by Paula Graves
The pantry wasn’t well stocked. After moving a few boxes and cans, she found a pack of crackers that didn’t look too old. She grabbed a glass from the draining rack by the sink, filled it with water and carried her snack to the table.
Halfway there, she felt the shivers hit. She made it to the table, falling into one of the chairs just before the door in her mind crashed open and she was sucked into the mists.
Casey appeared in the fog in front of her. “Oh, Lily!” She flung herself into her arms.
“What is it?” Lily squeezed her close.
“There was a gunshot, and a bad scowly man had a gun, and I think he killed the bad men who took Abby, and she got away but she’s all alone in the woods and it’s cold and she’s scared, and he’s looking for her, and I don’t know what to do!” Casey squirmed out of Lily’s embrace and tugged her hand urgently. “You’ve got to help us!”
Lily didn’t wait for Casey’s words to sink in, tightening her grip on the child’s hand, she followed her through the mist.
MCBRIDE LAY BETWEEN dozing and waking, waiting for Lily to return to bed. Though her scent lingered in the sheets and on his skin, he missed the feel of her next to him.
He pressed his face against her pillow and breathed deeply, remembering the way her soft, spicy-sweet scent had washed over him during their lovemaking. She had been both generous and demanding, trusting him enough to let him know when he was pleasing her and when she needed more. She’d given back to him in return, eager and willing to please him, as well.
And afterward, she’d given him what he’d needed most, letting him share the darkness he’d kept inside for so long.
He had been terrified of letting go of his grief, as if in doing so he would lose what small connection he had left with Laura and Clare. But he hadn’t lost them, after all. For the first time since Clare’s disappearance, he found he could think of his daughter and smile, too.
Clare had been a happy child, full of joy and laughter. She could flash her dimples at him and make his heart melt. He had almost forgotten that over the past six years.
How could he have let his rage and grief steal Clare’s smiles from him?
Thanks to Lily, he had those memories back again.
Tired of waiting for her to return to bed, he slipped on a pair of pants and followed the light to the kitchen, where he found Lily sitting at the table, her back to him. He padded across the cold linoleum and lifted her hair, pressing his mouth against the side of her throat. “Hungry?” he asked, noting the crackers sitting in front of her.
She didn’t answer.
Then he saw the glass lying on its side, water dribbling off the table and puddling on the floor at her feet. The skin on the back of his neck tingled. “Lily?”
He crouched next to her. Her forehead was creased, her eyes open but unseeing. A whisper passed between her soft pink lips, but he could make out no words.
She was having another vision.
Ignoring the spilled water, he sat across from her, his heart in his throat. He hadn’t expected to have to deal with this part of her so soon. After all they’d just been through, he still couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe she had some sort of supernatural ability to “see” people and places beyond her own reality. Yet neither could he believe she was a liar, a charlatan putting on an act for his benefit.
So the only other option was what? Madness?
Her sightless eyes stared toward the kitchen window, but he knew she wasn’t seeing her reflection in the darkened panes.
With growing unease, he waited.
“THERE SHE IS!” Casey pointed and tugged Lily’s hand.
The mists in Lily’s mind parted to reveal Abby, crying quietly in the middle of a dense, dark wood. The trees loomed over her like spindly monsters, dwarfing her tiny body. Lily intensified her concentration and touched the frightened child’s tearstained face. She felt the dampness beneath her fingertips.
“Lily, you came!” Abby’s face lit up with a smile. A now-familiar ripple of wonder shot through Lily. She knew that in reality she was sitting in a chair in McBride’s kitchen, but she could feel Abby’s soft skin as surely as if she were truly there in the dark, cold woods.
She soothed Abby as she concentrated on seeing more of the child’s surroundings. The forest stretched into blackness, but she heard sounds in the distance, something—someone—crashing through the underbrush. Lily clenched her jaw and focused her mind on seeing beyond the void, but she could only hear the noises. “Abby, you need to hide.”
