Did You Miss Me? (54 page)

‘Thank you, Agent Novak,’ Daphne said quietly. ‘For watching over my son.’

He smiled at her. ‘He’s a good kid. Who feels terrible about the way he treated you last night, by the way. He told me to tell you that. I think he could use a visit.’

‘I’ll go as soon as Joseph can free up someone to go over with me. And don’t volunteer,’ she said when Deacon started to do just that. ‘I want you to be alert and rested in case Beckett comes after Ford again. Go to sleep, Agent Novak.’

When he was gone, Joseph leaned in closer to her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had the certificate in your purse?’

‘I really didn’t find it until after you’d left my room. I had a nightmare the night before last but Kate was there and I didn’t want to show her the certificate I have hidden at home. I didn’t know any of this was connected to Beckett then or I would have told her.’

‘But when I came to get you and told you Bo was suspicious, why not then?’

‘You needed to be surprised in front of the others, I thought. Genuinely surprised. Otherwise they’d start doubting your objectivity. Bo did, didn’t he?’

Joseph had no intention of answering that question. ‘I need to brief Hector. If you’re ready to go, I’ll take you with me and you can visit Ford.’

She regarded him for a moment, head slightly tilted. ‘Five out of ten.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your score. For diverting me from my question. If you want to improve, watch your father with your mother. He’s a smooth diverter. I’m sorry Bo gave you a hard time.’

‘He’s just annoyed because the raid on the Russians was a bust.’

She smiled. ‘That was an eight out of ten.’

‘I’d give you the same score – for putting off the confrontation with your son,’ he said and watched her eyes flicker. ‘Come on, Daphne. Your son loves you. Let’s go see him.’

Baltimore, Maryland, Thursday, December 5, 10.30
A.M.

Cole woke to find everything dark. But not pitch dark. More a hazy dark, like peeking through a blanket.

Reality returned in an icy wave.
That’s because I’m under a blanket
. And not just one. Based on the weight that covered him, he was under at least two, maybe three of the fuckers. And he was tied. Hands behind his back, ankles crossed. He tried to open his mouth and couldn’t.

Kimberly
. The shovel. And . . . duct tape. The bitch had bound and gagged him with the same duct tape he’d used on her during the night.

Mitch, if I ever see you again, I’m going to fucking kill you
. And Cole meant that. Mostly. He struggled against the tape, but the more he struggled, the harder it was to breathe. His heart pounding like the whole damn marching band, he gave up.

I will fucking kill you, Mitch
.
Now I mean that more than mostly
.

Somebody had to come at some point. Mitch. Matt. Even the damn sheriff was starting to sound good.

No, I’m not going that far
. The sheriff would arrest him first and ask questions maybe never. Not with all the shit Mitch had in the basement.
Guns
.
Cash
.
A girl
.

God
. He drew a breath and held it.
Relax
.
You’ll never get free if you don’t relax
.

But panic took hold and wouldn’t let him go.
Relax or you’ll suffocate
. The air was so totally not fresh.
By the time help comes you’ll be dead
. Tears pricked his eyes.

God
.
What am I gonna do now?

Wheeling, West Virginia, Thursday, December 5, 10.30
A.M.

‘How do you want to handle this?’ Joseph asked Agent Kerr as the two of them plus Daphne and McManus gathered at the entrance to the bus station.

In the end, they’d used a combination of their ideas to locate Mark O’Hurley, who worked for Appa-Natural Gas, serving a large portion of the Appalachian area thirty years before. They’d found an ad with the bobcat logo in an old-fashioned phone book in the library, used Better Business Bureau records to locate the name of the business owners, now retired, their company defunct. But the owner of Appa-Natural Gas had a good memory and a willingness to gossip. Unfortunately he had a wife who hadn’t seen the need to keep thirty-year-old records. All of his client lists, invoices, and route maps had been thrown away in an office purge fifteen years before.

Then they’d done a new-fashioned Google search to find O’Hurley himself. He hadn’t been home, but they found neighbors more than willing to talk about Mark.

The old gas company owner remembered needing to fire O’Hurley twenty-five years before after several years of warnings and two DUIs. O’Hurley had developed a serious drinking problem, joining AA after he’d lost everything.

Now Mark O’Hurley worked for the bus station.

