The Mother

She caught his caressing hand and lifted it off her naked body. “I have no doubt of that.” She sat up, twisted around, and placed her feet on the carpeted floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she ran her tongue across her lips in a playfully seductive manner. “If all I wanted in a husband was a big dick and mind-blowing sex, you’d be my number one candidate, but when I eventually get married, it won’t be for sex or even for love.”

Holly got out of bed, picked up the satin robe lying on the floor, and slipped into the semisheer knee-length garment.

“I believe that was a backhanded compliment.” J.D. untangled his legs from the sheet and shot up off the bed. When he reached out and grabbed Holly from behind, she didn’t protest.

Just as she turned in his arms and lifted her face for a kiss, his phone rang. He eyed the pile of clothes on the floor where his phone lay atop his slacks.

“Let it go to voice mail.” Holly rubbed herself against him.

“I would, but I’ve got a kid, remember?”

Holly moaned. “You have my sympathy.” She disengaged herself from his loose hold and headed toward the bathroom.

J.D. bent down and picked up his phone. The caller I.D. read Cara Oliver. Damn! He figured Cara Oliver was Jacy Oliver’s aunt, the one who was chaperoning Jacy, Zoe, and their friends at the mall.

So help me, Zoe, if you’ve done something stupid, I’m going to—!

The incessant ringing reminded J.D. that instead of assuming the worst about his daughter, he should simply answer the phone and find out what was what.

“J.D. Cass,” he said when he took the call.

“Mr. Cass, this is Cara Oliver,” the soft, concerned voice said. “I’m Jacy’s aunt.”

“Is something wrong, Ms. Oliver?” Please, God, please let her say no.

“I—I don’t know quite how to say this, but … well, Zoe is missing.”

“What!”

“I take full responsibility,” Cara Oliver said. “The girls were sitting in the food court. We’d just gotten ice cream and … I went to the restroom and when I came back, the girls were gone.”

“Are all the girls missing?”

“No. I found Jacy, Presley, and Reesa, but when I asked them where Zoe was, they swore they didn’t know. But …”

“But?” J.D. demanded.

“But I think they know something.”

“Are you still at the mall?”

“Yes. We’re here at the food court.”

“Stay there. I’m on my way.”

“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.”

“It’s not your fault, Ms. Oliver. Zoe is a very resourceful girl and if she wanted to slip away from your watchful eye, she’d have found a way regardless of what you did or didn’t do.”

J.D. tossed the phone on the bed, picked up his clothes, and dressed quickly. He didn’t have time for even a quick, much-needed shower. Just as he slipped the phone into the belt holder, Holly came out of the bathroom.

“Leaving?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry, babe. Fatherhood duties call.”

Holly raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Zoe’s pulled a disappearing act. I have to go find her.”

“I hate to hear that. Since our acts one and two were so exciting, I was really looking forward to act three.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then swatted her behind. “I’ll call you later.”

“And I may or may not be available.”

J.D. chuckled as he walked toward the door, but by the time he exited Holly’s apartment, his thoughts had turned completely to his daughter.

Damn it, Zoe, what are you up to now?

At sixty-one, Wayne Sherrod was still a good-looking man. Tall, robust, broad shouldered. He kept his thick, silvery white hair cut short and was, as he always had been, clean-shaven and neat. A medic in Vietnam when he’d been barely nineteen, Wayne never spoke of what had to have been a horrific experience. Audrey could never remember a time in her entire life when she’d heard her father talk about his past. Nothing about being a child, a teenager, or a soldier. During her lifetime, he’d always been a police officer, and according to those who knew him best, he’d been a damn fine lawman.

But he’d been a terrible father, especially after he and her mother had divorced. Maybe, if Blake had lived …

When her father entered the second floor of the PSC, she wanted to rush to him, put her arms around him, and tell him she was there for him. How stupid was that? After a lifetime of being mostly ignored and often neglected by her dad, a part of her still longed for a genuine father/daughter relationship. Just once, she wanted to hear Wayne Sherrod tell her that he loved her.

Head held high, shoulders squared and straight, he marched toward Garth’s office, the door open and the four of them waiting anxiously as he approached.

Willie cleared his throat. “Let me do the talking.”

