Find Me If You Dare (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 2) (29 page)

    
           Chapter Seventy-Six

Madeline must have been a travel agent in her past life. Either that or she had some amazing connections with the Bureau.

We were in Chicago by that evening, staying at a hotel near the airport. We had a rental car and we were planning on heading out for Iowa the next morning.

The weather here was vastly different than where we had just come from. A late-season snow storm had blown across the plains the day before. There had only been a few inches of accumulation, but the temperatures had dropped below freezing and a sharp wind gusted from the west, dropping the temperatures even further.

Most of the drive from Chicago there wasn’t much to see. The landscape hadn’t yet thawed from the winter and it was mostly a broad expanse of a white dusting of snow against the dark brown barren trees.

Even at the end of winter, there was a beauty to the plains and farmlands of this country. In a few weeks or months the rolling hills and fields would be green with growing crops, stretching out in their neat rows. Long lines of wheat or corn would cross the land, turning the broad countryside into a giant checkerboard.

An occasional farmhouse, barn or grain silo
dotted the horizon. Once in a while we would drive through a tiny town with a small country store, a white-steeple church or two and a single stop sign. This was the true roots of this country, the heartland, a place that felt as though you could stop by the side of the road and travel back in time. Back to an age of innocence, back to a time of goodness and virtue.

The long icy roads seems to blend into each other. With the stark white of the land
stretching out before us, I had plenty of time to think.

Before we had left New Mexico and when we had reached Chicago
, Madeline and I had done as much research as we could about Elizabeth’s family. We used what information we could get from public records such as Elizabeth’s and her mother’s birth certificates. Madeline also had some amazing access to different court records.

The long drive gave me plenty of time for introspection. Maybe too much time. As I watched the long, barren fields pass by the window, I thought back to the innocent child Elizabeth had been at one time. I wondered if the outcome of her life would have been different if she had been raised by a loving extended family in a quiet country environment.

I thought back to all the potential she had once had. She could have done so many things with her life, accomplished so much. For her life to have ended the way it had, in a fiery grave out at the end of a deserted dirt road, alone, running from the world. To be branded forever as a mass murderer, a serial killer. To have left behind so much heartache and pain.  It was so tragic.

I knew I was doing this more for myself than for her. I needed to complete the circle, to see where the story of Barbara and Elizabeth Marshall began. Maybe if I saw where everything started I could somehow understand how it all ended up such a tragic mess.

Dubuque, Iowa was an interesting city, straddling the state line between Iowa and Wisconsin and touching the tip of Illinois. The lazy Mississippi River wound right through
the east side of the town, dividing it in places where river barges drifted down the muddy river.

We didn’t have to go all the way into the city. From what we had found in our research, Henry and Ida Miller still lived in a small farmhouse just east of the city.
It was a very rural area, the kind of place you couldn’t find on just any map. Most of the roads were barely paved and you definitely couldn’t get GPS signal out this far.

I sat in the back seat, distractedly listening as Madeline and Logan argued back and forth good-naturedly about which direction to go. They were both lost and unwilling to admit it to the other. I think both felt naked and out of their element to be unable to use the technology they had grown used to.

We must have gone in circles three times trying to find the address we had found listed in a house deed. So many of the farms looked alike and in the stark white landscape they all began to blend together. We finally found an old farmer, clearing his long driveway from the recent snow with a bright red ATV.

Logan asked for directions and we all smiled at the answer:
“Go down a ways until you see a set of mailboxes off yonder. Take a right up the next road as the crow flies. There’s a big old oak on the corner. Count another three pine trees down the way. Look for an old brown barn about to fall over. House should be to the left.”

We did the best to follow his directions. After a few wrong turns, we finally found the three pine trees in a row and a faded white farmhouse in the distance.

There was a long lonely road leading up to the house with an old wooden fence lining the way. The brown barn wasn’t far off with a patch of bare trees nearby. An antique John Deere sat in the long front yard, surrounded by a garden that must have been bright and cheerful in warmer days. A drooping front porch ran the length of the front of the house. The once-white paint on the house was worn and chipped. It had seen better days. The dull gray roof had shingles missing in places. The house had to be sixty or seventy years old.

