by Nancy Bush
“You’ve got an Amber Alert going,” Claire reminded him, more for something to say than any real reason that it needed to be stated. “Someone will find her.”
“We don’t know what vehicle she’s in. Maybe she thumbed a ride. Maybe she stole a car. Jesus.”
His cell phone rang. It was Deputy Burghsmith. “Tell me you have something,” Lang answered.
“A Jeep Wrangler just drove by the Feather house really slowly with a woman at the wheel. Maybe a gawker. Couldn’t see in the backseat.”
“Wrangler,” Lang snapped out. “There was a Wrangler parked in front of Cade’s, but it wasn’t there when I went inside last night…. Damn!”
“Want me to go after it?”
“I’ll get someone there. I’ll come myself!” he decided. He was off the phone and striding toward the door.
“Wait!” Claire called.
“I gotta go. I think we’ve got her.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders and stopped her as she was about to charge out the hospital doors. “Let me do my job. Stay with Tasha.”
Without another word he strode out through the door and Claire gazed after him in frustration. She headed back to Tasha’s room. Maybe it was a blessing that Tasha hadn’t woken up again. She was bound to be exhausted, and if Catherine was right, and why wouldn’t she be, this was a facet of Tasha’s overall health, whether it was good or not.
While Claire waited for news, the Channel Seven team pulled up outside the hospital and Pauline Kirby began serving up special reports. When the Amber Alert went out, they’d gotten themselves a story.
Several hours later Claire, who refused to go outside and let the newspeople pounce on her, pushed aside a plate from the cafeteria with the remains of a barely nibbled hamburger and remembered her own plan to call Human Resources and find out about Rita’s employment. She dialed from her cell and was put on hold for long moments before finally getting through. The head of the department, Dale Werkken, answered her queries carefully. “You know, Dr. Norris, that I’m not allowed to give out personal information about an employee.”
“Yeah, well, this employee could be the kidnapper of a baby from Ocean Park Hospital. Have you seen the news at all? Do you know about the Amber Alert?”
“That doesn’t mean I should tell you. There is a protocol.”
“Come on, Dale. She had to have been recommended by someone or the decision would have taken a lot longer. Who recommended her?”
“She came in and applied by herself…”
“And?” Claire questioned, hearing the hesitation. “Who recommended her?” she practically yelled at him.
“Paolo Avanti,” he said quickly, as if that would somehow vindicate him from telling.
Claire pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it in surprise. Avanti?
What did that mean?
Checking her list of stored numbers, she put a call through to Avanti’s cell. It was two thirty. He was probably in his office or patrolling Side A, maybe checking in with his favorite patient, Heyward Marsdon III.
He didn’t answer and she was about to hang up, when his supercilious voice suddenly came on the line. “Hello?”
“Paolo, this is Claire.”
“Claire! Are you still at Ocean Park?” He sounded extremely tense.
“Yes, I’m not sure I’ll be back this afternoon. I’m waiting with Tasha, our Jane Doe, who’s been unconscious since the birth.”
“We’ve been watching the news,” he said. “Any word on the kidnapper?”
“No. What you haven’t heard yet, but it’s bound to get out soon, is that we think the kidnapper is a nurse named Rita Feather Hawkings.”
He couldn’t disguise his gasp. “Who?”
“The recent hire at Halo Valley that you recommended for the job.”
“There must be some mistake!” he sputtered. “I know of Rita, yes. We’re acquaintances. And I did think she’d be good for the job, but she isn’t capable, she wouldn’t—”
“The sheriff’s department is looking for her. I’m assuming she’s not at the hospital today?”
“Um…no…I don’t know.” Panic ran beneath his tone.
“You’d better call and tell them what you know about her before something worse happens to that baby.” When there was no response, she said, “Avanti? Paolo?” But he was gone.
She next put in a call to Lang but it went straight to voice mail. She was debating on whether to call the sheriff’s department directly or find Deputy Savannah Dunbar, who was still at the hospital taking reports, when her phone rang in her hand.
