He went to the refrigerator again, just as he had done before, and as he opened it, he simply stared inside, as if lost in thought. She went to stand beside him and looked at his wizened old face. His mouth hung open, and his eyes looked blank. He’d clearly forgotten what he was doing.
“Sir?”
He looked at her then, confusion clear on his face, and this time there was no recognition, no delight, no awareness at all.
It reminded her of one of her cell mates in prison—Liza, who’d later been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She would have moments of lucidity, but more moments of confusion. She remembered her childhood but nothing of today, and each time she saw Sheila or the other inmates, she called them by different names.
Maybe this man had Alzheimer’s too. Sheila took his arm and closed the refrigerator, then escorted him over to a chair. He lowered to it, that blank look making his eyes look more shadowed, his skin more pale.
She took the opportunity to look around the room. A picture of a boy—about ten years old—sat on the table. She picked it up and took it to the old man, stooped down in front of him.
“Sir.” Maybe she could shake him back into whatever fantasy world he’d just come out of. “Sir, who is this?”
He stared down at the picture for a long moment, then whispered, “My boy. Finer grandson nobody ever had. Nate.”
Nate. She studied his young face, trying to figure out what he might look like now.
She saw another picture of the boy, but he was older in this one. He looked dirty and greasy and had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
She stood up, her eyes fixed on the face of the man she was certain had taken her daughters. He was about twenty in the picture, with an unshaven face and stringy hair. His eyes had that hungover, secretive, dangerous look—eyes just like Jack Dent’s, Caleb’s father. It was a deadly look, a look that said he had much to hide, a look that dared anyone to cross him.
“Is this Nate too?”
He smiled. “He’s a good boy.”
She put the picture back and stooped in front of the old man again. “I need you to listen to me.” His eyes fastened on her, and she thought for a moment that he might actually be listening. “Has Nate brought anyone here with him? A pretty blonde girl?”
That vacant look almost sent her over the edge. “Nate’s a good boy.”
“Listen to me! I need you to think. There are two girls, blondes, and I think he brought them here! Where are they?”
He didn’t answer, so she framed his face in her trembling hands. “Where are they? Please, answer me!”
He opened his mouth to speak, and she waited, breath held.
“I’ll make some eggs,” he muttered.
She started to cry then and got up, looking down at him. How did he manage here alone, completely out of his mind? He needed twenty-four-hour care, someone to keep him company. Someone to watch over him.
Nate could have brought anyone here, kicking and screaming, bleeding, maybe even dead, and the old man wouldn’t remember.
She heard a car coming up the driveway, the rocks crackling beneath its tires. She ran to the window and looked out. The car stopped, and she saw the same greasy-haired man get out. Nate! She was certain it was him.
She had to get out of there before he came into the house, so she slipped out the back door and hid until she heard the man get out of the car and go inside. Even if his grandfather remembered she’d been there, Nate wouldn’t believe him. The old man’s dementia was too pronounced, and Nate probably heard nonsense from him all the time.
She dashed across the yard and went to the barn. Quietly, she opened the creaking door and slipped inside. The only light coming through was the daylight through a window, so she went to the string hanging from the lightbulb and turned it on.
The hay smelled putrid. She walked from stall to stall, searching for her daughters, but no one was here. She looked around at all the farming implements, rusty and covered with cobwebs, leaning against the wall. No, it didn’t look like anyone had been here in quite some time.
She abandoned the building through the back way and went into the thick woods behind it. Cutting through the bushes was a beaten path. There were footsteps on it, big ones and small ones. Could they be Sadie’s? Amelia’s? Sheila’s heart hammered hard as she followed the tracks, certain she was getting closer to finding her girls. They could both be dead out here, buried in a shallow grave, and she would stumble on their bodies. If she did, she would want to lie down with them.
But maybe they were alive, waiting to be found. Maybe it wouldn’t be too late.
