Free The Dollmaker by Amanda Stevens Page B

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    “I hope they catch that son of a bitch,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I’d like to get ahold of him myself.”
    “I know, Mama.”
    “It’s an abomination, men preying on little girls like that. They ought to fry every last one of them.”
    Claire switched off the TV. She couldn’t watch anymore, and she didn’t feel like talking. The room fell silent, but her mind raced with images that had plagued her for years. Ruby was dead. In her heart, Claire knew that to be true. But what torment had the child suffered before she drew her last breath?
    Claire squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut off those terrible questions, but it was no use. Another mother’s agony, coming on the heels of seeing that doll, had reawakened her worst fears.
    When Ruby first went missing, Claire had made the same plea to her daughter’s abductor. Before the camera started rolling, she’d agonized over what to say, worried herself sick that she might not be able to make it through the broadcast without breaking down. Dave had wanted to go on camera in her place, but the reporter who conducted the interview encouraged Claire to make the appeal because it would have a more visceral impact coming from the mother. So she’d gone on air and begged for her daughter’s safe return, pleaded with the kidnapper to spare Ruby’s life. And it hadn’t made any difference.
    For weeks afterward, Claire worried that she’d come across badly or unsympathetic, and that’s why whoever had Ruby didn’t respond. Both Dave and the FBI agent assigned to the case told her that such an appeal was a long shot, anyway. It wasn’t her fault. But Claire had wondered for ages if she should have said or done something differently. Sometimes she still wondered.
    After the interview, she’d been so emotionally drained, she’d walked away from the reporter and collapsed in Dave’s arms. He’d held her for a long time, as if he’d never let her go. He was so strong back then, a rock in times of crisis, but that was before the guilt had eaten him alive. That was before the alcohol had destroyed the man Claire had fallen in love with.
    In the weeks and months following Ruby’s disappearance, he’d become someone Claire barely recognized. A drunken stranger who’d shoved his gun in her face one night and demanded to know what she’d done with their daughter.
    Claire could picture him the way he was at that moment, with hate and despair twisting his once familiar features. She would never get that image out of her head. That he’d suspected her even for a moment, even under the influence of alcohol, was something she hadn’t been able to live with. She’d packed her bags and walked out the next day.
    Drawing the covers over her shoulders, Claire slid down in bed and closed her eyes. The room was quiet, the air was cool and the pain medication she’d finally had to succumb to had started to numb the ache in her joints.
    She’d always told herself it was the not knowing that still tore her up all these years later. If Ruby had died of a terrible disease or in some tragic accident, Claire would have been racked with grief. Her life would never have been the same, but eventually she might have been able to move on. If she could have buried Ruby…if she could have known in her heart that her child was at peace, maybe she could have drawn some comfort from her faith.
    The not knowing was the worst.
    Or so she’d always thought.
    But on this dark, drenched night, as Claire huddled under the covers, dread settled like a shroud over her hospital bed. She’d never considered herself clairvoyant or even particularly intuitive, but she could feel the tug of something that might have been a premonition. A presage that warned of an evil she could hardly imagine.
    And suddenly she realized how wrong she’d been. The not knowing wasn’t the worst. Her ignorance had kept her sane all these years.
     
     
     
    She dreamed about Ruby that night, the same