It was James Freeson.
“This is Claire,” she answered.
“What did you say to Avanti?” he demanded. “I heard him talking on the cell phone to you and then he stormed out of here.”
“He knows the woman we think kidnapped Tasha’s baby. Rita Feather Hawkings. I told him to contact the sheriff’s department.”
“Rita stole the baby?” he repeated sharply.
“You know her, too?”
“I know that she really knows Avanti well,” he said in his smug way.
“Like that?” Claire said, slightly surprised.
“Claire, we need you back at the hospital. Avanti’s God knows where, and I’m going straight to Radke and bringing him up to date on all this.”
“I need to tell the sheriff’s department about Avanti’s friendship with Rita.”
“Do that. And give them my number, because I’ve got a few things to say as well…”
Lang screeched to a halt in front of the Hawkings house. Burghsmith, late thirties, tall and lean, met him on the porch. “Drove by that way,” he pointed toward the north. “Turned east.”
“Thanks.”
He jumped back in his truck. She could be long gone. It might not even be Rita. He could be chasing ghosts. But he followed Burghsmith’s directions and found himself winding back and forth through the Foothillers’ community, passing by the café-cum-grocery store-cum-tavern. No Wrangler.
He drove up to Cade’s house, thinking it was where the Wrangler had been parked before. Pulling into the driveway to turn around, he thought about the night before and felt a deep sadness for screwed-up Cade, who’d been undone just hearing about Rafe’s injuries and then was killed himself.
Turning back into the street, he glanced toward the Blackburns’. Rita had been parked in front of their house. Quickly he reversed direction and drove to the end of the block, the nose of his truck at the end of the road, pointed across the Scotch broom–covered field where he’d chased Cade.
There was no Jeep Wrangler anywhere.
He shook his head. Rita Hawkings wasn’t here. She hadn’t come back to the community because it would be the first place anyone would look for her.
Throwing the truck in reverse, he put an arm around the back of the seat and started to turn his head when a light caught the corner of his eye. A light from the house across the field, turned on against the uncertain daylight of this dark day.
Angela Feather’s house. Rita’s aunt.
Who lived there now?
He drove out of the Foothillers’ community, back onto Highway 101, and then to the side road that led to the house across the field. He pulled up to the drive and looked down the lane toward a carport.
A black Jeep Wrangler was tucked inside.
A zing ran up Lang’s nerves. The muscles at the back of his neck tightened. He drove past the driveway and pulled to the side of the road, then called the sheriff’s department and asked for O’Halloran. He was told the sheriff was busy and he nearly bit the administrator’s head off telling her it was Langdon Stone and it was an emergency.
O’Halloran came on the phone. “Detective?” he asked, slightly miffed.
Tersely, Lang explained the situation, finishing with, “I need the name of the current homeowner, if they live there themselves, or if it’s a rental.”
&
nbsp; “I’m sending backup.”
Lang got out of his truck and, in a crouch, walked back to the edge of the drive. He was pretty sure striding right up to the door and saying he was with the sheriff’s department wasn’t going to work if Rita was inside.
As if divining his thoughts, a dark-haired woman stuck her head out of the door and looked around. Lang shrank into the tall weeds and behind a skinny pine tree, his heart beating hard and fast. He’d bet his last dollar that was Rita Feather Hawkings. He couldn’t see her in this position and risked lifting his head, but she’d gone back inside.
Carefully, tramping through tall, wet field grass, he skirted the drive and came up on the north side of the house.
His Glock was tucked back in its spot at his waistband. He sure as hell hoped he didn’t have to depend on it. There was a baby inside that house, and as if calling for help herself, the little girl’s cries could be heard from where he was standing.
In a moment of pure reaction, he ran lightly across the driveway, tucked around the Wrangler, and let himself in through a back door that, though locked, gave when he pushed hard against it, breaking loose under pressure.
And there she was. Standing directly in front of him as he looked down the galley kitchen toward a back den. Attempting to give the crying infant a bottle. Staring at him.
