Vanished

A bond that had formed from the very beginning strengthened, and Madison started to envision more. She saw the possibility in his look and could even tell the exact moment he realized there was something beyond the case that was going on between them. His eyes blazed, and his intense regard took in her features as though he were reassessing his thoughts about them.

He pulled her into his embrace and just held her against him. “Thank you isn’t adequate for what I feel.”

His aftershave teased her senses. The feel of his arms sent a wave of contentment through her. What was happening to her? Surely these feelings were because of their heightened emotions concerning the case. She did not want to be hurt again. She did not want to mistake this for something it wasn’t.

MARGARET DALEY

feels she has been blessed. She has been married more than thirty years to her husband, Mike, whom she met in college. He is a terrific support and her best friend. They have one son, Shaun. Margaret has been writing for many years and loves to tell a story. When she was a little girl, she would play with her dolls and make up stories about their lives—now she writes these stories down. She especially enjoys weaving stories about families and how faith in God can sustain a person when things get tough. When she isn’t writing, she is fortunate to be a teacher for students with special needs. Margaret has taught for over twenty years and loves working with her students. She has also been a Special Olympics coach and participated in many sports with her students.

Vanished

Margaret Daley

Faith is the substance of things hoped for,

the evidence of things not seen.

—Hebrews 11:1

To the Steeple Hill editors

You all are the best

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ONE

“Go away!” Sitting on the navy-and-beige couch, Kim switched the cordless phone to the other ear and turned from her little sister to face the bookcases along one wall in the den.

“But you said you would help me.” Ashley stamped her foot. “I have to have it done by tomorrow.”

“Just a minute, Lexie.” Kim cupped the receiver, glared over her shoulder at Ashley and blew a bubble, the pop of the gum loud. “Can’t you see I’m busy. I’ll help you later. Go outside and play.”

“But—”

“I’ll let you know when I’m ready to help.” Kim infused into her voice all the frustration she was experiencing at her little sister’s constant bugging. When Ashley didn’t budge from the spot where she’d planted herself five minutes ago, Kim firmed her mouth into a frown she hoped conveyed all her feelings. “Go! Now, brat!”

“I’m telling Daddy when he comes home you’ve been on the phone for over an hour.”

The whine hovered in the air between the two sisters. Kim narrowed her eyes. With a glare, Ashley spun around and stormed out of the den.

The slamming of the back door echoed through the house. Kim pried her hand loose from over the receiver and put it to her ear as she pushed herself off the couch and walked to the bay window to make sure Ashley stayed in the backyard. “She’s gone. I don’t understand why I always get stuck babysitting. My brother should have to some of the time.”

“At least your dad pays you. My mom doesn’t.” Her best friend’s pout could be heard through the phone.

The fact she got paid didn’t appease Kim at the moment. Having an eight-year-old always following her around made her wish she didn’t have a little sister.

The watcher spied the little blond girl stalk out of the house. The sound of the door slamming against its frame drowned out the dog’s barking a few houses down for a couple of blissful seconds.

I’ll return later to take care of that dog, but right now I’ve got more important concerns. Anticipation surged. His daughter, so close the watcher’s palms itched.

The child made a beeline for the swing set and plopped down on the seat, grabbing hold of the chains to keep herself upright.

The little girl’s mouth moved. The watcher strained to hear what she was saying, but her voice was pitched too low.

No matter. After years of planning it wouldn’t change what had to be done.

J. T. Logan will regret his very existence by the time I’m through toying with him. Everything’s in place for the merry ride he’s about to go on.

“Ashley. Kim,” J.T. yelled when he stepped through the front door of his house.

Ashley was usually waiting for him to tell him the latest Kim transgression against her. Ever since his oldest daughter had turned fourteen, all the sisters did was fight. It had gotten to the point he was checking into day care for his youngest after school until he could get home from work. Being a single parent wasn’t easy. He wished he had family he could turn to for help.

