Concealed. Part 19

There was a strange crackling noise that came from the field beside the diner. Around her, everything went silent. Sydney's heart slammed in her chest as she fished wildly around in her purse trying to find her car keys. Wade had told her a million times to have them out and ready when she walked to her car, especially at night. Yet here she was, alone, and searching for them in the dark.

Her feet shuffled to the side of the car, using the steel frame of the vehicle to hold her shaking body upright. Another rustle came from the same direction and Sydney was two seconds from screaming when her fingertip brushed against a metal loop at the bottom of her purse. She yanked out the keys and jabbed them into the lock, freeing the door and allowing herself to climb safely inside just as Pete ducked out the back door of the diner, calling her name.

Too scared to wait, Sydney threw on her headlights and started her car, roaring out of the parking s.p.a.ce and nearly running over the orange and white cat that leisurely strolled out of the field in front of her. She shook her head and laughed at herself.

"Move, you stupid cat. You nearly gave me a heart attack!" With a quick beep of the horn goodbye to Pete, she scared the cat back into the field and she was able to pull out of the parking lot and head home.

It had been days since she drove home alone at night. Wade typically followed her from the diner, his headlights being that extra sense of security that would calm her nerves and make her feel safe.

Sydney turned onto the long stretch country road that ran the length of the Cooper's farm. There were no streetlights so she kept her attention on the road, not knowing what other kind of wildlife was planning on jumping in front of her car tonight. She had gone about a hundred yards when a pair of headlights flashed in the rearview mirror behind her. For a second she panicked and worried she hadn't backtracked as much as she typically did, but she wanted to get home tonight for some reason. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel for a few moments until it dawned on her who it was.

Wade.

When Cara called him, he must have jumped in the car to follow her home. A smile spread across her face at his thoughtfulness.

The car came up behind her quickly, holding at about three car lengths behind as she crept down the dark, hilly road. A minute later, flas.h.i.+ng lights signaled from behind her. She looked at the speedometer and knew she wasn't speeding. Then a slow smile spread across her face at the thought of Wade stopping her. He probably wanted to check on her and see how she held up today. Sydney found a small patch of gravel and pulled off to the side of the road. She glanced back in her mirror to quickly check her makeup and adjusted her sadly disheveled ponytail. The next thing she knew, she was startled by a loud tapping on her window.

She was laughing as she lowered the window. "Thanks for the heart attack, Wade." But immediately she could tell it wasn't him. From the build of the officer standing outside the window, to the flashlight s.h.i.+ning directly into her eyes, she knew whoever this was had a much smaller frame than Wade. The uniform was nearly hanging off them. When the light dipped, she caught sight of a dark braid hanging over the shoulder of the officer.

I didn't know there were any female officers in Elton, she thought to herself as her anxiety rushed back, full force.

"License and registration," the female officer said sharply, the bright light making Sydney's eyes water.

"Um." She reached for her purse which was sitting on the front seat, stunned and even more confused as to why she'd been pulled over if it wasn't Wade. And the stern way the woman was speaking to her was unexpected. There was no professional tone to her voice only a harsh edge that rattled Sydney's nerves. "Here." As she handed the officer her identification, she tried to get a look at her badge, but the handle of the flashlight was in the way. "Was I speeding?"

The officer ignored her question, only snapping, "Turn off the car." When Sydney didn't immediately comply, the woman raised her voice and barked, "Now!"

"S-Sorry." Sydney's internal alarms were sounding, but before she did anything, she needed to get an idea of who this woman was. Maybe she was new and didn't know about Sydney's situation, so she dropped Wade's name in the hope that the woman would take the hint, and back off a little. All she wanted to do was get home to Faith. "I-I didn't know there were any female officers on the Elton police force. Wade, Sheriff Jenkins, hadn't mentioned it."

"I'm sure there's lots of things Wade doesn't tell you." With that, the female officer strode back to her car, with Sydney's identification in hand.

"Think," she growled. Wade had never really checked her license but this woman seemed like she was very serious about it, and if she looked hard enough, she might discover it was a fake and that would be a disaster. She didn't dare drive off or create a huge issue for Wade at the station. Instead, she tried to get a hold of him and see if he could talk down his overzealous officer.