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t move, Rita,” he ordered in a cold voice that brooked no argument. “Don’t you damn well move.”
“This is my baby,” she said, after the longest moment of Lang’s life.
“Police are on their way. Put the baby down and your hands up.” He eased forward, his own hands in front of him, trying to keep her from panicking.
“You don’t understand! This is my baby!”
“Just put her down.”
“She’s hungry.” Rita’s attention wavered and she looked down at the infant, who was trying to eat, but Rita wasn’t holding the bottle correctly.
In that brief moment, he sprang forward and grabbed her upper arms. She automatically let go of the infant but Lang’s body was there, keeping the baby between them. He pushed Rita to the wall and pulled the baby away. He hardly knew what he was going to do until he did it. When he stepped back, he reached around for his gun at the same moment she jumped forward, claws out, but he yelled, “Back off. Get back. I have a gun, and so help me, I’ll shoot you if you don’t back off!”
His fierceness had its effect. She hesitated, looked around wildly, eyes rolling. She started screaming in frustration. “You can’t take my baby! You can’t take my baby!”
Lang held the child in one arm, the Glock in his other hand. He kept it steady on her. She was wild with fury. Torn between attacking him and ripping at her own hair. “She killed him!” she screamed. “She killed Rafe! And Cade! And she took my baby. Mine and Rafe’s and she doesn’t care. She’s evil. She stabbed Rafe to death! And she wants everyone to think it’s my fault but it’s not! She cut herself.” Rita made a motion across her own abdomen. “I didn’t do that. She wants you to think I did, but I didn’t. I had a knife but so did she. I went after her. I wanted my baby, but she turned on me with her knife. I stabbed her up here!” She pounded her upper chest and shoulder area. “I just wanted the baby. Yes, yes, I meant to take it. But I didn’t. Don’t you understand? I didn’t. Because she came after me. She’s a witch! A witch face! And Rafe was there, trying to stop her. But she kept hacking at me. Hack, hack, hack!” She stabbed at the air with a clenched fist. “But I got away. I cried all the way home because she took my baby. Mine and Rafe’s. And then she killed him! She stabbed him to death for saving me!” Rita was crying, gulping and crying. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” She fell against the wall for support, sliding down. “I had to kill her. For Rafe. And I had to get my baby back. Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”
Before Lang could say anything, do anything more, Clausen and Burghsmith surged through the front and back doors at the same time. They stopped short upon seeing the crumpled woman crying on the floor and Lang, holding both a Glock and a crying infant, standing over her.
Lang called Claire as he drove away from the scene of Rita’s capture and Claire listened to his recounting of the events in a kind of horrified disbelief. She was halfway to Halo Valley, and Lang’s terse recap of what had transpired brought instant relief and a whole lot of questions.
“Thank God the baby’s safe,” she expelled. Then, humbly, “Thank you for saving her.”
“Rita wasn’t going to hurt the child, but she’s definitely deluded. A candidate for the Dr. Norris treatment of care for the seriously psychotic.”
“She’s lying about Tasha,” Claire said. Then she quickly related what had transpired in her conversation with Avanti and how she’d given the information to Sheriff O’Halloran, who was going to talk to Freeson as no one had heard from Avanti himself. “I’m on my way to Halo Valley.”
“Clausen and Burghsmith have probably already talked to O’Halloran. They’re on their way to the jail with Rita.”
“Good. I’m glad she’s caught.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t believe anything she said about Tasha, do you?” Claire asked anxiously. “She’s obsessed. Can’t take the responsibility. Wants to believe the baby’s hers, and has a whole delusion about it.”
“I know.”
“But…?”
“Rita’s crazy. Really out there. But before Clausen and Burghsmith took her away, she was begging me not to give the baby back to Tasha. She said Tasha used Rafe to get away from the cult. That she got pregnant to escape. That Tasha never cared about Rafe, and that pregnancy was her way to get him to do what she wanted.”
