Kidnapped

  He heard a sound to his right and turned, spotting her in Benjamin’s room just stirring on the bed. She had moved to sleep in Benjamin’s room. The sight broke his heart.

  “What is . . . ?”

  “They found Mark.”

  He caught her as she fell, her feet catching in the blanket pulled from the bed with her. “Easy. Mark had a car accident. He’s hurt but alive. We still don’t know anything more about Sharon and Ben.”

  “Where is he? How is he?”

  “We’re going to go see him. I’ve got directions to the scene. Find something warm; it’s cold this morning.”

  “Get the car. I’ll be right behind you.”

  * * *

  Luke paused the car at the top of the hillside where the accident had happened so he could see the full scene. Had he been alone, he would have been tempted to swear at what he saw. Mark’s car had missed a turn, slammed through a fence line, and gone down a man-made embankment to crash into the water. It was a wonder the car hadn’t rolled and left his cousin dead.

  “Mark would never have gone so fast on a country road as to lose control like this without cause,” Caroline said softly.

  Luke reached over and squeezed her hand. “I know.” Something really bad had led to this wreck. Luke drove down the hill and parked on the roadside behind the cop cars. He opened the car door. The air ambulance in the north pasture ascended gracefully a few feet from the earth and turned south, lifting away with a loud beat of blades against the cold morning air. They were too late to see Mark.

  Caroline pushed her arms into her jacket. “He’s alive. If he had the strength to get through a night outside with his injuries, he’ll make it from here.”

  Luke swallowed against the bitter taste in his mouth and the fear that he might not see his cousin alive again. “He’s a fighter.” Luke forced himself to look from the departing helicopter to the accident scene. “It could have been a blown tire,” he offered, feeling out what might make this an accident rather than foul play. So much of how they handled the search today depended on their conclusions at this scene.

  Caroline handed over the jacket she pulled from the backseat for him. “Let’s go see.”

  The steep embankment had been torn into by the rescue equipment. Luke offered Caroline a hand, and they half slid down the steepest stretch.

  “Stand back in case this winch snaps!” the man on the tow truck called to the deputies trying to shift brush debris from the pond where the car had gone in. Only the back fender of Mark’s vehicle was visible, the car’s nose in the water. The tow truck operator started the power winch, and metal strained against the weight of the water.

  The sheriff came to meet them. He offered his hand to Luke. “I’m so sorry. I wish I had better news.”

  “He’s alive.”

  The sheriff nodded. “His vitals are strong, and the doctor on the air flight was hopeful the chest injuries didn’t result in massive internal bleeding. We think the air bag deployed before the car reached the water, saving Mark’s life.”

  The car began to inch out of the water, metal chains grinding. The car appeared, covered with pond moss and mud and disgorging water. The driver side rear tire had practically disappeared into the crumpled metal of the wheel frame.

  “What in the world did he hit?” Luke asked.

  “I doubt that damage is from hitting the water,” the sheriff said. “Not at a back tire.” As the car came to a rest, the sheriff picked his way through the mud to get a closer look.

  “Mark could have hit a tree or a fence post,” Luke said, not wanting to put a second vehicle into this accident just yet. Several had been torn away during the descent, some of them still embedded in the bank of the pond.

  “This tire still has good air pressure even under this crumpled frame. What about the others?” the sheriff asked.

  “They look fine. He didn’t blow a tire,” his deputy called.

  The engine block had been shoved back from the abrupt impact with the water and ground. Luke looked at the car and turned to study the road. Had someone hit his cousin’s car and sent it careening off the road? If they had, then why wasn’t more of the car showing damage? The back door and the trunk area were barely dented. Another vehicle striking Mark’s car at the back wheel area should have crumbled the entire area.

  “If this doesn’t have anything to do with Sharon and Benjamin disappearing . . . then it’s one incredible coincidence in timing,” the sheriff said. “Maybe someone wanted Mark out of the way? Causing an accident is a good way to make that happen.”

