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.Lieutenant Lloyd Hafner of the Hattiesburg P.D.had been very helpful.The Hattiesburg officer had done a little digging and found out that Hubbard was a single man who lived alone.He drove a two-tone green Chevy.His neighbors said he was quiet and gone a lot.He spent a lot of time polishing his car, and for a single man he led a solitary life.He hadn’t been home for the past few days.John Hubbard was missing in action with Big Sun.Frank had spoken to an irritable man whom he visualized pulling a beard as he talked.The Big Sun manager had told Frank that Johnny, as he called him, had covered a route for another salesman during the first of the week, and that he’d taken up his regular route to New Augusta, Beaumont, McLain, Lucedale, State Line, Leakesville, and Drexel.John Hubbard should have reported in Thursday afternoon.He had not.Frank moved slowly, carefully along the trail.Whoever had gone this way had been in a hurry.Leaves were stripped from limbs and there were places where a shoe heel had dug deep into the soft ground.He carne upon a footprint and knew he had the best evidence of the case so far.What troubled him was that he couldn’t even form a supposition as to why John Hubbard, if this was indeed his trail, had run in a different direction from Marlena.Why hadn’t he gone to help her? And why had Suzanna left no trail?Frank considered the possibility that he was following the trail of Suzanna’s abductor, and that he had carried the child in his arms, but Frank didn’t think so.This way led to the river and the swamps.Someone carrying a child would have gone to the road to be picked up in a vehicle.That assumption was based on an abductor who wanted to keep Suzanna alive.If John Hubbard had killed the child, or if she’d been taken by some deviant, some sick pervert who had other plans for the child….He stopped that thought before it could go further.There was sickness in the world, that much he knew.He’d come from a family of it, and he’d seen it across the United States and Europe, most especially in the POW camp in Germany where he’d been held.There, he’d come to accept that human beings were capable of inflicting terrible pain for the pleasure of it.That knowledge darkened his hopes for Suzanna.And for Marlena, too.She would pay with guilt and grief for whatever happened to her child.The trail he was following came to a swamp where yellow flies swarmed him in a cloud.The footprints he’d been following disappeared in a mud slick covered with a half-inch layer of rancid water.Frank hesitated.He did not believe the man who went this way could have carried the weight of a child, and pursuing the fleeing man through the swamp would take all the resources of the Jebediah County sheriff’s department and a host of volunteers.As interesting as it would be to find Hubbard and question him, Frank knew that finding Suzanna was his primary goal.Punishment could come after Suzanna was found.8The hospital room was small and smelled vaguely of pine cleaner and Clorox.Dotty felt a headache begin at her temples.In another half hour it would be pounding, and there was nothing she could do about it.Walking out of the hospital and into the fresh air was the only thing that would help, and she couldn’t do that.She’d promised Lucas she would sit with Marlena and listen, on the chance that Marlena might say something that would help the searchers find Suzanna.The little girl was dead, and that’s all there was to it.Dotty knew that.If a ransom request were coming, it would have arrived by now.And what was Marlena doing out in the middle of the woods with Suzanna anyway? Marlena wasn’t some tomboy.She’d never hunted or fished, to Dotty’s knowledge, and Dotty pretty much knew everything there was to know about Marlena.What Marlena was was a spoiled rich woman who didn’t know which side her bread was buttered on.Dotty had told her that again and again.Told it to her face, not behind her back.She’d done everything she could to help Marlena see how lucky she was.Dotty shifted in the wooden chair and felt the soreness in her bottom.Lucas had put it to her with force and a hint of savagery that she’d found more than exciting.He’d taken her from behind the first time, right there on the dining room table.He’d leaned his weight down on top of her, pinning her to the cool wood.When he’d entered her, he’d been brutal and punishing, acting like he wouldn’t be satisfied until she begged for mercy.He had no restraint.Her hand went automatically to her right shoulder, and she pressed until the pain made her gasp.He’d bitten her so hard she had a bruise in the shape of his teeth.What would Betsy McBane and Sharon Bosworth think about that? She giggled softly to herself as she thought of their scandalized reactions.Of course, that only hid the fact that they really wanted rough sex themselves.Whenever anyone talked about sex in front of Betsy and Sharon, they pruned up and acted horrified, but Dotty could see how much they wanted it.And feared it.What would they reveal about their secret selves if they dropped the shackles of propriety? They were terrified of that answer.Marlena’s head shifted on the pillow, and Dotty stood up, causing a delicious little pull throughout her pelvic region.“Suzanna,” Marlena mumbled.Dotty listened with a tingle of horror.The bones around one of Marlena’s eyes had been damaged, and the doctors had done something to her mouth to stabilize that side of her face.“What happened to Suzanna?” she asked, leaning forward and putting her hand on the sick woman’s forehead.“Tell me.” Marlena was hot, burning to the touch.The doctor said infection was a probability.There had been dirt in her internal wounds.“Two men,” Marlena said, tears leaking out of her swollen-shut right eye.“Took her
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