Taken (11 page)

She half laughed.

“But he can stay in the boundaries of what you want to have happen. Do you want him to tell others in your family you’re alive?”

“If he says anything to anyone, the news takes on a life of its own, and within hours it’s going to spill out to the public.”

“Probably.”

“What do you think I should do?”

He gestured toward the door. “Come on, let’s go to the living room and get comfortable. We’ll talk about it.”

Shannon curled up in the corner of the living room couch. Matthew delayed the start of the conversation long enough to find a can of cashews in the kitchen cabinet, retrieve the vegetable tray she’d been munching from earlier, place them on the coffee table. He brought in drinks. He knew that having something in hand to eat and drink could be helpful—could buy
a few moments of time to get past hard topics when otherwise the conversation might end rather abruptly. Matthew took the other end of the couch rather than a chair.

“I see two security concerns,” he began matter-of-factly, “that arise from the news you’re alive, plus a more general one from the magnitude of the press and public interest your case will generate. The two specific concerns: someone paid to have you abducted. That person is a threat if they believe you have information which will point the cops in their direction. Second, those in the smuggling group have a vested interest in your not being able to testify against them. If they could do you harm, see you dead, they would do so. Do you see the same concerns?”

“Yes.”

Matthew rested his arm on the back of the couch, his body turned toward her, tried to read her rather closed expression. “Shannon, both these threats can be neutralized. You could give us the address where you were to be dropped off, and we could use it to identify who was behind your abduction. You could give us the names and identify photos of those in the smuggling family, so that we can locate them, bring law enforcement resources to bear, know who to watch out for in a crowd. The more information you hold back, the more likely it is that the individuals responsible for what happened to you will make trouble . . . or burrow into the shadows and become ghosts.”

“I have my reasons for why I haven’t shared that information yet.”

“Can you talk about those reasons?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“How much time do you need before you think you might be comfortable sharing the information?”

She shook her head.

“Those security concerns come into play when it’s known you’re alive,” he said after a while. “If we ask your brother to tell no one you’re alive, not even your parents, we can buy another week or two. Is that enough to make this easier on you? There is security in silence.”

“That delay will cause Jeffery problems.”

“He’s a big boy. He can deal with it.”

Shannon pulled at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt. “A week or two may not change my dilemma. I know for a fact the people who held me are on the move and won’t be easy to find. Only a few times a year do they assemble as a group, typically in November and again around March. There are two places, one within half a day’s drive of here, and one on the East Coast where they often gather. Home bases, for want of a better description. They’d be deserted right now.”

“So if we want to arrest the majority of the group, if we don’t want them to realize what’s coming and scatter, we should wait until they reassemble.”

“That would be ideal. Yet it’s really not practical to wait that long. That internal family dispute and shooting last year started something that won’t be tamped down. Regardless of what I do, they’re coming apart at the seams. They might not hold together another year. And I suspect long before November, Flynn will be causing some chaos for his own reasons.”

“You said there are gravesites.”

“Besides the five members of the family, I know of seven. They’re . . . dispersed. Some are kids.”

It hurt to take a breath. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Shannon.”

She gave a jerky nod. “Before my time, but I heard the stories.” She looked over and caught his gaze, shook her head,
and changed the subject. “There are stolen items that can be recovered stashed all around the country. There’s a long list of people the group dealt with that law enforcement should know about. But it’s not . . . helpful to turn law enforcement loose on what I know about this group yet.”

He thought she might have already told him why in what she hadn’t directly said. “You’re waiting on someone else to get clear of the group.”

“I wasn’t the only name on that cleanup list. I’m hoping someone else was also able to get out.”

“Is there anything I can do for you, somewhere I can check for information, a description or name I can follow up on?”

“I’ll get a call. I’ve been expecting it for a couple of weeks. They’re . . . late.”

“Can you tell me about that person?”

She shook her head.

“If you can’t talk more about the group yet, what about the address where you were to be dropped off?”

She lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes. “What if I give you that address, and cops end up doing something unthinkable like arrest my mother?”

He felt as if his heart were being squeezed. “You’re truly afraid the abduction originated within your family,” he breathed. “Did you overhear something?”

“I know someone paid to have me abducted. I know this group was dealing with child custody disputes in the years after I was snatched. I know they were to drop me off at a house I didn’t recognize, in a town I’d never been to before. And I know my parents later divorced. I have no idea what happened to set things in motion. I’m not sure I want to know.” She picked up the can of cashews and moodily shook it, took a handful. “When
they couldn’t drop me off and were angry about what to do, I heard them arguing, and some things didn’t make sense at the time. But later, as I watched kids being dropped off in custody disputes, I pieced together some of what it meant. Worst case, this did start somewhere in my family, possibly with my mother. And that’s—” she paused, shook her head—“inconceivable. But what if it’s true? What I would want for justice and what the evidence might cause to happen may not be . . . equitable in my eyes. I give you the address, this moves forward in unpredictable ways. I don’t know that I can take that risk.”

“You’re afraid of what the truth is going to reveal.”

“I can deal with the truth. What I can’t deal with is what might happen because of that truth. I don’t want to plunge my brother, myself, other innocent parties in the Bliss family into twenty years of further pain while we visit someone we love in prison.”

