The Vanishing Gary Brown (booksvooks TXT) 📖

“I know. But it’s been so long. So much time has passed. And we still have no idea exactly where she is.”

“Give Mark and his team time to do their jobs. It’s what they do best. I know it’s hard but try to have a little faith.”

“I want to have faith, Martin,” Claire replied. “I want to believe you when you tell me they’re as good as you say they are. But tell me something. If they really are that good, why haven’t they found Melanie?”

Martin turned away. At the end of the yard, beyond the wary gaze of the sentinel towers of security lights, stood a large wooden gazebo. Within it, a low back cedar glider stirred lazily with each random breeze. Martin walked up the stairs and sat in the glider, his back to Claire. He pushed off against the pock-marked floorboards, swung silently in the darkness, stared up at the night sky, and watched as the fingers of a prestigious cloud reached out and pocketed the moon. How befitting, he thought, to observe this moment of celestial sleight of hand. Melanie had disappeared in a similar fashion. There one second and gone the next, right before his eyes. In his mind, the voice of his unseen attacker mocked him. Now you see her… now you don’t! And there’s not a thing you can do about it, Marty boy. Not one damn thing. The contemptuousness in the voice sickened him. Just look at yourself, for God’s sake. LOOK AT YOURSELF! Lying on the ground in a crumpled heap like the pathetic sack of shit you are while we take your wife and little girl away from you. By the time you come around, we’ll be far, far away. Where we’re going, you’ll never think to look for them because you’ll never find them. We’ll see to that. Better to not even try, Marty. And just in case you don’t possess the gray matter to figure it out on your own, remember this. We are their present and their future. So just lay there… lay there and sleep it off...

Tendrils of silver clouds appeared and gave up the stolen moon.

Consider yourself nothing but a faded memory, the voice taunted, then drifted away.

41

CLAIRE’S WORDS HAD fallen hard on Martin.

“Oh God, Martin,” she said. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Please forgive me.”

“It’s all right,” Martin replied. “Don’t be sorry. I ask myself that same question every day. Sometimes I’m so angered because no one can give me an answer that I want to pull the plug on this whole damn thing, to say to hell with it, and just give up. But then another lead comes in, another case finds the break it needs, and another child goes home to where they belong. It’s like trying to find the cure for cancer. You know it’s out there, that one day you’ll find it. So you keep trying. You learn to take it one day at a time, one lead at a time, because you know that that son or daughter you’re looking for is out there somewhere. No one can hide or be hidden forever. They may elude us, sometimes for an exceptionally long time, but eventually we find them. That’s when I’m reminded it’s all worthwhile. That’s also when the last flicker of hope that I thought had been extinguished forever finds the air it needs to burn again. So, I take a deep breath and I fan that flame for all its worth. I try to make it burn brighter than it did before. Bright enough for Melanie to find her way home to me.”

Claire sat beside Martin on the glider. “What will happen when you find her? What then?”

“We’ll get to know one another all over again. We’ll start from scratch, if that’s what it takes.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Of what?”

“That Melanie will have forgotten you. These cults can do that. Isn’t that what you said earlier? They force their followers to forget not only who they are but also all that mattered to them in the past.”

“Yes. But that’s when we draw upon Cynthia and Justin for their expertise. Being professional de-programmers, it’s their job to break down the doctrines and ideologies that have been imposed upon them by the cult and help them regain their focus.”

“How will it work with Amanda when we find her?” Claire asked. “How will she be de-programmed?”

“We’ll bring her back here and make her as comfortable as possible,” Martin explained. “Keep in mind she may not be in the most cooperative of moods. It’ll take some time before she settles down enough for us to begin the process. And one particularly important thing. Don’t expect Amanda to be the same person you remember her to be. She won’t revert to her old self overnight.”

“I can prepare myself for that.”

“You must. Over the days or weeks that follow, Cynthia and Justin will work up a psychological profile on her. We want to get into her brain, to map her psyche, so to speak. We want to know all we can about the activities of the group she has been involved with and how they work, how they recruit, their leadership hierarchy. In Amanda’s case, we have one very distinct advantage. We’ve identified Joseph Krebeck. We also know he’s dangerous, so we have a better idea about how to approach the extraction. I would also imagine the same could be said for the people who make up his inner circle. Leaders like Krebeck are usually well insulated. It’s their underlings who carry out the dirty work. The information Amanda shares with us could be enough for law enforcement to move in and arrest the leaders of the group. Depending upon the severity of the acts they’ve committed, they could go to prison for a very long time.”

“If Amanda is still as high-spirited as I remember