“I could see Frank leaving the money behind if he thought it was marked and too hot to dispose of,” Jackie offered. “Someone set up this kidnapping and hired Frank, who then hired Ronald and a support crew. Once it all started to come apart, Frank could be cutting his losses and killing the people who knew he was involved.”
“But why take Sharon out of the trunk?” Mark asked.
Luke looked over at his cousin. “Insurance maybe? A hostage to guarantee he could get out of the area?”
“And Caroline?” Mark asked. “He’s trying to get to you, Luke, trying to make this even more personal.”
Luke looked at Mark, a sense of dread building inside. Frank having Caroline was too terrifying a reality to consider. “Frank might want a fight with me, but to risk this? He would want to get out of this area, lay low, and make it a fight for another day.” If Frank made this personal, Sharon and Caroline are likely already dead. The impact of that thought had him recoiling inside and searching for anything else that explained this.
Luke shook his head. “Gary Gibson is involved. He’s been watching them, photographing them, and he’s been missing since this began. He’s the only person in this who has an immediate need to involve Caroline. I still think this is more than a kidnapping gone bad. Sharon is only a substitute for what Gary most wants. He would feel compelled to contact Caroline.”
Luke’s phone rang, interrupting the discussion. He pulled it from his jacket pocket to answer the call. “Falcon.”
“Luke.”
“Sharon!” His exclamation froze the group. He forgot how to breathe as he met her husband’s gaze. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere on Dryer Road at a bait shop closed for the holiday. I can hear interstate traffic. I can’t walk much farther.”
Luke pressed the phone tighter to his ear and covered it with his hand to hear her.
“I only had two quarters, and I didn’t know if Mark would be back at the hospital, or if I called the house…”
“It’s okay, Sharon.” Luke turned quickly and saw Jackie’s confirming nod as she spoke on another phone. “We’re tracing this call now.”
“She swapped for me, Luke. Caroline swapped for me. And you’ve got to get her back.”
He closed his eyes. “I will, Sharon.”
“Is Mark with you?” Her voice broke.
“Right here, honey. Hold on.”
He passed the phone to her husband.
“She swapped for me.” Oh, Caroline, what have you stepped into? He put his hand on the back of a chair to keep himself upright.
His vision cleared and he saw a swirling room of officers in a rush to seize the moment. Henry stood in the midst of it, calling out rapid orders to officers both present and out on patrol. They had to get to Sharon, but they also had to close every road in the area to try and seize the man who had held her. Minutes were precious.
Luke watched it as he took a second deep breath and knew relief that he was not in charge of this task force. As badly as he wanted to run it, at this critical moment all he could think of was the fact that Caroline was now in intense danger.
“Jackie, you and Luke—get in the air and get to Sharon. Joe is landing on the pad to pick you up now. Call in as much backup as you need to search the location once you know what the area looks like. Mark, the hospital or your home? We can prepare to receive Sharon at either place.”
Mark straightened, stronger now in a way he’d not been since the release from the hospital. “Our home. She’ll need to see Benjamin. Sharon’s on her feet and talking; the hospital stop can come second.”
“Done.”
* * *
When seen from the air, the bait shop stood out alongside a gravel road, the parking lot and winter storage areas for boats confirming they had the right site. The helicopter pilot circled the property. Luke could see no movement below.
“Joe, how long before the media helicopters track us down?” Jackie asked the pilot.
“You can bet someone at the task force has said something to the wrong person by now. I give you five minutes or less before we have unwanted company and are live on the air.” Joe pointed to the east. “I’m going to set down on that frontage road over there.”
Luke put his hands on the buckle of his harness. “What’s the time from here to the nearest hospital in case we need to divert?”
“Four minutes.”
The helicopter flared and set down. Luke shoved open the side door. He ducked low as he stepped out fighting the wind gusts, then turned back to give Jackie a hand.
“I’m good. Go.”
Luke ran down the rock road toward the bait shop, scanning for the pay phone Sharon had used.
“Over here.”
Luke heard the faint call over the sounds of the decelerating helicopter blades and turned to his right. Sharon moved to stand up, one hand braced against a tree trunk to keep her balance. Luke scrambled around the stored boats.
“I need a jacket. I don’t want Benjamin to see me like this.” Her face was tear streaked and dirty, her hands bruised, her face too gaunt, the circles below her eyes dark—but she was standing if on wobbly legs and her voice was clear.
“Right here.” Luke wrapped his own jacket around her. Her hands were icy cold, and her fingers curled much like a lady with severe arthritis. He eased her hands into the pockets of the jacket.
“She went with him,” Sharon whispered, leaning against his shoulder. “Over two hours ago.”
“Was it Gary Gibson?”
Sharon shook her head. “I’ve never seen this guy before.”
Luke felt part of himself die. Not Gary . . . “Okay.”
“I got the plate numbers of the car he’s driving, and I can try to help you with a sketch.”
“Both will help.” He pushed buttons together and then tugged out Kleenex to wipe her face. She had never looked so precious to him as she did now. “Let’s get you home,” he said, his voice ragged against the emotions he felt. “Your family is waiting for you.” He carefully picked her up.