Logan made his way cautiously up the drive. Many people in places like this didn’t take kindly to strangers.
We hadn’t been able to find a phone number for them, so we knew we weren’t expected.

We each slowly exited our rented SUV. I looked around at the other vehicles in the driveway. There was an old Ford pickup truck that probably dated back to the seventies. It had seen its share of work. You could still see bits of hay sticking out the tailgate.  There was a four door Chevy sedan, and again, it couldn’t be newer than the eighties.  There was one other vehicle, shiny and new, a sleek
black Cadillac.

We exchanged glances with each other as we climbed the steps to the porch, walked past a few weathered rocking chairs and approached the front door. Logan knocked firmly a few times.

The house was silent. I tried not to be too nosey, but I couldn’t help peering into the front window. Heavy curtains draped across the pane but I could make out a light on inside.

“There are cars here. There’s a light on too.” I didn’t mean to be so insistent, but we had come so far and it really felt as though we were out in the middle of nowhere.

“I’ll try again.” Logan gave the door a few more good knocks.

Silence again. We stood there in the freezing wind, wondering what we should do next.

“Maybe we should go into town, get a hotel for the night.” It was Madeline who made the suggestion. She was trying bravely not to let her teeth chatter. Neither one of us were dressed as warmly as we should have. We hadn’t expected it to be this cold and hadn’t thought to stop along the way to do any shopping. “We might be able to find out more there.”

“One more time.” Logan
insisted. He probably felt like I did. We had come so far. He was about to knock one more time when we heard movement coming from the other side of the door.

“Go away!” The voice was deep and gravelly. It was the voice of someone that had been around for a long time and had seen many things.

“Are you Henry Miller?” Logan insisted. He put a hand over the holster that held his sidearm. I had almost forgotten it was there. I had gotten so used to it. It was probably a good thing to have at the moment, just in case there was a double-barrel shot gun waiting for us on the other side of the door.

“I said go away!” The voice was hard and final.

“Please, if you’re Henry Miller we just want to talk to you for a moment.” It was Madeline this time. Her voice was calm yet confident.

“Didn’t you just hear me? I said go away! Leave us alone!” I took a step back from the door. It was obvious we weren’t wanted. We gave each other resigned looks and realized that we probably weren’t going to get anywhere this way.

Logan, with his law enforcement training, was careful not to turn his back as we edged off the porch. He knew not to leave himself exposed. Madeline and I quickly followed his example.

We backed down the icy porch one step at a time, slowly, carefully so we didn’t slip or take our eyes off the front door.
We were halfway to the stairs when a movement in the curtains caught my eye. The dark green material was brushed aside by an unseen hand just enough to give me a quick glance inside.

I only caught a quick look at an old, withered man, his eyes wide with terror, his face drained of color and pasty. Behind him stood a dark figure. I couldn’t make out the features. One thing I was certain of, though, there was a knife to his throat.

“Logan, we need reinforcements.”

          
      Chapter Seventy-Seven

The winter sun was rapidly falling into the west. It was hard to believe that we had left Chicago that morning and arrived here on this farm by early afternoon.

We had backed off the porch to the driveway and stood near our rented SUV, not certain of what danger there might be in the house.

Logan had tried several times to call out to the occupants of the farmhouse while Madeline had used her cell phone to frantically call in reinforcements. We were grateful that we were even able to get a cell phone signal out this far.

There had been no answer from inside. We had cautioned the local authorities to
approach from a distance and to approach carefully.

I paced back and forth across the gravel of the driveway, feeling panic welling up inside of me as I watched
numerous city and county vehicles stop down the road. They weren’t coming any closer, we had warned them. We didn’t want too many people in uniform here until we fully understood the situation.

The FBI w
as on their way but the nearest field office was in Omaha, Nebraska. For now all we had to rely on was the local law enforcement.

