Finding Claire Fletcher (32 page)

“No,” Connor said. He knew if he sat down, he might not get back up. He wasn’t feeling much pain, but his limbs were starting to feel like they were made of lead.

A moment passed in silence, and then Jen Fletcher came running down the hall toward them, her sandals flapping against the tile floor. Her gray brown hair had come loose from its tie and fluttered wildly around her head. Boggs walked behind her, head down, cellphone pressed to his ear.

Mitch seized the khakis from Connor’s hand a split second before Jen nearly knocked him to the ground with her embrace. She pressed her face into his chest and squeezed him hard. Connor regained his balance and wrapped one arm around her, the other still pressed against the wall for support.

Jen looked up at him, concern flooding her eyes. “Oh, am I hurting you?”

Connor laughed. “No. I’m fine.” He turned his head and lifted the gauze so she could see the four-inch gash the doctors had sewn shut earlier, after shaving the hair away. “Just here and my leg,” he said.

Jen’s lips pressed together as she surveyed his wounds. “Good Lord,” she said.

Connor rubbed between her shoulder blades. “I’ll live,” he said.

Jen reached up and pulled his face down to her so she could kiss his cheek. “You brought my baby back,” she said.

“Actually, she came back on her own,” Connor said, exchanging a glance with Mitch.

Jen’s eyes glistened. “I don’t care. She’s here. That’s all that matters. If it weren’t for you...,” she choked. Connor pulled her into him, letting her wet his tee shirt with her tears and rubbing her back as she sobbed.

Boggs reached them, flipping his cellphone closed and dropping it into his pocket. He glanced warily over his shoulder. “Goddamn nurses are all over me,” he said.

“Cellphone?” Mitch asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can’t have them on in here,” Connor said.

Boggs raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, well I’m on official police business here. How is she?”

Connor glanced back at the double doors. “She’s in surgery now. Could be a few hours.”

Boggs nodded. “How bout you? Think you’ll make it?”

“Yeah. They want to keep me overnight. Said I was lucky, the knife sliced clean through my leg without hitting anything important.”

“Good. They’re still combing your house over, taking video and photos and all that. Should be finished about now, but you won’t be able to get in there till tomorrow sometime. We’ll need statements.”

“Did you get him?” Connor asked, one arm tightening around Jen’s shoulders. She raised her head from Connor’s chest and looked at Boggs.

“No,” Boggs said.

Connor, Mitch and Jen all deflated at once. “Did you find the house? Where he was keeping the other girl?” Connor asked.

“Alison Ward,” Mitch supplied.

“Yeah, but we were too late. Looked like he flew back there, packed a few things and took off. There was blood. I don’t know how far he’s gonna make it wounded. We did a perimeter search around your place, and then we went to the Fletchers’ in case he got the idea to go there. Nothing.”

Connor sighed. “I doubt he’s sticking around.”

Boggs nodded. “Well, Cap wants a guard on the door here tonight, especially with the press all over this. We’ve got patrols all over the place. Claire didn’t happen to mention what he was driving, did she?”

“Son of a bitch,” Connor said. He hadn’t thought to ask Claire. He wasn’t thinking like a detective. He was too busy looking at her, assuring himself she was real, trying not to cringe as he surveyed the damage her abductor had done to her.

“Forget it,” Boggs said. “It’s okay. We’ll work with what we have.” But his mouth pressed briefly into a hard line. Connor knew Boggs was frustrated that none of their detectives had thought to elicit that small detail. A detail Connor knew could make the difference between catching the guy and him disappearing without a trace.

“I’m putting a guy on the door once she’s out of surgery. Yours too. I’m not sure you’re ready to go another round if he decides to pay a visit. If he survives, that is.”

“You shot him?” Jen asked, looking up at Connor.

Connor grimaced. “No,” he said. “I stabbed him. Two or three times, I’m not sure. It was kind of crazy. Boggs, did you get anything on that name Claire gave you?”

