Shattered Secrets (17 page)

18

T
ess heard glass shatter. Shards clattered in the sink and flew across the kitchen floor to where she huddled under the table.

“Tess! Tess, are you all right?”

Dad was home. She’d meant to call him.

A man climbed through the broken window over the sink, stepped right in the sink! He moved the chair by her head, bent down and touched the side of her neck with two fingers. He kicked broken glass away, then gently lifted her out from under the table. It was Gabe. Why did he break her window? She would have let him in.

He sat on a kitchen chair and pulled her into his lap. She clung to him.

“Tess, what happened? Was someone here?”

He’d closed the refrigerator door, but the ceiling light was on. It was bright and hurt her eyes, but she was so glad to see him.

“I’ve got to get you to the doctor. I’m calling him,” he said. He suddenly had a phone and started punching in numbers. She remembered that Gabe—no, it was his father then—had called for the doctor to look her over when she was found. But that wasn’t now. She didn’t recall anything except nightmares, wasn’t sure why she was here on the floor. She must have fallen and hit her head.

He talked into the phone while she cuddled against him. He steadied her with his free arm. “Yeah, no, not poison, Jeff. She’s conscious, looking a little better than she did a minute ago. It would take too long to get a squad out here to take her into the Chillicothe E.R. I know it’s nearly ten, but can you meet us at your office? Yeah, her pupils are dilated. Keep her alert, right, okay. Listen, we’ll need blood and urine samples, because there’s an open bottle of wine on the counter, and she might have been drugged by something. Yeah, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. She can’t just be drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” she protested, but he ignored her as he called Vic and told him to get Mike over to take prints in the kitchen. She was able to concentrate a little better as he spoke. “No, I’ll bag the bottle, take it with me, and we’ll have the contents checked later. Can’t let it out of my sight or someone could get in here before Mike does, try to remove the evidence. I know tox tests take a lot of time, but it’s important we know what’s in her since we might be dealing with Dane’s drugs now.”

It’s important we know what’s in her.
The words floated through her brain as he kept talking. Tess thought about what was in her. Sadness and regret. Memories that would not shake loose. Fear because someone had done this to her. And the need and desire for this man was in her. She might have been back here only five days, but had she cared for Gabe for years? Wanted his attention even when she was little? Felt sorry he was blamed when she was taken? But taken where? Would she ever remember who did this to her?

“Okay, Tess, we’re going to take another ride in my cruiser,” Gabe said. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Stay awake,” he insisted, rubbing her hands, one at a time, then lightly slapping her cheeks.

“The sheriff broke into a house,” she said suddenly with the urge to giggle. “And now I’m going in his police car, under arrest, under duress...I don’t know.”

“How much wine did you drink or what else?” he asked, getting them both up, then sitting her in the chair while he found the top for the bottle, put a paper napkin over it and screwed it on. Still touching the bottle only with the napkin, he put it on the table. She didn’t want to look at it, only at him.

“I can’t exactly remember,” she said, slurring her words. “I think I had bad dreams. So, what’s new, right?”

“I want you to tell me every one of your dreams.”

She felt giddy. “It means a lot when a gentleman caller asks a lady to share her dreams with him.”

“Keep talking.”

“Gabe, don’t leave me!” she cried when he walked out of the room, but he came right back with her jacket and helped her put it on.

“Don’t nod off,” he ordered when she yawned. “Did you get the door locks changed when you took this place over from Lee and Grace?”

She tried to remember. She felt spaced out. Her thoughts were all gummy. “No,” she managed to say, “but Mom changed them all after I was taken and then again after Dad left. I didn’t think to do it.”

“My fault not to ask earlier. You should have. Who knows who had keys when Lee and Grace were living here, including their dictator Monson? I’ll have to ask them.”

“If you can get near them. They have guards at Hear Ye.” She was pleased her thoughts were clearing, but it almost hurt to think.

“I know. But they’ll probably be at the farmer’s market uptown Saturday. Okay, now hang on to me. Upsa-daisy,” he said as he lifted her to her feet and steadied her with his hands on her waist.

Upsa-daisy?
Why did he say that? She didn’t like that. It made her think she was a kid again and...and she did not want to remember that, even though she knew she had to.

