The Mother

He chuckled again, as if he found her comment highly amusing.

Audrey felt a flush of heat warm her from head to toes. She hoped her sudden awareness of just how close her dance partner was holding her didn’t show on her face.

“You’re an open book,” Tam had once told her. “Everything you’re feeling shows on your face.”

“Holly and I don’t have that kind of relationship,” J.D. said.

“What kind is that?”

“The kind where I’d be aggravated or jealous that she’s ignoring me in favor of spending time with her boss and her coworker.”

“Then you two aren’t seriously involved?”

“I’m never seriously involved. Not since my divorce six years ago. What about you—are you and Beau Brummell engaged, going steady, or just sleeping together?”

Audrey laughed spontaneously, thoroughly amused by J.D. dubbing the fastidious Porter with the name of the best-known dandy of all time.

“Porter and I are not engaged,” she said. “And we’re a little too old to go steady. Besides, I think that term is passé, but I have no idea what teenagers call it these days.” She gave her last statement several moments of consideration before saying, “And whether or not we’re sleeping together is none of your business.”

J.D. grinned.

Damn if the man wasn’t dangerously sexy. And he probably knew it. Guys like that always did, didn’t they?

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It would be my business only if you and I were—”

“And we are not!” Audrey, Audrey, why did you finish the man’s sentence for him? Why such an adamant statement of fact?

With that damn sexy smile unwavering, he agreed. “No, we aren’t.”

As if on cue the music stopped, the dance ended, and J.D. led her off the dance floor. She pulled away from him.

“I’m going to find Willie and wish—”

Too late. The waiters wheeled out an enormous six-tier cake placed in the center of a serving cart and the band played “Happy Birthday.” The partygoers, including Audrey and J.D., joined in the song. As the well-wishers crowded together around the guest of honor, J.D. eased his arm around Audrey’s waist. Ambivalent feelings toward the man warred inside her and a damn army of butterflies did a war dance in her belly.

Debra didn’t know if it was daylight or dark outside in the real world. Here in the macabre otherworld in which she existed, it was always night. It could be twelve noon or twelve midnight for all she knew. It could be Monday or Friday. Perhaps she had been here for a week, or it could have been a month.

What did it matter?

“Rock him to sleep,” the voice told her. “Lovingly. Tenderly. He needs a mother’s gentle touch.”

She held the bundle in her arms and immediately began crooning the lullaby she knew he expected her to sing to the object wrapped in the soft blue blanket. How many times had they repeated this ritual? Dozens? Hundreds? She had lost count. Odd how rocking and singing to the skeleton of a small child had become a routine, one she no longer viewed with utter horror. Her entire world was now confined to this small space, an area with hard floors and walls too distant to see in the semidarkness in which she now lived. As far as she knew, the rocking chair where she was confined was the only piece of furniture in the room.

He had not harmed her, at least not physically. He kept her feet loosely bound so that even when she was allowed to move around, she had to hobble. And whenever he left her, he tied her wrists to the chair arms. He brought her food and water. He allowed her to wash herself and even brush her hair; and he provided an old-fashioned slop jar for her to use. But the indignity of having to bathe in front of him and even relieve herself with him standing nearby had added to the emotional trauma she had endured every moment of her captivity.

In the beginning, she had been afraid that he would rape her, but it soon became apparent that his reasons for abducting her and holding her prisoner had nothing to do with sex. Then she’d wondered if he would eventually torture her. He hadn’t. But the psychological torment was just as bad as physical torture would have been, perhaps worse.

She felt him move away from his stance behind the rocker, where he always stood when she performed. And that’s what it felt like—a performance. Where was he going? His leaving while she still held the blanket-wrapped bundle was not part of the normal routine.

Her voice momentarily faltered.

“Keep singing,” he told her.

She continued with the lullaby, repeating the words over and over, making up new verses as she went along.

Within minutes, he came up behind her again, but instead of standing guard over her, he reached around her and laid a small pillow across her lap. Since that first time when he had placed what she had thought was a doll in her arms, she had avoided glancing down at it, but she looked at her lap, at the age-yellowed white satin pillow trimmed with tattered blue ribbons. It was a baby’s pillow.

“Do what you know you must do,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You must send him to heaven where he’ll be one of the little angels.”

“What? I don’t know what you mean. What do you want me to do?”

“Pick up the pillow.”

She did.

“Lay it gently over his face.”

She did.

“Hold it there and keep singing and rocking him until he goes to sleep.”

Until he goes to sleep?

Realization dawned. Until he’s dead.

“You want me to smother him?” she asked.

“You don’t want him to suffer any longer, do you?”

She lifted the pillow and placed it over the bundle she held.

“It’ll all be over soon,” the man’s voice whispered softly … sadly.

Believing he meant the make-believe child in her arms would soon stop breathing, she felt a sense of immediate relief when he lifted the pillow, put it in her lap, and took the bundle from her. For now, it was over. He would tie her wrists to the chair and leave her here. Until the next time.

In the beginning, she had tried to get away from him, but each time he’d caught her before she had gotten more than a few feet. After being shoved onto the floor, face down, several times, she had stopped trying to escape.

She waited there in the rocking chair, waited for him to tie her wrists to the arms and then leave her. But when he reached around her from behind, there were no ropes in his hands.

Instead, he lifted the pillow from her lap and brought it up and over her face. She didn’t realize what he intended to do, not until he pushed the pillow against her face and held it there.

Chapter 4

Audrey had spent a restless night, tossing and turning, waking every hour or so from the time she had finally fallen asleep at midnight until a few seconds ago when she had shot straight up in bed. She glanced at the bedside clock—5:40 A.M.—and groaned. Damn it, she’d been dreaming. Crazy dreams. The kind that didn’t make any sense, but that were nevertheless all too real and somewhat unnerving. As a child, she had been prone to nightmares, especially after Blake’s disappearance. Jumbled, chaotic, frightening dreams. But as an adult, she rarely remembered her dreams.