“No, another alias. This guy is a regular Houdini. I’m betting when we finally do nail him, there’s gonna be a long line of unhappy people waiting to extradite him for priors.”

Jen shuddered in Connor’s arms.

“But we have his blood, DNA, and they're getting prints right now. Stryke is already on it. We’ll get him,” Boggs assured them.

The sharp beep of Boggs’ cellphone startled them all. Glancing around to make sure no medical staff was nearby, Boggs flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear. Connor knew by the way Boggs’ body tensed ever so slightly as he barked clipped “yeahs” into the receiver that something was happening.

Boggs hung up. “They’re out a few miles from the house where he was keeping Alison Ward. Local patrol spotted a white Ford Taurus with a male and female in it, driving erratically. They tried to pull it over but the driver took off.”

Connor glanced at Mitch. “It has to be them.”

“I gotta go,” Boggs said.

Two hours later, Connor sat in a chair outside the operating room, his head falling and snapping back to attention as he fought off sleep. Jen sat on one side of him and Mitch on the other. Across from them, Tom and Brianna sat side by side. Tom had dozed off, but Brianna sat stiffly, arms folded across her thin chest. She glanced alternately at Connor and her mother. She had said little to him since she and Tom arrived, greeting him only with a tight smile. A uniformed officer paced back and forth in front of the entrance to the suite of operating rooms, exchanging dirty looks with medical staff who had to answer his questions before they were admitted to the surgical unit.

A radio sat atop the officer’s right shoulder, and every so often he barked into it. No one listening would be able to make much sense of the litany of numbers continually called out over the frequency, but for Connor it was a second language and he listened absently for updates on the pursuit while he dozed. Jen nudged him awake as Boggs got off the elevator. Across from him, Brianna whispered softly in Tom’s ear, waking him. They all straightened up and stared expectantly at Boggs.

Connor could tell from the set of Boggs’ shoulders that they hadn’t caught Claire’s abductor. Before Connor could ask, Boggs said, “We chased him until he crashed his car. He had another girl with him. They left the car wrapped around a tree and took off on foot. We lost them about 20 miles away from the house Claire said he was living in. It’s all wooded out there. We’re still looking. We’ve got the dogs out there now and we’re working on getting a helicopter up there.”

All three of the Fletchers seemed to deflate, their bodies slumping in disappointment.

Mitch leaned over and caught Connor’s eye. “Any idea just how badly you wounded him?”

Connor sighed and swiped a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It happened so fast. I know I hurt him because he howled, but I have no idea how deep or how serious his wounds are. I would think he’d need stitches, but I couldn’t see anything—it was dark.”

“So he could conceivably get away?” Jen asked.

“He’s not getting away,” Boggs said firmly. “I gotta get back out there, but we’ll keep you posted. He’s not getting away.”

A half hour later, they were ushered two floors up to a private room where Claire had been situated after her surgery. Mitch went for coffee as Connor, Jen, Tom, and Brianna slid into the room. Connor watched the steady, slow rise and fall of Claire’s chest. Her left hand was secured with a splint and Ace bandage and it lay on a pillow at her side, elevated to prevent swelling. The left side of her face looked as if someone had run over it with a truck. Connor knew that she bore many more bruises on the rest of her body, some in the shape of shoe prints.

It didn’t matter to him. She would survive all of the injuries. What mattered to him was that she was there and she was finally safe. He wanted to touch her, to assure himself that she was really there, but didn’t want to interrupt the Fletcher family’s first moments reunited with her.

Connor stood by the door as Jen approached the bed. Tom and Brianna stood behind Jen, holding hands, their fingers laced together. Connor wasn’t sure which one of them gasped first, but Jen’s hands flew to her face as she looked upon the child she’d lost ten years ago, now a woman, battered and bruised.

“Oh my God,” Tom whispered. “What did he do to her?”

Tears shone in Tom’s eyes, and Brianna pulled him into a hug, letting her brother sob into her shoulder. She was the only one whose emotions were in check. She reached out a hand and placed it between her mother’s shoulder blades.

