To Trust a Stranger

Lynn Bulock

A faded childhood photograph of the Barker girls was the only clue found at a crime scene. But it didn't explain who'd want Jessie Barker's sister dead.The snapshot brought back memories of another tragedy, shrouded in mystery, that left the Barker girls orphaned as children. Jessie had to find out what happened to her beloved sister, but she'd have to trust a stranger with a twenty-five-year-old story that no one had ever believed.Yet detective Steve Gardner did believe– and with God's help he would aid Jessie in her dangerous quest for the truth…

To Trust a Stranger

Lynn Bulock

To Joe, always

And

To Cheryl, my friend and encourager

contents

PROLOGUE

Chapter ONE

Chapter TWO

Chapter THREE

Chapter FOUR

Chapter FIVE

Chapter SIX

Chapter SEVEN

Chapter EIGHT

Chapter NINE

Chapter TEN

Chapter ELEVEN

Chapter TWELVE

Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter FOURTEEN

Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

Twenty-four years ago

Jessie Barker sat in the backseat of her parents’ car, staying as quiet as possible. Mouse quiet. Falling-leaf quiet. So quiet they wouldn’t hear her breathing and know she was awake while they had another argument.

As the station wagon rolled along the dark country road Mommy and Daddy were arguing in the front seat. In the backseat Jessie curled up against the door as much as she could with her seat belt still on and pretended to be anyplace else besides where she was. She looked through slitted eyes at her little sister, Laura, sitting next to her. Laura just looked down at the floor, but then Laura was brave, or maybe too young to understand.

Jessie wanted to yell back at Mommy and Daddy and tell them how to do their job. If she was a mom she would never yell at her kids and she’d let them watch cartoons on TV, and sometimes she would buy the good kinds of cereal from the store, the ones with marshmallows. Then Jessie and her kids would eat it straight out of the box. Mommy never bought the marshmallow kind of cereal because she didn’t like it.

They were still yelling in the front seat. It was the same thing again. This time it went on so long that Laura finally leaned over and whispered to Jessie. “Why doesn’t she just try it? They make us try at least three bites of everything at the dinner table, even gross, slimy asparagus.”

Jessie knew she looked at her sister as if she was stupid. Jessie felt bad when she did that, but she couldn’t help it. She looked at Laura a lot that way. “Try what?”

“The tea. The fackle tea. Daddy said if Mommy was the right kind of fackle tea wife we could stay here for ten years. That’s a long time.”

Jessie sighed. “There’s no tea, Laura. That is not what he means. You are so dumb.”

“It’s still a long time,” Laura said. She turned her face toward the other door so Jessie wouldn’t see her cry. Jessie ignored her as she spread her fingers out in front of her, looking at the little bit of Hot-Hot Pink nail polish she put on her right pointer finger yesterday before Mommy caught her and made her stop. Laura was right about one thing. Ten years was a long time. If they could stay in the nice apartment they had now for ten years, maybe Laura could go to Jessie’s school when she was old enough to start kindergarten in the fall.

“And I still don’t see why we had to take this route—” Jessie could hear Daddy mutter “—middle of nowhere.”

Did nowhere have a middle? If you were nowhere, how did you know when you got to the middle of it? Jessie wanted to ask somebody about that, but her parents were still fighting so she kept quiet. Jessie was still thinking about the middle of nowhere when she really drifted off to sleep.

That was when the bang came.

The loud noise startled Jessie awake. She felt hot and sweaty and didn’t know where she was. Rough hands pulled her out of the car, making her cry out because they didn’t unhook her seat belt first, only unfastening it when she yelled. Where were they? What was happening?

It was dark and scary and she couldn’t see anybody else at first, not even Laura. Once she was out in the night air