by Lisa Regan
“Son of a bitch,” Connor said. He hadn’t thought to ask Claire. He wasn’t thinking like a detective. He had been too busy looking at her, assuring himself she was real, trying not to cringe as he surveyed the damage her abductor had done to her.
“Forget it,” Boggs said. “It’s okay. We’ll work with what we have.” But his mouth pressed briefly into a hard line. Connor knew Boggs was frustrated that none of their detectives had thought to elicit that small detail. A detail Connor knew could make the difference between catching the guy and letting him disappear without a trace.
“I’m putting a guy on the door once she’s out of surgery. Yours too. I’m not sure you’re ready to go another round if he decides to pay a visit. If he survives, that is.”
“You shot him?” Jen asked, looking up at Connor.
Connor grimaced. “No,” he said. “I stabbed him. Two or three times, I’m not sure. It was kind of crazy. Boggs, did you get anything on that name Claire gave you?”
“No. Another alias. This guy is a regular Houdini. I’m betting when we finally do nail him, there’s gonna be a long line of unhappy people waiting to extradite him for priors.”
Jen shuddered in Connor’s arms.
“But we have his blood, DNA, and they’re getting prints right now. Stryke is already on it. We’ll get him,” Boggs assured them.
The sharp beep of Boggs’s cell phone startled them all. Glancing around to make sure no medical staff were nearby, Boggs flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear. Connor knew by the way Boggs’s body tensed ever so slightly as he barked clipped “yeahs” into the receiver that something was happening.
Boggs hung up. “They’re out a few miles from the house where he was keeping Alison Ward. Local patrol spotted a white Ford Taurus with a male and female in it, driving erratically. They tried to pull it over but the driver took off.”
Connor glanced at Mitch. “It has to be them.”
“I gotta go,” Boggs said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Two hours later, Connor sat in a chair outside the operating room, his head falling and snapping back to attention as he fought off sleep. Jen was on one side of him and Mitch on the other. Across from them, Tom and Brianna were side by side. Tom had dozed off, but Brianna sat stiffly, arms folded across her thin chest. She glanced alternately at Connor and her mother. She had said little to Connor since she and Tom arrived, greeting him only with a tight smile. A uniformed officer paced back and forth in front of the entrance to the suite of operating rooms, exchanging dirty looks with medical staff who had to answer his questions before they were admitted to the surgical unit.
A radio sat atop the officer’s right shoulder, and every so often he barked into it. No one listening would be able to make much sense of the litany of numbers continually called out over the frequency, but for Connor, it was a second language, and he listened absently for updates on the pursuit while he dozed. Jen nudged him awake as Boggs got off the elevator. Across from him, Brianna whispered softly in Tom’s ear, waking him. They all straightened up and stared expectantly at Boggs.
Connor could tell from the set of Boggs’s shoulders that they hadn’t caught Claire’s abductor. Before Connor could ask, Boggs said, “We chased him until he crashed his car. He had another girl with him. They left the car wrapped around a tree and took off on foot. We lost them about twenty miles away from the house Claire said he was living in. It’s all wooded out there. We’re still looking. We’ve got the dogs out there now and we’re working on getting a helicopter up there.”
All three of the Fletchers seemed to deflate, their bodies slumping in disappointment.
Mitch leaned over and caught Connor’s eye. “Any idea just how badly you wounded him?”
Connor sighed and swiped a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It happened so fast. I know I hurt him because he howled, but I have no idea how deep or how serious his wounds are. I would think he’d need stitches, but I couldn’t see anything—it was dark.”
“So he could conceivably get away?” Jen asked.
“He’s not getting away,” Boggs said firmly. “I gotta get back out there, but we’ll keep you posted. He’s not getting away.”
