Dying for Love (30 page)

A knock sounded at the door, and Helen paused. Amelia pushed her teacup away, and stood, half expecting John to be on the other side. But when she opened the door, shock immobilized her.

A man stood on the other side with a gun in his hand. Dear God . . . it wasn’t possible . . .

Helen rushed up behind her, and he fired the gun. Amelia gasped as Helen collapsed, blood gushing from her chest.

Amelia turned to run for her papaw’s shotgun, but suddenly the butt of the gun slammed against her head and she collapsed, the world fading.

Helen’s cries echoed in her ears as she lost consciousness.

John studied the teen’s face for a reaction as his mother entered the room. His sandy brown hair was cropped short, the tattoo of the string of connected
B’
s marring his wrist stark beneath the fluorescent light.

But it was the dead, flat look in his eyes that was haunting.

“Jim, it’s me, your mother,” Mrs. Bluster said as she slid into the chair across the table from the boy. She reached out to touch his hands, which were handcuffed to the table, but he jerked back, the handcuffs rattling.

Mrs. Bluster startled, hurt, but she recovered quickly. “I know you’ve been gone a long time, Jim, but I never gave up looking for you. I called the police every week to see if they had any leads.”

He adopted a sullen look, anger radiating from him.

“They told me you might not remember me. That you’ve had a rough time.” Her voice faltered. “But I don’t care what you’ve done or where you’ve been, you’re my son and I love you. I always will.”

The boy’s eyes twitched as he stared at the woman. But he showed no other reaction.

She dragged out a photo album and turned it so he could see. “I thought you might like to see some pictures of when you were little, when you lived with me and your father, before he died.”

The boy glanced at the book, then crossed his arms. “You’ve got the wrong guy, lady. My parents didn’t love me. They didn’t want me.”

“That’s not true,” she said softly. “You have your father’s eyes, Jim. And that mole on your neck. It was there when you were born.” She flipped several pages of the album, describing the story behind each photograph. The first time his father had taken him fishing at age five at a stocked pond.

A camping trip they’d taken where the tent had washed away. One Christmas when they’d gone skiing, the birthdays they’d celebrated.

The last of which the father was missing from.

“We lost your father that summer,” she said, grief making her voice quiver. “He died of a heart attack. It was sudden and the doctors said he didn’t suffer, but you and I did. I didn’t handle it very well, and you cried every night.”

The pictures stopped after that birthday party.

“I let you down back then,” Mrs. Bluster said. “I was lost in my grief, and started drinking too much. That’s when social services intervened. The day you disappeared I was devastated.” She wiped at more tears. “The police searched everywhere, and they put out an Amber Alert, and . . . and I straightened up then. I joined AA and started looking for you myself . . . looking for you was all that kept me going. All these years . . . ”

Jim swallowed hard as he studied the pictures, his face stricken with grief and confusion and the realization that he’d been lied to by his abductor. Somehow her love had gotten through to him.

“Honey, I know you’ve suffered, and you have a right to blame me.” She pushed her hair from her eyes. “But you’re here now, and I want to help you. I want you to come home.”

He folded his hands into fists, obviously still torn, troubled.

“I understand you’re loyal to the people where you’ve been, but your father would want you to talk to the police. He didn’t believe in violence, honey, he’d want you to stop anyone else from getting hurt.”

A single tear rolled down his cheek, then he gave a quiet nod.

John cleared his throat. “There are other boys who’ve been brought into the group, boys stolen from their homes.” John paused to let that register. “You can save these kids from suffering like you did.”

Mrs. Bluster laid her hand over Jim’s, and he started to pull away, but she stroked his hand with her fingers, and this time he squeezed hers in return.

“Please, Jim, tell them where to find them.”

The boy gulped, then reached for the pad and pen John had laid on the table.

John, Coulter, and Nick Blackwood led the attack team to the location Jim Bluster had given them. He’d drawn a detailed map of the site of the group’s new compound. Apparently the group had caught wind of John’s investigation from the Internet and moved earlier, but hopefully this time John’s team would surprise them.

Jim said the place was primitive, but they’d been trained as soldiers, ready to die for the Brotherhood, and the accommodations didn’t matter.

John and Coulter called on all their resources. Helicopters flew in, dropping a tactical team along with SWAT, and John and Coulter geared up and hiked in on foot.

At first glance, there was no sign of the boys. Dammit, had someone heard about the arrests and moved them again?

But as they approached the main building, he heard noise.

