LITMIR.BIZ

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But neither of them was seeing other people. That meant something, didn’t it? He hadn’t said the L-word and neither had she, but she already knew she loved him. And she knew better than to push him. She’d done that before, with disastrous results. Danny had walked away and never looked back, leaving her with a broken heart. That had been nearly two years ago. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Travis. She’d wait for him to make the first move, to say “I love you,” and take their relationship to the next level.

      Whitney dug the car keys out of her Wal-Mart red purse and slung it over her shoulder as she exited Callie’s Café through the back entrance. When she reached her Honda Civic, a reliable used car she’d bought last year, she paused when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was watching her. She could feel it.

      Play it cool. Don’t panic. It’s broad daylight. You aren’t alone. There are people inside the restaurant and probably out here, too.

      She glanced around casually, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. Besides the other employees’ vehicles, she counted three other cars, all three empty. And she didn’t see another soul anywhere in the parking lot. No one was following her. No one was watching her.

      After hurriedly unlocking her car, she slid behind the wheel, closed the door, locked it, and tossed her purse into the passenger seat. While starting the engine, she surveyed the parking lot again and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But just as she drove into the street, she spotted an older-model car parked across the road at the nearby Kangaroo gas station and mini-mart. A man stood beside a white Lincoln, the driver’s door open, and he was looking right at her.

      My God, it was the weirdo from the restaurant, the one who had given her the five-dollar tip.

      Her heartbeat accelerated.

      What would she do if he followed her?

      You’ll drive to the nearest police station, that’s what you’ll do.

      For the next few blocks, she kept looking in her rearview mirror to see if he was following her. He wasn’t. No sign of his big old car or one that even vaguely resembled it.

      If that guy ever came back to Callie’s Café, she’d ask one of the other waitresses to take his order. And if he ever dared to follow her when she left the restaurant, she’d sic the cops on him.

      She was the one. He had known the minute he saw her. Everything about her was familiar, everything from her long, dark hair to her young, slender body and full, round breasts.

      Her name tag had read Whitney.

      But she couldn’t fool him.

      He knew who she was.

      He always recognized her.

      I’m going to take you home, where you belong. I need you. We need you, Cody and I.

      A child needs his mother. Someone to love him. Someone to rock him and sing to him. Someone to ease his suffering when he’s in pain.

      I’ve taken very good care of Cody. I’ve made sure you will be with him forever so he will never be alone again. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll help you make everything right.

      It’s what you need in order to rest in peace. It’s what Cody needs so that his little soul can go to heaven and the two of you can be together for all eternity.

      He drove out of the parking area there at the gas station/mini-mart and slipped unobserved into the late Sunday afternoon traffic. His plans to follow her to wherever she was staying now went up in smoke the minute he realized that she had recognized him standing there across the street from Callie’s Café. Why she always resisted when he tried to take her home, he didn’t know. She always pretended she was someone else, someone who didn’t know him, someone who had no idea why she was so desperately needed.

      Now that he had found her again, all he had to do was wait for the right moment to approach her when they could be alone. Just the two of them.

      Chapter 6

      Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time. They came at life from two different angles. Always had and always would. Her step-uncle was relentlessly stubborn and refused to accept anyone else’s viewpoint. He felt that he was right and everyone else was wrong. No opinion mattered except his. Audrey could be stubborn and fought for what she believed in, but she tried to keep an open mind and was willing to listen to other opinions and be proven wrong in any argument.

      “Wayne doesn’t need to know about this,” Garth repeated adamantly. “We have no proof that either of those toddler skeletons is Blake.” His brow furrowed deeply as he scrunched his face in a surly scowl.

      “I think my father should be told,” Audrey said, keeping her voice calm and even. “If he finds out that we kept this information from him, he’ll be very upset. He won’t appreciate us trying to protect him.”

      “God damn it, Audrey, there’s nothing to protect him from!” Garth shouted. When Willie gave him a concerned glance, Garth lowered his voice. “The odds of either child being Blake are slim to none. Why put Wayne through hell all over again?”

      “But what if this turns out to be a one-in-a-million coincidence and somehow—”

      “Neither of them is Blake!” Garth cut her off midsentence. “The very idea that those two little skeletons might somehow be connected to a string of toddler kidnappings more than twenty years ago is a far-fetched notion. We are not digging up ghosts that are better left buried. We are going to keep Wayne out of this. Do you hear me?”

      “Wayne Sherrod is one of my closest friends,” Willie said. “He has been for a good thirty-five years, and I think I know him as well as anybody.” Willie glanced from Audrey to Garth. “I’m calling him. We’ll tell him together, the four of us. No matter what, he would want to know, even if there’s only a slim possibility that either of those poor little boys is Blake.”

      Garth grumbled a string of partially incoherent obscenities so quietly that the words were barely audible, but his disapproval came through loud and clear.

      When Garth stomped off, went downstairs, and headed toward the exit, Audrey followed him, leaving Willie to telephone her father. She caught up with her uncle in the parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removed one, and stuck it in his mouth. After replacing the pack, he lifted a lighter from his pants pocket and lit the cigarette.

      Audrey walked up beside him. “Are you okay?”

      Garth puffed on the cigarette, his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched. “Yeah, sure.”

      “I almost wish one of those skeletons would turn out to be Blake.”

      Garth took several more drags off his cigarette, tossed it on the pavement, and ground it into pieces with the toe of his shoe. He gave Audrey a sideways glance. “Do you really think that would make it any easier for Wayne?”

      “Maybe. I don’t know. In most cases, closure is a good thing.”

      “Closure my ass. That’s psycho mumbo jumbo. How’s it better to know for sure your son is dead than to hold on to hope that he’s still alive out there somewhere?”

      “Because we both know that statistics, logic, and hard, cold facts tell us that there is practically no chance that Blake is still alive,” Audrey said. “You and Willie and Dad and everyone on the force, back when Regina Bennett was arrested, said that more than likely Blake was one of her many victims. Of the six toddler boys who were abducted, only one survived. The last one. And only because he was rescued before she killed him.”

      “Yeah.” Garth lifted his gaze and faced Audrey. “Blake probably was one of her victims, but we have no proof that the skeletons found with Jill Scott and Debra Gregory belong to any of those missing toddlers.”

      “No, not yet.”

      Audrey’s gut instinct told her that

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