Taken

by Dee Henderson

  “I can just see it, Matthew. My brother is running for governor, spending a private fortune out of his own pocket trying to find me, enjoying time with the parents he loves who are good grandparents to his daughter, and the next week I’m back, our mom is on trial looking at twenty years, and his political career is over. That’s not justice.”

  Matthew decided, given the unthinkable options she was already considering, his own conclusions about what had happened might not be the shock he had feared. He reached over and patted her knee in a small gesture of sympathy. “Shannon, I think it was a true abduction for ransom. But the person who did it wanted some deniability. So they hired this group to be the ones to grab you and transport you to somewhere out of the way. Then they made their ransom demand, got paid a lot more than it cost them to have you taken. You were supposed to be gone only a few days. Only the group dropping you off ran into complications, and they couldn’t drop you off as planned. What happened to you was the unintended tragedy of a failed abduction-for-ransom scheme.”

  She stopped swirling the can of cashews to stare across at him, stunned. “You think my uncle was behind the whole thing.”

  “Actually, I do. He embezzled company money and committed suicide before he could be arrested. But he was taking money out of the family business long before you disappeared. I think eleven years ago he was on the verge of being caught and needed a lot of cash quickly to cover up what he had done. Someone desperate for money would see a ransom amount as an attractive solution. We know your uncle delivered the ransom money. There’s a suspicion he turned over some of it as blank paper, that he used some of the ransom money to cover his original theft from the company. It’s assumed that he took advantage of the opportunity your disappearance presented, that he acted on the spur of the moment to cash in on what had happened, to get some money to hide his theft. But it’s not a big stretch from that option to the possibility your uncle may have been behind your abduction from the very beginning.”

  Matthew tried to read what she was feeling and couldn’t. “He set it in motion, thinking it was going to be a few days’ disappearance, a ransom demand, and you’re back home. Instead you went missing, the family business was driven into near bankruptcy by your parents’ divorce, those proceedings triggering audits of the company’s books, which revealed his embezzlement of company funds and led to his decision to commit suicide before he could be arrested.” Matthew settled a comforting hand on hers. He so wished he could take some of this pain away. “It’s ugly, but it’s a lot more acceptable than the possibility your mother had an affair, that the person at that address is your real father, that someone paid to ‘make you go away,’ as you put it.”

  “I agree it’s less . . . painful. My uncle is dead. It would be nice to have an ugly truth be historical.” She shook her head. “I can’t take more tragedy in my life, Matthew. I’d rather not return than spend the next decades living in more pain because of what justice now brings down on my family. Which is why I thought seriously about simply not coming back.” She let out a long breath. “I can’t take the chance.”

  “Shannon . . . give me the address. Let me help you find out answers and at least make it possible for you to think about this rationally. You have to know. You don’t have a choice. What is done with the information . . . I understand the dilemma. But you need to let me look and put your mind at rest if I can. I won’t tell anyone what I find. I won’t give the address to anyone else. But you’ll know.”

  She was crying, silently, but the dam in her control had cracked and wasn’t going to close. His heart ached for her grief.

  “Forty-seven Kline Street, East Brisbane, Colorado.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t tell me what you find. Not until I say I’m ready to hear it.”

  “Whatever it is, I promise, I will help you deal with the truth.”

  She struggled against the tears, wiped at them with her palms. “So much for the start of my first day of vacation.”

  It was too much for him, that attempt at humor while her heart was shattering. He shifted on the couch to turn her into his shoulder, very carefully rested his arm around her back, and felt his own eyes grow wet. “Eventually, it’s going to be okay.” He knew better than to promise it would be okay anytime soon. She needed to cry, and he said nothing else, just stayed bearing witness as her tears fell with a small layer of the pain washing away. Healing could come after the emotions surfaced, and he was relieved to see this first wave arrive.

  He had an address. He’d know. At least he could protect from one of the two threats he could foresee. He very carefully slid a hand down her hair. Her tears were easing. When she shifted back, he let her go.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  He offered her another tissue, and she disappeared toward the restroom. He leaned forward, his head in his hands. He’d ask God if he was being an idiot right now, the way he was letting her into his heart. He knew he should put up a wall to safeguard his own emotions, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear that, so he left the question unasked.

  He had an address. He got up from the couch and went to find some answers.

  9

  Forty-seven Kline Street, East Brisbane, Colorado turned out to be a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch house in a quiet neighborhood about two miles from a high school and four miles from a hospital. Matthew made notes as he read the results of the search. It had sold three times in the last twenty years. The owner eleven years ago was Sanford Bliss.

  Matthew read that last piece of information with a looming sense of dread. He’d been hoping for a stranger’s name, maybe someone with a record known to law enforcement. Instead it was Bliss, and that put him from the father’s side of the family.

