But where were Noah and Mallory?

  Could they have gone outside?

  But why would they have done that? It was still raining. There was no way to turn the electricity back on from outside.

  Rachel moved slowly toward the kitchen door, studying every familiar object in the kitchen, looking for something out of place. She saw the chairs pushed in, legal pad of notes she and Noah had made still on the table. Two mugs on the counter beside the sink. Nothing was out of place or had been disturbed.

  Without thinking, she picked the phone up from its cradle on the wall and held it to her ear. She was a little unnerved but certainly not surprised when she heard no dial tone. They lost phone service out here more often than they lost electricity.

  She slowly hung up the phone, thinking she had her cell upstairs in her purse. But who was she going to call? The police? What was she going to say? She couldn't find her daughter and her ex in the dark? Considering the fact that Noah had already been hauled into the police station once in the last twenty-four hours, that wasn't a call she wanted to make if she didn't have to.

  They had to be outside.

  Rachel started for the door, and the flashlight beam waned again. Remembering there was another flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer, she backtracked, pulling open the drawer near the phone. The dim light showed a jumble of pens and pencils, baggie ties, a toothbrush, paper clips, and coupons, but no flashlight.

  She shoved the drawer shut in annoyance. Where was the red flashlight? She could have sworn she'd seen it there earlier in the evening when she'd grabbed a pen out of the drawer.

  Noah. He must have taken it. But where was he?

  Rachel went to the door again. As she reached for the doorknob, she stepped into something cold and wet on the hardwood floor. She immediately flashed the light downward, and the beam waned dangerously low.

  It was rainwater, tracked in from outside. And... she leaned over and, on closer inspection, spotted pieces of grass, or weeds, some dark soil. A large, muddy footprint. Footprints.

  She stepped back for a better look, leaning over to lower the pathetic flashlight over the little puddle. Definitely footprints... leading into the house.

  * * *

  Snowden wanted to drive, and Delilah didn't argue with him. It was his car, he was the chief of police, and he was the one who had left someone in charge who had screwed up the prisoner transfer.

  As they climbed in, she glanced at him in the semidarkness. He hadn't gone jogging tonight, at least hadn't come by her place. It was probably because of the rain. Or because he was annoyed that she had sent Lopez back to the Gibson place without getting his okay on it first. Truthfully, she hadn't expected him to find anything, or she would have thought it through a little better.

  Snowden was upset with himself, though. She could tell he was by the way he held his mouth, so tight that his sensual lips were almost pursed.

  "You mad at me?" she asked as he pulled out of the station.

  "Put your seat belt on."

  She grabbed the belt, clicked it securely.

  "No, I'm not angry with you, Sergeant Swift. It's just that we have a chain of command and you should have come to me before sending Officer Lopez back to the Gibsons."

  "That's not what I mean and you know it." She didn't know what made her do it, but she slid her hand across the seat to rest it on his thigh.

  His muscles tightened beneath her fingertips at once.

  "Delilah—" Her name seemed to catch in his throat.

  "I'm sorry," she said, keeping her hand on his thigh. "You're right. I got ahead of myself. I guess I was so sure Noah didn't have anything to do with the murders that I was hoping I could prove it to you."

  "You still sure?" He glanced at her quickly.

  They were just passing the Welcome to Stephen Kill sign. There were still a couple of spots of Ellen Hearn's blood on it, but no one but the police and the emergency workers knew that. If you stood back, it just looked like variations in the wood stain of the sign.

  "Sure what?" She pulled her hand back.

  "Noah's not involved."

  "I don't know what I'm sure of anymore. I went home thinking I shouldn't have locked Mattie up. He looked so bewildered when they brought him in. So scared. He didn't look like a man who could have done to the judge what was done to her."

  "They never do," Snowden said softly.

  For a moment Delilah was quiet. She listened to the steady swish, swish of the windshield wipers. The storm was passing. She couldn't hear thunder any longer, and the sky was dark.

  "I don't know what I think," she finally said. "About this case. About anything." She looked at him. "About you and me."

  "There can't be a you and me, Delilah."

  "I know that. I keep telling myself that." She stared straight ahead
at the pavement illuminated by the cruiser's high beams. Toads hopped on the wet blacktop. "But I can't stop thinking about you," she murmured, almost mesmerized by the rhythm of the windshield wipers, the smell of his clean, starched uniform and the masculine scent that clung to him.

