Howard Lawrence’s death still bothered Will. It was a loose end, and he didn’t like loose ends. Loose ends meant he had missed something.
Though everybody else seemed perfectly willing to write it off as a suicide.
His gut told him they were wrong.
Not that it mattered. Not really. Suicide or murder, Lawrence was just as dead. Homicide investigations were the province of the local cops. Not the feds.
He tapped a key. His computer screen glowed green at him, then data started scrolling across it. All the information he had compiled from Operation ChaseRace—that was the tag the Bureau had given his investigation—had just been transferred via modem to the Lexington field office. They would handle the arrests, the prosecutions. His job was done.
“You want to go get a drink, Will?”
Dave Hallum popped his head in the door of Will’s small office. Lean and balding, Hallum reminded Will of a greyhound. Today even his suit was gray.
“Not tonight, thanks.”
Hallum’s question reminded Will that it was five-thirty. Time to go home. Home to what, though? Now that Kevin was gone, home was an empty house. He could order in a pizza, eat in front of the TV.
Will decided to opt for the gym. Later, he could always call up Lisa, though since he had returned from the sticks Lisa seemed to have lost her appeal.
For a long time now she’d been pressuring him to get married, but Will had always resisted, using Kevin as an excuse. Now that his son was no longer home to act as a shield, Lisa was growing more insistent.
She was thirty-seven, divorced, and heard her biological clock ticking, Will knew.
The thought of giving Lisa babies made his stomach act up. He didn’t like her all that much, Will realized. He certainly wasn’t in love with her.
Hallum walked into the room. “What’re you working on?”
“Finishing up that Kentucky thing. I just lobbed the last of the paperwork to—what’s the guy’s name?”
“The agent in charge of the Lexington office? Matthews.”
“Right. Matthews. Now the ball’s in Matthews’ court.”
“You did a good job on that.”
“Thanks.”
“They were shipping horses in from Argentina, right? And substituting them for American horses? I’ll be talking to George Rees tomorrow, and I want to make sure I’ve got it straight.”
“The report’s on your desk,” Will reminded him.
“I haven’t had time to read it,” Hallum admitted, crossing the room to perch on the edge of Will’s desk. “Fill me in.”
“A group of horse trainers entered into a conspiracy to fix certain races so that they could bet small and win big. To do that, they substituted fast horses for slow horses. Since all horses racing in this country are identified by mouth tattoos, they flew in horses from a country that has no such requirement—Argentina. Then they had the fast horse’s mouth tattooed with the slow horse’s ID number, ran the fast horse against other slow horses at long odds, and pocketed the winnings. End of story.”
“Sounds simple enough. I’m surprised it took you two weeks to figure it out.” Hallum grinned at him.
Will knew when he was being teased. “It wouldn’t have, except the first informant I recruited lied to me. Once I figured out how the scheme really worked, it was a piece of cake.”
“The first informant being the guy you think may have been murdered?”
“Yeah.”
“Murphy doesn’t think so. Anyway, that’s for the local cops to decide.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“So case closed?”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Case closed.”
There was a tapping at Will’s open door. He glanced over to see Murphy and two other agents—Warren Roach and Ben Markey—at his door. He motioned them inside. If it had not been for Hallum’s presence, he knew they wouldn’t have bothered to knock.
“You ready to go?” Murphy asked him.
“Go where?” Will frowned.
“Don’t tell me you forgot,” Roach said. He was tall and thin, with carefully combed brown hair and nice taste in suits. Divorced, he fancied himself a ladykiller. Will had the sudden hopeful thought that maybe he could fix him up with Lisa.
“Hey, man, it’s my bachelor party!” Markey grinned at him. In his late twenties, short with black hair, Markey was never still. He jiggled the change in his pocket now, looking at Will.
“That’s right, I remember. In fact, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. At DiGiorno’s, isn’t it? You guys go on, and I’ll be there a little later. I’ve got a few things to do here first.”
