Count to Three

by T. R. Ragan

  Although he couldn’t recall the younger woman’s name, he was 100 percent sure she was the same woman he’d recently seen on a local news channel. She’d been holding up a picture of a little girl who had been abducted five years ago. The story had immediately captured his attention because it so happened that he’d abducted Ali a week or so before he saw her on TV. She worked for a private investigator, and she’d talked about having a new lead, confident they were closing in on the girl’s abductor after all these years.

  Dani Callahan. That was the name of the woman whose daughter had been taken. What were the odds that they would find her daughter alive? he’d wondered when he saw the younger woman talking to the reporter.

  Watching the three of them sitting at a picnic table made him feel dizzy. His chest tightened. What was he going to do about the boy? If Ethan Grant was telling the truth, how much had he seen, and how good of a look had he gotten? It made him crazy to think someone had been watching him. How was that possible?

  He cursed under his breath and then leaned forward and hit the dashboard with his fist.

  A few minutes later, all three of them stood up. When the women started walking toward the street, Carlin started the engine and drove off, careful to stay at the speed limit and keep his eyes on the road.

  He felt a stiffness in his neck and jaw. He didn’t like feeling as if they were onto him. As if he were the one being watched instead of the other way around.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dani spent the morning sitting in her Highlander, staking out Cameron Bennington’s home in Sacramento near Land Park. It was a two-story house with wide stairs that led to an inviting porch and front entry. She made a point to come at different times of the day, hoping to catch the perpetrator making his way inside. Cameron had assured her she would install more cameras inside the house.

  In the back seat of her car, she always kept a large canvas bag with lots of zippered pockets filled with binoculars, a telescope, a tape recorder, and two-way radios for team surveillance, as well as snacks and water.

  As she sat there alone, the quiet seeping into her bones, she found herself thinking of her journey to this moment in time. After Tinsley had been taken, Dani had worked closely with James Whitton, the lead detective on the case. Noting her frustration and impatience, it wasn’t long before he suggested she put some of her passion for finding Tinsley into helping other parents find their children. He happened to have a friend at the time, a private investigator named Hugo Cavin, who was interested in selling his business. To be a private investigator in California she needed to be eighteen, complete a criminal background check, and have at least three years, or six thousand hours, of compensated experience in investigative work. Hugo and Detective Whitton became her mentors. The next three years had flown by in a blur. Hugo had never been the hovering type, which forced Dani to learn everything the hard way—from her mistakes. She enjoyed it too. Working closely with parents of missing children was deeply satisfying. She could relate to their pain and also feel incredible joy when a child was found safe.

  Everything seemed to fall into place. Before Hugo moved to Australia, leaving her on her own, he told her she was a natural and that she had an instinctive mind for this sort of work. And yet she couldn’t help thinking that it was all for naught if she couldn’t find Tinsley.

  She glanced at her phone. It was ten forty-five. She needed to get to the courthouse to testify for a workers’ comp case she’d investigated over a year ago. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she wasn’t required to go to court. But these things happened.

  She checked her messages, hoping Quinn had sent a text updating her on how things had gone with Mary Cross and Ethan—assuming Quinn had been able to find the boy. Nothing there. Readying to go, she set her phone aside and reached for her seat belt.

  There was a knock on her window.

  Startled, she let go of the belt, heard it whirring back into place, her hand across her heart. It was a man with his dog, a white lab. She pushed the power button on her Highlander so that she could get the window to open a bit.

  “Hello. My name is Frank Petri. This is my dog, Sadie.”

  She smiled but said nothing, unsure about what he wanted.

  “I’ve seen you in the neighborhood a few times now, and I thought I would come introduce myself and see if there was something I could help you with.”

  She sighed. A good Samaritan, keeping an eye out for his neighbors. There was usually one on every street, which was why she tried to change up where she parked and at what time of day she came to observe.

  But this guy was obviously onto her.

  “I’m doing a speed study,” she said, a line she’d rehearsed.

  “Where’s your equipment? Don’t you need radar of some type?”

  “That will come later. For now I keep track of the average number of cars that drive by.” A do-gooder or just a nosy man? she wondered. Her car was still running. She reached for her belt buckle.

  “Don’t mean to run you off,” he said. “I really was just curious. Any chance I can talk you into going to Starbucks for a coffee or tea?”

  The buckle on her seat belt clicked into place as she peered up at the man, trying to glean whether or not he was serious. Tall and on the thin side, he looked to be in his midfifties. Under different circumstances she might have actually considered going. The notion caused her to inwardly question her sanity. He was a stranger, and she was here on business, conducting surveillance of all things. And yet there was no denying that she was flattered by the gesture. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had asked her out for coffee or lunch or a movie. “I really should go,” she said, looking from him to his dog.

  “If you return to finish your study, maybe we’ll run into each other again,” he said, stepping back, still standing in the middle of the road as she drove off.

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That her life had come down to this. The truth was, his invitation had frightened her at first, but not in a dangerous way—she wasn’t afraid of him. But in a nervous, jittery way. No one had shown interest in her in so long that the idea of it felt foreign and downright weird.

