by Sharon Sala
“Savannah P.D., what is your emergency?”
“This is Mary O’Rourke. I’m in Vinter’s supermarket and I need you to tell Detective Reese Arnaud that the man he’s looking for is here.”
“Ma’am…are you in danger?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mary mumbled, and then glanced over her shoulder. The man had disappeared. “Oh no,” she muttered.
“Ma’am?”
“He’s gone,” Mary cried. She abandoned her cart in the middle of the aisle and started running toward the front of the store. If he got out of the store before the police arrived, there would be no way of telling which direction he’d gone.
“Who’s gone, ma’am?”
“The man! The man!” Mary muttered, resisting the urge to scream. “Just tell Reese Arnaud! Please! He’ll know who I mean.”
“Yes, ma’am, your message is being relayed at this moment, but I need you to stay on the line.”
“Yes, yes, I’m still here,” Mary said, puffing slightly as she bolted through the checkout line and out the front door, the phone still pressed to her ear.
She paused in front of the store, searching the parking lot with a frantic gaze, unaware that Howard Lee was watching her from behind the corner of his van.
He’d tossed the groceries into his vehicle and was debating with himself about driving away when he’d seen the woman come running out of the store with the phone still in her hand. At that point, he’d known his suspicions were correct. His first urge was to escape, but he couldn’t risk leaving her there. The way she kept looking around the parking lot made him think she was waiting for the police, and that left him no choice.
He jumped in his van and quickly backed out of the parking space, then circled the lot and headed for the front of the store. The woman was still there, the phone clutched to her ear. Knowing the tinted windows in the van would conceal his identity right up to the moment he opened the door, he drove straight for her.
Mary was frantic, certain that she’d lost sight of him for good.
“Please,” she begged of the dispatcher. “Did you tell Detective Arnaud? If they don’t hurry, it’s going to be too late.”
“Yes, ma’am, he got the message,” the dispatcher said. “The police are on the way. Just stay where you are until they arrive, okay?”
Frustrated, Mary moved a little farther away from the front of the store, still searching for sight of a tall blond man between the parked cars. A white van was coming toward her, then slowing down in front of the loading zone, and she took a couple of steps backward to get out of the way. The van stopped in front of her. She heard the driver’s side door open, then heard the footsteps of the driver circling the van.
Before she could react, she was face-to-face with the man she’d been seeking. She threw up her hands and started to run, when he grabbed her by the arm.
“No!” She screamed. “Help! Somebody help me!”
She clawed at his arm, trying to pull herself free. One moment she was screaming bloody murder and then everything went black as he hit her with his fist. She hit the pavement with her elbow, then her chin, but never felt the pain. Seconds later, he dragged her off the street, flung her into the van and sped away.
Her phone was on the pavement beside her purse as the clerk who’d witnessed the event came running out of the store. She picked up the phone as the 9-1-1 dispatcher kept asking if something was wrong.
“Yes!” the clerk cried. “The woman you were talking to has just been abducted by a man in a white van. Please hurry. They’re getting away.”
Chapter 10
Daniel pulled up in front of the house and parked in the shade of the portico, then glanced in the back seat. Hope was still asleep. Opening the door quietly, he unlocked the house and then went back to the car to carry her inside. She roused briefly.
“Daddy, are we home?”
“Yes, honey, we’re home.”
“I want bunny,” she muttered, without opening her eyes.
“He can take a nap with you, okay?”
She nodded once without bothering to answer.
He smiled as he carried her up the stairs, then down the hall to her room. He pushed the door inward with the toe of his shoe and then laid her on her bed, tucking the one-eared bunny beneath her arm and a blanket over her legs.
She fidgeted briefly, then settled.
Daniel watched until he was sure she was still sound asleep, then hurried back down the stairs to unload the car. He was just coming out of the house as Reese Arnaud pulled in behind him. He waved and smiled as he opened the trunk of the car, but Reese didn’t smile back. A warning bell went off in the back of Daniel’s mind, but it wasn’t enough to prepare him for the news Arnaud brought.
“What’s wrong?”
Reese sighed. It was days like these that made him wish he’d become a priest like his mother had wanted, instead of following his father’s footsteps into law enforcement.
“It’s Mary,” Reese said. “She’s been abducted.”
Shock, coupled with a mind-blowing pain, ricocheted through Daniel’s mind. He took an unsteady step backward and pointed at Reese.
“No, you’re wrong. She’s just gone to the supermarket. She’ll be right back. Come in and I’ll make us some coffee until—”
Reese grabbed Daniel, almost shaking him to make him listen.
“She was on the phone to 9-1-1 when it happened. She said she saw the man we’re looking for in the market. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he must have overheard her in some way and panicked.”
Daniel moaned, then staggered backward against his car.
“No…God, no…not Mary. You’ve got to be mistaken.”
“It’s not a mistake,” Reese said. “I wish to God it was, but we had an eyewitness. A clerk saw it happening. By the time she got outside, they were gone. We know it was a white van. We’ve got the first three letters on the license plate and a description on the man that fits the one Hope gave us.”
“Why in hell is this happening?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say this is the man who snatched the two little girls.”
