"Chapter 1
Little Sara Parker got away.
She was only seven, but' she was fast, especially when she was seared
to death. She had guts, too, because she saw her chance and she took
it.
Near as the authorities could make out from what the little girl had
told them, the man had stolen her off the sidewalk, a mere block from
her parents' home in Rus-sell ville Illinois, about seventy miles west
of Chicago.
Four days later--she wouldn't talk about the intervening time--he'd
been driving, Sara in the truck with him, when he nearly ran out of
gas.
He'd stopped to get more and Sara had defied his command to stay in the
cab of the pickup and keep quiet. She'd jumped off the high seat onto
the parking lot, then immediately stashed herself away under a
tarpaulin in the bed of another pickup, only moments before it pulled
onto the rural highway.
Sara Parker saved herself.
Only trouble was, she had hidden herself away quite well in the back of
that second truck, and had been too scared to move. No one noticed she
was there until an hour or so had passed. The startled driver, a young
boy from Bloomington, Indiana, headed for his cousin's new home on the
White River to go fishing, had no idea where he'd stopped the last
time; he'd been lost and looking for directions. But that must have
been the place where Sara climbed into the bed of his truck.
Sara had no clue about where she'd been kept for the four days she was
missing or where she'd made her escape, and so far, she hadn't been
willing to talk at all about the man who'd taken her away from her poor
mother and father.
Special Agent Andrew Delaney had been on the case for only three days
when the girl escaped. He beat her parents to Pritchard, the little
Indiana town where they'd found her, more than three hours' drive from
where she'd been snatched. Drew had been the first FBI agent to speak
with her.
She hadn't told him much of anything that would be useful in helping
him find the man. He was tall, but then all men were to a
seven-year-old girl. He smelled bad, he smoked constantly, and he'd
hurt her. She wouldn't say how, but then, she didn't have to. Drew
knew what bad men did to little girls.
All in all, he had next to nothing to go on in his search for the
man.
Still, there'd been something about Sara that triggered some memory for
him. Something about this case was so familiar, and he'd concentrated
so hard on what she'd told him that he overlooked it for an entire hour
and a half. It was her clothes.
Sara Parker had been kidnapped on her way home from her best friend's
house. They'd been playing in the tree house in the backyard until it
turned cold on them. It was
October, so she'd been wearing a flowered pink sweater and a pair of
light-colored jeans. Drew had seen' some pictures taken earlier in the
fall, when she was wearing the same outfit.
But when she escaped, she'd been dressed differently; in a light cotton
short set more suited to summer than fall. He should have realized
that earlier. That was at least part of the reason the girl had been
shivering--from the cold.
Now that Drew thought about it, the clothes had seemed too big for her,
too. The top had kept falling off her shoulder, and her tiny waist had
been too narrow for the waistband of the shorts.
He knew those clothes.
They were red--red-and-black checked shorts with red trim, with a
matching cropped top that barely covered her stomach, even if the top
was much too big for her.
The answer was right in the back of his mind, hiding there in the
shadows.
In an eerie premonition of what was to come, in what he could only
describe as an aeknowl~gment that some part of his brain figured it out
before the rest of him, a chill moved over him in one long wave,
shaking him to the core. Of course he knew those clothes.
He'd seen them before, on another little girl. Her parents had bought
that little red suit for her one year . in Texas, while visiting
rdafives over their Easter vacation. Thelittle girl had worn the red
suit all summer long. And one Sunday afternoon in August, after a
church picnic, she'd disappeared.
It had been ten years ago.
"Carolyn! You've got to see this?
She looked up as the door to her office, high in. the corner of the
old renovated house in Chicago, burst open. By the lime Carolyn McKay
stood up, her normally calm, cool secretary had come around to the
other side of the desk and was tugging on her arm.
"Come on," Julie said. "You won't believe it." "Okay, I'm coming."
Julie led her through the hallway and downstairs to the combination
kitchen-lounge, where the whole administrative staff of Hope House, a
private agency working for children's rights and gaiety, seemed to be
gathered around the small TV set in the corner and cheering.
"Comin' through," Julie said, taking her right down front.
"What's happened?" Carolyn said~ They so seldom got good news.