A half hour later, they were ushered two floors up to a private room where Claire had been situated after her surgery. Mitch went for coffee as Connor, Jen, Tom, and Brianna slid into the room. Connor watched the steady, slow rise and fall of Claire’s chest. Her left hand was secured with a splint and Ace bandage, and it lay on a pillow at her side, elevated to prevent swelling. The left side of her face looked as if someone had run over it with a truck. Connor knew that she bore many more bruises on the rest of her body, some in the shape of shoe prints.
It didn’t matter to him. She would survive all of the injuries. What mattered to him was that she was there and she was finally safe. He wanted to touch her, to assure himself that she was really there, but didn’t want to interrupt the Fletcher family’s first moments of reuniting with her.
Connor stood by the door as Jen approached the bed. Tom and Brianna stood behind Jen, holding hands, their fingers laced together. Connor wasn’t sure which one of them gasped first, but Jen’s hands flew to her face as she looked upon the child she’d lost ten years ago, now a woman, battered and bruised.
“Oh my God,” Tom whispered. “What did he do to her?”
Tears shone in Tom’s eyes, and Brianna pulled him into a hug, letting her brother sob into her shoulder. She was the only one whose emotions were in check. She reached out a hand and placed it between her mother’s shoulder blades.
Connor bent his head as Jen’s thin shoulders shook and heaved. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. Then she moved away from her older children, rounding the bed and perching on the side of it. She took Claire’s good hand and pressed it to her mouth. She raised her wet eyes to Connor’s.
“Mitch told me she looked bad. He said she—I had no idea,” she whispered.
Connor grimaced. “She’ll heal, Jen. The important thing is she’s here. She’s with you now.”
“She’ll be okay, Mom,” Tom said encouragingly as he separated from Brianna and moved closer to the bed. Brianna hung back, taking up position at the foot of Claire’s bed.
Jen stroked Claire’s hair back from her face. Her voice was heavy with emotion when she spoke again. “It’s really her,” Jen whispered. “It’s really my baby.”
Connor smiled. “I know.”
He watched Jen weep quietly over her child while Tom and Brianna looked on, and then wordlessly he inched out the door, leaving the newly reunited family alone.
One hour and two cups of coffee later, Connor slipped back into Claire’s room. He breathed a sigh of relief that she was still there, chest still rising and falling evenly as the IV dripped medication into the crook of her right elbow. Jen remained in the same place as when he’d left her. Brianna and Tom had pulled chairs up to the other side of Claire’s bed and sat watching their mother drink in the sight of the child she’d spent the last decade searching for.
Jen turned when he entered, eyes wide and questioning. She mouthed, “Did they catch him yet?”
Connor shook his head. Jen’s shoulders drooped as she looked back at her daughter.
“Where did he go?” Brianna asked. “What’s taking so long?”
“They’re doing everything they can,” Connor responded.
Brianna opened her mouth to speak, and from the scowl that darkened her visage, Connor guessed her next words would not be pleasant. He was relieved when Tom silenced her with a shushing gesture. Brianna met her brother’s eyes, and Connor saw the unspoken conversation between them. Tom’s eyes darted to their mother and back as if to say, “This isn’t the time.” Brianna sighed and leaned back in her chair, avoiding Connor’s gaze.
A long, silent moment passed. Connor watched Jen study Claire, her eyes roaming her daughter’s face as if Claire might vanish the moment Jen looked away. Connor sa
w her bite back the tears that glistened in her eyes. Lightly, she ran her fingers over the right side of Claire’s face.
“Look what that bastard did to my child,” she said in a whisper laced with anger. “She looks so … her face …”
Connor stepped closer to the bed. “She’ll be okay.”
Then Claire’s voice, thick and dry. “Mom?”
Jen jumped as if the bed held an electric charge. She peered into her daughter’s face. Claire’s right eye opened slowly. For a long time she looked at her mother. “Mom?” she repeated.
Jen nodded, unable to hold her tears back any longer. They fell from the end of her nose onto the bed. “I’m here, honey.”
“Dad?”
“He’s not here yet, honey. He’s on his way. But Tom and Brianna are here.”
