Kidnapped (33 page)

“Thank you for not saying we're flying randomly with no hope of spotting a white van this way.”

“Hey, when you don't know where to look, looking anywhere is progress,” Joe replied. “It would take two hundred search teams to cover these woods with any level of decent coverage.”

“Luke.”

He picked up the radio. “Go ahead, Jackie.”

“Sharon is getting . . . I'm worried about her. Is there anything we can safely do that would be helpful?”

“They are going in now to apprehend Frank.”

“She knows.”

“Put her on, Jackie,” Luke requested.

“Hold on.”

“Luke, it's Sharon.”

“Hey, lady.” Luke didn't have adequate words to convey the emotions he felt. “I'm sorry, Sharon. We don't know where Caroline is. The leads have gone nowhere . . .”

“Luke, where are you now?”

“Flying up near where the diamonds were delivered.”

“Come home.”

“Sharon—”

“They'll grab Frank, the task force will put him in a room for the next day trying to get him to admit where he left the van, and you'll stay out there slowly dying without knowing where to look for Caroline. Come home. Wait for news with us here, with family.”

The reality of what she said compelled him to agree. “I love you, lady. I'll stay out here looking a while longer, until Joe needs to refuel, then I'll be home.”

“Thank you.”

Luke set down the radio and lifted his hand from it slowly. “Send up another flare, Joe. Let's search the riverbanks.”

* * *

The water reflected back the light but gave away none of its secrets. The banks of the river were crowded with trees and the occasional fishing dock where a flat boat was tied up, marking a nearby farmhouse.

Luke rubbed his straining eyes and lifted the binoculars again. The moving ground and the motion of the helicopter left a disorienting sense of vertigo whenever he paused to think about it. The waiting ate at him. He wished Jackie were along, her occasional comments breaking the silence and keeping alive his hope.

“Luke.”

He snatched up the radio. “Go ahead, Henry.”

“We just got word from the strike team.” The pause lasted a beat too long. “I'm sorry, Luke. Frank's dead.”

His breath stopped. “Repeat that.”

“He put a .22 to his chest and pulled the trigger before they could get the car door open. He must have had the handgun resting in his lap as he drove.”

Luke absorbed the news and, with a hand grown stiff, depressed the button. “Caroline?”

“Nothing, Luke. The car was empty. The diamonds are in Frank's jacket pocket, and the vehicle has temporary plates. It looks like a new purchase. They didn't find so much as a gas receipt inside. We're at a dead end.”

“Okay, Henry.”

Luke set down the radio, feeling like a very old man.

“Luke?”

“Take me back to Sharon and Mark's home. It's over, Joe.”

“You don't want to search at least while we have flares and fuel?”

To say no would be giving up. To say yes would be futile. There wasn't anything else to have faith over. When Caroline was finally found, it would be by accident years from now, long after a broken heart had killed him and put him in the grave.

The thought of facing Benjamin's tears was too much to bear. “We'll search until the flares and fuel are gone.” He strained for breath for the words. “Let's retrace the path of the diamond drop.”

Joe changed course.

Chapter Forty-Five

C
aroline wished she had been able to write her essay for the kids. She found herself oddly awake again, not aware she had been sleeping, just suddenly awake and looking at the roof of the van. What were they going to think when their teacher died only a few weeks into the school year? Who would they bring in to teach her class? Who would help them understand how to still have hope when life suddenly turned dark?

The discomfort had faded to a distant pain, and her thoughts felt clear. Had her life mattered? It was ending in an odd way, at such an early time. She'd touched a few years of students' lives, helped Sharon, loved on Benjamin. It wasn't such a bad life; it just stopped without much to show for it. She wished she had folded and put away her laundry. Someone would be opening her dryer to find her most personal clothing.

Caroline smiled as she thought of all the bits and pieces of her life that would embarrass her to now have someone see. The letters on her desk, the bills, the mementos she had found worth keeping that someone else would hardly understand.

Luke, I sincerely hope you're the one to find the pot-sticker sticks. I don't think Sharon would understand why they are beside the few cards you sent me.

It wasn't so bad, loving Luke. She closed her eyes content to let herself drift through the memories of their time together. Her only regret was that there weren't more of them to hold on to tonight.

* * *

Did life come with second chances? The pain pulled Caroline from the memory of Luke's first kiss back to the present and the headache growing in intensity. It would be so nice to have the last months to live over again, to be more patient with herself and kinder to Luke. Relationships took so many turns through high moments and low. If she had it to live over again, she wouldn't mind nearly as much about his shift-to-work modes.

More candy sticks, Christmas presents, movies, and kisses for no reason whatsoever . . . She smiled at the thought. She was dating Luke, for as long as it lasted, as many turns as the relationship took. She'd chosen a long time ago, that night walking around the carnival. He was her choice. If God gave her a second chance, she was going to tell him so.

The desire to rub her nose was intense, as was the knowledge that to lift her bound hands that high was beyond her. She tried to shift the gag enough to get a breath around the cloth but couldn't do it. The headache came as much from where the knot on the gag pressed against the back of her head as it did from the physical assault to her system in the last hours. There wasn't a good way to move. She lifted one foot and eased an inch to the left to take a bit more pressure off her back. Flies would come with the morning, and this misery would be more than she could bear.

She refused to go there. Tomorrow's troubles would take care of themselves. She was no longer with Frank, and she was certain he would not return. That left the van to be found by searchers or accidentally by a local resident. It was a big vehicle to be left abandoned. She tried to think about Benjamin and Sharon. The doubts crowded in. She'd risked everything to give Benjamin his mom back, and she didn't know for certain that Sharon had made it. Would her sister even understand why she had done it?

Her vision clouded and she took a painful breath, struggling not to cough. Surely Sharon would understand.

