Cold Death

by Mary Stone

  It was only her headstrong daughter who’d rebelled against the more gentile life she’d envisioned for her offspring and insisted on courting danger at every turn.

  A baby’s wail pulled Helen from her musings. She glanced at the antique, white-gold watch circling her wrist and frowned. Twenty minutes past the hour. Where on earth was Mr. Ray?

  She scoured the faces of nearby patrons, but none matched the photograph Mr. Ray sent in his email. A brief trip through the closest gallery didn’t turn him up, either. With an impatient harrumph over his rather rude behavior, Helen dialed his number on her phone. The call went straight to an automated voice service.

  Her mouth tightened before she remembered to relax her muscles. Frowning would only hurt her, not the donor who hadn’t bothered to show up to their meeting on time. After a round through the entire second floor without a sign of him, Helen decided enough was enough.

  Her nails drummed an annoyed beat on her forearm as the elevator descended to the first floor. Chin high, she marched past the museum store and stopped at the Visitor’s Service desk.

  The pretty young clerk smiled a greeting. “Hi, Mrs. Kline. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Helen returned the smile despite her irritation. When she was a little girl, her mother had taught her that there was no excuse for bad manners. “Greta, would you be so kind as to contact me immediately if a Mr. Ray comes looking for me?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Kline.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

  When she exited the museum into the dreary day and descended the first three steps, her mind had already moved past the missed meeting and onto planning out the remainder of the afternoon’s activities. No sense dwelling on events over which she had no control. Like her grandpappy always said, that was a recipe for unhappiness and a broken ticker.

  There was always a positive to every negative if one searched hard enough. Like now, for example. Suddenly, she had ample time to fit in some shopping before the one o’clock lunch date with Eleanor. And if her daughter canceled at the last possible minute, as she was wont to do? Helen shrugged her slim shoulders. Well, more shopping time for her.

  She descended the last two steps and headed for the parking lot at a brisk pace. This afternoon, she had phone calls to make about two fundraisers scheduled for later in the month to ensure the events were proceeding without a hitch. Early evening was dedicated to dinner with her husband, of course, followed by a warm bath and a few chapters of the current romance novel she was reading.

  The sun peeped out from behind the cloud cover, warming her cheeks as her heels clicked across the pavement to the parking area. All in all, a good day beckoned. With or without Mr. Ray’s donation.

  Her Mercedes was in sight when the child’s cry reached her ears. Helen ignored the caterwauling at first. Museums weren’t most children’s first choice of entertainment options, and Helen could scarcely recall a visit that hadn’t included one sobbing preschooler or another.

  When the volume climbed higher, though, Helen’s confident stride faltered. With four children under her belt, she prided herself in being rather adept at distinguishing phony, attention seeking cries from sobs of genuine distress.

  The child cried out again, and the shrill wail sent a chill feathering down Helen’s spine. She paused, scanning the grounds for the source. No small, shivering bodies jumped out at her until her gaze swept along the deserted alley that led to a catering entrance on the side of the building. There, huddling in the building’s shadow, was a petite figure. Almost certainly a child based on the height and slim build.

  After a quick glance of the surrounding area didn’t produce any other adults, Helen took a hesitant step toward the alley. “Hello? Do you need some help?”

  As Helen’s voice echoed off the concrete, the girl’s head whipped in her direction before she went rabbit-still. She whimpered and scrambled two steps back, as if even more terrified now.

  Good going, Helen. You all but frightened the poor dear away.

  Helen sighed and continued down the alley in the girl’s direction. The waif held her ground this time as Helen approached the deserted area near the wall. As she drew closer, she clucked her tongue in growing concern.

  The girl’s pasty skin stretched taut over spiny cheekbones, like she hadn’t eaten a good meal in weeks, and her eyes were so shadowed that they almost appeared bruised. Helen’s maternal instincts clicked into overdrive. She knelt on the pavement to make herself less intimidating.