“You still working on Operation ChaseRace?” The absurd name made Murphy grin.
Will shook his head. “Just finished it up.”
“What was Kentucky like, Will?” Roach was teasing him. Murphy had spent the last three weeks regaling everybody in the office with his and Will’s experiences in the Bluegrass. Will had found himself the butt of much humor, none of which he particularly appreciated. Not that he was stupid enough to let his lack of appreciation show.
“Like being trapped in an endless Green Acres rerun,” Will said dryly.
The group chortled. “You even had your own Elly May, didn’t you?” Markey asked.
“That’s not Green Acres, idiot. That’s The Beverly Hillbillies,” Roach corrected him.
“I don’t care. I just want to hear about Elly May.” Markey was grinning.
“Get out of my office.” Will said it with far more good humor than he felt. Hearing Molly referred to as Elly May was starting to get on his nerves.
There was another tap on the door. His secretary—no, the new PC terminology was administrative assistant—stood there.
“Will, you have a call on line two,” she said. “A Miss Ballard.”
The trio of fools in front of his desk looked at each other in delight.
“Elly May!” they crowed, even as Will reached for the phone.
“Will Lyman,” Will said crisply into the mouth-piece. Watched by a grinning audience, he’d be damned before he’d let any emotion show.
“Will?” Molly’s voice hit him with the force of a baseball bat to the stomach. It was soft, and low, and southern, and it made his mouth go dry. Will suddenly couldn’t imagine how he had lived without hearing it for three weeks.
“Molly.” He ordered the Three Stooges—and Hallum too—from his office with a gesture. They ignored him.
“Oh, Will.” Molly’s voice broke. Will was suddenly alert. For Molly to sound like that, something must be very wrong.
“Susan’s gone,” she said, sounding as if she was having trouble talking.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” His voice was sharp.
“She’s missing. She went up to bed last night, and this morning she was just gone. Her bed was empty. She wasn’t anywhere in the house. We searched everywhere, inside, outside, and then I called the police. They act like they think she’s run away. Will, she didn’t run away. You know she didn’t. I think somebody must have gotten into the house and stolen her out of her bed.”
“Jesus God.”
“Will you come? Please? Now?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can catch a plane,” Will said into the phone as his blood slowly froze. “Just stay calm, and hang on.”
“Hurry. Please hurry.” Molly’s voice broke again. There was a click in his ear as she hung up.
Will replaced the receiver and got to his feet. The four men in the room were no longer grinning. Hallum rose from the edge of Will’s desk.
“There’s been a kidnapping,” Will said. “A little girl. I’ve got to go.”
43
Susan awoke in the dark. Her head hurt, and she was sick to her stomach. She didn’t know where she was, but she did know she wasn’t in her own bed. She’d gone to sleep in her bed last night just as she always did, but somehow she’d woken up—here.
Where? That was the quest
ion. Susan scrambled up, crouching on what felt like a dirt floor. Wherever she was was cold and dark and moldy-smelling. And quiet. Echoingly quiet. Like a cave.
Could she be having a nightmare? Susan pinched herself to make sure. The pinch hurt. Did pinches hurt in nightmares?
Susan knew she was awake.
A whimper formed at the back of her throat. Susan held it back. She was afraid to make a sound, afraid to move, in case the beast that inhabited this place should hear her and pounce.
She didn’t know why she pictured a beast, but she did. A huge, shaggy creature with horns and claws and fangs that captured children and ate them for breakfast. She could almost hear it now, sneaking through the dark toward her.
Something ran over her fingers. Susan snatched her hand off the floor and screamed. Even as the sound died away she was scuttling backward like a crab until her head crashed into a stone wall.
She saw stars, and subsided in a shuddering heap. Drawing her knees up close to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs, Susan made herself as small as possible. Stone walls, dirt floor, the smell of rot. Tiny beady eyes glowing at her from a distance: mini beasts?