Come on, Luke. I need you here.

Chapter Forty-Six

L
uke!” Joe pointed south as another flare burned white and bright, turning the area briefly into day. “I think we've got something.”

Silent tears had been clouding his vision for the last forty minutes. Luke blinked them away to clear the image in the binoculars. The trees repeatedly blocked and then cleared from his view, leaving him with only an impression of what he was seeing. “That's a vehicle,” he confirmed.

Joe brought them to a hover at the treetops, holding at as much of an angle as he could so the helicopter didn't block the view. Luke's heart jumped. “That may be a van, and it definitely used to be white. Can you get me down there?”

“The trees are too dense. We'll need a third person aboard if you want to try and be lowered down.”

“I don't want to lose it now that we've found it.” Luke reached for the radio. “Patch me through to Jackie.”

The dispatcher connected them.

“I'm here, Luke.”

“Bring Mark's jeep and meet me at the Hickory Point Bridge.”

“You have something?”

He didn't want to raise false hopes, not with Jackie standing beside Sharon and Mark. “Joe's spotted a vehicle farther off the road than we would expect, and it's worth checking out. Only we're in too rough a terrain to set down.”

“Sharon and Mark want to come along.”

Luke hesitated and then said, “Let them.”

“We're on our way,” Jackie confirmed. “See you soon.”

Luke listened to her drop off the call. “Henry, did you get that?”

“I've been listening in. What are the coordinates?”

Luke read them off the GPS. “It's a van, it's white, and if it's campers using the van as a place to sleep, we've been hovering over it with the spotlight going on several minutes without movement below. Send in officers to check it out; I'm going to wait and come with Sharon and Mark.”

“The sheriff has two units out your way. You'll be seeing lights of their cars soon, coming from the west.”

“Tell them to trust Joe's spotlight for the location. It looks like the van left the road, drove along a streambed and then up into the trees. It's not going to be easy to see until they're on top of it.”

“Will do.”

* * *

Luke took a seat on the bridge railing, keeping his balance with one foot around the lower rail, while he waited for Sharon and Mark and Jackie to arrive. Watching Joe, he saw the helicopter return to a hover, once again marking the location point of the van. It would be a twenty-minute hard walk in the dark from the road to that van. The officers already heading in should reach it anytime.

He wanted to race past the officers to the van and get there first, but he forced himself to let the others make that journey instead. He would go in just as soon as Sharon and Mark arrived. He was determined to do tonight what he knew Caroline would most want—protect and care for Sharon.

Luke looked up and studied the stars above him.
You've been very quiet during this storm, Lord. Letting me deal with the emotions and roll with events as they came. I would love having Your mercy and kindness give me back Caroline alive. But this storm is in Your hands, and only You decide its end. I won't let Caroline's courage to save her sister be forgotten. She loves people without reservation or limitation. And the sheer breadth of that action—it helps me understand more what You did on the cross, Your sacrifice.

Luke pulled himself together enough to look at his bare left hand and wish he'd been smart enough to bind them together with a ring a year ago.
I love Caroline, Lord. Please give me a chance to tell her that.

The quiet of the night answered him.

He knew the odds of it being the right van were slim. Frank wouldn't make it that easy. Luke had walked out on a limb to believe this would be something less than a severe disappointment. But it was the last hope of the day.

If this was a hunter's vehicle or one abandoned years before rather than be scrapped . . . He stopped the thought and chose to hope. This storm in their lives had thrown enough at them. It was time for a rainbow. And until he heard otherwise from the officers checking out the van, he was going to believe that good news was possible. From his perch on the rail, he tugged free a sliver of wood and systematically broke it into small bits.

He heard the vehicles and turned his head to see the lights coming his way. Mark's jeep came fourth in the procession of cars. The roadside became a parking lot as they stopped.

Henry stepped out of the first car. Jackie, farther back with Sharon and Mark, moved forward to join Henry, and they walked toward him together. “Is she in there?”

“We don't know yet,” Luke replied. “The first officers should just be reaching the van.”

He stepped down from the rail and walked down the road to meet Sharon and Mark. He hugged Sharon gently and then leaned back to study her face, grateful to see her looking steady on her feet even at the end of this excruciating day.

“I guess the diamonds didn't work,” she whispered.

“Not sparkling enough for him I suppose.” Luke rubbed her back. “Frank only knew how to be cruel.”

“I know.” She pulled together her composure to smile at him. “I think it's time we took a hike.”

“It's going to be a difficult walk to make in the dark. It might be better if you both wait here until there's word one way or another. I'll stay with you.”

She squeezed his hand. “I understand what disappointment is. I would rather walk than wait. I've done too much waiting lately.”

“Okay.” Luke offered her a flashlight. “The odds are good it's not the vehicle we need to find.”

“I know. But the bad news will be the same whether we're walking or waiting here.” Sharon buttoned up her jacket and tugged gloves out of her pocket. The night would only grow colder, and it was already damp.

Luke offered Mark a flashlight, and when he accepted it, Luke didn't release it right away. He shared a long look with his cousin. Mark nodded. If this was bad news, it wasn't going to be so confident a walk back.

Luke led the way from the roadside into the woods, following the path the other officers had already selected, letting Jackie walk with Sharon and Mark. Henry joined them and moved to the front of the group beside Luke.

“The first officer nearing the scene reports a strong smell of gasoline,” Henry whispered. “That van may have hit a rock and punctured the gas tank on the way in.”

“Or it's been booby-trapped,” Luke cautioned.

“They've been warned not to walk up to it and open a door without searching for trouble first. If it is this van, and Caroline is inside . . .” Henry nodded back to the others. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“If she's there, we'll know it long before we reach the site,” Luke replied. “It's been a brutal few days. As bad as this could be, closure matters more. I understand Sharon's need to be here.”