Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  “What about her new life with her new family, new daughter?” Tessa quizzed.

  “Clean as a whistle,” D.D. reported. “By all accounts, Marlene is a law-abiding citizen. The worst may have happened to her thirty years ago, but she turned things around.”

  “Well, a mysterious cash infusion of five grand doesn’t hurt,” Wyatt muttered.

  “Now,” D.D. spoke up, “you’re saying Nicky Frank is not Veronica Sellers, right? So who is she?”

  “We’re running her fingerprints now,” Wyatt provided. “We believe she was Vero’s roommate in the dollhouse, first name Chelsea. But we don’t have a last name or any other information as of yet.”

  “She looks like Vero, right? Same general description, brown hair, blue eyes? Same general age?”

  “Sounds like she arrived in the dollhouse first, so maybe a few years older.”

  “Got it. I’ll go back through the runaway reports. See if I can find a record of any girls with that name and description. Never hurts to try.”

  “Appreciate it,” Wyatt said. They wrapped things up, ended the call.

  Tessa set down her phone. She recognized the look on Wyatt’s face. He was tired and pissed off but still thinking hard.

  “I feel like we’re being played,” he stated abruptly. “Nicky who’s Vero who’s Chelsea. Marlene who’s a tragic mom who’s maybe the kind of woman who sold her own child. Thomas Frank who’s a caring husband who’s an accomplished arsonist who’s a criminal mastermind. They’re all knee-deep in this, but how to make the pieces fit?”

  “We need Thomas Frank,” Tessa said quietly.

  “Trust me, I know. I got uniformed patrol officers sweeping every hotel and motel in a fifty-mile vicinity. We’re monitoring any and all cell phone and credit card activity. Unfortunately, the man’s a ghost. We don’t even know what vehicle he’s driving. The one he stole from the hotel he ditched ten miles away, where his trail stops cold. It’s almost as if he’s done this before.”

  Wyatt raked a hand through his hair. “Here’s a question,” he said abruptly. “Given that Nicky isn’t Vero, how’d she recognize Marlene Bilek Wednesday night?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean, you told Nicky Marlene worked at a New Hampshire state liquor store. Now, according to Nicky, minute she entered the store, she recognized Marlene as Vero’s mom. How? Based on stories told to her more than twenty years ago?”

  “Nicky said she looked her up online.”

  “Maybe, but the way Nicky spoke, her reaction was more personal, even visceral. She knew Marlene to be Vero’s mom.”

  “You think she saw her before?”

  “Why not?” Wyatt was off the bed, pacing. “If Marlene collected five thousand dollars, she had to get the cashier’s check somehow; it’s not the sort of thing you send through the mail. Dammit! I showed her Nicky’s sketch of the house. I showed her the picture of Madame Sade. She looked me right in the eye and told me she didn’t recognize either one. But I bet you now, she was at that house one day. She personally picked up that check, and Nicky saw her there. That’s why Nicky’s been hell-bent on tracking her down. Marlene isn’t just some link to Vero. She’s another trigger for Nicky’s suppressed memories. That’s it, we’re picking her up.”

  “Marlene Bilek?”

  “Absolutely.” Wyatt was already crossing to the room’s round table, grabbing his keys. “And while we’re at it, wake up Nicky, too. We’re taking them both for a ride.”

  “You think Marlene can lead us to the dollhouse?” Tessa was up off the bed now as well.

  “Dollhouse, Madame Sade, I want it all. Bet you anything”—Wyatt turned, eyes gleaming—“we find them, we find Thomas Frank. And we get to the bottom of this once and for all.”

  Sounded good to Tessa. She crossed to the adjoining room to rouse Nicky.

  Except . . .

  “Wyatt,” she called urgently.

  Rechecking the first bed, the second, rounding to the bathroom, the small closet. But the room was small enough, the truth unavoidable.

  “What is it?” Wyatt stalked into the room, jiggling keys.

  “She’s not here. Wyatt, Nicky Frank is gone.”