Logan had walked down the driveway to speak with the county sheriff, trying to fill him in on what we knew or suspected so far. Madeline was on the phone with
Director Phillips, explaining to him the situation as he chartered a jet and tried to get here from New Mexico as soon as possible.

I stood shivering in the too thin jacket I had on, looking back and forth between the old farmhouse and the group of men gathering down the road. The
sheriff and police chief approached with Logan, speaking in low voices about what options we had at this point.

“I think we should try again to make contact,” Madeline weighed in.

“No one’s said anything from inside since you first approached?” The sheriff asked.

“No, but we need to keep trying.”
Madeline was insistent.

Logan agreed. The three of us understood this situation and what threat may possibly be waiting inside better than anyone else could. We had seen firsthand what Elizabeth was capable of. If that really was her inside, there was no telling what she would do or already had done.

The sheriff had brought along a bullhorn. He seemed a bit out of his element in whether or not to use it. He didn’t want to “rile up” whoever might be inside and cause things to get worse.

Madeline, bless her heart, didn’t have any hesitation. She
snatched it out of his hands before he even realized it and marched right up to stand next to the old pick up.

“This is the police. We’re just here to do a wellness check. We need to have everyone inside come out. We need to be certain that everyone in there is unharmed.” Her voice was calm and controlled. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought she’d had some hostage negotiation training. Maybe she had.
There were no threats made, nothing to alarm the occupants inside.

Still there was nothing from inside the house. She looked over at the men standing nearby then at me.
The local sheriff seemed a bit in shock that she had taken the bullhorn and taken over the situation. He looked like he didn’t know what to do next.

She looked like she wanted to roll her eyes at the useless sheriff.
She jerked her head just a bit towards me, telling me she wanted to talk to me. Confused, I walked over to where she stood, so small yet so confident. She lowered the bullhorn and her next words betrayed just a bit of her confidence.

“Are you sure you saw someone inside holding a knife to a man’s throat?” She whispered so that only I could hear. She had trusted me and my judgment so much through all of this. For her to question that
at all right now only told me how much was on the line at this point.

I swallowed hard and nodded.
I had to trust myself. It wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I know what I saw. I nodded again, this time more confidently. She didn’t question me again. Instead she raised the bullhorn and tried again.

“We need to have everyone come out. As soon as we know that everyone in there is safe and unharmed, we’ll leave.” It was an empty promise and we both knew it.
No one was leaving here until every inch of this farm was searched.

Up at the window near the front door the dark green curtain moved just slightly. It was the slightest movement but it drew my attention.

“Henry Miller, can we speak with you?” Madeline made another attempt. She turned off the bullhorn and turned slightly towards me. “Make it personal.” She whispered low so that only I could hear. “If it is a hostage situation, we need to identify the hostages, make them seem real, human. Not just victims.” She held up the bullhorn one more time. “Can I speak with either Henry or Ida Miller? We just need to know they’re safe.”

Again, I could see the rustle of the curtains. I thought I could make out just the barest outline of an old woman. They must both be inside. What could they possibly be thinking at this point? Some crazy woman they’ve never met comes into their home and holds them at knifepoint. Their simple
, peaceful life shattered in moments.

“Please,” Madeline was encouraged by the movement at the window, “just come out. Everything will be fine. No one will be harmed.”

Her voice was real, convincing. She must have had nerves of steel.

Maybe we would get lucky this time. Maybe they would all come out of the house and this would end peacefully. I wanted to hold on to that hope. I had to hold on to that hope.

That was when I noticed just the slightest movement in the trees off to the side of the house near the barn. I wasn’t certain what it was that drew my attention. I tried not to be too obvious as I looked in that direction. Was it the rustle of a dry leaf, still clinging to a barren tree, floating with the wind? Was it was hum of the near-arctic breeze snaking through the dry, brittle grass? There was something…….

My heart sank and I felt even colder than before if that were possible. There was another subtle movement off to the left, the swaying of the tall weeds along the fence not caused by the biting wind.
There was something there, something quiet, something cloaked. I had that odd feeling of suddenly not being so alone.

The SWAT team was here. They were surrounding the farmhouse.