by Sara Shepard
Seneca flipped a few pages ahead to a picture of the girl without a mouth. “I don’t believe it,” she murmured. Candace had named her Heather Peony. The skeletal girl was named Bethany Rose.
“Did she make these characters up?” Madison whispered.
“She at least made up the names.” Seneca sounded certain. Maddox agreed. They’d scoured Google for ways those names could link and hadn’t come up with anything.
They flipped ahead a few more pages, but they were blank. At the back of the journal, however, a few dried rose petals fell out and fluttered to the carpet. As Seneca reached down to pick them up, Maddox flipped to the page they’d marked. There was a new drawing of a tall, thin girl with wild, flowing hair and wearing a billowing gown and high heels. Half her face looked chewed up by insects. Maddox backed up, unsettled. The girl’s empty eyes were sucking him in.
“God,” everyone whispered in unison, blinking at the drawing. And then, with a shaky hand, Seneca pointed at the name Candace had given this new character.
Elizabeth Ivy.
TWENTY-THREE
IT WASN’T UNTIL after they’d said awkward good-byes to the Lords and were back in the Jeep that anyone spoke—maybe even breathed. Seneca gave Madison a thrilled, astonished smile. “Did we just figure out how where Candace’s aliases came from?”
“When I was younger, I used to draw characters like that,” Maddox said as he buckled his seat belt. “I mean, not like that, exactly—mine were ninjas, and I wasn’t as good of an artist, but you get the gist. I had names for them, too. They were almost like imaginary friends.”
“I guess Candace had some imaginary friends, too. That carried over into her adult life. It’s like she became those creepy drawings after her kids died.” It felt good to have figured this out. It got them closer to figuring out what made Candace tick, and it was also something Brett missed. But would it get them close enough?
Seneca checked her watch. It was almost ten thirty. Brett hadn’t specifically said when their clock ran out on Wednesday, but they had mere hours left to figure this out.
“But what about that skeleton character?” Madison shifted in the backseat. “Bethany Rose? Do you think Candace was her at one point?”
“Or maybe that’s who Candace is now,” Seneca suggested.
Maddox steered the vehicle down another street; a giant flea market was taking place in a parking lot. “Maybe there’s a way to track her under that name. A lease application, registration with the DMV …”
“Bethany Rose,” Madison repeated, tapping on her phone. “There’s one in Albuquerque. A bunch in England.” She looked up, a skeptical expression on her face. “Maybe?”
“There’s no way she could have transported Damien all the way to England,” Seneca said. “I’ll message MizMaizie.” Her fingers flew on the CNC site. As an ex-cop, MizMaizie, as was her handle on the website, still had the log-in codes to run plate numbers and look up driver’s licenses faster and cheaper than a regular online search. Seneca requested what they were looking for, supplying Bethany Rose’s name. She guessed Candace was probably somewhere on the east coast—replicating a dreamy beach vacation elsewhere wouldn’t give it the same vibe.
As she waited for MizMaisie to reply, she stared out the window at the bland landscape. Something nagged at her, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She was jazzed about the lead they’d found about Candace’s aliases, but it felt like there was something at the Lords’ house she’d missed.
Her phone pinged. MizMaizie had found an image of an Ohio driver’s license of a woman named Bethany Rose. The stats said she was fifty-one, which seemed about right, and she had dishwater-blond hair and the same turned-down eyes, as Seneca had seen in the news photograph of the woman who called herself Sadie Sage. “This could be her,” she said, showing the image to Maddox. He glanced at it briefly. An exit was up ahead, directing them east toward several shore towns listed in large white letters.
“Am I taking this?” Maddox asked. But no one answered.
“Should we call that address?” Madison asked, still looking at the screen.
The license listed an address for Bethany Rose at 108 Court Street, Apartment 5J, in Dayton. A quick Google search brought up an image of the nondescript six-story building along with the name of the company that managed the renters. Madison was already calling the 1-800 number. “Yes, I’m calling about a particular unit?” she asked. “It’s 5J. Is it rented right now? No?” She raised her eyebrows at Seneca, though Seneca wasn’t particularly surprised. Of course the woman who now went by Bethany Rose didn’t live there. She probably never had.
