“They didn’t have enough evidence to keep his ass in jail. I have no idea how these dumb-ass police work, but they let the son-of-a-bitch go!” Mac threw his cup into the trash and said, “They have a guy telling them that she’s in a dark goddamn place, and they let him go?”
“But you said he died. How’d he die?” Molly asked.
When the three men remained silent and avoided Molly’s eyes, she pressed for an answer.
Harley lifted his eyes, met her gaze, then turned away. “He was beat to death,” he said quietly. “People don’t take too kindly around here to a little girl being killed, or stolen, or whatever.”
Molly felt light-headed. “If she was alive, then no one could have found her anyway after Rodney was killed. Whoever beat him up should be ashamed. That poor girl never had a chance after that.” Molly’s words were angry, but the tickle down the back of her neck held the truth. There were many times, since Amanda’s death, that she wished she’d had the courage to find her killer—and the strength to do the same thing.
Seven
Tracey kept her arms close to her body to avoid touching the dirt walls. The confined space of the tunnel made her heart race, her breathing hindered. She knew she’d be punished for fighting back the evening before. She couldn’t stop her body from shaking or the tears from pouring silently down her cheeks. The ground was cold and wet under her bare feet. She gritted her teeth together, trying not to let her captor see her cry. Crying girls get punished. Tracey saw candles burning up ahead. Relief flooded through her as she realized that she was not headed toward the bad spot but rather toward her captor’s praying place.
Three candles burned. She knew from the prior evening that one candle was for her captor, one was for her captor’s mother, and the last one was for her. When Mummy had told Tracey about them, she had acted nice, but when Tracey had asked where her mother was, her captor had gotten mad and yelled at her, Don’t you speak of my mother! Her eyes had burned through Tracey’s, and her face had contorted. Tracey didn’t ask any more questions.
Tracey followed her captor’s lead and knelt on the cold earth. She held her hands together tightly to stop them from shaking. It didn’t work. She wished she were invisible.
“That’s Mummy’s girl,” her captor said. She handed Tracey a Bible and spoke in an eerie whisper, her voice so confident and the words spoken so smoothly, Tracey felt as if she were sitting in Sunday School. “John 8:42. The Children of the Devil. Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but He sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.’”
Tracey felt eyes boring down on her and kept her own eyes trained on the candles. She didn’t dare look up. Daddy is not the devil! Tracey wished the woman, who was as big as any man she had ever seen, would just go away. She wanted to go home. She was so tired that it was hard to keep her eyes open, and yet she knew better than to close them. Tracey hated her captor, she hated her words, I’m your mummy now, she hated her lies, If you come see me, alone, I’ll give you back your necklace, and she hated the smell of her breath, like she’d eaten too many Slim Jims. Tracey snuck a peek in her captor’s direction.
“He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God,” Mummy prayed.
Tracey grew angrier as she listened to Mummy pray. In her mind she heard her mother calling her during their last game of hide and seek, “Tracey Lynn, Emma Elizabeth, where are you girls? You hide better than fish in a pond!” Tracey swallowed hard.
Eight
Molly felt as if she were being thrown back in time. She could barely wrap her mind around the fact that the small town she’d chosen for its safety and charm had been home to the exact thing she thought she had escaped. Maybe Cole was right. Maybe she should close her eyes and walk away, just not think about Tracey, or Amanda. It’s not my fault. She drove by the church, vacillating between trying to go for a run and doing a little investigating, finally giving up on the idea of running on a bum ankle. She rationalized that she could keep her promise to Cole by walking instead of running. He didn’t have to know that her chosen path was because of Tracey. She headed further down the road toward the Hoyles Mill Conservation Trail.
Molly put her cell phone in her back pocket, threw her pack over her shoulder, and faced the well-hidden trail. It struck her as odd that she’d lived in Boyds for so many years and had never before been on the Hoyles Mill Conservation Trail. She picked up a stick and made her way down the trail, refreshed by the sounds of the birds and the smell of the leaves. It crossed her mind, briefly, that she had been able to drive down White Ground Road without encountering the Knowing, and as much as she disliked the impact it had on her, she also wished for answers about Tracey. She wondered if the episode on White Ground had simply been a coincidence, and if Cole was right, that she was setting herself up for another heartache, or worse.
She quickly came upon a little bridge that crossed a stream. She tossed a stone in just to hear it land and savored the light plink! Molly told herself that she wasn’t really looking for clues about Tracey, but just taking a walk to replace the run she’d skipped. If she could convince herself of that, than surely she could convince Cole. The foliage increased, and the path became harder to follow as she pushed through vines and made her way deeper into the woods. An hour of walking caused her ankle to ache, and Molly found the absence of the Knowing strangely and painfully disappointing.
Eventually, she came to a clearing, a large meadow that eased up a hill and edged a cornfield. Great, she thought, now I’m lost at someone’s farm. Exasperated, she made her way up the small hill, angry with herself for wasting her morning. At the crest of the hill, the rear of Kerr Hall came into view. The small, concrete building used for the preschool was situated directly behind the Boyds Presbyterian Church. The playground where Kate must have disappeared stood bare, the swings swaying in the gentle breeze. Molly swore under her breath, realizing she’d gone in the wrong direction when she had lost sight of the path. Or did I, whispered through her head. She sighed and began the trek down the hill, through the cornfield, toward the church. A noise startled her. She froze, listening. The sound pierced the air again, growing into what sounded like a child crying. Molly yelled out, “Tracey! Is that you?” Her heartbeat quickened, pounding through her with hope. There was no response. She ran toward the sound, “Tracey? Is that you? Tracey!” Still no response. She heard rustling, like a small child running through the cornstalks. Molly was shorter than the stalks and couldn’t tell which direction to search. “Hey!” she yelled. “Wait, I can help you!” In her haste, she stepped in a ditch and fell to the ground. She tried to stand, but was incapacitated by the throbbing pain in her ankle. “Shit!” she yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!” She remained on the ground to ease the pain and reached for her cell phone, flipping it open as fast as she was able. She held it up—no bars, no service! “Goddamn it! Piece of shit!” she yelled. “Tracey!” She looked to the sky and screamed out of sheer frustration.