Dying for Love (21 page)

Amelia’s heart shattered, both for the child and the woman in front of her. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Sweeny,” she said softly. “We had no idea he was gone.”

“It’s still so painful,” she said. “We . . . loved him so much.”

“I’m sure you did.” Sorrow assailed Amelia. If this child was her son, she’d missed any chance of ever getting to know him.

John pressed a hand to Amelia’s back as if to offer comfort. “I’m sorry, too. Is it okay if we ask you some questions?”

Mrs. Sweeny crossed her arms. “Why would the TBI possibly want to talk to me about Eddie?”

John spoke in a low voice. “It’s about his adoption, Mrs. Sweeny.”

Her eyes widened. “We went through legal channels.”

“We don’t believe you did anything wrong,” Amelia said quickly.

“What happened to Eddie?” John asked.

The woman brushed angrily at her tears. “He had a genetic disorder, a chromosome abnormality.”

“Did you know about his health issues when you adopted him?” John asked.

The woman shook her head. “Not at first. He was diagnosed a few months after we got him.”

“But you kept him anyway?” Amelia said.

“Of course,” Mrs. Sweeny said with no hesitation. “We loved him. From the first moment we held him, he was our son.”

Amelia fought tears. “I’m so sorry about his illness, but he was very lucky to have you.”

Mrs. Sweeny relaxed slightly. “Thank you for saying that. A lot of people didn’t understand.” She took a deep breath. “Now, I still don’t see why the TBI is interested in Eddie.”

Amelia cleared her throat. “We’re here because of me. I had some emotional problems six years ago because I was one of the subjects of the Slaughter Creek experiments, but now I remember—I
know
—that I gave birth to a little boy. And the hospital staff took my baby away from me.” Pain tinged her voice. “I didn’t give him away, Mrs. Sweeny, not willingly. All I want to do now is find out what happened to my son.”

A strangled sound came from Mrs. Sweeny’s throat. “My Lord, you think Eddie was your baby?”

John gritted his teeth. Obviously the woman had loved the little boy.

But if this child was Amelia’s, then her search had come to an end. The fact that he’d inherited a genetic abnormality could fit with drug use during gestation.

One more life Arthur Blackwood had ruined.

He hoped the bastard was rotting in hell.

“What do you know about Eddie’s birth parents?” John asked.

Mrs. Sweeny bit her lip. “Not much. He was only a day old when we got the call.”

Amelia exhaled, a sound filled with anxiety.

John willed her to be strong. “Do you remember the name of the social worker you worked with?”

Mrs. Sweeny looked at Amelia, her expression torn. “Her name was Rusty Lintell.”

John grimaced. Rusty Lintell was dead. She had been murdered two years ago by one of the CHIMES subjects.

He pushed Danny into the dark room, knowing the first twenty-four hours meant he had to teach the boy to do as he said.

After all, he was offering him a chance to make a statement to the world. To change things.

But he had to toughen him up first.

“Where are we?” Danny asked, shivering as a tree branch scraped the windowpane.

“A layover place for a while. “ Hell, he’d been awake the entire night. Hadn’t slept for the adrenaline pumping through his body. He had to get some rest. Laying low during the day was best. They’d travel again come dark.

Danny’s thin body suddenly looked frail as he sank down and leaned against the wall. A spider crawled across the floor and Danny held out a finger and let it crawl into his hand.

His own past returned in a blinding sea of darkness, his face transposed over Danny’s. Except instead of a spider, the rats in the cellar had crawled all over him.

His mother’s cruel lessons were ingrained in his brain.

“Take your punishment like a man,” she’d told him.

He had fought at first. Until he was too weak to fight back. Until he’d learned to tolerate her hands on him and the cold that swallowed him in the box where she locked him at night.

Hidden from sight. Away from other children.

Away from the men she brought into the house.

Forgotten, sometimes for days at a time.

Just like the kids he was taking. Forgotten. Neglected. Abused.

Danny was one of them.

“I’m going to make you important, son. One day everyone will know who you are, Danny. Would you like that?”

Danny nodded, then drew his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them.

