Chapter 28

28

Jay couldn't sit at the Hostetlers' kitchen table waiting for news a minute longer. Right before the police left, Chief Foster had gotten Jay's—and at least five other people's—contact information. He'd told them that he and Officer Mulaney would be in touch as soon as there was any news. They were supposed to remain calm, keep their phones nearby, and not call the police station unless they had a good, legitimate reason.

"No offense, but you calling one of the officers every ten minutes ain't going to give you much information and it'll make our jobs that much harder," Chief Foster had said.

"I understand," Wayne had replied. Bethanne's parents hadn't looked as if they understood, but they did look too shell-shocked to disagree.

Jay, on the other hand, had been ready to argue, but Lott had placed a hand on his shoulder. "Now ain't the time," he'd said under his breath. "I know how you feel, but you have to think of the big picture—and that's how all of us can help Bethy and Candace."

"It makes sense, but we've been worried sick all night. I can't just sit here."

"You can if you have to." Lott looked sympathetic, but it was obvious that he wasn't going to side with Jay.

Then, after the cops left, Lott had taken him outside. "Look, I know what you're feeling. A lot of questions surrounded Peter's death, and my sister was in the thick of it. More than once I flew off the handle, but it didn't do any good."

"You don't know that."

"Looking back, I can assure you that I do. All I did was cost them valuable time. And, ultimately, make Bethanne half afraid to tell me what the sheriff said when he stopped by."

"That was Sheriff Johnson, though. This is the police in Marion."

"That's true, but the sheriff and Chief Foster are working together. Then there's Ryan, of course."

Jay wasn't following. "What about him?"

"Jay, have you seriously forgotten that Ryan has been spending time with Candace? This man is invested in her being found. I daresay almost as much as you are in Bethanne being found."

"She's your sister. I would've thought you would be more anxious to get answers."

"I am anxious, but they can't give answers they don't have. And what I'm trying to tell you is that getting angry isn't going to help anyone. I carried anger inside of me for years. You know that."

"So we should just sit here and wait?"

"Yeah."

Even if it was the right thing to do, Jay couldn't spend another minute staring at the Hostetlers' kitchen phone or Mr. Evans's cell lying in the center of the kitchen table.

After standing up, he put his coffee cup in the sink. He needed to put on his boots and get out of there.

"Jay, what are you doing?" John asked.

He was tempted to lie and tell Bethanne's daed that he was going to go home. Maybe going home would be the right thing to do too. He knew his parents were worried about Bethanne and him. But he wasn't up for playing games. He wanted to be truthful. At the very least, the Hostetlers deserved his honesty. "I'm going to go out to the woods and look around."

John stood up. "I know you're worried and feel at loose ends, but I don't think it's wise for you to do anything but patiently pray. The police told us to stay near the phone. We should all do that."

"I know what they said. And I've been praying. I promise I have. John, I've even tried to be respectful of you and Martha and the Evanses' decision to let the police handle everything. But Bethanne means something to me." He shook his head, mentally correcting himself. "Nee, she means everything to me. I've loved her all my life. She's finally my girl. I ... I can't sit here any longer."

"I'll go with you," Lott said.

Jay turned to him in surprise. "Why?"

"You know why. That's my sister out there." He pulled a cell phone from his back pocket. "I have my work phone too. If something happens, I'll have a way to call for help."

Lott's cell phone was a good idea, but Jay didn't want the guy to start telling him what to do. "Listen, I'm determined to find them. I'm not going to change my mind, even if the police tell us to go home."

"We're on the same page, Jay."

John frowned. "Boys, what are you going to do if you find the girls' abductor?"

"I reckon I'll do whatever I have to in order to get the girls free," Jay said without missing a beat. He knew they weren't supposed to use violence, but he couldn't think of a single man in their community who wouldn't do the same thing.

Bethanne's father didn't flinch. "All right then."

"If we don't see anything in a couple of hours, we'll come back home, Daed," Lott said.

"If the girls return home before then, I'll let you know," John said while he turned around and went back to his chair in the kitchen.

