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by Lisa Gardner

  “I know,” D.D. singsonged, her tone as curt as his.

  She shot me a glance over her shoulder, her expression all pissy again.

  “Hey, can’t blame my father for this one,” I said.

  She glowered. “Annabelle, now would be a good time to catch a cab.”

  “Perfect. Wonder how many reporters I can find along the way? I’m sure they’d love to hear about this.”

  “You wouldn’t dare—”

  “Gonna return the locket?”

  “One, this is police business. Two, this is police business—”

  “Who wrote it? Did he sign a name? Mention me? I want to read the note.”

  “Annabelle, catch a cab!”

  “Can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is my life!”

  D.D. thinned her lips. She pointedly returned to the note, still untouched on the windshield of her car. She wasn’t going to let me see it. She wasn’t going to share. Law enforcement was a system. One that didn’t care about a person like me.

  Moment stretched into moment. D.D. read. Bobby studied her face, his own look impenetrable. They were in the zone. I was outside, looking in.

  Even I have my limits. I gave up, turned away.

  “Wait!” D.D. glanced at Bobby. “Go with her.”

  “Hey, I don’t need a babysitter.”

  D.D. ignored me, still speaking to Bobby. “I got this covered. You stay with her.”

  “We need to talk about this—” he stated levelly.

  “We will.”

  “I don’t want you doing anything rash.”

  “Bobby—”

  “I mean it, D.D. You may be the sergeant, but I’m the former tac-team guy.” He stabbed his finger at the note. “I know about this. This is bullshit. You will not do what this says.”

  D.D. jerked her head toward me. “Later,” she murmured. “Get her settled. I’ll assemble the task force. We’ll discuss.”

  He scowled, gaze clearly skeptical. “Later,” he grudgingly agreed, peeling away from her unmarked Crown Vic, heading toward me. I used the opportunity to try to catch a glimpse of the rest of the note. I simply saw the same two lines: Return the locket or…Another girl dies.

  Bobby put his hand on my arm, pulling me away. I let him, but only until we were out of earshot of D.D.

  “What does it say?” I demanded.

  “Nothing. Probably just a publicity stunt.”

  “The general public doesn’t know about the locket. It never made the news.”

  Apparently not even the fine detective had connected that dot yet. His footsteps faltered. He caught himself. Soldiered on. We had reached the elevator. He punched the down button with more force than necessary.

  “Bobby…”

  “Get into the elevator, Annabelle.”

  “I deserve to know. This involves me.”

  “No, Annabelle, it doesn’t.”

  “Bullshit—”

  “Annabelle.” The elevator doors were closing behind us. “The note doesn’t even mention you. The author wants D.D.”

  HE DROVE ME in silence to the vet’s. There, Bella greeted me with ecstatic frenzy. She twirled, she jumped, she smothered my face in kisses. I held her longer than I intended, burying my face in the thick mane at her neck, grateful for her warmth, her squirming body, her madcap joy.

  Then the traitor turned around and jumped on Bobby with equal enthusiasm. There’s no loyalty in the world.

  Bella settled down once I got her to Bobby’s car. She enjoyed a good car ride as well as the next dog, scooting close to the passenger’s door so she could decorate the window with nose prints. She’d already left a trail of fine white hair all over the recently cleaned seat. It made me feel better.

  Arriving at my apartment building, Bobby parked illegally and came around to the passenger side. I opened my door on my own, a rather pointed statement. He simply diverted his attention to Bella, who of course bounded out of the car and pranced around his legs, oblivious to the rain.

  “Always a pleasure to help a lady,” he said, patting the top of her head.

  I wanted to hit him. Pummel him. Kick and scream at him as if everything were his fault. The violence of my own thoughts startled me. I walked with shaky footsteps to the building, working my keys with fingers that trembled.

  Bella dashed up the stairs to the apartment building. I followed at a slower clip, trying to pull myself together as I went through the motions of unlocking doors, checking mail, securing all portals behind me. I had a rolling feeling in my stomach. A childish urge to stop and cry. Or better yet, pack five suitcases.

