Chasing Amanda Read online

  Molly came to in a fog, the pungent odor of death, the smell that had accompanied her dreams of Amanda, smothered her senses. Her palm bled through the bandage, caked with mud and broken leaves. She sat up and looked around frantically, putting together the pieces of what she’d seen and trying to breathe without tasting the sickening stench. The silence around her was unnatural. Molly’s heart continued to race as she sat on the chilly ground, gathering her thoughts. She scrambled forward, grabbed the flashlight, turned it on, and scanned the area, nervously pulling herself to her feet and grimacing as her ankle complained about the hundred ten pounds of her weight. She spotted her bag a few feet away and reached for it, pulling her hand back quickly, the ground beneath the bag was hot. With the exception of the leaves and dirt being unusually dry, she noticed nothing remarkable. She quickly removed her notebook from her backpack and sketched the area, scribbling details about every tree, branch, and bush. She pushed leaves over the spot where her bag had lain and suddenly felt as if she were not alone. She spun around, facing the dark night. Amanda’s killer’s face flashed before her and disappeared just as quickly. “Shit!” She shoved the notebook into her pack, hitched it over her shoulder, and with the flashlight to guide her, sprinted back out of the forest, oblivious to the pain in her ankle.

  Molly was mauled by Stealth and Trigger as soon as she entered the house—all paws and tongues—reminding her of what her supposed mission had been when she’d left the house earlier in the evening. In a voice loud enough for Cole to hear, she said, “Where were you guys? I looked all over those woods for you.” Molly hurried into the mudroom and stashed her bag behind the freezer. She eased her feet out of her muddy shoes and wriggled her ankle to see if it was any better without them. It was not. She washed her hands and face, patted dry her bandage, and went to face Cole.

  The television blared in the small family room. It was not uncommon for Molly to wake up to hear the television as far upstairs as the bedroom and to find Cole fast asleep in front of it. Tonight, he was awake, sitting in his t-shirt and jeans and talking on his cell phone.

  “She has no clue,” Cole said with a smirk.

  Molly walked quietly into the room.

  “Gotta go,” Cole ended the call and stared intently at the movie playing before him.

  “Hi, honey,” Molly said. “When did the dogs come back?” Her efforts at sounding casual were strained. She sat next to Cole and stretched her arm casually across the back of the sofa.

  He leaned forward, his eyes remained trained on the television. “Maybe an hour ago.”

  Molly cringed. She glanced at the wall clock and went for a fast recovery, “I looked all over the woods behind our house. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me yelling.”

  Cole turned to look at her with the “uh-huh” face she’d come to know all too well.

  “I went across White Ground and searched the Hoyles Mill Conservation Trail for a bit, thinking that they crossed into those woods.” Molly remembered that the Hoyles Mill Trail, part of the county’s Legacy Open Space project, ran through the woods adjacent to White Ground Road and continued south, abutting the Adventure Park. She made a mental note to check out that area and rationalized that it wasn’t a complete lie if she planned on doing it.

  Cole gently took Molly’s wrist in his warm hand. He ran his finger along the dirty bandage. “You know, Mol, I would have gone with you,” he said. “I don’t like you in those woods alone.”

  Molly was unsure if he was talking about those woods looking for dogs, or if he knew where she had really gone but was not yet ready to call her on it directly. She looked away. “I know,” she said tentatively. “I was going stir crazy with the stress of the day, and I was worried about the dogs.”

  “Uh-huh,” he laid her hand on her thigh and turned back to the television.

  Molly desperately wanted to tell him the truth. She hated to lie to him, but she didn’t want to face his disregard for her senses. She could just imagine what he would say: What you think of as the Knowing is really just your repressed anxiety about Amanda and your desire to do something about it, or something just as scientifically explainable.

  Cole turned to her with a mixture of concern and anger on his face. “Baby, you can’t keep putting yourself at risk.” He said seriously, “You shouldn’t be in the woods at all. You should be here, with me.” He reached his arm around her and pulled her close. “You’re going to hurt yourself so badly that you won’t be able to run, and then you’ll be miserable.” His words were spoken with sheer love and concern, and just a sprinkling of frustration. Thankfully, what Molly had picked up on as anger had dissipated.

  She snuggled into him, “I know,” she said. “I had to go.” It was the truth, plain and simple.

  Six

  Pastor Lett looked down at the scratches on her arms and was glad it was fall and that long sleeves were in order. She was exhausted from the prior evening’s scene and the chase that had ensued. It had taken her hours to catch and settle down the kid, and when she had, her old body wouldn’t move as fast as she’d needed it to. She needed to find a way to ensure that the kid could not escape again.

  Figuring out a way to seal off the entrance to the house from the cellar wouldn’t be difficult, she knew, she simply rued the energy it would take to do the job. In all of the years she’d been caring for the Perkinson House and utilizing the cellar, no one had ever found the entrance behind the sofa. She wondered how her observations could have been so sloppy. She’d been doing this for so many years that it had become a routine that she no longer enjoyed, a duty she loathed.