“I doubt she took Damien to Ohio just to get a new name and license, you know?” Seneca said after Madison hung up. “She probably has a whole cache of fake IDs at the ready.”
“It’s not like it’s hard to get a forged ID, either,” Madison said. “All you need is a social security card—and for fifty bucks, you can buy that all over the internet. A birth certificate can be forged, too. Our girl’s probably a pro at it.”
Maddox gave his sister a surprised look. “How do you know this stuff?”
She glared at him. “You’re not the only good detective in the family.”
Seneca started a new text to MizMaizie. “I’m going to ask if Bethany Rose got any traffic violations under that license ID. If she did, we’d find out where she’s driving these days, and that could link us to where she’s hiding.” But soon enough, MizMaizie wrote back that Bethany Rose got a gold star for safe driving. “Damn it,” Seneca whispered. “Why can’t we just find something real?”
“We’ll figure out something,” Maddox said.
She looked at him. “When? Tomorrow? That’ll be too late!”
“If only we knew what social security number she was using with this license,” Madison said after a while.
“Why?” Maddox asked. “It’s probably fake.”
“Yeah, but maybe she used it to open some credit cards. That would make it easy to trace her.”
Maddox made a face as he steered onto the highway. “Would a kidnapper really use credit cards? And how would she pay the cards off? I can’t see a kidnapper holding down a nine-to-five job. Does she play online poker or something? Does she have some sort of work-from-home business we don’t know about?”
“She’d have to pay taxes on that,” Seneca said. Her dad was an accountant; she knew more than most almost-nineteen-year-olds about the way taxes worked. “That would put her in the system, which would make her easier to find.” She shook her head. “I bet she isn’t using a social security number except to get that driver’s license. Which means she probably isn’t using credit cards, either. Though that still doesn’t answer our question of how she’s paying for everything. Even if she’s only using cash, she has to earn it. How was she doing that if she was keeping an eye on her kidnapped kids all the time? This would make more sense if she asked for a ransom.”
“Maybe she makes money the same way Brett does,” Maddox suggested.
“And that would be … what?” Seneca asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe she taught him some sort of scam.”
Seneca pinched the skin between her eyes. “Maybe? We could call Viola back, perhaps?”
They tried that, but Viola didn’t answer.
Miles ticked on the odometer. At every intersection, Maddox asked, “Uh, where am I going?” to which no one had the answer. The theory about Elizabeth re-creating the beach vacation again and again was a good one, but what were they going to do, check every beach town up and down the coast? And what if Elizabeth chose to mix it up? What if she, as Sadie, took Damien to the mountains, or to a lake?
As they got onto the highway, driving aimlessly toward the shore but with no true destination in mind, Madison cleared her throat. “Not everyone works, you know.”
Seneca turned to her. “Sorry?”
“I was thinking about what you said about Sadie working. Not everyone works, though. W
hen I want money, I just go to my parents.”
Maddox groaned. “Not helpful, Mad.”
Seneca tapped her lip. “Are you saying she’s getting it from her parents?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Maddox made a face. “Uh, you don’t remember that apartment we were just in? The Lords are broke.”
“And they didn’t seem to know anything,” Seneca added. “Are they that good of liars?”
Out the window, they passed a McDonald’s, a Best Buy, a giant Walmart. A thought struck Seneca hard. “Actually, could that be why the Lords have nothing to give?”
“Meaning?” Maddox asked.
“Some of the things in their apartment didn’t make sense—the solidness and size of their furniture, that piano in the corner, and they did own a nice house, years before. Those are all indicators that the Lords had money … but they don’t anymore. And yet dad’s a postman, which is a decent, steady job.”
“What are you saying, they’re secretly wiring her money?” Maddox asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Seneca looked at him, something pinging in her brain. “I need you to turn the car around.”
