The Fourth Victim (18 page)

“What about Kelly Chapman? You think he's really got a bomb on her?”

“What do you think?”

“It's possible.”

“I agree.”

“Barry called half an hour ago. He found a guy who says he knows Ezekial Greene, although he hasn't seen him around in a while. He claims that the guy moved to Tennessee a while back. Barry says his source is a crackhead and could be making the whole thing up, but the Tennessee connection spooked him so he took the guy down to the office to get a sketch of Ezekial drawn up.”

“Good. Get it out the second it's done.”

“One other thing,” JoAnne said before they rang off.
“Maggie Winston was a mass of nerves when I was there this afternoon. Sam said she hardly slept.”

Clay suspected the girl knew more than she was saying, but he couldn't worry about her, or any alleged liaison with Abrams, right then. He had to deal with the immediate issue—a possible bomb detonation—first. Then he'd attempt to question the foster kid again.

“Have you heard from Mercy?” The agent he had watching David Abrams.

“Abrams took his family to church this morning, then out to breakfast afterward.” She named a well-known chain restaurant. “He's been home all afternoon.”

“Anything on his phone records?”

“Not that anyone's found. None of the calls from home, office or cell raise any questions or alarms.”

“He could have someone working for him.” He thought of Rick Thomas. Was it just the day before that he'd spoken with the ex-covert-ops agent? “Abrams wouldn't be stupid enough to make traceable calls. He'd probably use a scrambled phone to communicate with anyone working for him on a criminal matter.”

Clay didn't like the idea of a quiet Sunday night and David Abrams on the loose. “Or he could be getting ready to make his move. Send someone out to keep Mercy company. I don't want to give this guy a chance to slip away from us.”

“My guess is he has someone working for him,” JoAnne told him. “I got an earful from Samantha and Kyle before I left last night and this Abrams guy isn't the type to get himself dirty.”

No? Well, he was the type to screw little girls. And that was about as dirty as it got.

Edgewood, Ohio
Sunday, December 5, 2010

I
wished I had my files. If I could go over them, maybe I'd find something that could help us end this terror before anyone else got hurt.

If children died because of me, I'd never forgive myself.

If a client of mine was behind the kidnapping…

In that case I should have seen the signs. Should've known.

If Maggie got hurt…

I did sit-ups. Not many. I still felt stiff and sore and didn't want to overexert myself, but after all the sleep I'd had in the past forty-eight hours, I had too much nervous energy to keep it fully contained.

And I didn't want to pace the house. It wasn't mine. I didn't belong here. And I was petrified to move. What if someone caught sight of me?

I was letting fear suffocate me. I knew it. But that didn't seem to make one iota of difference.

What if they didn't find this guy? The players in Rick Thomas's game had killed many seemingly powerful men;
they'd stolen state secrets, they'd made millions in illegal imports and exports. And I, one woman, was going to be able to escape their clutches?

What about the gang in Florida? There were a number of deaths attributed to them.

And David Abrams? A cop had died. So had a businessman who'd shot himself. A farmer who'd overdosed. So many others who'd lost their lives to the drugs he trafficked. And the innocent women the man had hurt, indirect though his actions might have been—the businessman's wife and the sixteen-year-old girl, Glenna. He'd taken the virginity of my sweet little Maggie. And I thought I could stand up to
him?
Bring him down? Was I out of my mind? Could I be his fourth female victim, just like Clay said?

I'd been so convinced that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe the true thing to fear was the
lack
of fear that led you into dangerous waters.

But I'd never allowed fear to govern me. I'd made that promise to myself when I was just a child. And I'd lived by it. I'd had to live by it.

Fear would've prevented me from believing that I could ever hold my head up in a town where everyone knew everyone's business. It would've held me back from college applications. From grad school.

It would've made me a replica of my mother.

Fear was debilitating. I'd watched it destroy my mother, who'd been so afraid to face reality that she'd hidden away in a drugged fog until it killed her.

With the thoughts tripping over themselves in my brain, I turned to the only thing I had there in Clay Thatcher's house that felt like my own. The pad and little pen he'd given me. I scanned a page of scribbles about myself.

And then the few comments I'd written about the man who'd rescued me. I flipped the page and saw the list I'd
made when Clay had been relaying the latest call from the kidnapper.

Blue backpack.

Eleven forty-five.

Children!

No bomb.

I tried to relax. To open my mind. To let thoughts and impressions flow. To find a semblance of myself within the timid being I was becoming.

