Where the Blame Lies

by Mia Sheridan

  Josie was able to speak openly about her thoughts on the subject with Zach because not only was he a violent crimes detective, but his own family had had the rug swept out from under them with the death of his little brother. She felt understood by him. Known. And it was yet another gift he gave to her.

  They finally got out of bed late in the day, famished and in need of sustenance. They stood at the counter, eating sandwiches, and laughing. Zach put his arm around her shoulders as he took a mouthful, not seeming to be able to stop touching her either. Her heart felt warm with happiness.

  Zach’s phone rang and their eyes met, Zach’s face going serious as he took his arm from around her and put his sandwich down. Josie had the sudden feeling that their happy little bubble had just popped. “Hold on,” he said, walking to the table where his phone was sitting. “Jimmy,” he answered after he’d glanced at the number. He sat on the edge of the wood table and despite the notion that the real world had just invaded their happy space, she took the moment to admire him. His body was sculpted and trim. Her eyes ran over his smooth, brown skin, and down to the waistband of his low-slung jeans where she could see the trail of dark hair. Her mouth had been there only minutes ago, and at the memory, her skin flushed. She looked up at Zach’s face to see him watching her closely, his eyes dark. He knew exactly where her mind had gone.

  “Yeah,” he said, obviously responding to something Jimmy had said, his gaze drifting from her as worry altered his features.

  “Shit,” he muttered, his hand moving over his hair. “Thirteen years? How is that possible?”

  A shiver went down her spine and Josie put her sandwich down, gesturing to Zach that she would be right back. She was suddenly freezing, and she was only wearing one of his T-shirts and a pair of underwear. She went into the bedroom and pulled on her jeans, socks, and a sweatshirt and used the bathroom.

  When she walked back into the kitchen, Zach was just hanging up the phone. He pressed his lips together, his eyes filled with worry.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Professor Merrick finally handed over a list of a couple names of women he’d been with over the years. Apparently, he can’t remember the names of more than that.” His eyes flitted to her and away. Did he wonder if that hurt her? She was long past caring what Vaughn Merrick thought of her though. She’d accepted the fact that he’d only been using her. More so, she’d come to terms with the fact that she’d let him. Taking responsibility for her role in the relationships in her life that had hurt her had made all the difference. She’d made bad choices. Period.

  “And?” she prompted after he drifted away for a moment.

  His eyes snapped back to hers and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “The first one on the list moved overseas apparently. She lives there now with her husband and two kids. The second one on the list disappeared without a trace thirteen years ago.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. “Disappeared?” she whispered, dread streaming through her. She swallowed, leaning back against the counter. “Do you think she was the victim of Marshall Landish too?”

  Zach shook his head. “Couldn’t be. Marshall Landish was eighteen and had just enrolled in the Army. He was in basic training in South Carolina at the time.”

  “South Carolina,” she repeated. “Couldn’t he have driven to Ohio on a weekend?”

  Zach blew out a breath. “South Carolina is a nine-hour drive from Ohio. And what reason would he have to drive to Cincinnati, abduct a woman, and drive back? He’d never been to Ohio at that point from what we know. He moved there years later to be closer to his sister who had recently relocated to Cincinnati when she got a job at Proctor and Gamble.” He paused. “But if he did drive to Ohio from South Carolina and abduct that woman, however unlikely, what was his connection to her, and to Vaughn Merrick?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Josie chewed at her lip. The abduction—and probable death—of the woman thirteen years before, her own abduction, and the most recent victims were all similar in that they were involved with the professor. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But Zach was right, what was Marshall Landish’s connection to the professor, if any? A sinking feeling made Josie sag against the counter behind her. It was becoming more and more plausible that the man who had abducted Josie hadn’t been Marshall Landish. But her mind still fought against the notion. It had been him. She hadn’t known him well, but she’d recognized his voice—not just his stutter, but his tone, cadence, depth—his smell, his body and the way he’d carried it. “Did he have a twin?” she asked Zach. “Or a brother?”

  Zach shook his head. “Neither. Just a sister.”

  Josie looked away. “His sister insisted he didn’t do it,” she murmured. “The detectives who originally worked my case questioned her thoroughly. She wanted to talk to me but”—she shook her head—“I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I was afraid I’d recognize him in her and I just . . .” She made a helpless sound. She’d been too traumatized to expose herself to more potential trauma. As it was, she’d felt like a walking black hole.

  Zach approached her, taking her in his arms, holding her to him closely. “I understand that. There was no need for you to speak to her.”

  She leaned back. “Sometimes I wonder if I would have questioned her too, if maybe . . . if maybe she did know something about my son.” But the detectives had assured Josie that Marshall’s sister didn’t know anything. They’d been convinced and they’d convinced her as well. Whatever Marshall had done with her baby, he hadn’t told a soul. At least not one who had come forward.

  If it had even been Marshall . . .

  Zach smoothed her hair back, kissed her temple. “They had the best detectives in our department working on your case. Men who know how to tell if someone’s lying.”

  Josie nodded, but she still felt unsettled.

