“The dream wasn’t about me,” she finally said as she leaned heavily into him.
“Edie,” he said softly. His big hand rubbed up and down her back.
She nodded in the darkness. “Yes, it was about Edie. I’m so afraid for her, Frank. And for Jake,” she added.
“You think she’s gone.” Frank didn’t ask it as a question but said it as a statement of fact. He knew her so well.
“We can’t all be Colette Merriweather. Face it, I survived because I was lucky.” She moved from Frank’s arms and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. “I’ve been telling Edie all the little tricks I used to survive, pretending that I was smarter than other victims, that I had all the secrets on how to beat a psychopath at his own game.”
Frank attempted to pull her back into his arms. Instead she got out of the bed, not wanting the comfort of his arms. “It’s been lies, all lies and I’m nothing but a fraud. I lived because he let me live. No other reason.” Tears blurred her vision as Frank got out of bed and circled it to reach her.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “That’s not true,” he protested. “You were smart and that’s what kept you alive. You did outplay him, outwit him. Otherwise you would have been dead within the first twenty-four hours he held you.”
He gave her a gentle shake. “Don’t you dare discount what you did. Don’t you dare question that it was your mind and your will that kept you alive, not him.”
Yanking her to him, he held her tight against his broad, naked chest. She melted into him as she cried in earnest. The tears didn’t last long but even after she’d stopped, she clung to Frank, the man who had waited three years for her, the man who had never lost the belief that she would be with him again.
She finally raised her head and looked at him. “I wish I had your faith. I wish I could truly believe in my heart that I’m going to see my friend again. I’m so afraid that I’ll never see her again, that she’s gone forever.”
She buried her face in the hollow of Frank’s neck as a new wave of tears overwhelmed her. For the first time in his life Frank had no words to comfort her, he simply held her tight.
It was Monday morning and Jake was a mess. Since the moment they’d identified the man at the signing and at McDonalds the entire task force had pulled out all the stops to try to identify him. So far there had been no success.
They’d gone through receipts both at the book store and the fast food restaurant in the hopes that he’d used a credit or debit card to pay for his purchases. He’d used cash.
Nobody at the McDonalds knew who he was although several people who regularly worked the day shift thought he came in occasionally for lunch. They now had undercover cops sitting in the restaurant between eleven and two in the hopes of finding him there.
The staff at the bookstore professed to never seeing him before, so there was no point in staking out that establishment. Despite the lack of any real evidence, there was no doubt in Jake’s mind that the man was responsible for both Edie and Maggie’s disappearances. As far as the police department was concerned, he was officially a person of interest they would like to question.
It was ten o’clock when Jake took Rufus out to romp in the backyard. Although it was difficult for him to stay away from the investigation, he knew there wasn’t anything he could do. He was still officially on vacation. He had been warned by Chief Decker to stay away, to let his brothers in law enforcement do their job. There was no way anyone wanted a question of impropriety if and when they found the man.
Rufus ambled to his usual bush to relieve himself and then came back to where Jake sat at the umbrella table on the deck. He slumped down next to Jake and looked up at him with sad eyes.
Jake scratched him behind his ears. “I know, buddy. I miss her, too.” It seemed that when it was just Jake and Rufus in the house, they wandered the rooms as if hoping to find Edie hiding in a closet or under a bed.
There was no doubt in Jake’s mind that Rufus was depressed. The dog didn’t beg when Jake was eating. He didn’t chase rabbits or run the length of the fence in the backyard.
Jake feared the day when Rufus stopped looking around the house for Edie. He worried that a time would come that Edie’s slipper would remain on the floor next to the bed instead of with Rufus’s head resting on it.
He had no idea how long a dog’s memory might be, but the idea of Rufus forgetting Edie filled Jake with desolation.
Rufus had become the keeper of the dream that Edie would return. As long as Rufus sat up with eager expectation each time somebody entered the front door, as long as he carried Edie’s slipper to bed each night, Jake could believe that she’d come back home safe and sound.
Chapter 30
Monday morning Edie awoke to the sound of running water and thanked God that it was Monday. He’d left her alone the day before. She’d been grateful. She’d spent most of the time curled up in a fetal ball, escaping from her pain into sleep.
She’d dreamed Colette was telling her to be strong, reminding her that he couldn’t take her dignity no matter how badly he beat her.
Then she’d dreamed of Rufus, his furry face seeming to smile at her. She felt his warmth as if he was curled up at her side and she wondered if she were dying.
She’d thought of Lisa and Frank’s children and wished she’d had a baby of her own. Then she had taken the wish back, for she’d never want to have a baby and not be there to see him or her grow up.
Finally she dreamed of Jake, of being held in his arms, of feeling his naked body close to hers as they made love. She’d underestimated him, she knew that now. She should have told him about her father. She should have confessed her burden, her guilt.
