Not This Time (10 page)

“About ten o’clock. I wasn’t in but he left a voice mail message. He was at the auto shop, waiting for someone to bring him a rental car.”

Beth hurried things along. “He paused during the message to answer someone—it sounded like he took delivery on the rental.”

Sara nodded. “I took it that way too.”

Kyle’s eyes turned hawkish. “He said he’d call from the hotel, but you haven’t seen or heard from him since?”

The hair on Beth’s neck stood on edge. Something was
seriously
wrong.

“Not a word.” Tears welled in Sara’s eyes. “His cell isn’t working.”

Jeff rubbed at his ear. “You’re sure he’s not at the hotel now?”

Dread might as well have been scrawled on Jeff’s face in red ink. “She’s checked several times. He hasn’t called home. What’s going on, Jeff?”

He leaned forward and laced his hands at his knee. “Robert’s rental car was found abandoned in a local subdivision.”

“Abandoned?” Sara looked confused. “In the village?”

“No, in Destin.”

“But that’s east of here. New Orleans is west.”

“Yes.” Jeff twisted his academy ring on his finger, his face flushing. “Some kids were playing, and a boy chased the ball over to the car. He saw something inside and told his mother. She’d noticed the car parked there at about eleven thirty yesterday morning but hadn’t thought much of it until her boy came to her. When night fell and no one came for the car, she figured she should check the car herself. So she did, then called police.”

Sara just stared at him.

Why wasn’t she asking the obvious question? Beth stiffened. What had the boy seen? What alarmed his mother into phoning the police?

Jeff waited but Sara still didn’t utter a sound, so he went on. “We knew from the tag that the car was a rental, but it took time to determine who had possession of it.”

Sara didn’t blink or glance away; she’d zoned out. Bad news was coming and she was delaying its delivery to give it time to change to something not painful—or so Beth thought until Sara did a one-eighty that worried her even more.

Her face lit up in a wondrous smile. “So the Destin police
did
find Robert.”

“No.” Jeff shot Beth a silent plea for help. “They’ve canvassed the neighborhood, but no one saw him.”

Sara frowned. “But you just said—”

Another pleading look from Jeff. This one, Beth answered. “They found the car. Robert wasn’t in it.” Beth looked back at Jeff and asked the burning question. “What did the boy and his mother see in the car?”

Kyle fidgeted. It took a lot to make a cop fidget, even a rookie. Jeff pounded out dread. “Jeff?” Adrenaline surged through Beth. “What did he see?”

He leaned back, distancing himself from them and the situation. “Blood.”

“No!” Sara gasped, mangled a shrill keen. “No. I-I—” She stammered, gasped, then gasped again. “I … can’t … breathe …”

“Yes, you can,” Beth said. “Calm down, focus, and slowly inhale. There’s plenty of air. Breathe it in, and then let it out.” Sara’s doubt flooded her eyes. Beth firmed her voice and expression even more. “I said, you’re fine. Just breathe.”

Kyle scooted, ready to bolt. Jeff dropped his gaze to the floor and his face flushed. He hated delivering this news and upsetting Sara. “So the boy saw blood and no one saw Robert?”

Attuned to Sara’s precarious condition, Jeff quickly clarified. “A very small amount of blood, and this.” He passed Beth a shiny object in a little plastic bag. “Don’t open it.”

Beth held the bag in her palm. Inside it was a plain gold wedding band.

Sara gasped again. “Robert’s …”

It looked like any other plain gold band to Beth. The slick package crinkled between her fingertips and thumb. “There are millions of gold bands. You’re sure?”

Sara nodded wildly. “It’s his, I’m telling you. Look at the inside.”

Beth stretched the plastic smooth, looked inside the ring, and saw the engraving: their names and wedding date. Her chest tightened. “It’s his.” She passed the bag back to Jeff, her stomach twisting into knots.
The rental car abandoned. No Robert. Blood. His wedding band. What does all this mean?
Beth looked over at Sara. She’d probably had about all she could stand. “Do you need your medicine?”

