Kidnapped (25 page)

He slid off the rubber band from the newspaper. As he had expected, Sharon's photo was prominent on the front page.

Luke knocked a couple times on the door, then folded the paper and walked around the house. If she was up, the coffee would be started and she would have already spent some time out on the back patio. If he just woke her up, it would be a minute.

He found the patio door unlocked. He slid it open and wiped his feet of wet leaves before stepping inside. The lights were off and the kitchen cool. “Caroline, you awake yet, darlin'? It's Luke. You want me to start the coffee for you?”

He tugged over the filters and the coffee can. There was an open aspirin bottle and a half-eaten microwaved dish of pasta on the counter. His car keys were on the counter next to her tin of after-dinner mints.

Caroline didn't answer his call. He didn't hear the shower. He walked down the hall to the bottom of the stairs. “Caroline?”

Luke took the stairs two at a time.

He looked toward Benjamin's room since Caroline had slept there last time. Empty. He walked on. Her bedroom door was open, and one glance showed a made bed. “Caroline, answer me if you're here.”

His words echoed in the hall, unanswered.

He pushed open doors to the bedrooms, the bathroom, and headed back downstairs. The alarm system had been off, the back patio door unlocked. His car was in the driveway. He scanned rooms on the main level and saw nothing out of place.

Luke grabbed his keys and headed outside to the garage to check on her car. Caroline had been here last night, she'd eaten a bit, but either that bed was recently made or it had never been slept in.

Luke pushed open her garage door.

Caroline's car was gone.

Chapter Thirty-Two

L
uke shifted the phone in his hand so he could push in the alarm code sequence to get the time when the system had been shut off. The numbers flashed up in blue, and Luke searched his memory of last night to figure out when Caroline had called to tell him she was home. It had been before Jackie's last update of the night. The time looked roughly the same. Caroline had shut off the alarm system a few minutes before she had called him last night. She hadn't rearmed it as she normally did before she went to bed.

“Caroline's not at the community center,” Jackie relayed.

Luke pushed buttons on the alarm system to reactivate it after a two-minute time delay. “I'm heading back to Mark's house. How she could have passed us when you were heading out and I was walking over here—”

“Luke, what's going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Luke—”

“Her purse is gone, her car is gone, and other than an unlocked back patio door and a deactivated alarm system, everything here is normal. She's going to be at Mark's right now, wondering where we are.”

“Do you want me to alert the—?”

“There's no new problem, Jackie. Caroline and I just missed each other. I'll call you back in a couple minutes.” Luke ended the call and hurried through the house.

He headed toward his own car. His palms were sweaty as he turned the key in the ignition and put his car into reverse. There was something wrong. Something terribly, terribly wrong.

* * *

Mark pushed open the back door of his home so hard it hit the wall with a thud. “Still no word from Caroline?”

Luke held up his hand, holding his cousin off. “I need to know where that number originates, and I need to know it now.” He covered the phone. “After she called me last night, Caroline got a call that she returned. That's all I know so far. Sometime between then and this morning Caroline left her house, got in her car, and headed somewhere without any note or message indicating where she was going.”

“I thought they had her phone line tapped.” Mark knelt to help Benjamin with his backpack.

“They do, but she must have returned the call on the cell phone she had borrowed from Amy when the batteries went dead on hers.”

“Were you able to get the number?”

“Her home phone showed the last dozen incoming numbers.” He turned his attention back to his call. “Repeat that?” He scrawled down a location, and his hand shook as he wrote the final part of the message. “Thanks.” He closed the phone. “She got a call from a pay phone at a rest stop off I-20.”

“Sharon?” Mark asked.

Luke stared at the paper and then turned to share a quick look with Jackie even as he shook his head. “Caroline would have been over here in a heartbeat to get you. And she's not one to go off on her own.”

“She would,” Jackie corrected softly, “if she thought it necessary.”

