Taken (15 page)

“There was a great deal of joy in this house last night,” Cindy continued. “It was the first time I’ve seen Jeffery’s parents being anything more than politely civil with each other since the divorce. They both showed enormous relief that Shannon has come home alive rather than receiving the dreaded news that she had died and they needed to plan a funeral. So it was a good evening.” She looked over at her husband.

Matthew studied the two of them, asked quietly, “What’s the problem?”

“There’s a problem, primarily with Dad,” Jeffery replied, then hesitated. “Shannon is not his daughter.”

Matthew went still. He didn’t let himself show a reaction to that news but simply took it in.

“That fact came out during the divorce,” Jeffery continued, “though it never became publicly known. Dad’s not sure he’s . . . able to see Shannon just yet, so her approaching me first was an enormous relief to him. Mom . . . she’s shaken. She knows the truth is going to come out, and she’s scared over how Shannon is going to treat her when she knows.

“I’m
certain
Shannon doesn’t need this shock right now,” Jeffery added. He pushed back from the table, got to his feet, paced as far as the kitchen allowed. “She and Dad were close. Have always been very close.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, studied Matthew. “I love my sister,” he said abruptly. “Next to my wife and daughter, I love her more than anyone else in the world. So I’m willing to do anything we can figure out to help her. Maybe we can try
to keep her return out of the press until she’s had a few more weeks to recover, can be told this news and given a chance to absorb it herself. . . .”

Matthew knew doing so risked Jeffery’s campaign once the press got a sense something was going on and learned Jeffery had stalled the news for weeks. He wasn’t opposed to letting that fallout hit if it was necessary to protect Shannon, but the news was going to be devastating enough that a long delay might only make matters worse for her. “I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

Jeffery stopped pacing to lean against the counter. “There’s no way to hide the truth from her,” he said heavily, “which is what the big brother in me longs to do. I’ve spent the night worrying this problem in circles. Listen for a minute, Matthew, as I run through some thoughts, and maybe it will give you something to work from.”

“Sure,” Matthew said.

“My parents managed to keep it quiet and out of the official divorce record—the cops don’t have it or the press. But my own people discovered the details when I was being vetted in anticipation of a run for governor. My father had arranged for a DNA test to be run on himself so he could check paternity with Shannon. The cops had done Shannon’s DNA panel with hair taken from her hairbrush so they could put the record in the missing-persons registry. My opponent is likely to also find what my father did and may use it at the last minute in the campaign, especially if he’s losing, to take a cheap shot at my family. Someone would eventually dig up the information because of the campaign, even without my sister’s return. But it’s guaranteed to be found out and made public once she reappears alive and people start digging into the entire story of my family.”

“It’s out there to be found. So someone finds it,” Matthew agreed. Something like this didn’t stay hidden.

Jeffery shared a long look with his wife, then turned back to Matthew. “We’ve talked about my stepping out of the campaign, but it wouldn’t stop this information from coming out. The only thing I can think of that buys some time and helps buffer this would be if you take Shannon back to Boston with you, tell her the press here is too engaged given the political race, that she’s better off staying far away from Illinois for a few weeks. Let me fly out there to see her and be the one to tell her. If she’s not in Chicago when she hears the news, it means there can’t be an immediate drive over to Mom to confront the matter, and possibly a family explosion. There’s no question it’s going to be a crisis, but I’d like Shannon to survive it as well as she can.”

“It’s an option,” Matthew said, unsure what he thought about it, though the idea of getting Shannon out of Chicago before this erupted appealed.

“Two things that need to stay at the center,” Jeffery continued. “Mom loves Shannon. And Dad loves Shannon. She’s always been Daddy’s girl. He just doesn’t have the words yet to deal with the fact she’s someone else’s daughter too. That Shannon was thought to have died was his protective wall against the pain of having to figure out how to have a relationship with her when she’s no longer his own flesh-and-blood child.”