  My father had masqueraded as an FBI agent, interviewing a young abduction victim two years before I’d ever been stalked. My best friend had been killed in my place. Someone, twenty-five years later, was now demanding the return of my locket.

  My head hurt. Or maybe it was my heart.

  Once in my apartment, Bobby made the rounds. His fluid movements should have made me feel better. Instead, his need to secure my apartment only upped my anxiety as I realized that, once upon a time, this was exactly what my father would’ve done.

  When Bobby finished, he gave me a curt nod, permission to enter my own home, then took up position against the kitchen counter. He watched as I went through my own homecoming routine, setting down the mail, depositing my suitcase in my room, filling a water bowl for Bella. The digital display on my answering machine read six messages, unusual volume for my quiet little world. Instinctively, I moved away; I would check the messages later, when Bobby was no longer around.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” I countered.

  “Plans for the evening?”

  “Work.”

  “Sewing?”

  “Starbucks.”

  He frowned. “Tonight?”

  “People like their java twenty-four/seven. Why? Am I under house arrest?”

  “Given recent events, a reasonable level of caution is not a bad idea,” he replied levelly.

  I couldn’t take it. I jutted my chin up and cut to the heart of the matter. “My father didn’t do it. Whatever you’re thinking, my father wasn’t like that. And the note proves it. Dead men aren’t known for their personal correspondence.”

  “Note’s not your concern, Annabelle. Note is official police business, which may or may not have anything to do with this case.”

  “So my father posed as an FBI agent and he visited Catherine after her attack. Maybe as a father he wanted to understand first-hand what kind of monster preyed on little girls. Maybe as an academic, he felt it was the best way to do research. I know there’s an explanation!” The words sounded defensive, the theories preposterous even as I laid them out. But I couldn’t help myself. After a lifetime of warring with my father, of accusing him of being controlling and manipulative, suddenly I was his biggest defender. It was one thing for me to distrust my father. But I would be damned before I’d let anyone else beat him up.

  Bobby seemed to be genuinely considering my words. “All right, Annabelle. Give me a reason. Try something on for size. I’m willing to be open-minded. The pitchforks and torches can come out later.”

  “He wasn’t even around when Dori disappeared,” I said sharply. “We were already in Florida.”

  “So you believe,” he said.

  “So I know! My father never left us once we got settled in Florida!” I told the lie effortlessly. I thought, bitterly, that my father would be proud.

  Two weeks after we’d been in Florida, me, waking up in the middle of the night. Screaming. Wanting my father, begging for my father. My mother coming to my side instead. “Shhh, sweetheart. Shhhh. Your father will be home soon. He just had to go tidy up some loose ends. Shhh, sweetheart, everything is all right.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  Bobby’s even-toned voice returned me relentlessly to the present: “Annabelle, where is your family’s furniture? Your whole family disappeared in the mid
dle of the afternoon. What happened to your stuff?”

  “A moving van came and got it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I talked to Mrs. Petracelli—”

  “You what?”

  “I hid in a corner and shut my eyes,” I said sharply, anger returning to full boil. “What did you think I was going to do? Wait for you and D.D. to serve up my life on a silver platter? Please. You’re the cops. You don’t care about me.”

  He took a step forward. The look on his face was no longer impassive. His eyes had turned a deep, stormy gray. I thought I should be scared. Instead, I felt excited. I wanted to fight, to war, to rage. I wanted to do anything other than continue to feel helpless.

  “What did you tell Mrs. Petracelli?” he demanded.

  “What, Bobby,” I parodied in falsetto, “don’t you trust me? Aren’t we all on the same team?”

  “What the hell did you tell Mrs. Petracelli!”

  “I told her nothing, you ass! What did you think I’d do? March into the home of a woman I haven’t seen in twenty-five years and announce the police had found the body of her long-lost daughter? Please, I’m not that cruel.” I took a step forward myself, stabbed his chest with my finger. It made me feel tough, even as his eyes went a darker shade of granite.

