The Innocent. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ to bet money that Sergeant Cross’s bookshelves were filled with non-fiction works written by some of the legendary profilers who’d come out of the famous Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Sam’s old stomping ground.

      “I think stressor is the wrong terminology,” she said. “It implies someone with a compulsion. I think Emily’s disappearance gave Sara Beth’s abductor the idea.”

      “Which could bring us back to a parental abduction.”

      “Not necessarily. In fact, a ransom demand could still be made. Sara Beth’s father owns a car dealership here in town, as well as several small businesses around the county. By Eden standards, he’s pretty well off. And her mother is the manager of the Eden National Bank.”

      “You’ve tapped their phones, both home and work?”

      “Of course,” Abby said. “Tess Campbell’s phone is tapped as well, but she doesn’t have access to the kind of money the Brodies do. She has her own business, a cleaning service, but she’s hardly well-to-do. She’s a single mother, just like my sister was.”

      “But I get the impression Fairhaven is a pretty exclusive school.”

      “It is. And that’s another similarity between Emily and Sadie. They didn’t really fit in at Fairhaven. There’s usually a waiting list at the school, but in both Sadie and Emily’s cases, enrollment was down in the years in which they applied. Otherwise, I doubt either of them would have been accepted.”

      Sam paused, thinking. “I’d like to talk to the staff, especially their teacher.”

      “Her name is Vickie Wilder. She’s been very cooperative, even volunteered to take a polygraph when we interviewed her after Emily’s disappearance.”

      “Was one administered?”

      “No. She’s never been considered a real suspect.”

      “Even though she has a connection to both Emily and Sara Beth?”

      “A lot of people do,” Abby said. “This is a small town, Agent Burke. Everyone knows everyone else.”

      For a split second, their gazes locked and an understanding, a terrible suspicion, passed between them. Everyone knows everyone else. Including the kidnapper?

      Sam turned to gaze at the street, but he was very aware of the woman sitting next to him. Of the way her shoulder-length dark hair gleamed in the sunlight. Of the way her lashes shaded her soft, brown eyes. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt about it. Not too thin. Not too tall. Not beautiful exactly, but she possessed a quality that was hard to define.

      She didn’t look a thing like Norah, and that, Sam decided, was definitely Sergeant Cross’s best feature.

      “Let’s hit the street,” he said abruptly.

      She glanced at him in surprise. “You saw something?”

      “No. But I’d like to do a door-to-door.”

      She started to say something, then stopped. Sam knew what was on her mind. The sheriff’s office would have already conducted a door-to-door immediately after the child was reported missing. They would have gone back for a deeper canvass once it became apparent Sara Beth hadn’t simply wandered off.

      But another round of questions with a fresh set of eyes and ears never hurt, and Sergeant Cross was smart enough to realize that. She got out of the car and walked over to the cruiser, saying something to the driver before she came back over to Sam.

      Heat shimmered off the pavement beneath their feet, and Sam could feel perspiration rivering down his back. His gaze moved irrevocably to the front of Sergeant Cross’s cotton T-shirt, where the damp fabric clung to her curves in a way he couldn’t help admiring. He was only human, although he had colleagues, past and present, who might take issue with that. Certainly Norah would.

      Sergeant Cross lifted her hand to shade her eyes, and the subtle movement accentuated her body’s contours. The pale yellow fabric of her shirt hugged her tightly, and something inside Sam tightened. He’d gone too long without a woman’s company, and now suddenly, at the worst possible time, lust was beating him over the head with a vengeance.

      He tore his attention from the front of Sergeant Cross’s T-shirt and scanned their surroundings.

      “You want to do this together, or should we split up?” she asked.

      Split up, was Sam’s first instinct. They could cover more ground that way. But he heard himself answering almost gruffly, “Maybe we’d better stick together since you know the area better than I do.”

      “It’s your party.” She slipped on a pair of dark glasses and started toward the street.

      Sam’s gaze dropped to her backside in spite of himself. Unfortunately for him, Sergeant Cross looked as good going as she did coming.

      Chapter Three

      Fayetta Gibbons had lived all of her life on First Street, in the same house in which she had been born sixty-nine years ago and raised by her beloved parents, Milford and Garnett Gibbons, both dead now almost half a century. They lay buried in the family plot at Holyoke Cemetery four blocks away on Peachtree Street, and a pink marble headstone ornately inscribed with Fayetta’s name and birth date marked a space nearby.

      Fayetta’s daily habits always included a short visit to her parents’ graves. No matter the weather, the routine never varied. Depending on the season, she would take fresh flowers from her garden, sometimes for her parents’ graves and sometimes to place in the marble vase attached to her own tombstone in the event that after she was gone, no one else would think to.

      Except for her afternoon walks and church on Sundays, Fayetta rarely left her home. She’d never married, never had a suitor that anyone in town knew about, and had never, apparently, been sick a day in her life. As she approached her seventieth birthday, she could become a bit confused at times, but her blue gaze, keen as ball lightning on a hot summer night, still missed precious little of the goings-on around her.

      If anyone would have taken note of anything suspicious in the neighborhood on the day of little Sara Beth’s abduction, it would be Fayetta Gibbons, Abby assured Sam.

      They waited now on her front porch as she carried out a tray of lemonade and crystal glasses. Sam rose from the wicker rocker he’d been assigned and took the tray from her. Fayetta smiled and batted her lashes at him. “Why, thank you…Mr. Burke, wasn’t it? Such a gentleman,” she said to Abby. “A trait one finds all too rarely these days.” Her blue gaze skimmed Agent Burke’s dark suit approvingly. It wouldn’t matter to Fayetta that he had to be melting in this heat. He looked dignified, and Fayetta came from an era where appearances meant everything. Abby suspected the woman would be wearing hoop skirts if she could find some.

      As it was, her starched floral shirtwaist looked fresh and crisp, as if she’d donned it only moments before her callers had arrived. In comparison, Abby felt like something her cats had dragged in. The jeans and T-shirt she’d put on that morning in anticipation of tramping through woods and vacant lots had definitely seen better days. She could feel Fayetta’s ladylike disdain rake over her as smoothly as a butter knife on cream frosting.

      Fayetta handed her СКАЧАТЬ