  “You poor, poor thing. Are you okay? Are you lost?” No response, so she tried again. “Where’s your mommy or daddy?”

  Helen extended her hand to the urchin, who hesitated, staring at her with wide, cautious eyes before placing her small hand in Helen’s palm. Something about the elfin face framed by lank blonde hair tugged at her memory. Where had she seen those delicate features before?

  “Are you here with your class from school?” Helen recalled the frazzled teacher leading the small army of kids. If this girl was part of that group, Helen wanted to have a word with the principal to see how to go about donating food and supplies to needy students. This child appeared so frail that a light breeze might pick her up and blow her away.

  Helen frowned when she recalled the students in that group wearing matching orange shirts. Not part of the school trip, then.

  The girl tugged at Helen’s hand. “My papa fell and needs assistance, please.”

  Alarm bells surfaced in Helen’s head. The girl’s intonation was stilted, almost robotic, as if the line had been fed to her and rehearsed. And she voiced the request without urgency. More like she was being forced to carry out an unpleasant chore than seeking emergency aid for her injured father.

  The clouds blotted out the sun, and another chill swept across her skin. Something was very, very wrong.

  Helen checked her surroundings again but didn’t notice anything odd. Still, the little voice in her head kept insisting that she hurry back to the car. “Sweetie, what’s going on here? Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

  The girl stroked her left arm, inadvertently drawing Helen’s eyes to the dark bruises marring the fair skin. A quick scan revealed similar marks on the opposite side.

  Helen’s eyes narrowed as her worry gave way to anger. Hurting a child was despicable behavior. Whoever did this had better believe she’d unleash some choice words on them if they dared to show their cowardly face. “Poor baby, who did this to you?”

  Helen lifted her gaze back to the gamine face, and this time, recognition hit. She inhaled a sharp gasp. “Sweetie, what’s your name?”

  The little girl returned Helen’s stare with the sunken, empty gaze of a drug addict or abuse victim triple her age, causing goose bumps to skitter across Helen’s chest.

  She needed to get this child out of the alley. Escort her to the safety of Helen’s car or back inside the museum.

  A breeze kicked up, whisking a dead leaf down the alley. The girl jumped and tugged at Helen’s hand.

  “It’s okay, baby, I’m here now. I’ll take you somewhere safe and get you something good to eat. How does that sound? A nice big meal, and maybe a cup of hot chocolate or a shake. What do you like? Spaghetti? Pizza? We can have anything at all, my treat.”

  At the mention of food, hope lit up the girl’s eyes for one heart-stopping instant, and Helen sucked in a breath. The transformation was unbelievable. Just as quickly, the expression vanished, and the dead-eyed wariness returned. Had someone lied to the girl about food before?

  Helen was this close to spitting nails. What kind of monster would tease a precious little angel like that? Starve her half to death? “I promise, I’m not playing a trick. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

  The girl began to quiver all over. Her throat moved several times, and her lips parted, and the expression on her little face when she glanced over her shoulder could only be described as pure terror.

  Her fear made Helen’s urgency retur
n. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get out of here. You’ll feel so much better once you eat.”

  And Helen would feel better once they were out of this creepy alley and back in the open. Hopefully, once Helen removed the girl from this grim spot and tucked her into a booth in her favorite diner, the child would relax a little. There wasn’t much a little good, Southern cooking and a big bowl of peach cobbler couldn’t fix. Once her belly was full again, Helen was sure to coax the story out of her.

  As soon as they were locked inside the car, Helen would call Eleanor and let her know who she’d stumbled upon.

  But first, she needed to get the girl to move.

  Helen tugged on the girl’s hand and tried to pull her into a run, but the girl’s legs wobbled and stumbled after only two steps. Too weak. Probably from hunger.

  That left only one option. Helen bent down and scooped the girl up, the same way she’d done years ago with her own children. Her knees creaked and her spine complained, but the girl was light. Too light. Helen clutched the frail body close to her heaving chest and staggered toward the parking lot.

