Abduction (40 page)

#

She wanted
to lift her face to the warm light and bask in it. It was the most amazingly
wonderful thing she’d ever felt in her life. Electrifying. Comforting. Loving.
All-encompassing. Pure.

Her heart
seemed to beat in rhythm to it—as if it pulsed with a life force that was
connected to her. Part of her.

Love.

It was
love. The most unbelievable love she’d ever sensed in her life. It overwhelmed
anything she’d ever felt or known. It swelled and moved in and around and
through her.

She wanted
to embrace it but didn’t know how. And suddenly it responded to her desire and
swelled within her. It continued to grow, increase, and enlarge.

Intense.
More and more intense until she almost felt too overwhelmed by it.

She felt it
withdrawing and cried out.

It’s not
yet time, My child.

Time for
what?

Time for
you to be with Me.

“Zoe, don’t
you dare die on me.”

JJ?

The light
began to dim and the sensations eased away. No, don’t go! I want to know You.

You will.
Each day you will grow closer until the day you are once again this close to
Me.

“Start an
IV drip.”

“Do we need
to intubate?”

“Pulse?”

“Ninety
over sixty.”

She tried
to reach back for the light, but it faded to little more than a soft glow.

Please,
come back.

I am always
with you.

#

JJ pushed the car door closed and reluctantly
headed up the sidewalk to the front porch. Matt followed close on his heels.
For a moment JJ wrestled with what he had to say and how in the world he was
going to say it. He looked at Matt and then at the front door.

“You could
have let me or Gerry handle this,” Matt told him.

“No, I
couldn’t.” Lifting his hand, he knocked briskly.

A minute or so
later, Ray Timms opened the front door. His smile faded when he saw their
faces. “It’s not good news, is it?”

JJ shook his
head. “Can we come in?”

“Are you going
to arrest my sister again?”

“No. Please,
we just need to talk to her.”

Ray thought
about it a moment before he stepped back and waved them in.

Karen Matthews
was sitting in the living room, holding Jessica in her arms. Rene Taylor was
seated in a chair across from her. Both women looked up with suspicion in their
eyes as JJ and Matt walked into the room and sat down.

JJ fiddled
with his car keys, summoning the words that seemed so hard to speak. Finally,
he lifted his head and looked at Karen. “I wanted you to know that we found your
husband.”

She went
white. He saw emotion in her eyes, but he wasn’t sure what emotion it was.
Fear? Hostility? Confusion?

“Is he. . .?”

JJ shook his
head. “He’s alive. He’s in the hospital. We just came from there.”

“Alive.” Karen
seemed to be testing the word to see how it felt.

“I want you to
know that I’m the one who shot him.”

Karen’s eyes went wide, and Rene reached over to
take her hand
. “You shot Ted?”

JJ nodded. “He
was trying to kill Zoe Shefford.”

She gasped and
nearly dropped the baby’s bottle. “Why—”

Matt rescued
him. “Mrs. Matthews. Your husband is the serial killer we’ve been trying to
catch. He’s killed many children. Miss Shefford was getting too close to him.”

Karen seemed
to sway, and Ray rushed forward, lifting Jessica from her arms. Rene jumped up
and rushed to sit next to Karen, wrapping her arms around her.

“That’s. . .that’s just not possible. He wouldn’t.
. .couldn’t have. . .”

“He did,” Matt
said firmly. “There is no doubt. No question.”

“I see,” she
said softly.

“Karen?” Rene
rubbed Karen’s arm. “Are you okay?”

Karen gave her
a blank stare. “He was a serial killer? He killed children? How could I not
have seen such evil?”

“Evil hides
behind many masks, Karen. It’s not always so easy to see.”

Karen stood
up, swaying a little. Her face was drained of all color, unnaturally pale and
translucent. “Excuse me.”

JJ stood to
his feet as she walked stiffly out of the room. Matt also stood.

“I’m sorry,
but we had to let her know. It’s going to hit the papers, and that’s not the
best way to find out something like this.”

