He stopped dead still. "I"m sorry. I shouldn"t have come here." His gaze shot nervously around the room. "To be honest, I don"t remember how I got here."
"I don"t know either," she replied. "Maybe a friend dropped you off or maybe you took a cab or-"
"Where"s your husband? I"m surprised he didn"t kick my a.s.s out. n.o.body could have blamed him."
"Marcus is away on business."
"Good. Uh...I mean it"s good I didn"t cause trouble for you with your husband. I want you to be happy. I don"t ever want to hurt you again. I swear."
Steeling her nerves, Tam swore to herself that she could handle this situation, that she was in control of her emotions. "I believe you."
The tension between them tautened with each pa.s.sing second, like a wire tightening almost to the breaking point.
The doorbell rang.
Tam actually swayed on her feet as her body relaxed and she released a pent-up breath. "That"s probably Audrey."
"You called in reinforcements," Hart said.
Tam didn"t reply, nor did she glance back at him as she headed straight for the front door.
Audrey didn"t know who looked worse, Tam or Hart. Her stepbrother appeared to have sobered up after his drinking binge last night. Tam looked like she"d spent the night in h.e.l.l.
"Go ahead," Hart said. "Chew my a.s.s out. I deserve it. I f.u.c.ked up once again."
Audrey shook her head. What a sad state of affairs for all of them. "Garth will be here soon and we"re taking you to Parkridge." No need to beat around the bush. Straight talk was what Hart needed.
"One little slip and it"s back to the dungeon." Hart grimaced.
"Do you have a better idea?" Audrey asked.
"Yeah, why don"t I just go jump off the Walnut Street Bridge and put us all out of our misery?"
Audrey cut her eyes toward Tam in time to see the stricken look on her face as she bit down on her bottom lip. Audrey glared at her stepbrother. "d.a.m.n it, Hart, think about how what you say and what you do affects other people, the people who love you."
Hart stared at Tam, his gaze filled with a mixture of self-contempt and a plea for forgiveness. "I"m not worth loving."
How many times had Audrey heard those words come out of Hart"s mouth?
And how many times had she heard him threaten to kill himself?
What could she say? How do you convince someone who hates himself that he deserves to be loved?
As the three of them stood there in Tam"s living room, the silence deafening, the doorbell rang. Tam sucked in a startled breath. Hart cursed.
"That"s probably Uncle Garth," Audrey said. "I"ll let him in."
When she opened the door, Garth stepped inside as his gaze swept over the living room. With a snarl on his lips and weariness heavy on his thick shoulders, he surveyed Hart from tousled hair to shoeless feet. "Get your shoes."
Hart made no move to obey.
"He doesn"t want to go back to Parkridge," Audrey said.
"Too bad," Garth said. "He"s going."
"He is in the room, standing right here," Hart told them. "Don"t talk about me as if I"m not here." He glared at Garth. "I"ll continue going to Parkridge as an outpatient. You can drive me over there yourself for the first available meeting today, but I don"t need-" is in the room, standing right here," Hart told them. "Don"t talk about me as if I"m not here." He glared at Garth. "I"ll continue going to Parkridge as an outpatient. You can drive me over there yourself for the first available meeting today, but I don"t need-"
"You don"t know what you need!" Garth growled the words. "Were you or were you not drunk this morning when you showed up on Tamara"s doorstep?"
"Yeah, I was. And I admit that I didn"t handle the news about-" Hart glanced at Audrey and then refocused on his uncle. "The news about the toddler skeletons shook me up. But I"m okay now. I swear I am. I promise I won"t act crazy about this. I can deal with the possibility that one of them could be Blake."
"Can you?" Garth asked.
"I can. I swear I can."
Garth turned and faced Tam. "Did he say anything stupid or do anything that-?"
"No," Tam replied.
"You don"t have to worry about anything, Uncle Garth," Hart said. "I didn"t accidentally let any top-secret information slip out while I was drunk." Hart laughed, the sound horribly hollow and sad.
"Shut up, will you? You"re talking nuts." Garth grabbed Hart"s arm. "You don"t have to go back into rehab, but you"re going to continue with the outpatient program, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Understand?"
Hart saluted his uncle and tried to click his sock-clad heels. "Yes, sir."
Fifteen minutes later, with Hart tucked in the front seat of Garth"s "06 Mercury, Tam sat down on the sofa, leaned over, and placed her open palms on either side of her face. Audrey sat beside her and flung her arm across Tam"s trembling shoulders.
"He"ll never get any better, will he? He"s always going to be..." Tam"s voice trailed off midsentence as she looked at Audrey with teary eyes.
