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LUCAS LOOKED AT HER in surprise. Her ex-husband? “I thought you were a widow, that Billy’s father was dead.”
Her blue eyes refused to meet his as she stared at her hands in her lap. “That’s because I wanted everyone to believe I was a widow. Because I wanted to forget Frank Landers and my marriage to him.”
“You need to unforget now,” he said with an edge of impatience.
She reached up and twisted a strand of her hair between two fingers. “Frank and I were married for five years. We’ve been divorced for two. We lived in Shreveport.” She dropped her hand to her lap and rubbed her left wrist like an arthritis sufferer feeling a weather front moving in.
“If you’ve been divorced for two years, why would your ex-husband decide to grab Billy now?” Lucas asked.
She looked at Lucas. Her cool blue eyes betrayed nothing of what might be going on inside her head. “I don’t know. It’s possible it took him all this time to locate us.”
“He didn’t know where you and Billy were going when you left Shreveport?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know where we were going when we left Shreveport, and I haven’t been in touch with Frank since before my divorce.”
He was less interested in what she was saying and more intrigued by what she wasn’t telling him. “You don’t have a custody arrangement with him?” he asked.
“I have full custody.”
He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. The woman definitely had secrets, but he didn’t have time to be curious about her past.
All he cared about was finding Jenny and Billy, and if she thought this Frank Landers might be responsible, then he needed to call the Shreveport police and see if they could locate the man.
“You have an address for him?” he asked.
“I imagine he still lives in our old house.” She told him the address and he wrote it down.
“I’ll contact the Shreveport police and see if they can hunt him down.” Lucas looked at his watch. Almost midnight. Hopefully the authorities in Shreveport could go to Frank’s home and find out if he was there. It was a five-hour drive from Conja Creek to Shreveport. Even if Frank was home, he could have taken Billy and Jenny and gotten back by now.
He tried not to think about where Jenny might be. If Frank Landers had come to get his kid, then what had he done with Jenny?
Mariah stood, her entire body taut with tension and her eyes haunted. “If he’s taken Billy it isn’t because he wants his son. It’s because he wants to hurt me.”
He’d always looked at Mariah as nothing more than a barrier he needed to get through to see the mayor, a respectable widow who might be a good influence on his flighty, dramatic sister. Now he saw her as neither of those things, but rather as a woman who had apparently suffered some sort of heartache in her past. Lucas knew all about heartache.
“Within an hour we should know if Frank is in Shreveport. In the meantime, why don’t you make a fresh pot of coffee? My deputies should be checking in anytime and they’d probably appreciate the caffeine since it’s getting so late.”
He knew the moment those last words left his mouth that they were the wrong thing to say. She lifted her wrist to check her watch, and her features seemed to crumble into themselves as a sheen of tears filled her eyes.
“Billy has never been away from me this long,” she said, but before he could reply she left the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.
The next couple of hours passed in agonizingly slow increments. Lucas called the state police, and an Amber Alert went out. He also spoke to the FBI, who indicated they would have a field agent there the next morning. The deputies checked in with the news that nobody had seen anything suspicious at the home during the day.
“I’m not surprised,” Mariah said. “All my neighbors work except Sarah Gidrow across the street, and she spends most of her days watching soap operas in the family room in the back of the house.”
They couldn’t be sure Mariah’s house was a crime scene, which was problematic. There was no sign of a struggle, nothing to indicate that anything untold had happened there. It was possible the crime scene was the front yard, or the park, or a sidewalk a block away.
Jenny’s e-mail had yielded nothing to raise an eyebrow, and Deputy Maylor had reported that there was no sign of forced entry or tampering at any of the windows or doors, leaving Lucas to suspect that if the crime had happened here, Jenny had opened the door to whomever had taken them.
If they’d really been taken.
It was that particular thought that haunted him as the night hours passed. Were Jenny and Billy really in danger from a kidnapper, or had Jenny orchestrated this whole drama? What better way to get the attention of Phillip Ribideaux, the young man who had recently broken her heart?
Although this was certainly beyond the pale of any stunt Jenny had pulled in the past, he had to admit that it was something he thought she might be capable of doing.
It was in her genes. He had plenty of memories of his mother pulling crazy stunts in an effort to hang on to whatever man happened to be in her life at the time.
He shoved away those thoughts, not wanting to remember the woman who had possessed the maternal instincts of a rock. She’d died when Jenny was twelve and Lucas was twenty-two, and for the past thirteen years Lucas had spent his time raising Jenny and trying to make sure she didn’t turn out like Elizabeth, their mother.
Despite the late hour, he began calling Jenny’s friends to find out if anyone had spoken to her that day or knew where she might have gone.
Mariah sat on the edge of the sofa and listened to him making those calls. With each minute that passed, the tension that rolled off her increased and her eyes gazed at him with the silent demand that he do something, anything, to bring her baby boy back home.
By three he had nobody else to call, nothing else to do but wait until morning or for another phone call to come in.
“You still aren’t sure that they’ve been taken by somebody, are you?” she asked when he hung up the phone after talking to one of Jenny’s girlfriends. There was a touch of censure in Mariah’s eyes.
