“Yeah. Better yet, keep them at home today and I’ll be by around lunchtime. I’ll bring Chinese.”

  He looked at the girl. She wasn’t cooperating. She was causing trouble, even worse than the last one. He stared through the one-way glass at the hole she had made in the wall. She had promised to be good, and so he had taken off the shackles. Then she had used a blunt nail file to dismantle the frame of her bed and beat through the paint and the wall board, sending construction debris, wall-board chips and mess across the room. He had hoped that when she found only concrete block beyond, it would discourage her. She stood there now, her back to the window, staring at the wall, trembling. Slowly she turned her head, and stared at the window as if she could see him. And she snarled.

  In a fury, she whirled and raced to the window, the short metal rod taken from the bed frame held like a baseball bat. Like a weapon. At a dead run, she attacked the glass.

  I had a precious three hours of sleep before Jasmine stuck her head in the door to wake me. “He’s here. He brought mu shu, sesame chicken and lots of veggies.”

  As my daughter watched, I rolled out of bed, fought for balance until I found it, stripped off the T-shirt I’d slept in and pulled on the sweats I had left at the foot of the bed. I ran my fingers through my ash-blond hair and started to the doorway. Jas held up a hand. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Groggy, I blinked at her. “Don’t think what?”

  “Go brush your teeth and comb your hair and put on some jeans. And some makeup.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The laughter helped clear my head and I looked at my daughter, studying her where she stood, blocking my doorway. I didn’t say it, but I was pretty sure my suddenly grown-up baby was matchmaking. “Keep the food hot,” I said instead. “Nothing worse than cold sesame chicken.”

  Ten minutes later, I emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a button-down shirt, hair combed and blush and lipstick in place. I felt better and I no longer looked like an extra from a teenage-kegger movie. In fact, I looked pretty good—as good as a late-forty something can in the presence of two college-age, skinny, pretty girls. I left my feet bare because this was not—not—a date.

  As I entered the kitchen, Jim looked up in the middle of asking a question. “And you found the site—” he stuttered a half beat, holding a spoonful of rice over Topaz’s plate. The half beat was the biggest compliment he could have given me. I’m pretty sure I blushed. Jasmine grinned at me with satisfaction and Topaz looked back and forth between Jim and me, almost as pleased as my daughter. Dang. They were both conspiring against me.

  The conversation went on. “Paz, you have to tell me who you told,” Jim said. “I have to know, so I can contain the information spread.”

  “Not gonna do it, Mr. Cop.”

  Jim put on his cop face and his voiced dropped into interrogation mode. “It’s not an option.”

  “Ooooh. Mr. Cop turned into Mr. Bad Cop.” She did a little head wiggle and raised her hands in “scary movie” pose. “Who you gonna get to play Good Cop? Mamash?”

  “Not me,” I said, accepting a plate from Jim. “I’m just going to call Wallace and Pearl and tell them you and Jasmine are interfering in a federal police investigation, talking to friends about the case, hacking into Web sites on the Internet and staying up all night with boys in the house. You and Jas can spend the summer with no cars, no cell-phone privileges and no fun.”

  My girls’ jaws dropped. Ignoring their reaction, I took a bite of sesame chicken and groaned. I loved this stuff.

  “You wouldn’t,” Paz said.

  “Um-hum,” I said smiling, mouth closed around the food. I swallowed and said, “I would and I will.” I was usually too easygoing to put my foot down, but when I did, I put it down hard. “Shall I call Wallace now?”

  “Crap. Mamash, I promised not to tell on my buds.”

  “Too bad. Spill it.” I ate another bite.

  They met one another’s eyes as the silence lengthened. Jas finally shrugged. Paz sighed and gave Jim the names, addresses and phone numbers, then detailed the way into the Web site’s hidden area so he could reproduce it. He copied the information in a little spiral notebook that made the electronic-age girls giggle. He went to work on the meal with a single-mindedness that let me know he hadn’t been eating regularly. When he finished his lunch, he sat back with a cup of hot tea Jas had made and watched us. “Anything else I need to know?” he asked.

