Savage Beauty - Peggy Webb Page 0,55
yelling for Siri to call Detective Yancy.
As she reported the murders and the killers, she tried to be brief but thorough. She tried to catch her breath as she ran and talked at the same time. If Debbie Waycaster was still alive, she was likely in the underground bunker.
“Get a search team to Allistair Manor, and hurry! Debbie may still be alive.”
“You’re absolutely sure about this?”
“Positive.” Lily thought she was going to be sick again. Stop it. Stop it. You don’t have time to be weak. “I’ll need a search team to meet me at Dr. Jack Harper’s clinic, too. Stephen has taken another girl.”
“Who?”
“My daughter.”
With the cops on the way, Lily bolted from the east wing, leaving the door wide open. As she raced to her Jeep, she yelled, “Siri, call Jack.”
She was already behind the wheel when he answered his phone.
“Hey, you. What’s…”
“Jack! Stephen is the one who took Cee Cee and now he’s got Annabelle!”
“I’m on my way.”
She almost wept with relief. Jack never questioned her, never second-guessed her decisions. He always raced to her side to help.
“No. I’m coming to you. He took her shopping.” She glanced at the clock on her dashboard. It was already past seven.
Did Stephen even take her shopping, or was Annabelle in the underground bunker now, waiting to become a rose?
Lily braked so hard she slammed against the steering wheel and startled the guards at the gate. Should she go back or go forward?
“Ma’am?” A guard rushed from his station and stood beside her window. “Are you okay?”
Get it together.
She lowered her window. “Yes, thank you. I thought I’d forgotten something, that’s all.”
She fastened her seat belt. She’d help nobody by crashing through the windshield. Then she floor-boarded the gas pedal and shot off, leaving the guards gaping after her. She broke every speed law in Ocean Springs. When she spun the Jeep into the driveway at the clinic, she saw Jack waiting outside.
She screeched to a halt, and he jumped into the passenger side. Suddenly, she didn’t know where to search. She’d made it to Jack, and she’d finally run out of steam.
“Lily?” He studied her then put his fingertips on her pulse. “Tell me everything you know,” he said quietly.
As she talked about her discoveries in the east wing, his face couldn’t mask his horror.
“He said he was taking Annabelle Christmas shopping.” Lily was so terrified she couldn’t think straight. “Oh, Jack, why did I let her go with all those girls missing and Cee Cee’s kidnapping unresolved?”
“You couldn’t have known, Lily.” Jack hadn’t let go of her hand, and she hung on. “Call him again and see if he answers.”
Her hands shook so badly, he took her cell phone and scrolled through her contacts. Then he punched call and handed the phone back to her.
The ring tone was eerie, as if the phone were in a secret tunnel where mutilated girls waited out their pitiful lives, knowing their grave would be a compost pile. She felt as if her own blood were being drained away.
Jack reached for the phone and listened to the hollow ring. Then he ended the call and scrolled her contacts again.
“I’m calling Annie,” he told her. “Just in case she found her phone.”
“She won’t answer. He took it. I know he did.”
Jack was shaking his head and saying, “No answer,” when police cars with flashing blue lights turned into the parking lot.
Finally, they could begin the search. If she clung to the guilt that her daughter was missing because she had chosen a monster to be Annabelle’s father, she’d never be able to get out of the Jeep.
“Lily, look at me.” Jack cupped her face. “This is not your fault. Okay?” She nodded. “I’ve got your back. We’ll find her.”
When they got out of her SUV to make a plan for the awful, desperate search, Lily sent a silent prayer winging upward that they’d find her daughter before it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Christmas packages Stephen loaded into the back of his car had cost him a small fortune. He considered it a reasonable price to ensure his legacy.
Annabelle was standing beside him in the parking lot of the second crowded mall they’d visited in downtown Biloxi. He’d taken her there to shop in case Lily decided to join them. They wouldn’t have been hard to find in Ocean Springs. But she would never think to look for them across the bridge. Although she’d turned out to be overbearing and controlling, she didn’t have