Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(26)

“I yelled at you about being a tomboy, to get back out here.”

“A crazy tomboy,” she added.

“I yelled so loud that the other kids quit playing and turned around to look at me.”

“I think I went deeper in then, thinking you might come after me.”

“I should have,” he said, moving closer. “How about you go into the field, but I’ll go with you, right behind you?”

She nodded but hesitated. What had crushed the full-of-life girl in her? Whoever had done it made her angry. They had no right to ruin her life, hurt her family, torment Gabe. Had there been a “they” or just one person? And who? Who?

She shouldered her way into the corn, ripe and heavy with ears that bumped her shoulders and hips. It was still taller than her but not sky-high as it had seemed then. Gracie had said the same man, Aaron Kurtz, who lived down the road, still owned and farmed it. He’d been appalled, Tess remembered hearing, that she’d been snatched from his land. He’d sent Christmas gifts to them the year Dad deserted them. Oh, thank you, Lord, she prayed. Detailed memories were coming quicker, surer.

The rows of green leaves, some turning tan and dry, went straight away from the house at first, then curved to fit the contour of the distant, slight hill before leveling out again, reaching toward Dane Thompson’s property. She heard Gabe right behind, his size making rustling noises louder than hers.

So that day, had her abductor been waiting, standing still in the corn, and she ran toward him? Was he tracking her through the corn by where she moved the stalks? Should she have heard him as she heard Gabe now? Had someone driven past the house and heard or seen they were playing in the backyard and come into the field to take one of the girls—any one of them? Or had she been the target?

It had to be a random choice of victim, didn’t it? A crime of opportunity, as they called it? Or worse, had someone taken her because of something she’d done or who she was?

“Wait,” she said, turning back to Gabe. “I’m going to stoop down, like it would have looked to me then.”

“Missing, four-year-old Teresa Lockwood, blond hair in a single, long braid, wearing denim jeans and a yellow sweatshirt,” Gabe recited. “That was the wording on your missing-child posters. Pink plastic Princess Leia watch on left wrist. Blue-eyed, weight thirty-six pounds, height three and one-half feet.”

She shivered. This memory probe might be as important to him as it was to her. She crouched a bit, her back to Gabe, staring up through the corn at the vast sky....

She heard the monster sound from decades of dreams. A muted roar, this time, not so close—but real! She stood, turned and threw herself against Gabe, holding tight. His arms came hard around her.

“What?” he demanded. “Tell me!”

“That’s the sound. The monster!” she told him, blinking back tears. “Hear that?”

“Tess, it’s only Aaron Kurtz’s big harvester—his reaper. He’s in the field beyond my house. He won’t come roaring through here now, so—”

“No, I mean I heard that sound in this field that day!”

He held her tight. “And it scared you, and you ran farther from the house? Maybe toward Dane Thompson’s or the side road?”

“The reaper—in my dreams, I turned it into a dinosaur or some sort of monster. But the reaper cutting in this field that day was louder. I think he sat so high in the cab that I saw his head go past. Yes, I do recall that now.”

“My father questioned him, but he said he saw nothing unusual. You don’t mean that he took you?”

“No! I mean, I don’t think so. I must have ducked down, or got pulled down when he went past. When I screamed—more than the one time you mentioned—no one could hear me. Then I was too scared to scream at all. But I dreamed a warped memory of that for years, a big monster cutting and chopping me apart and taking me away.”

“Away to where? Which way?”

She pulled from his grasp and looked around. She turned in a circle, again, again, trying to figure it out, until she got dizzy and Gabe grabbed her elbows to hold her up. She slapped her hand to the side of her neck as if something had bitten her there.

“I...I just don’t know. Gabe, I still just don’t know!”





9

Tess had just closed the curtains over the window facing the cornfield when someone knocked on her front door. Dusk had fallen. Gabe couldn’t be back already. Besides, he used the back door.

Peeking out the front porch window, she saw a pretty, red-haired woman she did not recognize. Alone. She didn’t look like a reporter. Her blue-green sports car was parked far down the driveway. Maybe she was lost. Tess opened only the inside door and kept the storm door locked.

“May I help you?”

“If you’re Tess Lockwood, yes. I’m here to inquire about buying your house. I’m Erika Petersen, the social director at the Lake Azure Community Lodge. I drive back and forth to Chillicothe every day and I’d like a closer place.”

Tess’s stomach cartwheeled. To sell this place and be able to buy her own back in Michigan was just what she’d hoped for.

“Yes, won’t you come in?” She unlocked the outer door for the woman. Erika brought a waft of scented powder with her that made Tess want to sneeze. When Erika took off her suede jacket, her emerald-green cashmere sweater was stunning. Her knee-high boots were fringed, just as Marian Bell’s had been. This woman must be in her late forties, but her cosmetics were so carefully and subtly applied she looked years younger. She wore a big rock of a diamond ring next to her wedding band.