One Scream Away (37 page)

Like Hannah.

She’d chosen a dark green Taurus—Evan’s suggestion. Evan, whom she hadn’t wanted to involve, but whose voice was choked with fear and regret after losing Abby, and who would do anything for Beth. For Abby.

She pulled up to a traffic light, and a city police cruiser eased beside her. She looked straight ahead, pretended to fiddle with the radio, and thought she could feel the officer’s eyes drilling into her temple.

Relax. They probably don’t know what car to look for yet. The only thing making her feel conspicuous was the fact that it was a cool night and she was driving in a sleeveless dress with no jacket and wearing panty hose with no shoes—her pumps and blazer had been in the living room of the apartment, where Suarez waited.

And, of course, there was the fact that she was about to drive directly into the hands of a wanted criminal. If she was right about where he was.

She
was
right. She knew it.
“This is just like home. It’s Mother’s land. Scream so Mother can hear you.”

She had to be right. He’d gone home, to Samson, to where Beth could make his mother stop singing.

Please, God, just let him leave Abby behind.

Alive.

Neil banged through the front door of the Fosters’ house, prompting a cop on the porch and one just inside to go for their guns. When recognition dawned, they both looked as if they had seen a ghost.

“You’re dead,” said one of them under his breath.

“Not yet,” Neil answered, “but you will be if you blow the story. Where’s Evan Foster?”

The second guard frowned. “He and his aunt went upstairs an hour ago. Been watching the news.”

Neil started toward the stairs. “Which way?”

“Up and right. There’s a big sitting room up—”

Neil took the stairs two at a time, paused outside a wide set of double doors, and heard the television reporter expound on the details of Neil’s death. Christ, it was probably national news by now. He’d better make sure someone called his mother, his sister. Even Mitch.

He took a deep breath, then burst through the doors to the sitting room. Evan Foster stood behind Carol’s chair. In two seconds, Neil had his shoulders shoved hard up against the wall. “Where is she, you bastard?”

Evan stammered, “You’re d-dead. They said y-you died.”

Neil tightened his grip, the fingers of his right hand crumpling something that felt like cardboard in Evan’s breast pocket. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking abo—”

Neil slammed him against the wall. “Tell me, you son of a bitch!”

Carol Foster grabbed his arm. “Mr. Sheridan, you have no right coming in here and—”

Neil shoved Evan into the wall again, saw his eyes roll back with pain. “Beth’s missing, and you know where she is.”

“N-no, no, I don’t know where she went.”

“Beth’s missing?” Carol said at the same time. She had Heinz by the collar. The stupid mutt was wagging his tail. “What’s going on?”

“Beth pretended to be sleeping, then left through the passageways from the carriage house,” Neil explained, growling over his shoulder. “Your nephew here called the guards a half hour ago, to say he’d be going out. Said he’d take the green Taurus and didn’t wanna be followed—wanted some private time with a lady friend after such a harrowing day, right? Five minutes later the green Taurus pulls out and no one follows it because they know it’s Evan, but look at this, Evan’s right here and Beth is gone. You wanna explain that?”

The question was punctuated by another small smash against the wall, something falling from Evan’s pocket. Carol’s pleas of don’t-hurt-him fell on deaf ears. Evan’s face scrunched with pain.

“I don’t know where she went,” he said weakly.

“You gotta do better than—”

“I swear, I don’t know!” He was screaming now, and Neil snarled at the tears that squeezed from the corners of Evan’s eyes. “She just said she had to go. She begged me to trust her and said she could find Abby. She said you were dead and the Feds weren’t letting her help, that there was another doll and she could figure it out. She begged me, said she had to save Abby…”

“So you let her go after a madman by herself?”

Evan pinned Neil with a feral glare. “She can’t live like this, you stupid asshole! Just what do you think Beth’s life will be worth if Abby dies and she could have stopped it—”

“She can’t stop it!”

“She
thinks
she can!” Evan shot back. His voice dropped three notches, emotion filtering through. “She just wanted me to give her a little time to figure out where Bankes had taken Abby. You guys wouldn’t even let her try. You wouldn’t let her
try
. I gave her a gun. She said if I loved her at all—”

And that was all there was before Evan Foster broke down, crying like the lovesick bastard that he was, weeping for the wrong choice, the wrong emotions, the wrong woman.

