Maggie gripped the plastic handle in the backseat as the police cruiser sped through the woods at night. Two uniformed officers in bulletproof vests sat in the front seat, silent except when they communicated on a radio. She was in the middle of a paramilitary operation of law-enforcement personnel, police cruisers, SWAT vehicles, and ambulances. Authorities were converging from all directions, flooding the roads to a secluded farmhouse in Tipton, near the highway exit and two truck stops.
Maggie kept her face to the window, trying to see through the driving snow and the darkness. Her heart hammered away. Every muscle in her body tensed. They passed through woods and finally reached open pasture. Every mile brought her closer to Anna. She sensed they were getting closer, racing down a curving country road. They accelerated behind the five other police cruisers, like the caboose on a runaway train.
The cruiser veered around a curve, following the others. The police in the front seat talked faster into the radio. Maggie caught sight of a farmhouse in the distance, a bright spot in the darkness. The cruiser zoomed ahead and so did the others in the line ahead, their red taillights burning through the blackness. The sirens remained silent, the light bars off.
The farmhouse got closer and closer. A light shone on the front porch and from every room, and the front of the farmhouse looked like the Tenderlys’, but in back were four mobile homes, also with the lights on.
Maggie swallowed hard. It made her sick to think that Anna and the other girls were being trafficked out of those trailers. She was horrified that Anna was inside, but she prayed Anna was alive. Where there was life, there was hope.
The police cruiser raced to the farmhouse behind the others. Suddenly all of the cruisers slowed to a stop at the same moment, then parked on an angle to the right, spraying snow. Maggie’s cruiser was at the end of the line, about a hundred yards from the farmhouse.
The police in the front seat grabbed their long guns, jumped out of the cruiser, and knelt behind its open door, training their barrels on the farmhouse in the blowing snow. Police in the other cars were doing the same thing, and SWAT teams poured from boxy black vehicles in the front of the line, closest to the farmhouse.
Maggie’s heart thundered. She couldn’t see the farmhouse well enough. It was too far away and too dark. Flurries clung to the cruiser window. She rolled it down. Snowflakes blew into her face.
Even with the window down, the farmhouse was too far away for Maggie to see anything. It was too dark. Snow swirled everywhere. The porch light barely illuminated anything. She prayed silently. Any minute now, Anna could be rescued, taken hostage, or killed.
Maggie watched riveted as the SWAT team hustled to the farmhouse, splitting into three moving teams. One team broke down the front door with a metal ram and charged inside. A second and third team flanked the farmhouse, raced to the windows, and shattered them with their long guns.
Suddenly a fusillade of gunfire went off inside the farmhouse. The shots echoed through the snowy night. Light flashed in the windows.
Maggie felt her heart lurch. Anna was inside the house. She could have been shot.
Maggie got out of the cruiser, ducking behind the police officer in the driving snow. More gunshots blasted in the farmhouse. Lights flashed again in the windows.
Maggie had to see what was going on. She took off running to the farmhouse. Her legs churned in the heavy snow. Icy flakes bit her cheeks. She ignored the police calling her back.
A group of SWAT team members hurried from the farmhouse with two handcuffed men, hustling them onto the porch. Uniformed police and FBI agents rushed the handcuffed men to waiting cruisers.
Maggie stumbled in the snow but kept running. Ice bit her cheeks. Her breath grew ragged. She heard women screaming in the farmhouse. The sound cut to her heart, bringing tears to her eyes. She had to get to Anna.
Maggie kept running, snow swirling around her. Another group of SWAT team members hustled two more handcuffed men from the house, their heads down. Police and FBI agents clustered around them and hustled them to cruisers.
Maggie reached the front yard, where police personnel hustled this way and that. They jostled her, calling instructions.
‘Miss, stop, get back, it’s not safe!’ one shouted, and a group of police blocked her path.
‘My daughter’s inside!’ Maggie shouted back, but the police linked arms, forming a barricade.
Maggie watched the porch from behind them. Another SWAT team emerged from the farmhouse with two girls in parkas.
Maggie’s heart leapt with hope. But neither girl was Anna. She told herself to get a grip. She remembered Chief Vogel’s saying there were seven victims. There were five to go.
SWAT team members hustled out with two more girls in coats. Maggie’s hopes soared again. She stood on tiptoe behind the police to see better. Neither girl was Anna. Only three girls were left.
Maggie began to panic. Anna had to be soon. Anna couldn’t have been shot. Anna had to be alive.
SWAT team members brought out another two girls. Maggie jumped up and down. She felt a bolt of recognition. She knew one of the girls. It was Samantha Silas.
‘Samantha!’ Maggie called out, but Samantha didn’t see her in the chaos and darkness before she was hustled off the porch.
Maggie started praying. Anna had to be next. She couldn’t be dead. She had to be alive.
SWAT team members emerged from the house with a young girl in a coat, whom Maggie’s heart recognized instantly, the way it was supposed to, even after all this time. A mother’s heart, in the end.
‘Anna! Anna!’ Maggie cried, tears brimming in her eyes. She pressed against the police, but they wouldn’t let her past. ‘That’s my daughter!’
Anna turned to the sound, finally spotting Maggie as the police hustled her off the porch. ‘That’s my mom!’
Maggie shoved the police aside to get to Anna, and Anna broke free of the SWAT team members to get to her. They made their way to each other, falling into each other’s arms, clinging to each other in the blowing snow.
Maggie held Anna tight, finally holding her beautiful baby girl.
And vowing never, ever to let her go.
Epilogue
Maggie and Noah, After
Five months later, the sun was rising in a clear sky, shedding dappled light on the backyard. The Eastern Redbud tree was blooming with tiny pinkish-purple flowers, the forsythia bush had exploded in yellow stars, and the snowbells bowed their pure white heads. The Zephirine Drouhin rosebushes along the fence had grown sturdy canes with floppy green leaves, sending thinner tendrils curling around the wooden pickets and making a natural border dotted with hot-pink rosebuds, which released a sweet fragrance.
‘What do you think of those roses?’ Maggie asked, leaning back in the cushioned lounger.
‘I think they’re gorgeous,’ Anna answered, lying on the lounger beside her, with Wreck-It Ralph curled into a purring ball at her feet.
‘I think they’re incredibly gorgeous.’
Anna smiled. ‘This is usually when you tell me that Zephirine Drouhin is one of the few varieties that are both thornless and fragrant.’
‘I was just about to, because I like to hear you pronounce Zephirine Drouhin.’
‘With my French accent?’
‘Yes. Say it for me.’ Maggie was only half-kidding. She was so happy that she’d gotten Anna back, and that her daughter was recovering from her horrific ordeal with intensive therapy, support, and love. Anna had good days and bad, but this was one of the good ones, an Easter Sunday morning. Anna had taken the year off from school, and Maggie had stayed home to support her in her recovery. Fortunately, Anna had been spared a trial because the other co-conspirators had also taken plea deals. Jamie Covington, Samantha Silas, and the other four victims had been restored to their families.
‘Zephirine Drouhin,’ Anna said, in French.
‘Sublime.’ Maggie smiled, then heard Noah laughing by the bushes. She looked over to see him gesturing to Caleb, who was rifling behind the forsythia for the plastic eggs they had hidden, filled with M&Ms, Reese’s Pieces, and other caffeinated treasures.
‘Caleb, keep going!’ Noah called out, laughing.
‘Here? Or here?’ Caleb raced back and forth with his bag.
‘There!’ Noah pointed beside the bushes. ‘Look there! There’s more in that direction.’
‘Am I getting warmer or colder?’ Caleb ran back and forth.