“Luke?”
He watched every step he took, trying not to jar her. “Hmm.”
“I’m sorry about Caroline not telling you. She would have never had the courage if she had told someone what she was going to do.”
Luke hugged her tighter to him. “She loves you. She got you out alive.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” he whispered back. He nodded to Jackie, who stood ready to help at the rear helicopter door. He eased Sharon into the seat and saw the moment all of it became overwhelming for her. He let her lean against him as the tears became sobs, rubbing her back and taking the worst of the blow so Mark and Benjamin would not have to a few minutes from now, his own silent tears joining Sharon’s.
* * *
Home had never, ever, looked so good. Sharon squeezed Luke’s hands in thanks, trying to put a thousand emotions into the one gesture.
“You’re welcome, Sharon.”
She looked over at Jackie. “Thanks for the gift of the makeup.”
“My pleasure.”
Sharon turned toward the house. The front door flew open and the screen crashed back. She knelt and took the collision with Benjamin at full speed, wrapping her arms around her son and holding him so tight he giggled. “Benjamin, I hear you ran like a rabbit.”
“I tried.” He wrapped his arms tight around her neck and leaned back to see her face. His small hands touched her cheeks and traced the bruise, a frown on his face. “Dad crashed his car into a pond.”
“I heard about that.” She settled her hands over his, reassuring him, as she checked out every freckle on his face. Her son looked so tired, and so afraid. She kissed the back of his wrist and turned it to show him the lipstick. As his eyes widened, she smothered his face in kisses from ear to ear. “Aren’t you glad I’m home?”
“Mom! I’m going to have lipstick in my hair,” he protested with a laugh.
“You can go lipstick him.”
“You sure?”
“I’m going to be scrubbing for an hour. You got my nose; I can see it.”
She laughed with him, added one more perfect kiss to his neck, then released him. “Go start scrubbing. And then come join me in the kitchen. I’m hungry. I want some of your Pop-Tarts to start with.”
She stood. She wanted to run and wrap her arms around Mark and bawl for a few hours, but she instead took a deep breath, smiled at her husband, and simply waited as he closed the last few feet. Her emotions would overwhelm her soon. At the moment she just wanted to appreciate the fact that her husband and son were alive.
He rested his arms across her shoulders and blinked away tears as he searched her face. “Hi.”
Her own tears started regardless of what she planned, sliding down her cheeks. “Hi. . . . She traded for me.”
“I know,” he whispered.
“I saw what was happening and there was nothing I could do to stop her, stop him.”
“She loves you, Sharon. We all do. We’ll get her back.”
She straightened the collar of his shirt, one from his collection of golf shirts with a hospital logo, and rested her arms around his waist, her head against his shoulder. “I hear you missed me.”
“A bit.”
She leaned back to look at him.
He smiled, the emotion so tender she sniffed back more tears. He dropped a light kiss on her nose and struggled to lighten his voice. “I missed your soft snore that interrupts Letterman’s monologue.”
She choked back a laugh.
“Your pillow mashing me in the head when I try to see the alarm clock,” he went on. “My shaving cream brush wandering away, socks that are not mine showing up in my drawer . . .” He let out a deep sigh and cupped her face in his hands. “I missed you.”
She went up on her tiptoes to kiss him, holding back a wince as she stretched the ankle she had twisted during her long walk to freedom. “How many ribs did you break?”
“Two. It feels like more.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “You need to go to the hospital to get checked out.”
“Not now. Not while Caroline is out there somewhere.”
“We will find her.” Mark brushed her hair back from her face. “What do you need most right now?”
“Let me get the police sketch done, then have a shower. I’ll spend a few minutes with Benjamin while I eat, then I need a chance to talk it through from the beginning while it’s fresh in my mind.”
“Done.”
“Would you chase the dreams away for me tonight?”
“We’ll do it for each other.”
She kissed him a final time and unwound her arms. She turned with her husband toward the house. The helicopter lifted off again, with Luke and Jackie aboard. “I wish I could have told them more. I’m afraid I know so little that will help them find her.”
“Luke will find her; he won’t stop until he does.”
“Caroline’s in love with him.”
“He’s in love with her too.” Mark hugged her. “Welcome home.”
* * *
“Sharon said the swap happened near a vista pulloff,” Jackie said, flipping through the notes of their brief conversation during the flight.
Luke shoved the map back up on the police car dashboard. “There are too many of them around here.” He slowed the car and took another park back road. He could hear the three helicopters crisscrossing the area, but so far they had been unable to locate the place Sharon described.
“Sharon was walking for quite a while, mostly downhill, to reach the bait shop. The road turned both right and left several times and was paved with white gravel.”
“A fact that matches just about every back road in this area. Did she say something about a hunter’s sign?”
“Quail.”
“Okay. This road looks promising. It’s closed to public traffic, which would fit this guy’s purpose.”
