Cinderella's Big Sky Groom (17 page)

J
enny flew to Lynn's side and grabbed for her hand. “Hurry, hurry. We have to stop them. They're going to hurt Sara, and there's a lady, she's already hurt. She's just lying there, on the cold ground. Oh, please, Miss Taylor. Hurry up now!”

“Where?” demanded Ross. “Jenny, where are those ‘bad men'?”

“In the parking lot. Mrs. Parchly was taking too long and Sara and me decided to go by ourselves and—” She let out a frantic cry and yanked on Lynn's hand. “I can't 'splain it all now.” She gave a low, terrified whimper. “We have to save Sara. We have to hurry—”

Right then, Mrs. Parchly appeared in the open doorway. “Jenny, there you are. I turned my back for a moment and—where's Sara? Oh, this is so up-
setting. I had to make one stop, that's all. I told the girls to stay with me, but they—”

“Excuse me,” said Ross. He cut around the secretary.

“What is going on here?” demanded Mrs. Parchly as Ross rushed past her. “Where is Sara? Will someone please—”

But there was no time to answer Mrs. Parchly's questions, and Jenny knew it. “Come on, with my lawyer,” the child begged, still dragging at Lynn's hand. “We have to go now!”

They ran out together, following Ross, Jenny leading Lynn, Mrs. Parchly falling in behind.

“This way, this way,” Jenny kept chanting. “Hurry. This way…”

They emerged from the shadowed open hall between the buildings. Save for the few rows of cars and the steadily falling snow, the parking lot appeared deserted.

“They've gone!” Jenny cried out. “The bad men took Sara and ran away!”

“What?” Mrs. Parchly blanched. “Bad men? What bad men? Oh, my heavens, what is going on here?”

Ross stopped at the edge of the walkway and turned back to Jenny. “You said there was a lady…?”

Jenny pointed. “Over there.”

They fled together in that direction, off the curb and onto the blacktop.

A few feet from the row of cedar trees that rimmed the outer edge of the lot, between a beat-up SUV that belonged to one of the teachers and another car Lynn didn't recognize, they found the woman. She was
lying faceup on the blacktop, unconscious. The snow had yet to start building up on the ground. But it clung to her pale, pretty face, gleaming silver-white in her dark hair, dusting her brows, catching in the crease between her soft lips.

“That's her. That's the lady!” cried Jenny.

“My goodness,” Mrs. Parchly gasped. “That's Mrs. Sheppard….”

Lynn had never seen the woman before. “Who?”

“A new teacher. She was just in to see Mrs. Taggert for a final interview. Oh, my Lord, what is happening here?”

Ross was already shrugging out of his coat and tucking it around the still form on the ground. He pressed two fingers to the woman's white throat. “Her pulse is steady.” With great care, he used his thumb to raise one of the woman's eyelids. “Out cold,” he said. “We'd better not try to move her.” He slid a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a cell phone. Flipping it open, he punched up a number.

Lynn stood beside Mrs. Parchly, clutching little Jenny's hand and shivering without her coat, as Ross called an ambulance and then the sheriff's office.

Once he'd made the calls, he beckoned Jenny. She let go of Lynn's hand and went to him. Still crouching, so that his eyes and Jenny's could meet on a level, he clasped her mittened hands. “Did you see which way the bad men went?”

“No. Oh, no. One of them grabbed Sara by the back of her jacket…I mean, by
my
jacket…I mean—”

“It's okay. Settle down. Tell me slowly.”

“I…um…Sara and me came out from the hall and saw the bad men. They were fighting with the lady.”

“How many bad men?”

“Two.”

“Have you ever seen either of those men before?”

“I don't know. I couldn't tell. They had on those mask hats, like you wear when you're skiing?”

“Ski masks over their faces, is that what you're saying?”

Jenny nodded.

“Okay. Then what happened?”

“One of them pushed the lady. She hit her head on the car and fell down. Sara got mad then. She started running toward them, shouting at them to leave that poor lady alone. Then the men started coming after us. Sara said, ‘Uh-oh. We better run.'