"They found her," Brian Wilson, the best computer expert she'd ever had
the pleasure of working with, said as'he threw an arm around her back
and gave her a quick squeeze. "They found Sara Parker."
She gasped. Her hand came up to cover her mouth, muffling her words,
as she stared at the pictures of the little girl on the tiny television
screen. "Oh, thank God..."
Carolyn squeezed Brian back, then turned to her secretary for another
celebratory hug. The adminisgrative of-rices of Hope House were in an
uproar. They'd been following the little girl's case for the past
seventy-two hours, and most of them had expected the worst, from the
information the authorities had released about her kidnapping. But it
hadn't worked out that way--not this time.
"That's incredible," Carolyn said," straining to hear what the
announcer was saying. " How did they find her? "
"They didn't, actually," Brian said. "She ran away ~when the guy
stopped to get gas for his truck."
God, all kids should be so lucky--and so brave. Carolyn felt the
throbbing in her head, the churning in her stomach--which had been
constant ever since they'd heard about the kidnapping--finally ease. It
would be all right now. At least until the next case.
In her business, there was always another case, always another child,
another set of grief-stricken parents, maybe brothers and sisters,
too.
Carolyn knew all about that.
Her sister had disappear~ ten years ago, and no one had ever found a
trace of her or her kidnapper.
Drew Delaney sat alone at a borrowed desk in the corner of the
Pritchard police station, waiting for someone at FBI headquarters to
dig up the file on the ten-year-old ease that continued to haunt him to
this day.
He was oblivious of the constant ringing of the phone, the buzz of
excited conversation around him, the curious stares of other officers,
both local police and FBI. He turned his back on all that and sat
facing the wall, his mind helplessly drawn back to another place,
another time.
They had never found the other girl, had barely found a trace of usable
evidence, not even the first good clue as to what could have happened
to her.
It was even crueler than the actual death of a child, because her
parents had never learned what had become of their daughter. To this
day, they waited for answers. No doubt, in some corner of their minds,
they still hoped for a miracle--that she was alive and well somewhere,
that someday she'd find her way back to them. Some bit of irrational
hope never. died, making the nightmare a never-ending one.
Drew wanted answers for them, and for himself. While witnessing
something as joyous as Sara Parker's tearful reunion with her parents
helped ease the ache, it didn't stop it. Nothing would. Except
finding the other missing child.
"Mr. Delaney?" someone called out from the front of the room.
He stood and turned around, then caught the clerk's eye. She made her
way back to him, through the throng of excited, happy law-enforcement
officers. They'd won one.
for a change, and they'd all been in this bus' mess long enough to know
that they had to celebrate the victories, because the defeats were far
too many, the costs much too high.
"Mr. Delaney?" she said again as she reached his corner of the
room.
"Yes," he said, holding out a none-too-steady hand. "Fax for you." She
handed it over. "Thanks," he muttered.
Drew held it facedown in his hand, waiting for the clerk to walk away.
Then, once again, he turned his back on the crowded room.
It shouldn't mean so much to him--not after all this time. And it
shouldn't bother him this much; he'd worked on dozens of cases like
this in which they'd never found the missing children.
But that one, all those years ago, had been different. It hadn't been
a case. It had been personal. Drew Delaney hadn't worked on it. He'd
been a witness--one of the last people to see Annie McKay before she
disappeared without a trace.
And he knew what the odds were of finding her, or finding out anything
about her kidnapping, after ten years.
It would take a miracle, and Drew had been on the job long enough to
know that those were few and far tween. Sara Parker's escape was
probably the only one he'd see for years to come. Still, holding this
old picture in his hand, he couldn't help but hope.
Slowly he flipped the flimsy piece of fax paper over in his hands. It
was a lousy copy of a black-and-white copy of an old color photo. The
clarity was nonexistent, yet he still had to swallow hard when he saw
the image. He would never forget the sight of a smiling Annie wearing
that red-and-black suit; it was the image that had been reproduced
thousands of times and distributed throughout the country in newspapers
and broadcast on numerous television stations in hopes of finding Annie
McKay.