And here they were.

Daphne cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me? I’m talking to O’Hurley.’

Joseph looked concerned. ‘He might feel too intimidated to talk to you.’

‘Joseph, don’t you think it’s interesting that the man starts drinking around the time my incident occurred?’

‘Yes, I do. That’s exactly what I meant by intimidating. You’re his personal demon.’

‘He’s gone through AA,’ Daphne said stubbornly. ‘He’ll want to make amends.’

‘Lady’s got a point,’ Kerr said. ‘Let her try, Carter. If he looks like he’s shutting down, we can take over.’

‘All right,’ Joseph agreed. ‘Let’s hurry.’

Daphne searched the faces at the bus station until she found the night watchman. She knew it was the right face when her lungs suddenly deflated and her knees went weak. He was twenty years older, but the shape of his face, the placement of his eyes, hadn’t changed. ‘There he is,’ she murmured, grateful that Joseph was there to put his arm around her waist, keeping her upright.

She drew a steadying breath before approaching him. ‘Excuse me. Mr O’Hurley? Mark O’Hurley?

He looked up from zipping his coat. ‘Yes? Who are you?’

‘My name is Daphne Montgomery. I’m with the state’s attorney’s office in Maryland. These are my colleagues, Special Agents Carter and Kerr, FBI, and Detective McManus, Wheeling PD. We’d like to talk to you about the days you worked for the propane gas delivery company.’

O’Hurley’s eyes flickered. ‘All right. What do you want to know?’

‘November, 1985,’ she said. ‘I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember making a delivery to a cabin in what’s now the wildlife management area?’

‘That was nearly thirty years ago,’ he said, but he’d paled slightly. ‘I made a lot of deliveries out there in those days.’

His hands were trembling, Daphne noted.
He knows
.

‘This is very important,’ she murmured. ‘I’m interested in a day about a week after Halloween. You’d stopped at a cabin to make a delivery and it was late afternoon. Just starting to get dark. As you got out of your truck, the cabin’s owner pulled up next to you in a car. He asked if you’d seen a little girl running around, told you that his sister had dropped off her brat and she’d run off. You told him that if you saw her, you’d bring her back.’ He’d closed his eyes. ‘You do remember, don’t you?’

For a long time he didn’t speak. When he did, his voice was hoarse. ‘I remember.’

‘What do you remember?’ Daphne asked, forcing her voice to remain gentle.

He looked up at her. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Daphne Montgomery. In 1985, I was Daphne Sinclair.’

‘It was you.’ His throat worked as he tried to swallow. ‘You were in my truck, weren’t you? That’s how you got away. You hid under my tarp.’

Surprise had her eyes narrowing. ‘You knew I was there?’

‘Not that day.’

‘When, then? When did you know I’d been there?’

‘Not until a few days after the newspaper headline said you’d been found. I found a little girl’s hair bow in the bed of my truck, under the tarp. Then I remembered a guy asking me if I’d seen a little girl. I wondered if it might be you.’

‘But you didn’t tell anyone?’ The question stuck in her throat.
I’m a damn hypocrite
.

‘I didn’t know for sure. I told myself that one of my own daughters had probably dropped it in the bed, although it had been a year since I’d seen my girls. Because their mother took them away from me.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Because I was a drunk. I was drunk the day you climbed into the back of my truck.’

‘Did you hear about my cousin?’

‘Yeah, I did. I worried about it, worried that I should tell the cops what I’d seen. I even went back to the cabin when the man wasn’t home. I snuck in to see if he was holding anyone. He wasn’t, so I figured I’d got it wrong.’

‘I see.’

‘And then I saw the family interviewed on the news and there was the man from the cabin, cozy with you. I figured maybe the whole thing was a mistake. That you hadn’t really been kidnapped. That you really had run away from that man at the cabin and that your family had . . . handled it in their own way.’

‘Hm.’
Handled it in their own way? Really?
‘I see.’

‘And then a few weeks later the papers said you’d identified your own daddy as the kidnapper. I figured the guy at the cabin was telling the truth after all.’

It was Daphne’s turn to pale.
Oh God
.
This nightmare keeps going on
.

