AllFreeNovel
Share Us
All Leslie knew was that the boy she remembered was not the man who came home.
***
By the time Cameron got home, he was exhausted and Ghost was asleep. He got out quietly and once again lifted his dog from the seat. As he did, Ghost whined.
“I know, boy. I know. But we’re home, and you’re going to be okay,” he said, and carried the dog into the house, then took him into his bedroom and laid him on a pile of blankets on the floor beside his bed.
The moment Ghost was among familiar surroundings and next to his human, he went limp and closed his eyes.
Satisfied that all was well for now, Cameron went back through the house, locking everything up and turning out lights. He checked his phone to make sure Rachel hadn’t called, then stripped down and showered before crawling into bed.
The sheets were cool. The room was warm. He rolled over on his belly and fell asleep.
***
Once Biggers had been taken into custody, Sheriff Woodley had been forced to accept Rachel and Louis’s story about the abduction. He knew he needed to make peace with the Glass family before he returned to the office, so he drove to the hospital to check on the child’s condition and found both parents in the waiting room of the ICU.
“Louis. Rachel. How are you doing, and how is your daughter?” he asked.
“I have the headache from hell and, no thanks to any of you, my baby is alive,” Rachel muttered.
Woodley flushed, but he had the good sense not to challenge her.
Louis could tell Rachel was too angry with the police to talk. He was disgusted with how they’d been treated, but he wanted details.
“Where is Danny Biggers right now?” Louis asked.
“He’s being treated for his wounds, but he’ll be going back to prison. We were contacted by federal marshals who’ve been on his trail, and we now know that the car he was driving was stolen, as was the phone he was using. The owners were found tied up in their home but unharmed.”
“There’s something about this whole incident that makes no sense,” Louis said. “Biggers had no relationship with Rachel. He had no bond whatsoever with Lili. And yet when he escaped, this was where he came. How did he know where we live, and why come all this way afterourbaby?”
Woodley leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He was tired and ready for bed and had a mountain of reports to write. “We don’t know, but the kidnapping moves this into the hands of federal prosecutors. The FBI will take over this case.”
Rachel shuddered. “I don’t get why Danny Biggers would target me again. He was shocked it was me. I saw it on his face. He didn’t know or care who the child belonged to and wasn’t expecting to see anyone he knew,” she said. “This is a nightmare.”
Louis hugged her, pulling her close. “But Biggers didn’t succeed, honey. And all of the laws he broke after he escaped will be added to his sentence. He’ll still be behind bars when we’re old and gray,” he said.
“Again, I’m sorry for all the misunderstanding, but in my business, everyone is suspect until proven otherwise,” Woodley said.
Rachel glared. “Misunderstanding? Bullshit! You knew the connection between me and Danny Biggers before you ever arrived on the scene! So now I’m thinking you’re the biggest fool walking to think I’d be in on my own daughter’s kidnapping with the man who raped me. And if it hadn’t been for Uncle John finding the abandoned car, and our people and my brother searching, my baby girl would be gone.”
Then she got up and walked out of the room.
Woodley’s face was an angry red, but he didn’t have a decent rebuttal and he knew it.
Louis wasn’t about to apologize for what Rachel had said, because she’d spoken nothing but the truth. He waited until Woodley left, then went to look for Rachel. He found her in the chapel on her knees, her head down, praying.
Without saying a word, he knelt down beside her and lowered his head.
***
Frankfort, Kentucky
Special Agents Jay Howard and Dan Pickard of the FBI were part of a team investigating human trafficking. They’d been staking out a certain group for months, trying to link them to more than a dozen missing person cases in a tristate area, and more recently to a surge of missing babies and toddlers.
One suspected member of the group was a woman named Lindy Sheets. The FBI team believed she was working as bait, befriending teens and single women, then luring them into traps. They knew Sheets was also a regular visitor to an inmate named Daniel Lee Biggers, who was serving time in Abercrombie Penitentiary for assault and rape.
When the team learned Biggers had been one of the escapees, it was nothing more than a point of interest, until they found out some hours later that Biggers had stolen a car and a cell phone from an elderly couple in Frankfort and left them tied up in their house, then drove all the way to Jubilee, Kentucky, where he assaulted a woman and kidnapped her three-year-old child. That’s when the FBI agents’ internal radar pinged.
