Piece of My Heart (Under Suspicion #7) - Mary Higgins Clark Page 0,19

him? What if he was never seen again and died out here by himself?

“Can anyone hear me?” His voice was louder this time, but, still, no one answered.

He pounded his palms against the top of the car trunk. “Help! Help! Someone please help me!” He yelled as loud as he could.

The trunk popped open, and he screamed from fright. A three-inch crack of light appeared between the hood and the trunk. Someone was standing behind the car. A gray T-shirt, untucked except for the spot where it hitched up over the top of a gun tucked inside the man’s waistband. That’s all Johnny could make out other than the treetops and sky around them.

“See, that’s why we needed to pull over in the middle of nowhere.” The man’s voice was deep. He sounded casual, like there was nothing weird about making Johnny ride in the trunk or the weapon only inches away from Johnny’s head. “Had to see whether you were going to act up or not.”

“Please, mister. Don’t hurt me.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do, but I will if I have to. You understand? And I can go back to that hotel and find the rest of that family, too, if you don’t do what I say. I can’t have you yelling and screaming, do you understand?”

Johnny said nothing.

“That’s better. Now… are you hungry?”

He shook his head, but then realized the man couldn’t see him any better than he could see the man. “No, my stomach hurts.”

“That’s probably nausea from the chloroform. I was afraid of that. You didn’t throw up in there, did you?”

Johnny couldn’t tell whether the man was actually worried about him or was angry about the possibility of a mess in his car. “Uh-uh.”

“Don’t say ‘uh-uh.’ It’s not polite. You’re old enough to say yes or no, properly, like a young man.”

“I’m sorry. No, I didn’t get sick.”

“That’s better. Here, you’re probably thirsty, and this will help your stomach.” The man reached in and handed Johnny a can of ginger ale.

“I can’t drink it lying down,” Johnny said.

“Tell you what. I’ll pop the trunk all the way open so you can sit up and get some fresh air for a bit. But you got to promise not to try to run away or yell or any of that nonsense, okay? There’s no one around to hear you, and remember what I said I would do if you act up. Deal?”

“I’ll be good, mister. I promise.”

“Just like I knew you would be. Such a good kid.”

Chapter 14

In the honeymoon suite at the South Shore Resort, Leo had asked the babysitter Kara to recount every single moment of her day on the beach in minute detail. In Leo’s police experience, the exercise might lead to the discovery of an important detail that may otherwise have been overlooked.

Kara was recalling the Buckley kids continuing to practice for Laurie and Alex’s wedding ceremony after Timmy and Ramon had left the hotel to shop for a birthday present for Alex. It broke Laurie’s heart picturing Johnny standing in for Timmy as her best man. As she listened, it was obvious that the boy looked up to his older future cousin.

The chirp of a cell phone interrupted Kara’s narration of the day. Marcy glanced at the screen with a perplexed expression and excused herself from the room.

From his spot on the sofa next to Kara, Timmy brought their attention back to the beach. “The twins were teasing Johnny before we left, saying he wanted to be so much like me that they were going to call him ‘Timmy.’ ”

Something about Timmy’s comment tugged at the back of Laurie’s mind, a thought trying to come to fruition. She was about to get ahold of it, like pulling at a loose thread, but then immediately lost her grasp.

“That’s right,” Kara agreed. “Chloe and Emily continued like that the whole time at the beach, calling him Tim or Timothy more often than his own name. He seemed to enjoy the game. It was all in good fun.”

They had been calling their brother Timmy on the beach. Laurie felt that nagging feeling again, and then pictured little Wyatt, the boy on the beach who had been sharing the skim board with Johnny and Timmy.

“Kara, did you happen to notice anyone else addressing Johnny by that name? Or hear someone calling out the name Tim, or some variant of that?” Wyatt had heard a woman yelling the name Tim, like maybe he was in trouble