Marrying Jake

by Beverly Bird

  She left her hair down. She did not bother with an apron. She found an old satchel in the closet and she stuffed it full of one change of clothing for each of her children. Then she carefully folded the wedding-ring quilt and laid it neatly upon her pillow.

  There was one last thing she needed. The idea of taking money—more money—from Adam and Mariah made her head pound and her throat burn. But there was no help for it. When the house got quiet and she thought Adam and Mariah had left, she crept back downstairs. She took the grocery money Mariah kept in a little cookie jar on the kitchen counter. She found a notepad and a pencil and scribbled an explanation and a vow to someday, somehow, pay it back.

  Two hundred dollars. Would it be enough? She wasn’t sure. She had no choice anyway but to make it be enough. She had no way of getting more and she really didn’t have to go very far. She thought briefly of waiting. Of planning. Of saving money. But she made no money to save, had no way of earning any here. And if she waited, this burning urgency she’d just discovered within her might fade again. It would be so easy to keep hiding behind Adam as she had been, too weak and too stupid to change.

  She let herself out the back door. Then she hugged herself hard and marched toward the road, the little satchel slung over her shoulder.

  Jake was firing on pure adrenaline. And caffeine. He’d had two cups of coffee before he’d even left the rental car place in Lancaster, another three on his drive to the other side of the Delaware River and into New Jersey.

  “Where is he?” he demanded as soon as he stepped into the state police barracks in Toms River. Ernie was in the lobby and he turned to look at him sharply.

  “Same place he’s been since two this morning, pal. Right this way.”

  Jake’s stomach rolled. Two this morning. They had maybe eighteen hours, then. The law said they could hold him for questioning for twenty-four. So they had eighteen hours in which to charge the bastard with something or set him free. To get information and a confession.

  “I told my boss you were working in tandem with the Federal guys,” Ernie said. “Back me up if they ask you.”

  “Sure.” Then Jake swore. “A good lawyer will have any confession I get tossed right out of court. I don’t have jurisdiction.”

  “So I’ll go in with you. It’ll be our word against his. We’ll say you were just a bystander and I badgered the truth out of him.”

  “Good enough.” Gray areas, Jake thought. They were necessary too damned often. That was why he hadn’t moved up in the ranks with the Dallas P.D. He couldn’t handle the politics, the focus of a spotlight that showed up every glaring and iffy procedure.

  If you were a damned good cop...you wouldn’t be horsing around in a low-paying job....

  Damn Adam to hell, he thought angrily. Damn him for putting all these doubts in his mind.

  “We didn’t find a thing in his house,” Ernie said. “No trace of where the kids have gone. Nothing except seventy thousand or so in cash stuck under a floorboard.”

  “The going rate for a healthy, Caucasian baby,” Jake snarled, feeling sick.

  “Maybe. Or at least a portion of it anyway. I suspect some has already gone up his nose in the form of cocaine. He was wired when we got him.” They went down a hallway and stopped in front of a closed door. “You need to calm down, man,” Ernie warned.

  Jake looked at him sharply. “I’m calm.”

  “You look like you’ve been through the third world war. Alone. Without the rest of us grabbing guns to help out.”

  Jake scrubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw. “I haven’t slept.”

  “Jake, I don’t know what kind of a personal stake you’ve got in this and I don’t have to know what it is, but you can’t get too ugly with this guy. Not with all these people around to hear him holler.”

  Jake’s smile was chilling. “No one will hear a blessed thing.”

  Ernie followed Jake inside the room.

  Somehow, here, Jake finally felt the jolt. It hadn’t happened in either Lancaster or on the drive here. Maybe he’d been numb then, he thought. Maybe he’d still been thinking about what had happened with Katie. Dear God, he’d let himself fall in all the way. He hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t drawn a line. And he was terrified.

  Running again. Running.

  Deal with Mills. Find Sam.

  He just had to find her kid and go home, get out. It had turned into a pounding, driving urgency. But all he could feel in this room was the vast difference between her world and his own. Technology—a multiline phone, a fax machine, a coffeemaker, a bottled water dispenser—versus humanity, he thought. Justice walking a fine line versus the heartache of parents who had lost everything precious in spite of their strict and devout ways.

  Katie.

  Mills was seated at a long table in the center of the room. His eyes slid over Ernie and settled on Jake. Jake tried hard to take Ernie’s warning to heart, to appear calm. But the menace in his eyes must have shown through because the guy shot to his feet and backed up fast.

  “Who’re you?” Mills demanded.

  “I’m the guy who put your picture on the Internet so that Ernie could haul your sorry backside down here last month,” Jake said harshly. “Remember that? You were telling us all about Linda Porter.” That had been Jannel’s real name.

  Mills’s eyes rolled a little. “Oh, man. Linda’s guy.”

  “Nope. That was my brother. I’ve just been helping him out with a little problem some of his friends have developed over on the other side of the river.”

  “Yeah?” Mills watched him suspiciously.

