But for Marla’s sake, I hoped not.
They took my room key. One of the cops was going to retrieve my MacBook. They needed to start tracking the information on that picture of Marla. I hoped it wasn’t too late.
There was no information from Seth.
He had been unconscious when they took him away.
I’d held his hand for one brief second. I wanted to tell him that we’d find Marla, bring her back. But I couldn’t make promises without knowing if I could keep them.
The only one I could make was that I’d try to stop my ex-husband this time.
Somehow.
Some way.
I had a wire running down between my breasts.
Sweat trickled down my spine. It was dark and I was supposed to be outside, walking around. That alone almost froze me, but every time the blackness tried to close up around me, I made myself think about Marla.
Nearly thirty minutes before Tony was to arrive, I slid out through the back. I was going to pretend as if I was walking up the street. Somebody would let me know if he was seen on the street any sooner. So far, he hadn’t been. One of the cops had checked my home and nobody had been in or out. My alarm system had been reset and now I got notifications even if the door just opened.
Nobody was staying there to watch me.
The knowledge didn’t offer me comfort.
I wasn’t sure if anything could offer comfort right now.
Marla. Did he have Marla?
I knew how cruel he could be, how vicious his hands, and how strong he was, how he could crush you into the floor, rob you of breath, even the will to live, all while he laughed about it.
I didn’t want my friend to have to go through that.
“He’s walking up the street toward your friend’s house. Looks nervous.”
Jenks’ voice was a low, steady murmur in my ear.
I practically came out of my skin.
Tony. They had seen Tony. And Tony was nervous?
I was nervous.
“What do I do now?” I asked, staring at nothing. I had a bottle of water, but I thought if I drank any of it, I’d get sick.
It seemed as though a million eyes rested on me and everybody knew what I was doing.
“Just keep on walking down the street.” Jenks paused, and in the background I heard voices. He came back to me and said, “We don’t want him in their place. If he had anything to do with it, that will alert him that something is off, assuming he doesn’t already know.”
Assuming.
If.
I didn’t like those words.
But at the same time, I was almost positive that Tony didn’t know what had been done to Seth. Maybe he wouldn’t care so much about Marla, but he loved Seth. I knew that in my bones.
I continued on down the street, my hands cold as ice and fear pounding through me.
Look on the bright side. The absolute worst things that can happen to me have already happened, and I survived. It’s a weird sort of pep talk, but if I could survive what Stefan had done, what could Tony do?
Other than try to turn me back over to Stefan, but Stefan couldn’t steal me away this time. Not without people noticing. I’d be missed.
People knew what was going on. There were cops watching. Jenks was watching.
Swiping my hands down my jeans, I turned the corner and saw a dark shadow up ahead. Familiar. My shoulders went tight and I picked up my pace. Just as Tony’s hand would have closed around the elegant iron-worked doorknob, I caught up to him. “Tony.”
He looked at me, his eyes wide and startled.
“You…” He blinked, pasted a fake-happy expression on his face. “You’re early.”
“Yeah. I knew it would take me a while to get here, so I left early. Didn’t take as long as I thought it would.” I gave him a half-hearted shrug. “Feel like walking? I’m more tired than I thought and if I sit down, I’m going to crash.” Then I nodded toward Marla and Seth’s, the ache in my chest tightening. “They’re probably asleep. We don’t want to wake them.”
In the dim light, it was hard to see it. Although I hated the dark, I could see well in it. And I had no problem seeing the tiny lines that formed around his eyes, the way his mouth went tight. They lasted only a minute and then he nodded. “Yeah. Good point. Not everybody loves the night like we do.”
Dumb-ass. I hate the night. But I nodded and smiled.
We weren’t walking ten minutes when his phone rang.
The short, terse message gave me the chills.
“Yes. I understand. I need…yes, yes. I remember, sir.”
He tucked the phone away and I glanced at him. “Really late for calls.”
He shrugged. “I know. I do business at all hours, though. You know how it goes with clients.”
“Yeah. Glad most of my business is online.”
He was quiet a minute. “How is that business going? Get a lot of it?”
“Enough.” My spine prickled and I casually put some distance between us.
After a minute, he closed it, just as casually. “Still handling all your own business? Emails and such.”
“Yes.” I stopped, planting my feet wide apart and then I stared at him.
He looked at me. I saw it there, written on his face. “Tell me you called the cops,” he whispered, his voice a plea. There was panic all over his face. But it didn’t stop him.
He lunged for me.
I threw myself backward. I hadn’t ever wanted to be helpless again. I had taken self-defense classes, but it was so hard to overcome that fear, the panic that takes you over when someone tries to hurt you.
Tony’s fingers brushed my arm.
But before he could grab me, he was taken to the ground.
His eyes widened with shock as Jenks hauled him up.
“You…”
Jenks flipped him over, drove his knee against his back.
Tony fought him, but Tony worked retail. He did everything from working in music shops to management and he might be physically fit, but he wasn’t up to handling the six-foot-two cop who was muscling him into the dirt.