Luke slowed as the road began to climb. If they didn’t locate the site Sharon described where she had been released soon, this would become a nearly impossible search at night. After two minutes he began to wonder if he should keep on this road or turn around.
“Stop! There it is.”
Luke stepped on the brakes as the trunk of the car caught his attention too. Caroline’s car was under the limbs of an old oak tree, rolled off the road until the hood nearly touched the tree trunk. Luke stopped in the middle of the road and put on the high beams. “No wonder it couldn’t be seen from the air.”
Jackie called in their coordinates to the circling helicopters.
“It’s going to take the crime scene technicians a good hour to get here and set up, and the light isn’t going to last that long.”
Luke got out of the car, retrieving his torch flashlight.
“Sharon said they drove off from here in a gray Plymouth. The plate numbers she gave us matched a car stolen in Florida two months ago.”
“That car has likely been dumped by now too.”
Luke stood on the road and shone his light across the ground beside the vehicle, not wanting to disturb any evidence that might be present. The ground was too hard to give them footprints.
“Getting Caroline out here without telling us . . . all he had to do was ask Caroline the question: ‘What will you do to save your sister’s life?’ Caroline would have done whatever it took to free Sharon.”
Luke walked down the incline to Caroline’s driver side door and shone his flashlight around the interior. “Her purse is still here.”
“Maybe he left us prints when he rolled the car under the trees, or maybe up at the picnic table. Sharon said she was left at the picnic table while Caroline and the guy drove away.”
Luke saw nothing in the car that immediately looked helpful. He walked back to the gravel road and looked toward the picnic tables Jackie pointed out. “Sharon’s hands were bound with duct tape, and he left a pocketknife for her to cut herself free. Let’s see how many pieces of that tape can be found before the wind blows it away. For capturing fingerprints, duct tape is excellent.”
“We’re close to her, Luke. They’re only hours ahead of us now.”
“We need a break, Jackie. Once this goes past midnight . . .” He shook his head rather than finish the thought.
* * *
The passing of time was like a boulder resting on his chest. Luke looked at his watch again and then up at the darkening night sky. If they didn’t find Caroline in the next three hours, they were in trouble.
He pushed through more underbrush. The wind blew in almost a circular pattern around this vista, and nothing was staying close to where he expected it to rest. “What’s that?” Luke paused, shining his torchlight on the item that had caught his attention.
The crime scene technician knelt to check it out, moving aside leaves. “Cigarette butts,” he confirmed, reaching for another evidence bag from his pocket to recover them.
“I think they waited here for quite a while for Caroline to arrive.”
“Even with good directions, trying to find this place in the middle of the night would be tough. They could have been here until almost dawn.”
“So what else did our guy leave us?”
“Where would you take a leak if you were out here, drinking beers, waiting?”
“I’m not even going to go there,” Luke replied, pushing on through the underbrush, looking for more of the blown tape fragments. From the pieces they had been able to locate and reconstruct, there was still roughly a three-inch piece to be found.
“Luke.”
He turned at Jackie’s call and saw her flashlight waving over near where he had parked their car.
“The car Sharon gave us plate numbers on—they found it abandoned behind a closed restaurant about five miles from here, off I-85. You want to check it out?”
Luke looked at the technician.
“I’ll find that last piece of tape,” he promised.
“Thanks.” Luke paused. “This evidence goes back to the lab by air, and someone walks it through processing. There is no higher priority case tonight.”
“You’ll have answers as fast as they can be found.”
* * *
The restaurant had once been a Burger Palace, but from the condition of the weathered signs and peeling paint, it must have been closed for over a year. Luke saw the blue van from the crime lab parked to one side of the building, along with three patrol cars, their headlights being used to light the scene. He showed ID to the officer keeping the parking lot off-limits and parked behind a state patrol officer.
“Taylor Marsh is here,” Jackie noted, closing her door.
Luke pocketed his keys. “It was likely his guys who spotted the car.” They walked over to join the group.
“A patrol officer spotted the vehicle at the end of his rounds,” Taylor said. “From the depth of the leaves blown in around it, the car looks like it’s been here a few hours. There are fresh tire tracks that cross the tire tracks of this car, suggesting they transferred to a new vehicle. Based on the tread size, my guys think it’s a sports van or truck of some kind.”
Luke looked around, hating what he saw: a lot of uninhabited area and more dense woods. He feared Caroline could have been dumped along with the car. “You’re canvassing the area?”
“I’ve got officers in the woods, both behind this restaurant and walking both directions of the frontage road. So far we’ve come up empty.”
Luke spotted the flashlights moving around along the tree lines. “Sharon said this guy was on his own. Are there any signs he was joined by someone else?”
“It looks like only two sets of footprints,” Taylor said. “I’m assuming Caroline is about a size six shoe?”
“That sounds about right,” Jackie said.
“Then our guy is wearing boots, big ones, about a size eleven. We’ll get casts of them to see if anything appears unique.”
“He changed vehicles here and he’s got Caroline with him, so I’m betting his plan is to drive through the night and be hundreds of miles away from here by morning,” Jackie offered.
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