It was nearly two in the morning. Rina lay awake,
staring at the ceiling above the bed. At Alex’s insistence, she was still
staying at his house, but the police were working hard to solve her case. In the
meantime, they went on as if nothing had changed. She loved him. She would stay
these few more precious days.
She closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. She tried to lie
still so she wouldn’t disturb him, but somehow he knew she wasn’t asleep.
“What is it?” he asked into the quiet darkness.
She moved her head on the pillow. “I don’t know. My mind just
seems to be working overtime.”
Alex reached for her, drew her against his side. She nestled
her head on his shoulder. “You thinking about Priscilla?”
Along with thoughts of Alex, she had thought of her cousin a
dozen times since Rusty had been arrested. “I keep remembering what it was like
when we were kids. Uncle Walter was never there for them. I remember how much
Priscilla missed him. George, too. George was the misfit of the family. He used
to sit out on the front porch and watch for his dad to come home.”
“I hope he isn’t involved.”
“I called him today. I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I
was worried about Janie. George says she’s doing great. He cried, Alex. He feels
terrible about what’s happened to me. He said to thank you for saving his
daughter.”
Alex made no reply. She knew he didn’t want her talking to any
of them. Until Henry Mullins awakened, the cousins were still not in the
clear.
“I remember Aunt Marlene telling George what a rotten guy his
dad was. How he never cared about any of his kids. How he only cared about
himself. I never believed it. I thought Walter was the freest, most interesting
man I’d ever known. I tried to tell my cousins their dad loved them, that he was
just different, but they never really believed me.”
Alex leaned down and kissed her. “They resented you because you
had a loving family and their father loved you, too.”
“I was lucky.”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t all luck. People choose their own
paths.”
She turned onto her side so she could see his profile,
appreciate the beauty of his face, the strength of character in the sculpted
valleys and planes. “Yes, they do. Maybe someday you’ll find the right path for
you.”
His eyes found hers and even in the darkness, she could see the
turmoil there. “Maybe I’m on the right path now.”
Hope flared. Maybe he would finally find his way and the path
would lead to her. “Are you?”
He looked away, off toward the window, though he couldn’t see
outside. “I don’t know. I just...I know right now what I need is you.” He turned
back to her, leaned over and kissed her. Sabrina slid her arms around his neck
and kissed him back.
He was everything to her. She had tried not to love him, but he
was more irresistible to her now than when she’d first met him. She wondered if
there was the slightest hope for them. She reached up and touched his face as he
came up over her, made a place for himself inside her.
It was a gentle taking, a sharing on some new and different
level, as if he gave her some small part of himself he had never given her
before.
When they reached their peak and drifted back to earth, she was
torn between the hollow ache that reminded her she would have to give him up,
and the soft pulsing of hope that maybe in time he would come to love her as
much as she loved him.
* * *
Joe wasn’t certain what awakened him. The neon numbers
on the clock read 2:45 a.m. Nestled against his side, Rebecca slept deeply. He
kissed her cheek and rolled from the bed to check the house and make sure
everything was okay.
It hit him as he stood up, the harsh smell of smoke drifting up
from the floor below. An instant later, the fire alarms began going off and
Rebecca jerked upright in bed, her stunned gaze shooting to the window.
“Oh, my, God, the house is on fire!”
Joe tossed her the pretty silk robe she’d been wearing when
he’d walked into the bedroom and started pulling on his jeans. Through the front
windows, flames climbed the outside walls above the porch, their bright orange
glow filling the black night sky.
Rebecca ran to the door. “I’ve got to get Ginny!”
“Wait! I’ll get her!” He zipped his fly and ran for the door,
laid a hand on the wood to make sure the fire wasn’t right outside. The door was
still cool.
“Come on, let’s go!” He swung the door open, grabbed Rebecca’s
hand and pulled her out into the hall behind him.
“It’s already reached the roof!” Rebecca shouted, looking back
through the bedroom window. The flames were chewing their way up the side of the
house, burning into the turret in the front.
Joe jerked open Ginny’s door, ran over and shook her awake,
lifted her into his arms. “Honey, it’s Joe. There’s a fire. We have to get out
of the house.”
“A fire?”
He carried her into the hall.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Rebecca said, squeezing the little
girl’s hand. “We’re going out the back.”
“Where’s the fire department?” Ginny asked.
“The alarm system’s already called them,” Joe said, urging
Rebecca down the hall toward the old servants’ stairs leading to the kitchen. He
had worked on them himself, made sure they were safe.
