by Karen Rose
Meredith’s swallow was audible. “Hope’s fine, Bailey. She misses you. And Alex never gave up hope that you were alive.”
Bailey licked her dry, split lips. “Beardsley?” she croaked.
Alex dabbed Bailey’s mouth with a wet cloth. “He’s alive. He saved my life, too. He told me to tell you he’d come to see you. Bailey, the police found your father.”
Bailey’s lips trembled. “I need to tell you. Wade . . . did some horrible things. My father knew.”
“I know. I finally let myself remember. Craig killed my mother.”
Bailey flinched. “I didn’t know that.”
“Do you know about the pills I took that day? Did Craig give them to me?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. But Alex . . . Wade . . . he . . . I think he killed Alicia.”
“No, he didn’t. He did a lot of other horrible things, but he didn’t kill her.”
“Rape?”
Alex nodded. “Yes.”
“There are others.”
Alex shivered. Granville had said the same thing. “You mean the letter Wade sent you? We found it, with Hope’s help.”
“There were seven. Wade and six others.”
“I know. Except for Garth Davis, they’re all dead, and Garth’s been arrested.”
Again Bailey flinched. “Garth? But he . . . Oh, God, how stupid I was.”
Alex remembered Sissy’s phone call and the man Bailey was supposed to have met the night before she was taken. “You were having an affair?”
“Yes. He came to see me after Wade died, offered his condolences as mayor.” She closed her eyes. “One thing led to another. And Wade warned me, too. Trust no one.”
“Did Garth ask about Wade’s belongings?” Meredith asked quietly.
“A few times, but I didn’t think anything about it and I hadn’t gotten Wade’s letters yet. I was so happy to be treated nice by someone in the town . . . Garth was looking for that damn key, just like him. That’s all he kept asking for. That damn key.”
“Who kept asking for the key?” Alex asked, and Bailey shuddered.
“Granville.” She said it bitterly. “What did the key open?”
“A safe-deposit box,” Alex said. “But it was empty.”
Bailey looked up in devastated bewilderment. “Then why did he do this to me?”
Alex looked at Meredith. “That’s a good question. Daniel and Luke thought the seventh man had another set of keys, but I guess Granville didn’t.”
“Or he would have taken the pictures from the box himself,” Meredith said.
“He may still have done that,” Luke said from the doorway. “Granville may have taken the pictures years ago. We don’t know yet. But Simon’s turning up alive after all those years had them all nervous. If Daniel had Simon’s key and Bailey had Wade’s key, they would have started asking questions, and Granville didn’t want that.” He stood next to Bailey’s bed. “Chase wants to talk to you, Alex. How are you feeling, Bailey?”
“I’ll be okay,” Bailey said fiercely. “I have to be. How is the girl I found?”
“Unconscious,” Luke said.
“That’s probably for the best,” Bailey murmured. “When can I see Hope?”
“Soon,” Meredith promised. “She had a terrible trauma seeing you beaten. I don’t want to scare her again. Let’s get your hair washed and try to hide some of the bruises before we bring Hope in to see you here.”
Bailey nodded wearily. “Alex, I told Granville I sent you the key. Did he hurt you?”
“No. This blood on my shirt is mostly his. He’s dead.”
“Good,” Bailey said harshly. “Did he suffer?”
“Not enough. Bailey, who else did you see while you were being held?”
“Just Granville and sometimes Mansfield. Sometimes their guards. Why?”
“Just asking.” Alex would wait to tell Bailey that Granville said there were others, just as she’d wait to tell her Craig had murdered Sister Anne. “Sleep now. I’ll be back.”
“Alex, wait. I didn’t want to tell him you had the key. He . . .” Her eyes filled with tears as she pointed to the fresh needle marks on her arm. “He shot me up.”
Alex stared at the needle marks, horrified. “No.”
“I was clean for five years. I swear.”
“I know. I talked to Desmond and all your friends.”
“Now I have to quit again.” Bailey’s voice broke, breaking Alex’s heart.