From his shirt pocket, he took the Polaroid he'd snapped this morning
of Sara Parker in that little red shorts set. He could have sworn it
was a perfect match for the outfit Annie had been wearing when she
disappeared-the one Annie had on in the faxed photo he now held in his
other hand.
And it made sense that the red suit was too big for Sara. She was only
seven, but Annie had been thirteen when she disappeared. It had been
only about a hundred and twenty miles from here, across the border in
Illinois, in a little town called Hope. Drew would never understand
the cruel twist of fate that had bestowed that name on the town.
He'd grown up there, and he hadn't been this close to the place in
years. The past four years had been spent with the FBI working on the
West Coast, and before that he'd been in the army. He didn't want to
get any closer to the town now, but he didn't have a choice. It was
his job to track down the miss' rag especially the children, and Annie
McKay was still missing, even if no one had been working on her case in
seven or eight years.
He sat back in the swivel-based desk chair and stared at a water stain
on the gray wall, near the ceiling. It had been so long ago.
/knnie would have been twenty-three years old now, but in the eyes of
h~ family, her friends, and the people who'd searched for. her 'she
would remain forever a smiling, laughing thirteen-year-old. Annie
would never grow old.
She had a sister--Carolyn, who would be twenty-seven now. Drew
couldn't help but wonder if she still lived in town. He wondered if
she'd married, if she had kids of her own.
Every now and then, he still let himself think about her. He wondered
if she'd ha~. ~l him in the end, all those years ago, wondered if she
still thought of him," every now and
then, and what she'd do if he just showed up on her doorstep.
Most of all, he wondered whether she still hated him for walking away
from her so long ago.
He still hated himself for that at times.
Drew knew Sara Parker's case should take precedence over a ten-year-old
kidnapping, but he couldn't help himself. As disciplined as he was, he
couldn't keep his mind on Sara Parker; He'd been there when Annie McKay
disappeared. He'd searched for her himself, along with most of the
people in the small town where she'd lived. For years he'd tried to
somehow atone for her disappearance by trying to get girls like Sara
back home, safe and sound.
And he knew that, no matter what he did today, he wouldn't stop
thinking about Annie. Finally, he just gave up trying. He had a bad
feeling about-this. Hell, he had more than that. He had a
ten-year-old photograph of a little girl who hadn't been seen in a
decade, and another of one who'd disappeared four days ago, only to
return in what he was sure were once Annie's clothes.
Even without that, Drew had been in the business long enough to trust
his instincts. They were screaming at him right about now.
After conferring with the agent in charge at the scene, convincing him
nell that they had the manpower to do what they needed to do without
him, he'd excused himself with. at erse explanation that he had
another lead. It was a long shot, but he needed to follow up on it.
Then he'd promised to check inas soon as he knew something. Drew had
worked with Bob Rossi long enough that he didn't have to say more than
that.
Then he'd climbed into his car and headed toward a place he hadn't seen
in nearly ten years.
He reasoned with his conscience, telling himself that Sara was safe
now, where Annie never would be again. The authorities still owed her
parents something, even if it was only a body to bury And if Sara
Parker really had been found wearing Annie's clothes, then there had to
be some connection between the two cases. He had a duty to follow up
on this lead.
It was difficult to go back to that town. Like stepping back in time
and into someone else'S skin. He'd been different here. At least, the
people of Hope, Illinois, had seen him differently, and he hadn't
appreciated it at all.
They'd judged him by the clothes he wore, the rundown place he called
home, the mother who'd run off and the father who all too often was
falling-down drunk. No one had seemed that interested in knowing him,
because they'd thought they knew enough about Drew already. "
Well, they'd been wrong, though it didn't matter much anymore. He
didn't care what any of them thought.
Except, may he Carolyn. Because sometimes he still let himself think
about her. Sometimes he imagined he caught a glimpse of her in a
crowd. Sometimes he thought he smelled her perfume. Sometimes, in
~the night, he still reached for her, even though he hadn't touched her
in years, and had never shared a bed or a whole night through with
her.
Sometimes he thought about trying to find he~, if for no other reason
than to exorcise old ghosts, to separate the reality of Carolyn, thew0
man at twenty-seven, from the memories of the girl who haunted his
dreams.
But he'd never done that.
