The Amateurs: Last Seen

by Sara Shepard

  “I’ll help,” Maddox said. His hand brushed Seneca’s wrist as he leaned in to check the screen, but he quickly pulled away. He was being careful with her. He probably thought she was going to blow up again.

  Maddox chose the next number on the list. “Yes, can I speak to Viola Jones?” She waited, frowning, then hung up. “No Viola Jones there.”

  They went down the list with this tactic in mind, but there were no Viola Joneses working any of the help desks. Frustrated, Seneca called yet another toll-free line. When she heard the woman’s voice on the other end, her heart dropped to her feet. “Hello. Thank you for calling Addams and Stern LLC in Annapolis, Maryland.”

  The phone fell from her hand and thudded onto the mulched ground. “What?” Maddox asked, his head swinging up. “What is it?”

  Seneca could barely swallow. “It-it’s my mother.”

  She picked up the phone again. Her mother was still talking. “Press one for directions, press two for attorney Christopher Addams …” It was the law office where Collette used to work as a paralegal. How did she not know her mother was still on this answering machine? Even more bizarre, why had the office kept her voice on the outgoing message? How did Brett know?

  Wooziness swept over her. She pressed her head between her knees and took deep breaths. Brett probably knew they’d access his phone records. This was just another fuck you, reminding her of what he’d done, how much power he had. But she couldn’t help thinking about a barrage of questions. Why, why, why had Brett chosen her mother in the first place? She just couldn’t buy that she hadn’t paid him enough attention at Starbucks—it had to be more than that. But what? Would she ever know?

  Without knowing quite how she got there, she was suddenly in Maddox’s arms. He held her tight, stroking her hair, whispering to her that it was going to be okay. He’d taken her phone from her, too, and had hung it up. After another tight squeeze, he held her at arm’s length and gave her a firm, almost stern look. “He’s a demon, Seneca. You can’t let him beat you.”

  Seneca nodded and tried to breathe. That’s all Brett was doing. She had to use the anger to fuel her to find Viola and get Brett.

  With that, Seneca, Madison, and Maddox called more of the 1-800 numbers, asking again and again for Viola Jones. No, no, no. But then, when someone at the help desk of an organic dog food company answered, he said, “We don’t have a Viola Jones, sorry.” After Seneca hung up with her, she started to think. Did the office have a Viola by a different last name?

  “We’re assuming that Viola has the same last name as Brett,” she told the others. “But maybe she changed it. Maybe she got married.”

  “That dog place is the only company that seemed to have a Viola, period,” Madison, who had been working from the bottom of the list up, said. She tapped her phone and typed in the 1-800 number into Google. Seneca watched as some hits came up for a company called Frieda’s Raw and Organic Pet Meal Plans. The company was based in Brooklyn, New York, and when Madison clicked on Meet the Staff, there was, indeed, a Viola on the payroll. Viola Nevins was the head of customer support and ran a newsletter called the Dog Blog.

  Seneca chewed on her bottom lip. “Could this be her?”

  “All we can do is try,” Maddox said.

  “But it’s Saturday. What are the odds she’ll be in?”

  Maddox shrugged. “Maybe the universe will be on our side with this one.”

  They dialed the 1-800 number again. This time, a man answered in a chipper voice, asking, “How can I make your day even more puptastic?” Seneca rolled her eyes and asked for Viola Nevins, and voilà, she was put on hold to the tune of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” She suddenly felt nervous. Was she about to talk to Brett’s sister? What if she was as crazy as Brett?

  “Hello?” A voice broke through. “This is Viola. How can I help?”

  “Um …” Seneca couldn’t believe Viola had answered. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “It’s Seneca Frazier. I sent you an e-mail. We know your brother, Brett. I mean Jackson Brett Jones.”

  There was an awkward pause. “I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  Seneca’s skin prickled. It was the right Viola. There was no way Seneca was letting go of her now that she had her. “Look, he’s done something awful. Something related to his kidnapping. We need your help.”

  There was another long beat of silence. “What did he do?” Viola asked quietly.

