Too Close To Home

“They weren’t at home,” I said simply.

“So she just abandoned them?”

Katie made no effort to keep her voice down or to disguise her outrage. And there was no doubt that what she said carried clearly because Missy began sobbing.

I looked over my shoulder in time to see her struggle up from her seat, move forward past the empty row of seats, reach for the handle that opened the van’s side door. Then Gran’s hand darted out and I saw the sinewy muscle beneath her leathery skin flex with effort as her long, bony fingers caught Missy’s wrist and held it captive.

A fit, lean sixty-three years old, Gran was undoubtedly strong enough to force Missy back into her seat. But that would turn a rescue into a kidnapping and we, like Dr. Porter, would be denying Missy control of her own life. If her life was to change, Missy had to make her own decision.

The van was already running, so I shifted it into Drive. But I kept my foot on the brake, my hands on the steering wheel, and my attention split between the rear of the van and the front door of the Porter home. I couldn’t help wondering how long fear would control Dr. Porter’s fury, how long he would remain where I’d left him.

A frozen eternity passed as Gran simply looked at Missy, her expression one of utter sadness. She shook her head slowly and I knew that the intensity of her pale blue eyes would be magnified by the thick lenses she always wore. She lifted her hand away from Missy’s hand as she spoke. Missy leaned forward just enough to grasp the door handle but she didn’t pull it.

“You did what you had to do, Missy. You escaped,” Gran said. “You’re no good to your children if you’re dead. Or horribly injured. We have to get you to safety. First. Then we’ll get your babies back.”

Tears were streaming down Missy’s cheeks, but she nodded. Maybe it was the strength of Gran’s voice and the utter conviction of her words that returned Missy to her seat. Or maybe it was the sight of her husband—red-faced, barefoot and dressed only in his trousers—emerging from the house. He saw the van and raced across the lawn toward us.

I pulled away from the curb and the tires squealed as I floored the gas pedal. Inside the van, my passengers huddled down in their seats. Outside, Dr. Porter stood screaming obscenities in a cloud of exhaust smoke. There was nothing he could do to bring his wife back except, perhaps, call the police. But then he might have to explain why she’d fled. And I doubted he’d want to do that.

I rounded a corner, putting Dr. Porter out of sight. Another stretch of residential street, another quick turn, and I joined the heavier traffic on a main thoroughfare and headed for the interstate.

A glance in the rearview mirror briefly revealed Missy’s blotchy, tearstained face. Then she covered her face with her hands. I changed lanes, then checked the mirror again, seeking Gran’s eyes. But I was distracted by a quick movement beside me as my sister turned back around in her seat to stare at Missy. Her golden hair framed a face twisted ugly with anger. Her hazel eyes were narrowed, and her full bow lips were pressed into a tight line. Then she opened her mouth.

“Hey, you! Missy Porter!” she said, her usually soft, breathy voice sounding tight.

Certain that she would say something we all would regret, I reached quickly for the dashboard, cranked the volume setting on the radio up to maximum and turned on the power. Noise blasted through the van’s interior and drowned out Katie’s shrill yelp as I pinched her hard.

“Behave,” I mouthed as she jerked her head in my direction.

Katie surprised me by doing as I said. She faced forward again, sat rigidly with her hazel eyes fixed on the view out the front window. The muscles along her jaw flexed as she gritted her teeth.

I reached out again and dialed the radio down several notches.

“Sorry,” I said loudly in no one’s direction.

Then I fiddled with the controls until I found a country-western station where Toby Keith was singing something bawdy. The song was just loud enough to cover a front-seat conversation.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said to my sister once both of my hands were back on the steering wheel. “You don’t have any reason to be mean to her. You weren’t inside that house, didn’t see what she had to endure. She didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh, yes, she did,” Katie hissed. “She could have stayed with her children. Protected them. That’s what a good mother is supposed to do. Isn’t it?” And then more urgently, she repeated: “Isn’t it?”

That’s when I realized that she wasn’t really talking about Missy Porter.

“This is different,” I said. “Missy’s not like her.”

Eleven years earlier, our mother had left us alone with a stranger. Just for a little while. While she got a fix with the money he’d given her. She didn’t bother asking him what the money was for, didn’t wonder about his generosity.

When he began touching me, Katie had attacked him with teeth and fists.

“Get Momma!” she screamed as I broke free.

I ran as fast as I could. I searched for our mother in all the places I knew. The alley. The street corner. The bar at the end of the block.

I couldn’t find her anywhere.

So I did what she said we should never do. I found a cop and showed him where we lived.

I took him into our building, dragged at his hand so he would hurry, hurry, hurry. I told him to ignore the roaches and, instead, to concentrate on not falling through the traps that Momma and her friends had cut into the stairs and in the upstairs hallway. To keep the police from sneaking in and throwing everyone in jail.

Momma had said that the police put children in jail, too. But I didn’t care. Because even then I knew there were far worse things.

I’d brought help as fast as I could, but the stranger had already gone.

He hadn’t left right away.

Briefly, I looked away from the traffic, reached across the front seat of the van and covered Katie’s hand with mine. Our eyes met, and the smile that passed between us was sad and full of memory. And though I was sixteen and old enough to know better, I wished that I could go back in time. Wished for a chance to run faster, to find a cop sooner, to be brave enough to stay and fight by Katie’s side. I wished for a chance to save my sister just as she’d saved me.

Gran always said to be careful what you wished for.

Chapter 1

Eight years later

Lust.

That’s what any thought of Chad Robinson’s muscular six-foot-two frame, copper hair and green eyes inspired. The sound of his deep voice with its down-home drawl inevitably notched lust up another level, pushing almost-nostalgic warmth in the direction of aching desire. Not a particularly good way to feel about a man I was determined not to fall back in love or in bed with.

So when I answered the phone on a hot, humid evening in mid-June and heard Chad’s voice on the line, I kept my thoughts focused on the business at hand, not the memory of his hands. It was a good strategy for ex-lovers who were determined to remain friends.

In the time it had taken me to cross the kitchen and lift the cordless phone from its cradle, Chad had apparently been distracted from his call. When I put the phone to my ear, he was already speaking to someone in the background.

“Yeah. Good idea. The water gets pretty deep in those ditches. As soon as Brooke and her search dog are headed this way, I’ll take the southbound stretch and do the same….”

“Hey there,” I said by way of greeting, personal issues abruptly irrelevant as the snatch of conversation hinted at the reason for his call. “What’s going on?”

Chad’s attention returned to the phone.

“We’ve got a missing toddler, Brooke. Family lives northwest of town. The forest is right in their backyard. I checked the map. The house is in Maryville jurisdiction.”

As a deputy sheriff for Hardin County, Chad usually patrolled the southern Illinois towns of Humm Wye, Peters Creek, Iron Furnace and everything in between. When no cop was on duty in Maryville, his patrol looped a bit farther south to include the town where the two of us had grown up. Undoubtedly, that had happened tonight. Because, at the moment, Maryville’s entire police force was off duty and standing barefoot in the middle of her kitchen, considering dinner possibilities.

Chad gave me directions that started at the intersection of two meandering county roads. From there, he described his location in tenths of a mile and natural landmarks.

“How fast can you and Possum get here?” he said.

Away from the bluffs of the Ohio River, where the original town had been built, Maryville’s ragged boundaries were created by fingers of human habitation jamming deep into the vast Shawnee National Forest. I lived at the tip of one of those fingers. The missing child’s home was on another, in an area of expensive, very isolated homes. Even with four-wheel drive and a native’s intimate knowledge of the area’s back roads…

“I need half an hour,” I said, then asked him for details.