Stolen

by Carey Baldwin

  “But if Whit was the father, he didn’t need to adopt Laura.”

  “He said that was the best way to handle things since his name wasn’t on the birth certificate. His parents and Tracy didn’t know the baby was his, and he wanted to keep it that way. He wanted a closed adoption so that Laura would never know about me, and neither would Tracy. I was to sign over all my rights. If I didn’t, he said, he’d deal with his parents and Tracy, make a paternity claim in court, and he’d win because of my mental instability. He said I was too fragile for a court battle. The kicker was he promised to send pictures of Laura to my parents, and to pay my medical bills, which were bankrupting them.”

  “That must’ve been a terribly hard decision for you to make,” Caity said.

  “I was confused, medicated, and I didn’t want my parents to suffer any more than they already had for my mistakes. I knew Tracy would be a far better mother to Laura than I could ever be.” She dabbed her eyes and met Spense’s gaze. “The god-awful truth is that although I wanted what was best for my child, I wasn’t capable of bonding with her. Not back then.”

  “What about now?” Spense asked. “You keep her pictures out. Have you followed her life over the years?”

  Lisa lifted her hand to brush away a tear. “Yes. I’m better now, after what seems like a lifetime of therapy. I no longer blame myself for the past, and I’m content with my life. I’d like to have a relationship with Laura, but she doesn’t know she’s adopted, and I never wanted to disrupt her life.”

  “So you’re still looking out for her the best way you know how,” Caity said. “But knowing she’s in trouble, now, I wonder why you haven’t gone to the police with this information.”

  “I don’t see how it will help. And the cops never get anything right anyway. When Laura was kidnapped, and her poor nanny was murdered, they screwed everything up royally. But I’ve heard about you two before, and you seem like two people who know how to get things done, so when you said you need me to answer your questions . . .” She blew her nose. “I’ll do anything I can to help. I told Laura’s bodyguard, Ty Cayman, too. He was here just a little while ago, looking for Laura.”

  The hairs on the back of Spense’s neck raised. He exchanged a glance with Caity. The missing bodyguard, the last person to see Laura before she disappeared had come here before them looking for Laura.

  “Why would Cayman come here? Does he know you’re Laura’s biological mother?” Spense asked.

  “Yes. They’ve all been friends for years. I don’t think Ty knew about the rape, but he said he knew I was Laura’s mother. He thought maybe Laura found out the truth, and that she might’ve come to me for help.” She wrung her hands. “If only Laura had come to me. I want to help her so badly.”

  There was no time to render comfort to Lisa. They had to find Laura, and quickly.

  “What do you mean by they’ve all been friends?” Caity asked.

  “Ty and Whit and Grady. They all pledged the same fraternity back in college, and they’ve remained friends ever since.”

  “Did Cayman say where he was going next?” Caity was on her feet.

  “He said he was going to Frank’s Cabin, to have a look around and see if he can spot something the cops missed.”

  “How far is it to the cabin? I assume you have to go on foot,” Spense said.

  “You have to take the trail, but you can get there on an ATV in just a few minutes.”

  “Is that how you get down the road in bad weather? Do you have an ATV we can borrow?” Caity asked.

  Lisa went to the window and pulled the curtains back.

  Parked in the back drive was a red ATV.

  As she climbed up behind him, Caity grabbed onto his waist and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Depends if you’re thinking Frank’s Cabin’s a test of guilty knowledge. No mention made of it at the press conference. Chaucers weren’t informed this time around or last time.”

  “So how does Cayman know about it? He could be our UNSUB.”

  “Any of them could be. Webber, Chaucer, and Cayman were all members of a subculture that considers drug-facilitated sexual assault as not that bad.”

  “But which one do you think morphed into a cold-blooded serial killer? I think it’s . . .” The rev of the ATV’s engine drowned out the rest.

  Chapter 48

  Tuesday, October 29

  1:10 P.M.

  Frank’s Cabin

  Eagles Nest Wilderness

  Laura could barely see through the red film in her eyes, but she could feel the blessed comfort of someone cradling her head in strong, thick arms. She lay on a mattress with something cool and white pulled over her skin—a sheet.

  “Cayman, is that you?” she whispered into the arms. The hairs tickling her nose smelled like gun smoke.

  No answer.

  Was she dreaming, still?

  “Am I alive?” She remembered a gunshot . . . and red on her hands.

  “Laura, sweetheart.” A fuzzy face bent near hers. “You’re awake. It’s all going to be okay, darling. I’m with you now, and I won’t leave this time—not until you’re at peace.”

  “Daddy?” She sat up quickly, banging the top of her head against the wooden bedrail.

  “I’m here, honey.”

  Her stomach lurched. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “I’ve got more pills, but it would be best if you try to keep the ones I’ve already given you down.”

  The room cascaded around her in a whirlwind of colors. Her father’s face split into a thousand pieces. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it was coming out of speakers in the log walls.

  “No, please,” she croaked. “No more pills, they’re not helping me. They’re making me sicker. My mouth is so dry, Daddy.”

  He propped her up and fed her a sip of water from a tin cup. It was cool and sweet on her lips and went down easy. The water made her feel better. Not clearheaded, but better.