  Who was Dani Callahan?

  She had no friends. No family.

  Quinn was her friend, of course, but there were twenty years between them. If anything, she was more of a mother figure to Quinn. And then there was Matthew. Since their divorce, she could count the number of times she’d had a friendly chat with him on one hand. They were different people now.

  An hour and a half later, she was headed back to the office. Her day in court had ended early after the attorney’s claimant decided to settle.

  Her phone rang, and she hit “Talk” when she saw the name on the console. It was Mimi Foster from RAYTEX.

  “Hi, Dani. It’s Mimi. I have information about the woman you were asking about. Her name is Rebecca Carr. According to Cheryl Max, head of accounting, Rebecca was a temporary worker at the time, which is a convenient and cost-efficient way to recruit and test out new workers before hiring them full time. I was able to look at her file. She was at RAYTEX for four months, then let go after a complaint was filed.”

  Dani kept her eyes on the road. “A complaint?”

  “Yes. It had to do with her excessive flirtatious behavior.”

  “Wow. Okay. If I remember correctly, there seemed to be a lot of in-house dating going on at the time,” Dani said. “Who was she flirting with?”

  “Matthew.”

  Dani’s skin tingled. “My Matthew?”

  “Yes.”

  Dani was at a loss. “He never mentioned any of this back then. I would have remembered.”

  Mimi released a long, drawn-out sigh. “Listen. As far as I can tell it’s all conjecture, but apparently the woman somehow managed to get her claws into Matthew.”

  “Were they having an affair?”

  “Looking back, I remember hearing a rumor about Matthew and Rebecca, but I didn’t t
ake it seriously because I knew Matthew was a good man. You and Tinsley were all he ever talked about. I do recall being relieved when she was let go. I thought she was toxic. But after she left, I didn’t think of her again.”

  Dani didn’t know what to think. It was sort of a cruel head trip to think that he might have cheated on her when she thought he was such a loyal man. It was as if her ego had taken a hit. Rationally, it didn’t make sense to care one way or another, but she did, and she knew she would have to ask Matthew about the woman the next time she saw him.

  “I’m sorry. I should not have said anything.”

  “No,” Dani said. “Don’t be sorry. I came to you about this. Thank you for being so honest.”

  “I should get going,” Mimi said. “Take care of yourself.”

  Dani disconnected the call. Her stomach roiled. If Rebecca Carr had meant nothing to Matthew, he would have told her what was going on at work at the time. After Tinsley was taken, they both acknowledged that their marriage had been slowly disintegrating for a while. But she’d never once considered that Matthew had ever cheated on her. It wasn’t in his DNA. Or so she thought.

  Unsure as to what this all meant, she pulled to the curb outside her agency, walked up the path to the entry door, and had slipped the key halfway into the keyhole when the door opened.

  Strange. Did I leave it unlocked?

  The first things she noticed when she stepped inside were papers scattered across both desks and the floor. Drawers had been riffled through, and the closet door had been left open. Someone had been in a hurry. Worried about Quinn, especially since she hadn’t heard from her, Dani walked toward the kitchen, calling her name, and didn’t get a response. Next, she headed for the door to the basement.

  Dani’s heart rate intensified at the thought that Quinn might have been caught off guard in the middle of a burglary. She wrapped her hand around the knob and opened the door. A black-clad figure stood at the top of the landing holding a piece of wood—no, not wood, the base of a lamp—and took a good, hard swing at her, the solid heaviness of the lamp’s base making contact with her left temple.

  Dani fell backward, weightless, with nothing to stop her from hitting the floor, blinded by a kaleidoscope of colors as she went down, down, down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Relief flooded Ali Cross the moment Carlin set her on the bed, adjusted her pillows, and then took a step back. She felt nauseous from all the movement. Her foot throbbed, her arms and legs trembled.

  He brushed his hands together as if he’d just loaded a sack of fertilizer into a truck instead of carrying her one-hundred-twenty-pound frame from the bathroom ten feet away.

  “I might have to find you some crutches,” he said with a light chuckle. “I used a wheelbarrow to get you from the van to the shed when you first arrived. You’re much heavier than I thought.”

  She thought of Dylan and how he often scooped her up into his arms as if she were as light as a feather. Mom had no idea she and Dylan were “a thing.” It wasn’t worth telling her and risking being bombarded with “You’re too young,” “You’re leaving for college and won’t be able to concentrate if you’re always thinking of him,” “Men aren’t worth the stress,” and so on.

  Ali had known Dylan since the second grade, but they had only been together for six months. He was the first guy who’d made her think twice about settling down someday and starting a family—not now, but ten years down the road.

  “Hey. Earth to Ali.”

  She looked at him, noticing for the first time since he’d entered the room that he no longer wore a bandage over his wounded eye. Without blood and bruising she got a good look and saw that she’d completely missed her target. The puncture marks, now scabs, were mostly on his nose.

  “I’m talking to you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You looked miles away. What were you thinking about?”

