Into Thin Air

by Karen Leabo

  When she had a nice, flat piece of plastic, she jammed it into the space between the door and the facing, just beneath the latch, and worked it upward. She was rewarded with a rasp of metal against metal as the latch lifted and the door fell open.

  The sense of accomplishment was almost overwhelming. Her eyes filled with tears, whether from relief or the pain of her hands or the smoke, she didn’t know. But she didn’t allow her elation to rule her for long. She was far from home free.

  She was in a little office of some sort, and although the light was on, there was no one around. No phone, either. She searched through the desk, finding a key ring with about a dozen keys, each one numbered. Figuring this might be useful, she took it. Then she pulled a small automatic gun—a Walther PPK/S .380— from a leg holster concealed inside her boot. She was glad now she’d decided to carry the slim, stainless-steel weapon, although Austin probably would have had a fit if he’d known about it. With gun in hand, she began searching the rest of the premises.

  She was in a house, she decided, but a damn big one. The front rooms—kitchen, living room, dining room—were deserted. In another section of the house she found what looked like a doctor’s examination room. Was this, then, The Good Shepherd Home? Whatever it was, it appeared to be deserted.

  Peering around each corner, she made her way to the back of the house. She found a long, dimly lit hallway lined with six doors. The first one was open, and the small bedroom, hardly big enough to turn around in, was empty. The next door was locked from the outside.

  “It’s about time,” an impatient female voice called from inside the room. “Hurry up, I have got to go pee.”

  “Hello? Who’s there?” Caro called, surprised to have found a live person.

  There was a long pause. “Kendra. Who are you?”

  “I’m a police officer.” Making an educated guess, Caro tried the key marked number two. The deadbolt slid free and the door opened.

  A pretty, pale blond girl stared incredulously at Caro, then at the gun. “You aren’t going to shoot me, are you?”

  “No, I’m the police. Are you being held here against your will?” Caro asked what seemed an obvious question, but she had to be sure.

  “Me and a bunch of other girls.” All at once hope suffused Kendra’s face. “You’re gonna get us out of here?”

  “That’s the idea. How many girls are there?”

  “Uh, nine, I think.”

  Nine? Oh, Lord. Caro feared she was about to become a one-woman SWAT team.

  Kendra peered nervously around Caro. “Where’s Odell and Henry?”

  “I don’t know. Which means we’d better hurry.”

  The next ten minutes were sheer bedlam as Caro unlocked first one door, then another, freeing three additional girls in various stages of pregnancy. Despite her attempts to keep them together, they ignored her and headed for the bathroom. She let them, because she figured they wouldn’t listen to her, anyway, so long as their bladders were calling.

  Caro was relieved to discover Julie Yates in one of the rooms, but Amanda was still to be found.

  Upstairs was a similar hallway with five more rooms. Two were empty, but the others held more captives. Caro opened the last locked door, disappointed that the girl inside was not Amanda. She herded all the girls downstairs, rounded up the strays and quickly counted heads. “That’s only seven,” she said. “Where are the other two?”

  There was a moment of contemplative silence until one of them asked, “Where’s Amanda?”

  “And Terri. I don’t see Terri.”

  “They slept in the basement last night, remember?”

  Caro quickly checked the basement and, finding it empty, she gathered her little flock together and ordered them not to move until she returned. When it was time to run, she didn’t want to have to track down any stragglers.

  With her gun drawn, she eased out the front door. The huge farmhouse was surrounded by an eight-foot fence topped with barbed wire, and the front gate—the only entrance to the property, she soon discovered—was securely padlocked. She knew without even trying that none of the little keys on the pilfered key ring would fit the huge Master lock. “Now what?”

  She heard a noise behind her and whirled around, but it was only Kendra, brazenly defying Caro’s order. “See?” she said. “You’re a prisoner just like the rest of us. That’s probably not even a real gun. You’re just another pregnant girl.”

