The Fourth Victim (13 page)

The last thing I wanted to do was go out into the darkness.

Or move my head.

“What if they…come…”

“We should be safe for now. I believe whoever did this to you is posing as a city worker. He'd blow his cover if he came out after dark.”

I hoped he was right.

He made me drink some more, still holding the bottle for me. And a while later, a little more. He kept checking my pulse. Watching my eyes.

He could've been watching for any number of things. I'd know what they were if I thought about them. I didn't. I just lay there and let him figure it all out.

H
e had to get her out of there, but didn't want to move her. She was a healthy young woman; all those years of skating had served her well. Other than dehydration, she didn't seem to have suffered too many ill effects from her ordeal. At least not physically.

He kept a close watch, though.

And his mind raced. He'd found her. She was alive. And for all intents and purposes, she was well.

And until he knew who'd taken her—and why—she was in danger. Once he revealed that he'd found her, agents from another bureau would be called in. They'd put her in some kind of protective custody.

And they'd follow the rules.

Rules that men like Rick Thomas's enemies would know about—and shrug off—before the night was done.

Rules that thugs from Florida would scoff at.

And David Abrams? He was the one Clay worried about the most. He was the ultimate con man, saying one thing while his actions said something else.

He'd had contacts. There was no telling where he might still have insiders in place.

Clay couldn't turn her over.

Not yet. He was so close. He'd done all the preliminary
investigations. He knew the facts. The people. He was on to something. And with his victim now with him, awake and talking, he could solve this one very quickly.

With the smallest amount of danger to her.

He could keep her safest by keeping her a missing person.

So what was he considering here?

What was he going to do?

Clay didn't know. He just knew that he wasn't going to walk away from the woman sitting there staring at him with that look of trust in her eyes—that look of belief in an innate goodness.

Chandler, Ohio
Rescue Night

I knew we'd have to do something soon. And I was glad to be able to collect myself a bit, to lie there safely and drink more water, before I had to force myself to move. Or to think.

“Do you have any internal pain?”

“No.”

“Were you hit in the stomach? Or the chest?”

“Don't remember being hit.”

“What about…other…injuries?”

“My head.”

“There's a good lump. Do you know how you got it?”

“No.”

He glanced down toward my groin and I cringed again.

“You're clothed.”

“Yes.”

“Were you raped?”

I'd know. Wouldn't I?

“No.”

Some of the tension lines around his eyes dissipated. He was really a very nice man.

And I was slowly starting to regain some of my faculties.

“I just wanted to sleep,” I told him.

“I'm not surprised. Thank God you were dumped here. Underground caves in Ohio generally maintain a steady temperature of fifty-two to fifty-six degrees year-round, and with your jacket and thermal exercise clothes, you've managed to hold enough body temperature to prevent hypothermia.”

“You're a cop
and
a doctor?”

“I'm a licensed paramedic, and I've had a bit of experience with health care, but no, I'm not a doctor.”

A paramedic would recognize hypothermia. And vital signs and broken bones.

“I think I'm concussed.”

“Your pupils are dilating normally and your pulse is steady.” He paused, and I waited.

“Listen, we need to get you out of here, but I'd like a chance to speak with you first, before word gets out that you've been found. And found alive.”

“Okay.”

“But I need to take your blood pressure, just to be sure there isn't some immediate danger I'm unaware of. I have a cuff in my car with a survival kit. I'd like to go get it.”

No!
Panic, rapid and lethal, attacked my entire system. I couldn't breathe. Pain shot through my stomach.

“I know,” Agent Clay Thatcher said, his voice warm and calm as he responded to something I hadn't even said. He'd climbed over my legs and was kneeling on the other side of me. He pulled a revolver out of the inside of his coat.

“I want you to take this. Hold it in your hand the whole time I'm gone.” He showed me how to use it and then said, “When I return, I'll whistle.” He made a noise like a
whip-poor-will's. “If anyone comes through that opening without making that sound you shoot first and ask questions later.”

