“I didn’t know!” my mom sobbed. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”
Maybe my mother felt a little actual remorse, but the way she was carrying on, defending herself, and still insulting Daphne told me that she wasn’t shedding these tears for me or for my missing girlfriend. She was shedding them for herself. Because she was upset that Rachel and I were angry with her.
“No, you didn’t know. But you also didn’t think,” I rasped as the heart-stopping fear and white-hot anger burning in my veins turned into tears that I couldn’t stop from shedding. “Now, if you’re done proving your nonexistent point, I’m going to go try to find my girlfriend. If I can. I have no idea where she went, and no fucking clue where to even start looking. Rach, can you take Ari to Hector’s? Please?”
“Yeah, of course,” Rachel said.
“And Mom, as for you, you’ll be lucky if I ever let your granddaughter spend any time here alone with you again, because obviously you can’t be trusted with anyone’s safety,” I spat.
I quickly boxed up the evidence against Hugh again and headed for the door. I heard footsteps behind me, but I didn’t look to see who it was. As I was putting the box back in my trunk, Rachel came to stand next to me.
“I’m so sorry, Ezra. I’m sorry Mom did this to you,” she sniffled.
I shook my head. “I should have known. She decided she hated Daph before I ever brought her home. But I just didn’t think she was capable of this.”
“I didn’t either,” she agreed. “Now go find your girl. Hector and I will take good care of Ari. I promise.”
“I know you will.”
“Um, what do you want me to tell Ari? If she asks about what happened in there?”
“The truth,” I sighed. “I’m not going to lie to her. And she deserves to know why she’s not going to see her grandparents as much. I mean it. I’m not letting them anywhere near her for a good long while. I trusted them to help me keep Daph safe, and look what happened. They sold her out to the person I’m trying to keep her safe from because obviously no one’s good enough for their precious baby boy.”
“I know.” She gave me a hug. “But you know Mom’s full of shit, right? You know I wouldn’t lie to you. So when I tell you that Daphne’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, believe it. Because it’s true. And believe me when I say that I can see how much she loves you and Ari every time she looks at you. Don’t be too hard on her for leaving.”
I sniffled. “I won’t be. I’m mad at Mom, not her. And I can’t fucking breathe knowing that she’s out there by herself, unprotected, while Hugh’s still on her tail.”
Arms wrapped around my waist, and I looked down into Arielle’s tear-filled eyes. Choking down a fresh round of tears, I picked her up and buried my face in her neck for a minute.
“I love you, jelly bean,” I whispered. “So much.”
“I love you too,” she mumbled as a few tears wet my shirt. “What if something happens to Daphne now? Because Grandma told him where she was?”
Of course she’d heard that. She was too smart for her own good sometimes. And she was curious and didn’t like to be kept in the dark.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” I promised. “That’s why I’m leaving. Aunt Rachel is going to take you to Uncle Hector’s for a little while because the police are still working at our house. Okay?”
She nodded. “Be safe, Daddy.”
“I will,” I told her, kissing her temple.
I set her back down and got into the car, and just as I was pulling out of my parents’ driveway, my phone rang. I answered it with the Bluetooth in my car.
“Hello?”
“Ezra? This is Jack Henry. I got your message. Are you still in the Hamptons?”
“No. I just dropped my daughter off with my sister in Montauk. Daphne slipped out in the middle of the night because she was afraid Hugh would find her,” I told him. “I’m trying to find her now.”
He sighed. “I know you’re worried about her, but can you come by the field office in the city first to give me the evidence you have so we can start working the case?”
As much I hated wasting any time, I was on a wild goose chase right now anyway. At least delivering the evidence I had to the FBI was productive. And maybe they could help me find Daphne too.
“Yeah. I’ll be there in a couple of hours,” I said.
“Damn it,” Jack said as he took the box of evidence from me at the FBI field office in New York City. “I’m so sorry, Ezra. I’m sorry I didn’t take this seriously when you called me.”
“I’m not going to say it’s okay, because it’s not. But you’re helping now, and I’m grateful for it,” I sighed.
“I wish I could do more, but it seems like she’s turned her phone off. Or at least she’s turned off anything we could trace it by. We can’t get her GPS location or her signal. But if she turns it back on, you’ll be my first call,” he told me.
I nodded. “Thanks. Guess I have to find her the old-fashioned way. But I have no idea where to even start looking.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “You know her. Just put yourself in her shoes. Where was her head at in the middle of the night when she made the decision to leave so she could get you and your daughter out of harm’s way?”
“I don’t know,” I sniffled. “I have no fucking clue.”
“If her stalker is her manager, and she says he knows her well, she’d want to go somewhere he wouldn’t know about. Somewhere he wouldn’t think to look.”
My first thought was New Orleans, but then I realized he knew how much she loved New Orleans, because she told me that she always had him fit a free day into the schedule when she was there. So maybe it would have taken him a little longer to figure out, but he would have figured that out.
And I knew her well enough to know that she’d want to go somewhere she felt safe. Somewhere familiar to her. She wouldn’t want to spend every second looking over her shoulder. She’d want to go somewhere she felt like she could breathe, at least for a little while. To come up with a plan.