  "If it's any consolation," he spoke so quietly that she had to listen hard to hear him, "I think about you too. About your hair, about your eyes, the sound of your voice—"

  "Alpha 1-A, come in," interrupted the dispatcher's voice over the radio.

  Delilah hit the speakerphone button. "This is Alpha 1-A, Sergeant Swift here."

  "You with the chief, Swift?"

  "Affirmative."

  "Got a call from a motorist on County Road 307 who reported one of our cars in a ditch, quarter of a mile west of the Route 22 intersection. Hit a pole. Some power lines are apparently down. We've got a call into the electric co-op."

  Delilah looked at Snowden. "Sounds like our missing car. Any reported injuries?" she asked the dispatcher.

  "Motorist said the car had been abandoned," came the crackly voice.

  It always amazed Delilah that as far as technology had come in the last decade, police radios were still sometimes plagued with static. She glanced at Snowden. He nodded and mouthed "Backup."

  "We're headed for the Gibson property. We'll check out the car as we go by and then continue on. Send a car out to the site of the abandoned cruiser, tow truck, you know the drill, and send backup to the Gibson property."

  "Ten-four."

  "Out," Delilah murmured, and punched the speakerphone off. "So our mentally retarded boy can't read or write, but he can drive a car?" She glanced out into the darkness. "What the hell's going on here, Snowden?"

  * * *

  "I want my mommy!" the little girl whimpered out of the darkness.

  "Shhhhh," Azrael shushed, heart pounding, hands shaking.

  This wasn't the way this was supposed to happen. It was all wrong.

  A lump rose in the angel's throat. It was all wrong, but there was no way to right it. No way to turn back. God had spoken. God had ordered that Mattie must die for his sins... or was it for his mother's sins?

  Azrael couldn't remember.

  It was all so confusing. God's voice had gotten lost in the storm somehow. Lost in the driving rain. The pain that wouldn't cease.

  "I want to go. I want my mommy," the little girl repeated.

  Azrael stood in the dark, the beam of the red flashlight pointed down on the wall of Bibles that separated the Angel from duty to God.

  The child began to cry softly, reminding Azrael of another child's cry. No, not a child. A monster! A creature with two heads.

  "Mattie, come out here!" the angel demanded angrily.

  There was movement behind the wall of Bibles.

  "Leave him alone!" The little girl's voice was surprisingly strong.

  Azrael did not want to injure the child. It was not the child God had ordered His Angel of Death to kill. Not tonight, at least. But Azrael could not disregard the order. Could not fight the need that burned inside.

  The Angel of Death gripped the knife tighter and took a step forward.

  * * *

  "Our car, all right." Delilah stood beside Snowden, staring at the wrecked police car in the ditch, illuminated by the headlights of his cruiser. "Nobody here. I checked the car again. Can't see on the other side, but until we know power's been cut, no one belongs over there. No way to tell if any of the downed lines are hot."

  He glanced away, his stomach balling into a knot. This just kept getting better and better. There wasn't a chance in hell he was going to keep his job. A serial killer he couldn't catch. A murdered judge. A shaky arrest of a mentally incompetent man. Then he escapes, steals a police car, and wrecks it. He might as well start sending out resumes now. The only bright spot in the whole lousy picture was the thought that if he was no longer a member of the force, there was no reason why he couldn't date Delilah.

  She came to stand beside him and waited in silence, looking up to him. In the distance, he could hear the whine of a police siren approaching.

  "I think we need to get to the Gibson place," she said. "That's got to be where he's headed."

  Snowden walked to the car in silence, and she climbed in on the other side. "Call in and let them know we're leaving the scene."

  As chatty as Delilah could be sometimes, she seemed to recognize his need for silence. He shifted the car into reverse, cut off the bubble lights so Mattie wouldn't see them coming, shifted into drive, and hit the gas, fishtailing on the wet pavement.

  * * *

  Car headlights appeared in the driveway, and Rachel halted, barefoot in the wet grass. Who could be coming in the middle of the night?

  She clicked off the flashlight, suspicious. The car came around the slight bend in the road, the headlights illuminating the grape trellises that ran along both sides of the drive. The bright white light reflected off the broad, wet grape leaves and she caught a glimpse of the side of the car. It was a black-and-white police cruiser.

  Against her will, her heart fluttered. The police had come at night to tell them that Joanne and Mark were dead and that they needed to contact the State Department. The police had come the night Noah had been arrested.