  “She told me movers came and packed up our house. No doubt my father arranged it by phone, had everything placed in storage. Maybe he imagined the police would figure things out one day. Then we could return home, pick up where we left off. My father was a big believer in planning ahead.”

  “Annabelle, there are no real estate transactions, no storage bins, no records for a man named Russell Granger.”

  My turn to be blindsided. “But…but…”

  “But what, Annabelle? Tell me what was going on in the fall of ’82. Give me something to believe.”

  I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know…I didn’t understand….

  How could there be no record of Russell Granger? Arlington was supposed to be my real life. In Arlington in ’82, at least, I had lived.

  Bobby wrapped my hands with his own. That’s how I realized I had started trembling, swaying on my feet. From the doggy bed, Bella issued a nervous whine. I couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t speak. I was thinking of my father again, of whispers in the middle of the night. Of things I didn’t want to know. Of truths that would be too much to bear.

  Oh God, what had happened in the fall of ’82? Oh Dori, what did we do?

  “Annabelle,” Bobby ordered gently. “Put your head between your knees. Draw a breath. You’re hyperventilating.”

  I did as he told me, bending at the waist, staring at my scarred wooden floor as I struggled for air. When I stood up, Bobby’s arms went around me and I fell into his embrace quite naturally. I smelled his aftershave, verbena and spice tickling my nose. I felt his arms, warm and hard around my shoulders. I heard his heartbeat, steady and rhythmic in my ear. And I clung to him like a child, embarrassed and overwhelmed and knowing I needed to pull myself together, but desperate for the sanctuary of his arms instead.

  If Russell Granger never existed, what about Annabelle? And why, oh why had I believed that moving to Florida was the first time my father had ever told a lie?

  “Shhhh,” Bobby was whispering in my ear. “Shhh…” His lips touched the top of my hair—a small, thoughtless kiss. It wasn’t enough for me. I tilted up my head and found him.

  The first contact was electric. Soft lips, raspy whiskers. The smell of a man, the feel of his lips pressing against mine. Sensations I rarely allowed myself to experience. Needs I rarely allowed myself to feel. Now I opened my mouth, drawing in his tongue, wanting to feel him, touch him, taste him. I needed this. I wanted to believe in this. I wanted to feel anything but the fear that loomed in the back of my mind.

  If he could just hold me, then maybe this moment would last, and the rest would fall away and I wouldn’t have to be scared and I wouldn’t have to feel alone and I wouldn’t have to hear the voices now growing in the back of my mind….

  “Roger, please don’t go. Roger, I’m begging you, please don’t do this….”

  In the next instant, Bobby was setting me back and I was reeling away. We retreated to separate corners of the tiny kitchenette, both breathing hard and refusing to meet each other’s gaze. Bella scrambled up from her dog bed. Now she pressed against me anxiously. I reached down and focused on smoothing the fur around her face.

  Minute turned into minute. I used the time to school my features, to find my composure. If Bobby had taken even one step forward, I would’ve gone to him. Yet, the moment we were done, I would’ve pulled away. Hid behind the smooth composure I had perfected over the years.

  And I realized again that my mother had not been the only casualty of my father’s war. He had taken something from me, too, and I didn’t know how to get it back.

  “What about my mother?” I asked abruptly. “Leslie Ann Granger. Maybe, for some reason, my parents had everything in her name.”

  “Annabelle, I’ve searched for both of your parents’ names. Nothing.”

  “We existed,” I insisted weakly, stroking Bella’s fur, feeling the reassuring weight of her head pressing against my hands. “We played with the neighbors, had a social life, a role in the community. I went to school, my father had a job, my mother was in the PTA. That’s all real. I remember it. Arlington was not a figment of my imagination.”

  “What about before Arlington?”

  “I…I don’t know. I don’t remember a before.”

  “It’s something to ask the neighbors,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  He had straightened again, seemed to be pulling himself together. “I can’t promise you where this will go,” he said abruptly. “Six bodies are six bodies. We have an obligation to ask every question, to pursue every lead. Already this case has a life of its own.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe, for the near term, you should keep a low profile.”