“There’s a big bush over there.” Casey pointed.
Lily led Abby to the bush and crouched beside her. “Abby, I need you to be quiet as a mouse. Can you do that?”
The little girl nodded.
Casey hunkered down beside them, her wide hazel eyes fixed on Lily’s face, as if waiting for the next instruction. The full weight of responsibility crashed down on Lily’s shoulders.
The noise behind them grew louder, and Lily finally caught sight of the source. Though the darkness rendered him little more than a hulking shadow, she could tell by his build and his powerful movements that he was a man.
She peered through the gloom, wishing her gift of clairvoyance came with a built-in spotlight. She couldn’t get a good look at him in the dark.
Until he came close enough to touch.
A thin beam of moonlight pierced the canopy of trees overhead, revealing his sandy hair and stocky build. Around forty, he wore dark clothes and carried a large gun.
Lily tightened her grip on Abby. The child went still.
The man crept closer. Lily held her breath, terrified he’d find Abby’s hiding place.
After an excruciating length of time, he passed the bush where Abby was hidden. The little girl started to get up, but Lily held her in place, allowing herself to breathe again. She waited, caressing Abby’s small arm, until the man was well away. Then she whispered, “Do you think you’re ready to keep walking, Abby?”
“Sure she is.” Casey took one of Abby’s hands. “We can make it together, can’t we?”
Abby blinked away her tears and nodded.
Lily helped Abby up. “Honey, you need to think hard, okay? Think hard about Casey and me holding your hands. Do you feel it?”
Abby nodded.
“Okay. Do you remember which direction you came from, sweetie?” The last thing Lily wanted was to lead the little girl back to her abductors.
Abby looked around. She lifted one plump arm and pointed. “Over there.”
“She’s right, that’s the way we came,” Casey agreed.
Lily tightened her fingers around Abby’s hand. “Let’s go.”
By focusing sharply, she could see about fifty yards ahead of her at any one time, but thought it would be enough. She just had to keep Abby putting one foot in front of the other until they came to some sign of civilization.
After a long walk, Abby said, “I see a light.”
Lily peered into the gloom, seeing nothing. “Which way?”
The little girl gestured to her left. She tugged Lily’s hand, urging her to quicken her pace.
On the other side of Abby, Casey’s image was wavery, not quite there. All of Lily’s concentration was on Abby, which meant that Casey was sustaining her presence almost completely on her own. Lily wondered if the little girl was clairvoyant.
How was she ever going to explain this to McBride?
Suddenly, ahead, she saw it. A yellow light. It flickered as they approached, sometimes shielded by tree limbs but growing ever closer. Soon, Lily could make out the edge of a clearing, then the dark outline of some sort of building.
“It’s a house!” Abby started running toward the light.
It was, indeed, a house. Made of natural pine clapboard, it nestled in a clearing in the woods, with a wide porch that spanned the entire front.
Abby almost tripped but caught herself, her little legs churning as she hurried forward.
Excitement surged throu
gh Lily as she realized that Abby was really going to be safe. She would knock on the door of that house and nice people would come to the door and help her.
Wouldn’t they?
Or was Abby about to walk into the lair of an even more heinous monster?
Lily pushed her doubts to the back of her mind. Abby couldn’t last out in the cold much longer. She had to take a chance on the people in this cabin. “Abby, knock on the door. Tell whoever answers that your name is Abby Walters and that you were kidnapped. Tell them to call the police, and tell them about yourself, okay? Can you remember all that?”
Abby nodded, her eyes bright with tears of nervous excitement. “Are you coming with me?”
“I can’t, honey. But I’ll come find you soon, I promise.” She let go of Abby’s hand.
As soon as the contact was broken, she felt the mists swirling around her, blurring the edges of her vision. Frantically she clung to the vision, watching Abby climb the three steps to the porch. Lily looked for some kind of distinguishing mark on the house so she could tell the police where to search for her.
