She wished she could hold this moment in a kind of suspended animation, until she passed the responsibility for the little girl back to Valerie. Tomorrow would be different, when the press surrounded the house, and photographers shot pictures for magazine covers, and champagne flowed in the war room in Grand Rapids. Tomorrow would be filled with noise and elation.
Tomorrow would be her first day to confront the new world. Her own new world. Alone.
Tonight was for her and Callie.
'You can read all about it when you're older,' she told Callie, who slept calmly and didn't hear a word.
She wondered at what age a girl would want to learn more about being kidnapped as a child. Fifteen? Eighteen? Maybe never. Maybe Valerie would try to keep it a secret, but Serena knew there were no secrets about that kind of experience. It would seep into Callie's consciousness as she grew older, something people talked about but that she didn't understand, something that made her different. Someday she'd want to know more.
It wouldn't be easy. It wouldn't be happy. The ending was happy, but everything else about the time in between would have been better kept as secrets. When do you choose to read that the father you lived with was the principal suspect in your disappearance, a man that everyone in the world assumed had murdered you and buried your body? When do you want to read about him wishing you had never been born?
When does your mother tell you that this man was not your father at all? When do you begin to think you're alive not because of love, but because your mother was so lonely she turned to comfort with another man? When do you realize that no one is innocent and understand what betrayal is all about?
Not now. Not for a long time.
'I hope you never blame yourself,' Serena told Callie in the back seat. 'I know it's easy to do. The mind is a funny thing. Something happens and you have no control over it all, and somehow you still think it's your fault.' She smiled as she looked in the mirror and added, 'If you ever feel that way, call me, OK? I'll come back and talk to you. I'll tell you how you rescued your mother long before she ever rescued you.'
She passed the turn-off that led through the dirt roads to the
Sago Cemetery, and she shivered. That was how fate worked. Two children were born on the same night; one lived, one died. It wasn't fair.
'You're almost home, Callie,' she said.
The last miles melted away, disappearing with the hypnotic throb of the engine. The forest thinned, and she drove closer to civilization again. Buildings appeared. Dark houses hugged the highway. It was two in the morning as she wound through the downtown streets, which were as vacant and artificial as a movie set. The silence followed her across the last bridge over the water.
Then, behind her, the noisy whine of a police siren shattered the peace. Red lights swirled and grew large in her mirror, and a Sheriff's vehicle sped past her. The car turned where she was about to turn, on the road that led to Valerie's house.
Serena didn't need to be told. She realized with despair where it was going.
'Oh, no,' she said.
Stride watched Kasey's flashlight swivel in his direction and capture him where he stood amid the rubble and hanging wires of a jagged gap in the wall. He held his gun with both hands. Kasey's head turned, and she saw him, but she didn't lower her gun. She aimed it at Maggie at point-blank range.
'It's over,' he warned her.
Her face was covered with blood and dirt. Her ripped shirt hung open, exposing the swell of her breasts. Her red hair was matted down. The gun quivered in her outstretched arms. He held her stare and didn't like what he saw in her eyes. Behind the exhaustion and panic, she was obsessed. Desperate to escape.
'Put the gun down right now,' he said.
Kasey's lower lip trembled. Her chest heaved as she hyperventilated. The cage she had built began to close in around her.
'Kasey, I'm not alone. Do you understand me? Cops are coming. There is no way out. Are you listening? No way out. Just put the gun down, so no one else gets hurt.'
His eyes flicked to Maggie. She was pale, and her neck was bleeding. She showed no fear with the barrel of a gun inches from her face.
Instead, when she saw him watching her, she mouthed two words back to him.
I'm OK.
But she wasn't. Kasey's finger was still curled round the trigger.
'We know about Callie,' Stride said. 'Listen to me, Kasey, it's over. The police are at your house right now. Callie's going home to her parents. Nothing you do here is going to change that.'
'You're taking Callie?' Kasey murmured. Her voice sounded like a lost little girl.
'I'm sorry.'
'You can't take her away from me.'
