Karen Rose - Have You Seen Her?

"When did you find it?" he asked quietly.

Brad shrugged. "Labor Day. I was looking in the top drawer of your bureau for a picture of all of us together because I wanted to have it made into a calendar for Grandma. Then I found this."

Steven took the ragged paper and stared at it for a moment. "You blamed me."

"For lying to me," Brad said. "And for making her leave," he added, looking away.

"You thought she'd left because I cheated?"

Brad shrugged. "I didn't know. I guess it was easier to blame you because you were here. And you hadn't told the truth from the beginning."

"You want the truth now?" Steven said and Brad met his eyes and nodded. "I was never unfaithful to your mother. In the thirteen years we were married I never touched another woman."

Brad looked up. "I believe you."

Steven exhaled, relieved. "Your mother wasn't happy,

Brad. So she decided to leave. I had no idea it was coming to that."

"What would you have done if you'd known?"

"I honestly don't know, Brad. I don't even know if there's anything I could have done. But I don't regret not telling you the truth. I would have done anything to spare you this pain."

"So you took it all on yourself."

"I did."

"Did you think we might have been able to help, Dad?" Brad asked, his voice wavering. "Did you think maybe we could have supported you through it?"

"No," Steven answered truthfully. "I didn't. I didn't want to hurt you."

"It hurt more knowing you didn't trust me." He looked away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

"It's okay, son. I know I should have trusted Jenna, too, but I didn't and now she's gone."

"She'll be back, Dad. I know it." Brad hesitated, then put his hand on Steven's shoulder. "And when you get her back, she'll come back to you."

Steven swallowed, slipped his hand in his pocket, and fingered Adam Llewellyn's ring, hoping against hope his son was right on both counts. "You seem sure."

Brad's expression became intense. "She cares about you. Anybody that has eyes can see it. You hurt me, too, by not trusting me about Mom, but here I am. I came back. Because… because I love you, Dad. She'll be back, just like I came back."

Steven struggled, then gave up and let the emotion come, choking on a sob when Brad's arms circled him, holding him, patting his back as the tears came. "I'm so afraid," Steven whispered. "I'm so afraid he'll hurt her. That he'll kill her like all the others."

Brad held on. "You'll get her back, Dad. We have to believe that."

Steven sucked in a deep breath and straightened, pulling his palms over his face to dry his eyes. "We have to have courage."

Friday, October 14, 11:30 P.M.

He'd cut her hair.

She was still weak from the last round of dreams, populated by hundreds of hissing, striking snakes. She woke, screaming and gasping, but still tied up. It wasn't until she'd caught her breath and come back down to earth that she realized her hair was gone.

Her hair was gone . All but a quarter inch he'd left all around. As her vision focused, he'd shown her the razor he'd use to finish the job, to make her smoothly bald. But now he was… playing with her hair.

Jenna watched as Josh laid her hair out on his worktable and braided it. Almost lovingly.

"Why, Josh?" she asked from the floor, trying to sound as teacherlike, as authoritarian as she was able. "Why do you take our hair?"

Josh looked over and shrugged. "It's a little embarrassing, actually. Kind of a Freudian thing."

Jenna had to fight not to show the revulsion she felt. "You like your mother's hair?"

"Oh, yes. My mother has absolutely beautiful hair. I've heard my father tell her that it's her best feature. She used to brush it every night. One hundred strokes." He ran his hand over the braid he'd created from Jenna's hair. "I used to love to watch her braid her hair. That's what I first liked about you, in fact. Your hair. I wished I could braid it, sitting there in your class. I'd planned to brush it and braid it when I finally got you."

"When you finally got me," Jenna repeated. "But now you've got me and you cut my hair."

He frowned at her. "That's your doing, not mine. I'd planned to take you away after graduation, to make you happy. You'd earned it. You weren't like the others. But then you spent the night with Thatcher," he said bitterly, "and I knew you were no better than any of these others, willing to crawl into a car with a man they barely know. So you lose your hair, Miss Marshall. Just like you'll lose your life." He took Jenna's braid and mounted it under her picture. "There. But I get ahead of myself. I'm not supposed to mount the hair until I've finished and I'm behind schedule." He turned with a grin. "It's Friday night, Miss Marshall. Time for a show."

Saturday, October 15, 1:00 A.M.

Steven answered the phone on the first ring. "Thatcher."

"It's Harry."

"Where are you?"

"In Pembroke, Virginia. The widow of George Richards is here, visiting her sister. It took me all day to track her down, but when I did I had her go through yearbooks from every high school in the county. I didn't want anyone saying we directed Mrs. Richards unfairly."

"And? Dammit, Harry, tell me ."

"She identified Josh Lutz as the boy who used to help her husband chop wood and do errands a few years back. It was some program for troubled kids. You know, back to nature, fresh air. Mrs. Richards said Josh seemed harmless as a lamb, except when it was slaughter-time. Then he seemed to enjoy his job a little too much. Her husband let him go. Josh's mother even came to ask Richards to give him another chance, but the old man was firm."

"So that's how he got the ketamine. Well, that explains a lot."

"There's more. Mrs. Richards said her husband had a woodworking shop in a barn on the farm."

Steven's knees went weak and he sat down. Sawdust. Jenna . "Where? Exactly where, Harry?" He listened, memorized the location. Then ran from the house, dialing for backup.

Saturday, October 15, 1:30 A.M.

Jenna swallowed back terror as Josh placed an assortment of very large carving tools on the table where he'd tied Kelly. From across the barn Jenna could see Kelly struggle, although the girl's movements were pathetically weak.

He was going to kill her now, kill Kelly . I need to get him away from Kelly .

Stall , she thought, do anything . Sooner or later the police would come looking for her. Steven would find her. Jenna wanted to cry, just thinking Steven's name, but she knew she needed to keep her voice firm. She pulled on her teacher's cloak of authority. "So help me understand, Josh. You had nothing to do with the vandalism in my class, or the dead possum."

Josh rolled his eyes. "Really, Miss Marshall. That possum was a roadkill one of my brother's friends found on the road. They're bullies, not sadists." He held up a curved knife so that she could see it. "Nice, isn't it? It's always rewarding to work with quality tools. Old Mr. Richards always had great taste in tools. Now I, on the other hand, am a sadist. If I'd wanted to leave you a gift, it wouldn't have been a roadkill." He smiled mockingly. "Roadkill's so off-the-shelf. I do made-to-order. Rudy's friends have no style. They haven't a shred of creativity."

"But you do," she said archly.

"I do," he answered. "Watch and learn, Miss Marshall." He pulled out a laminated page covered with a design she'd never seen before. "My old school. Fond memories." He looked over and winked. "Figured out I needed to laminate it after the first time. It was all covered in blood." He pulled out a smaller syringe and a bottle of something dark blue. "Art class, creativity at its most enjoyable. Today, Miss Marshall, I'll teach you the art of tattooing. Got this idea from Lorraine. She had a peace symbol tattooed to her ass. Such poor quality workmanship."