Dying for Love (19 page)

“Was he able to tell you who abducted him?” Brenda asked.

“No,” Agent Strong said. “But we do believe the kidnapper left him because he suffered from asthma, and that this may not be the first child he’s abducted. Parents should be vigilant about watching their children.”

Helen’s coworker took a call and left the office, and Helen studied the agent’s face, his intense brown eyes, the square jaw, his high cheekbones—she’d read about him on the Internet. Knew finding missing children was his cause.

That he had been in a terrible accident, and head trauma had caused him to have amnesia. That he remembered nothing about his life before a few years ago.

It was best he didn’t remember. Not her or what happened before his accident.

Safer for her.

Safer for him.

Chapter Nineteen

A
fter he left the press conference, John drove Amelia home, then drove to the lab to drop off little Davie’s DNA sample.

Ronnie’s words disturbed him. The kidnapper had gotten rid of him because he wasn’t any good, because he was weak.

What had he meant by that?

If the kidnapper wanted strong, healthy boys, there had to be a reason.

He didn’t like any of the possibilities that came to mind.

Had the kidnapper wanted boys with no health risk because it decreased their value to human traffickers?

Disgust soured his mouth. Child labor, sex slaves, he’d heard and seen it all.

Images of the SFTF camp where boys were being trained for military combat taunted him. Roper had claimed the members recruited their soldiers through family members and friends, and that the boys weren’t forced to join.

But what if one of the members had found an alternative way of recruiting? He would want strong, healthy boys and Ronnie wouldn’t have fit.

An image of himself as a preteen flashed behind his eyes, and he squeezed the steering wheel.
He stood by an older man wearing a military uniform. They were deep in the woods somewhere. The area was desolate. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the area, thick trees lining the edges, creating a fortress.

Other teenage boys marched in tandem to their leader’s commands, weapons angled over their soldiers as if preparing for war.

The leader called John over and ordered him to the firing line. He placed a hand on John’s shoulder.

“
Shooting takes great concentration, but you’re ready for it.
Look through the sight finder and line up your target. When you shoot, shoot to kill
.”

John aimed the gun at the target. Cardboard cutouts of men and women, some dressed like soldiers, some like civilians.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a cry. Not just one, but several cries and screams for help.

When he looked up, he saw children passing by. Children chained together. A tiny girl with huge sad eyes was watching him, a haunted look on her face.

“Shoot,” the leader commanded.

The girl mouthed the word help.

He froze, heart hammering. What was wrong with the girl? Why did she need help?

Then he looked at the other children. They looked washed out, eyes vacant, complexions pasty white, limbs battered and scarred.

Suddenly the leader pushed the end of his gun at John’s temple.

“Do not disobey me,” the voice ordered.

John’s hand shook slightly as he dragged his gaze from the little girl and pulled the trigger. He hit the target dead on, and the cardboard cutout of the man exploded, shattered pieces floating to the ground like ashes.

Black clouds hovered above the guesthouse, threatening to unleash more hail any second as Amelia climbed her porch. She’d decided to stay on the farm instead of her condo. Maybe being there would jog her memories.

She hadn’t told John about the phone call. She was too ashamed of what the caller had said.

Because there was some truth to it. One thing she’d learned in therapy was that she had to own up to her actions. That the alters had been part of her. And she had to come to terms with that before she could heal.

It was another reason she didn’t belong with a man like John. He was a hero, while she had let so many people down, had such a fragmented life that she was still learning secrets about herself.

She checked over her shoulder a dozen times, the sense someone was watching making her skin crawl. A tree had fallen in the drive, and dead limbs littered the yard. The wind hurled twigs and snow across the ground, icicles cracking and breaking in the storm.

She fumbled with her keys, but managed to unlock the door, then rushed inside.

Her stomach dropped when she saw the canvas she’d left blank smeared with red, the word
WHORE
scrawled across it, the paint dripping as if it were blood.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe as the phone conversation echoed in her head. Someone was trying to either scare her or make her crazy by forcing her to remember the past.

But if she told John that, would he think she was crying wolf? That she might be doing these things herself?

A year ago, one of her alters
would
have done this.

