Danger In The Shadows

  Dave thought for a moment. “The best lead has always been the one kidnapper in jail. By tracing everyone he had been seen with in the six months before the abduction, we thought we might find a link. In the initial years of the investigation, that was the focus of the legwork. It didn’t pan out then, but I’ve put Susan and Ben back on it to take another look.”

  Adam could hear the discouragement. “Dave, you will find him one day.”

  “I pray we do. I pray it ends because we know who the suspect is, not because he gets close. We can’t afford to be playing defense when this finally ends.” Dave sat forward in his chair, setting down his drink. “Don’t be surprised if we end up with a short night.”

  “Sara?”

  “Probably. I’m going to make some coffee, trade off shifts with Quinton.”

  “Do you want me to stay up, take a turn?”

  Dave grimaced. “No need. If she wakes up, you’ll hear her.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Dave wished he hadn’t been right this time. Sara’s screams woke him. They were chilling in their shrillness.

  His bedroom was directly across from hers. He literally ran into Adam at the door to Sara’s bedroom and shoved him back from the doorway against the wall.

  “Dave, what the—”

  “Be quiet!” Dave peered around the door frame, then pulled back.

  Quinton was in the hall with them now. “Go to the east window,” Dave ordered Quinton.

  “What’s going on?” Adam demanded.

  “She has another gun hidden somewhere in the room. Quinton and I thought we had them all removed. In this state of terror, we’re going to be digging bullets out of the woodwork if we’re not careful.”

  There was a commotion in the bedroom, the sound of things falling.

  “Talk to her,” Adam urged.

  “Doesn’t work. She hears a man’s voice and it’s not us she’s hearing. Believe me, we’ve tried before.”

  Dave took another cautious glance around the doorway. The screams had stopped, but there hadn’t been a word from Sara. “I don’t see her,” he whispered. He keyed the security radio. “Quinton, do you see her?”

  “She’s not on the bed; her closet door is open. I can’t see the end of the bed.”

  “What do you suggest? Wait? Go in?”

  “Go in. She’s a level-headed lady, but there’s no telling what she just remembered,” Quinton replied.

  Dave entered the bedroom and saw her seconds later. She was crouched beyond the dresser in the corner of the room, the closet door open to hide her as best she could. The gun had been set down on the floor, away from her reach. “Don’t let him reach me, Dave. Don’t let him reach me.”

  Dave eased the gun on the floor farther back with his foot, relieved to see sanity in her eyes beyond the terror. Very carefully, he reached out a hand and her left hand came up to clench his.

  There was blood on her shirt. Her right arm was bleeding from a gash near her elbow. Most everything on the dresser had been knocked off it, including dozens of pictures. Now that he realized it, he was kneeling in broken glass.

  “The last time he came, he wanted me to see his face. He purposely wanted me to see him,” Sara said, her voice in the past.

  Dave didn’t like the way her eyes were beginning to close. “Adam, shake out that comforter. I’m going to lift her out of this mess of glass to you.”

  Dave tried to ease Sara away from the shattered glass as he picked her up. Her eyes were closed, and it was clear she was letting herself see the details her mind had never wanted her to see. Dave looked at Adam and shook his head as he handed his sister over. Only after he was sure Sara was safe with Adam did Dave bend down to pick up the gun. His foot was on a picture of Kim. A silent tear dropped to the floor as he carefully retrieved the picture from the shards of glass.

  Adam shifted Sara up in his arms as he turned to the hall. Just as she had during the episode in the dark elevator, she had mentally slipped away from this place, was lost somewhere that terrified her. He could see the clenched hands, the bit lip. She wasn’t shaking yet, but he felt the tremors coming. Adam brushed a kiss across her forehead, hugging her tight, as he strode down the hall. “Hang in there, honey. Hang in there.”

  They had to stop the memories before they overwhelmed her, get that bleeding stopped.

  Quinton was beside him. “The kitchen. I can get the glass out and stitch the cut if it needs it.”

  Adam nodded and followed him and, when they got to the kitchen, kept Sara in his lap. Her left hand had curled into his shirt, and her head was resting against his shoulder. She didn’t want to be moved and he wasn’t in favor of it either.

  She stirred as the medical supplies were gathered. Adam was relieved to see her blink against the light.

  Dave joined them, pulling up another chair. He gently brushed back Sara’s hair. “How are you doing, squirt?”

  A wisp of a smile crossed her face. “Kim named me that, didn’t she?”

  Dave closed his hand around her clenched one, easing it open. “Yeah. When you were about four.” He looked up and gave a rueful smile. “My own little way of prodding a memory, I guess.”

  Sara reached over to touch his cheek. “Thanks.” Her voice was a whisper. “I always liked the name, but I could never figure out why. I remembered tonight.”

  Dave ruffled her hair. “I’m glad. Look away; you don’t like needles.”

  She looked at Quinton as he loaded a syringe. “I like drugs even less.”

  “Novocaine, Sara. You’ll need it. That cut is deep.”

  Quinton removed the glass with care. The gash bled heavily, soaking the towel he used to apply pressure. He closed the gash with five neat stitches.

