She sat up and looked out the window. The sun was up now, though just barely, the first glow warming the lake and waking the birds that nested in the trees that lined the banks on the opposite side. Already the ducks had left their nests and taken to the water, keeping their babies close and near to the shore, warily watching the great blue heron that at this early hour was fishing for his breakfast, no doubt watching with one eye the momma duck and her tiny ducklings and hoping that one might stray.
Plumping the pillow behind her, Mara settled back, the bunny resting on her abdomen. The small house had its creaks and groans, but otherwise all was quiet in spite of the activity of the new day outside. It was strange being here, in this strange house, two strangers sleeping downstairs. Well, one of them not so much a stranger. Not anymore, anyway.
She’d begun to recognize Aidan as a man whose strength lay in many levels, a man who understood kindness and who understood pain. A man who understood what it was like to live with ghosts, because he lived with his own.
Of course, there had been a time when she believed that Jules was a man worthy of trust, of respect, too. A man who embodied only the finest qualities. Until she walked into his office one night and found him in a compromising situation with one of the assistant professors in his department, a woman who had dined at their home just the weekend before.
Despite Jules’s assurances that his affair didn’t really mean anything, Mara consulted an attorney by the end of the week. For Julianne’s sake, she agreed to joint custody. For Julianne’s sake, she’d remained friendly with Jules and never—never—let their daughter know what had happened to cause the split. And Jules had repaid her by stealing her child.
She’d never seen it coming. She believed that whatever else Jules Douglas might be, his love for their daughter was genuine. She’d believed him when he’d agreed that it was Julianne’s right to grow up strong and secure in the love of both parents. She’d spent the last seven years paying for that error in judgment.
Mara sighed and looked over the edge of the bed for Spike.
“Spike?” she whispered. “Spike?”
No dog.
The door to her room was slightly ajar, the way she’d left it the night before to allow a little bit of light into the room. She got out of bed, tiptoed to the door, and opened it just enough to step out into the open loft area that overlooked the living room of Chief Tanner’s cabin. She crept to the rail and looked down.
Aidan was stretched out on the sofa below, his hands behind his head, a small bundle of brown and white fur alongside him.
“That little traitor,” Mara muttered.
“What was that?” Aidan asked.
“I said Spike is a little traitor. He’s supposed to be up here keeping me company.”
“I could come up there and keep you company,” he said, his eyes still closed, a smile crossing his face.
“Thanks. I think I’ll get dressed and come down there.”
“Spoilsport.” He pretended to frown.
Mara changed quickly into jeans and looked through her bag for a sweatshirt, since the air drifting in through the window was cool, and realized she was still smiling.
This new Aidan was worth smiling about.
It seemed clear to her that he grew more at ease with her as he grew more at ease with himself. Having his job back had gone a long way to bringing that about, she suspected. He was clearly a man who loved his work, and from what she had seen, he was good at it.
It had been a long time since any man had gotten close enough to kiss her. But Aidan, she recognized, wasn’t just any man. She had known that the night he’d come to her house with an offer to stay. She remembered him pushing himself to keep up with her and Spike on their nightly walk, in spite of the pain the exertion had caused.
Galahad with a bum hip and a pound of metal in his leg and no grip in his sword hand. But he’d come and stayed with her, all the same. And when she’d called him, he’d come for her to keep her from harm’s way.
There’d never been a hero in her life before. It was something to think about.
She pulled the sweatshirt over her head, recalling that Annie had once said that Dylan had swept her off her feet the first time she met him. Mara had teased her sister, never having understood the whole swept-off-the-feet thing. Now she was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something to it after all.
Aidan stopped the Explorer in front of the neat ranch home with the wide front lawn and the trimmed hedge across the front. Bright yellow daffodils grew around the base of the mailbox that announced the street number of the house—459—and the name of the occupant—Channing. Aidan knew from Chief Tanner that Mr. Channing had died several years earlier, and that the missus now lived there alone.
“Do you think she’ll talk to you?” Mara asked.
“Don’t know. She might feel intimidated if I go in alone. Having a woman with me might make her more comfortable. Feel like risking a federal prison term by impersonating an FBI agent?”
“My sister’s with the FBI. Does that make me a Fed by blood?”
“Close enough.” Aidan nodded. “Let’s go.”
A long brick walk led from the mailbox to a small covered front porch where a newspaper wrapped in a clear tube of plastic lay on the top step. Aidan picked it up and tucked it under his arm. He rang the doorbell, and they waited until they heard the door unlatch from the inside.
A small woman who appeared to be in her early seventies opened the inner door slowly. Glancing from Aidan to Mara, she frowned slightly.
“Yes?” she asked tentatively.
“Mrs. Channing?” Aidan asked. “My name is Aidan Shields. I’m with the FBI—”
“The FBI? Oh, my . . .” She appeared taken aback.
“—and this is Ms. Douglas,” he continued, not identifying Mara other than by name. “May we speak with you for a moment?”
