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The limousine crunched over a path of crushed shells. Moonlight made ripples on the lake shimmer. Music that drifted from the banquet hall faded as the car rolled through the stone and iron gates.
“But this is big business. What if he isn’t able to convince his other partners?”
Eric laughed, then winced as his ribs rebelled. “When have you ever known Jack Morrissey to take no for an answer?”
Smiling, Jenna nodded. She leaned her head onto Eric’s shoulder as he explained to her what had happened and why he had been missing for a week. “I never would have left you. You must know that.”
A chill pricked her skin and she burrowed deeper into his arms. The limo cruised along, its passengers silent until they reached Jenna’s street. She closed her eyes tightly and then finally spoke. “There’s something I have to tell—”
Nick lowered the divider. “What’s going on here?”
Jenna’s eyes bloomed wide. She froze, rendered immobile by the scene stretching beyond the window. A slow steady glow of lights whirled through the darkness in front of her house. Two Cromline patrol cars sat caddie cornered in her driveway. A state police cruiser and an unmarked car were at the curb. Strobes of neon flickered from the unmarked car like lightning bolts. The house and sky above was cast into an eerie storm of blue. Red, white, and orange flashed in a dizzying circle from patrol cars.
With a scream building deep in her throat, Jenna tore herself away from Eric and crawled across his knees to get to the car’s door. She grappled frantically with the handle and shoved, then almost hit the pavement as she fell from the car.
Eric and Nick were less than a second behind her as they all raced up the driveway and bolted into the house.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jenna pushed her way into a barricade of blue and putty gray. “What’s going on?” Her head twisted back and forth in a frantic sweep. “Janie!”
Willy Parks cleared a path. “This is the girl’s mother.”
“The girl!” The words tore from her throat. She whipped her head around, up, down, turning frantically till she spotted the police hovering around Randi. Jenna’s knees jelled and it seemed an eon before she reached her friend. “Where’s my baby?”
Randi’s eyes were rimmed scarlet, and a crumpled tissue fell from her hands. “It happened so fast. One minute she was standing next to me eating ice cream and the next…” Randi gulped air, and a bellowing sob followed. “Some…some guy grabbed her and threw her in his car. I…I couldn’t stop him.”
“No!”
Eric pulled Jenna close, but she continued to flail her arms and scream. A State trooper, his gray uniform a severe collection of sharply pressed seams, approached. “Mrs. Black, about twenty minutes ago your daughter was abducted from a parking lot by an unidentified, white male. We brought your friend back here so she could give us a photograph and something your daughter recently wore. We’re going to send our K9 unit out with the search party.”
“Oh God.” Jenna’s body was dead weight in Eric’s arms. She’d lost all balance and strength.
The trooper spoke evenly. “We’re covering all the bases. This town is surrounded by woods and hiding there might be one of his options.” Static and muffled voices crackled from police radios. Local officers conferred with the troopers, more of whom hurried into the house carrying computers and other electronics.
“We’ll be monitoring your phone, and we have officers at the shopping center interviewing people to see if anyone noticed anything unusual.”
The police went about an efficient business of putting a trace on the telephone and relaying information from the scene. Willy Parks gave directions to his men to organize a team of civilians to intensify the search of the woods and lake.
“Chief,” a trooper called out. “We just got a description of a suspicious looking man who was loitering in front of the ice cream parlor.”
While Eric held Jenna, Randi gripped her hand. Both women trembled as if icy breaths of fog hung in the room.
The trooper stepped over. “A woman saw a strange looking man staring at your friend and your daughter.” Tilting his felt Stetson back on his head, he flipped a page in his pad to read his notes. “She said the man was blond, mid to late forties, possibly younger but‘burnt out like a druggie.’ Those were her exact words.”
The trooper then turned to Parks. “She said the guy had a lot of healed scars on his face. Anyone fitting that description live around here?”
Jenna screamed. She pushed away from Eric and pounded her head. Her cry was the desperate wail of someone begging for their life. “No, not him! Oh, God, please no!”
Her body was suddenly stripped of any substance and her legs began to fold beneath her. Eric swept her close as he whispered his own prayers. He wrapped her, sobbing and shaking, tightly in his arms. “I’ll find her. I promise…Shh…I swear I’ll find her.”
“Mrs. Black, do youknowwho took your daughter?”
Eric answered for her. “You just described Janie’s father, Mark Chambers.”
Scribbling in his pad, the trooper asked, “is that Mark with a K or a C?”
“K.”