Suddenly she saw it. A trap door in the ground that looked like it could be a tornado shelter, and a rope ladder pulled out of the hole, lying wadded on the dirt.
She went to the door, struggled to get it open, but it was heavy. Pulling with all her might, she managed to pull it up. She looked down into the large dark pit, and shivered with anticipation.
“Sadie?” Her voice came out choked and too loud. “Sadie, are you there?”
“Mom?”
Sadie’s voice. She was alive! Sheila almost collapsed with relief. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Thank You, God.” She gathered herself and leaned over the hole, trying to see in. “Honey, you’re alive! Are you all right?”
“Yes, Mom! Hurry, put the ladder down!”
Sheila reached for the ladder, then froze as she heard something moving behind her. She started to turn, when pain cracked across the back of her skull …
And Sheila fell forward.
CHAPTER 46
Sadie and Amelia screamed as their mother plummeted through the hole and dropped flat on the dirt floor.
Sadie scrambled to her mother, who lay facedown in her own blood. “Mom! Mom, wake up, please wake up, please!”
Sheila didn’t move, so Sadie turned her over. Her head lolled back, her face scraped and bleeding from the impact. Sadie looked up at the open door, saw Nate’s silhouette. “She’s dying! She needs an ambulance!”
He just laughed.
“Please! Please, just come and get her, take her to the hospital. You can leave us here. Just get her help, please!” There was no answer, so her screams went up an octave. “You monster! You help her! Come and help her now.” At his continued laughter, her screams turned into sobs. She closed her eyes and wailed. “Please, I’m begging you. She didn’t do anything to you.”
He kept laughing—a hard, brittle laugh that chilled her bones. He dropped the door shut above them, and Sadie knew he was going to let her mother die, right here in this rat hole, and there wasn’t a thing in the world that she and Amelia could do.
She felt Amelia’s hands on her shoulders, heard her own anguished crying. She tried to pull herself together. “We have to help her. We have to save her somehow.”
“She’s breathing.” Amelia’s wet, streaked face was hopeful as she went to touch Sheila’s wrist. “She has a pulse, Sadie!”
Blood ran from her mother’s nose and mouth, and Sadie tried to see if it was from some internal bleeding or from the impact of her face on the floor. She was bleeding from the back of her skull too, where she’d clearly been hit. How could anyone survive a sixteen-foot fall onto her face?
Amelia’s hands were covered with blood as she tried to stop the bleeding on the back of her mother’s head. “Her arm looks broken.”
Sadie turned her attention to Sheila’s arm. It was strangely bent from the elbow, and beneath the skin, she could see the end of the bone. Her leg was unnaturally bent, as well. Had she broken it too?
Sadie went back to her mother’s face, held it in both hands. “Mom! Please wake up, Mom. Please tell me you’re all right.”
There was no answer. Her mother’s eyes were closed, her bloody mouth hanging open.
“How did she find us?” Amelia said. “How did she know where we were?”
Sadie looked up at her, her eyes wildly hopeful. “Maybe someone came with her.”
“Th
en where are they?”
She looked up at the door again, praying for help. But she feared there was none.
She touched her mother’s good arm, stroking it as she wept over her. She bumped something in Sheila’s pocket, and reached in to see what it was. Slowly, she pulled out a gun.
Sadie caught her breath. “It’s a miracle.”
“Is it loaded?”
Sadie checked. “Yes. Where did she get this?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s here now. He doesn’t know she has it, or he wouldn’t have thrown her down here with it. We can use it.”
Sadie nodded. She could almost imagine it—Nate opening that door, putting that rope ladder down. As he descended to terrorize them, completely unaware, she would raise it in the darkness. He wouldn’t see it as his eyes adjusted to the light, and he would walk into the trap.
She wiped her face on her shirtsleeve. “I want to do it.” “You don’t have to,” Amelia said. “I’m not afraid to.” Sadie sucked in a shaky sob and looked down at her mother.