  “More?” he asked in that scary, disembodied voice.

  “Yes, please.” She drained the last drop from the cup in his hands.

  The cabin. They were in the cabin.

  “Cayman shot me.” She needed to explain it to him so he could get help.

  “No.” He laughed.

  Her father was laughing.

  She was dying, and he was laughing.

  “It was you who shot Cayman. Then you fainted. He’s deader than dirt, just waiting for me to feed him to the cougars.”

  Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She grabbed her throat, sucking in painful spasms of air.

  Her father put his arms around her and rocked her back and forth. “Shh. Not to worry. I’m not going to feed my baby girl to the mountain lions. Not my Laura.”

  She shoved his arms away. “What are you talking about? I didn’t shoot Cayman. I only pushed him. I don’t even have a gun.”

  “You used his pistol. And now you’re going to kill yourself. They’ve already found your note. They just need to find your body. You see Cayman’s been watching you all these years. He suspected that it was you who killed Angelina, and he saw you with Harriet. He knows you killed her, too. He was onto you, so you shot him, and dragged his body out into the woods like you did Harriet’s. But then, my sweet Laura, you came back to your senses, and you were so filled with remorse that you took your own life. So you see, there’s no reason for Daddy to feed you to the animals. You can die in peace, and we’ll have a beautiful funeral. Everyone will understand it wasn’t your fault. You’re not right in the head.”

  “I’m not crazy.” She gagged on a throat full of bile. “Why are you lying?”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “I never killed anyone.” She sat up fully and crawled as far away as possible from the man beside her on the mattress. He’d given her pills. The only reason she hadn’t died in this cabin last time she’d been given pills was because she’d been lucky enough to throw up. Without hesitating, she stuck her fin
ger down her throat. She wretched, and out gushed a beautiful stream of fluorescent green liquid. She could see bits and pieces of pills floating around in her vomit.

  He shouldn’t have let her drink so much water.

  She was confused, but not too confused to understand that he was lying when he said she killed Angelina and when he said she’d killed Cayman.

  She was not a monster.

  How could a child have done all those things to Angelina, and to the others? “Dr. Duncan told me I couldn’t have gotten Angelina to the mountains when I was just a little girl. What you’re saying is impossible. It’s crazy.”

  “No, darling, you’re the crazy one, remember? You killed Angelina, and I tried to cover it up to save you. But now I see what a terrible mistake that was.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest. Her father’s lies floated before her in the air, written letter by letter with a bloody finger.

  “I want you to be at peace, Laura. So I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “But then, I want you to take the rest of these pills and lie down and go to sleep like a good girl.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t.”

  “Yes, Laura, you will. Because that night, thirteen years ago, I heard a scream coming from Angelina’s room. I went in, and I found you standing over her with a pillow. You smothered her. I wanted to protect you, so I gave you some medicine to make you forget. Then, I wrote a ransom note to cover up her murder and make it seem like a kidnapping. Your mother woke up briefly, but she was so drunk she passed out again, and I didn’t even have to drug her. I brought you and Angelina up to this cabin. I left you here while I dragged her body out into the wilderness. She was already dead, but I stabbed her to confuse the police. Then I went home, and your mother and I called the cops.”

  “Does Mother know what you did?” Laura could feel tears clogging her throat, but she refused to let them out.

  “Of course not. She’s too stupid to know anything except exactly what I tell her. She thought your birth mother had kidnapped you, and she wanted the police to go out and find her.”

  Birth mother.

  Laura pictured the words written in the air with the bloody finger again. Another lie!

  “Oh, honey, don’t look at me like that. And don’t worry. I’m your real father. I love you, and I just thought you should know . . . before it ends . . . that you have another mother. She’s beautiful, and absolutely crazy. Just like you.”

  “I don’t believe you!” But somewhere, deep inside, an ache that had nothing to do with drugs or even fear for her life took hold. “If what you say is true, the police would know about her. I would know about her.”

  “Not so. Only the family attorneys knew about the closed adoption. I convinced Tracy that your biological mother couldn’t have taken you, because she didn’t know who had adopted you. That was a lie, but it was for your own good. I told Tracy that if the police found out and got a court order to unseal the adoption records, it would be a disaster, and then your biological mother really would know how to find you.”

  His words were like a grenade, exploding inside her, shattering her heart into a million pieces. She grabbed her chest—it wasn’t moving. She opened her mouth and gulped in air.

  Breathe!

  The oxygen turned her blood cold and her mind hard. She forced herself to look at her father. “People close to the family had to know I was adopted. They would have thought my biological mother was a suspect. They would have said something.”

  “Cayman and Webber knew. And I appeased them by having Cayman look into Lisa’s—that’s your birth mother’s name—whereabouts the night of the kidnapping. She was in an institution at the time. No surprise there. Like I said, she was unhinged, just like you.”

  Lisa.

  Could it be? Her head was pounding with the lies and half-truths that had permeated her entire life. Tears stung her eyes, distorting her vision. She cupped her hands over her mouth, breathing and rebreathing the same air to keep from hyperventilating. Separating the lies from the truth seemed impossible. Only . . . there was one truth she could cling to.

