by Paula Graves
“Okay, the front faces north, then. And the church spire is in the east…” His voice trailed off suddenly. She looked at him, and found his eyes wide.
“What is it?”
“I think I know where that church is!” His voice shook with excitement. “It’s in the middle of the woods, like you said. If I find the church, I can backtrack to the house.” He kissed her quickly and started toward the bedroom.
“Wait, I’m coming with you.” She tried to stand, but her head swam. She stumbled into the table.
He was at her side in a second, arms circling her. He caught her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. “Did you fight the vision?” he asked, looking surprised.
“It was trying to bring me back before I was ready. I wouldn’t let it.”
“Are your pills in your purse?”
“I’ll get them. You go.”
“I’ll be back soon.” Brushing her hair aside, he kissed her forehead. “How will I ever be able to thank you for this?”
She caught his hands. “Just bring Clare home.”
THE GRAVEL ROAD LED to the Barclay United Methodist Church, a small white clapboard building in the middle of Barclay Woods. McBride parked the car and got out, staring at the tall steeple. His heart banged against the back of his throat as he looked toward the spot where the spire seemed to prick the veil of heaven.
She’s here somewhere, isn’t she?
He closed his eyes and opened his heart, calling to his little girl with every ounce of love he had inside him. Daddy loves you, K.C., he loves you so much.
He called her name aloud. “K.C.!”
The sound echoed in the early morning quiet of the woods. Only the soft chirping of birds and the chatter of squirrels answered him.
God, please don’t let this happen again.
“K.C.?”
The silence compelled him forward, into the forest. He jogged through the tangled underbrush, sometimes stumbling, sometimes sliding, always moving west toward the house he knew had to be just beyond the next stand of trees. He called his daughter’s name as he ran, his voice ragged and shaking.
When he saw the edge of a clearing through the wall of trees, he staggered to a halt. The sound of his breathing was harsh in the stillness. He took a step forward, then another. His strides sped up and he finally broke into the clearing, where he halted again and stared.
There it was, just as Lily had said. A small, one-story white house with green shutters. Overgrown grass, sagging roof.
This was it! She was right.
Hope surged through him like new blood, propelling him forward. He ran around the side of the house, heedless of any possible danger, his heart, mind and soul set on one goal: finding his daughter. He turned the corner and ran a few steps more before his feet caught up with his eyes.
The silence swallowed him whole.
Bile coursed upward through his esophagus, gagging him. Squeezing his eyes shut, he turned his head and retched, falling to his hands and knees. Ice seemed to replace his blood as his stomach emptied, leaving him stiff and cold.
Finally, he stopped retching and found the strength to turn his head again, clinging to one last sliver of hope. Maybe adrenaline had played tricks on him. Maybe he’d been so afraid of having his hopes dashed again that he’d created his own worst nightmare.
He slowly opened his eyes. His heart sank.
The entire front of the place was a blackened ruin, gutted by a fire long since extinguished. This house hadn’t been occupied in years.
McBride hung his head, wishing he were dead.
LILY SLEPT FITFULLY, dark dreams disturbing her slumber. She was in a black space, blacker than night, blacker than death, and she could hear McBride calling his daughter’s name.
“K.C.!”
The sound echoed in her head, a hard, brittle noise. It sounded like blood tasted, she realized. Sharp and metallic.
“Liar!”
She twitched in her sleep as McBride’s voice stabbed her in the heart.
“You said she was alive! You said I could find her, but you were wrong!”
She ran from the malignant thickness of that voice, crying as she ran. Her tears were acid, burning her cheeks. She couldn’t escape the fiery heat of McBride’s hatred.
“I hate you for what you’ve done!” McBride’s voice pursued her in her nightmare.
Lily jerked awake with a cry, clawing at the bedcovers that held her prisoner. Her heart caught as she realized McBride was sitting in a chair next to the bed, looking at her with eyes as dead as winter.