The burglar alarm was also blasting now, the sound deafening as
they hurried through the thick black smoke toward the door that led out to the
yard. The fire crackled overhead, burning into the upstairs floor, the smoke
leaking through, filling the kitchen.
“Keep your head down so you can breathe!” He set Ginny on her
feet where the air was less smoky, grabbed her hand and urged Rebecca toward the
door. “We’re almost there!”
A wooden deck stretched across the back of the house, then
three steps down to the grass. Joe waited for Ginny and Rebecca to run out of
the house, then stepped out behind them. He heard Rebecca scream the instant
before he caught movement in the shadows, something hard slammed into the side
of his head and he crashed to his knees.
“Joe!” Rebecca cried as the man who’d been waiting swung the
baseball bat again.
Joe tried to block the blow, but the bat made contact like a
thousand-pound brick smashing into his skull. He went down like a sack of wheat,
his mind spinning into darkness.
“Step back and you won’t get hurt.” The baseball bat was gone.
Ed Bagley had an arm wrapped around Ginny’s waist and a gun pressed against the
side of her head. Her little girl was crying.
Shaking all over, fear clawing at her insides, Rebecca stood
her ground. “Let her go.”
“Mommy!”
“I know who you are,” Rebecca said. “The fire trucks will be
here any minute. You can’t get away with this.”
Bagley’s smile seemed almost kindly. How could he look so
harmless?
“Actually, I can.” Moving before she realized his intent, he
swung a blow with the hand that held the pistol, his fist smashing into her
cheek. Pain exploded in her face and she went down.
“Mommy!”
Bagley started walking. “Tell your brother I said hello.”
Through a haze of pain, she struggled to remain conscious.
“Don’t take her...please...” Darkness hovered at the edge of her vision. She
tried to move but she couldn’t seem to make her body work. Her vision dimmed. As
blackness descended, she saw Edward Bagley running away from the house, her
little girl no longer fighting, just lying limp in his arms.
Thirty-One
R
ed lights flashed, bright scarlet
reflected in the puddles left from the fire hoses. So many fire trucks and
police cars filled the cul-de-sac in front of his sister’s house Alex had to
park down the block.
Next to him, Sabrina sat tensely in the passenger seat as he
turned off the engine, then they both got out of the car.
“Oh, God, Alex.” Her voice shook as she stared at the
wood-framed house. The porch that wrapped around the structure still smoldered.
The front was burned clear into the living room and the second story, the roof
was partly destroyed, but the flames were mostly out. Only a few tongues of red
and orange licked up to where firefighters still worked on the roof.
“Fucking bastard set fire to the front porch and drove them out
the back. He was lying in wait for them. They didn’t stand a chance.”
Joe had called just minutes after he had regained
consciousness. Bagley had taken him down with a baseball bat before he’d had
time to recognize the threat. Joe was riddled with guilt for having failed Becca
and Ginny.
Alex spotted them sitting behind the ambulance in a pair of
lawn chairs one of the neighbors must have supplied. Though both had refused to
go to the hospital, Joe was being treated for a concussion. From what Joe had
said, Rebecca was mostly just battered and bruised.
It was her heart that was in peril. Her little girl had been
abducted by a child killer.
Alex’s gut churned. As he walked toward the ambulance where Joe
and his sister were waiting, his hand unconsciously fisted. It wasn’t Joe’s
fault. Alex was the one who had led the bastard to Ginny.
His sister was on her feet and running the minute she spotted
him, hurling herself against him. Alex gathered her into his arms, felt her
trembling.
“He took her, Alex. Bagley took...took Ginny. I tried to stop
him but there was nothing I could...could do.” She started crying and Alex just
held her, helpless rage burning through him.
“We’re going to get her back,” he said. “I promise.” But there
was no way to know if he’d be able to keep his word.
Joe walked up beside her, a white gauze bandage wrapped around
his head. Alex noticed he didn’t touch her.
“I should have seen it coming,” he said, guilt evident in the
slump of his shoulders. “I should have realized what was going on.”
Alex shook his head. “There was no way you could have figured
this. The guy’s smart, maybe brilliant. He had it all worked out.”
Rebecca stepped away from him, wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“We’ve got to find her, Alex. She’s alone and she’s scared. Oh, God, what if
he—”
“Stop it!” Alex gripped her shoulders. “You can’t think that
way. You need to focus on finding Ginny.”
Rebecca made a sad little sound in her throat. She swallowed
and nodded.
“You have to be strong.” Sabrina leaned over and hugged her.
“We’re going to find her. Bagley may be smart, but your brother’s smarter. He
caught Bagley before—he can do it again.”