  “My mom and my sister,” she said. Another lie. “I miss them.”

  He looked skeptical but shook it off easily enough. “It would be better if you just forgot about them. I’m your family now.”

  Ignore him, she told herself. She couldn’t listen to his constant chatter about her being “the one” and how she would come around soon enough. She couldn’t let his fantasy world eat away at her. If she did, she’d lose hope, and without hope she wouldn’t have the courage to go on. “When are you going to take me downstairs? I’m bored. There’s nothing to do—no TV, books, or painting supplies.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, I have to go to work and you need to rest. But don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be gone long.” He snapped his fingers and then walked jauntily to the dresser, pulled open the bottom drawer, and reached inside. “Here,” he said, walking back her way and handing her a copy of the Bible. “Mom left it here when she moved. Praise the Lord!” He laughed.

  He looked proud of himself, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he’d found her something to read. Or maybe he just thought he was a funny guy. He leaned down and kissed her forehead as if she belonged to him, which in a way she absolutely did. She made sure not to cringe or make any movement at all. She didn’t want to anger him.

  He stood tall afterward, anchored his hands on his hips, and took a last look around the room before finally leaving, locking the door behind him.

  She set the book on the bedside table and listened to his retreating footfalls—across a hallway, she assumed, and then down a flight of narrow stairs? It was a guess, but she needed to keep track of every little detail for when the time came to attempt another escape.

  A few minutes later, there was no mistaking the sound of a door being opened and closed. She hardly took a breath until she heard what sounded like a creaky garage door roll open, followed by the loud whir of an engine before it too disappeared, leaving her in silence.

  The first thing she did was toss the covers to one side and then gingerly slide her legs over the edge of the bed, letting her good foot stand on solid ground. When he’d taken her to the bathroom earlier, he’d let her shut the door. There was no lock. After flushing the toilet, she’d stood on her good leg. Two hops had gotten her to the sink, where she had washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face. The pain caused by that movement alone had caused a tear to escape and slide down her cheek as she bit down on the washcloth to stop herself from crying out.

  For that reason she grabbed two pillows and dropped them on the ground so she could put one knee on each pillow and crawl around. Once she was on the floor, pillows in place, she moved across the room like a baby on all fours toward the dresser, the downy pillow protecting her foot and ankle. She pulled open the drawer, disappointed to see that it was empty. She looked around before heading for the gabled window facing the street, hoping she might be able to see the other house, the one with the tall pitched roof she’d spotted through the trees when Carlin had brought her from the shed to the house.

  It took some doing, but she was able to pull herself up so that she was standing on her good foot. Figuring she would see a long and winding dirt driveway lined by an endless forest of trees, maybe a grassy field dotted with cows, she was shocked to see something else entirely. Homes with yards and driveways. Although the houses were set apart and some were only half-finished, a few of the homes appeared to be lived in. The road leading to Carlin’s house was paved. The driveway looked like a million other driveways.

  There was shimmering water in the distance. It couldn’t be!

  She blinked, leaned closer to the window. Her heart pounded in earnest as she made out what was definitely the American River.

  She wasn’t too far from home.

  Her real home. The one she shared with the two people she loved most.

  Swallowing a laugh, she wanted to jump with joy. Knowing she was so close to home filled her with optimism and gave her fresh hope. All this time, she’d thought he’d taken her to a remote area, somewhere deep in the woods where no
one would ever find her.

  As she continued to stare out the window, she took in every detail, including the eight-foot chain-link fence covered with poison ivy that surrounded the property. She would know poison ivy anywhere. She was allergic and avoided the plant at all costs.

  Her heart sank.

  Even if she had gotten through the front door after stabbing him with a fork, she never would have had time to scale the fence. She wasn’t athletic, couldn’t climb a tree if her life depended on it. And now with a bum foot, her odds of escaping had grown even slimmer.

  She grabbed hold of the window frame. It was old, the paint peeling from the wood. She pushed upward as hard as she could, but the window wouldn’t budge. After closer examination she realized it had been nailed shut.

  It seemed he’d thought of everything.

  She thought of the metal brackets she’d seen on the floor near the table when he’d fed her pancakes. The brackets had been on the walls in the hallway and on the floor in the bedroom too.

  And then she thought of the other girlfriend he’d mentioned, and now wished she’d asked more questions about her. Maybe Ali wasn’t the first “girlfriend” he’d brought home to meet Mother. And maybe she wouldn’t be the last.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dani sat in a hospital bed, feeling antsy, wishing she could get up and walk out of the place. She was fine. Ready to go home. But her doctor wanted to keep her overnight for observation, and she’d given in. The top of her head was wrapped in thick gauze. Apparently she’d taken a blow to the temple and had been unable to communicate when she’d been brought in by ambulance, unable to follow simple instructions like “Squeeze my hand” or “Open your eyes.”

  It was seven o’clock at night. Quinn was asleep in a chair by the window.

  The last thing Dani remembered was opening the door leading to the basement. After that, much of the day was a mystery except for flashbacks of Quinn hovering over her, pleading with her to wake up.