  She’d been so wrapped up in the girl that she hadn’t noticed the silver car come to a stop at the exit of the alley until the motor sounded over the beating of her heart.

  She was trapped.

  Fear clawed at her breast, but Helen Kline did what she did best…pressed forward. There was a foot or so of space between the wall and car. If she hurried, she could slip past and rush to her own vehicle.

  She only made it a few steps before a man leapt out, and Helen gasped. She recognized the face from the photo attachment he’d emailed her.

  Mr. Ray.

  There was no smile on his face now. No apologies for arriving so late for their scheduled appointment, or explanation for how he’d located Helen here, out of sight from the museum foot traffic.

  Helen Kline prided herself on being the type of person who wasn’t given to flights of fancy or allowed her imagination to run wild, but the victorious expression on the man’s tanned face was truly the most frightening thing she’d ever seen.

  Hurry. Hurry.

  Holding the child tight, she rushed to get past him. Three steps, and then her ankle wobbled, twisted. Cursed heels! She’d chosen her fancy, impress-the-wealthy-donor footwear today, not her Cole Haan sneakers.

  Frantic, she kicked off the first shoe, then the second, before hugging the girl and gathering her legs to launch into a run.

  They only had to get to her car. They could make it. She might need an oxygen tank afterward, but she would get them there.

  She lunged forward, but a strong hand grabbed her arm from behind. Terror clawed up her throat. She sucked air into her lungs and opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped across it, muffling the sound to a squeak.

  No.

  Helen Kline twisted, lurched, fought with all her might. As she struggled, she felt a pinch in her upper arm.

  No.

  She staggered. Craned her head in time to witness the hypodermic needle extruding from her favorite peach blazer.

  The man withdrew the needle, and she stumbled away.

  Hurry. This was her last chance to get them to safety.

  She managed one more step before her knees buckled, and the blue sky ahead tilted in a sickening way.

  As her vision blurred, the man she knew as Mr. Ray finally spoke.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kline. I am so very pleased to see you.”

  27

  An undercurrent of urgency electrified the silence in Ellie’s living room, which was broken only by an occasional cough or paper rustling when someone flipped a page. Katarina’s surprise arrival on her doorstep had led to both Ellie and Jillian letting work know they’d be staying home for the day. Neither of them trusted leaving Katarina to her own devices, so instead, they were sprawled out across the apartment, each of them claiming a different area to serve as a temporary workstation.

  Thanks to her work on the Burton case, Ellie had access to a treasure trove of adoption documents that would have proven difficult to acquire otherwise. The dining room table doubled as her desk, with all the files on Burton’s illegal adoption victims stretched out before her like an assembly line.

  Ellie tugged at the elastic holding back her ponytail to tighten it while frowning at the quick and dirty timeline she’d attempted to form. Her idea was that by arranging the illegal adoptions in chronological order and cross-referencing that with the geographic location of where the child was reported missing, she might get lucky and determine Kingsley’s comfort zone.

  If she found a comfort zone, then they might be able to triangulate and ascertain a probable location of Kingsley’s safe house, give or take a dozen square miles or so.

  Ellie bit her cheek until she tasted blood. Might. Probable. Dozen square miles. Not very reassuring, but what else could they do?

  She traced her finger over a line of text that she’d read too many times already and exhaled through her nostrils. Staring at these documents all morning and afternoon was making her eyes start to cross. So much of this felt like a wild goose chase. Hopefully, her accomplices were having better luck.

  Stretching her arms overhead, she glanced up from the sea of papers to check in with the others. Jillian’s blonde head was bent over the laptop, and adoption records were strewn across the kitchen island as she searched for a legitimate adoption by Letitia Wiggins. Ellie didn’t envy her that job.

  Adoption records were usually sealed, so uncovering the one that was linked to a specific person would be a hell of a feat. Sam laid at her feet with her head slumped on her paws, heaving deep doggy sighs every once in a while, her expressive eyebrows twitching.

