Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

face twisted in pain, stretched his good arm toward his father and brother.  “Max,” he cried, through gritted teeth.  “Ah God, that woman took Max!”

IT wasn’t very pleasant to watch.

Because of the other drugs in his system, Rogan’s doctor had to be stingy with the painkillers.  And since he needed to be conscious to answer Clay’s questions, putting him under again was definitely out. So he lay there, jaw clenched, sweat rolling off him in waves, trying to concentrate on being as accurate as he could over the pain of three broken bones.

Whoever had dubbed the drug he’d been given ecstasy was guilty of a very serious misnomer.

“White hair.  Pulled back in, you know…in a bun.”

“Okay,” Clay continued from his position beside the bed.  “Anything else you can tell me?  Anything that really stood out?”

Pain squeezed Rogan’s eyes shut, determination forced them back open.  “A lot of it’s… fuzzy.”

“It’s a side effect of the GHB,” Clay assured him.  “We’re actually lucky that you can remember anything at all.”

His lips formed a grim smile.  “Yeah.  Lucky.”

From somewhere behind Clay, Declan snorted.

“I remember her shoes,” Rogan continued.  “I saw them as I was going down.  They were… big.  Almost as big as mine.”  He stiffened as a wave of pain washed through him, fisting his hands in the sheets.

“Do we really have to do this?” Declan pushed his way to his brother’s side, repressed frustration vibrating.  “I mean, come on.  Big shoes?  It’s obvious he didn’t see anything important, and he’s half out of his head with pain.  Instead of wasting your time grilling him, why not go out there and look for Max?”

Patrick Murphy laid a hand on his son’s arm, started to pull him away.  But Clay gave a conciliatory wave because he understood the outburst.  “I know it seems like I’m pushing him unfairly, but the first few hours after an abduction are critical.  Our best chance to find Max, and bring him home unharmed, will rely on what information we can gather about his abductor.  And while big shoes might not seem all that important, there are a few things you have to consider.  Any information like that, any distinguishing characteristics, helps narrow our suspect pool.  We narrow it down far enough, and it leads us to Max that much sooner.”

“Familiar,” Rogan claimed from the bed.  “Something about her… familiar.”

Clay forgot all about Declan.  “Familiar how?  Like she reminded you of someone or she’s someone you’ve seen before?”

“Not sure.”  Rogan turned an unhealthy shade of gray.  “Sort of like… the old lady that spilled the tea.”

“What?”  Oh, shit, shit, shit. 

“You know what he’s talking about?” Declan asked.

“The woman at the Inn this morning.”  Clay leaned closer to the bed.  “Is that who you mean, Rogan?”

The man nodded, and Clay got to his feet.  Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner?  He was paid to notice behavior, pick up patterns.  And he’d realized the abduction was premeditated.

He’d seen that woman, the old lady with the big shoes and the nervous hands, in the hallway just last night.  With her hand on the door that led to the third floor, and the bed where Max slept.

Damn.  She’d been trying to take him then.

If he hadn’t come home when he did, Max might have been whisked off into the night.

Of course if he’d been paying closer attention, Max might not have been taken at all.

Kim came into the room, after having excused herself to take a call from Deputy Harding, and caught the look on Clay’s face.  “Something’s up?”

“We need to get into the Inn’s computer and find the name of the person who took Max.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

JOSH Harding pulled his cruiser into the long, tree-lined drive which led back to the old Walker place.

He’d just gotten off the phone with Agent O’Connell, who’d instructed him to continue canvassing without her.  Seemed she was going to be wrapped up with Agent Copeland in the search for Tate Hennessey’s son.

And hadn’t that been a piece of crappy news.   As if the case they were working weren’t foul enough.

A pothole in the neglected drive had Josh prying his teeth out of his bottom lip, and after examining the overgrown vegetation, chalking this up as a waste of time.  Old lady Walker had gone to live with her grandson in Atlanta a while back, and the farm was in disrepair.  Where once corn and tobacco had marched in well-tended and orderly rows, undergrowth snarled and sapling pines bumped together like boisterous children.

Around the bend the farmhouse rose, half obscured by a cloud of dust. When the debris settled in the heavy air, Josh decided the place was a pit.

It had been white – once – with neatly painted blue trim.  But the blue had long since faded to gray, the white peeling like cosmetic leprosy.   Weeds sprouted two feet high from inch-wide crevices in the broken sidewalk.

“Crap.”  Josh eyed the sagging front porch, wondering if worker’s comp would cover him falling through.  But he had to search every dwelling, barn and outbuilding in his particular quadrant. Exiting the car, feeling the slap of heat, he donned his hat and started to sweat.

Then adjusting his weapon to within easy reach, set off toward the house.

AFTER seeing to it that a member of Tate’s family would be with her on the off chance that she awoke, Clay tried to reason things out while Kim drove.  His brain – which he definitely needed in good working order – was suffering the profiler’s equivalent of writer’s block.

He just couldn’t put himself in the mind frame of an elderly woman using a date rape drug to facilitate kidnapping.  It was a weird combination of daring and non-confrontational, the way she’d gone about it.

When Clay thwarted the apparent initial attempt, she’d backed off and gotten nervous.  Her hand had shaken as she’d turned the key in the lock, giving her unsteady nerves away.

At first, Clay had attributed the tremors to age or a possible neurological