“Upstairs closet,” Richard said. “Terrell will be glad you’re here early. His headache hasn’t cleared up, and he’s been grumbling about guarding all morning.”
Greg rolled his eyes.
As he started up the stairs, Richard called, “How long are you on shift?”
“Until sunset,” Greg said, already dreading it. Then again, if it was raining this hard, Carrie couldn’t weed or do laundry outside. Maybe they could wait out the storm together. Smiling, he leaned over the railing. “Send Carrie over after you talk to her, if she’s free.”
“Sure thing,” Richard said.
Greg took the stairs two at a time.
Several long hours passed of Greg twiddling his thumbs and watching the main road for any sign of life. He had nothing but his thoughts to entertain him, planning everything from setting up this farmers’ market to how he could keep the vulture, David Jamansky, away from Carrie tomorrow. But even those thoughts couldn’t occupy him forever.
He was struggling to keep his eyes open by the time he spotted Richard out the window, striding up the wet sidewalk with Dylan Green. The rain had finally stopped after a steady stream all day, leaving the air damp and humid. The sun hadn’t quite set yet behind the lingering clouds, but Greg ran down to meet them on the driveway, hoping to finish his shift early.
“Your turn,” Greg said to Dylan.
“Hold on,” Dylan said. “We were coming to see if Carrie is here with you.”
“I wish,” Greg said. “She never stopped by. Why?”
Dylan exchanged a brief look with Richard. “I just dropped Sasha and the boys off at the Ashworth’s for the night. No one’s home.”
“I never found Carrie either,” Richard said. “Now it seems as if no one knows where she is.”
“Did you check the Watson’s house?” Greg said. Halfway into his shift, he figured she had spent the rainy day with Rhonda and Chuck Watson, planning her new yard. “Carrie was anxious to get her yard started. My guess is she lost track of time.”
“Good idea,” Dylan said. “I’ll check over there and let her know she has a house full of people waiting for her.”
Greg grabbed his arm. “Nice try, sly dog. I will check with Watsons. You will take over here.”
Dylan muttered something but walked into Richard’s two-story home to start the next shift of guarding.
Two minutes later Greg stood at the Watson’s front door, baffled.
“Sorry, Greg,” Rhonda said. “We just figured Carrie got busy today. Do you want us to look for her with you?”
“No. I’ll check Ziegler’s,” he said. “Maybe Amber knows where Carrie went.”
As he headed toward the end of the cul-de-sac, he couldn’t push away the gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right. Carrie wouldn’t spend a whole day on anything but her garden, in one form or another. With the rain, where else could she be?
He didn’t even make it halfway to Braden’s house because a group was gathered on Carrie’s driveway, including the Ziegler’s entire family. It only took one question for a pit to carve itself in Greg’s stomach.
“Hey, Greg,” Braden called. “Do you know where any of the Ashworths are?”
nineteen
AS WORD SPREAD, THE REST of the clan met on the road in front of Carrie’s house. It had been roughly twelve hours since anybody had seen any of the Ashworths. Greg had been the last one, giving Carrie a quick kiss as they left her house that morning: him to hunt, and them huddled under Carrie’s coat on their way to grab Richard from May’s house. Nobody had seen them since. Obviously, they had gone into town without Richard, but twelve hours ago?
Twelve hours, Greg repeated, sick.
“Maybe they stopped off to contact another clan,” Terrell said. “Maybe Zach remembered another group.”
“Or they could have gotten lost,” Sasha said. “It’s a long way.”
Richard shook his head, eyes on Greg. “Not likely. Carrie knows the area well. I’m sorry, Greg. I never heard them come to the house this morning. Are you positive you saw them heading to your grandparents’?”
Greg couldn’t even nod. He’d already tried to comfort himself that they’d just gotten lost on the way, strayed off the beaten path to hide from the storm, or pick wild strawberries, but Richard was right. Richard was horrifyingly right. Carrie knew her way around this area better than anybody. She wasn’t lost. She wasn’t visiting some other clans.
She was gone.
“Jamansky,” Greg whispered.
Richard’s eyes widened. “What?”
Greg’s blood began to boil. “Jamansky has her. He took them.”
The entire group fell silent.
His grandpa was the first to venture a question. “Why?”
“Because I kept her from him,” Greg said, stomach pitching. “He was coming back to see her, and she wasn’t home—because of me—so he took her.”
Revenge on Oliver.
Ashlee Lyon covered her mouth. Braden, who had been sitting on the curb, slowly rose to his feet, pallid skin flushed with fury.
“Was it worth it?” Braden asked. “Was it, Greg? They could be in jail. They could be gone forever!”
Richard held up his hands. “Hold on. Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know anything yet. Even if Carrie and the others went into town, Jamansky wasn’t in Shelton today, remember?”
“That’s right,” Ashlee said. “David was in Geneva all day for a big high-up meeting. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near Shelton.”
Greg tried to talk himself off the cliff. This might be harmless—some simple reason keeping them away for twelve, long, wet, unexplained hours.
But inside, he knew.
