Nor did she want to go back to Will’s. Sam had a handle on things there. She felt useless.
Friends. She had lots of friends. But she could hardly be with them and not tell them about Megan.
For a minute she considered driving to Newport to see her father—but only for a minute. It wasn’t a wise idea. For one thing, her dad would either be out for the evening or asleep, and he wasn’t one to take kindly to a change in plans. For another, he had never particularly approved of her going to work, let alone her choice of profession. He would have little sympathy for the oppressive sense of responsibility she felt. And he was a terrible gossip. If she told him about the kidnapping, it would be all over Newport by morning.
She gripped the steering wheel tightly, backed the car out of the garage, and headed for the WCIC studios.
The address she had taken from her media file took her to a largely wooded, residential area on the outskirts of town where the houses were set widely apart, hidden from one another and the street by trees. Only the mailboxes stood as proof of habitation nearby.
Turning in by the mailbox whose luminescent number matched the one she had committed to memory, she drove down a short, unpaved path to a clearing. At the back of the clearing stood a large Victorian house. The night hid its details from her, but there were several cars parked around a pebbled curve and the first floor of the house was comfortably lit. She assumed she had reached the right place.
Turning off her own lights, she sat for a minute and took several slow breaths to calm the rushing beat of her heart. It seemed imperative that she look, sound, and act totally professional.
She felt, however, like a young girl excitedly awaiting a glimpse of her hero. Incredibly, the thing that frightened her most was not that he wouldn’t be able to help Megan, but that he wouldn’t live up to the image she had of him.
For a moment she toyed with the idea of starting the car and driving home. It still bothered her that she had been so cowardly with not one, but two phone calls. For her own pride, if nothing else, she intended to see this through.
Snatching her keys from the ignition, she buried them in her briefcase, laced the straps of the briefcase over her shoulder, and climbed from the car. The pebbles crunched beneath her heels, a sound so loud that she half expected floodlights to suddenly shoot out and spear her in the night. Pulling her cashmere topcoat more snugly around her neck, she hastened her step toward the front door.
The only indication that she had, indeed, found the right place was a small brass plate over the doorbell that bore the station’s call letters. She rang the bell. Its sound came faintly through the door, a sweet long-winded chime. Looking down, she waited. Then she heard the muted sound of rapid footsteps. Her heartbeat accelerated accordingly.
The door was flung open, and a young woman started talking to her before she could fully see her. “It’s about time! My God, we’re starved!” she said. Savannah vaguely recognized her voice, although her rather plain features were not familiar. Her expectant expression quickly changed. “You’re not the pizza house.”
“No,” Savannah said.
“Oh dear.” The young woman looked to be in her midtwenties. She was of average height, weight and build, and wore a jogging suit designed for exercise rather than the fashionable sort Susan wore. Savannah identified the voice.
“You’re Melissa Stuart, aren’t you?”
Melissa smiled. “You listen.”
“When I can.”
“And you’re here for Jared. Quick, come on in. I’m supposed to be in the booth monitoring things.”
Savannah stepped into the front hall. It was a large hexagonal room whose outstanding feature was a winding staircase that led to the second floor. Three doorways led to the center of the house. Melissa disappeared through one, leaving Savannah to wonder how she had known she was there to see Jared.
Her palms felt damp inside her gloves, so she removed them and held them in one hand. She felt trapped, and wished she could turn and run, but it was too late for that. She glanced helplessly around. A pair of lamps on a console table cast a gentle light in the hall. The floor was made of newly polished oak. The walls were clean, uncracked, and painted an almond shade. Savannah was surprised by the contemporary prints adorning the wall and the built-in speakers that played, at a just-audible volume, the station’s country sound. In fact, the only concessions to the Victorian style were the delicately carved ballistrade and the patterned runner that climbed the stairs.
With another quick look around, Savannah realized that either the house had been thoroughly renovated within the last year or two, or it had been newly built not long before that. She was trying to decide whether that was relevant to anything when a man appeared at the door through which Melissa had gone.
He was exceedingly tall, exceedingly thin, exceedingly intense. The oxford-cloth shirt that hung on his upper body was tucked into a pair of chinos that fit better than the shirt, but in so doing only emphasized his thinness. She searched his face for the warmth she heard night after night, but his features were nearly as angular as his body.
Savannah wouldn’t have called him handsome by any stretch of the imagination, and there was nothing remotely sexy about him. Her heart fell farther than she thought it could.
Then he said, “Hi,” and her spirits bounced back up. His voice was as deep but not as smooth or as breathtaking as the one she knew. “You’re here to see Jared?”
She nodded.
“He wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“I know. But it’s important that I see him.”
“You look familiar.”
She shrugged.
“Who are you?” he asked.
