Hours later, Jack stumbled back into the room. He couldn't believe his good fortune! Small towns were great. Everyone knew everyone else's business and just needed the right nudge to tell what they knew. He got out the small notebook he carried at all times-a habit he'd picked up while on the force-and went over his notes.
First, he'd waited outside the hardware store and sure enough, at about six thirty, she came out with an older man. She kissed him, then turned to the right. The man turned to the left. She walked down the street, stopped at a meat market, then got into a big black Lincoln. She drove out of town and down a lonely stretch of road until she turned off onto a gravel driveway that lead to an old colonial farmhouse. There was another building under some sort of construction to the left of the house, a barn, Jack guessed. A man greeted her at the front door. Must have been the boyfriend.
Once satisfied that was where she lived, he drove back into town along the same road, trying to get a feel for the area, but since it was already dark, he would have to check it out tomorrow in the daylight to learn the roads, just so he wouldn't get lost when he made the snatch.
Back in town, he'd decided to get something to eat and maybe ask a few questions. He was successful on both counts. What he didn't learn from his waitress in the dining room of the Saxon Inn, the bartender had been happy to fill in.
Jack had already known her name was Sara Mathews, but now he knew that was her married name. Her maiden name was Pearson. Her father owned the local hardware store, and she'd been working there since summer when she moved back home after a painful divorce. The town gossips were evidently having a field day with Edith and Edward's little girl. Not only was she divorced, but now she was living with that lawyer from Boston who bought the old Miller farm.
Jack chuckled to himself as he thought about the commotion her disappearance was going to create, then realizing he had just thought of her disappearance as a fact, sobered immediately. He really was going to do this thing. Well then, he'd damn well better do it right.
He went over his notes once more, then crawled, naked, between cool, crisp sheets and fell into a restless sleep, his dreams filled with visions of slave girls being beaten and raped by dark, fat Arab sheiks.
Late that next afternoon, his nightmares forgotten, Jack parked behind the stone wall of the old cemetery he'd discovered on Old Telegraph Road and waited for Sara to drive past on her way home from work. It was a dark lonely stretch of road, thickly wooded with evergreens on either side.