And saw a man gag her.
Infused with frantic strength, Harry alternately yanked his arms, trying to free them from his captor’s hold, and hit back against him. A hand grabbed the waistband of his briefs and yanked him backward. He bit and tasted leather, bit again and had a piece of leather on his tongue. He couldn’t spit it out. Couldn’t swallow.
“Do not move and you won’t be injured.”
Laura was hauled up, the strap of her pink gown falling down one shoulder. She tried to right it but before she could, her hands were pulled forcibly behind her and restrained. Her whimper sent him over the bounds of sanity.
Harry’s foot connected with flesh and bone. His nails scraped leather and denim. The elbow punch he landed resulted in a loud smack in the too-quiet room.
And then, his arms wrenched behind his back, pulling the left one half out of its socket, he felt something thin and hard being twisted around his wrists, cutting into his flesh.
“Unless you want more than a dislocated AC, you’ll keep still,” the deep voice muttered. He could hear it clearly despite Laura’s high, terrified moans.
Tears streamed down her face.
Shoving against his captor with both legs, Harry broke free, kicked again and again, landing some blows. The shadow was doing something to Laura at the bedpost and Harry lashed out like a madman, needing to annihilate his own unseen force so he could get to her.
He couldn’t.
Laura’s captor joined Harry’s and just as Harry realized his wife had been tied to the bedpost, he was attacked by two male bodies at once. He kicked. He bit. He pummeled with the hands tied behind his back, hardly aware of the pain that shot through his shoulder with every wrench. The pain was good; it kept him alive and feeling, aware.
Harry was strong, athletic—a black man who knew how to defend himself—but he was no street fighter.
He landed a kick to one guy’s head. The guy fell. And the other was there, smashing his fist into the right side of Harry’s face. Stars swam before his eyes at the sudden, excruciating pain in his nose. The fallen man got up. Swung. A crack reverberated inside Harry’s head. A second punch made it hard to think. Only the staccato whimpers of his wife’s fear kept him conscious. Fighting.
They dragged the antique desk chair to his side of the bed. Harry fought with everything he had, but the two men were bigger, stronger—and less injured. They grabbed his shoulders, numbing his left arm. He felt the edge of the hard wooden chair shove into the backs of his knees.
He continued to fight, to kick and thrash and jerk his body, in spite of the rope securing his hips and then his ankles to the chair. The grunts rising from his throat were unrecognizable—the sounds of a man enduring a nightmare worse than hell.
And knowing it was going to get worse.
Thursday, June 7, 2007. 2:09 a.m.
Flagstaff, Arizona
Luke’s cries woke him. Jumping out of bed, Bobby Donahue wiped sleep from his eyes and hurried in to check on his three-year-old son.
“What’s up, buddy?” he called as he entered the room lit by the soft glow of the angel night-light above the dresser. He instantly swept the space with sharp, alert eyes. Finding it empty, he switched from automatic defensive mode to compassion for his upset son.
“No boogy man, here, pal,” he said, reaching the boy.
Luke stood at the bars of the crib he still slept in, arms outstretched, and Bobby scooped him up.
“You’re soaked,” he said, holding the toddler against him anyway. “Is that what woke you?”
“Mama!” Luke’s wail pierced Bobby’s emotions more than his eardrums.
“I know, pal. I miss Mama, too.”
Holding the boy until his sobs subsided to hiccups, Bobby drew in the child’s warmth. His nearness.
Luke and the world his son would inhabit in the future were Bobby’s reason for being. His son, and all the other pure children. Every breath he took, every decision he made, was for the children of God.
“Your mama loved watching Blue with you, did you know that?”
Changing the diaper the boy wore only at night now and the damp summer-weight pajamas, Bobby snapped Blue’s Clues bottoms into a matching short-sleeved top.
“Can you remember how she used to scrunch up her nose just like him?”
Luke shook his head, reaching out to Bobby again.
Taking his son in his arms, Bobby headed back toward the crib, but when the boy’s arms clasped his neck, he chose the rocker Amanda had loved.
It had been a year since the car accident from which Amanda—Luke’s mother, the love of Bobby’s life—had disappeared. A year of grieving, of missing her, of not knowing whether she was dead or alive, but assuming the worst. A year to recover.
Luke still had dreams about her.
And Bobby continued to draw strength from the living warmth of their son. He liked to believe Amanda remained with them. She’d been his angel on earth, and it wasn’t such a far cry to think that she was watching over them from the heavenly place she inhabited now.
He rocked Luke for the few minutes it took to get the little boy back to sleep and then, with a gentle kiss on his son’s forehead, he laid him in his crib again, checking the monitor to make sure he’d hear any sounds coming from the boy’s room during the rest of the night.
Amanda had insisted on the monitor when Luke was born. And now it gave Bobby great security. He’d die if he lost Luke, too.
Back in his room, Bobby sat propped against the pillows, staring out into the darkness. Some days he was too busy, too filled with the intensity of his work, to think about Amanda much. But on nights like this, the pain of her loss was almost debilitating.
Doing what he’d learned to do at a very young age, Bobby endured as much of the pain as he could, then traveled to other places in his mind, focused on things that felt good. Positive things.
He immediately thought of Tony Littleton. His young college-age friend, a new convert the year before, had left his mother’s home the previous summer and moved in with Bobby, helping him care for Luke. He’d also proven to be a loyal and trusted brother of the Ivory Nation.
Tony was in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, where he was being mentored by an influential Ivory Nation brother and studying political science at Bobby’s behest, but he still made it home most weekends. Which meant he’d be there by dinnertime the following day.
Bobby couldn’t wait that long.
Picking up the phone, he dialed Tony’s cell, knowing the boy slept with it right beside him for occasions like this. A true and loyal brother.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang again. Where the hell was Tony at 2:36 in the morning?
For a moment, as Tony’s voice mail