They swarmed the camp, police charging in, catching the group off guard. According to Jim Bluster, the group held a nightly meeting. John and the team strategically timed their attack, so most of the group would be contained in one area.

Protective gear saved the front team as they shot three grown men dressed in camouflage guarding the compound while the meeting took place. Others charged through the door and windows, taking the group by surprise.

The team moved quickly and efficiently, storming the main camp.

Rayner, the man left in charge and Axelrod’s second-in-command, was tall and imposing, the look of a psychopath in his eyes.

John jammed his gun in the man’s face. “You son of a bitch.”

“You may have me,” Rayner said in a stone-cold voice. “But there are others who will take my place. Others who follow the Commander and Axelrod. Others who believe in what we’re doing.”

“You’re nothing but a coward,” John said between clenched teeth. “Killing innocents for no reason. Forcing children to do your dirty work so you can make a name for yourself.”

“I’ll be famous just like Commander Blackwood and Axelrod,” Rayner said.

John wanted to pull the trigger bad. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

The man spit at him. “Go to hell.”

“That’s where you’re going.” He raked the barrel of the gun across the man’s forehead.

“Go ahead. Shoot. I’m not afraid to die.”

John hissed. “That would be too easy for you. You’re going to suffer in prison for the rest of your sorry life.”

He whipped the man around and handcuffed him. “Where are the boys?”

Instead of answering, the man simply laughed, a sinister sound that made John’s skin crawl.

Nick strode toward him, his jaw set in rage. “I’ll take him. Go look for the boys.”

John was glad to leave him with Blackwood. Blackwood had his own brand of justice. Maybe he’d beat the truth out of the bastard.

Wind and the cold bit at him as he and Coulter split up to search the compound.

John shined his flashlight across the property, finally spotting a pile of brush. Too neatly stacked for it to have been from the storm.

Someone had put it there. To hide an opening?

He yanked away the brush, twigs and limbs scraping his hands. When he lifted the last piece, he spotted a wooden lid. He pried it open and shined his light down into the hall.

“Coulter, over here!”

His partner ran over, and John led the way down the steps, shining his flashlight to illuminate the darkness. The sound of banging and cries for help echoed from below, and he took off running through the tunnel.

Several hundred feet in, he and Coulter found an underground cell.

Chaos erupted, the boys shouting all at once.

“Help!”

“Get us out of here!”

“Where is he?”

John shined his flashlight inside the cell. He recognized little Mark Bayler and Danny Kritz from the pictures he’d seen. The others were probably on the missing children list. Maybe nine kids altogether, ranging in age from six to thirteen.

Most of the kids were dirty and scared, and some looked malnourished. His flashlight shined just enough to reveal bruises and scars. Three were chained to a pipe at the back. Probably the ones who’d fought back.

“Hang on, guys,” John said. “We’ll get you out of here.”

He waited with them while Coulter ran back through the tunnel for tools and backup. Two officers returned with them, one carrying an ax to break the lock on the cell.

Over the next few hours, John and Coulter oversaw moving the kids to a secure facility, where they were evaluated by doctors for physical and psychological trauma.

Some were treated for burns and other minor injuries, but thankfully there was no evidence of sexual abuse.

Rayner was locked up as well, although he wasn’t talking. But the younger kids who hadn’t been brainwashed yet revealed everything.

Apparently Rayner worked for Axelrod. He’d beaten them into submission because he’d been beaten himself. Beating was the only thing that made him strong, Rayner had told them.

He had maps drawn up of future areas to target, and had already picked his next heroes, suicide bombers, for the mission.

Each boy had his own horror story of how he was abducted, where he was kept, and the mind games Rayner had played with him.

“I want DNA samples taken from each of the victims,” John said. Maybe one of them was Amelia’s son. And he needed to learn the identity of the others to reunite them with family.

John’s phone buzzed as he was about to sit in on the interview with Mark Bayler. It was Amelia’s number. “Amelia . . . ”

“Help . . . ” a woman cried. “He has Amelia.”

John’s blood ran cold. “Who is this?”

“Helen Gray. Hurry. I’ve been shot.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

J
ohn clenched the phone. Helen Gray had been shot? Amelia was missing . . .

“I’ll be right there.” John disconnected, told Coulter where he was going, and called an ambulance to meet him at Amelia’s as he raced outside to his SUV.

The sleet had stopped, but the wind beat at the trees as if a tornado might be coming. A car turned in front of him, and he slammed the brakes and hit his horn as he swerved to avoid it. He righted his SUV and raced on, his heart hammering.

