by HELEN HARDT
“Look around, Melanie,” I said. “No one’s here. This is your closet. He had no right to be here, but you do.”
“I know.” She began pulling things off of the rack. “I’m okay now.”
“You need help?” the officer asked.
“No. Please, just take the towel and shoe”—she stooped down and grabbed the other of the pair—“shoes out of here.”
He took them from her and left the bedroom. Why they hadn’t been removed before now was a mystery to me.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. I just need a minute in here. Alone.”
I nodded and walked out to join Loring. A few minutes later, my cell phone buzzed in my back pocket. A text from a number I didn’t recognize.
I read the words, and then read them again.
I will have you.
Chapter Twenty
Melanie
I was pacing around my bedroom when Jonah returned.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay. It’s just… I don’t think I can live here anymore, you know? Even if I did live here, I’d have to get all new stuff. But I really don’t feel safe here.”
I stopped before clamping my hand to my mouth. I hoped he didn’t think I was inviting myself to stay at his home indefinitely.
“You don’t have to decide that right now. Who knows when the police will release the area, and it will take a few weeks for your insurance company to settle your loss anyway. But you do need to take some time to pick out all the stuff you want.”
“I don’t know if I have it in me to do that today.” I wasn’t lying. Just being in the loft made my skin crawl, and seeing the towel and shoe had almost sent me into hysteria. I was having symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, perfectly normal in my case. I did need to get out of here.
“That’s fine. Just find anything of value to take today, to keep it safe.”
I had very little of any value. I kept all my important documents in a safe deposit box at my bank, along with some jewelry from my grandmother. The few pieces of gold jewelry I kept here weren’t worth much. Pretty much everything I had was replaceable. That didn’t say very much for my life up to this point. Forty years, and what did I have to show for my life? No husband, no children, though I’d never thought I had it in me to be a mother. Sure, I’d helped some people but not all of them. One was haunting me still.
I covered my eyes with my hands.
“Melanie?” Jonah’s hands were warm on my shoulder.
“I’m all right,” I choked out, opening my eyes. “Give me about five minutes to gather up what I need.”
Jonah nodded. “Just tell me what you need. I’ll take it all down to the truck.”
I eyed my file cabinet in the corner of my bedroom. Gina’s file was in there, as well as encrypted on my computer and on the cloud. I turned to Jonah. “Just that,” I said, gesturing. “I’ll grab what clothes I want. Everything else can stay. I’ll follow you to your place in my car. That way, I’ll have it with me.”
I had some money saved up. I needed a change. I’d buy some new clothes. Some new furniture. And once this loft got back in shape after I got the insurance payment, it was going on the market. Would anyone buy a loft where a woman had been abducted?
Just what I didn’t need. Another loss.
* * *
When we returned to the ranch, Jonah carried the file cabinet into my bedroom as well as a couple of suitcases I’d filled with clothes and other things I wanted, which wasn’t much. It was nearing dinnertime, but I wasn’t very hungry, so I decided to go to bed.
He promised not to leave the house.
I washed up in my private bathroom and then found some sweats—clean this time—and put them on. I climbed into bed, wishing for Jonah or even Lucy and her warmth against me. But I had to be strong to get through this. I was safe in the house. I had watched Jonah lock the doors.
I lay in bed for a few minutes, my heart beating in my ears.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It grew louder.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
* * *
“I could feel his heartbeat,” Gina said. “I could feel his heartbeat thumping as he held me.”
“And how did that make you feel?” I asked.
“Warm, at first. Secure in someone’s arms.”
“What else do you remember?”
“I remember the…hardness in his lap. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to be rude and ask. I didn’t want to anger him because I needed the closeness, and I didn’t want it to go away.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true that some victims of childhood abuse don’t remember the abuse?”
“In some cases.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I think they are the lucky ones.”
I could not fault her observation, but I did have a response. “Whether you think so now or not, Gina, it is better that you remember. Blocking out painful memories comes with its own problems.”
“What kind of problems? It seems to me that ignorance would be bliss.”
“That’s the problem. Ignorance is not bliss. Perhaps a victim doesn’t consciously remember these things, but they are still inside, and they can manifest a thousand different ways, sometimes as personality disorders, sometimes other mental illnesses. Sometimes the victim goes on to abuse another. In the worst cases, the victim might take his own life.”
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine that. I would never do such a thing. He’s not worth dying for.”
“I know you won’t, and I’m very glad of that. But believe me, it’s better that you remember. Even if it’s painful. Then you can get through it. People have gotten through worse.”
“I can’t imagine that anyone ever had any worse,” she said.
“They have, but that’s not what you need to focus on. You need to focus on you. Your life. You’re here now, getting the help you need. It’s a rocky road, I know. But I’m here with you every step of the way.”
