скачать книгу бесплатно
She glanced around casually, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. Besides the other employees’ vehicles, she counted three other cars, all three empty. And she didn’t see another soul anywhere in the parking lot. No one was following her. No one was watching her.
After hurriedly unlocking her car, she slid behind the wheel, closed the door, locked it, and tossed her purse into the passenger seat. While starting the engine, she surveyed the parking lot again and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But just as she drove into the street, she spotted an older-model car parked across the road at the nearby Kangaroo gas station and mini-mart. A man stood beside a white Lincoln, the driver’s door open, and he was looking right at her.
My God, it was the weirdo from the restaurant, the one who had given her the five-dollar tip.
Her heartbeat accelerated.
What would she do if he followed her?
You’ll drive to the nearest police station, that’s what you’ll do.
For the next few blocks, she kept looking in her rearview mirror to see if he was following her. He wasn’t. No sign of his big old car or one that even vaguely resembled it.
If that guy ever came back to Callie’s Café, she’d ask one of the other waitresses to take his order. And if he ever dared to follow her when she left the restaurant, she’d sic the cops on him.
She was the one. He had known the minute he saw her. Everything about her was familiar, everything from her long, dark hair to her young, slender body and full, round breasts.
Her name tag had read Whitney.
But she couldn’t fool him.
He knew who she was.
He always recognized her.
I’m going to take you home, where you belong. I need you. We need you, Cody and I.
A child needs his mother. Someone to love him. Someone to rock him and sing to him. Someone to ease his suffering when he’s in pain.
I’ve taken very good care of Cody. I’ve made sure you will be with him forever so he will never be alone again. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll help you make everything right.
It’s what you need in order to rest in peace. It’s what Cody needs so that his little soul can go to heaven and the two of you can be together for all eternity.
He drove out of the parking area there at the gas station/mini-mart and slipped unobserved into the late Sunday afternoon traffic. His plans to follow her to wherever she was staying now went up in smoke the minute he realized that she had recognized him standing there across the street from Callie’s Café. Why she always resisted when he tried to take her home, he didn’t know. She always pretended she was someone else, someone who didn’t know him, someone who had no idea why she was so desperately needed.
Now that he had found her again, all he had to do was wait for the right moment to approach her when they could be alone. Just the two of them.
Chapter 6
Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time. They came at life from two different angles. Always had and always would. Her step-uncle was relentlessly stubborn and refused to accept anyone else’s viewpoint. He felt that he was right and everyone else was wrong. No opinion mattered except his. Audrey could be stubborn and fought for what she believed in, but she tried to keep an open mind and was willing to listen to other opinions and be proven wrong in any argument.
“Wayne doesn’t need to know about this,” Garth repeated adamantly. “We have no proof that either of those toddler skeletons is Blake.” His brow furrowed deeply as he scrunched his face in a surly scowl.
“I think my father should be told,” Audrey said, keeping her voice calm and even. “If he finds out that we kept this information from him, he’ll be very upset. He won’t appreciate us trying to protect him.”
“God damn it, Audrey, there’s nothing to protect him from!” Garth shouted. When Willie gave him a concerned glance, Garth lowered his voice. “The odds of either child being Blake are slim to none. Why put Wayne through hell all over again?”
“But what if this turns out to be a one-in-a-million coincidence and somehow—”
“Neither of them is Blake!” Garth cut her off midsentence. “The very idea that those two little skeletons might somehow be connected to a string of toddler kidnappings more than twenty years ago is a far-fetched notion. We are not digging up ghosts that are better left buried. We are going to keep Wayne out of this. Do you hear me?”
“Wayne Sherrod is one of my closest friends,” Willie said. “He has been for a good thirty-five years, and I think I know him as well as anybody.” Willie glanced from Audrey to Garth. “I’m calling him. We’ll tell him together, the four of us. No matter what, he would want to know, even if there’s only a slim possibility that either of those poor little boys is Blake.”
Garth grumbled a string of partially incoherent obscenities so quietly that the words were barely audible, but his disapproval came through loud and clear.
When Garth stomped off, went downstairs, and headed toward the exit, Audrey followed him, leaving Willie to telephone her father. She caught up with her uncle in the parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removed one, and stuck it in his mouth. After replacing the pack, he lifted a lighter from his pants pocket and lit the cigarette.
Audrey walked up beside him. “Are you okay?”
Garth puffed on the cigarette, his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched. “Yeah, sure.”
“I almost wish one of those skeletons would turn out to be Blake.”
