December twenty-second.
She pounded the phone in frustration and closed her eyes. “Stay calm, Natalie. Stay calm. You’ve come too far to give up. Keep going.”
Clutching the phone, Natalie pushed herself to her feet and back into a chair, staring at the phone and wondering what on earth the password could be. She looked over at Joey.
“The one time I actually need you for something,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “All right, Natalie, come on, think. Think like Joey. What would he use as the password?”
She started punching in any combination of numbers she could think of: her birthday, his birthday, their first date, their ages. Nothing. She was locked out. She threw the phone down on the table, frustrated. Then she smacked herself on the forehead.
“I can still call 911,” she whispered as she punched in the numbers, her heart leaping as she was connected. “Even with a locked phone, you can still call 911,” she mumbled to herself.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My name is Natalie Scott, and I was kidnapped.”
Chapter 77
SHE
“All right, ma’am, where are you?”
Such a simple question. Yet it unleashed a flood of tears. Long. Loud. Uncontrollable. “I don’t know. I have no idea. He killed my husband and then kidnapped me, and I’ve been locked in this house for months and everything is electronic, and I can’t get out and please, please you have to help me.”
“Ma’am are you on a cell phone?”
“Yes, yes, I am.”
“Ma’am, we’re going to track your location, so I will need you to stay on the line while we do that, okay?”
Natalie nodded. “Okay,” she said, still sobbing. “Please hurry.”
“Ma’am, are you by yourself?”
“Yes. I mean, no, the . . . the man who kidnapped me is dead. But I’m pregnant and—”
On cue, pain ripped through her, knocking the breath out of her. She gasped and clutched her stomach while trying to keep her grip on the phone. “Oh, God, please hurry. I think I’m going into labor.”
Another swift internal punch caused her to scream. Sweat dripped from her pores and she was shaking with pain.
“Okay, ma’am, we’ve found you, and we’ve dispatched officers and EMTs to the scene. They should be there soon, so I want you to stay on the line with me until they get there, okay?”
“How soon? How soon will they be here?” Another contraction.
“Any minute, ma’am. Just hold on.”
Chapter 78
SHE
Where were they?
The phone kept beeping, indicating the battery was dying. The dispatcher kept peppering her with questions she couldn’t answer, and Natalie was cranky and crying. The contractions had stopped, but there was no way of knowing when they would come surging back.
“Ma’am, we’re showing that the officers should be there now. Can you see them?”
“I told you, all the windows are blacked out, and I can’t see anything.”
“Okay, the officers are definitely outside the building.”
Building?
The phone beeped again.
“No, it’s a house, and all the doors are on some kind of grid or something, I don’t know, but there’s no keys, there’s no—”
Natalie stopped and looked at the phone. A building. That meant. . .
“Where are they? I mean what’s the address?”
“They’re at 11025 South Winchester. It’s a three-flat building.”
Natalie let out a sob. One last twist of the knife.
“Oh, my God, he did something to scramble the location.” The phone slid from Natalie’s hand. “You’ll never find me, you’ll never find me. Oh, God, he was right, he was right. I’m never getting away from him.”
“Ma’am? Ma’am, I need you to stay on the line.”
Natalie doubled over in tears. It was no use. The police would never find her. That bastard would win after all.
“Okay, ma’am, we have to unscramble the signal—”
The phone went dead.
Natalie moaned, the pain walloping her again. She’d have to find the charger, which could be anywhere, and start all over again. She whimpered, plastering her palm against the wet grime of her forehead. She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the search. She gasped.
The iPad.
He probably had the controls for the house on his iPad as a backup.
“Oh, God, please let that be it,” she murmured to herself as she struggled to her feet, clutching the table, barely making it across the room before dropping to her knees again. The pain was so intense, she no longer even felt it. She took several deep breaths and dragged herself across the carpet, grasping the arm of the couch to try and hoist herself up. The iPad was next to the TV. She grunted as she stumbled toward it, her fingers grubby now, tears blocking her vision as she swiped screens and buttons trying to locate the controls for the house.
The pain swooped through her again.
And then a gush of water dropped between her legs.
“Sonja, no, please, oh, God, please not yet, not yet,” Natalie whispered as she continued to fumble through the icons to find the right one.
Finally, she spotted a tiny icon labeled “house” and “disarm.” She started to punch in random numbers, hoping she would hit on something.
Another labor pain tore through her, and she dropped the iPad. It bounced across the floor, just out of her grasp. She was sobbing uncontrollably now, ready to give up.
Come on, Scotty, you can do this.
“Jason?” Natalie looked up, so certain she’d heard his voice. “Oh, God, baby, I’m trying, I’m trying.”
She shook her head, took a deep breath, and started to crawl toward the iPad, her brain calculating a new set of possible combinations. She reached out, able to push it back toward her, and grasped it. She wiped her nose as she started punching in the numbers, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes before she realized. . .
Of course.
There was only one combination it could be.
She let her finger hover over the screen for a few seconds as she sent out a silent prayer.
“Zero . . . four . . . one . . . two.”