  Chapter 33

  IT’S NOT HARD to sneak out of the hotel. Middle of the night, off-season in the North Country. Summer, a hotel like this one would be overflowing with families eager to jump in the pool, hike the mountains, raft down the rivers. Early fall, tour buses would cram the parking lot with aging leaf peepers, armed with cameras and heavy knit sweaters. Of course, December brought snowfall, teenage boarding dudes, and impeccably clad ski bunnies. But now, mid-November, when the mountains were denuded of leaves, covered in nothing but dirt . . .

  Not even the locals enjoyed November in the North Country. This was a time of waiting. Which is exactly how the night felt to me. Expectant. With just enough chill in the air to prickle the hair on the back of my neck.

  Slipping out of the room was easy enough. First I found Tessa’s computer case, where she’d left it next to the table. Then I rifled through it in the dark, until my fingers discovered the rectangular shape of her key fob. Next it was a simple matter of waiting for her and Wyatt’s voices to pick up, become louder, more focused on their phone call next door. Six quiet strides and I stood next to the exit.

  Tessa asking a sharp question. Me opening the door. One muffled click. Another exclamation from the adjoining room. Me slipping out, closing the door behind me. Second muffled click.

  I didn’t wait after that. Just headed straight down the hall to the stairs. Down one flight; then I was striding out into the darkened parking lot, armed with keys and hopped-up on determination.

  Of course, where to go, what to do . . .

  Is knowing who you aren’t the same as knowing who you are? Is knowing you’re sick of running the same as knowing how to fight?

  Is knowing that you’re tired of forgetting the same as knowing how to remember?

  I stride across the parking lot in search of Tessa’s black Lexus SUV. Cloudless night above. Half-moon in the sky and so many stars. I can’t help but stop and stare. In all the places I’ve lived, the cities, the coasts, the deserts, there’s still nothing like the night sky in the mountains of New Hampshire.

  I should count the stars, I think. So many, so vast. I could count and count and each one would make me feel smaller, less significant. Until I’d disappear once and for all, standing in the middle of a hotel parking lot. No more decisions left to make. No more past left to escape.

  Then, in the next instant, I smell smoke.

  And that’s how I know he’s here.

  I can’t help myself. I take one step forward. Then another. There are only six cars in the dimly lit space. But I already know he’s not in any of them. He’s the shadow, right there, leaning against a tree. The man slowly straightening, unpeeling himself from the branches.

  My husband walking toward me.

  It’s funny the things you know after so many years together. I can’t see his face. He’s too far away and it’s too dark. But I don’t need to see his eyes or his nose or the slash of his mouth or the set of his jaw. I know my husband simply from the way he moves.

  And the corresponding tightness in my chest.

  He has his hands in his pockets. Nonthreatening, I think, and yet already my nerves are on edge. I hold Tessa’s key fob tight in my fist, just in case.

  He stops four feet back. I can feel his gaze on my face, assessing me, even as I try to gauge his mood.

  I feel too much at once. An urgent desire to rush forward, throw myself at him. Because I’m alone and I hurt and I wanted a family and I lost a family and he’s all I have. All, maybe, I’ve ever had, and God, I’ve missed him. The steady comfort of his voice. The feel of his fingers, massaging my temples. The strength of his resolve, day after day, w
eek after week, month after month.

  I love you, he told me, all those years ago. Wherever you want me to go, whoever you need me to be, whatever you need me to do . . . I will always be there for you.

  Now I stare at my husband of twenty-two years, and I realize that for the first time, I’m afraid.

  “Where are you going?” he asks. In the faint light cast by the moon, I can see that he’s frowning. “Should you even be out here?”

  “Funny, I was going to ask you the same.”

  He frowns again. Takes another step forward, before something about my expression brings him up short. He rocks back on his heels. Nervous, I think. Uncertain, which doesn’t make any sense.

  “You met with her, right?” he presses. “Marlene Bilek. I saw the cops bring her.”