As the mists encroached on the clearing around her, she caught sight of a painted wooden plaque hanging on the wall next to the front door of the house—geese flying in tandem, a wide blue banner stretched between their beaks. In neat script on the banner was written The Marlins.
Then the mist swallowed her. She emerged from the grayness a few seconds later.
But she wasn’t in McBride’s kitchen.
She was in Casey’s bedroom.
“You’re going to leave me now, aren’t you?” Casey stood before her, arms tight around her tattered green frog.
“I promise I’ll try to come back. Maybe you can help me do that.”
Casey smiled. “I don’t feel alone when you’re here.”
Lily tried to hug the little girl, but the tug of reality at her back was too strong. Arms still outstretched to Casey, she was sucked back through the door in her mind.
Casey gazed out at her from the doorway, tears trickling down her cheeks. Then the door slammed shut and Lily was back in the kitchen. Looking at McBride.
She gave a little start.
His touch on her arm was tentative. “Are you okay?”
She clutched his wrist. “McBride, Abby got away from her kidnappers!”
His forehead creased with a frown. “Lily—”
“Please, you have to listen to me just this one time! Abby escaped through the window of the trailer home where they were keeping her. There was a man—I think maybe he killed Abby’s kidnappers, and now he’s looking for her in the woods. He has a gun. I helped Abby hide until he went past us, then we walked in the other direction and found a house in the woods. The last I saw of Abby, she was knocking on the door.”
Brow furrowed, McBride stood up and took a step away from her.
She followed, closing the gap he’d opened. “You’ve got to call the FBI or somebody! What if the people at that house aren’t nice?”
“You sound…crazy.”
“Damn it, McBride, if you don’t call someone, I’m going to do it. She’s at a house in the woods. I couldn’t get a good bearing as to where it might be, but I think it’s here in this county. The terrain looks kind of familiar. The house is one-story, pine clapboard, with a big veranda-style porch. And there’s a plaque on the wall by the front door, two flying geese carrying a banner with The Marlins printed on it.”
He grabbed her hand. “Lily, listen to me—”
Before he could say another word, the phone rang.
A bubble of hope rose in Lily’s throat. Had the people in the house already called the police?
McBride didn’t move for a moment. She could tell by his expression that the timing of the call spooked him a little. He looked from her to the ringing phone.
“Get it.” Her stomach tightened with anticipation.
He crossed to the phone. “McBride.”
Seconds later, myriad emotions darted over his face—disbelief, anger, confusion, consternation, realization, bewilderment and, finally, a mixture of fear and hope. “Okay, I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone.
“It’s Abby, isn’t it?”
He walked slowly toward her, looking stunned. “A man named Jerry Marlin called the county sheriff. A little girl knocked on his door in the middle of the night, said she was Abby Walters and they were supposed to call the police.”
It took a second for McBride’s words to sink in. Then shivers rolled over Lily. She groped behind her for the chair and sat. “She’s okay?”
“Best they can tell.” As McBride closed the distance between them, he opened his mouth, then closed it again, as if he didn’t know what to say.
Neither did she.
He stopped a foot in front of her. “Agent Brody is headed out there already. I’ve got to go.”
She pushed away from the table. “I’m going with you.”
MCBRIDE CONCENTRATED on the dark, winding road. Jerry Marlin’s address was a rural route box, but the sheriff had given him good directions. They were less than a mile away now.
Lily had been silent during the drive. Just as well. McBride didn’t know what to say to her. The world was upside down, nothing making much sense. He was a man who dealt in facts. The facts of the Abby Walters case were that the little girl apparently was alive, after all. She’d apparently escaped her captors, made her way through the woods and knocked on the door of Jerry Marlin’s cabin.
And Lily Browning had told him every single fact well before the phone rang.
