by Amy Faye
A minute later, as if by magic or by clockwork, a woman comes by with a pitcher of water and refills it silently, before walking away with Josh's plate in her hands.
Anna looks down at her own food. She'd never be able to finish it, not in a hundred years. It's too much. She pushes her own plate away and braces for the lecture that's sure to come, the lecture that she absolutely doesn't want to hear and absolutely cannot avoid.
Deep breaths, now. Her stomach hurts. Too much food will do that. She wants to smile back at Mitch. He'd want that. It's her own little act of rebellion that she doesn't. She's here because she has to be here, because Ava is more important than Anna's own petty desire to be away from the man who'd helped make her.
Josh, on the other hand, has barely touched the food. He pushes the plate away and leans in hard on his elbows. That's bad manners; Mitch won't like it.
"Get to the God damned point," he growls.
Mitch smiles at him. He's showing teeth this time. An aggressive smile, the sort of thing that a person does from time to time, when they're not worried about what you're going to do.
Or, for other people, it might come naturally. Nothing has ever come naturally to Mitch Queen, though. He's an unnatural sort of man.
The only things that come naturally are his unfailing and unflinching ability to find where there are mistakes being made, and his ability to correct them. In both himself, and in others.
He wouldn't let something like elbows on the table, such an obvious slip of good manners, go unnoticed. Nor, under normal circumstances, would he let it go uncorrected. At least, that was Anna's experience.
Of course, it's entirely possible, even likely, that with other men he doesn't act in that exact way. It's likely that he only acts that way with Anna.
Does that mean that he's being more appreciative, though, or less? She doesn't want to wonder about it.
"You're right. I'm keeping you both in suspense, aren't I?"
"Suppose that you are," Mitch growls. He's not happy.
Anna understand why he's not. But he's keeping himself in check better than he could have. With how things have been going, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the big detective leaping over the table to throttle Mitch right there in the middle of everyone.
It's actually almost impressive that he manages not to, in the end. He keeps his hands to himself, and keeps himself away from Mitch's throat. Almost in spite of himself.
"You're absolutely right. How rude of me." He turns to Anna. "I am concerned, you see. I worry. Not only for myself."
He pauses for dramatic effect. He's always been concerned about that sort of thing. Some might say over-concerned, but Anna knows better than to make any judgments about that sort of thing.
After a moment, he continues. "No, I worry, you see, for our daughter. For Ava. Can she be raised without her father? Do you know the statistics, Anna, on what happens to the children of households where the parents are separated?"
Anna shakes her head. She can guess, though. She can guess that they're not very good. Otherwise, he wouldn't have brought it up. It's about as simple as that, the same as it has always been.
"Take a guess."
"Get to the point," Josh growls.
Anna gives him a look for a moment. He should have realized, by now, that there's nothing that can be done but to play the game. That's the only way you get out of this without too much trouble, and the one thing Anna doesn't want right now is trouble.
All she wants is to get away from all of the trouble she's been having. She wants her daughter back. She wants to have her life back.
"They're bad?"
Mitch turns to Josh, smiling that toothy smile. "You see? She's smarter than she looks." He turns back to Anna now. "That's exactly right. They're bad. I wouldn't want that to happen to Ava."
"What's your point?" Josh cuts in. He's not seeing it, and to be honest neither is Anna, but she wasn't going to say anything.
There's no way around it. She's not going to let Ava just go into the foster care system, or anything like that. There's just no way.
And of course, there's no chance of abortion. It wasn't an option then, and it's much, much too late now. So what exactly is he trying to get at?
Anna gulps as Mitch reaches into his pocket. When he pulls out a little box and gets down on one knee beside her, the eyes of the entire room seem to turn and look at them, all at once.
Just in time to hear Mitchell Queen, son of the congressman whose kidnapping has been getting wall-to-wall coverage on every news station in the country, propose to her.
Chapter Thirty
Josh Meadows is sitting on the comfiest sofa in the house. There are three, around the entire house, and this is the good one.
The sofas around the house are among the best he's sat on, and this is the best of the three. Which, in effect, makes it the nicest sofa he's sat on altogether.
Which isn't remotely the problem. The problem is that he's alone. It should feel normal. He should be able to look down at the manila envelopes on the coffee table in front of him—the ones that he was still supposed to get back to Jeffries on—and get to whatever work he was still hoping to be able to do.
He shouldn't have been off work in the first place. He should have had better control of himself.
But now that he's in this situation, sitting alone on a sofa at home at eleven thirty in the morning feels like the last in a very long list of things he shouldn't be doing today.
Why had she said yes? It was a foolish question, of course. He knew exactly why she'd said yes, and he wouldn't have told her she was wrong if she'd asked him for permission to say it.
She'd said yes because it meant making all of her problems, all the little threats that had built up over the past months, it made them all just… go away. There's very little more powerful than the promise of all of your troubles disappearing. Very little, indeed.
Anna found a way out. All it meant was giving up whatever independence she'd found. All it meant was marching back into the lion's den, knowing full well what she was getting herself into.