“But why take Mary?”
“Who knows? But something put him on the alert and he took her, maybe believing she was the only person who could identify him.”
Daniel paled. “If that’s what he thinks, he’ll kill her.”
Reese’s gut knotted. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. But he doesn’t know about the sketch.”
Daniel grabbed Reese’s arm. “You’ve got to release it now! If the media gets hold of it, he’ll realize she’s not the only witness. Then he won’t think he has to kill her.”
“Already got it covered,” Reese said. “It went out about a half hour ago, the moment we learned about Mary. We won’t take chances with her life, even if it means the man might run.”
Daniel’s vision blurred. “This can’t be happening.”
“I’m sorry…so sorry,” Reese said.
Daniel stood for a moment, his head down. Reese thought he was crying, then Daniel looked up.
“If he hurts her, I’ll kill him.”
Reese empathized with Daniel, but as a cop, he had to persuade him otherwise.
“You can’t think like that. You have a daughter to raise.”
Daniel poked a finger in Reese’s chest, his voice so low that Reese had to lean forward to hear.
“You heard me. If he so much as makes her cry, he’ll pray to die before I’m through.” Then he turned away and strode toward the house.
“Where are you going?”
“To call my parents to come get Hope, then I’m going to look for my wife.”
“Damn it, O’Rourke, you’re a lawyer. You know better than this. You’ve got to leave this to the police.”
“Then you better find him before I do,” Daniel said, and slammed the door in Reese’s face.
Mary woke up in a strange bed and in pain. Her face throbbed where the m
an had hit her with his fist and her right shoulder and hip were stiff and aching. As she rolled from the bed to her feet, sheer terror hit her like a fist to the gut. The man was here—staring at her from across the room. She didn’t know how long he’d been there, or what he’d done to her while she’d been unconscious, but the look in his eyes made her want to throw up.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Howard Lee Martin.”
“Okay, Howard Lee…I need to know why you are doing this.”
He smiled. It made Mary’s skin crawl.
“It’s all going to work out for the best, you know.”
Mary shuddered. The calm, conversational tone of his voice seemed obscene in the face of what he’d just done.
“What’s best is that you let me go home to my family.”
His smile turned downward. “This is your family. You are home now. You’ll soon get used to it. I have a good job and I can take good care of all of us.”
Mary stifled her shock. It wasn’t enough that the man was a criminal, but he had to be crazy, as well. She wanted to cry—to wail aloud at the injustice of being snatched from a family she’d just regained, but something told her that Howard Lee wouldn’t deal well with panic.
“Look, Mr. Martin, I—”
“Not Mr. Martin. Call me Howard Lee and you’re going to be Sophie. It was my mother’s name. I loved my mother deeply. She would be proud to know you had the same name.”
Mary shivered. “My name is Mary, not Sophie. I can’t be a mother to your children because I’m already someone else’s mother. I have a daughter, Howard Lee. She’ll be worried about me.”
“I have two daughters and they need a mother, too.” Then he pointed over Mary’s shoulder. “They haven’t been feeling well. See for yourself. They need you far more than your child does. Their medicine is on the table. I’ve already given them injections for today, but they need to be bathed and fed. I’ll leave you to it.”
Mary gasped, then turned. For the first time since she’d awakened, she saw another small bed pushed up against the wall. A loud clunk startled her and she spun back around to find the man had disappeared and the door he’d come through was closed. She ran up the steps, screaming for him to come back and let her out, but the door was heavy and obviously locked from above. No matter how hard she pushed, it wouldn’t give. Daniel and Hope were bound to be home from their errands by now. When she didn’t come home they would be frantic.
She ran her fingers along the edges, trying to find a weakness in the door, to find a way to set herself free, but the man had been too thorough. She felt nothing but cold, smooth steel.
“No,” she muttered, then pounded on the door. “No, no, you can’t do this! Let me out! Let me out! Somebody help!”
“No one ever comes but him.”
At the sound of the voice, Mary spun. The little girl looking up at her from the foot of the stairs resembled Hope so much that it gave her chills. Thinking how close Hope had come to falling into this awful man’s grasp, she took a deep breath and then went back down the steps. If this had to happen, thank God it happened to her and not her baby. She dropped to her knees and then lifted a wayward strand of hair from the little girl’s eyes.
“Honey…is he your father?”
The little girl frowned. “No. My daddy’s nice.”
Oh God…oh God. “Do you know long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. Lots of nights, I guess.”
Mary shuddered, trying to imagine what those nights had been like.
“What’s your name?”
“Justine.” She pointed toward the bed. “She’s Amy Anne, but she doesn’t talk.”
Mary stifled a gasp. The two missing girls! My God! They were alive after all. She touched a hand to Justine’s forehead. It was hot and dry.
“He said you were sick.”
She nodded, then her lower lip quivered and she started to cry.
“I want my Mommy.”
“I know, baby,” Mary said softly, then picked her up and carried her back to the bed.
She lay Justine down, then smoothed the dark tangles away from her feverish face before turning to the other little girl. She lay on the side of the bed next to the wall, her gaze focused on a spot on the ceiling above her head. When Mary touched her face to test for fever, she didn’t even blink.
