Seeking Refuge

by Alana Terry

  Jade had just finished checking the men’s room when Aisha trudged up the stairs, shaking her head. “I checked the nursery rooms and the cleaning closet downstairs. Do you think she went out to the car?”

  “I looked there already.” Jade glanced around. She didn’t want Aisha to see the fear in her eyes. There had to be somewhere they hadn’t searched yet. A five-year-old didn’t just disappear, especially not on one of the darkest nights of the year. It wasn’t even Dez’s bedtime, but the sky had been black as midnight for hours already.

  Mrs. Spencer hurried toward them. “I just went over everything with Jerry, since he’s the go-to guy on maintenance here,” she said. “Neither of us could think of any other places in the church that haven’t been checked.”

  Aisha stared at the exit. “People are starting to leave. If we’re going to ask for help, we better do it before they’re all gone.”

  At first, Jade had been content searching the church with Aisha and Mrs. Spencer, but if not even the maintenance man could find her daughter, it might be time to recruit more volunteers. She gave a resigned nod, and Aisha scurried to the doorway.

  Mrs. Spencer reached out her hand and rubbed Jade’s back. “Are you all right, dear?”

  Jade nodded. Dez was bright, precocious, and far too intelligent for her own good, with enough common sense to stay indoors when it was negative twenty degrees and pitch-black outside. She also knew how to get on Jade’s nerves. “I’m sure she’s just hiding out or something.” Even as she said the words, she sensed how uncertain they sounded. She tried to force more confidence into her voice. “She does stuff like this all the time.”

  “I’ll go check downstairs again,” Mrs. Spencer finally announced. Jade imagined the possible ways she’d punish her daughter once they finally found her. Did Dez have any idea how many people she had worried?

  Aisha hurried up with Ben behind her. Of course, she would have turned first to Mr. Trooper. This time, however, Jade couldn’t afford to be haughty.

  “I hear your daughter’s missing?”

  Jade forced herself to meet his gaze. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s nothing. She likes to be dramatic. But it’s so cold outside ...” She let her voice trail off.

  “How long has it been since anyone saw her?”

  Jade wanted to laugh off his question, but she couldn’t. “She came upstairs right before the service started. She wanted to sit with me, and I sent her back downstairs. So the nursery worker thought she was up here, and I assumed she was down there ...” Jade wanted to kick herself. What kind of a mother would take a full hour to realize her daughter was missing? If Dez was outside, she could already be suffering from hypothermia.

  Aisha offered her a sympathetic side hug. Ben, however, was far more formal. “You’ve searched everywhere in the church? You’re convinced she’s not in here?”

  Jade shrugged. “We had three of us looking, and then we got the maintenance man to help. So as far as I know we’ve checked everywhere.”

  Aisha kept her arm around Jade’s waist, and Jade felt like her tiny friend was the one supporting her. They both looked to Ben, who pulled out a small radio.

  “It’s cold enough outside and dark enough that I don’t want to mess around. I’m gonna call this in.” He turned to Aisha. “Why don’t you run outside and ask anyone who’s able to stay to stick around. We’re going to need all the manpower we can get.”

  Jade couldn’t stand the thought of standing by like some helpless damsel. “I’ll go with you.”

  Ben shook his head. “No, you stay. I need you here to pass information on to dispatch. Then you’re going to tell me everything you know about that letter.”

  Chapter 6

  JADE REFUSED TO ANSWER Ben’s questions until she could start actively helping with the search. Once she was bundled and outside, Ben began his interview.

  “Your friend told me you received a threatening letter. Can you tell me exactly what it said?”

  “Yes, I can.” Jade hid her hands inside her coat sleeves since she didn’t have any gloves. “It said, Sorry about your dad. You better make sure your little girl’s not next.”

  He watched her fidgeting with her sleeves and then handed her his own gloves. She was too tired and cold to refuse them.

  “What did the reference to your dad mean? Did you understand that part?”

  “Yes,” she answered flatly and stared at Ben. He was the real reason why she hadn’t shared that part of her testimony at church.

  A trooper car pulled into the church parking lot, and Ben excused himself to fill his colleague in. Not a moment too soon. Jade caught Aisha standing under a street lamp and hurried toward her.

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked.

  Aisha’s teeth were chattering. “We’ve looked in all the cars, under all the cars, and around the church. I don’t know what else to do but start searching along the road and behind the buildings.”

  “She wouldn’t have come out here. Not without her coat.” Jade shook her head. This search was a waste of time. Her daughter had probably found some hiding place in the church, maybe even fallen asleep, and she was going to be grounded until her eighteenth birthday if she didn’t show herself soon.

  Aisha frowned sympathetically. “Are you doing okay? Do you need anything?”

  Jade shrugged. “I need to find out what that girl is doing. I swear, she can be so stubborn.”

  Ben raced back up. “We’ve got two men coming out now, and the search and rescue team is standing by in Fairbanks.”

  “Fairbanks?” Jade wished she could explain what she already knew. Dez wouldn’t be out here in this cold.

  Ben nodded. “It’s a cold, long night. We’ve got to act fast.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Optimism,” Jade muttered under her breath before turning away.