Less than a minute later, two uniformed cops arrived and he was handcuffed and dragged upward, crying.
He stared at me, a plea in his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he said, eyes wide, horrified. “If I don’t take you there, he’ll kill Marla and Seth will hate me. I…I had to do it.”
Jenks leaned in, his voice low, hard as nails. “Take her where?”
When Tony had first met Seth, he’d been living in a converted loft that had been left to him by his grandparents. It was outright gorgeous and he could have sold it and made a pretty penny but he held onto it because his parents had loved it, and I think he liked having a home base. Seth had once told me that Tony liked being in love, but he didn’t like being in a committed relationship.
It made sense.
The windows of the converted loft were mostly dark, but as they parked, I could see one light. So faint.
Probably the kitchen. It was tucked in the far corner, if I remembered right. I had only been here once.
My gut was tight and frozen.
Tony sat next to me, sweating bullets.
I had to let him walk me up there.
If he did this, and Stefan grabbed me, I was going to try to run. When he stopped me, I would tell him to let me go.
He wouldn’t.
We were talking dangerous, dodgy lines, but once I fought him, it was going to give Jenks, who’d just happened to be around, a chance to hear me.
Once they came in, they’d find Marla.
Tony swore she was there.
So much was riding on his word and he was a cowardly liar.
But I couldn’t risk her being hurt and we had no time for anything else.
If he slipped away from us, he’d just go right on hurting people. He’d take another shot at me.
Even the beating that Seth had gotten couldn’t be traced back to him. Tony had said he’d paid a couple of m
en to do that.
We had to trap him here, and now.
The next few minutes passed in a rush of voices, reassurances, Jenks’ hand on the back of my neck as we paused in the shadows of the building. He’d arrived five minutes earlier, wearing a cap and a heavy jacket that somehow managed to conceal his build. Now he was moving into the building and then we were following, waiting until he was out of sight.
I was supposed to be crying on Tony’s shoulder.
How could I do that?
Cry on the shoulder of a man I’d once thought was just sort of a friend?
I’d never trusted him the way I trusted Marla and Seth, but he’d been there when Seth first came to me. He’d been one of the first people I’d laughed with, smiled with.
And now he was walking me up to the man who’d locked me up for nine months. Beaten me. Raped me.
As he slammed down the grate on the elevator, I turned to look at him. “Do you know what he did to me?” I asked, my voice shaking. It wasn’t fear. It was rage.
Tony tensed. In the dull lights, I saw something red creep up his neck. “The cops are here. He won’t be able to hurt you.”
“He locked me in a basement. A dark hole in the ground, no lights, no nothing, for nine months. The only time I heard anything was when I screamed, or when I spoke to myself. Eventually, I stopped speaking. I even stopped screaming.”
He flinched.
The elevator continued its slow, clanking crawl.
“He’d come in, like some sort of boogey man and throw me to the floor, rape me. There was food and water left and if I didn’t make it last, I’d starve and go thirsty until he came back. Then he stopped coming back.”
“Stop it,” Tony said, his voice shaking.
“The tornado that hit Boston three years ago…I was there. In that. That’s how I got away. It destroyed the house and I climbed out of the rubble. That is the only reason I got away.”
The elevator came to a stop.
He reached out to grab my arm.
I sidestepped and shoved him, watched as he slammed back into the wall. Avoiding him as I stepped out into the hall, I said softly, “I’ll let you take me in there. But you won’t touch me. And you’re wrong about how this will play out. You’ve already lost it with Seth. He’ll never forgive you anyway.”
The lights were off when we went in.
Stefan, trying to play with my mind, I had no doubt. But I’d walked through the dark to come here.
Somehow, I’d conquered that fear.
Maybe I should thank him for that.
I let some of the nerves I felt creep into my voice. “Ah, can we turn on the lights?”
A soft chuckle echoed through the room.
“Who is that?” I demanded.
“No-nobody,” Tony said, his voice even more nervous than mine.
When a hand caught me, I swung out. The surprise wasn’t that I connected. The surprise was how good it felt. “Let me go!” Terror flooded me as Stefan slammed me against the wall.
“Grace. How nice to see you,” he whispered against my cheek.
“No.” I struggled. “Let me go!”
I put every ounce of terror, fear and rage I had into my voice.
Or I tried.
He clamped his hand over my mouth.
It didn’t matter, though.
A fist hit the door.
“Everything okay in there?” a voice called out.
Jenks.
My legs went limp and I might have collapsed, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being helpless on the floor while Stefan stood.
“Say you’re fine,” Stefan snarled in my ear. His fingers bit cruelly into my cheek as he squeezed my face. “You know how it will go if you don’t.”
But I’d been out of his reach for too long. And I knew better now.
“Help me!”
There was a tremendous sound and Stefan flung me to the floor. Something wet and sticky met my palms and I fell, stumbling as I tried to get to my feet. A hand caught my wrist and jerked me down. “Stay down,” Tony ordered. His voice was low.
I jerked back, refusing to listen.