Jeffery turned his chair around and sat back down, folding his arms across the back of it. “Dad needs a few days, maybe a week. I think that will be long enough. He’ll find his footing and come around. What I don’t want is for there to be lunch tomorrow with my parents, where Shannon finds her father unexpectedly stiff with her. Or worse, after she knows the truth,
Shannon and Dad see each other and they can’t find a way through this. She doesn’t need to be put in the situation of also having to grieve the loss of being Daddy’s girl. He needs some time so he can adjust and be able to embrace her as still being his Shannon. We put the two of them together before that’s possible and they’re both going to get seriously hurt.”

Matthew heard Jeffery out, then made sure he kept his voice level as he asked the question that had to be asked. “Do you know who her birth father is? Did he ever come forward?”

Jeffery shook his head. “Mom wouldn’t say. He may not even know he has a daughter. I would have thought her disappearance could have led him to come forward if he’d known about her.”

“Give me a minute,” Matthew said. “You’ve given me a lot to weigh, and we need a course of action sorted out.” He walked out to the hall where he could pace while he thought through the implications of such news. He ran his hand across the back of his neck. Getting Shannon past this land mine had to be his number one priority. How could that unfold with the highest safety margin—and when? He was recalling everything Shannon had told him about her family, about her mother, her suspicions, and felt sick as he put the pieces together. He didn’t like the answer he came up with, but it was the only one that seemed to best protect Shannon.

He returned to the kitchen and leaned against the doorjamb. “It’s going to have to be you who tells her, Jeffery, and it’s got to be done before she learns about it from anyone else. I’m not able to share information Shannon has told me in confidence, but there are crosscurrents going on related to this news. How this all is going to impact her is . . . worrisome to me.”

“It’s going to be hard for her to hear,” Cindy said, her own concern apparent.

“Very hard,” Matthew agreed. “And I’m thinking she must be told sooner rather than later. Tomorrow evening is what I’m thinking. I’ll bring her by around nine, she can look in on her sleeping, beautiful niece, and then, Jeffery, you need to tell her. From there I’ll take her on a long drive and help her deal with it. If you can show me what was said in the divorce proceedings, if there was an admission or copy of this DNA test, or just an allusion to this fact . . . however it unfolded, that would be useful to have.”

Her brother had risen to his feet. “Matthew—”

“I can’t explain, Jeffery. Trust me when I say it’s an incredibly serious set of circumstances or I wouldn’t be jumping time like this. My only priority here is Shannon. I believe I can get her through it, but you’ll have to let me orchestrate how things go. Time isn’t going to help matters. This absolutely can’t be something she learns anywhere else. And if the news is delayed, the broken trust may never be repaired. Worst-case scenario, Shannon disappears. I’ve got to finesse this to avoid that outcome.”

“I feel like I just got my sister back, and I’m going to lose her again,” Jeffery said, a catch in his voice.

“You tell her you love her, you tell her the news, you tell her again you love her, and then you let her go deal with what just hit her. She’s a survivor, Jeffery. What I’m afraid could happen is that she looks at you with blanked emotions, says ‘okay,’ then comments that she likes what you’ve done with the house, that it feels like a nice home, and never mentions the matter to you again. That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

His wife was pale, but she rose to stand with Jeffery. “Tomorrow night, nine o’clock,” she said. “We’ll welcome Shannon into our home and make sure she knows she has a forever kind of
welcoming place here. She’s loved, Matthew. We’ll make sure that gets through before any of this has to be said.”

“Good. That’s what she needs to hear.”

Jeffery’s phone rang.

They all watched as he picked it up and looked at the screen. “It’s Shannon.”

Because Jeffery was way too churned up to keep the rough emotion out of his voice, Matthew stepped in and said, “Remember—calm, normal, emotionally level.”

Jeffery took the direction, drew a deep breath, and firmed up with a nod. He strode toward the living room as he answered the call. “Hey, Shannon. Good morning. Had breakfast yet or are you being lazy and sleeping in?” he asked, his smile projecting in his voice. “Ashley told me over breakfast that just one kitten isn’t going to do because she’s got too much love for just one. The neighbor has four. I think our little lawyer is angling for at least two. Want the other two? I think at least one is a ginger tom like that cat we used to have when we lived over on Court Circle. Do you remember his name?” He paused to listen. “Peanuts, yes! I figured you would know it. I’m getting old, Shannon. I’m about to become a cat owner.” He laughed. “No, you don’t get to help my daughter make her case. She’s already got me wrapped around her little finger.”

