The Light Before Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  “I… told you!” he manages to get out through his constricted airway. “I… only… talked to her!”

  “You came all this way just to talk? Why the hell should I believe that?”

  As soon as I’d found out Natalie was missing, I’d rattled every tree I could think of, calling each and every person that might have even the faintest of ideas of what happened to her or where she might be. I’d done all that before I boarded the plane for Medford, then kept calling people as I sped down to Meadow Brook in my rental SUV. Natalie’s mother had been the most helpful, if I can even call it that. She told me she plotted to get me up to Seattle with the hope it would leave Natalie alone in Meadow Brook, allowing Michael to finally get to see her without my interference.

  “But he wouldn’t hurt her!” she’d said over and over again, as if trying to assuage the guilt she’d feel if he had.

  “You don’t know that,” I’d said, wondering how the hell she could do that to her own daughter. “And you better find a way to keep him down there, because I need to talk to him.”

  Whether she was the reason he was still in Meadow Brook when I got here didn’t matter. All that did was that I’d been able to track him down at the only hotel in Meadow Brook I figured would meet his standards, the same one Natalie’s father stayed at. With one of Melissa’s acquaintances working the front desk, I’d been able to confirm his room number. When he finally opened the door at my insistence that I was a maintenance guy who needed to check on something, I found him half naked. I’d have lost my mind if Natalie was in bed with him, but I’d at least know she was safe.

  But when I barged in, I found Camille in the unmade, hotel bed, clutching a sheet over her breasts.

  “You’re going to kill him, you know?” She says it without the concern I’d expect to hear in her voice as I continue holding tight to Michael’s neck.

  “Tell me!” I demand, ignoring her.

  He grabs hold of my wrist, his face going from bright red to purple, and I realize that I will end up killing the guy if I don’t let go.

  It’s only because dead men can’t talk that I do.

  He bends over, coughing loudly, his chest spasming as he’s trying to catch his breath. For a moment, it seems like I’m a different person, not the man who tries to fix people with surgical intervention, but rather some thug off the street who takes pleasure in taking a man within inches of his life. But if I have to be that man to help Natalie, then so be it.

  “I only went to talk to her,” he gets out through gritted teeth, slowly raising his head. “Yeah, I’d been pissed off about how we left things, but I was only going to talk some sense into her.”

  “And when she didn’t listen, what did you do to her?” I’m still irate, still ready to grab his neck and push him back up against the wall if that’s what needs to be done.

  He puts his palms up, like he’s trying to fend off another attack. “I didn’t lay a hand on her. After she showed up at the cabin—”

  “You were already there, waiting to ambush her!”

  Michael shares a look with Camille who turns away and goes toward the bathroom.

  “Don’t you move,” I demand of her before she goes into hiding. “I want you to tell me every step of what happened in your own fucking words.”

  Between the two of them, they tell me how they got to talking at the diner, put two and two together, and how Camille tricked Natalie into going back to the cabin, playing on her care and concern for Blue and the idea that he was in danger.

  “That was pretty fucking low,” I tell Camille who looks back at me with an upturned chin and raised brows. She’s wearing Michael’s discarded shirt and not much else.

  “I knew the fire wasn’t going to spread—she wasn’t in any real danger.”

  “Except that she’s missing,” I remind her before turning back to Michael. “And you breaking into our cabin shouldn’t raise any alarm bells, huh?”

  “The front door was unlocked,” he says, standing against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “All I did was look around, found the letter she was writing to me… in plain sight. I’m not going to stand here and lie and tell you it made me happy or that I wasn’t hoping she’d give us another chance, but she was adamant that wouldn’t happen. Jesus, I fucking gave her a hug when I left. I was going to move on.”

  I turn to Camille. He’d moved on sure enough. “You’re telling me everything you know?”

  She nods. “I’d have been plenty happy if little miss perfect had packed up and gone back to Seattle, but I didn’t hurt her. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not violent.” She raises one brow at me, as if to say I am.

  “And today is the first time you guys have met?” I nod to each of them, thinking it pretty convenient I’d found them together.

  “I gave him my number earlier,” Camille says with annoyance in both her voice and expression. “So when things with Natalie didn’t work out, he called me. I closed up the diner, and we hooked up. People are still allowed to fuck people they’ve just met, aren’t they?”

  Michael grimaces, a shadow of shame casting over his features. How he’d managed to get a girl like Natalie and then fucked it all to hell is something I’ll never understand.

  “If I find out either one of you are lying, that either of you have anything to do with her disappearing, then I’ll have nothing to lose when I come after you next time.” The words pour out of my mouth like I’m another man, but I mean every single one of them. They aren’t idle threats. They are promises.

  “I’m not fucking lying,” Michael says, his body slumped against the wall. “I’ve known her a hell of a lot longer than you, so you think I don’t care about her? If she’s really missing or hurt, then I want to find her too.”

  While I’m never going to get on board with his method for getting her alone, my gut is telling me to trust he’s not lying, that he wouldn’t hurt her. And right now, I’d much rather have an ally than an enemy.