  “Yeah.” Jake’s hand flashed out. He caught Mills by the collar. The man squealed like a stuck pig as Jake lifted him off his feet and drove him back against the wall. He held him that way without flinching, the shorter man’s feet dangling off the floor. He did not feel the strain in his muscles. Adrenaline and five cups of coffee did not let him feel anything at all.

  Except panic, he thought. Except rage. And loss. He’d left her only hours ago, and already there was loss.

  Got to find Sam. He was a damned good cop. And this time he would not fail.

  “I’m sort of in a dangerous frame of mind right now, Mills. You might want to bear that in mind. See, I had a fight with my brother earlier today and it dredged up a lot of things I’d really rather just forget. Things like a man I should have killed and didn’t. I’d be just as glad to make amends by putting an end to you.”

  Mills opened his mouth and closed it again. “I want a lawyer.”

  “Yeah? Think you can get one over here in the next ten seconds? That’s about all you’ve got until I throttle you.”

  “This ain’t legal!”

  “Neither’s stealing kids, you bastard.” He pushed him harder against the wall, then glared at him. “There’s one other thing I forgot to mention.”

  “What?” Mills gasped, obviously not sure if he should be hopeful or scared.

  “That kid you just took? The most recent one. It just so happens that he’s the son of a lady I care a lot about.”

  Mills opted for scared. His face blanched. “All right!” he shouted.

  Jake dropped him to his feet in disgust. “Where’s Sam Essler?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t push me, Mills. Sam Essler. The last kid you took.”

  “I didn’t say I took no kids.”

  Jake shot a look at Ernie. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Wait, wait!” Mills shouted. “You’re like wanting a confession out of me or something, right?”

  “He’s so smart it’s scary,” Jake said to Ernie.

  Mills was trying to circle around the table, trying to put it between them. Jake grabbed his collar and hauled him back. He shoved him hard into a chair.

  “Sit down,” he snarled. “Here’s the thing, Mills. One way or another, you’re a dead man. You’re either going to push me until I snap and you’ll die here and now, or we’ll play this whole thing out in court. That
could take months, years. You know the FBI is in on this thing? You’ve got the attention of the big boys now, Mills. They all want you. Let’s see, we’ve got murder one—I found Jannel’s body, by the way. It was a good hiding place, but not good enough. I...”

  Suddenly, treacherously, his mind went blank. He thought of the way they had found Jannel. Of the way Katya had kissed him that first time he’d let himself touch her. The first time he’d crossed the line.

  He tasted her again. He caught her scent again—it was as though she had just stepped into the room, the air stirring around her.

  “What?” Mills demanded. “You what?”

  Jake tried hard to focus on him. He had to find Sam. Nothing else mattered. But his mind stayed blank.

  “They can’t get me on murder one,” the man went on. “You got a body. Big deal. Doesn’t mean I killed her.”

  Jake shook his head to clear it. “Yeah, well, we’ve got a special forensics team working on what’s left of her right now. If you did, we’ll know it within a few hours. Personally, I’ll put my money on a murder conviction.”

  Mills paled a little.

  “Hey, now I remember where we were,” Jake went on. “Besides murder one, you’ve got five charges of kidnapping across state lines hanging over your head. You know what that means, Mills? Death penalty. What with all of that, they’ll hang you for sure.”

  “I ain’t gonna confess. I’ll take my chances. If I don’t confess, you gotta get evidence.”

  “Oh, we’ve already got it. You left two kids at the pond last night, Mills. Two kids who can ID you, who saw you take Sam. They’ll ID your car, too. Tell you what,” he went on, straining for control, for patience. “You give me Sam and point me in the direction of the others and I’ll put in a good word for you with the FBI.”

  “They’d listen to you?”

  “Sure,” Jake lied. Got to find Sam.

  “You for real?”

  “You’d better hope so. I’m all you’ve got. Where is Sam?”

  “Hey, man, nobody got hurt or nothing. That’s what you got to know right from the start. That’s good, right? That’s good for me, huh? I didn’t hurt nobody.”

  Tell me. Jake’s blood was pounding with urgency now. He was fresh out of games to play with this fool. “Five seconds, Mills. Then I’m walking out of here and you can take your chances with the FBI on your own.”

  “Okay! All right! I dropped him off already,” Mills said.

  Jake felt his blood pressure go up a notch.

  “I got clients, see,” Mills said proudly. “A whole waiting list. Got an agency here in Toms River. Private adoptions, that’s what I call ’em. The kid last night went to some people in Dover.”

  Jake was shaking. “Who?”

  “What do you mean, who? The kids I took.”

  “Who...in...Dover?”

  “Chavers. Folks named Chavers. Hey, it’s a good home. Rich folks. He’ll have everything he ever wanted. Everything normal kids have. Everything that he couldn’t get back in that crazy place I took him from.” He looked at Ernie. “Weird place there, man, let me tell you.”

  “Yeah, he’d have everything but his mama,” Jake snarled. Just like me.

  Ernie was already half out the door. “I’m on it.”

  “Where?” Jake demanded. “Where in Dover?”

  “Ur...Arlington Drive. Big white house.”

  Good enough. He could get the rest from the phone company.

  His heart began roaring. He’d done it. For once in his life, he’d done something, finished something, fixed it.

