Kidnapped (10 page)

HOW TO BE A GREAT TEACHER

Know your students.

Know your subject.

Make it relevant.

Teach in an organized place, in an organized way.

Encourage curiosity.

Ask the questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Time is priceless.

Care.

The list sounded so like her. Caroline loved teaching fifth grade. Luke touched the small chimes hanging on the wall, sending them into motion and then turned off the light. He walked through the house. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, simply signs that there had been unwanted attention also focusing on Caroline.

He couldn't discount the fact that by leaving early for Atlanta, Caroline had unknowingly saved herself from being part of whatever had happened. If someone had grabbed Sharon and Ben and also Mark, had they intended to grab Caroline too?

Luke took a seat on the stairs and rubbed the center of his left palm with his right thumb seeing the lines smooth out and re-form.
Caroline part of this . . . when had she made that decision to leave early for Atlanta?

Had someone been tailing her too and she hadn't realized it? Or maybe she lost them in traffic? Someone had come after the Falcons in Benton and taken three of them. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them also plucking Caroline from her travels. His hand tightened over the other to stop the tremor. This hadn't been accidental—the hours since they had last been seen made that improbable—and that left intentional.
Who are you? Why did you do this? What do you want?

He pushed hands through his hair and looked for a moment at the ceiling. If he came apart tonight, so would Caroline. She'd pulled herself together but she was still on that fragile line of panic. He suppressed the overwhelming emotions he felt. He could do little for his family tonight, but he could still do something for Caroline. As much as she hated his calmness, it was still for her benefit.

He was doing the biggest snow job in the world right now, implying he was okay.
I am so scared, Lord. All I can see is finding their bloody corpses. You might as well kill me with a heart attack first; it would be more merciful.

He took a deep breath, stood up, and walked back through the house. He reentered the kitchen from the other direction. “I still think you have a great home. It's got character.”

“I like it.”

Old-fashioned glass jars with stick candy in a variety of flavors lined the counter. Luke took an orange stick and walked to the patio door to check the dead bolt.

Caroline brought the tea over to the table, and a plate of sandwiches. “Come and sit. You barely touched what I fixed earlier; you have to eat something. Would you say grace for us?”

“Sure.” He pulled out a chair and waited for her to settle in her chair before reaching for her hand. “Jesus, please bring Sharon, Benjamin, and Mark home to share the next meal around this table.” Her hand cut off the circulation in his. “Please keep them safe.” He ended the prayer before it overwhelmed her. She looked like she wanted to lay her head down on her hands and bawl.

He picked up the sandwich he would have to wrestle to swallow. A glance at the clock showed it was 2:23 a.m. “If you eat, you'll rest better.”

She nodded and ate a few bites of the sandwich. He needed more things from Caroline: lists of friends and neighbors and answers to a dozen other questions about who might have reason to hurt the family, but he couldn't bring himself to ask them right now. The team already had their hands full getting ready for the 6 a.m. newscasts. A couple hour's delay for those names wouldn't materially affect how fast they could be investigated.

Caroline pushed aside her plate and rested her chin on her palm. “They aren't going to be found alive, are they?”

He flinched. He looked at her and couldn't answer her. Not given what he'd seen on the job the last few years. He couldn't offer much hope that he could give her back all three of them safe and unhurt. He might be able to give her back some of them alive. Sometimes he hated his job that made anything better than death good news.

She looked away, toward the night outside the patio doors. “Tell me what comes next, Luke. If we don't get a ransom call.”

“We'll talk after you get some sleep.” He took the dishes to the sink, rinsed them, and stacked them in the dishwasher.

“I'm scared to sleep. They're out there somewhere, needing help, and I'm sleeping.”

“Finish the tea.” A marathon was coming, and she was still thinking sprint. “With the coming of dawn, the world will be at your doorstep, all wanting to help. You'll need your voice to answer all the questions.”

She turned her glass around. “I want to stay with you later today, wherever you go.”

“You'd survive better if you stayed a step away from the investigation.”

“If we don't find them, what does it matter? There will be only me. Without family, who cares how neatly I survive this?”

He sighed. That made two of them. Without Mark around, what was his life going to be worth? He rested his hand on her shoulder. They'd been tossed out of the same boat and both expected to swim. “Go sleep while you can. We're in this together, Caroline, for as long as God allows this storm to last.”

She covered his hand briefly with her own, and maybe that was the one encouraging point in the night—they were in it together. They weren't exactly in sync with each other, but they were in the same storm. “I'll wake you at six. Try not to dream.”

She tried to smile. “No problem. Life is enough of a nightmare right now. Get some sleep too, Luke. You look awful.”

He rubbed his face. “Yeah. I feel it too.”

Her eyes met his, and the emotion in them— She reached over and hugged him hard, then abruptly left the room.

* * *

For the first time since the suspicion that something was wrong had set in yesterday afternoon, Caroline had nothing else to distract her from her thoughts. If only the images and fears would go away. Only the faint sounds of wood creaking as the cool night air contracted floorboards broke the silence. Tonight she only wished that footsteps of weary family members making it back home were on the stairs to wake her up.

Caroline's bedroom was at the end of the hall, the room she had used since she was a child, decorated now in soft white walls, with colorful pillows and throws for splashes of impact. The room was simple, but hers, and comforting.

She tugged back the blankets and moved the pillows to her preferred pile on her right. She set the alarm clock for 5:40 a.m. She could be ready to join Luke at six o'clock. She picked up the hairbrush from the bedside table but didn't have the energy to use it.

Something horrible happened to them; there was no other explanation.
Jesus, I just want to curl up and retreat from life, from this gaping wound and unbearable pain. We have to find them. I need to be out there looking, even though I know experts are already searching.