  Ellie’s gaze traveled across the room to one of her overstuffed living room chairs, where Katarina sprawled with a yellow legal pad in her lap and her bare feet stretched onto Ellie’s coffee table. She’d spent half an hour in the shower and had discarded the atrocious “New Mommy” sweatpants ensemble in favor of a pair of Ellie’s old baggy jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Her brown hair hung loose, obscuring part of her face as she scribbled notes with a pencil.

  Katarina had shot down the suggestion that there was a blood link between her and Kingsley, refusing to even entertain the idea to the point that she scoffed at Ellie and Jillian’s focus on the adoption records as a waste of time. Instead, she’d told them she’d rack her brain for anything and everything Kingsley had ever shared or revealed about his history during her time with him and jot the details down, no matter how irrelevant, vague, or inconsequential they might seem.

  Ellie studied the other woman’s profile, frowning. Was there really no deeper connection between Katarina and Kingsley? Because Ellie wasn’t convinced.

  Truth be told, she was pretty sure Katarina wasn’t convinced, either. Why else had she breathed fire and all but charred their heads to ashes when presented with the possibility?

  Ellie understood why Katarina reacted that way, though. Turned out, not even Kingsley’s protégé wanted to entertain the idea of additional bonds to the man who’d raised her. She’d had years to accept the nurture part of their relationship. Expecting her to immediately jump on board to tacking on a genetic, nature link to the sociopath was a lot to ask.

  The more Ellie toyed with the idea, though, the more she wondered. Kingsley had a proven track record of fixating on father-daughter relationships, of obsessing over the unraveling and corruption of interpersonal connections. All of which fit perfectly with a man whose lover lied about a pregnancy and gave up a child for adoption without his knowledge. Plus, there was his dysfunctional focus on the bifurcation of women into two groups…good girl or slut.

  Slut. She shuddered at the word. At the horrible, horrible memories it conjured up. Memories she still couldn’t fully access, thanks to her brain’s protective mode repressing them. The game, though. She’d never forget that. Even the horrible name—Die, Bitch! Die—testified to Kingsley’s misogynistic, twisted ideas about wome
n.

  His sinister voice stuck in her mind. Sometimes disappearing for a while, but always coming back, like an evil boomerang. One day Ellie hoped to eliminate every trace of him from her brain entirely, but that would never happen unless he was locked up or dead and no longer a threat to her family or anyone else.

  Like Bethany.

  Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip while she straightened the closest papers. Time to focus. Hopefully, they’d get lucky and find the clue leading to Kingsley’s whereabouts. It wouldn’t help Ellie manage her memories, but at least they could prevent him from featuring in any new ones.

  A wet nose nudged her elbow, and she absently stroked the dog’s soft head with one hand while she marked a location on the map with her other. After a few minutes, Sam abandoned her in search of a more attentive ear scratcher, but Ellie barely noticed as she hunched over the table and tapped the pen on the wood. Hours had passed, yet no leads. No nothing.

  Maybe Katarina was right, and this adoption angle was them sprinting down a dead end.

  A gasp from the kitchen made Ellie’s head whip up. “Did you find something?”

  When Jillian lifted her gaze from whatever paper had elicited her reaction, her mouth hung open, and her blue eyes held an expression that sent tingles racing across Ellie’s neck.

  Katarina sat up slowly in the chair. Her lips were pinched, but she was quiet as she waited for Jillian to share.

  “So, Letitia Wiggins did give birth to a baby. A little girl, no record of a name. Two days later, the Rhett family from Charleston announced the birth of their own daughter, Morrigan Rhett.”

  Wrinkling her brow, Ellie turned the name over in her mind. Morrigan Rhett. Why did that sound so familiar? “How have I heard of that name before?”

  “Morrigan Rhett was featured in the society pages for a long time, as one of those feel-good stories that everyone could get behind. You know, poor unwanted baby gets adopted by a rich family and turns into a beautiful debutante. It’s one of those rags-to-riches fairy tales that most people love, like Little Orphan Annie meets The Princess Diaries.”