Danger In The Shadows (17 page)

When Dave sat down in one of the deep chairs and Adam in another, she returned to her seat. “Why are you here?”

“I was curious to see if you had decided on your next book project or not,” Dave replied.

“You know what I’ve decided.” She rubbed her eyes. “Have you told him yet?”

“Not my secret to tell.”

“I write more than children’s books, Adam. Those are also my books.” She gestured toward a bookcase to the right. It went from floor to ceiling, and every book spine was black with one word written in blood red.
Shawn. Tara. Benjamin. Scott. Jennifer.
All books by H. Q. Victor. Translated into dozens of languages.

“I am two people, Adam—the children’s author and illustrator who can still feel the innocence of being a child and the person who at age six met evil face-to-face. Through H. Q. Victor, the part of me that saw the evil gets to have a voice.”

Adam stared at the books, feeling chills creep up his spine as he recognized and remembered those he had read. They were bestsellers because the stories were detailed, complex, and vivid. They packed an emotional punch that made you feel like someone had robbed you of your breath.

Sara was H. Q. Victor. The insight it revealed into who she was made it difficult to keep his perspective. There was rage in those books, controlled, focused, but there. A deadly rage.

It was out of step with everything he had seen in her to date.

It wasn’t that he thought of her as a victim. She handled the situation she was in with too much courage and dignity for him to think of her that way. But he had never thought of her as aggressively angry, and now he wondered why he hadn’t. It was the logical reaction to her situation. In fact, not seeing her anger should have been a red flag that something was wrong. No one in her situation could sit back and accept it, not if she were to stay sane.

The books were a direct attack against the man who had killed Kim and who still stalked her.

It was like being handed a dictionary and suddenly understanding what the words meant.

Sara was being driven by this stalker, her life controlled for twenty-five years by this faceless man. She was fighting back by giving him a face, letting him try to win, and always having the law catch him in the end.

Adam scanned the books, counting the titles. Nine. How many more would it take before she could finally release the memories? Would the anger ever fade?

No wonder she was forcing a distance between them. She was fighting a war with this man, and it was taking everything she had. She was back in the past; there wasn’t room for the present, wasn’t room to plan a future.

“Dave, you know I’m doing Kim’s and my story as the next H. Q. Victor book. I have authorization to use all the case material the FBI gathered as I write it. I’m going to nail his face. It’s in my mind. I know it. Writing this book, reliving it in careful detail, is going to give me that face.”

“Sara, are you crazy?” When Dave had said she was reviewing the case files it was one thing, but to write a book and force herself to literally relive what had happened?

Adam’s exclamation earned him a scorched look from her and a warning one from Dave.

“Hypnosis couldn’t bring back that face. All you’re doing is adding to your suffering.”

“It will work, Dave. It has to. The buttons on the first man’s shirt—nothing in these reports or all the therapy afterward ever mentioned them, but I know what they look like now.”

She dug through a stack of paper and found a sketch. “They were metal, the type that could be shined, and the third button had a flattened edge to it on the left side. I can get the images in my mind accurately onto paper now. I didn’t have the technical skills to do that before. I do now.”

Dave looked at the sketch. “You think you can remember the same details of the second man?” There was real hope in his voice.

“Yes.”

Adam got up to pace the room as Dave and Sara talked, not liking where their discussion was heading. Sara was in no shape to be doing this.

He stopped to run a finger along the spines of the books she had written.

Her first instinct when she had seen him had been to flee. She didn’t trust him. She might like him, even love him, but she didn’t trust him.

He needed her to trust him, to be able to say anything to him, not to be worried about his reaction. He had seen it in her eyes—the fear of rejection, had seen it in her stiff spine and heard it in her tight words. Her rejection hurt.

What do I do, Lord? How do I reach her?

