“Mrs. Evans? I’m sorry to interfere, but I know something is wrong. I called your friend, Allison, for you. Hopefully, she’ll get to you soon. I’ve got something very important I think the two of you will be interested to know. I look forward to speaking with—” a murmur of voices takes over, and it sounds as if the phone has been swallowed up by an elevator shaft.
James stomps his way down the hall, and I quickly shove the phone to the back and slam the drawer shut.
“You ready?” I pant, looking at the small duffle bag in his hand, a small face peering out from the corner, frightened bulging eyes, duct tape secured over her mouth. “Close your eyes, little Allison,” I whisper, zipping the bag shut. “This will all be over soon.”
Or at least that’s what I’m hoping.
* * *
James tossed her on the floor of the back seat and I carefully unzipped it enough for her nose to peer through. The last thing I want is to suffocate a child. It’s not her fault her mother was insane and that her favorite aunt in the world just morphed into a psychopath. Thankfully, it’s less than a ten-minute drive to the Price family home. The first time James brought me out here I thought how nice, he comes from a long line of farmers, what a beautiful conventional life we’ll have. But his father, the judge, his mother, the socialite, quickly dispelled any Farmer John theories I was tossing around.
The house comes up quick. And as James speeds down the impossibly long driveway, a thought comes to me.
“You said Monica picked up your belongings at the curb. Your father doesn’t really have a curb.” Monica would have had to willfully make the grueling trek down to the house. I doubt Charles was depositing his belongings out on the highway.
His dimples depress as he comes to this realization himself. “He doesn’t, does he? I don’t know. Maybe he called Monica?”
“Maybe Monica has a thing for all the Price men.” That felt like a particularly low blow, considering there are only two Price men left.
A small moan comes from the back and we both glance over our shoulders in unison.
James parks next to the porch and we get out, me with my nerves jangled and him with his new fidgety gym bag.
“Dad?” His voice booms as he bursts through the door. In all honesty, I don’t know if it was unlocked or if James just kicked his way in, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all I can do to keep from shouting Reagan’s name.
“Jumpin’ Mary and Joseph!” Charles staggers out of the kitchen armed with a spatula in his hand. “What the hell? You scared the living daylights out of me!” He warms a quick smile. “Whatcha got there?”
I unzip the bag a few good inches and Ota pops her head just enough to evoke a dull groan from Charles.
“My God, is that Reagan?” The spatula slips from his hand, and with that one genuine moment of concern the thought of finding my daughter here slips as well.
“No, Dad, it’s not.” James heads to the sofa and unzips the bag fully so that Charles can take in the full horror of it all, her hands and feet sloppily bound with duct tape, her eyes the size of bloody golf balls.
I’d tell her everything will be okay once again, but I can no more believe my lies than spew them.
“What have you done?” Charles lifts a brow as he examines the two of us. His body is hunched over the duffle bag, twitching, unsure if he should bolt. His gaze shifts from James to me, his cheek rising as if betraying him on some level.
It’s as if all of time stands still. My heart stops beating, my next breath elusive to my lungs. Everything that’s transpired these past few weeks, all of the swirling rumors, the conjectures, the doubts about what really happened to the Price children, his wife, it all comes crashing to my feet as I look into his stunned eyes. Charles doesn’t look as if he’s being confronted about Ota. Those milky blue eyes of his look as if they’re veiled in guilt—with the realization that James and I are hovering over him, ready to detonate another of his necrotic secrets right out of the water.
My eyes flit to the stack of pancakes towering on a plate behind him—far too many for one person to consume. Reagan’s favorite breakfast. You could pacify her to do just about anything with those. My heart thumps into my throat, drumming right through my ears until all I hear is the staccato wallop.
“My God, it was you,” it comes out breathy, less than a whisper. “You have her. Don’t you?” My voice shakes as I stare down this older, grumpier, far less stable version of my husband. “Where’s Reagan?”
A moment of silence bumps by as he looks to the two of us once again. Ota lets out a muffled wail and breaks the spell.
Charles staggers forward. “This isn’t going well. We could have ended this another way.” He reaches in to free her and James flings him into the wall with a horrific thud that shakes the paltry frame of the house.
“You bastard!” James thunders so loud, Ota jerks and I think she’s having a seizure. “Why did you do it? Why did you take my baby?”
Charles narrows those bushy brows my way, his affect suddenly fierce and cold as steel. “Is she your baby? Or are you simply raising the bastard of another man?” He tips his chin at me. “Tell him, Allison. Tell him you were a loose woman who couldn’t keep her legs shut, and then you used another man’s child to trap my son into marriage.”
“No.” I shake my head, stunned. “No, that’s not true.” A knot builds in my stomach so intense the urge to vomit bucks through me.
“Allison?” James staggers back, the rife look of pain already on his face.
“It’s a long story, James. But he’s dead. He was a flash in the pan for that brief window we weren’t together and he was dead before I ever knew Reagan was in my belly.” I bow my head in horror, in relief. “I’m so very sorry.”
A dull whimper comes from the duffle bag. The room stills as James steadies his steely blue eyes over me. It was his eyes I fell in love with first. My sister told me to run. She said the good-looking ones always broke your heart, and it’s true. James and I have taken turns ripping out one another’s vital organs.
