Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Box Set

by Willow Rose

  "There are always deals to be made," he said, "emails to answer."

  "An investment banker never sleeps, huh?" I sipped my wine.

  "I guess not," he chuckled and looked at me. "So, how was your day? Did you catch your killer?"

  I sipped my wine again and took a bite of pizza. "We caught a bad guy, yes. But he wasn't the guy we were looking for."

  My dad nodded pensively. "I never liked that Thomas Price. That's who it was, right?"

  "I am not at liberty to say," I said. "You know, ongoing investigation and all that."

  He laughed. "You don't have to. I met Mrs. Weiner outside of Tiny Turtle earlier. She's Thomas's neighbor. She told me Thomas had been taken in, and Jenna too. She assumed it had to do with the murder of little Sophie. "

  I scoffed. "Nothing gets past you, huh?"

  "Nope. It's all anyone talks about these days. Especially with the video and all that. It creeps them all out."

  "It wasn't Thomas, but we'll catch the right guy. Don't worry," I said.

  "I’m not worried; well, that’s not entirely true. I am worried about you. It's we now? You're working the case?"

  I nodded. "They can't do this alone. This guy is seriously deranged. And clever."

  "Just make sure you take care of yourself," he said with a deep sigh. "A guy this clever can also be dangerous, remember?"

  "I'll be fine," I said. "Don't worry so much."

  He shook his head, then reached over for a piece of the pizza with a smile. "Don't tell your mom."

  "I’m not usually in the habit of sharing secrets with her anyway," I said.

  He sighed and sunk his teeth into the cheese. "It's not getting better, is it?"

  I shook my head. "Why is she being like that, Dad?"

  "You know your mom. It's been tough for her…ever since…you know," he said. "She was never really herself again. It broke her."

  "Why can't we even talk about it?" I asked. "We never did. It was like we just decided never to mention Sydney again. Like she never existed."

  My dad exhaled and put the pizza down. "It was just easier that way, I guess."

  I nodded and drank my wine, thinking about that day at Wal-Mart when that man had grabbed first me then my sister. I could barely remember what she looked like anymore. I had been so young. My mom had always resented me for not being able to remember anything, and for being the one he didn't take. I couldn't blame her. I felt guilty about that too.

  "Well, I should get going," my dad said and rose to his feet. He leaned over with his laptop under his arm and kissed my forehead. "Remember to take care of your family first. That's why you came down here. Don't you forget that. Enjoy every second you have with them. They won't be around forever."

  Chapter 51

  The darkness at nighttime was the worst part. Maddie hated when she sensed the lights go out of the room and darkness fall upon them. She knew another day had passed, another day she had spent in captivity, another day when she didn't get to see her mother or even the outside again. Oh, how she missed the fresh air.

  They must be looking for me by now, right?

  She sure hoped and prayed they were. She knew her mother would be, but she didn't know if her mother had returned home yet and discovered that Maddie wasn't there anymore. She could sometimes be gone for days. It could be like that time when she had ended up in the hospital and stayed there for four days before they let her go home. Her mother had told no one that she had a daughter at home, and she had been unconscious for days on end, she later told her, when Maddie was crying and asking where she had been for so long. It could be like that time, so maybe she hadn't found out that Maddie was missing yet.

  Maddie had gotten some food. Earlier in the day, her captor had come into the room and had taken the cloth out of her mouth, ripping the tape off first. She had felt water splash into her mouth and bread hit her lips, and she was told to eat. So, she did. Greedily, she chewed on the old bread like it was the finest delicacy in the world. Never had bread tasted better, she thought as her stomach rumbled for more. But no more came. Her captor gave her more water, then put the cloth back in her mouth, Maddie pleading with him not to while he was taping it shut. Then she put her cheek back down on the carpet till her captor was gone again.

  Now, as the darkness descended, she started to wiggle toward the box. Experience had told her that the nights were usually quiet. Her captor didn't come around at night, usually only once a day as far as she knew.