  Seneca raised an eyebrow at Madison, wondering if they could trust her. “We’ll tell you if you talk to us. You know him better than anyone. We can meet you where you live. We’ll come anywhere. Please.”

  The other end of the line was filled with the sounds of ringing phones and soft murmurs. Seneca stared at crabgrass sprouting out of the sidewalk. One of the turkeys in the vacant lot let out a meansounding gobble. Please, she willed in her mind. Please let something in this case go right.

  Finally, Viola sighed. “All right. Grand Central Station tomorrow, under the clock, three p.m. But for the record, Jackson isn’t my brother. We’re not technically related at all.”

  EIGHTEEN

  ON SUNDAY AT 3:00 p.m., Maddox shifted uncomfortably under the big clock at the center of the terminal in Grand Central Station. He listened to the echoing sounds of footsteps, announcements over the PA, and chatter as people rushed to catch their trains. He’d been to this station plenty of times before—Grand Central was the place in NYC where you caught Metro North to Dexby. He’d had his first kiss here, actually, down one of the corridors, with Esme Richards from track.

  But he’d never associate Grand Central with kissing Esme again. Now he’d forever associate it with a murderer’s “sister.”

  He kept craning his neck, searching for Viola Nevins, though that was a joke—he had no idea what Viola Nevins looked like. He couldn’t even look for someone who resembled Brett, because, as Viola had so mysteriously told Seneca, she and Brett weren’t related.

  So who was she, then?

  Seneca, stood next to him, smelling deliciously like coffee, picking at the Band-Aid on her finger. Maddox smiled at her, and she smiled back. At least she was smiling at him again. The immature part of him wanted to bring up how hurt he felt that she’d accused him of siding with the enemy or whatever, but he held his tongue. He was so tired of the swings in their already-fragile relationship—one minute, Seneca was joking with him, the next, she was a stress ball again, taking her frustration out on him. But he knew better than to bring it up. She might accuse him of not taking this seriously again.

  “Are you Seneca?”

  Everyone spun around. A tall, skinny woman in her late twenties stood a few feet away. Her eyes looked tired. She was in a black blazer and jeans, an outfit Maddox’s mom wore when she was going to Back to School night. She had chin-length brown hair and high cheekbones and looked nothing like Brett, but there was something familiar about her, something that tickled the edges of Maddox’s brain.

  Seneca stepped forward. “Viola?”

  Viola nodded, then glanced around the station. “Let’s find somewhere private.”

  She peered around the busy terminal and the same corridor where Maddox had gotten up the guts to kiss Esme. She marched toward a trashy, nearly empty gift shop called I Heart NYC. It was full of bug-eyed Beanie Boos, Empire State Building snow globes, and T-shirts that had dumb phrases on them like I got bageled in NYC. Viola marched past racks of gum and Statue of Liberty–printed socks, stopping next to a rack filled with self-help paperbacks. She appraised everyone, her arms crossed tightly over her chest like a shield.

  “Thanks for meeting us,” Seneca said. “I’ll get right to it. Jackson kidnapped our friend, Aerin Kelly. We’ve been communicating with him, and the only way he’ll give her back is if we find the woman who kidnapped him, who’s currently holding another child hostage.”

  For a few moments, all Viola could do was stare. “No. He would never kidnap someone. That’s impossible.”

  “Actually
, he’s done way worse than that,” Madison muttered.

  “No. No.” Viola’s face was staring to turn red. She peered at her watch and then at her phone, suddenly seeming desperate. “You’ve spoken to him recently? Maybe I could talk to him. This has to be a misunderstanding. He wouldn’t have done that.”

  Maddox was about to explain, but Seneca spoke first. “Actually, he made us promise to leave you out of it. If you got on the phone, he might get angry we went against his wishes.”

  Viola blinked hard. “His wishes?” she spat angrily. She looked around at the group. “Is this some kind of joke? He would never, ever do this stuff. He’s a good, sweet guy.”