Maybe today they actually got along for a change. He’d certainly prayed to the Lord enough in the past months concerning his two daughters. God was probably getting tired of hearing from him, J.T. thought with a chuckle.

After the long day he’d put in at the sheriff’s office, trying to pacify people who didn’t want to be pacified, all he wished for was a warm dinner and a little peace. He cocked his head, realizing the place was too quiet. His youngest was so full of energy that she usually kept going strong right up to bedtime.

J.T. walked toward the den at the back of the house. Halfway down the hallway he heard Kim mumbling something he couldn’t make out. When he entered the den, his oldest daughter quickly put the receiver in its cradle and bolted to her feet as though he hadn’t seen her talking on the phone.

Ever since Kim had become a teenager, the phone wasn’t far from her reach. Even setting limits on her phone time didn’t stop her from spending half of her waking hours gabbing to her friends—not her family. It had never been that way with his son. But girls were different. “Where’s your sister?”

Kim waved her hand toward the window. “Out back playing.”

“Go get her. You two can help me make something for dinner. Neil will be home from baseball practice in an hour.”

“Why don’t we order pizza?”

“Because we had it two nights ago.” J.T. left the den and headed for the kitchen to see what was in the refrigerator while his daughter hopefully obeyed and got Ashley.

His shoulders aching, he stood before the near-empty shelves, the cold air cooling him, and wondered how he was going to pull off dinner with the few items he had. Ketchup. Milk. Three eggs. Several cheese slices. An onion that had black spots on it. A few stalks of limp celery. He would have to go to the grocery store on the way home from the station tomorrow. Being shorthanded at the sheriff’s office because one of his deputies was on vacation was certainly takinig a toll on him.

Kim shuffled her feet across the tile floor and opened the back door. “Ashley!” A long pause, then his oldest daughter stepped out onto the patio, the screen door banging closed behind her, and shouted, “Ashley, you’d better get inside. Now!”

The exasperation in Kim’s voice made J.T. lift his head and turn toward the back patio. By the tone of Kim’s voice, he would be refereeing yet another fight this evening.

“Ashley, you’re in big trouble. Get in here!”

Great! His oldest daughter had alerted the whole neighborhood. He walked out onto the patio. “Kim?”

She peered over her shoulder at him, all the exasperation in her voice showing clearly on her face. “She’s mad at me. She’s hiding.”

“Why is Ashley mad at you?” He positioned himself next to Kim and began to scan the backyard.

“I wouldn’t help her with her wildflower project when she wanted.”

“In other words, you were talking on the phone and didn’t have time for Ashley. I pay you—” J.T.’s words suddenly caught in his throat when he spotted one of his daughter’s black patent leather shoes on the ground by the swing set. She’d begged him to buy them and for the past two weeks they had been on her feet constantly except when she’d gone to bed. So why was only one there?

Every cop instinct in him rose to the surface, reviving for a brief moment the dark years he’d spent in Chicago as a homicide detective. There he saw a side of life most people never saw. He forced down the panic that for just an instant surged through him. She was hiding, as Kim said, probably in her fort by the trees. Or she’d gone over to a friend’s without permission.

The father in him believed that.

The sheriff in him didn’t.

He’d been trained to expect the worst. J.T. hurried toward the swing set, his gaze making a sweep of the large backyard. He noted a couple of places to check to see if Ashley was hiding from her sister. But it wasn’t like her to continue to hide when he came out. She liked to complain too much to him about Kim’s transgressions against her.

He skirted the swing set and jogged toward the stand of trees and several large bushes along the back of his property near the chain-link fence. “Call some of her friends and see if she’s there.” When Kim didn’t move, he added in a stern voice, “Now, Kim.”

I need to know that Ashley is okay. That I’m letting my cop imagination get the better of me.

Heart pounding, J.T. inspected the area behind the grouping of pines and various types of bushes where Ashley often played with her friends or by herself. The downpour earlier that day would have washed away all footprints except recent ones. His gaze fixated on a lone pair of prints in the mud near the thickest brush. Cowboy boots, size nine or ten, worn by a person around a hundred and eighty pounds.