Yes, he was saving him. Danny was overlooked at that damn foster home. Lost. Passed by as if he didn’t exist.

With the Brotherhood, Danny would shine.

Chapter Twenty

T
he pain radiating from the Sweeny woman was so intense that her grief made Amelia’s heart ache. She touched John’s arm. “Maybe we should go, John.”

“Amelia, we’ve come this far. You deserve to know the truth.”

Unfortunately, whether or not Rusty Lintell was working for Arthur Blackwood was a question left unanswered by her death.

But if she had taken Amelia’s baby from Blackwood, she could have given him to the Sweeny family.

And now he was gone.

John cleared his throat. “Mrs. Sweeny, there’s one way we can determine if your little boy was Amelia’s son. She deserves closure.”

Amelia sighed. “If Eddie was my baby, it won’t change anything for you, Mrs. Sweeny. But I’ll know, and I can stop looking and move on.”

Resignation snapped in the woman’s eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you have a comb or brush, even a toothbrush, anything that might have his DNA on it?”

The woman closed her eyes for a moment as if torn over what to do, then opened them and murmured for them to wait. She disappeared for a moment, and returned carrying a hairbrush. “This was his.”

John removed a bag from his pocket and bagged it. “We can test his hair for DNA and then we’ll know the truth.”

Mrs. Sweeny caught his arm before they could leave. “Please, can I have the brush back when you’re finished?”

“Of course.”

They turned to leave, but Mrs. Sweeny called Amelia’s name. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. I do understand what it’s like to lose a child. I don’t wish that on anyone.”

Amelia thanked her, but the deep sadness that had pervaded her eyes when John had first met her returned. Like him, she knew that if Eddie was her little boy, she would never get to meet him.

It was unforgiveable. And one more thing Arthur Blackwood had stolen from her.

John’s cell phone buzzed that he had a text from Helen Gray.

I have information regarding The Gateway House. Meet me at my office.

Amelia struggled not to give in to despair as John drove to the lab. There was still the possibility that Davie was her son.

But it could be Eddie. Which meant she’d lost any chance of ever knowing her own child.

She waited in the car while John dropped off the hairbrush. When he returned, he looked frustrated.

“Any news?”

“DNA takes time. Lieutenant Maddison will call us as soon as he gets the results.” They started the drive toward Slaughter Creek. “Helen Gray sent me a text saying she has information about The Gateway House.”

“They know who set the fire?”

“Not yet.”

“How about where the children and house parents are?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find out when we talk to her.”

They lapsed into silence until they arrived, the windshield wipers scraping freshly fallen sleet as they drove. Bundling up in her coat and scarf, Amelia followed John up to Helen’s office, an older colonial-style house that had been converted into a business on the main street of Slaughter Creek.

Helen greeted them at the door with a smile. The social worker was probably in her early fifties, but attractive with dark hair and brown eyes. Eyes that looked kind but worried.

“Come on in, Agent Strong, Miss Nettleton.”

“Thank you for texting,” John said. “Any word on the Ellingtons?”

A frown pulled at Helen’s mouth. “No, I’m afraid not.” She gestured for them to take seats. “I did some research, though, after we last talked regarding the adoptions that occurred through The Gateway House.”

John leaned forward. “And?”

Helen pushed a printout toward John. “I followed up on a few of the cases to see how the families and children were adjusting and found something disturbing.”

“What do you mean?”

Helen tapped the printout with her finger. “Three of the families I spoke with confirmed that everything was fine with their adoptions. But there were four other families I couldn’t locate.”

“They moved?” John asked.

Helen sighed. “No. The addresses listed as their homes were fake.”

John contemplated the implications of the social worker’s statement. Had the Ellingtons been working a child-trafficking ring? Had Blackwood started another project by using subjects from The Gateway House?

Or was he jumping to conclusions that the cases were even related?

“Can I have a list of those names?” John asked.

Helen nodded, tapped some keys, hit print, then handed him the list.

John’s cell phone buzzed, Coulter calling. He stepped out of Helen’s office into the hallway to answer.

“Yeah?”