“For the record, I’m against doing this,” Garth told them for the umpteenth time since Willie had phoned Wayne.

Standing at her side, Tam reached down and grasped Audrey’s clenched fist. Audrey looked at her best friend, relaxed her fingers, clutched Tam’s hand, and gave it a hard squeeze.

Wayne paused in the doorway, surveyed the foursome, and settled his gaze on Willie. “What’s this about?”

“Come on in and close the door,” Willie said.

Hesitating only momentarily, Wayne did as his old friend had asked. Once they were enclosed privately in Garth’s office, he glared at Audrey. Instead of averting her gaze, she stared right back at him. The days when her father could intimidate her with a hard, cold glare were long gone.

“Take a seat.” Willie indicated a wooden chair to the right of the desk.

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

“We’re not all in agreement about this,” Garth said. “If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Doing what?” Wayne’s brow furrowed with curiosity and concern as he focused on Garth. “What the hell’s going on? Whatever it is, just spit it out.” Wayne narrowed his gaze and directed it toward Willie.

“We’ve had two young women abducted and murdered,” Willie said.

“Two?” Wayne asked.

“Yeah. Debra Gregory’s body was found this morning. Same MO as the Jill Scott murder.”

“I hate to hear that, but what does either murder have to do with me?”

“Not a damn thing!” Garth stomped across the room until he stood in front of his brother-in-law.

Puzzlement clear in Wayne’s brown eyes, he ignored Garth and asked Willie again, “What do the murders of these two women have to do with me?”

“The information I’m going to share with you hasn’t been released to the public and it won’t be for as long as we can possibly keep it under wraps,” Willie said. “Both women were found sitting in rocking chairs, as everyone knows. Both were holding blanket-wrapped bundles in their arms. The press has stated that they assume the women were holding dolls.”

“But they weren’t, were they?” Wayne glanced at Audrey.

She forced herself not to look away, to hold her gaze steady and not to back down from the coldness in her father’s eyes.

“No, both women were holding the skeletal remains of what have been identified as human males, probably between two and three years old.”

Wayne didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink. He stood there so quiet, so rigid, that he could have been mistaken for a marble statue.

“Wayne?” Willie called his name.

He didn’t respond.

“Daddy?” Audrey said. And when he didn’t reply, she walked over and laid her hand on his arm. He stiffened instantly. “They haven’t identified the remains,” she told him. “Not yet. It’s possible that neither—”

“You think one of them could be Blake, don’t you?” Her father glanced at where her hand rested on his upper arm. He pulled away from her and confronted Willie. “That’s what this is about. You think …” He gulped hard. “You believe it’s possible that one of the bodies—one of the skeletons—is my son.”

“I tried to tell them that there’s no way in hell that either could be Blake.” Garth gripped Wayne’s shoulder.

Wayne took a deep breath. “No one can be that certain. And if there’s one chance in a billion … I want to know. You’ll need a DNA sample. I assume mine will do. If not, I still have …” He closed his eyes for half a second. “I have Blake’s hairbrush, his toothbrush ….”

Oh, Daddy … Daddy.

Tears choked Audrey, tears that threatened to escape and overflow.

Poor Daddy. Poor little Blake.

If he hadn’t been so damn pissed at Zoe, he might have appreciated what a lovely woman Cara Oliver was. Late twenties, big brown eyes, and a mane of thick auburn hair that framed a face blessed with attractive features. Even in jeans and an oversized cotton sweater, she couldn’t hide the appeal of her slender yet curvy body.

“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.” Cara gazed up at him pleadingly.

J.D. offered her a forced smile. “Don’t blame yourself.

It’s not your fault. Zoe’s a handful. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled a stunt like this.”

“I’ve spoken to the girls again and I’m sure they know something. But they’re not talking.” She glanced at the threesome, who sat with eyes downcast at a nearby table in the food court.

“Mind if I talk to them?”

“No, please, be my guest.” Cara huffed in exasperation.

When J.D. approached the girls, they scooted their chairs closer together. He looked from one to another. Jacy had the same dark red hair and brown eyes as her aunt, but was not as pretty. Presley was cute as a button, with curly brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her pert little nose. And blond, blue-eyed Reesa possessed the promise of becoming a real femme fatale in the tradition of a long list of bosomy Hollywood blondes.