  “If you want him out of the way, then let him go to Atlanta as originally planned. He’s over an hour away when he realizes something is wrong.” Luke walked over to the stretch of ground where Mark had managed to pull himself before he collapsed; the medical supplies used still marked the area. Dried blood stained the grass. “His thrashing to get out of the water to this spot would have occurred in the minutes immediately after the wreck. Someone simply idling their vehicle on the road would have known Mark survived. So they weren’t intent on killing him. And setting out to injure him—it isn’t logical.”

  “You said the damage could be from the car hitting a tree or a fence post,” Caroline interjected.

  Luke turned to look at Caroline. “I think it could.”

  “What if Mark got a call saying Sharon and Benjamin had been grabbed, and that Mark had to withdraw the ransom money before the bank closed? Mark’s attention would be caught by the horrific call and he drove off the road.”

  Luke looked from the road to the pond and saw a straight line. A huge tangled knot had just been sliced and made simple. His stomach roiled.

  “Sometimes the truth is simply what is in front of you. He drove off the road and into the water,” Caroline said.

  Luke tugged on his gloves and climbed up on the tow bar to get a look inside the car. The phone handset had been pulled from its cradle and now dangled on its cord wrapped over the top of the steering wheel, pinned between the wheel and the inflated air bag. “He was using the phone when this accident happened.” Luke turned, searching for the paramedic. “Did he say anything when he was found?”

  “He was never lucid enough to speak.”

  Had a ransom demand been made? Was a clock ticking on delivering money to save Sharon and Benjamin’s lives? The only person who knew for certain was flying away from here, heading toward hours of surgery. Luke knew a surge of panic like nothing he had experienced before. “Someone get on a radio to the hospital and clue them in to what’s going on before they sedate Mark! We’ve got to know who he was talking to on the phone.”

  “I’m on it.” One of the deputies sprinted toward his car radio.

  “Unless he can be awakened, we’re not going to have much to work with. Jackie was working on phone records last night. Was she getting the car phone logs too?” the sheriff asked.

  “She should have them soon.” Luke stepped away from the car. “Walk through the time line. Sharon and Benjamin leave the hospital before four, then drive to the house and pack. They head to Atlanta about four thirty. We know Mark left the house being built sometime around five thirty. That puts him here about ten minutes or so later? A call to Mark around six . . . Sharon and Benjamin could have been grabbed near the end of their journey.”

  “What about at the condominium itself?” Caroline asked. “It has a private parking garage. I didn’t raise a concern until after seven, and that was with the sheriff for the Benton area. Jackie was the one who got the Atlanta PD involved hours later.”

  The sheriff looked between the two of them. “If it’s a kidnapping for ransom and it becomes public knowledge, they may kill them and run to cut their losses.”

  “If Mark was to deliver a ransom last night or early this morning, then we’re already too late,” Luke countered. “The kidnappers won’t know what happened to him, just that he didn’t show with their money. The best thing we can do right now is get word all over the media
that Mark is unconscious. We might get a second call.”

  Luke looked to the sky where the helicopter had disappeared. If only Mark had been able to confirm one way or another if this was indeed a kidnapping gone bad. “We’ve got to figure out where Sharon and Benjamin got into trouble. I doubt they’d be snatched on a highway. We need to make searching the roads near Mark and Sharon’s home in Benton and getting officers to walk the areas around the condominium a priority. We do the one thing we can.” Luke looked at the ground fog beginning to dissipate. “We search.”

  * * *

  Sharon hit her head when she tried to stand, for the room ceiling was low. She stumbled as her feet stepped on tangled blankets and the black pillowcase that had been over her head caught on her one remaining shoe. She ripped at the tape on her mouth, got it off and would have screamed, but her headache swam so bad she couldn’t risk the sound putting her in a curled-up ball of pain.