His fists clenched. Why hadn’t he followed them into town? He’d told Carrie that he and Dylan could hunt anywhere, but she’d brushed it off and said they’d be fine. So he’d let it go—let her go.
“They’re probably just waiting out the rain somewhere,” Sasha said.
“The rain stopped an hour ago!” Greg snapped. “Look, I’m not waitin’ around. I’m headin’ into town.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Richard asked. But at Greg’s sharp look, he backed down. “You’re right. I’ll go with you.”
Within seconds they had a group prepared to spend all night searching if necessary. Night was closing in fast, and a few grabbed makeshift lanterns. As dark as it was about to be, it would basically be a blind search, complicating things. The rest would stay behind to check the immediate area around Logan Pond.
When they reached the edge of the neighborhood, Richard turned back under the flickering light of the lanterns. “If anyone finds them or any sign of them, send up the call. If you reach town before the others, hold back behind the old library. And please, stay in groups of at least two or three. I don’t need to tell you how nervous it makes me to have all of you out in the open, so stay aware, stay smart, and stay together. Nothing rash,” he added with a look aimed at Greg.
Greg ignored the warning because they were taking too long.
Too long!
Turning, he started off but only made it a few steps because somebody grabbed his arm.
“If anything happened to Amber,” Braden said, standing nose to nose with Greg, “anything at all, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
Greg nodded. He already knew this was his fault.
He took off, sprinting.
The dark, rugged two-mile path into Shelton was nearly invisible under the heavy cloud cover, but that didn’t slow him down. Desperate to see, and yet even more desperate to know, he sped up until the voices calling out behind him faded to nothing.
Once Greg hit the abandoned cornfield, he spotted a packed-down trail through the wet weeds, barely visible in the muted moonlight. A few places held three distinct sets of footprints filled with muddy rain water. He should have sent up the call, but his pounding heart refused to let him stop for even a second because the Ashworth’s tracks o
nly led one direction. They’d gone into town and hadn’t returned.
With the speed of a hound dog, Greg followed their trail, each step bringing a new vision of Carrie strapped up, tied up, beaten, bruised, half-dead on the floor of a prison, or worse, at the mercy of David Jamansky. His mind became his enemy. With each new horrid possibility, he sped up until he was a blur in the night.
At one spot, he nearly lost them. The weeds thinned, and their footprints had washed away in the storm. After a few minutes of frantic, breathless searching, he found their trail again and took off, muscles and lungs burning. Branches whipped his face, logs and boulders slammed against his shins, but he flew.
Their trail entered town in nearly the same spot he always had, just behind the township office. He searched the exterior of the dark brick building first, then pressed his face up to the glass doors. The small building was dark inside except one emergency fluorescent light. But bright light spilled out of the conjoining building.
The patrol precinct.
Breathless, Greg crept up to the three patrol cars out front. Oliver’s car was parked closest with the identifying dent in the side, the same one Jamansky had driven to Carrie’s. Double-checking his surroundings, Greg peered inside the black interior. An empty coffee mug and useless papers sat on the passenger seat. Nothing with ties to Oliver.
Greg had ridden in the trunk of that same car not that long ago, clueless about how much could change in a few days. The other two patrol cars held nothing useful, and neither had “Chief of Patrols” plastered along the side.
Jamansky wasn’t there as far as Greg could tell.
Out of options, Greg scurried up to the lit patrol building and pressed his back against the brick to peer inside. Four patrolmen stood around a desk, talking. Their soft laughter drifted out to him. Greg recognized three of them from the raid on his grandparents’ house in March, including the huge, line-backer-sized officer.
He nearly charged inside and demanded they tell him what had happened, but he wanted to get the other clansmen’s reports first, just in case they’d seen something he’d missed.
He headed back behind the old library, hoping against hope. The small group was still gathering. Terrell held Carrie’s drenched, abandoned coat, having found it under a huge tree. That told Greg little but solidified it for the others. The Ashworths had come to town. Other than that, nobody had seen anything that Greg hadn’t already seen for himself.
“Now what?” Richard asked, breathless.
“I’m goin’ in,” Greg said. His mind went over the speech he’d prepared for those four patrolmen—and Commander McCormick.
Richard looked confused for a moment before his head snapped up. “No way. Your mother would never forgive me, and neither would Carrie. What’s option number two?”
“The second they know I’m a federal patrolman,” Greg insisted, “they’ll be forced to tell me—”
“Absolutely not!” Richard rode over him, more forcefully than Greg had ever seen. “I love your mother too much to let you throw your life away on some rash, idiotic decision. Not just her, but your grandparents. You’re the last family they have. Need I remind you that getting yourself arrested won’t do Carrie any good anyway?”
“Maybe it would,” Greg said, as his mind suddenly tripped over the possibility. Getting arrested. The fastest way to figure out where they’d taken Carrie.
Richard glared at him, his face glowing orange in the lantern light. “They house men and women separately, Greg—possibly not even in the same county. And even worse, do you think the government, in the chaos it’s in now, will simply welcome you back into the Special Ops group with open arms after what you did? You’ll be court-martialed faster than you can say your name. Military prison will be twenty times worse than anything else we might be facing with the Ashworths, so we will do this rationally or not at all.”