  He needed to see a family tree to know where Sanford Bliss fit. He pulled up the case index, searched for the name, and came up with a blank. The cops working Shannon’s disappearance had never spoken with a Sanford Bliss. Which made Shannon’s comment about a cop car being in the driveway of the home where she was to be delivered stand out as even more unusual. It hadn’t been an officer following up with her family members stopping by to ask questions. So why had a cop been there on the day they arrived to drop her off?

  Did East Brisbane have its own police department or was it patrolled by officers from an adjacent town?

  Was Sanford Bliss himself a cop?

  Maybe the man went by his middle name. Sanford was an unusual enough first name that Matthew would have remembered it had he seen it in any of the files.

  Okay, Shannon’s family tree on the father’s side. He picked up the phone and called his friend at the missing-persons registry. “Gregory, how good are your genealogy resources?”

  “Decent. A significant percentage of missing-kid cases turn out to be family situations, so we try to know the matrix of relatives.”

  “I need a family tree for Shannon Bliss, as wide and deep as your system can build it.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  “Thanks.”

  Next, Matthew went online to the Colorado Newspaper Association, found the local paper for the East Brisbane area. He accessed their archives and ran into a wall—they went back only eight years. If the police had filed a report with this address, the only way to find out would be a paper search. He saw a link to request one, twenty dollars for an hour of a researcher’s time. Given he knew exactly what dates to check, he would have an answer within a fraction of that hour. But when Shannon Bliss became part of the national news, the one handling the search for this name and this date was going to remember Sanford Bliss and might wonder what that search was about. Matthew saved the web page and took a different tack.

  He called the East Brisbane Police Department and got a night-duty officer, a sergeant, and after a little tap dance of East Coast and mountain pleasantries, he got the answer he needed. Yes, there would be electronic records back that far should the proper agency request a search be ma
de. Matthew added the number to his private notes. Paul could determine what a cop car was doing at that address during those first forty-eight hours. Which was a nonstarter until Shannon let him reveal the address to Paul. He needed some time to think about this.

  He could hear Shannon in the kitchen fixing popcorn in the microwave. Popcorn sounded good right now and smelled even better. Matthew finished writing his notes, flagged the next questions to pursue, then left the desk and went to see if she was inclined to share the popcorn.

  She had returned to the living room and was watching a Godzilla movie.

  He caught up with the story line within half a minute, unexpectedly captivated by the now-amateurish level of special effects. “I thought they would have burned these movies a decade ago.”

  She held out her bowl of popcorn to share. “He’s a national treasure of Japan.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  She smiled. “Probably.”

  Her eyes were slightly swollen, and the smile was an effort, but she was making a best attempt to force aside the sadness. He moved to the couch to watch some of the movie with her. Scary monster movies had been the fun theme of his childhood, and he’d watched scores of them, but he couldn’t remember this one. She shifted on the couch and found a pillow to put under her feet on the coffee table. When she sat back, her shoulder rested against his. Unintentional as the contact was, he noted it as significant because she didn’t move away. He was glad, yet puzzled too. Some of the problems Becky had dealt with, ones he’d anticipated would be Shannon’s experience, were not there, and he wasn’t sure how to read their absence. He was grateful, though, that she was growing comfortable around him.

  “If I see one more pizza commercial,” he murmured after three-quarters of an hour, “we’ll have to order one and have it delivered.” He took a final handful of popcorn. “I’m going back to my reading.”

  “You just don’t like feeling scared when people scream.”

  He chuckled. “Something like that.”

  His phone chimed as he walked back to the office. Gregory had sent the Bliss family tree. He acknowledged with a thanks and then checked his email, found the document. Matthew pulled it up and scrolled around on the visual tree, tracing the father’s side.

  Sanford Bliss was a cousin of Shannon’s father. He was deceased. Matthew stared at the square and the listed years of births and deaths and whispered, “Huh.” Nine years ago. There would be an obituary somewhere with more details. It meant when the house had sold eight years ago, it wasn’t because the owner had moved. It was because Sanford Bliss had died. Matthew wondered who had packed up his personal papers, if anything was still around, like old bank account records or letters . . . or if any backup files from his computer might still exist on a CD tucked away somewhere.

  He went back to the newspaper archives and widened the search to all of Colorado, looking for the name Sanford Bliss. The obit led the list, and he opened the link. No photograph, just a single paragraph. Complications from cancer. He had been sixty-eight. And wasn’t this a mess?

  Someone had paid to have Shannon taken to the home of her cousin on her father’s side. The person he needed to ask about that was now dead. What had been going on in her family? Did Shannon know Sanford Bliss? Was this person a stranger to her? Matthew wondered if he dared ask her. Maybe if he printed out the family tree and asked her to talk about her family, worked his way over to the name as part of a list of names, she’d mention whether she knew him. He shook his head. She was smart enough to see through what he was doing, given she’d just told him this man’s address. Probably not worth pursuing with her until he knew more.

