Blindside

“I’ll call your daddy right now if you’ll just tell me his name and phone number.”

Sam said against the wet denim on her leg, “My dad’s name is Miles Kettering. He’s really cool. He can fix anything. He fixes helicopters for the government.”

His father was a government contractor? Could that be why he was kidnapped?

“What’s your home phone number, Sam?”

He was silent, thinking, but he couldn’t get it together, and she knew his brain was closing down. “It’s okay. I’ll call information. Colfax, Virginia, right?”

Sam managed to nod before he closed his eyes. He felt her strong leg supporting his head. She still felt wet through the blanket she’d put under his head. He felt the sway of the truck and the little girl’s body pressed close against him. He was warm. He was safe. He was asleep in the next minute.

Katie pulled the blanket more closely around his shoulders, and whispered to Keely, “He’ll be okay, sweetie. You just stay there, keep him really warm.”

After a moment, Keely said, “I would have saved myself, too, Mama.”

“I know you would have, Keely. Now, let me get information in Virginia and find Sam’s daddy.”

When the phone rang, Miles jumped nearly three feet. He’d been telling the agents again how the government contracts worked, who his competitors were, and how much money was involved. Agent Butch Ashburn, the lead on Sam’s kidnapping, nodded to the other agent, Todd Morton, who’d just swallowed a doughnut too fast and was choking.

“Showtime,” Agent Ashburn said.

Savich, who’d just gotten to the Kettering house, laid his hand on his friend’s arm and said, “Everything’s set, Miles. Just answer the phone. Keep calm, that’s more important than I can say.”

Miles Kettering forced his hand to reach for the phone. He didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to because he was afraid that Sam was dead. So many children were kidnapped and so few survived. He could hardly bear it.

It had been a day and a half. This was the first word. His hand shook as he lifted the phone.

“Hello? This is Miles Kettering.”

“Hello, Mr. Kettering, my name is Sheriff K. C. Benedict from Washington County, Te

Miles couldn’t speak. His throat worked. “I don’t believe you. You’re the kidnapper, right? What do you want?”

Butch Ashburn and Todd Morton were standing there staring at the phone, trying to look both calm and competent. Savich took the phone from Miles’s hands. “Who is this?”

Katie understood. She said again, “This is Sheriff K. C. Benedict from Washington County, Te

“This is Dillon Savich with the FBI, Sheriff. Thank you very much. Give me your exact location and we’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

Katie gave the man directions. She’d never before met a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She patted Sam’s shoulder, whispered, “Your daddy’s going to be here soon now, Sam,” but Sam didn’t hear her. He was asleep.

She heard Mr. Kettering say in the background, “I want to talk to Sam.”

She said to Agent Savich, “Sam’s asleep. Do you want me to wake him?”

Miles Kettering came on the line. “No, let him sleep. I’ll see him soon. Please, Sheriff, tell him I love him. What about the people who took him? Did you get them?”

“I’m very sorry, but they escaped. But we’ve got a group of my deputies in the field and they’ll do their best.”

When Katie hung up the phone, Keely said, nearly asleep herself, “What about his mama?”

“She’ll probably come, too. If I were her, I’d beat his daddy here to get him.”

“Stealing Sam was a bad thing, Mama.”

“You’re right.” And she thought, I should have just brought the bastard down, not given him a kiss in the arm. I should have kicked his butt like Sam said.

6

K atie’s phone rang at a quarter of seven that evening. It was Alice Hewett from Hewett’s Pharmacy, and she was out-of-breath excited.

“Oh, Katie, that man who kidnapped the little boy-I think it was him. He just left. I called the station house and Li

Katie’s heart started to pound, deep and hard.

“Was he the fat one, Alice?”

“No, he was the other one, tall, almost sick-looking thin, but he wasn’t wearing that long black leather coat Wade told everyone about, just a white shirt and jeans, and some scarred black boots. But he had a ponytail, like you said. And he was shivering, which means he left that leather coat in his car because he was afraid to be seen in it. He bought bandages and antibiotic cream and some Aleve. And when he was leaving I saw blood on the back of his sleeve.”

“He was in his forties?”

“Yes, I’d say so.”

“And he had a ponytail.”

“Yeah, wet and stringy-looking. He didn’t say anything, just brought the stuff up to me at the register, and paid cash. He had a really big roll. I saw a couple of hundreds, lots of fifties.”

“Did he just leave the pharmacy?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see his car?”

“Yes, Katie, the instant I saw that blood I knew. When I heard his car, I peeked out the front window. He was driving an old van, light gray I think, but it was hard to tell with all the rain.”

Katie nearly held her breath. “License number?”

“I just got part of it. He screeched out of here pretty fast. It was a Virginia plate, the first three letters were LTD-you know, like that old Ford sedan-LTD. I think the next one was a ‘three’ but I can’t be sure.”

Katie wanted to leap through the phone line and kiss Alice. “That’s just great,” she said. “Now, was there anything about the man that was unusual, something that would make you remember him as opposed to another man?”

Silence, then, “He was wearing a necklace, you know, a gold chain with some sort of pendant or stone hanging off the end of it. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Oh yes, his two front teeth overlap.”

“Alice, do you want to be sheriff when my term is over?”

Alice Hewett laughed. “No, Katie, it’s all yours. Just looking at that guy made my stomach cramp up. Besides, I’m too young to be sheriff, I just turned twenty last week.”

Katie was pleased, as was the rest of the town, that Alice was no longer a teenager, particularly since Abe Hewett was fifty-four years old and had three grown boys all older than their stepmama. “Well done, Alice. Thank you.”

“Let me know, won’t you, Katie?”

“You bet.”

Katie called Wade at home, got him between spoonfuls of his wife’s special pork stew. “I’m really sorry about this, Wade, but-”

“I knew you’d call, Katie. I sent Conrad over to talk to Alice, see if she remembered anything else. Man, this stew is the best.” A long silence, then Katie heard Wade’s wife, Glenda, say something in the background.

“Tell you what,” Katie said, “stay put. Just keep close to your phone. Call Jeffrey and have him update the rest of our people, including our three volunteer deputies. Keep an eye out for that van-we’ve got a partial plate. It’s Virginia and it’s LTD three something. I’m going to call the FBI, let them check it out.”

“You don’t want me to go out right this minute?”

“Nah, stay put. I’ll call you if something comes up.”

She called the Knoxville FBI field office because she knew the Johnson City field office just didn’t have the staff for this sort of thing. She got Glen Hodges, the special agent in charge, pretty fast and told him what was going on. Then she dialed Agent Savich’s cell phone. He picked up immediately.

“Agent Savich?”

“Yes. Is this Sheriff Benedict? Is Sam all right?”