  “Then why are we speaking in private?” Seneca put her hands on her hips. “Why did you not want to speak at all? You sensed something was off about him, didn’t you?”

  Viola shook her head. “I didn’t want to talk to you about him because what happened to Jackson isn’t my story to tell.”

  “You mean his kidnapping?” Maddox asked, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” Viola shifted her purse higher onto her arm and started for the station again. “This was a mistake.”

  “Wait!” Seneca lightly grabbed her arm. “Viola. Please. Hear us out.”

  Viola turned back impatiently. The hurt and disbelief was all over her face. She has absolutely no idea who Brett really is, Maddox thought. He wondered what sort of person Brett pretended to be around her. A nice guy, obviously. A hapless victim. The unassuming dude they’d met in Dexby. Someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  Seneca cleared her throat. “We’re doing this to save a life. When you said Jackson wasn’t your brother, what did you mean? We got the sense that you were family.”

  Viola looked away. “It’s … complicated.”

  “Were you good friends? Did you grow up on Tallyho Island, too?”

  “No, I grew up in New Jersey.” Viola stared into a refrigerator containing bottles of water and soda. Her shoulders were curled up around her ears.

  “So where did you two meet, then?” Madison asked. “After he was kidnapped? Before?”

  Viola’s jaw twitched. All of a sudden, Maddox realized why she looked familiar. There was something about her face that reminded him of the girl in the picture they’d found at Sadie Sage’s house in Upstate New York. He’d been thinking about that picture a lot. If Brett was the boy in the photo, then who was the girl? Could it be Viola? But that would mean …

  Seneca’s eyes flashed with the same realization. “Wait. Were you kidnapped with Jackson?”

  Viola’s gaze dropped. Tons of emotions washed over her face. Holy shit, Maddox realized. They were right.

  “I was eleven,” Viola said in a small, halting voice. “The woman—Jackson knew her as Elizabeth, but I knew her as Heather Peony—she was my math tutor. I saw her every week. She was really friendly. Made me friendship bracelets. Finally explained fractions to me in a way that made sense. That fall, she pulled up to me when I was riding my bike in this park near my house. Said she had newborn puppies at her house—did I want to see?” Viola shook her head ruefully. “Oldest trick in the book. But like I said, I knew her. It wasn’t, like, stranger danger.”

  “And she took you to the same house where Jackson was held?” Seneca asked.

  Viola nodded. “He came about three months, give or take, after I did. While she went to get him, she left me in this dark, locked room with food and water. I was so scared. There was no way out.”

  “Jackson told us you were near the ocean,” Maddox said.

  “Yes, I realized that after we escaped. But she never let us out of the house except when she put us in the shed if we misbehaved.”

  Maddox felt his stomach lurch.

  “I was happy when Jackson got there,” Viola admitted. “We leaned on each other. And we became like brother and sister. We were all we had.”

  Everyone fell silent. Maddox’s gaze drifted to a shadow in the corner—a grisly man in a janitor’s uniform was staring at them, his eyes blank and hollow. He felt his throat constrict. The janitor looked away in a blink and continued to sweep the floor.

  “What was it like, living that way for so many years?” Madison asked quietly.

  A shadow fell over Viola’s face. “I … I can’t talk about it. I’ve been through so much therapy to put it behind me, and there are some things I just can’t get into.”

  “Was it all bad?” Maddox asked.

  “Not all of it. That’s what I always forget. Sometimes it almost felt normal … we had meals, watched TV, she taught us school lessons. But the bad times … they were really bad. And it was all just so twisted.” She fiddled nervously with her hair.

  “Can you talk about when you escaped?” Seneca asked. “And can you talk about why Jackson’s part of this story isn’t yours to tell?”

  Viola twisted her hands together.

  “Please,” Seneca urged. “It would really help.”

  Viola took a deep breath. “We picked the lock to the back door while she was asleep. She woke up, though, just as we were leaving. We had to fight her off. But we did, and then we broke out of the house and ran. Our plan was to go straight to the police station—I ran to the next block and stopped and asked someone where it was. I grabbed Jackson’s arm to pull him with me, but he stepped away. Said he didn’t want to go to the cops. And he begged me not to tell them that he’d even been kidnapped.”