Luke forced himself not to ball the piece of paper in his fist as he too thought of the possibilities. “Or if she thought the call was a false lead, but one she had to check out for her peace of mind. Regardless, there's no way she intended to be gone this long.”

Caroline, I didn't need you being brave today, not this way.
He steadied himself and looked at his watch. “I'm heading out there.”

“I want to go with you,” Mark said.

Luke shook his head. “She's not missing; she's AWOL. There's a difference. That call could have sent her anywhere, but I'll start with checking out where it originated. I need you two to head back to the sheriff's office and see what the task force has on phoned-in tips last night. See if any of the calls originated from this rest stop location. Someone was able to get Caroline's home phone number; they may have been calling the tip line too. Caroline and I will join you at the sheriff's office just as soon as we can.”

* * *

Caroline should have trusted him.

Luke disregarded the speed limit and passed a trucker by using the right lane. Heavy traffic made him regret not requesting an air flight. The depth of fear he felt was different than anything he'd ever felt before. What was he going to say when he found her? If he reacted as he feared, his emotions would roil out, and he'd regret for years whatever came out of his mouth.
You've scared me, Caroline—bad. And I don't do scared very well.

He hit the turn signal to pull into the rest stop. It looked nearly full with several trucks lined up before the restrooms and soda area. Luke chose not to park, but instead cruised through the rest stop slowly. He hoped to find Caroline sitting at one of the picnic tables or in her car, having chased a lead and come up with a bunch of nothing. He could deal with tears and the awful question of why someone would call her with false information, build up her hopes and then kill them. Luke could deal with her disappointment, but he couldn't deal with her not being at this rest stop.

He circled the parking lot twice, but there was no sign of Caroline's car.

Had she turned back for home? gone on with her quest? He should have insisted she stay at the house last night rather than let her return home. What had been said on the call? What had she come out here to find? Or had the call sent her somewhere else?

There was nothing here to find.

He left the rest stop and reentered traffic to take him back to Benton. Once she reappeared Caroline would be as apologetic as she could be for causing them to go through this. Two sisters—both missing. Luke wanted to pull to the side of the road and throw up.

Chapter Thirty-Three

T
he Benton sheriff had cleared two conference rooms and several desks for the task force. Luke paced in front of the time line on the display boards, past the flyers and photos and leads that had been followed. So much work, and so little to go on. “She's not down at the volunteer center, the hospital, or with any of her friends we've been able to find.” He was coming up empty.

Luke ran his hand through his hair. “He got to Caroline; that's the only thing that makes sense. He has Sharon and he came back for Caroline. Who knows why, who knows what's going on in this guy's head. But at this point, if he's still in the area, he won't be for much longer. We find her car, we find where they met up, and maybe we figure out which interstate he's using to get out of this area.”

“Why didn't Caroline leave a note or get word to us?” the sheriff asked.

“I don't know.” Luke looked over at Mark, wishing he had something to offer his cousin.

Mark just shook his head. “This isn't like Caroline.”

Henry James hung up the phone. “The officers have finished their canvass around Caroline's property. Her home, the surrounding grounds—they show no signs of foul play. The only tire tracks there appear to be your car and hers.”

“I agree; I saw nothing at the house to indicate trouble,” Luke said. “She apparently left on her own. Show me again where the roadblocks are set up.”

Jackie shifted the county map around for him to see the latest updates. Luke sat down to study the map.

Henry ripped a fax off the machine. “Listen up, people.” The officers and FBI agents around the room quieted down and turned at his call. “Forensics just matched the bullets. Our three men dead in the camper—they were shot with a gun that traces back to Frank Hardin. So are we looking for Frank Hardin?”

“If Frank shot those men, then why did he leave the money? That makes no sense,” Jackie said.

“Maybe someone also killed Frank and took his gun?” one of the task force officers suggested.

