Abduction (22 page)

She knew Ted
was only hard on her because she needed someone to keep her focused. But to
kill Ted? Ridiculous! Beyond belief! She couldn’t even stand the sight of
blood!

Idiots! That’s
what they were. Complete idiots! This was all a major misunderstanding. The
kidnappers dumped Ted’s car. He probably had to go with them in their car
somewhere, and now he was trying to hitch a ride home with Jess.

Karen sat up
in a rush.
Of course! That had to be it!

Footsteps in
the hallway penetrated her thoughts, and she jumped to her feet. “Karen?”

Her father’s
voice echoed through the house. Karen slapped a hand to her chest. “You scared
the daylights out of me, Dad.”

“Why didn’t
you answer the door? I had a heck of a time finding my key.”

She sank back
down in her chair. “I didn’t answer the door because I didn’t want company.”

The hint was
ignored as he pulled out a chair and joined her at the table, his eyes hard and
condemning. “Why didn’t you call me? I had to hear it on the news?”

Karen
shrugged. She had no desire to answer his questions any more than she wanted to
be pounded on by the police. There was very little difference in the impact on
her heart and mind.

“You’ve
finally snapped, haven’t you?” His voice slapped at her, stinging. “Gone around
the bend.”

Karen looked
over at him, still saying nothing.

“Why did you
do it, Karen? Did you just get tired of being a wife and mother? Is that it?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous, Dad. I didn’t
do
anything.”

“Of course
not. Ted and Jessica are just missing, right? Someone took them, right?”

“Yes,” she
whispered. What else could she say?

“Just like
someone took Kipsey, right?”

Karen felt the
words hit her like a fist, knocking the breath out of her. “What?”

“You killed
that kitten and refused to admit it.”

“I was a
child! Give me a break, Dad! It was an accident!” A terrible accident. The
little tabby had been climbing on her mother’s curtains, and her mother had
threatened to give him away if Karen didn’t control him. Desperate, Karen had
put the kitten in a box and lined it with blankets so he would be comfortable.
She’d sealed it shut to keep him from escaping.

She hadn’t
realized that between the blankets and the sealed box, the cat had been
smothered.

“You could never own up to it, could you? No. You
had to tell everyone that someone had taken that kitten, that it had been
stolen. That’s what you kept saying, because you couldn’t admit that you’d
killed it. Are you doing it again, girl? Refusing to admit the truth?”

“Leave her
alone, Dad.”

Karen jumped
up out of her chair at the sound of the familiar voice. “Ray!”

He held out his arms and she didn’t hesitate. She
flew into them
and let him wrap her up in comfort. “Thank goodness you
came.”

Walter
lumbered to his feet. “And here
you
finally are. You don’t bother with
any of us until there’s trouble, then the first thing you do is coddle that
girl.”

“And as
always, you have to beat her up rather than admit that you may have judged Ted
wrong. You’re never wrong, are you, Dad? Heaven forbid. No, it’s always someone
else’s fault—usually Mom’s or Karen’s.”

“You don’t
know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what’s been going on here.” He
pointed to his daughter, his voice tight with anger. “First her daughter and
now her husband.”

“And Karen is
innocent. End of story.”

“So say you.
You don’t have all the facts.”

“I have enough
facts to know that my sister would never kill her child. Or her husband. She
isn’t built that way.”

“You have no
idea, Ray. You aren’t here to see her. Forgetting things, shifting blame,
always shuffling around with her head in the clouds, neglecting the baby, not
doing right by her husband.”

Ray gently
extracted Karen from his arms. He looked down at her, and she felt a tremor run
down her spine.

“Did you kill
Jessica? Did you kill Ted? Tell me, Karen. Tell me the truth. Did you do this?”

#

He smoothed
the ground with his hands and then rose, clapping his hands together to knock
off the surface dirt. With a critical eye, he examined every aspect of the
area. Nothing looked disturbed. Nothing to indicate that anything was amiss.

Of course,
he wasn’t concerned at the moment. His superior thinking had the cops running
in fifteen different directions and getting nowhere fast. He laughed out loud,
picturing the police scratching their heads as they tried to figure out what
was going on.

Oh, he was good. Smart. Far too smart for Johnson.
It was utterly presumptuous of Detective Johnson to think that he could
actually catch him.

No, Johnson
would be chasing his tail for years to come. In the meantime, there was more
work to be done. A few more warnings to that nosy Shefford woman and then he’d
take her out of the equation completely. And of course, he would lay so many
rabbit trails the good detective wouldn’t know which way to look. The bracelet
was a stroke of genius. He laughed to himself. She probably still hadn’t
noticed that he had taken something of hers. A little trinket to send the
police running in the wrong direction again.

Fools.
That’s what they all were. They didn’t understand him and they never could.
None of them. He’d learned how to play the game, letting them think he was like
them. But he wasn’t. Oh, no. Not even close. He was far superior. They looked
him in the eye and never knew he was laughing at them behind that bland stare
he’d perfected in front of his mirror.

And he
would keep on laughing.

#

It had been a
long morning, and the tension was still lingering on the edge of fear. Zoe’s
father had called her from somewhere outside Columbus, Ohio, with an update on
their travel. They had stopped for breakfast before hitting the road again.

He sounded
upbeat. She could only imagine that the time alone together was giving them a
much-needed opportunity to sort through relational issues.

Licking the
mayo off her fingertips, she stacked the ham on the bread. At least her mother
was safe. Carrying her sandwich to the table, she sat down and stared at it.
Being relieved of one set of worries had only given her more time and
inclination to dwell on another worrisome situation: her attraction to JJ.