She needed him. If she was determined to walk into her nightmare, she needed someone to talk to. Not surface level talk, but gut level talk. Someone to share the memories that made her panic. The fear. The rage. Dave was too close to the case; he would push for details without realizing it was time to pull back.

Adam looked back at Sara talking with her brother. She thought she could do it herself by directing the memories to paper. He knew she couldn’t. He had watched his father’s peaceful death less than a year before, and the memories of that day were still vicious. If Sara got close to her complete memories of what had happened during those nine days…she was not going to be able to walk alone through that minefield.

He was staying until she got her answers or was ready to let it go. His mind was set. She would hate it, but he didn’t intend to give her an option.

The discussion between Sara and Dave had turned into a semiargument.

“You’ve got to sleep, and it’s apparent you are not.”

“The memories come,” Sara replied, stacking papers.

Adam decided it was time to interrupt before Dave threatened her with medical intervention. That would be a match to dry timber right now. “What did Frank do when you were a child and these dreams plagued your sleep?” Adam asked her, hoping there was an answer to the question.

“He’d saddle his horse, set me up in front of him, and we’d ride for hours. I’d eventually fall asleep.” Sara’s face tinged momentarily with a distant smile, the memory a good one.

“The old-fashioned way of taking a crying baby for a car ride,” Dave remarked.

“Something like that.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go riding,” Adam decided. “Sara, you are going to get a good night’s sleep tonight, and it can be through sleeping pills or a horseback ride. Your choice.”

“That’s hardly a safe thing to do at the moment,” Dave protested.

“You can arrange it.”

“Why take the risk?”

“Dave, find us a couple horses. You can come along if you like,” Sara said, ending the discussion.

Adam followed Dave and Sara to the barn. Twenty minutes later, with a quiet word to Quinton to lay out their path and the security that would accompany them, they were riding.

Adam kept his arms loose on the reins. Sara settled comfortably against him, and he gave her a gentle hug in appreciation. “I’ve missed you something fierce,” he told her as they followed Dave.

“I missed you too, but it’s immaterial. We can’t have a future, Adam.”

He didn’t reply, thinking through what he had seen and heard that evening.

“There’s something else you haven’t told me, isn’t there? Something pretty big,” he concluded. She was too intent on separating them for there not to be something else.

His question surprised her. He felt her stiffen. He prayed she had the courage to tell him.

The minutes passed as they rode. He felt the moment she finally made her decision; her head bowed forward and her shoulders sagged.

She shifted in the saddle and leaned her head back against his shoulder, looking up at the vastness of the night sky. Through the silvery moonlight he could see tears slip down her cheeks.

“I used to imagine having children—four, five, with dozens of grandchildren. We would have family barbecues and Fourth of July celebrations, and it would be a family who fought and cared for each other.” She was silent as she cried. Finally she said, “I can’t have children, Adam.”

Her eyes looked toward him. “I can make books for them, tell them stories, bake cookies, and baby-sit, but I’ll never have children of my own.”

Adam couldn’t reply. He had no reply. He could barely breathe. Not have children with her? It was one of his core dreams for his future, being a father, raising his children.

Why hadn’t she told him sooner? He didn’t need another sucker punch tonight. She had already delivered one with the H. Q. Victor books.

Anger surged inside him, but it had nowhere to go. When should she have told him? Before his heart had been involved? It had been involved from the earliest days of having met her. Getting angry at her now would only injure himself. He was hurt. He could imagine how she must feel.

Time slipped by as he fought to keep his emotions in check.

She can’t have children.

He felt sick.

“Sara, I am so sorry.”

His arms closed gently around her midriff, his hands splayed across a womb that would never carry his children. He wanted so badly to have somewhere to direct his pain.

Why this, God? Why have You given her a life where everything good is denied her? Safety? Loving parents? Stability? Marriage? Children?

He had to get his anger under control. Life didn’t come on his terms. If it did, they wouldn’t be in this situation. God allowed much more pain to enter their lives than Adam would ever understand. Was this revelation worth losing Sara over? That was how important a matter this was.

