“I don’t know—about Reagan’s age, a little older maybe.”
“That’s what I thought.” He tugs his neck from his collar. “I’m thinking Monica lied about the baby she had. I don’t think it died as an infant.”
“Your baby?” I take a partial step back and the air cools me slightly.
“I don’t know if Monica’s child is or was mine—but that happened long before we were together.” He offers it up like the weak consolation it is. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “That doesn’t paint me in a better light. Not sure why I went there. Hell, I do know. I’ll do anything to make things right with you. Every step from here on out matters, and I’m desperate to follow the right path this time.”
“You’re rich with children as of late, aren’t you?” I couldn’t help smearing it with the sarcastic edge it deserved. Hailey Oden and her impossible perfection will now haunt me for the rest of my natural life. I remember the day they moved in. She was the first to greet us. She wore a bathing suit, a full-brimmed hat, and sunglasses. She looked like an old-time movie star, and even I admired her beauty.
“I’m sorry.” James bows his head and weeps silently a moment. His chest bucks hard and violent. “I’m so damn sorry.” He wipes his face clean. “I’m going to get a paternity test.” He glances to the door behind me.
“You think you’re Ota’s father, too? Is this some kind of God complex? Some mid-life crisis you’re dealing with?” My husband’s mid-life crisis has driven us all into a fiery abyss.
“No. I just thought maybe that was her, Monica’s daughter. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about anymore. I just need answers. Monica’s off her rocker. She’s obsessed with me.”
Heather blinks through my mind, that invisible daughter of hers. “I have to tell you something.” My voice shakes as I pull him farther down the hall. “You know that girl in the pictures McCafferty shared with us?”
“The nut case who named both of her kids after you? The one that started the GoFundMe?”
“I saw her. She tried to introduce me to her daughter and—” that scene from the hotel room comes to mind and a choking fear clings to me.
He grips my shoulders and gives a light shake. “And what?”
“She acted as if she were right there with us. She was—invisible.” Even sharing the notion with James seems ludicrous. “She simply wasn’t there.”
“Shit.” He looks just as stunned as I was. “McCafferty said she existed. There were school records.”
“But where is she now?”
We both glance to Reagan’s room as if the answer waited inside.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I’m not saying that’s her. I’m just saying Heather is out of her mind and she doesn’t know where her child or her sanity is.”
“Who is that little girl?” James wraps his arm around my shoulders and we continue to stare down Reagan’s door as if it had the answers.
“Who is she indeed?”
* * *
James and I decide that I should sleep on a blow-up mattress in Reagan’s room with one eye open. It’s the same blow-up mattress she used back home for sleepovers with friends. James jammed both the front door and the back to ensure that if Ota tried she couldn’t easily get out of the house. He wedged roofing nails into the downstairs windows to make them nearly impossible to pry open. If the house combusted into flames, we would all be toast quite literally.
But Ota didn’t sleep. Ota didn’t even come to bed. Instead, she took me up on the offer and colored all night long. The desk lamp bled right through my onionskin lids, assuring I wouldn’t sleep a single wink myself. It didn’t matter. The last good night’s rest I had was the night before Reagan was taken.
In the morning, after sharing a cup of coffee on the base of the stairs, James thinks it’s best if we keep Ota to ourselves another day and I happen to agree.
“Social services would scoop her right up. We’d lose the upper hand. She hardly trusts us. God only knows how long she’d stay clammed up if she was with strangers.” I raise my mug to him as the toilet flushes in the bathroom behind us, and we watch as Ota walks silently back into Reagan’s room, straight to the coloring projects that have possessed her. I glance to James. “She’s gone through half the ream.”
“I’ll bring up a few blocks of paper from the office.” James and I once bought a huge box of printer paper from Costco and spent the next year wondering how we would ever use it all. I think we have our answer.
He peers in at her from over my shoulder. That stubble of his has grown out. I love him like this, with his hair unkempt, his wrinkled shirt, barefoot with sweats. I wish he was still mine. “Have you looked at any of it?”
“No. She’s hoarding it all in the corner. I figure she’ll have to crash soon, and I’ll get to sift through it all I want. We need her to speak, though.”
“Maybe we should call Rich?” James looks resigned to the fact. I start to protest and he holds a hand up. I know that Rich is more of a brother to him than he is some errant cop working the case, but still. He has laws to uphold. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t say a word.”
“You can’t promise.”
“I will.” He picks up my hand and gives it a squeeze. That small gesture makes me ache to have him again. And then Hailey pops through my mind with that bowling ball uterus of hers and the feeling leaves as quick as it came.
My phone rings from my pocket and it startles me for a second. Jane can’t call me and my mother refuses. I pull it out, half-anxious to see Heather’s name even though she prefers to text. But it’s not Heather. It’s a number I don’t recognize altogether, so I decide to pick up.
“Hello?” The world wobbles beneath me, because at this point anything is possible.
The line clots up with silence.
“Hello?” My voice shrills into the line. “Reagan, is that you?”
The clearing of a throat. “Is this a Mrs. Allison Greer?”