Matthew glanced over as Jeffery’s wife stopped beside him, rested her hand on his arm. “He’s a born politician. He can be boiling mad over some news, then slide on a genuine smile to greet someone the next moment. Both emotions are true. I didn’t understand that for the first few years I knew him. I thought most of the kindness and smiles were just him being polite. But he lives in the moment that is in front of him, and unlike most people he can switch from minute to minute.”

“It’s impressive to watch.”

“He loves his sister. He’s devoted his life to getting her back. Shannon will be safe with him. Whatever is necessary, Jeffery will do it. He’s already got a clear hierarchy in his head—his wife, his daughter, his sister, then his parents.”

“What he’s offering Shannon right now—that’s how she gets through this,” Matthew pointed out. “There’s nothing as simple as kittens in her life right now. She needs to borrow that from him while all the painful pieces shake out into the light.”

“He’ll give it,” Cindy replied. “Head on back, Matthew, be there as she gets her day started. I’ll tell Jeffery you’ll be in touch tomorrow morning.”

It was good advice and probably best. “Thanks.” He silently took his leave of Jeffery with a raised hand and headed out to rejoin Shannon.

M
atthew entered the security code at the apartment door, opened it, out of habit dropped his keys on the side table, and stepped out of his shoes. He knew Shannon was up. He made a point of thumbing through the newspaper as he went to find her. Casual body language could hopefully cover some of the stress. Shannon was seated at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of Cheerios. Peeled and chunked potatoes were boiling on the stove. It looked like she was serious about making potato salad for the cookout tonight.

“How was my brother this morning?”

Matthew spread out the sports section on the table and pulled out a chair. “He said that next to the day his daughter was born, seeing you was the happiest day in his life.”

She smiled. “Nice.” She got up to take her bowl to the sink, stabbed a fork into a potato, turned off the heat. “We need to make a road trip today. We’ll be back before the cookout at five, but we should get on the road soon. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you why in advance.”

Anything that diverted the conversation from her brother
was fine with him. “I can take you wherever you’d like to go. But I’d be more comfortable if I could touch base with Paul occasionally, let him know our location.”

“That’s fine.”

She put together the potato salad, slid it into the refrigerator to chill, then went to find her tennis shoes. Matthew swallowed two aspirins and hoped the day did not come with any more hard surprises.

It was a quiet trip heading north away from Chicago. Shannon gave him directions occasionally, but otherwise sat quiet, lost in thought. It bothered him, but he chose not to interrupt the silence. Not quite two hours after their trip began, they entered the small town of Leesburg, Illinois, population twelve thousand. They passed nice subdivisions with new construction, a bank, grocery store, pharmacy, crossed a railroad track, and entered what looked like an older, less prosperous side of town.

“Take a left at the stop sign,” Shannon directed.

The homes were mostly two-story with porches, weathered white paint in need of touching up. Blocks passed. The homes became one-story with a detached garage in the back. “At the next stop sign, take a left, and we’ll be heading out of town.”

They were soon surrounded by more cornfields than houses. He had to ask, “Where are we going?”

“It’s about three more miles on this road.”

He checked the odometer and began to mark off the miles.

Shannon touched his arm. “Up ahead, on the left.”

“The cemetery?”

“Yes.”

He found a place to pull off the road. Shannon got out of the car. He joined her.

“We’re looking for a woman named Eddie Malleton.”
Shannon began walking lines of gravestones. It was an old cemetery in the country, mostly full, set between two sizable fields of corn and beans. Matthew noted some of the gravesites went back a hundred years or more, and some monuments were several feet high, ornate with figures and spires and angels with spread wings. It would be an interesting place to visit if it weren’t for the fact Shannon was searching for a marker relevant to her past.

“Here it is,” Shannon called. He walked over to stand beside her. Eddie Malleton’s resting place lay beneath a monument resembling a square tower topped with a brass dome. Shannon leaned against the headstone, and when it rocked back on its base, she nodded to the other side. “Hold this for me, this angle, like I’m doing.”