Garth took several more drags off his cigarette, tossed it on the pavement, and ground it into pieces with the toe of his shoe. He gave Audrey a sideways glance. “Do you really think that would make it any easier for Wayne?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. In most cases, closure is a good thing.”
“Closure my ass. That’s psycho mumbo jumbo. How’s it better to know for sure your son is dead than to hold on to hope that he’s still alive out there somewhere?”
“Because we both know that statistics, logic, and hard, cold facts tell us that there is practically no chance that Blake is still alive,” Audrey said. “You and Willie and Dad and everyone on the force, back when Regina Bennett was arrested, said that more than likely Blake was one of her many victims. Of the six toddler boys who were abducted, only one survived. The last one. And only because he was rescued before she killed him.”
“Yeah.” Garth lifted his gaze and faced Audrey. “Blake probably was one of her victims, but we have no proof that the skeletons found with Jill Scott and Debra Gregory belong to any of those missing toddlers.”
“No, not yet.”
Audrey’s gut instinct told her that there was a connection, that after twenty-five years, they were finally going to bring Blake home.
J.D. kept the different parts of his life separated as much as possible. Of course, there were times when the various parts of a guy’s life overlapped whether he wanted them to or not. His job as TBI agent J.D. Cass comprised the bulk of his waking hours, five days a week and sometimes on Saturday and Sunday. The man J.D. was a loner for the most part who ventured into short-term relationships for a little female companionship in and out of the bedroom. The family guy J.D. had lost his parents years ago, but he kept in touch with his kid sister, Julia, and usually spent Christmas with her in Nashville. And now J.D. had to include fatherhood as a sub-compartment under the family guy heading. Admittedly the role of parent didn’t come easy to a confirmed bachelor who had sworn off committed relationships when his shipwreck of a marriage finally sank.
Just when a man thought he had everything under control was usually when fate threw him a curveball. Zoe had sure as hell been one of those totally unexpected pitches. And he had a stomach-knotting feeling that Dr. Audrey Sherrod just might be another one.
Holly Johnston, on the other hand, was exactly what he wanted, a woman who wasn’t any more interested in a commitment than he was.
Holly had invited him to a late lunch today, lunch that she had assured him would include dessert.
“Something hot and spicy and oh so sweet,” she’d promised. “I’ll serve it to you au naturel on silk sheets.”
Since Holly hadn’t phoned him until ten o’clock that morning, he’d already halfway promised Zoe that they’d go to the movies that afternoon. Lucky for him, a group of her classmates was going to Hamilton Place to shop until the mall closed, and she’d been happily surprised when he’d changed his mind and told her she could go. Since Jacy Oliver’s aunt was chaperoning, he figured the woman would keep an eye on the girls.
With Zoe off with friends and far happier than she would have been spending the afternoon with him, J.D. had the rest of the day for himself since, at that point, he wasn’t officially assigned to either Jill Scott’s or Debra Gregory’s murder case. Until his boss told him anything different, he wasn’t going to stick his nose any farther into CPD business.
When he arrived at Holly’s, as promised, she provided a late gourmet lunch—no doubt ordered from a nearby restaurant—and did indeed deliver a delectable dessert in her bed, on her hot pink silk sheets. The lady sure did have a way with her hands and mouth. Years of experience had honed her bedroom skills. If there was one thing Holly Johnston did well outside of her profession as an ADA, it was sexually pleasing a man.
After a second vigorous round of hot and heavy, J.D. lay there completely spent, his hips and legs tangled in the top sheet. Holly rested beside him, her luscious body uncovered, a fine sheen of perspiration glistening on her skin from forehead to knees. As she sighed contentedly, she turned over and propped her elbow on the pillow as she looked down at J.D.
When she continued staring at him without saying anything, he grinned. “What?” he asked.
“If I were a different kind of woman, I think you would be on my top ten list of candidates.”
If he didn’t know Holly so well, her statement might have unnerved him. “Candidate for what?”
She laughed. “For a husband, of course.”
“God forbid.” He lifted his hand and ran his index finger over her throat and down between her large, round breasts. “I tried that once. I made a lousy husband.”
She caught his caressing hand and lifted it off her naked body. “I have no doubt of that.” She sat up, twisted around, and placed her feet on the carpeted floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she ran her tongue across her lips in a playfully seductive manner. “If all I wanted in a husband was a big dick and mind-blowing sex, you’d be my number one candidate, but when I eventually get married, it won’t be for sex or even for love.”
