Deep in the Heart (26 page)

“What’s up, boss?” he asked.

“Give Carol Ann that information again on Aaron Reuben. Have them put out an APB on the man and the Jaguar. He left town. I want to make sure that he left alone.”

“Yes sir,” Monty said, and headed for the dispatch desk.

Less than an hour later the department was empty save for Carol Ann and Delmar. Both dispatchers had volunteered to stay round the clock until Samantha was found.

The radios were alive with traffic and static, as first one search party, then the other, called in to let them know they were at their starting point. And then, except for short, intermittent transmissions, the airwaves went silent. The search was on.

On the rougher terrain, the searchers used four-wheelers and horses. Where possible, they walked, searching every nook and cranny, every shallow pond and deep crevasse for evidence of recent entry. Each time they came to a place where the earth or the grasses looked disturbed, to a man they held their breath, hoping that they wouldn’t be the one to find the lifeless body of the sheriff’s lady.

Daylight disappeared, and they didn’t even see it leave until they realized they were staring harder into shadows that hadn’t been there earlier, and losing sight of one another as they moved across the land.

Within the hour, it became evident that a halt was imperative. Search parties were impotent without light by which to guide them. They were forced to stop and make camp until sunrise.

John Thomas stood beside a campfire, watching blindly as orange and yellow tongues licked into the wood. He was heartsick. All he could think was that he would give a year of his life to be able to start this day over.

She’d been safe up until the point that he got the call about the rustlers. After that, it was all a confusing collage of thoughts that played and replayed in his mind until he thought he would go mad. And yet he knew that would not bring Samantha back. He had to concentrate.

But he kept remembering what he’d promised her. Damn his soul to hell and back, he’d even crossed his heart and hoped to die that he would protect her. And he hadn’t been able to do it. As far as he was concerned, living without her was no longer an option.

Some of the locals had gone home with promises to return at daylight, while others had opted to sleep at the point they’d ceased searching, anxious to be first on hand when daylight came.

Refusing the offers of food, coffee, and conversation, John Thomas retreated to a bedroll a distance away from the others. As he sat, he tried to remember everything that had occurred from the moment he realized Samantha was gone, up until now. But no matter how many times he replayed it in his mind, the only clue they held to her whereabouts were the grasses that he’d pulled from beneath Marylee’s old black pickup truck. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember if there was any particular significance to the varieties, not even the berry vines that had pricked his hands.

He shifted uncomfortably on the sleeping bag, wondering where, and in what condition, Sam was trying to sleep.

When I find her, please God, don’t let it be too late.

His stomach grumbled. But the thought of food made him sick. He didn’t need to eat. What he needed was Sam.

When he closed his eyes, the image surfaced again of the grass and weeds that he’d pulled out from beneath that old black truck. The answer had to be somewhere in that drying bundle. It was there…it just had to be.

Instinct prodded him to go back to his car. He had a sudden need to look at the evidence all over again.

The trunk light was dim, but it was enough to see that the grasses and weeds were still where he’d tossed them.

“Whatcha looking at?” one of the older men asked, as he walked by the sheriff’s car, then peered into the trunk and tried to coax a smile from the sheriff by teasing, “Did you find yourself a marijuana plant?” He laughed lightly at his own wit.

John Thomas sighed and stepped back. “No, just a clump of grass and weeds I pulled out from under Marylee’s old truck.” He tossed them inside the trunk and started to shut the lid.

“See you got yourself some dewberry vines in with it,” the old man said.

John Thomas froze. Dewberry vines? He’d thought they were blackberry. It was a small distinction. Could it possibly mean something he’d overlooked earlier?

“As a rule, dewberries don’t grow wild like blackberries, do they?” he asked.

“Nope.” The old man scratched his head and leaned against the car, readying for a reminiscence. “My ma had a big old truck garden when I was a kid. Had two of the longest rows of dewberries you ever did see. Me and my younger brother had to pick them damned things ever year. The stickers were hell on fingers, but Ma’s cobblers were fine on the stomach.”

