Face Off Read Free Page A

slightest chance we could get a line on Amy, wouldn’t it be worth the gamble?”
    She could hear the woman’s muffled sobs as she answered. “I’ll talk to Jake when he gets back, Miss Richards. We sort of lost hope after the police told us they suspected that beast Clark of taking her.” Her voice broke. “He … my God, he dismembered those other girls. I just can’t bear to think about it. Our Amy. Our dear, sweet Amy.”
    Suzanne wanted desperately to give the woman some hope, but knew she dared not. The chance of Amy still being alive was slim to none, and she knew it.
    â€œMrs. Matthews, I’m going to leave you my telephone number. You talk it over with your husband, and whatever you decide, I’m sure it will be the right decision. In the meantime, Jessie is fine here with me. I won’t let anything happen to her. You have my word on that.”
    *   *   *
    Jake Matthews followed the newly painted white fences which encompassed the ranch house, barns, and pasture. His land didn’t end with the fences, but continued for miles of open range. How Sally had managed to get out with the other cattle, he didn’t know. Probably that young kid from town he had hired to repair the fences, who thought it too much trouble to get back out of his sports car and lock the gates after he went through them. He should have fired the lad that first day, anyway. Whoever heard of running a fence line in a candy-apple Trans Am? And every time Jake came across an open gate, the kid always had the same answer. “I knew I was coming back through in a few minutes. I didn’t see no need of wasting time closing it.” And Sally, dang her contrary hide, she always did try to get off by herself when she was birthing. If she was ready to drop, then she would certainly have taken advantage of an open gate.
    The main trouble was, these last two weeks had simply been one big blur for Jake, ever since the Kansas City police had called, informing them that Amy’s purse had turned up in a Dumpster outside the apartment of that Randal Clark. The bastard had enough evidence in that apartment to link him with the deaths of eight young girls. The police said there wasn’t any doubt that he was the infamous Kansas City Butcher. Even so, Clark wasn’t admitting a thing.
    Quick, hot tears filled Jake’s eyes, and he brushed them away, angrily. The police were still searching for Amy’s body. They offered no hope that she would be found alive, and insisted there was no reason for him and Martha to come to Kansas City just yet. He wanted to believe, but Jessie’s insistence that Amy was still alive didn’t make it so.
    Amy and Jessie. The lights of his life. So different, yet both devoted to one another, and to this land he and Martha had toiled over to make a success. He could not have asked God to send him any two more precious daughters. Amy, with her love of books, of drawing, her music. He could still remember the joy on her face when she received the letter saying she had gotten the job of design artist at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. “Don’t worry, Dad,” she had said, hugging him. “I promise to call home twice a week and write you almost every night!” Amy, with her mother’s blond good looks and quiet reserve. Still waters running deep.
    Now his Jessie was another story altogether. He could picture her racing Higgins, her stallion, over the fields, her long red hair flying in the wind. Jessie had never known a moment’s fear in her short life. She was a whirlwind of activity, and it was this trait that worried Jake when he thought of her alone in Kansas City. Jessie wouldn’t be cautious. It was completely against her nature. He should have paid more attention when she first started talking about that Richards woman. God knows when she got something in her head there was usually no stopping her. But to