Taken (27 page)

It took five hours to finish walking the property. The day had been draining on Matthew, and he could only imagine what it had been like for Shannon. He offered her another water bottle as she perched on the gate separating the pasture from the barn. The wind had blown her hair around despite the ball cap he’d given her, and she showed signs of a light sunburn, even though she’d used the sunscreen he’d offered. She looked . . . hollowed out. She had to be feeling relief now it was all over. The memories had surrounded her, with no place to hide from them.

The cops would be out here for the next several weeks, Matthew thought. The graves, the house where the bullet holes from the shooting were still evident, the hidden locations riddling
nearly every building. “You’re right, they didn’t leave here thinking there was trouble coming,” he commented, leaning on the gate beside her.

Shannon nodded. “This is the farm as they would leave it behind every year. They liked being here, but staying in one place, even on their own property out here in the middle of mostly unoccupied countryside, left them itching to be on the move again.” She shrugged. “This was their retirement nest egg. The plan was to stay here for a year or so when they retired, then sell the entire property and use the money to set up someplace where they would spend their last years. They didn’t trust a bank or a mutual fund—they put their wealth into the land, into things they kept rather than sold.”

She tipped the water bottle to get the final swallow. “If someone hasn’t already called to tell them a sheriff’s car is on their property, that word will reach them by tonight. They’ll be on the run, scattering with a well-thought-out emergency plan, pulling what they can get to from storage and disappearing like ghosts. How many of them are dead by morning, deemed expendable and a liability for the future, is the question.”

He knew that outcome was likely. “You can’t change what they’re going to do, Shannon, any more than you could change what happened before. None of this is your fault—not the killings that already occurred, not ones that might come.”

“I know. It doesn’t make it any easier to live with, though.”

It was time to get her out of here, preferably out of Chicago too. If she didn’t get a break soon, she was going to disappear inside the black emptiness surrounding her emotions, and it could be months before the woman he’d met and been getting to know since Atlanta would reappear. What to do didn’t take much thought. “Come home with me to Boston for a few days.
We’ll fly out of Milwaukee, be on the ground in Boston in two hours. I know you don’t like to fly, but you can hold my hand the entire flight. You can simply walk away from all this and catch your breath. You need that.”

She turned to look at him, her expression too calm. He braced to hear her politely turn him down. She slipped off the cap, ran her hand through her hair. “Sure, why not? I don’t want to be here, and Chicago is just more drama.” She stepped down off the gate. “We’ll need to make a stop in Indiana first. We can fly east from there.”

“Something to pick up?”

“Something you should see.”

They stayed the night at a hotel in Wolcott, Indiana, and the next morning Shannon directed him farther into the state toward the Tippecanoe River. When they arrived at their destination, Matthew was surprised by the setting. Crater Lake stretched a mile-plus across, its surface smooth but for the occasional protruding tree limb of a submerged fallen giant. The shoreline was made up of mostly heavy woods down to the water, and very little of the surrounding property had been developed. An old fishing boat with a trolling motor was tied up to one of the few docks they passed, suggesting the lake provided some good fishing. The cabin Shannon eventually identified for him defined isolated. He parked on a crushed gravel square, grown through with weeds. “What is this place?”

“One of Flynn’s private residences. That flag is flying high above the property when he’s here, letting the one neighbor nearby know to ignore the car traffic back here or the smoke coming from the chimney.”

“You were thinking Flynn might be here?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think he will go near anyplace I know about. But I want to check if something of mine is here.” She stepped out of the car, and he joined her.

She pushed the flagpole’s bracket to one side and produced a key tucked behind it. She unlocked the front door, gave a rueful smile. “The lock is more formality than substance. Someone who wanted in would just smash through a window and crawl inside. But the lock is at least a statement that it’s private property.”

The cabin was larger inside than it had appeared—two rooms off to the left, open doors showing a bedroom and a full bath, and on the right a larger area with a kitchen, worktable, and living room.