With her phone hidden in her lap she texted, "Did you hire a female officer? She pulled me over and..." before she could type any more, she saw the light of the officer's flashlight approaching the car again. She cursed and hit send, hoping it would get to him soon enough.

"Come on, Wade," she whispered as she rolled her window back down. "Is there a problem, officer? I wasn't speeding. Are the plates expired? It's a rental. I'm sorry for all the questions. I'm just confused as to why you pulled me over."

"Get out of the car."

"What?"

She knows.

Sydney was horrified at the thought of being put into the back of a police cruiser and driven to the station in handcuffs where her secrets were going to be spilled in front of so many people she knew and cared about it.

"Get out of the car, now."

"Can't you call Sheriff Jenkins? He knows me. Can you talk to him? He's your boss, right?" She stopped talking the second she saw a gun muzzle pointed at her face.

"I'm not asking again. Get out of the car, or I'm going to shoot you." The matter of fact way she said it made Sydney's blood run cold.

On the outside, Sydney somehow managed to stay calm, but inside, she was screaming. Something wasn't right, she could feel it. She was on a deserted strip of road with one of two evils. The woman pointing a gun at her was either an officer who knew, after checking her identification, that she was a fraud with no past beyond eighteen months ago and wanted to lock her up, or this officer wasn't who she seemed and intended to do her serious harm. Either way, she had to be very careful if she ever wanted to see Faith again. She glanced to the pa.s.senger seat where her phone sat, just out of reach.

"Ok," Sydney said softly, raising her hands for the officer to see and slowly reaching to release her seatbelt. "I'll get out of the car. Could you put the gun away, please?" There was no way to get away from her from inside the car, but outside, she could run and get lost in the fields, if she was lucky.

All she wanted to do was get to Wade.

"Move it," the woman all but screamed at her, the hysteria in her voice telling Sydney she was in serious trouble.

Sydney stretched all her movements out, hoping and praying that another set of headlights would come up over one of the hills and send this woman running for cover, but as she shut the door behind her, there were no other cars in sight.

Without a thought, Sydney swung her arm out toward the woman's face, landing a crus.h.i.+ng blow to her nose. The flashlight dropped to the ground as the woman screamed in fury. Sydney ran as fast as she could to the officer's car, desperate to put as much distance between herself and this woman as possible. If she made it home quickly enough, she could grab Faith and they would disappear before anyone found the woman.

The click of a gun being readied to fire froze Sydney in her tracks.

"Touch the car and you're dead."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Sydney pleaded as the woman approached.

With the flashlight gone, Sydney's eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness and she could begin to make out the woman's features. When she realized who was standing in front of her, she did the only thing she could do.

She screamed and everything went black.

THE NEXT THING SYDNEY knew, she found herself in a moving car, her head throbbing from the fall she must have taken. She was in so much pain, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the nausea to pa.s.s. Then she heard the woman beside her mumbling.

"Dammit, Charles, what have you done now?"

She kept her eyes closed, trying to piece together what had happened. Sydney's head made a dull thud as it banged repeatedly against the window of Wade's cruiser. She could smell his cologne in the leather. There was no sound to be heard except the soft mutterings of her captor. The blow to her head still had her feeling disoriented. She had no idea how close or far from Elton they were. Part of her was afraid to open her eyes and find out.

Her shoulders burned as her arms began to cramp. Little bits of rock and gra.s.s covered her clothes, new aches and pains reminding her of her earlier ordeal on the side of the road. At some point, her hands had been tied behind her back, her wrists pinched so tight she couldn't even feel her fingers. There was warm, sticky blood trickling down the side of her face from where a ghost from her past had hit her with the b.u.t.t of her gun. Not a ghost really, but a woman she long a.s.sumed dead.

Marcy.

Seeing her face had been a shock. All these years Sydney had been so certain she was dead. There was no way she could have survived that incident with Ronald. She'd lost so much blood and when he raised the bat over her head, Sydney couldn't imagine anyone surviving that. But she had.

Marcy was back, but why?