  Maddie wormed her way to the box, then put her ear against it. There was a light scraping against the wood coming from inside of it. Maddie wiggled herself around so her back faced the box, then leaned her tied up hands against the box, reached out with her fingers as best she could and scratched the wood with her nails.

  Then she stopped and listened. A few seconds later, there was a response. More scratching from the other side, this time louder and steadier.

  Maddie laughed behind the cloth, then scraped the box again rhythmically. The scratching was repeated from inside the box.

  I knew it! It's not an animal. No animal could repeat it exactly like that. This has to be a person. A real person, a human. I am not alone. Someone else is in here with me!

  Up until now, Maddie had debated whether it was mice or rats maybe that she heard, but she had a feeling it was more than that, and now it was confirmed. Maddie wasn't alone.

  She smiled behind the tape, then scratched the box again to let this person know she was there, and they weren't alone. The person returned her gesture, and they continued like that for a very long time until Maddie felt so exhausted she couldn't keep her eyes open behind the blindfold anymore. Knowing she had to get back to her corner, she wormed her way back across the room, this time with a feeling of hope emerging inside of her. Not only wasn't she alone in this awful place, her chances of someone looking for her—for them—had just doubled.

  Chapter 52

  The faceless man is screaming and yelling because I bit his finger. Sydney is standing in front of us, dolls in her hands, as the man hisses at me. My mom has turned her cart around and sees us now.

  "Help!" I scream.

  "Hey!" my mom yells, panic in her voice. She runs toward us. The man sees her, then gives me a short glare. I can see that he is panicking. He doesn’t know what to do. That's when I notice his eyes for the first time. They're blue.

  "Stop!" my mom yells. "What are you doing?"

  The faceless man reaches out toward me, and I scream. Confused, he turns around and grabs Sydney instead. He holds her with his hand over her mouth and drags her away. She drops both dolls to the floor. I’m screaming; in the distance, I can hear my mom yelling. My heart is throbbing loudly in my chest as I watch the faceless man drag my sister out toward the entrance, my mom storming after him. I watch as he carries the screaming Sydney out of the store, where a white van waits for him, engine running.

  The last thing I hear is my mom's heartbreaking screams, and then the engine roaring as the van takes off.

  I woke up with a start. It wasn't the dream that woke me up; it was something else. A noise, I realized as I came back to myself. It was my phone; it was glowing in the darkness and vibrating. I looked at it. It was Melissa.

  "What's going on?"

  "It's Dawn," she said. "She's in the hospital."

  I jolted upright. "What happened?"

  "He beat her up."

  "Oh, no, is she all right?" I asked.

  "I…I don't know. I just got the call from her mother, and then I called you."

  I sprang to my feet. "I'll pick you up in two minutes. Be ready."

  I walked into Olivia's room and woke her up, telling her what had happened and that I needed to be gone for a few hours.

  "It's okay, Mom,” she said and kissed me. "You do what you have to do."

  Neither of us spoke in the car while driving down Minutemen Causeway. As we reached A1A, Melissa sobbed.

  "I knew he was bad for her, you know?"
r />   I nodded. "He just seemed so nice."

  "They all do," she said. "But she has a talent for finding them in a crowd. It's like she's drawn to them somehow. She only finds the true psychopaths, the ones who have everyone fooled."

  I drove up in front of Cape Canaveral Hospital and parked the minivan. My heart was aching for Dawn as we took the elevator up to her room and walked inside. Her mom was sitting by her side when we entered. She stood to her feet. I remembered her from my childhood. A small woman who—just like Dawn—seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but she was doing everything in her power to hide it.

  "Melissa, and…Eva Rae? Is that you, girl?"

  I nodded and hugged Dawn's mother. I could feel the bones in her body and feared I might crush her as I put my arms around her.

