Chasing Amanda by Melissa Foster Page B

energy and strength. She fought with all the might of her sixty-three pounds, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” She broke loose and tried to wriggle back up the hole toward the last of the fading light, but was pulled back down by a quick yank of her ankle. Tracey shrieked, “No! I want to go home!” She clawed at the dirt, kicking fiercely at her captor’s face, “I’m not going back in there!” Tracey felt her arm being pulled and twisted behind her back.
    Her terrified screams were absorbed by the dirt walls of the tunnel.

Eleven
     
    Molly pulled on a gray cotton sweater and her favorite blue jeans—the ones with several patches of mismatched fabric on the knees. She was excited about the upcoming evening, and as she heard Cole’s footsteps on the stairs, she was glad that he had made it home at a reasonable hour.
    “Hi, honey,” she cheerily called out. “I’m getting ready for tonight.”
    “Tonight?” he asked, as he entered the room. “What’s tonight? I’m so tired.” He fell backward on the bed, his arms and legs spread wide. His feet hung off the bottom of the bed, and his arms were just shy of the edges of the king-sized mattress. His rumpled scrubs top inched up and revealed an enticing swathe of his toned stomach, speckled with dark hair.
    Molly walked over and sat down on the bed next to him, running her fingers over the rough pattern on his cheeks, up around his forehead, and down the soft skin next to his eyes. She smiled, thinking that his face held the innocence of a child and yet the sexiness of a man.
    “Mmm,” he moaned. “That feels good. Can’t we just stay like this all night?” he asked.
    “Mm-hmm,” Molly responded. She stood up, sighed, and said, “No, no, we can’t.” She turned away to glance in the mirror, fluffed her thick hair, and scrunched her face in disapproval.
    “Why not?”
    “We have to go. Newton Carr is speaking about the history of Boyds at the Boyds Negro School tonight. Remember?” She put her hands on her hips, “Don’t you remember? We talked about this.” Molly was used to Cole’s mind, which, though she knew was like a sponge at work, she believed suddenly turned into a sieve when he left the hospital each afternoon.
    He made a face, groaned, and said, “Do we really have to?” He stood and walked toward Molly, reaching his arms around her, and looking at her with his big, dark eyes. “I’ll buy you Japanese and rub your feet if you let me stay home,” he coaxed.
    “Honey!” she smiled. “I want to go. We loved his other discussions, remember? Besides, you always like it once you’re there.”
    He made another do-I-really-have-to face.
    “C’mon. I’ll buy you Japanese and rub your feet if you come with me,” Molly urged.
    Cole smiled and relented. As he walked toward the shower, he said, “You owe me.”
    Molly snickered, “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
    While Cole showered, she told him about Pastor Lett’s brother, his link to Kate Plummer’s disappearance, and his untimely death. She paused, waiting for a reaction, listening to the sound of the water being shut off, the remaining drips making their way to the shower floor. “She said Rodney knew things about the girl,” she hesitated, “I think he was like me.” She closed her eyes, not sure if she should continue, but could not control her impulse to share her thoughts. “I don’t think he was guilty.”
    Steam rose off of Cole’s body, a thick towel tied around his waist, his dark mass of hair sticking out in every direction, “What do you mean, like you, Mol? And what do you mean, not guilty?” he asked with a serious tone.
    Molly looked down at the floor. “You know,” she said sheepishly, kicking her foot out and back, off the side of the bed, “like I do? Like with nine-eleven? Remember?” She lifted her eyes and met his, she saw in them his recollection of her visions before the planes had crashed, the fear she’d conveyed, and his