She had looked very much the same, just older. Wade had asked her to describe Ronald once and she couldn't, but Marcy's face was seared into her brain. Probably because Faith resembled her mother so much, the image never truly left her. But the anger and the violence, that was something she never expected from this woman, the woman who sacrificed herself so her daughter could live. Or so Sydney had thought.

It must have taken superhuman strength for Marcy to haul Sydney's limp body into the car. She was definitely taller than Sydney but their builds were similar. Something she hadn't noticed all those years ago. The car bounced wildly as they drove down the country road. Sydney braved a look out the window to get an idea of where they were, but her vision was so blurred it made her nauseous. Probably a concussion, she told herself. In an effort to save her energy, she slammed her eyes shut. And prayed.

"I know you're awake." Marcy cranked the wheel hard to the left, the tires screeching under the force.

Sydney's battered body pressed tighter against the door until they finished making the turn. For a second, she debated finding a way to open the door and fling herself out of the car, but she had a feeling she knew where they were headed and there was no way Sydney was letting this woman go there alone. She'd just have to bide her time and wait for another moment to run.

They drove a while longer, and then the car jerked to a stop. Sydney's suspicions were confirmed when she saw the fuzzy outline of her home in front of them.

"What do you want?" Sydney's voice was rough as if she hadn't used it in months. "Where's Wade?"

The woman spun on her so fast, Sydney didn't have time to dodge Marcy's hand as it slapped across her face. "Sorry to do that but you need to sit back and relax. We have a little situation going on at the moment. Just be quiet and let me think, please." She flashed a knife and tapped the edge on the steering wheel. The silver of the blade reflected in the moonlight. "What do I want? If I'm being honest, I really don't want anything from you. I, for one, am glad you have Faith. But the others, well, they're not. They're really angry and-" Marcy winced, grabbing her head. "They're fighting me on this. They have been ever since that night." She looked toward the house, her eyes wild. "I was right to give her to you, but they're going to take her from you. And not you, or your hunky boyfriend, are going to be able to stop them."

"No! You can't have her." Sydney screamed and tried to ram the woman with her shoulder, but she was swatted away like she weighed next to nothing. Marcy's hand slammed down hard on Sydney's neck, pinning her face against the dashboard and cutting off her airway. When she spoke again, Marcy's voice was noticeably rough, deeper.

"Now listen here, you b.i.t.c.h. Touch me again and I'm gonna start snapping bones. We understand one another?"

All she could do was nod her head and stare at the woman strangling her. In the course of a few seconds she had changed, not just her temper but her face and voice too. There was a roughness to Marcy that hadn't been there before and it terrified her. And Sydney couldn't help but wonder who were the 'others' Marcy kept mentioning? Was she working with someone? Had Ronald and Marcy been together, stalking her all along?

Marcy released her and Sydney gasped for air. "I-I love Faith."

"So does her mother!" she growled, the knife, now in her right hand, sliced wildly through the air as she stabbed at the leather beside Sydney in anger. There was a momentary flurry of motion and curses until Sydney once again felt the tiny p.r.i.c.k of the knife positioned against her side. "You do remember her, don't you? The woman who carried her for nine months, loved her, sang to her, and dreamed of a life with her." She leaned across the seat, her face inches from Sydney's while the steel of the blade dug deeper into her side drawing blood. "Do you know what you did to her when you took her baby? You broke her!"

The way Marcy kept referring to herself in the third person was alarming. Sydney's internal warning alarms were going off. The mood swings and the rage were scary, but strangely familiar. She thought back to her mother's ranting and the months she spent in the women's shelter. She'd grown up around mental illness all her life. This woman obviously wasn't stable, but just how 'broken' was Marcy?

EVENINGS AROUND THE ELTON sheriff's office were typically uneventful. At least they had been until two murders rocked the small town to its very roots. Add to that the nightmare that was going on with Sydney. Now Wade's days were full of conference calls, questions, and visits from all branches of law enforcement, it seemed. What he wouldn't give for a quiet evening right about now.

Wade glanced at the clock to find the hands had barely moved at all since last he checked. Earlier in the day, he had reached out to an old bird at a local police station in Montana that was so small it made Elton look like a metropolis. He was hoping this would be the lead he needed to confirm who this man from Sydney's past was so they weren't tracking a ghost. But the person he needed to speak with hadn't been in, so Wade left an urgent message. And he was slowly going insane from the wait.

