5

      Abby locked up and stood at a front window, watching till every car had gone down the twisting, oleander-lined driveway to Carmel Valley Road. There they turned right, heading back into town. Finally. The FBI woman’s words kept repeating themselves in her mind. To have gone through all that…come out unscathed…

      How does a woman end up unscathed, Abby thought, when she’s so brutally raped she’ll never be able to carry a child? How does she even end up close to being what other people call “normal”?

      And the rape was only the beginning. What followed had nearly killed her, just as Ben had said. If he hadn’t been there…

      Which didn’t excuse his betrayal tonight.

      Glancing at her watch, she decided to wait ten minutes before going up and releasing Alicia and Jancy, just to be safe. In the meantime, she looked for Helen, wanting to thank her for her help. When she didn’t answer the knock on her door, Abby quietly opened it to make sure her old friend was all right, but glancing around, she saw that Helen wasn’t there.

      The room was small, no more than a “cell,” as the nuns in former times had called their ascetic cubicles. Most had held little more than a bed, a chest of drawers and a crucifix. Though Helen could have had the biggest, nicest bedroom in the house, this was what she’d asked for, and Abby had built this room to her specifications.

      “I can’t sleep if there’s too much space around me,” Helen had muttered. “Or too much clutter, for that matter. Those young sisters and the others can have their big, pretty rooms with their flowered curtains and sheets. To my mind, that’s all nonsense.”

      Sister Helen had been Abby’s teacher in high school, and though Abby had feared her at the time, she’d come to love her as an adult. The job of answering the bell that announced nighttime visitors was actually a perk. Because of the arthritis in both her hips and knees, it had been painful for Helen to climb the stairs every night. This way, she could remain on the first floor at all times.

      The elderly nun would be aghast, of course, to think she had special privileges, or if she knew that Abby and the other women had come up with this solution to ease her discomfort. Helen was from the old school of Catholics. She believed in suffering and in “offering it up” in exchange for more stars in her crown in heaven.

      Abby was no longer a practicing Catholic, despite the year she and her best friend, Marti, had spent in a convent at the age of eighteen. She didn’t know if “offering it up” toward a better future in heaven was still a viable plan, but to each his own.

      Come to think of it, she and Marti had both followed a different drummer. Going off to become nuns right out of high school seemed to be a wacky thing to have done later on. But they’d honestly had some idea that to do so would better the world. When they didn’t turn out to be the greatest of nuns, they left, went to college and became journalists.

      Marti, though, became a famous photojournalist, while Abby married a guy who turned out to be no Prince Charming. He had an affair with a woman who had boobs out to “there” and dressed like a Hooters waitress. In fact, Abby thought, I called her “the bimbo” every chance I got—until I finally had to stop and forgive her, given that she was my sister.

      And where was Karen Dean now? Off on some new adventure in Africa, God love her, trying to save her poor tattered soul by working with children who had AIDS.

      Abby looked at her watch. A good ten minutes had passed since everyone had left. It should be safe now to go up and get Alicia and Jancy. Alicia had damn well better have some good explanation as to what she was doing earlier in the hotel room of a dead man.

      In the solarium, Abby knelt down and tapped on the panel to the hidden cubbyhole. She waited, but didn’t hear the inside bolt slide open.

      “Allie, open up,” she said in a low voice. “It’s me, Abby. They’re gone.”

      She waited a few more seconds and tapped again. “Allie? Jancy? It’s okay. You’re safe. Open up.”

      Leaning her ear against the panel, she heard a rustle and what sounded like someone sniffling. Another few seconds and the bolt was thrown. Abby opened the panel and saw Jancy, her face swollen and red from crying. The girl shuffled backward on her behind and leaned against the back wall, drawing her knees up to her chin.

      “Allie?” Abby squinted, looking around the small dark space. She’d worried about squeezing the two of them into it, as the priest’s hole was never meant to hold two people comfortably.

      Well, hell, she thought, both fear and anger vying for a place in her head. That doesn’t seem to matter much now.

      Allie was gone.

      Abby couldn’t get Jancy to come out, so she sat on the floor just outside the paneled door, talking in gentle tones. “Where did your mother go? Do you know where she is?”

      Jancy wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and murmured something Abby couldn’t hear.

      “Jancy,” she tried again, “where is your mother?”

      “I don’t know,” Jancy mumbled, covering her face with her hands. “Gone. Like always.”

      Like always. Her tone of voice set alarm bells off in Abby’s head. “You said that before, honey. Does your mom go away a lot?”

      Jancy shrugged.

      “How often?” Abby asked.

      “I don’t know. At least once a month.”

      “Didn’t I hear somewhere that she gives speeches around the country? Something about voting for better health care?”

      “Ha.”

      “You don’t believe that’s what she’s doing?”

      “Oh, sure, she does that sometimes. But a couple times when my school tried to reach her on one of those trips, they couldn’t. Her cell was off the whole three days she was gone, and when they called the hotel she was supposed to be staying at in Chicago, she wasn’t even registered.”

      “What about when she got home? Did you ask her where she’d been? Maybe they lost the reservation and she stayed somewhere else.”

      Jancy made a sound like a snort but didn’t answer. Abby studied her a moment, then reached for her hand. “C’mon, let’s get you out of there.”

      Jancy turned away. Abby touched her arm gently until she looked at her. “C’mon, honey. It’s okay.”

      “Will grown-ups ever stop saying things like that?” Jancy said angrily. “It’s not okay. Nothing’s ever okay!”

      But she ducked her head and crawled out into the solarium, still not taking Abby’s hand. “Oh, God, I’m stiff!”

      Standing, she stretched, bending from the waist and touching her toes. Letting out a long breath, she rose slowly, then raised her arms over her head, bending from side to side in an exercise position Abby recognized as hatha yoga. It seemed to come naturally to her, as if she’d done it out of habit, without thinking. Abby watched her curiously.

      When it seemed Jancy was loosened up, Abby took her to the