I'd never shot a gun in my life.

But after being abducted and held captive, I knew I could.

“How long have I been here?”

He glanced at his watch. “It's about two in the morning on Sunday night. You left your office to go skating at 9:30 Friday morning.”

“I've been lying here for forty hours?”

“I think so.”

I had to think about that.

On his hands and knees Agent Thatcher faced what I now knew was an opening to the tiny cave that had become home to this new, victimized me. He turned back, saying, “I'll be twenty, twenty-five minutes max.”

I just looked at him. It was the best I could do.

“Keep the gun ready and aimed,” he said, and waited until I'd done that before he continued on his way out.

I watched him go, trying not to cry away the little bit of water I'd taken into my system as it occurred to me that the man had a lot of faith in me, a woman he'd only just met, turning his back while I was holding a gun pointed at him.

And he was planning to return while I still had the gun aimed at the entrance of the cave. If I were him, I would've been worried that a woman who'd been abducted and was still in captivity might get trigger-happy when she heard a sound at the opening of her prison.

 

He jogged the entire way, was in and out of his car in ten seconds flat, having grabbed the two duffels he stored in his trunk, and jogged the whole way back.

He'd found Kelly Chapman. Alive.

But there was no time for gratitude at the moment. No time to savor relief. Kelly's case was different. Had been from the start. Here was a missing adult woman with hordes of people looking for her within
hours.

With the Bureau chief demanding immediate and focused attention.

And Clay knew, even as he acknowledged that he could very well lose his job when this was all over, that his real job had just begun.

Before he could turn over his missing person, before he could put Kelly back out in her world, he had to learn who'd abducted her in the first place.

There were agents, both at his office and at the large Cincinnati office, who'd argue that they were better at that task. They'd been trained for it. Had the experience.

But Clay had an edge they didn't—couldn't—have. He had the ability, if he was very careful, and very lucky, to keep Kelly missing until he found out who'd taken her.

The plan formed of its own accord. Details fell into place.

And by the time he'd returned to the small opening beneath the logs he'd replaced when he went to his car, he figured the only thing left to do was convince Kelly Chapman to agree to his plan.

He whistled and then, moving the log aside, slid into the riskiest venture of his life feetfirst.

Chandler, Ohio
Sunday, December 5, 2010

I was shaking from head to foot by the time Agent Thatcher came back. I'd wrapped the blanket around myself, arms aching with every move, and still couldn't get warm. A pair of feet sliding toward me had never looked so good.

“How's Maggie?” I asked before he was even fully inside the small enclosure. “My foster daughter. Do you know where she is?”

My voice was sharp. Urgent. But I'd had twenty minutes, at least, to think. And to battle the fear that would consume me if I allowed it to.

“She and your dog are out at the Evans farm with Detective Jones.” Back in the enclosure, Agent Thatcher sat between me and the door, arranging the duffel bags he'd dragged in.

Detective Jones. “Maggie's with Sam?”

“Yes.”

Thank God. Sam knew our situation. The dangers to Maggie. The need to watch over the girl with focused care. Sam not only knew the situation, she was part of it.

“How long has Sam had them?”

Had David had any chance to get at Maggie first?

He unzipped one of his bags. Pulled out a battery-operated lantern-style light and, flipping it on, set it on the floor, shining straight up.

I could see more of my prison now. It extended farther back than I'd realized.

I didn't want to think about what else might be back there, sharing this space with me. What might've been crawling on me.

Agent Thatcher had a blood pressure cuff in his hand. “Since Friday afternoon.” My rescuer reached for my left arm, helped me out of my jacket, easing it down over the dried blood on the side of my hand and lower wrist, and pushed up the sleeves of my shirt and insulated undershirt.

I shivered again as the cold air hit my skin and I wanted to burrow back under the blanket. Agent Thatcher wrapped the cuff around my bare arm.

