Danger In The Shadows

by Dee Henderson

  They left the ranch an hour later in three vehicles. Adam sat beside Sara in the backseat of the van. Travis drove while Dave sat in the passenger seat. Dave was in constant motion, scanning the road and talking to the lead and chase cars over the radio.

  Adam could feel Sara’s tension. She sat stiff, a sketch pad resting in her lap, her hands tight around the cardboard spine.

  There might as well be a wall between them. High. Impenetrable. Her thoughts today were private.

  Adam watched the passing countryside, hoping there would one day be an opportunity to come back and explore the country Sara had loved as a child without this threat hanging over them. He could understand why she called this place home. It was a great expanse of open land. It fit her need for freedom.

  The interstate eventually led into the city. They slowed and entered city traffic.

  No one had to tell him when they reached the point of town near the park. Sara and Dave both sat up straighter, tense.

  It was an upscale neighborhood. They turned a corner. Up ahead on the right was an oasis of trees.

  “It’s changed. They’ve widened the streets. There were not stoplights before,” Sara said, looking around.

  The park was large. The van slowed and drove along the quiet street. They entered the park from the north. The road wound past picnic benches and small parking lots.

  Sara touched Travis’s shoulder. “Stop up there by the bridge over the pond.”

  The van pulled to a stop.

  There was silence as Sara and Dave looked around.

  “There was playground equipment there on the grassy knoll. Mom was there, to the right. The van drove right over this curb.”

  Sara was back in the past. Adam could hear the memories, the raw pain. His hand gripped hers. It was hard to listen to the quiet words.

  The scene was peaceful. The sun had come out making it a beautiful day. It looked nothing like what it really was— a place nightmares had been born.

  “Dave, I want to get out.”

  Her brother didn’t argue. Several agents had already formed a perimeter.

  Sara stepped from the van.

  Adam stayed beside her as she resolutely walked across the grass. Her steps didn’t hesitate until she reached the grassy knoll. She turned and looked back toward the van.

  She studied the view. “This is about where Kim and I were,” she decided. “Where were you, Dave?”

  Her brother pointed. “There.”

  Adam watched her close her eyes, swallowing hard. She opened her eyes and looked around. “It’s been, what, five years since we last came here?”

  “About that. Anything new strike you?”

  “The trees have grown.” She shivered. “The place gives me the creeps.”

  “It should. Come on, let’s get back to the van.” They had been outside ten minutes now, and it was obvious Dave wanted her behind the tinted safety glass.

  Sara was reluctant to move. “There has to be something here. It’s those first few moments that hold the most promise. Before I realized the threat was directed at me, at Kim, at you. What’s here that I’m missing?”

  Dave squeezed her hand. “Don’t, Sara. You haven’t been missing anything.”

  After another two minutes, Dave tried again. “Come on, Sara. This isn’t safe.”

  This time she let Dave tug her away from the danger.

  The town traffic was heavy with the lunchtime rush hour. Sara barely seemed to notice. Adam watched as she drew a sketch of the view from the grassy knoll. The lines conveyed a sense of menace beneath the peaceful appearance.

  When her sketch was finished, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  It was a long ride to the farmhouse.

  What had it been like for her and Kim, riding over this or similar roads, not knowing where they were being taken? Every minute must have seemed an eternity.

  Adam tried to flex muscles stiff with tension. He didn’t look forward to what they were about to see.

  Sara abruptly sat forward, momentarily unclipping her seat belt so she could reach the briefcase by her feet. She withdrew a thick folder.

  Adam watched her, curious. Her face was intense.

  Pictures.

  Adam knew in a matter of moments what the pictures were from. He had seen one of them before. The faxed photo of her pearl hair clasp.

  The stack was deep. She turned through them in order, looking for something Adam could only guess at. Each sent memento represented another source of terror. Letters. Objects.

  Dave had told him the packages had become more frequent and more personal over the years and were arriving now on almost a preset schedule.

  She stopped at one picture, pulled it from the stack, and looked at the date on the back.

  Blue hair ribbons.

  Sara looked ready to cry.

  Adam grasped her hand as she looked at the picture of the evidence.

  “He marked my sixteenth birthday with this package,” she whispered.

  A lifetime of anticipating every important date in her life with dread rather than joy. Adam wrapped his arm around her and tugged her to his chest. He carefully took the photo from her hand. He didn’t have to ask if the hair ribbons had been something special to her as a child. The man would have chosen the cruelest thing he could.

  “I’m sorry, Sara.” There had been a lifetime of birthdays and Christmas holidays ripped apart by packages. Someday he would be able to start making those memories up to her.

  “So am I,” she whispered.

  Her hand against his shirt suddenly clenched. Adam felt the tremors she fought off. His hand smoothed her hair, his arm around her shoulders tightened. She wasn’t strong enough to do this. The past was too big an abyss.

  He had no hope of changing her mind. Help her survive this, God. Please.

  They eventually turned off the highway.

  Dust, heat, ruts in the road. That was Adam’s initial impression of their destination. The land was barren, rocky, the ground a pale brown clay. Dirt devils swirled in the air.