The problem was, I had no idea where that would be. But I knew someone who might. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and found Taylor’s profile on social media easily. Thank God, he was online. So I sent him a message.
Me: Hey, Taylor. I know this is out of the blue, but if I give you my number, would you call me? I need to talk to you, but I don’t want a paper trail of the conversation.
Taylor: Sure. What’s your number?
I gave him my phone number, and less than ten seconds later, my phone was ringing.
“Hey,” I answered, sounding as tense as I felt.
“Hey, Ezra. Is everything okay? How’s D?”
“I don’t know,” I choked out. “She left. Hugh’s her stalker.”
“Wait, what?” he gasped. “Back up. Hugh’s her stalker? I knew there was something wrong with that fuck. And what do you mean, she left? What the fuck, D? What happened?”
I gave him the shortest version of what was happening that I could. And as I said it all out loud, it got increasingly harder to breathe and the knot that had been in my stomach since the second I’d figured out she was gone this morning twisted even tighter.
“What the fuck was she thinking?” he muttered. “So bloody typical of her.”
“Is there anywhere you can think of that she would go? Any friends she might have that Hugh wouldn’t know about?”
He was silent for at least half a minute, as if he was contemplating it.
“She’s cut ties with most of her family, but she has a cousin in Pennsylvania that she still talks to,” he finally said.
“Jillian,” I remembered. “I met her at the show in Pittsburgh for a minute. Do you know her last name?”
“McManus. I think she lives in D’s hometown, Foxburg.”
“Thanks, Taylor,” I sighed.
“Just go find our girl, yeah? And give her a bollocking for me when you do.”
I snor
ted. “How about if I call you and let you give her hell yourself?”
“Even better,” he said.
I hung up with Taylor and turned back to Jack. I hated asking him for this kind of a favor, but I knew it’d be a hell of a lot faster for him to find Jillian’s address than it would be for me.
“Can I ask a favor?” I asked him.
“After I fucked up so colossally, anything,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Daphne has a cousin, Jillian McManus. Her friend that I was just talking to said he thinks she lives in Foxburg, Pennsylvania. Think you can find me an address?”
“I’ll even do a family search. Is DeVille Daphne’s legal last name?”
“Yeah, it is,” I chuckled. “I didn’t believe it at first either.”
In less than two minutes, Jack found an address and a phone number for Jillian. And in another five minutes, I was back in my car. I put the address in my GPS and then dialed her number with my car’s Bluetooth.
“Hello?” came a feminine voice.
“Hi. Jillian?” I asked.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“My name’s Ezra Ramsay. I’m Daphne’s…” I trailed off.
What was I to Daphne now? She’d left me. Granted, she hadn’t left me because she wanted to, but still. Did I have the right to call myself her boyfriend anymore?
“I know who you are, Ezra,” Jillian chuckled warmly. “Daph hasn’t shut up about you and Arielle since she got here.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. “She’s with you?”
“Yeah, she’s here.”
“I got your address from my company’s contact at the FBI,” I told her. “I’m on my way there.”
“Thank God. She needs you.”
“Do me a favor and don’t tell her. She left to protect me and my daughter. I don’t want to take the chance of her running again if she knows I’m coming.”
“I’m not saying a word. Someone has to save her from her own stupidity.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. She was okay. She was somewhere safe.
“GPS says I’ll be there in about five hours,” I said.
“Okay. See you then.”
Curled into a ball in the back of a walk-in closet in Jillian’s basement, I rocked back and forth, sobbing. Hugh had found me. I just knew it. Jillian lived alone, and her property was relatively isolated. No one else should have been here. But I’d heard someone walking around the house. No car pulling up. Just someone creeping around the house trying to find me.
“Daph? You hungry? I made some lunch,” I heard Jillian call.
How could she be so blasé about this? My stalker was sneaking around the outside of her house and she was making lunch like Suzy Housewife?
“Daph?” she asked. “Shit. Daph, where are you?”
The closet door cracked open.
“Daph?”
I couldn’t suppress my whimper, no matter how much I tried.
“Daph. Oh, my God,” she gasped, rushing over to me and kneeling down to pull me into her arms. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s just me.”
“Hugh found me. He was here. I heard him walking outside,” I sniffled in a hushed whisper.
“Shit. I’m an idiot. That was just my grocery delivery service. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think to tell you they were coming today,” she murmured, petting my hair. “That’s all.”
“No. There wasn’t a car. Just a person walking around,” I sobbed.
“He was driving a Nissan Leaf. I didn’t even hear him pull up, and I was upstairs. He didn’t knock because I saw him pulling up from the window and I just went ahead and opened the door. I ordered some fertilizer for my garden and he helped me take it to my shed. I’m sure that’s what you heard. I’m so sorry, Daph. You’re still safe.”
It felt like every muscle in my body relaxed, and I let out another sob, but this time it was of relief. Jillian tightened her hold on me and pressed a kiss to my temple.