Matthew grasped the stone, pushed against it, and held the angle steady. She reached under the exposed lip and pulled out a white butcher-paper-wrapped package about four by six inches in size. He should have been expecting something like this, but he was still startled. “What is that?”

“One of Flynn’s private hideaways.”

He carefully let the stone drop back in place. Shannon unwrapped the paper, then multiple layers of plastic wrap, to reveal a thick stack of the old-version twenty-dollar bills and a sealed, standard-size white envelope with a bulge at one end. Shannon opened the envelope and pulled out a deposit slip and a key for a safe-deposit box. “The bank in town we passed by,” she said, reading the name.

“I wonder where we’re going next?” Matthew asked dryly.

She handed him the deposit slip with the number 917 written on it.

“We can’t access the box without a warrant,” he said.

“I’ll be on the signature card.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Not in the bank. Flynn had his own way of getting things finessed. I signed a lot of signature cards that he’d bring to me and deliver back. It wasn’t uncommon for him to set up five deposit boxes in an area when he would slip away to conduct his own business. What name I’m under is the more critical question.”

“We should make a call, Shannon. At least talk to the bank manager before we show up.”

“And have what I need to recover be pulled into evidence by the local cops? I’m not opposed to turning things we recover over to law enforcement, but you need to give me some leeway here or I’m going to walk away and recover these things without you. Some of what I’m looking for is personal enough I would ditch you if I had to.”

“Please don’t do that, Shannon, not over this. We’ll work out any issues that come up.”

“After I open the box and we see what’s inside, you can make the decision on what to do next. I promise, if you insist I stop, I’ll do so and let you make some calls.”

“What do you think is in the box?”

“That depends on whether Flynn has been here in the last few years.”

“Let’s go find out.”

The bank was on Main Street. He parked at the curb next to a bench and flagpole. The breeze fluttered the flag above them as they walked up the sidewalk to the bank entrance. “Let me do the talking, please,” Shannon requested.

It was a small bank: a counter with three teller windows, two employees with desks just off the lobby, and three private offices
opposite the entrance. Two tellers were working the counter at the moment. A sign indicated their vault and safe-deposit boxes were located to the left.

Shannon moved to the first free teller. She set a key on the counter and smiled. “I’d like to access a safe-deposit box, please. Number 917.”

“Could I see some ID?”

“Sure.” Shannon pulled out a change purse from her canvas bag and offered a driver’s license.

“Thank you, Ms. White. I’ll meet you back at the vault. Will you require a privacy booth today?”

“Yes.”

The teller nodded. “One moment while I get the keys.”

Signing the check-in card, handing over the key, getting the box retrieved and brought to one of the two privacy booths took five minutes. Shannon turned the check-in card so Matthew could see that the name above hers was dated three years ago and was illegible. “You want to open the box?” Shannon offered when they were alone.

Matthew nodded toward it. “Go ahead.”

She lifted the lid. The box held a slightly bulky nine-by-twelve-inch manila envelope. “Good, it’s still here. Flynn’s emptied this box, I think, as I would have expected to find something of his, if only a few cigars. That envelope is mine, my handwriting, my real name—can I have it? I know what it contains.”

“Yes.”

She pulled out the envelope, unwrapped the thread tie, slid out the contents. A well-worn small book, covered in blue fabric, with a date embossed on the corner in gold script. It was eleven years old.

“My diary, from the month I was taken. I had it in my backpack in the car. They let me keep it.” She was quiet for a long moment, then glanced over, met his gaze, and held the volume out to him. “You should probably read this.”

He accepted it, but she didn’t release her hold. “I have two conditions: I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want you to give it to the cops unless I make the decision to do so.”

He knew the implications of what she was offering. “Agreed.”

She closed the safe-deposit box. “This was a casual drop site. Flynn would use it for his personal business matters. He’d occasionally store things for me—a diary, small objects that had some sentimental value.”

