Page 22

TWENTY-TWO

B ryce held Penny, needing her closeness and warmth to calm his own nerves as much as to offer her this safe place. He’d never seen her this shaken before.

And yeah, he could admit he felt it too. Someone had gotten the drop on him. He was supposed to be here to protect Penny and her family. Show her she could depend on him. Instead, he’d been knocked out cold within the first few minutes. Now that he had her in his arms, he wasn’t going to let her go.

Lord, be our strength. Be with Libby and the kids.

But there was still so much about this woman he didn’t know. Like why he’d woken up to find her rocking and hyperventilating in the middle of the pantry.

“Doing okay?” he asked her.

“I’m ready to get out of here.”

“Let’s see what we can do about that.”

The door was locked. Even with a swift kick to break the locking mechanism, the door didn’t budge. “They must’ve blocked it with something. Any tools in here?”

Penny wrapped her arms around herself. She shuddered as she looked around. “Not that I can see. We need to get word to someone or find something to break down the door.”

Get word to someone. Bryce felt his pockets. “What kind of bad guys are these? They let me keep my phone?”

“Thank God.” She leaned into the door, some of the tension in her shoulders relaxing.

“Looks like I missed calls. Jude. Jason Woods. Olivia.” He scrolled down the screen. “What’s going on?”

“Right now we just need to get my sister and the kids.”

Bryce pushed aside the unease about the list of missed calls. “I’ll call the rescue team. They’ll be here quickly.” Bryce made the call to dispatch, explaining the kidnapping, and then gave them the address. “Send the cops out to look for those kids ASAP. You can send the rescue squad here to get us out.”

“Yes, sir, I have a squad car on the way. But the rescue squad is out on another call.” She was new, someone he hadn’t met yet. “Do you need me to stay on the phone with you?”

What he needed was to get Penny out of this pantry ASAP. But it wouldn’t help her to get upset, and it certainly wasn’t the dispatcher’s fault. “We’re good.”

He called Izan instead. Then tried Jude and Olivia. No answer with any of them. He tried crewmate Zack Stephens next. Thank goodness he answered on the first ring.

“Hey, we need help. Can you get any of the off-duty guys and come help us out?” Bryce explained what had happened.

“I’ll grab Izan and we’ll be there as soon as we can, but we’re out in the boonies. Got called in to help support the on-duty crew with a field fire, but they’re sending us back. So it will be a little bit before I can get there. Can you hold out?”

“Believe me, we’re not going anywhere. But get here as soon as you can.”

He ended the call. Now he just needed to keep Penny calm while they waited.

Her breathing was starting to speed up again. But it was probably better to let her know they were in for a bit of a wait.

He took her hands in his and helped her sit down on the floor. “Stephens and Izan will be here, but they’re stuck out in the remote part of the county, so it will be a little bit longer than we thought.”

“What?” Her voice squeaked. He’d never seen her this scared. She’d been fearless throughout the whole Diego Sosa thing. Seeing this side of her didn’t take away from her appeal though. It only made him care more, deepened the desire to see her safe.

“I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

Her eyes searched his face, pinging back and forth. “You probably think I’m nuts.” She released a humorless chuckle.

“I’m guessing there’s a really good reason enclosed spaces freak you out. I mean, last time I saw you in a closet, a bomb had just gone off, so there’s that.”

He gently caressed her hands, trying to massage some warmth back into her fingers.

She closed her eyes, dropped her head down to her knees. “I thought I was over this.”

“Over what?” Yes, he wanted to hear what had her so terrified, but he wouldn’t push.

She lifted her head. “I keep seeing her body. And the spiders.” Her voice sounded small, far away.

“Whose body?”

“She was our next-door neighbor for a short time. She’d make us cookies and bring them over. But I’ve worked so hard to forget those days that I can’t even remember her name now.”

Bryce moved next to her, tucked her close to help fight off the chill. She didn’t resist. “I’m sure you have a good reason for not wanting to remember.”

She sniffed. “I hated that duplex. We had a nice home growing up, but after my mom got sick and died, my dad ended up losing it. Had to move into that rundown rental in the middle of my fourth grade year. But the elderly lady next door was kind. She was the only good thing about that place.”

Bryce’s heart squeezed. “I didn’t realize your mom died when you were that young.”

“She died right before my ninth birthday. And my dad…he fell apart.”

“He really loved her, huh?”

“We all did.” Her voice wobbled. “She was everything. The glue that held us together. She was amazing.”

“And your dad didn’t handle the loss well, I take it?”

“He just wasn’t there.” There was a sharp edge to her words. “Ever. When he was physically with us, he always seemed like he wanted to be somewhere else. I can’t tell you how many times we went to bed hungry because he was too out of it to realize we hadn’t had dinner or there was no food.”

“He didn’t feed you?”

“I think he was so wrapped up in his pain he simply forgot about those basic necessities. I understand it more now, but back then I didn’t. And I was an angry kid. Angry that my mom was gone. Angry that my dad didn’t seem to care about us girls. Angry that it was up to me most of the time to get what we needed.”

He kissed the top of her head, wishing with all his heart he could take away her pain. “So you stepped up and took care of your sisters. Are you the oldest?”

