Chapter 54
Chapter
Fifty-Four
Wren was still on the bottom step when Luke started giving orders.
“Everybody out in the hall.” He didn’t turn around. “We need to clear the school.”
“You think it’s a bomb?” Wren nearly whispered the words.
“I think we can’t take any chances.”
“Sheriff.” Nash spoke from behind her. “Are you calling somebody?”
“Nearest bomb tech’s out of Knoxville.” Luke’s jaw worked. “Hour out, hour to work it.”
“Are you calling him?” Nash asked.
“I’m thinking.” He stared down at the box. “It’s not taped.”
Nash moved up behind Wren. “Sheriff—”
“Flaps are just folded over each other. Anybody could’ve opened it.” Luke crouched. “And he carried it in one hand. Watch the footage again. He had it up on his hip as if it were empty.”
“That doesn’t make it safe,” Rowe said, his face paler than it was before.
“No.” Luke stayed where he was. “But he walked it past a hundred kids with it up on his hip. He wasn’t afraid.”
Nobody said anything.
“We don’t have a lot of time right now.” Luke looked back down the stairs. “Get everybody out. All the way to the fence. Wren, that means you too.”
“I’m not leaving.” She crossed her arms.
“Wren.”
Her gaze locked on his. “Luke, just open it. Please. I have to know. What if whatever is inside leads us to Mason?”
His jaw tensed. “I’m nearly certain this isn’t an explosive. If I really thought it was, I wouldn’t open it. Having it checked first is protocol.”
“We trust your instincts,” Nash said.
Luke hesitated one more minute. Then he pulled gloves off his belt and worked them on, one hand and then the other.
He didn’t touch the box. He turned his head, working the seams with his eyes. Then he put his face down close to the cardboard where the flaps crossed.
Finally, he took the corner of the flap between two fingers and eased it up.
Nobody made a sound. Wren had both hands on the rail.
He reached in.
Wren couldn’t breathe as time seemed to turn into a slow-moving plasma.
He lifted something out and held it up.
A gray, floppy rabbit.
Wren gasped and sat down hard on the bottom step as her legs gave out. Concrete drove up through the hip she’d landed on Sunday night. She didn’t care. Nothing mattered right now except Mason.
“That’s Mason’s,” Cody muttered, his shoulders slumping with defeat.
Nash put his hand on her shoulder. The motion somehow helped to ground her.
“He keeps it on his pillow.” Wren’s voice came out gravelly, like she’d been screaming, though she hadn’t. “He’s had it since he was two. The person who broke into my house . . . he must have taken it.”
Luke came toward them with the stuffed animal held away from his body in both gloved hands.
Wren rose to meet him.
“He didn’t take that rabbit out of your cabin because he wanted it as a keepsake,” Nash said. “He took it so he could send a message.”
Luke put the rabbit into an evidence bag and handed it off to a deputy. Then he walked down the hall pulling off a glove.
He glanced at Nash. “Walk with me.”
Nash fell in beside him, while Cody came off the wall without invitation and took Luke’s other side.
“I’m calling the Bureau.” Luke stripped the second glove and shoved both in his pocket.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Nash said.
“I’ve got men stationed on the highway leading out of town.” Luke stopped walking. “But I need the gap roads shut before dark, and I don’t have enough manpower. I’ve pulled most of my guys from another scene, but I’m still short. I’m going to call the highway patrol and state police to help.”
A map of the area appeared in his mind. There were too many roads. Nighttime was coming too fast.
They needed a better way to lock down this area.
“What about an Amber Alert?” Cody asked.
“They’ll want a vehicle description,” Luke said.
“You could push anyway,” Cody said. “You’ve got an abductor on camera, right? That’s more than most of them get.”
“Let me see what I can do,” Luke said.
“What about a search?” Cody continued to push. “I can have twenty men here in an hour. We can canvas this whole area.”
Luke paused. “Mason isn’t lost out in those woods, Cody. People searching fields is only going to clog up what we need to do.”
“I’ve got to do something!” Cody’s jaw tightened, and he closed his eyes as if shutting out the helplessness lingering there.