  “Jimmy’s looking more thoroughly into Landish’s background right now,” Zach said. “Because all the evidence pointed to him at the time, and because it was assumed you were his only victim, there wasn’t a need to do an in-depth information pull on his past.” Zach paused. “Jimmy did get his medical file from the Army though and found one thing that was unique.”

  “What?” she asked, her muscles tensing.

  “He was color blind.”

  She frowned. “Color blind. What . . . what does that mean?”

  “It’s nothing that would have been visually distinguishable. It just meant that he couldn’t perform certain duties in the Army.”

  Josie’s heart clutched. Did you not wear these r-red panties for me, you slut? Her eyes flew to Zach’s. She shook her head. “I don’t think the man who abducted me was color blind.” She told him what she remembered.

  His jaw clenched and his eyes went dark as she spoke the words Marshall Landish—or the man she’d believed was him—had said to her that awful, horrific night. He glanced away, obviously considering. “Are you sure?”

  “Very. I’ve been going over those memories, Zach. I’ve . . . allowed my mind to go back . . . there.”

  His jaw ticked again. “There’s no other way he could have known the color of your . . . clothes?”

  She shrugged, a small movement of her shoulders. “I don’t see how.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, Josie’s mind traveling back to that moment. Unlike the days prior, she didn’t just probe the memory, she lingered there, recalling the way he’d ripped her clothes and later, the way he’d looked standing in front of that window, the light shining in. There had been something about that moment . . . something, but it remained out of her grasp.

  Everything she came up with felt incomplete or circumstantial, like the recollections that didn’t exactly fit could still be explained away. A band of frustration tightened around her.

  “I need to talk to his sister,” Josie said. “I wasn’t emotionally able to back then. But I need to now.”

  “You don’t need to. I can talk to his sister. Jimmy can talk to his s
ister.”

  She shook her head. “No, no. I need to. If I was wrong about him. If it was someone . . . I don’t know, posing as him somehow or . . .” She let out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know, but I need to look in her eyes and talk to her about her brother. About who he was. Zach, I have to.”

  His eyes—those kind, expressive, beautiful eyes—moved over her face for a moment before he nodded. “Okay. I’ll set it up.”

  She put her hands on his bare shoulders. “Thank you.”

  She wondered if every path she’d gone down to find her son had been wrong. If it wasn’t Marshall who abducted her, it wasn’t Marshall who’d taken her child from her either.

  “We need to leave. I . . . I have to do this. This guy might be looking for his next victim even as we speak, and if I have a key that might open a door that will lead to capturing him, we can’t waste any time.”

  She was missing something. She felt it in her gut.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Before

  Josie inserted the straightened spring once more, her eyes trained on the wall in front of her—unseeing—as she listened to the tiny clicks inside the keyhole of her shackle. Her hand cramped and she grunted in frustration, dropping the sharp piece of metal. This is useless. It’s never going to work.

  Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes, the small burn stopping her from dropping her head forward so she could curl beneath the soiled quilt and just sleep for a little while. Instead, she wiped at the wetness tracking into her eyes, a sharp cramp causing her to grimace and bring her knees up. She felt blood dripping down her thigh. That had begun earlier in the day, just a small trickle at first, but now she could feel the flow of it increasing. At least the fever was keeping the pain of the freezing room at bay.

  She was so weak and could hardly sit up. She picked up the straightened spring and rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling as she reached over her head and once again, inserted the tool into the lock. Dusk had arrived, but the streetlamp hadn’t yet come on. Josie could see the stars beginning to emerge in the pale gray sky. A few snowflakes fluttered down, collecting in the corners of the window. She drifted, her gaze locked on the tiny, faint twinkles of starlight, her fingers spinning the skinny tool she’d fashioned. She felt the metal catch on something and rather than pull it out, she pushed it down, a loud click echoing through the room.

  Her hand fell away from the shackle.

  For a minute, Josie didn’t comprehend what had happened. It didn’t compute that she was free. That her hands were both lying on the mattress above her head, the lone shackle she’d been wearing having fallen away.

  Shock rolled through her. She scrabbled up, a cry falling from her lips, her gaze seeking what she couldn’t believe had just happened despite that there was no pull holding her hand close to the wall, no metal cuff felt around her wrist. She peered at the open shackle on the mattress, bringing her hands to her mouth to hold back her wail of disbelief and desperate wonder.

  I’m free. I’m free. I’m free.

  She came to her feet, her legs buckling beneath her as she grabbed for the wall.

  Only she wasn’t completely free yet.

  On legs that felt like jelly, Josie walked to the door, pulling on it with what strength she had left. It was locked, deadbolted from the outside. Her gaze flew to the window, to the stars blinking high in the deepening night sky. She thought she heard a sound outside—footsteps?—and scurried back to the bed, sitting down and putting her hand behind her back so it appeared she was still shackled. Her heart thundered, sweat dripping down her face. There was blood on the floor—large drips that led from her mattress to the door. They’d give her away.

  I won’t be back.

  Despite the memory of his promise, fear slammed into her as she strained her ears to listen, adrenalin pumping through her system. Nothing.