Someone came into his yard recently.

That thought renewed the earlier panic he was trying to suppress. For what purpose? To read the gas meter? He glanced toward it, twenty feet away and on the other side of the yard, and realized that wasn’t a likely explanation.

Which in his mind left all the bad reasons someone would trespass on his property. To do harm. Again the panic rushed to the foreground. He worked to keep it under control. It wouldn’t do him any good in a time of crisis.

He looked at the bushes that his youngest loved to play in. Her secret hiding place, she had told him once. “Ashley, it’s time to come out!” The strength in his voice conveyed all the rising doubts that she wasn’t hiding in her fort. But he had to check and hope for the best.

Although there was no sign of her footprints nearby, J.T. got down on his hands and knees, making sure not to disturb the area around the ones made by the cowboy boots, and crawled into a hole in the vegetation that Ashley used as a door to her fort. Mud oozed up between his fingers. The bottom part of his tan uniform pants was soaked almost instantly. Something dripped down onto his head from above. He peered up and another raindrop spattered his forehead.

Lord, let her be inside and just playing a prank on her sister and me. Please.

He parted some branches to reveal a cleared area where his daughter had left some of her toys. But that was all there was under the large group of bushes. He backed his way out, trying desperately to keep his professional calm about him.

This just means she’s at a friend’s house.

But as he stood, his gaze again caught sight of the two footprints of an adult who’d had a perfect view of his whole backyard from this vantage point. In his professional estimation there was only one reason someone would have been watching his house. That person had to be up to no good. In his line of work he had angered some hardened criminals who would love nothing better than to get back at him, who had in fact threatened that very thing.

And as an officer of the law, he’d been taught to assume the worst-case scenario with a missing child. It was always better to be safe than sorry. That thought sent J.T. racing for his back door. Visions of the missing children he had been involved with as a Chicago police officer flew across the screen in his mind.

Inside, Kim hung up and turned toward him. “She isn’t at any of her friends’.” Her gaze widened at the sight of him muddy and wet.

“Who did you call?”

As his daughter ticked off the long list of Ashley’s friends, he ran his fingers through his damp hair. “Did anyone know where she might be?”

Tears welled in Kim’s eyes as she shook her head. “Dad, where’s Ashley?” A lone track coursed down her cheek. “I know we got into a fight, but why would she run away?”

Lord, I hope it’s only that. J.T. couldn’t believe he had thought that, but if she were missing and she hadn’t run away, the alternative would be that she had been taken. And that chilled him to the bone. In Chicago some of those missing children cases he’d been involved in hadn’t ended—

Reminded of the ugliness in life he’d left behind, J.T. snatched up the phone and called the station. Time was of the essence, especially if she had been kidnapped. Twisting away from Kim to cover the trembling in his hand that held the receiver, he counted the rings.

On the fourth one, his secretary and receptionist Susan Winn finally answered. “Mercer County Sheriff’s Office. How may I help you?”

“J.T. here. Ashley’s missing. Send a couple of deputies to my house.”

“Missing? What happened?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know. She isn’t in our backyard where she was supposed to be and none of her friends know where she is. It isn’t like Ashley to leave without letting someone know where she’s going.” Ashley was his child who always followed the rules.

“Do you want to put out an Amber Alert?”

The waver in Susan’s voice as she asked about the alert forced J.T. to dig deep for the mantle of professionalism he wore in cases like this. But his secretary’s question underscored the situation. He couldn’t afford to fall apart—not with his daughter’s life at stake.

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes and let you know. I want to check with the neighbors first.” Please, God, let her be at one of their houses.

“J.T., I—”

He lowered his voice so Kim wouldn’t hear. “She’s okay. She’s probably next door or across the street. Got to go.” Dear Lord, I hope that is all it is.