“Greer?” I glance to James who is suddenly eager for information. “Yes—yes it is.”
“My name is Nora Stewart. I run the Saginaw Library District as the head librarian. A woman by the name of Heather Evans came by yesterday. She says you have a child fathered by a Black Stone Indian.”
“Fuck.” I take in a ragged breath and jump to my feet. Leave it to stupid, stupid Heather Evans to blow the most precious details of my life right out of the water.
“Well, I have the information she was looking for. I’m not sure how well you know her, but she said that she was in some kind of trouble. I hope you don’t mind me calling. She left two numbers, and one of them was yours. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t reach her.”
Stupid, stupid Heather.
“Oh?” I’m only mildly concerned at the thought of Heather in trouble. It’s most likely a lie she concocted to cover up for being there to begin with.
“Anyhow.” She pauses and I try to picture this woman, elderly by the sound of her rickety voice, Indian, a Black Stone according to Heather. I imagine her dressed in a purple sweater that she hand-knitted. Comfortable shoes. “We had an appointment at ten and it’s almost noon. She said this was an alternate number to reach her at. She explained to me you were her best friend.”
“Of course, she did.” I scratch the hell out of the back of my head because for the life of me I can’t ever seem to escape that title.
“Well, I’m a bit worried for her. She seemed awfully paranoid while she was here. She kept saying something about being followed. Something about a little girl threatening her.”
“A little girl?” A nervous laugh burps from me as I glance to Ota. “That would be her paranoia.”
“Not necessarily. Not if you knew anything about the Black Stone tribe.”
A fire line of electrical jolts runs up my back, spreading over me, embedding their vampire-like teeth right into my flesh, my nerve endings.
“Ms. Stewart?” I cup my hand over the receiver, walking deeper sti
ll into the hall. “Whatever you know about the Black Stone tribe, you need to tell me right now.” I swallow hard, tempering my breathing in the event I miss a single detail.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that over the phone. You know where to find me. But if I were you, I’d check on your friend. Something seemed very, very off to me. I have to go.” The line goes dead.
Something seemed very, very off to her? It sounds like Heather was having an ordinary day.
I step into Reagan’s room to find James seated at the table, the two of them coloring away like father and daughter.
And according to James, that’s exactly what they might be.
James
There are some people who come into your life that no matter how brief the interaction you will never forget. Ota, our little mystery girl, is panning out to be one of them, although not in any positive way. I spend the afternoon studying her. Sitting right next to her on one of Reagan’s pastel chunky wooden chairs and pretend to color alongside her. There is a beauty about being near a child, something all around rejuvenating about the experience. Her thick dark hair hauntingly reminds me of my own, but those eyes of hers, those deep wells—they don’t belong to me. I don’t want there to be a child with Monica—especially not this one. I study the ridge of her nose, the outline of her features for a trace of anyone in my family and come up empty each and every time. She looks like no one I had seen before, and yet like every other child. But Ota had too many dimensions, too much depth, to be your ordinary child. She was multilayered, and each of those layers exhibited some dark twisted root system that ensured a mindfuck at every turn.
Why is she here? I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that someone sent her to the door last night. I don’t buy it for a minute that she wandered here herself. But why? They could have asked for a ransom without sending the little girl. Why put her in jeopardy? They can only assume that Allison and I are good people. How can they trust what happens behind closed doors? But, then again, these are not sane people we’re dealing with. They’re already on the hook for felony kidnapping. By logical deduction, Ota must belong to them, whoever they are, since nobody came forward to claim her as missing.
“Can I see the pictures?” I flick a finger at the stack she’s amassing and she slides them over without looking up. I thumb through them quickly, mostly dogs, rabid looking dogs, a forest of evergreens—but tucked in just about every single one of them is an eye—an errant floating eye. Sometimes the eye has wings. Sometimes the eye has a tail. Rarely is it ever unadorned, but it is almost always floating.
Allison comes back in with a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches piled high on a tray and a glass of frothy chocolate milk.
Ota lights up at the sight, pushing aside her work to make room for the carbohydrate-laden feast.
“It is delicious,” Allison trills, taking a seat across from her. She sets the chocolate milk on the bookshelf just out of reach, a move both Ota and I find disconcerting. “I know you must be very, very hungry.” She turns around and sets the plate on the nightstand behind her. “And you can eat as many as you like once you answer a few questions for us.”
The little girl takes a quick breath as if protesting the idea. Her forehead wrinkles in elongated waves—but those eyes, those brows of hers have zeroed all of their disdain in on Allison.
“Let’s start with the basics. What is your real name?” Allison doesn’t waste any time.
The girl straightens. “Otaktay.”
She speaks!
Allison and I glance at one another, the equivalent of a mental high five.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I fish it out, only to find it’s from Hannigan, aka Hailey.
I need to see you.
I bury the phone back into my pocket and shake my head at Allison as if to say it was nothing. But it was something—something that I never in my life want to deal with.
“Otaktay,” Allison repeats the name slowly, this time setting it to memory as do I. She was right. It does sound like pig Latin. Go figure.