He was afraid to believe that he was about to see Abby Walters alive and well. He’d been sure they’d find her in a ditch or a Dumpster somewhere around the county. He’d been rehearsing the words he would say to Andrew Walters.
He was afraid to believe until he saw Abby for himself.
He pulled off the highway onto a gravel road that led deep into the woods. The gravel soon gave way to dirt. “Almost there,” he murmured, the first words he’d said in ten minutes.
Next to him, Lily was tense and pale. She turned to look at him, her eyes glittering in the dashboard lights.
“How you doing?” he asked. “Warm enough?”
She nodded. “Did anybody call Andrew Walters?”
He shook his head. “We want to wait, make sure this isn’t a hoax or a false alarm.” The Chevy’s headlights suddenly picked up the reflector paint on a county sheriff’s car, then the pine cabin looming just beyond. McBride parked behind the sheriff’s cruiser and turned to Lily. “Ready?”
She unbuckled her seat belt and nodded.
They converged in front of the car, Lily sliding her hand into his. He tightened his fingers around hers and walked with her up the shallow porch steps. Immediately he saw the wooden plaque beside the front door. Even in the waning moonlight, he could make out the pair of geese and the printed banner. “The Marlins,” he murmured.
Lily’s hand trembled in his. He looked down at her and saw her staring at the plaque. “It’s really here,” she breathed.
He squeezed her hand and knocked on the door. It opened and a lanky black sheriff’s deputy greeted him. “You McBride?”
“Yes.” He indicated the shield on his belt, then released Lily’s hand. “This is Lily Browning. She’s been helping us on the case. Where’s the child?”
The deputy waved toward a doorway to the left. McBride went through the wide archway, Lily right behind him.
Three people sat at the kitchen table. A burly man with steel-gray hair was in one chair, a short, plump woman with pink curlers in her bleached hair across from him.
And in the middle, her grubby little hands wrapped around a stoneware mug, sat Abby Walters.
McBride’s stomach tightened into a hard, hot ball. He took a couple of tentative steps toward the child, then closed the rest of the distance in a dash, reaching out to touch the little girl’s face. “Abby?”
She blinked rapidly, startled by his sudden approach.
<
br /> Her skin was warm and unbelievably soft. He drew a swift breath. “Tell me your name, honey.”
She wiped her cheek with one grimy hand. “I’m Abby Walters, I live at 524 Winslow Road and I want to go home.”
“Your daddy will be here soon. But I need you to tell me everything you remember about tonight.”
Abby’s face crumpled. “I heard a bang. It sounded like a big firecracker going off. I pushed and pushed at the window and it opened, so I climbed out and ran.”
McBride glanced over his shoulder at Lily. She stood in the kitchen doorway, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach, tears in her eyes as she stared at Abby.
She had been right about everything. Skeet, Gordy, Abby. This house and the geese on the plaque on the porch…
He looked back at Abby, who was saying, “It was real high and I was scared I’d fall and break my neck like Mama always says, but I was more scared Skeet’d come get me and hit me like he hit my mama, and so I opened the window and I jumped.”
Her gaze shifted, looking beyond him.
He heard Lily’s voice, soft and trembling. “Abby. It’s Lily.”
Abby’s face lit up. She leaped from the table, pushing past McBride.
He turned in time to see the little girl fling herself into Lily’s arms. Lily crushed the child to her, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“You came, Lily, you came!” Abby cried.
Chapter Fifteen
Lily tightened her arms around Abby. She was really here, really okay. Not just a tiny freckled face in the mists of her mind, but solid little arms and legs wrapped around her.
Abby patted Lily’s cheeks with her hands. “You’re so pretty! I never could see you.”
Lily stroked Abby’s red curls. “I’m so proud of you. You were such a brave girl to get away.”
“Mama will be real proud of me, won’t she?”
Lily’s heart broke. She glanced past Abby to McBride, who leaned heavily against the table, watching them. He looked as if a truck had hit him.