Ransomed Dreams (3 page)

“Gracie? Did I wake you?”

The voice of her best friend sent her heart back into place. “Under normal circumstances, calling at 4 a.m., it’s a good bet I’m still asleep.”

Leah ruffled through some papers. “But not today.”

“No.”

“You going to make it?” Leah McDaniel sounded like a mother hen, but she kept her trial lawyer questioning at bay. For now.

“Elizabeth would have been in my class next year.”

Leah sighed.

Gracie knew there was nothing more to say. For two years they’d searched for clues and cried on the anniversary of her family’s death and on each of their birthdays. She grew weary of the continuing ache.

“I’m doing something different today, Leah. I’m tired of walking through their birthdays like a zombie with puffy red eyes.” Jake scurried back to the bed, dog tags jingling, and she rubbed his warm fur. “This time I’m going to find out what happened. My family deserves justice.”

“But you’ve been there and done that … for the entire first year after the accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident! That kid must have been drunk, and driving intoxicated isn’t an accident. He should be in prison.”

“Gracie, we don’t know that. The police didn’t find much evidence and had no leads. Even with all of us hounding them—you; your parents; me, your brassy lawyer friend way up here in
DC—the officers in charge of the investigation did all they could.”

“Well, I’m going to do more.”

“When?”

Her old college roommate had gone soft. Gracie’s heartbeat surged. She’d run her plan by Leah and succeeded without much of a fight.

“I’ll call my parents tonight. Then after I make it through the last week of school, I’ll leave for Georgia next Monday or Tuesday.” She got out of bed, walked to her closet, and pulled out a soft blue and yellow flowered sundress. Elizabeth’s favorite color of sky and Joshua’s favorite because it looked like sunshine.

Mark would have loved undoing the bow in the back. She shook that thought away. Over two years as a widow didn’t make a body’s natural physical responses any easier to manage. Avoiding the thoughts helped a little.

“You’ll call with updates? And you know if Kevin and I can do anything to help, we will.”

“I know, Leah. And I love you for it.” She picked out matching blue slingbacks and moved to the dresser for jewelry.

“I’ll be praying too.”

“Pray that God will answer sooner than later this time.”

“Be careful what you ask for, Gracie.”

She knew Leah’s heart. But the caution did little to dampen her spirits. Gracie had reignited the fire that had lent her strength during her first year alone. For the first time, a birthday wouldn’t send her running to her scrapbooks crying. She’d fight. The powerful zing circulating through her blood did wonders for her energy level.

She ended the call with promises to be careful and not get her hopes up too far. But they already were. This time
would
be different.

Gracie fingered her old-fashioned gold locket. The heavy oval contained pictures of her babies right after they were born.

For them. She’d find answers this time. In the deep places
within her, the truth remained just beyond her reach. But this time she’d take hold of it, and life would make sense again.

Hope Ridge Academy loomed before her.

A year of teaching first grade at the exclusive school hadn’t lessened the overwhelming sense that walking through school security was like visiting the president.

Gracie maneuvered her car into her parking place under one of the huge oaks that surrounded the brick federal-style main building. Exiting her still new-smelling red Jeep Wrangler—a birthday gift last month from her parents and sister—she remembered the last phone call from Beth.

“After you finally agreed to let Mom sell the Mustang on eBay, I loaded the Jeep with perfect specs on-line, and Mom and Dad picked it up. It’s a great guy-magnet car.”

Like Gracie needed that. But she didn’t need Mark’s car gathering dust in her parents’ garage either. Letting go of that piece of her husband pricked at her heart. At the same time, one small shackle to the past fell away.

Now if she could just keep Beth’s pestering at bay. Her sister’s insistence that she needed to date again dogged her heels. Soon. Because she wasn’t getting any younger. Little sisters could be pains, even up to the wise old age of thirty.

Walking past the stately front columns of Hope Ridge reminded her of being in Old Philadelphia, imagining the American Revolution days. Until she stepped inside. There, high-tech surveillance cameras and magnetometers greeted her with beeps and electronic blips.