Who had taken Amelia?

He had just arrested the leader of the Brotherhood and his second-in-command.

Of course, her missing son might have nothing to do with this Brotherhood group . . .

Ominous clouds rumbled above, icy patches slowing him down, but he drove as fast as he could up the mountain. Fear gnawed at him as he swung onto the road leading to Amelia’s. He spotted a black sedan in her drive and Amelia’s Mini Cooper.

The ambulance hadn’t arrived yet.

He threw the SUV into park, pulled out his Sig, and scanned the area in case he was walking into a trap. Nothing evident, but he remained on guard as he approached the front door. When he checked the door, it screeched open.

Instincts on alert, he inched inside, then spotted Helen lying on the floor. Blood soaked her abdomen and shirt, seeping around her.

She was unconscious.

He ran to the kitchen and grabbed some towels, knelt beside her, and pressed the towels to her wound with one hand to stem the blood flow.

The wind chimes clanged in the background. Cold air swept through the house from the front door. He took her hand in his free one. Her fingers felt icy and frail, but she slowly opened her eyes. “Helen?”

A weak nod. “John, he has Amelia. You have to save her.”

“Who has her?” John asked.

“He . . . he must have followed me here,” she cried. “I saw her on the news, pleading for information about her son. And I had to come.”

Sweat beaded on John’s forehead. “You know where her son is?”

“No . . . ”

She was fading again, and he gently shook her. “Helen, where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Helen murmured. “But you need to know the truth. The accident you had, your amnesia.”

John’s heart thundered. How would Helen know about that? “What about it?”

“You challenged him and tried to save Amelia, and he couldn’t have that. I heard him give orders to subdue you, to make it look like you had an accident, to brainwash you so you wouldn’t remember Amelia.”

Confusion swirled in John’s head as he tried to remember the events she described. “I tried to save her?”

“The night she delivered,” Helen said. “But he caught you and took you away. Then he erased your memory.”

A coldness swallowed John as a memory surfaced. He was with Amelia, she was crying, screaming, in labor . . .

Then . . . everything went blank.

“Did I work for Arthur Blackwood?”

Her breathing grew erratic. “You helped him because that’s all you ever knew, but then you fell in love with Amelia and wanted to get her away from him.”

So he had guarded her. Damn, no wonder she hated him now.

“I begged him to let you go,” Helen said. “But he said he’d kill you if I interfered.”

Her eyes fluttered, her voice growing weaker. He was losing her. Where was that damned ambulance?

“How do you know all this? Did you work for Blackwood, too?”

She shook her head, her eyes suddenly desolate, as if she thought she was going to die. “No.” Tears rolled down her face. “I didn’t know what he was doing,” she whispered. “I didn’t. I swear. But now he’s back. He was supposed to be dead . . . ”

John went stone cold still. Supposed to be dead? “Helen, God, what are you saying? Blackwood is alive? He has Amelia?”

She nodded, gasping for a breath.

A siren wailed. The ambulance was finally coming. The color had faded from Helen’s face, and her eyelids looked heavy. She needed help, surgery, fast or she wasn’t going to make it.

“Was I one of Blackwood’s subjects?” John asked.

A sob escaped the woman. “No, John. You’re his son.”

Amelia stirred from unconsciousness. Fear hammered at her as she realized she was strapped to a chair.

Her head swam from whatever drug he’d injected her with. She blinked to focus and glanced around the dark basement, shivering from cold and fear.

He walked toward her, a leer on his face. “Hello, Amelia.”

Her mouth was so dry she felt as if it had cotton in it. “You bastard. You’re supposed to be dead.” She gulped back tears. “How did you survive?”

His laughter echoed in the dark. Then he held his hand up in front of her, fingers splayed. His thumb was missing. “I was a soldier. I cut off my thumb and left it in that chopper. I knew those fools would find my DNA and assume all of me had blown up in the explosion.”

Amelia shivered. “But Nick and Jake saw you get in the helicopter.”

“I have followers,” he said in a voice filled with self-love. “They will do anything for me.”

“One of them posed as you to throw off the police?”

“Yes. He was honored to be a decoy.”

“How could anyone follow you?” Amelia said in disgust. “You’re a monster.”

“And you’re a sick, mentally ill girl,” the Commander said. “You always will be.”

“No, I’m strong now,” Amelia said. “Your experiment failed.”

His footstep clicked as he came closer. “I never fail.”

Fear choked her. She wanted answers. “What did you do with my baby?”