“What kind of gun did you give her?”

“A Ruger 9 mm.”

Neil breathed again—Beth would know how to use that one, at least. He let Evan’s shirt spring free of his fists and rolled his shoulders. Glared at both of them. “Keep your mouths shut.”

“Sheridan.” Evan bent to pick up the card from the floor, and pulled two more from his pocket. He held them out to Neil. Orioles tickets. “When you find Beth and Abby…”

Neil gave Foster a long look, then pocketed the tickets. He started for the door but turned back to Evan. “Beth’s favorite color is yellow, by the way,” Neil said. “And her biggest fear? It’s what she’s out there doing right now.”

B
eth drove like a zombie, her cruise control set, the voice on the radio washing over her like an arctic, numbing breeze.
Former FBI agent Neil Sheridan, dead… A six-year-old-girl now believed to be held… The FBI scrambling… Distraught mother charged with the murder of Sheridan… Neil Sheridan, dead… Six-year-old missing…

A nightmare. A dream. Perhaps she’d awaken later to the sounds of Abby giggling with Heinz, to the sensation of Neil holding her, moving deep inside her, and discover this was all an ugly fantasy. Perhaps it wasn’t happening.

But it was. That woman had killed Neil. Chevy Bankes had Abby. Beth’s imagination took a wild ride for a moment, to all the things Bankes might do to a child, to what he had possibly done to his little sister, then she reined it all in and focused on the running white dashes on the highway.

Keep driving. Don’t think.

She looked at the dashboard clock: 10:08 p.m. Another hour, about, to Samson, Pennsylvania. Then she’d find Bankes’s house. Neil had drawn it all out for her once. It was adjacent to Mo Hammond’s shooting range, couldn’t be hard to locate in such a small town. Neil had explained it to her.

Thank God. Thank God he’d come into her life, for just a little while.

She blinked to clear the tears from her eyes. She didn’t dare think about Neil right now, not when Abby was alive somewhere, needing her. She had to find her.

You’re in over your head with this.

Neil’s words floated through the haze. She smothered them. Bankes wanted
her
. Certainly he’d kill Abby if a string of FBI agents showed up at his mother’s home instead of her.

Doing everything alone doesn’t mean you’re strong. It just means you’re alone.

She wished Neil would shut up and half laughed at that. She hadn’t listened to him when he was alive, yet now, his words drummed through her body with every beat of her heart.

You aren’t alone anymore.

She’d believed him, finally, and cursed herself for it. It hadn’t been so painful being alone when it was the only thing she knew. But now, having lived outside her bubble with Neil for only a few short days—and nights—she was floundering. Alone again, driving toward a destiny she couldn’t bear to think about, without the man who had been her anchor.

There’s more than one person in the world willing to help you, Beth.

Oh, God.

Beth swerved and stopped on the shoulder of the highway. She closed her eyes. Made a decision.

Oh, Abby, please. Don’t let this be a mistake.

The tears were gone when Beth finally found a gas station. Grover’s. It was a podunk little place in Pennsylvania’s wooded hills just outside the town of Samson, at the corner of two country roads. She needed a phone.

To call Special Agent Copeland.

A single car was parked on the gravel drive, a dented old Ford LTD jammed onto the sidewalk at the side of the building. One employee, one car. She looked around. There were bathrooms on the outside, an ice machine, and a newspaper stand. But no phone.

She got out of the car, shivering. The temperature had fallen to fifty-eight degrees, said the radio, and it hit her like a north wind. She walked over the pebbles on the parking lot. Glass punched through the sole of her left foot, and she stepped to the right, trying to avoid any more of what must have been a shattered bottle. No luck; her right foot found more. Not so bad, though. She’d gone more lightly there.

She stepped onto the sidewalk, now in better light, one hand curling around the door handle to the store. The other rested lightly on her purse, which was strapped over her shoulder. Evan’s gun was inside. She prayed she wouldn’t need it now. She’d find a phone, tell Special Agent Copeland everything, and let the FBI handle it.