Adam turned her into his shoulder, brushing away the tears that continued to fall, taking a deep
,
steadying breath.

“It doesn’t change anything. I don’t love you any less,” he said softly.

He felt her jerk.

“You surprised me with the H. Q. Victor books, but that’s okay. They weren’t exactly something you could just mention.”

“Adam.”

“Shh.” He eased her head back down on his shoulder. “Give me some time to adjust. I can hear how raw the issue of children is in your heart. You’ve made a decision that we can’t have a future together because of that fact. Maybe you’re right. But it’s a decision we will both have to make. You can’t make this one unilaterally.”

“You would resent a marriage where you couldn’t have children.”

“That’s an awfully big assumption.”

Sara rubbed his arm. “Am I right?”

Adam didn’t know how to answer her. The pain cut too deep for there to be a simple answer. “I’ll have to think about it, Sara. I don’t know.”

They rode in silence for a while, following Dave.

Her hand pressed against his chest. “I’m glad you came to the ranch.”

Adam answered her whisper with a soft kiss against her hair.

Ten minutes later, she was asleep.

Adam moved his embrace, a hand around her waist, the other supporting her shoulders and neck, content to hold her as she slept.

Dave had dropped back to join him when the quiet words between them had died away. “She asleep?”

“Yes.”

Dave shifted in his saddle. “It is beautiful country, isn’t it? The heavens unlike anything someone who lives in the city would ever see.”

“It is magnificent.” Countless stars stretched across the horizon. Adam tried to keep his attention on the here and now and not on the bomb Sara had just dropped.

Did Dave know Sara couldn’t have children? It was a hard question for Adam to consider. It surprised him, but he almost thought Dave didn’t know. Sara was a lady who kept her secrets deep. She wouldn’t like pity. She might not have told her brother.

“I think this is why she comes to the ranch, to see the panorama, to feel closer to God.”

“Is she going to be okay, Dave? Reliving what happened?”

“I don’t know. The files that have been released to her are only the factual files: the depositions of witnesses, the physical evidence. But there are other files—the speculations, the options—that were used to help put context to the facts she had been able to recall. Frankly, most of the child psychologists who worked with Sara were against pursuing her memories.”

“Dave, she’s already split into two people—Sara Walsh and H. Q. Victor. We’ve both read her H. Q. Victor books. She’s been reliving those nine days of captivity in different ways with each one.”

“I know. So maybe now is the time for her to try to remember the rest of it. But I’ve been through these flashbacks with her. It’s not pretty. There is little I can say that is going to prep you for what they’ll be like.”

They turned and rode in silence back to the ranch. Dave took a sleeping Sara from Adam’s arms. Stable hands were there to take the horses.

“Her bedroom is the last one on the right,” Dave said softly as they walked down the hall. Adam turned down the blankets and helped Dave ease her down.

Dave turned on the bedside light. Adam stopped his question. Of course Sara slept with a light on.

“Come on, I’ll point out a guest room.”

Adam wearily opened his suitcase and prepared for bed. He was exhausted.

“I can’t have children.”
The statement ran as a refrain in his mind, adding another reason to why Sara had been trying so hard to distance herself from him. His love of kids and desire to have a family had not exactly been a tightly held secret.

The bed was comfortable; the ceiling above was wooden timber to continue the theme in the house.

“I can’t have children.”
There was something about the way she had said it that lingered at the edge of his mind, refusing to let the words slip away. He puzzled over what was disturbing him but found no answers. It was the most emotional statement she had made to him since telling him Kim died; maybe that’s what was troubling him. He shifted restlessly on the bed.
God, I missed something. I don’t know what. But I missed something critical. Help me out. Please.

He drifted off to sleep thinking about Sara.

C
HAPTER
15

T
he morning was overcast, a heavy blanket of low altitude clouds hanging in the air. Adam stood at the kitchen window studying the sky as he listened to Dave and Sara argue.

