LITMIR.BIZ

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      Remy looked distinctly uncomfortable as he tried to pull his hand from her grasp, but she held on, refusing to allow him to move away from her.

      “Billy, that’s my son. He has asthma and if he gets scared or stressed out he’ll have an attack. He’s a smart boy and he loves school and learning about new things. He loves to play baseball and he doesn’t like the dark. He needs his medicine but more than anything he needs to be home with me. I need him home with me.” A sob welled up in her throat.

      “Look, lady. I’m sorry for your troubles, but I don’t know anything about it.” Remy looked at Lucas for help.

      Lucas stepped closer and placed a hand on Mariah’s shoulder. “Let him go, Mariah,” he said gently.

      She didn’t want to let him go. She wanted to hold his hand until he confessed he’d kidnapped Jenny and Billy. She wanted to cling to him until he told them where he had the two stashed and how she and Lucas could bring them home safely. But his dark, heavy-lidded eyes let her know she could squeeze his hand through eternity and he wasn’t going to give her the answers she needed.

      Reluctantly she let go and dropped her hand to her side. Remy raced for the exit as Lucas took Mariah by the arm and led her out of the hallway and into the interview room, Kessler following just behind them.

      Lucas pulled out a chair and motioned her to sit, as if aware that her trembling legs threatened to give out beneath her. Once she was seated, he left the room then returned with a bottle of water and set it in front of her.

      She smiled at him gratefully and uncapped the bottle and took a drink. “You okay?” he asked as he perched on the table next to her chair.

      She shrugged. “I guess I was expecting a Perry Mason moment. You know, you lean on him and he breaks and tells us everything we need to know. Stupid, huh.”

      “Not stupid,” he protested. “Just maybe a bit naive.”

      “I’ll tell you what was smart on your part. Talking about Billy like you did,” Agent Kessler said.

      “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

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