He patted the sheriff on the back and ambled away when he realized that storytelling wasn’t what Sheriff Knight was after.

John Thomas’s pulse kicked into second gear as his mind began to whirl. Exactly what did this mean to the investigation? There were commercial berry farms all over East Texas. But he couldn’t imagine Claudia concealing Samantha on one of them. There were always too many people. The only thing that made sense was an abandoned farm and an overgrown dewberry patch that had once been part of someone’s garden.

And with that thought came another. Plenty of old, abandoned homesteads had an assortment of shrubs and bushes growing wild that their owners had once planted and nurtured with pride. But how many of them had a berry patch?

“Hey, Bud!”

The old man stopped and turned.

“You don’t happen to know where there are any dewberry patches growing wild?”

The old man thought, and then shook his head. “But your deputy, Mike Lawler, might. He’s a big one for hunting. I’d guess at one time or another he’s walked over every square inch of East Texas.”

John Thomas slammed the trunk down with a thud. Lawler was with another search party, but he had a sudden need to talk to him face-to-face.

“Tell the men I’ll be back,” John Thomas said as his deputy walked up.

Monty took one look at the sick, empty expression on his boss’s face, crawled in beside him, and began to buckle his seat belt.

“What do you think you’re doing?” John Thomas asked.

“Going with you.”

John Thomas didn’t argue.

Less than thirty minutes later he was in deep discussion with Mike Lawler, poring over a map of the area, while Mike related the location of every local hunting expedition he’d made within the last twenty years.

Hours later, John Thomas pulled up in front of his house and parked. Rebel came out from beneath the porch, wagging his tail and woofing a soft welcome.

“What are we doing here?” Monty asked.

“Getting some sleep, and when it gets daylight, getting my dog. I’ve got an idea that may or may not pan out. But I can’t afford to ignore anything—especially gut instinct.”

Monty nodded. “I’ll take the couch.”

“You may as well take a damn bed,” John Thomas said gruffly. “I can’t sleep in any of them. Not without…” He swallowed harshly, unable to finish his sentence.

“We’ll find her, Sheriff,” Monty said. “You can’t give up hope.”

You don’t understand, boy,
John Thomas thought.
Hope is all I have left.

Sometime when Sam wasn’t looking, night had come, shadowing the deep hole in which she was trapped to a frightening degree. In spite of the darkness sparkling with minute bits of starlight above her, she knew she must be sick. Only a fever would produce the psychedelic glitter she saw overhead.

She rubbed her knee and winced when it throbbed beneath her fingertips, hot to the touch even through the denim of her jeans. She was only vaguely aware of the consciousness that came and went at alarming intervals. But each time she came to, she knew that her condition was deteriorating. Twice she thought she’d heard John Thomas’s voice. Each time she’d screamed until she was hoarse, but he’d never answered.

The knowledge that she was seeing things—and people—who weren’t really there, frightened her more than the hole she was in. She felt sick, shaky, and weaker by the minute.

The wind rose, rustling the long grasses above her just enough to make her think that something—or someone—was up there. But each time she called, she got no response. Her throat ached from continuous shouting, and her lips were caked and dry, split from a busted lip as well as lack of fluids.

At one point she slapped the flat of her hands into the water in which she was sitting and groaned. “This is a joke! I’m starving for a drink, and up to my ankles in water I can’t even stand to smell.”

The thick, rank stuff had obviously been in the well for ages. But she’d long since given up worrying about what she might be sharing it with. Not even a snake could survive down here for long. And with that thought came a huge, ugly sob, tearing up her throat and ripping out through her lips in a makeshift scream.

Not even a snake could suvive.

A small, wispy cloud slid across the slice of quarter moon, momentarily blotting out the weak glow from its face. Samantha shuddered, closed her eyes, and buried her face in her hands.

In seconds she was past misery and lost in a hallucination that saved her sanity.

She kept seeing her mother’s face, hearing a young boy’s voice from her childhood as he urged her to hurry, then feeling Johnny’s arms around her, his hands on her face…on her body…just as he did when they made love.