Before today, he'd have sworn he never would, because he'd decided long
ago that Carolyn McKay was better off without him.
He had no trouble finding the town, despite the way the area had grown
in the intervening years. There was a new,
more direct road connecting it to the nearby Interstate 70, and the
place was dotted with fast-food joints and gas stations.
He passed a new-car dealer, an honest-to-goodness shopping center and a
big grocery store before making his way into town. Once he got within
the town limits, he stopped to get gas at what used to be Eddie's
Garage. In what seemed to be another lifetime, he'd worked there.
It was one of those convenience stores now--just like the ones you'd
find in any city anywhere in the country. He wondered what happened to
Fxldie, wondered whether anyone in this town would recognize him
anymore and whether he'd recognize them.
He was mildly curious about whether there was anything left of the old
town he'd known. Not that he'd mourn its passing. It was just
strange--like thinking of Annie being twenty-three instead of thirteen.
In his mind, the town, like the girl, had never aged.
He had found the presence of mind to realize that the McKays might well
have moved in the intervening years. So when he stopped for gas, he'd
asked the clerk, who'd told him that they still lived on Highland
Avenue.
Reluctantly he drove down the tree-lined street and parked in front of
the house, one of those respectable two-story brick homes in that
eminently respectable part of town. He'd been intimidated by it in his
youth, but the man staring at it now found it to be smaller than he
remembered, and showing definite signs of aging. The dark green paint
on the trim and the shutters was peeling, the path leading to the front
door was cracked. He remembered flowers--a profusion of them--in
window boxes and pots on the front porch, but there were none in sight
now. That was strange, he thought. It wasn't like Henry McKay to let
the place go like this.
Drew opened the old ornamental iron gate, and a loud creaking sound
filled the air. He wondered why someone hadn't oiled the thing,
wondered why he was starting to sweat now, merely at the thought of
walking into the place.
He glanced down the bare sidewalk and remembered how pretty it had
been, lined with black-and-gold pansies, ones that matched the flowers
in the pots on the porch. He had known from the beginning that he
wouldn't fit in here.
Determined to shake off the memories, he made his way down the path
toward the door and knocked.
Drew had done much harder things than this in the line of duty, so why
did walking back into this house seem so difficult? Why did he dread
the opening of that oversize oak door?
But it didn't open. Even after he knocked, it didn't budge. He turned
to one side, noting a brown sedan in. the driveway, then knocked
again.
Finally, he heard footsteps coming toward the door. After what seemed
like forever, it swung open.
A woman stared back at him with not a flicker of recognition in her
eyes, but Drew would have known her anywhere. This was Grace McKay,
Annie and Carolyn's mother. Her hair was going gray, which shouldn't
have surprised him, but did. He took just a moment to survey the rest
of her. She'd gained some weight, but not much. Her face had new
lines running across it that seemed to have nothing to do with age and
everything to do with the difficult life she'd led.
"I'm sorry" she said, quite pleasantly; She obviously didn't recognize
him. "I was just watching the news. They found that~ little girl this
morning--the one who'd been missing for four days now."
"I know," he said, before be even thought about it, then backtracked
into something that wasn't quite a lie. "I was listening to the news
on the radio."
"I've been so worried about her, and to have them jusi find her like
that--it's a miracle."
"Yes, ma'am, it is," he said, feeling like-a boy who was trying and
failing to impress her with his good manners and his politeness.
"Now, what can I do for you?"
Drew glanced around at the porch and the path, the old houses that
lined the block. It was hard to believe he'd come back here after all
this time. His hand went to the outside of his jacket, where the right
inside pocket was, and felt the outline of the fax paper and the
photograph. For a moment, he'd forgotten where he'd put them, and he
wasn't sure how to bring them out. No doubt she was going to be upset
just to see him again, once she realized who he was. And once she saw
the photograph--anything could happen. For a moment, he wished he
hadn't come alone, or that some of her neighbors were around.
"I need to come inside for a minute, ma'am," he said, going for the
case that held the credentials that identified him as a federal agent
and flipping it open briefly for her to See.