  “Wait a minute.” Ben reached out his arm, shying away just before touching her elbow. “I still need to know more about that note. You were saying something about your father.”

  Jade cast her glance over to Aisha, but her friend was already heading off to join the volunteers in the wooded area behind the church.

  “What do we need to know about your father?” Ben asked. “What’s this letter mean?”

  Jade wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but everything regarding her dad was public record anyway. If she told Ben everything now, it’d free up his time to keep looking for her daughter. She took off, following Aisha toward the woods, and Ben hurried to keep up beside her.

  “You were listening when I was talking tonight, I assume?” Jade asked, hoping she could save even more time by not having to repeat everything she’d gone through earlier.

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry for what happened to you.”

  Jade didn’t have time for sympathy right now. Not from a cop. “My parents went to the police. They pressed charges against the pastor of Morning Star.”

  “Good,” Ben inserted forcefully.

  His comment derailed her concentration, and it took a second to remember what she was saying. “Well, we did it all. Went to the police, talked with the lawyers. They looked for other witnesses to come forward, but everybody else refused to testify against him.”

  “They weren’t brave enough?”

  “No,” Jade replied. “They weren’t stupid enough. Pastor Mitch had connections all over the Mat-Su valley. The longer the pre-trial period spread out, the more we realized he was going to get away with it. If we got ourselves a miracle, he might get charged with statutory rape, but even that didn’t seem too likely. With Pastor Mitch being on a first-name basis with nearly everyone in Palmer, my dad lost hope that he’d ever see the inside of a jail cell.”

  “That must have been disheartening.”

  Jade wondered if Ben had taken police training in the art of understatement.

  “It was ridiculous,” she spat. “And the whole time, we were getting death threats from the people we thought had been our friends, even from some of the par
ents of girls who went through the exact same thing I did. They treated us like we were turning our backs on God, like we’d lose our salvation if we testified against a monster like that.”

  Jade gritted her teeth. This wasn’t the time to get weepy and weak. This was the time to be angry. Angry, determined, and focused.

  “So what happened?” Ben asked the question so softly, Jade wondered if he already knew or maybe suspected the answer.

  “My dad attacked him. Confronted him one night when he was coming home and assaulted him with a baseball bat.”

  She paused to see if Ben had any interjections, if he was going to lecture her about the need to let justice follow its own slow course of action. He remained silent, which wouldn’t make telling him the rest of the story any easier.

  She was trying to figure out how to continue when someone called out, “Hey, over here!”

  Jade raced ahead, panting by the time she made her way through the snow to where the maintenance man was shining the flashlight of his cell phone. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

  Jade’s heart was pounding as she stared at the red scarf in the snow. She studied it for a full second before answering, “That’s not hers.”

  “You sure?” Jerry asked, as if Jade might not recognize her own daughter’s scarf.

  She nodded, too disappointed to think up any caustic remarks. “And look.” She pointed at the lower fringes. “It’s been out here a while.” She tried to pick it up, but it was frozen to the snow. “See?”

  Jerry nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. False alarm.”

  Jade stared around at the towering spruce trees. The snow lay in uneven heaps, without any trace of footsteps. They were wasting their time. “I don’t think she’s back here.”

  Jerry shined his flashlight around. “Yeah, I thought she might have left some tracks, but I don’t see any.”

  Jade swallowed hard. “No. No tracks.” She had to keep control over her emotions. She had to be strong. It was the only way she was going to find her daughter again.

  Lord, show me where she is, she prayed and thought about that letter she’d gotten in last week’s mail.

  Sorry about your dad. You better make sure your little girl’s not next. Would someone from Morning Glory come all the way out to Glennallen from Palmer to hurt her daughter? Was that the way the church was going to get back at Jade for speaking up against their pastor after all these years?

  It was far-fetched. It was insane.

  But right now, it sounded like the most plausible explanation.

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN before Aisha and Ben forced Jade to warm up indoors. The church had been set up as the search and rescue crew headquarters and was teeming with volunteers and first responders. A helicopter with search lights was circling the area, and the pararescue team from Fairbanks was due to land any minute. Wilderness search and rescue dogs were on their way, and Aisha had already run to Jade’s home to get a sample of Dez’s dirty laundry so the canines could try to pick up her scent.

  Jade couldn’t believe any of this was happening.

  “If your daughter wandered off, we’re going to find her.” Ben pulled a pen out from his breast pocket. “But until then, we need to examine every possible option. I want you to think of anyone who may have wanted to hurt you or your daughter. We need to make a list of possible suspects.”

  Jade’s hands were so cold even after wearing Ben’s gloves she could hardly hold onto her mug of coffee. She blinked at him.

  Aisha gave Jade what must have been her fiftieth hug of the night and stood up. “I’m going to see if I can call in a few more volunteers. Be back soon.” Jade watched her friend depart, feeling a wistful longing for something she was too tired and confused to name.

  “Suspects,” Ben repeated. “Who might have sent you that letter, for one thing?”

  That one wasn’t hard to answer. “Anybody back at Morning Glory.”

  “No good. It’s too broad.”