  I had to smile, but it came out lopsided. “Bobby, I live under an assumed name. I have no friends, never speak to my neighbors, and belong to no social organizations. The closest thing I’ve got to a long-term relationship is the UPS man. Frankly, if I fall much lower on the social ladder, I’ll be an amoeba.”

  “I don’t like you working at night,” Bobby continued as if I hadn’t spoken. His eyes narrowed, he looked from me to Bella then back to me. “Or running after dark.”

  I shook my head. The worst of the shock was wearing off, my defenses shoring up. “I’m a grown woman, Bobby. I’m not hiding anymore.”

  “Annabelle—”

  “I understand you gotta do your job, Bobby. You might as well understand that I’m going to do mine.”

  Clearly, he was not happy. But to give him credit, he stopped arguing. Bella seemed to sense the lowering tension. She wandered over to Bobby and shamelessly pressed her nose into the palm of his hand.

  “I gotta go,” Bobby said, but he still wasn’t moving.

  “Task-force meeting about the note.”

  He refused to take the bait, so finally I followed his lead and let it go. “I need to get ready for work as well,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as tired as I felt.

  “Annabelle…”

  “Bobby.”

  “I can’t. You and me. There are ethics involved. I can’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  He suddenly scowled. “I know, and it’s pissing me off.”

  I smiled, and this time it was softer, honest, a genuine step forward for me. I crossed to him. Placed my hand on his cheek. Felt the rasp of his five o’clock shadow, the strong line of his jaw. We stood just inches apart, so that I could sense the heat of his body, but nothing more.

  He felt like promise, and for one moment, I let myself believe that such things were possible. That I did have a future. That the woman Annabelle Granger had grown up to be had a chance at happiness in her life.
/>   “Do you like barbecues?” I whispered.

  I could feel his lips curve against the palm of my hand. “Been known to flip a few burgers in my day.”

  “Ever dream of white picket fences, two-point-two kids, perhaps an incredibly hyper white dog?”

  “My dreams generally include a finished basement, pool table, and plasma-screen TV.”

  “Fair enough.” I pulled my hand away, sighing over the loss of contact, the cool reality that settled in the space between us. “You never know,” I said lightly.

  “You never know,” he acknowledged.

  He exited down the stairs. Bella took it the hardest, whimpering pathetically as I locked the door behind him.

  My phone rang. I picked it up.

  And a male voice whispered, “Annabelle.”

  BOBBY WOVE HIS way through Boston traffic, grill lights flashing as he worked his way south to Roxbury. He had spent longer than he’d intended in Annabelle’s apartment. Done more than he’d intended in Annabelle’s apartment. Hell, came damn close to behaving like a total ass in Annabelle’s apartment.

  But he was back in his car, in control, and reacquainting himself with cold, hard reality. He was a detective. He was working a major case. And things were sliding from bad to worse.

  Someone knew about the locket. According to the note, that person would meet only with Sergeant D.D. Warren, who was supposed to bring the necklace to the deserted grounds of Boston State Mental at 3:33 a.m. tonight.

  Failure to comply would result in immediate repercussions. Another young girl would die.

  Bobby’s reaction to the note had been instinctive and informed by nearly a decade of tactical team training: clusterfuck.

  Someone was playing with them. But that did not mean the consequences of disobeying wouldn’t be real.

  He hit Ruggles Street driving with one hand, working his cell phone with the other. He had a call back from MIT with the contact info for one Paul Schuepp, former head of mathematics. Another call from a rental agency that had handled Annabelle’s former home on Oak Street. More people to call here, more leads to chase there. He did the best he could in the ten minutes he had before reaching HQ.

  Dusk had descended, the low ceiling of gray clouds making the hour seem later than it was. Commuters trudged along either side of the street, hidden beneath umbrellas or shrouded in dark raincoats. Living so close to police headquarters had made them oblivious to sirens, and not a single person bothered to look up as he passed.