“What is this about?”
“It’s about a foster child whom we believe once lived with you,” Aidan told her as he handed her the newspaper.
“Oh. Curtis? You have news of Curtis?” Her eyes lit up, and she smiled just briefly, before the smile froze. “If you’re from the FBI, then it can’t be good, can it? Has something terrible happened to Curtis?”
“May we come in, please?” Aidan showed her his credentials. He hoped she would be focused enough on those to not realize Mara had offered neither ID nor badge.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.” Mrs. Channing motioned for them to come inside. “Please. Sit down.”
“Do you hear from him often?” Aidan asked as he and Mara took seats on the sofa.
“No, not in years. He just . . . he just disappeared out of our lives. I didn’t even know how to contact him when my husband died, and I think Curtis would have liked to have known about that.” She shook her head and drew her cardigan sweater around her as if to warm herself. “I just didn’t have any way to get in touch to let him know.”
“Mrs. Channing, what can you tell us about Curtis?” Aidan asked softly.
“Well, I don’t know what all you want to know.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, when you first took him in as a foster child?” Aidan suggested.
“Oh, that was a time.” She shook her head. “Marshall and I had tried for so long to have children and we just finally gave up. We started going through the adoption process here in the county, met with the social workers and all. We told them we would take any child, any child who needed us. Well, no sooner than we’d met with them that we got a call. Not to adopt, but to take in this boy. They wanted to place him right away, immediately, didn’t want him to go into a group home.”
“Why was that?”
“Because of what he’d gone through, they knew he’d have . . . troubles.” Claire Channing looked at Mara, who had not spoken since they’d entered the house. “He’d had a terrible start in life, that boy did.”
“We know about his mother, Mrs.
Channing,” Mara told her.
“Then you know how damaged that poor child was. We were determined, Marshall and I were, to make it up to him as best we could. To give him as normal a home as we could. But nothing we could do for him would ever make right what had happened to him. I think we both understood that.” She smiled sadly at Mara. “I used to tell the social worker, it’s just a matter of time before it all catches up with him. Oh, we sent him for therapy—he was in therapy for years—but in my heart I knew that no amount of therapy could undo what had been done to that boy. All he’d been through, all he’d seen . . .”
Tears had formed in her eyes. “He was such a good boy, Agent Shields. Studied hard and helped around the house . . .” Her eyes wandered to the window, and she looked outside as if searching for something lost long ago. “We had a little garden together out there, him and me. He helped Marshall with all the yard work. Helped him build a grape arbor out back, planted the grapes.” She smiled even as the tears fell over her cheeks. “We used to make grape jam together. Curtis would help me pick, and we’d get out the canning equipment. . . .”
She rose and pulled a tissue from the top of a nearby box. “But all the same, we knew that he’d never gotten over it. How could he have? All the things that had happened to him. All he’d seen . . .”
It was the second time in less than two minutes that she’d used that expression. All he’d seen . . .
“What are you referring to, Mrs. Channing? What had he seen?” Aidan asked.
The woman lowered herself slowly onto an ottoman close to Mara’s chair and leaned forward slightly.
“Didn’t you know?” Her voice dropped as if she were about to speak the unspeakable. “All the while that man was raping Curtis’s mother, while he was stabbing her to death . . . Curtis was watching from the closet.”
Mara and Aidan exchanged a long look.
“Chief Tanner told us that Curtis had been found hiding in the closet—” Aidan began.
“He saw the whole thing. Can you imagine what that did to that child?” The tissue twisted in her hands. “The police told us that when they found him there on the closet floor, he was covered with blood. That he must have touched her, maybe to see if she was still alive. As best we could piece together, he’d probably watched from the closet, then when the man who killed her—that man, Unger—you believe they’ve let him out of prison?—left the house to wait for the police, Curtis crept out and went to her.” She shuddered. “They said he had her blood on his clothes, on his face . . . his hands. . . .”
Claire Channing held her hands up in front of her. “I just couldn’t imagine that sweet little boy having to watch that terrible thing. We thought if we gave him a good home . . .”
“I’m sure that you did, Mrs. Channing. I’m sure that you and Mr. Channing were the best thing that ever happened to Curtis.” Mara tried to comfort the woman who now wept openly.
“But you have no idea where he is now?” Aidan asked.
Mrs. Channing shook her head. “No. As I told you, I haven’t heard from him in years. After he graduated from high school, he came to us, thanked us for giving him a home. Thanked us for all we did for him. But he said he had to go. He said it would be for the best.”
“And there’s been no word since?”
“None. I would tell you if—” She paused to search their faces. “Has he done something bad?”
“We don’t know, Mrs. Channing. We’re just trying to follow up on something that’s come to our attention.”
“I’ve always feared that someday . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. It hung in the air. It wasn’t difficult to figure out what she feared would eventually happen.
“Do you know if he had any friends in the area, any family, someone who would be in contact with him?”
“No. There’s no one. Curtis didn’t have many friends. He wasn’t very outgoing.”