'The secret is out, Kasey. Everyone knows the truth. It's time to get help.'
Hopelessness and horror washed across Kasey's face. 'My God, it was all for nothing.'
He watched the gun. He watched her finger. Neither moved. 'I need you to put the gun down now.'
'Nothing,' she repeated. 'It was all for nothing.'
'Kasey, do what he says,' Maggie instructed her sternly. 'Put the gun down.'
Kasey's wide eyes turned toward Maggie again. 'I'm sorry. I can't. I need to get out of here.'
Maggie's voice softened. 'Listen to me, Kasey. I understand. I've had miscarriages, and I blamed myself. I went crazy. I did things I'll always regret. I know how it must have been for you. You loved your boy, and there was nothing you could do for him. That's the worst pain a woman can endure. It's worse than dying yourself. But this isn't the answer. You know that.'
Kasey's elbow sagged downward. The barrel of the gun tilted toward the blasted foam tiles in the ceiling. Her whole body caved in on itself. Stride took a step closer, with both hands still tightly wrapped around the butt of his gun.
'That's good, Kasey, now bend down and lay it on the floor, and put your hands on the top of your head.'
Kasey stared at him with those same wounded eyes, putting him off guard. She knelt to the floor. He began to relax, but then he realized that her hand was still locked fiercely around the gun. Her grip hadn't changed. She hadn't taken her finger off the trigger. He looked into her eyes and realized that her submissiveness was a ruse.
She wasn't giving up.
Maggie saw it too. 'Stride,' she warned him, her voice urgent, but he reacted too slowly.
Kasey's finger moved, not on her gun hand, but on her other hand. She switched off her flashlight, throwing the ruins into blackness again. Stride knew what was coming next. He threw himself sideways as fire flashed from Kasey's gun. Something hot burned through the skin of his neck, and he felt warm blood running on his skin and soaking into his shirt. He hit the ground and spun, rolling through sharp glass and a mountain of fallen stone.
More bullets exploded, pounding the floor and walls around him, ricocheting madly. Dust and flakes of concrete fell in a cloud over his face. He kept rolling until his body collided with a concrete pillar, and then he slid behind it and pushed himself up into a crouch. He peered around the beam, but he couldn't see or hear anything in a room filled with blackness and silence. The air around him was choked with smoke.
Twenty feet away, Kasey's flashlight flicked on again, but before he could aim and fire, the light switched off. He heard her footsteps in the aftermath, running, getting further away. The light went on and off again in a split second in a room beyond the far wall, as she used it to guide her.
'Mags,' Stride hissed.
'Over here.'
He followed the sound of her voice, leading the way with his hands. He kicked through a jumble of metal spikes and ducked as the noise clanged through the open space, but no one fired at him. He could still hear Kasey stumbling through another room, looking for a way out.
'Stride,' Maggie whispered. He felt along the chair to find where she was tied.
'Are you OK?' he asked.
'I'm alive.'
He clawed at the tape with his fingers but couldn't unwrap it. He felt on t
he floor and found a sharp piece of glass and used it to tear a cut in the tape that he peeled open, ripping it quickly off her skin. Maggie gave a strangled cry. He used the glass to free her other hand and then her feet.
'Don't stand up too fast,' he whispered, but she didn't listen. She bolted off the chair, then wobbled and fell backward. She toppled against him, and he caught her in his arms. The chair overturned. Her hands wrapped around his neck and got lost in the blood flowing from the open wound.
'Fuck, you're hurt,' she said.
'It seared me. It burns like hell, but I'm OK.'
A cone of light stabbed through the corridor opposite them, throwing shadows past the concrete towers. For the first time, Stride caught a glimpse of the bodies hidden in the school, and he swore. Maggie gestured at the nearest body on the floor - a large man with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
'That's our guy. The farmland killer. Kasey shot him.'
Stride nodded. In a distant corner of the school, at the source of the light, they heard Kasey hammering against the plywood boards nailed over the windows. Explosions rattled between the walls as she fired twice more. Wood splintered and broke. They saw smoke in the beam of light. After a pause, they heard the impact as Kasey threw her entire body against the wooden barrier.