Shannon pulled a soldier’s metal footlocker from the corner, worked the latch. “Flynn’s son liked to play with all kinds of toy construction equipment, then toy soldiers, and finally it was race cars. This footlocker’s spent most of its life being hauled around filled with a child’s delights.”

The comment caught Matthew off guard. “Flynn was married.”

“Um-hmm. His wife was a nice woman. I was often assigned responsibility for his son. I made the wrong move, the boy would pay the price. I wouldn’t hurt a child, and I wouldn’t hurt Flynn by hurting his son. A double bind.” She nodded toward the wall. “The pictures are of his wife, Karen, and their son, Taylor. There were more photos, several with Flynn in them—I snapped most of those—but he put them away after his wife and son died because the reminder hurt too much.”

Matthew took a seat at the table, watched Shannon lift items from the locker, realizing an entire new fissure was opening up
regarding what had happened in her life. “You were responsible for the safety of his son.”

She paused to glance over at him. “The old man could spot a weakness in a heartbeat, and exploit it. Mine was Taylor. He was two when I met him for the first time. If I stepped out of line, the boy would take the punishment. Even Flynn wouldn’t have been able to stop that retribution. So I lived very carefully, tried never to take a misstep.”

“They died.”

“One of those tragedies that seem to strike the most innocent of people. His wife and son both got food poisoning at a state fair, the doctors did what they could, but it hit them both too hard and too fast. The loss shattered Flynn. I wondered for more than a year if he’d be able to get through the grief. He would maneuver things so he was responsible for me, then leave an opening big as a truck for me to slip away—he wanted me to go so the family would kill him for his lapse. I couldn’t do it. I think that’s when I finally realized how much he mattered to me. I was willing to stay in that hell rather than get him killed with my escape.”

“Why hadn’t he taken his family and gotten out long ago?”

She rested her hands on the edge of the footlocker. “Flynn’s not a Jacoby. His wife was. And she wouldn’t agree to leave while her mother was alive. Flynn had begun to set up safe places like this for his family after her mother passed away, places that couldn’t be traced back to him. He was looking at buying a proper home about twenty miles south of here. This cabin would have been a vacation spot for family outings.” She lifted out the top tray of toys. “Ah, I wondered if they would be here.” She began lifting out journals. Her diaries, he guessed. “These are most of the later years,” she said, studying the covers.

“Why here?”

“Flynn was grieving. He’d come here for a few days, a week, whenever he could get away. He’d say he was going out on private business, but I knew he was coming here. I’d cover for him as best I could.” She began to stack the diaries. “We’ll take these with us.”

“Anything else you want to look for that might be here?”

“No. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell Paul about this place, at least not for a while.”

Matthew nodded. If he broke trust with her, she’d stop showing him these locations. It was too important to know these facts. “It can wait for a couple of weeks.”

She found a pen and wrote a note,
Flynn, call me. Shannon
, then included her phone number on it, and left the note on the table.

Matthew followed her outside, carrying the diaries. He was beginning to recognize the emotion in her when she spoke about Flynn. A survival kind of bond, a friendship on her side, and probably an acceptance on Flynn’s side that Shannon was only going to make it out with his help. The references to Flynn in those diaries he had read, the few things she’d mentioned at the farm, had been of a man taking actions that weren’t in his own interests. Now with the added knowledge there had been a wife and son in the picture, his action had definitely not been in his own interest, but he’d interceded on Shannon’s behalf just the same. A man with a conscience, Matthew thought, in a family that hadn’t shown much of one. Shannon had survived in large part because of Flynn. Her silence about him was beginning to make sense.

I
t felt good to be home. Matthew pulled into his own driveway, shut off the car, felt the strain of the recent days slide away. His own bed tonight, his own coffee mug, that same faucet drip in his bathroom. Photos of Becky, stacks of mail to sift through, the flower bed’s weeds calling for attention. He’d gladly deal with all of it, for here were the memories and belongings of the last two decades of his life.