“Do you have any pictures of him?” Aidan asked.
“Only from years ago. I think the last would be his high school graduation picture.”
“May we see?”
“Certainly.” She opened the drawer of a chest that stood against the front wall and pulled out a box. “There are some in here, I think.”
She sat back on the ottoman and crossed her legs to balance the box while she sorted through a stack of photos.
“This was the first year that he was with us.” She passed a photo to Mara, who was seated closest to her.
Mara glanced at it before passing it to Aidan. The face in the photo was that of a sad, solemn little boy with dark, haunted eyes.
“And these are a few years later.” Mrs. Channing handed Mara a whole stack.
“He looks happier in these,” Mara murmured aloud as she gave the photos to Aidan.
“Oh, thank you.” Mrs. Channing teared up again. “We like to think . . . well, he seemed happy, after a time. Here, here’s a few more.”
Mara shuffled briefly through the pile, then paused. She held up one photo and asked, “You had a Jack Russell terrier?”
“Oh, yes. Curtis’s dog. We got it for him for Christmas the second year he was here. Oh, how he loved that dog.”
“They are wonderful dogs,” Mara agreed. “I have one.”
“Do you?”
Mara nodded, about to mention that Spike was right out in the car, but Aidan picked up the questioning.
“He liked animals?” he asked, well aware that the typical profile for serial killers often included cruelty to animals from a young age.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Channing assured him.
“There were never any incidents of abusing animals or . . .”
“Oh, no.” Her eyes widened at the thought. “No, no. Curtis loved animals. He was very good with them.”
Aidan proceeded through the usual serial killer profile while he had the chance. “Was he a bed wetter?”
“Well, yes. He was. Marshall and me, we decided not to make a big deal out of it, you know, after all the boy had been through.”
“How about fire, Mrs. Channing? Did Curtis like fire, like to start fires?”
“He and my husband used to burn brush out back, years ago. Burn leaves and such, but that’s all I can recall . . .”
“What happened to the dog?” Mara asked.
“Oh, poor little Jake. He died the year Curtis was a junior in high school.”
“Did the dog have . . . an accident?” Aidan asked cautiously.
“No, no. Cancer. And Curtis just cried and cried. Only time I ever saw that boy cry was when his dog died. He never even cried, they said, when they found him in the closet. If he ever cried for his mother, I never saw it. But he sure did cry over that dog.”
“Do you have anything that belonged to him?” A hairbrush or hat that would have DNA on it would be too much to ask, Aidan knew, but maybe there was something. . . .
“No, no, not anymore.” She shook her head.
“May I take this with me?” Aidan held up Curtis’s senior year photograph by one corner. He turned it over. Curtis Alan Channing was written in pencil across the back.
“Of course.” Mrs. Channing nodded. “Can you tell me what you think he might have done, Agent Shields?”
“Not at this time, I’m sorry.” Aidan took her hands in his. “If we’re wrong, you’d have been upset for no reason, and I know that just having us here, asking after him, has upset you enough.”
Claire Channing smiled. “Agent Shields, I’ve been upset for Curtis’s sake every day since the day we brought him home.” She rose, understanding that there were no more questions. “I still pray for him every morning, every evening.”
“You just keep on doing that, Mrs. Channing.” Aidan squeezed her hands gently. “You just keep on praying for him. . . .”
Aidan was on the phone with John Mancini almost before they got back to the car.
“Sounds like you struck gold, Shields,” John exclaimed after Aidan laid out the entire story.
�
�It’s actually Cahill’s gold,” Aidan reminded him. “She was the one who remembered the Ohio case and gave us that lead.”
“You know, I always say to trust your intuition. Follow your gut. Good work, Shields. We’ll get this out on the wires. Now, if we can get a good description of what he looks like . . .”
“We were able to get one of his high school graduation photos. I think a good compositor could probably do a fairly accurate projection on what he’d look like now.”
“We have one of the best. Get that photo to me as quickly as you can, and we’ll get it to her immediately.”
“I’ll take it to Chief Lanigan at the Lake Grove PD and ask him to fax it to you.”
“Excellent. With any luck, we’ll be able to get that sketch completed and out within twenty-four hours. Do I understand that Ms. Douglas is still with you?”
“Yes. She’s here.”
“Stay with her, Shields.” Mancini related the details of what had happened the night before in Lyndon. “It looks like someone—Channing or otherwise—may have tried to get to her last night, but we don’t have the details yet. Keep her out of sight, if you can, while we try to piece this whole thing together.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”
Aidan returned the phone to his jacket pocket while he filled Mara in on the attempted break-in.
“So the boss thinks I should stick with you for a while,” Aidan said.
“And what do you think?”
“I think I’m sticking, regardless.” He leaned across the console and kissed her. “If that’s okay with you . . .”
“It’s more than okay.” She drew closer, meeting him halfway, kissing him back.
“It may be a while. . . .” he told her, his lips brushing against hers.
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