All it meant was taking a big risk. But it was a big risk with a much bigger reward, and the reward was paid up-front. As long as things didn't go too far off the rails…
Well, life as someone's trophy wife might not have been the most glamorous thing in the world by any means. But that doesn't mean that she's doing wrong by herself. It's totally natural, for a woman that looks like that.
And as trophy wives go, it's not that unusual. Most of them aren't happy. But hey. Maybe he'll get her treatment for it, eventually.
Josh can't afford to worry about her future. He doesn't have the time. He needs to get back to the work of catching bad guys. People who committed real, provable crimes. People who can be brought in. Not people who are above the law like Mitch Queen.
He should be working on those things. But it's not going that well, because for all that he can't afford to worry about Anna Witt, the sad, anxious girl who showed about every sign of abuse that he could think of off the top of his head, he was sick with worry about her.
Was she at least alright? Not hurt? Mitch Queen might be able to stop bullying the girl for a few days, at least. Maybe long enough to get to the wedding. Hopefully.
Long enough for his father to get picked back up. Long enough for everything in his life to fall back into place.
Josh looks down at the pile of cases. There's not a lack of evidence, per se. There's plenty of evidence. Someone broke in to the bank. That's a job in and of itself. They'd taken things from several safety deposit boxes. Several.
The contents of those boxes, as usual, is unknown.
There's plenty of evidence that someone broke in. There's a big god damn hole where the safety deposit boxes used to be, for example. And there's an open vault door.
Those things don't just open on their own. Safety deposit boxes don't just walk out.
But the job was done at night. The night guard d
idn't see anything out of the ordinary. For all anyone knows, maybe he was looking at Playboys when he was on the job. Too focused on texting his wife instead of watching the building. Who knows.
Second, the video feeds show a single man come in, drop a bag, and then head over. Video feeds all cut around the same time, about thirty seconds after he walks back under the frame of the lobby camera.
Nothing really points to anyone. Which is why the papers are sitting there, right this second, on Detective Meadows' coffee table. Because the guy in charge, he's not sure what to figure.
The men in the photos are not particular-looking men. They're wearing heavy black coats that terminate at the mid-hip. Probably pea-coats, like the British navy used to wear back in the day. Warm. Very warm for August.
They've got masks on. Nothing that would stand out. Nothing unique. Black masks. Ski masks. The eyes are blacked out somehow. The camera feed is too poor to make it out. For all that they know, it could be that the fellow is just dark-skinned, but for a very brief glimpse of the man's arm.
His coat, as it turns out, is not exceptionally well-fitting for a man with such long arms, and so for a brief moment his wrist is visible between his gloves and his sleeve, and it's light-skinned.
Hence, the skin around his eyes has been blacked over with something. Grease paint, probably. Grease paint available just about anywhere. Costume shops all around the country carry the stuff year-round.
For a well-planned job this size, a year of preparation wouldn't be outside possibility. Most criminals don't have that kind of patience, but most criminals don't plan well in the first place.
By and large, it's why they're criminals.
If they, for some reason, couldn't bear to go into a party supply store, though, they could get something like this almost anywhere around Halloween. Which is to say, almost totally untraceable.
The bag is a standard duffel bag. Looks like canvas.
Josh looks it over. Someone must have thought long and hard about this job, which begs several questions. The most important of them, though, is… if they've planned this out enough to avoid being seen, to cut the camera feeds, all that…
Would they have taken the contents of roughly a dozen random safety deposit boxes? Why fourteen? Why not thirteen or fifteen? Why not twelve?
Is it a matter of timing things? Do they know specifically at what time the security guard calls up his booty call every Friday night and gets his jollies off in the parking lot, and specifically at what time he finishes?
That could excuse it, maybe. But it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. None of it does.
Josh leans his head back and takes a breath. He looks down at the notepad beside him. He was right. He'd have regretted leaving it at the office. Worst case scenario, he ends up with two notepads. Never sure which one to use in the moment.
He flips back a page, to the speech he'd been writing out. It sounded vaguely apologetic. That was probably good enough, in the end, right? It was hard to say with any certainty. But it was even harder to say how anyone expected a better apology.
After all, Mitchell Queen should be happy that it doesn't open 'When I first met Mitch Queen, I knew with absolute clarity that he was a son-of-a-bitch and a bully, and I knew that he'd driven every person who was ever close to him away—some of them with his bad attitude, and for those who stayed, by telling them he didn't want them around.'
But he wouldn't be happy with that. Nobody would. Even Josh would probably be unsatisfied reading it out. It lacked a certain sense of gravity when he just laid it all out like that.
No, he needed to get his job back. Queen wasn't worth it. He'd be outed by some tabloid sooner or later. They'd get themselves a picture of Anna Witt, who would be Anna Queen by then no doubt, with a big god damn wallop on her eye.
Then they'd post it around, it would be the talk of the town for a couple of days, and it would die down. Well, if she went back to him, she knew what she was getting herself into.