He had been searching the Internet for days to pin down the exact town where Sydney had been when she left the highway that night. He was hoping to confirm that one of the men who worked there years ago, a volunteer deputy, was named Ronald Was.h.i.+ngton, or 'Donny' to his friends. Wade dug further and found that, even though Donny had been with the sheriff's office, he was a sleaze with a string of arrests for a.s.sault, a number of domestic charges, and restraining orders that were all later dropped by his wife, Amanda.

The calling card of a habitual abuser, Wade thought to himself.

A little more than three years later, he had disappeared. Maybe he went on the run, maybe his wife finally took a shot at him, or maybe he found a secluded cabin and became a mountain man. Whatever the reason, the guy was a ghost now, which really bothered Wade.

The piece of information that didn't add up was the fact that his wife was named Amanda, not Marcy. Sydney suggested that maybe Marcy had been a girlfriend he kept on the side, which was a definite possibility. However, if that was true, it was going to make it difficult to connect her to Faith without more information. If he confirmed Ronald's ident.i.ty it would at least be a starting point. Wade was desperate for something to sink his teeth into on this case. He was hoping this local sheriff's office would give him answers rather than raise more questions.

Until then, he considered several 'what if' scenarios with the facts he had.

What if this guy got a partial plate on Sydney that night? She said he watched her drive away. If he wanted to find her, he had a lead. It'd be a long search, but if he was in with the law enforcement, he had connections. It would explain how he would have been able to track her over the years and how he could find her when she moved. As far as Marcy went, if Sydney was right, Ronald could have easily disposed of her body that night in the mountains of Montana and then went back to his life with Amanda. Stranger things have happened. The problem was, Wade liked to deal in facts, not speculations. And right now, he was praying for just one fact he could work with to help Sydney.

His eyes wandered to the clock again. "Seriously? How busy can they be in nowhere, Montana?" Wade stood up and raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. He wasn't used to standing around waiting. The inaction was killing him.

"Easy, boss. There's probably an escaped cow or two they have to get off of the highway." Sam laughed, trying in vain to lighten Wade's mood. He'd been pacing all afternoon and the guys knew something had him stressed. They a.s.sumed it had to do with what was going on with Sydney. Everyone at the station believed it was a simple case of hara.s.sment, but they didn't know the half of it. "You know Billy went to check on that injury accident in Hightown?"

"Yeah," Wade scrubbed his hand down his cheek, "I'll swing by the diner and get Sydney when her s.h.i.+ft ends."

So much had happened in the last few weeks that Wade found himself sifting through the images in his head. The woman they found dead at the edge of town, then Angie's lifeless body was dumped behind the diner, Sydney's face when he told her that there had been someone in her house, Wade making love to Sydney, waking up with her draped across his chest, the smile Faith gave him when she opened his present, the shattered windows on Sydney's car. The good all intertwined with the bad into a never ending nightmare.

Frustrated, Wade grabbed the file on Angie's murder off his desk and thumbed through it again. Right on top was the picture of her, face down and covered in stab wounds beside the dumpster. A dumpster he found a picture of Faith wedged behind. Wade stared at the scene for the thousandth time, looking for something small he might have missed. He couldn't help but feel like it was right in front of him.

Sam looked over his shoulder and shook his head. "You have to stop staring at that picture. You could probably draw it from memory by now."

"I'm missing something. There's something here." Wade set it aside and flipped through the countless lab results done on the blood and tissue samples found near her body. Nothing out of the ordinary, of course.

"Wade, you're doing everything you can to find her killer. Whoever this was, they were good, and the sonofab.i.t.c.h took their time. They did their homework and planned this out."

Wade froze, and grabbed the photograph again, holding it from a distance and compared it to the woman they found in Greenville. He'd been thinking the same thing since he arrived on the scene that night, but he hadn't dared to say the words out loud. The build, the hair color, and age were a match in both pictures.

Dead ringers for Sydney. Coincidence or design?

He was in Elton. Ronald killed both of these women on his way to town and he'd been there for days.