He had known them since early July and had never heard them seriously fight before, with voices raised and cupboard doors slammed.

Listening to it hurt.

He needed Dave to win, but his friend was going to lose. Sara had decided her plans for the day, and no one was going to change them. There was so much focused anger in her, not at her brother, although he had made himself a target by getting in her way, but at the man she feared.

Today she was revisiting the sites where it had all begun.

Adam had tried to discourage her, only to discover he wasn’t welcome to come along. That stung.

She didn’t want him in danger.

It was a convenient excuse. He knew the truth. She didn’t want him to see the places that haunted her.

She had about as much chance of convincing him to stay behind as Dave had of convincing her not to go. If she wanted to revisit the places that tore her apart, she was going to have a lot of company.

Dave slammed the back door on his way out of the kitchen.

Adam turned.

Sara’s color was high, her face taut.

He finished his hot coffee, hating what he was seeing. She was so brittle. He feared today was going to break her. He set his cup down by the sink, squeezed her shoulder, and gave her privacy for her tears.

He found Dave on the back patio.

“Ben, get three people to the park. I’ll
try
to keep her in the van. Have two people sweep the old farmhouse and put a spotter on the entrance road. At least there we’ve got a line of sight for miles around. We’ll travel in three vehicles.”

Adam stopped beside Dave to look at the map spread out on the table. Dave’s frustration was obvious. He was nearly drilling the paper with his finger.

“Can you give me an hour to get it set up?” Ben asked.

“Even if I have to lock her inside.” Dave’s voice was firm, final.

He was coiled too tight to do anyone any good. Adam wondered if Sara realized by taking this trip, she was forcing Dave to go through it again too.

Dave may not have been in the cellar, but he had spent the nine days blaming himself for not being able to stop what had happened. He had never seen his sister Kim alive again.

Adam knew Dave was still not over the grief. Sara was choosing to relive it. Dave wasn’t given a choice.

“Are you going to be okay?” A lousy question, but there was no good one.

Dave grimaced. “Security is an illusion. If he tries something, all we’ll be able to do is react.”

“Dave, can
you
face it again?”

His friend rubbed his face with the heel of his hand. “I don’t know. I’ve got no choice. The park is the point the nightmare starts for both of us.” He folded the map. “Stay close to her, Adam. I’ve got that tight feeling in my gut that says today is going to be a dangerous day. We still haven’t figured out how he compromised security at the house in Chicago. That guy could be anywhere.”

They left the ranch an hour later in three vehicles. Adam sat beside Sara in the backseat of the van. Travis drove while Dave sat in the passenger seat. Dave was in constant motion, scanning the road and talking to the lead and chase cars over the radio.

Adam could feel Sara’s tension. She sat stiff, a sketch pad resting in her lap, her hands tight around the cardboard spine.

There might as well be a wall between them. High. Impenetrable. Her thoughts today were private.

Adam watched the passing countryside, hoping there would one day be an opportunity to come back and explore the country Sara had loved as a child without this threat hanging over them. He could understand why she called this place home. It was a great expanse of open land. It fit her need for freedom.

The interstate eventually led into the city. They slowed and entered city traffic.

No one had to tell him when they reached the point of town near the park. Sara and Dave both sat up straighter, tense.

It was an upscale neighborhood. They turned a corner. Up ahead on the right was an oasis of trees.

“It’s changed. They’ve widened the streets. There were not stoplights before,” Sara said, looking around.

The park was large. The van slowed and drove along the quiet street. They entered the park from the north. The road wound past picnic benches and small parking lots.

Sara touched Travis’s shoulder. “Stop up there by the bridge over the pond.”

The van pulled to a stop.

There was silence as Sara and Dave looked around.

“There was playground equipment there on the grassy knoll. Mom was there, to the right. The van drove right over this curb.”

