In Desperation Read Online Free PDF Page B

poison. I mourn the time we’ve lost. I regret choices I’ve made. Don’t take your anger out on me now, Jack. I need your help. I have to get Tilly home safe.”
    â€œTell me what happened.”
    Gannon took a long, deep breath and Cora related every detail from the night before. He listened, saying little until she’d finished.
    â€œI don’t know why this is happening to us,” she said. “I don’t know who to turn to, Jack. I thought you would have sources, people who know about this stuff and that you would know what to do. Help me find out who took her. Help me get her back.”
    â€œCall the police, Cora.”
    â€œNo. They said they would kill her if I went to the police.”
    â€œAre you involved with drugs in any way, Cora?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut you were?”
    â€œYes. I used drugs, yes, but that’s all in the past. I’ve changed my life.”
    â€œNo one from your past would do this?”
    God, I hope not. They told me I would never be free from what I did. Never. They told me I would always be looking over my shoulder. I can’t tell Jack. I can’t tell anyone. I have to protect Tilly.
    â€œCora, does this have anything to do with your past life?”
    â€œNo, I’ve been living a clean life, a good life, for years.”
    â€œWhat about Lyle? You say you’re dating. What do you know about him? Is he involved in drugs?”
    â€œIf he is, he’s hidden it all from me.”
    â€œCan you find him?”
    â€œI’ve been trying and trying. He’s disappeared.”
    â€œWho else knows about this?”
    â€œOnly you—and I called Tilly’s school.”
    â€œYou told her school she was kidnapped?”
    â€œGod, no, I said she wouldn’t be in today. Only you know what’s happened, Jack.”
    â€œFrom what I know about these things, they usually involve a drug debt. The cartels will kidnap someone close to get their money. That looks like the case here.”
    â€œMaybe it’s all a mistake?”
    â€œCall the police, Cora.”
    â€œBut they said—”
    â€œYou have to call them, or it looks like you’re involved.”
    Cora put her hands to her mouth, nodded, then reached for her cordless phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed 911.
    â€œI need the police. My daughter’s been kidnapped…”
    As she stayed on the line confirming her name and address, Gannon walked through the house, finding Tilly’s room. Police would soon process the room but he wanted to see it, to get a sense of his niece.
    Her white-and-pink bed was unmade, left the way it was when the invaders abducted her from it. On the wall nearby there was a cork bulletin board plastered with birthday cards, a drawing of two people holding hands called Mommy & Me, and photos of Tilly with her friends, their smiles and eyes blazing with adolescent zeal.
    She sure resembled Cora.
    Under the board was Tilly’s desk. Math, history and science textbooks were stacked neatly on it to one side. Also on the desk he saw Tilly’s homework: a handwritten essay. He began reading it:
    The Swiss Family Robinson
    Book Report
    by Tilly Martin
    The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss is an exciting story about a family who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and how they must work together to do all they can to survive…
    â€œâ€¦how they must work together to do all they can to survive…”
    The significance of her words jolted Gannon. He studied Tilly’s neat cursive style, the forward slant, the generous looping of the g, y and p. He recognized that it was precisely the way he wrote.
    A family trait.
    It hit him full force that Tilly was his blood and that he was her uncle. That’s when he heard something for the first time since entering the bedroom.
    Ticking.
    It was coming from the metal clock with a clown’sface on her dresser. It grew louder,