“What good will it do to lock the door?” she asked as he made her take steps while he propped her up. He took the bottle along too. Maybe she should give up wine, at least in Cold Creek. Her legs were a little wobbly, but she was walking. “Someone could come in that window,” she added as if he didn’t get what she meant.

“I’ll put police tape over it, and we’ll get it fixed—and your locks changed—first thing in the morning. We’re going to Dr. Nelson’s. Then you’ll stay with me again.”

That sounded good to her. Though her head was clearing, her thoughts were dark. Whoever had done this wanted to scare and hurt her, maybe even worse than that.

* * *

Tess woke with a jolt. It was light. She saw an unfamiliar ceiling and room. She realized she was under a quilt on Gabe’s couch, and he was slumped in a chair he’d pulled up close. She had no shoes on but was dressed in her clothes, which must be a wrinkled mess. She started to remember. She’d been to the doctor last night after...after she’d blacked out and then Gabe came. He wasn’t dressed in his uniform now but jeans and a sweatshirt.

“You awake?” he asked the obvious when she looked at him. “It’s eight. Friday morning. How do you feel?” His voice was gravelly, and his beard stubble made his face look dirty. His usually police-sharp hair was mussed.

“I feel tired. That train I hear in my head sometimes—I think it hit me.” She scooted herself up to a sitting position, pulling the quilt up higher too.

“Dizzy, nauseated? Doc Nelson said you might be.”

“Just hungry, I think. Wow, don’t buy cheap wine at the Kwik Shop.”

“You giggled and cried last night. Talked in your sleep too. I would have taken notes, but you weren’t making any sense.”

“Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“Can you remember anything after you drank the wine or during the night?”

“No. Maybe it was another amnesia drug. Maybe my kidnapper came calling again,” she said with a shiver. “Did you get the search warrant for Dane’s place?”

“At least your head’s okay on what happened before you got blasted. Not yet. The judge was holding it up until she heard new evidence, but the fact that Dr. Stevens has perjured herself in a deposition means I should get it soon. The judge is obviously reluctant since the warrant my dad, ‘the previous Sheriff McCord,’ as she puts it, failed to pin anything on Dane when he served him with a search warrant twenty years ago. I told her double jeopardy should not figure in here, since Dane wasn’t arraigned or tried before. She took offense since I was lecturing her about a legal matter, but I think she’ll get me the warrant. The case is too hot not to.”

“And are you going to talk to Reese Owens?”

“Thank God you’re all right. We just have to keep drugs and booze out of your system. Stay right there while I fix us some juice and coffee. Oh, yeah, I’ll talk to Reese,” he said as he stretched his big frame, then went into the kitchen. “He’s in Cincinnati until tomorrow morning, and I’m not doing that over the phone.”

“I hope I feel better by tomorrow,” she said, rubbing both eyes. “I’d like to go to the farmers’ market. I want to see my family if they come with the Hear Ye people.”

“Let’s just see how you do with food and walking on your own today—you need some rest. Doc Nelson thought you might have ingested something like a date rape drug. They’re short-term but made worse by being mixed with any kind of alcohol. I’ll take you over to your house to pack up some things but you’re staying here.”

He came back with two huge glasses of orange juice. A date rape drug? And then she’d spent the night here with him....

Thank God she could trust Gabe. Because there was obviously someone in Cold Creek who’d been watching her, who wanted her out of here one way or another. That terrified her but made her angry enough not to leave until they found Sandy Kenton.

* * *

After breakfast, Gabe shaved and changed into his uniform, they picked up some things at her house and he checked everything there again. Nothing else seemed amiss. He called the hardware store to order new locks and a window. He took her back to his house and left, returning for lunch, still stewing he didn’t have his search warrant yet.

“You’d think there’s someone pulling the strings for Dane, just like for Reese,” he groused as he quickly ate the lunch she’d made, before heading back to the office. She felt as if she was married to him—and spending most of the time on her own. He said Vic was going to want to talk to her, but right now he was busy trying to locate a housekeeper who had recently worked for Reese Owens and his wife.

