THEY’D driven halfway to the airport when Bobby made-up his mind. He turned the truck around and tried to use his phone, but got a recorded message about no available signal.
“Where are we going, daddy?” Lisa asked.
He reached over and ran a hand down her hair. “This storm is too rough for me to want to take off in the airplane, sugar. I’m taking you to spend the night at your grandma’s, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
Lisa looked a little disappointed, then she got excited. “I haven’t got to spend the night at grandma’s in a long, long time. We’ve been so busy since you got here,” she said. “Then she was acting so weird because she’s sad about grandpa.”
“She’s feeling better now. You know what? You staying there with her, just the two of you girls, that will really cheer grandma up.” He hoped he was right and he prayed she was home.
The airport lay on the east side of Richmond while the ranch was on the west side. He had to go back through downtown. Coupled with the fact that it was nearly five o’clock on a Friday and the fierce storm had started to hit full force, the traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl.
Under normal circumstances, Bobby Kent considered himself a pretty easygoing guy. By design, he was slow to anger. He kept a strong grip on his temper and was rarely seen out of control. With the stress and strain he’d been under for the past month, on top of the fact that he couldn’t get the fear in Carol’s eyes out of his mind, he finally reached the point that he’d had enough.
The only thing that kept him from bellowing at the cars around him was the fact that his daughter sat in the seat next to him. He got off the interstate at the first exit he came to and started to work his way through the back streets. He was a native Virginian, born and raised in Richmond, and had family who had lived there before the interstate highways were built. Some of his uncles refused to use them. He remembered every back street, every shortcut that he’d ever used with his cousins while they were out joy riding through the city as teenagers. When he hit a traffic snarl, he merely turned at the next road and tried an alternate route.
By the time they made it to the ranch, the wind was starting to pick up and the sky had nearly completely darkened. He parked his truck next to his mother’s and helped Lisa out of the cab. They found her sitting on her back porch, nursing a cup of coffee, when the two of them walked up.
“Hello mom,” Bobby said.
“Bobby. What are you two doing out on a night as bad as this?”
He sat in the chair next to her and stretched his long legs out in front of him, trying not to let the nerves show. “We were on our way to Atlanta, but the weather’s too bad for flying. I was wondering if Lisa could stay here with you tonight.”
Harriet looked at Lisa with a smile. “I’d love to have her. It’s been a little lonely out here lately.”
“Thanks, mom.” He stood back up. “Lisa, be good for your grandma. Mom, I’ll be by early to get her.”
“Tell Carol I said hello, Bobby,” Harriet said. Before Bobby stepped completely off the porch, she stood and said, “Wait. I need to talk to you.”
He hid his impatience and waited for her to reach him. She left Lisa on the porch playing with a kitten that had materialized at her feet. She walked down to his truck with him. She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him as the first few raindrops began to fall. “I meant what I said after Robert’s funeral, Bobby. That wasn’t just a grieving woman speaking. We were wrong for what we did, and I was wrong about my opinion of her for all those years.”
“Thanks, mom,” he said, and brushed his lips on her cheek. “Enjoy your granddaughter. See you in the morning.”
The traffic had thinned out considerably for his drive back to town, but it still took him twenty minutes. As hard as it was raining, he couldn’t go too fast for fear of losing control of the truck, but the urgency he felt nearly overwhelmed him. Something was very wrong. He could feel it in his gut.
Carol needed him. He knew it as if she’d picked up the phone and called him. The strokes of the windshield wipers beat a cadence to the ticking of the clock, telling him that he needed to hurry – hurry before he was too late.
The rain had tapered off somewhat by the time he reached his neighborhood. He knew more was coming. They’d just seen the beginning of the storm.
Panic skirted on the edges of his mind when he pulled into the driveway and saw the hood of Carol’s Jeep propped up and the front door to her house open. He practically tore the truck door off its hinges with the haste of his exit from the truck. As fast as he could without slipping on the wet ground, he ran up the driveway. Her keys dangled in the lock on the door. He ran past them, then through the house, looking for her.
Every room was empty. Panic gripped his chest full force now. He went back and stood in the doorway of the house and looked out into the night, wondering what to do next. Praying for inspiration.
He heard the car before he saw it, the gunning of the engine, the squealing of tires – then it pulled to a screeching stop in front of the house, directly under the street light. Bobby recognized it as the sedan Mitch was supposed to be sitting in down the street. He saw the car door open and started marching across the yard.
As soon as his boot hit the grass, lightning lit up the sky. And he saw it. He froze. Though it couldn’t have lasted for more than two seconds, the world around him was plunged into slow motion, and while the silver light danced around him, and the wind whipped his hair, he stared at the body lying on the ground not ten feet in front of him.
When the world fell back into sudden darkness, his mind cleared and he could move again. His boots slipped on the grass and he landed on his knees near the body. Another flash of lightning confirmed what his hands already knew.
It wasn’t her.
Relief surged through him, temporarily replacing the fear. He looked up and saw Mitch standing over him, a flashlight in his hands pointed at the face of Jack Gordon, revealing eyes that stared blankly into the sky, a look of shocked surprise on his face.
Bobby’s brain finally clicked into place and he surged to his feet. Gone was the panic and fear. In its place was deep, burning fury. “Where is she?” he screamed at Mitch.
With his face reflecting the shock of seeing his partner lying on the wet grass, Mitch took a step back from the man in front of him. “I don’t know. What happened here?” he demanded.
Bobby stepped over Jack and grabbed Mitch by his shirtfront with both hands, giving him a hard shake. “How should I know? You were supposed to stay here and protect her!”
Mitch’s feet actually came off the ground, but he did nothing to defend himself. “I had a call to a crime scene,” he said. “I left Jack here.”
Bobby pushed him away and watched Mitch struggle to keep from falling on the soggy ground. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Bobby put his hands on his hips and turned in a full circle, not even knowing where to go. He had her. Richmond Red had her. He knew on a deep instinctive level that time was not his friend right now. They needed to find them before drugs seeped through her veins and stopped her heart. He needed to find her before a violin string cut into the skin of her throat and cut off her air supply. He needed to find her now.
The wind continued to rage around them, bringing with it the occasional flash of blinding silver light as lightning warred above, sending rolling thunder to shake the earth. The very elements in the sky mimicked the emotions swirling through Bobby.
He needed to think. He looked at the house behind him, but knew that if he went back in there he might destroy some piece of evidence that could be used to find her. Instead, he turned his back on Mitch and marched across the lawn to his own house.
