New Year Heroes: The Sheriff's Secretary / Veiled Intentions / Juror No. 7

“What do you mean?” She looked at the blond-haired man curiously.

“You said his name, told Remy a little bit about him. You personalized Billy to the man you thought might have him. That’s a smart thing to do. It’s what hostage negotiators do when they’re trying to resolve a situation.”

She sighed wearily. “I don’t understand how two people could seemingly disappear from the face of the earth and nobody knows what happened.” She put the cap back on the bottle of water and fought against the wave of overwhelming despair that threatened to consume her.

“Why don’t you just hang tight right here,” Lucas said. “We need to coordinate with my men.” He stood. “You need anything?”

“The only thing I need is the one thing nobody seems to be able to get for me,” she replied.

They left her then, alone in the interview room with only her faltering hope to keep her company.

THE MEN WERE ALL THERE except Ed, who had taken over sitting on Phillip Ribideaux for Louis. It took almost an hour for them to exchange pertinent information. Wally had been in touch with the phone company, trying to trace the calls that had gone to both Lucas’s cell phone and Mariah’s home number. As Lucas had suspected, other than the call that had come from the pay phone, the calls had been made by disposable cell phones that were almost impossible to trace.

He’d given the original copies of the recorded messages to Kessler, who would forward them to specialists in the hopes that they could identify a background noise or a voice pattern that might lead to a suspect.

Louis added that while he’d had Phillip Ribideaux under surveillance, the young man hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything suspicious. After losing him, Louis had picked up his trail again at his house, where Phillip and some of his friends had spent most of the night drinking beer and packing a rental moving van.

Ben had searched the cemetery to look for the bullet, but hadn’t found it.

There was still no word from Shreveport about Frank Landers and no other potential suspects on the list. Lucas instructed Ben to grab a couple of citizens who’d volunteered their time, and search all the empty buildings and storefronts in the city.

With nothing more to do, Lucas left his men and headed back to the interview room. Before he reached it, on impulse he went into the smaller room, sat in the chair and gazed at Mariah through the one-sided glass.

She sat with her profile to him, staring at the wall with no expression on her face. Her shoulders were rigidly straight and she seemed to scarcely be breathing.

He thought of the things she’d said to him during breakfast. Did he really remind her of her abusive ex-husband? Was he too overbearing with Jenny? In his concern that she not become a woman like their mother, had he stolen his sister’s self-esteem?

Jenny had once mentioned that she’d like to be a teacher, but he had been adamant that a business degree was a smarter decision. He had just been trying to steer her in the right direction. Was that abusive?

Irritated with his thoughts and with the small flutter of self-doubt that suddenly assailed him, he stood. Dammit, he had more important things to be concerned with than analyzing his relationship with Jenny. He had to find her.

He got up from the chair and went into the interview room. Mariah stood as he entered, looking weary despite it being just noon.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

She nodded and together they left the office and headed back to her house. They didn’t speak. It was as if the failure to learn anything from Remy sat between them, creating a barrier too big for words to get around.

The minute they were back in her kitchen, they both saw the blinking message light. Lucas checked the information on the recorder. One recorded message, and it had come in three minutes before they’d walked through the front door. Without even playing it, he knew it was from the kidnapper.

Mariah grabbed one of his hands as he punched the button and the now-familiar voice filled the kitchen. “No answers at the office, right? Well, I have a little something for you. By the twisted tree you’ll find a clue, where the grass is green and the sky is blue. Where the flowers bloom you’ll find something rare. So go there now if you think you dare.”

Lucas wanted to punch something. The bastard was watching their every move. He seemed to know what they were doing almost before they did it.

“It’s the park,” Mariah said, her blue eyes lighting with life. “A twisted tree, I know the tree. It’s near the swings in the park.”

Lucas frowned. “There must be a hundred twisted trees in Conja Creek.”

Her eyes flashed with a touch of impatience. “But he would pick the one we know. Everyone refers to the tree in the park as the twisted tree. It’s got to be the one in the park.”

Mariah’s excitement was contagious, but Lucas tried not to get his hopes up. He hated the bright shine of optimism that shone in her eyes—a shine that could so easily be doused.