The lights came on and I blinked, struggling to adjust to the bright, almost vicious glare.
Stefan stood there, smiling. So handsome, so urbane.
And even with a gun in his hand, he looked as though he expected the entire world to fall at his feet.
Jenks stood in front of him, and he wasn’t about to fall.
Stefan cocked his head, frowning. “You…” he murmured. “I know you.”
“Do you now.” Jenks just stared. “I think you need to put that gun down.”
Stefan just smiled. “I think you should have stayed outside, minded your own business. Now you’ll just be another missing person. You can thank my wife for that, I’m afraid.”
Swallowing, I tried to push to my knees and again, my hands slipped out from under me. Looking down, I saw the puddle of red. Dark, sticky red…a moan slipped out of me as I followed the line of it, flowing from the still, broken body in the middle of the kitchen floor. Marla’s face, her eyes sightless, stared in my direction and I wanted to scream, wanted to hit something, break something.
“You son of a bitch,” I breathed out.
This time, I managed to clamber upright.
“Shadow,” Jenks said softly. “Stay there.”
Stay there… No! I had to go to her. Each step sent me slipping back to the floor and when I reached the counter, I almost did fall. I clutched at it, clinging to it to keep from going back down in that awful, awful pool of red.
Marla. Dead. Because of him.
“Shadow…” Stefan’s lip curled. “You…you were at the restaurant. Are you fucking my wife?”
“I’m not your wife!” I shouted it and it felt so good to do that. Even as my heart broke and fear ripped through me, shouting those words at him freed something inside me. “I’m not your wife, you evil son of a bitch. I left you and you couldn’t stop me. You tried but you couldn’t.”
Stefan’s head whipped around, and he stared at me.
I swept out my hand and caught something. I didn’t even look to see what it was—a half empty can of beer. Hurling it at him, I had a brief second to enjoy the shock that lit his features.
Then Jenks was moving, taking him down.
The sound of the gun going off echoed so very, very loudly.
Chapter Eighteen
The hours that came after that were terribly loud, terribly awful. I, who had chased after sensation and light and touch and sound, would have given almost anything for a bit of peace, a bit of silence.
Marla had been dead for some time before I got there. Nothing I did or said would have kept her alive.
Stefan had likely killed her immediately after that email.
She’d never had a chance.
Neither had Seth.
Oh, Seth was alive. But he’d never be the same after this. I spent a great deal of time in the hospital. They wouldn’t let me go in to see him. I wasn’t family. He had nobody listed as next of kin, though I knew he did have family. There was a rift between them, caused by the trouble he’d gotten into, and stubbornness, he’d told me, on both sides.
So he was alone in there.
And I was alone here.
Jenks had climbed into one of the cop cars.
There had been a low, furious argument between him and the older cop, his boss, I thought. But in the end, Jenks had climbed into that car and I had the feeling that if he hadn’t climbed willingly into the front seat, he might have been handcuffed and thrown into the back.
My clearest memory of all of it was the way Stefan had looked at me as the cops dragged Jenks off him. Bloody and broken, his eyes were still cool as they sought out my face.
I’d stared into the face of a madman.
And he had smiled.
“Enjoy your time away, wife,” he murmured as the cops had slapped a pair of handcuffs on him.
&nbs
p; He truly believed he could get out of this. While Marla’s blood had cooled at his feet, he’d thought he could get away with what he’d done.
There was no reasoning like that of a lunatic.
And he still managed to fill me with fear. It was a fear that followed me, even now.
When my phone rang and I saw a familiar name on the display, I almost didn’t answer. My gut was tight and cold and my head throbbed. Blood roared in my ears and the metallic taste of fear in my throat was thick and heavy.
Detective Neely.
Swiping my hands down my skirt, I debated whether I should answer and I waited too long.
It went to voicemail and maybe that was better.
It let me stop and panic, stop and pace, stop and almost puke each time the fear got too strong.
Neely was the cop who’d found me on the road all those years ago.
He was a detective now and he’d heard about what had happened. It was enough, he thought, to re-open my case. But he needed to talk with me.
He left a number.
My hands were aching and I looked down, saw that I had them clenched so tight that my knuckles had gone bloodless.
Neely called me three times over the next week.
Seth’s mother called many times. I’d tracked her number down and called. She hadn’t been home and I’d had to leave a voicemail. I panicked and handled it badly, said he’d been hurt.
She called back within the hour, her voice tight with fear and I wanted to smack myself.
The sanitized version didn’t calm her and the next time I heard from her it was to ask if I had the number for the hospital. There were other calls—could I recommend a hotel near the hospital, did he need clothes…
There were no calls from Jenks.
Not a one.
I went to the cottage and it was shut down tight, as if he’d never even been there.
I called and spoke with Detective Barry, gave her his name, told her what I knew. Asked if she knew where he might be.
And I was told I might need to let things lie for a bit. I didn’t understand that.
But it made it easier to know what to do when the day came and Neely called again and told me that they needed me to come back to Boston.
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