Maddox looked shocked. “Wait, what?”
“We need to go back to the Lords’. I need to talk to them again. Now.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Madison asked.
Seneca had no idea if it was a good idea or not, but she knew she had to try. Forty-five minutes later, Maddox was pulling back up to the West Prune Arms. She gazed at the building warily. If she was wrong about this, they would have wasted precious hours. It was past noon by now. They were running out of time.
She jumped out of the Jeep before it was fully stopped and hurried back through the busted security door to the lobby. Took the stairs two at a time. Mr. Lord answered her knocks. When he saw it was Seneca, his mouth flattened into an angry line. “I don’t have anything else to tell you,” he said tightly.
“You love her more than anything, don’t you?” Seneca interrupted.
Mr. Lord went very still. “Excuse me?”
“No matter what she does, no matter how sick she is—you’re her dad. You want to make sure she’s okay. You know where she is. You’ve known all along. You just wanted to help her.”
A shutter seemed to close down Mr. Lord’s face, revealing nothing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Bill?” Mrs. Lord called from the background. “What’s going on?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Everything is fine, Dawn.”
“How did you get money to her?” Seneca persisted. “Was it through a secret credit card? Envelopes of cash?”
“What is she talking about, Bill?” Mrs. Lord sounded woozy.
“She’s not making any sense.”
Seneca stared the man down. If she just grilled him a little longer, she’d have him. “You know the postal system. You know secret ways you can get her money that won’t raise any flags. It’s why you have no money now. It’s why you had to move out of your house.”
Mrs. Lord stared at him. “But you told me it was because of salary cuts.”
“I don’t know who you are,” Mr. Lord said, rubbing his face. “But you’re picking on the wrong person. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I could call the police.” But when he took his hand away from his eyes, she could see there was fear in his expression. Her heart started to leap. He did know. All she had to do was push him a little further.
“You know where she is, Mr. Lord. I know you know. But your daughter has done something awful with that secret money you’ve been sending her. She’s been kidnapping children. Kids she’s trying to make into her kids … except it never works. Do you know that, too? Have you suspected, and maybe you don’t want to admit it to yourself?”
Mr. Lord’s eyes widened. He blinked hard at her but didn’t say anything.
“They’re scared. Lonely. She hurts them. She’s sick. Some of those kids have escaped, and one has gone on to be a toxic person. He killed my mother … and it’s all because of your daughter and the money you’ve been sending her.” Seneca took a breath, the magnitude of the moment swirling around her. The nightmare had started here, with this family. If not for Candace, Brett wouldn’t have been kidnapped and warped. Aerin’s sister would be fine. Aerin would be fine. Seneca’s mother would be fine.
Then she took a breath and pinned them with her gaze. “So if you think it’s okay to hide this, if you think this isn’t doing any harm, keeping your sick, sad daughter afloat, you’re wrong.”
The rage had disappeared from Mr. Lord’s expression, replaced by something resembling horror … and maybe shame. He slowly licked his lips. Seneca’s heart banged in her chest. What was he going to do now? What if he tried to hurt her? What if he had the ability to snap, just like his daughter did?
And yet she still didn’t think she’d hooked him yet. She had to keep going. “Right now, your daughter is holding another boy hostage. This boy.” She pulled out her phone and called up the picture of Damien. “He’s nine and he loves Disney and he has a family that’s desperate to get him back. And her old captive, the one who killed my mother, he’s now kidnapped my dear friend. Time is of the essence, Mr. Lord. In just days, both these victims could be dead. I’m not going to report her or you to the police, but I do want information. Please.” Seneca pressed her hands together in prayer. “Undo all of this evil by just telling me, okay?”
The world seemed to still. Mr. Lord kept his head down, staring at the floor. His shoulders heaved up and down—maybe in anger, but maybe in sadness. Mrs. Lord breathed quietly behind him, her teeth biting down on her closed fist. “It can’t be true,” she whispered. “Bill, is this true?”