  Jas and Paz looked at each other again, a surreptitious slide of eyes.

  “Spill it,” I said. I had been saying that a lot lately and couldn’t help the anger I heard in my voice. My girls were fast becoming troublemakers.

  Topaz said, “We been doing some research on the girls, the ones they say the kidnapper took? And we found every one of them in the news.”

  Jim nodded. “After Ash mentioned it, I went looking at the possibility that he chose the girls from media sources. But not all the girls had their picture in the news. They all did have Chadwick connections.”

  “Maybe not The State paper or on TV. But I’m telling you, we found them all. Every one.”

  “Yeah?” Jim said, interested now.

  “Yeah, Mr. Cop man.” Paz said triumphantly. She cocked her head and said, “Two were in school newspapers, you know, like the ones students put out. We found ’em posted on the school’s Internet sites. But we found ’em all.”

  “I want to see the pics and let you walk me through the new site you found,” Jim said. “After I talk to Ashlee.” He looked at us all in speculation, one hand holding the tea, the other on the table. The silence lengthened. His study was unnerving. It must have been to the girls as well, because they gave another communicative glance and excused themselves. They went to the rec room with a promise to show Jim the site as soon as he was ready.

  As they disappeared, Jim set his cup down and eased back, reclining at an angle, an arm stretched along the chair back, elbow bent, hand dangling. The fingers of his other hand were poised over his mouth as if he was hiding a secret, but his eyes were solemn. I took my last bite, freshened my hot tea and his and waited. This was one of those “Men are from Mars” moments that another man would have had no problem with, but that drove any normal woman up a wall. Jack Davenport had played the I’m-thinking-so-wait-on-me game after meals, too, and I had learned to be patient until he was ready to start speaking. Trying to draw out what I wanted to hear had been a waste of time.

  Finally, Jim dropped his fingers and said, “Sarah—my daughter—is four. Am I going to have all that—” he nodded his head toward the rec room “—to look forward to?”

  “If she’s well behaved and smart. Otherwise you may have problems.”

  He laughed, the breathy sound coming through his nostrils. He sat up, steepled his fingers as if preparing for bad news, and said, “Okay. What else do you have to tell me?”

  I filled him in on the fact that Nana had not yet gotten in touch with Erasmus. I told him about the unexpected visitor in the vault room. I finished with the fact that the security company had changed the locks and taken fingerprints and would get back to me.

  Jim’s eyes darkened steadily throughout my narrative. When he spoke, his voice was too soft, too calm. “And you were going to tell me this when?”

  I stiffened at his tone. “I was going to call but I saw you all on the road to Erasmus’s house. It got put on the back burner. And at the time, I was pretty ticked off at you and Bow-tie Emma. I didn’t exactly want you in my house for any reason, especially when Emma would brush it off as nothing.”

  “She might. I wouldn’t,” he said shortly. “Someone may be targeting you.”

  “Maybe. Maybe it’s just coincidence. That does exist, you know. Maybe we startled a robber and he hid there until he could leave. Maybe it’s a family member on drugs, targeting those closest to him for money.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel better,” I said tartly.

  “I noticed. Let me see this room.” He stood. I didn’t.

  I simply looked up at him, standing above me, and I steeled myself for what I needed to say. “Jim, once upon a time, I waited for a man to make decisions, to handle family safety measures, to buy and pay for cars and to do household repairs. I’m a widow and a single parent now. I no longer have that luxury. And I no longer want those things to be taken care of in that way.

  “This is my house. Jas is my daughter. I killed a man once, for threatening her. For trying to kill me.” Tears of exhaustion sprang to my eyes, too little sleep making me weepy. “And it nearly killed me, trying to live with that. But I learned. And I took up the reins of my life and took control. Of my life,” I said distinctly. “I will make my decisions based on the knowledge I have and not on any man’s desires or preferences. I know you’re angry that I didn’t call you about the person in the vault room. But I won’t call you for things I can handle. And I handled the invasion of my home.

  “I’ve changed the security code, upped the volume on the alarm, changed all the locks, had the fingerprints in the room taken.” Before he could ask, I said, “And I have a shotgun and several handguns loaded and stored in safe places. Now, you tell me. Did I miss anything? Anything that would keep us safer?”