“Amy Anne…is that your name?”
“She won’t talk to you. She doesn’t talk to anyone,” Justine said, and then coughed.
The cough was more like a rattle deep in the little girl’s chest. There was a box of tissues, as well as some cough drops and cough syrup on the table beside the bed. Mary reached for the bottle.
“How about we take a little cough medicine?” Mary asked. “It’s grape flavored. Do you like grape?”
Justine nodded, then sat up in bed as Mary poured a measure of the medicine into a small plastic cup.
Justine drank it without comment and Mary wondered what else she had endured without complaint.
“Amy Anne has a cough, too.” Justine said.
“Then we’ll give her some, too,” Mary said. “Okay?”
The child nodded, watching intently as Mary slipped an arm beneath the girl’s shoulders and lifted her up.
“Swallow it, honey,” Mary urged.
Amy Anne opened her mouth and swallowed. When Mary slid her arm out from under her shoulders, she looked so tiny and lost against the bed-clothes that it broke Mary’s heart.
“Come here, babies…it’s going to be okay,” Mary said, and then crawled into the bed, took both children into her arms and pulled them close. “I’m here. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.”
“I want to go home,” Justine whispered.
“So do I, sweet baby,” Mary said. “So do I.”
Mike and Phyllis O’Rourke were doing their best to hide the horror of Mary’s abduction from their granddaughter. At Daniel’s bidding, they were taking her home to spend the weekend, and Hope was so excited she hadn’t realized Mary was not back from the supermarket. It wasn’t until she was packed and ready to leave that she mentioned her mother.
“Daddy, I didn’t get to tell Mommy goodbye.”
Daniel was struggling with tears as he picked Hope up and held her to his chest.
“I’ll tell her for you, okay?” he said, as he kissed her cheek.
Hope smiled. “Okay. And give her this, too.” She blew a kiss in her own hand and then handed it to Daniel as if it was real.
Daniel pretended to take it and put it in his pocket, then hugged her again before setting her down.
“Mommy’s going to love that,” he said. “I’ll be sure she gets it.” He looked at his parents, who were struggling to keep smiles on their own faces, too. “I’ll call,” he promised.
Mike nodded, while Phyllis didn’t trust herself to speak. Instead, she picked up Hope’s overnight bag, then took Hope by the hand.
“We’ll be in the car,” she said.
Mike stayed behind, not knowing what to say, but aware that his son was at a breaking point.
“Daniel…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say to make this better.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Please don’t do anything rash. Let the police do their job.”
A muscle jerked in Daniel’s jaw. “What if this had happened to Mom?”
Mike sighed. “Just remember you’ve still got a daughter to raise.”
“She deserves both parents, Dad, not just me.”
“Just be careful,” Mike cautioned.
“There’s no time for caution. I’ve got to find her, or life won’t be worth living.”
“Not even for Hope?”
“No Dad…because of Hope. She needs Mary as much or more than I do. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but I thank you and Mom for taking care of her.”
Tears welled in Mike’s eyes. “No thanks are necessary. Just stay in touch.”
Dan
iel walked his father to the door, then stood on the doorstep and waved until they were gone. The moment he was alone, he went back in the house and headed for his office. He couldn’t let himself think about what Mary was going through or he’d lose it completely, but waiting helplessly while someone else went to rescue his reason for living made no sense. Arnaud said the man who took her was the same man that Hope had seen. That couldn’t be good. He had to know he’d been made. It also meant that Mary’s life was, more than likely, hanging on a very thin thread. He took a deep breath and then swiped his hands across his face.
“Ah God…please…don’t take her away from me.”
Before he could think past the prayer, the phone rang. He grabbed it immediately, needing it to be Mary.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Daniel O’Rourke?”
His heart started to hammer. “Yes, this is Daniel O’Rourke.”
“Mr. O’Rourke, how much do you pay for your long distance service?”
Daniel stared at the phone in disbelief and then slammed the receiver down on the cradle. Seconds later, he picked up the paperweight and flung it angrily toward the fireplace. It hit the brick firewall with a vicious thud then shattered in a dozen pieces.
“Damn, damn, damn it all to hell!”
He’d talked big to Reese Arnaud, but the truth was he didn’t have the first idea of how to start looking for Mary Faith.
He slumped against the desk, his gaze wandering aimlessly about the room as he waited for a miracle. He sat that way for several minutes, unmoving—mind blank to everything but the panic threatening to overwhelm him.
It was a bit before he began to realize that he was staring at a small framed picture hanging on the wall. When he finally focused on what he’d been looking at, he reached for the phone. It would take more than a miracle to find Mary Faith. He needed help, and from someone who had no qualms about bending the law.
Bobby Joe Killian tossed his gun and holster on his desk, then sat down in his chair and kicked back with a weary groan. His head hurt, and he would give half a month’s wages for a thick steak and a good massage.
The sign on the door to his office read Killian Investigations, but he considered it more than slightly deceiving. The last three cases he’d been on had been more like hunts. Hunting for cheating wives and men who’d jumped bail. The money was good—damned good—but the lifestyle was getting harder and harder to keep up with.