“She’s transferring blame. It happens.”
“She said that’s why Catherine and the Colony don’t want Tasha back. She’s a devil. A bad seed.”
“Are you seriously buying this?”
Lang sighed. “Not all of it.”
“But some of it. You’re buying some of it?”
“You’re the doctor. You know more about this than I do. I just don’t want Tasha to be a blind spot. One I didn’t look at closely enough, you know?”
She did know. She’d been fooled a time or two by patients, and she’d made it a practice never to take things at face value until she had all the facts.
“I’d like to talk to Catherine again,” Lang went on. “She said Natasha was afflicted with these spells. Maybe there’s something more she’s not telling us.”
“I told Catherine I’d let her know when Tasha delivered. But I have to go to the hospital first.”
“I’m heading to the department. Let’s connect later and tell Catherine about Tasha and the baby together.”
Claire agreed, frowning as she hung up. Catherine had already intimated Tasha would be an unfit mother. Social Services had been called to take the baby from Rita’s house, and the child was now in their hands until Tasha woke up.
She thought about her last vision of Tasha, lying in bed, unaware, her clean, smooth brow and uncomplicated face, the picture of angelic peace. Rita Feather Hawkings was the villain in this piece, not Tasha.
Claire didn’t see Freeson upon her return to Halo Valley. She spent the rest of the afternoon in a motherly, babysitting role because news of Tasha’s disappearance and delivery, and then the kidnapping, had stirred up the residents, touching their nerves, exacerbating their own fears. Mrs. Tanaway and Mrs. Merle were in their rooms, and Maribel was circling in tight circles, muttering to herself. Donald was rubbing his jaw and looking concerned. Gibby was in his chair, asking constantly when Tasha would be home, and Thomas McAvoy was in a glaring match with Big Jenny, who was looking at him coquettishly through her lashes.
Heyward Marsdon was seated in the chair next to Gibby’s, clutching his hands together, staring at the flickering images on the television while Greg, Alison, and Alphonse hovered nearby. “Dr. Avanti is usually with him if he’s out of his room,” Alison breathed
to Claire about Heyward.
“A condition imposed to even allow him on Side A,” Claire said, feeling renewed fury at the Marsdon family. Yes, they donated heavily and paid extra for the personal attention, but it didn’t allow for breakdowns in staff care. Freeson was right. She’d been desperately needed back at the hospital, if for nothing else than crowd control.
With the overworked staff’s care, Claire brought things under control again, and the worst of the patients’ inner panic and worries were allayed by dinnertime. Freeson showed up and grudgingly helped out.
“Where’s Avanti?” Claire asked him.
“With his doctor,” Freeson said. “He’s got some issues over sex that Rita tapped into, apparently. He and Rita were fornicating all over the hospital.” He looked satisfied, and to Claire’s questioning look, admitted, “I’ve been promoted to his job.”
“Ah…”
“Don’t pretend to be appalled. You’re going up the ladder, too,” he said.
“Did Avanti talk to the police?”
“Spilled it all to his doctor and allowed some information to be given out. He barely knew Rita. She doesn’t have a cell phone and he saw her mostly at the hospital.”
“How did he meet her in the first place?”
“Picked her up at that bar on the way to Salem, Vandy’s, and they started seeing each other. Guess she twisted his arm for a reference. Apparently he didn’t know about the baby obsession.”
Lang called at six thirty. It was pitch dark and there was moisture in the air, but at least it wasn’t a full-fledged rain shower. They agreed to meet at her place, and when they did, they fell into each other’s arms, needing the human contact after the events of the day.
After some long kisses and desperate touches, Claire finally surfaced. “I can’t think straight with you!”
Lang groaned, ran a hand through his hair, and closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. We’ve got miles to go before we sleep.”
“Tasha still hasn’t woken up,” Claire worried.
“I know. Deputy Dunbar reported in when she left Ocean Park. But with Rita locked up, she’s safe enough. And the baby’s with Social Services, doing well.”