The Day I Lost You: A totally gripping psychological thriller

by Alex Sinclair

  “Oh God. This can’t be happening. Please tell me this is a big joke.”

  “No joke, my man. You’ve been busted. Your life is about to get a whole lot worse from here on out. Let me ask you something real quick, before we haul your ass away: was it worth it?”

  Michael shook his head at Mason. “You don’t understand, officer. I—”

  “I don’t understand?” Mason yelled. “Are you kidding me? You paid people to kidnap your little girl and—”

  “I don’t have a daughter!” Michael screamed, his voice echoing across the lobby.

  Mason’s eyes popped out wide for a moment as he faltered. “Bullshit. Don’t lie to me. You think I was born yesterday? You won’t get out of this that easily.”

  “I don’t have a daughter; I don’t have any children,” Michael said.

  “No, that can’t be—”

  “Erika is unstable,” Michael said, cutting Mason off. “Yes, we were married several years ago, but we don’t have any kids together. I swear it.”

  Any smugness disappeared from Mason’s face. Surely the man was lying to get out of trouble, but something in his voice said otherwise. Mason almost dropped to his knees when he thought of something vital. “Wait. If you’re telling me the truth, and I’m not saying you are, does that mean…?”

  “Yes. Erika has taken someone else’s kid.”

  Mason stood on two shaky legs and stumbled back from Michael. “You have to be lying,” he said, as the truth hit him like a runaway bus. He lifted his police hat off his head for a moment and rubbed his forehead. “This has to be a joke.”

  The elevator dinged a second later, grabbing Mason’s attention. Another police officer came running toward him with something in his hands.

  “Officer Mason, you are going to want to see this,” said a young rookie policewoman. She handed over a wallet encased in a crime scene bag. Mason stared at the open wallet in the plastic and saw what had so rattled the policewoman in an instant.

  “This can’t be right,” he said, as he stared at a photo of Desmond hugging the little girl Erika had just taken away. Both had smiles on their faces.

  “She’s unstable,” Michael said from the floor. “She shouldn’t have been here.”

  Mason dropped down to the ground with the wallet. “This isn’t your little girl?”

  Michael studied the photo and shook his head. “That’s Desmond’s daughter. He doesn’t get to see her very often because of his criminal record. Most people in the building don’t know about her or his past. I only knew him from a professional standpoint. I gave Alan advice when Desmond was still in prison. Recently, Alan and his son came to me for some advice regarding custody of Desmond’s little girl. He has a few outstanding warrants and is terrified of losing her. He probably got freaked out when you people showed up here.”

  Mason’s mouth hung open. He tried to regain some composure as best he could. He had one burning question begging to be answered. “Why did Erika take her?”

  Michael sighed and closed his eyes for a few moments. “It’s hard to explain, but a little over four years ago, she was pregnant with our child. She used to live here with me in the building, until something bad happened.”

  “What do you mean by ‘bad’?” Mason asked.

  “I mean the kind of thing that changes a person forever. Erika was taking the elevator up to our apartment when she had a panic attack. She stopped the elevator manually and fell into an anxiety spiral. She was eight and a half months pregnant.”

  Mason stared at Michael, still sprawled on the ground in the handcuffs the officers had placed upon him. Any lawman worthy of his badge could see that Walls was telling the truth. “What happened?”

  Michael glanced away for a moment and took in a long gulp of air. He let his breath out slowly, as if to calm his words. “She lost the baby, right there in the elevator. When the doctors arrived, they had to cut her out of Erika by cesarean. I was at work when this all happened. I rushed down to the hospital as soon as I heard and found Erika in a recovery room, holding our dead child.” Tears streaked down Michael’s face.

  Mason felt his mouth fall open. Three other police officers had gathered around and were listening to Michael’s every word.

  “She named her Alice and told me to come meet my daughter.”

  None of the officers spoke. Henry stepped forward and managed a few words. “I saw Desmond step out of the elevator with a little girl. Erika convinced me that she was her daughter and that Desmond had taken her. I didn’t realize he was her father.”

  Mason tried to formulate his next question in his mind, but his brain drew a blank. He was speechless.

  Michael continued. “I eventually took Erika home from the hospital, once she was ready to leave, but it didn’t end there. Erika continued to think our baby was alive. She…”

  Mason studied Michael as he trailed off and sobbed into the floor.

  “Are you okay?”

  Michael ignored the question and pushed on. “I got doctors in to talk to her, but she wouldn’t speak to them. I tried to stay home with Erika to help her through what had happened, through what she was suffering with, but my firm was demanding the world from me at the time, and I had huge bills to pay. They didn’t care about my personal life. They didn’t care about our loss. I came close to losing my job in the end, but after six months of her sickness, Erika took off and refused to come home. I had no choice but to have her committed.”