He glanced at Shannon and saw she was still asleep. She wasn’t a good air traveler. She’d taken the recommended medication to prevent vertigo, clung to his hand in nervous tension through most of the flight, then promptly closed her eyes and went out like a light when finally she was safely back in a car and able to let go of the stress. It seemed like the flight had worn her out at least as much as visiting the farm.

He stepped out of the car and softly closed the door so as not to wake her. He walked up to the house and unlocked it, walked through the rooms switching on lights, adjusting the air-conditioning to take the edge off the late afternoon’s warmth. It had been some time since guests other than one of Becky’s
friends had visited. He hadn’t exactly cleaned house before leaving for the conference. Things were neat, but the laundry wasn’t done, the kitchen floor needed mopping, and fishing tackle lay spread out on the dining room table.

He checked Becky’s room. She’d suggested Shannon use hers instead of the guest room, as there were locks on the inside of the door, the safety blanket of sorts his daughter had needed those first few years. He’d remade the bed when he last did laundry, so the sheets were clean. He set out fresh towels in the adjoining bathroom, turned on the bedside lamp, and changed the radio station to one with softer music than his daughter’s taste. The posters on the walls and collectibles on every surface definitely said “Becky,” but the room was clearly female, soft and lacy. Shannon would be comfortable here for a couple of days.

He walked back outside. Shannon was still sleeping. He eased open the passenger door, hunkered down beside her. “Can I convince you to wake up from that dream you’re enjoying?” He didn’t reach across to unclip the seat belt—waking her by surprise would likely get him a fist thrown or an elbow in the eye. Instead he talked, amused at her deep slumber, and waited until she began to stir. The sleepy eyes that met his were so exhausted it was like looking down a dark, bottomless well. “Hey, lady.” He gently brushed her hair back from her face. “Welcome to my home.”

She looked past him toward the house, sighed, and closed her eyes again. “Nice place.”

He waited some more.

“I think I want to just relax here for a month or two. The travel is finally over, most of the list done,” she whispered.

“Yeah. Mostly.” He reached across to unfasten the seat belt. “Food, then you can sleep as long as you want.”

She managed a small smile. “Heaven.” Reluctantly she swung her feet around and stood. She looked at the neighborhood as they slowly walked to the front door. “Is Becky home to meet you?”

He heard the hesitation. “No, her car would have been in the drive,” he replied.

“I don’t want to intrude on a homecoming. I can stay at a hotel.”

That idea wouldn’t be going anywhere. He wanted her somewhere he knew how she was doing and what was happening. “There’s no need. I’m going to enjoy introducing you to Becky, but the timing might not work out on this trip. There will be other visits.” He held the front door for her.

She stepped inside, looked around the entryway, into the living room. “Has it changed much since Jessica died?”

Matthew understood the question, and the reason for it. “You’re meeting Jessica in this place as well as my daughter. This has been the family home since we first married.”

“She had lovely taste.”

He smiled. “She did.” He led her through the dining room and into the kitchen, pointed to the stool where Becky often perched to watch him work. “Sit. I’m fixing us a nice dinner. You’re going to be lazy.”

He saw the start of a smile. “I can do that.”

He talked about Boston while he worked on a stir-fry with fixings from the freezer, got her laughing about his marathon experiences, asked her to thumb through the stack of newspapers to give him the front-page highlights while they waited for the rice to finish cooking. This city had its charms, and if she didn’t want to stay in the Midwest, it would be a good place for her to settle for the summer. Florida, though, always appealed to him come mid-December.

They talked about sailing as they ate dinner—she was willing to go out should it work into the schedule—and she asked him about his work, what he did around Boston for his clients. As they talked, she ate, and he was pleased to see her appetite returning. “We’re going to have our dessert out on the back deck—it’s lovely weather, and the summer bugs aren’t out yet in droves,” he told her. “While I pick up the kitchen and figure out what we’re having for that dessert, why don’t you wander around, get acquainted with the house and where everything is—nothing’s off-limits—and then join me on the deck. You’ll rest easier knowing the layout. My daughter makes art—string-and-fabric kinds of wall hangings. She describes them better than I do, but I can tell they’re pretty. Second room on the right is yours. I put your gym bag beside the bed.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that,” Shannon said.