No bomb.

No bomb.

Blue backpack.

Eleven forty-five.

Blue backpack…

He'd specifically said blue?

My hands started to shake.

I would not fall apart. I would not become helpless. I'd rather die from fearlessness than live in fear.

Eleven forty-five.

Eleven forty-five.

Not noon. Not 11:00. Or even 11:30. No, it was 11:45. Why that time in particular?

Something occurred to me. Something crazy. Eleven forty-five. Once, years and years ago, that time had been significant, but I couldn't immediately place the reason for its familiarity. Why had I remembered?

And then I knew.

I had to speak with Clay.

But I couldn't make a phone call.

I couldn't contact anyone.

If I was going to stay alive, I couldn't exist. Or be assumed to exist.

 

Clay had the blue backpack in his trunk. In the morning he'd pick up the money that had been placed in a deposit
box in a bank in Chandler, put it in the bag and turn it over to the team who would leave it at the school.

JoAnne, wired but dressed in plain clothes, would “just happen” to be in the neighborhood. She'd follow whoever picked up the money. And find a way to befriend him. The agent's breathtaking good looks had come in handy in a couple of previous cases, as well.

Two years ago she'd saved the lives of a couple of under-age prostitutes by coming on to their pimp. The discomfort Clay had felt on that one still lingered.

If the kidnapper showed, JoAnne would follow the man, come on to him and try to get him to tell her about the second bomb. If there actually was a second bomb. Then they could prevent what would most likely be a preprogrammed detonation.

If that didn't work, they'd stay on him until Clay gave the order for his arrest.

Either way, by five o'clock the next evening, Clay would have the man—kidnapper, accomplice or opportunist—in custody.

And then the bastard was going to answer to him.

For the first time in maybe forever, Clay felt anticipation as he turned onto his street just before six that evening. He hadn't been gone long. An hour maybe. But that hour had dragged. He had a lot resting on his shoulders with this case, but what was driving him was Kelly Chapman's safety.

He'd made her his sole responsibility.

He had to protect her.

And he believed he could.

She was sitting where he'd left her, dressed in her jeans and black top and black tennis shoes, eyes wide as she watched him enter from the garage through the kitchen door.

“It's me,” he said for the second time. He'd called out before he'd put his key in the lock.

“I know.”

She looked…as though she'd seen a ghost. And beautiful, too, although he didn't think she'd opened a single one of the beauty products he'd purchased. A woman with Kelly Chapman's big blue eyes and blond hair didn't need makeup to draw attention to herself.

Not that he cared about her looks.

He was just glad to see her sitting there alive.

“My favorite color is blue” were the first words out of her mouth.

Clay brought to the table the pizza he'd picked up on the way home, setting it, and the pile of reports he'd also brought in with him, in the only available space. In front of Kelly Chapman.

The pizza was his usual order—large, thin crust, supreme. Every Sunday night. He had to maintain his routines. To appear to be living normally. The pizza usually covered two meals. Tonight it would be one.

“You want a beer?” he asked, opening the fridge, pulling out a cold one for himself and uncapping it.

“I… You don't have any wine, do you?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Then, yes, I'll have a beer.”

Grabbing a couple of paper towels off the roll at the sink, Clay gave her one and kept one for himself. Setting the files he'd brought in on top of the others he'd begin perusing in a few minutes, he opened the pizza box, removed a slice, took a bite.

“I went by the cave on my way home. It's exactly as we left it.”

Kelly sipped from the bottle he'd set on the table as though it was something she wasn't accustomed to doing.

“I take it you aren't a beer drinker,” he said as he swallowed his first bite and washed it down with a long swig.

“Nope. Just wine. Occasionally.”

“There's more Diet Coke….”

“This is fine.” As if to prove her point, she sipped again. More boldly.

“You do like pizza, don't you?” he asked after he was two bites up on her.

“Yes, but…did you hear what I said when you came in?”

“Your favorite color is blue.”

“Right. And he said a blue backpack.”

She'd been playing armchair detective while he was gone. He couldn't blame her. What else was there to do? She couldn't turn on a light. Or watch TV. Because there wasn't supposed to be anyone home.

He took another bite.

She'd been abducted. Hit on the head. Bruised. Starved and dehydrated. Her life was at stake. Of course she was trying to put pieces together.

“He had to specify the color so he'd be able to identify the bag. Blue and black are the most common colors when it comes to backpacks so the choice is an obvious one.”