“I have to look at all possibilities,” he replied non-committally.
“It must be terrible, to always look for the worst in the people around you.”
He eyed her in surprise. There was an edge in her voice that made him wonder if she was trying to pick a fight. He stared at her assessingly.
Even though exhaustion showed in the shadows beneath her eyes and her forehead was lined with worry, somehow she looked lovely. He’d never really noticed before how pretty she was. But she also looked achingly fragile, as if the mighty control she’d exhibited over the past hours might snap at any moment.
“I’m just doing my job,” he said, refusing to be drawn into an argument with the mother of a missing eight-year-old. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” he suggested. “We’ve done everything we can do for now.”
She sighed and swept a hand through her cascade of chestnut curls. “So, we just wait.” Her voice was flat, without inflection. It wasn’t a question, but rather a statement.
Lucas didn’t reply. He knew there was nothing he could say that would make things better for her. There was no way he could tell her that, no matter what happened, he didn’t see a happy ending.
If Jenny were responsible for this, then he would have to do his duty and arrest her for kidnapping. If Frank Landers had taken Billy, then what had he done with Jenny? The answers that sprang to his mind chilled his blood. And if somebody had taken Jenny for ransom, then Billy was expendable.
No matter what, Lucas had the terrible feeling that a tragedy lay ahead and there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening.
THE FIRST THING Jenny became aware of was a headache the likes of which she’d never had before. She winced and reached up to grab the back of her pounding head. Slowly, other sensations and impressions began to seep through her mind.
The smell of rotting fish and dampness coupled with the faint sound of water lapping against wood. The sound of insects buzzing and clicking. She opened her eyes and was terrified when she saw nothing but blackness.
Where am I? The question screamed through her head, making it pound with more nauseating intensity. Panic surged inside her as she sat up, fighting back a scream of sheer terror.
Before she could release the scream, a faint whimper sounded from someplace beside her. And with that whimper, memory returned.
She and Billy had been sitting on the sofa watching cartoons. Billy had gotten up to the bathroom…and somebody had come into the house.
One minute she’d been laughing at the antics of the Road Runner, and the next her mouth and nose had been covered with something that must have rendered her almost immediately unconscious.
“Billy?” She tentatively moved a hand and encountered his warm little body next to her.
“Jenny?” He scooted closer to her as another whimper escaped him.
“Are you okay, buddy?” She pulled him against her and wrapped him in her arms. “Are you hurt?”
“My head hurts and I want my mommy.”
“I know, honey. But you’re going to have to be brave for a little while, okay?”
She felt him nod. “Where is this place?” he asked. “Why did that man bring us here?” Billy’s body trembled slightly against her and she thought she detected a faint wheeze in his voice.
With each minute that passed, Jenny’s mind grew clearer. “Did you see the man, Billy? Did you see what he looked like?” If she knew who had done this, then maybe she could figure out why.
“He had on a black mask. I tried to run, but then he grabbed me and put something over my face and I guess I went to sleep.”
A man with a mask. What was going on? Who had drugged them and brought them here…wherever here was? Once again a scream of terror rose up inside her, but she swallowed against it, knowing that she had to maintain control. She needed to be brave, not for herself but for Billy. If she lost it, that would only frighten Billy more than he already was.
“Somebody took us, Jenny, and I’ll bet my mom doesn’t know where I am.” The wheeze in Billy’s voice wasn’t just a figment of her imagination.
“Don’t be scared, Billy.” She reached her hand up to touch his sweaty head, then rubbed the back of her hand against his damp cheek. “Even if your mom doesn’t know where we are, my brother will help her find us. You know Lucas is the sheriff. He’s very smart and he’ll find us in no time.” She hoped he believed her. She certainly wanted to believe her own words. Billy seemed to relax a bit.
“I think it’s the middle of the night. Maybe we should both go back to sleep, then we can figure out how to get home in the morning,” she said. There was nothing that could be done in the utter darkness that surrounded them.
“Okay.” Billy cuddled closer to her and she could tell by his breathing that he went back to sleep almost immediately.
Sleep was the last thing on Jenny’s mind as she fought against a fear the likes of which she’d never known. She had no idea what kind of place they were in, was afraid to explore in the blackness that prevailed. She had no idea who had taken them and why.
There was only one thing she was fairly certain of and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize it. The buzz of insects, the smell of fish and the sound of water all led her to believe they were someplace deep in the swamp.
As she thought of all the miles of waterways, the hundreds of miles of tangled, dangerous swampland that surrounded Conja Creek, a new despair gripped her, and she prayed that her brother would be able to find them before it was too late.
Chapter Three
Lucas pulled into his driveway at six the next morning. His intention was to take a fast shower, then go talk to Phillip Ribideaux to see if the young man had any clue as to where Jenny and Billy might be.
When he’d left Mariah’s house, she’d been seated in the same chair where she’d sat for most of the night, staring out the window as dawn slowly arrived. He’d left her in the charge of Deputy Ed Maylor, who would hold down the fort there while Lucas did a little field investigation. Maylor was a good man, bright and eager to get ahead.