While she looked around the place, Matthew cleaned up the kitchen, chose a container of frozen chocolate mousse for dessert, and took a knife with him as well as plates and forks out to the deck. She wouldn’t need to hurry, and it would be easier to cut if it sat out for a while.

Shannon eventually came out holding a bottle of soda, leaned against the wood railing, looked toward the sun that was beginning to disappear into the horizon. He saw she’d removed her shoes somewhere along the way. “Sunset will be about eight o’clock tonight,” he told her. “There’s rain in the forecast, so it may have deep-red streaks if that cloud bank cooperates.”

“You talk a lot about the weather.”

He smiled. “Want me to stop?”

“No. I like knowing, and I enjoy the sound of your voice. And I realize it’s probably the only topic that doesn’t end up somewhere you can’t predict.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve noticed” was his dry comment as he cut the dessert into wedges. He passed her a plate. “It tastes better than it looks.”

She grinned. “I’ve heard you say that before when you handed me a plate. I’m sure it tastes wonderful.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

They ate the mousse in comfortable silence. He was accustomed to his daughter chattering through a meal, whatever she was thinking spilling out as she skipped from topic to topic. Even when she’d been feeling miserable in those first days, Becky had come to the dinner table dragging a box of Kleenex, talking between tears about how awful the dreams were, while she tried to do justice to the meal. His daughter had processed things by talking, only occasionally in that process requiring his input. She’d just needed someone to listen.

He would grow accustomed to Shannon’s preference for silence, even while he wondered how much that silence was learned behavior over eleven years. He suspected she would become naturally more open as time went on.

A breeze kicked up, and he caught the faint scent of the ocean on the wind. “Want to watch a baseball game with me tonight?”

“Sure,” she replied with a smile, “until I fall asleep out of simple boredom.”

He chuckled. “Whatever works to get you some rest.”

“I like your home. It’s peaceful here,” she noted as she stood and began collecting their dishes.

“The hedges hide the fact the neighbors are within touching distance,” he said.

“I noticed. It’s like that for too much of the East Coast.” She turned toward the kitchen with the dishes. “I’ll see if I can find a game,” she offered.

“Try channel seventy-one.”

When he joined her again, she was stretched out on the couch, watching a Red Sox game. He took the leather chair on the opposite side of the room—his chair, with his things piled around it and on the table beside it. The other chair near his was where his daughter liked to hang out, her legs draped over the arm, stealing his popcorn and flipping a quarter between shows to see who got to have the remote next.

The first four innings passed without either of them speaking. He got up at the bottom of the fifth and handed her the fuzzy throw his daughter used, went into the kitchen and returned with a handful of cheese cubes and crackers from the before-dinner snack tray, also carrying another soda for himself. She stirred in the seventh inning, disappeared into the kitchen, came back with an iced tea and a handful of the crackers. She settled back on the couch as the game tied up one to one. It stayed there into the bottom of the ninth and moved on to extra innings. He thought about telling her there was a TV in Becky’s room if she wanted to finish the game there, but she seemed to have caught her second wind—relaxed, legs drawn up under her, eyes on the game, occasionally glancing around the room, at times lost in thought. Rarely did he catch her looking toward him. She wasn’t avoiding him but wasn’t paying much attention to him either.

Her phone rang, catching them both off guard. She hadn’t given the number to Jeffery yet. Charlotte had the number but had called only twice. Shannon pulled it out of her pocket. “It’s Becky,” she said with surprise, reading the caller ID.

“I gave her your number,” Matthew said. “Go ahead and answer it, say hi. She’ll do the rest.”

Shannon took the phone with her and stepped into the kitchen. “Hi, Becky. Yes, it’s Shannon.”

Matthew grinned when she said very little for a very long time.