Wade let his mind acknowledge the truth he had been avoiding. He grabbed the file the FBI had left about the other murders they were trying to connect these ones to. As he flipped the pages, all the women were blonde and early twenties. On his second pa.s.s he noticed the cities they were from all aligned with where Sydney had lived recently. Indianapolis, Nashville, and he'd bet if he were to ask Sydney, she would confirm she had, at one time, been in Decatur, too.

"s.h.i.+t," he said as he threw the file onto the desk. "He's been following her all along. But he seems to miss her by a few months every time."

"What are you talking about?" Sam reached down and picked up a paper that had rolled under the fax machine. He absently looked at it, before his eyes went wide with surprise and he handed it to Wade.

"I don't care about another fax from the Feds."

"You'll care about this." He thrust the paper at Wade more forcefully. "I think we found the guy you're looking for."

Wade skimmed the fax from a California court of records and found a J. Ronald Was.h.i.+ngton's date of birth...and death. "It's not him," Wade mumbled but he kept reading, looking for anything that could help. Was he the brother of their man? There was a case number scrawled at the bottom, so he had Sam pull it up on the computer. He barked at Mrs. Watts to call the diner and tell Sydney to stay put until he got there.

"Oh, Cara called about fifteen minutes ago, Wade. You were on the phone with the guys from Greenville. Sydney headed home early. She wasn't feeling well."

"This isn't happening," Wade muttered as he scrambled around the office, searching for his phone on his desk. He needed to hear her voice, then he could calm down and figure out what all this meant. But for now he had to know she was safe.

Because something told him she wasn't.

"His wife, Amanda, killed him." Sam's head popped up over his monitor with a grim look on his face. "It was a total bloodbath. He was stabbed over a hundred times. Amanda was on the run for a long time. Her lawyers claimed insanity and she's been locked up for the last two months in Atascadero which is a mental hospital outside of Fresno. That explains why you couldn't find them in Montana."

He had started to dial Sydney's number when he found her text message. "We don't have any female officers," he said to himself then realization slowly started to hit him. The events of the last weeks fell into alignment, and the one common thread to all of them was Sydney.

He grabbed Sam by the collar. "Go find Sydney and call Billy back, now. One of you take the route from the diner that goes past the pond, another one of you go past the farm and I'll go to her house. I want to know the moment you see her headlights, understand?" He didn't wait for a response, he grabbed his jacket and started calling Sydney's cell phone repeatedly, praying she'd pick up. When it clicked over to voicemail, he thought his head was going to explode. He was almost out the door when Mrs. Watts screamed his name.

"I don't have time for this." He went outside and drew up short when he realized his cruiser was missing. "Where the h.e.l.l is my car?"

"Wade, it's a doctor from a hospital in California. She said she had to speak with the sheriff, that it's an emergency."

"I have to find Sydney!" he bellowed, his fear and frustration bubbling over until he felt a trembling hand on his arm.

"I think this is about Sydney," she whispered, turning his blood to ice. With a vile curse, he stormed back inside and grabbed the phone off her desk.

"What?" he snarled into the mouthpiece, unable to keep from pacing as he listened. He had too much adrenaline in his body, too many places he needed to be.

"Sheriff? Is this the sheriff?"

"You need to start talking, now. I'm in the middle of an investigation and you're holding me up. Talk fast."

The rage in his voice made her cut to the chase. "My name is Dr. Margaret Lee and I'm a physician at Atascadero. There's a woman, a patient of mine, headed in your direction, I believe." She rattled off her name and DEA number as proof of her ident.i.ty. Mrs. Watts took the piece of paper Wade handed her and ran to his computer to check it out. When she confirmed the woman's ident.i.ty, Wade started peppering Dr. Lee with questions.

"The mental hospital? You work in California?" The car Luke saw in town had California plates. What were the odds?

"Yes. I believe someone is in grave danger which, you know, exonerates me from doctor patient privilege. I have a patient, a very disturbed woman by the name of..."

Wade didn't wait for her to finish, his worst fear coming to life. "Amanda Was.h.i.+ngton."

"You know her?" She sounded somewhat relieved, but Wade's irritation was growing by the second.