“Morning, Mrs. Lang. Ready for schools end?”

She returned the older security guard’s smile. He’d been like a surrogate grandfather, a true friend she’d eaten lunch with many times over the past year. “Sure am, Mr. Jennings. You and the missus going to travel the country while we teachers catch up on sleep?”

He waved her through the large metal portal. “Believe we will. Not getting any younger, you know. You have big plans besides sleeping?”

In May she’d turned thirty-two and felt every day of it. But Mr. Jennings at sixty-plus acted far younger, with a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. Maybe age was all in the mind.

Gracie set down her soft leather briefcase. Teachers and students alike filed past her. Some with Secret Service escorts; others pouting because their cell phones and iPods didn’t make it past security “I’m heading home next week. Going to follow my daddy’s old military intelligence ways and become a supersleuth.”

His wise old eyes misted. “Going to pester those police about your family?”

She touched his uniformed arm. “I need answers, Mr. Jennings. I need to know that I did all I could.”

“Then you’ll let it go, honey? You got to let it go sometime.”

“I will.”

“Mrs. Lang.” The gruff voice of a lanky Ichabod Crane look-alike bristled the hair on the back of her neck. “Isn’t it past time for K through Third’s morning assembly?”

“No, Mr. Perkins, I have ten minutes.”

He raised an eyebrow and rubbed his thick brown beard. “Last I checked, I was still the vice principal and school was still in session.”

Her experience growing up as a military brat forced her to smile, nod, and keep moving. Not to mention stuffing all the smart-aleck words she’d like to say to her stuffy boss. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It didn’t stop her from feeling like a kid being called into the principal’s office, though.

Or vice principal, as the case was.

Gracie hurried to her room and locked her purse and briefcase in her desk. Little voices filled the hallway just beyond her classroom door. And the lines of tall teachers with fifteen little ducklings following in neat rows made her smile.

They reminded her why she taught: For Elizabeth and
Joshua and all the little minds like theirs who required patient love and gentle direction for their inquisitiveness.

It gave her a small taste of the joy of being a mommy again.

Most days, anyway.

For now, she had a morning assembly to run. Or Mr. Perkins with his curly brown hair tamed perfectly into place would be circling like a vulture ready to peck at her for every second she was late.

There was nothing worse than being called to the vice principal’s office the last week of school.

Well, except for the extra paperwork he could dream up to keep her at her desk all summer. He’d tried that last winter break, tasking her with reworking her lessons to better fit his idea of what fancy prep school first graders should learn.

Mr. Perkins had no idea who he’d hired a year ago, though.

She smiled. Leah and her perfect research papers done the night before they were due had nothing on Gracie Lang and her straight
A’s
. A dual Education and Literature major with tons of curriculum paradigms stored on her computer, she matched her college roommate’s work grade for grade.

And Mr. Perkins had his new lesson plans before he could blink.

Gathering her silly song list and a bag of musical instruments, Gracie headed for morning assembly. If she could harness the zeal she woke up with this morning, her search for clues next week just might yield some powerful results.

Ones she hoped would help alleviate the fire building in her gut. She didn’t want to repeat the ulcers or insomnia of her first year without her family.

Justice. That was her aim. For Mark and Elizabeth and Joshua. Their killer needed to know the impact of three white sheets.

The warm night air whipped his hair as he waited outside Gracie’s dark backyard.

“Jake! Jake,” she called. “Come on, boy. It’s time for bed.”

But Gracie’s dog liked to take his time sniffing out his domain. After two years, her watcher knew almost everything about the golden retriever and the young widow.

Except how to end her quest for answers.

He crept closer to the wooden fence for a better look. At least she wasn’t hard on the eyes.

In the full moon, he could see Gracie’s long auburn hair fly free as she wrapped her bathrobe tighter around her athletic body. Her huge dog rushed across the backyard to obey her command.

She and that dog had been in every major newspaper for months after his accident. And following her every night, he’d grown accustomed to her vanilla spice perfume tormenting his senses.

He moved in for a closer look.