Here it is, the moment of my reckoning. A part of me feels as if the ground were just cut out beneath me—and yet, I’ve never felt so light, such a great relief, a release like the unbuckling of an impossibly tight corset and I can breathe for the first time in six long years. The pressure, the weight, of holding a secret the size of another man’s body had slowly eroded the state of my marriage long before Hailey Oden. It was the noose that I had fashioned for us—the one that ultimately strangled the life out of what we had. James didn’t know why we were suffocating but it was me holding us under water.
A breath expires from his lungs as if it were the last one. His eyes widen just a notch as if he could see how far back this malfeasance had smeared itself over our existence.
“Come here.” He pulls me in with one arm, strong and commanding as he lands a warm kiss to my cheek. “It changes nothing. Reagan is mine in every way that counts.” His gaze stills over my features a moment, reassuring me he means it before he turns back to his father. “Now, if you have Reagan, give her up so we can go home and piece our family back together. What the hell are you doing with her, anyway?”
My heart thumps wild. My God I hope we’re right. Charles could potentially end this nightmare in a microsecond if indeed he has her.
Charles moves slowly over to the sofa and falls exhausted into the cushions. “So the two of you have ironed everything out I see.”
“What does it matter?” I take a step toward him, my every instinct says kill. It’s in the Greer blood. So help me God, don’t test me, old man.
“Because it does!” he roars back so loud, Ota lets out a painful cry. “Come here, darling.” He plucks her out of the bag, and this time James doesn’t lunge for him to stop. I think we’re both exhausted. We want this over more than anything else. “The two of you have a marriage to uphold. You took vows before God and man. Divorce is a sin and the—”
“Wages of sin is death,
” James finishes for him before closing his eyes. “Oh God, that’s why you did it. You killed them all because they had sinned.” His head arches back in pain. “They were people. Newsflash, people are not perfect. We are not robots programed to receive. We are humans. We are fallible. God knows that. And if you’re so damn smart, you should, too.”
The room spins as I try to keep up with the conversation. “Oh my God.” My chest heaves in deep ragged breaths as I take in this frail old demented man before me. “Did you kill Reagan?”
“No.” He strokes Ota’s hair and she leans into him like a kitten. “If she’s dead, you’ll only have yourselves to blame.”
James
My father has held human life in his hand as if it were an apple. His to contend with. His to destroy if need be. The wages of sin is death. And Wilson, Rachel, and my mother never had the chance to seek forgiveness. He had injected us with his poison, made himself out to be like God, the Grim Reaper all in one. My father was a necrosis, rotting away our family from the inside out and I had stepped into the bear trap, drove my family right into his waiting demented arms.
“It’s time you take us to her,” I say, helping Ota up from his lap.
He growls at the sight as he swipes haphazardly to remove the tape from her mouth. “For God’s sake, free the child.”
Allison leans in and helps carefully unravel the layers of adhesion I’ve bound her with. “You can’t scream,” she says sternly and the little girl nods in obedience, most likely a false one.
It takes a painful five minutes to yank the silver paper chains off her body and Ota holds out her hands for my father to pick her up.
“It’s time?” He looks down at her with his towering frame and her dark eyes sparkle as she gives a slight nod.
“The time is here.” Her voice comes out far too calm for a girl who’s just had her body bound and gagged, and both Allison and I exchange a wary glance.
“Follow me,” he says, picking up Ota in his arms as if she belonged to him all along and I don’t have any doubt she didn’t. I walk next to him, close, in the event he thinks bolting is a good idea. He heads out the front door and nods to the truck. The four of us pile in like some dysfunctional family out for an evening ride as my father gives soft directions from the back seat. We bypass the countryside, trade it in for the business district, then quickly glide into the impoverished bowels of downtown.
Allison claps her hand over her chest. “The homeless shelter?”
“Heaven’s no.” My psychopath of a father decries the notion. “Make a left once you pass it.”
The truck rolls by the Concordia County Homeless Shelter and I steal a glance at the people that populate the mouth of the entrance, tired looking faces, but clean and hygienic enough to the point you wouldn’t realize the fact they didn’t live down the street from you.
I make the left and it becomes apparent where he’s leading us to. “Shit.”
“Oh my shit,” Allison repeats the sentiment.
The Concordia Storage Facility stares us in the face, a series of boxy bone white buildings with industrial garage doors that close the world off to their contents.
“Which way?” My heart picks up pace. The reunion is imminent I can feel it.
“Four twenty-one.” He leans between Allison and me, pointing hard with a crooked finger. “I lucked out with an end unit.”
My head inches back with the blow. “Lucked out.” The words take the air right from my lungs. “You got the keys?” I speed the hell down the last few yards and stop the truck with a jerk as Allison and I spill out the sides.
“Reagan!” Allison bangs on the metal door and the sound thunders through the sterile facility.
“Would you stop!” my father reprimands as he scuttles his way over. Ota comes around and hugs my leg as if she truly were my child, and for a moment I’m startled back to the reality of what we’ve put this child through. “They gave me this doohickey here.” He holds up a small electronic device that winks under the hot glow of the lamplight above.