“So we ran. Back the other way. But Sara was behind me then. And one of them caught her. I wanted to go help her, but Sara screamed at me to hurry, get away and get help. I ran. I didn't look back until I got to our classroom. I…didn't see where they went.” The sweet face started to crumple. “I don't know where they went. I didn't turn around again. I didn't see. I only ran. I should've looked, shouldn't I?”

Ross held Jenny's hands more tightly and stared hard into her eyes. “Jenny. Listen to me. You did just the right thing.” He looked up at Lynn and gestured with a quick toss of his dark head.

She hurried to the child, gathered her up in her arms. Those small mittened hands closed around her neck. “I should have looked….” Jenny's cold nose pressed against Lynn's throat. She was sobbing now. Lynn felt the hot moisture of her tears. “Oh, what if we don't find her? What if they do bad things to her?”

“It's okay, honey.” Lynn held Jenny tight. “We'll find her. Don't worry. She's going to be all right….” Lynn realized she was murmuring the soothing words to herself as much as to the distraught child.

Ross stood. “You'd better take her inside.” He turned to Mrs. Parchly, who wore an expression of horrified disbelief. “Does the school have a nurse?”

Mrs. Parchly didn't answer. She made a low, frightened sound.

Lynn answered for her. “The nurse is only here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Ross swore. “See if you can dig up some blankets, okay? Whatever you can find to keep this woman warm until the ambulance comes.”

Lynn nodded, her nose brushing the soft little pom-pom at the crown of Jenny's bright pink wool hat. “All right,” she said. Her voice sounded calm.

But she didn't feel calm. Inside, she was screaming.

Screaming for Sara, with her fighter's spirit and her unzippable mouth. Sara.

Kidnapped.

By two men in ski masks. Two thugs who thought nothing of roughing up a woman, knocking her unconscious to the ground and then leaving her there.

Oh, God, Lynn's heart cried. Sara! Where are you? Sara,
please
be all right….

Lynn scanned the deserted parking lot, taking in the rows of cars, the silent trees. Steadily the snow came down, like something in a picture postcard, so pretty and white….

“Go on, Lynn,” Ross said. “Get the blankets. I'll stay here with the woman.”

“Yes.” Lynn held the sobbing Jenny closer. “Yes, right away.”

 

They went straight to the office, where Mrs. Parchly broke down. “Oh, this is terrible,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What have I done? I should have been watching. I shouldn't have let them out of my sight.”

Trish went right to her, led her to the cot in the small nurse's cubicle down the hall. Lynn followed after, gratitude washing through her that Trish was here. Trish might be spoiled and self-absorbed sometimes. But she could be tough, too. She could keep her head in a crisis.

Lynn passed Jenny to Trish as soon as Trish had made the secretary comfortable.

“What in blue blazes is going on?” Trish demanded.

Quickly, Lynn explained the situation.

Trish sank to a chair, cradling Jenny, who by then was crying for her mother. “It's all right, sweetie-pie,” Trish crooned. “Shh, it's okay. Your mommy will be here. She'll be here real soon….” She pointed to a cupboard. “The blankets are in there.”

Lynn grabbed three of them, as well as a pillow, then whirled for the door again.

“Take my coat,” her sister called after her. “It's on that rack right by the door!”

Lynn grabbed the coat, shoved her arms into the too-short sleeves and went out again.

She heard the sirens in the distance just as she reached Ross's side. Together they wrapped the blankets around the still-unconscious woman. Ross lifted her head enough to slide the pillow beneath it. When
he pulled his hand away, drying blood clung to his fingers.

“Oh, God…” Lynn whispered as the sirens screamed their way toward them.

Ross sent her a steadying glance. “It felt like only a surface cut. And it's not the blood on the outside that's the problem, anyway.”

She nodded. She knew her first aid. It would be the blood caught beneath the skull, causing uncontrollable swelling, that could end this woman's life.

“What's happening here?” Lynn looked up. The principal, Mrs. Taggert, was standing over them. Trish must have alerted her. She knelt beside them. “Mrs. Sheppard…dear God.”

Ross looked up. “Your secretary says she's a teacher.”