Luke shook his head. “We wouldn't get that lucky.” He got up from the table to pace again. This was becoming impossible to sort out. Was he dealing with a kidnapping ring, a stalker, or both? “We suspect Frank was in this area to do a job. He was seen at the gas station Friday night after the snatch.” Luke looked at Jackie. “The one credible sighting after that put him heading west out of the state. But check me on this, the trail went cold within hours, correct?”

“There were no more confirmed sightings.”

“So Frank holed up and came back into this area, possibly to get paid? There's a falling-out among the kidnappers, and Frank shoots his compatriots. Only that doesn't explain the left behind cash or why Frank would take Sharon with him, let alone why he would want to get to Caroline . . .”

“All we have so far on the three guys found shot is that Ronald Parks had the longest criminal record. The other two were support players in the past for car thefts and burglaries and probably had similar support jobs this time—drive the van, arrange the campsite. None of the three was the type to plan a kidnapping,” Henry added.

“Frank isn't the kind to plan such a crime either; he's the guy who gets hired by someone to execute it.” Luke turned to look at the sheriff. “Has anyone else turned up murdered in the last two days around here? Did Frank shoot the guy who hired him too?”

“We've had a couple shootings that look drug related over near Sandy Hill, and a domestic homicide south of Benton,” the sheriff offered. “No homicides that seem to match this.”

“I could see Frank leaving the money behind if he thought it was marked and too hot to dispose of,” Jackie offered. “Someone set up this kidnapping and hired Frank, who then hired Ronald and a support crew. Once it all started to come apart, Frank could be cutting his losses and killing the people who knew he was involved.”

“But why take Sharon out of the trunk?” Mark asked.

Luke looked over at his cousin. “Insurance maybe? A hostage to guarantee he could get out of the area?”

“And Caroline?” Mark asked. “He's trying to get to you, Luke, trying to make this even more personal.”

Luke looked at Mark, a sense of dread building inside. Frank having Caroline was too terrifying a reality to consider. “Frank might want a fight with me, but to risk this? He would want to get out of this area, lay low, and make it a fight for another day.”
If Frank made this personal, Sharon and Caroline are likely already dead.
The impact of that thought had him recoiling inside and searching for anything else that explained this.

Luke shook his head. “Gary Gibson is involved. He's been watching them, photographing them, and he's been missing since this began. He's the only person in this who has an immediate need to involve Caroline. I still think this is more than a kidnapping gone bad. Sharon is only a substitute for what Gary most wants. He would feel compelled to contact Caroline.”

Luke's phone rang, interrupting the discussion. He pulled it from his jacket pocket to answer the call. “Falcon.”

“Luke.”

“Sharon!” His exclamation froze the group. He forgot how to breathe as he met her husband's gaze. “Where are you?”

“I don't know. Somewhere on Dryer Road at a bait shop closed for the holiday. I can hear interstate traffic. I can't walk much farther.”

Luke pressed the phone tighter to his ear and covered it with his hand to hear her.

“I only had two quarters, and I didn't know if Mark would be back at the hospital, or if I called the house…”

“It's okay, Sharon.” Luke turned quickly and saw Jackie's confirming nod as she spoke on another phone. “We're tracing this call now.”

“She swapped for me, Luke. Caroline swapped for me. And you've got to get her back.”

He closed his eyes. “I will, Sharon.”

“Is Mark with you?” Her voice broke.

“Right here, honey. Hold on.”

He passed the phone to her husband.

“She swapped for me.” Oh, Caroline, what have you stepped into?
He put his hand on the back of a chair to keep himself upright.

His vision cleared and he saw a swirling room of officers in a rush to seize the moment. Henry stood in the midst of it, calling out rapid orders to officers both present and out on patrol. They had to get to Sharon, but they also had to close every road in the area to try and seize the man who had held her. Minutes were precious.

Luke watched it as he took a second deep breath and knew relief that he was not in charge of this task force. As badly as he wanted to run it, at this critical moment all he could think of was the fact that Caroline was now in intense danger.