She shifted in the water, trying to ease the ache in her leg and the throbbing behind her eyelids, but it was no use. The pain that came spiraled, sending her into blessed oblivion as fever claimed her body. The night passed and morning came without notice. Samantha was unconscious.

Desiree Adonis inserted her key in the lock and turned it, smiling to herself as it clicked sharply. The door swung open. She wrinkled her nose. The apartment smelled stale, but she would soon take care of that. She was back—for good! She turned on the light and locked the door behind her.

Tossing her bag onto the sofa with casual abandon, as if she’d just come in from a workout at the gym, she walked to her patio overlooking the pool. The security light reflected back from the water in a broken wave of refracted glitter. She leaned over the railing, staring down into the darkened end of the pool and imagined Samantha Carlyle below her in the well. She looked up at the stars, inhaled deeply, and walked back inside with a small smile in place.

The condo was in her maiden name, or it would have been sucked up with the rest of their assets that the courts had taken after Donny’s death. But it was no matter. Up until now, money had been the farthest thing from her thoughts.

She walked into her bedroom. Without turning on the light, she stripped herself of her clothing, tossed it into a garbage bag, and made a mental note to put it out with the rest of the trash that had accumulated in her apartment. She needed no reminders of her accomplishments. The inner satisfaction was enough. Relishing the cool draft of air on her nudity, she walked slowly toward the bathroom, stepped into the shower, and turned on the taps.

The water spurted, jerking past the air pockets that had accumulated in the unused pipes, then ran fresh and clean onto her face, her hair, her skin. She’d done what she set out to do. The woman who had ruined her life was dead. Or she soon would be. Of that Desiree was certain. Now it was time to focus on the rest of her life.

And with that thought came the fear. What
was
left? Her entire life had been Donny. After his death, revenge had taken over her world. Now that it had been accomplished, she realized she had no direction. She felt lost and empty.

Fear overtook the rush of adrenaline that had carried her from Texas to California, replacing the success that she’d felt with another, more insidious emotion. Her hands flattened on either side of the shower as the water continued to pelt down upon her face.

Suddenly she began to laugh. Loud, jerky bellows of hilarity that changed into choked gasps for air. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands, then yanked them away as the memories of what she had done surfaced.

Without turning off the water, she dashed from the shower and flung herself on the bed, ignoring the spots she was making on the satin comforter.

“She had it coming. She had it coming,” she muttered, and rolled over on her back, staring blankly up at the shadows on the ceiling above the bed.

Midmorning of the next day, Desiree was at her dressing table, painting on a face to present to the world. She squinted her eyes as she traced a deep rose lipliner carefully across her upper lip, and then licked her little finger before running it across her mouth to soften the line that she’d drawn. Minutes later she’d put the finishing touches on her makeup, and was stepping into a subdued, but fashionable, black summer dress. She was, after all, still in mourning.

14

T
HE SUN WAS ONLY
minutes away from the horizon when a car drove into the front yard of John Thomas’s home. Rebel’s baying was a second alert to the engine he had already heard.

Instead of sleeping, he’d spent all of last night going through the letters Samantha had received from the stalker, hoping to find a clue they might have missed. Nothing had surfaced other than the notion that when he found Samantha, it would be too late.

“Someone’s outside,” Monty said, as he came out of the bathroom with a towel in his hands.

“I heard them,” John Thomas said. “Fresh coffee is in the kitchen. If you want any, make it to go. I’m leaving here in less than five minutes.”

Monty hastened to comply as the sheriff went outside to greet his visitors.

“Sheriff Knight?”

The small, dapper man wearing a plain blue suit and a professional smile held out his hand.

“I’m Inspector Williams, FBI. Sorry my men and I couldn’t get here sooner. I understand that the physical evidence the kidnapper sent is in your possession, and that you already have a search in progress. Mind filling me in on the details? After I hear the facts, it might be that some reorganization is necessary.”