Born on the 4th of July - Heather Graham Pozzessere Page 0,7

her bag, but she wasn’t without means of defense, even if she was expecting a baby.

More so, because she was expecting a baby!

And on the good side of the situation, of course, was he wasn’t expecting the elbow jab and knee to the groin she gave him.

He doubled over in pain, shouting, loosening his grip on her.

Angela reached for the flap of her bag, but the woman, Merissa Hatfield, was right behind her.

And she had something.

A rag drenched with a knockout drug.

“This one walked right into our arms!” Angela heard the woman say.

The man, still furious and grumbling about his pain, swept her into his arms, “When the kid is out of her, this bitch will have it coming!”

He moved through the office to the back. Angela’s limbs were failing her. But she grasped at him anyway. Something came free in her hand. Fabric?

The darkness was closing in. She’d ripped or pulled something. She didn’t even know what. But as he walked through the hallway of the old rectory to the back door, she knew she had to drop it.

She did. In the dirt before he could load her into a cemetery maintenance vehicle.

And then . . .

That was it.

Chapter 2

There were far more little family mausoleums than Jackson had imagined.

The ghost of Cameron Adair was shaken and confused. Of course, someone had kidnapped the beloved daughter he had left behind. But while they traipsed over slate stones, bronze markers, above-ground tombs, and around—and around—at least ten free standing mausoleums, they found nothing unusual. Most were sealed and gated. A few had heavy doors—one had been built in the late colonial period that boasted many nails, a sign of the family’s prosperity at the time.

“I know I saw him come this way!” Cameron said. He paused, looking over the grounds. “No one is here. It’s such a lonely place right now.”

“Well,” Jackson murmured, “we’re opening the world again, so it seems, but not that many people are anxiously pouring into cemeteries.”

“She came early, right?” Jackson asked.

“She loves the early morning hours,” Cameron said. “She always did. Oh, as a teenager, she liked to go to rock concerts or out late with friends to movies or whatever, but she was never one to stay out all night or even late. The cemetery opens at 9:00 for the day when the front and back gates open. She’s here for opening. Brings coffee and flowers.” He hesitated. “We used to like to sit in the back garden together and have a cup of coffee and just talk. We started it when she was a little kid. It wasn’t coffee then—that started in her later years in high school—but we both loved coffee. Good and strong and rich and dark.”

“But she shares a nice memory with you now,” Jackson said.

Cameron smiled and nodded. “My buddy Joe was a fisherman. When he died, he was cremated. His ashes were scattered off the end of a pier at a bait shop and bar he loved that was always populated by a bunch of old salts. For years we’d all go and empty a can of beer into the water. Except for old Bart McIntyre. He’d only empty a few ounces into the water because he said Joe would be damned mad at him for wasting a whole can of beer. Who knows who was right? Joe did love his beer, and he could be frugal, too.”

Jackson smiled again. “We all have our ways of honoring those we loved.”

Cameron looked stricken again. “We have to find her!” he whispered.

“We will,” Jackson told him.

He needed to call out the troops. Adam, he knew, would be taking all the necessary steps to make a search of the cemetery legal, but it was difficult when their only witness was . . . buried in the cemetery.

Cameron looked around and shook his head. “I swear, I saw him go behind the Hartford mausoleum, and then . . .”

“You were standing behind the MacInnes mausoleum when Angela saw you.”

“Right—so he ran across the path and in this direction.”

He paused, looking at the three mausoleums in the immediate area, trying to determine which might have been out of sight to someone standing where Cameron had been.

There were three. Miller, Rosser, and Glenville.

He studied the three.

Two were gated; one, the Miller family mausoleum, was gated and sealed.

He headed for the Miller family vault, reaching through the bars, and tapping on the cement that covered the entry to the mausoleum. He ran his fingers all