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11

The sleepless night had begun to show on Miss Parker’s face despite the expertly applied make-up. Her attitude towards the hospital staff they questioned grew more and more hostile with every futile attempt to gain information. Jarod finally pulled her out of what was about to become a heated argument with a physician and whispered: “A word, Susanne?”

She followed him into the hall, hands in her hair and looked up at him with an exasperated sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she surprised him, before he could say anything. “It’s just that I absolutely hate to feel that helpless.”

He reached out for her shoulder and gently pulled her into him. To his surprise she didn’t resist, but reluctantly placed her hand against his back. He rested his own hand against the back of her head where he felt her soft hair. His fingers slipped beneath the dark strands and cradled her head against his shoulders gently.

“I understand,” he whispered to her. “It’s been a tough day for the both of us.”

They remained in each other arms for a moment and neither wanted to pull back. Then finally Miss Parker took a step back and smiled tentatively.

“What about getting some lunch somewhere and then we could drop by at Angela’s and see whether she’s learned anything new.”

Miss Parker suggesting anything as trivial as having lunch put Jarod off somewhat, but when he had caught himself, he nodded.

“I know a nice place just down the road. Come on.”

They walked down the corridor towards the car-park together, their shoulders brushing now and again.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on a table near the window in a quiet little French restaurant that overlooked the hospital park. Miss Parker was very eager to hide her face inside the menu to avoid Jarod noticing her inner turmoil. She was so busy trying to convince herself that she was trembling because of her lack of sleep and not because of Jarod’s embrace, that she didn’t hear the waiter approach.

She only came up behind the menu when the waiter addressed her with a heavy French accent. Jarod noticed her confusion and momentary loss of speech and ordered water for both of them.

“I remember you like coc au vin?” he asked, softly and when she looked up, he saw desire in her eyes. Somehow he suspected that it wasn’t for the chicken.

But the moment ended as suddenly as it had begun when she shook her head slightly as if to chase dizziness away. Or rather unwelcome thoughts?

Now that he had apologized to her for what had gone wrong in the past and since she now allowed him to touch her, he felt as if her behavior was some sort of apology in its own way- if grudging somehow.

Still, the usual banter that had consisted of both hostile and alluring elements didn’t seem to fit them anymore and neither of them knew how to act or how to deal with the new situation at all.

Miss Parker finally folded her hands in front of her on the table and silently looked up from them at Jarod, how was mirroring her actions unconsciously.

“This is pathetic,” she almost snarled, but the ghost of a smile that accompanied her words betrayed her harsh tone.

“In what way?” he spoke teasingly, just like he had done so frequently in the past.

“The only way we knew how to deal with each other was to argue. Now that we don’t have anything to argue about anymore, we’re kind of lost.”

He grinned despite himself. She was quite brilliant at getting straight to the point.

“You’re right,” he finally admitted. “It’s quite hard to sweettalk you.”

She cocked an eyebrow and Jarod tried hard not to laugh.

“Sweettalk me? Did you just invent a word?”

“Nah. It’s just not in your vocabulary.”

“My vocabulary must exceed yours. Otherwise I wouldn’t have you speechless so often lately.”

“Oh, don’t make yourself believe that you owe that to your intellectual qualities. I’m just after your body.”

That was the point when they both broke into fits of laughter and couldn’t stop even when the sour-faced waiter arrived to serve their food.

It felt good to laugh and to be able to forget about Amanda’s predicament and their own part in it for even a moment.


The sky was heavy with clouds once again when they returned to the children’s home. Rain was falling in big drops and hammered a mad rhythm onto the car roof. Jarod cursed when he noticed that the gate was closed. He opened the car door and stepped out onto the rain-sodden ground. He felt his foot sink in slightly and listened to the wet sound of his footsteps when he walked over to the alarm pad where he keyed in the code to mechanically open the gate. He looked up at the sign over it and froze.

It was white and was adorned with plain bold letters spelling “BUTTERFLY CHILDREN’S SHELTER” a butterfly was stenciled above the letters next to a yellow sun, whose rays touched the letters. One of the rays them was longer than the others and reached down to the bottom of the bold letter “H”.

Jarod swirled around and ran for the car, slamming the door behind him as soon as he was inside. He hurriedly ripped the blood-stained sheet of paper from his pocket and looked at its severed top. He had been right.

What had seemed like a meaningless irregularity in the paper’s surface before was actually a small yellow dot that seemed to have touched what remained of the bold letter H.

Miss Parker had followed his gaze from the sign to the paper and her eyes widened.

“Thank god for your photographic memory!” she murmured, impressed.

“Whoever wrote this was in possession of our stationery,” Jarod concluded and for a moment they simply stared at each other.

“Do you think Angela’s behind it? Or Jenny?”

He could hear the slight edge in her voice when she said Jenny’s name and shook his head.

“I can’t imagine either of them doing such a thing. It must be someone who was inside the shelter lately.”