  "How's she doing?" I asked. I looked at Dawn on the bed. Her face was almost unrecognizable. It was painful to see. Melissa burst into tears when she saw her. It was tough not to follow.

  "She's sleeping now," her mother said. "They gave her something. She couldn't find rest."

  We went to get some coffee and waited by her side for a couple of hours, sleeping in chairs, curled up uncomfortably. The night there gave me lots of time to think while looking out over the Banana River that the hospital faced. In the distance, I could see the lights from the cruise ships docked in Cape Canaveral while I thought about the case. It had brought so many memories up in my life that I could hardly sleep anyway. I kept thinking about Sydney and what had happened back then. I remembered how devastated I was, especially when I couldn't talk to my parents about what had happened. I just remembered the house suddenly going so quiet. It was like we stopped talking altogether. And laughing. There was no more laughter in my childhood home, where there had been so much before. Sydney had been the funny one, the one who always kept the rest of us happy.

  I sipped my coffee in the hospital room, wondering what she would look like now if she were still alive. I remembered thinking I saw her everywhere in the days afterward. So often, I was certain it was her, but of course, it wasn't. It was just my imagination. She was gone and probably dead. Still, I never could stop wondering. What if she was still around? Every now and then, I would still think I saw her in a crowd.

  "Mom?"

  Dawn woke up. She blinked her eyes, and we went over to her. "Eva? Is that you?"

  I grabbed her hand in mine and squeezed it. "We're going to nail that bastard for what he did to you. I’m going to talk to Matt as soon as it is morning, and he'll…"

  "Stop," Dawn said and shook her head.

  "What?"

  "I don't want you to make a big deal about this," she said. "Phillip is a nice guy. He's just…well, I’m the one who…"

  "Don't you even dare go there," I protested. "This can never be your fault. Never."

  "Eva Rae is right," Melissa said, wiping tears from her eyes. "You shouldn't let him get away with this."

  "He's been through so much," Dawn said. "His ex-wife left him just two months ago. Took the kid with her. He just misses his daughter. That's all. It was his night off. I was drunk; we both were and then…we got into a stupid fight. I said something about him probably being the one who pushed his ex away and that was why she left. He couldn't take that. So, he hit me. Please, just leave him alone."

  I looked at her, shaking my head. "I can't believe you. He does this to you, and you're…you're making excuses for him?"

  "He's not a bad guy, Eva Rae," Dawn said. "I just have to be more careful what I say to him. That's all."

  I left the room angrily. Melissa ran out after me. "Eva Rae, don't."

  I stopped. I couldn't hold the tears back anymore, and now they were rolling down my cheeks.

  "I can't just…I can't just…"

  She grabbed my hand. "If she doesn’t want to press charges, then that's her choice," she said. "You can't force her. You have to let it go."

  "I'm going to freakin' kill that guy," I said.

  "She won't press charges," Melissa said. "It's how it always goes. We can't change her, Eva Rae."

  "What the heck happened to her? She used to be so strong?" I asked through tears.

  "You also remember her dad, right?" Melissa said.

  "Of course, how could I forget?"

  "So, you remember how he treated her and her mother like dirt. All of Dawn's life while growing up. She would come to school with bruises, always on her body so no one would notice except her closest friends. Now, she's doing it to herself. How many times do you think I’ve been out here with her like this? It happens all the time. And, every time, she says she will stop seeing the guy, but next thing, she's back with him again. Or she finds someone new just like him. She can't help herself."

  I wiped away the tears with my hand. "Maybe she can't stop it. But I can."

  "Eva Rae, I don't like that look in your eyes," she said as I turned around and walked away. "What are you going to do, Eva Rae? Eva Rae?"

  Chapter 53

  I drove down my street and continued past my house. Two houses down, I parked and shut off the engine. Wild rage still rushing through my veins, I walked up to his door and knocked.

  It took a few minutes before the light was turned on inside and someone came to the door. It was him. His hair was tousled, and his face bore marks from sleeping.