Alex reached for Sabrina’s hand, gave it a squeeze. She never
doubted him, never lost confidence in him. She had said she loved him. Women had
said it before, but none had really meant it.
“I called Josh Reynolds with the D.A.’s office,” he said.
“Shook him out of bed. Reynolds says the D.A.’s worried about reelection, says
by the time I got here, the department would be all over this. By now half of
Houston P.D. is looking for Bagley.”
“They’ve put out an Amber Alert,” Joe said, “and set up a
perimeter around the neighborhood. They’re trying to stop him before he gets
away.”
“I called Sol, woke him up, told him what happened. He’s trying
some other angles, seeing if he might have missed something.”
Joe stared back at the smoldering remains of the house. “I said
I’d take care of them. I’m bigger than Bagley. I should have been able to handle
him.”
Rebecca saw the defeat in his eyes, and Alex saw something
shift in her features. “He was waiting for you, Joe. He hit you with a baseball
bat. He could have killed you.” She swallowed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Joe’s gaze locked with hers. There was something in her face
that Alex could only call love, and his friend’s broad shoulders straightened as
if the life had just returned to his body. When he opened his arms, Rebecca went
into them and he just held on.
“We’ll find her, honey. I swear it. I won’t let you down
again.”
Rebecca started crying, but she didn’t leave Joe’s arms.
Watching them, Alex’s chest felt tight. He thought of the words Sabrina had
said, knew that she had meant them. Knew that he would never find another woman
like her.
She looked up at him. “What can we do?”
Alex drew her into his arms. “Hope to God the cops get lucky.
Sol’s meeting us at the office. We’re going to brainstorm. In the meantime, we
just have to wait and pray.”
* * *
No one slept. Joe’s head was pounding. Off and on, he
felt dizzy. They were sitting in Rebecca’s next-door neighbor’s kitchen. Mrs.
Slotski lived in a big, older colonial home with an oversize backyard and shady
oak trees in front. She was a widow, a sweet, slightly stoop-shouldered older
woman who made chocolate chip cookies for Ginny, babysat once in a while and was
devastated at the news the little girl had been abducted.
“There’s plenty of room in the house,” she’d said to Rebecca.
“You and Joe can stay right here as long as you like. The police need a place to
work and you need a place to wait for your Ginny to come home.”
Becca had started crying and Joe pulled her back into his arms.
“It’s all right, honey. Your brother’s working hard to find her and so are the
police. We just have to believe they’ll bring her home.”
Rebecca dragged in a shaky breath and fought to pull herself
together. She wiped tears from her cheeks. “Thank you, Mrs. Slotski. That’s
terribly kind of you.”
“I think it’s time you called me Frances,” the woman said.
Rebecca managed to smile. “All right...Frances.”
And so the police, working with a lieutenant named Gleason, had
set up headquarters in the kitchen of the Slotski home, a cozy atmosphere with
old-fashioned ruffled curtains at the windows and a round maple table and chairs
in the breakfast nook.
Joe was resting in one of them as Becca had insisted, wishing
he was out on the streets, banging on doors, rousting passersby, doing
something. Anything that might bring little Ginny home. Instead, he sat there
waiting for Alex to call, waiting for the police to find some clue to where
Bagley had disappeared.
Praying as he had never prayed before.
* * *
Standing against the wall in Sol’s office, Rina looked
out through the glass windows to see Jake and Sage walking in. It was only 5:00
a.m.
“What can we do to help?” Jake asked as he strode into the
room, his powerful presence making the office seem smaller.
“Sol and I are brainstorming,” Alex said, “trying to come up
with something that’ll tell us where the bastard’s hiding. He has to have a
place. He hasn’t had that much time to plan. I’m thinking it’s somewhere he’s
taken girls before. I never believed Carrie Wiseman was his first victim.”
The men began tossing ideas around, going through the file,
picking out names of people Bagley had known throughout his life, people he
worked with at school, people who were once his friends.
Sage walked over to where Rina stood against the wall, reached
out and took hold of her hand, gave it a squeeze.
“How’s he holding up?” Sage asked, tipping her head toward
Alex.
“He’s worried sick, but he won’t let it stop him from doing his
job. How did you know where to find us?”
“Annie called. She must have seen something on the news.”
“What was she doing up in the middle of the night?”
“Jake says she has a police scanner in her bedroom. She has
fantasies of being a detective.”
Rina couldn’t help a smile. “She’s pretty amazing.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Rina’s smile slid away. “They’ve got to find her. Alex loves
that little girl. He loves his sister. Losing her child will destroy
Rebecca.”