“No, it has to be me. He’s so fascinated with the sound of bodies dropping. I want to be the one to drop him into the pit of hell.”
CHAPTER 47
The moment Joe came back to his car in the Flagstaff parking lot, he knew that Sheila had taken the address on his notepad. His heart sank. Cade was coming toward him as he got out of his car. “I know where she is.”
“Sheila? Where?”
“She took that address I got for Nate out of my car. I guarantee you she’s headed to Hinesville, if she isn’t there already.”
Cade closed his eyes. “Surely she wouldn’t just go barreling up in there without waiting for us. She’s not crazy.”
“She’s desperate. Who knows what she might do? I don’t even know how long she’s been gone.”
Cade looked back at the second floor, where the room was being searched. The GBI agents had shown up and taken over. Their men had spread out and were talking to the residents from room to room.
Cade found Yeager and filled him in on what was happening. “I’m going to head to Hinesville.”
“Yeah, I’ll get some of my men out there too,” Yeager said.
McCormick was already in his car, starting to pull out of the glutted parking lot. Cade opened his passenger door and got in. “Yeager’s sending people.”
“We can’t wait for them. Sheila’s in trouble. We have to hurry.”
“Hey, I’m sold, buddy. Let’s go. Maybe we’ll make it before she does anything stupid.”
CHAPTER 48
Cade’s distinctive ring startled Blair out of her prayer, and she clicked her cell phone on. “Hello?”
“Blair, it’s me.” He was out of breath, and she could hear the siren in the background. “We think we know where Sheila is. She took some notes out of McCormick’s car, with our suspect’s address in Hinesville.”
“The suspect? You think she went to his house?”
“We’re headed that way now.”
“Cade, who is it?”
“A man named Nate Morris. He and a buddy were next door to Amelia and Jamie at the Flagstaff. We have reason to believe Sadie figured it out and confronted him. That’s the last anyone’s seen her.”
She got up, wishing she could run out of there and follow them, but she couldn’t leave the hospital. “Please be careful.”
He didn’t answer. “Has Morgan had the baby yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Miss Owens?”
Blair swung around and saw a nurse standing by the swinging double doors, a mask around her chin. “The nurse is here, Cade. I have to go.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She clicked off the phone and hurried to the nurse. “Has she had the baby yet?”
The nurse grinned. “She sure has. Why don’t you go in and let her tell you if you have a niece or nephew? She’s in Delivery Room B.”
The grin was a good sign, Blair thought as she pushed through the doors. Surely the nurse wouldn’t be grinning if something had gone wrong.
She found Delivery Room B and saw Jonathan bent over Morgan. “Morgan!” Blair almost couldn’t get her sister’s name out.
Jonathan rose up, and Morgan reached for her. She had a smile on her face, and her cheeks were covered with tears and sweat.
“Is it—?”
“It’s a boy! Oh, Blair, he’s a beautiful, healthy little boy.”
“Healthy? Are you sure?”
“He came out screaming bloody murder,” Jonathan said with a grin. “The doctor said his lungs sounded fine. They’re testing him to make sure.”
Blair started to cry and bent down to hug her sister. “Oh, Morgan, I was so scared.”
“Me too.”
“He’s a little small,” Jonathan said, “only five pounds, but they think he’s perfect.”
Blair clapped her hands together and brought her fingertips to her mouth. She looked at her sister. “How are you?”
Morgan laughed. “I’ve never been better.”
Jonathan wiped the hair back from his wife’s face. “She was a trooper. Just like she’s done it before.”
“So did you talk to Sheila?” Morgan asked.
Blair looked at Jonathan, not certain what to say. Should she bring her sister down in her moment of her greatest joy? No, she couldn’t do it. Morgan didn’t have to know that Sheila was missing.
“I talked to almost everybody.” She forced herself to laugh. “Everyone was praying, Morgan. They’re all so anxious to hear.”
“What about Sadie? Did they find her yet?”
