Chickasaw County Captive

“Cissy plays hide-and-seek with her sometimes. I guess she’s so small she doesn’t have any trouble squeezing in there behind the boxes.” Sam’s gaze moved away from hers, settling on something behind her. She turned to see J.D. Cooper coming into the waiting area, his face pale and drawn.

“Do you think you could watch Maddy a second?” Sam asked Kristen. He ruffled his daughter’s hair. “Can you sit here with Detective Tandy for me, baby? I’m just going over there to talk to Uncle J.D., okay?”

Kristen wanted to argue, but the little girl had already climbed down from her father’s lap and settled onto a seat beside Kristen, looking up at her with warm green eyes.

“Do you like to color?” she asked Kristen.

“Yeah, I do,” Kristen answered, wishing she were anywhere else in the world.

“THEY’RE TRANSFERRING HER to Birmingham,” J.D. was telling the others as Sam walked up. His voice sounded faint and weary. “They’re afraid she’s got some bleeding in her brain and they’re not set up to handle that here. The helicopter should be here any minute.”

“Is she gonna be okay, Dad?” Michael asked J.D., his eyes wide with fear.

J.D. hugged the boy. “She’s going to be in the best hospital around. The doctors there are going to take good care of her, Mike. I promise.” He looked at his mother. “Y’all keep Mike here, okay? I’ll call with any word.”

“I’m going with you,” Gabe said.

“Thanks, man.” J.D. turned at the sound of wheels rolling across the linoleum floor behind him. At the same time, Sam heard the first faint whump-whump of helicopter blades beating in the distance.

“Mr. Cooper, Life-Flight will be landing any moment.” A nurse in a pair of blue scrubs stepped away from the gurney carrying Cissy and crossed to J.D.’s side. “There won’t be room for you in the helicopter, so if you’d like to get a head start, we’ll take good care of her until they get here.”

J.D. looked at Sam. “I’ll call when I know something.”

Sam gave his brother a hug. “She’s a fighter.” J.D. managed a weak smile and repeated the familiar old mantra. “She’s a Cooper.” He headed out the door, Gabe on his heels. Jake moved up next to Sam, watching them go.

“Hell of a night,” Jake murmured. He looked over his shoulder at Maddy and the detective. “I see little Mad Dog has made a new friend.”

Sam followed his brother’s gaze to find Maddy leaning against Detective Tandy’s arm. Tandy was sitting stiffly, gazing down at the child with a hint of alarm, but Maddy didn’t seem to care. “Detective Tandy apparently isn’t the maternal sort,” he murmured.

“Can’t blame her,” Jake said. “She’s got no reason to think much of motherhood.”

Sam looked at his brother. “What do you mean?”

Jake looked taken aback. “Don’t you know who she is?”

Sam shook his head. “Should I?”

“Oh, that’s right—you’d already left town when that all went down.” Jake lowered his voice. “Fifteen years ago, Molly Jane Tandy brutally killed four of her five children.”

Sam looked across the waiting room at Kristen Tandy, his stomach tightening. The scar on the back of her hand made sudden, horrifying sense. “My God.”

“Kristen Tandy was the oldest. She was thirteen. She’s also the only one who survived.”

Chapter Two

The space behind the cellar wall was almost too small to hold her, but she squeezed through the narrow opening and pulled the loose board over the gap, trying to slow her ragged breathing. Pain tore at her insides, stronger and bloodier than the cuts on her palms and fingers, more wretched than the searing ache on the back of her hand where the hot spatula had branded her. She had pressed her wounded hands to her body as she ran, terrified of leaving a blood trail for Mama to follow.

She held her breath, lungs aching, and listened. The angry shouts had died away a few minutes ago, the only sounds in the now-still house were the soft thud-thud of footfalls on the kitchen floor above.

Her mind was filled with images too grotesque, too profane to process. A whimper hammered against her throat but she crushed it ruthlessly, determined to remain soundless.

