“Oh, God, Matthew.”
“What? What is it?”
“Something’s happened to Lisa.”
“What? LuAnn, you were dreaming. You had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“He’s got her. He’s got my baby. Oh, God, he was touching her. I saw it.”
Riggs pulled her around to face him. Her eyes were careening all over the room. “LuAnn, there’s nothing wrong with Lisa. You had a nightmare. Perfectly natural under the circumstances.” He tried to sound as calm as possible, although being wakened out of a dead sleep by this hysterical outburst had certainly unnerved him.
She pushed him off, jumped up, and started tossing things off the table next to the bed.
“Where’s the phone?”
“What?”
“Where’s the damned phone?” she screamed. As soon as she said it, she uncovered the phone.
“Who are you calling?”
She didn’t answer. Her fingers flew across the face of the receiver as she punched in the cell phone number. She was almost vibrating off the ground as she waited for an answer. “They’re not answering.”
“So? Charlie probably turned off the phone. Do you know what time it is?”
“He wouldn’t turn off the phone. He never turns off the damned phone.” She redialed, with the same result.
“Well, if that’s the case, maybe the battery’s dead. If he didn’t plug it in when he got to the motel.”
LuAnn was shaking her head. “Something’s happened. Something’s wrong.”
Riggs got up and went over to her. “LuAnn, listen to me.” He shook her to the extent his wound would allow him. “Will you listen for a minute?”
She finally calmed down a bit and managed to look at him.
“Lisa is fine. Charlie is fine. You had a nightmare and that’s all.” He put his arm around her, squeezed her tightly to him. “We’re going to see them tomorrow. And everything is going to be fine, okay? If we go tonight and we are being followed, we’ll never know it. Don’t let a nightmare make you do something that could end up really putting Lisa in danger.”
She stared at him, terror still in her eyes.
He continued to murmur in her ear and his soothing tones finally reached her. She let him draw her back over to the bed and they climbed in. As he settled back to sleep, however, LuAnn stared at the ceiling, silently praying that it really had only been a nightmare. Something deep within her kept telling her it wasn’t. In the darkness she could see what looked to be a hand reaching out for her. Whether in a friendly gesture or not she couldn’t tell, because it never fully formed and then it was gone. She put an arm around the sleeping Riggs, holding him protectively. She would have given anything to be doing the same for her daughter.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The two FBI agents sipped hot coffee and enjoyed the late morning calm and beauty of the area. The winds were whipping up, however, as a storm system approached with the promise of even higher winds and a lot of rain, that night and into the next day. Stationed at the road leading up to LuAnn’s home, the veteran agents had seen little activity, but they kept alert despite the tedium.
At eleven o’clock a car approached their checkpoint and stopped. The window came down on the driver’s side.
Sally Beecham, LuAnn’s housekeeper, looked expectantly at one of the agents and he quickly waved her through. She had gone out two hours before to run some errands. When she had passed the checkpoint earlier she had been very nervous. The FBI hadn’t explained much to her, but they had made it clear that she wasn’t in trouble. They wanted her to go about her normal duties, keep everything the same. They had given her a number to call in case she noticed anything suspicious.
As she passed through the checkpoint this time, she looked more comfortable, perhaps even a touch self-important with all of this official attention.
One of the agents commented to the other, “I don’t think Tyler’s going to be coming back to eat any of that food.” His colleague smirked knowingly.
The next vehicle that came down the road and stopped at the checkpoint drew some special attention. The older man driving the van explained that he was the groundskeeper. The younger man in the passenger seat was his assistant. They produced ID, which the agents checked thoroughly, then made some phone calls to verify. The agents opened the back of the van and it was indeed filled with tools, boxes, and old rolled-up tarps. Just to make sure, one of the agents followed the van up the road.