When he hung up, his hand lingered on the receiver for a few seconds as he composed himself for Kim. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He drew in a deep, fortifying breath. He’d been involved in many cases where nothing had been wrong.

But the few—

He shook the thought from his mind and pivoted toward Kim. “I’m going to check with the neighbors. You need to stay right here and wait for my deputies. Don’t open the door to anyone else. Understand?”

With tears still streaming down her face, Kim nodded. “Daddy, I didn’t want…”

Hearing her call him Daddy tore at his fragile composure. She’d stopped using it several years ago when she’d informed him she was too big to call him Daddy. He pulled her to him for a quick hug. “Everything will be all right, honey.” When he opened the back door, he said, “See if you can get hold of Neil at the baseball complex and have him come home.”

“Hey, maybe Ashley went to see Neil practice.” She grabbed the phone.

“Maybe. If so, I’ll be next door. Lock the door after I leave.”

He waited on the patio to hear the lock click into place. J.T. hated to quench Kim’s theory. But Ashley disliked anything to do with sports and didn’t even like to go to her brother’s baseball games. So Ashley going there didn’t seem likely.

At a jog he headed toward his nearest neighbor whose view of his backyard was blocked by his six-foot wooden fence down both sides of his yard that the previous owner had erected because he had wanted some privacy. That very privacy could have made it easier for someone to come onto his property undetected.

Day one, 9:30 p.m.: Ashley missing three hours

“Kim won’t come out. She refuses to eat.” Susan grabbed the pot of coffee and began to refill everyone’s cups as distant thunder rumbled.

Exhausted, J.T. pushed himself to his feet, his muscles protesting the movement after the hour spent sitting at his kitchen table mapping out a strategy to find Ashley. “I’ll talk to her.”

The blaring of the phone cut into the silence. Its sound jarred J.T. He whirled around, reached across the glass table and grabbed the receiver before it rang again. “J.T. here.”

“Sir, we checked all the places you gave us and found nothing,” Deputy Derek Nelson said, frustration marking each word spoken.

All energy drained from J.T. His eyes squeezed shut for a second as he leaned against the table for support. “Go back over every square inch a second time. The church. The school. The park.”

“Yes, sir.”

J.T. slammed the phone down. “Derek reported nothing.”

“We still have four more teams who haven’t called in yet.” Kirk Carver studied the map of the town and the surrounding countryside. “Maybe she wandered off and lost track of time and they’ll find her.”

Lost track of time? Three hours? After dark? J.T. faced his deputy and wanted to laugh. He knew in his gut that Ashley hadn’t walked away from the yard willingly. Someone had taken her. What little evidence they had pointed in that direction. He needed to be searching like his sons. “As soon as I talk with Kim, I’m going back out. All this planning isn’t doing my daughter any good.”

“We need to coordinate where people look. We need—”

“I don’t. You can,” J.T. interrupted his deputy. “There’s got to be something—some kind of evidence that will tell us what happened, where to look.”

“We scoured your backyard before it got dark. Except for her shoe there was nothing.”

“And those footprints by the bushes.”

“We’ve taken a casting. There’s still a possibility—”

“What possibility? That Ashley is at a friend’s playing? That someone opened my back gate and innocently wandered into my yard to stand by the bushes and face the back of my house?” All his anger and frustration—held at bay while he’d focused on planning—swamped him. “Nothing about this feels like a missing person. No one has wanted to say it, but I think Ashley has been kidnapped.”

Susan gasped, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “Why?”

J.T. swung his gaze toward his secretary. “If I knew that, I might know who.”

“Are you sure?” Her eyes wide, she dropped her arm limply to her side.

“Don’t you think with practically the whole town out looking for the past couple of hours we’d have found Ashley by now?”

“Sir, we still need—” Kirk paused a few seconds “—to drag the lake and search the surrounding woods. Your house isn’t too far from it. The two teams checking all the places around the lake haven’t reported in yet.”