  The idea that the kid could have wandered out of the house and down the driveway scared the dickens out of her. Her heart beat faster just thinking of the scene that could have transpired. She’d board up the windows and doors, just in case—lock the doors from the outside, too. Her heartbeat settled as she formed her plan. I’ve put enough fear in that kid that it won’t happen again, she thought, and if the kid did get into the house again, there would be no escape. Pleased with her plan, she headed to the shower, whistling.

  Molly tossed and turned all night, the events of the day had taken their toll on her body and on her mind. She awoke in an anxious state, thinking about Tracey, and vowing not to let her become the next Amanda. She sat up on the edge of the bed, her favorite of Cole’s t-shirts tangled around her waist, her sleeping shorts uncomfortably bunched around the tops of her thighs. She began to stand, and a searing pain shot through her ankle. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, the bandage scratched her eyelid. She sighed and turned to wake Cole just as the radio sang out in alarm.

  Cole rolled over and reached his arms around Molly’s waist from behind. She pried his hands away, feeling guilty. Cole would never approve of her plan to help find Tracey. She knew that Tracey wasn’t Amanda, but she believed that if she could find Tracey, it would help her make amends for what she had, or hadn’t done, for Amanda. Maybe I am losing my mind, Molly thought. “Come on, Cole. You’ll be late,” she said, and limped into the bathroom.

  “Ankle still bad?” Cole asked.

  “Not really,” Molly lied. She knew he would tell her not to run, a feat she wasn’t even sure she could pull off, but she didn’t want to be told what to do. She continued through her morning routine with high hopes of making it to her run.

  She caught a look from Cole as they passed each other entering and exiting the bathroom. “It gets a little better with each step,” she said, feigning cheerfulness.

  “Mm-hmm,” he said. “Don’t be stupid, Mol. If it hurts, don’t run.” He stood in the bathroom in his boxer briefs looking very sexy and very sleepy. At forty-three, he still took Molly’s breath away. She was reminded of the first time they had stayed together overnight. After hours of newly-finding-each-other sex, they had lain together for the entire next day, reading, talking, and dozing.

  Molly turned her back to Cole and lifted her foot onto the bed to begin wrapping her ankle
for her run.

  “Molly,” Cole wrapped his arms around Molly’s waist again, turning her to face him. “You’ll be sorry if you overdo it. Don’t you remember how you hated not being able to run for months on end when you had tendonitis?”

  “Yes, I remember,” she said, more testily than she had anticipated. “I’m not going to hurt myself this time. If it hurts, I’ll just walk.” She smiled, “Promise.”

  He kissed the top of her head, “Good.” He walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower, “What’s on your schedule today?”

  Molly became rigid, fearing the untruth that hung on the tip of her tongue. She’d already calculated the time it would take to scan the papers for updates on Tracey, check out the woods, stop by the police station, and maybe even hand out flyers. Molly was excited to finally have an agenda, even if she knew that this day’s particular agenda was one of which her husband might not approve.

  After a moment of silence, Cole said, “Mol?” He paused, and the flow of the shower water told Molly that Cole was washing his face. “I know you’re worried about that little girl,” he said between splashes. “Are you going to try and help?”

  That was Molly’s in—she wouldn’t have to lie after all. She paced, fidgeting with her shirt. “Oh, you know me,” she said. “I’ll nose around a bit and see what I can find out.” She heard the water turn off.

  Cole stepped out of the bathroom with a pale green towel wrapped around his waist. “And?” he asked.

  Molly looked at his strong body wet with steam, his hair slicked away from his broad forehead, and the seriousness of his eyes. Cole’s looks commanded attention, and, whether he was happy, mad, or sleeping, it didn’t matter, there was something extraordinary about him—the square of his jaw, the ever-present darkening of the lower half of his face, where, within hours, a five o’clock shadow would settle in, like salt and pepper sprinkled on his upper lip, down his cheeks, and into the little dimple in his chin. He walked into a room and people gawked, women and men alike. He spoke softly and they wanted to align themselves with him, just to be close enough to catch every breath, but when he was upset, his eyes darkened, his stance became manlier, taller, puffed-up. At the moment, Molly was lost in those looks, but her growing desire was quickly quelled by her guilt—guilt for knowing she was omitting the relentless resolve she felt toward finding Tracey. “I’ll do what I didn’t do, what I wasn’t able to do, for Amanda. I’ll help.”

  A look of pity stole over Cole’s face. “Mol, what happened to Amanda wasn’t your fault. You have to let that go.” Cole wasn’t used to dealing with the old demons anymore. They’d subsided in the past few years, and he felt a bit rusty trying to deal with them now, but he knew the potential they had to cripple his wife.

  Molly grew sullen and looked away.

  “Mol,” Cole said again, “I get it. I was there, remember? Amanda’s gone. You can’t save her. Tracey’s not Amanda.”

  “I know she’s not Amanda,” Molly snapped. “Don’t you think I know that?” Molly pleaded with him to understand. “I have to do this, Cole. I just want to help.”

  Cole threw his hands up. “Fine, Molly, but I’m worried about you. It feels like we just got back to normal, and I’m not sure we can make it through that again.” He walked to Molly’s side. “Please, Mol, think about this. You weren’t at the point of abduction. It doesn’t come down to you saving this girl. The whole damn town is looking for her.” He gestured with his arm as if to encompass all of Boyds.