“Oh, God.” Lily choked on the words.
He looked away from her.
“You didn’t find her.” Her heart plummeted.
McBride didn’t glance at her again. “You’re right. She wasn’t there.”
“Did you find the church?”
“Yeah. I even found the house. But Clare wasn’t there.”
“You mean you didn’t find her at the house.” Lily felt a glimmer of hope. “McBride, I told you that she ran away. She was probably out in the woods, hiding. If we just go back, I’m sure—”
“No.” McBride’s voice sounded hollow. “I found the house. Dirty white with green shutters, sagging roof—everything was just right. But it was gutted by fire a long time ago. Nobody’s lived in that house in years.”
Lily shook her head. How could that be? “But Abby saw her, too.”
“You were in Abby’s head, Lily. She probably saw whatever you saw.”
“Why would I see your daughter if she wasn’t there? Before yesterday I didn’t even know you had a daughter. And I didn’t see a three-year-old. This was a grown-up nine-year-old.” Lily shook her head. “Maybe we were wrong about where the house was in relation to the church. Or maybe we had the wrong house.”
“Stop!” He doubled over as if in pain. “Please, just stop, Lily. I can’t do this anymore.”
But I wasn’t wrong about Abby, she thought, desperately clinging to that fact. Abby had been right there where she’d seen her. She couldn’t understand why McBride hadn’t found K.C. “I don’t know what happened. After we found Abby, I was so sure…” Hot tears sprang to her eyes.
“I’m not saying you don’t have some kind of ability,” McBride said. “Finding Abby was proof of that. But you were obviously wrong about Clare.”
The one failure he’d never be able to forgive. He’d said as much. Tears trickled down Lily’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry, McBride.”
He nodded, but he still didn’t look at her. “I know you believed you had found Clare. It’s really not your fault.” He rubbed his jaw. “It’s my fault. I knew better than to let myself believe again. I knew all the risks, what it was going to cost me, but I did it anyway. I should’ve known better.”
The pain in her head had faded, but her heart was ripping apart. “You want me to leave.”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds, and she almost dared to hope. But then he nodded slowly. “I know I’m not being fair to you. But I know now that I can’t do this. I’ve called Theo to follow you home. He’s waiting outside.”
She could tell by the sound of his voice that she’d never be able to convince him otherwise.
Tamping down despair, she stood, legs wobbling as she crossed in front of him, barely able to keep her hands from reaching out to touch him. She went to the closet, where she’d put some of the clothes from her overnight bag.
“I’ll do that,” he said. “Your head’s still hurting.”
She leaned against the frame of the closet door, her chest aching with pent-up grief. She had known the risks as well. She’d known that trying to find Casey could cost her the chance of being with McBride.
But she’d been so sure.
How could she have been so wrong about Casey when she’d been so right about Abby? Lily just didn’t know how the visions worked. She didn’t know what caused them, how to control them or what they meant. It had been arrogant to think she did.
She pushed herself upright and turned to McBride. He stood near the dresser, folding her clothes and putting them into the overnight bag. He avoided looking at her, as if the sight of her was more than he could bear.
She sought the strength to ask him one hard, dreaded question. “Did you ever love me, McBride? Even a little?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. He turned and looked at her, his gaze cold, his expression nearly blank. “I just knew I was going to find her today. I thought I could feel her with me. It was like I could reach out my hand and touch her. And I thought, Lily did this for me. She brought my baby back to me.”
Lily gritted her teeth, holding back a sob.
McBride shut his eyes. “Then I found that burned-out house.” His shoulders rose and fell with a deep sigh. “You want to know how I feel about you? I don’t feel anything, Lily. I just don’t…feel.” He turned away, pulling out the dresser drawer where she’d put some of her belongings.
Unable to find anything else to say, Lily joined him by the dresser and started putting her clothes into the overnight bag. They moved in slow, silent concert, methodically erasing all evidence that she’d ever been part of his life.
