The Fourth Victim (25 page)

Marc Snyder was right about one thing—the woman pushed too hard.

“You want to hear what I have to say?” he asked, fueled by the unwelcome emotions she'd churned up in the two days she'd been in his life. Three, if you counted the day he'd spent with her picture on his dash.

“Yes.”

“I have a kidnapper—most likely a professional—out there someplace, plotting God knows what. I can't even tell what I'm up against. I could be fighting a threat to national defense, a street gang, an unbalanced American soldier or a powerful and highly connected pedophile. And after
three days I'm no closer to finding him or proving who it is. I've risked my career by bringing you here and possibly your life as well if I don't manage, on my own, to keep you safe until we get this guy. I almost strangled a prisoner tonight to force him to talk to me. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. And right now all I can think about is what you'd feel like naked in my bed.”

There. That would shut her up.

And he could get back to work.

Edgewood, Ohio
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I
'd been up, showered and dressed since six. I'd watched the shadows on the wall of my room as the darkness of night gave way to daylight.

I'd written on the backs of the pages I'd ripped from my notebook, careful not to get salve from my hands on them.

The sheet with the name
Clay Thatcher
on top went untouched.

I had no clear plan for the rest of the day. No idea when I'd emerge from this room. I'd excused myself and gone there after Clay's outburst the night before.

Nor was I going to let him know that I'd spent a good part of the night hearing his words. Over and over.
Naked in my bed.

Naked in my bed.

I listened for him to go to bed in his room across the hall from me. If he had, he'd done it quietly enough that I hadn't noticed.

Naked in my bed.

The comment had been completely inappropriate. And
that was exactly why he'd whipped it in my direction. I understood that much.

I wasn't afraid of him. If he had any intention of acting with impropriety he certainly wouldn't have announced it.

And…I just wasn't afraid of him.

I couldn't say the same for myself.

Naked in my bed.

Naked in my bed.

Every single time the words repeated themselves in my brain I got turned on.

Clay's cell phone rang.

He answered. He seemed to be in the kitchen. I couldn't make out the words, but there was no mistaking the urgency in his voice.

I left my room.

 

“That was the prosecutor in Florida,” Clay said with a glance at Kelly as she entered the eating area.

Dressed in the same clothes as the day before, she was as unforgettable as she'd been the first time he'd seen her picture. The bruise at her temple didn't look so bad anymore, but he'd never forget it either.

“Miguel Miller just took a plea.”

“Why would he do that
now?
With me missing, the prosecution doesn't have a great case against him.” She sounded normal. Like any other time they'd talked in the past couple of days. She was meeting his eyes.

Good.

“Exactly. If he knew you were missing he wouldn't have taken a plea bargain. So it looks like we can cross him off our list of possible suspects.”

“What if someone kidnapped me for him, but he doesn't know about it yet?”

“That's possible, but not likely. The underground infor
mation network is pretty sophisticated. And Saturday was visiting day.”

Kelly helped herself to a bottle of water and a granola bar and sat at the table where he'd spent much of the night.

The rest of it he'd passed on the couch. He'd gone to his room across the hall from hers only long enough to shower and pull on a pair of black slacks, a white shirt and a black-and-white tweed jacket with his black dress boots.

“I also had a call from the Bureau in Washington about an hour ago,” he continued. “They arrested an aide to the secretary of defense last night. They've connected him to a plan to kill Rick Thomas, but it doesn't look as though you were anywhere on their radar. They haven't determined yet who else is involved, so it's still possible that they have something to do with your disappearance, but it's not as likely.”

“So that leaves Snyder.”

“Or David Abrams.”

She didn't reply to that.

“Or someone else we've missed,” Clay added. He'd spent the night combing through his files—and her notes.

“Someone who wants me dead. We know now that this isn't about money.”

“I spoke with JoAnne first thing this morning,” Clay said. “We're both fairly certain that Abrams is our man, Kelly. Everything about him fits. He has the most to lose. A wife, kids, a career, his standing in the community. His entire life is over if his relationship with Maggie is exposed. And you're the key to that exposure. We're focusing our investigation on him—finding a way to get him to make a mistake if we can't come up with anything that leads him directly to you.”

