Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

understand, honey.”
    The word “honey” seemed to help. Shali found her footing.
    “Well, that she could help him. Get to know him. Maybe once she got to know him, she could like him. You know, like, hook up”
    It was a shot to the heart. No mother likes to hear that they’ve been excluded from their child’s life in some small way. Emily had no idea about Nick and Jenna. No clue whatsoever that there’d even been a potential boyfriend lurking somewhere in the background. Hooking up? Never. Jenna would have told her. She and Jenna were close.
    But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jenna was missing and Shali had held out information. Emily knew by reading Shali’s face more was about to come.
    She was right.
    “Mrs. Kenyon, I’m sorry. I lied to you about something else.” She started crying so hard, that whatever she tried to convey, was lost in her sobs. “Sorry…”
    “It’s all right,” Emily said. “Take your time. What do you know? Where is Jenna? Do you know where she is?”
    “No. That’s not it,” she said. “I don’t know where she is now.”
    Emily pulled back a little, looking into her eyes, her face calm. Her daughter was gone and Shali Patterson was about to actually be helpful. This was good. Unexpected. Joyful. But good.
    Shali held out a wrinkled piece of copier paper folded in quarters.
    “I let her use my computer before the storm. I found this a day or so later, but with the storm and everything I just didn’t ask her about it. I don’t know why she’d write this kind of a message. If it was for English class, I missed the assignment.”
    “Let me see,” Emily said, her eyes still riveted on Shali. Shali pressed the paper into her outstretched palm, and she carefully unfolded it.
    The detective looked down and read:
    Do you think it is possible that someone could really possess another? Do you think that a love could be so powerful as to be sick? So good it could become bad? Tell me how you feel? How you want to possess me as I want to possess you. Never be lonely again. Never.
    She looked up at Shali, her disbelieving eyes now full of even greater worry than she’d ever felt possible.
    “I don’t think she wrote this either,” she said. “Who do you think did? Who do you think it came from?”
    Sniffing for a second tissue, Shali nodded. She pulled her feet up to her chair and tucked them under. She looked small and scared.
    “Batboy88,” Emily answered for her. “Do you know who this is?”
    “I think it’s Nick Martin,” she said. “He liked Jenna “
    Emily started for the door. “Stay right here. Don’t move a muscle.” She hurried down the hallway, her heels clacking like gunfire on the linoleum. She held the paper like it was a telegram and she was rushing it to the recipient. But that wasn’t true. Her daughter had been the recipient. The tone was scary. It was as if Nick Martin had a fixation on Jenna. Images of the Martins, Nick, the tornado debris ran through Emily mind. Now a twisted e-mail spoke of good and evil, of love and possessing another.
    Why, .Jenna? Why were you nice to him? Didn’t you see the danger? What happened to you? I want you home. Now! Jenna!
    She turned in to Kiplinger’s office and planted the note on his desk.
    The sheriff slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and set down a newspaper. He’d been scanning USA Today for mention of Cherrystone and the Martin murders or the tornado. But the town was no longer national news. So fast had the media dropped them from page one. A few days before, Diane Sawyer’s people were banging down the door for an interview and now nothing. Zip. He looked at Emily. She was wound tighter than he’d ever seen. There was good reason for it, of course. But he knew that whatever Shali Patterson had told his best and only-detective it was going to be big. USA Today was merely a diversion as he waited. Emily’s face was red and her eyes bulged. She panted for breath, not because of the hurried gait down the hall, but because of the heartbeat ramming inside her chest.
    “A killer’s got my daughter,” she said.
    Wednesday morning, exact time unknown, at the abandoned mine
    Morning light came throuh the rusty slits in the roof, the same openings that had ensured that the indoor environment was acrid and damp. Jenna lay very still on the stinky sofa, her eyes scanning the ceiling for a clue as to the size of the room that had provided shelter. It had been a moonless night when he