  How long had she lain there, how long? An hour? Six? Twelve? There was no sense of time, no windows, only a small light clipped on the headboard, and her watch was gone. The duct tape binding her hands had been half cut and left for her to work off, the pillowcase tugged off her face for her. A concussion put someone down for a long time, and touching her aching temple and fighting the double vision, she knew she was badly concussed.

  In her terror the room was registering. A place designed for someone. A bed. Shelves. She reached for the lamp she saw and whimpered at the glare. Everywhere color, and not what an adult would find appealing. Posters on the walls. The room barely five feet high. Half crouched, trying to stay on her feet, she read labels on the big plastic bins on the shelves: movies, puzzles, books, junk food. What was this place?

  She sat back on the only thing resembling furniture in the room—the short bed with Mickey Mouse sheets. Directly across and touching her knees was the television with a page taped there with blue block letters.

  You were kidnapped. The next time the door opens, you’ll be on your way back to your parents. It will just take a few days to work out the details. There is food and drinks, new clothes, television. Think of it as camping out. The scary part is over.

  They had designed the room to hold her son. The shock broke her. Her anger crumbled into tears. Benjamin, oh Benjamin, please keep running . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  The Benton community building, turned into a temporary command center, could hold 150 people when full. Caroline judged eighty people had already come in to pick up maps and flyers and join the search.

  “Caroline, we need more flyers.” Lynn joined her at the table; one of dozens of her students who had come to help.

  “We’ve got more,” Caroline reassured her. Jackie had managed to get thirty thousand flyers printed overnight. She retrieved another box of a thousand. “How are the packets coming?”

  “We’re making them up as fast as they can highlight the street maps.”

  Caroline started another pot of coffee, trying to keep busy and stay out of the way. The team Jackie had sent to coordinate this center knew what they were doing. Volunteers continued to flow in, get briefed, get assigned territories, and head out. Teams were already working the interstates, stationed at each restaurant and gas station to give out flyers. Atlanta and Sandy Hill had similar centers up and running. Surely someone would report seeing something soon . . .

  Caroline looked at the clock and reached for her cell phone, which Luke finally convinced her to buy. She pushed through a side door and stepped outside. The head surgical nurse took her call.

  “Mark’s still stable, Caroline, if a bit thready on the pulse.”

  Caroline noted the vital sign on her notepad. “How’s the bleeding?”

  “The surgeon is hopeful. I know how critical it is to find out what Mark knows,” Trish sympathized, “but it’s going to be another two hours before he’s out of surgery and far enough out of the anesthetic to be able to talk. Hang in there, Caroline. Has there been any news there?”

  “No. I’m coming to the hospital shortly to sit with Mark when he wakes.”

  Caroline hung up the phone. Four hours since Mark had been airlifted from the car crash. Mark, we need to know what you know. If only the phone records would tell them something.

  Luke had left the command post over an hour ago to join the sheriff searching the roads around Sharon and Mark’s home. She joined the deputy inside who was coordinating the searchers on a big map of the area. She’d lived here all her life and never realized the extent to which the vast woods and waters stretched around Benton and Milo and Sandy Hill outside of town.

  “Where is Luke now?”

  “They’ve closed two miles of the road that runs in front of Mark and Sharon’s house and are walking it,” the deputy said. “Air assets are coming into the area to search the woods.”

  “I’d like to get out there too.” She wanted to hug her sister and tickle her nephew and hear “Aunt Carol . . .” in Benjamin’s voice. She had to do something more than staff a table here. “We search.” Luke had said it all in that simple statement.

  “I’ll get someone to take you,” the deputy offered.

  * * *

  Luke folded his map and slid it back into his pocket. Fellow searchers rustled in the underbrush on either side of him, sometimes only visible even ten feet away by the bright yellow vests they wore. Only four families had a reason to travel the two-mile stretch of road that passed in front of Mark and Sharon’s home, and all four said an immediate yes to the inconvenience of the road being closed. Searchers were walking the road thirty feet out on either side of it for the duration of the two miles. They were not going to miss anything that could be found.