Then before she turned to go inside, Jake made an abrupt halt and stood completely still, eyes trained in his direction. The dog’s low growl pierced the quiet night.

Every muscle in his body tightened as he clamped his mouth over the curse threatening to spill out.

“Come on, Jake. No one’s there. Let’s go inside.” Her shaky words didn’t convince Jake. But he obeyed her command anyway and disappeared inside the small brick house.

He exhaled a slow and controlled breath. If he was caught, his sloppy surveillance skills would cost him everything. His career. His freedom. Juries didn’t look in favor on drunk drivers who killed perfect little families.

Or who hid the truth from law-abiding citizens. Especially the mother of two dead children.

But he wouldn’t allow himself to be lax again.

Any more than he’d allow Gracie Ann Lang to find long-buried answers.

S
teven Kessler’s Thursday couldn’t get much worse.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building buzzed with federal agents hustling to and from desks, myriad tasks on their minds and serious lemon faces straining their features. The steady drone of chatter forced him to curb his observation analysis and finish the trek to his desk.

A weeklong case taunted his patience. Ryan, an eight-year-old boy from Steven’s Kentucky hometown, had been tracked to Washington DC. Now it was his job to find the child and bring him home. Alive.

And the sooner he got another lead, the sooner he and Ryan could both sleep a full night—in their own beds. He longed for time off, but only after his job was done. With his first look into his newborn son’s face almost six years ago, he’d vowed that nothing would stop him in his new assignment as a Crimes Against Children coordinator. He would bring kidnapped kids home to their families. That one reuniting moment made all the donkeywork and not-so-happy endings worth it.

Steven shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He removed his suit coat and loosened his U of L basketball tie. A million other things held more appeal, but the paperwork stacks required his attention.

“’Bout time you meandered in to work, partner.” Clint Rollins slid past the partition that separated them and grinned. Agents passing by straightened their shoulders and sucked in their guts. Nothing like trying to best the Texan’s top-cop stature.

“After all these years, I’d think you’d have learned only early
birds catch the unit chief’s morning lashings. Besides, real agents get coffee first.” Steven held up his double espresso and extended his partner’s straight black brew.

Clint tipped his imaginary cowboy hat in thanks. “The unit chief was in good form this morning. Even had a compliment for the defense tactics training I did last week.”

Steven didn’t meet his partner’s eye.

Clint stood to his full six foot five inches and rolled his neck from side to side. “Remember? The class you skipped because of your creaking joints?”

“Last I recall, I was escorting a porn ringleader to jail, my creaking joints and all.”

Michael Parker, their squad’s newest member, pulled his nose out of a book and stopped beside Clint. “Any news on Ryan’s case?”

Steven and Clint both shook their heads. Steven wanted to hit the punching bag in the gym or be out with the team surveying the place Ryan was last sighted, but he had paperwork to do.

“You missed a good class, Kessler. I beat your record in tactics and on the track.”

Clint slapped the twenty-eight-year-old CACU rookie on the back. The kid’s blond hair crowned a smirk the size of Alaska.

“While you and the cowboy here were playing good cop, I was working. Something I suggest the two of you return to.”

Clint clucked his tongue. “Don’t let his growl scare you, kid. Only his gun’s worse than his bark.”

Jan Bryant, their favorite administrative assistant, interrupted. “Steven, an Amber Alert just placed Ryan and the perp in Rock Creek Park. You guys bring Ryan home today. And get that son of a—”

“Will do.” Steven cut off the string of words he didn’t need slamming around his brain. Without thinking, he grabbed his backup Glock, holstered it, and headed for the stairs. Clint and Michael followed close on his heels.

He’d rather avoid killing a man if he could.

But if not …

All that mattered right now was brining Ryan home. As Clint drove, Steven fingered the year-old picture of his son’s first day in kindergarten. The one he kept tucked into his vest. James’s light brown hair, blue eyes, and full-throttle smile held such promise. Just like Ryan’s photo they’d circulated.

Both were like looking into a mirror of the past.

One was safe at Hope Ridge Academy; the other Steven intended to return to his parents’ arms. Tonight.