Kelly nodded. Picked up a slice of pizza. Took a bite. And wiped her mouth. After another sip of beer, she took a second bite. And then, with determination shining from eyes that had been calling to him since he'd first seen her photo, she said, “I was born at 11:45 in the morning.”

A coincidence, he was sure…. Clay bit into his pizza, but chewed more slowly than before.

“And I went to Chandler Elementary.” She named the school that was the site of tomorrow's drop-off. “My father told me once that he'd seen me there, on the playground. He'd made a delivery to my mother and for some reason he stopped by. The story was his proof that he'd been a loving father.”

Pizza suspended in midair, Clay gave her his full attention.

“When he first came to see me, he had a copy of my birth certificate. I thought it was a fake at first, until I checked it against the original. Anyway, my time of birth was on it.”

“And the color blue?”

“When he'd first come to me claiming paternity, I told him I wasn't his daughter. He said he knew everything about me. That my mother had kept him informed. Somewhere in the back-and-forth that ensued, I told him he didn't know me at all. That he didn't even know my favorite color.”

Her smile didn't reach her eyes, but the beer bottle reached her mouth.

“He guessed red. I'd proven my point. It was blue.”

Clay dropped the pizza and picked up his phone.

Ten minutes later there was a full-personnel tri-state search in progress for Ezekial Greene.

And Clay was left waiting for the phone to ring so he could go down to headquarters and do whatever it took to get the truth out of the man before anyone died.

And as he waited, he sat at his kitchen table and ate pizza with the man's daughter.

Edgewood, Ohio
Sunday, December 5, 2010

I ate because I had to. I needed to regain my strength. Emotionally as well as physically. My equilibrium was off. Rest and nourishment would take care of that and I'd be my old self.

Or so I told myself. And I wanted to believe it. Needed to believe that the woman I'd been—safe and secure and confident and happy—was still here, within me.

Change was inevitable. I knew that. But some things weren't meant to change. Some things were meant to be released. You had to let go of them.

Like my father. I'd finally let go of him the month before. Maggie's advent into my life had given me the strength to do it. I'd done it for her.

Or…what was it Clay had said in the cave? That since I had Maggie now—a new family—I no longer needed my father.

As if the man represented family to me. He didn't.

Did he?

I'd never needed him.

And now he was back?

What would my clients think when they found out I was Ezekial Greene's daughter? The offspring of a drug-dealing pimp who'd sell his own—

Well, no.

But a drug-dealing pimp with rotting teeth and nothing to show for the life he'd lived.

Except me. And that was purely by accident.

I didn't really care what my clients thought. I mean, I cared, but I didn't worry that they'd think any less of me because of my parents. Such as they were.

I just didn't want to think about Ezekial Greene at all. Or a value on my head. I was worth more than money.

“I'm assuming his picture is being broadcast on all the news stations?” I asked quietly while Clay went over sales receipts and lists of names and numerous other records I couldn't be privy to.

“Yes.”

He didn't offer to turn on the television. And I didn't ask him to. He was poring over his papers, hoping to find a break in the case before morning, but we both knew that morning would come whether he had an answer or not.

“Is he being described as a person of interest in my disappearance?”

“Yes.”

“So my picture will be up there with his?” I had no idea why I was doing this to myself.

Clay, who'd traded beer for coffee when I'd opted for water, looked at me. “Yes.”

“I'm ashamed of him.”

“He's a biological fact in your life, that's all. He had nothing to do with the person you are.”

He was right, of course. “I let him get to me.”

“Understandable.” He'd returned his focus to his lists.

“If I'd been more honest with myself, admitted what was going on, I'd have seen this sooner. I'd have known he wouldn't just accept my blowing him off.”

“Maybe.”

Well, at least I didn't have to worry about the guy lying to me to spare my feelings. That was okay, though. I could handle my feelings. I decided I wasn't going to think about the past. It was gone. Done. It had nothing to do with the woman I was today.

And nothing Ezekial Greene had or hadn't done bore the slightest relevance to the child I'd been, the woman I was or the woman I would be.

I had to think about someone other than myself. Tend to someone else. That was the cure for a fall into the dark recesses of the mind.

“What about you?” I asked the only other occupant of my world—the only person to whom I could extend my need to nurture.

“Huh?” he grunted, and circled a name.

“Your mother. What's up with her?”

His pencil stopped midcircle. “Nothing's up with her.”