“Use me as bait, Clay. If he needs me gone, learning that I'm not will force him into action. It's the only way.”

“If we make your rescue public, if Abrams knows you're alive, he's going to start getting desperate. He could go after Maggie.”

“Go after her how?”

Clay shrugged. He'd been over and over this during the night. With no one else aware that Kelly was alive, this was an aspect of the case he had to handle alone. To rely only on himself to see every angle. “If he thinks she'll buckle, that she'll turn him in, he could kill her.”

Kelly's gasp hit him hard. Made him feel like he was failing her.

“Could also be that if he's really in love with her like she thinks, he'll try to run off with her.”

“David Abrams is in love with David Abrams,” Kelly said, her voice hard. Unyielding. “There's no way he'd leave his perfect life—his wife and kids—to live on the run with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

But Clay wasn't sure she was right.

“Think about this,” he began slowly. “The man is allegedly the mastermind behind a methamphetamine superlab that grossed maybe a million dollars—the majority of the money being slipped into the city budget via so-called donations—and he manages to keep his hands clean. His one mistake was Maggie Winston. She's his weakness. If we're going to get him, it has to be through her.”

“You aren't using Maggie as bait!”

“Would you rather she be left out there exposed to Abrams's next plan? Whatever that might be?”

“Can't she be put in some kind of protective custody until this is over? She could be taken somewhere, out of state, even out of the country, just until we get Abrams?”

He'd thought of that. “But how are we going to get him?” he asked, aware that the question was a rhetorical one. “If Sam had been able to do that, she'd already have done it. Once Maggie's gone, you aren't of any value to
him, so using you as bait wouldn't work. I also don't believe he'd let Maggie go. He'd hunt her down. His only safe recourse is to keep her close, to keep her devoted to him.”

Kelly frowned. “What you're saying is you think she's safest right here, with him convinced that he's still got her in his control.”

“Don't you?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“I understand that you don't want to consider this, but it's possible that Abrams believes himself in love with Maggie. Why else would he have risked so much to be with her?”

“Because he's a pedophile.”

“Then why not go after any of the other girls who were delivering for them?”

“Maggie was the only one he was personally exposed to.” But Kelly's response had a hint of desperation about it. Maybe Maggie was her weakness, too. Her blind spot.

“Pedophiles aren't generally exclusive in their needs,” he said. “I'm assuming there wasn't any other evidence against Abrams, no suspicious activity with children, no child pornography found on his computers or Samantha would have arrested him.”

“She didn't have enough to get a warrant to look at his computers, but I know that in the past couple of months she's been monitoring his IP addresses—not legally or officially—and there's been nothing.”

“I'm telling you, the man has a thing for Maggie.”

“It's sick! Disgusting. She's a
child.
”

“If he wasn't in love with her, if he was just protecting himself, why kidnap you? Why not simply arrange for something to happen to Maggie? With his connections that shouldn't be too hard.”

She didn't answer.

“He's not going to hurt Maggie because he has feelings for her,” Clay said. “And he's egotistical enough to believe that her feelings for him will keep her loyal. It's a win-win for him. You're gone and he still gets Maggie. The only way that changes is if he thinks there's a chance Maggie might turn him in.”

The pinched look was back on her face.

“We know he's still holding on to her. He went to their place in the woods. And so did she, at least twice. Once to drop off the rose and then again on Saturday when we left her alone. He moved the rose to let her know he was there, that he loved her. There's still something going on there. He risked spending time at their spot. And there's another element of this we haven't considered. Maybe Abrams didn't just want you gone to protect himself from eventual exposure. Maybe he wanted you out of the way so he could have Maggie.”

“He knows Sam is watching him like a hawk.”

“But he also knows that Maggie loves you. You were competition for her affection and loyalty.”

“You think he's that far gone?”

“Don't you? With the risks he's taken? By all accounts David Abrams is a highly intelligent man. A winner. A guy like that isn't just going to throw away his perfect life. Maggie has a hold on him as surely as he's got a hold on her.”

The silence was painful. An unpalatable, unacceptable truth was painful.