"FBI?" she said, obviously taken aback at finding an agent on her
doorstep.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well." . " She hesitated. " I guess. Please, come in. " He
stepped into the dim entranceway, one that seemed even~ darker because
of the sunlight he'd just left, then waited by the sofa in the living
room until she invited him to sit. He chose the corner by the lamp,
and he knew the' moment the light hit his face, because she gasped.
"Oh, my Lord, it's you!" She sank into the chair in the opposite
corner, her face deathly pale.
"Mrs. McKay, I'm sor"
"Drew Delaney? After all this time.."
" She took a moment to gather her breath, then shook her head back and
forth, as if she still couldn't believe it.
Drew didn't like the way she looked one bit. He didn't want her
fainting on him, especially at the mere fact that he'd returned after
nearly ten years. If that upset her this much, what would she do when
he brought up Annie? "Ma'am, is your husband home?" She shook her
head. "No."
"Could we' call him? Maybe he could come, be,
cause- '
"My husband died six months ago," she said, and Drew decided that must
account for the peeling paint and the absence of flowers in the front
yard.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said earnestly. Carolyn's father had been
much less vocal in his dislike of Drew than her mother, and he knew
Carolyn had been very close to the man.
His own father had died three years ago, and Drew hadn't even come back
for the funeral. He would have felt like too much of a hypocrite.
After all, they hadn't spoken in ten years.
"Look," Mrs. McKay said, gathering her strength now, "I don't know
what you think you're going to accomplish by coming back here after all
this time, but it's too late. Do you understand me? It's too late.
Whatever you were thinking of doing, you might as well forget it,
because I'll never give up my"
Drew just purled out the picture of Sara Parker. That left Grace McKay
absolutely speechless once she caught a glimpse of it.
It wasn't the nicest thing he could have done, but he didn't want to
prolong this, or to get into an argument with the woman. He definitely
wasn't ever going to change her mind about him or about anything in the
past. So he was going to get this over with as quickly as possible.
"I didn't come to talk about Carolyn and me." He tried to hide the
anger in his voice, but he couldn't quite do it. He'd been gone for
ten years, and this woman obviously still hated him--not that it
mattered a damn bit anymore.
"I'm sorry, I don't know any way of making this easy for you."
She just stared at him with a look of utter disbelief. "This isn't
about Bi?" -- She clamped a hand over her mouth then and--if it was
possible--turned even paler. The breath went out of her in a whoosh,
and Drew noted that the hands she was wringing together in her lap were
now shaking;
"I'm sorry," he said, searching for the all-important detachment that
was so necessary to surviving things like this in his line of work.
He followed her line of vision to the end table in the corner, to the
photographs in the three small brass frames. Carolyn, a shot of the
teenage girl he'd known, in one frame; Annie, smiling and happy, more
than ten years ago; and a photo of a little boy who looked so much like
Carolyn, Drew knew he must be looking at her son.
Why did that surprise him? That Carolyn had a son? He certainly
hadn't thought she'd be here waiting for him. Still, faced with the
fact that there was another man in her life, that she'd had a child
with him. it was harder than he'd imagined it would be, harder than it
had a right to be.
He was finally going to see her again, and he'd do so / knowing that
she'd had another man's child. That shouldn't matter to him--not at
all. But it did.
"Why in the world are you here?"
Grace McKay's shaky voice brought him back to the task at hand.
"Business," he said abruptly. "Official business."
He intended to look her in the eye, just once, briefly, before he
flipped the photo in his hand over and got this over with. But he
didn't think that would he possible now. She'd moved back in her
chair, getting as far away from him as she possibly could without
getting up--which would be out of the question, he was sure, because
she~ was Ixembling all over now. She was having trouble catching her
breath; he could hear her struggling with that now, and she had her
hands up in front of her, as if to ward off an attacker. He supposed
what he was about to do constituted an attack against this woman.
"About... Annie?" He nodded.
"I don't want to see that," she shot back, glancing down at the picture
in his hands.
"It's not Annie," he reassured her.
"I don't want to see it." "She sounded close to hysteria now.
"You have to, Mrs. McKay. I need you to look at it, he-cause I
think... I think it has something to do with Annie. It's a picture of
Sara Parker, the little girl you've been heating about on the news.