  The other girls had followed Kendra outside and were now standing mutely in a tight knot on the front porch. Caro saw no point in trying to convince them she was a detective.

  Odell’s white Suburban was parked in the driveway. The doors were unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. “Just stand back,” Caro said as she opened the driver’s door and climbed in. She would show these girls who was a prisoner and who wasn’t. She cranked up the engine, turned the truck around, pointed it toward the gate, fastened her seat belt...and floored it.

  The violent jolt from the impact jerked Caro against the shoulder harness and snapped her head forward, but the chain that held the gates didn’t break. She backed up the truck and tried again. Finally, on her third attempt, the chain gave way. Her head was spinning. The truck’s hood was crunched in and the engine didn’t sound so good, but who cared? The girls cheered and whistled. Caro leaned out the window and motioned for them to join her. It was a tight fit, but all seven and their protruding stomaches managed to wedge themselves into the vehicle.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” she dutifully ordered as she put the truck in gear and headed down the narrow, twisting dirt road that led away from the Good Shepherd Home.

  “You gotta be kidding,” someone groused.

  “I’m about to pee in my pants,” another complained.

  “Why didn’t you go back at the house?” Caro asked.

  “There wasn’t time for everybody to go.”

  “Well, there are worse things than peeing in your pants,” Caro said. Like burning your hands. Every movement she made sent searing rockets of pain all the way up her arms. Still, she’d do it again. Her escape and rescue might not have been textbook pretty, but it had worked. “Anybody know how to get to the nearest town?”

  No one did. They had never left the home before. So when she reached a two-lane blacktop, Caro arbitrarily turned right. The road had to lead somewhere.

  Over the next ten minutes the girls overcame their reticence, and soon they were all talking at once. Caro got a jumbled version of what had been going on. Odell had singlehandedly kidnapped more than a dozen pregnant girls from cities all over Texas. After the girls had their babies, they disappeared. No one knew what had happened to Amanda and Terri, who apparently was close to term, only that they had been alive and well the night before.

  That, at least, was encouraging.

  * * *

  She was not going to cry, Amanda told herself. If she was smart enough to escape The Good Shepherd Home, she was smart enough to get herself out of these damned woods. But it seemed like she’d been walking for days, and she’d encountered nothing but trees, trees and more trees.

  She’d hated leaving Terri behind. But it seemed the only sensible solution. After her water had broken and the contractions begun, Terri had valiantly tried to continue. But she hadn’t lasted long. When they’d stumbled onto an abandoned house, which would at least provide some shelter if it started raining, Terri had declared that she wasn’t moving another inch.

  “It takes a long time to have a baby, right?” Amanda had asked. “Hours and hours, sometimes days?”

  Terri groaned. “What a cheerful thought.”

  “I mean, surely I’ll be able to bring help before the baby actually gets here. I just don’t want you to worry.”

  “I won’t,” Terri said in a small voice. “Just go. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be back, right?”

  “I’ll be back by daylight,” Amanda had promised.

  As it turned out, her promise had been
rash. Going had been slow in the pitch black. Branches seemed to reach out with wills of their own to scratch her face and catch her hair. She’d walked through spiderwebs and tripped over roots, all the while not even sure she was still headed in the right direction. Ten miles over rough terrain was a helluva long way, she realized.

  Then the crowning glory of bad luck: she’d fallen into a hole and twisted her knee, like one of those stupid heroines in an old B movie. At that point she’d dragged herself to the base of a large tree, intending to rest awhile and wait for daylight. She’d dozed fitfully, fearful of every slight noise she heard.

  When morning finally dawned, the sky was overcast, and Amanda wasn’t able to use the sun to navigate. Hobbling along as best she could, she continued in what she thought was a straight line. But several hours later, she saw a fallen tree covered with fungus that looked awfully familiar. She was afraid she’d been walking in circles.