  Sara closed her eyes and rested her head back against Adam’s shoulder as Quinton worked.

  Adam watched each stitch go in and wanted badly to have something, someone he could hit. He had nearly lost Sara tonight. It wasn’t an easy thought to accept.

  “I need a pencil,” Sara said, her voice clear and grim.

  It was nice to know they were both feeling the same emotions.

  Adam set a mug of coffee beside Sara as she sat curled up on the corner of the couch and got an absentminded thanks in return. She had been working for four hours. The sketches were being drawn with a black charcoal pencil, seven of them now, each one a slice of time from her memory.

  The first sketch was the most critical, for it depicted the one time she had directly looked at the kidnapper’s face. With precise lines and sharp detail, she had drawn him as he looked twenty-five years ago.

  Dave picked up the sketch, his mouth tightened, then he went to Sara’s office to make some phone calls.

  The other sketches were of other instances she had seen the man’s face, some in side relief, some glimpses only of his eyes, but together the sketches were drawing a face in such detail it was going to be a literal photograph of what the man looked like twenty-five years ago.

  The sketch she was drawing now was the composite of everything she had seen. She had his face down to the literal number of stitches he had in an old cut above his eye, the exact part of his nose that showed an old break, the exact pitch of his cheekbones.

  For an hour after Quinton had closed the gash on her arm, Sara sat at the kitchen table, not saying much, drinking the coffee Dave brewed. Adam recognized the slow way shock wore off, as it had after the elevator ride, and Dave did too. That she had remembered more details than she was willing to tell them was obvious, but neither of them pushed her to talk. She told Dave a few new details about the van and about the order of events during the nine days. Then she had begun to draw.

  Adam left Sara sketching and went to join Dave in her office. He found her brother pacing. It instantly put him on guard. “What’s wrong? This should be good news, yet you’re as tense as a threatened rattlesnake.”

  “We have always known, or at least strongly suspected, that the mastermind of the kidnapping was
actually part of the law enforcement community, that he somehow had access to what was going on.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “A distant connection but enough to keep him in the information loop. There were too many instances where negotiations would change directions without a reasonable explanation.

  “Whoever carried out the kidnapping knew this part of the country and knew it well. It was his partner that got sloppy and left the evidence at the farmhouse, not the man we’re after. I suspect we’re looking for a man who probably works for one of the surrounding county sheriff’s offices. Sara just handed me that man’s picture.” Dave held up one of the sketches.

  “We’ve got to spread out, find him, and get him into custody before he learns the truth. My biggest fear is that he has an information source here on the ranch, someone who is going to pass on the news that Sara remembered a face.”

  “Can you trust Quinton?”

  “Yes. But we don’t trust anyone else. The housekeeper, the ranch hands.”

  Sara came into the office carrying the final sketches. She handed them to Dave. “Are they enough?”

  “Yes.” Dave squeezed her hand. “It’s enough. It’s going to finally end, Sara.”

  She nodded. Unsteady on her feet, she grasped the back of a chair to hold on to. “I am so tired.”

  Adam wrapped his arm around her waist. “Come on, you need to eat a little; then you can sleep for as long as you like.”

  She tried to smile. “You’ve got a deal.”

  He sat across from her at the kitchen table as she ate and tried to tell from the expressions on her face how well she was coping. The exhaustion was vying with strain, but she didn’t look afraid. That had been his biggest worry.

  She put the plate and soup bowl into the dishwasher when she was finished. She had managed to eat; that in itself was good to see.

  Adam got up to fix hot tea for her. “Can I get you anything else?”

  She joined him at the counter, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his shoulder. She had initiated the contact. Adam loved it. He gently wrapped her in a hug of his own.

  “I’m fine. You’ve done exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

  He was pleased to see the look of a fighter coming back into her eyes. She was pulling herself back together with the same determination she had done after every crisis. “You’re welcome. Want to take your tea into the living room?”

  She half smiled. “I’ll be lousy company. I’m going to fall asleep.”

  “I won’t mind.”

  She settled on the couch and finished her tea, then stretched out with a quiet sigh. She was asleep in minutes.

  Settling into the chair beside her with one of her H. Q. Victor books, Adam alternated between watching her sleep and reading a few pages. He had read this book before, but now he read it in a totally different light.

  Dave stopped by to watch her for a moment, then quietly said he was going to the downtown office.

  Adam didn’t expect Sara to awaken that day, not after the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours. She slept through the afternoon stretched out on the living room couch. Quinton came by frequently. Adam doubted he was ever far away.

  The end was in sight. Adam knew it. Dave was determined; he had the lead he needed. Adam had no doubt about his succeeding. But there was a big issue that still lingered.

  Children.

  “I can’t have children.” Her voice had been so raw as she had said the words.

  Adam didn’t consider adoption to be something with a stigma to it. They could still have children, but she had not mentioned that option.

  Part of it was obvious, as soon as he realized she also wrote as H. Q. Victor. Sara was terrified of having one of her own children snatched and held for ransom. He was wealthy, but Sara herself was extremely wealthy, each H. Q. Victor book bringing in millions of dollars. She wouldn’t want her children to grow up surrounded by security, but neither would she want them put at risk. Adam could feel himself being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. There had to be an option, but he couldn’t find one.