  “Well, what do you want?” Who did this cop think he was, making Jade feel like a criminal being brought in for questioning?

  “I need names. Specific names. And details. Where they live. Who had the most motive to hurt you or your family.”

  “I don’t know.” Jade didn’t try to hide her exasperation. She focused on a small speck of dirt beneath her fingernail, begging herself to stay composed. Once she got her daughter back safely, she’d allow her tears to fall. Until then, she had to seize control of her emotions.

  Ben sighed and softened his expression. “Look, I know how hard this is for you.”

  Jade didn’t believe him, but she had no energy left to argue.

  “Let’s back up a little bit, okay? Can I assume the note you received was from someone at your old church?”

  She sniffed and nodded. “Yes.” Who else had that much reason to hate her as well as her father enough to send a letter like that?

  Ben nodded. “I’d have to agree.”

  She tried not to let him see her roll her eyes. Did he think that listening to her testimony once and spending some time together outside in the cold made him an expert on her and her family situation all of a sudden?

  “Do you think it could be the pastor retaliating?”

  Jade scoffed. “I seriously doubt that.”

  “We can’t take anything for granted,” Ben reminded her, as if she wasn’t already keenly aware of the gravity of her situation. He frowned. “I hate to be indelicate here, but putting together what you said in church this evening, would I be right to assume that this pastor, this ...”

  “Pastor Mitch.” Jade supplied the word for him.

  “Pastor Mitch,” Ben repeated. “Am I right to assume that he is your daughter’s biological father?”

  Jade kept her eyes on his shoulder. “That’s correct.” Next thing he’d do was find two dolls and tell her to show him how it happened.

  Ben sighed. “Well, if you ask me, that makes him a pretty significant suspect right there. Your father attacked him, you exposed him for what he was, and your daughter is his biological offspring.”

  Jade stared at him. Had he come up with that all by himself?

  He looked at her, waiting.

  “Problem with that line of reasoning is that he’s dead.” Jade’s voice was flat.

  “He is?”

  “Yeah. As of last fall.” Jade had read the obituary herself, two paragraphs posted online. Pastor Mitch Cobb, beloved church leader, husband, and friend is now rejoicing eternally in the kingdom of heaven ...

  The irony wasn’t lost on Jade to see the pastor who’d preached nothing but faith healings succumb to cancer. She stood up.

  “I’m going to see if Aisha needs help making those phone calls.” She took a step away, but Ben grabbed her by the hand.

  She yanked herself free instinctively and hissed, “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult for you.”

  “Actually, officer, I don’t think you do.” She refused to meet his eyes, knowing that if he was staring at her with even a fraction of the compassion she could detect in his voice, she’d break down and never make it through this night.

  “I really want to ask you a few more questions. Do you need a break first?”

  The last thing she wanted to do was to sit here with her daughter missing and talk with this trooper, but she was too tired to argue. She shook her head. “No, I’m okay.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.” The sooner they got this meeting over with, the sooner she could go back and join the citizens of Glennallen who right now were braving the ever-dropping temperatures to look for her daughter. It was only a few questions. What was she so afraid of?

  She took in a deep, choppy breath and gave him a nod. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 8

  ONCE SHE STARTED, IT was easy for Jade to come up with name after name of members of Morning Glory International who m
ight want to hurt her family. There was Elder Keith, formerly one of her dad’s best friends and the one who’d been the most vocal about trying to cover up the abuse. He even offered to pay the family five thousand dollars if Jade told everyone that the child she carried belonged to some boyfriend from school.

  After the allegations were exposed to the public, various individuals delighted in telling Jade and her family how sinful they were to bring such outlandish charges against their pastor. Even though a DNA test could easily reveal the child’s parentage, most members of the church preferred to think that Jade and her family made the entire thing up. Halfway into her pregnancy, the pastor’s wife, Lady Sapphire, forced Jade into a bathroom stall and yanked up her blouse because the baby bump looked like nothing more than a little extra weight on an already heavyset teenager. It wasn’t until Lady Sapphire felt Pastor Mitch’s child kicking in Jade’s womb that she even recognized the pregnancy was anything more than a lie and a ruse meant to tear down Morning Glory International and its ministry across the Mat-Su valley.

  Ben’s suspect list had grown to ten different names by the time Aisha sat down beside them. “We’ve got a few more volunteers on their way to relieve the ones who’ve been out the longest.”

  Jade couldn’t believe she was hearing this. Couldn’t believe there was actually a search team at this moment scouring the woods surrounding the church to look for her five-year-old daughter. As hard as it was to picture Dez wandering off into the cold without a coat or flashlight, the idea of an abduction was even more unfathomable.

  If Dez had been taken, whoever had her was twisted. Demented. Who would want to harm a child? The thought made Jade even more terrified. Would the night ever end?

  “I need more coffee,” she told Aisha, who looked about as tired as Jade felt. But she wasn’t going to sleep until her daughter was found. She finally understood what was going through her dad’s mind when he found out what Pastor Mitch had done to her. Why he’d grabbed that baseball bat and waited to ambush his prey. It made sense now, that rage. That protective instinct. No parent could sit back and watch someone destroy their child’s life, not without taking matters into their own hands.