  “Fine,” I say. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Camille very begrudgingly tagged along with Michael as I sent him up to Medford and Grant’s Pass to visit the hospitals and local police there, while I focused on Ashland and Meadow Brook. Melissa had gone to high school with the police chief of this small town and was able to assure him Natalie disappearing was uncharacteristic, that he needed to take this report seriously and to put as many of his officers on it as possible.

  “So, last place you saw her was at your cabin?” Chief Cliff Barnes asks me, jotting notes down in his office.

  “The last person to see her wasn’t me. It was her ex-boyfriend.” I say, beyond angry at myself for leaving her in Meadow Brook when I should have pushed harder for her to come up to Seattle with me.

  “Well then we need to talk to him.”

  “I already have. It wasn’t him.” Even I can hear the impatience in my voice.

  “And how exactly can you be sure?”

  I don’t tell him my sureness comes from grabbing Michael’s neck and watching his eyes pop out of his head as his face went purple. He’d remained vehement he’d had nothing to do with it, and going after him was just going to lead to a dead end.

  “You can talk to him,” I tell the chief, “but I think anyone that knows him will tell you he wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “And you’re sure she didn’t just up and go on her own?” he asks. “Mel says she left her ring behind.”

  “That was nothing!” Melissa answers with vehemence. “Mom says she took it off to put some lotion or something on her hands, and then she got the call from my daughter… it’s just that she left in such a hurry that she forgot it.”

  “She wouldn’t have gotten very far without her car,” I remind him, tired of wasting time on his theories.

  He taps his pen, then makes some more notes before turning back to Melissa. “Any other ideas, Mel? You know of anyone that might want to do her harm?”

  She shrugs. “No. I can’t imagine anyone
disliking her or wanting to hurt her. Hey, you don’t think this has anything to do with that thing up in Medford?” She visibly shivers, hugs herself and then shakes her head like she’d just said the most ridiculously terrifying thing.

  “Anything to do with what?” I press.

  The chief pulls his lips into a thin line and looks back down at his notes.

  “What the hell is it? What the hell aren’t you telling me?”

  Melissa straightens up in her chair and shakes her head furiously. “I shouldn’t have said anything, Jack. I’m sure that she’s fine. Maybe she just got lost in the woods looking for Blue.”

  “She didn’t get lost.” We’d already talked about that possibility, and Melissa had wrangled up some of her regular customers from the diner to comb the woods all around the cabin, but other than her car still being there and the back door wide open, there was no sign of her. “And there’s no evidence she went into the lake if that’s what you’re going to tell me next.” It was a distant chance, that she could have somehow gone into the water and drowned, but my mind couldn’t fully accept that as even an option. But besides that, something deep inside of me tells me she’s been taken. “So why don’t one of you tell me what you meant when you mentioned Medford.”

  The chief sighs, easing back in his chair and crossing his arms over his more than ample gut. “There was a woman about Natalie’s age who disappeared some months ago in Medford and one before that late last year in Grant’s Pass.”

  “And?” My stomach sinks.

  Tell me they’d both been found alive and unharmed.

  Melissa tugs at my arm. “Jack, I’m sure she’s fine. I don’t know why I even—”

  “They were both raped and murdered,” the chief tells me, no holds barred. “Their bodies were discovered in very public places. If it’s the same guy, he has a type, girls with dark blonde hair, beautiful girls. The two victims were both in college and disappeared from their apartments, as if someone had been watching them, taking them from the places they felt safest.”

  “No.” It’s the only word I can imagine saying. “No.” I stumble back, not stopping until I hit the wall.

  This is all like a dream, a nightmare. This morning, the biggest obstacle for me and Natalie were her parents and her ex-fiancé. We’d already gotten through the hard shit, me finding room in my heart to love again, her deciding she could love me back, that she’d be my wife, that we’d have a child together and start a family. So how is it that I’m here, in this police station? Did I really just hear the police chief calmly tell me that it’s very possible Natalie is gone because of some sick, twisted serial killer?

  “God, I’m so sorry, Jack.” Melissa is at my side, her hand on my arm. “What a stupid thing for me to bring up. I don’t believe it—I really don’t!”

  The police chief is standing too, behind his desk. “It’s good we don’t leave any stone unturned, any possibility unexplored. It doesn’t mean Natalie’s disappearance has anything to do with the other two, but we have to at least look. Now, you sure there isn’t some medical condition that would cause a black out or something? I mean, your cabin is right by the lake. Drowning is always a possibility, whether you want to believe it or not. We can send out a dive team if we decide—”

  “No,” I say, more solid in my belief Natalie didn’t disappear under the water of the lake. “That’s not what happened. I’d know.”

  He looks at me sideways. “You’d know?”

  When Marjorie died, I’d felt it like a shot to my heart. I just knew she was gone. And while I also believed her soul had lingered with me for months, that a part of her was still present in my life, it hadn’t lessened the disconnection of her physical self. It was because of the bond we shared, the love we had for one another. And knowing that I love Natalie just as much as I’d ever loved Marjorie, I have to believe that I’d know if she were gone too.

  I grab at my hair, nearly pulling some out. “I’d sense it… have a feeling. I can’t allow myself to believe that she’s dead. I think all the manpower needs to be focused on her being taken, kidnapped.”