  “You’re spying on me.”

  “Of course. What did you expect?”

  I shake my head, fight an instinctive need to rub my forehead. “You burned down our house.” Then, perhaps more important: “You were with me Wednesday night. You asked me if I trusted you. Then you fastened me into the driver’s seat and shoved my car down a hill.”

  Thomas doesn’t say anything. He’s eyeing me intently. Waiting for me to speak more? Or waiting for me to remember more?

  Sergeant Wyatt has it wrong, I realize abruptly. This has never been about Vero. And it’s never been about me. It’s about us. Thomas and me. Because that’s marriage, right? It’s never about one person or the other. It’s always the dynamics between the two.

  And Thomas and I, we go way, way back. The longest relationship I’ve ever had. To the smell of freshly mowed grass. And a lonely girl’s view from a tower bedroom.

  All these years, my husband hasn’t been waiting for me to tell him the truth. He’s simply been waiting for me to remember it.

  I step forward. Testing out my theory, I hold out my left arm, push up my sleeve to reveal smooth skin. “Vero had a scar,” I say.

  There, just for a second, a flash of recognition in his eyes.

  “On her left forearm,” I continue, eyes still on his face. “I don’t have it.”

  He knows. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “But the fingerprints,” he counters, “recovered from your car. The police identified you as Veronica Sellers. I saw it on the news.”

  “I’m not Vero. Marlene Bilek knows it and so do I.”

  He frowns, disappointed, frustrated, annoyed? I can’t tell and it makes me angry.

  “You did this.” My conviction is growing, and with it, my sense of power. “You handed me those gloves. Did you tamper with them somehow, etch Vero’s fingerprints into the tips? But you did it. You made me put them on. And then . . .”

  Rain, mud. I’m cold; I’m hot. I’m crying, but I don’t make a sound. I’ve consumed too much scotch. I’ve followed the woman, the magical queen from all the stories. And I’ve seen Vero, who was once dead but is now alive, and my world is imploding and I can’t put the pieces together again.

  Thomas, responding to my frantic call. Thomas, once more riding to the rescue.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks me, standing in my open car door. “Do you trust me?”

  He bends down, presses his lips against my cheek. Soft, featherlight. A promise already laced with regret.

  Suddenly, in the midst of the rain and the mud and the smell of churned-up earth.

  The smell of smoke. The heat of fire.

  I sit, fastened into my Audi in the middle of an empty, rain-swept road. I stare at my husband, and I can almost see the flames dancing around him.

  I remember.

  In that moment, I remember everything.

  And he knows I know.

  My husband reaches across my lap. My husband puts my vehicle in neutral. My husband steps back, closes the door, shuts me in. And I realize, belatedly, what he’s about to do next.

  His lips moving in the rain.

  “Do you trust me?” Thomas says again. He’s standing right in front of me. So close I can feel the heat of his body, the bulky softness of his overcoat.

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “I love you.”

  I shake my head. Order myself not to listen to his words, but focus on his actions. “Something happened back then. Worse than Vero OD’ing, worse than being buried alive. What can be worse than being buried alive, Thomas? What did you do?”

  “I love you,” he says again.

  I realize then that I’m doomed, for I can already hear the undertone. But it won’t save you in the end. Vero had tried to warn me. Maybe it wasn’t my past I was trying to escape, but the man I married.

  “I am not Veronica Sellers,” I hear myself say. I need the words out. Thomas’s fingerprint trick had briefly disoriented me, my own confused state and guilty conscience making me that much more vulnerable. But Vero is Vero, and I am me, and I owe it to both of us to get it right.

  “I know.”

  “My name is Chelsea Robbins. My mother sold me to Madame Sade when I was ten. And I hated her for that and I loved her for that because the house was nicer, the food better, and at least Madame Sade pretended we were family. Then Vero came along and kicked me out of the tower bedroom and I hated her for that, but I loved her for that because she became the sister I never had and spun our world into a fairy tale.”

