Don't Look for Me

by Wendy Walker

She cried the words. Evan was confused.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Ev—I think I know who gave Mom a ride here. I think she may have left.”

  Evan was quiet for a moment. But then—

  “I don’t care! We still have to find her. You’re still going to look for her, right?”

  “Yes. Of course. I promised you I would.”

  More silence. She couldn’t tell him why she’d called, that she had dug herself into a hole and didn’t think she would survive it. Not this time.

  “Evan?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Just keep your shit together, okay? I’m sorry I called. I’m so sorry…”

  Then a knock at the door. And Reyes’s voice.

  “Are you decent?”

  Then Evan again. He’d heard it—the man’s voice.

  “Who was that?”

  Then Reyes.

  “Are you ready?”

  Nic jumped out of the bed, raced to the bathroom for a towel which she wrapped around her body. She called out to Reyes, covering the phone with her hand so Evan wouldn’t hear her.

  “Just a second…”

  Then to Evan on the phone, “I’m fine. I have to go … I just needed to hear your voice.” She made quick excuses, then hung up the call.

  She opened the door, her hand still clutching the phone.

  Reyes stood there with two cups of coffee and a disarming smile.

  He walked inside, his eyes moving over her, head to toe, wrapped in the towel.

  “Good morning,” he said. He set down the coffee and pulled her close.

  She buried her face into the crease of his neck. She wanted to cry, with despair, or relief. All of this was disorienting.

  He held her until she let go first. Then he handed her a coffee and sat on the bed.

  “Are you all right? You seem upset. Is it about what happened last night?”

  She told him the truth. “I don’t know.”

  Had it been like all the others? She had told herself it was different somehow.

  Sweet and tender. Wasn’t it? She could still hear his soft voice on warm breath. We are the same. We are just the same. Whispering in her ear as they fell onto the bed. And then the silence of his voice, but the words his body spoke as he touched her and kissed her and held her. They were kind words. Loving words. The silent conversation of lovers, not just people fucking, but making love, connected by the role they’d played in the death of another human being. It was something few people could understand.

  “It’s okay,” he said to her. “Why don’t I wait outside. You take your time. Get dressed. Come down when you’re ready and we’ll head back to town.”

  When the door closed behind him, Nic took a shower. Got dressed. Drank the coffee he’d left for her.

  It was different, wasn’t it? How could she not know?

  * * *

  They drove half an hour back to Hastings, then another fifteen minutes through winding roads before arriving at the parcel on Abel Hill Lane that Reyes had found in the land records. It felt like they’d been driving in circles.

  “It’s such a maze of woods and cornfields,” Nic said.

  Reyes nodded. “It’s a small town, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to get lost.”

  They pulled into the dirt driveway. Then they stopped in front of a metal gate. On either side was a tall, wire fence with coiled barbed wire lining the top.

  Nic stared at it for a long moment, then got out of the car.

  Reyes joined her.

  He went to the gate and swung it open. It was not locked, though a loose chain hung from one side.

  “Strange,” he said. “Why go to all this trouble to hang a lock on the gate but not close it?”

  Nic looked up at the fence, then touched one of the wires. She could feel the small barbs.

  “This is the same fence!” she said.

  Reyes started walking back to car. “I guess you were right about it.”

  They got back in the car and drove up the long driveway to the top of a hill. They stopped just past the front porch of a house. It was exactly as Booth had described it. An old ranch with a partial renovation.

  “Stay here,” Reyes said.

  Nic didn’t argue. He walked around the car, but then stopped by her window. She rolled it down.

  “What?” she asked.

  He leaned in and gave her a kiss. It was the first kiss all morning and it made her want more.

  “Is that okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Nic answered.

  She leaned out the window, watching as he walked to the porch steps, then up the steps to the front door. He rang the doorbell and waited. He knocked, and waited. He looked back, shrugged. Rang again. Knocked again. Waited.

  He placed his hand on his holstered gun.

  Then he turned the doorknob. It opened. He looked back to motion that he was going inside. Nic nodded at him, and watched as he disappeared into the house, closing the door behind him.

  33

  Day sixteen

  I hear a car in the driveway. Mick has been gone for two hours. Alice has not come to me, not even to bring me food. I have listened to her play alone in her toy room, making the voices for both Hannah and Suzannah. I cannot hear what they say to each other but it worries me that she stays away.

  I get up and walk to the window. I look out the hole to see what it is Mick wants me to see. There is no point in avoiding it.

  I have been looking out all morning and I have already turned his plan to my advantage. Beyond the driveway, I see my new weapon.

  A row of apple trees flank the side of the driveway. They are mature trees and I imagine they were planted before Mick took over this house. He does not seem to have an interest in property maintenance.

  The apples have ripened and fallen days, maybe weeks ago.

  Apple seeds contain amygdalin.

  Amygdalin can convert to cyanide.

  Cyanide can make you sick. It can even kill you.