His deputy’s statement hung heavy in the sudden silence. J.T. lowered his gaze to the tile floor, his hands clenching at his sides. “I know we’ll have to drag the lake if she isn’t found soon,” he finally managed to say, though his throat closed around each word.

“She could have gone to the lake. Had an accident.” Kirk downed the last of his coffee and stood.

J.T. didn’t know which was worse: thinking Ashley was at the bottom of the lake or she was kidnapped. At least if she had been taken there was a possibility she was still alive. Is that why I’m insisting she’s been kidnapped?

No, he knew the reason. The evil he had encountered in Chicago nearly destroyed him to the point he had tried to forget the ugliness by drinking. Now he felt in his gut his past had come back to haunt him.

“We’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning if we haven’t found her by then.” J.T. scanned his kitchen. “And we need to move the command post down to the station.”

“J.T.,” Rachel Altom, another one of his deputies, said from the doorway, “I’ve cataloged everything in Ashley’s room and secured it. You need to go through it and determine if anything is missing.”

Only an hour ago he’d briefly checked Ashley’s room to see if her favorite doll or stuffed bear was missing. Both had been on her bed in their usual place, mocking him with their presence. The rest of his survey of his daughter’s belongings had been quick. He’d barely held himself together and didn’t know how he was going to do a more thorough search.

“I didn’t see anything earlier, but I’ll do it again.” J.T. didn’t say it was a waste of time. He knew in his heart his daughter hadn’t run away, but this investigation needed to be by the book and he was the only one who could do the search.

“I need to talk to Kim again.” Rachel took a mug of coffee that Susan handed her. “Now that she’s had time to think, I want to make sure she’s positive about what Ashley was wearing.”

J.T. shook his head. “I’ll do it. But unless Ashley changed after school, what Kim told you was right.” He remembered his oldest daughter fleeing to her room an hour ago, refusing to talk to anyone. The longer Ashley was gone the more silent Kim had become.

J.T. plodded across the kitchen and passed Rachel at the doorway. The hallway to the bedrooms lay before him. The sight of Kim’s and Ashley’s closed doors tightened his chest, making breathing difficult. As he approached Kim’s room, he drew in one shallow breath after another but nothing alleviated the pressure. It felt as if his heart had broken into hundreds of pieces.

For the first time in years, since his time in Chicago, he wanted a drink. He wanted to drown his pain in a bottle of alcohol, to forget that evil existed. His hand shook as he reached for the handle.

Lord, I can’t go back to that kind of life. Help me! Bring Ashley home safely.

He knocked softly on Kim’s door, then pushed it open. Kim sat trancelike in front of her small TV set, listening to the Amber Alert broadcasted over the Central City television station. He moved closer as his daughter rewound the tape and began to play it again. He touched her shoulder and leaned forward to switch off the TV.

“Kim—”

“Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She spun toward him and threw her arms around his waist.

Although she buried her face against him, he heard her sobs and the tightness in his chest expanded. Stroking her hair, J.T. fought to keep his own tears under control. For the past few hours they were ever present, a huge lump in his throat.

He swallowed several times. “Honey, you’re not at fault.” He managed to kneel next to her and cup her face, forcing his daughter to look at him. “Do you hear me? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You paid me to look after her, not talk on the phone. I told her to go out back and play. If she hadn’t, she would—”

He pressed his fingers over her lips. “Shh. Ashley played out back all the time, often by herself. You had no idea this would happen to her.” He regretted his admonition of Kim earlier, but there was no way he could take it back. His words uttered in frustration would be with both of them for a long time. He knew what guilt could do to a person. He’d dealt with it six years ago with his drinking and his wife’s death.

“What if she ran away because of me?”

If only that was the extent of it. Another deep breath to fill his oxygen deprived lungs and J.T. said, “Let’s not play what-ifs. It won’t help Ashley, and it won’t help you. Now, I need you to go over one more time what Ashley was wearing when she went outside to play.”