  I look at him. “And I met you, the boy I watched in the distance, walking free about the property. And I hated you for that and I loved you for that, but mostly . . .” My voice breaks. “I loved you. From the very beginning, I’ve loved you and I’ve never forgiven myself for it.”

  Thomas smiles. I think it’s the saddest expression I’ve ever seen on a man’s face.

  “It’s time,” he says simply. “She’s waited long enough.”

  He holds out his hand. This time, I take it, following him across the parking lot. Because there is nothing else to do. There is nothing else to say.

  Thomas had been right: I never should’ve returned to New Hampshire; I never should’ve hired an investigative agency; I never should’ve tried so hard to discover the memories I’d worked even harder to forget.

  But what is done is done.

  And now, twenty-two years later, for both of us, for all of us, there is no going back.

  Chapter 34

  MY CAR KEYS are gone,” Tessa reported ten minutes later. She and Wyatt had snapped on the lights, giving the room a cursory glance, before tearing outside to the parking lot. With no sign of Nicky inside or out, they’d returned to the room and summarily ripped it apart. Senseless, really, given they were looking for a full-size female, which wasn’t exactly something you could lose beneath a sofa cushion.

  “She doesn’t have wheels of her own,” Wyatt commented.

  “But where would she go? She doesn’t have a house of her own either.”

  Wyatt nodded. He straightened, took in the wreck of the hotel room and finally exhaled in defeat. “All right. Time to regroup. We’re reacting. This whole damn case, frankly, has been one reaction after another, and it’s not getting us anywhere. From the top, what do we know?”

  “Nicky Frank is missing,” Tessa supplied sourly. She’d stripped the covers from both beds. Now she was on her hands and knees, peering under the first, then the second, as if locating a missing witness was no different from finding a lost pair of shoes.

  “Nicky Frank who is not Veronica Sellers,” Wyatt emphasized, “the girl who went missing thirty years ago.”

  “Meaning she’s probably not running to Marlene Bilek’s house,” Tessa muttered, still crawling on the floor. “Her only contact in the area remains her husband, Thomas.”

  “Who most likely engineered her car accident and set things up for her to be falsely identified as Vero.”

  Tessa finally paused, sat back on her heels. “Could they be
in this together? A joint ruse to pass Nicky off as a missing girl? Maybe as part of that, Thomas and Nicky set a predetermined rendezvous point for if things got too dicey, and that’s where Nicky’s headed now?”

  Wyatt grimaced. “Except what is this ruse? What could Nicky possibly gain as Marlene’s long-lost daughter that would justify the risk of a major auto accident, let alone Thomas burning down their home?”

  Tessa had to think about it: “Revenge? Marlene failed her daughter, maybe was even part of Vero’s abduction? Nicky wants payback, and what better way to get it than masquerading as the lost child?”

  “I think Thomas is behind it.”

  “Okay.” Tessa resumed her search, slipping a hand beneath the box spring and top mattress of the bed closest to the door.

  Wyatt ticked off on his fingers. “Nicky’s concussions are real. Her memory loss certainly appears real. Then there’s the multiple accidents, house fire, et cetera. In all those scenarios, Nicky’s a victim, not a perpetrator. Given all this started when she decided to move to New Hampshire and search for answers, I think her desire for the truth upset the apple cart. Meaning Thomas is the one with something to hide.”

  “Hang on.” Tessa paused. “What do we have here?” Her fingers worked between the mattresses; then she slowly withdrew an oversize piece of paper, top edge ragged where it had been torn from the sketch pad. Tessa eased it carefully from where it’d been stashed, between the mattresses on Nicky’s bed.

  Wyatt immediately crossed the room to study the black-and-white pencil sketch. “That’s Thomas Frank.”

  “Little young, don’t you think?”

  “She must’ve drawn this earlier, when you had her working, because you’re right; this isn’t the Thomas Frank from present day. This is him, easily twenty years ago.”

  “The time of the dollhouse. My God, look at his face.”