by Lois Duncan
This is a dream, Karen told herself. It’s all just a nightmare. There had been so many dreams—waking ones—sleeping ones—flowing one into another in such bewildering succession. How could she be sure whether any one experience was or wasn’t real? In a moment or so, perhaps, she would awaken. She would find herself at home in her own bedroom with the leaves of the backyard elm tree fluttering at the window and bird voices chirping and sunlight falling in patterns across the blue carpet. Or, better yet, she would be stretched in a sleeping bag in a wild, red wonderland, and Rob would be lying across from her, smiling in his sleep.
Unless and until that happened, however, she had to accept the situation as she now perceived it. Moving like a robot, she crossed to the back steps. She passed so close to the body of the dog that she felt the bristle of its hair brush against her ankle. Flies had already begun to gather, their monotonous hum growing increasingly loud with an underlying intensity, like a vicious buzz saw.
Karen didn’t look down. She didn’t look at Rob as she moved past him. She had a vague impression that Betty was now beside him, preparing to haul him to his feet.
That won’t hurt him. Not if this is a dream. Soon I’ll be waking up. Soon it will be over.
She ascended the steps and went in through a door that led into a tiny, foul-smelling kitchen. Glass jars of commercially prepared baby food and an assortment of empty beer cans littered the counter next to the stove top, and the sink was piled with crusted dishes and nursing bottles filled to various levels with souring milk.
Karen paused uncertainly. What am I supposed to do now? she wondered. As though in response to the unvoiced question, she received another brisk jab with the handgun. Obediently, she continued on across the kitchen and through a second door into the front room of the house. It was furnished with an overstuffed sofa, unmatched chairs, and a wooden picnic table on which there sat a laptop computer. Two narrow windows on the north wall faced out upon the river.
In the room’s far corner, there stood a playpen, and in it, dressed neatly in bright red rompers and a striped T-shirt, sat Matthew Wilson.
The little boy glanced up from a pile of plastic building blocks to stare at Karen. His round face was solemn, as if he were pondering whether or not he knew her. Then his eyes moved beyond her, and he let out a crow of happy recognition. Grabbing for the sidebars, he began a frantic scramble to hoist himself up into a standing position.
Karen turned to see Rob standing in the doorway behind her. He was leaning against the doorframe as if he needed it for support. At the sudden sight of his nephew, he pulled himself upright and took an impetuous step toward him. Then, reeling, he released his hold on his own shoulder and made a grab for the edge of the table.
Karen’s manufactured lassitude abruptly vanished. She could no longer hide from reality. This was not a dream, no matter how much she might wish that it were. It was real, horribly real. Rob was badly injured.
She moved quickly to his side. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding!”
Joe addressed himself to Rob as if she had not spoken.
“Get over there on the sofa. I’ve got some questions.” He gestured toward Karen. “Help him get over there before he falls over.”
“I’m dizzy,” Rob muttered.
“Lean on me,” Karen said. “It’ll be all right. You’re going to be okay.”
She spoke the words with as much conviction as she could muster, but she could not make herself believe them.
There was nothing “okay” about any part of what was happening. With her arm around his waist and with his left arm draped across her shoulders, she managed somehow to propel them both across to the sofa. Easing Rob down onto it, she glanced hastily about for something that could be used as a tourniquet.
“Where are the clean diapers?” she asked. “We can use them for bandages.”
Ignoring the question, Betty stared past her, out through the dirty pane of the nearest of the windows.
“I don’t see their car. I thought it was supposed to be parked over there on the road.”
“It’s around the bend,” Karen told her. She fought to keep the thin edge of her panic from surfacing in her voice. “Please, do something. We can’t let him keep on losing blood this way.”
“Which one of you has the keys?” Joe asked her.
“They’re still in the ignition.”
“We’d better get the car moved,” Betty said. “If somebody comes looking for these two, it will be as good as a signpost.”
“That can wait a few minutes,” Joe said. “First I want to find out about something.” Rob had by this time so obviously passed the stage for possible interrogation that, by default, Joe was forced to direct the question toward Karen.
“How did you find us? How did you know we were up here?”
In the silence that followed, Karen could hear the thud of her own racing heartbeat. What answer could she come up with that these people would believe? To tell them the truth would be suicidal. It was doubtful that they would accept it, and if they did, it would brand her as a threat.
If she could mentally track them now from one state to another, what would there be to stop her from doing future tracking? As long as she existed, they would never be safe from detection. No matter where in the country they might choose to relocate, she would always be able to find them.
Betty spoke up suddenly. “That Summers woman told them. I warned you about her back in Dallas. I knew she was going to be bad news.”
“It wasn’t her,” Joe said. “If it was, the law would be up here. When she talks, cops listen. No, it’s the girl who got onto us somehow. She came up here looking for us and brought along the boyfriend. You must have let something drop when you were with her in the car.”
“I let nothing ‘drop,’ ” Betty said curtly. “There’s something strange going on here. It’s like with Anne Summers, when she told reporters that I was a natural redhead and you had a beard. She’d never seen us, but she could describe us.”