“You don’t have to do it alone this time.” Alex kissed Bailey’s forehead. “Sleep now. I need to talk to the police. They’re going to want to talk to you about the girls.”
Bailey nodded. “Tell them I’ll help all I can.”
Atlanta, Saturday, February 3, 10:15 a.m.
Daniel woke up to find Alex sleeping in the chair next to his bed. He tried to say her name three times before he could get enough volume to wake her up. “Alex.”
She lifted her head, blinking to immediate attention. “Daniel.” Her shoulders sagged and for a moment he thought she’d cry. Panic snaked through him.
“What?” The single syllable tore a chunk from his throat.
“Wait.” The ice chip she slipped in his mouth felt like heaven. “They took out your breathing tube, so your throat will be sore for a while. Here’s a pad and pen. Don’t talk.”
“What?” he repeated again, ignoring her. “How bad am I?”
“You’ll be out of the hospital in a few days. You were lucky. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital.” She kissed one corner of his mouth. “You won’t even need surgery. Your wound had already started to seal itself. You’ll make a full recovery and be back to work in a few weeks, a month at the outside.”
Something was still very wrong. “What happened to Mansfield and Granville?”
“Mansfield, Granville, and O’Brien are all dead. Frank Loomis, too. I’m sorry, Daniel. He was probably dead a few minutes after he was shot. But Bailey’s alive.”
“Good.” He said it as fiercely as he could. “What happened back there, Alex?” he asked hoarsely. “You and Luke . . . I heard you talking. Something about girls.”
“Granville was into something horrific,” she said quietly. “We found the bodies of five teenaged girls. He’d been keeping them prisoner. Beardsley said he thought there were maybe a dozen in all. Granville began to move them, but he didn’t have time to move them all. He killed the ones he left behind.”
Daniel tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Alex slipped another ice chip in his mouth, but this time it didn’t help. “One of the girls got away, with Bailey’s help. She’s unconscious, so we don’t have any details yet. Luke said he recognized one of the dead girls from the work that he was doing before.” She sighed wearily. “I guess he can’t forget their faces any more than you could forget the faces in Simon’s pictures. One of the girls we found was featured on one of the child-porn sites Luke’s team shut down eight months ago.”
Daniel’s stomach rolled. “God.”
“We were an hour too late.” Alex stroked his hand lightly. “Daniel, before he died, Granville said he taught Simon, that there were others, then he said, ‘I was another’s.’ ”
“Who were the others?”
“He never said.”
“Mack O’Brien?”
“Chase’s team found where he’d been living.”
“At the warehouses Rob Davis built on O’Brien land?”
“You’re half right. He’d been living in one of the warehouses the printer of the Review used for storage. Delia’s car was equipped with GPS and Chase’s people followed the signal and found all the other cars Mack kept. Luke found e-mails on Mack’s computer. He was planning to sell Delia’s Porsche, Janet’s Z, and Claudia’s Mercedes. He’d repainted Gemma’s ’Vette. Apparently he was going to keep it.”
“Wait. Mack was in a warehouse where they stored copies of the Review? Why?”
“He worked for the Review. Daniel, Mack was the paperbo
y. He stood on my front porch talking to me Tuesday morning, just as pleasant as you please.”
Daniel’s gut tightened at the thought of Mack O’Brien that close to her. “Shit. And nobody recognized him?” he asked hoarsely.
“Marianne hired him. She did all the admin for the paper. She’d never met him. Mack would have been just a little boy when you all were in high school. He delivered the papers when most people were asleep, and the rest of the time he just drove around in Marianne’s delivery van, watching. Mack did a lot of watching.”
“Who?”
“He watched all of them. He’s got pictures of Garth going into Bailey’s house, Mansfield delivering girls to Granville’s bunker, Mansfield —”
“Wait. Mansfield was involved in that?”
“Yeah. We don’t know how yet, but he was part of Granville’s business.”
Daniel closed his eyes. “Fuck. I mean . . . God, Alex.”