  Poor Terri, she thought, plodding along, refusing to give up. Had she had the baby by now? Could she do it without anyone to help her? Well, of course she could, Amanda scolded herself. Women had been delivering babies for centuries, and she didn’t imagine the baby would wait just because there wasn’t a doctor around. But what if Terri had trouble? If this harebrained escape plan resulted in anything happening to her friend...

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  She walked on, mechanically putting one step in front of another, concentrating on staying upright. She heard a noise in the distance and stopped to listen. There it was again, a dog baying. And it sounded like Phoebe.

  Oh, dear God, she prayed, don’t let Odell find me. Not after all this. Amanda would rather wander the woods forever than put herself under that witch’s control again. But the dog was getting closer. She could hear it running through the brush now, howling spasmodically. Moments later Phoebe crashed into view, tongue lolling as she leaped over a log.

  Amanda froze. She didn’t think the dog would attack her, but she wasn’t sure.

  Phoebe skidded to a halt a few feet away, much to Amanda’s relief, and continued to bay loudly. At that point she knew there was no escape for her. Any moment now Odell would appear with her shotgun, and Amanda would be dragged in disgrace back to the Good Shepherd Home. The only decision she needed to make was whether to tell Odell where to find Terri.

  Was it better to leave her friend to her own devices, or send Odell to help deliver the baby? She knew what Terri would want. Even if she were dying, she would want Odell to stay as far away as possible. That was the answer, then. Odell could torture Amanda, and she would never tell her where to find Terri.

  Phoebe abruptly stopped howling and turned to retrace her path. That’s when Amanda saw a shadow moving through the woods toward her, leaves crunching under heavy boots.

  It was Henry! Thank you, God, thank you, thank you. Henry would help her. He would show her the way out of the woods and into town. She waved and smiled happily as he drew closer. “I thought I’d be lost in these stupid woods forever!” She wondered if she should hug him.

  Henry stopped a few feet from her. He wasn’t smiling. “Why didn’t you meet me at the Dairy Queen?” he demanded. “I waited and waited.”

  She thought the answer to that question was obvious. Then again, Henry wasn’t the brightest person she’d ever encountered. “I’ve been lost,” she said. “I didn’t realize how far it was into town, and also I tripped and twisted my knee. Look, look how swollen my knee is.”

  Henry appeared unconvinced. “Why did you take Terri with you?” His voice was low, full of suspicion.

  She’d never seen him in quite this mood before. “I had no choice,” she explained patiently. “How was I to know Odell would put Terri in the basement, too? She followed me. I tried to stop her.” That, at least, was true.

  “Is that why you dug such a big hole under the fence?” he asked, smug now, as if he knew he’d caught her. His facial tics seemed more pronounced than usual.

  She wondered if he’d actually witnessed the escape, or if he only examined the hole under the fence this morning and figured out that she’d enlarged it. “I couldn’t get through the hole myself. I had to make it bigger,” she reasoned. “Anyway, Terri was the one with the shovel. I was busy distracting Bella.”

  It was like talking to a brick wall. He didn’t appear to be listening or trying to understand. Suddenly his eyes filled with tears. “You called me a big, dumb ox,” he said. “Why did you say that?”

  “I was acting!” This was incredible. “I was pretending to be a very bad girl, remember? I was trying to convince Odell that I was out of control. Henry, you know I didn’t mean it. It was all an act. Henry?”

  She reached out to stroke his sleeve. His face softened, and he almost let her touch him. Then he jerked away. “Where’s Terri?”

  “We split up,” Amanda said carelessly. “You know I can’t stand her.”

  “I thought the fight was all an act,” he said, obviously confused.

  “Well, it was, my part was. But not hers. Did you hear what she called me? She called me a bitch. I hope she wanders around in these woods until she’s eighty!”

  Apparently she’d said the wrong thing. Henry’s face hardened. “That’s not a very Christian attitude.”

  Amanda tried to appear contrite. “I’m sorry. But she made me mad. Can we forget about Terri? I’m tired and hungry and my knee hurts.”