She heard Mama’s hoarsened voice from the kitchen above. “Kristy, I know you’re still here. Nobody goes outside today. Come here to Mama.”

Kristen pressed her forehead to the cold brick wall behind the panel and prayed without words, a mindless, desperate plea for mercy and help.

The door to the cellar opened.

Kristen jerked awake, her heart pounding. She scraped her hair back from her sweaty brow and stared at the shadowy shapes in her darkened bedroom, half-afraid one of them would move. But everything remained quiet and still.

On her bedside table, green glowing numbers on her alarm clock read 5:35 a.m. She’d managed about four hours of sleep. More than she’d expected.

She switched on the bedside lamp, squinting against the sudden light. Her fingers itched to grab the cell phone lying on the table next to her, but she squelched the urge. Foley wouldn’t appreciate a predawn call, and it wasn’t as if she had anything to tell him anyway.

As of midnight, when Kristen and Foley called it a night, Cissy Cooper was still unconscious in a Birmingham hospital, her prognosis guarded and uncertain. Sam Cooper and his daughter were spending the next few nights at his parents’ place on Gossamer Lake. The crime scene had offered up plenty for the lab to sift through but no obvious smoking gun. And Kristen had at least two more hours to wait before she could decently start following up on the few leads she and Foley had to work with.

She’d start with the ex-wife, she decided sleepily as she stepped into the shower and turned the spray on hot and strong. Sam Cooper had seemed certain the former Mrs. Cooper wasn’t a suspect, but Kristen believed in playing the odds. Family members—primarily noncustodial parents—were involved in the majority of child kidnappings. And from what little Cooper had revealed during their brief discussion the night before, Kristen had gleaned that Norah Cabot Cooper hadn’t seen her daughter in nearly three years.

She was in the middle of dressing around 7:00 a.m. when her cell phone rang. Stepping into a pair of brown trousers, she grabbed the phone. “Tandy.”

“Sam Cooper here.”

Her feet got tangled in the trousers and she stumbled onto the bed, hitting it heavily. “Mr. Cooper.” She’d given him her business card, with her cell phone number, but he was the last person she’d expected to hear from this morning. “Has something happened?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe.”

She tucked the phone between her chin and shoulder and finished pulling on her pants. “Maybe?”

“My secretary called from my office in Birmingham. She got in early today and found a package for me sitting in front of my office door.”

“What kind of package?” Visions of mail bombs flitted through her head. Maybe an anthrax letter. Cooper was a county prosecutor, almost as good a target as a judge or a politician.

“No return address. No postal mark. Right now building security is examining it, and if they think it’s a threat, they’ll call the cops. But I thought you’d want to know.” Sam sounded tired. She doubted he’d managed even as much sleep as she had. “I should probably go into the office, but—”

“No, stay with your kid. If it turns out to be anything we need to worry about, I’ll handle it.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “I don’t want this case mucked up by police agencies marking territory.”

If that was a warning, she could hardly blame him. She’d seen her share of interagency wrangling during her seven years as a police officer. “I’ll call your office when I get to work, and if I think the package is remotely connected to this case, I’ll go to Birmingham and sort it out myself.”

“Thank you.” After a brief pause he added, “Maddy liked you. You made her feel safer last night when you talked to her. I know that was probably hard on you, considering—you know.”

Her heart sank. So he did know who she was. Everybody in Gossamer Ridge knew. Oh, well, the brief anonymity had been nice while it lasted. “It’s my job,” she said gruffly.

“Thank you anyway.” He rang off.

Kristen closed her phone and released a long breath. He was right. It had been hard dealing with Maddy. Kids in general, really. The psychiatrists had all assured her the prickly, uncomfortable feeling she had around young children would go away eventually, as her memories of that horrible day faded with distance.

Only they hadn’t faded. The pain had receded, even most of the fear, but not those last, wretched memories of her brothers and sisters.