The siblings stood and leaned over the side of the bed, peering into their sister’s battered face, murmuring their greetings.
“Where’s Connor?” Claire asked.
Connor stepped forward, taking up position beside Jen. “I’m right here, Claire.”
She closed her eyes again, and Connor watched as she squeezed her mother’s hand.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
I woke from a morphine coma, sleep hanging thick and heavy on my limbs. It reminded me of the times my captor had drugged me in order to transport me from one house to another—from one prison to another—each time taking me farther away from my family and the life I had known. I opened my right eye and looked around, a slow panic rising from my gut as my brain tried to orient itself. It took a long moment for me to remember where I was and how I had come to be there.
The hospital room was semi-dark, the first light of dawn glowing beyond the windows and the lamp above my head illuminating my family members asleep in their chairs. My mother had pulled her chair as close to the bed as possible, and she slept with her upper body resting on the side of it, my good hand gripped tightly in her fingers. My brother and sister slept sitting up on the other side of the room. Brianna’s head lolled on Tom’s shoulder, and my brother’s head reclined on the back of his chair, his mouth yawning open. One of them was snoring, but I couldn’t tell which one.
I remembered waking earlier when Connor was in the room. My family’s faces had floated above me, seeming disembodied, trying not to look too shocked at the sight of my injuries. Even in my drug-induced haze, I had momentarily wished that they would leave and come back later, when I looked less like a set of tire tracks and was alert enough to greet them. But perhaps it was better to be reunited with them while I was still in a semi-comatose state.
I was frightened of their faces, their arms, the tears they would shed, and the questions they would surely ask. I had always been afraid to return—afraid my family would see me the way I saw myself. Dirty, used up, and weak. Like I was covered in a filth that could never be washed away. I felt branded by all the years of rape and abuse. And as long as I stayed with him, in the small, carefully controlled world he’d made for me, those memories were at rest, silent, and existed only to me.
I always believed that if I returned, my family would demand that I share those memories, and then every sordid thing that had been done to me would become a part of them as well. My ordeal would become like another family member, shared by everyone, ever present, a constant reminder of who I had become.
“Claire?” My brother’s voice startled me out of my reverie. I turned my head in his direction, the shift causing my mother to stir and sit up.
“Tom?” I croaked.
The three of them were inches from me then, and as I struggled to sit up, my mother’s able hands guided my upper body forward. Tears streamed down Tom’s face, and his body shook with sobs. He leaned over the side of the bed and gathered me in an awkward hug.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” he whispered.
He made room for Brianna, but her hug was stiff and awkward. “I can’t believe it’s you,” she said, stepping quickly away from me.
I felt her distance like a knife in my heart. I could see the questions in her mind, crowding out everything else. It wasn’t the time to ask questions, but Brianna had never been very patient. Still, she held them back, and I had a feeling that things between us would never be easy again until I answered them.
“How do you feel, sweetheart?” my mother asked.
I started to answer her but was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. We all turned toward it as it opened. I expected Connor or Stryker, but instead a man I hardly recognized stepped into the room.
“Rick,” my mother said.
He had aged considerably, his hair a salt-and-pepper mix where it had once been a lustrous brown. He was still handsome, but I estimated forty pounds lighter than when I’d last seen him a decade ago. His gray suit hung on him, making him look much smaller than I remembered.
His whole body twitched, hands fidgeting and trembling. His eyes were wide and undone as he stared at me, his body going utterly still. He swallowed two or three times and strode over to the bed, Brianna and Tom quickly making way for him. He leaned in and touched my face. His fingers moved along the contours of skin and bone, like a blind person searching for something.
“Dad?” I said.
He tugged my good hand from my mother’s grip and pressed it to his cheek. He closed his eyes and took several long, deep breaths. Without opening his eyes, he said, “It’s really you.”
