Dark Lie (9781101607084) (3 page)

TWO

J
uliet.

My daughter.

Being taken away.

Shock froze me so stupid I couldn't react, couldn't think, couldn't conceptualize
captured, kidnapped, abducted.
All I could think, incredulous, was
He hit her. He hurt her.
I should have screamed, yelled for mall security, run to head off the van, but I'd been secret and ashamed and silent for so long that I couldn't react. I just stood there watching the van roll toward the parking lot exit.

My daughter.

I still couldn't scream, but I jerked into action. Sprinting to my car—I wouldn't have believed my aching body could move that fast—I fumbled in my purse for the car keys, couldn't find them; the confounded things always burrowed in the sludge at the bottom, and whoever had invented handbags deserved to be hung by the ears. . . . There. Keys. Hands shaking, I unlocked my blue Kia, jammed myself into the driver's seat, started the car, and thank God there was nobody parked in the space across from mine. If I'd needed to back out, it would have been too late. But as I floored it and slewed across the parking lot in wild defiance of designated traffic patterns, I caught sight of the van at the mall entrance's traffic light.

Turning left.

Heading out of Fulcrum on the state highway.

But when I got to the light it was red, and several cars stood between me and that left turn. Meanwhile, I could see the van maybe a quarter mile away, accelerating toward flat, open Ohio countryside.

I'd never in my life run a red light, not even by mistake, not even as a teen driver. I didn't know
how
to run a red light. But stopping was not an option. Bearing down on the gas, I aimed my car toward—I'm not sure. I think I shot between the cars waiting to turn left and the cars waiting to go straight. I heard metal clash against metal; I think I tore somebody's mirror off. I know I hoped somebody would call the cops and report me as I swerved left, other people's brakes screeching and horns protesting on both sides of me.

Call. Police.

Taking off after the van, I groped in my purse for my cell phone, found it without too much hassle, flipped it open, and brought it to my ear. Dial tone. Yes. Peering through my windshield for glimpses of the van far ahead of me, trying to get over into the left lane, and trying to locate the 9-1-1 buttons on the phone, I cut somebody off, swerved as his horn trumpeted in my ear, and very nearly sideswiped the car I was passing. This was the first time in my life I'd committed such blatant vehicular offenses. Where were the police when I needed them? If only an officer would pull me over, I could call out the cavalry, send them after the van. But no, all I got was a monotone, staticky voice in my ear saying, “County Control; what is the nature of your emergency?”

“Juliet Phillips has been abducted from the mall parking lot by a man in a van,” I said rapidly and, I thought, cogently.

“Ma'am? State the nature of your problem, please.”

“I
told
you. Juliet Phillips—”

“Is that your name, ma'am? Julie Smith?”

It would have been funny if it weren't that something was roaring like an animal inside my ears, my head hurt, my insides seemed to have turned to water, and I felt as if I might throw up. “That's the
girl's
name!” I found myself yelling. “She's been abducted.
Kidnapped,
” I corrected myself. A kidnapper would want money, that was all. The Phillips family could pay. The kidnapper would let Juliet go. He would not—do anything to her; he would not hurt her. She was being kidnapped, not abducted. “Kidnapped,” I repeated. “A man in a van hit her over the head with his cane and took her away.”

“Describe the man, please.”

“Um, Caucasian, maybe in his thirties or forties, not fat or anything, kind of average . . .”

“And where—”

“At the mall! The Fulcrum mall.”

“Is that where you're calling from, ma'am?”

“No! I'm following them. They're heading south on the Old Buckeye Pike. You need to get somebody to stop that van.”

“What van, ma'am?”

“The kidnapper's van!”

“Make and model?”

I had no idea. Had never paid much attention to cars. “I can see it from here,” I said, hating myself for sounding like a child. Far ahead of me the van's rear looked like a square of bread. In any normal place with hills, I wouldn't have been able to see it at that distance at all. “It's kind of beige,” I said, “or silver. A light silver brown. Kind of taupe.” Excitedly my mind seized upon the exact comparison. “Actually, it's the color of a Weimaraner.”