Shivering at the thought, she glanced toward her bedroom and saw her underwear strewn across the floor. Her panties had been slashed to shreds, black and red lace dotting the floor like a bed of dead roses.

The journals she’d been reading had been torn apart, pages ripped from the binder and shredded like confetti, destroying the words on the page as if to say none of what she’d written had happened.

Or one of her alters had returned to torment her and make her think she was losing her mind.

A sob caught in her throat. Her lungs squeezed for air, but she forced herself to step to the edge of the room. On the mirror in her bathroom, there was another message.

Jagged letters written in red.

Time for you to die.

Amelia’s stomach pitched. Enough was enough. She couldn’t hide this from John anymore. She’d have to convince him that she wasn’t crazy. That she hadn’t relapsed.

She wanted to find whoever was doing this and make them stop.

Furious, she dug her phone from her purse and punched John’s number.

Wind beat at John’s SUV as he drove from the lab toward his place. His phone buzzed, and Amelia’s number flashed on the screen. He pushed connect, wishing he had answers for her, but his head was filled with questions about The Gateway House and Ronnie Tillman.

“Amelia?”

“John, someone’s been in my house.”

John’s chest clenched. “Is the intruder still there?”

“No,” her voice cracked. “But he left me a threatening message.”

“Lock the door. I’ll be right there.”

He jammed his phone in his pocket and made a U-turn at the next intersection, pushing the gas to the floor, even though black, icy patches appeared out of nowhere.

A black sedan had skidded off the road, the driver waving for help, but John didn’t have time to stop. He phoned it into the sheriff’s office instead and gave the deputy the location.

Frustrated at the sudden traffic, he blew his horn, anxious to get to Amelia. When the two-lane road suddenly became four for a few feet, he sped past the pickup in front of him, grateful for four-wheel drive.

An eighteen-wheeler coming toward him on the curve was going too fast and sludge spewed from his tires, splattering John’s window.

Dammit to hell. He flipped on the wipers, blinking, the white lane lines nearly invisible on the dark mountain road.

He rounded the next curve, then veered into the drive for Amelia’s, cursing again at the tree that had fallen. He swung the SUV to the right around it, bouncing over the uneven pastureland until he maneuvered back onto the driveway.

Amelia’s car was parked in front, the lights on inside the guesthouse. He searched the perimeter, but the woods behind her house were so dark all he could see were the trees, thick and ominous.

He threw the SUV into park, jumped out, and jogged to her front door. He raised his fist to knock, but Amelia swung the door open.

One look into her ashen face and terrified eyes, and he pulled her up against him and held her tight.

Amelia collapsed into John’s arms, trembling all over, tears leaking from her eyes. She was trying so hard to be strong, to prove she wasn’t crazy anymore.

But even she didn’t know if she was sane.

Who would torment her like that?

John stroked her back, gently soothing her with his hands. “It’s okay, Amelia. I’m here.”

The words she ached to hear. That she wasn’t alone.

Was she so desperate for love that she’d let a new alter emerge?

He feathered her hair back from her face with such gentle fingers that it felt erotic and made her body instantly warm. Her breathing rasped in the air.

John dropped tender kisses into her hair, making her want to cry again, but this time because no one had ever been so tender and loving with her.

She fought back a sob, knowing he wouldn’t understand. No one did. She’d lived her whole life feeling unwanted, like an oddity, like no one could ever love her.

Yet John hadn’t questioned her when she’d called. He’d come to her, and now he was holding her as if she wasn’t an outcast.

“Shh, it’s okay, I’m here,” John murmured. “You’re not alone.”

More words that made her want to cling to him and never let him go.

Words that somehow felt familiar, as if he’d said them before.

She stilled, her body craving more of him, her mind filled with questions.

“You need to show me what the intruder did,” John said next to her ear.

She nodded against his chest, then lifted her head, her fingers still holding on to his arms.

His gaze met hers, his dark eyes filled with the kind of heat that made a woman want to tear off her clothes and bare her soul.

“Amelia, show me,” he said, his professional manner back intact.

She inhaled a sharp breath, then let go of him, reminding herself that when he left—and he would leave—that she would have to stand on her own.