  “No,” he said. But he still sounded annoyed.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay. Let’s go see the girls.” I stood and he stopped me with an outstretched hand on my arm.

  “You guys are out in the middle of nowhere. Too few sheriff’s deputies, too few neighbors. Only a couple of old women within close range. I agree it’s unlikely that the person who invaded your house is the guy we’re looking for. But it is remotely possible, what with you being a Chadwick and being identified by the media on television. I worry.”

  I felt my face soften from the hard mask I hadn’t known I was wearing while speaking my piece. “Thank you.”

  “And I want you to know that I trust you, even if you don’t trust me.” He must have sensed my confusion because he said, “You don’t trust me, Ash. You don’t trust me or any man, at all. I understand why. Your husband was an SOB. But I’m not.” I stiffened but he went on. “And to prove all that I’m saying, especially the part about trusting you, I’ll tell you this. Erasmus and his deceased wife, Ellen, owned some property, three rental houses. None of them are rented out at this time, and so getting warrants for them was easy. We have teams going in, taking all three houses at once, in a little over an hour. I’ll be with them. I’m asking you to trust me enough to not call your nana and tell her.”

  He was telling me something that would get him in trouble if I revealed it. The last of my animosity melted away beneath his words. His hand was warm on my arm through the thin shirt fabric. I turned up my hand and clasped his. “I won’t call Nana. If Erasmus is guilty of taking these girls, I want him put away.”

  “Thank you. And you should know, too, that Poulous was being questioned by Simmons early this morning. Someone found some more damaged statues in the state museum. One was a horse, missing all its feet.”

  I took a quick breath and gripped his hand hard.

  Jim smiled at me. “Thought you might like to know that the Chadwicks aren’t the only ones under a microscope.”

  Wryly, I said, “No. You’re also looking at enemies of Chadwicks and people who married, divorced or did business with Chadwicks. Bet that sent the possible suspect numbers through the roof.”

  Jim sighed. “You have no idea.”

  He slapped his open hand against the wall and looked at the hole in the broken one-way mirror. It was ugly now, covered with a scrap of wood and duct tape. The room beyond was ugly now, too, with wall board scattered all over the pretty pink carpet, and the four-poster bed taken apart, the frame separated, the mattress on its side, and linens everywhere.

  She had hurt him. He tested his weight gingerly, leaning on the leg she had kicked. His other knee was tender now, too, and would be for a while. Not that she would be around to notice. He had made sure of that.

  He hated to punish them. For most, that was the worst part of it all, having to cause them pain. But this one had left him no choice. The anger of failure rose up in him, hot and rancid. He slammed his hand into the wall again, and when he heard her moan, he shouted, “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  She started crying. Her sobs were muffled in the dark of the closet where he had locked her. “I want my mama. I want my mama,” she cried. “I need my insulin,” she whimpered more softly.

  Insulin? He stepped to the door of the closet and opened it. She was curled on the closet floor, her face bruised. He could smell the sweet scent of a diabetic, strong in the enclosed space. He needed a nurse. Needed Ashlee, to mother and care for his daughter. But until then, until she came to help them, he would have to trust the other one.

  Jim’s phone rang, a tinny sound. He pulled it from his belt with one hand and stood. He had been bending over Topaz at the laptop, inspecting the new site, asking questions about the woman in the Greek toga. She undeniably resembled a Chadwick family member, but none of us knew who she was.

  “Ramsey,” he said into the phone. “Yeah…Yeah.” He flipped open his spiral notebook and took the pencil Jasmine passed him. “Coordinates?” His voice held a peculiar tone, part old anger, part resignation, part something I couldn’t name. He scratched on the pad and flipped it closed, saying, “On my way.” He paused, then said, “Maybe three hours. I’ll push it.” He closed the little phone.

  To Topaz and Jasmine he said, “Thanks, girls. I’ll keep your friends out of it. But if I hear about any hacking in the state, I’ll know who to come see.”