Sara was back in the past. Adam could hear the memories, the raw pain. His hand gripped hers. It was hard to listen to the quiet words.

The scene was peaceful. The sun had come out making it a beautiful day. It looked nothing like what it really was— a place nightmares had been born.

“Dave, I want to get out.”

Her brother didn’t argue. Several agents had already formed a perimeter.

Sara stepped from the van.

Adam stayed beside her as she resolutely walked across the grass. Her steps didn’t hesitate until she reached the grassy knoll. She turned and looked back toward the van.

She studied the view. “This is about where Kim and I were,” she decided. “Where were you, Dave?”

Her brother pointed. “There.”

Adam watched her close her eyes, swallowing hard. She opened her eyes and looked around. “It’s been, what, five years since we last came here?”

“About that. Anything new strike you?”

“The trees have grown.” She shivered. “The place gives me the creeps.”

“It should. Come on, let’s get back to the van.” They had been outside ten minutes now, and it was obvious Dave wanted her behind the tinted safety glass.

Sara was reluctant to move. “There has to be something here. It’s those first few moments that hold the most promise. Before I realized the threat was directed at me, at Kim, at you. What’s here that I’m missing?”

Dave squeezed her hand. “Don’t, Sara. You haven’t been missing anything.”

After another two minutes, Dave tried again. “Come on, Sara. This isn’t safe.”

This time she let Dave tug her away from the danger.

The town traffic was heavy with the lunchtime rush hour. Sara barely seemed to notice. Adam watched as she drew a sketch of the view from the grassy knoll. The lines conveyed a sense of menace beneath the peaceful appearance.

When her sketch was finished, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

It was a long ride to the farmhouse.

What had it been like for her and Kim, riding over this or similar roads, not knowing where they were being taken? Every minute must have seemed an eternity.

Adam tried to flex muscles stiff with tension. He didn’t look forward to what they were about to see.

Sara abruptly sat forward, momentarily unclipping her seat belt so she could reach the briefcase by her feet. She withdrew a thick folder.

Adam watched her, curious. Her face was intense.

Pictures.

Adam knew in a matter of moments what the pictures were from. He had seen one of them before. The faxed photo of her pearl hair clasp.

The stack was deep. She turned through them in order, looking for something Adam could only guess at. Each sent memento represented another source of terror. Letters. Objects.

Dave had told him the packages had become more frequent and more personal over the years and were arriving now on almost a preset schedule.

She stopped at one picture, pulled it from the stack, and looked at the date on the back.

Blue hair ribbons.

Sara looked ready to cry.

Adam grasped her hand as she looked at the picture of the evidence.

“He marked my sixteenth birthday with this package,” she whispered.

A lifetime of anticipating every important date in her life with dread rather than joy. Adam wrapped his arm around her and tugged her to his chest. He carefully took the photo from her hand. He didn’t have to ask if the hair ribbons had been something special to her as a child. The man would have chosen the cruelest thing he could.

“I’m sorry, Sara.” There had been a lifetime of birthdays and Christmas holidays ripped apart by packages. Someday he would be able to start making those memories up to her.

“So am I,” she whispered.

Her hand against his shirt suddenly clenched. Adam felt the tremors she fought off. His hand smoothed her hair, his arm around her shoulders tightened. She wasn’t strong enough to do this. The past was too big an abyss.

He had no hope of changing her mind.
Help her survive this, God. Please.

They eventually turned off the highway.

Dust, heat, ruts in the road. That was Adam’s initial impression of their destination. The land was barren, rocky, the ground a pale brown clay. Dirt devils swirled in the air.

If this had once been a farmhouse, time and nature had reduced it to an uninhabitable remnant. Their van pulled to a stop beside the other two vehicles. Dave left them to sit in the van while he spoke to the other agents.

“I don’t suppose I can ask you to stay here.” Sara sat up and ruthlessly cleared her face of any emotion.