“Shh,” she soothed me. “You’re okay. When was the last time you ate, sweetie?”
“Um…” I trailed off. I couldn’t actually remember.
“If you can’t answer that question, it’s been too long. I’m going to go grab the sandwiches I made, and we’ll eat them down here if that makes you feel more comfortable. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Okay, come on. You’ve been out of the closet since high school, and you went public about it last year. Not sure you can really go back in now,” she teased as she stood up and held her hand.
I couldn’t help it. I chuckled as I let her help me to my feet and lead me out of the closet.
This time I knew I wasn’t going crazy. I heard a car engine pulling up and someone walking around outside. Suppressing more tears, I rushed back into the closet, making sure to keep the doorknob turned until the door was completely shut behind me so it didn’t make any sound. I felt my way to the back of the closet in the pitch darkness, biting my lip to contain my whimpers and cries.
I heard a knock sound on the door, and I couldn’t help the sob that tore from my throat. Now someone Jillian wasn’t expecting had come here. She was going to open the door for him, and when she did, he’d kill her and then tear this house apart until he found me. And then he’d kidnap me and take me back to that room and chain me up for the rest of my life, for him to live out every sick, depraved fantasy he’d concocted since he met me.
“That didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” I heard Jillian’s muffled voice say.
Oh, my God. Was she working with him? Was that why she’d just taken me in without question? Was her job to lull me into a false sense of security until Hugh got here?
The thud of footsteps sounded on the stairs that led to the basement, and as they got closer and closer, I fought harder and harder to choke back the sob that was desperate to escape. If I didn’t make any noise, maybe there was a chance he wouldn’t find me. Maybe he’d leave, and I’d have a chance to escape to somewhere else.
“She’s in here,” Jillian said as the door to the bedroom opened, and then she sighed. “I’d bet my next paycheck that she’s in the closet. I found her there at lunchtime after she heard my grocery delivery guy walking around outside. She’s terrified.”
“Thanks, Jillian,” came an all-too-familiar voice.
No. Ezra couldn’t be here. Hugh would find us, and then he’d kill him. And he’d probably kill Arielle too for good measure. He’d kill everyone I’d ever loved or cared about, just so I didn’t have anywhere left to run. I couldn’t contain my sob anymore. At least the coats I was hiding behind muffled it.
“I’m going to give you two some privacy. I actually might have an idea to help her, but I need to go meet a friend. I was just waiting for you to get here. I’ll be back in a little while,” Jillian told him.
The closet door opened, and I whimpered involuntarily.
“Daph?” Ezra said tensely.
Another whimper escaped me. Shit. I was horrible at this. When Hugh came for me, he’d find me in under a minute.
“Thank fuck,” Ezra sighed in relief, and in less than three seconds, I was in my favorite place in the whole world: his arms. “It’s okay, angel. You’re okay. It’s just me. You’re safe.”
“No,” I sobbed, shoving away from him. “No. You can’t be here. It’s not safe. You have to go.”
“Not happening,” he said, his voice still soft.
“You have to! He’s going to find me! He’s going to take me! Go home and protect Ari.” My voice was raw from all the tears I’d shed today.
“Ari’s safe,” he murmured, putting a hand on my cheek and wiping away a few tears with his thumb. “She’s with Rachel and Hector.”
“You don’t understand, Ezra!” I wailed, shoving away from him again. “You don’t get it! He’s going to find me! He’ll do whatever it takes! And he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way! You’re going to die, Ari won�
��t have anyone to protect her anymore, and I’ll end up as a slave, chained in that sick room for the rest of my life for him to do whatever he wants, whenever—”
I was cut off by his lips crashing on mine in a desperate kiss. And, as much as I knew I should fight it and make him leave, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough. I needed it too much. I needed this connection one last time.
“That’ll never happen, Daph,” he breathed, resting his forehead on mine. “As long as I’m still breathing, he’s never going to touch you. I won’t let him. I love you too much to let anything happen to you.”
I pulled back to look at him. I couldn’t have heard him right. I’d left him in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye. He was supposed to hate me, not love me.
“You heard me, angel,” he murmured, cupping my face in his hands. “I love you. I know you’re scared, baby. I’m scared too. I couldn’t breathe when I woke up and you were gone this morning. I fucking lost my mind thinking about you being out there unprotected with Hugh looking everywhere for you.”
“He’ll kill you if you stay. And he’ll kill Ari,” I sobbed. “And it’ll be my fault.”
A fresh round of tears came to the surface as I thought about that poor sweet girl being so scared and so confused. And as I thought about her thinking that I’d abandoned her mere days after telling her that I was going to do everything I could to make sure she was happy and safe. She didn’t realize that this was me doing that.
“He can try,” he said. “But I’m not going down without a fight. And I’m not letting you go without a fight either. You make me happier than I’ve ever been, and you make my daughter happier than she’s ever been. You belong in our lives, Daph, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you stay there.”
Damn it. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t keep pushing him away. Not when I needed him this much. Not when he and his daughter belonged in my life just as much as he was saying I belonged in theirs.
Falling Angel Page 27