Kisscut

"Stop!" Robbins screamed. He was just a kid, his feet out wide, his gun in front of him, pointing at the figure ru

Jeffrey knew what was going to happen and it did. The ru

"Dottie!" Jeffrey yelled.

Dottie stood, their eyes locking. She raised her hands like she meant to surrender, then took off ru

Jeffrey took off after her, pumping his arms as he ran. He hurdled the fence without breaking stride, ru

"Sir?" a young woman asked. She was probably around twenty, and her dark brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked terrified.

Jeffrey sat up, pressing his fingers into his arm to see if he had broken anything. He realized he was panting from ru

"Sir?" the woman repeated, pulling some of the kids close to her.

Jeffrey pulled his badge out of his back pocket, showing it to her. He tried to catch his breath so he could speak. "Where…?" he began. "The woman…?"

"Wendy?" the girl asked. "Wendy James?"

Jeffrey shook his head, thinking she did not understand.

"She just left," the girl told him. "She ran through the house and-"

Jeffrey jumped up, scattering the kids as he retrieved his gun. He ran out the open front door, into the yard and to the street. He could see a car ahead, taking a right to merge onto the busy interstate. It could have been white or tan or gray. It could have been a four door or a coupe or a hatchback. He did not know what kind of car it was. All he knew was that it was gone.

Chapter Twenty

Jeffrey walked around to the dock behind Sara's house. The moon was high above the trees, and a breeze was coming in off the lake. Jeffrey stood in the grass, watching Sara, feeling some of the stress start to drain out of him. She sat in one of the two deck chairs on the dock, her legs crossed at the ankle in front of her. In the moonlight, Jeffrey could see she was staring out at the rocks in the water. The greyhounds were with her and she rested her hand on Bob's head. She was wearing a pair of shorts and one of his old shirts. Jeffrey stared at her, thinking that she looked even better now than she did the night before.

She turned in her chair when she heard his footsteps on the dock. Billy and Bob kept their heads down, staring out at the water.

"Don't let them scare you," Sara teased.

"They're so ferocious," Jeffrey said. He went on one knee to pet Bob on the head. The dog rolled over, kicking his left leg into the air as Jeffrey scratched his belly.

Sara put her hand on Jeffrey's shoulder. "How's Lacey?"

He sighed. "Better. The sleeping pills are wearing off, but she's still groggy."

"Did they find anything?"

"There was no evidence of recent abuse," Jeffrey said.

"Just recent?"

He nodded. "There were signs that something happened before."

Sara seemed to sense he did not want to give specifics right now. She asked, "What did her father say?"

Jeffrey kept scratching Bob's belly, enjoying the simple pleasure. "He said he's glad to have her back."

"Does he have a problem with me talking to her tomorrow?"

"Not last I checked," Jeffrey said. "He still thinks it was all Dottie."

She stroked his hair back behind his ear. "Have they identified the kids yet?"

"They're ru

"What about the day care behind the house?"

"She had just started working there," Jeffrey said. "Maybe a week or so. All the kids are being checked out, but they're thinking she didn't have time."

Sara asked the question that had kept him up at night, "Do you think you'll ever find Dottie?"

"We're hoping she doesn't know we picked up on Je

Sara pressed her lips together. "Sounds like she knows what she's doing."

"We're coordinating with the credit card company. They're mailing it out tomorrow. It should be in the box in a couple of days." He shrugged. "From there, we just sit and wait. She shouldn't take long to get it. I'm sure she needs the money to set up shop, wherever she is."

"You think that's what she's doing?"

He gave her a sad smile. "The guy at the post office says there's another card from a different company in the box right now."

"What's with all the cooperation?" Sara asked. She knew better than anyone that people were reluctant to assist the police these days. "Didn't they ask for a subpoena?"

"No," Jeffrey told her. "It's amazing how helpful people are when you tell them that children are involved."

"So," Sara began. "What next?"

"We're going to have to coordinate with the school, find out how many kids were involved in this thing."

"I want to check every file at the clinic."

"Will Molly help you?"

Sara nodded. "I already talked with her. We need to be careful about this. The hard part is going to be dealing with the hysterics whose kids never had contact with Dave Fine or Dottie or Grace."

"You think people will do that?"

"Yes," Sara answered. "You can't blame them, but we're going to have to find a way to screen out the real cases from the bogus ones. We're lucky in a way that this was happening to older kids who can talk about what happened."

"They didn't look that old in the pictures."

"The FBI will have someone assign ages to the kids. They'll use the Ta

"I hate that there's even such a thing."

"Do you want me to go to the school with you?"

Jeffrey sighed, thinking about how hard the next few days were going to be. Of course, it wasn't her job to talk to Lacey Patterson, either. He said, "I know you don't have to, Sara, but do you mind?"

"No," she told him. "Of course not."

"What I want to know is why do the kids protect these people?" Jeffrey asked, because that was the one thing that he could not understand. "Why didn't Lacey or Je

"It's hard for them," Sara explained. "Their parents are all they have, all they know. It's not like they can move out and get jobs. A lot of times parents convince them that it's normal, or that they don't have an alternative."

"Like Stockholm syndrome," he said. "Where the victim falls in love with the abductor."

"That's a good analogy," Sara told him. "Their parents set up this pattern where they abuse them, then buy them ice cream. Or they guilt them into doing what they want, or trick them. Kids don't know that it's not supposed to be that way." Sara sighed. "And the fact is, the kids love their parents. They want to please them. They don't want to get their parents in trouble. They want the behavior to stop, but they don't want to lose their mother and father." She paused. "There's a real dependency there. The parents cause the pain, but they're also the ones who take it away."