Adam simply shook his head. “No.” She was afraid to show him this place. The fact she couldn’t yet trust him with the deepest wound of all was hard to accept. He had no choice. She did it in self-defense to avoid his rejection. He was going to have to show her that her fear was unfounded. No matter what she told him, he was not turning away from her. He loved her too much; to turn away would be to rip out his own heart.

Dave opened the door. The dry heat rolled into the air-conditioned interior. “Are you sure about this, Sara?”

She stepped out of the van. “I’m sure.”

She walked with purpose across the uneven ground and around the dilapidated house. Adam found the coarse grass was sharp even through his socks. They passed a well, red-colored slivers of rust dusting the ground at the base of the pump handle. A hay barn, part of its roof collapsed, leaned in the distance, pushed by wind.

Desolate. Forsaken. The wind a lonely, hollow whistle. The sounds intensified the emotions.

To be left here, forgotten… Adam looked over at Sara and saw her jaw was locked. This place was having its full effect.

A good fifty feet behind the house, Sara came to a stop.

The cellar.

Boards in one of the two doors had rotted. One of the hinges had given way. The slide bolt no longer bore a padlock.

Dust drifted around in the sunlight.

She looked down at the rotting boards of the cellar door, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Open it, Dave.”

The doors came back with a loud creak.

She didn’t step near for several minutes, just stood looking at the dark chamber the sunlight struggled to penetrate. Dave stood by, watching her like a hawk.

She finally stepped forward, put her hand on the door-sill, and ducked her head to step inside. She didn’t pause to let herself think about it.

The root cellar stank with the smell of decades of rot. She could stand after a fashion. Spiderwebs smeared her hands and dried-up bugs crunched under her boots. The shivers were not from the sudden coolness.

The cellar was deeper than she remembered, more narrow. Her hands could reach out and touch both walls.

Scarred into the side of the cellar wall were the distant traces of her struggle to get free. She had dug out quite an impression with her bare hands trying to yank from the wall the source of her restraints. She rubbed her wrists as she looked at that reminder.

She had thought she could get the restraints free, but her best effort had not been good enough. She had failed.

If she had been able to get free, Kim would still be alive. That fact still ate away inside her heart every day. She carried the guilt. She had failed to keep her sister safe.

She had seen this place many times before in the crimescene photos, had been brought back here as a child. She and Dave had returned here on two previous occasions. She looked around carefully, forcing the fear not to overwhelm her. There had to be something here.

It was only a place now. The taste in her mouth was bitter.

This was reality.

This was where life as she had known it had ceased to exist. This was her cross to bear.

Sunlight filtered in, casting her shadow across the place Kim had been.

The tears were too deep in her heart to fall. Like the park, there was nothing here to remember, only to relive. The darkness gripped her and this time it did not let go.

He had won.

“Is she asleep?” Adam asked.

Dave wearily sat down in the nearby office chair. “Yes. She finally cried herself to sleep.” His voice was ragged.

Adam looked over at his friend. They were feeling the same pain. “She’ll leave with us in the morning, give up this quest?”

“She said she would.”

Adam had never spent a more horrible day in his life. They had watched Sara shatter. It had been a slow fracture as they drove back to the ranch.

Neither one of them could do anything but watch. Adam still felt the hit his heart had taken. She had rested her head against his shoulder and just started crying.

She had never stopped.

“Where does she go next?” He looked over at Dave. He saw the man hesitate, then take a drink from the soda can he held.

“Seattle. They are finalizing arrangements now. They found a private place on the coast, a loft with good sunlight for her studio. Remote. She can walk for miles along the shore.”

It was as good a fit as Dave could create. Even so, Adam could hear the sound of defeat in his friend’s voice. Dave would take a bullet for his sister. To watch what had happened to Sara today had ripped him to shreds. Uprooting her again, even for her own protection, was tearing at his soul.

“Will she be okay?”