  With a hand to her mouth, Melissa takes in a deep breath as several beads of moisture slide from the corners of her eyes.

  “You seem to know a lot about what hasn’t happened to her.” Chief Barnes gives me a hard look, and I don’t expect anything less from him. For all he knows, I’m the reason Natalie is gone, regardless of the fact I was in Seattle.

  “He’s not involved.” Melissa is all conviction when she tells him this.

  “Then who is? Can you think of anyone else who might want to do her harm?”

  I let out a long, strangled sigh. I can barely string together a coherent thought through my head, let alone think back to anyone else that might want to hurt her, not my Natalie, not the woman I’d fallen so deeply in love with.

  “There’s this guy,” I say, this one properly formed thought pushing out of my mind. With my hand to my forehead, my fingers gripping at my skin, I force myself to recall the man at the café in Ashland, the guy I’d twisted the arm of because he was bothering Natalie. “His name is Will. He went out with Natalie once, and he wasn’t too happy when I showed up at the same restaurant he’d taken her. And another time, there was an altercation in Ashland. When I was calling around earlier, I found the place he worked and gave them a call. Manager said it was Will’s regular day off, that he goes fishing, nothing out of the ordinary. I’d been so focused on Michael that I kind of put it out of my head.”

  Now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have.

  “I was there in Ashland too,” Melissa adds. “Jack gave his arm a good twist, put him in his place after he got handsy with Natalie.”

  “Oh yeah?” The chief looks at me suspiciously.

  “He deserved it, Cliff. Will was drunk, and I figured he was acting out with Natalie because of something Camille put him up to—or maybe it was all him—they went to high school together, you know? Always pulling each other into trouble. But I think he’s mostly harmless.”

  Like I’d just been intravenously fed a dozen shots of espresso, my mind zeroes in on Will, and I’m already halfway out the door when I turn to Melissa. “Where does Will live?”

  “Now hold on there, buddy,” Chief Barnes says, stepping out from behind his desk.

  “Melissa?” I press. “I really need to talk to him.”

  “I think that’s better left to us.” The chief is just a couple feet away from me now. “We’ll figure out where he lives, and I’ll head over and have a chat with him right now.”

  With clenched teeth and my hands curled into fists, I don’t want to wait for anyone to just talk to a guy that might have anything at all to do with Natalie disappearing. “I want to go with you,” I demand. “I want to look into his eyes when he tries to deny he knows anything.” Because, like a cloud parting away my uncertainty, I know he’d just be lying.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  NATALIE

  He’s back.

  It’s been hours since he methodically walked around the outside of the house he has me in, folding creaking shutters over the windows and latching them until there was no natural light left to stream into the room.

  “They’re locked from the outside,” he’d told me, flipping the light switch on in the bedroom where I was still tied up to the bed frame. “And there’s no window on the front door, so don’t you even think of trying to get out.”

  But that’s exactly what I’d been planning. If he were leaving, I was going to get out of the ropes, now tied around both of my wrists, and do whatever I had to do to make a run for it.

  “And you better not try breaking the windows because that will just piss me off. Don’t bother screaming either. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. Nobody’s gonna help you out here.”

  After he said all that, he closed the bedroom door, locked it and left. If he decided to never come back, I might starve to death in here with no way out, nobody to find me. And th
en I’d never see Jack again. I’d never have this baby.

  Jack.

  The thought of never seeing him again, of our child never being able to look up into his deep brown loving eyes, was just too much. For the first time since I’d been abducted, I burst into loud sobs, nearly hyperventilating as snot poured out of my nose and tears clouded my eyes.

  “Jack!” I screamed out loud, as if he could hear me, as if he was just outside the shuttered up window, as if he could save me.

  I spent my time trying to loosen the ropes, but to no avail. I tried to think of ways out, of how I could outsmart Will or just do everything he ordered me to do, hoping it would be enough to keep him from killing me. Telling him about the pregnancy might garner some sympathy, but more than likely, it would just breed disgust. Or maybe he already knew. I remember slipping my engagement ring off when I was talking to Barbara so I could put on some lotion, and without thinking, I’d left it when I got that call from Camille. But even without the evidence of the ring on my finger, I’m sure Camille had probably found a way to tell Will all about it, that I was engaged and pregnant. Those two things would only make him angrier… right? I hadn’t wanted to feel hopeless when he left. I’d wanted to believe I could get out.

  But now he’s back, and I’m no closer to an answer, no nearer to breaking these restraints than I was when he left.

  There are sounds of cupboards being opened and closed, of the floor creaking as Will makes his way through the house. I try not to be afraid, but my stomach clenches every time the floorboards squeak outside the bedroom door, and I want to throw up when the doorknob turns, when the door is opened and Will walks through. His eyes look like dark slits, his lips like a thin white slash. I can’t read him, can’t tell if he’s angry or emotionless, if he’s going to hurt me or just leave me alone.

  “You been thinking?” he asks me, standing at the foot of the bed and looking down on me. He’s wearing a plaid shirt and jeans but has left me here exposed, having taken my sheet away before he left so that I’m still only in my bra and panties.