“Mariah,” he began cautiously. “We thought we were going to get something positive when we went to the cemetery, but the only thing we got was shot at.”

“Surely he wouldn’t do that again.” She headed for the front door. “He says there’s a clue there. He didn’t say that about the cemetery. This is different. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t check it out.” The words bubbled out of her, as if escaping an intense internal pressure. “Maybe this time he’ll give us something to go on, or at least something to let us know that Jenny and Billy are still okay.”

Lucas hurried after her and a moment later he backed out of her driveway and headed for the nearby neighborhood park. He had a bad feeling about this. It worried him that the caller had known that they’d been at the sheriff’s office. It enraged him that the kidnapper was obviously close enough to them to know what they were doing and when they were doing it.

Who in the hell was behind this? It was possible Remy had made the call the moment he’d left the office. He probably possessed more than one cell phone that could be used to make the anonymous calls.

Lucas believed Remy hadn’t been completely forthcoming, especially when Lucas had questioned him about why he’d been seeing Jenny. Although Remy had professed that he wasn’t seeing Lucas’s sister, Lucas hadn’t believed him. Remy had avoided his glance when he’d answered and blinked one too many times, like liars usually did.

It bothered him that a ransom demand hadn’t been made. That meant this was about something more than money. That meant it was something personal. And with both Jenny and Billy taken, it was impossible to know who was the real target.

The park was empty when they arrived, probably due to the intense heat and humidity of the day. Mariah was out of the car almost before Lucas had brought it to a complete halt. She raced across the parking lot toward the gnarled tree that rose up near the swing set. He ran after her, his hand on the butt of his gun.

“Mariah, wait,” he called. Dammit, he didn’t know if they were walking into some sort of a trap again or not. She didn’t slow down.

He caught up with her when she halted in front of the tree. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the ground. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Have you forgotten what happened the last time we followed the caller’s clue? Just stay down for a minute and let me assess things.” He held on to her arm with one hand and kept his other on his gun.

He gazed around the area, not liking that the south side of the park was flanked by a wooded area that provided plenty of cover if somebody wanted to hide there.

“Lucas, if he wanted to kill us, we’d be dead,” Mariah said softly. “If we’re dead, the game ends and we both know that doesn’t seem to be what the kidnapper wants.”

As much as he hated to admit it, she made sense. The kidnapper was obviously getting off on running them around town, feeding their fear and anxiety. If he killed one or both of them, his game would be over.

Mariah stood and began to search the tree. She looked up into the branches, then walked around it, checking out the trunk. Lucas looked as well, but found nothing. “‘Where the flowers bloom you’ll find something rare,’” Mariah said, and her gaze focused on the flower bed in the distance. “It’s not the tree, it’s the flower bed,” she exclaimed.

A deep weariness overtook Lucas. “Let’s see if he really left us something or if this is just another step in his sick game.”

Chapter Eight

Mariah raced toward the flower bed, her heart pounding with the rhythm of hope … of fear … and a million other emotions. Surely he wouldn’t send them out for nothing again. Nobody could be that cruel.

There had to be something here, something that would feed the small glimmer of hope that still existed in her heart. As each hour passed, in the deepest, darkest places inside her, hope was becoming more and more difficult to sustain.

She’d somehow believed that if Billy were dead she’d know it in her heart, in her soul. But over the past couple of days she’d realized that wasn’t true. It was possible Billy and Jenny had been murdered in the first hours of their disappearance, and she hadn’t felt the loss.

As she stared at the flower bed, she refused to consider that scenario. They had to still be alive. Any other possibility was too horrific to contemplate.

“It doesn’t look like any of the flowers have been disturbed,” Lucas said as he stood next to her.

“There’s got to be something here,” she replied. She stepped into the flower bed and sank to her hands and knees and began to pull at the flowers to see if any of them had been uprooted, then just set back in the ground.

A note, a piece of fabric, something, there had to be something buried beneath the flowers. That’s what the caller had implied. It was a treasure hunt and she was desperate to find the treasure.

She pulled and tugged, more frantic with each minute that passed. It had to be here. Something had to be here. She couldn’t come away from here without anything and continue to maintain her sanity.