A wry chuckle rumbled from the bastard. “You weren’t fit to be a mother.”

“Because you drugged me.” She struggled against the bindings. “Where’s my son?”

He gave her an odd look as if he wanted to say something, then a sinister leer appeared on his face. “You said I failed, but I didn’t. You don’t remember everything.”

“I remember giving birth.”

“To one son.” He circled her, eyes boring into her. “Not two. You had two boys, Amelia. Twins.”

His words roared in Amelia’s ears, sending her into shock. Twins? Just like her and Sadie . . .

She wanted to scream in frustration. “What did you do with them?”

“Don’t worry. My grandsons are safe.”

Her stomach clenched. “What do you mean,
your
grandsons?”

Another laugh. “You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought that was the reason you and John Strong were working together. That’s the reason you went and saw Sister Grace and got that Jayne woman to help you.”

“You killed them, too,” Amelia gasped.

“Just the Jayne woman. The nun . . . I let her go. But I don’t think she’ll be back.”

Amelia’s mind spun as everything sank in. What did he mean? Then the truth dawned on her. John had been working with the Commander. She’d thought they had been in love.

And they had had sex.

John was the father of her babies.

And he was the Commander’s son.

Tears blurred her eyes.

Her babies were related to Arthur Blackwood, the man she hated most in the world.

“You called me, didn’t you? You tried to make me think I was losing my mind by talking about Viola?” Her head swirled as she pieced together the facts. “You put that bear in my house. You tore up my journals.”

Blackwood laughed. “You’re such an easy one to manipulate, Amelia. Such a malleable mind.”

“Why do you keep tormenting me?” Amelia cried. “Why can’t you just give me my children? Then die?”

“Because I’m invincible,” he said with an eerie laugh. “And your children are Blackwoods. They need to be made into men.”

Amelia steeled herself. “You may think you’re God, but you’re not. And one day someone will take you down.” She hoped when they did, he’d suffer, too.

He untied her right hand and shoved a pen between her fingers, then laid a notepad in front of her.

“Now write a good-bye note to John.”

“Why? So you can kill me and make it look like a suicide?”

“Of course. No one will be surprised. Poor Amelia, she suffered from delusions. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Depression because she was delusional. Even your shrink will testify you were unstable. That you came to her claiming you had a baby who I took away.”

How did he know her doctor would testify?

The truth hit her like a fist to her chest. “My doctor—Dr. Clover works for you?”

Another evil grin. “Of course. You didn’t think I’d forget to watch you, did you?”

Nausea climbed Amelia’s throat. She had trusted Dr. Clover. Confided her secrets to the woman. Respected her opinion.

Had poured out her heart about Bessie’s bear and the journals . . .

And Dr. Clover had used them against her.

Just like she’d trusted John.

But he was Arthur Blackwood’s son.

Helen said he’d tried to save her though. That he’d loved her. That the Commander had destroyed his memory.

Where was John now?

“Write,” the Commander ordered.

The paramedics rushed in and began working on Helen, taking her vitals, applying blood stoppers, and easing her onto the stretcher.

John squeezed her hand. “Helen, can I call someone? Do you have family?”

She had lost consciousness though and didn’t respond.

He jogged beside them as they loaded her into the ambulance. She stirred and reached for his hand.

“John, save Amelia.”

“How? Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a broken voice.

“Do you have any idea where Blackwood would take her?”

She tried to speak, but her voice came out a guttural sound, then she passed out again.

“Get her to the hospital,” John told the medic. “I’ll check in later.”

John climbed in his SUV, then punched Sheriff Blackwood’s number as he squealed from the parking lot. “Jake, this is Agent Strong. You aren’t going to believe this, but your father is alive.”

Moments passed as Jake absorbed the news. “What? That’s not possible.”

“But it is,” John said, hating it as much as Jake did. “And the bastard has Amelia. I need your help.”

“Christ . . . How the hell did he survive?”

“I don’t know, but he must have faked his death. We have to find Amelia before he kills her.”

Another tense heartbeat passed.

“Listen, Jake, I know this is a lot to take in. But we have to hurry.”

Jake cleared his throat. “Right. I’ll call Nick and alert all the authorities to be on the lookout for him,” Jake said. “We’ll look into that website for the Commander’s followers. Maybe one of them knows where he’d go.”

“Thanks. I’m going to question Axelrod.”

Fear seized John, nearly immobilizing him. Arthur Blackwood was a monster, a man who’d nearly destroyed Amelia.

What was he going to do to her now?