Love Inspired Suspense May 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Trail of EvidenceGone MissingLethal Exposure

by Lynette Eason

  She entered her darkroom as she always did—greeting it like an old friend. The distinctive, aromatic smell of the developing fluids lingered in every corner, and the low-watt red bulb gave her a sensation of coziness. The small space was well organized, with her chemical solutions neatly lined up and labeled, her developing trays laid out ready on the table and walls full of shelves, groaning with travel books, guides and maps of places all around the globe.

  Being in this special place of peace calmed her senses, and she closed her eyes, remembering how many hours of blissful solitude she had enjoyed within these four walls. The surfaces were a little dusty now, as the room was much underused. She could print high-quality photos directly from her computer in her office, and she suddenly felt a tug at her heartstrings thinking of exactly what this room meant to her. She had often used her time in the dark to commune with God, especially when developing prints of her war photographs. She would tell Him of the subjects in her photographs, ask Him to provide care to the desolate places she was fortunate enough to be able to leave behind and thank Him for the privilege of sharing in the suffering of others, however briefly.

  She picked up her bottles of developing fluid and put them in the sink before filling it with warm water and popping a thermometer inside. She then walked to a large black freezer in the corner where she stored all her negatives. It was a chest style with plastic boxes inside, containing special envelopes to keep the precious contents from being damaged. She shivered as she dug deep, searching for the box marked with the correct year. It would be the fullest one, crammed with images from Iraq, where she spent the majority of that year.

  Finding the box, she pulled it up and rested it on the table while she searched among the many envelopes inside. It had been a busy year for her, following the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit as they fought to gain a stronghold in the Al Faw Peninsula. It was during this assignment that she came across the palace, set in sparkling, shimmering waters. The decadence of the building had taken her breath away, especially when set against the poverty of the ordinary Iraqi people. She had been the only press photographer permitted to take pictures of the palace before it was cleared and designated with its new name of Camp Liberty. Little did she know then that those photographs would become so significant twelve years later.

  When she found what she was looking for, she seized the envelope between her fingers and held it up triumphantly. Her scrawled words were a little smudged but clear to see. She replaced the box back in the freezer and turned around to start the process of making these pictures come to life.

  She prepared her equipment with meticulous attention to detail, as she always did, and checked that her enlarger was correctly adjusted. Each step of the process had the potential to ruin the images unless she got it exactly right, and she might need two or three attempts before she got the density and color just as she wanted. There was very little room for error in such a finely balanced procedure. The last step of that complex process was shutting off her overhead bulb to ensure that no light could damage the ultrasensitive photographic paper.

  Rebecca flipped the light switch, and the room was plunged into total blackness. She stood motionless for a few moments, allowing her eyes to become adjusted to the dark. It usually took no more than a couple of minutes for her to be able to see the fingers in front of her face. Bringing her hand about a foot away from her eyes, she could see the clean, white bandage she had fixed a little while ago.

  In her peripheral vision, she thought she saw movement—an outline or a shadow, rising slowly from the floor beneath the table. She spun around, putting her hands out in front of her body, suddenly panicked. “Who’s there?” she called. “Is anyone in here?”

  There was no sound except for the whir of the ventilation fan, pumping in cool, fresh air. She momentarily froze, remembering the slow creak of the unlocked door and her assumption that it was she who had left it unlocked. Her heart raced like a train in her chest, and goose bumps tingled all over her body. Could someone have been lying in wait? What better cover was there for attack than a lightless, windowless room? And she was defenseless.

  She swiveled on the ball of her foot and reached out for the light switch, snatching at it with both hands. She didn’t find it. Instead she found a gloved hand, bearing down on her, its fingers closing around her mouth to silence the terrified scream that was just about to fill the blackness.

  SEVEN

  Rebecca thrashed around with all her strength, lashing out and kicking, making contact with her assailant many times. She knew she was agile, able to twist and turn to prevent him from gaining a good hold on her body. Her equipment clattered to the floor. Would Jack hear? He had secured the house well, locking all routes of entry, so he would have no reason to suspect someone would have been able to break in.

  She held the negatives in her hand, still contained within their envelope, and her attacker was snatching at them. Even in the pitch-black room, she could see his thick fingers swiping through the air. She felt his breath on her neck. She was in trouble. She didn’t want to give up the negatives, but she might not have a choice. The hand over her mouth was increasing its pressure, restricting her breathing, making her dizzy. She had to make more noise. She needed Jack to hear.

  She dropped the negatives to the floor, and her assailant growled through his teeth. “You stupid woman. I could’ve killed you already.”

  She shook her head as her muffled voice tried to plead with him.

  She felt herself being dragged across the floor. Was this the moment he would kill her? Visions of her beautiful children flashed into her mind, closely followed by Ian’s face. But the vision that lingered was one of Jack, smiling in a photograph she had taken at the beach. He held Charlotte and Emily in front of an orange sunset. This image was still in her head when she felt herself being lifted off her feet, and an icy blast curled around her body. She was being put into the freezer! She gasped with shock as her body touched the frozen plastic boxes. Her shirt rode up, and the warmth of her bare skin was devoured by the iciness. The man hurled a couple of boxes from the freezer to make room for her and then pressed her down hard, keeping his hand firmly over her mouth.