“No.” Sheet white, she shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“Asthma,” Jeff mouthed to Kyle. “Severely complicated by other medical issues.”

Nearly everyone in the village knew about Sara’s attacks. They knocked her to her knees, then nailed her even more. Medicine given too soon wouldn’t be effective when she most needed it. Too late, and her airways would lock down. Fast action was required or Sara could lose her life.

Kyle nodded.

Jeff cleared his throat. “Police checked the trunk and found something else. I couldn’t bring it with me. It’s being examined.”

Sara’s breathing was leveling out. Almost normal. Beth was thankful for that. At the dorm the night her parents died, Sara had coded. They’d fought hard to get her back, and it’d taken two long days and nights to get her stable and another two days before she’d been released from the hospital. Beth had never been so scared.

In the years since, Sara had seven severe attacks; three in the last year, all when she had been overly tired, upset, or excited. That’s when Beth had learned that good news could be stressful too. For the most part, Sara’s attacks had been medically controlled, though the tension over Robert had triggered multiple
mild attacks in the past six months. Keeping them mild and not life threatening had required Beth to tolerate more jabs and stabs from him than she typically would have tolerated from anyone.

This attack could be as rough as the one at the dorm. Anxiety had been building all day, an attack seemed inevitable, but hopefully—
please, God, don’t be napping
—not one as bad as that. “What else did you find?”

“A note,” he said.

Like him, Beth waited a long minute, giving Sara time to absorb before setting her off again. “What kind of note?”

“From Robert?” Sara held her hand at her throat, gently massaging her skin in what looked like an absent gesture, but Sara was attempting to stop muscle spasms.

“No, it wasn’t from him.” Jeff shot Kyle a look that he ignored by focusing on a vase of white lilies on the table between two long, arched windows.

Not good. Oh, definitely not good
. Beth braced. Kyle didn’t want to be one to deliver this news to Sara, and that more than prepared Beth. She excused herself, snagged Sara’s inhaler, shoved it into her pocket, then returned to the living room.

“What … about … the … note?” Sara struggled to get the question out.

Jeff tried, but he just couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at Sara. “It said …” He shot Kyle another silent nudge to take over.

Kyle grimaced and took up the banner. “It said, ‘Answer the phone tonight. Kidnapped for ransom.’ ”

Sara’s face contorted in horror. She shrieked a wail so shrill it nearly made Beth’s eardrums bleed.

“Call 911!” Scrambling, Beth shoved the inhaler into Sara’s gaping mouth.

Robert? Kidnapped for ransom?

6

A
nyone’s world can change on a dime
.

Beth’s grandmother had told her so a million times, and Beth thought she had understood. After Sara’s parents had died and she’d become another Dawson child in Beth’s family, their worlds had changed drastically. When SaBe had rocketed and their worrying about rent money had become history, their lives had changed radically again. But those changes didn’t prepare a person to fight for survival.

Robert had been kidnapped, and regardless of his outcome, the event had thrown Sara into a life-threatening situation. So only in the past two hours had Beth really come to understand her grandmother’s saying. Sara’s world had turned topsy-turvy and then collapsed around her ears. The impact had been so jarring that she had to be flown to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, where she now lay in ICU with a team of doctors trying to keep her throat open, her lungs functioning, her bronchial tubes out of lockdown, and her blood pressure low enough to keep her heart from exploding. Her medical condition was worse than she’d told Beth. Sara had a weak heart.

Peggy Crane and Harvey Talbot were on their way to Sacred Heart. They’d watch over her. Beth was forced to stay put—in case the kidnappers called.