“I know.” Sage tugged on her hand, pulling her toward the door.
“Let’s get some coffee. You can fill me in on what the police are doing.”
“I could use a cup. We’ll make a fresh pot for the guys.”
Sage nodded and they started for the employee lounge in the
back of the office.
* * *
At 6:00 a.m., Alex spotted Ben walking toward Sol’s
office, where he and Jake hovered over the computer as the kid pounded on the
keyboard. In jeans and a black T-shirt, dark hair rumpled, Ben looked as if he’d
rolled out of bed and hadn’t taken time to shower.
“Annie?” Alex guessed with a raised eyebrow as Ben walked
in.
He nodded. “She called me right after she talked to Jake. I’ve
been doing some legwork. I know some people. I told them any info that would
help us locate Bagley would be worth big money. They’re lowlifes but none of
them are high on child molesters. I’m hoping they’ll come up with something we
can use.”
“Thanks, buddy. We need all the help we can get.”
“Anything look promising?” Ben asked.
“Not so far.” The words made Alex’s stomach burn.
“Actually, maybe I’ve found something that does.” Sol pointed
to the screen. “Take a look at that.”
Alex leaned closer. “You found intel on the brother?” They’d
been working that angle off and on since they’d gotten to the office.
“Bagley has a brother?” Ben asked.
“Half brother,” Jake corrected.
“I went back to the hospital records,” Sol said, “took another
look at what happened to the baby after he was born. At first, I wasn’t able to
get into the adoption records. Then I got an idea. I went around a back way and
finally got in. The kid was adopted by a couple named Ella and Thomas
Bartholomew. His adopted name is Jason Bartholomew.” Sol started typing away,
pulling up one screen and then the next.
Another screen popped up and Sol shot a fist into the air. “All
right! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
Alex’s pulse raced. “What is it?”
“Jason Bartholomew, born at First General Hospital in Dallas in
1963. Still lives there. His adoptive parents passed away ten years ago, but
here’s the interesting part. They left him a piece of property—out at Lake
Houston.”
Alex’s fatigue fell away beneath a shot of adrenaline. “That’s
only forty miles from here.”
“Let’s see what it looks like.” Sol’s fingers flew over the
keyboard. He plugged the address of the lake property into Google Maps, clicked
up the street view. “Looks like there’s a house there.” He went to the satellite
photos. “Huge yard, lots of open space around it.”
“Maybe Bagley knows Bartholomew,” Alex said. “Maybe his brother
lets him use the house. Hell, maybe he’s even involved.”
“What’s the address?” Jake asked.
Sol rattled off a number on Sand Springs Trail. “It’s on the
east side of the lake. Looks like the best way to get there is out I-90.”
“I’ll call the cops.” Alex took out his cell and started
dialing 911. When the dispatcher came on the line, he gave the woman his name
and asked for Lieutenant Gleason, who was still working the crime scene, and she
patched him right through.
“We’ve tracked down Bagley’s half brother,” Alex told him.
“Jason Bartholomew owns a house at Lake Houston.” Alex gave him the address of
the property. “There’s a chance he may have taken Ginny there.”
“We’re rolling on it. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Time to go,” Jake said as Alex ended the call, and all three
men headed out of Sol’s office.
“We’ve got a lead,” Alex called out to Sabrina. “We’ve got to
go.” He stopped. “Dammit, I can’t leave you here by yourself. It’s still not
safe. And I sure as hell can’t take you with me.”
Jake walked out of the back just then, carrying his M4 sniper
rifle. “You can’t go, either,” he said to Sage. “We have no idea what might be
coming down.”
Ben sighed. “As much as I’d like to take that bastard down
myself, looks like I’m the one who’s going to have to stay.”
Alex slapped him on the back. “Thanks, Ice Man.” He turned to
Sabrina. “I’ll let you know if we find Ginny.”
Before the women’s angry looks could turn into actual protests,
the men were out the door, the Jeep fired up and pulling out of the parking
lot.
“I wish we had time to check the place out before the cops get
there,” Jake said darkly.
“So do I. If there’s gunfire, Ginny could get hurt. Thing is,
we can’t take the risk. If that’s where Bagley was headed, he’s got her there by
now. The sheriff’ll have units close by and we need them there ASAP.”
Alex figured Gleason would withhold the information from
Rebecca until they were certain. False hope was sometimes worse than not knowing
anything at all.
As the Jeep roared along the road, Alex popped the clip on his
.45 and checked the load, shoved the clip back in. He prayed little Ginny would
be there when they got there, prayed she was alive and unharmed, and that he
would soon be bringing her home.