Tears burned my eyes. I watched him breathing in my existence as if I truly had returned from the dead, and I felt the last years I’d spent in the trailer—too afraid, too ashamed to come home. They felt heavy and wrong. Had I done this to my own father? Turned him into an old man withered away to a loose sack of bones?
A terrible wave of guilt, tempered with shame—a new kind of shame—engulfed me. Why hadn’t I trusted him or my mother—my family—to receive me once more with love and relief? I was fifteen when my abductor smashed my head in and stole me from them. I was old enough to realize that my parents loved me unconditionally—that all I’d seen and endured would mean nothing to them just so long as they could hold their child again.
My experience had overwhelmed me, it had become the sum of my parts, who I was, and I hadn’t deemed myself fit to return to those who loved me.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I squeaked.
His eyes snapped open. He looked at me, shock and alarm dancing in his eyes. “No, no, no,” he said. “No, honey. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m so sorry, Claire.”
With that, he broke, dissolving into a weeping mass, his body draped over the side of the bed, head in my lap. Hesitantly, I placed my right palm on his scalp.
He shook. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said.
I breathed.
“Me too, Dad. I’m sorry I doubted me too,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
At 5:00 a.m., Stryker called the hospital to give Connor an update and check on Claire’s status. Connor took the call at the nurses’ station down the hall from Claire’s room. As he listened to Stryker, he watched the uniformed guard continue his even pace back and forth in front of the door. The man was like a metronome. He had only been interrupted once, by the arrival of Rick Fletcher. Farrell was dozing in a chair next to Claire’s door.
“Nothing,” Stryker said into the phone. “We been lookin’ all night. Even got an FBI helicopter up here with fucking floodlights and everything. We got Feds, Staties, locals, and division people combing half a county and we got nothing. It’s like this guy just vanished into a puff of smoke or something.”
“Any sign of the girl he had with him?” Connor asked.
“Nope. Everything shut down about an hour ago. We’re chasing our tails out here in the goddamn dark. We’re gonna recharge and start again at first light. We got technicians dusting for prints at the car and the house. I’d like to get an ID on this guy, but it may take a few days.” Stryker sounded as bone tired and weary as Connor felt.
A nurse rounded the other
side of the station counter and set a disposable coffee cup in front of Connor. The smell of coffee wafted up to his nostrils. He gave her what he hoped was a smile, and she winked back at him. She pointed down the hall toward Claire’s room where one of her colleagues stood, handing a second cup of coffee to the uniformed officer. The nurse peeked into Claire’s room, glanced at Mitch, seated just outside the room, and set a carrier in the chair next to him with two additional cups.
Connor almost forgot he was on the phone. Stryker’s voice faded out and then back in loudly. “Parks? You there?”
Connor blinked and picked up his coffee. “Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”
“I said what’s the fucking deal with this guy?”
Connor’s brow puckered as he sipped the burning liquid. He thought about the day he’d stood outside Strakowski’s house and pieced together the abduction and how the guy had managed to pull it off in broad daylight during a busy morning with the police crawling all over the place five minutes later.
Connor sighed. “I’m sure he planned for this. He probably had a couple of escape routes picked out in case something like this happened,” he told Stryker. “Keep me posted.”
“Will do. I’ll be stopping by within the hour to check on you guys.”
Connor watched as Jen emerged sleepy eyed from Claire’s room. She shook Mitch awake and spoke softly to him. A moment later, Brianna and Tom followed.
“Stryke,” Connor said.
There was a long silence on the other line, then he answered, “Yeah, I’m here.”
“We have to find this guy. We just—we just have to.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Between the drugs they gave me to soothe my anxiety and the ones to ease the pain of my injuries, I slept through most of the next three days. My sleep was broken up by faces and voices—nurses, doctors, my parents, Tom, Brianna, Mitch, and Connor, who stayed faithfully outside my room most of the time. I wanted to ask him questions, but I couldn’t get my mind or my mouth to work. He said nothing, occasionally sitting in the chair beside my bed with his leg elevated and a big strip of gauze wrapped round his head.