The dispatcher sounded unimpressed. “License number?”

“I don't know! It's a big van. It has kind of darker brown stripes on the sides.”

“Ohio plates?”

“Um, I don't know. It has a wheel cover on back,” I supplied helpfully, “with a design that looks kind of like one of those diagrams in a doctor's office of the female reproductive tract—you know, the ovaries and the uterus and . . . and stuff.”

The dispatcher's tone of voice declared me a nutcase. “Recent model?”

I felt tears stinging in my eyes. “Listen, I'll call you back when I get closer.” I started to set the phone aside.

“Ma'am! Ma'am, I need you to stay on the line. Your name and location?”

“My name, um . . .”

Nobody was supposed to know about me.

Thumbing buttons blindly, I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. I blinked hard. No time for tears right now. Clutching the steering wheel with both hands, I stepped on the gas. And if the car was shaking, so what? So was I.

This was definitely my day for new ventures into automotive danger. I pushed the Kia up to ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, and still nary a police cruiser appeared in my rearview mirror. But I was getting closer to the van, and I could see it better now, including its Weimaraner-colored wheel cover with the white design that looked like ovaries, et cetera, on it.

And probably the driver, if he was looking at his rearview mirror, could see me tearing after him.

Did I want him to know I was following? If I got close enough to read the bastard's license plate, he was sure to notice me. And then what would he do, and what might happen to Juliet? How could I keep her safe? What was I going to do until County Control got its act together and the police showed up?

I had no idea.

Slowing down, I blended back into the right lane, three cars behind the van, and tried to think.

But all I could think was
Juliet. Daughter.
Was she still unconscious? Or awake and crying? Or trying to talk the driver into letting her go? I didn't have any idea how Juliet might be reacting. Would she get hysterical? Would she do something impulsive and dangerous, break a window, try to jump? Would she get angry, mouthy? Or would she be thinking, watching, ready to seize a chance to escape?

I didn't know.

I didn't know my own daughter.

If I sped up and hung by the van's left rear corner till I could call the cops with the make, model, and license number, then the kidnapper would notice me for sure. And then what? He'd get away, that was what. He wouldn't wait for the police to come and stop him. He'd go tearing off, maybe take a side road, and being male, not to mention being criminal, he'd probably had a lot more practice at speeding than I had. Plus I had a feeling a big van could go faster than a Kia.

Unless . . . maybe I could get in front of him quick, cut him off, make him slow down so Juliet could jump . . .

And break her neck, probably. Get run over. Killed.

I stayed where I was, following the van from a discreet distance. I thought of phoning Sam, my husband, but how could he help and what could I say? He knew nothing about this—my other life, my daughter. I would call him as soon as I had figured out what to tell him. Meanwhile, I trailed that van like toilet paper stuck to a shoe. It was all I could do.

* * *

Three hours passed. Three hours and forty-one minutes, actually.

I kept telling myself that as long as he was still driving the van, he couldn't have hurt Juliet. Or not much.

And sometime he was going to have to stop for gas.

I still had more than half a tank. I'd started off the day with a full tank, and on the highway the Kia got forty miles to the gallon. The van couldn't possibly get mileage like that. He'd have to stop soon.

On the other hand, the van probably had a much bigger tank of gasoline than my car did—

I bit my lip to discipline the doubt away.

About that time I saw green highway signs ahead, and a jumble of motels, fast-food restaurants, gas stations. We were coming up to the interstate.

I stiffened as I saw the van's right turn signal flashing. Now what? Where was he taking her?

Into the Exxon.

I breathed out.

And swerved into the BP just before the Exxon.

I pulled around back of the building and lurched out of the Kia, leaving it running, leaning against its door with one hand until I could stand upright. My lupus doesn't affect my organs—yet—thank God, but it gnaws at my skin, my muscles, my connective tissue, and my bones, especially my spine. After so many hours in the driver's seat, my back was screaming.