  He really did want a family. Sara knew that. What had Dave said last night? “She will still shoulder the weight of having put you in this situation.” Yes, Sara would do that if they were to marry, knowing they would never have children. She would carry the guilt even if it was his decision.

  There had to be a solution that met both their needs without placing a new burden on Sara.

  Her matter-of-fact statement for Dave to call the counselors she had used in the past was the most encouraging thing he had heard short of seeing those drawings. They had to find this man but Sara also needed to heal. Now, if she could just include him in that list of people she could trust with the raw truth ….

  He knew how hard it would be to hear what she had to share. It didn’t matter. He loved her, no matter what.

  Dave returned as the sun began to set. “Has she stirred at all?”

  “No. I think if we let her, she’d sleep another full day right where she is,” Adam replied with a slight smile.

  Dave slid off his jacket and tossed it over a chair. “We’ve got a strategy in place for how to do the search. I’ll take Sara in with me tomorrow. I know there is no way to keep her out of it, so I might as well head it off. I would appreciate if you could keep an eye on how it’s hitting her.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “Thanks.”

  They talked quietly as Sara slept, both of them needing a chance to let go of the stress. Adam figured out that Dave had about six hours sleep in seventy hours, but he gave up trying to get the guy to see reason and go to bed. If he were lucky, Dave might fall asleep right where he sat, but his friend just sat working an old tennis ball with his hand, watching his sister sleep.

  Was this what love did to you, made you willing to walk between the one you loved and danger? It was Dave’s way of showing his love. Adam couldn’t fault his friend for that. It showed dedication on Dave’s part to have hung in there for such a long duration. He was going to like having this guy for a brother-in-law.

  Sara finally woke at ten that night. She mumbled a sleepy hello to Dave, teetered a bit as she gave her brother a hug, and whispered a foggy good-night to Adam. Then she promptly went to crash in her bed for the rest of the night.

  “Satisfied?”

  Dave had a sleep-deprived smile on his face. “Yeah. She’s okay.”

  “I told you she was.” Adam couldn’t help the grin. “Come on, Dave.” Adam had to haul the guy to his feet. “I don’t want to see your face until after nine tomorrow. Sleep is now a priority, got it?”

  “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  Adam turned to see Sara rub her eyes. He knew what she meant. It was dusty work looking through the newspaper archives. The clippings smelled musty, making her frequently sneeze.

  They were the lucky ones. At least they were not on the microfiche team, having to read white text on a black background.

  Around various parts of the conference room were groups of agents going through old television film footage, yearbooks, military IDs, driver’s licenses. Anything that bore a photograph of someone listed in the case index. In the center of the room, agents were going through the actual case files.

  The man they were after had stayed on top of the details of the case. They knew that from the letters he had sent over the years. If he had been trying to stay on top of the details during the search… there was a reasonable chance he had been photographed. A good chance if his desire for attention had been high. He would have enjoyed taunting the searchers by actually staying close to the investigators.

  Sara’s sketch had been computer aged by twenty-five years. That idea was truly a long shot, but the agents were showing a unique determination to try anything that might succeed.

  Just to make sure no possible match was overlooked, two different agents independently reviewed all the mate
rial. Anything that looked like a possible match was routed to Sara.

  After a long day of work, they had barely made a dent in the amount of material they had to go through.

  “Adam, take Sara home. This will all be here tomorrow.” Dave stopped beside them.

  “I can do another hour more.”

  “Sara, we’re talking at least a week of solid work. This can’t be done in a day. I need you rested.”

  “I’ll take her home,” Adam agreed. “Ben and Susan will take us?”

  “Yes. I’ll send two other cars as well.”

  It was a quiet ride. Sara had been quiet all day.

  Adam followed her into the house, considering what he should do. His hand on her arm stopped her in the foyer. “Sara, how about we make a deal. For the next four hours, we can’t think or talk about the search. It will still be there tomorrow.”

  Adam watched the tension in her face drain away. He hadn’t realized his comment would have such a profound impact.

  “Really? Not at all?”

  “I think we both deserve the break.”

  She reached up and kissed him. “Thanks. We’ll have it.”

  Adam smiled. “Why don’t you select a video? I’ll bring in dinner.”

  There were Texas-size hamburgers and french fries ready for them. Dave had called ahead. Adam fixed two plates and carried them back into the living room.

  After Sara finished rewinding the videotape, she accepted the dinner plate.

  Adam had brought her another couple aspirins to help with the throbbing arm. She hadn’t been complaining, but he knew it had to be hurting.

  “Thanks.” She accepted the glass of water.

  She started the comedy she had chosen for them to watch, and they ate dinner sitting on the couch.

  It was good to laugh. Sara curled up on the couch, settling her weight against his shoulder. Adam made her comfortable, loving the chance to have a stress-free evening with her.

  She fell asleep before the movie was over. Adam wasn’t surprised. He brushed her hair back from her face, idly watching her.