She pointed to a tall pine at the side of her garage. “There’s a pair of hawks who sit up there, watching the bird feeders. I had to take mine down. They were picking off the little ones that came to eat.”
She turned to him. “You must have a lot of wildlife out where you’re from.”
Sam nodded. “Bears, deer, elk, raccoons, prairie dogs, bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, antelope, big-horned sheep, depending on the part of the state you’re in.”
“Stop.” She laughed. “You had all those animals living near you?”
“Pretty much, yeah. I’m from an area close to the western part of the state. It’s still pretty much the way you might picture the Old West in some places.”
“You ever think of moving back there?”
“Not in this lifetime.” He shook his head. “My family farmed. It isn’t for me. My brother and sister are still there, wouldn’t live anyplace else. They’re always trying to get me to come back. They have families, though, and I understand the appeal of raising your kids in a place like Blackstone.”
“Blackstone?”
“The town where I grew up.” He laughed softly. “Town is a bit of a stretch. We do have a grocery store, a bank, a feed store, a café … that sort of thing. Not much more, though. I guess it’s not as bad with the Internet—you can buy anything and have it shipped to your door, which is great for people who have no stores nearby, but we didn’t have anything like that when I was growing up. If we needed to shop for almost anything, we’d have to go to Henderson Falls. That’s the nearest big town. The regional junior high was there—we only had a grade school in Blackstone.” Sam grinned. “And they have a library. My mom spent a lot of time there in the afternoons. She’d have to come in to pick me up from football practice every day, so she’d meet my sisters at the library every day and they’d do their homework and mom would read all the latest magazines and pick up the latest novels. She loved mysteries, romances, thrillers. She still spends a part of every afternoon reading.”
He paused, as if remembering.
“And Henderson Falls has several streets with houses on them.” When she laughed, he turned and explained why that was worthy of note. “Blackstone was mostly a farm community. There were a few houses in town, but not many. We only had about five different streets.”
He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. When he turned toward her, they were almost eye to eye. She held his gaze, wondering who was going to look away first. She might still have been wondering if her phone hadn’t started to ring.
“I should get that.” She went inside and looked for her phone, found it at the bottom of her purse.
She listened for a long time, asked a few questions before saying, “All right. We’ll be there.”
Fiona turned off the phone and stood in the kitchen, wondering how she was going to tell Sam what she’d just been told. Moments later she heard the back door open and close, and she looked up to see Sam come into the room.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Fiona cleared her throat. “There’s been another killing. Same MO. There’s no question it’s our guy. We need to go. John’s having a plane sent for us in less than an hour.”
“Where this time?”
“Henderson Falls, Nebraska.”
He stared at her for what seemed to be a long time, the color draining from his face.
“Who’s the victim?”
“They don’t have a name just yet.”
He took his phone from his pocket and speed-dialed a number.
“Kitty. Hey, it’s Sam. Yeah, everything’s fine. Listen, can I speak to Tom …?” He stared out the window, his eyes focused on something she could not see. “Do you know when he’ll be back? Would you have him call me? No, no, nothing’s wrong, Kitty. I just need to ask him something. Just tell him to call … he has the number.”
He hung up the phone and turned his face to Fiona’s. “My brother went into Henderson Falls to pick up a part for his tractor,” he told her. “He isn’t back yet.”
“You don’t think he’s …” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“If this guy’s trying to get to me and thinks he’s failed, what else can he do but make me come to him?”
FIFTEEN
Agent Parrish, what else can I get for you?” Trula stood at the side of the kitchen table, her hands on her hips, and pointedly ignored the glare Robert was sending her way.
He knew she was ignoring him, knew the FBI agent had overstayed his welcome now by about two hours. Two hours the man had spent mostly talking to Susanna.
“Not another thing. You’ve already been way too good to me,” the agent replied. “I haven’t tasted cookies like that since my grandmother stopped baking and took up tennis.”
“How old was she when she did that?” Trula asked as if it really mattered.
“She was into her sixties when she started taking lessons.”
“God bless her,” Trula smiled.
“Let’s wrap this up, can we?” Robert grumbled. He’d had about enough of this good-looking guy monopolizing Susanna’s time. He had a business to run, and Suse was an integral part of it. He glanced at the clock. It was now late in the afternoon, well past the time Suse usually left for home.
“Ms. Jones, I’m just so impressed that you were able to locate the exact place where Mrs. Magellan’s car went off the road, after all that time, and after all those law enforcement agencies had given up.” Luke Parrish’s smile was one of admiration.
“There was no giving up,” Susanna replied. “And call me Susanna.”
“Then call me Luke.” The agent turned to Robert. “You are so lucky to have such a clever investigator on your staff.”
Before Robert could respond, Susanna said, “Oh, I’m not one of the investigators. I’m Robert’s personal assistant.”
Parrish raised an eyebrow and told Robert, “Her talent is being wasted.” To Susanna, he said, “You should think about applying to the FBI. You’d be great in the field.”
“I’m afraid I’m past the age of recruitment.”