The Jamison home was a huge two-story antebellum mansion that sat on five acres of lush lawn. Lucas’s father had been sixty when he married his young bride, Elizabeth. He’d made a fortune playing the stock market with his old family money. He’d died when Lucas was eleven and Jenny was just a baby.
Lucas didn’t have many father-son memories. His father had spent most of his time either in his office at home or in bed with a heart condition that had eventually killed him. Although Lucas would always believe it had been his mother’s demands and histrionics that had killed his old man.
“Have you found them?” Marquette Dupre met him at the door, her black eyes radiating with worry.
“No, I’m just here to take a quick shower then go have a chat with Phillip Ribideaux,” Lucas said as he headed for the grand staircase. Marquette followed close at his heels as he headed up to his bedroom suite.
“That boy needs less money and more character, that’s for sure,” Marquette exclaimed. “You think he knows where Jenny and that little boy is?”
“I don’t know.” He stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to face the woman who had been the housekeeper for first his parents and now him. “Jenny hasn’t said anything to you that I should know about, has she?”
Marquette’s tiny face wreathed into something that looked like a prune. “You know better than that. That girl quit confiding in me when she was sixteen and I told you that she sneaked out of the house to meet that boy she had a crush on. How’s Mariah doing?”
Lucas walked into his bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed to take off his boots. “I’m not sure how, but she’s managing to hold it together.”
“That don’t surprise me. That’s one strong woman. You can see it in her eyes. She’s got that cold gator stare. Besides, she’d have to be a strong woman to put up with that boob we elected mayor of this fine city.”
Lucas offered her a grim smile, then disappeared into the bathroom. Minutes later, standing beneath a hot spray of water, he did what he’d done through most of the nighttime hours: In his head, over and over again, he replayed the phone message he’d received.
There had been something familiar…not about the voice, which had obviously been disguised, but in the inflection, in the cadence of the words spoken. A kidnapper, or a friend of his sister’s working with her to orchestrate drama?
He’d heard from the authorities in Shreveport, who had let him know that Frank Landers no longer lived at the address Mariah had given him. They promised to continue to look for him. He’d called Mariah with the news and she’d been bitterly disappointed that Frank hadn’t been found.
Aware of minutes ticking off, he finished his shower and left the bathroom to see a clean, freshly pressed uniform laid out on his bed. Marquette was as handy as a pocket in a shirt.
Minutes later, dressed and with a thermos of fresh coffee, courtesy of his housekeeper, he drove toward Phillip Ribideaux’s place. The shower had invigorated him, washing away the exhaustion that had weighed him down as he’d driven from Mariah’s house to his own.
He hoped that, while he was hunting down leads this morning, Mariah was getting some much-needed sleep. There was nothing she could do at the moment to help bring her son home, and being exhausted would only make things worse.
He thought of what Marquette had said about Mariah. He’d known she was a strong woman, but through the long hours of the night he’d seen flashes of intense vulnerability. If she had an Achilles’heel it was definitely her son.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel as her strange words to him echoed in his head. It must be terrible, to always look for the worst in the people around you. He had the distinct feeling she’d been talking about his relationship with his sister.
But she didn’t really know Jenny. She didn’t know the fear Lucas lived with every day—the fear that his sister would turn into another version of their mother and come to the same kind of tragic end.
Phillip Ribideaux lived in a large, attractive house on the outskirts of town. The twenty-eight-year-old had never worked a day in his life and lived off the generosity of his father, a wealthy developer in the area.
He was a party guy with no work ethic and a sense of privilege that Lucas had seen too often in men who came from money. In fact, Lucas himself and four of his then closest friends might have come to the same end had they not made a pact in college to use their wealth to give back to the community.
Lucas hadn’t been sad to see the relationship between Ribideaux and Jenny end. Jenny deserved better than a man like Ribideaux.
It was just after seven when Lucas knocked on Ribideaux’s front door. Phillip’s sleek sports car was parked out front, but the knock yielded no reply. He rapped again, harder and longer this time.
“All right, all right.” The deep male voice was full of irritation. Phil opened the door and glared at Lucas. It was obvious he’d been awakened by the knocking. His dark hair was mussed, a pillow crease indented his cheek and he wore only a pair of black silk boxers.
“Morning, Phil,” Lucas said. “Can I come in?”
The handsome young man frowned. “Why? What’s going on?” He scratched the center of his chest, then stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Couldn’t it wait? Jeez, what time is it?”
“No, it can’t wait,” Lucas replied.
“Talk about what?” He gazed at Lucas belligerently.
“I’d like to come in. Now, you can invite me inside and we can have a nice, friendly chat or I can come back in a little while with a search warrant and the chat won’t be quite so friendly.” Lucas kept his voice pleasant and calm, but narrowed his eyes to let Phil know he was dead serious.
With reluctance Phil opened the door to allow Lucas to enter. “Now you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
Lucas ignored the question and walked through the foyer and into the living room. He stopped in surprise, noting the moving boxes lining the walls and the lack of furniture. He turned back to face Phil. “Going someplace?”