  I have been back and forth to the hole in the window, studying the trees, counting the apples that have fallen to the ground.

  Plotting how I can get to them.

  I watch now as the car pulls around the driveway just enough for me to see.

  It takes a moment for the image to settle in my brain. And then it explodes. A police car.

  A police car!

  I hear footsteps. Alice is coming. She is at the bars of my cell. She pushes the wood door open so she can see me. I look back at her, and I know I cannot change the look on my face.

  Desperation.

  She shakes her head sternly and raises her finger to her lips.

  Shhhhhh! She makes this sound. I look back out through the hole.

  I have to be careful. I will have one chance to call out before Dolly’s eyes see that I am being a bad mommy.

  I don’t know how far away Mick is. He could still be in the house, though I thought I heard him leave. He may have returned.

  Think, Molly! Think!

  I wait for the officer to open the door and step outside. He walks around the back of the car and I lose sight of him. But then I see his back as he walks to the passenger side. A window rolls down. A head leans out. It’s a woman, I can see her blond hair. He kisses her and I think how strange this is.

  Is he not here to save me? To look for me?

  He stands up straight and steps away. I think that I will press my lips to the hole now and scream out for help.

  Alice taps nervously on the metals bars.

  “Stop!” she screams in a whisper.

  I look back at her, then once more through the hole, ready to call out for help.

  Alice leaves. I hear her feet running now toward the front of the house.

  The officer turns. I am ready to do it, ready to look away and press my lips to the wood. But then I see the face of the woman. I think my eyes have gone crazy. But I stare long enough to know that what I am seeing is r
eal.

  I do not look away. I do not scream for help.

  Because the woman in the car is my daughter.

  And the man in the uniform is Mick.

  34

  Day sixteen

  Nic stared at the house. There was no movement now. No sound. Apple trees lined the driveway, then woods. More woods, as far as the eye could see. Probably all the way to the edge of the fence.

  She thought then that if no one was inside the house, they would track down the owners, those investors from New York. Maybe they had someone check on the place the night of the storm. They owned a black truck. Or a gray one. But a truck, like the one Edith Moore had seen her mother get into.

  How this fit with Chief Watkins and his truck, his broken taillight, was still a question. But she would follow every lead until it brought her to her mother.

  She looked back to the house and noticed a window to a room in the back. It was boarded up—from the storm, she imagined—only it was fortified with steel bars.

  She stared at the one boarded window. It was odd. Out of place.

  And for a second, she wondered what was behind it.

  35

  Day sixteen

  I hear the doorbell and the knocking and the waiting. Then more ringing and knocking until finally the door opens and closes. I look out the hole and pray Nicole is still in that car. That she is still unaware.

  Footsteps bound the hallway. Smaller ones scurry behind them.

  Then the lock turns. The grate opens.

  Mick walks in, wearing a police uniform. He is calm and steady.

  He wears a face that is smug and laden with the power he has just acquired over me. Just like the moment when I heard his cell phone ring on the kitchen counter. The moment I knew I was his prisoner.

  I have a flash of memory, provoked now, by the uniform. A traffic stop somewhere along Route 7. I don’t remember the name of the town. I only remember now how John hired a lawyer to make it go away because he was worried about our insurance. And how it was never submitted by the officer. It was as though it had never happened. I thought I’d gotten lucky.

  I had been traveling twenty miles over the speed limit. I had been trying to get away from these dying towns, trying to get home. I hadn’t noticed how fast I’d been going.

  I study his face and know it is the same man.

  How long has he known me? How long has he been planning this? That stop was last spring.

  Mick is a cop. Everything I have come to think about him now unravels. I try to put the pieces back in a way that fits with this new one.

  Mick is a cop—a real cop. He has access to records. He can get people to pull over, the way I did. To give him their information.

  What else? The cameras—at the Gas n’ Go. Mick watches people coming and going. He can see their license plates and credit cards. I think about how these pieces fit together—how perfect it is. How he can gather information, and then use it however he wants.

  He knew I came every other Thursday in the afternoons from the cameras at the gas station. He got my driver’s license and car registration from the traffic stop. And how easy it was from there—one Google search and my whole life unfolded for him, like a nicely wrapped present.

  I want to fight against it. I think that maybe my rage is finally big enough to overtake him, but that delusion is dispelled the moment his hands take hold of my wrists. His physical strength is undeniable.

  He pulls me back to the window. Presses my face to the wood until it scrapes my skin. I can feel the small splinters as they enter and dig their way through the flesh.

  “Look,” he says calmly, though his strength feels like an explosion against me.

  I do as I’m told. I look at my precious daughter through the hole.

  “I have her now. Nod if you understand.”

  I nod. I do exactly as I’m told.

  “I think she would make a good mother, don’t you? And a good wife.”

  A cry leaves my mouth. I can’t hold it in.

  “She is so lovely. Every inch of her, so, so lovely. And she is in love with me.”