“Maggie's the one who reported you missing,” he said,
squeezing the bulb that inflated the cuff. “When she came home from school on Friday and couldn't get hold of you, she called Samantha Jones.”

The cuff was fully inflated and I sat quietly while he slowly released the pressure, studied his watch and counted. It was hard not to be impatient. I suddenly had too many questions and no answers at all.

Half an hour before, answers hadn't been important.

Funny how some water and another human presence changed the world.

“One twenty-four over eighty-two. A little high on diastolic, but that's to be expected with the stress you're under. And it's still in normal range.”

I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to himself.

The man who'd returned didn't seem to be the same one who'd left. The body was the same; the attitude was completely different. Professional. Distant.

I wasn't complaining. He'd saved my life. Now I needed to get home. To tend to Maggie and Camy and…bathe.

He pulled out some foil-wrapped packets—antibiotic wipes—and picked up my right wrist. “This is going to sting, but we need to see what you've done to yourself.”

I gritted my teeth and thought about Maggie. And Camy. And waited while he cleaned my hands and wrists, applied salve, and then wrapped them both in white gauze from the tops of my palms to past my wrists, leaving my thumbs and fingers free. The raw skin throbbed, but it wasn't burning the way it had before.

His touch was warm, gentle and completely confident. Like he knew exactly what he was doing.

Like he'd done this before.

I was getting curious about him.

Agent Thatcher had opened a second bag. Pulling out a vacuum-packed foil package, he ripped into it and handed me a quarter-size disc of something that resembled dried
banana. My movements were awkward, with the gauze wrapped around my hands, but I managed to hold the pieces within my fingers. “I don't want to put too much in your stomach, but we have to get some nourishment into you,” he said.

I wasn't hungry. And certainly not for crunchy banana, if that's what it was. But the second the morsel touched my tongue, my mouth started to water.

It wasn't because of the taste of whatever he'd given me. That was bland at best. But when the food hit my mouth I craved more. A lot more.

I was coming back to life.

My guardian angel handed me a few pieces at a time, regulating my intake. I was embarrassed by how eagerly I gulped the food. And the water, too, when he handed me the bottle. A few days in captivity and I'd lost all my manners.

And didn't care enough to find them again.

As soon as the foil bag was resealed and stored, he faced me again. “Do you need to, uh, go to the bathroom?”

He had to know I'd already done so. More than once. I stank.

He'd given me the water bottle. I held it with both hands and said, “Not right now.”

Nodding, he pulled what looked like sweats and a T-shirt out of the bag. “We need to get you changed.”

“I can do that as soon as I get home,” I said. And he stopped moving. His hands froze, suspended above my ankles with clothes dangling from them.

“We need to talk about that, too.”

“About what?”

“You going home.”

Of course I was going home. If he insisted I stop by the Emergency Room to get checked out, I'd agree, but I didn't think I needed to. And after that I was going home.

I'd just been through a harrowing ordeal. I'd been abducted and left for dead. I needed to be surrounded by familiar things.
My
things. To regain my sense of security as rapidly as possible.

I needed to talk to someone about this experience and move forward.

I needed not to dwell on it.

I needed a good night's rest in my own bed.

I needed Maggie and Camy.

I needed…

“When you're ready.”

His words, interrupting my own musing, didn't immediately make sense to me. “Ready for what?”

“To talk.”

“I'd rather go home first.” I'd be able to talk much better after I'd showered.

“We need to talk first.” His tone didn't invite argument.

And I wasn't usually an argumentative person. I was good at listening.

So I nodded.

With the clothes lying across his thighs, he sat, legs extended and perpendicular to my feet.

“I don't want anyone to know I found you.”

For the first time since the man had identified himself to me, I was afraid of him.

Was
he
my captor, then? Had I been that stupid? That trusting?

My thoughts were surprisingly calm.

He watched me and I tried to remain bland. And when I said nothing, he nodded and continued.

“Forgive me for any improprieties, but I've spent the past forty hours delving into every minute and hidden corner of your life.”