Zoe shook her
head. What was she thinking? Nothing was ever going to develop between them.
He’d made that perfectly clear after kissing her.

She pulled the
newspaper closer and perused the top stories. They had fished Ted Matthews’s
car out of the river and he was presumed dead.

Karen Matthews
must be at the end of her rope.

You use the
devil’s powers and I can’t allow that. I’m sorry, but Karen is a Christian.
Karen’s friend’s words echoed in her mind. Taunting her.
Your gift is not
from God.

Enough!

She was going
to settle this once and for all! It took her almost fifteen minutes, but she
finally found her old Bible—the white one her parents had given her as a
child—tucked in the back of a closet with her old Nancy Drew books and a copy
of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Wiping off the
dust, she carried it back into the living room. She flipped randomly through
the pages.

Your gift
is not from God.

You use the
devil’s powers.

Zoe slammed
the Bible closed. She didn’t know where to look—where to find answers to her
questions. She hadn’t been able to find one word about psychics.

“Who do you
call to, Zoe? Do you call on God?”

Zoe shook her
head as if to dislodge Rene’s voice.
“Is your life submitted to Him? Is your
gift submitted to Him? All gifts come from God and are given without repentance.
He has given mankind free will. How you choose to use your gifts, whether for
Him or for His enemy, is up to you.”

“Stop it!” Zoe
whispered forcefully. “Just stop it! I’m not using my gift for evil. I’m using
it for good!”

“There is a
difference between good things and God things.”

Zoe reached
for her purse and dumped the contents out on the table. She fished through
everything—brush, lipstick, tissues, bottle of aspirin, two pens, checkbook,
wallet, receipt from the drugstore—and finally found the card Rene had given
her.

Reaching for
the phone, Zoe read off the number. Then she noticed the scribble at the bottom
of the card.
Read Acts 16:16.

Huh? What
is Acts? Oh, the Bible. Duh.

Zoe reached over and slid the Bible closer as she
slowly sat down. Acts. Acts. She flipped through the pages and finally resorted
to the table of contents in the front. It took her another minute or so to
locate Acts and then chapter sixteen.

With her chin
resting in one fist, she started to read.
Once when we were going to the
place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she
predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by
fortune-telling.

Zoe winced.

This girl
followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most
High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many
days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the
spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that
moment the spirit left her.

When the
owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone,
they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the
authorities.

Zoe made a face as she went back and read it
again. This was what that guy on television had been preaching about. Then she
noticed the little mark by the word
fortune-telling.
She went to the
bottom of the page and found the corresponding mark.
Fortune-telling,
Soothsaying. Greek
manteuomai—
to divine, utter spells under pretense of
foretelling; divination. See Deut. 18:10; Jer. 14:14.

Under
pretense?
Zoe felt her temper rise.
This is such bunk. I’ll show you
pretense!

But as much as
she wanted to slam the book shut and walk away, she grabbed her pen and the receipt
from the drugstore instead and wrote down the two Scriptures on the back of it.
Then she started searching for the first one.

She found
Deuteronomy 18:10:
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or
daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens,
engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who
consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the L
ord
.

Zoe felt like
someone had just punched her in the heart.
Anyone who does these things is
detestable to the Lord?
Detestable? Did He really think of her that way? As
a detestable thing?

She searched for Jeremiah 14:14.
Then the Lord
said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them
or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions,
divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.”

Zoe leaned
back in her chair.
The delusions of their own minds.
Stunned, she
reached over, picked up the phone, and dialed Rene’s number.

“Rene, this is
Zoe.” She propped her elbow on the table and brought her forehead down to rest
on her clenched fist. “I was just reading those Scriptures you wrote down. I
have a question. Does God really think I’m detestable?”

“Oh, Zoe. He loves
you so very much. What you are doing grieves Him, but that’s why He’s gone to
such lengths to get the truth to you. He’s always loved you.”

Zoe stared
down at the Bible, and suddenly a shiver of fear ran down her back. “Rene. You
said the last time we talked that I would have to renounce my gift in the way
it’s being used right now.”

“Correct.”

“And if I do,
then I wouldn’t have it, right? I mean, being able to sense the killer and
stuff, that would all stop, right?”

“I don’t know.
It’s likely, Zoe.”

Oh, no. There was no way she could stop the
killer if she could
n’t use every ounce of her psychic ability to do it.
She had to be able to use it or she’d be a sitting duck.

“Zoe?”

“I can’t,
Rene. I think I understand all this, and I believe I want to do this God’s way,
but not yet.”

“Zoe, don’t
fall for this. It’s a lie. You don’t need to be a psychic anymore.”

“Yes, I do.
One last time, Rene. I have to.”

“No!” Rene
almost sounded as if she was crying. “Please, listen to me, Zoe. God will help
you. He will. You don’t need the gift.”

“I’m sorry,
Rene. I have to do this. It’s important.”

#

JJ stopped at
Zoe’s on his way home from the station. He refused to believe he was just
looking for an excuse to talk to her when he went down to Evidence and signed
out the blanket they’d confiscated from Jessica Matthews’s crib the morning she
was taken. He just needed to apologize. He wanted to make sure she was okay.
And he was forty different kinds of a fool while he knocked on her door, baby
blanket in hand.

She swung open
the door and stood there looking at him without saying a word. Her hair was
tied back with a blue ribbon, almost the same shade of blue as the cotton
drawstring pants and short-sleeve shirt she wore. He looked at her bare feet.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”