Chasing Second Chances Read online

  “When was the last time you spoke to them?”

  “Saturday. I called them before we boarded the cruise ship.”

  Nick tried to suppress another frown as he scribbled. It had already been six days since the children had been confirmed alive and usually, that was not a good sign.

  “You left the two children with Charlene Morrow?”

  Kate nodded. “I don’t have any relatives who live near here.”

  “And friends?”

  “I asked a friend to check on them every day, but her mother got sick so she had to leave town last Monday.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Anne. Anne Turner. She’s a pediatric nurse.”

  “When did you last speak with her?”

  Kate paused. “Friday. She only left a message on my phone. I haven’t tried to call her.”

  “Can you give me her address and phone number?”

  “Here’s her phone number.” Kate showed him her phone. “I’m not sure I have her mother’s address. All I know is that she’s in Atlanta.”

  Nick copied the number. “How long have you known Charlene?”

  “She only watched the kids for me once before,” Kate confessed with a guilty expression. “But she was highly recommended by Mrs. Duncan, the woman across the street, and I know her mother. She teaches at Lena’s school.”

  “And your impression of her?”

  “She looked responsible enough to me,” Kate said. “I mean I’m sure she has issues like every other girl her age but I thought she was smart and she had a way with kids. She’s studying to become a kindergarten teacher.”

  “I see.”

  Kate’s hands tightened into fists on her lap. “Look, Lieutenant, I know I was wrong to have left the kids with…”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Ms. Evans, nor am I judging you.”

  She unclenched her fists. “Right. I’m sorry.”

  Nick paused for a moment before resuming his interrogation. “Have you noticed if there’s anything missing in the house?”

  “I haven’t really looked around, but all the appliances are still here and the safe doesn’t seem to have been tampered with.”

  “And was the door locked when you came home? The windows shut?”

  Kate nodded.

  “And only you and Charlene have keys?”

  “I had the house keys duplicated for Charlene. My boyfriend, Bryan Knowles, who was on the trip with me, has keys, too and so does my ex-husband, but he’s in Los Angeles.”

  “Is there any reason to believe that the kids may have run away?”

  “That’s impossible,” Kate said. “Lena is smart. She would never leave the house and drag Jack along with her, knowing I’d be coming back. And she would never try to hurt Charlene.”

  Nick felt inclined to believe her and so he decided not to pursue that line of questioning further. “Have you received any calls asking for ransom?”

  “No,” Kate told him. “I would be relieved if I did. At least, that would mean the kids are still alive for sure.”

  Nick said nothing to that, simply scribbling some more. “Do you know anyone who might want to kidnap the children? Like a relative? Someone who has a grudge against you?”

  Kate shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone who would want to take those kids away from me. I mean, why would they?”

  Nick wanted to tell her that kidnappers had plenty of reasons, none of which justified their actions, or that some kidnappers did not need a reason at all, but instead, he kept silent. Just as he wasn’t going to make her any promises to make her feel better, he wasn’t going to say anything to make her feel worse than she already did.

  Deciding he had no further questions for the time being, he stopped twirling his pen, tucking it in his pocket, closed his notebook and stood up. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Evans. If there’s anything else that comes to your mind, anything at all about this case, or if you receive any suspicious calls, you can call the police station or drop by and ask for me.”

  “I will,” Kate assured him. “And if there’s anything you find out…”

  “We’ll let you know at once,” Nick assured her in turn. At least, that was one promise he could make.

  “Whether it’s good news…or bad?” She looked up at him, her lower lip trembling at the last part of the question.

  Nick swallowed the lump in his throat before nodding slowly. “Yes, Ms. Evans. You have my word.”

  She let out a deep breath, her shoulders rising then slumping in exhaustion. “Thank you, Lt. Paulson.”

  * * * *

  Kate watched the police officer walk to the waiting patrol car from the living room window, the paper bag containing Lena and Jack’s combs and toothbrushes and their most recent photographs in one of his hands. He was a good man, she thought, not having tried to comfort her by making her promises he wasn’t sure he could keep and doing his best not to show her any pity even though she could see in his eyes that he felt her pain. She only hoped he was a good enough cop to be able to bring back her children.

  At the renewed thought of Jack and Lena gone, she felt tears once more prick the corners of her eyes and she moved away from the window, sitting on the couch before her knees failed her.

  Instead of reaching for the box of tissue, she reached for Miss Sophie who was on the armchair, hugging the toy to her chest as she allowed the tears to fall.

  Lena.

  She hoped that wherever Lena was, she was all right without Miss Sophie. Once, Lena had accidentally spilled chocolate milk on Miss Sophie and so she had to be brought to the dry cleaners. Lena hadn’t been able to sleep, whining for hours that she wanted Miss Sophie and it was only after Kate lay down beside her, assuring her over and over that Miss Sophie would be just fine and singing songs to her, that she finally did.

  “I hope she’s doing fine, Miss Sophie,” she whispered to the stuffed bunny.