Finally, the man lifted his head. His mouth was gummy and amorphous, and when he first spoke, his voice had a bleating, honking tone, trying very hard to hold in a sob. “I didn’t want her living on the streets.”
“What?” Mrs. Lord cried. She blinked at him, dumbstruck. “What did you do?”
“When did you last send her money?” Seneca asked quietly, careful not to show her elation that she’d managed to crack through his tough exterior to the truth.
He swallowed hard. “A few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks?” Mrs. Lord repeated.
“And where did you send it?” Seneca asked, ignoring his wife. They were so close. So close.
Mr. Lord shook his head. His mouth clamped shut, like a vault. Then his wife grabbed him by the arm and swung him around with great force, making him face her. “You tell them!” she screamed. “If this is true—if she’s kidnapping children—you tell them right now!”
She started to shake his shoulders. The man’s head rattled on his neck, and his arms hung at his sides, boneless. After a moment, Mrs. Lord collapsed against him, sobbing, wailing, pounding his chest. He pushed her away with a grunt and then faced the group, giving them a withering stare. He opened his mouth several times before actually getting out the words. “A PO Box. In Breezy Sea, New Jersey.”
Seneca’s mouth dropped open. Behind her, she could feel Madison shift and hear Maddox gasp. It made so much sense. Of course Candace Lord—aka Sadie Sage, aka Elizabeth Ivy, aka Bethany Rose, maybe—was hiding in a town called Breezy Sea. Even the name conjured up lapping waves, calling seagulls, mini-golf. Seneca could practically smell the sunscreen and the waffle cones.
And then she realized something else. She thought of the roads they’d just driven on, all the turns Maddox wanted to take, all the mile markers. A sign for the Breezy Sea exit shimmered into her mind, and she stood up straighter, energized. They were close. Really close. Breezy Sea was only one parkway exit away.
TWENTY-FOUR
AS THE HOT sun made a long, slanting shadow out the window, Brett’s phone rang. He looked up at Aerin, who was sitting on the bed across from him, watching a rerun of Friends on TV. He’d wheeled in the TV this morning, and he liked how pleased Aerin h
ad been to receive it. He also liked how she moved aside to let him watch Monica and Rachel and Ross banter back and forth in their big apartment in New York City. Not like he gave a shit about Monica and Rachel and Ross—he’d never seen the show before this, and he didn’t really find it that interesting. What he liked most was sitting next to Aerin’s warm, sweet-smelling body and watching her laugh. He wanted this time to last forever. Sometimes, he considered adjusting things so that it would.
The phone rang.
Brett frowned. Aerin looked up, intrigued. Talk about shattering a moment. Then again, these were Seneca’s last few hours of fact finding. Of course she was scurrying around, trying to put all the pieces together. He hoped she’d found something useful.
“We found the town where she’s hiding him,” Seneca said the moment Brett pressed the green ANSWER button.
Brett moved away from the window. “You got all that from the Lords?”
There was a pause. “How did you know we went to the Lords?” Seneca’s voice sounded strange.
Brett’s skin prickled. Shit. He knew they’d gone to the Lords because he’d watched Seneca’s phone travel there on the GPS tracker. But he didn’t want her to know that. “Because it was the only lead,” he said haughtily. “And clearly, you got more out of them than I did. Good job. So where are you going now?”
“No way I’m telling you that yet. Not until you give us Aerin.”
Brett let out a scoff. “I’m not giving you Aerin until you tell me.”
“Make a trade, and we’ll do just that.”
“Tell me, and I’ll make a trade,” Brett countered.
He could feel Aerin watching him, so he padded out of the room, careful to lock her door, and entered his own room, clicking on his laptop. After typing in his password on the GPS app, a map swam into view. The pointer moved quickly across the state of New Jersey, heading straight toward the shore.
“If you can help us with something, we’ll give you your information faster,” Maddox broke in. “When you were with Elizabeth, were there any specific patterns you remembered? Times of day she went out. Stuff she brought back for you guys. Logos on grocery bags, brands of food she liked to get, that sort of thing?”