  He looked at his watch. 10:30 a.m. They had started shortly after seven, and if his group had covered more than a third of a mile he would be surprised. The terrain was a challenge. He looked up as a helicopter crossed overhead, relieved to see it working this area.

  “Luke, you’re needed back at the road.”

  He was near the far end of the line of searchers. He let the officer delivering the message take his place, and Luke walked back toward the road. The heavy underbrush had to be shoved through; he was at the ditch by the road before he realized it was near. He saw Caroline approaching, walking in the middle of the fine oil-graveled road.

  “Can I walk with you for a bit?”

  “Sure.” He joined her on the asphalt and opened his water bottle. “How’s it going at the command center?”

  “Over a hundred people had already been in when I left. There is a heavy media presence. It’s impressive, if only it weren’t being done for Sharon and Benjamin. How far are we walking?”

  “Through this grove of trees, up to the bend. Another team is working back to that point.”

  Luke kept them on the road rather than ask her to struggle with the terrain. “You need to wear a hat and sunglasses to keep that headache from getting worse.”

  “I’ll survive. I’m glad it’s not raining and washing away whatever clues might be found.”

  Luke passed over the water bottle. “Drink more than you think you need. Sharon had her drive planned. At what point along that route did Sharon’s plan derail? If it’s a stranger coming at her, there are natural vulnerable points at the house, an empty road like this, a stop at a restaurant or gas station, when they arrived at the condominium. If we can eliminate one or two, it simplifies the rest of the search.”

  “I’ve been reading a copy of the handbook they use to guide the command center,” Caroline said. “The odds suggest this was done by someone Sharon or Mark knows.”

  “Statistically that’s true. The special agent running this for the FBI is Henry James. He won’t miss anything. They’re doing background checks of Sharon’s coworkers, the list of friends’ names you gave me, Sharon’s patient list. If they were snatched, we’re looking for someone who needs money and knew where they would be.”

  “I’ve been thinking about last fall.”
r />   Luke nodded. “So have I. Does any of this raise a glimmer of a connection?”

  “No.”

  “We dug out the file on your unwanted company. The sheriff is looking at who bought those roses, to see if he can trace him.”

  “A stalker isn’t going to ask for a ransom,” Caroline said.

  “I know. We need those phone records.”

  A helicopter passed low overhead.

  * * *

  Luke watched Caroline shove back her hair for the third time, wiping the inside of her wrist across her forehead to push off sweat. “Drink more.”

  “And have to hike half a mile back to the house? I’ve finished one water bottle; it’s enough.”

  “We’ll have shade soon, that will help.”

  “Yeah. I wish I were one of those soaring hawks. They can see whatever is around here to find.”

  “I’m guessing the air search would have spotted a vehicle off the road, and at least around here there are no ponds for the car to end up in. But you could run a car off the road into these woods and not see it.”

  “Luke.” The call came over the radio as they were nearing the grove of trees.

  Luke keyed his radio. “Go ahead, Sheriff.”

  “The searchers found something a mile east of Sharon’s drive, around the curve of the road.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  Caroline broke into a trot and Luke matched his stride to hers. “Take it easy; this isn’t going to change if we get there in two minutes or four.”

  She just looked at him and kept her pace.

  As they arrived officers were blocking off the area with yellow and black crime tape. Luke put a hand on Caroline’s shoulder and steered her to the left, around the area.

  The sheriff came to meet them. “There are a few pieces of clear rigid plastic, possibly from a broken headlight. We’ve got signs a car went off the side of the road. Farther down, there appear to be muddy car tracks as a vehicle backed up.”

  “Stay here, Caroline.” Luke stepped under the tape. A deputy set down an evidence marker beside a jagged triangle of plastic and several shards. Rigid plastic from a headlight? Cars had bumped. It wasn’t much, but it was a place to begin.