Was she in a cellar—or a grave? The thought that she might be buried alive terrified her. Around her, the darkness seemed suddenly alive, listening, breathing, waiting to pounce on her.
“Mommy,” she whimpered. Then, “Molly.”
44
By the time Will arrived some four hours after Molly had phoned him, the house was filled with people: neighbors, friends, and cops. It served as a command post for a bewildering mix of federal agents and local police. Will had set the wheels of that in motion before ever leaving Chicago. There was a tap on the house phone in case a ransom call should come in, and an agent monitoring the tap. Molly had provided pictures of Susan, along with a list of her friends, identifying information, and a description of what she had been wearing when last seen—an ankle-length white flannel nightgown sprigged with pink flowers. Molly, Sam, Ashley, and Mike had been questioned so extensively about their movements of the night before that Molly felt she could retell her story in her sleep. The house had been dusted for fingerprints. Susan’s room had been photographed from every angle. A BOLO—Be On the Lookout For—had been issued with Susan’s description, and a search had been made of the house, yard, and nearby fields. A more extensive search was being organized for the coming of daylight, if Susan had not turned up by then.
Molly prayed that Susan would turn up by then.
Will phoned from the plane to tell them what time he would be landing. The FBI agent in charge of the phone tap passed on the message to Molly—Special Agent Eaton, he said his name was. Molly, Ashley, Sam, and Mike sat around the kitchen table with untouched plates of meatloaf and mashed potatoes before them, courtesy of their neighbor Flora Atkinson. Molly had dated the Atkinsons’ son Tom, and had been good friends with their daughter Linda before Linda had married and moved away. Mrs. Atkinson was a plump, motherly woman of sixty. She bustled about the kitchen, preparing food and talking in hushed tones to other neighbors as they came in and out.
Susan’s disappearance was a nightmare, they all agreed, the kind of thing that happens on TV, or to other people. Not to them. Not to Susan. Not to a child they knew.
Pork Chop’s excited barks as a car crunched into the driveway at about 10:00 p.m. sounded so normal, it was bizarre. They all, Special Agent Eaton included, went out onto the porch, hoping. Hoping it was Susan being brought home. Hoping for news. Hoping for …
Will. He strode toward the house, his blond hair bright in the moonlight. He was wearing a trench coat unbuttoned over a dark suit. Molly was so glad to see him that her throat constricted.
“Will!” Ashley and Sam swarmed down the steps toward him. When they reached him they threw themselves upon him, hugging him as if he were a long-lost family member. He hugged them back, then looked over their heads at Molly standing on the porch with Mike beside her.
For a moment their gazes met and held.
“You didn’t tell us you were an FBI agent!” Sam’s voice was accusing. Molly had told them that afternoon, just before she called Will. His real identity was the only ray of hope she had to offer them—and herself.
Will looked down, ruffling the boy’s hair.
“It was a secret,” he said.
“Susan—” Ashley broke off, obviously too overcome with emotion to continue.
“Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right,” Will said, then with an arm around each of them came on toward the porch.
From the moment Ashley and Sam flung themselves at him, Will knew he had been wrong. Wrong to think that his fondness for the Ballards was something that would pass, wrong to leave without a word the way he had. At the time, it had seemed like the best way to handle things. He had been afraid that they—and he—were getting too attached, and to what purpose? His life was in Chicago, their lives were here. When the job was done, he would walk out of their world as abruptly as he had walked in. As Molly had said on that last, never-to-be-forgotten night, under the circumstances he should never have gotten involved with her brothers and sisters in the first place. It wasn’t anything he’d planned; he’d felt sorry for them, at first. They’d been so obviously needy, not just financially but for adult male attention. It was easy to help Susan with her homework, to toss a football with Sam, to teach Ashley to dance. Mike seemed at first to need stern discipline rather than attention, but he was just as vulnerable as his siblings, Will had discovered. Showing the kid the rudiments of basketball had been fun. Straightening him out in other ways wouldn’t have been so enjoyable, though Will was confident it could be done. But teaching Mike and the rest of them to depend on him would have been cruel. Will had no forevers to offer them.