She's alive. She's going to be fine, but I need for you to look at the
picture for me. It's important."
Somehow, she rose to her feet then, though Drew was sure that was a
mistake.
"I'don't care," she said. "I don't want to see it." Drew backed off
for a moment, rethinking the situation. He truly hadn't wanted to
upset the woman, but he was trying to catch a kidnapper here. Sara
Parker had gotten away, but the next little girl might not be so lucky.
And who was to say whether, if someone had pushed a little harder more
than ten years ago, they might not have caught that other man before he
kidnapped Sara?
He had to do it. He had to make this woman help him, regardless of how
much it upset her.
"I'm sorry," he said to her once more, then held the photo up in front
of her.
Grace McKay gave a little cry and turned her head aside, but he watched
as her eyes helplessly darted ba~k toward the photo for a quick
glance.
There was nothing upsetting about the photograph at all. It merely
showed a~small, thin, frightened LITTLE girl standing before the
camera. She didn't even look anything like Annie. Her hair was dark,
where Annie's had been blond. Her eyes were brown; Annie's had been
blue. And she was six years younger than Annie had been when she
disappeared. So there was nothing, nothing at all, about this picture
that could have upset Grace McKay--except for the clothes.
And something had definitely upset her.
Dtc~ felt as if a streak of sheer power, like the kind that skimmed
along the electric lines outside, shot through him in that instant.
He'd been right. He was certain of it now. There ~as definitely a
link between Annie's kidnapper and Sara Parker's.
He'd just found the first good clue they'd ever had in Annie McKay's
kidnapping. He was going to find out what had happened to her,
finally, after all these years. And then he was going to put this
whole nightmare behind him.
"Mrs. McKay?"
He looked up just in time to see her pitch forward. Her knees buckled
beneath her. She nearly hit the floor before Drew could grab her. She
slumped heavily against him and clutched a hand to her chest. He
braced himself, then hauled her up in his arms long enough to make it
to the brown flowered couch.
"My heart," she said, pressing. a hand against chest. "I can't-- Oh,
it hurts."
"Lie still," he said, pushing her gently back against the cushions,
then checking the pulse in the carotid artery in her neck. Her pulse
Was racing, and he heard her gasp' rag painfully for every swift,
shallow breath she took. For all the color there was in her face, she
might as well have been a ghost. Drew knew enough first aid to be
scared. He wondered if he'd just sent the woman into heart failure.
"I don't want to see that picture," she said weakly.
"It's all right," he said, not believing it himself, but needing to say
something to try to reassure her.
It's been ten years, he wanted to tell the poor woman. Ten years, for
Christ's sake. Didn't it ever get better? Hadn't any of them found a
way to live with what had happened to Annie? Was he going to hurt
Carolyn just as much as he'd hurt her mother, just by showing this
picture and tracking down this lead?
What in hell had he started here?
He wondered, even as he picked up the phone and dialed 911. He
remembered the address without any problem, and answered the
dispatcher's questions as best he could while he tried to calm Mrs.
McKay down.
He knew CPR, and he'd used it before. If need be, he could do it again
to try to keep this poor woman alive until the ambulance arrived.
But he didn't need to do that just yet. He loosened the top two
buttons of her blouse, kept one hand on the pulse at her neck, and
watched her struggle for breath.
"Slowly," he told her. "Try to slow it down a little. Take deep
breaths, if you can."
He was still checking to make sure Mrs. McKay's l~cart was beating,
however rapidly, still trying to quiet her breathless ramblings about
not wanting to see that picture, when he heard the ambulance pull up
outside.
Drew went to the door and waved the two men inside.
"This way," he told them, stepping aside. "Her pulse is racing, and
she's having trouble breathing."
"What happened?" one of the men asked as they walked across the
room.
"She grabbed her chest and said it hurt."
"Okay." One of the men dropped to his knees beside the woman and
opened one of his bags.
Drew stepped aside and looked away as they started working over the
woman. He picked up the picture of Sara
Parker that he'd dropped when Grace McKay collapsed, and put it back in
his jacket pocket, next to the one of Annie McKay, which surely would
have upset her even more.
15-09-07, 01:16 PM
Our child by sally tyler-hayes
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