Jerking open the sliding door, he leaned in and wrenched the phone away. Then he turned it off, used his T-shirt to wipe it clean and chucked it as hard as he could into the field behind the grocery store.
Marcie had one hand still cuffed to the door handle. The other was bleeding because she’d forced it through the metal circle of the other cuff. But that didn’t stop her from pushing her legs through the opening and trying to get out.
Without warning, he slammed the door on her legs. When she arched back and cried out, he widened the gap enough that she could yank her legs in. Then he closed it tightly.
“I didn’t call anyone important,” she sobbed as he climbed behind the wheel.
If he’d had the time, he would’ve punched her in the face. “You lying bitch!”
“No, I swear,” she said. “I jus’ wanted to tell our older sister we’re okay. She don’t know where we’re at. I don’t even know…”
“You’re dead,” he promised but, careful to do nothing that would attract attention, he backed up, swung around and turned out of the driveway at normal speed. He had to get away from the supermarket before his vehicle could be spotted by whatever police unit had been dispatched. And he had to do it without creating a witness to his flight.
Four
The jangle of her phone came to Jane in a dream. She heard it ringing, but it had no relevance to her. It was someone else’s phone. Distant. Removed. Then silence-until a much more subtle disturbance woke her.
Opening her eyes to total darkness, she blinked. For months after Oliver had left her lying in her own blood, she’d dreamt she heard him in the hallway, coming to finish what he’d started. He always had a knife in his hand and the look of murder in his eyes. She knew that look because she was one of the few who’d seen it and lived to tell about it. The nightmare was so vivid she could smell him, feel the warmth of his body as he drew close, his fingernails biting into her arm as he dragged her up against him-
“Mom?”
Jane gasped. She could breathe. It wasn’t real. Oliver was dead. The noise that’d awakened her had been Kate. Her daughter was standing in the doorway. “Wh-what?” she said, willing her heart to slow its pounding.
Kate came to the side of the bed. “Didn’t you hear me? Someone’s on the phone for you. And she sounds like she’s crying.”
Who would call her in the middle of the night crying? Sheridan? Skye? Had there been an accident?
Alarmed, she threw off the covers and sat up. Then the memory of the day’s events snapped into place, along with the news snippet she’d watched before bed, and she realized that her caller could be someone else.
“Thanks, babe.” The time on her clock radio indicated it wasn’t the middle of the night as Jane had thought. It was only ten-thirty. She’d been asleep for half an hour. “Go back to bed,” she told Kate, but her daughter didn’t leave. Understandably curious-they didn’t receive many calls like this-she sat on the edge of the bed as Jane brought the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Ms. Burke-Jane?”
It wasn’t Skye or Sheridan. It was Gloria, as she’d suspected. “Yes?”
“They jus’ called me,” she blurted, so breathless she could hardly speak.
Jane cleared her throat to eliminate the rasp of sleep. “Who just called you? Latisha and Marcie?”
“Marcie, I think. I couldn’t tell for sure. She was talkin’ so low I could barely hear her.”
The mind-numbing fatigue fell away like a cast-off shirt. “What’d she say?”
“She say, ‘Gloria, you gotta help us.’ I say, ‘Where are you? Tell me where you’re at an’ I’ll be there.’ An’ she say, ‘I don’t know.’ So I told her to hang up and call 9-1-1. But she say she already tried that an’ they put her on hold while they sent a cruiser.”
“A cruiser’s good.”
“I know, but she was so terrified she panicked. She hung up and called me. I told her, ‘Give me some clue, baby. Help me find you.’ But she was cryin’ so hard she couldn’t talk. All she could say is, ‘Oh, God, he’s here!’ Then the line went dead.”
Jane’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins. The girls were alive. But where? In what condition? And who had them?
“Someone has ’em both,” Gloria was saying. “She said us. I heard that much. They’re alive, but I don’t know for how long. We gotta find ’em!”
Jane clutched the phone tighter. If they were alive, they needed someone better than her. Just hearing about Marcie’s call-Oh, God, he’s here-made Jane’s own past rush up on her like a wave surging from behind. She tried to beat back the fear, but with little success. She’d already broken into a cold sweat.
“Hello?” Gloria cried when she didn’t speak.
Drawing a deep breath, Jane forced a calm she didn’t feel. She had to pretend she was everything Gloria thought she was, had to act as if she knew what she was doing or she’d be letting her client down. What good would it do to add to the poor woman’s panic? “Have you contacted Detective Willis?” she asked.
“I called the number on his card, but it went straight to voice mail.”
Of course it did. Jane hadn’t been thinking when she’d asked that question. Detectives were basically on call twenty-four hours a day, but that didn’t make them available to the general public. “I can reach him at home,” she said. “Did your phone show the number Marcie called from?”
“It did. It wasn’t blocked. I got it right here, on my list of incoming calls. But I already dialed it at least a dozen times, and I can’t get anyone to pick up. A recording comes on, saying the voice-mail box hasn’t been set up yet.”
Jane wished Gloria hadn’t done that. The ring might’ve alerted Marcie’s captor to the fact that she’d made a call. But she didn’t want to make Gloria feel bad for doing what anyone would want to do under the circumstances. “Give me the number. If we’re lucky, I can find the owner via a reverse directory. Or maybe David can get the information from the phone company.”
Gloria’s voice shook as she dictated each digit, but she was careful to enunciate.
“I’ll call David and get back to you,” Jane promised.
Throughout the conversation, Gloria had held up admirably, but now she broke into tears, as she had in Jane’s office. “Can you find ’em? You gotta find ’em. Right away. I can’t live without ’em. They all I got.”