She closed the case, and McBride took it from her, heading toward the hallway. He walked her out to her rental car, pausing as she slid behind the wheel. “You’ll probably want to get out of town for a while,” he said. “I’ll take care of it with Brody. There’ll be reporters hunting you down if you hang around.”
She looked at him, studied him one last time. She wished she had a photo, some memento she could pull out when the nights were long and lonely. Something to remember him by. But they hadn’t been together long enough for love notes, dried roses or any of the forget-me-nots that accompanied lost love.
All she would have was the memory of this moment to haunt her for a lifetime.
McBride waved at Theo Baker who sat behind the wheel of a dark sedan idling at the curb. Then he finally looked at her one last time, his dark gaze unfathomable. After a moment, he turned and started walking back to the house.
She slumped in the driver’s seat and shut her eyes, aching with misery. Casey had been so real to her. She could still see her little face, still hear her voice in her head.
What if she was really out there somewhere? Maybe not McBride’s daughter, Clare, but somebody, some scared little girl, lost and all by herself?
Lily didn’t know. She didn’t know if finding Abby had been a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime lucky break. She didn’t know if her gift was reliable. She didn’t even know if there ever was a little girl named Casey who was hiding in the woods, waiting for her daddy and Lily to come rescue her.
She didn’t know anything anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
When Lily arrived home a little after ten, Agent Logan stood on her front stoop talking to a dark-haired man with a bushy mustache. The sketch artist McBride had called, she realized, spotting the sketch pad under the stranger’s arm. She’d forgotten all about the meeting.
Agent Logan smiled in greeting. “I’ll be down the street if you need me, Ms. Browning.” He headed down the driveway, stopping briefly to speak to Theo Baker.
The mustached man introduced himself as Jim Phillips. Waving off her offer of something to drink, he went right to work, listening to her description of the man she’d seen in the woods. His charcoal pencil flew across the paper as she viewed the results and helped him tweak the sketch.
Within a half hour, he’d managed to draw a very good likeness of the man she’d seen following Abby.
“That’s him,” she finally declared.
Jim closed the sketch pad and shook her hand. “Thanks for the input—you have a good eye. I’ll be sure McBride gets this ASAP.”
His mention of McBride felt like a stab in the heart, but she kept her chin up until she’d ushered him out the door.
She glanced down the street, looking for the FBI van. It was no longer where it had been parked earlier. A niggle of unease tickled her spine, but she pushed it away. They were probably hidden from plain view. The FBI was good at that, she’d heard.
Still, she thought as she closed the door, she’d feel safer if she could see them.
Slumping on her sofa, she tried to coax her cats to her lap, but they kept their distance, glaring at her from the doorway. “It was overnight, not a week,” she protested. “I left you plenty of food and water.”
They didn’t budge from the doorway, gazing at her with pure feline disdain. Lily gave up and sat back, closing her eyes.
A knock on her front door jerked her upright, nerves jangling. Her cats scattered.
McBride, she thought, her heart leaping with hope.
But it was Andrew Walters who stood on her doorstep.
CAL BRODY WAS WAITING for McBride when he arrived at the station. The agent took his own sweet time vacating McBride’s desk chair, which only darkened McBride’s already pitch-black mood. But he welcomed the rush of anger. After the past couple of hours, it was good to feel anything, even rage.
“I’ve gone over the evidence retrieval in this case, and I’ve got to hand it to you, Lieutenant, it’s damn good,” Brody commented. “You’ve got good people here.”
“Did you think this was Hooterville or something? Of course we did a good job.” McBride glared at him.
“Didn’t mean any offense.” Brody quirked his thick, dark brows. “Your captain has refused further FBI assistance in investigating the deaths of the two kidnappers, and we’ve already found forensic evidence that Rick ‘Skeet’ Scotero killed Debra Walters. So we’re done here. We’re heading back to Birmingham.”
McBride’s brow furrowed. “What about your surveillance unit at Lily Browning’s house?”