“That woman was a psychic. We both of us read that article about her online.”
“Maybe Karen’s one, too. Has that ever occurred to you?”
“You’re nuts,” Joe said. “She’s a kid.”
“So what does that prove? Everybody starts out as a kid. Anne Summers was a kid once.” Betty consulted her watch. “I’ve got to get a move on. I’m due in the city with the baby in less than an hour. We’ll be getting a good price for this one. The couple’s old and rolling in money. I bet they’re good for at least half a million.”
“Then go,” Joe said. “I’ll take care of things here.”
“First I want that car moved.”
“So move it! Who’s stopping you?”
“You move it,” Betty said. “I’m not going to jump stones across that creek. I’ll keep tabs on our friends.”
“There’s only one who needs watching.” Joe nodded toward Karen. “As for that guy there—”
Rob had slumped over into the corner of the sofa. His eyes were closed and his face was the color of chalk. With no real notion of how one detected vital signs, Karen grabbed his left wrist and frantically groped for a pulse.
“Let him be,” Joe commanded.
“Let him be?” She regarded him incredulously. “Let him be, when he may be dying? Please, can’t either of you do something? If you’ll take him to a doctor, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
What was it that Joe had asked her? Was it how she had known where to find them?
“Betty was right,” Karen said in a rush. “I am like Anne Summers. I knew where you were because I could see this place in my mind. The mountain, the road, the river, I could see all of them. I could see this house, the babies and Matthew… I could see Betty dressing him. I knew he was wearing red before we ever got here. I saw the dog; that’s why I left the car. I was trying to get to Rob before he walked straight into it.”
She had lost all control of what her voice was saying. W
ords came tumbling out of her mouth in a babbling torrent. She was not aware that she was crying until she felt the heat of tears on her cheeks and heard the ugly, rasping sound of her own harsh sobbing.
“What else can I tell you? I’ll tell you everything—everything! I know about the office you have in Denver. That’s where you meet with people to sell them babies. There are files on all the adoptions in that computer over there. Except for Matthew, the children here now are in the back bedroom. You’ve doped them with something to keep them quiet and sleeping.”
What did it matter what she told them? What did anything matter? It had been insane of her to dream that there might be hope for them. Neither she nor Rob would be leaving this house alive.
Dropping Rob’s limp wrist, she buried her face in her hands. For what seemed like an eternity, the only sound in the room was her weeping.
Then Betty said softly, “I told you.”
“I’d never have believed it.” There was awe in Joe’s voice. “How do they get like this, these psychics? How can they know this stuff? Is it in them, like from the beginning? Are they born this way? Do they inherit it from their parents? Is this whole damned world a freak show?”
It’s not a freak show! Karen screamed silently. It’s a wide, shining, beautiful place! I don’t want to leave it, not now, when I’ve hardly started living! It’s not fair! Rob and I haven’t even had a chance yet! There are so many things that we both still have ahead of us!
Though her eyes were closed tightly, she could see the dream-child shimmering before her. Like a carbon copy in miniature, she, too, had her small face covered with her hands. Her thin-boned, fragile fingers were shaped like Karen’s. Her hair was the texture that Karen’s had been in childhood.
If you die, wailed the child, I will never be born!
The thought was so startling that it shocked Karen out of her tears. In that one split second, her third eye sprang violently open to its full capacity. In the yard at the front of the house, she saw people gathered. She saw the raised fist that was aiming at the door.
She heard the sound of the knock before the blow fell.
“It’s the police!” a voice shouted. “Open that door and come out with your hands up!”
“Son of a bitch!” Joe exploded incredulously.
Whirling on his heel, he pointed the pistol at the closed door and pulled the trigger. The wood panel shattered with the close-range impact of the bullet.
Instantaneously, a second shot rang out, and Joe pitched forward. Betty screamed, and in the playpen in the corner, Matthew let out a bellow of startled terror. As if on cue, the house was filled with the cries of frightened babies, waked suddenly from drugged slumber.
All of it happened too quickly for her to respond to. Karen sat like a statue, incapable of intelligent reaction. As she stared at the uniformed man in the kitchen doorway, she found herself thinking inanely that she could never before have visualized an angel with a revolver in his hand.
CHAPTER 21
As she exited the plane at the Albuquerque airport, Karen experienced a rush of fatigue that was so overwhelming that for a moment she thought she might need to request a wheelchair.
I’ll never make it, she thought as she measured with her eyes the distance up the ramp to the terminal beyond it.
Then she braced herself and started walking. It was almost over; she would not allow herself to fold now.
The late-afternoon flight between Denver and Albuquerque had been a crowded one. On it, there had been the parents of most of the infants who had been recovered from the house in the mountains. Many of these people had flown to Denver just that morning. Others had managed to book flights the previous evening after having received notification that their children had been found. Now, they were returning home with the cherished little ones they had feared they would never see again, and the atmosphere in the plane had been one of such emotional intensity that the cabin had been filled with shrieks of wild laughter and outbursts of tears.