“I have trouble sleeping. For a long time, I didn’t. For a long time, I tried to just convince myself I was okay. Sometimes I was successful, others not as much. But now… It all seems so real, and I can’t escape it at night.”
“I can prescribe medication to help you sleep. Everything is easier to deal with when you’re well rested.”
“I…don’t like the idea of medication.”
“Sleep aids on the market today are nonaddictive,” I assured her. “Think of your inability to sleep as a symptom that needs to be relieved. If you have a headache, you take aspirin or ibuprofen, right?”
She nodded.
“So why not take something to relieve the symptom of insomnia?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I don’t want to be scared. I don’t need to be scared anymore. My uncle’s dead.”
“I’m sure that’s a comfort to you. How did he die?”
“I don’t know. My parents just told me he was dead.”
“They didn’t tell you how? Was he ill? In an accident?”
“They just said he was dead.”
“Gina, would it be okay if I talked to your parents?”
“Why would you do that?” She visibly tensed.
“I certainly won’t, if you don’t want me to. But sometimes it helps me get a feel for the situation, to understand why this happened, why they allowed it to happen.”
“Because they didn’t care. They were never home. They left me with him.”
“Did you tell them?”
She shook her head. “Part of me wanted to. Part of me…”
“Did your uncle threaten you? Did he say he would hurt you if you told anyone?”
“No. He was already hurting me. He did say that this was a secret between us, that I was special to him, and that it was special to have a secret like ours.”
I nodded. She was a classic
case. She longed for attention and affection, and when she couldn’t get it from the people she wanted it from, her parents, she took it from wherever she could. The attention from her uncle, though painful, was at least attention.
“So you didn’t tell your parents. Can you tell me why?”
“Like I said, part of me wanted to, but…part of me liked having a secret from them. Part of me… Oh my God, was this all my fault? Could I have stopped it if I had told them?”
I stood and walked over to her so she could feel my closeness. I gently touched her on the forearm. “No, no, never think that. None of this is your fault. But it was attention, even if it was unwanted attention. And I understand what you mean. You were a young child, and this was something that was yours.”
“Yes. That’s exactly it. Oh my God, was there a part of me that actually wanted it?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But not the sexual part. The close part. The being important to someone part.”
She swallowed visibly, nodding.
“At least he’s dead, and you’re safe now.”
“It’s funny. I know he’s dead, but I get phone calls sometimes. Someone calls and hangs up. On my caller ID, it just says ‘number not available.’”
My hackles rose. “Gina, I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I want you to ask your parents how your uncle died.”
“I don’t want to talk to my parents about this. They never really took me seriously.”
“I understand. But it’s important that we know what happened to your uncle.”
“Do you think there’s a possibility that he’s not dead?”
I shook my head, knowing full well I was lying. “I doubt that’s a possibility. But the more knowledge you have, the more you can be certain inside.”
“All right. I’ll ask them.”
* * *
I shot straight up in bed.
At our next session, I’d asked Gina what her parents had said. She told me she had forgotten to ask about how her uncle had died. When she had forgotten again at the next session, I stopped asking.
Why had she not been able to ask her parents? And why wouldn’t her parents have told her how he had died?
Maybe because it had never happened.
Gina’s uncle, whoever he was, was alive.
Why hadn’t this possibility occurred to me before now?
I got up and turned on my light. I went to my file cabinet, unlocked it, and shuffled through the files until I found hers. I pulled out the suicide letter she’d written me.
He’s not worth dying for.
Words alone weren’t proof positive that a patient wasn’t suicidal, but they were a damned good indicator. What if Gina hadn’t written this note? What if someone had locked her in a garage with a running car, just as the masked man had done to me?
I was a good therapist, goddamnit. Some of my patients had been suicidal in the past, and I had always known. I had referred them for hospitalization in most cases. So how could I have missed that Gina was suicidal?
Perhaps because she wasn’t.
And had she truly been in love with me? I’d had patients fall for me before. It was a common phenomenon, and I’d always recognized it and taken care of it before it went too far. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed it with Gina because I hadn’t expected a woman to fall in love with me.
Or…perhaps I hadn’t noticed it with Gina because it wasn’t true.
Was it possible that the letter was a forgery?
And why a letter? Why hadn’t she e-mailed me? Nearly no one sent letters through the mail anymore…
An e-mail would be traceable. But an old-fashioned letter…
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I shuffled through the file again, looking for something, anything, with Gina’s handwriting on it. She had never sent me a check. Her therapy had been covered by her insurance.
Where could I find her handwriting?
I glanced at the letter again. Some words were blurred, and I honestly didn’t know if the wetness had come from my tears or Gina’s. The writing was shaky, though I hadn’t thought anything about that at the time.