J.D. grabbed an empty chair, turned it around, and sat down, straddling his legs around the back and resting his arms on the top of the frame. “Where’s Zoe?”

Silence.

“Jacy, where’s my daughter?”

Jacy hazarded a glance at J.D. “I don’t know.” She quickly cast her gaze downward again.

“Presley?”

She stared at him, a look of sheer terror in her hazel eyes. “I—I don’t know where she is, Mr. Cass. I don’t.”

“Reesa?”

She smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the long sleeves of her colorful T-shirt, then lifted her head and smiled at him. “Zoe’s all right. You don’t have to worry about her. She’ll come home when she’s ready to.”

“Hush,” Jacy warned.

“You promised,” Presley chimed in simultaneously.

“Oh, get over it,” Reesa told her friends. “I didn’t promise Zoe anything. You two did. And I’m not going to be given the third degree by her dad, who I’m sure knows all kinds of ways to make us talk since he’s a TBI agent.” Reesa batted her eyelashes at J.D.

Good God, the child is actually flirting with me.

“Aunt Cara,” Jacy wailed. “You won’t let him give us the third degree, will you?”

Cara managed to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’ve already given Mr. Cass … uh … Special Agent Cass permission to do just that, if he believes it’s necessary.”

Tears filled Presley’s eyes. Jacy whimpered.

Reesa snorted. “You two are pathetic. He can’t do anything without your parents’ permission.” She looked at J.D. “Can you?”

“Is that what you girls want?” he asked. “You want to involve your parents?”

“Zoe’s with my brother Dawson,” Presley blurted out.

J.D. grimaced. His daughter was with some boy doing God only knew what. “How old is Dawson?”

“He’s sixteen,” Presley said.

Well, at least the boy was just that—a boy. “Where did Zoe and Dawson go?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Presley looked him in the eye.

He could tell that she wasn’t lying. She was too frightened to lie.

“They just went for a ride in his new car,” Reesa said. “They wanted to have some fun, to be alone together. There’s no crime in that, is there?”

Reesa was a little smart aleck, but she was not his problem. Zoe was.

“He’ll take her home,” Presley said. “It’s not as if they’ve eloped or anything like that.”

“Thank God for small favors,” J.D. grumbled under his breath, then told Presley, “Call Zoe. She won’t answer her phone if she sees I’m the one calling her. Tell her that her father said to get her butt home ASAP if she knows what’s good for her.”

“Er … ah … yes, sir.”

Presley placed the call and they all waited for Zoe to answer. And then Presley gasped, “What? Oh my God, no! Are you okay? Is Dawson okay?”

“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, his heart beating ninety-to-nothing. When Presley stared at him wide-eyed and her mouth agape, he snatched her phone out of her hand and said, “Zoe, this is your father. What the hell is going on?”

“Oh, J.D., please help us.” Zoe sounded desperate.

“Are you all right? Where are you? What’s happened?”

“Don’t be angry. Please don’t be angry.”

“Zoe!”

“We’re in jail.”

Chapter 7

Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He had hated the pity he’d seen in Willie’s eyes and the sympathetic expression on Tam’s face. He hated that Garth was in denial and preferred to dismiss the possibility that one of the dead toddlers might be Blake. He understood that Garth simply couldn’t accept the fact that Blake was dead. It had taken Wayne years to accept the truth. Yeah, sure, somewhere deep down inside him a glimmer of hope still existed, but he knew only too well how illogical that hope was. Blake was dead. The odds were that he had been one of Regina Bennett’s victims. Wayne had visited the crazy bitch in the mental hospital twice, and both times he had come away with more questions than answers.

Just as he started to open the door to his Chevy Silverado, he heard footsteps behind him and knew without turning around that Audrey had followed him.

Go away, girl. Go away and leave me alone.

“Daddy …?”

He gripped the door handle with bone-crushing strength.

Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your sympathy or your comfort.”

“No, you never did, did you?”

Without so much as glancing over his shoulder, Wayne climbed up into the cab of his truck and slammed the door. After starting the engine, he buckled his seat belt and put the gear into reverse. As he drove out of the parking area, he caught a glimpse of his daughter in his peripheral vision. She stood alone, tall, slender, and elegant, and looking so much like her mother.