Once they had reached their cruising altitude, the pilot had turned the controls over to the copilot so he could walk through the cabin, offering congratulations. In the spirit of celebration, the flight attendants had distributed animal crackers to the rescued babies and served their mothers and fathers with complimentary cocktails.
Karen had sat next to Sue Wilson, who had spent the hour’s flight time struggling to keep a rambunctious Matthew confined in a seat belt.
“He doesn’t seem to have lost much energy,” she commented as the child squirmed and wriggled in an effort to climb out and over the seat back. “He’s come through this way better than his parents.”
Sue looked sunken-eyed and haggard, as though she had not slept for a week. Her husband, Steve, who had flown up with her that morning, had stayed over in Denver to drive Rob back when he was released from the hospital.
To the surprise of everyone, particularly Rob himself, the bullet that Joe had fired into his shoulder had not lodged there, but had passed straight through and ended up embedded in the trunk of a pine tree. The state police had managed to stop the bleeding before the arrival of the rescue squad, and Rob had then been transported to a hospital in Denver for a blood transfusion. He had been retained an extra day for observation.
“I should have stayed, too,” Karen said now, as she and Sue walked together toward the exit to the security area. “I could have come back with them and helped with the driving. My parents got so upset, though, when I suggested it on the phone, that it just didn’t seem worth the battle.”
“It’s better you didn’t, anyway,” Sue said. “Steve needs this time alone with Rob. They’ve got some things they need to work out between them. There’s always been a distance there. I’ve never understood it.”
“I think it may be different now,” Karen said.
“I hope you’re right. My husband’s a workaholic. He doesn’t get out and make friends the way he ought to, and he needs his brother.” She shot Karen a quizzical glance. “What’s with you and Rob? Is there something going on between you?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said honestly.
The crowd standing outside the security area was composed largely of relatives of the kidnapped children. Sue was immediately descended upon by an older couple, each of whom embraced her quickly before sweeping Matthew out of her arms for a series of hugs and kisses. The man was tall and sandy-haired, with a strong, high-boned face. The woman, when she raised her face to smile up at him, had eyes the color of sapphires.
Karen heard her own name called and turned to see her parents hurrying toward her. The reunion was an awkward one, stiff on one hand and overly emotional on the other. Her mother reached her first and hugged her fiercely. Then she released her and turned abruptly away.
Karen’s father said, “Now, Wanda, don’t start crying again. She’s home safe, and everything’s fine now. I hope you realize, Karen, how much pain and worry you’ve caused. Your mother’s a basket case. She can’t handle this sort of pressure.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You did have a choice,” Mr. Connors said, “and you made it. You got it into your head that you wanted to be a heroine, and you took off on an escapade that might have killed you. It was unnecessary. The police had a handle on things.”
“No, they didn’t,” Karen contradicted. “There was a computer in that cabin that contained records of false adoptions that went back three years. The children had all been taken from other states, and the Colorado police hadn’t been involved. They had no idea what was going on there.”
“Then how were they able to come to your rescue so conveniently?” her father asked her. “I read about it in the paper. The police had that place staked out as though it were a war zone. They must have had it under observation.”
“They didn’t know anything until yesterday morning,” Karen told him. “They got an anonymous phone call informing them about everything. Dad, I’m
so tired, I can’t answer any more questions. Can we go home now?”
“Of course.” His expression changed abruptly from anger to deep concern. “You are all right, aren’t you? You weren’t hurt in any way? On the phone, you said—”
“I wasn’t hurt,” Karen assured him. “I’m just tired.”
She and her mother waited together in front of the terminal while Mr. Connors brought the car up from the parking lot. Neither of them spoke. It was obvious that her mother was extremely upset. Aside from their initial embrace, she had not made any further gesture, nor had she tried to initiate conversation. Now the two of them stood with space between them, as though they were strangers who were waiting for the same shuttle van.
When the car arrived, Karen climbed into the back, and Mrs. Connors got into the front seat beside her husband. Most of the way home, they drove in silence. At one point, at a stoplight, Mr. Connors glanced back at her to ask, “How did Officer Wilson find that place in the mountains? Did he get a phone call also?”
“No,” Karen said. “I told him where to go.”
She knew as she spoke that her father would not believe her. She also knew that he would not pursue the question, for he did not want to be forced to accept her answer. She did not know which of her parents it was who shook her awake when they reached the house. She was conscious of hands on her shoulders and a voice speaking her name.
Then she was outside, crossing the lawn, entering the front door, and climbing the stairs to the second floor. Despite the weight of weariness that threatened to smother her, she kept moving on down the hall to its end.
When she entered her room, the half-filled suitcase still sat open on her bed, just as she had left it two days before. Too exhausted to face the prospect of putting the clothes away, Karen shoved the case off the side of the bed and watched its contents tumble out onto the rug.
The temptation to sink down onto the vacated mattress was almost irresistible. She knew, however, that this could not yet be allowed to happen.