She knew what was going to happen. None of this would be a surprise to her when it finally did happen. Josh Meadows had a promising career ahead of himself, if he managed to keep his nose clean and keep himself under control.
As long as he left Mitch Queen and his fiancée alone, there wouldn't be any trouble.
His throat felt tight, but that wasn't because of Anna. It wasn't because of her that his stomach churned, that his heart felt like it was racing.
His throat just felt strange because he was… because…
Josh Meadows, who might still be a Detective after he makes this televised apology, takes another drink. It doesn't matter why he's panicked, it doesn't matter why he's upset.
What matters is that he looks at these case files, and he writes his apology, and he forgets about anything that resembles a pretty, sad-eyed girl with a missing daughter.
That was a different life and a different time, and he's past it now. As long as he remembers that, he'll be just fine.
Chapter Thirty-One
Nobody seemed to react much when Anna rejoined the household. Nobody seemed all that surprised. For Anna, though, it was all very strange. All very surprising.
There had been a time, a long, long time, where she'd wanted nothing more than to be back here. When she'd wanted nothing more than to have the chance to be back in Mitch's life.
That time had passed. That time had been before she'd settled into her new life, with her new baby. It had even been before the contractions began, and that was a whole exciting time by itself.
The fact that she now had what she'd wanted so desperately through March, through April, through May… it was in her hands, now. It was completely within reach. Not only within reach. She had it.
It boggled the mind. She couldn't imagine having what she had now. And yet, she had it, nonetheless. The entire future that she'd hoped for, the future that for a long time she'd done nothing but dream about.
She smiled down at Ava. It was about time that she had another day with her daughter. It had been a long day of phone calls for Mitchell. He'd done it for her, though. He'd done exactly like he promised.
He said he'd get Ava back, and back she was. Right there. With her. In her arms, in her lap. Anna smiled down at the girl. Ava smiled back, almost totally unaware of the world around her, outside of her mother.
She gurgles happily and reaches out, and Anna scoops her up, holding the baby against her shoulder. There was nothing else that she'd ever wanted more. Nothing that she could possibly have asked for.
Everything she needed, everything she wanted, was right there in her arms. Smiling at her. Anna laid her head back and looked at the ceiling. Nothing was ever going to separate them again.
Not for… oh, say, twenty-two years. She's not going to let Ava start dating until she's forty, of course. But at twenty-two, she can start doing small things. Maybe a little part-time job. To prepare her for the outside world in little ways.
A soft giggle escapes Anna's lips. She doesn't want to stop herself this time. The entire idea that she had an open future ahead of her, that things aren't going to go completely wrong… it's all a big fantasy, and she's got it. Why shouldn't she laugh? Why shouldn't she be overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all?
Ava makes a little giggle of her own, on her Mom's shoulder. Anna pulls her back to look her in the face. She tries to look serious, but she can't keep the smile off her face.
Her daughter is back in her arms again.
She does a little dance with the baby girl, who laughs at the face that Anna does while she's moving the little one around. What a perfect little girl. What a perfect time. What a perfect day.
Nothing could possibly go wrong. No matter how wrong things could possibly go, they can't go wrong enough to ruin Anna's mood today. Not unless a bunch of armed men burst through the door and take the little girl away again.
Because that's what it would take. No more government people coming and Anna letting them take her. No more falling
asleep and having the little bundle of joy taken from her. There's no way.
She's not going to let anything like that happen again. They're going to have to come in, and they're going to have to take Ava out of her hands. They're going to have to kill her. Nothing else is going to do the job. She's not going to let anything else happen. No matter what.
Mitch comes back in. He's got his phone to his ear. The thought flashes through Anna's head that maybe he shouldn't have come into the room with her and the baby, if he's on an important phone call. In either case, she can't exactly say anything.
After all, it would be rude to interrupt him if the call is important. If he wanted to be here with the baby on an unimportant call—if he was calling his Mom, for example, who…
Anna tries to remember. Is she in Italy right now? Or Spain? They're real close to each other, and she's never been to either. But Mrs. Queen is in one of them. She's been away for a long time, so it's easy to forget where she's at right now.
Anna certainly knows, though. They told her. She just can't remember. In either case, if he wants to be close to the baby, then he wouldn't like being told that he should leave. He'd be pretty upset about it, in fact. So she keeps her thoughts to herself. After all, it could be any number of things, and she'll have to keep her concerns to herself.
Ava gurgles in her arms, and then transitions seamlessly to whining and fussing. Anna doesn't need to look up to see Mitch's head whip over to them. He's not happy about the noise.
Important phone call, then. Not 'here, let me put the baby on the phone' type of call. Mitch knew that they were in the library. He knew it. He shouldn't have come in if he wanted privacy. If he wanted quiet.
Babies don't know about people wanting quiet when you're on a phone call. Mitch has to realize that. He couldn't possibly be that foolish. And yet, here he was.
Anna doesn't say any of that. If she does, it will only make it worse. She mouths, 'I'm sorry' and stands up from the sofa with Ava and leaves the room. It's no big deal, after all. She can afford to move around a little.