  “Oh.” Seneca rubbed her chin. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Even later, when we got back in touch, he didn’t explain. I immediately went to the cops and reported what had happened. I didn’t mention Jackson. The cops went to the house where we were held, but Elizabeth had already fled the scene—she had to have known what we were planning on doing. I thought the police would find evidence that Jackson had been there with me—clothes, DNA, something—but Elizabeth had cleared the place top to bottom.”

  “How could she have done that so quickly?” Maddox asked.

  “It wasn’t so hard, I guess. She didn’t let us in many rooms. And she was constantly making us clean up, wipe stuff down, scour the sinks. We were getting rid of our evidence.” Viola hands were clenched. “The cops asked me over and over what happened. They even mentioned the other boy who’d gone missing in the area, from Tallyho—they probably wondered if the two cases were related. But I kept Jackson’s promise and didn’t tell. It was the least I could do for him.”

  “And then your parents came for you?” Seneca asked.

  Viola smiled weakly. “They couldn’t believe I was alive. No one could. But it took so long to get back to normal.” She pressed a shaky hand to her cheek. “After going through that, you’re sort of never normal.”

  Maddox nodded. He couldn’t even imagine.

  “Were you interviewed a lot?” Seneca asked.

  Viola shrugged. “People wanted to do a story on me, but my parents thought it would be too traumatic. I was in a few smaller papers, but mostly my parents kept the media away.”

  Maddox felt confused. Why hadn’t they found those stories? But then, they weren’t searching for a Viola with a different last name. They also weren’t looking for a kidnapped girl.

  Viola went on. “And then, when I got older, especially after I met my husband, we talked about me going to the press to tell what had happened, but I decided against it. Why dredge up the past?”

  Seneca sank into one hip. “Jackson mentioned he went to find his parents, but they’d passed away.”

  “That’s right. He called me when he found out. Before we escaped, I gave him my parents’ phone number and told him to come live with my family, but he said no. He didn’t want to be a burden.”

  “Huh,” Maddox murmured. Was that why Brett didn’t want to stay with them … or was he already too far gone by then? After all, he couldn’t carry out crazy, violent deeds when living under his “sister’s” roof. “Do you know where he lived instead?” Maddox asked.

&
nbsp; “I don’t. I was really worried about him. I called him a lot, but the numbers he gave me were often disconnected. He was the one who got in touch with me about two years later. He said he was living in Arizona. I asked him what he’d been up to, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just wanted to talk about Elizabeth, nonstop. It made me uncomfortable. I’d already started therapy then, so I was trying to put it behind me.” She flicked a keychain shaped like a double-decker NYC tourist bus. “He was obsessed with her.”

  In the main terminal, an announcement sounded for a train going to Dexby, of all places. Maddox felt a nostalgic tug. He looked at Viola again. “It doesn’t sound so crazy, then, that he’d kidnap someone and demand that the only way she’s safely returned is if we find the woman who stole his life, does it?”

  Viola’s eyes dropped to the floor. “But he’s a good person.”

  Everyone fell silent. Maybe back then he was.

  Seneca cleared her throat. “This is going to be hard to hear, but Jackson … well, he’s done some other terrible things beyond kidnapping our friend. He also murdered my mother. And my friend’s sister.”

  The blood drained from Viola’s face. “No. That’s insane.”

  “He did. I swear.”

  Viola’s eyes were wide. She shook her head faintly. “No.”

  “Viola, he wrote us a letter.” Seneca stared at her hard. “I can show it to you. He confessed, more or less.”

  Viola’s mouth hung open. “Wh-when did he do this?”

  “Five years ago.”

  Viola took a moment to respond. “B-but that’s impossible. Jackson and I were in touch five years ago. He didn’t act … He wasn’t seeming … There’s no way!”

  Maddox touched her arm. “Jackson is an incredible actor. It took us a while to figure out who he really was.”