  “I can’t forget about Terri,” he said, clearly disturbed. His mood seemed to be flickering back and forth among anger, anxiety, and hopefulness. “Now that she’s free, she’ll bring the cops. They’ll put Aunt Odell in jail. And she’ll know that it was all my fault. She’ll never forgive me.”

  “Okay, we’ll find Terri,” Amanda said, thinking quickly. “She can’t move very fast, not when she’s almost nine months along. She’s probably lost, just like me. But she headed south and I went east. She’s probably miles away from here. What would she find if she went south?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said, his brow creased in deep thought. “I’d need a map.”

  “Where’s your truck? I bet you keep a map in your truck.”

  “That’s right, I do,” he said, brightening. “The highway’s about two miles that way. Can you walk that far?”

  Amanda breathed a surreptitious sigh of relief. She’d almost lost his trust, but now he appeared to be falling in with her plans again. “I can walk,” she said, “but not very fast.” To think, she’d been only two miles from the highway, from salvation. She would still make it. But now she would have to get away from Henry. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

  Hang on, Terri.

  After an arduous forty-five minutes or so, Amanda could see that the trees were thinning out. Soon Henry’s old green pickup truck came into view, parked on the side of a dirt road. The sight made her heart leap. She was close to dropping from exhaustion and her knee was throbbing. She thought about home, her father, Scott. Perhaps she was just a few hours away from seeing them again.

  Henry hoisted Phoebe into the back, started to open the passenger door for Amanda, then paused, his brow creased in concentration the way it did when he was thinking something through.

  Amanda was filled with apprehension. Henry was no Rhodes scholar, yet he did possess some logic. Was he thinking about what she’d told him? Was he about to catch her in a lie?

  “What’s wrong, Henry?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking...if I find Terri and bring her back to the home, Aunt Odell will be real proud of me.”

  “That’s right, she will.”

  “And then Terri will open her big mouth, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She knows I helped you escape. You told her, didn’t you?” It was an accusation.

  Amanda’s heart fluttered erratically. “Well, I didn’t come right out and tell her, no. I wasn’t talking to her hardly at all.”

  “But she saw that the bars on the wi
ndow were loosened. And she saw the hole dug under the fence. So she knows you had help, and she’ll tell Aunt Odell.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Amanda reasoned. “Even if she does know, why would she tell Odell anything? She has nothing to gain.”

  “Because she’s a sinner, that’s why.” Abruptly he jerked the door open. “Get in.”

  Amanda climbed into the truck, feeling like she was walking through a mine field. She had to find some way to reassure Henry that everything would work out okay. But he had a point about Terri. If he let her get away, she would bring the cops to the home. And if he caught her and brought her back to the home, she would almost certainly tell Odell of Henry’s part in the escape. Of course, Amanda was going to bring the house down before either of those two possibilities could happen. But Henry didn’t know that.

  Henry slid behind the wheel and reached into the glove compartment. He pulled out a stack of maps, found the one he wanted and began to study it. When Amanda leaned over to have a look—it would be nice to know where she was—he pulled away from her so she couldn’t see.

  “You say she headed south?” he asked Amanda.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “South is down,” he murmured to himself, frowning as he concentrated on the map. Then he smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I know where to find her. And I know just how to deal with her, too.”

  “What are you going to do?” Amanda asked, trying to sound merely curious.

  “I’ll make sure Terri never tells anyone anything, ever again.” He cranked up the truck and threw it into gear.

  Amanda went cold as a block of ice inside, Surely he didn’t mean... “Henry,” she said cautiously, “you can’t hurt Terri.”

  “Oh, it won’t hurt much,” he said, as if this was supposed to reassure Amanda. “My hands are real strong. I just squeeze, kind of like squeezing the juice out of an orange, no harder than that. Then after a minute, two minutes, it’s over. She’ll be gone, gone to her eternal punishment.” He spoke as casually as if he were explaining how to check the oil in a car.