You Can't Hide by Theresa Sneed (uplifting novels TXT) 📕

Gladys sat down beside her. She gestured for her to set the coffee cup on the end table and then patted her knee. “I’m not Gladys. I don’t live here, and I never knew your mother.”

Nancy jumped up, bumping against the end table. The coffee sloshed over the cup’s ridge. She sat back down when the man arose and towered over her. “What do you want? Who are you?” Her heart thudded in her chest.

“We’re FBI,” the woman said, showing Nancy her ID. The man opened his wallet and did likewise.

“FBI?” Nancy couldn’t breathe. “What is this?”

The woman placed a folder on Nancy’s lap. “Here.”

She opened the folder, and a picture of Sally fell from it. Nancy’s heart went to her throat. “Why would you do this? This is so cruel!”

The woman tapped the picture. Sally was holding a newspaper in it.

“Yes, I see the paper is from Elkmont, Tennessee, but why are you showing me this?”

“Your daughter died on a Thursday, am I right?”

She struggled inwardly for a way to escape.

“Nancy,” the man said. “Look at the date on the newspaper.”

Shaking, she looked down at the photo. The newspaper was dated a day after Sally had died. “What does this mean?” She wanted so desperately to believe it. She stared at the picture of Sally and then the date, unable to take her eyes off either one. Could it really be true? Trembles rippled throughout her body.

The man offered her a pill. “Take this. It’ll calm you down.”

“What? No.” She shook her head. “I’m okay.” She stood and paced the room, glancing back at them from time to time. Sally? Alive? She quivered uncontrollably, shaking so hard it hurt. Could it be real? She stared at the photo clutched in her hands. Without warning, she burst into tears. “Alive?” It came out as a whisper. “Alive?” she repeated.

“Yes, Nancy, no one died in that cabin except for Marvin Snyder.”

She looked up at them through tear filled eyes and then sank back down on the chair. “But, there were four bodies recovered at the cabin.”

“Yes, but not their bodies.”

Her lip turned up in a curl and her body slanted away from them. “Ew.”

The man shrugged. “No one you know, ma’am. They—”

She didn’t need to know more and held her hand up to stop him. She wiped at the tears on her face. Sally was alive—and Elle, too. “Amazing,” she said, a quiver in her voice.

She jumped up and raced toward the door. “I have to tell Eddie.” She threw the door open and went to dash outside toward her car, but it was gone. At first, it didn’t register. “You took my car?” She closed the door and turned to them. Her eyes narrowed. “You took Sally?”

The woman nodded. “They came to us, and yes, we relocated them.”

She sank back into the chair. Okay, that made sense. A smile formed, where one before couldn’t surface. Alive? And then, realization sunk in. “You’re taking me now? You’re taking me to Sally?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ecstatic, she jumped back up. “Eddie will want to come, too.” But even as she said it, she knew it couldn’t happen. Eddie was married. His wife was not well, and she needed her family as much as Nancy needed Sally. “How will you do it? I mean, how will you make me disappear?” She quivered.

“We have ways of making any death seem an accident.”

That much was obvious, she thought, trembling. They had acquired four corpses to replace Sally, Elle, Karen, and Sam. Making her death look like an accident was probably easy for them, first-year spy-stuff.

“And my body? I suppose it will be a closed coffin, but my brother would never hear of not seeing me.”

“Oh, he will still be able to view you.”

She groaned. “How?”

“You’ll be heavily sedated. There are drugs that can make a person seem like they’re not breathing.”

Her gut churned and she felt ill. “Oh. Really.”

The woman stood and gestured toward the door. “We’re ready to take you now.”

Nancy shook her head. “I need to go to my mother’s funeral first.”

The man shook his head. “Not a good idea. You might give it away and endanger Sally and the others.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Of course, you’re right, but I did some acting in school, and I’m pretty good at it.” She held her face like stone with not a trace of emotion.

The woman smiled. “She is pretty good.”

Nancy clasped her hands together. “Please?” she begged. “One last time to say goodbye—” at that, her voice broke.

The man’s face hardened. “You understand that you could blow their cover, right?”

Nancy thrust her hands on her hips. “Do you have kids?” she quipped.

His eyes widened. “Uh, yes, ma’am.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you were me, do you think you’d let anything ‘slip’ that would harm them?”

He looked at the other FBI agent, and then he turned back to Nancy. “No ma’am.”

She drew her head back. “Then okay, let me do this.”

After a phone call, her car was brought back to the house. Nancy stared at a bag of groceries on the front seat. “What’s this?”

The agent shrugged. “Your cover, why you didn’t go home right after the viewing.”

She rummaged through the bag, pulled out things she never would’ve bought from the store, and then handed them to the agents.

On the way back to the house she now shared with just Eddie and his wife, soon to be just them without me, she thought sadly, she felt conflicted—both happy and sad, joyous and miserable. How was she going to act like nothing huge was about to happen? She would focus on the great sorrow of leaving her only brother, her only sibling, and that would keep her from beaming from ear to ear about Sally.

Gratefully, Eddie was on his way to bed. After giving her a quick peck on the cheek, he retired to his room. Inside her bedroom, she paced nervously. How was she going to deceive her dear brother? Sally, she thought over and