Pied Piper

CHAPTER 36

Boldt sensed someone behind him, spun in his chair in time to see a woman at his office door, emaciated and pale. His wife.

Her release had been postponed twenty-four hours because of a scheduling conflict. He did not expect her, and so for a moment simply stared.

“Forgive me,” she said calmly. She stepped inside and closed the door.

Forgive you? he thought, a bubble of painful guilt overwhelming him. No words came out. He stood and approached her.

“I’ve acted foolishly,” she said, “unchristian in every way, and I-”

Boldt hugged her unfamiliar body, once soft but now sharp with bone. “No. You have every right-”

“Nonsense. I was horrible to you. I apologize. Please forgive me.”

They spoke, simultaneously, their apologies blurred.

“We’ll get her back,” the wife said.

“We’ll get her back,” the husband echoed.

“The two of us.”

“I never thought-”

“Tell me,” she said, gently breaking the embrace and holding him at a distance. “Tell me everything. Time is against us, isn’t it? I know it is. And yet I also know that God will not allow this. God will see her safely returned. But not without you, love. You’re the best cop there is.”

Words he had lived to hear spoken; words she had never said, instead voicing resentment, anger and frustration at the demands and risks of his job. Words he would have gladly given back in a heartbeat for Sarah’s safe return.

Sensing his every emotion, she said, “We aren’t alone in this.”

His enormous emptiness waned. A state of mind, he realized, not reality, for what else could explain it passing so quickly and completely? With Liz in the picture, everything changed.

“Together,” he said, his lips gracing her ear, her cheek hot against his neck.

His wife gave in to her tears like a tree uprooted by the wind, begrudgingly and with much protest. “Together,” she agreed. “Bring her home.” She wept openly.

For a moment Boldt thought she meant him, but then she whispered so closely that he felt it clear through to his soul, “Please God, bring her home.”

“Together,” Boldt repeated, a single word as healing as any he had known.