She sat woodenly on Sara’s sofa. A flurry of police and FBI agents coordinated, setting up and testing their equipment. Kyle Perry had left as soon as the FBI had arrived, but Jeff stayed with Beth. When he refused to let her board the helicopter with Sara, she’d nearly lost it. But he had made points she couldn’t dispute. The hospital was over an hour away, and if there, then she wouldn’t be positioned to respond to the kidnappers’ demands. That could create lethal
challenges for Robert, which could create lethal challenges for Sara. Beth best served her friend here. Oh, but seeing her go through that attack … watching them load her onto the Life Flight alone …

Beth’s eyes burned and her throat constricted. She blinked fast and swallowed hard, a snippet of conversation with an EMT replaying in her mind.

“What happened to her feet?”

“New shoes.”

He gave her an odd look and started to comment, but his partner whispered something about patient privacy and he’d whispered back,
“Women cripple themselves just so their legs look good. It’s insane. Look at her feet, man.”
Then they’d boarded the chopper and taken off.

A sheet covered Sara on the gurney; Beth hadn’t seen her feet. But he’d gotten
that
bent over a couple blisters and swollen ankles? In his line of work? Weird.

“When the kidnapper calls, you’ve got to take it,” Jeff said. “They could want information you have that we don’t.”

“I won’t have it either. You know Robert and I don’t get along. My concern is Sara.”

Surprise and suspicion flickered through Jeff’s eyes. Beth buried her emotions to think. “You know what I mean.”

“Are you involved with Robert’s disappearance?” Jeff frowned. “I have to ask …”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. You have motive.”

Beth’s jaw fell slack. “I don’t like him. That’s a long way from harming him. Would I do that to Sara?”

Jeff looked her in the eye. “That’s what I’m asking you.”

“No.” Anger roiled in her stomach. “I’m not involved in Robert’s disappearance or his kidnapping.”

“So your concern for Sara is because …”

“She’s fighting for her life. She’s been my best friend all my adult life.”

Suspicion burned in his eyes.

Beth resented it and wished Joe were here. He’d tell Jeff a thing or two … wouldn’t he? Or would he be suspicious of her too? Unsure, she fell silent.

Around her the world went on, people working, sleeping, eating, and she hung in this horrific limbo waiting for her cell phone to ring, afraid when it did she’d be told bad news about Sara.
God, please let her live. Please
. From Jeff’s behavior, she feared no matter what happened to Robert, she’d be blamed.
Joe, please break away and get here
.

The phone looked so innocuous sitting on the coffee table next to a free-form sculpture simulating the circle of life, but every time Beth looked at it, the note ran through her mind.
Answer the phone tonight. Kidnapped for ransom
. It terrified her. What if she messed up? What if the kidnapper asked her something she didn’t know? She could get Robert killed. Sara would forever believe Beth messed up intentionally to get Robert out of her life and never forgive her. And Jeff would think Beth had goofed up on purpose. If he didn’t, he’d be unsure. He wore his doubt just as he wore his shirt. It was so unfair.

She was afraid to leave the room long enough to call Joe. She wanted to pray. Her whole life, whenever crisis struck, she always prayed. But what did she pray for? Sara’s life, of course. But pray for Robert’s safe return? That’d be total hypocrisy. Beth didn’t want him to return. Yet she didn’t want him dead either, and if he was, she didn’t want to be blamed for it. No one had more issues with Robert. Naturally Jeff saw that as motive—Kyle sure did and made no bones about it. Maybe she should pray for Robert’s safety … But if he was safe and he’d worried Sara intentionally … Oh, how Beth wished she believed he had more character than to do that. But she didn’t.
God, forgive me. Let Sara survive
.

You’re terrible, Beth Dawson. How can you think these things?

I can’t help it. I try, I really do. But I know he’s bad the way one knows the sun rises. I wish I didn’t. For Sara, I wish I could adore him. But I
 … 
don’t
.

“Greater good.”

The words formed clearly in her mind. Peace followed. She grasped them,
welcomed it. She could pray for the greater good of everyone concerned.
Thank You!

Beth excused herself, went into the empty kitchen, and prayed hard.

Then she called to update Nora.