Audrey hugged Tam. "Don"t do this to yourself. Hart is not your problem. You don"t owe him anything. Do you hear me? You have a husband who loves you. Don"t do anything to risk your future with Marcus."
Jeremy Arden faced himself in the mirror as he shaved. He was young, good looking, and reasonably intelligent. He shouldn"t be living in a dump like this, working as a busboy at a local restaurant, and fighting his inner demons every waking minute just to stay clean and sober. If his father hadn"t died and if his mother hadn"t married that j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. second husband, maybe things would be different for him. When a kid went through the kind of trauma he had, more than anything, he needed the love and support of his parents.
He really didn"t remember much about what had happened when he"d been kidnapped. Not consciously. But more than one shrink had made him realize that on some subconscious level, he remembered more than he was willing to admit. Occasionally, a thought crossed his mind-a memory?-and he was never sure whether what he was thinking about had actually happened or if somebody had told him it had happened.
The dreams weren"t real. They were just nightmares. Frightening nightmares that ate away at his brain like drops of acid. Only when he was drunk or high could he escape the reoccurring dreams, the night sweats, the sound of a voice singing inside his head.
Hush, little baby.
When he was seven, his parents, with the a.s.sistance of the shrink he was seeing at the time, had explained exactly what had happened to him when he was three. The psychiatrist had told his parents that he was old enough to understand and that knowing the basic facts would help him fully recover.
"Those bad dreams you have are because when you were three, this woman-this mentally unstable woman-kidnapped you," his father had said. "She took you out of our car where you were sleeping while your mom went into the service station to pay for the gas she"d just pumped."
"This woman kept you with her for a long time." His mother had wrung her hands continuously as she talked. "Months and months. We nearly lost our minds worrying about you, but..." His mother"s voice had broken and she"d turned away from him in tears.
His father had taken his hand. "The police found you and took you away from this woman and brought you home to your mama and me. It was the happiest day of our lives."
During the following years, Jeremy had learned more about the woman who had abducted him. Oddly enough, he had become fascinated by Regina Bennett. An unhealthy fascination. And he had visited her several times at the mental inst.i.tution before she died. Even in her fifties, she had still been a rather pretty woman, bosomy and slender, with pensive brown eyes and thick, dark hair.
She had called him Cody.
And the last time he saw her, shortly before she died, she had caressed his cheek and hummed a familiar tune. "Remember, Cody? Remember how you loved for me to sing to you?"
Did he remember? He thought he did. Flashes of memory. Nothing definite. Maybe not even real memories, just thoughts planted in his head by an insane woman.
Ouch! Jeremy had cut himself with the razor and a spot of blood appeared on his chin. The momentary physical pain snapped him out of his thoughts and temporarily relieved him of the emotional pain that never left him. Jeremy had cut himself with the razor and a spot of blood appeared on his chin. The momentary physical pain snapped him out of his thoughts and temporarily relieved him of the emotional pain that never left him.
He didn"t have time to question the past, to wonder what if. What if he"d never been kidnapped? What if his father hadn"t died? What if his mother hadn"t married an a.s.shole? What if he"d never visited Regina Bennett and gotten to know her?
He needed to finish up here, grab a shower, and get dressed. He had places to go, people to see, things to do.
J.D. took a sip from his mug and frowned when the taste of the cool coffee reminded him how long it had been sitting on his desk. After dropping Zoe at school, he had come straight to the office, poured himself a mug of hot coffee, and tossed the two Baby Blue files he"d taken home with him on his desk. By the time he had finished thoroughly studying the Blake Sherrod files, it had been past eleven last night, so he"d never gotten around to the other file, the Jeremy Arden file.
This morning, he had decided to study the same aspects of each of the six cases simultaneously instead of going through each file separately, one at a time. First things first, the point where each case had begun-with the abduction.
Blond, blue-eyed Keith Lawson, twenty-nine months old, only child, abducted twenty-eight years ago from a sandbox in his grandmother"s backyard when she went inside the house to answer a ringing telephone and left the child alone.
Blond, blue-eyed Chase Wilc.o.x, twenty-five months old, the younger of two children, abducted twenty-seven years ago when the teenage baby-sitter was in another room having s.e.x with her boyfriend.
Blond, blue-eyed Devin Kelly, twenty-seven months old, only child, abducted twenty-six years ago when his divorced father"s girlfriend left him sitting in his stroller at a department store, outside the dressing room while she tried on a pair of jeans.
Blond, blue-eyed Blake Sherrod, twenty-three months old, one of three children in a blended family, abducted twenty-five years ago from his baby bed while his mother slept in her bedroom and his older siblings played outside.