  “For your own sake, stop with the detective work,” the man said, looming over her. “Without the negatives, you have nothing. Take my advice and let it go.”

  When he finally released his fingers from her lips, she screamed with all her might. Then the lid was closed, and she knew that her eyes would never adjust to the new level of blackness that had enveloped her.

  *

  Jack dropped the cordless phone as a woman’s scream echoed through the house. He had been checking in with the staff at his car dealership, assuming the house was perfectly secure, assuming Rebecca was safe inside her darkroom.

  “No!” he called out, descending the stairs two at a time, reaching for his gun in its holster.

  He kicked open the door to the garage where it joined the kitchen. Rebecca’s minivan was parked in its usual space, next to the bags and boxes waiting to go to charity. Jack raised his weapon and scanned the area. His eyes quickly sought out the danger—two wide eyes, staring from behind the minivan, obscured by the same ski mask he had seen on the night of Rebecca’s breakin. The two men eyeballed each other for a split second.

  Jack called out first. “Hands in the air!”

  The man ducked out of sight, using the car for cover, and Jack saw the garage door slide open. He knew that Rebecca had locked it barely a couple of hours ago.

  The man scrambled beneath the garage door in no time at all and set off running across the yard. Jack saw a child on a skateboard across the street and realized that shooting his weapon was too dangerous. Neither did he want to leave the house—he wanted to find Rebecca without delay.

  At that moment, Darius’s car turned the corner and screeched to a halt, sending smoke rising from wheels on the pavement. Darius jumped from the car, looking between Jack and the black-clad
assailant, quickly assessing the seriousness of the situation. The man darted across the neighbor’s yard and vaulted a fence, trying to take an alternative route away from prying eyes.

  “Get that guy,” Jack yelled to Darius.

  “I’m on it,” Darius yelled, setting off after him. “You go take care of Rebecca.”

  Jack didn’t need telling twice. He turned back toward the house, running at first, and then forcing himself to approach with caution. When the Dark Skies team had successfully completed their mission, Ian had let down his guard and assumed the danger had passed. He had been wrong. Jack knew he couldn’t make the same mistake. The stakes were too high this time. If he lost his life, who would take care of Rebecca and the children then?

  He skirted around the edge of the garage, almost falling over a box that had been knocked off a pile. It was marked Men’s Sweaters. The door to Rebecca’s darkroom was closed, and a dull, monotonous knocking could be heard from inside. Jack positioned himself directly in front of the door, feet evenly spread apart. He raised his weapon to his shoulder and kicked the door clean open. It flew off one of its hinges and hung there, swaying in the dark.

  Jack raised his weapon and called out a warning. “If anybody’s hiding in there, I suggest you show yourself with your hands where I can see them. I am armed and will fire on any hostile action.”

  He waited for a reply. All he heard was knocking coming from the back of the room, where Rebecca kept her freezer. He flipped the light switch, and a dingy red glow lit up the room. It was just enough light to check into every dark corner, making sure the assailant hadn’t brought a friend.

  Then he turned his attention to the chest freezer, on which the attacker had placed a large filing cabinet, its drawers slid open, spilling out magazines and papers. He heaved the cabinet from the freezer lid, sending it crashing to the ground. In an instant, Rebecca emerged from the iciness, gasping for breath. He gathered her into his arms and lifted her from the enclosed space, holding her extraclose to allow his body heat to travel into her.

  “He…he…took…the…negatives,” she stammered.

  “It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “You’re safe, and that’s all that matters to me right now.”

  He carried her into the garage and put her on her feet while he tore the tape from the brown box he had stepped over just a moment earlier. Grabbing the first sweater he could lay his hands on, he yanked it over Rebecca’s head and rubbed her shoulders hard before once again pulling her into an embrace. Her body shivered and shook with either shock or the cold. Or both.

  “He was lying in wait, Jack,” she said breathlessly. “How did he get in?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack replied, taking a long, hard look at the open garage door. “But it won’t happen again, that’s for sure.”

  He studied the path that the intruder had taken from the house, hoping for a clue inadvertently left behind. He narrowed his eyes at a dark and shiny strip fluttering across the floor in the breeze. It took a second or two for him to realize that it was a strip of negatives, obviously dropped unnoticed by the attacker in his haste to get away.

  Rebecca saw it too and pushed away from Jack, darting to retrieve the potentially precious evidence. She picked it up carefully, holding it by its edges as if it were a fragile object.

  “I have to get these negatives back into the darkroom,” she said, stumbling on her feet, still shivering. “They could be damaged. I should develop them now.”

  Jack held her steady in his arms as he led her back into the red light of her darkroom. “Rebecca,” he said firmly. “You’re in shock. You can develop these photographs later. We should report this incident to the police.”

  She was insistent. “But these negatives may be the only evidence we have left to prove these items were stolen from the palace. There are only four negatives on this strip. The other twenty pictures are gone.”

  “Darius is chasing after the guy right now,” Jack said. “He’s doing his best to get them back for you.”