April twelfth. The day he’d killed Dennis. The day he’d kidnapped her. The day he made all of his dreams come true.
All at once, she heard the melodic sound of doors unlocking and electronic shades rising. The front door swung open, and unseasonably warm, bright, beautiful sunlight rushed in to throw its arms around her. She looked into its eyes and struggled toward its embrace, reveling in the hot, clean kisses it peppered across her face. . .
And then she passed out.
Part V:
Same Time, Next Year
Chapter 79
SHE
“La Vie en Rose.”
Édith Piaf’s plaintive wail trailed off like a wisp of smoke, carried away down Ocean Drive by a vintage pink Cadillac convertible. It was a funny thing to hear on the beaches of Florida. Then again, most things about Florida were funny.
She dug her toes into the heavy, sodden sand, the bubbles of the Atlantic tickling the tops of her feet as she held her face skyward to let the sun drench her skin. She took huge, gaping inhales, eager to scoop the salty air into her lungs. She rubbed her legs, after all this time, still not used to her hands gliding over a soft, smooth surface. No matter how many times she shaved her legs (she was holding steady at twice a day now, a comedown from four times a day), she could always feel long bristles stinging her fingertips.
“Mama?”
She looked down to see her little girl holding a clump of muddy sand out to her. She laughed and took it from Sonja’s tiny, chubby palm.
“Oh, is that for me? Thank you,” she said, depositing the mound of wet grains on top of the pile next to her, which was composed of all her daughter’s sand gifts. Natalie wrapped her arms around her knees, mesmerized as alway
s by her healthy, bubbly little girl. No trace at all of the trauma of being drugged, beaten, and starved for days in a row, of no prenatal care, of her delivery in the doorway of that house of horrors by an ob-gyn who just happened to be out walking her dog when the doors swung open.
She was strong. Like Jason.
“La Vie en Rose” continued to swirl inside her head, the lump in her throat rising like dough as she thought about the last time she saw Paris.
She could see the two of them so clearly, like she was watching a movie where they were the only roles cast. They clung to each other like life preservers, him tugging her just a little, eager to show her something. They were standing on a bridge drowning in padlocks, ribbons, and shrubs of paper. He reminded her to take the padlock he’d given her at Christmas from her coat pocket, explaining that they were standing on the Pont des Arts and together, you and your true, committed love put the “love lock” on the bridge and threw the key to the bottom of the Seine. The only way to break the seal of love was to find the key and unlock the lock, which, of course, couldn’t be done since the key was at the bottom of the river. He took both their hands and they placed the lock on together, each kissing the key and throwing it into the water. He grabbed her and told her she was stuck with him now.
“She looks more like you every day.”
Natalie closed her eyes and sank into Jason as he rejoined her on the sand and slipped his arms around her. “She has your eyes. And your chin,” she murmured.
“Thank God not my nose.”
She chuckled softly as she continued to melt against him, unconsciously rubbing the platinum band around his ring finger as they watched their daughter pack wet sand into her tiny yellow pail with her matching plastic shovel. “It’s a nice nose,” she whispered.
Initially, she wondered whether Joey knew he’d failed so spectacularly in this part of his “mission,” that a neighbor coming home from happy hour that Friday night—just seconds after he slipped down the back stairs with her, neglecting to close the door in his haste—had seen the door of the apartment standing open, could hear Jason choking on his blood, moments away from succumbing to the twenty stab wounds and loss of more than two liters of blood. Had Joey known Jason lingered in a coma for close to a month followed by two more months in the hospital for an excruciating recovery? Had he seen the newspaper and TV stories about the massive manhunt for the pregnant fiancée of the man who’d miraculously survived such a brutal attack?
In the end, Natalie realized it didn’t matter what Joey knew. It didn’t change any of what he did.
Or what she did.
She was questioned about Joey’s death, of course. Not all that hard, though—at least she didn’t think so. Her fingerprints weren’t on any poisons or the tumbler. None of those lists containing exactly what she told him to buy were in her handwriting. She told the police Joey wanted them to go to the afterlife like Romeo and Juliet, and, accordingly, tried to make her stab herself. Except, before he could get her to plunge the dagger into her chest, so they’d die in each other’s arms, the poison snatched him faster than he expected, and he collapsed moments before she went into labor—all she could focus on was getting herself and her baby out of there. They accepted her version of events, which seemed plausible, given the circumstances.
It may have been unethical. Immoral. A crime, even.
But there was no question in her mind it was the right thing to do.
Deep down, she wondered whether any doubts lingered, if the overzealous rookie (eager to “crack the case”) or the seasoned, grizzled detective (listening to his never-wrong gut) who had gently pressed her for the details of Joey’s last moments had put the puzzle pieces together and realized one jutted out like a sore thumb. Did they know what she’d done but couldn’t prove it? Did they know what she’d done, could prove it, but decided, as she had, that the bastard had gotten what he deserved, no matter the circumstances? Were they reluctant to drop the sad case of Natalie Scott and Joey Green into a crisp, new file box marked “case closed?” Did they close it with a smug satisfaction that justice had been served and were content to leave the box to molder in a dark, fetid corner for all of eternity?