Holly got out of bed, picked up the satin robe lying on the floor, and slipped into the semisheer knee-length garment.
“I believe that was a backhanded compliment.” J.D. untangled his legs from the sheet and shot up off the bed. When he reached out and grabbed Holly from behind, she didn’t protest.
Just as she turned in his arms and lifted her face for a kiss, his phone rang. He eyed the pile of clothes on the floor where his phone lay atop his slacks.
“Let it go to voice mail.” Holly rubbed herself against him.
“I would, but I’ve got a kid, remember?”
Holly moaned. “You have my sympathy.” She disengaged herself from his loose hold and headed toward the bathroom.
J.D. bent down and picked up his phone. The caller I.D. read Cara Oliver. Damn! He figured Cara Oliver was Jacy Oliver’s aunt, the one who was chaperoning Jacy, Zoe, and their friends at the mall.
So help me, Zoe, if you’ve done something stupid, I’m going to—!
The incessant ringing reminded J.D. that instead of assuming the worst about his daughter, he should simply answer the phone and find out what was what.
“J.D. Cass,” he said when he took the call.
“Mr. Cass, this is Cara Oliver,” the soft, concerned voice said. “I’m Jacy’s aunt.”
“Is something wrong, Ms. Oliver?” Please, God, please let her say no.
“I—I don’t know quite how to say this, but … well, Zoe is missing.”
“What!”
“I take full responsibility,” Cara Oliver said. “The girls were sitting in the food court. We’d just gotten ice cream and … I went to the restroom and when I came back, the girls were gone.”
“Are all the girls missing?”
“No. I found Jacy, Presley, and Reesa, but when I asked them where Zoe was, they swore they didn’t know. But …”
“But?” J.D. demanded.
“But I think they know something.”
“Are you still at the mall?”
“Yes. We’re here at the food court.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.”
“It’s not your fault, Ms. Oliver. Zoe is a very resourceful girl and if she wanted to slip away from your watchful eye, she’d have found a way regardless of what you did or didn’t do.”
J.D. tossed the phone on the bed, picked up his clothes, and dressed quickly. He didn’t have time for even a quick, much-needed shower. Just as he slipped the phone into the belt holder, Holly came out of the bathroom.
“Leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry, babe. Fatherhood duties call.”
Holly raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Zoe’s pulled a disappearing act. I have to go find her.”
“I hate to hear that. Since our acts one and two were so exciting, I was really looking forward to act three.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then swatted her behind. “I’ll call you later.”
“And I may or may not be available.”
J.D. chuckled as he walked toward the door, but by the time he exited Holly’s apartment, his thoughts had turned completely to his daughter.
Damn it, Zoe, what are you up to now?
At sixty-one, Wayne Sherrod was still a good-looking man. Tall, robust, broad shouldered. He kept his thick, silvery white hair cut short and was, as he always had been, clean-shaven and neat. A medic in Vietnam when he’d been barely nineteen, Wayne never spoke of what had to have been a horrific experience. Audrey could never remember a time in her entire life when she’d heard her father talk about his past. Nothing about being a child, a teenager, or a soldier. During her lifetime, he’d always been a police officer, and according to those who knew him best, he’d been a damn fine lawman.
But he’d been a terrible father, especially after he and her mother had divorced. Maybe, if Blake had lived …
When her father entered the second floor of the PSC, she wanted to rush to him, put her arms around him, and tell him she was there for him. How stupid was that? After a lifetime of being mostly ignored and often neglected by her dad, a part of her still longed for a genuine father/daughter relationship. Just once, she wanted to hear Wayne Sherrod tell her that he loved her.
Head held high, shoulders squared and straight, he marched toward Garth’s office, the door open and the four of them waiting anxiously as he approached.
Willie cleared his throat. “Let me do the talking.”
“For the record, I’m against doing this,” Garth told them for the umpteenth time since Willie had phoned Wayne.
Standing at her side, Tam reached down and grasped Audrey’s clenched fist. Audrey looked at her best friend, relaxed her fingers, clutched Tam’s hand, and gave it a hard squeeze.
Wayne paused in the doorway, surveyed the foursome, and settled his gaze on Willie. “What’s this about?”
“Come on in and close the door,” Willie said.
Hesitating only momentarily, Wayne did as his old friend had asked. Once they were enclosed privately in Garth’s office, he glared at Audrey. Instead of averting her gaze, she stared right back at him. The days when her father could intimidate her with a hard, cold glare were long gone.
“Take a seat.” Willie indicated a wooden chair to the right of the desk.
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