She got to her feet, left the hairbrush, and headed out into the hall. Her parents' bedroom had been turned into a guest room and sitting room years before. Her sister had used the bedroom across the hall from hers, and Benjamin had his own room near the front of the house where the dormer angled out from the wall. Caroline walked down to Benjamin's room and sat on the slender bed.

He'd left a book on the bedside table. She opened it to the bookmark he'd made from a thin blue strip of colored paper glued to a piece of cardboard. He penciled on the bookmark his own bar graph to record how many books he read this year. Caroline smiled and set the book back down.

She picked up his pillow and hugged it. So many memories were in this room. Days of tucking him in and reading him a last story. Nights when he had whispered questions like: Could he be in her fifth-grade class one day? Would she help him make his mom a bracelet for her birthday? Was Mark really going to be his new father? She was his aunt, and he trusted her to back up what his mom said, to tell her his thoughts and dreams. He liked to try ideas out on her before testing them on his mom.

It had been several weeks since Ben last spent a night under this roof on a sleepover. He was still getting comfortable with the security of his new home, and Caroline understood his subconscious desire not to be away from Sharon and Mark for long. Benjamin hero-worshiped his new dad, and it was still sinking in that
permanent
really meant forever.

Caroline curled up on Benjamin's bed and pulled over a second thin pillow.
Hang tough, Benjamin. Luke will find all of you.

Sharon was a strong woman. She had made it through medical school while married with a son. She had survived the shock of her husband Zachary's unexpected death. She had picked up and come back to Benton to build a good life for herself and her son. She'd had the courage to say yes when Mark proposed.

Sharon, I'm going to be lost without you. If you're hurt, if someone grabbed you, if you're protecting Benjamin—please, figure out a way to get word to us. I've always counted on you to figure out what to do.

Caroline wiped at the tears flowing onto the pillow. She wasn't sure how Luke was getting through this night. It was his family too. If she could guess at what might have happened, Luke had firsthand experience on which to base his suspicions. As much as she hated his silence and distance, deep in her heart she knew he was staying silent because he likely did know what had happened, and it would be news too hard for her to hear.

Jesus, I'm just so scared.

Caroline closed her eyes and wished for the night to be over.

* * *

Luke turned on the couch, tossing off pillows and trying to get comfortable, needing to be downstairs rather than in the guest room to hear if something was disturbed outside.

What was he dealing with? Who? Why Mark and Sharon and Benjamin? The boy was a good kid; he would do the Falcon name proud for the next generation. Luke sighed. He should have paid better attention to the details of the suspicious events occurring around Caroline last fall and what they suggested about the stalker's behavior. How much of what was happening today was rooted in those days?

He watched moonlight shadows drift across the wall. Mark might survive a fight, Sharon would try to negotiate an out, but Benjamin had no defenses. He was resourceful, not as likely to realize the extent of the personal danger he was in, but defenseless to the emotional hit if he saw someone hurt his mom. Luke closed his eyes at that image. He couldn't even imagine where the three of them might be found.

Just let it be something I can deal with, Lord. Even if it's a snatch and a ransom—something for which there's at least hope they will be found alive.

Life already had a before and after quality to it. He would gladly trade his own life for any of theirs. His worst fear was that he wouldn't have the chance.

Chapter Ten

C
aroline got up quietly after two hours, her sleep too filled with nightmarish images to close her eyes again. She pulled on sweats and heavy socks. Not wanting to wake Luke by going downstairs, she settled in the sitting room, which had once been her parents' room, curling up on the rocking chair with a blanket across her lap to keep warm.

Her attention drifted across the photos and the books, the display shelves with mementos from family trips. So many memories here . . .

Unable to help herself, she reached for the photo album on the bottom shelf of the table beside the rocking chair and set it in her lap. The old album needed retaping to hold the spine together and saved programs and ribbons moved to a more secure box, but it was a project still waiting to be done. Her family had documented everything in photos, from the proud loss of a first tooth to the high school debate finals.

Caroline opened the album and ran her finger across the photo of her dad. “I wish you were here.”

She let the tears fall as she turned through pages of Sharon's first wedding, the baby shower, and Benjamin's birth. If these memories became her only connection to her sister, as the photos were the last links to her parents— She bit her lip to hold back a sob.

O God, it hurts.

With an unsteady hand she retrieved Benjamin's birth announcement, remembering the hours she and Sharon had spent choosing the card and the words. Being Benjamin's aunt was one of the best things that ever happened in her life. If he were her own son, she couldn't love him more.

“Do you remember New Year's Eve?”

She looked up, startled, and hurriedly wiped her eyes. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean to wake you up.”

Luke took a seat in the big chair beside her that her father had loved. “I wasn't sleeping well either.”

“What about New Year's Eve?”

“Cramming into that photo booth because you wanted a photo of us together to remember the night?”

She smiled. She'd forgotten, but it was obvious he hadn't. “I like photos.”

He reached over, closed the photo album, and gently took it from her. “Then don't let these make you sad. They are good memories. Let them stay good.”

“I don't know what to do with the fear.”

At this odd hour of the night, it was okay to admit it. And she loved him all the more when he didn't tell her right now to trust God and stay brave and keep hoping.

He just extended a foot and started her chair rocking gently. “Close your eyes for a bit. I'm here. The nightmares will stay at bay this time.”

She had his undivided attention. They wouldn't be interrupted, and under any other circumstances she would have sought to talk about their future and settle the disquiet that had been building over the last weeks. She had to tell him of her need to know if their relationship would develop into something much more serious or would it return to just being friends. But it wasn't a night that could absorb one more emotional note. She closed her eyes. “I enjoyed that New Year's Eve.”