  Molly knew he was right about their relationship. After Amanda, she’d become useless, and hadn’t trusted herself to make decisions. Cole had been supportive and understanding. He’d taken her to therapists, was patient when she would have a near panic attack at the sound of a crying child, and finally, with no other choice, he’d agreed to pack up their family, leave his practice, and move to the country. Molly was thankful, and she knew her recovery would not have been possible without him by her side, but something in Molly needed this. It was something that she had to do.

  She was non-committal, “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid.”

  “It’s not stupidity that worries me,” he said. “It’s your damn drive and determination. Once you get something in your head, you don’t let it go.”

  The Boyds Country Store had been in business for decades, and Molly could imagine, as she pulled up to the front of the store, that the old wooden bench and the three men who sat upon it each morning had been there just as long. Harley Mott, Mac Peterson, and Joe Dillon, or as Molly liked to call them, the Boyds Boys, were the eyes and ears of Boyds. They’d grown up together, each in their sixties now, and if the stories that Molly had heard were true, they knew intimacies about residents that paralleled teenage gossip.

  Molly greeted the men with a smile, “Hey, guys!”

  “Hey, girl!” Harley said, a term of endearment that had taken Molly two years to get used to. A burly farmer with slicked-back graying hair, he had an imposing presence and had become protective of Molly for reasons she never understood.

  She grabbed copies of the Washington Post and the Frederick News-Post, scanning them on the porch of the store. Tracey Porter was front-page news, “Boyds Girl Still Missing, Foul Play Suspected.” Molly shook her head. She had hoped they might have found Tracey and that the Knowing had been wrong. She glanced up and into the three tired faces of the Boyds Boys. Molly knew their reputation for being bad boys in their younger days, and yet she wasn’t able to reconcile that reputation with the three fatherly types that sat before her.

  “Have you heard about this?” she turned the newspapers toward them. Immediately their faces hardened—Mac, a small, squirrel of a man, who never had much to say and always appeared a tad bit nervous, pursed his lips and looked away, Harley fiddled with his coffee cup and stared into the dark liquid, and Joe sat between the two, huddling toward the back of the bench.

  Molly gave Harley an inquisitive look.

  Harley shuffled his feet, his heavy boots scraping against the concrete of the porch, and took a long sip of his coffee. “Well, Molly,” he said quietly, “it’s just that…well…it’s too much like what happened twenty years ago is all.” He looked toward Mac, who shook his head and looked away. “It’s a little too close to home.”

  Molly’s heart leapt in her chest, It’s not your fault.

  Pastor Lett pulled up in her blue corvette, a car that Molly believed was a little too flashy for a woman of the cloth, though Pastor Lett’s argument was that just because she spoke to God did not mean that she had to be as invisible as Him. Children loved Pastor Lett’s car. She often took them on rides up and down White Ground Road after the children’s services at church. Pastor Lett was very supportive of their activities, showing up at their baseball games, gymnastic meets, and even Girl Scout and Boy Scout outings.

  “Good morning, Pastor Lett,” Molly said, still distracted by Harley’s disclosure. “How’s Mrs. Porter doing? Any news yet?”

  Pastor Lett walked nervously past Molly, giving her a brief nod, “Molly.” She shot the Boyds Boys a contemptuous look and walked into the store.

  Molly bristled at the brush-off and looked toward Harley. “What’s up with that?”

  A knowing look passed between the Boyds Boys. Molly did not like to be ignored. She sat herself down between Harley and Joe, purposely making them uncomfortable. “It’s okay, I can wait,” she said.

  Joe, who had probably been somewhat of a lady’s man in his day, with his Gregory Peck good looks and quiet demeanor, cleared his throat, and Harley took another sip of his coffee. Molly didn’t budge.

  Pastor Lett walked out of the store, orange juice in hand and a newspaper under her arm. She didn’t look back at the four of them, packed on the bench like sardines. She got in her car, started her engine, and backed out without ever looking up.

  “Okay, guys, spit it out,” Molly said. Tension thickened the silence between them. “What the heck, Joe?”

  Joe
looked away.

  “Mac?” Molly said, forcefully.

  Mac looked down at his boots.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, angrily. “Harley?” she caught his gaze and held it, ignoring the twitch that long ago had claimed his left eye.

  Harley looked down and fingered the ends of his frayed flannel shirt. He turned his body to face Molly, and said, in barely a whisper, “Kate Plummer. She disappeared about twenty years ago—same way.” He looked at Joe, who scowled at him. Mac let his breath out loud and hard in displeasure, and nodded so slightly that had Molly not been scrutinizing every move, she may have missed it.

  “What do you mean, ‘same way’?” she asked.

  “She was playing at the preschool playground. You know the one behind the church on White Ground?” he looked down again, and his voice held a hint of anger. “They never found her.”

  Molly jumped to her feet, shocked by the news. She looked at the three men, who sat in silence, again avoiding her eyes. Her mind raced with questions. “What happened?”