Tess locked up after Gabe left each time. She’d asked his permission to go up to his war room to look it all over again, hoping, as ever, to recall something useful. But she sat up there, studying the walls for an hour, while the wind kicked up and the house creaked. Feeling haunted, not by the house or even what had happened to her yesterday, but by the faces—her own and her family’s included—staring at her from the walls, she went back downstairs to wait for him.

He called and said he’d be there in a while, just a little late. It got dark so early now. Though she hadn’t heard his car, she jumped up to greet him when she heard him at the back door. She started to open it for him, then hesitated. No footsteps, no key turning in the lock.

When she tried to look out the window in the door, she saw it was blocked by a piece of cardboard or paper. She wondered if Gabe had done that to keep someone from looking in. But no, a crude drawing and printed words faced inward. Done in crayon, it depicted figures of three girls. Big tears dropped from the eyes of the smallest one. It looked so familiar. Suddenly she was certain she had drawn it. Was she hallucinating again? Were more memories coming back?

She read the words under the figures. YOU BAD GIRL! YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME!

She heard a voice from the past. She wanted to hide, had to hide! She rushed toward the closet in the hall, opened it to throw herself behind the hanging coats before she realized where she was. She took a deep breath. She was an adult, not a terrified child! She tried to recall more than her terror, but nothing else came, and she collapsed to her knees in tears.

* * *

Tess and Gabe stared at the drawing with the note he’d brought inside. “At first, I thought I might be hallucinating again,” Tess said. “But I’m okay now, and I’m positive I drew that. I do remember drawing Kate, Char and me many times, but since I’m crying here—I must have drawn that during my time away or just after.”

“So you did drawings like this while you were in captivity?” he asked as they huddled over the paper at the kitchen table. “Your abductor evidently let you draw, gave you crayons and paper.”

They had both collapsed in kitchen chairs. He’d scooted his so close to hers that their heads almost touched. She could hear him breathe, feel his deep voice when he spoke.

“Yes, I think so. But this possibly could have been done when I got back home. Mom got me some counseling through the church, and they had me draw what I remembered—which was only this. Me so sad and scared and missing my sisters.”

“I didn’t know about the counseling. Maybe we can find out who worked with you, contact them for memories. Can you recall anything else connected with this?”

“I sure as heck didn’t write that message. Mike’s going to have to get prints off this too.”

“And I’d bet we’re dealing with someone who’s too clever to leave prints. Mike found none on the wine bottle but yours.”

“And to think I could have seen who it was if I’d just looked outside at the right time!”

“Or if I’d driven in earlier. But it was already dark outside. Tess, don’t keep beating yourself up,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders, “because someone else is trying to do it. I’m just grateful you didn’t open the door when you thought it was me.”

“Whoever it was probably comes out of the cornfield, does his dirty work in your backyard or mine, like he did twenty years ago, then runs back home, maybe with that light I saw moving through the corn the previous night. Can we beg or demand that Aaron Kurtz cut the field early?”

Gabe slumped back in his chair and sighed as his gaze met hers. “You know Aaron Kurtz’s visit to the doctor his wife mentioned to us? It wasn’t to Jeff Nelson here in town. He went into Columbus to see what the pain in his legs was, and he’s flat on his back there for a while with a blood clot.”

“So we can’t bother him with that right now. Doesn’t he have others working for him who could cut the field?”

“Other farmers will step in to help, but we’ve got this field for at least a week or so. It was planted late anyway, and Aaron’s going to need the yield from it. Doc Nelson says he’s always been so independent and in good health that he doesn’t have much insurance. But listen, now that my place isn’t even a safe house anymore, I’ll understand if you want to leave town. You’re not remembering what we need, and you’re obviously in danger. I’ll try to sell the house for you so you won’t have to pay a middleman. Maybe you should head home—to Michigan—until this is all over,” he said, taking her hand. Their grips tightened as their fingers entwined.

“I don’t know. I’m scared, but I’m really angry now. You have enough to do without worrying about watching a house you’re trying to sell. And who knows if the person who did this is desperate enough to follow me, where I wouldn’t have you around. I want to stay at least over the weekend to think it over, go to the farmers’ market to see my family, if I can get to them without Bright Star hovering.”