  Something she knew beyond any doubt.

  She was not a murderer.

  Even if her father was telling the truth about this Lisa, he was lying about Angelina.

  He stuck his hand out and opened his palm. It was filled with different colored pills and capsules—a kaleidoscope of death.

  She knocked his hand away, and the pills went flying like confetti.

  “Liar!” she screeched, surprised by how strong she suddenly felt, as if sheer rage had raised her from the dead. “Angelina did scream.” She could hear that scream in her head. “But I was the one who ran into her room to help her. I remember! I remember!” The doors in her secret mind began to fly open one by one. “You were on top of her. You had your hands around her throat. I saw you!”

  He was breathing hard and fast. He looked at her with feral eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Laura. You were never supposed to see. I could’ve killed you, too, right then, and made it seem like an intruder had done it all. But I love you, so I tried to find another way out.”

  A terrible feeling of dread came over her, but she was finished running. There was nowhere left to hide. “If you love me, for once, just tell me the truth. Don’t let me die without it.” Though it made her want to crawl out of her skin to touch him, she reached out and rested her hand on his arm. “I’m begging you, Daddy.”

  “And then will you take the pills? Please don’t make me shoot you. I don’t think I can bear it.”

  No! “Yes, but I’ll know if you’re lying. I remember too much. You killed Angelina, and then you set everything up to look like a kidnapping so no one would suspect the truth. But what I can’t remember is what happened this time—to Harriet and me.”

  There was something shiny next to her father, an object, partially concealed by the covers. A knife? He must’ve laid it down when he took her in his arms. She could see the black handle and the edge of a blade protruding from beneath the sheets. Her heart raced as she realized it was within her reach . . . almost.

  He patted her hand. “You should’ve stayed my little girl. I tried to keep you with me, always. But you wanted to grow up, and when you stopped taking your medicine, you started to think things through. You became too curious. Even after you went off to college though, I had hope. Tracy and I came down for parents’ weekend, just to make sure that you were happy. That was the real reason, I swear.” He paused and raised her chin with his finger. “I hoped you could be happy.”

  She wanted to be sick again, but fought it off.

  “What did you do to Harriet?” If she got out of this alive, she wanted to be able to tell Harriet’s mother what had happened to her daughter. A mother deserves to know.

  “At parents’ weekend, I saw your young friend in the hallway of your building, and Laura, I couldn’t resist her. I had to take her, and so I did. The girls I claim, they don’t feel a thing. I make sure they’re fast asleep before I . . . anyway . . . the very next day, you and I had our father-daughter breakfast. Remember that?”

  She nodded, too nauseated to speak.

  “And you told me you thought someone sick murdered Angelina, but not a kidnapper. You said you’d been thinking about our travels. How sometimes the news would report a woman missing just as we departed. You said the women looked like Angelina, and that someone evil had to be near us. And do you remember what you planned to do about your theory?”

  She clutched her throat. If only she hadn’t told her father she was going to meet with the newspaper editor, with Ronald Saas.

  “Who was the man who bought me dinner?” She forced herself to look him in the eyes.

  “Someone I hired. A homeless fellow no one will ever miss—I’ve taken care of him like the rest. Whose blood do you think was all over this cabin? Not yours. It was mostly his. I’d already cleaned up after I killed Harriet.”

  “You can’t get away with this. Wh
en they find the homeless man . . .”

  He laughed, seeming genuinely amused. “They’ll never find his body. Anyway, I hired him to bring you to the cabin, but I made sure he kept you asleep until I could get here the next day. I wouldn’t trust something so important as your death to a bum. But I admit I made my own mistakes. You were barely breathing when I left, and I didn’t think it was possible for you to survive, not after the huge overdose I gave you. And I had to get back. The police were waiting to interview me, and I didn’t want them to get suspicious. But don’t worry.” The sincere look he gave her made her blood curdle in her veins. “I’m right here, baby. I won’t leave you this time until it’s all over.”

  His shoulders sagged, as though he’d grown weary of conversation. But there was so much more she wanted to know. And she needed more time to gather her breath, to steel her nerves for what was to come. She had to keep him talking.

  “Did you shoot Cayman?”

  “In the back. He was trying to save you from me—your own father, if you can believe that. Once, I slipped and mentioned this cabin to him. I think he suspected this was where I would hide you.”

  She forged on, she had to keep him talking. “Why does Dr. Webber think I’m a murderer?”

  “Because of all the little lies I tell him. Things like how you have a habit of sleepwalking with knives. I hoped it would never come to this, but I’ve been laying the groundwork for years, in case I needed someone to take the fall for me. Unfortunately for you, my window of opportunity is closing. I can surely convince the law that you killed Angelina and your friend . . . and yourself. But if they ever catch on to all the others, that would be a hard sell, indeed. So you understand why I had to act quickly, once you said you were going to the newspapers.”

  The web of evil her father had spun was so elaborate, so sticky—it seemed impossible to escape. Oh how she wished she hadn’t confided in him about her theories and told him she was going to take them to Ronald Saas.