LITMIR.BIZ

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be hearing her correctly—could he? “I don’t think I’m getting all of this quite right.”

      In a high, strained voice, she said, “I know I’ve shocked you. I didn’t know how else to say it. Five years ago, I left you because you told me you didn’t want to get married. And you didn’t want children. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I wasn’t going to come back and beg you to marry me. So I just….” She let go of the mug and flapped one arm. “I just went it alone.”

      He tried to imagine what she’d been through, what she was going through now.

      “You’re saying he’s been kidnapped?” Matt said, his own voice turning rough. This was like a nightmare. An old nightmare coming back. Only she didn’t know it yet.

      “Yes.”

      He asked the next obvious question. “And the police and the FBI are looking for him?”

      The scared, determined look on her face tore at his heart. “No! I can’t go to them.”

      “You have to!”

      “I can’t!” she shouted, then lowered her voice. “Somebody picked him up at day care two days ago. A man, apparently. He made the teacher think he had my permission. But he left a note for me with her. It said that if I contacted the police or the FBI, they’d kill Trevor.”

      The revelation tipped her over the edge. It looked as if she’d been holding herself together with strapping tape. Suddenly, all pretense of composure evaporated. She began to cry in great gulping gasps, her shoulders shaking as the sobs racked her body.

      Matt shot out of his chair, came around the table and hauled her up. When he wrapped his arms around her, she leaned into him. As he folded her close, he knew he needed to hold on to her as much as she needed to cling to him.

      While he rocked her gently in his arms, he tried to process everything she’d just told him. It was too much to take in all at once, but he had to because the past was rushing back to body-slam him.

      Shelley gulped, and he could feel her trying to pull herself together.

      Now he was the one who was hanging on to composure by a thread.

      “You have no idea who took him?” he asked.

      “No,” she whispered.

      “And you have no idea what they want?”

      “No.”

      “They didn’t ask for money?”

      “I’m telling you everything I know.”

      He stroked her back. “Okay. I believe you.” Sucking in a breath, he let it out in a rush, knowing he was going to make this worse for her. For both of them.

      “A long time ago, I was kidnapped,” he said.

      Her head jerked up, and she stared at him through brimming eyes. “What?”

      He had turned the tables on her. Now she had to process what she was hearing. “You were kidnapped?” “Yes.”

      “You never told me about it!”

      “It’s not something I was prepared to talk about—with anyone.” But now that he’d opened the subject, he knew she had a thousand questions, and he would do his best to answer them. He’d told her she’d feel better when she explained why she’d come. Strangely, he was discovering the truth of his own words. Despite the circumstances, it was a relief to stop lying. Well, lying by omission.

      “How old were you?”

      “Twelve.” Before she could ask another question, he pressed ahead. “A couple of friends and I had gotten off the school bus. A white van stopped and somebody pulled me inside.”

      “Who?”

      “I don’t remember!”

      “But you got away!” she whispered, and he knew she was grasping onto that fact. He was here. Somehow he’d escaped from his captors.

      “I came back three months later. I don’t have any memories of what happened to me while I was gone. The next thing I remember is wandering along the stream on the ranch.”

      “You were safe!”

      “Yeah. But I made the decision never to have children. Never to put a child of my own in danger. Now I know I was right.”

      “Matt, what are you saying?” she gasped, obviously trying to put it all together.

      “Shelley, it can’t be a coincidence that I was kidnapped, and then Trevor. It’s got to be related.”

      When she stared at him, stunned, he said, “I understand your confusion. Let’s sit down where we’ll be comfortable.”

      He led her down the hall to the den where they’d sat on so many evenings long ago. After seating her on the sofa, he crossed to the fireplace and removed the screen. Kneeling down, he struck a long match and lit the kindling under the dry logs in the grate, watching them flame up.

      When she turned, he saw Shelley huddled on the cushions, staring at the fire as though the flames held the answer to their problems.

      “I tried,” he said. “I tried to keep it from happening again.”

      She nodded, and he knew he had to tell her the rest of it.

      Still standing with his back to the fire, he said, “I may not remember what happened to me, but I know it changed me.”

      Lifting her gaze, she asked, “How?”

      He swallowed, because as bad as the first part of his revelation had been, he was just getting to the worst part.

      BIG BOYS don’t cry. Trevor Young knew that, but it was hard to keep tears from leaking down his cheeks.

      He was cold and hungry, and he wanted to go home. He wanted his mommy.

      With a trembling hand, he swiped the tears away.

      “Mommy,” he whispered so that the man named Blue wouldn’t hear him. “Mommy, please come get me out of here.” He didn’t think that she could hear him. But he couldn’t stop himself from talking to her because it made him feel a little better.

      He was in a cabin in the middle of a field—with trees all around the edges, except where the road cut through. He could look out the window, but he couldn’t see any other houses. Maybe there were some behind the trees. Or maybe not.

      He wanted to get away. But the window was locked. And so was the door. And sometimes Blue put a handcuff on Trevor like the police did on TV when they were taking the bad guys to the police station. The cuff was attached to a chain. And the chain was attached to the bed frame. So he couldn’t move very far.

      Only it was all backward now. The bad guy had the handcuffs. Not the police.

      He lay curled on the bed, hugging his knees. When he heard the doorknob turn, he burrowed under the covers, wishing he could hide.

      Footsteps crossed the wooden floor, and he knew Blue was looking down at him. If he pretended to be sleeping, would the man go away?

      Instead, he pulled down the blanket, and Trevor couldn’t stop himself from whimpering. “Please, let me go back to my mommy.”

      “Don’t give me a hard time, kid.”

      “Why are you so mean?”

      “It’s my job.”

      “What kind of job is that?” “Stop asking questions.”

      The hard look in the man’s eyes made Trevor clamp his lips together.

      Blue pulled his hand from behind his back, and Trevor saw that he was holding a hypodermic needle.

      Trevor cringed away. The man had already given him some shots that hurt a lot. In his back. “Please, please

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