It was when she woke up that her thoughts went to Francine. A little girl who’d never realized her potential. A child whose adulthood had been stolen from her. Edie realized she and Francine had suffered the same fate. Francine’s death had stolen Edie’s childhood and robbed her of becoming the adult she should have been, a woman capable of accepting love.
She finally roused herself from her place on the floor, her body screaming in protest and her ear still painful and deaf. He was going to kill her. She had a feeling it was going to be sooner rather than later.
The stacks of paper closed in around her as she sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. A paper prison. She eyed the stacks and thought about death…a painful death that she knew would have her begging for mercy before the final blow.
That’s not the way she wanted to die. She would not give him the pleasure of beating her to death. She would choose how she died. She looked at the paper stacks once again. A plan formulated in her mind. If she could somehow get to the top of one of the piles in the back, then maybe she could topple them all, crush Anthony to death and walk out of here.
At the moment the idea of moving, of trying to crawl anywhere was daunting, but her time was running out. With that thought in mind, she slowly got to her feet.
If he’d gone to work as she suspected, then she should have approximately eight hours to figure things out before he’d return. She had to use every minute of those eight hours, every ounce of strength she had left.
As she headed to the bathroom, each step she took shot pain through her entire body. A faint nausea accompanied each step. She figured besides the damage he’d done to her eardrum, he’d probably given her another concussion.
She had to work through the pain. She had to figure out a way to beat him once and for all. She stepped into the bathroom and stared at the piles of paper that filled the tub and rose to the ceiling.
There could be a window behind the papers, or there might not be one. If there was, then she could use the hours of the day to empty the tub, get to the window and crawl out. And then what?
She had no idea what was outside, where she was. He’d told her they were in the middle of nowhere on ten acres of land, that there were no neighbors anywhere around.
If she
did manage to get out of the window where would she go for help? Depending on how long it took her to find the window and get out, he could come home and hunt her down. Then for sure she’d be dead.
She wanted him dead.
Her desire to stop him was greater than her pain, bigger than her need to attempt an escape. She wanted to kill him before he could take another innocent woman.
She stepped out of the bathroom and looked up at the seemingly unreachable heights of one of the back towers of paper. There was no way she could climb a vertical mountain without foot or handholds.
She was going to have to build a staircase with the papers from the bathroom. As she moved the first pile of papers from the tub to the base of the tower she wanted to climb, her arms ached and screamed in protest.
When she lifted the second bunch, she stopped and dry-heaved. Her head spun with dizziness. There was nothing in her stomach to come up. The last thing he’d given her to eat was the apple and that had been two nights ago.
Push past the pain, she told herself. Think about Colette and all the abuse she managed to survive. Think about Jake. Even though he’d told her he needed time to figure out what he wanted, where he needed to go, she knew that if she managed to escape, he’d be waiting for her.
Forever.
That’s what he’d told her. He’d wait forever for her.
These thoughts gave her strength and for the next couple of hours she moved stacks of paper like a staircase to Heaven.
When she’d managed to get halfway to the ceiling she stopped and rested and gazed at her work. She thought it was enough. About halfway up the papers were less neat, creating places she thought would hold knees and elbows as she crawled the rest of the way.
It was a dangerous plan. She could get halfway up and create an avalanche in which she would be crushed, but at least she’d be dying her way…fighting until the end and robbing him of her death at his hands.
Although it was difficult to judge time, when she thought it was growing near the time that Anthony would return home, she began the climb, hoping to reach the very top of the back row. He wouldn’t even be able to see her hiding there.
As she began her treacherous climb, her heart beat a million miles a minute. Wait for him to enter the room, create an avalanche, crush him to death and then walk out the door.
It was her mantra. Wait for him to enter the room, create an avalanche, crush him to death and then walk out the door. The words played over and over again in her head as she slowly made her way up the tall tower.
More than once her breath caught. She froze as papers shifted and swayed beneath her…around her. For the first time in a long time, Edie prayed her plan would work, that she would live to escape and become the woman she was meant to be.
The higher she got the hotter it became. She began to sweat and her skin was slick against the paper. Bugs crawled over her arms, up her legs, disturbed by her very presence in their house.
The heat, coupled with the pain in her ribs made each breath agony and still she climbed. This was her final chance to beat him, to destroy him.
As she finally reached the top, she lay on her side, unable to see beyond the stack of papers before her, unable to sit up in the space between where she was and the ceiling of the room.
Before she’d begun her climb, she’d closed the bathroom door. Anthony was a creature of habit. She had to hope, to pray that he would be that today. He’d come into the room, place his folding chair in the center and assume she was in the bathroom. He’d wait for her to return to the laptop at the center of the small bare space in the middle of the room.
She was afraid to move, afraid that in doing so she would create the landslide of papers before he got into place. She had to time it perfectly.
She could feel the instability of the stacks beneath her, knew that a simple deep breath, the twitch of a muscle could make them fall. Once one tower fell, others would follow.
Dead. He’d die just like the mother he loved…the woman he’d hated. Crushed by his hoard. It felt like a fitting end to his life.