Matthew rested his head against the back of the couch, feeling the weight of that impossible box she found herself in. “You tell law enforcement the address, they learn who lived there eleven years ago, from that learn why you were taken and who paid for you to be abducted. You get answers. Those responsible get punished. Only you fear the punishment might land on someone you care about and be more than you want to have happen.”

“Maybe my mother had an affair, and it’s my natural father who lives in that house. Maybe someone paid, not to take me but to make me go away. Maybe someone thought they were protecting me by getting me out of Chicago. Maybe my parents were about to split in a nasty, bitter divorce and Dad was going to throw Mom and me out. I don’t know. But I won’t cause my family more harm by blindly giving law enforcement that
address and hoping for the best. I can’t live with the possible outcome.

“There’s mercy and forgiveness and justice,” she continued, reaching for the drink he had brought her, “and I want—I think I deserve—to have some control over what that all looks like related to the person who put this abduction into motion. I paid for that right with eleven years of my life. If it’s a stranger, throw the book at them. But if it was from within my family . . . I simply can’t put blind justice into motion. I’m the one likely to be hurt the most by that outcome. It hurts me and it hurts Jeffery.

“I can just see it, Matthew. My brother is running for governor, spending a private fortune out of his own pocket trying to find me, enjoying time with the parents he loves who are good grandparents to his daughter, and the next week I’m back, our mom is on trial looking at twenty years, and his political career is over. That’s not justice.”

Matthew decided, given the unthinkable options she was already considering, his own conclusions about what had happened might not be the shock he had feared. He reached over and patted her knee in a small gesture of sympathy. “Shannon, I think it was a true abduction for ransom. But the person who did it wanted some deniability. So they hired this group to be the ones to grab you and transport you to somewhere out of the way. Then they made their ransom demand, got paid a lot more than it cost them to have you taken. You were supposed to be gone only a few days. Only the group dropping you off ran into complications, and they couldn’t drop you off as planned. What happened to you was the unintended tragedy of a failed abduction-for-ransom scheme.”

She stopped swirling the can of cashews to stare across at him, stunned. “You think my uncle was behind the whole thing.”

“Actually, I do. He embezzled company money and committed suicide before he could be arrested. But he was taking money out of the family business long before you disappeared. I think eleven years ago he was on the verge of being caught and needed a lot of cash quickly to cover up what he had done. Someone desperate for money would see a ransom amount as an attractive solution. We know your uncle delivered the ransom money. There’s a suspicion he turned over some of it as blank paper, that he used some of the ransom money to cover his original theft from the company. It’s assumed that he took advantage of the opportunity your disappearance presented, that he acted on the spur of the moment to cash in on what had happened, to get some money to hide his theft. But it’s not a big stretch from that option to the possibility your uncle may have been behind your abduction from the very beginning.”

Matthew tried to read what she was feeling and couldn’t. “He set it in motion, thinking it was going to be a few days’ disappearance, a ransom demand, and you’re back home. Instead you went missing, the family business was driven into near bankruptcy by your parents’ divorce, those proceedings triggering audits of the company’s books, which revealed his embezzlement of company funds and led to his decision to commit suicide before he could be arrested.” Matthew settled a comforting hand on hers. He so wished he could take some of this pain away. “It’s ugly, but it’s a lot more acceptable than the possibility your mother had an affair, that the person at that address is your real father, that someone paid to ‘make you go away,’ as you put it.”

“I agree it’s less . . . painful. My uncle is dead. It would be nice to have an ugly truth be historical.” She shook her head. “I can’t take more tragedy in my life, Matthew. I’d rather not
return than spend the next decades living in more pain because of what justice now brings down on my family. Which is why I thought seriously about simply not coming back.” She let out a long breath. “I can’t take the chance.”

“Shannon . . . give me the address. Let me help you find out answers and at least make it possible for you to think about this rationally. You
have
to know. You don’t have a choice. What is done with the information . . . I understand the dilemma. But you need to let me look and put your mind at rest if I can. I won’t tell anyone what I find. I won’t give the address to anyone else. But you’ll know.”

She was crying, silently, but the dam in her control had cracked and wasn’t going to close. His heart ached for her grief.

“Forty-seven Kline Street, East Brisbane, Colorado.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t tell me what you find. Not until I say I’m ready to hear it.”

“Whatever it is, I promise, I will help you deal with the truth.”

She struggled against the tears, wiped at them with her palms. “So much for the start of my first day of vacation.”

It was too much for him, that attempt at humor while her heart was shattering. He shifted on the couch to turn her into his shoulder, very carefully rested his arm around her back, and felt his own eyes grow wet. “Eventually, it’s going to be okay.” He knew better than to promise it would be okay anytime soon. She needed to cry, and he said nothing else, just stayed bearing witness as her tears fell with a small layer of the pain washing away. Healing could come after the emotions surfaced, and he was relieved to see this first wave arrive.

He had an address. He’d know. At least he could protect from one of the two threats he could foresee. He very carefully slid
a hand down her hair. Her tears were easing. When she shifted back, he let her go.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

He offered her another tissue, and she disappeared toward the restroom. He leaned forward, his head in his hands. He’d ask God if he was being an idiot right now, the way he was letting her into his heart. He knew he should put up a wall to safeguard his own emotions, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear that, so he left the question unasked.