“I know,” she murmured. “For what it’s worth, it looks like Frank wasn’t. He got a text message yesterday morning telling him where he’d find Bailey. He thought it was from Marianne, but it was from Mack’s cell phone.”
“But Frank still falsified evidence in Gary Fulmore’s murder trial.” His voice was a dry croak, and Alex fed him another ice chip with a look of reproach.
“Use the pad and pen. Yes, Frank did falsify evidence then, but I don’t think he meant to betray you yesterday. Bailey said Frank helped her get away.”
There was some comfort in that, Daniel supposed. But still . . . “I wish I knew why. I need to know why.”
“Maybe he was protecting someone. Maybe he was being blackmailed.” She smoothed a hand over his cheek. “Wait until you’re strong again. You’ll investigate and hopefully come up with some answers.”
Hopefully. Daniel knew he might never know Frank’s reason, but he had to believe Frank had one. “What else?”
Alex sighed. “Mansfield hired Lester Jackson, the guy who ran me down and who killed Sheila and that young Dutton officer at Presto’s Pizza. Chase found a disposable cell in Mansfield’s pocket. The phone number matches the incoming calls to Lester Jackson’s cell phone the day he tried to kill me.”
“Journals?”
“Chase found them with Mack’s things. Everything Annette said was right. Mack had been following Garth and Rob Davis and Mansfield for a month. I think he wasn’t sure who the seventh guy was either, because he had pictures of a lot of the men in town at the beginning. But then he saw Granville standing outside the bunker and from then on, all the pictures were only of Toby, Garth, Randy, and Rob Davis. Rob was having an affair with Delia, so I guess Mack figured killing her was a double bonus. He got revenge on Delia for maligning his mother and hurt Rob Davis even more.
“Mack had pictures of Mansfield killing Rhett Porter.” She hesitated. “And he had pictures of me and of us.” Her face heated. “He was outside your house Thursday night in his van. He took pictures of us, through your window. It doesn’t appear that he uploaded them. Or anything.” She shrugged. “He wanted me to close the circle.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, while Daniel’s temper boiled. “Sonofabitch,” he said through clenched teeth, and she rubbed his hand. “Safe-deposit box?”
“If Rob Davis knows, he’s not saying. Garth has lawyered up. Eventually they may give some answers, but it’ll be in exchange for favor with the SA’s office.”
“Hatton?”
She smiled. “He’s going to be okay. He might not come back as a field agent any time soon, but he’ll live. He said he was close enough to retirement anyway.”
“Crighton?” he asked, and her smile faded.
“They found his bloody prints in Sister Anne’s room, in her blood, so they have enough to arrest him for her murder. Chase has told me that if Craig doesn’t confess, we can’t get him for killing my mother or for conspiring to hide a crime with Wade.”
“The pills you took?”
“I may never know. I don’t plan to beg him for an answer.”
“Have you seen him?”
She tensed. “No.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said. She relaxed, and he knew she’d been afraid to go alone.
“Bailey thinks he and Wade forced me to take the pills, based on some things Wade said back then, but we have nothing definitive.”
“Bailey’s awake?”
She nodded. “I’ve been hospital-room-hopping,” she said with a little smile. “You and Bailey and Beardsley and Hatton and the girl Bailey saved. Bailey said that the one thing she did remember about the night Alicia died is that Alicia put something in my soup at lunch to make me sick. She knew she was going to a party that night and she didn’t want me tagging along. She was still mad at me about the tattoo and telling the teachers about our switching for tests. Her being pissed probably saved my life.”
He tightened his hold on her hand. “Hope?”
“She knows Bailey is alive, but hasn’t seen her yet. Bailey still looks bad. Daniel, Granville injected Bailey with heroin to get her to talk.” Alex’s voice trembled. “She’d been clean for five years. Now she has to go through all that again. He was a doctor.”
“He was a cruel bastard.” Daniel forced out the words.
She sighed. “That, too. Bailey was having an affair with Garth, but it’s not clear if he knew Manfield and Granville had kidnapped her or not. Like I said, Garth has lawyered up. Luke’s been trying to question him, but so far Garth’s not talking. That’s pretty much it.”