Of course, she knew there was no guarantee she would survive the mass destruction she was about to set in motion. She was willing to take the chance.
Minutes passed, ticking off in agonizingly slow increments. And in the silence of waiting, Edie found the self-love that had been missing from her life since Francine’s murder so long ago.
The fact that Janet Carpenter had lost one child to murder and had abandoned another wasn’t Edie’s fault. It was a flaw of weakness in the woman who had given birth to her.
Her father suffered from the same character flaw, a weakness that had cast him into the position of his choice. Checking out on life, on her, had been his choice.
Like Colette, Edie found herself thinking of all the things she would do and enjoy when she gained her freedom. She’d reach out and make more friends. She’d go to lunch and shop and gain a better balance between her writing and real living.
She’d eat a bag full of Oreo cookies, something she hadn’t touched since Francine’s death. She’d run in the rain without a coat, stay up all night and watch old movies.
Finally she’d marry Jake…if he’d still have her. And they’d plan a family, build a life based on happiness with each other and within themselves.
Greg Bernard had taken three victims, her sister, her father and mother. He’d almost taken her as well. He didn’t get to take it all. He and his crime no longer had any power over her. She refused to be his fourth victim. He didn’t get to win.
And live or die now, she was just as determined that Anthony didn’t get to win, either.
Her heart thumped as she heard the faint sound of the microwave ding.
It was just before five when Teddy showed up at Edie’s place to fill Jake in on the investigation. The big man looked tired. He accepted the cold beer Jake handed him and together with Rufus, the three went outside on the deck.
Teddy took a long pull of his beer and leaned back in the chair. Rufus lay down at Jake’s feet and released a deep doggy sigh.
“When are you coming back to work?” he asked Jake. “Even though you can’t work on Edie’s case, we could use you back on the job.”
“There are mornings I wake up and wish I was getting dressed and ready to head into work.” Jake took a drink from his beer bottle. “But most of the time I feel like I need to be here waiting for her when she comes home.”
Teddy frowned and broke eye contact with Jake. In that disconnect, Jake realized Teddy believed she was never coming home.
“We’ve got men armed with photos of the man in the video checking out the office buildings around the McDonalds, but there’s dozens of businesses in that area. So far nobody has recognized him. It’s possible he doesn’t work in the area, doesn’t have anything to do with that area of town but just occasionally stops in there for lunch.”
“It’s not hopeless,” Jake replied.
Teddy looked at him once again. “It’s definitely feeling hopeless.”
Jake shook his head. “I refuse to give up hope until a body is found. Until then, she’s still alive as far as I’m concerned.”
“Yeah, you and Danielle Black. Maybe you two can start your own club.” Instantly Teddy raised a hand in supplication. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. I’m cranky and tired. You know she’s left a hole in our lives, too. Just this morning at breakfast Snap asked when we were going to see Aunt Edie again.”
“What did you tell her?”
Teddy shrugged. “I told her whenever we found her. She told me I must be a bad detective if I couldn’t even find one woman.”
Emotion pressed against Jake’s heart. The painful vise squeezed so tight it was hard to draw a breath. “I paid her father’s rent for the month and took him some groceries.”
Teddy looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
“Edie would have wanted me to.”
“And what happens next month when the rent is due again?”
Jake took another drink of his beer before replying. “I’ll face that bridge when I reach it.”
“What he needs is some long-term treatment and a swift kick in the ass.”
“I plan on talking to a social worker to see if we can get him some help, but the person’s got to want it. I’m not sure James Carpenter wants to be helped.” Jake’s thoughts of Edie’s father were a combination of anger and sympathy.
“Edie would be better off without him,” Teddy exclaimed.
“That’s for Edie to decide when she gets home.”
A heavy silence fell between the two men, broken only by the sound of cicadas singing in the trees in the distance. Edie used to joke that the noisy male cicadas spent the heat of the day bitching about their mates.
Once again the vise squeezed his heart. It wasn’t sorrow. It wasn’t grief. It was need. His need to hold her once again, his desire to see the sparkle of her eyes, to hear the sound of her laughter diminished any grief or sorrow that might find purchase in his heart.
“Next week,” he said suddenly. “Next week I’ll be back on the job.” It was time. He needed to do something constructive with his time. Edie would hate him being so unproductive. If he couldn’t find her kidnapper, then he would find somebody else’s, he could work the cases that would get the bad guys off the street. That’s what he did, that and loving Edie.
The sound of the key in the door tensed every muscle in Edie’s body. She lay on her side with her good ear up so she could hear him when he entered the room, could guess when it was time to move.
The door creaked open and she heard the sound of his shoes on the floor. “Edie? Hurry up in there. You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
She heard the chair as the legs unfolded and she shifted her weight. That’s all it took. She felt a moment of weightlessness and then it was as if the entire room folded in on itself.
She saw the papers crash into his stomach, and then had a single moment of his face, his mouth opened in an endless scream. He was then swallowed whole, disappearing from her sight.
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