She felt Joseph’s hands on her shoulders a moment before he spoke. ‘I can see how you might have thought that,’ he said, no recrimination in his voice. ‘There was a lot of confusion in the case back then. But today we got new information that the man you talked to at the cabin was the kidnapper. It’s important that we find that cabin. Do you remember where it was?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s been almost thirty years. Even if the place still exists, the roads are going to look different. I just don’t know.’

‘Will you try to help us find it?’ Joseph asked.

‘Now?’ O’Hurley asked, dismayed.

‘It’s important,’ Joseph said again. ‘Please.’

O’Hurley shrugged. ‘I’ll try. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.’

Thursday, December 5, 12.15
P.M.

The police scanner woke Mitch up. A glance at the alarm clock had his eyes bugging out. He’d overslept, seriously so. But all those nights with no sleep and all that driving had finally caught up to him. He’d slept like the dead.

Mitch turned the scanner up. The locals were rousing the troops. EMTs, uniforms, even a helicopter.
Good to know
. Dispatch was putting all personnel on alert. The location was the wildlife management area. Exact coordinates would follow.

Sounded like they’d finally found the cabin. Took them long enough. He wondered if they’d followed Beckett back to it or if the dogs had finally picked up Ford’s scent and tracked him backward.
I have to see this for myself
.

He checked the phone he used with Cole and cursed. He’d missed a call from the school attendance office. The voicemail confirmed his fear that Cole was absent.
Again
. Mitch called the house, but no one answered.
Big shock
.

I am going to kill that kid
. Then he forced himself to chill. Annoyed people made mistakes and this was too damn important a day. He’d deal with Cole tomorrow.

The phone he used with Mutt was loaded with messages. All from Mutt’s daddy’s phone. Mitch smiled. Fifteen messages.
Running scared, old man? Good
. Remembering his desperate phone calls from prison that went unanswered by the old man, Mitch hit delete. Delete. Delete. Fifteen calls, all deleted.

Now you know how it feels
. His good mood restored, Mitch went to his closet and pulled out the uniform he’d stolen especially for this occasion. Minutes later he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, straightening his tie.

The previous owner of the uniform was a West Virginia state trooper. Mitch had gotten some good stuff out of that heist. The trooper had excellent taste in baseball cards, guns, vintage
Playboy
editions, but most importantly, the guy was exactly his size so the uniform fit like a glove.

He placed the hat on his head. ‘This will make all of this worthwhile.’

A banging on his door had him wheeling around, startled. Checking his Glock, he went to the door, his heart banging in his chest. Who knew he’d be here?
Chill
. Nobody knew he had this place.
Must be a salesman or a Girl Scout selling cookies
.

He looked through the peephole in the door and his heart crashed to a halt. On his doorstep, his shirt bloody, his face haggard, swollen, and stained with tears, was his stepfather.

Thursday, December 5, 12:15
P.M.

‘What the hell are you doing, kid?’

Ford looked up from tying his shoes. Deacon was standing in the doorway of his hospital room, fists on his hips, glaring. Ford glared right back.

‘I heard you on the phone, talking to Carter. I’m going to that cabin, even if I have to hitchhike to get there.’

‘You’re staying right here, so sit your ass back down.’

Ford ignored him, pulling on the sweatshirt Gran and Maggie had brought him when they’d visited. He walked carefully across the tiled floor, every step painful, like there were millions of needles in his feet.

Deacon blocked his way. Face to face, Ford was startled to find he had to look up to meet the Fed’s eyes. Because Ford had been sitting or lying down every time they’d talked, he hadn’t realized Deacon was so tall. The guy had to be six-three. The stark contrast of his white goatee and bronze skin combined with those weird bi-colored eyes and the whole leather getup made him look like one bad motherfucker.

But Ford wasn’t scared, because he was feeling like one, too. ‘Get out of my way, Deacon. I mean it.’

‘I could take you down with one pinkie, kid. You’re weavin’ on your feet.’

Ford stowed his rage for a moment. ‘I know. I also know that getting help for that girl was what kept me walking, even when it hurt like hell.’ He thought of his mother’s face as she’d told her story. ‘My mom’s with Carter, isn’t she? She’ll go to that little room where Beckett held her cousin, even if Heather’s not there to save. She needs the closure. When she comes up, she’s going to be so . . . upset. I need to be there for her. So if you won’t drive me there, please, just don’t stand in my way.’