Shannon came back into the living room, hands hugging her arms, looking rather dazed in a good way. Matthew didn’t need any explanation to interpret that look. “She’s twenty and you’re here,” he said, figuring that would explain the conversation.

“I think I got in a ‘yes’ twice. She asked if I liked you, and could I remember to fix your coffee with the cheap coffee beans because you didn’t like the expensive coffee she’d bought you for your birthday. You don’t like good coffee?”

“Blame it on all those years drinking bad coffee on the job. My daughter likes to talk.”

“No. She just hides her nerves in talking. Why do I make her nervous?”

He laughed. “To repeat, she’s twenty and you are here with her father. You’re the first woman to ever stay in this home since her mother died.”

“I really should stay at a hotel.”

“No, not a good idea.”

“She’ll think—” Shannon stopped. “No, she won’t think that. She knows you, and she certainly knows this situation. So what’s she nervous about?”

“I promised I’d find a woman I could like and she could like. It was kind of our pact—she goes off to college while I deal with the empty nest syndrome. You just showed up earlier than she thought I might deliver on my part of the deal.”

“What’s her part of the deal?”

Matthew wasn’t going to touch that question. “She can tell you one day.”

Shannon curled up again on the couch. “You and your
daughter are eerily alike in some ways. Listening to her was like listening to a more animated version of you.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Don’t worry, it’s a compliment.” The Red Sox second baseman managed to catch the edge of a misplaced fastball and drive it over the outfield wall for a home run, diverting their attention.

The stadium erupted in celebration and fireworks with the win. Matthew muted the volume, and they could hear the fireworks faintly outside. “A good game.”

“It was.” Shannon rose from the couch, stretched, gave him a little smile as she picked up her glass. “Since I now know where Becky keeps the really good bubble bath and all her nail-polish choices, I’m going to retreat and call it a night, and enjoy both.”

“Do that,” Matthew replied with a chuckle. “I have no plans for tomorrow, so be thinking about what you might like to do.”

“I’d love to see the ocean up close. Can you find us a relatively private beach?”

“I’ll show you a favorite stretch of sand,” he promised.

“Thanks . . . for everything. Good night, Matthew.”

“Night, Shannon.” She disappeared down the hall.

Matthew waited until he heard the door close before he got up from his chair, walked into the kitchen. Having Shannon Bliss in his home was a welcome addition, if only for a few days. He dialed Becky’s number. “So how are you tonight, Becky? Thanks for calling Shannon.”

He listened to his daughter chat about Shannon—she seemed nice—about how classes were going, and what her roommate had planned for them for the weekend. She could change her plans to come visit. “No need, Becky. We’ll be gone by the weekend. I’m thinking we’ll return to Chicago either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, depending on which day has
better weather for the flight.” He opened the freezer and set out steaks to thaw for tomorrow. “I’ll definitely be back here the next weekend for the Fourth of July holiday, so bring your roommate this way if you like. Shannon might come back then, depending on her plans. Her next big decision is going to be where she wants to settle for a while.”

Becky promptly included both her roommate and her new friend from English class for the weekend plans. “If you can man the grill, Dad, I’ll fix my award-winning seafood salad.”

“It’s a plan,” Matthew agreed easily. “Bring home whoever you like. There’s plenty of room.” Spectacular fireworks in Boston Harbor could be seen within walking distance of the house. “Anything you want me to do for you while I’m home?” He made a note to find her running shoes—she wanted to try out for track this year. “I’ll find them. Love you, honey. Call me tomorrow.”

Content that his daughter was doing well, Matthew glanced at the time, thought about turning in himself. But while he was trying hard to give Shannon a break with this brief trip, his own to-do list was growing. His first call was to Paul. “What’s the latest with the farm?”

“I’m surprised Shannon was able to walk that property and tell us what she did. So far, ground radar has indications of ten bodies: the five she was certain about, the two children she suspected, and three others she flagged for us to check. Has Shannon said anything else about their East Coast home base? I need a perimeter put in place on that property too.”