“Another boy was kidnapped. Name is Danny Kritz.”

John dropped his head forward and rubbed his eyes. Dammit. This was his fault. If he’d stopped this kidnapper earlier, Danny Kritz wouldn’t have had to suffer. “Where was he taken from?”

“A dental clinic.”

“Text me the address and I’ll meet you at the clinic.”

He disconnected and motioned to Amelia, who’d followed him into the hallway. “Another child was kidnapped. I have to go. Can you get a cab home?”

Amelia nodded, and he tugged his coat up over his neck and hurried to his SUV. A little boy’s life was in danger.

Amelia waited until John drove away before going back inside to talk to Helen. Helen stood in front of a whiteboard where dozens of photographs of children had been attached with magnets.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw Amelia, and she flipped the board around, looking nervous. “Did you forget something?”

Amelia tapped her fingers up and down her sides. “Thank you for helping us. Can you tell me about the three families who said their adoptions went smoothly?”

Helen frowned. “That information is confidential.”

“If they agree to talk to me, you can come with me,” Amelia said. “But they might be able to tell me something about the people at The Gateway House.”

Helen gnawed on her lower lip for a moment. “All right. I’ll set it up. But we’ll meet here.”

“That’s fine,” Amelia said. “I appreciate it.”

“I’ll call you after I speak with them.”

Amelia thanked her again, then stepped outside and phoned for a cab. Cars crawled by in the sludgy street. The snow capping the mountain peaks looked ethereal, but the wind was pounding the trees and there was nothing peaceful about the way she felt.

By the time she reached her guesthouse, she was antsy, wondering how soon Helen could set up the meeting.

Maybe one of the other families had seen her baby. Or maybe they’d kept in contact with the Ellingtons.

It was a long shot, but she couldn’t ignore any lead.

The cab driver let her out in front of her guesthouse, and she rushed to the door. But nerves fluttered in her stomach. Would she find more damage inside?

Hand shaking, she opened the door and took a quick glance around. Her canvases were stacked against the wall just as she’d left them that morning. She peeked in the bedroom. Bed still made, no more underwear or scraps of her journal lying around.

She breathed a sigh of relief, but suddenly the sound of a baby’s cry echoed through the walls.

“Mommy,” the voice cried. “Mommy, where are you?”

Amelia whirled around, searching the studio for the source of the sound.

“Mommy . . . help me . . . ”

A sob caught in Amelia’s throat. That voice . . . the little boy’s cry . . . it sounded so real.

But it couldn’t be . . .

Perspiration beaded on her neck.
Was
she losing her mind again?

“This is Mrs. Kritz,” Coulter said as John entered the clapboard house at the edge of Slaughter Creek.

One look told him the family had little money. The wood was rotting on the house, the porch was falling in, a few windowpanes were broken out, and out the backdoor window he spotted an outhouse down a trail in the back.

A single fuel oil heater burned in the small living room, probably the only heat in the shack.

The mother sat in a rocking chair, a tissue wadded in her hands, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen. On the other side of a grimy window, three boys ranging from three to five were playing in the snow, building a snowman, their clothes tattered and dirty, their bodies thin and bony.

“The school was supposed to pick him up, then he was to ride the bus home,” she cried. “But he didn’t show up.”

John checked his watch. “Isn’t it a little early for school to be getting out?”

“Early-release days, they send ’em home so parents can go in for conferences.”

“And the school took him to the dentist?”

She nodded. “First, I thought the stinker just missed the bus, that maybe he snuck off with a friend and was lollygagging around. So I called the school and they said they thought I picked him up at the dentist.”

“Do you pick him up sometimes?”

“No, sir. My car ain’t been running right.”

“So why did the school think you picked him up?”

“They said I called ’em and told ’em I’d get him, but I didn’t do no such thing.”

John gritted his teeth. “What was Danny wearing, Mrs. Kritz?”

She rubbed at her forehead. “I dunno, a T-shirt and jeans. He gets himself dressed on account of I been up all night with Baby Boy and then got to feed the other little ones and the phone was ringing, goddamned bill collectors.” She threw her hands up. “I do the best I can.”