Connor bent his head as Jen’s thin shoulders shook and heaved. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. Then she moved away from her older children, rounding the bed and perching on the side of it. She took Claire’s good hand and pressed it to her mouth. She raised her wet eyes to Connor’s.

“Mitch told me she looked bad. He said she—I had no idea,” she whispered.

Connor grimaced. “She’ll heal Jen. The important thing is she’s here. She’s with you now.”

“She’ll be okay, Mom,” Tom said encouragingly as he separated from Brianna and moved closer to the bed. Brianna hung back, taking up position at the foot of Claire’s bed.

Jen stroked Claire’s hair back from her face. Her voice was heavy with emotion when she spoke again. “It’s really her,” Jen whispered. “It’s really my baby. ”

Connor smiled. “I know.”

He watched Jen weep quietly over her child while Tom and Brianna looked on, and then wordlessly he inched out the door, leaving the newly reunited family alone.

One hour and two cups of coffee later, Connor slipped back into Claire’s room. He breathed a sigh of relief that she was still there, chest still rising and falling evenly as the IV dripped medication into the crook of her right elbow. Jen remained in the same place as when he’d left her. Brianna and Tom had pulled chairs up to the other side of Claire’s bed and sat watching their mother drink in the sight of the child she’d spent the last decade searching for.

Jen turned when he entered, eyes wide and questioning. She mouthed, “Did they catch him yet?”

Connor shook his head. Jen’s shoulders drooped as she looked back at her daughter.

“Where did he go?” Brianna asked. “What’s taking so long?”

“They’re doing everything they can,” Connor responded.

Brianna opened her mouth to speak, and from the scowl that darkened her visage, Connor guessed her next words would not be pleasant. He was relieved when Tom silenced her with a shushing gesture. Brianna met her brother’s eyes, and Connor saw the unspoken conversation between them. Tom’s eyes darted to their mother and back as if to say, “This isn’t the time.” Brianna sighed and leaned back in her chair, avoiding Connor’s gaze.

A long, silent moment passed. Connor watched Jen study Claire, her eyes roaming her daughter’s face as if Claire might vanish the moment Jen looked away. Connor saw her bite back the tears that glistened in her eyes. Lightly, she ran her fingers over the right side of Claire’s face.

“Look what that bastard did to my child,” she said in a whisper laced with anger. “She looks so...her face...”

Connor stepped closer to the bed. “She’ll be okay.”

Then Claire’s voice, thick and dry. “Mom?”

Jen jumped as if the bed held an electric charge. She peered into her daughter’s face. Claire’s right eye opened slowly. For a long time she looked at her mother. “Mom?” she repeated.

Jen nodded, unable to hold her tears back any longer. They fell from the end of her nose onto the bed. “I’m here, honey.”

“Dad?”

“He’s not here yet, honey. He’s on his way. But Tom and Brianna are here.”

The siblings stood and leaned over the side of the bed, peering into their sister’s battered face, murmuring their greetings.

“Where’s Connor?” Claire asked.

Connor stepped forward, taking up position beside Jen. “I’m right here, Claire.”

She closed her eyes again, and Connor watched as she squeezed her mother’s hand.

I woke from a morphine coma, sleep hanging thick and heavy on my limbs. It reminded me of the times my captor had drugged me in order to transport me from one house to another—from one prison to another—each time taking me farther away from my family and the life I had known. I opened my right eye and looked around, a slow panic rising from my gut as my brain tried to orient itself. It took a long moment for me to remember where I was and how I had come to be there.

The hospital room was semi-dark, the first light of dawn glowing beyond the windows and the lamp above my head illuminating my family members asleep in their chairs. My mother had pulled her chair as close to the bed as possible and she slept with her upper body resting on the side of it, my good hand gripped tightly in her fingers. My brother and sister slept sitting up on the other side of the room. Brianna’s head lolled on Tom’s shoulder, and my brother’s head reclined on the back of his chair, his mouth yawning open. One of them was snoring, but I couldn’t tell which one.