“We packed them up an hour ago. She’s not a witness, and we’re pretty sure that the men who called her are dead.” Brody’s eyes narrowed. “Unless you want us to continue investigating her as a possible accomplice?”
McBride’s patience snapped. “Oh, for God’s sake, Brody. She’s not a suspect. You know it. I know it. Now get out of my office so I can get some work done.”
“By the way, Walters called to say thanks again.” Brody actually smiled, although the expression looked strange on him. “Nice that at least part of this mess ended well.”
After Brody left, McBride passed his hand over his face, feeling sick. He didn’t want to think about Andrew Walters with his beautiful, healthy little girl, while McBride was sitting here, wondering why he had to keep going through hell over and over again, losing everyone and everything that gave meaning to his life.
He grabbed his bottle of antacid tablets and twisted open the top. He crunched two tablets, unsure if they’d be strong enough to calm the acid bath churning in his gut. Reaching for his phone, he arranged for a patrol unit to watch Lily Browning until he could figure out what to do with her next.
No matter how much he was hurting right now, letting her go home alone had been damn near a dereliction of duty.
“HOW’D YOU MANAGE to evade the reporters?” Lily asked as she settled in the armchair across from Andrew Walters.
“I’m used to it by now. I’ve learned the tricks.” Andrew stretched one arm across the back of her sofa. “Abby sends her love. She’s with my ex-wife’s sister in Tellerville.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.” Lily tamped down her disappointment. “But I’m so happy she’s safe.”
“Thanks to you.” Andrew leaned forward. “I’m hoping you can answer something for me. Abby keeps talking about someone named Casey. Do you know who she’s talking about?”
Tears stung the back of Lily’s eyes. “She’s a little girl who showed up in some of my visions of Abby.”
“Showed up?”
“She wasn’t physically there in the trailer with Abby. She just…appeared.”
“Appeared? How?”
“I think maybe she’s clairvoyant, too.”
Andrew shook his head, his lips
curving in a half smile. “This is all so…”
“Weird?” Lily supplied.
He nodded. “Abby says Casey’s the one who told her about the man with the gun.”
Remembering McBride’s warning, Lily played dumb. “What man with a gun?”
“I believe it must be the man who killed the two men who took Abby. Abby said he was following her in the woods.”
Lily feigned surprise. “I heard the men were dead, but…”
“The FBI think it may have something to do with the senate race.” Andrew’s expression oozed dismay, but he couldn’t hide a tiny glimmer of satisfaction in his blue eyes. Anything that cast doubt on his opponent would aid his bid to become the next senator from Alabama, Lily realized. That was politics.
“Horrible,” she murmured, not really sure what else to say.
“So you never saw the kidnappers or anyone else in your visions? Just Abby?”
“Just Abby,” she lied. “And Casey, of course.”
“What does Casey look like?”
Lily’s stomach tightened. “She’s just a little girl,” she said, being deliberately vague. “A little older than your daughter. I didn’t see that much of her. I was more focused on Abby.”
“I see.” He sounded disappointed. “I’d have liked to thank her, too. Abby said Casey was a great source of comfort.”
“I don’t think I’ll be seeing any more of her.” Lily’s throat tightened with misery. Andrew’s questions only reminded her of all she’d lost.
A shudder ran down her back, sprinkling gooseflesh across her arms and legs. Another shiver washed over her, giving her less than a second’s notice before the vision slammed open the door in her mind and pulled her inside.
The gray mist dissipated with shocking suddenness, and Lily almost tripped over Casey. The little girl was huddled in a dark place, hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater. She was shivering, but her color looked good, Lily noted with a rush of relief. She said Casey’s name.
The little girl’s dark hazel eyes lifted. She scrambled to her feet. “Lily, I thought you’d gone away forever!”
Lily wrapped her arms around the child and hugged her tightly, tears streaming down her face. “It’s okay, Casey. I found you.”