  Rachel didn't know that she could stand any more loss. Any more pain.

  A thousand thoughts flew through her head as she fought the urge to bolt, waiting for the car to pull up in front of the garage.

  Had Noah taken Mallory somewhere to use a phone, perhaps, and been involved in an accident?

  But that didn't make any sense. She rarely used her cell phone, but he knew she had one. And there was no way he would leave the property with Mallory, take the risk of being caught driving with a suspended license. He would have woken her.

  Maybe this had nothing to do with Noah and Mallory. Maybe it was Mattie. Had something terrible happened to him in police custody?

  By the time Sergeant Swift and Snowden approached her, Rachel was fighting tears.

  "What's going on?" She rushed toward them. "Have Noah and Mallory been hurt?"

  Sergeant Swift took her outstretched hands. "Are they missing, Mrs. Gibson?"

  "Yes. No." She shook her head. Confused. Scared out of her wits now. "I mean, I don't know. I woke up and the electric was out and—" She lifted her gaze suddenly, pulling her hands away. "You're sure this isn't about Noah and Mallory? Why are you here in the middle of the night?" She looked to the police chief. "Snowden?"

  "Mattie escaped. We think he took a police car. We've got a wrecked cruiser out on 307. We were hoping maybe you had seen him."

  "No. No, Mattie isn't here." Rachel fought to control her emotions. "You arrested him. He was in your custody. I trusted you, Snowden!"

  "Mrs. Gibson..."

  Sergeant Swift's voice, laced with a southern drawl, drew Rachel's attention again.

  "Mrs. Gibson, you mentioned Mr. Gibson and your daughter. You don't know where they are?"

  "No. The electricity went out." She pointed lamely toward the dark farmhouse. "When I woke up, Noah was gone from bed." Her gaze strayed to Snowden's face, illuminated by the headlights of the car. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, but she knew the fact that she and Noah were sleeping together again had registered in his mind.

  Rachel focused on the small blond woman in the yellow rain slicker. "I thought he must have gotten up to check the breaker box but I can't find him."

  "And your daughter?"

  "I... I don't know where she is either." The words, the realization of their meaning, caused bile to rise in her throat, and for a moment Rachel thought she might vomit. She swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as if that sense of dread she couldn't identify had just increased tenfold. God, was she losing her mind?

  "She must be with Noah. She must have woken in the storm and he... they..." Rachel couldn't think of an explanation, and her voice trailed into silence. But then she looked up suddenly. "But there were footprints
in the kitchen. I... I don't know whose, but someone came into the house. Do you think it was Mattie? Could Mattie and Noah and Mallory be together?"

  "I'm going to check the house," Snowden told Delilah, walking back to the car. He removed a flashlight from the front seat. "Keep her out here."

  "They're not inside," Rachel called after him as he strode away. But now she wasn't sure. Not of anything. "I don't think they are. I already looked."

  "Stay here with her," Snowden repeated, clicking the flashlight on. "Radio me if you see or hear anything. Backup's on the way."

  Chapter 32

  Noah woke slowly, disoriented, confused. He was surrounded by a darkness that was so devoid of light that it almost seemed velvety. As he became more aware of his own body, he realized he was lying on a floor, his face pressed against floorboards. He could feel the ridges under his cheek.

  He rolled onto his back, trying to focus on something, on anything. He thought he was in the house, but he wasn't entirely certain.

  He ran his hand over his chest and downward. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts. Something on his feet. Last he remembered, he was naked in bed and had Rachel curled asleep in his arm. There had been a storm, and he had been listening to the rumble of the thunder over the hum of the window air conditioner. Every few minutes, a drum roll of thunder had been followed by a flash of light that illuminated the bedroom, as lightning zigzagged across the sky. He remembered he had been thinking. Even as worried about Mattie as he was, as scared as he was about being a suspect in multiple homicides, he knew he was very lucky. He remembered thinking that he was being given the gift of a second chance at life, something many people desired but few were given.

  He remembered wondering who else, what else, could give such a gift but God.

  Noah sat up and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. He could tell he was in an enclosed place. He could feel walls, objects, something fairly close. Wherever he was, it was hot and humid. The storm seemed to have passed; no thunder rumbled, no lightning flashed, no rain pattered. It was as if he were in the midst of nothingness, and it was one of the most disturbing feelings he'd ever experienced.