“Suze?”
“She’s still here. She’s been sitting with you and Jane Doe.” When he lifted a brow, she added, “The girl Bailey helped. We don’t know her name. Daniel, I’ve been thinking.”
A wave of dread filled him. Then he brushed it away. She might leave eventually, but she wouldn’t leave him now. Of that he was confident. “About?”
“You. Me. Bailey and Hope. You’re going to be fine when you get out, but Bailey . . . she’s got a long road to walk. She’ll need help with Hope.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Here. Her friends are here. I’m not going to take her away from all that. I’m going to stay here. I’ll need to find a house for me and Bailey and Hope, but—”
“No,” he rasped. “You stay with me.”
“But I’ll need to watch Hope while Bailey goes into rehab.”
“You stay with me,” he repeated. “Hope stays with us. Bailey can live with us as long as she needs to.” He started to cough and she put a cup of water to his lips.
“Slow,” she ordered when he would have gulped. “Just a little sip.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He lay back and met her eyes. “You stay with me.”
She smiled. “Yes, sir.”
He didn’t drop his gaze. “I meant what I said, back there.”
She didn’t falter. “So did I.”
He breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good.”
She pressed her lips to his forehead. “Now you know everything you need to know. Stop talking and go to sleep. I’ll be back later.”
Atlanta, Saturday, February 3, 12:30 p.m.
“Bailey.”
Her eyelids fluttered at the familiar voice and her heart sank. She was back there. Getting away had been just a dream. Then she felt the softness of the bed beneath her back and knew the nightmare was over. One of them anyway. Her addiction nightmare had started up all over again.
“Bailey.”
She forced her eyes open and her heart stuttered. “Beardsley.” He sat in a wheelchair next to her bed. He was clean now. Bruised, with a big gash on the side of his face, but clean. His hair was sandy brown, cut army-short. He had strong cheekbones and a sturdy jaw. His eyes were brown and warm, like she remembered. His lips were cracked, but firm and proportioned. Everything about him was firm and proportioned. “I thought you died,” she whispered.
He smiled. “No. I’m a little tougher than that.”
She could believe that. He
was truly wider than three of her. “I saw Alex.”
“Me, too. She’s been making the rounds, checking on us. You have a very strong stepsister, Bailey. And she has a strong stepsister, too.”
His compliment warmed her. “You saved my life. How can I thank you?”
He lifted his sandy brows. “We’ll come back to that later. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been held prisoner for a week.”
Again he smiled. “You did good, Bailey. You should be proud of yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I know what I’ve seen you do.”
She swallowed. “I’ve done terrible things.”
“You mean the drugs?”
“And other things.” Her lips curved sadly. “I am not a girl you’d take home to Mother.”
“You mean because you were a prostitute and had affairs?”
She opened her eyes, stunned. “You knew?”
“Yes. Wade told me about you before he died. He was so proud that you’d turned your life around.”
“Thank you.”
“Bailey, you aren’t understanding me. I know. I just don’t care.”
She met his warm eyes, nervous again. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know yet. But I want to find out. We weren’t thrown together for no reason and I want you to know that I’m not going to walk away now that that phase is done.”
She didn’t know what to say. “I have to go back into rehab.”
His brown eyes flashed anger. “And for that I’d gladly kill him again.”
“Beardsley, he . . .” The word stuck in her throat.
He clenched his jaw, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “I know that, too. Bailey, you walked through that door today on your own two feet. Don’t look back.”
She closed her eyes and felt the tears seep down her face. “I don’t even know your first name.”
He covered her hand with his. “Ryan. Captain Ryan Beardsley, U.S. Army. Ma’am.”
Her lips quivered up into a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Ryan. Is this where we say it’s the start of a beautiful friendship?”
He smiled back. “Isn’t that the best place to start?” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Now sleep. And don’t worry. As soon as you’re ready, they’re going to bring Hope to see you. I’d like to meet her, too, when you’re comfortable letting me.”