  If this had once been a farmhouse, time and nature had reduced it to an uninhabitable remnant. Their van pulled to a stop beside the other two vehicles. Dave left them to sit in the van while he spoke to the other agents.

  “I don’t suppose I can ask you to stay here.” Sara sat up and ruthlessly cleared her face of any emotion.

  Adam simply shook his head. “No.” She was afraid to show him this place. The fact she couldn’t yet trust him with the deepest wound of all was hard to accept. He had no choice. She did it in self-defense to avoid his rejection. He was going to have to show her that her fear was unfounded. No matter what she told him, he was not turning away from her. He loved her too much; to turn away would be to rip out his own heart.

  Dave opened the door. The dry heat rolled into the air-conditioned interior. “Are you sure about this, Sara?”

  She stepped out of the van. “I’m sure.”

  She walked with purpose across the uneven ground and around the dilapidated house. Adam found the coarse grass was sharp even through his socks. They passed a well, red-colored slivers of rust dusting the ground at the base of the pump handle. A hay barn, part of its roof collapsed, leaned in the distance, pushed by wind.

  Desolate. Forsaken. The wind a lonely, hollow whistle. The sounds intensified the emotions.

  To be left here, forgotten… Adam looked over at Sara and saw her jaw was locked. This place was having its full effect.

  A good fifty feet behind the house, Sara came to a stop.

  The cellar.

  Boards in one of the two doors had rotted. One of the hinges had given way. The slide bolt no longer bore a padlock.

  Dust drifted around in the sunlight.

  She looked down at the rotting boards of the cellar door, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Open it, Dave.”

  The doors came back with a loud creak.

  She didn’t step near for several minutes
, just stood looking at the dark chamber the sunlight struggled to penetrate. Dave stood by, watching her like a hawk.

  She finally stepped forward, put her hand on the door-sill, and ducked her head to step inside. She didn’t pause to let herself think about it.

  The root cellar stank with the smell of decades of rot. She could stand after a fashion. Spiderwebs smeared her hands and dried-up bugs crunched under her boots. The shivers were not from the sudden coolness.

  The cellar was deeper than she remembered, more narrow. Her hands could reach out and touch both walls.

  Scarred into the side of the cellar wall were the distant traces of her struggle to get free. She had dug out quite an impression with her bare hands trying to yank from the wall the source of her restraints. She rubbed her wrists as she looked at that reminder.

  She had thought she could get the restraints free, but her best effort had not been good enough. She had failed.

  If she had been able to get free, Kim would still be alive. That fact still ate away inside her heart every day. She carried the guilt. She had failed to keep her sister safe.

  She had seen this place many times before in the crime scene photos, had been brought back here as a child. She and Dave had returned here on two previous occasions. She looked around carefully, forcing the fear not to overwhelm her. There had to be something here.

  It was only a place now. The taste in her mouth was bitter.

  This was reality.

  This was where life as she had known it had ceased to exist. This was her cross to bear.

  Sunlight filtered in, casting her shadow across the place Kim had been.

  The tears were too deep in her heart to fall. Like the park, there was nothing here to remember, only to relive. The darkness gripped her and this time it did not let go.

  He had won.

  “Is she asleep?” Adam asked.

  Dave wearily sat down in the nearby office chair. “Yes. She finally cried herself to sleep.” His voice was ragged.

  Adam looked over at his friend. They were feeling the same pain. “She’ll leave with us in the morning, give up this quest?”

  “She said she would.”

  Adam had never spent a more horrible day in his life. They had watched Sara shatter. It had been a slow fracture as they drove back to the ranch.

  Neither one of them could do anything but watch. Adam still felt the hit his heart had taken. She had rested her head against his shoulder and just started crying.

  She had never stopped.

  “Where does she go next?” He looked over at Dave. He saw the man hesitate, then take a drink from the soda can he held.

  “Seattle. They are finalizing arrangements now. They found a private place on the coast, a loft with good sunlight for her studio. Remote. She can walk for miles along the shore.”

  It was as good a fit as Dave could create. Even so, Adam could hear the sound of defeat in his friend’s voice. Dave would take a bullet for his sister. To watch what had happened to Sara today had ripped him to shreds. Uprooting her again, even for her own protection, was tearing at his soul.

  “Will she be okay?”

  Dave squeezed the bridge of his nose. “If she starts to sleep again, stops fighting, starts accepting. It’s the same process for every move. She’ll do it because she has no other choice. Her will to fight is still there. Today was an exercise in hitting her head against a brick wall. She does it occasionally.” Dave leaned his head back. “What about you, Adam?”

  “It sounds like I’m moving to Seattle.” It meant leaving family, conducting his business via frequent conference calls and faxes. So be it. He wasn’t leaving Sara.

  He had made that decision this afternoon. He had spent twelve years living life as a nomad. If he had to spend the next ten doing the same, at least he knew what to expect.

  Sara dreamed of one day being free but had to accept the loss.

  He dreamed of having a family. His dream would have to die.