“For all we know,” Terrell Dixon added, “they went a different way home, and they’re sitting within the warmth of their home right now.”
“And if they aren’t?” Greg challenged, refusing to let a few little words like court-martialed deter him. “What if Jamansky has her, Richard?”
“Then we’ll deal with it as a clan, just as we’ve always done. They can handle themselves for one day while we get our bearings.”
“One day?” Greg yelled.
Richard laid a hand on his shoulder. “I promise you on my life that we will find them. Right now, though, I’m begging you to trust me. I need your brains and wisdom, but I need you here. Don’t let me down.”
Greg yanked free. “Ditto.”
“Now,” Richard said, “what’s option number two?”
It took Greg a long moment before he could answer. “We split up. Half go back and search the woods again, the other half searches here in town for any other—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dylan interrupted. “You want us to search town? Have you completely lost it? We can’t just be wandering around the open, Greg. It’s bad enough we’re here now.”
Greg looked around the small group and, to his disgust, several nodded. He shook his head. “Guess I’m goin’ alone after all. Option number one.”
“Wait, I’ll search town with you,” Richard said. “Perhaps to be safe it should just be the two of us anyway.”
“Count me in, too,” a woman said, her dark shape coming up the wet trail.
“Me…too,” another guy said between gulps of air.
Ashlee Lyon held Braden Ziegler around the waist as the two straggled into the group. The second they stopped, Braden dropped to his knees, doubled over for breath.
Greg marched over to them. “What are you doin’ here? Neither of you should be here.”
“I have to…” Braden said, “to know what happened.”
“And I can find out,” Ashlee said. “I can, Greg.”
In the darkness, Niels Ziegler loomed over his son. “I told you to stay home. Greg is crazy. There’s no way I’m letting you search town.”
“Try to stop me,” Braden said, still on his knees. A pathetic position to insist on being defiant. “I’ll volunteer as a patrolman if I have to.”
As Niels, Richard, and Terrell worked on convincing Braden of the stupidity of that decision, Greg locked eyes with Ashlee Lyon.
“Can you really find out what happened?” he asked.
“Can you help me break into the township office?” Ashlee said in return. “I just need access to my computer. If you can get me inside there, I can figure out if they were—”
Richard spun. “No way! None! The patrol precinct is connected to the township office. Someone is bound to hear, a lot of someones with a lot of guns.”
“No worries.” Greg still stared at Ashlee, mind racing. “All of my useless military training might not be so useless after all. I can get you in. But…” His voice caught. “Can you find her?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Ashlee said.
Pulse leaping, Greg looked at Richard. Richard was shaking his head.
“It’s better than turnin’ myself in,” Greg said. “And it’s better than risking a group of us wandering around in the dark. So, are you in or out? No hard feelings either way.”
Richard closed his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Forgive me, Mariah.”
Close enough.
“Alrighty,” Greg said. “You and Ashlee scout out the township office. Check every window and door for bars, locks, and such. But don’t touch a thing. We don’t wanna be settin’ off any alarms yet.”
“Yet?” Richard echoed angrily.
“Yeah. We gotta figure out what we’re up against first.” Greg moved toward the dark street. “Meet me back here in five minutes.”
“Where are you going?” Ashlee called.
“Carrie’s flower shop.”
That got a reaction, but he didn’t have time to explain. The flower shop had been left in ruins. Hopefully something in there would help him break into the
township office. He didn’t need much. Something small and metallic to help him get in undetected.
“See you in a few,” he said. “Oh, and don’t get caught.”
Then he made another mad dash in the dark.
twenty
“ARE YOU OKAY, HON?”
Carrie curled against the painted cinderblock wall, one hand over her nose to block out the worst of the smells, the other covering her good ear to block the sounds. She’d already thrown up twice, adding to the awful smells in her cell, and the thirty percent she could still hear out of her bad ear was plenty. She didn’t know which was worse, listening to some crazy woman moaning a few cells down, or not listening and being left to her own thoughts. She couldn’t handle reliving everything again, but her mind kept taking her back, over and over and over.
The office. The car. The prison.
The office. The car. The prison.
Amber. Zach. The guards.
“It’ll be okay, hon,” someone said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You get used to it here.”
Blinking slowly, Carrie saw a woman kneeling beside her on the hard, cement floor. The woman looked older than Carrie by thirty years, or maybe in the woman’s present condition—filthy, with a few missing teeth—she just looked that old. The other women in the shared cell looked to be in worse condition since most didn’t have enough social sense to keep their mouths from gaping wide open.
Prison…
Six cement slabs—one above, one below, and four painted walls—closed in around Carrie. A metal bunk bed sat in one corner with thin mattresses and even thinner pillows. A toilet and sink sat in another. Filth permeated everywhere else. But the smells…the sounds coming from places she couldn’t even see…
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat.
It took the woman three times of saying, “I’m Donnelle. What’s your name, hon?” before Carrie could think straight enough to answer.
“Carrie,” she whispered.
Donnelle smiled warmly. “Carrie. Where are you from, Carrie?”
Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set Page 101