“Or is there right now,” Miss Parker said. “He wouldn’t have ripped the top of if it wouldn’t mean anything. And if it’s not a staff-member, there must be another reason why he didn’t want us to know that he was in possession of that particular stationery. Look, what would you do if you needed a sheet of paper and you were in some part of that house? Wouldn’t you take what you can grab?”

Jarod looked at her, incredulous.

“Do you means he’s keeping her inside the home?”

“Why not? Look at the house!”

A jolt of thunder made Jarod’s heart skip a beat along with the possibilities when he looked at the large house. There was a large attic running the length at the house and the spacious basement was used for storage of things that were needed only in the summer. Also there were smaller buildings on the property that stored gardening tools. Miss Parker was right. Even if Amanda screamed, there were lots of places on this property where nobody could hear her.

“Shall we call the police?” he asked.

“And tell them what?” Miss Parker challenged. “That we found a note attached to our kitchen telling us that her kidnaping was our fault? Big deal. They’d find out our fake-identities in the blink of an eye.”

She was right.

“Then let’s have a look around ourselves then.”

For once Miss Parker didn’t complain about the fact that her shoes would be ruined after their excursion. She simply briskly walked behind Jarod and stayed so close that he could see her breath in the floodlights. He only hoped that nobody was looking out the window, wondering why they were crossing the lawn in this rain, heading towards the first shack.

Reaching it, they found it locked and empty. Jarod shone the torch he had taken from the car’s trunk into the dusty window and found only brooms and toys.

It was the same with the next two and the last one’s door stood wide open, its inside empty except for a stray cat that ran past them hissing and vanished in the gloomy afternoon.

“Great,” Miss Parker commented. “We’re going to catch pneumonia and die out here. Then the Centre will find us and they’ll wonder- boy, they’ll wonder.”

He gave her a strange look and rested his hand on her back for a moment.

“Let’s go into the house. If she’s there we’ll find her.”

“Shall we ask Angela to help us?”

“Let’s just keep it under wraps just now.”

They turned around and crossed the muddy garden lawn again, heading towards the house. It had seemed charming to Miss Parker before, but now that she looked up at it, wondering whether Amanda was being held a prisoner somewhere in its depths, she shuddered, feeling a dark presence rather than a welcoming when they entered.

Jarod had chosen to use one of the back-doors that led them into a wing of the building that was used as the children’s home’s office space. It was mostly empty since Angela and her staff usually only worked here when the children were already in bed. The lights were turned off and Jarod motioned for Parker not to switch them on, shining his torchlight into the corners instead. The corridor was long and lacked the cheerful yellow paint, but otherwise appeared to look exactly the same as the one in the other wing. The four rooms held two offices, a small kitchen appliance and a file-room that looked mildly chaotic.

Parker followed Jarod to the door at the end of the corridor and felt her heartbeat quicken when he fumbled with his keys and finally opened the door.

Behind it was an old-looking staircase that led upwards towards a dark void that must be the attic. Parker took a deep breath before she stepped into the darkness behind Jarod. The old stairs creaked as their combined weight was put upon them and momentarily drowned out the ghostly sound of the wind howling in the old woodwork.

She didn’t hesitate to take Jarod’s outstretched hand and let him help her up the last steep stair. There was old furniture all around, all covered in white sheets. It looked like a landscape of square objects that unsettled Miss Parker somehow for there were shadows all around. It reminded her of areas in the Centre that she had been forbidden to enter, but had explored nonetheless. It reminded her of mysterious objects and screams whose origin she had never found out. Today she was grateful for that particular fact, but as a little girl it had driven her mad.

Jarod chases the shadows away with the torchlight, but found only dust.

“I don’t believe there’s someone here,” he said quietly and Parker was about to nod, but then a feeling too strong to ignore rose up inside her.

She wordlessly took the flashlight from Jarod and shone it into the other direction where she found only a brick-wall.

“What’s behind that?” she asked Jarod.

“Nothing, I guess.”

Parker fell silent for a moment, then shook her head. With sudden determination she banged against the wall.

“Are you crazy?” Jarod asked and she swirled around to face him.

“Old houses often have secret doors,” she whispered. “My parents’ house used to have one. This wing is the mirror image of the other. There must be a room behind this wall.”

“The other wing doesn’t have a staircase to reach the attic. This is the only way up. There can’t be a room behind that wall.”

Parker shone the flashlight onto the floor and froze. The dust had been unsettled there and the faint imprint of footsteps was visible on the wooden flooring. The last one was cut in half, it second part appearing to be behind the wall.

She looked at Jarod, then ran her hand over the wall and finally found a small cavity that was just big enough for her hand to fit in. She pushed carefully, then felt the wall move.

She felt Jarod’s reassuring presence behind her when she entered the room behind it. A moment later she felt him wince, startled when the light revealed a glistering pool of blood next to the motionless body of a small child.

... to be continued ...










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