She told Jason one night as he sat in their living room feeding the baby her bottle and singing softly to her. She was folding a load of towels, warm and spring-fresh from the dryer, when she simply told him. Quietly. Calmly. No emotion. Not a tear shed. He didn’t interject. Didn’t ask questions. Didn’t clear his throat, leaving the only sounds in the room the baby’s suckling noises, the squeal of the rocking chair, and her whispered monotone. When she was done, he’d just sniffed and murmured, “Good.”
And that had been the end of it.
“Where’d you go?” Jason asked, nudging her out of her reverie.
Natalie shook her head. “Just wondering what we should do about lunch. I’m starving.”
He kissed her neck. “I’m on it. Hey, Sonja, baby, we’re gonna go get something to eat.”
The little girl toddled back over to her parents, sand dripping from her outstretched hands. “Sand,” she giggled.
Natalie laughed and took the clumps from her as Jason scooped up his daughter. She squealed as he tickled her while Natalie smothered her warm, downy neck with kisses.
Natalie collected the pail and shovel while Jason continued to swing the baby around. Her phone beeped from inside her beach bag, and she reached in to see a text message from Christine.
Hope the Hudson family is having a good vacay. Call me when you’re back, we’ll have lunch. We also need to talk about what we should do for Brandy’s bachelorette party :)
Natalie smiled and tapped out a quick yes and yes and yes before noticing that Dina had left her a voicemail. She’d call her tomorrow. There was also an e-mail from the fabric reweavers, letting her know her old baby blankets (given back to her along with her other childhood mementos after the investigation was closed), in tatters from age and Joey’s abuse, were ready for pickup. Well ahead of the new baby’s arrival in four months. Another little girl.
She and Jason reached for each other’s hand while he balanced Sonja on his hip. He kissed Natalie’s hand, and she gripped him tighter, letting her gaze settle on his for a few moments. The words were unsaid, but the look that passed between them said it all. Love. Happy.
Grateful.
She dropped her head on his shoulder as they continued down the beach.
“All he could do was get to his girl.”
He didn’t think about all the truisms that applied to a situation like this as he bolted down the bright, white hospital corridors toward his girl, ignoring the pinch in his thigh that sometimes bothered him on cold days like today, a lifetime souvenir from that night.
No, he didn’t think about the compulsive craving for sunlight and open windows. About how she couldn’t stand closed doors. About the crying jags that would jolt her awake in the middle of the night. He shoved from his mind how angry she must be at him, how abandoned and betrayed she had to have felt because he didn’t come rescue her. How else could he account for her having the hospital call Christine and not him?
All he could do was get to his girl.
The black acne scars smeared across her puffy face, the chapped cracks of her lips, and the matted mass of broken, fraying clumps of hair—once long and shiny—as she lay pale and wasted against the massive hospital bed didn’t stop his legs from wilting beneath him as he dropped to the floor in a quivering mass of tears and gratitude.
His girl was finally home.
He took her hand, cold, limp and clammy, inside of his. He pressed a soft kiss against her lips and waited.
Hoped.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled. Weak. Crooked.
“Oh, Jason. Oh, God, Jason. I’ve missed you so much.” Her voice was wet. Raspy.
He stroked her forehead, afraid to speak, afraid the words would be swallowed by the tears. Finally, he nodded. “Me too, baby,” he whispered
. “Me too.”
“I don’t want to wake up. I just want to stay here with you.”
“Where am I going?”
Her eyes slid shut. “But I have to stay awake for the baby, the baby needs me, I’m all she has.”
His heart swelled. She. A little girl. They had a little girl.
He wiped the tears from his eyes. “She has both of us.”
“I know,” she nodded. “I know you’ll be watching over her, and I’ll tell her all about you. I’ll tell her everything. I named her Sonja. Do you like that? Sonja. I know it’s not the name you wanted, but it was perfect, the perfect name for our little girl. She’ll love you so much. She’ll always know daddy. Always. . .”
“Scotty,” he said, kissing her hand. “I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”
She blinked. She kept on blinking until tears dropped from her eyes. She cried out as he snaked his arms around her as gently as he could, resisting his urge to crush her, to show her just how much. . .
She was babbling, but he didn’t hear any of what she said. She likely didn’t either. All he could do was hold her. Just hold her.
“I know, baby. I know.”
“Don’t ever leave me.”
“What have I always told you?” he whispered as he held her face in his hands.
“That I’m stuck with you.”
He held her closer. Tighter. “Forever.”
-Fin-
Acknowledgments
It’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child. In the case of this book (my child), it may have taken two villages.
First off, huge thanks to my “First Reader,” Kathryn, for reading this not once but twice (glutton for punishment that you are) and pointing out its numerous flaws both times.
To my awesome team of beta readers—Sara, Debi, Trish, and Murry—I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your taking time from wedding planning, marathon training, college preparedness, and life in general to indulge me by reading the manuscript and providing such thoughtful and shrewd feedback.
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