  “Calm, stay calm,” she whispered to herself. The overwhelming need to weep, to panic, to scream overcame her, but she swallowed it all down. Her baby boy. A sob came up her throat. Her infant was out there and he needed her. She pulled herself up again.

  I’m coming, Caleb. Mama’s coming.

  She wasn’t going to get out through the thick metal door that locked from the outside. Her only hope was the small window high up on the wall. She stared at it for a minute. It suddenly seemed impossibly small. But it was the only way. Either that, or she waited for Marshall to return—if he ever did. But he’d assured her he wouldn’t. And she knew she was too weak for that anyway. She had no hope of overpowering him. And she was getting weaker by the day.

  Moisture trickled into her eyes. She didn’t know if it was sweat or tears. She wobbled, bracing herself against the wall as a wave of nausea overcame her. There was no time to hesitate. Josie grabbed the end of the mattress she hadn’t moved from for so many months, the mattress where she’d delivered her own child, and dragged it to the wall under the window. She propped it at an angle and then attempted to climb it, letting out a groan of frustration when it folded in half and slid down the wall under her weight. She tried again, and then again, the same thing happening until her legs began to shake and her head swam. She could feel blood flowing slowly down her leg, the remaining life she had leaving her body in a slow trickle.

  She was going to have to run up the mattress quickly, before it had time to bend under her weight, and grab onto the sill even while the one hand that had remained shackled until ten minutes before was weak and tingly. A Herculean task when she was having trouble simply holding herself up.

  Josie took a deep breath and ran up the mattress, pushing off it just as it started to fold. She cried out in pain, missing the ledge by at least a foot as she collapsed to the ground with the mattress. For a moment she lay there crying, her body shaking. This is impossible. I’m going to die here. Die six feet from freedom, the stars blinking in at her as she bled out on the floor of her prison. No!

  She pulled herself up. No. No. Surviving this long had seemed impossible too. Bringing her pregnancy to term, giving birth alone had seemed hopeless. Getting out of her shackles had been completely inconceivable. But she’d done them all. She’d done all those impossible things. And she’d do one more.

  She would not die crumpled on the floor after giving up, when somewhere out there, her baby cried for his mother. For her. She’d brought him into this world, and she owed him to keep trying if she even had one single breath of life within her.

  Josie picked herself up, propping the mattress against the wall, shaking her half-numb hand, and taking a deep breath before, again, running up it and propelling herself toward the window. She slammed into the wall with a cry, her fingers not even grasping the ledge.

  But she’d gotten closer.

  Again and again she repositioned that mattress and ran up it, her grunts of pain as she hit the wall mixing with the sobs she could no longer hold back. Her whole body shook, the room wavering around her, her brain pulsing, her shoulder throbbing with the incessant impact of hitting the wall again and again.

  She mustered every bit of strength she had left and with a mighty battle cry that came from a place she hadn’t known existed inside her, she ran toward the mattress again, her arms pumping as her body flew up toward that pale patch of light. Her fingers made contact with the wide sill, clutching it, holding on. She was dangling from the windowsill. I did it. I did it. Her legs kicked against the wall and she realized the mattress hadn’t completely crumpled. With wild grunts of effort, she used her legs to press the mattress back against the wall, not at an angle this time, but so it was upright on the floor. Her arms shook, fingers slipping, as she used the flimsy frame of the mattress’s end to lower some of her weight. It began bending slightly but held. She panted, her whole body shaking, blood and sweat dripping from her, draining her further. Nausea rose up her throat in a sudden rush, and she leaned her head to the side and vomited bile. She was sure she’d pass out as she gagged and sputtered. But she didn’t and a
fter a moment, she was able to gather herself.

  She took a moment to breathe, to let her muscles rest before she tested them again. I can’t. I can’t. The streetlight outside blinked on, the milky glow mixing with the last traces of daylight and brightening her cell. Unbidden, that vision of her aunt’s farmhouse flashed in her mind, golden peace filling her mind with hope, the imagined sound of a child’s laughter—her child—filling her heart. She opened her eyes, looked up, ready for the final trial. There was a tiny crack in the corner of the window, a small spot of weakness. With her lower body semi-supported on the rickety mattress edge, she let go with her right arm and punched at the crack in the window. Once, twice, grunting and heaving. The third time caused the tiny crack to spider outward and the fourth punch shattered it, Josie screaming with pain as glass shards sliced her skin.

  Cold air flowed over her drenched skin and she gasped out, a desperate sound of longing at the first feel of partial freedom. She used her arm to sweep the window of glass as much as she could and then took one big breath before using the mattress edge as a springboard and pushing off it while simultaneously using her arms to pull herself up and through.

  Her torso caught on the sill and for a moment she simply flailed, half in and half out of the room that had been a dungeon of torture for almost a year. She let out another mighty yell, kicking with her legs as she pulled herself through the window, glass shards raking her naked skin.

  Josie tumbled onto snowy dirt, groaning and gasping, as she crawled for a moment, unable to pull herself up but desperate to get away. Away. Away. Her sobs filled the night, breath forming white gusts of vapor, and she tried in vain to be quiet, but her body had taken over. She thought she heard a car in the far distance and her heart slammed harshly against her ribs. Her head whipped around. She felt watched.