Page 101 of Midnight Creed

“I know she’s not telling me everything.”

Creed startled at Taylor’s voice. He thought she had gone back to the Jeep and didn’t realize she was standing behind him.

“You never dream that cops would be looking for your little boy in Dumpsters and ditches.” Her eyes were scanning the woods. “You can’t imagine him being lost and frightened or...or taken.”

She rubbed her shoulders. He could see she was shivering.

Her eyes came back around and caught his, holding him there as if to seal the promise she was about to ask for. “Please bring him home. I know you’ve done it before. I don’t deserve rescuing. But Will does.”

Then she turned and walked back to the Jeep.

He watched them leave. Norwich watched them leave, too, then she tucked away her cell phone and came over.

“I just talked to Maggie O’Dell,” she told him. “She’s been following a serial killer all the way from Washington, D.C.”

“I talked to her earlier today.” It was now long past midnight. “Actually, yesterday.”

“She thinks he might be involved in all this.”

“I thought he targeted homeless people?”

“She just found out his mother is Isadora Ramsey. She’s on her way to talk to her. Seems like an odd coincidence that this guy gets to Pensacola right about the time Will went missing.”

“Did she mention if he was driving a blue pickup?”

He turned and switched on his flashlight. Off to the side of where the sheriff’s SUV headlights marked, he shot a stream of light across the pickup tucked close to the trees.

“I don’t like this,” Norwich said. “I don’t like this at all.”

When he glanced back, he saw Deputy Trevor coming over to join them. Only now, Creed noticed the deputy was carrying a shovel in each hand.

68

Gregory couldn’t believe this. His mother showed more concern about her poor husband’s bump on his head than she ever showed about his father. He zip-tied the man’s semi-conscious body to one of their heavy-ass dining room chairs. The frame was made of wrought iron.

She was whining. “You can’t do this, Peter.”

It took him a while to realize she wasn’t protesting him wounding her husband.

“What did you do with Willie?”

“Heaven forbid I hurt Mickey’s mini-me.”

“I swear—”

“Tell me what you two did to my father.”

“Your father was taken and killed by a transient. You know that.”

“I know what you told me. But that’s not what I saw. And I’ve been seeing it very clearly lately in my nightmares.”

“In your nightmares. Listen to yourself, Peter. I’ve tried to help you. I’ve tried—”

“To brainwash me. To drug me.”

“It was to help you get through your nightmares.”

“I saw the man who killed him. I recognized him.”