When the pain subsided enough so I could walk, I limped around the corner of the BP building, head down, fumbling in my purse for a pen while I looked for the van through a screen of my own limp hair. Not like Juliet's anymore, my hair, not sleek and brown with golden lights, but faded and grayed to the color of a squirrel.

There. The van had pulled in for gas with its rear end and passenger doors toward me, the pumps on the other side. The driver stood over there pumping gas. I could see him only indistinctly, through a blur of the van's window glass, but I could clearly see the license plate, and I could see—

I choked back a scream.

I could see Juliet sitting in the passenger seat.

She was conscious. Sitting up.

To me she looked as pale and fragile as a porcelain swan. How could everyone not see she was in trouble?

Yet, because there she was in full sight, everyone assumed she was all right. Sitting there in the front seat. Not duct-taped or handcuffed or anything.

But—but if she wasn't physically injured or tied hand and foot, why didn't she run, flee, escape? This was her chance, with the kidnapper on the far side of the van from her. Why didn't she dash into the Exxon and tell somebody to call the police?

Maybe she was thinking about it. She turned her head slightly. I saw her frozen face.

I understood. Or thought I did.

She was the way I had been.

A good girl. Obedient.

I wanted to run to her, shake her, yell at her to snap out of it and run, run—

Already the chance had passed. The kidnapper was hanging up the gas nozzle. As he screwed the lid onto his gas tank, I peered at his license number and wrote it down on the palm of my left hand. The chrome lettering on the van, I saw, read
DODGE RAM
.

Aaak. That white design on the Weimaraner-colored wheel cover was supposed to be an abstract front-view rendering of a ram's head. I had given it a Rorschach inkblot interpretation.

The kidnapper strode around the rear of the van.

Hastily I turned away so he wouldn't see me watching him. With my back to him, I opened a door in the side of the BP station and walked in.

I found myself in a rather rudimentary bathroom, and suddenly realized how badly I needed to use it.

Quickly, though. A minute later, when I peeked out, the van was still at the pump and Juliet was still sitting woodenly in the passenger seat. I hadn't lost them.

The kidnapper seemed to be paying for his gas inside the Exxon. He would be smart to do that, use cash so as not to leave a paper trail. If I could get to Juliet—

No, already it was too late. Here he came.

With one eye to the crack in the door, I watched as he strode across the parking lot to his vehicle. I wanted to have a description of him to give to the police. But I saw little more than before. Nothing special about his build, his weight, his height. Average, average, average. Khaki slacks, blue Windbreaker, baseball cap. Face mostly turned away from me, shadowed by his hat. About all I could see was the pale outline of one cheekbone, yet I felt a chill snake up my spine and coil in the hair at the nape of my neck, making me want to hide. I fought an impulse to close the door and stay in the bathroom.

Juliet.

Where was he taking her? Farther down the Old Buckeye Pike? Or onto the interstate?

Couldn't hide. Had to follow.

The kidnapper, with his back to me, had almost reached his van. Closing the bathroom door gently behind me, I trotted around the corner to where I'd left my car running. It was still there. Sighing with relief, I wedged my hind end into the driver's seat, put the Kia in gear, and nosed it out from behind the BP just in time to see the van pulling away from the Exxon pump.

I waited. Didn't want the kidnapper to see me following. After he'd made his turn onto the highway, I pulled forward just enough so that I could see past the Exxon to watch the interchange. The kidnapper could either continue south on the state route or head east or west on the interstate.

He pulled into the left turn lane to head up the ramp on the other side of the overpass. Interstate, eastbound.

It was time to call the cops again. They'd have to pay attention now.

I pulled out of the BP, positioned myself in the correct lane with several cars between me and the van, stopped to wait for the traffic light to turn green, then reached toward the passenger seat for my cell phone.

It wasn't there.

Excuse me?

I peered at the passenger seat where I'd tossed the phone, then at the passenger-seat foot well. No phone.