  "Eva Rae? What…?"

  "You sick bastard," I said, then clenched my fist and placed a punch right on his nose. His nose made a loud cracking noise as it met my knuckles. Phillip screamed and bent forward.

  "What the…? What are you doing?" he yelled. He held a hand to his nose, and it came back with blood on it.

  "That was for Dawn," I said, then turned on my heel and walked away. I could still hear him yelling at me as I started up the car and backed all the way down to my own house and went inside.

  Once inside, I found some ice and applied it to my pounding knuckles, then sat down by the kitchen table with a deep sigh. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so instead, I grabbed my laptop and opened the lid.

  I entered the station's database, then opened Sophie Williams' case and went through all the files, going through every little detail of her disappearance from the Girl Scout camp. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, but anything that would stand out, anything no one had noticed before.

  Except there wasn't anything. The leader, Michaela Strong had been interviewed over and over again about the last hours before the girl disappeared. She was also the one who had found out that Sophie was no longer in her tent when she came to wake her up the next morning. She had started the search in the woods afterward. She had called the police. For a very long time, they believed Sophie had walked out at night and gotten herself into the swamps and drowned. They had searched the river and swamps nearby for days afterward, using helicopters and airboats, but found nothing. The dogs hadn't been able to pick up a trace either. They had found nothing, not even a shoe or a piece of her clothing. Her sleeping bag had been gone with her, and that was what puzzled the investigation team. If she had wandered off, why bring the sleeping bag? If she were kidnapped, why would the perpetrator take it with him? It made no sense to them. Until now.

  He placed her there in her sleeping bag for us to unwrap her, like a freakin' Christmas present.

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair, running a hand through my hair. My eyes fell on the stacks of books and research files I had left out in the hope that I might one day get a little time to write my book. I wondered if I ever would. I had to, at some point, find the time. It was my bread and butter now. I had a deadline.

  I grabbed one of the books and flipped a few pages, wondering about this Phillip character. He rubbed me the wrong way and had from the first time I met him. Why had he given Christine a ride the other day? I had met him once, and then he believed he could just drive around with my daughter? His car had been white too, like the one I saw at night in the alley, and like the one we saw in the picture. I hadn't taken a l
ook at the license plate when he dropped off Christine. I should have paid more attention. That would have told me if it was the same one that picked up Maddie. He could have stolen it from Thomas Price's mother's driveway. It would be easy, and it would drive the suspicions elsewhere. Maybe that's what he wanted all along? To get us to focus on Coach Thomas so he could continue his mission on his own. Was it possible? Could Phillip be the killer? Was he sending me a message by taking my daughter for a ride? To let me know he could get to me at any time he wished? Get to the ones I loved?

  He's too perfect, were Melissa's words. Could she be right? He sure fit the profile. He’d just gone through a difficult divorce too.

  My eyes returned to the screen while a million thoughts rushed through my mind. Did Phillip Anderson know Sophie Williams from somewhere? I looked through the files and found his name on the search team along with the rest of the firefighters from our local station. They had pitched in and helped where they could, of course they had. Everyone did that around here, so nothing suspicious about that.

  My head was spinning out of control. I opened Google and searched for articles about Sophie's disappearance and found hundreds in Florida Today alone. I spent the next several hours reading through them all until daybreak came and the sun began to rise outside my window. When the alarm rang on my phone, I laid my eyes on a picture in one of the later articles, an interview with Michaela Strong, the leader. As I stared at the picture, my heart started to pound heavily in my chest.

  There it was; staring right back at me from the newspaper clip was what I had been looking for.

  Chapter 54

  "Are you insane?"

  Matt stared at me as I entered the police station and walked up to my desk. The place smelled of freshly brewed coffee. I needed that. I had fought with the kids all morning to get them to school on time. Christine had ended up yelling at me that she hated me. So much for best mom ever. Guess that was already forgotten by now.