“If he isn’t one of the people who took her,” Eden said. “Have you found out yet who he is?”
When Jared didn’t answer right away, Eden sat up. Her head was beginning to clear somewhat. “You know who he is, don’t you?”
“I wish we did know who had taken her,” Jared said softly.
“That’s not what I asked. Who did Melissa meet at the airport?”
“I don’t know,” Jared said, looking into her eyes.
Eden knew he was lying, but she had come to trust him enough to know that there was a reason for the lie. Eden didn’t care who her daughter had gone to meet. It could be her daughter’s lover, the true father of her child; Eden didn’t care.
Between Eden and Jared passed silent communication. He was lying; she knew it, but she trusted him.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jared pulled Eden into his arms. “We’re moving heaven and earth to find your daughter now, but no one has yet contacted us with a ransom demand. Where is this door with the riddle on it?”
“In the attic. There’s a little closet on the left, under the eaves. I think some trunks are in front of it, so it’ll be hard to find.”
“I’ll be back in seconds. Don’t move,” Jared said.
Eden closed her eyes. The drug inside her was lessening just enough that her fear was beginning to come to the surface. When her phone rang again, she grabbed it before the ring finished. “Yes?” she said quickly.
“You know what I want, don’t you?” said a man’s muffled voice.
“Yes. We just figured it out. Please don’t hurt my daughter. She’s going to have a baby. She’s a good person. She doesn’t deserve to—”
“No one will be hurt if you follow my instructions. There’s a dirt road where Highway 580 crosses 45. It’s easy to miss, but it’s there. At the end of the road is an old house. Put the necklace in a paper bag and leave it inside the house. Do you think you can find the place?”
“Yes,” Eden said, rubbing her eyes and trying to clear the confusion from her brain. Necklace? What was he talking about? The necklace was worthless. It was just glass. Or was it? Had McBride lied to her about that too?
“Come alone,” said the voice on the phone. “Anyone comes with you and your kid gets killed. Understand me?”
“Yes. When?” she asked quickly. She could hear Jared’s footsteps on the stairs. “When?”
“At midnight tonight.”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” she said, then snapped the phone shut just as Jared came into the room. He was carrying the little door with him.
“Were you talking on the phone?”
“I was trying to call Brad back to tell him what we found,” she said, “but he didn’t answer.”
Jared nodded, then put the door on the bed. On the back of the door, the wood hardly faded since it had been in the dark for a couple hundred years, was a crudely carved four-line riddle.
Eden’s head was clearing more with each second, but she didn’t want Jared to know that, so she struggled when she tried to sit up.
“Tell me about this,” he said.
“I found it when I was clearing up the attic, but Mrs. Farrington knew it was there. No one in the family knew who had written it or when. Mrs. Farrington said her father told her he thought it was put there when the house was built.” She looked at Jared. “No one in the family thought anything about it. There’s also a phrase written in Latin on a windowpane in one of the dormers. It says—”
“One mystery at a time. What do you think this one means?”
Eden didn?
?t have to read it, as she knew it by heart. “I don’t know. Ask Brad. He’s the one who figured it out.” Her mind was on her daughter and how she was going to slip away, alone, to deliver a worthless necklace to a kidnapper. And how was she going to sneak away from Jared to try to find Melissa?
“I need to sleep,” she said in the most pathetic voice she could muster. She did need to sleep. She needed all the strength she could muster to face tonight.
Chapter Twenty-three