A fucking doohickey. I snatch the glorified garage opener from him and press the shit out of it. The door groans like an oversized cat as it rolls up, exposing a bath of light at our feet.
Both Allison and I duck underneath it and head on in, the remote still firmly in my hand.
White walls, lights, a full bed in the corner with pink fluffy covers, a small television in the corner plays one of Reagan’s favorite cartoons. I recognize the old TV/VCR combo from when I was a kid.
“Where is she?” I ask as the air around us stills.
My father stalks forward and gives the bed a little wiggle. “Come out, come out wherever you are. Your parents are back.”
A dark head pokes out from the corner, pale, an instant smile lighting up her face the moment she sees us.
Voices explode all at once as Allison and I attack Reagan with a powerful embrace. Tears, shouts of joy, Reagan’s panicked voice screaming Mommy, Daddy again and again. It’s the most beautiful sound, the most beautiful moment. I wrap my arms hard over Allison and our precious baby girl as we weep in our holy huddle.
It had come to an end.
I have my beautiful, beautiful family again.
Reagan is back.
She’s been here all along.
* * *
Allison carries Reagan into the car and belts her between us in the front. My father, the man I will find a way to punish, and Ota sit quiet in the back.
We drive home with Reagan chattering happily about her time in the land of adventure. So that’s how my father billed it. One giant fantasy. How long was he going to keep this up? Good God, what would he have done if we had never figured it out?
“And you brought Ota to see me!” Reagan gives a chipper wave to the little girl sitting demurely in the back before looking up at me. “Did you have fun on your trip?”
“What trip?” I glance to my father in the rearview mirror, but he averts my gaze and frowns down at Ota.
Reagan warms my leg with her tiny hand. “Grandpa said you had a very important secret trip come up. So that’s ’cause why I got to sit in the adventure land. I ate cake and candy every night. I love it there.” Her voice grows small. “But I never want to go back.” She buries her face in Allison’s side and I glare at my father for what he’s done to her, to us. He has no clue what reprehensible damage he’s caused. The man thinks he is God, but he’s the devil in the flesh. That’s what he’s always been.
Allison struggles to calm her, so any questions I might have will simply have to wait. But I’m dying to know. What part did Ota play in this demented adventure?
The moon has already crested the rooftops as we pull into our driveway. Miraculously not a single reporter is in the vicinity. It must be dinner. Or perhaps we’ve fizzled out like we always hoped we would.
Allison shuttles Reagan into the house and I fish Ota out of the back seat and boldly carry her in as if she were my own.
As soon as the lights flick on, Reagan kicks her way to the floor and begins running around in circles with her arms stretched wide like wings. She’s craved the space, the freedom to move around without fear. It’s only then I notice how paper white she is, the dark circles underneath her eyes laying over her skin like bruises.
“She wasn’t afraid,” my father offers up. “I took good care of her.”
Allison grunts an angry feral pig snort and I put Ota down and both she and Reagan embrace as if they hadn’t seen one another in so very long.
Reagan hops up and down. “Can we go outside?”
“No,” both Allison and I bark at once.
I take in a quick breath. “We missed you. Stay in here where we can see you.”
I look to my father. “You’ll be staying here as well.” That is, until I can get Rich to show up and haul him out to a place a little less cushy with a few more bars. I can’t wait until he hauls him out of my life for good.
A knock vibrates over the door and both
Reagan and Ota attach themselves to my legs.
“Hold on, girls!” I walk them over, taking exaggerated steps that cause them to rise and fall in turn and the sounds of their laughter is irresistible. Another set of frantic knocks. “Let’s get that.” I fully expect to find a boatload of reporters licking at their chance to get the very first scoop. Missing children found! Concordia’s own Judge Price charged with felony kidnapping and murder.
Crap. I swing the door open, and to my surprise there’s not a mob itching for their next get.
“It’s you,” I say, lackluster.
Hailey Oden stands with her arms wrapped around her belly, the belly I very well may have given her.
Her mouth falls open as she looks to the girls. “The kid’s back.” She gives Ota a pat on the head.
“Wrong kid.” Allison wraps her arms around Reagan like a seat belt. “Does Faulk know where you are?” I can tell by the tone in her voice, that as much as she doesn’t want her around, she has a modicum of concern for her well-being.
“Faulk can go fuck himself.”
“Whoa,” I bark out the reprimand. “Not in front of my kid.” It’s hard not to come across overly protective seeing that I haven’t had Reagan home for five minutes. “Look, tonight’s a bad night. You have my number. Why don’t you go home? We can work something out.” Work something out. It felt awkward coming from my lips. Here she is—the woman who started it all, with her swollen belly, glaring at me as if I just threatened to land her downtown in Rich’s office right alongside my father.
“You promise?” Her lips twitch downward, and her eyes are white with rage.
“He promises.” Allison pushes us back from the doorway. “If you’re still around, come by next week. I think the sooner we look into paternity tests, the better.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Hailey flips back her long dark tresses, ever the supermodel. But she’s not what I’m looking for or what I need. I need Allison. Allison has always been the answer.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 54