  A silence filled the air as the small group of people stared in shock at the restrained man on the ground of the lobby.

  “I still love her,” Michael said. “I tried to make it work, but she hated me and kept saying I blamed her for the birth, that I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her. She thought I only cared about our baby. The baby that only she could see. It was like deep down she knew the truth, but at the same time she didn’t.”

  The silence in the lobby was deafening. No one dared to speak. They all waited for Michael to continue.

  “I pay for her care and treatment. I forced myself to see past her illness, past her delusions, but she changed her last name straight away and filed for divorce. She tried to enroll our dead daughter in daycare facilities and preschools. I had to send them all warnings about her condition.”

  Mason saw the stunned faces all around the lobby and pulled himself together. “Where is Erika taking Desmond’s daughter? She gave me an address.”

  “Show it to me,” Michael said.

  Mason held up the note Erika left him. Michael scanned it and closed his eyes. He knew the place.

  “Where is it? I need to send several officers there, right now.”

  Michael met Mason’s gaze as he reopened his eyes. “Rocksville Psychiatric Center. I pay a lot of money for them to give her the help she needs. They take her out on day trips every two weeks. She must have escaped somehow and come here. It’s out of the city, in the suburbs. Erika has lived there for the last three and a half years.”

  Forty-Two

  Then

  The elevator came to a stop with a grinding thud. I don’t know why I hit the button, but I couldn’t face going up to that apartment again to lie around for the rest of the day, rubbing my belly and feeling sorry for myself. I wanted more than anything else in the world to see Michael for lunch and talk about the concerns I had for our growing family.

  I knew the end of our relationship was coming. The baby I was close to having wasn’t going to turn things around and bring us together like some magical fairy tale. If anything, she was going to drive us further and further apart.

  I wasn’t trying to blame my unborn child for all of my problems, but when all was said and done, I wasn’t prepared for her the way Michael seemed to be.

  I paced around the elevator, unsure of what I was doing in the cramped space. I held my hands tight against my skull, pressing in harder than I ever had before, trying to calm my brain from swirling into a panic. It didn’t seem to help. I couldn’t st
op what was coming.

  A pain stabbed into my chest as I struggled to get in enough oxygen. I needed to get the elevator up and running again. I pushed the stop button back in with a shaky hand to kick-start the motors into action. But instead of lurching back up the building, the elevator remained motionless. Then the lights overhead clicked off. The dull, red emergency lighting replaced the bright glow.

  Dread filled my every thought as the pain in my chest sharpened. Had I just marooned myself inside a darkened elevator while eight and a half months pregnant? I fell back against the wall and clutched at my clothing, my gaze darting from corner to corner. I was trapped in a tomb of my own creation, with no way out.

  I fumbled through my bag to find my cell. Some of my makeup fell out along with my keys as I haphazardly rummaged through my belongings to retrieve my phone. I found my cell a moment later and pulled it out. It slipped through my sweaty fingers like it was covered in butter. I watched as it hit the floor of the elevator with a crack. The phone clattered around the hard surface and settled, its screen broken.

  I screamed—louder than I’d ever done in the past. Every frustration, every pained word that was dying to explode out of me, filled that yell with power until it flowed down through to my fists. I slammed the ground over and over as I fell to my side and burst into tears. I had finally lost the fight with the breakdown the whole world had seen coming.

  I closed my eyes and wept as my head settled into place on my outstretched arm. I lost all control of who or where I was. I didn’t try to pick up my phone to call Michael for help. I just lay there, lifeless, as the world spun around me. Nothing could pull me out of that state. Nothing could save me from the end I hadn’t seen coming.

  But I was wrong.

  She saved me that day with a single kick. I felt her tiny foot press against my belly. She pulled me from the dirty floor to grab my cell. She forced me to get up to my feet. The desperate monsters in the back of my head, the ones that wanted me to give up and fall into the depths of the void that surrounded my existence, would have to wait. Alice needed me.

  So I did what needed doing. I called for help. I couldn’t get the elevator working again, so I waited for people to pry open its doors and save us from the dark.

  They came within the hour and forced the doors open. I’ll never forget the look on the police officer’s face as he shone his flashlight into the elevator.

  The paramedics told me I had gone into early labor in the elevator. They said the stress I had been suffering from might have triggered things.

  It all happened so fast. I didn’t see the blood on the floor of the elevator until they hauled me out of the space. Had I been bleeding?

  At the hospital, a dozen or so people stood around me, working away, panic in their eyes. They all looked like they had something to tell me. But when I held my daughter in my arms, staring into that face, their words faded into the background. I stopped listening to what anyone had to tell me. Their talk could wait. Their explanations didn’t make sense, anyway.

  I vowed from that second onward to never let the pain in my head take me away from Alice’s care. She was my world now. Nothing else mattered.