  This seemed to appease her a little, and she leaned onto the counter with a big exhalation of breath. “Okay. I’ll put these in the storage freezer until later.” She looked at the lower portion of the door hanging on its hinge. “I guess I should fix the door before using the room, anyway.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jack said, holding her by the shoulders and gently lowering her into a chair before reaching to a shelf for a special moisture-proof envelope that he knew all of Rebecca’s photos were stored in. “I’ll secure the garage door with a padlock as soon as Darius gets back.” He clenched his jaw, thinking of what might have happened. “Thankfully this guy didn’t hurt you worse than shutting you inside a freezer.”

  “He could easily have killed me,” she said quietly. “And when he notices that he dropped some negatives, I’m guessing he may regret letting me live.”

  “Don’t dwell on what he might do,” Jack said, handing her the envelope, in which she carefully placed the negatives. “Let’s get you into the house.”

  She looked down at the sweater she wore, running one hand over the blue woolen fabric. “This is Ian’s sweater,” she said.

  “I took it out of one of the boxes to get you warmed up,” he said. “Do you mind?”

  She shook her head and looked into Jack’s face, her pupils large and round in the dim light. “You never know when your future could be snatched away from you, Jack. It happened to Ian, and it almost happened to me.”

  Jack was angry with himself. How had he allowed this to happen? This had been a close call for both of them.

  *

  Rebecca pulled a chair from around the kitchen table and sat close to Darius. She then applied a large dressing over a wound on the chief’s forehead while Jack spoke with the police, ensuring that they dusted for prints before he repaired the door and tidied the darkroom, ready for Rebecca to finally process the four remaining prints.

  “I’m so sorry, Rebecca,” Darius said. “I guess I’m not as young as I used to be. I managed to catch the guy, but he was too strong for me.”

  “It’s okay,” she said yet again. Darius had apologized numerous times since returning to the house empty-handed and bloodied. His wound wasn’t too bad—his pride seemed to be more damaged than his head. She had been bitterly disappointed to see his empty hands but had tried not to show it.

  “Good thing he dropped a strip of negatives, huh?” Darius asked. “Where are they now?”

  “Jack has them,” she said. “I’ll develop them right after the police leave.”

  Darius adopted a gentle tone. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said almost on autopilot. She wasn’t fine. Her stomach felt like a washing machine on spin cycle. “I’m just worried about how this guy managed to get in.” She secured the dressing with surgical tape. “I was so sure I locked the garage door.”

  “It happens,” Darius said. “In times of stress, even the most basic of tasks require careful attention.”

  Jack appeared in the kitchen doorway, flanked by the same two deputies who had responded to her first burglary. One of them nodded toward her while touching his cap.

  “I’m sorry to be back here under such unfortunate circumstances again, ma’am,” he said. “We’ve got a forensic team looking for clues in your photographic studio. They’ll only need an hour or so to finish up.” He looked between her and Darius. “That should give us enough time to get a statement from you two. In light of the car explosion that occurred earlier today, I’d say that your theory about the stolen pieces of art doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched. We’d like to take your remaining negatives as evidence and get them analyzed.”

  Rebecca rinsed the bloodied cloth in a basin of warm water on the table and looked at Jack. “That might be a good idea Jack,” she said. “We need to keep those negatives safe.”

  Darius jumped in before Jack could answer. “Personally, I think we should deal directly with the FBI. They have a special unit that dea
ls with war crimes like looting. If someone from the military is involved with the theft, they may be able to infiltrate the police and destroy the evidence against them.” He touched the cut on his forehead and looked up at Jack. “I recommend we stick with the plan to get these photos analyzed by an art expert, and then hand it all over to the FBI.”

  Jack rubbed his chin. “He’s right. Once those negatives are out of our hands, we have nothing. I’d rather keep them close until the FBI is involved.”

  One of the deputies stepped forward. “Well, we can recommend an art curator at the Museum of Fine Art in Tallahassee. He’s worked with the police on cases of fraud in the past. He really knows his stuff.”

  “Good,” said Darius. “We’ll go tomorrow morning.”

  “The museum has short opening hours on a Sunday, sir,” the deputy replied. “Your best option is to go on Monday.”

  Rebecca went to the sink to pour away the red-tinged water from the bowl. “Monday is good with me,” she said. “It gives me a little extra time to make sure I get the prints exactly right. I want them to be crystal clear.” She gesticulated to a chair. “Deputies, would you like to sit and take my statement? I’d like to get it over with.”

  Jack rolled up his sleeves. “And I’ll start on dinner.”

  Rebecca’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re cooking?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I can cook, you know.”

  “You can?” she asked. “I had no idea.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said, reaching into the cupboard for a large pan. “I’m full of surprises.”

  “You sure are,” she replied. First he asked to go to church and now wanted to cook a meal. She felt like she was seeing him in a new light.

  Rebecca sat opposite the deputies, ready to recount her experiences of the day. As the words flowed, she watched Jack in her kitchen, preparing a meal for her, taking care to ensure she was nourished and energized for the difficult tasks ahead.

  With the sheriff’s deputies sitting opposite her and Jack working away in the kitchen, her house felt like the safest place in the world. But she knew the feeling would be fleeting.