Ota points to the stack of sandwiches bleeding their sickly sweet perfume all over the room, and even my stomach growls to have one.
Allison leans in. You can see the elation exuding from her for accomplishing that one small verbal feat.
“Is Reagan safe?” She holds her breath as she asks the question.
Ota looks from Allison to me with a simple twitch of the eyes, her chin still staunchly tucked to her chest, that glowering affect staunchly in place.
“Ota?” I lower my voice, soften it around the edges, sounding every bit the loving father. “Do you know where Reagan is?”
The little girl pulls another sheet of paper off the desk, stark white, and begins tracing out an eye, coloring in the iris a violent shade of red.
“Is that Reagan’s eye?” Allison’s hand shakes as she bounces her fingers off the page.
Ota lets out a quiet sigh before shaking her head. That look of perennial hatred for the two of us takes over again as she points hard to the peanut butter promise land.
Allison scoots her seat over to effectively block her view. “Just tell me what you know about Reagan. About the people who took her. Do you know if she’s alive?”
Ota takes the stack of artwork she’s been working on all night and all morning and begins to rip at it in a fury.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I snap up the stack and hold them over my head. “You don’t have to do that.”
A squeal of frustration emits from her as she lunges into the art bin and begins snapping crayons in half, two and three at a time until most of them hang limp like broken candy canes.
“Stop.” Allison clamps her hand over the little girl’s, and in one swift move Ota glides her nails over her arm, leaving behind a trail of bloody welts.
“Shit.” Allison retracts her hand as if pulling it from an open flame.
My phone buzzes again, and as much as I don’t want to look, I force myself to. Life isn’t about me or my ego anymore. It’s about Reagan, and every second counts.
“It’s Rich.” I flash the phone to Allison. “He’s downstairs.”
Allison scoops up the plate of food and the chocolate milk and begins to walk out the door. “I’ll be back, Ota. Just a few questions and you can eat as much as you like!” She tries to keep it friendly, but it comes out deranged instead.
“I’ll be right back, kiddo.” I give her a quick pat to the head. “Go ahead and color.”
Her tiny hand reaches out and grips me over the wrist. Her bony fingers press into my flesh quick and hard as pliers and I pull back, stunned.
“You’re strong.” I get up and make my way to the door. “And I know you’re hungry. You will eat.” I give a little nod of assurance as I make my way downstairs.
She will eat as soon as we get some damn answers.
* * *
Rich sits twiddling his thumbs with Allison while asking questions about her mother’s campaign.
“As much as I didn’t care for her delivery, she’s been diligent about changing the posters,” Rich blinks a wry smile. “Her crew has plastered a new set around town, bigger with a larger, far more eligible font.”
“All right, enough.” I take a seat across from them. “You’re making yourself look bad. What’s new?” I glance to Allison. We hadn’t discussed how this might go down, but I think it’s best I walk him into it.
“Checking in on you two.” Rich has always been the nicest guy in Concordia. It’s a bonus he’s protecting the streets. “Have you heard from your dad?”
“Yup.” I slap the back of my neck as if my father had turned into a fly and I was swatting the life out of him. Ironic when you think about it.
A bang followed by a thump comes from upstairs and the three of us freeze.
Allison jumps to her feet. “I’d better take care of that.”
“Let me know if you need some help,” I offer, but she’s already at the top of the stairs.
&n
bsp; “Is that the old man?” Rich scoots over. There’s a level of concern on his face that got serious quick once Ally took off.
“I’ll get to that in a minute. What’s going on? You look tense.”
He plucks at his collar, his face turning ten shades of persimmon. “I did some research for you after you left.”
“Nice.” I hop over and take the seat next to him. “What did you find out?”
“Wilson did have traces of ethylene glycol in his bloodstream.”
“Old news. What else?”
Rich looks stunned. Old information doesn’t knock you off the pedestal the way his expression demands.
“So did Rachel.”
The world stops for a moment. A searing heat runs through me as a bite of perspiration erupts all over my body.
“Rachel?” Shit. “What in the hell does that mean?”
“Most likely whoever offed Wilson, offed Rachel.”
“Oh my God.” My head drops between my knees as I try to hold it together. “Why?”
“They were disappointments. That’s from my mother, not me.” He raises his hands. “I didn’t say a word about this theory. I simply asked how your dad felt about them. She offered.” He blows out a steady breath. “I want you to know there’s no way to confirm anything solid regarding your old man. At this juncture, it’s all speculation. Same with your mother.”
“So the bastard lives free as a bird and the rest of my family rests in a prison of caskets. How’s that for irony?”
“Terrible.” His chest pumps. “Are you sure you killed Aston?”
My heart seizes. With everything in me I wish to God I hadn’t. “As much as I’d love to blame him, it was me holding the gun.”
“That doesn’t mean a lot. You did mention it was your dad who made sure you cleaned your rifles before you left for your trip.” He ticks his head to the side. “As a seasoned hunter, he should have known you clean the guns after the trip.”
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 51