  Michael came. I introduced him to his daughter, hoping the love he felt for her would allow him to forgive me for endangering her life in the elevator. But he wouldn’t forgive me. His face was filled with anguish over what I had done. I knew right then and there that he would hold on to this moment forever. A wedge had been placed between us that would eventually break our relationship permanently apart.

  The doctors came and took Alice away. They told me she needed to go, but I wanted her near. I didn’t want her taken away to some room full of newborns so I could rest. I didn’t deserve sleep.

  The next few days were a blur. I demanded to see Alice, but no one would bring her to me. The doctors kept trying to tell me she was gone, but I couldn’t accept that. She was there with me. I held her in my arms. I saw her face. They couldn’t tell me otherwise.

  People came to visit. I couldn’t concentrate on who they were or why they were there. They kept saying how sorry they were. For what? This was a happy occasion. I told them all to stop being sad and to leave after a while.

  One of them left behind a plush bunny for Alice. I kept it close by, so she’d have it ready to hold when the doctors brought her back to me.

  I held that bunny tight against my chest for days and stroked its back until the doctors sent me home with Michael. At home, I put Alice’s bunny in her bassinet, ready for her arrival. As the days went by, I found myself holding Bunny against my chest until I fell asleep. I could never let her go. She was so soft and warm, just like her.

  Nothing comforted me like my Bunny. Nothing ever would. She was my Bunny and no one else’s.

  Forty-Three

  Now

  The ride home is a long one, but I don’t mind. Seeing Alice asleep and snuggled up to me is more than I deserve after the hell of a day she’s had. She hasn’t woken up once, obviously needing her sleep more than anything else.

  We cross the George Washington Bridge, finally leaving Manhattan behind. I’ll never step another foot inside the city again after today. Michael was wrong. He thought he could take her from me, but Alice is here with me, now and forever.

  So many people tried to tell me she didn’t exist, that she died before she was born. They were all wrong. How could they have believed it? She is right here with me.

  I can feel the softness of her hair as I stroke it. I can feel her warm breath flowing in and out of her body. I can hear her lightly snoring as her heart beats ever so gently. Alice is real. And when we get home, I’ll take good care of her.

  “How old is your daughter?” the cab driver asks me.

  “Just over four years old,” I say.

  “She’s enjoying her sleep, isn’t she?”

  I nod. “We’ve had a long day. But we’re heading home now for some rest.”

  “Always a good thing. You’re my last fare of the day, then I’m headed home to my own little girl.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I reply. “Enjoy your time with her. It’s precious.”

  The driver smiles at me in the mirror and goes back to the task at hand. I stare out the window and think about the future. None of them can bother us now. Michael won’t ever see Alice again after today. I won’t let him. He can no longer harbor resentment toward me for what happened. It wasn’t my fault that Alice almost died in that elevator. If he hadn’t placed that stress on me, she would have been okay. He thought he could make it all better with his wealth and control.

  We exit the bridge and hit the highway on the long stretch home. I know Alice doesn’t enjoy living where we do, but maybe after today, she will come to appreciate the life I’ve given her. The people around my apartment will welcome us back with open arms. They always have. They always will.

  “Mommy? Where are we?” Alice asks, as her eyes half open in a haze of confusion.

  I gently lower her head back down and stoke her hair. “Go back to sleep, Bunny. You’re safe now. No one can harm you ever again, as long as we stick together. I won’t let them.”

  If Erika’s secret shocked you to your core, you’ll love Alex Sinclair’s The Last Thing I Saw. Emma wakes up with no memory, and no idea where her husband and son are. But as she slowly begins to remember things, she realizes her family may be in terrible danger. Get it now!

  The Last Thing I Saw

  The perfect family. A moment that will change everything.

  * * *

  Emma thought she had the perfect life: a beautiful home, a loving husband and a gorgeous son.

  * * *

  She was wrong.

  * * *

  When she wakes up to find herself in hospital, Emma has no memory of how she got there or why her husband and son won’t come to see her.

  * * *

  What happened to Emma’s family?

  * * *

  Emma is desperate to find o
ut what happened – and that her loved ones are safe – but remembering the truth could be the most dangerous thing of all…

  * * *

  An addictive and page-turning psychological thriller that will having you looking over your shoulder and checking the doors are locked. If you love B.A. Paris, Shari Lapena and K.L. Slater, The Last Thing I Saw is for you.

  * * *

  Get it here!

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  Also by Alex Sinclair

  The Last Thing I Saw

  A Letter from Alex

  I want to say a huge thank you for taking the time to read The Day I Lost You. If you enjoyed reading the book and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, then just sign up here. Your email address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  I hope you got a lot out of this book. It was an emotionally challenging story to write, but I loved every minute I spent working on it. If you enjoyed The Day I Lost You, I would be very grateful if you took the time to write a review. I’d love to hear your feedback, and your review would help other readers to discover my work.