  Paz and Jas squealed happily and jumped up, hugging him, leaving Jim Ramsey, special agent of the FBI, nonplussed. When he peeled out of their arms, distinctly uncomfortable, he said, “I gotta go. Ash, want to walk me out?”

  I followed him from the room, through the kitchen and out onto the porch. “Thank you for lunch,” I said.

  He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “You may not see me for a day or two,” he said. “I’ll be working out of the Charleston office.” His gaze swept the porch for teenagers. Finding it empty, he went on, “They found another girl down near there. She was buried in a shallow grave in an abandoned cemetery. She had been there awhile.” He moved off the porch to his car, spun and walked backward, watching me. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I nodded and crossed my arms. “Be safe,” I said. He flipped me a wave and climbed into the ugly gray Crown Vic, then started the car and pulled down the long drive and out of sight. I saw the reflection of blue lights against the trees and he was gone. Moments later, I heard his siren begin to wail. In the distance, thunder rumbled. At last I became aware of rain clouds overhead. I hoped that the storm front didn’t extend all the way to Charleston, threatening the crime scene discovered there.

  The next morning I was called into the Dawkins County Hospital for a rape workup. The ob-gyn who often handled them for the local police was in surgery, and Dawkins was part of my territory.

  I was exhausted, but I dressed and stuck the yellow emergency light on the SUV’s dash. I made it to the hospital in twenty minutes.

  The workup was routine. Though I always had to strive hard for an unemotional approach in rape cases, all I usually wanted to do was hug the victim, tell them that things would be okay, that they could recover both emotionally and physically. But I couldn’t. That was the job of the rape-crisis volunteer, not the forensic nurse. I was there just to collect physical evidence. That was all.

  When the samples had all been taken and the cops were questioning the woman, I stopped in the E.R. lounge and visited with old friends. It was shift change, and four nurses, my cousin Wallace and Dr. Rhea-Rhea were all waiting on coffee. “Ashlee!” she shouted. Rhea Lynch, affectionately known as Dr. Rhea-Rhea, was my favorite doctor of all time, and was one of the doctors I’d lured to CHC for part-time hours, two days a month. We worked opposite shifts, though, and I seldom saw her. She grabbed me and swung me around in an unaccustomed display of exuberance, then shoved a box of doughnuts at me. “Eat. I picked ’em up fresh this morning.”

  I took one and sat, taking a bite. I was never going to get the weight off my thighs like this. “When you marrying that good-looking cop?” I asked Rhea-Rhea, needling. The doc dated a local cop, but rumor suggested she was loath to set a wedding date.

  She crossed her arms and looked down at me from her five-nine height. “If you’re ready to settle down, we can make it a double ceremony.”

  Three of the nurses made “Oooohhhhh,” sounds.

  Gleefully, Wallace said, “Catfight.”

  “No fight,” Rhea said, holding her hands up in the universal peace-and-surrender sign. “I did good introducing you to a younger man. Admit it. You think he’s hot. All your friends at CHC are talking about him stopping by the ED to visit all the time, bringing roses…”

  “Ooooh, Ash’s got a maaan in her life,” one of the RNs said.

  “You’ll have to walk down the aisle by yourself, Rhea,” Wallace said. “I’m sure Nana and Mama Moses have already set a date for her wedding. Ash needs a younger man to keep up with her.”

  The nurses all chortled. I blushed ten shades of red and glared at Wallace, who just laughed evilly. Still getting me back for the bathing-suit incident when we were kids, I guessed. I stuffed the rest of the doughnut into my mouth and stood. Pointing at my lips to show I couldn’t talk, I walked backward from the lounge to the ambulance-pad doors.

  Rhea stuck her head from the room and called, “Chicken!”

  I nodded and held up my hand, gesturing the okay sign, showing that I was indeed a coward, and left the building. Sometimes I hated living in a small town.

  24

  Monday

  A fter a Sunday off, when I missed church and spent the time catching up on sleep, I was back at work, finishing up a shift with Lynnie Bee. We were sharing cups of caffeine—she had coffee; I had hot tea—in the office. Lynnie sniggered into her cup. “I can’t believe they said that.”