You’re not alone anymore.

She opened the door and peered inside. The cashier’s counter was just ten feet away, lit up, with an open bottle of Aquafina on the counter and a candy wrapper lying beside it. The cashier wasn’t in sight.

Then Beth noticed two things at once. One, a dark red stain was splattered behind the counter, trailing down the wall in a gruesome smudge. And two, the candy wrapper was from a Reese’s Cup.

R
un.

She did, but her body snapped backward. A scream tore from her chest even as she groped at the arm trying to close around her throat.

No, no. Don’t grab my arm; use the heel of your hand.

But reason came too slowly. He grunted and stumbled back, yanking her with him. She lost her balance, taking them both down, her purse strap falling from her shoulder. She grabbed it. The gun, the gun…

It will be in your purse when you need it.

Bankes was on top of her, sneering. His weight felt like stone, her hip screaming with pain from when they’d fallen. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Think.

“Ah, Beth,” he said, straddling her. “Just like old times.”

No. Things were different now. She was strong. She was trained. She’d practiced for years. She knew all the techniques for self-defense.

She rammed her forehead into his nose.

“Ahhggh!” he groaned, rolling to the side. She shoved him off, clambering to her feet to get away. Run.

Stay with it; never believe your last hit was the final one. Otherwise, you’re likely to get—

Fwp.

She felt the impact before the pain. Like someone had shoved her hard from behind. She struck the ground, gravel scraping at her arms and legs, and the pain seeped into her shoulder blade. Her right arm went limp.

First she heard a chuckle, then felt herself being hauled upright. His gun, smelling freshly fired, pushed into her throat.

“Hi, doll,” he breathed, and Beth felt the blood leaking from her back. Warm and sticky, it soaked the back of her dress. She looked down. A dark spot formed over her right breast, too.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Beth, watching for you to drive by. In fact, I’ve been waiting seven years.” He looked at the blood on her shoulder and grimaced. “You shouldn’t have made me shoot you, Beth. I don’t want you to die yet.”

Beth blinked, trying to pull the world into focus. Think. You can’t beat him physically right now, so
think.
Standlin’s instructions came back in a flood.
Act scared, cry, gasp. Let him see you as weak.

“Go to hell,” she spat.

Bankes cursed, shoving her against the door of the gas station. Her cheek smashed into the glass. Pain exploded behind her eyes, blackness seeping in. She grasped for consciousness, but it was like a banner whipping in the wind just out of reach, and she couldn’t quite get hold of it. For a second, she wanted to stop fighting and just sink beneath the pain, then she remembered why she couldn’t.

“Abby,” she mumbled against the glass.

Bankes’s lips settled at her temple, her face pressed hard against the door, and Beth had to concentrate on not throwing up. “What did you say?”

“My daughter. Wh-what did you do with her?”

He laughed, that same self-satisfied ripple she’d heard on the phone and in her nightmares. “You mean
our
daughter?”

“No,” Beth cried before she could think not to, and Bankes chuckled.

“I thought so. Don’t worry. I don’t want any claim to her. Just because we share the same blood doesn’t mean anything. Blood is nothing. Blood is nothing.”

He’d repeated himself, or was she just hearing double? She tried to make sense of it.
Blood is nothing.
Could he really mean that? And if so, then what was this all about?

Sccrrattch.
The sound cleaved her senses, the unmistakable screech of duct tape ripping from a roll. She tried to move but couldn’t. He yanked her arms behind her and pain shattered her shoulder, his knee drilling into the small of her back to hold her against the door. A sticky length of the tape grabbed her wrists. He bent, to bite the end of the tape, she thought, and she jerked back and kicked, screaming, but he was ready for it and yanked her head back. Tape seized her lips, plastering her hair over one cheek. For the space of two breaths, she couldn’t breathe, the panic causing her to stupidly try to open her mouth and gasp for air.

She grabbed a deep breath through her nose, and he shoved her into the store, dragging her through the aisles to a back room. Beth felt his hand against her hip as he dug into his pocket. He produced a key and slid it into a tiny slot on the wall. He gave it a crank.