Again, she felt caught in the headlights, and she looked helplessly at Jonathan. She thought of lying, but she wouldn’t get away with it. She started to speak, when she heard a baby crying.
She turned and saw the nurse bringing her tiny little nephew in. She covered her mouth at the sight of the screaming infant. “Oh, he’s so beautiful.”
Morgan raised up to take him. “How is he?”
“He’s wonderful. Lungs are fully developed. Except for his low birth weight, you wouldn’t know he was a preemie. The doctor wondered if you might have even gotten your due date wrong.”
Morgan kissed her son’s little cheek. “It’s okay, little Wayne, Mama’s here.”
Blair caught her breath. “Wayne. You named him after Pop.” She looked down at the tiny bundle, nestled in Morgan’s arms, and tears came to her eyes.
The baby kept screaming, and Morgan pulled him gently up to her shoulder and kissed his cheek as she rubbed his back. His crying settled as his mother whispered and cooed to him, and finally he was silent.
Morgan brought him back down and cradled him in her arm, and he looked up at her with clear, round eyes. “You look like you know everything,” Morgan whispered. “Like you’re wiser than I am. You came here straight from God. What do you know, little one? What could you tell us?”
Blair watched, awed, as her sister—the proverbial Earth Mother—settled into the role she’d prepared for all her life. The most important role she would ever play.
“Thank You, God.” Morgan’s prayer was tearful. “Thank You so much. We don’t deserve such a precious gift. Make us worthy. Please make us worthy of him.”
Jonathan leaned over and kissed the top of Morgan’s head, then touched his son’s round cheek. “God will equip us. This child’s too precious for Him to leave to chance. He has a plan for our boy, and He’ll tell us what it is.”
Emotions so overwhelmed Blair that she could hardly stand. Would she love a baby of her own even more than this? Could she?
She watched the young family, basking in the glow of the newness of such a gift, and for a moment, she could have sworn she saw her mother and father standing there behind them, bent over this little bundle, proud grandparent smiles on their faces, tears of joy in their eyes.
Her heart ached to reach out for them, to throw herself into their arms, to touch their faces one more time
, to take a deep breath of their scents—a breath that would get her through the next year. Just one breath, she thought. Just one touch.
But then she realized her eyes hadn’t really seen them. Her heart just felt them near. She squeezed her mouth tight as the tears rolled down her face.
“Look at him, Mama,” Morgan whispered. “See how beautiful he is, Pop?” She sucked in a sob and looked up at Blair. For a moment their tearful gazes locked …
And Blair knew.
Their parents were here, somewhere, somehow … Maybe just the history, and all the years of their watching over their daughters, had brought them to Morgan’s and Blair’s minds at the same time. Maybe it was the longing. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.
Or maybe they really were here, watching the event and rooting them on. Maybe God let them have glimpses like this that would make them rejoice, and show them that things were turning out fine.
“Want to hold him, Blair?” Jonathan asked softly.
She nodded, hoping she didn’t get the baby wet. She watched, amazed, as Jonathan lifted him carefully from Morgan’s arms and put him into her own. She held him, squirming in her arms, and he opened his eyes and squinted up at her. “Hey there, little fella” She barely managed the words through the emotion in her throat. “You know, you’ve got a pretty big name to live up to. I hope you’re up for it.”
He wiggled, indicating he was, and then he kicked his foot and brought his fists up in the air, and groaned irritably. Not sure what to do, she gave him to his father. Jonathan sat down with him and spoke to him softly until he settled down.
“You’ll have to have a girl now,” Blair whispered, “so you can name one after Mama.”
“Or you could.” Morgan smiled.
Blair looked down at her, realizing for the first time that she really could be next. She looked down at the diamond on her finger. It was real. She was going to marry Cade and have his children.
Unless something terrible happened tonight …
When Morgan started to nurse her son, Jonathan pulled Blair out into the hall. “Wanna tell me now what’s going on with Sadie?”