  His heart had already decided Sara was his choice for a wife. He could stay single and have no children or marry Sara and have no children.

  If that was his choice, it wasn’t a hard one.

  Dave looked over at him. “Don’t do this to be heroic, Adam. The shining armor starts to tarnish after about the first year.”

  Adam gave a brief smile. “I’ve got my eyes open. A few weeks in protective custody quickly took off the rose-colored glasses. I know what I’m getting into.”

  Dave flexed the side of the soda can. “More trouble is going to follow us to Seattle. He knows you are with her.”

  Adam had weighed that risk at length since they had returned to the ranch. “She doesn’t have a life if she keeps losing everyone who’s important to her. That’s part of the problem. He’s driving her. Her actions are going to get more and more desperate unless we put a zone of relative normalcy around her.”

  “She can’t take another emotional blow right now.”

  “I know she can’t. She’s so bruised right now she’s going to try to retreat, exactly as she did after Colorado. If we let her, she’s going to tuck herself so far away she’ll never let someone get close to her again. You have to get her out of here, safety demands that. But I’m coming along.”

  “You’re that serious about her.”

  “Yes.” There was no joy in that word, only sober acceptance of what it meant. Sara was living under a prison sentence, Dave beside her by choice. Adam had just committed to join the two of them for the duration.

  “She’s not exactly going to be thrilled with the idea, Adam.”

  “She protects those she loves. I’ve already figured that part out.”

  “And she feels responsible for the situation. Please understand and don’t take this the wrong way. You will be another burden to her. You can tell her she isn’t responsible, but that won’t keep her from shouldering the weight of putting you in this situation.”

  Adam hesitated. “Just like she did with Kimmy.”

  “Yeah. She still thinks it was her fault.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Twin stuff, I think. They were close to each other. Sara lost more than just her sister, she lost part of herself. In many ways they were two halves that made a whole.”

  Adam hadn’t thought of that. Born the same day, playmates, confidants, soul mates. Sara had lost part of herself.

  “Why didn’t she talk for such a long time after the kidnapping?” He had already asked Sara that question, but he needed Dave’s perspective. Those years were his best indication of how the trauma had affected her.

  “Fear. She thought he would come after others in her family. He had threatened retaliation. And she didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Didn’t want to talk about Kim. I think that was what frightened her the most. Remembering Kim.”

  Adam closed his eyes, seeing a terrified six-year-old girl who didn’t know what to do. “Didn’t anyone ever tell her it was okay to be afraid?”

  “You have to understand the times. An ambassador’s two daughters had been kidnapped; one of them had died. There was a fury to find those responsible. Sara was the only lead they had. They pushed her for information in every possible way they could.”

  Adam’s hand clenched.

  Dave flinched. “She used to creep into my room and tuck herself under my school desk so no one could find her. It was awful.”

  Adam could see it only too clearly.

  “Mom wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the pressure. She was a wonderful lady, but even if she had steel in her backbone, I don’t think she would have been able to stop the onslaught. I think that was one reason she left my dad—to give Sara some distance. It tore me apart the day I watched them get on the plane to move permanently back to the States.”

  “Sara mentioned one time how much she wished you could have stayed together.”

  “It was mutual. I hated our father for a long time after the divorce.”

  “Is that wh
y Sara is still at odds with him?”

  “Part of it. She was always trying to please him, and he is a hard man to please. After the kidnapping, there was no chance of a relationship between them. It was the money, the accusations, the events. Too much to repair.”

  Dave pointed to a picture on the end table. “Frank Victor. Now there is a guy you would have liked. Mom met him totally by chance. They were married soon after they met. Frank was just the person Sara needed. He was as different as night and day from our dad. She used to follow him around like a shadow. I think he was the first one to get a smile, definitely the first one to get a word out of her.”

  “The new foal.”

  Dave smiled. “Yeah. Frank never did sell that foal. He had a sentimental streak in him, Frank did. The time I got to spend here was the happiest of my life. It was always too brief.”

  Dave went quiet. Adam knew there were certain memories that would always be private.

  “How close has this kidnapper gotten to Sara in the past, Dave?”

  “Into the house on two occasions we know about. It’s not about killing her, although he has shown a willingness to take a shot at anyone around her, as I know from first hand experience. No, he wants her back in his control. That’s what all those packages are about. He would kill her to protect his identity, but if he did, he would destroy the thing he wants most. So he keeps playing this game. The ironic thing is he’s probably using the ransom money as a way to cover his tracks and make this possible.”

  “Are there any new leads?”

  “No. A lot of theories. A lot of time on the ground trying to piece together the packages. He has sent enough of them, though, that we are possibly beginning to have a handle on his travel patterns.

  “The handwriting is still our best source of evidence. The words he chooses give some clues. We can almost tell which newspaper articles he kept from that era when the search was going on. We’ve gone so far as to cross-index newspaper subscription lists from those years. We just need a break somewhere where he tips his hand.

  “As traumatic as Chicago was, it did open a new direction for the case. He had to travel to a known destination within a known period of time. That helps.”