Then they were outside. After mutually deciding to start where Candace's car had been found, they headed toward the small, well-known trail that led into the woods. After walking a bit, Jay glanced at Lott. "Are you surprised that your father didn't argue?"

"Nee. I'm pretty sure he'd be with us if he thought mei mamm would be okay with that. But he's not going to leave her side. Not with Bethanne in trouble again."

"So, do we need a plan?"

"For walking in the woods and trying to find my sister and cousin?"

"Yeah."

"Keep your eyes open, your ears ready, and pray as much as you can."

"I'd say that about covers all the bases," Jay said in a dry tone as they entered the woods.

As they walked along the path, the first thing Jay noticed was that it was far from being unused or abandoned. "Look at some of these patches of grass," he said as they walked. "They've been trampled on recently."

"You're right. Someone's been here."

"Maybe the guy took the girls this way." Sure, he might be jumping to conclusions, but it did make sense. At least, he thought so.

Lott crouched down and ran a hand over the trampled weeds. "I thought the police thought they left in a car." Looking up at Jay, he added, "Or was that just a rumor?"

"I don't know. But since we can't jump in a car to look, let's figure the girls were definitely taken away on foot."

"Okay. So..."

"So, what if the guy forced Candace and Bethanne to go into the woods? If that was the case, they would've had to enter this way," Jay said.

Standing back up, Lott looked down the path. "Jay, everyone looked around in the woods last night. All these bent branches and trampled sections of grass are likely from that. No one was thinking about tracking them down in the light of day."

"I hear you..." He let his words drift off. He didn't want to sound ridiculous or make Bethanne's brother more alarmed than he already was. But he honestly felt as if the Lord was nudging him in this direction. Prodding him to imagine what could have happened if a man was desperate and the two women he was taking were so concerned about each other that they'd do whatever he asked so the other wouldn't be hurt.

"Go ahead and say it," Lott bit out.

"All right." He took a deep breath. And with that, he tossed his pride out the window. It didn't matter if he was right or wrong. It didn't matter what Lott thought of his ideas. All that did matter was locating Bethanne and her cousin. "Lott, what if the police are wrong? What if the three of them did go into the woods? If they did go deep ... where would they go?"

Everything in Lott's posture changed. Now, instead of arguing over what he believed to be true, he was thinking about possibilities. "I couldn't say, Jay. I'm drawing a blank."

"Help me think. Come on, we can do it."

"Jay, it's not that I don't want—"

"Come on. Just think about it. We grew up around here. We tracked deer and wild turkeys in these woods with our daeds. We've fished in the streams and creeks. We even played hide-and-seek in the summers when we were kids. We know this area pretty good. We sure know it a whole lot more than Officer Mulaney. His heart might be Candace's, but he's from up north. The woods here might not make a lot of sense to him."

"You're right," Lott said slowly. "If someone doesn't know this place, they could get lost real easy in the holler."

"There's a lot of places back here that nobody goes to. But there are some places that we've probably seen a hundred times but don't even notice anymore." Thinking about it, Jay added, "Some of those old cabins even have roads leading up to them that are half covered up with vines and bushes."

"Right." Staring into the densest part of the foliage, he lowered his voice. "If this guy took the girls into the woods, he would have to know them well too. It would have to be someone who grew up here just like us. And he wouldn't take them into the woods just to wander around in the dark. He'd have known where to go. He'd have to know of someplace where he could hide them."

"Maybe even keep them there for a while," Jay said. He hated the thought of that, but he couldn't deny the possibility.

Lott's expression darkened. No doubt he was doing the same thing Jay was—imagining how scared Bethanne and Candace would be. With obvious effort, he cleared his throat. "Okay. Let's say that was the guy's plan. He was going to take the two of them to some hidden place out in the woods."

"And ...?"

"What I'm wondering is how he got them there."

"It's obvious, don't you think? If the guy knows these woods, he knows where all the paths are."

Lott shook his head. "No. Think about the logistics. Think about actually making someone go where they don't want to go. How do you do that?"

"You force them."

"Or scare them."

"Right," Jay said. "I'm sure the girls were scared to death. But I don't get where you're going with this."