“It's really him, isn't it? He's the one behind this?” For the first time since he'd known her, Kelly Chapman sounded needy. “I've been telling myself that someone wanted
me
dead. I've worked on a lot of cases. There are a lot of people who could be upset with me—and any number
of them could become unhinged enough to do something desperate. I've been telling myself this is only about me. That Maggie would be fine.”

Tears spilled from her eyes. “I'd rather be facing a street gang that's after me than have David Abrams go after Maggie. He's insidious. He always gets what he wants. And I don't want Maggie hurt again. I promised her I'd protect her.”

He'd promised Kelly he'd protect her, too.

“I'd give up my life for Maggie, but from what you're saying, with David Abrams, giving up my life only makes his quest easier.”

“We have to use her, Kelly. We have to come up with a way to use Maggie to get to Abrams and end this.”

He didn't like it. Didn't like putting the kid in any more danger.

Didn't like using her as bait.

But he didn't have any better ideas.

And he couldn't hide Kelly Chapman in his home forever.

Edgewood, Ohio
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Was I actually willing to use Maggie, exposing her to possible danger? Could doing that actually be safer for her than not doing it?

There had to be another way. We
had
to find another way.

Clay's cell rang again as I sat there frantically trying to figure out an alternative and still trying to think of someone else who might be responsible for my kidnapping.

I'd been trapped for four days. A prisoner. This
had
to end….

“You're sure?” Clay's gaze was intense as he spoke on the phone and looked at me.

“Thanks. I'll get back to you.”

“That was Samantha,” he said as he disconnected the call.

My stomach dropped. “Is Maggie okay?”

“Sam's worried about her. Maggie's not just missing you, and worried, she's nervous. She asked Sam this morning how long a person can survive without water.”

“How would she know I was without water?”

“Unless she knows where you were being kept.”

Maggie knew what had happened to me and was just leaving me there to die? I couldn't believe that.

And yet I could. The girl had been through too much. Lost too much. And she was being given impossible choices. Turn in the person you believe to be your soul mate, the one person who'll love you forever—or leave the counselor and foster mom you'd only known a few months to her fate.

“That's not why Sam called, though,” Clay was saying. “There were a couple of hang-ups on your line last night. They came from a pay phone in town.” He named the location of one of the few remaining pay phones in Chandler. “Video from the parking lot of the store shows David Abrams leaving the area just minutes after the call was made. There were no fingerprints on the phone. There's no way to prove that Abrams made the calls, but Samantha doesn't think it was a coincidence. And frankly, neither do I.”

Oh, God, what was I supposed to do?

“Samantha said that Maggie was upset by the first call, but seemed a bit calmer after the second. Almost as though it was some kind of message to her.”

“There were a couple of hang-ups, one right after the
other, at home, too…” I remembered aloud, feeling a sense of horror. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but…

“It could be a signal to her to meet David at their spot in the woods.”

I knew what was coming next. No! Just no. I shook my head.

“We have to do this, Kelly. We'll watch her every second. He won't get his hands on her, but we have to let him hang himself. These past months without her, playing this game, worrying that you were having an influence on her…they've obviously taken their toll. He's getting desperate. Otherwise, why take you?”

“Desperate people do desperate things.” Not exactly a profound analysis of the situation, but I knew how true it was.

“Well, yes…”

“I need to talk to her. Let me see her, Clay. Let me show her I'm alive and that I'll be here for her. Sam said she was nervous and struggling, more than just because of missing me. What I know is that Maggie's a good kid. Really good. Bone-deep good. If she knows anything about my disappearance, then she's in true crisis mode right now. I'm terrified that if she doesn't connect with Abrams or me, she might commit suicide…” I was blubbering, I knew that, I could hear myself. But I couldn't stop. “If she sees that I'm okay, that nothing happened to me, that'll free her from at least part of the nightmare. Free her enough to see what Abrams did to me, but also to her—she'll see the price he expected her to pay to be with him. And if I'm there to offer her security, if I'm there as proof that I'm not going to leave her…she just might be able to tell us the truth. This could be the moment we've been waiting for.”