Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Out of the way could mean a lot of things, he thought, and he moved so he was near the driver’s-side door of Ren’s ambulance. He eavesdropped while they spoke to her in low, calming voices. He could hear others nearby, too. Cops and medics and federal agents and all the various special-ops people they brought in to face any potential insanity on the homestead, all speaking too quietly for him to make out, but the movement around him gave him some clues about what had happened. Police tape was unrolled liberally, cordoning off large swaths of land. Dogs were brought in to search the premises for drugs, guns, maybe even people. He had no idea. With Ren shielded from view by a van, Gloria was escorted into an unmarked car and driven away—he caught only a glimpse of wild eyes and tousled hair before she was somewhat roughly guided into the backseat—but Steve’s whereabouts remained a bit of a mystery. That was, until a CSI van backed down the driveway and the coroner arrived.
The idea of this, that the only mother Ren had ever known had just been arrested, that the only father she’d known was leaving his property in a body bag, was too much. He couldn’t stay out of the way anymore.
Edward walked to where Ren sat in the back of the ambulance, partially hidden by the medic who was carefully dabbing at two large scrapes across her arm. She looked tiny and terrified, dwarfed by the big flannel blanket around her. She glanced up as his shoes crunched through the gravel, her eyes watery and bloodshot: a portrait of grief and confusion.
“Hi,” he said, and the single syllable felt heavy in his mouth.
“Hi.” She swallowed a sob. “How did you get here?”
“Airplane,” he said. “Then cop car.” In an effort to diffuse some of the tension, he whispered, “For once, I was not in handcuffs.”
Ren gave a watery laugh, and when the medic stepped away, Edward offered her his hand. She grabbed it between both of hers, wordlessly tugging him forward, needing a hug. Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her while she shook. “I’m here. I got you.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, but he knew that she did. She did, but it was too terrible to comprehend, and there was nothing he could say to make it any less horrific. Slowly, she pulled away and tilted her face up to his. “Who was that in the bushes? Was—”
“Yeah.”
“My dad?”
He ran this thumb over her cheek, wanting to protect her, wishing she got to hear this in a way she’d want to hold on to and remember. He nodded. “Yeah, Chris. He’s been looking for you for a very long time.”
“He’s not a terrible man?” she asked, chin wobbling.
Edward frowned, fury at Steve and Gloria rising in him anew. “No. He isn’t. He’s a good man who had something deeply precious stolen twenty years ago.”
Her tears spilled over, streaking down her cheeks. “Can I see him?”
Edward turned, searching in the darkness, and found Chris about ten feet away, standing unobtrusively next to a patrol car. It was all over his posture, the way he wanted to burst forward and hold this grown-up version of the little girl snatched from his side nearly two decades ago, but he approached slowly when Edward waved to him, correctly reading the shock all throughout Ren’s posture.
“Hi, Ren,” he said, calm and simple, just like the agents had suggested on the drive here from Lewiston. Use the name she knows, they’d told him. Don’t expect much right away. She may not want to talk, or she may need you to lay it all out immediately. There wasn’t one way this would go down, but this was what he needed to remember: This will be much more of a mixed bag for her than for you. You’ve just got your daughter back, but she’s losing the life she’s always known. Go slow. You do whatever she needs.
“I’m Chris.”
“Hi, Chris.” She tried to smile, and this glimpse of the Ren Edward adored, this earnest effort, sent a painful ache through his gut. “Thanks for coming.”
His laugh was carried on a sob. “Are you kidding? I’ve been looking for you for twenty years. I would have flown to Siberia a hundred times over.”
Ren stared at her father, and Edward knew what she was seeing, how it was undeniable who he was. In the flashing lights, he could see the tears streaming down both their faces, and as Chris stepped forward to give her a careful hug, Edward blended back into the mass of bodies all around them.
KIDNAPPING VICTIM GRACE KONING FOUND ALIVE TWENTY YEARS LATER, RESCUED IN DEADLY SHOOTOUT IN IDAHO
by Tustin Wilkes and Dawn Meyer, Associated Press
Updated 3:14 a.m. PDT
Grace Koning, the young girl who vanished nearly twenty years ago from a park near her home in Atlanta, was rescued last night in a shocking confrontation at her alleged kidnappers’ homestead in rural Idaho that left one man dead and a woman in police custody.