“You have to be kidding. You don’t look a day over thirty,” Parrish told her.
Robert could barely believe his eyes. Susanna was blushing.
Susanna never blushed. At least, Robert could not remember a time when she had.
“So tell me what you’re going to do to find my son,” Robert said to bring everyone back on point.
“As I said earlier, I’m going to spend the day tomorrow with the Sisters of St. Anthony. I’m going to need a list of all the sisters who stayed at the cabin since they started renting it, and a list of everyone the owner ever rented or loaned the cabin to. We’ll start narrowing the search by contacting every one of them. We’ve run the fingerprints that were taken at the cabin but there were no matches, so at least we know that whoever has your son has no criminal record,” he told Robert. “I’m also going to canvass all of the merchants in the area to find out if they remember if anyone was buying baby equipment and food around the time your son disappeared. It’s a pretty rural area, the town’s small. Most places like that remember strangers. Maybe not that far back, but we’ll see what we can find. It’s a starting place.”
“The accident was in February,” Susanna said. “The cabin isn’t heated. Maybe whoever was staying there bought wood for the fireplace from one of the locals, or maybe propane for the stove.”
“An excellent suggestion.” Parrish turned to her. “See, what did I tell you? You’ve got really good instincts.”
Robert cleared his throat and Trula shot him a dirty look.
“Well, I need to get going.” The agent stood. “Trula, I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality.”
“Well, here.” Trula busied herself at the counter. She handed him a small bag. “Take some of those coconut cookies with you.”
“I’d be polite and refuse them if they weren’t so delicious,” he said. “Thank you. I
’ll snack on these later.” He turned to Robert and extended his hand, which Robert took and shook with what he thought would be a bone-crunching grip. Parrish merely smiled and returned the crunch.
“Robert, I’ll be back to you as soon as I have something for you.”
“I hope it’s soon.”
“So do I.” The agent nodded again to Trula as he started for the door.
“I’ll walk out with you, Luke,” Susanna told him. “I should be heading home now. Bye, Trula. Robert, I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Right.” Robert remained standing until Parrish and Susanna left by the back door.
“Isn’t his car out front?” Robert frowned.
“I’m sure he’s just being polite and walking Suse to her car,” Trula pointed out.
“Suse always manages to find it on her own,” he grumbled.
He pretended to sort through that day’s household mail, his eyes straying every few seconds to the backyard, where Susanna and Luke Parrish were in an animated conversation.
After nearly ten minutes, he said, “What do you suppose they’re talking about all this time?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Rob. Why don’t you go on outside and find out?” The smug tone in Trula’s voice was unmistakable.
He shot her another dirty look before going back to the window. Susanna and Parrish were standing close to her car now, still talking. Damn.
All at once, he saw Chloe running down the drive. When she saw Susanna, she came to a quick stop, then skipped over and said something that made Susanna and Parrish laugh. Then the kitten she and Trula had adopted from the local shelter and named Foxy ran into a nearby flower bed, and Chloe’s attention was diverted.
Robert remained fixated at the window, his curiosity just about killing him. The agent was clearly flirting with Susanna, and if Robert wasn’t mistaken, she was flirting back.
“He’s flirting with her,” he told Trula.
“Of course he’s flirting with her. She’s a very lovely woman, and he’s not a blind man.” She added under her breath, “Unlike some others I might mention.”
“What?” Robert looked over his shoulder.
“I said, why wouldn’t he be attracted to her? Suse is very pretty, she’s smart, she’s funny—” She paused. “Was that a harrumph I just heard? Did you harrumph?”
“No.”
Robert stood back from the window as Chloe came running through the back door, the kitten in her arms.
“Trula, I think Foxy is hungry. She was trying to eat a bug.” Chloe set the cat on the floor. “A very big bug. Like a grasshopper, but with long long legs and a funny little head.”
“A praying mantis?” Trula asked.
Chloe shrugged. “I don’t know if it was praying, but it was big.”
“Chloe, did Susanna introduce you to Agent Parrish?” Robert asked.
“Uh-huh.” Her dark head bobbed up and down.
“Did you happen to hear what they were talking about?”
Trula shot him a look of disapproval but she said nothing.
“Uh-huh. The man was asking Susanna where is a good place to have dinner and Susanna told him some places and how to get to them.”
“So she just gave him directions …?”
“Uh-uh. She started to, but he said, why don’t you pick your favorite and join me.”
“What did she say?” Robert leaned against the counter.
“She said, okay, you can follow me and we can—”
“She said okay?”
“Uh-huh.” Chloe sat on the floor attempting to distract the kitten while Trula prepared its dinner.
Robert scowled and looked out the window in time to see Parrish’s car pull to one side of the driveway in order to let Suse’s car pass before falling in line behind her.
“Damn,” Robert whispered as he watched both cars ease down the drive and disappear through the gates.