  He lets go of me and I fall to the floor.

  “Nod if you understand,” he says again.

  Again, I do as I am told.

  Of course I understand.

  If I am not the best mommy to Alice, he will take my daughter.

  But then I also know the truth.

  He is delusional, thinking she loves him. Thinking whatever it is they’ve shared will last beyond this morning. She will grow tired of him before the sun goes down.

  And yet, it doesn’t matter.

  He will take her anyway. But first, he will kill me.

  Unless I can stop him.

  36

  Day sixteen

  It was only a few minutes before the door opened again and Reyes appeared. He shrugged once more, then walked back to the car.

  “The place looks abandoned. No heat. No water. I checked every room in case … but no sign that anyone’s been living there.”

  Nic stared back up at the house.

  “We have to find out what the story is with this place.”

  “We will,” he said. Then he leaned over to kiss her again.

  He started the car and pulled forward.

  Nic looked back one last time, at the window with the wood and the metal.

  “Did you see the room with the boarded window? There are metal slats on the outside.”

  “Yeah,” Reyes said. “Strange, right? But the window inside was broken. Maybe they didn’t want to pay to replace the glass. I told you, no one’s lived there for a while.”

  They drove through the gate. Reyes stopped. Got out.

  “I’m just going to close it. Leave things the way we found them. Probably shouldn’t have come without a warrant.”

  Nic didn’t turn around to watch him, though his image in the side mirror caught her eye.

  He closed the gate.

  But then he replaced the chain—which was not how they’d found it—wrapping it three times as though he knew that would be the right number. And then he did something else.

  Something that made her gasp one breath of air.

  He took a padlock from behind a post—as though he knew it would be there, just like he knew about the chains—and he put it through the loops of the chain, locking it shut.

  37

  Day sixteen

  I watch the car drive away. I watch the man, the monster, drive away with my daughter.

  Now, more clanking on my prison bars. Alice is there with her Sad Face.

  “Come over here,” she says.

  She wants to comfort me. The chaos of the morning, the violence, has made her hungry.

  I don’t move. I can’t.

  “Come here!” she demands, and I see Angry Face coming. She points to the camera in the corner of the room, reminding me that he is watching.

  She does not need to say the rest. That he has my daughter. That he will take her and kill me if I do not behave.

  I manage to walk across the floor to the grate. My skin stings in the places where the splinters of wood have entered.

  “Sit down,” Alice says. Sad Face has returned. She is volatile now, and I have to calm her. I have to feed her need to empathize with me, to comfort me.

  So I sit.

  “Give me your hands,” she demands.

  I give her my hands.

  She holds them tight and presses her cheek into them.

  “What will happen to you if I have to have that new mommy? What if she’s not as good a mommy as you are? What if she only loves him the way you only love me?”

  She begins to cry now, tears of empathy as I knew she would, and I can feel her calming. She presses my hands to her wet little face and cries into my skin.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I will be better. I will make him happy so you don’t have to get a new mommy.”

  She looks at me as though I’ve just tried to tell he
r the sky is purple. We both know what Mick wants.

  He wants Nicole.

  But I remind myself that Mick is not the only one in this house with power.

  He has physical strength. Metal bars. Locks and keys and Dolly’s eyes. But I have those apples and inside of them, in their tiny seeds, is everything I need to take him down.

  I watch Alice melt in my presence. And I think something else. Something about power.

  “Have you ever tried an apple muffin?” I ask her. She looks up at me with wonder. As though it sounds delicious, and like something we will do together. And I think, Mick may have my daughter. But I have his.

  38

  Day sixteen

  “I’m sorry that was a dead end,” Reyes said to Nic as they turned back toward town.

  Nic was confused. He’d just said something entirely different not five minutes before.

  “What about finding those investors? And the utility companies? I thought we were going to see if anyone checks in on the place—they left the gate open, right?”

  Nic had just watched Reyes lock the chains as they were leaving. And now this sudden shift in his demeanor. He was distracted, like his mind was now preoccupied, unable to even remember what he’d just said to her.

  “I think it’s futile—I know you don’t want to hear that,” he said. “It was cold and dark in there. No utilities running. And that broken window … we can still check if you want, but it’s a dead end. The fence is there because of that loony bin they wanted to build. Trust me,” he said. “I am the cop, you know.” He let out a slight laugh.

  Nic was dazed. Things were moving too fast now. Why had they even come to this house? Because no one checked it. Because no one knew it was here. And now it was checked, with no sign of her mother. Reyes was right to be dismissive.

  “What about Chief Watkins?” Nic asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll speak with him as soon as I can. And I still need to find out about that credit card charge your father made in West Cornwall.”

  Nic let all of this sink in.

  She wasn’t losing her mind. Reyes was the same man who’d held her all night, who’d brought her coffee and taken her to this house. He’d told her about Chief Watkins even though it was likely to hurt him in the end. And he would find out the truth about her father.