  “Hold on, Ernie, I’m right behind you,” he shouted, and jogged from the little room.

  He wasn’t going to just get Sam. He was going to see this guy put away for life.

  Damned if he wasn’t a good cop.

  Chapter 17

  Katya stood with her nose pressed to the glass door of the bus station in Lancaster. Her palms were flush against the door. Despite the biting cold, they were damp with perspiration. There were so many people in there.

  She pulled the door open and stepped just inside. She hovered there, her back pressed to the door now. After a long while, she realized that in spite of her odd dress, no one seemed to be paying her any attention at all. That made her feel braver. She crept a little farther into the terminal and spotted a long row of telephones across from the bus gates.

  She hurried that way with fresh determination. She pushed a quarter into the slot of the first phone. With great care and precision, she pressed “0” for the operator as the deacons had said to do to ask for information.

  A tinny voice answered. “Hello,” Katya said breathlessly. “I need to call the policemen in Atlantic County, New Jersey, please.”

  There was a staticky sound. “One moment please. You need Information.” And then, amazingly, the line was ringing again, though she had not put any more money in. In fact, her first quarter came plopping right back out with a merry ringing sound.

  A new voice was speaking to her. “Information. What city please?”

  “Atlantic County. New Jersey,” she said again.

  “That number is 606-555-1212.”

  She repeated it frantically to herself, disconnected, then fished for her quarter again. She pushed it back in and tapped out the new number. It was not the police.

  “Information. Can I help you?” another mechanical voice asked.

  She felt a thin line of perspiration trickle down between her shoulder blades. “Yes, I certainly hope so,” she said. “I need to speak to the policeman.”

  “What police, ma’am?”

  “The police in Atlantic County!”

  “But what city there?”

  Katya’s mind raced wildly. She didn’t think Jake had mentioned a city. Then she remembered something Adam had said. “Toms River!” she burst out, proud that she had remembered. And Jake’s voice came back to her, giving her strength. Do you know why Frank said that? To keep you under his thumb. To keep you his. Because if you believed in yourself, you might find it within yourself to fight him.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a recording giving her yet another number. And the machine gave her her money back again. She grabbed it desperately and stuck it in the slot one more time. She called the newest number. This time the machine kept her quarter and a metallic voice asked for more. She dug frantically in her dress pocket and pushed in all the change she had.

  “Toms River Police Department,” a male voice finally said.

  “Yes.” Katya breathed again. “Oh, yes, thank you. My name is Katya Essier, and you’re looking for my little boy.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She heard him shouting to someone else, then the line went dead. No, no, no! But before she could react, before she could hang up, the man came back.

  “You’re sure you want Toms River, ma’am?” he asked. “The thing is, we don’t have any open kidnappings or missing children on the books,” he explained. “Is this a recent case?”

  “Yes. He was taken last night.”

  “Not here, he wasn’t.”

  “Oh! No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. It happened in the settlement.”

  “The settlement?” His voice took on a wary tone. “And what settlement might that be?”

  Suddenly, her eyes burned. Oh, God help her, maybe Frank was right. She could not survive out here. She could not even manage a phone call to tell Jacob she would come for Sam herself.

  The man disconnected again. Had he hung up on her? She waited desperately. After all, he had come back before. After a moment or two, music began playing. She held the phone away and looked at it, amazed.

  “Ma’am?”

  She put the receiver back to her ear as soon as she heard. his voice. “Yes!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Yes, I’m here!”

  “You want the state police, ma’am. A guy in the county barracks says they’re involved with a kidnapping. You have the wrong number.”r />
  “Please, could you give that to me?” she asked. “The correct number?”

  “I can take whatever information you have and send it over to them, if you like.”

  “That would be wonderful,” she breathed, relieved. “There’s a policeman there named Jacob Wallace. He’s from Dallas. He’s looking for my son. Please tell him I’m not at the settlement. If he would just please keep my baby safe when he finds him, I’ll be there to collect him just as soon as I can get there. Tell him I’ll come to your police station. In Toms River. We can meet there.”

  “But—”

  “That’s all,” she finished more confidently. “Did you get all that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sam will be safe with him. Sam is safer with him than anywhere, until I can get there.” She knew that with all her heart.

  She hung up the phone, then got into line to buy a bus ticket to Berks County so she could collect her other children. Her heart was hammering. But it felt good, so very good, she realized. She was finally doing something, for herself, for Jacob, for everyone.

  Jake heard Sam before he saw him, which was pretty amazing since Sam Essler did not make a sound.

  A tense, white-lipped woman had opened the door to them at the house on Arlington Drive in Dover. Jake and Ernie O’Brien, four other troopers and two guys from the FBI’s New Jersey office had made the drive in a convoy of three separate cars. Three more agents from the Dover field office had met them outside at the curb.

  Jake had been absolutely convinced that for some obscure and ridiculous reason he would get here too late. Or that Mills had deliberately lied to him. They would get here and Sam wouldn’t be here at all. Mills could have sent them on a wild-goose chase and meanwhile made arrangements—God only knew how, but Jake wasn’t being rational—to put the boy into hiding.