  And Jack, oh, she hoped Jack was all right without his favorite race car under his pillow and that whoever was watching over him had not turned off the lights so that he wouldn’t be scared of the dark.

  “Oh, my babies…”

  She hugged Miss Sophie tighter against her chest, which now heaved as her tears spilled over. Oh, she would do anything, anything just to have them back safe, to see their crooked smiles again, to hear them calling her ‘Mommy’ in their high-pitched voices, to have them in her arms. If…no, when that happened, she vowed that she would be a better mother.

  No, she would be the perfect mother.

  She would never again go anywhere without them, never again tell them she was too tired to play hide-and-seek or watch cartoons with them, never raise her voice at them again…anything, anything just to get them back.

  For a while, she just cried, crying over every memory she had of her kids which, no matter how happy, were tainted by the fear that she would never see her kids again. She tried not to think of that, though, tried not to imagine the worse scenarios for fear they would come true or that she would lose her sanity just thinking of them.

  When the tears had run out, she put Miss Sophie down, the stuffed toy now stained with tears, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. After drinking it, she pulled out a chair from the dining table and sat down to rest, her glance falling on the cordless phone that was on the table where she had set it down after calling the police.

  She thought about calling someone, thinking that now that she had calmed down a little, she didn’t want to be facing the nightmare she was in alone. She wanted someone to talk to.

  But who?

  Both her parents were living out their retirement in luxury at a villa in Hawaii, while her older sister was in Switzerland trying to make the world a better place and her younger sister was in Las Vegas with a bunch of problems of her own. As for friends, the closest friend she had, Anne, was out of town, and all the rest were simply not close enough for her to dump her current problem on. Friendship was one of th
e things she lost after becoming a mother.

  She considered calling Bryan, thinking that she owed him an apology. She decided against it, though, since apologizing was not exactly what she wanted to do at the moment.

  True, she wanted someone to comfort her, but she also wanted someone to really understand what she was going through, someone who could not only ease her pain but share it and tell her not only the things she wanted to hear, but also the things she needed to know.

  There was only one person who came to mind.

  Chapter Five

  Lloyd Marrick stared at the ringing phone on the coffee table and frowned.

  He had just arrived home, his meeting lasting longer than he had expected, and he wanted some peace and quiet. Then, there was the fact that the phone that was ringing was his personal phone and the few calls he received on it usually meant bad news, certainly not the type of calls one wanted to get at the end of a long, exhausting day. Still, this call could be different and so he set down the glass of wine he had been about to drink from, slowly approached the phone and looked at the lit screen.

  Kate.

  Upon reading the name on the screen, his brow relaxed, the image of a woman with shoulder-length black hair and almond-shaped black eyes appearing in his mind as he tapped the ‘Answer’ button before holding the phone to his ear.

  “Kate?”

  “Lloyd.” The worried tone in which she spoke his name caused his brow to furrow again.

  “I thought you were on vacation. Is something wrong?”

  “The kids…Jack and Lena…they’re both missing.”

  He felt a lump form in his throat, which he quickly swallowed. “Missing?”

  “They were kidnapped while I was away,” she explained, her voice nearly breaking. “Oh, Lloyd, I should never have left them. Now, I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  He heard her give a low hum of approval and then there was a click and the line went dead. Even after, though, he kept the phone against his ear as he blankly stared at the glittering skyline of downtown Los Angeles beyond his window, still stunned at the fact that Kate had called.

  His ex-wife had called.

  Not only that, she wanted him by her side. She may not have said it out loud but the plea was clear in her voice.

  The next minute, he was walking out the door.

  * * * *

  Nick walked out of the Morrows’ house and sighed.

  He had hoped that Charlene’s parents would be able to offer him a clue as to where Charlene and the Evans children had disappeared to. To his surprise, however, they did not even know about what had happened until he had told them, explaining that Charlene was their oldest child and that she didn’t like being checked on, and so they were utterly shocked and devastated, Mrs. Morrow breaking into tears, much to Nick’s dismay. Even when she had calmed down, she could not tell him anything, saying that as far as she knew, Charlene did not have a boyfriend or any reason to kidnap the children, insisting that her daughter was as much a victim as the Evans children were.

  Nick understood why she felt that way. It was natural for any mother to want to believe she had raised her child well enough to abide by the laws.

  He wasn’t sure if he felt the same way, though. As the ‘adult’ in the Evans house, Charlene was responsible for the safety of Jack and Lena, and if she did not kidnap them herself—a possibility he considered unlikely since if she was going to kidnap them, she could have done so the day after Kate Evans had left, and the neighbor across the street, Mrs. Duncan, confirmed that she had seen Charlene three days ago—then she had failed to fulfill her responsibility in some way.

  Personally, Nick suspected that Charlene’s boyfriend—the fact that her mother didn’t know she had a boyfriend did not mean she did not have one—might have come to the house and proposed the kidnapping, though he could not tell why he did not do so right away. The drops of blood on the rug and the broken phone indicated a struggle, which could mean that Charlene might have tried to dissuade her boyfriend from his plan and got hit. It could also mean that she and her boyfriend might have fought over something else, in the process of which the boyfriend got violent, and, not satisfied with hitting Charlene, ended up taking her and the kids away to vent his anger out on them, which would explain why there was no call demanding any ransom.