“No, I’m the middle sister. Libby is oldest. Tori is younger than me. But we pretty much raised ourselves.”

“So your dad didn’t know what to do with three grieving daughters.”

He almost felt bad for the guy.

“That’s one way of putting it. And it all came to a head that one night.”

“What happened?”

Penny scooted in closer to him. “I needed to make a papier-maché project for school and needed flour. Dad kept saying he’d get it, then wouldn’t. Libby tried to tell me not to bother him, but he was supposed to be taking care of us, you know? So when he came home from work late…again without the flour, I went off on him. And he just looked at me and said, ‘Buck up, Pen. If you need something, go figure out how to get it yourself. Don’t ever depend on anyone else. Including me.’ So I did. I went next door to borrow some flour. I knocked on the door and thought I heard the old lady inside. She didn’t hear very well, so I walked into the house like I’d done before. In the kitchen, the basement door was open. I went downstairs, and there on the floor was the old lady. Dead. A couple of spiders crawling on her. I ran back up the stairs, but someone locked the door behind me. Later we found out the lady had been robbed by her own son. He’d pushed her down the stairs and locked me in with her.”

Bryce held her tighter. “You were trapped? With a dead body? How long until you were rescued?”

“Not until the next afternoon.”

“You were trapped all night ?” He was ready to go toe to toe with Penny’s father himself until he remembered he’d already passed away. What kind of dad didn’t realize his daughter was missing all night?

“When I wasn’t there to get on the bus for school, Libby realized something had happened to me. She’s the one that called the police. They couldn’t get ahold of my father because, surprise, surprise, he’d lost his job and never told us, so they didn’t know where to find him. They tried looking for me at school and other places. It wasn’t until they knocked on the old lady’s door to get the neighbors involved in the search that they finally heard my screaming and found me.”

“No wonder basements freak you out.”

“And spiders.”

“I’m so sorry. But we will get out of here. I promise.”

“I know.” She squeezed his arm.

“So can I ask…what did your dad do after all this?”

“CPS got involved. Threatened to take us away. Dad got his life back on track. Sorta. Found a job. He made sure we had food and clothing. But”—she lifted her chin and sat up, pulling away from Bryce a bit, almost as if in defiance—“that trust was broken. He was supposed to be there for us. Protect us. He didn’t even know I was gone. He was that…broken. And I decided then and there if that was what true love did to people, I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

Seeing that resolve in her big green eyes, it became clear. “Is that why you ran away from here last year?”

She scooted away further. “Bryce…you have to understand. Before Mom, my dad was a good man. I had no doubt when Mom was alive that he’d fight to the death for us, that he loved us, cared for us. And he was so fun. But when she died, he became a completely different person. Loving her destroyed the man I’d grown up with. And the last man I let myself get involved with wasn’t any better.”

“Are you still not over the Ashlee thing?”

“I’m not talking about you.”

So there had been someone.

“What did he do?” And who was he? Bryce was ready to take him down.

“Someone I had no business falling for. He’s the reason I left the ATF.”

“Was he part of one of your investigations? A suspect?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Worse. He was my boss.”

Bryce was ready to hunt the man down, but he didn’t dare say a thing. He might lose it completely.

Penny opened her eyes, stared blankly at the ceiling. “He told me it would be fine. That he wanted to marry me. And of course I couldn’t tell anyone. Not even Jude, who was my partner at the time, or I would’ve been fired. I thought Carter had my back though. Would protect me, and once we were married it would be worth it. So I kept waiting. Then one night I walked into his office and found him cheating on me. With another woman in the bureau. An intern.” She dropped her gaze to Bryce. “So I left. And I promised myself I wouldn’t depend on a man like that again. Ever.”

“Not every man is like that. I’m not like that.”

“But where you see love, all I see is a lot of potential for heartbreak and destruction. A weakness someone might exploit.”

“But real love makes us stronger. Better. Look at my parents. Jude and Andi. And what about right now? Penny, we’re good together. Isn’t it helping that you’re not stuck here alone? That we can lean on each other?”

“I’m not denying it works out great for some. Just not me. I can’t let myself be that dependent. That weak.”

“But sometimes when we’re at our weakest, we finally see what we need.”

“What do you mean?”

He might as well lay it all out there. “I know what it’s like to be broken and weak, because when I realized you weren’t coming back, I fell apart. Completely. But it was then that I also found I needed someone a whole lot bigger than me to put me back together. My mom, Andi, Logan, and I found that faith Jude had been talking about was real. That man we met at the bakery, John, he leads a discipleship group, a Bible study I go to.”

She looked at him then. “You believe that God stuff?”

“Yeah. I do.”

Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew soft, almost like she was talking to herself. “That’s what it is.”

“What what is?”

“The change. I knew something had changed in you. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.”

She saw a difference? Maybe God was working in him after all.

But it sounded like it would take more convincing to show her that love wasn’t always so self-destructive. Because as far as he was concerned, it was love that beat clearly in his heart for this amazing woman. He wanted a chance to show her that it was worth it. That he was worth it. That God was worth it.

“Penny, I believe that God is real. That He cares. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but we’re going to get out of here and do everything we can to get your family back.”