"Okay. Pretend I'm the sick guy abducting Bethanne and Candace. And you? You are Candace."

He folded his arms across his chest. "And?"

"No, come on, Jay. Work with me here." Lott grabbed his wrist. "So, here we are. I'm bad, you're Candace, and you're getting dragged through the woods." Lott yanked on his wrist. Hard enough to make him stumble forward a couple of inches.

"Stop. I get it."

"Fine. Now what about Bethanne?"

"What about her?" He was losing patience. "He took both of them."

"But how, Jay?" Lott pressed. "You know those trails as well as I do. They aren't wide."

At last he got it. "They aren't wide at all. Most of them can barely be called a trail. They're little more than a narrow line of dirt in between a bunch of trampled foliage."

Looking pleased that Jay was finally with him, he added, "Think about it. Pulling one woman along this section is hard enough. But how would he have gotten the both of them willingly?"

"They didn't go willingly. That's the point. They were abducted. They weren't willing."

Lott's voice grew louder. More impatient. "Even if he had a gun, he couldn't point it at both of them at the same time. If they were on the sidewalk or something, I could see it being possible. But think about the way those old hickory trees grow around Cripple Creek."

At last he caught on. "You're right. Either he had a gun aimed at only one of them ... or he had the girls tied together."

"And I can't see either girl attempting to escape if the other was trapped. Though they'd probably try to convince the other to go," Lott murmured. "I could see Bethanne telling Candace to run while they're trying to cross the creek."

"No, it would be Candace who was in his grip," Jay said. "If it's Candace's stalker, he would keep her no matter what."

Lott nodded. "Candace feels the same way about Bethanne as the rest of us in the family do. Even though she's come a long way, we all think of her as fragile. Helpless."

"Even though she's not."

"It don't matter if she's as strong as an ox now. We still think of her as weak. Candace would encourage Bethanne to escape—unless—"

"Unless she was tied to Candace," Jay finished. "That must be what happened. He had them secured together in some way. Then he pulled them both along."

Looking back out into the woods, Lott froze.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing new. I was just thinking about that broken bridge on Cripple Creek. Do you recall what's on the other side of it?"

"Yeah. That abandoned shack."

"It blends in, but I went in there once. Did you?"

"Nee. I ... I'd heard it was haunted. I was too scared when I was little and then didn't care about it when I was older."

"I walked by there sometime last summer. I was with Melonie. She asked me about it, and so we peeked in." His voice growing excited, Lott said, "Jay, that could be it! When Melonie asked me about the shack, I realized that it had been there so long I hardly even saw it."

"You're right. I've taken it for granted. Like it was an oak or something."

"It's secure in there, Jay." Lott pressed a hand on the tree trunk behind him. "It looked to have a fairly new lock on it. Mel thought that was weird, given that it used to be a deer blind back in the day. I told her that we would likely never know why someone would put a lock on it."

"Unless they had a reason to keep someone out. Or keep someone in." Feeling as if the Lord was guiding them, Jay stepped forward. "Let's go."

"Wait. Do you think we should tell the cops or something?"

"Nee. We don't have the time to waste. And if we call, they're going to tell us to stay put or ask us a bunch of questions."

"That's probably true, but we've got to tell someone. I'll call my parents and tell them. Then at least someone knows. In case something happens."

"Like we get shot?"

"Yeah. Like we get shot. Hurry." As Lott made the call, Jay all of a sudden thought of Seth Zimmerman. He'd always thought that he'd never be like Seth. That no amount of anger or fear could convince him to knowingly hurt another person.

Now he realized that he'd been completely na?ve. If their hunch was right and some guy was holding Candace and Bethanne in that old hunting shack, well, he was going to do whatever he could to save them.

Whatever it took.

Even if someone looking at it from the outside might believe it was very, very wrong.

At the moment, he couldn't care about that less.

"I called home. My father thinks it's a stretch ... but maybe not impossible."

"Did he tell you not to go?"

"Nee. All he did was tell me to be careful ... and to tell you the same thing. He's going to call the police station now."

"Let's go, then."

Lott glanced back as he walked away. "Already on my way."