SIXTEEN
The flight to Nebraska was a tense one, with Sam on the edge of his seat, unable to get through to his brother, and not wanting to explain to his sister-in-law, Kitty, that there was a chance—at least in Sam’s mind—that Tom might be in danger. What if he was wrong? That Tom had been gone for several hours in itself was no cause for concern. Tom was notorious for being chatty. A stop at the gas station to fill up his pickup could last anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on who he ran into. On the way to the airport, Sam had tried Tom’s cell phone several times, and had even tried calling their cousin, Greg, to see if he’d talked to Tom at some point this afternoon. Sam had not managed to get through to anyone, and he was becoming more frustrated by the hour.
Sam glanced across the narrow aisle of the small plane to the seat next to him where Fiona slept. He wanted to wake her, wanted to hear her cool reasoning on why he shouldn’t jump to conclusions. One thing he really liked about her was her ability to reason and to think things out logically. He’d spent years with a woman who seemed to be lacking the common-sense gene and whose nature suffered from an overabundance of the impractical. Carly held the world of whimsy by the tail most of the time, and at first, that had been part of her charm. She was so totally unlike anyone Sam had ever met. She was light to his darkness, fun and games to his studious, solemn nature. He’d been told all his life that he was entirely too serious. When he met Carly, he believed that a woman like her would help him to lighten up, and isn’t that what everyone always insisted he do?
Marriage to Carly had sometimes seemed like a too-long day at the fair, a day filled with too many sweet sodas and too much cotton candy. There’d been many wonderful moments, many good memories, and Sam would never deny that they’d loved each other, but for the last eighteen months before she died, he’d been wondering if the lightness of her being wasn’t perhaps a heavier burden than he’d ever imagined. It had become very difficult, after days of tracking a killer who left mangled children in his wake, to come home to reruns of The Simpsons and entertaining her friends over the elaborate dinners she was fond of preparing. There had been times when he wished only to get into the shower and stay there until he could wash the stain away from his soul, but there would be dinner for eight that night.
He’d tried to explain to her how hard it was for him to switch from one mode to the other, but she insisted that it was better for him to socialize with fun people than to retreat to his study where he’d brood and dwell on whatever case he was handling, that all he really needed was some good times with friends to forget about the nastiness of his job. For Sam, those good times hadn’t been so good, and the friends were mostly hers. He’d never once ended one of those nights without a massive headache. He’d never really fit in with her circle of friends, most of whom lived in the same carefree, fun-filled world wherein Carly dwelled. Sam knew better.
Fiona stirred in her sleep, bringing him back to the present. The cabin had grown cool during the flight and she’d wrapped her arms around her midsection as if chilled. Sam found a blanket in one of the overhead compartments, and tucked it around her lightly. She smiled in her sleep, and that alone had made him smile. Her dark hair spilled over her face, and he was tempted to push it back behind her ear. After a moment, he did just that, lifting the heavy silken strands with his fingers and draping it carefully over her shoulder. He leaned back in his own seat and closed his eyes, trying without success to relax.
The first thing Sam did once he climbed down from the plane was to try Tom’s numbers again. It was now two thirty in the morning, and there was still no answer and there’d been no return call.
“They have kids in school,” Sam told Fiona. “You’d think someone would be there to pick up the phone.”
“There could be any number of reasons why no one’s answering, Sam,” she replied calmly. “Some people turn off their ringers at night. If the kids fall asleep with their iPods on, they won’t hear the phone.” She paused. “Does the house have central air?”
“Central air?” He frowned. “Th
e farmhouse is almost a hundred and fifty years old. No, there’s no central air.”
“Then they probably have those window units, right?” When he didn’t respond, she repeated, “Right?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“The newer ones are pretty quiet, but the older ones … those suckers are loud. And if they have them, you know they’re running tonight. It’s pretty damned hot. So chances are they’re not hearing the phone.”
“I’d like to think Tom would have called back if he heard my message.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, all right? First, we need to get out of here.”
“We need a car.” Sam gazed around the private airstrip. “How can we get a car at two AM out in the middle of nowhere?” He frowned. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”
“Someplace called Afton’s Fork.” She walked around the building that served as a hangar. “As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, the airstrip is private. It’s owned by a friend of John’s who lets him use it when he needs to. Which, from what I understand, is practically never.”
She continued to walk and he continued to follow. In front of the building a dark SUV was parked. Fiona opened the driver’s door and reached under the seat.
“Sam, heads up.” She called and tossed a set of keys in his direction. He caught them in one hand.
“You drive,” she said as she walked around to the passenger side. “You’re more likely to find the way out of here than I am.”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” he told her as he started the engine. “I’ll bet it’s been twenty years since I was in Afton’s Fork.”
“And the last time I was here would have been … let me think.” She fastened her seat belt. “That would have been never. You drive.”
The paved road wound through endless fields. Sam drove slowly, the headlights the only illumination. They passed a large house, darkened in the dead of night, and it was then that Sam realized that this was actually someone’s home. He tried to think if he’d ever known anyone in the area who had the kind of money that would enable one to have a private airstrip and a home like the one he’d just passed. He was pretty sure he never had.
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