But now, looking at the penmanship, I could see that she’d been trembling. Anyone about to commit suicide could have been trembling. But something else might have made her tremble as she wrote.
Fear.
Chapter Twenty–One
Jonah
I will have you.
I read the text again.
I had run the phone number through a simple search and come up empty-handed.
Clearly, the text had come from Brooke Bailey. The area code was from Iowa, where her fiancé, Nico Kostas, had told her he was an Iowa senator, although there was no record of him in either the United States Senate or the Iowa Senate.
Had Brooke been living in Iowa?
I decided to ignore the text. She was simply a needy woman, a model past her prime, who had stared death in the face and made it through. On top of that, her so-called fiancé had bailed on her and had probably tried to have her killed, although she didn’t know the latter, and unfortunately we couldn’t prove it anyway.
My stomach growled. It was getting close to dinnertime, but I didn’t want to wake Melanie. God knew she needed her rest. I shuffled into the kitchen and took a look in the cupboards. Melanie had laid in quite a few staples. I opened the refrigerator and took out an apple, biting into the crisp fruit. That would hold me over until I figured out what I was doing for dinner.
My phone buzzed again in my pocket. This time it was a text from Talon.
Marj came home from cooking class with a vat of spaghetti and meatballs. Come help us eat it. Ryan is coming over with a couple bottles of wine.
My stomach growled again. Spaghetti and meatballs sounded great, but I didn’t really want to run into Brooke again. Still, having my meal made for me would be a godsend. I would just have to wake up Melanie and tell her we were going.
I hadn’t yet told Talon what had happened to Melanie. I couldn’t leave her home alone. I’d have to wake her up and tell her we were going to Talon’s for dinner. She might not want to.
I texted Talon that I’d have to pass.
Are you sure? We need to discuss what to do about Felicia. I asked her to come over tomorrow morning for a talk with us.
Crap. My brother needed me, but so did Melanie. I had failed them both.
I sighed. It wouldn’t hurt to try. Maybe Melanie was hankering for spaghetti and meatballs, and she would want to go.
When I walked up to her door, I heard footsteps. Good, she was already awake. I knocked gently.
“Is that you, Jonah?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on in.”
I walked in, and she was taking a file out of her cabinet. She sat down on the floor and opened it.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just looking through some files.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. I have this strange feeling…”
“What is it?”
She looked at me, her green eyes glimmering. “What if Gina didn’t commit suicide? What if she was tied up, pushed into a garage, and left to die—like I was?”
The skin on the back of my neck began to burn. “Did you remember something?”
“She always told me the uncle who raped her was dead, but she could never tell me how he had died. I told her to ask her parents, but every time I asked her what they said, she said she had forgotten to ask.”
“I suppose it’s possible she just didn’t want to talk about her uncle to her parents.”
“Yes, that is definitely possible.” She bit her lip. “But Jonah, I know a lot about suicide. I’m writing a book about preventing suicide in teens. If someone was suicidal, I’d see the signs. I didn’t see them in Gina.”
Melanie was grasping at straws, clearly. Trying to convince herself. I didn’t know what to say to her.
�
�You don’t believe me, do you?”
“We can look into it,” I said. “I’ll pay for the best investigators if you want.”
“Oh, no, I’m not after your money.”
I chuckled. “I know you’re not after my money, sweetheart. But I have money in abundance, and I want to help you through this. Right now, though, I’m starving. How about you?”
A smile pulled at her lips. “You know, for the first time in days, I am actually famished. Not just hungry, but I want to eat something good.”
That was an excellent sign. “It’s your lucky day then. We’re invited to Talon’s house. Marj brought home a ton of spaghetti and meatballs for all of us.”
Her smile fell. “I don’t know…”
“Melanie, I haven’t told Talon or anyone else what happened to you. We don’t have to talk about that. They already know there’s something between us. It could be that you’re just visiting me today, and I invited you along.”
“Will they mind?”
“You saved my brother’s life. No one will mind. We would all happily buy your meals for the rest of your life.” I smiled, giving her my hand.
She took it, and I pulled her up so she was standing next to me.
“Text them first, and make sure they don’t mind.”
“That’s not necessary, but I will. In the meantime, do you want to change into some jeans or something?”
She nodded. I left the room and texted Talon quickly, and of course he was thrilled to have Melanie come along. In ten minutes, she came out in a pair of jeans, ankle boots, and a pullover top that accentuated her breasts beautifully. Her lips were painted a soft burgundy.
She looked fresh and beautiful. I wanted to grab her and kiss her senseless, but if I did that, we might never get out of here. As much as I wanted her, I couldn’t let Talon down.
I did give her a quick kiss on her burgundy lips. “You look beautiful,” I whispered in her ear.