I’m sorry, little girl. Sorry I’ve been such a worthless father. I’m sorry for so many things.

If he could go back to when Audrey had been a baby, to when he’d been madly in love with Norma, there were so many things he’d do differently. But he couldn’t go back. A guy didn’t get any second chances in this life. He had loved two women and he’d lost them both. And he’d fathered two children and had lost both of them, too. Death had taken Blake from him. And his own stupidity had lost him his daughter.

As he made his way down Amnicola Highway and hit 153, his mind swirling with memories and an ache in his gut growing more painful by the minute, Wayne wanted only one thing—to forget. He didn’t want to remember Norma Colton. How beautiful she’d been. How he had adored her. How she had felt lying beneath him. How sweet her lips had tasted. How badly he had disappointed her by being unable to give her all the love and attention she craved. He hadn’t understood why she’d had to be so possessive, so demanding. The more she had clung to him, the more he had pulled away.

I’m sorry, Norma. God, I am so sorry. I wish I had been able to give you what you needed. I wish I had realized that you were the love of my life. I wish I’d had the chance to tell you.

The late-afternoon sun sank low on the eastern horizon, a blaze of color spreading across the sky. Wayne sucked in a long, hard breath. He had made more than his share of mistakes, and others had paid the price. Not that he hadn’t suffered, wasn’t still suffering, but he deserved it. Neither of his wives had. And God knew, neither of his children had.

Where Norma had been effervescent, giggling and talkative and loving all the time, Enid had been a quiet, reserved woman with a gentle nature. He had fallen in love with her and her son, Hart, too. In the beginning, they’d had a good marriage—or so he’d thought—and he’d been content. But even before Blake’s birth, he had begun to notice little things about Enid’s behavior, things that he later realized were signs of her mental illness. But he had chosen to ignore those signs. After all, his life had been good, hadn’t it? There had been no need to make mountains out of molehills.

If only … Famous last words. If only he had paid more attention to Enid’s strange behavior. If only he had admitted that after Blake’s birth, she had needed professional help. But a quarter of a century ago, people didn’t talk much about the various types of mental illnesses, about things like bipolar disorder or postpartum depression.

I’m sorry, Enid. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were sick, that you had suffered with mood swings and severe bouts of depression since childhood. Sorry that I didn’t realize until it was too late.

Wayne turned onto Meadow Hill Drive and slowed his truck to the neighborhood speed limit of twenty-five as he drew near his destination. The three-bedroom, two-bath red brick ranch house with the neatly manicured lawn and rose bushes lining one side of the concrete drive beckoned to him as it had for so many years. Inside this house, he would find, as he always did, warmth and caring, understanding, and a few hours of forgetfulness.

He had already rung the doorbell before he thought that maybe he should have called first. But when Grace Douglas opened the door and stood there smiling up at him, every thought except what a wonderful sight she was left his mind.

“What a pleasant surprise,” Grace said as she stepped back to allow him into her home. When he remained silent, simply looking at her, drinking her in, her smile disappeared. “Wayne, what’s wrong?”

The moment he closed the door behind him, she opened her arms and wrapped them around him. When she laid her head on his chest, he enclosed her soft, womanly body in a tender embrace and the weight of the world dropped from his overburdened shoulders.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Grace said as she lifted her head from his chest and gazed lovingly up at him.

He reached down and cradled her face with both hands. “Have I told you lately how very important you are to me?”

Her lips curved in a fragile smile. “Not lately, no, but you don’t have to tell me for me to know, because I feel the same way.” She took his hand in hers and led him through the living room and into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Sit down and I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

When she pulled away from him to prepare the coffee, he grasped her wrist. She looked back at him.

“I guess the coffee can wait,” she said.

He slid out a chair from the table, sat down, and then eased her onto his lap. She draped her arm around his neck.

Grace Douglas was round and plump, with wide hips and full breasts. She was a kind, giving woman with a heart as big as Texas. He doubted most folks ever noticed the sadness in her pretty blue eyes, a sadness that he understood in a way no one else in her life did.