  But then, that latter scenario meant Charlene and the kids were likely dead.

  Nick shook his head. No, it must be the former scenario and perhaps the only reason why the boyfriend had not called was because he was biding his time, or maybe because he wasn’t sure Kate was home yet.

  It was only a suspicion, though. Only the forensics unit could come up with solid information, like who the blood drops belonged to, or who Charlene was talking to on her phone before it got smashed to pieces, or who the fingerprints on the doorknobs—not only on the front door but the doors to the kids’ rooms—belonged to.

  Or at least he hoped they would.

  It would take time, though—processing evidence was not exactly as quick as it was on television—and in the meantime, he would have to go back to his desk to fill out some paperwork and make some calls.

  But first he was going to get himself a cup of strong coffee.

  * * * *

  Kate set down her empty cup of coffee in the middle of the sink.

  She had not really needed the coffee, knowing that she would have stayed awake all night even without it, but now that she had finished a cup, she was glad. Her mind felt clearer and she felt less tired, calmer even, which was strange since she thought coffee made one more anxious. Then again, her mind could just be playing tricks on her.

  Whatever the case, she felt better and she was grateful for it. Now that her mind was clear, she could think about what she could do.

  But what could she do?

  She thought about circulating her children’s pictures on the internet, but decided not to, unsure of what the ill effects of that might be. She thought of consulting a psychic, but dismissed that, too, thinking that she did not know of any reliable psychic and was unsure if one truly existed. She, thought, too, of getting a dog who could sniff out her children’s tracks, but weren’t the police supposed to try that one? Hadn’t they already done so?

  In the end, she could do nothing but wrap her fingers around the locket she wore around her neck and slump on the dining table, her helplessness causing tears to well up again. It was the worst feeling one could feel—helplessness, and a hundred times worse because she was a mother. As a mother, she was supposed to be invincible, she was supposed to be able to work miracles for her children, and yet, she could do nothing. It was bad enough when Jack had gotten sick with hand, foot and mouth disease, and she had simply watched over him, unable to do anything to ease his discomfort or when Lena had cried on her birthday because she couldn’t get a bunny, which Kate could not give her no matter how much she wanted to for health reasons, but this, this was the worst.

  She tried not to wallow in the sickening feeling, tried not to let the tears gush forth. Instead, she got up from her chair, intent on keeping herself busy. If she couldn’t do anything for her kids, then maybe she could do something for herself, or at least, she could do something, which was definitely better than just sitting still.

  She decided to unpack, but stopped halfway through when she saw the presents she was supposed to give to the children—the colorful beaded necklace and the jewelry box decorated with seashells for Lena and the stuffed toy shark and ship in a bottle for Jack. Again, she fought the tears, and winning, she decided to do laundry, hoping that the chore would distract her as it had done in the past.

  To a certain extent, it succeeded, and by the time she was done, sunlight was already drifting in through the windows.

  Morning had come.

  She did not know how another day could begin with her problems still unresolved. In the horror and thriller movies she had watched in her ch
ildhood, the monsters and serial killers were always gone by dawn, and yet she was still living her nightmare, no end to it in sight. Then again, she was not in a movie.

  She placed the folded laundry in the closets where they belonged, then decided to get another cup of coffee, this time with two slices of toast and a scrambled egg. She was not really hungry, but she supposed she had to eat in order to survive. It would do no one any good for her to end up in a hospital.

  When she was done with breakfast, she sent Bryan a message, thinking she could at least try to fix the problems that she could fix, then headed to the bathroom for a bath.

  She took a quick shower and then soaked in the tub, the water feeling wonderful against her skin, exquisite even, soothing and relaxing her.

  As she lay there, immersed in the water which glided against her skin and gently rippled with her every move, she remembered the first few months after Lena had been born. She could hardly take a shower, then, and soaking in the tub was definitely not an option. It had made her view baths as a luxury and not a necessity, and now she appreciated and savored them more.

  Lena…Jack…

  She was suddenly filled with horror at the thought of the void that would ensue if her kids were taken away from her. She had given up practically everything for motherhood – her career, her social life, her hobbies, maybe even her marriage. Her kids were everything to her and without them, she would not be able to call herself a mother and she would be lost.

  She would have nothing.

  She sat up and folded her knees up, hugging them and burying her face in her arms, trying to push away the horrific thought but hardly able to.

  What would she do?

  She sat there in anguish, too absorbed by it to notice anything else, which was why she did not hear the front door opening or footsteps coming up the stairs and she nearly jumped when the bathroom door opened, a confused Lloyd standing in the doorway.

  Lloyd.

  One moment he was standing there and the next he was beside the bathtub, offering his arms to her. She fell into them without thinking, ignoring the fact that she was wet and naked, that she had not seen her ex-husband in months, had not been with him for years and cried on his shoulder.