  Someone had paid to abduct her and have her taken to a relative. Why? To get her out of the way, as Shannon believed? To protect her? Or because it was a ransom and Sanford Bliss had been involved in that plan? Who else might have been involved, or had it only been Sanford Bliss? That was a new thought. Maybe this man had set the entire thing up. He’d hired the group to take her, bring her to him, have someone else working for him in Chicago who was to pick up the ransom, and he’d look like the hero for being the one to get the girl safely home. Only two things had gone wrong: her uncle took advantage of the opportunity and stole some of the ransom money, delivered blank paper, and the cops had been at Sanford’s home on another matter, complicating the arrival of Shannon.

  Matthew blew out a long breath as he pondered that possibility. It remained a kidnapping-for-ransom plot gone wrong with tragic results, but originating in an entirely different direction. What better deniability than to kidnap a girl who lived states away? It actually began to feel likely that Sanford Bliss had been the one behind the entire kidnapping plot rather than the uncle. If he could prove there was bad blood between Sanford Bliss and Shannon’s father, it got even more plausible.

  Did he dare tell Shannon any of this? Hopefully put her mind at rest about the idea of her mom having an affair and her natural father living at this address? Or would it only leave her with the larger unknown of what it all meant? It would just complicate matters for her if he gave her half the picture.

  Matthew raked his hand through his hair. He didn’t do well when shoved into a corner. He printed out the family tree, took the six pages and taped the edges to make one large square, and laid it out on the desk. He found Shannon’s name and put a big red circle around it, capturing other individuals closely related to her. He picked up the phone. “Paul, I need a favor, and I don’t want a lot of questions about why.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m sending you a list of twenty names in Shannon’s family—some are individuals already looked at pretty thoroughly, but others not so much. I need one of your best researchers on that list to tell me about these people—finances, business troubles, relationships, rivalries within the family, job details and travel, personal vices like gambling, alcohol, having an affair—anything you can learn about their lives, particularly back eleven years.”

  “You know how this got started.”

  “I know . . . something. I’m going to shake the family tree and see what might fall out. These twenty were either in the Chicago area, were in touch with the parents, or are in the right age bracket for something like this. I’d like to know details about who they are. I’ll send over the family tree and the list of names. Theo might want to add another name or two. There’s some urgency to this request.”

  “I’ve got a researcher. Send me the names.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  “How is Shannon tonight?” Paul asked.

  “Talking. Crying. Currently watching a Godzilla movie. I’d say she’s going to be fine with time.”

  “Godzilla, huh?” Paul said, sounding amused. “I’d say it’s time to go rent a stack of movies. Need a break from being the only one with her?”

  “I’m doing okay. Becky thinks what I’m doing is admirable, so I’ve got my own support network.”

  “Theo and I put together the draft of a plan to deal with the press once it becomes public. When you want to walk through it, I’ll come your way, add your ideas.”

  “One thing—I think John gave us a secure place to tuck her away while she’s in Chicago, but I’m not familiar enough with Chicago streets to be the one driving if we’re either followed or the press is staking out locations.”

  “John’s got a couple of people in mind to handle just that concern.”

  “Good to know. We’ll be at your place tomorrow around six thirty. You’re going to debrief the brother after he meets Shannon?”

  “John and I are going to make sure he doesn’t get near a phone until he’s processed matters enough not to say the wrong thing to the wrong person. How he handles his wife is going to be my biggest concern. His parents he can simply avoid calling or talking with them for forty-eight hours. But however the situation begins to break once her brother knows she’s alive, we’ll handle it. Just keep your focus on Shannon.”

  Matthew appreciated th
at plan. “I’ll have my hands full just with her,” he concurred. He hesitated. “Paul . . . this is just a heads-up, no specifics. There was someone else Shannon thought might have been able to get free of the family. She’s been expecting a call that hasn’t come. And she mentioned there’s a place within half a day’s drive of here that was a home base of sorts for the group. Some of the graves she mentioned might be there.”

  “Did she give you anything else on the person she’s hoping to hear from? Gender? East or West Coast . . . ?”

  “No. But it’s why she isn’t saying more than she has. When she starts talking, I get the impression there will be a lot of names.”

  “I’ll put out some quiet feelers, see if there’s someone else, like Shannon, who they’re trying to keep out of the news while they sort out what the whole story is. I’ll get back to you with whatever I learn.”

  “Thanks, Paul.” Matthew emailed the family tree and list of names, closed down his laptop, stored his notes, and cleared the desk. He’d done as much as he could deal with for now.

  Shannon had already turned in for the night. Matthew debated a moment, decided to take the second guest room in the apartment—he wasn’t comfortable being across the hall the first night she was in this new place.

  His mind was even more tired than his body. It felt like a month had passed, rather than simply three days since the Friday evening she had appeared. He drifted to sleep wondering about Sanford Bliss and what might be discovered when detectives began digging into his life.

  Matthew got up six hours later, ran a weary hand through his hair, thinking in equal urgency about hot coffee and a hot shower. He was facing a tough thirty-six hours. He knew the day was going to end with a very stressful event, and tomorrow could be just as stressful if the meeting with Shannon’s brother didn’t go well tonight.