“I know,” Ray
replied, cradling Jess in his arms. “Thanks for telling us.”

Rene continued
to look down the hallway after Karen. “We’ll take care of her, Detective.”

#

Rene looked at
her watch. “Karen has been in the shower for almost thirty-five minutes, Ray.
I’d better check on her. I don’t like the feel of this.”

“You don’t
think she’d do something crazy, do you?”

“I don’t know.
She just got some horrific news. Just let me check and put my mind at ease.”

She hurried down the hall and into the master
bedroom. At the bathroom door, she tapped. She could hear the water running.
“Karen?”

Still no
response.

She turned the handle, relieved to find the door
unlocked. Steam hit her in the face as she stepped in. It rolled and tumbled
toward the open door. Through the shower curtain, Rene could see Karen’s
silhouette. She looked like she was scrubbing her arms. Hard.

Rene pulled
back the shower curtain. Karen’s arms looked an angry red, as if Karen had been
trying to scrub the skin clear off.

“Karen, honey.
What are you doing?”

Karen
continued to scrape the bath brush across her skin with furious intensity.
“Gotta get
him
off. I have to get clean of it.”

Rene flinched
and reached back for a towel. She shut the water off. Karen looked stunned, as
if she had only at that moment realized that Rene was there. Rene wrapped a big
bath towel around Karen and helped her from the shower.

“There’s
nothing to scrub off, honey.”

Karen’s bottom
lip trembled as she stood there shaking. “He touched me. So many times, he
touched me. Evil. I didn’t know.”

Rene put her arms around Karen as Karen’s knees
buckled and the two women sank to the floor. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re
okay.”

“I lived with him. Had his child. Cooked his meals
and did his. . .” She sniffed back tears. “Did his laundry. And all that time,
he was. . .he was. . .”

Karen wailed
and began crying hard, her shoulders shaking at the onslaught of
heart-wrenching sobs.

Rene pulled
her close and began to rock her like a child. “Shh, baby, it’s okay. Shh. He’s
never going to touch you again.”

“I have to wash the evil away,” Karen cried out
in a panicked voice.

“No, honey.
Jesus already did that for you.” She rocked her closer, letting Karen collapse
in her arms. “You’re all clean. Jesus made you all clean.”

chapter
34

Monday, May 1

K
aren
rocked back and forth, ever so gently, as Jessica slept in her arms. She stared
down into the baby’s face, unable to get enough of seeing her. Holding her.

“Sis?” Ray set
his suitcase down at the door and leaned against the doorframe. “I’m ready to
go. Cab will be here any minute.”

Karen lifted
her face. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”

Ray shook his
head. “No. You need to stay home. Unwind. Relax. Regroup.”

Moving carefully,
Karen stood up and laid Jessica in her playpen. She walked over and put her
arms around her brother. “I can’t thank you enough for being here.”

He hugged her
tight and then released her, setting her back at arm’s length. “You’re going to
be okay, Sis. You’ve found out who you are.”

“I called the
hospital this morning.”

“Karen—”

She cut him
off, knowing he was going to disapprove. “I had to find out.”

“And?”

“He’s going to live. They said he’s paralyzed from
the waist down, but he’s going to live. Do you think it will make a difference?
That they won’t send him to prison because he’ll be in a wheelchair?”

“No. He will be lucky if they don’t sentence him
to death.” Ray reached out and touched her cheek. “If you need anything, call
me.”

“I know. And
as long as we’re on the subject, I want my inheritance. I see no reason why I
can’t take control of it myself.” She folded her arms across her chest, lifted
her chin, and prepared to do battle for what was hers.

“I’ll take
care of it first thing when I get back.”

Karen’s jaw
dropped. “That’s it? No argument?”

“That’s it.
It’s yours. You can take care of it now. I’ll go over everything with you.”

A car horn sounded. Ray picked up his suitcase.
“My cab is here. Gotta go. Love you, Sis.” He wrapped one arm around her and
squeezed her.

“Love you,
too, Ray.”