“Yes. Mrs. Angela Sheppard. She just left my office, not ten minutes ago.” Mrs. Taggert glanced toward the entrance to the parking lot. “There's the ambulance. Good.”

The white van, lights flashing, came toward them. The sheriff's department SUV was right behind it.

 

They took Angela Sheppard, who remained unconscious, to Whitehorn Memorial Hospital.

Recently elected sheriff Rafe Rawlings collected statements from everyone. In the meantime, his partner, a new deputy, Shane McBride, secured the parking lot and then scoured the area for signs of the two masked men and the stolen child. Shane didn't find much, but he did discover Angela Sheppard's purse, under the car, right near where she had fallen.

Danielle and Jessica McCallum arrived to pick up
their daughters before Rafe and Shane had finished their work.

Lynn would never forget the look of utter desolation on her dear friend's face when they told her that her child was missing. Danielle remained calm throughout. A deadly, terrifying kind of calm. Sterling McCallum, Jenny's adoptive father and a special investigator in the sheriff's office, appeared a few minutes later. After a quick session with the sheriff, the deputy, the principal and Ross, where the others brought him up to speed on the situation, he insisted that Danielle go home with Jessica and Jenny.

At two-thirty, Ross left to return to his office.

He took Lynn aside before he went.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

She nodded.

“I've got appointments at three and four o'clock, but I'll come to your house as soon as I can get away.”

She only stared at him, wondering what that meant, if he was putting out some hope for the two of them now—or if he just wanted to be certain that she was keeping it together, that emotionally she was managing to deal with the horror of Sara's disappearance.

He peered at her more closely. “You're
sure
you're okay?”

“I am fine.”

“All right, then.” And he was gone.

A few minutes later Lynn volunteered to take the prostrate Mrs. Parchly home. She stayed there with the secretary until Mr. Parchly arrived at four. Then Lynn drove to the McCallums' house, where for two
hours she sat at the kitchen table with Danielle. Jessica made sandwiches. Lynn ate hers by rote, hardly tasting it, worried sick about Sara, hoping Jenny would come through this all right.

Jenny's pediatrician, Carey Hall Kincaid, had already dropped by to see the child. Now Jenny was resting in her room, her dog Sugar in bed with her, a special treat, which Jessica had allowed because of the circumstances.

They went over the few facts that the sheriff and the deputy had discovered. Jessica added that Rafe Rawlings and Shane McBride had already begun gathering what information they could on the history of Angela Sheppard. Maybe something in the woman's past would tell them why two thugs in ski masks might have been after her. Better yet, perhaps she'd regain consciousness soon and tell them herself.

Carefully they all avoided speculation about where Sara might be right now, though Lynn felt certain the scary subject was foremost in each of their minds.

Danielle grew somewhat agitated as the time crawled by. She wanted to be at home, she said. Maybe, somehow, Sara or the men who had taken her would try to reach her there. Jessica reminded her that Rafe Rawlings did have a deputy stationed at her house, that the man could handle anything that happened there. But Danielle said she needed to be there, just in case; she had to be the one to answer if an important call did come in.

Sterling came home at five minutes of six. He had no news, but asked Danielle if she had a recent picture of Sara. They would put it on a flyer and run off several thousand. Then tomorrow they could start
calling around, asking everyone they knew to come in and pick up a stack of the things, to plaster all over every available bulletin board and telephone pole for miles around.

Danielle stood. “I have her school picture. At my house—which is where I'm going now.”

“I really wish you'd stay with us,” Jessica suggested one more time.

But Sterling said, “She's right. If a call does come in, she should be there to answer it.”

Danielle spoke to Sterling again. “If you'll follow me over there, I'll give you the picture.”

Lynn offered to go along, to stay with her for the night.

Danielle shook her head. “Go on home now. I'll have the deputy there with me, if I need anyone.”

“But—”

“Lynn. I'm all right. And I'm used to handling things on my own.”

Lynn looked at her friend's pale, set face and wondered about Danielle's husband. Where was the man? Would Danielle try to reach him, now that their child was missing?

Lynn wanted to ask. But she feared that such questions would only dredge up more misery.

“You'll call me. If there's anything…?”