Blond, blue-eyed Shane Douglas, thirty months old, younger of two sons, abducted twenty-five years ago from his hospital room where he was recovering after having minor surgery to put tubes in his ears because of chronic ear infections. The nurses had persuaded his mother, who hadn"t left his side, to go to the cafeteria for a bite to eat.
Blond, blue-eyed Jeremy Arden, thirty-four months old, only child, abducted twenty-four years ago from his mother"s car when she left him in his car seat to go inside a mini-mart to pay for the gas she had just pumped. Found four months later with Regina Bennett, who lived in a small house on her aunt and uncle"s farm in Sale Creek, not thirty miles from his parents" home.
Regina"s aunt and uncle had sworn they had no idea that their niece had kidnapped Jeremy or any other child. Although the authorities doubted their complete ignorance, they had no proof of the couple"s culpability in the Baby Blue cases.
J.D. got up, went into the bathroom, and dumped his cold coffee in the sink. After pouring his mug full with semifresh hot coffee, he returned to his office. Standing beside his cluttered desk, he thought about the information he had just finished reading. The obvious came to mind first. Each child fit an almost identical profile. Blond, blue eyed, somewhere between two and three years old. Six toddlers, kidnapped a year apart over a period of five years.
No, that wasn"t right. Six kids, five years. Something didn"t add up. J.D. set his mug down as he flipped through the files until he found the exact dates. The five-year period was correct. That meant if Regina Bennett kidnapped all six boys, she had abducted two of them the same year. J.D. checked the abduction dates again and when he found the discrepancy, his gut tightened, but his mind cautioned him not to read too much into the information.
Blake Sherrod had gone missing in July and Shane Douglas had disappeared in August. Only a month apart.
J.D. triple-checked the dates.
Why had Regina Bennett changed her pattern of taking only one boy a year? Had something gone wrong with one of the kidnappings? Had she killed one of the boys too soon? Had someone else taken one of the boys?
Once again, J.D. skimmed through the files, checking the exact dates each boy had disappeared, thinking perhaps the month or the day might be the same. Keith and Chase had both disappeared in the month of June, a year apart. Devin and Blake had both disappeared in July, a year apart. Shane had disappeared in August, as had Jeremy Arden. The day of the month differed with each boy. The only similarity was that each of the boys had disappeared in the summer.
There had to be a reason that Blake Sherrod and Shane Douglas both went missing the same year. His gut instinct told him that this fact was significant. J.D. doubted that he was the first person to question why, if Regina Bennett had kidnapped both boys, she had changed her MO that year.
J.D. picked up the phone, removed the business card from where he"d clipped it to his desk calendar, and dialed George Bonner"s number.
Chapter 12
Jeremy caught a glimpse of the dark-haired waitress at the back entrance of Callie"s Cafe as soon as he parked his motorcycle. The guy with her looked angry, his face splotched with red and his slim body coiled tight with anger. He was yelling at the waitress, but Jeremy was too far away to hear what he was saying. When he drew back his hand and slapped the woman"s cheek, it was all Jeremy could do to stop himself from intervening.
If he hits her again...
Thankfully, it didn"t happen. The guy turned and walked off, leaving the waitress in tears.
As soon as the man he a.s.sumed was her boyfriend got in his car and drove off, squealing his tires in the process, Jeremy approached the young woman.
Play it cool. Don"t scare her. And whatever you do, don"t touch her.
Approaching her slowly, Jeremy called out, "You okay?"
She jerked her head up and a pair of teary brown eyes stared at him, a look of surprise and unease etched on her pretty features. As she swiped away tears and sniffled a couple of times, she took several steps backward toward the restaurant"s exit by the large metal Dumpster.
Realizing she was wary of him, Jeremy stopped a good ten feet from her. "Sorry. I couldn"t help seeing what happened. That guy"s a real jerk. You should get rid of him."
She nodded. "Yeah, I know."
"If you"re okay, I"ll leave you alone."
"I"m okay."
When Jeremy turned around and headed toward the restaurant"s front entrance, she called out to him. "Hey, I"ve seen you in here before, haven"t I?"
"Yeah, a few times." He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her.
"Thanks for...well, for asking if I was all right." She studied him for a minute, as if trying to decide whether or not she could trust him.
Keeping his smile in place, he watched while she entered the restaurant"s back entrance. Then he walked through the front door and found a stool at the counter. By the time he picked up a breakfast menu, she was pouring coffee into his mug.
He noticed that the cheek her boyfriend had struck was still bright pink and that she had taken her hair down from the neat ponytail and tried to drape it over the left side of her face. She had also put on her ap.r.o.n and name tag.