She opened the
front door and followed him outside, watching from the porch as he jogged down
the stairs. Halfway down the sidewalk, he turned around toward her, walking
backwards. “I forgot to tell you! Dad called.”

Karen groaned.

“He said he’d like to come over and see Jessica
if it’s okay with you. Call him and let him know.” He turned and handed his bag
to the cab driver. Then he lifted a hand to wave and disappeared inside the
cab.

Karen waited until the cab was gone before she
turned to head back inside the house. Her dad wanted her permission to come
over and see his granddaughter. Permission! Well, would wonders never cease.

As she started
to turn, she caught sight of Rene.

“Hey there.”

“Hi, Rene.”

“You look great,”
Rene told her as she stepped up onto Karen’s porch.

Karen sighed
heavily and then smiled. “It’s been a horrible path to get here, but. . .I’ve
never felt better.”

“Tea?” Karen
pointed to the door.

“Love some.”

“I heard
you’re helping the McCaines.” Karen shut the front door and then led Rene into
the kitchen.

“What a wonderful couple they are.” Rene sat at
the table, her hands running over the quilted placemats. “One of the young men
in our church’s youth group came to us, oh, must have been a month or more ago.
His younger sister was in trouble—you know, pregnant—and didn’t know what to
do. They come from a broken home, poor things. We talked to her, prayed with
her, and her brother started bringing her to the youth group with him. Two
weeks ago she accepted the Lord.”

Rene smiled at
the memory and at Karen as Karen placed the sugar in front of her. “A couple
days later, she called me and said she felt the right thing to do was to give
the baby up for adoption and would I please help her find a nice couple. She
didn’t want to go through an agency.”

“They were so
good to Jessica.” Karen pulled two teacups down from the cabinet and reached
for the tea. “I’d love to see them have a child of their own. They’ve been
through so much.”

“Well,
everyone signed the papers yesterday, so unless something happens and Leeza
changes her mind, the McCaines will have a little boy in about four months.”

“That’s
wonderful!” Karen exclaimed. The teakettle started whistling, and Karen pulled
it off the stove. She reflected on the simple pleasure of enjoying a cup of tea
with a friend in the middle of the day. No need to worry that her husband was
going to get angry. No guilt that she might have forgotten to do something.

“Why the
sudden frown?”

Karen’s face
cleared, and she laughed. “Sorry. I was just thinking how wonderful this
feels.”

“And
frowning?”

“No. Frowning
that I once lived in such fear of doing these pleasurable little things.”

“I
understand.”

Karen set the teacups on the table and pulled out a
chair. “Do you?”

Rene spooned sugar into her cup and stirred. “I
never told you, did I? My first husband abused me. Physically as well as
emotionally.”

“Then you
really do understand.”

Rene lifted
her cup and looked at Karen over the rim. “More than you can imagine, my friend.
Which is why I’m so overjoyed to see you so happy now.”

Karen toyed
with her spoon. “I want to thank you for what you did.” She lifted her head.
“You’ll never know what that meant. To have someone care like that.”

“I was just
worried about you. I don’t normally go barging in on people when they’re in the
shower.”

Karen laughed
and reached for Rene’s hand. “Well, we’ll let it slide this time.”

#

Zoe opened her
eyes slowly, blinked, and then gently smiled up at her dad. “Hi,” she whispered
in a raspy voice that sounded strange to her own ears.

The hospital room smelled of flowers and
disinfectant. Sunlight streamed into the room between open drapes. To her left,
monitors beeped and chirped, keeping an electrical watch over her vital signs.

“Hi, yourself.
Feeling better?” He sat down on the edge of her bed, stroking her hand.

“Little.”

He nodded.
“You had us worried there for awhile. I kept running from your room to your
mother’s. Between the two of you, I think I’ve aged twenty years.”

A worried
expression formed on Zoe’s face. “Mom? She okay?”

“She’s fine. A
little dehydrated, a few bruises, but nothing to worry about at all. She was
released last night and I took her home. Today she’s complaining because I
won’t let her do anything but rest. She probably got up the minute I pulled out
of the driveway.”