They left the bank together. She said, “You can have someone find out who paid the safe-deposit box storage fees and pull the signature cards, but I can tell you right now the inquiries will lead to a dead end. And just looking may trip an alert he has set up. Don’t pursue this location just yet. You’ll have numerous other storage locations to unwrap soon enough.”

“I trust your judgment, Shannon.” Rather than head to the car, he pointed to a corner store to get a fountain drink to take along. “Is there anything else around this area we should investigate today?”

“No. Let’s get back to town for the cookout. Unless you’ll let me back out.”

“They’re friendly people,” he assured her. “I think you’ll be glad you went tonight, but I’m not going to insist.”

“We can leave when I want?”

“No questions asked, we leave whenever you wish,” he said. “Becky and I had this deal. I could choose the place, the event, and she could choose the amount of time. She didn’t have to explain to me why she wanted to go home. Over time I started
figuring out patterns I could predict. Sometimes it would be the dark corners in a restaurant, or smells could be a trigger, but most of the time it was a nervous stomach bothering her. She was hypervigilant for a long while to the feeling of being watched.”

“I’m sorry that was her experience, Matthew.”

“It’ll be helpful for you to meet these people or I wouldn’t be suggesting we go. But you’re the one sorting out the impact of what’s happening. I’m not going to feel let down or disappointed if you want to change how this is unfolding. I’ll work with your decisions, Shannon. You’re going to get through the next few weeks intact if it’s the only thing I can promise you.”

She had begun to smile. “I like that about you. That I’m in that circle you’re going to care about and protect, like some knight of old in a definition of chivalry.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. I’m pretty good at reading people. You’ve got ‘Becky II’ written over my name. It’s why you’re in Chicago with me, disrupting your own life, rather than in Boston. It’s . . . helpful to me to know that this is personal to you, not just business, that it matters to you that this unfolds in a safe way. I’m frankly taking advantage of that. I should be excusing you to get back to your life, but I’m selfish enough that for now I want you to stay.”

Matthew put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a friendly hug. “You couldn’t budge me if you tried.” He opened the door to the store. “Find us drinks, make mine something orange or cherry. I’ll get some snacks.”

“No more pretzels. I’ve eaten so many of them I’m becoming twisted too. Cheese puffs. Cheese curls. Something cheese.”

Matthew laughed. “I’ll find something.”

He went to review the snack options, his smile fading when
he was alone. He thought about what she’d handed him: the diary from the month she’d been taken. The implications . . . he understood the trust she was placing in him. He had now been hit with two fastballs in a matter of hours—the confirmation she wasn’t her father’s daughter, and the existence of a diary from the first month of her abduction. The contents of which were likely to hit him like a third fastball. He’d be reading that diary tonight after they were back from the cookout. He needed this evening among friends, if only to give him a chance to break up the stress landing on him. Shannon needed it even more—a taste of something normal, a chance to meet in a casual setting those she would be dealing with from law enforcement.

He found cheese puffs. The last time he’d eaten junk food like this had been in the days after his daughter was recovered. Cheese puffs, old movies, ice cream, Scrabble, all familiar favorites to fill in the hours he was spending with her while those shattered nerves began to heal. Shannon wasn’t in nearly as bad a shape as his daughter had been, which was something that continued to surprise him.
Or she was in her own way, and she was
doing a good job of hiding it.
He looked across the store to where she was filling drinks at the fountain, watched her expression when she didn’t think she was being observed.
Hiding
, he realized. But also exerting a tough strength to get things done like recover that diary, then trust him enough to hand it to him.

Shannon would get herself through this, and he’d help her where she let him. And when the inevitable hard days arrived, when she wasn’t managing as well as she was today, he wouldn’t be surprised. He’d be as ready for them as possible. He walked over to meet her at the checkout counter. “Cheese puffs. And I might share one of my Twinkies.”

She grinned. “I’m enjoying this break from eating healthy.”

He put cash on the counter, accepted the change. “It’s going to turn me into an early fossil. I already did a round of this with Becky.”

She laughed, and he decided the rest of the day was going to flow by as she needed it to—nothing else particularly stressful in it unless she raised a particular subject. He had enough on his plate to mull over without asking her anything else right now.