He ran the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She closed her eyes and quietly sighed.

“Could we talk, later?” he asked. “I promise I’ll explain everything. But right now …” He glided his hand down her neck, across her shoulder, and opened his palm to cup one breast.

Right now, he needed to forget. He needed to lose himself in this beautiful, loving woman. There would be time enough later that evening to tell her about the unidentified skeletons of two toddler boys. Skeletons that might be the remains of his son Blake and her son Shane.

The minute J.D. entered police headquarters, he spotted his daughter. She rose from the chair where she sat alongside a tattooed, nose-ringed boy with scraggly brown hair and a surly expression.

When a uniformed police officer said something to her, Zoe cried, “But it’s my father. Please, let me tell him what happened.”

The officer nodded. Zoe came running toward J.D. and hurled herself at him. Instinct took over and he put his arms around her in a comforting, fatherly way.

“I wasn’t drinking,” Zoe told him. “I swear to God, I wasn’t drinking. Not even a beer.”

The young officer, who looked all of twenty-five, lean, blond, and clean-cut, walked over to J.D. “Special Agent Cass?” He offered J.D. his hand. “I’m Officer Karns. Ryan Karns.”

“Yeah, I’m J.D. Cass.” He shook the man’s hand. “So, what’s going on here?” He glanced from Zoe to Officer Karns.

“Your daughter isn’t under arrest, but we had to hold her, of course, until a parent could pick her up,” Karns said. “The boy she was with was speeding not two miles from here, and when a patrolman tried to pull him over, he raced off doing close to a hundred. Lucky for him and your daughter, he didn’t wreck.”

“Dawson just panicked, J.D.” Zoe grabbed his arm. “He’d been drinking a beer and he didn’t want to get a DUI. That’s why he ran.”

J.D. glowered at his daughter.

“Whatever possessed you to go off with that boy?” J.D. glanced at the sulking young hunk who glared back at him.

“Dawson’s my boyfriend,” Zoe snapped angrily.

“Like hell he is. You’re fourteen. You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend.”

When she opened her mouth to protest, J.D. gave her a warning stare and said, “Not another word out of you.”

“Young lady,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Is my daughter free to go?” J.D. asked Officer Karns.

“Yes, sir, she is.”

“No, damn it, I won’t leave without Dawson.” Zoe planted her hands on her slender hips and shot her father a challenging glare.

“You’ll leave,” J.D. told her. “Either under your own power or thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Your choice … young lady.”

“I’m afraid Dawson isn’t free to go,” Officer Karns explained. “Not only was he speeding, but he was driving under the influence, endangering himself and others. He failed the breathalyzer test. He had a BrAC of 0.09.”

“He was just drinking beer,” Zoe told them, adamant in Dawson’s defense.

“Whatever he was drinking doesn’t matter,” J.D. informed her. “A reading of 0.08 is considered intoxicated, and the number drops even lower for anyone under the age of twenty-one. Dawson’s sixteen.”

“We’ve contacted Dawson’s parents. They’re out of town, so we’ll be holding him at the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center until they get back in town.”

When J.D. refused to help Dawson, Zoe began mouthing off again, threatening all sorts of outlandish things. The wayward teen was his parents’ problem, not J.D.’s. He had enough trouble with Zoe.

In the middle of his daughter’s tirade and just as J.D. was at his wits’ end, he heard a calm, soothing female voice ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Evening, Dr. Sherrod.” Officer Karns’s shoulders drooped wearily, as if he, too, were at the end of his rope. No doubt he had counted on J.D. being able to control his fourteen-year-old daughter since he wasn’t sure how to deal with the hysterical girl.

Apparently, Audrey Sherrod had been visiting her uncle and had just walked out of his office. However, it wasn’t Garth Hudson who accompanied her, but Chief Mullins. The chief gave Audrey a quick, fatherly peck on the cheek and whispered something to her, then nodded to Officer Karns and headed for the exit.

Dr. Sherrod’s question had startled Zoe into complete silence. She stood there staring at the woman as if she were an alien who had just stepped out of a spaceship from Mars.

“I … uh … I don’t know if you can help.” Karns looked from Audrey Sherrod to J.D. “It’s up to you, Special Agent Cass.”