“You can help me by searching out cameras in the area,” Luke said. “Every gas station and market and church parking lot between here and the interstate. I need to know which businesses have them.”
Cody’s eyes brightened. “I can do that.”
“Make a list and let me know.”
Cody was already moving away. As he did, Luke’s phone rang, and he stepped away to answer.
Nash stepped back and let everyone work around him.
Wren stood at the far end of the hall with her arms crossed over her chest. A woman in a windbreaker had a clipboard out, asking her something, and Wren answered without looking at her.
Everything in Nash wanted to cross that hall and pull Wren into his arms again.
But he didn’t. Not now.
Luke ended his call. “Prine’s leaving Pilcher Road. She’s on her way here.”
“Good.”
“She’ll want to talk to you.” Luke moved toward the doors. “I need to do a few things before she gets here. Can you help my team by looking at a map of the area? I need every exit to the town covered—even the backroads.”
“I’m on it.”
Luke left, and Nash put his back to the wall.
Lord, Mason’s just a kid. Please be with him right now. Help us to find him. Help him to be okay. I’m begging You.
By five that evening, a whirlwind of activities had already happened.
Wren’s sisters had arrived at the school. They’d comforted her before jumping in to help out. Mom had stayed home with Christian. They all thought it was for the best, and it helped that Dad was there with her.
Nash and Cody were busy doing something—she wasn’t exactly sure what.
Wren had talked to FBI Special Agent Prine and given her all the relevant information. The woman didn’t seem especially friendly, but she did seem competent.
When she was done with the interview, Wren wandered outside to get some fresh air.
The parking lot had been cleared—school staff and students had been allowed to leave after each vehicle was checked. Then it had filled up again.
Wren looked at the trucks and church vans parked along the fence. People stood in clusters with their hands in their pockets, waiting on someone to tell them where to go or what to do. They just wanted to help.
That was Fog Lake for you. When it mattered, the town pulled together.
Two folding tables had appeared inside the cafeteria doors with coffee urns on them. A woman Wren didn’t know was writing names on a legal pad, and the line to sign it went back to the trophy case.
Two tips had come in on the phone number investigators had put out. A man at a store in Sevierville and a woman who’d seen a boy in a truck on the state route.
Both of the leads had been checked, and neither was Mason. Luke had told her to expect that.
But Wren hated feeling so helpless. She squeezed the skin between her eyes and vowed to hold herself together. It was becoming harder and harder, however.
Nora came up beside her at the flagpole and put a hand on Wren’s back. “I just talked to Mom. She’s doing okay.”
“What did you tell Christian?” Wren asked.
“That there’s something happening at the school tonight that we need to deal with,” Nora said. “He seemed to understand.”
Wren let out a breath. Hearing about this would probably stir up so many bad memories for him, and he’d already been through so much. Would the police want to talk to him? Could the same person who’d taken Christian also have taken Mason?
Her heart beat harder. The truth was that law enforcement might want to talk to Christian. But since Christian couldn’t remember anything, it probably wouldn’t do any good.
“Prine was supposed to be at the house at two.” Nora rubbed her arms. “She called Mom around one-thirty and postponed it. Said something came up.”
Something had. Wren just hadn’t known what yet.
“I keep waiting to wake up,” Wren murmured.
“I know.” Nora’s hand slid off her back. “Me too.”
Wren watched as a man lifted a stack of flyers out of his truck bed. She hadn’t given anybody a picture of Mason, but someone had found one somewhere—probably through the school’s class photos. Her gut lurched at the thought of seeing her precious son’s face on those papers.
“When Christian disappeared, they wouldn’t let me go out with the search parties,” Nora said. “I wanted to. But they said no.”
“They told me the same thing,” Wren said.
“Instead, I handed out water. It seemed so lame at the time.”
“Everything about that time is just a nightmare, isn’t it? Just like this. I never thought I’d have to relive those days.” A tear trickled down Wren’s cheek.
“I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Wren.”
She leaned into her sister, and the two of them sat there a moment with their own thoughts.
Wren had spent a lot of time mad at God. Now it all seemed silly.
The lyrics from “Softly and Tenderly” came back to her.
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching, Watching for you and for me.
Was Jesus still watching and waiting for her?