But they’d wormed their way into his heart, all of them. The truth was, he had missed them.
He was as sick with fear over Susan as he would have been if she were his own child. He understood the ramifications of the horror that had befallen her far better than did any of her siblings, and it terrified him.
What he most feared was a pedophile. When he remembered the night Susan had seen someone at the window, his blood ran cold. Perhaps whoever had taken her had been stalking her for some time.
Another possibility was a kidnapping that stemmed from Molly’s help with the investigation. Someone could have taken the child for revenge.
There were lots of possibilities, but not much time to explore them. He knew that the longer a child was missing, the less likely it was that the child would be found at all, much less alive.
But he didn’t mean to tell the Ballards that, not until he had to. They were already scared to death; a glance at them had been enough to tell him so.
Standing there on the porch as he walked up the driveway toward her, Molly said nothing, did not even so much as lift a hand in greeting. She was very pale. Since he had seen her last, she had lost weight that she didn’t need to lose. Dressed in faded jeans and a nondescript gray sweater, she still managed to look both sexy and beautiful. And fragile, so fragile the moonlight almost seemed to pass right through her. Her arms were crossed over her breasts. She kept her lips pressed tightly together, as if she were afraid they would tremble if she didn’t. Her eyes were huge and ringed with shadows. Will met their gaze and felt his world tilt on its axis.
For three weeks he’d been telling himself that what he and Molly had had been great, but it was over: a classic case of a hot, brief love affair.
Only it wasn’t over. As soon as he set eyes on her again Will knew that. What he felt for her was too strong; what was between them was no brief affair.
Will wanted to walk up on that porch and take her in his arms and kiss the breath out of her.
But she had called him not because she wanted him, but because she needed him. He was here in his capacity as an FBI agent, not as Molly’s lover.
Until Susan was found, he had to remember that.
“Hello, Molly” was what he said as he came up the steps with Ashley and Sam clinging to either arm.
“Thank you for coming,” Molly answered in a low voice.
On the other side of the steps, Mike made a restless movement. Will looked at him.
“Hey, Mike.”
“Hey, Will.” The boy didn’t sound openly hostile, as Will had expected. Will supposed he had the trauma of Susan’s disappearance to thank for that. They were all on the same side until Susan was safely home.
Please God it worked out that way.
“I’m Special Agent Ron Eaton.” The man in the suit standing behind Molly held out his hand. Will would have known at a glance that he was with the Bureau. There was something about feds, he supposed, that allowed them to recognize each other.
“Will Lyman.” Ashley and Sam released him, and Will shook hands.
“And I’m Flora Atkinson.” A gray-haired woman too heavy for the navy polyester slacks and long-sleeved white blouse she wore nodded at him. Besides Eaton and Mrs. Atkinson, there appeared to be about a dozen strangers crowded onto the porch staring at him. With a glance Will separated them into the teenage crowd—friends of Mike’s and Ashley’s, he supposed—and the adults, who with the exception of Jimmy Miller appeared to be neighbors.
Miller nodded at him without enthusiasm.
“Will.” Molly’s voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. He was standing beside her. As he glanced down at her she put a beseeching hand on his sleeve. Her eyes were huge and dark. “Find Susan. Please.”
“We will,” he said reassuringly, hoping he was telling the truth. Then, purely for the purpose of comforting her, he put an arm around her and ushered her back into the house.
The whole crowd of them followed. One glance at Molly’s exhausted face in the light told Will that she was nearing the end of her rope. He beckoned Eaton over, said a word in his ear. Eaton handled the situation like a pro. Within minutes the group was leaving.
Mrs. Atkinson kept saying, “I can stay if you need me,” up till the very moment when she got into her car. Miller pressed a kiss on Molly’s white cheek and murmured something in her ear before walking out the door. The rest of them departed with various farewells. Finally the Ballards, Will, and Eaton were left alone.
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