The plywood tore away with a scream. They felt the air pressure change as a gap opened in the school wall. The light vanished.
'She's out,' Maggie said.
Stride put an arm around her waist to steady her. 'We have to get out of here,' he said. 'The first thing she'll do is go after Callie.'
* * *
Chapter Fifty-five
'Valerie's disappeared,' Denise told Serena.
'Disappeared? What happened?'
Serena didn't get an answer. Denise looked over her shoulder to where Callie slept in the back seat. The mask of the tough cop on Denise's face melted away. Serena heard Denise catch her breath and watched her cover her face with cupped hands as if she was praying. Denise opened the back door and gently undid the straps of the car seat. She lifted Callie like fragile china into her arms. The little girl didn't wake up.
'Oh, my God,' Denise murmured. 'Oh, baby, I never thought I'd see you again.'
She wrapped her niece in a bear hug and buried her face in the girl's mop of curly hair. For a moment, nothing else mattered. There was no infidelity. No anger. No complicated life. There was only jubilation.
'I didn't have any hope,' she said. 'We always tell the families not to give up, but I didn't believe it. I thought she was gone. God forgive me, I should have had faith.'
Serena got out of the car. 'Denise, what about Valerie?'
'She left a note,' Denise said. The relief on her face disappeared, and her eyes turned grim with worry. 'Marcus found it and called the police.'
'A note?'
Denise nodded. 'It's pretty clear what she was going to do.'
'Oh, damn it, no, not now!' Serena exclaimed. 'When was this?' 'The cop on the street saw her leave about two hours ago.'
'He didn't report it?'
'We were watching Marcus, not Valerie. We haven't been following her. When Marcus called, I scrambled units all over town to look for her car. Nobody's spotted her yet.' She added, 'Come on, let's get Callie out of the cold.'
Denise carried the girl up the driveway. A police officer at the front door let them inside. They followed the hallway to the kitchen at the rear of the house, where they found Marcus sitting at the island with a mug of coffee. He wore a chocolate-brown silk bathrobe and slippers and had half-glasses pushed down his nose. He was reading an online medical journal on a laptop in front of him.
Marcus saw Callie in Denise's arms. He'd known for an hour that she was coming home, but it was one thing to know it and another to see her alive. Serena watched him and tried to decipher the changing emotions on his face. He stripped off his glasses. His mouth tightened, and he blinked faster. A smile flickered on his lips, like a flame that couldn't quite catch.
Denise made no effort to hand Callie to Marcus or to hide her hostility. She stared at her brother-in-law, her eyes fierce.
'May I hold her?' he asked finally.
Denise clung to Callie and didn't move. 'She's not yours, is she?'
'Do you think that matters right now? Do you think I care about that?'
'I think the only person you care about is yourself.'
'You're wrong. You've always been wrong about me.'
Serena murmured under her breath, 'Come on, Denise.'
With her jaw clenched, Denise took a step closer and eased the girl away from her shoulder. Marcus put his coffee down and climbed out of his chair. He reached out his arms, and Denise passed Callie to him with obvious reluctance. The girl stirred and made a noise but didn't wake up.
Marcus held Callie against his chest. She looked small in his big hands. He sat down again.
'Well?' he said to Denise.
'Well what?'
'Don't you have something to say to me?'
'You don't want to hear what I have to say, Marcus.'
'I was expecting an apology,' he told her.
'Excuse me?'
'An apology,' he repeated, his voice hushed, but his tone harsh and bitter. 'For the last week, I've seen my name trampled through the mud and rumors flung around town about me. People calling me a murderer. Friends not returning my calls. Patients dropping my services. My marriage in ruins, my private life put on display for the world. I know where it all started, Denise. It started with you. Well, guess what, the truth is exactly what I said it was all along. I had nothing to do with any of this. And I think the least you can do is have the decency to tell me you're sorry.'
'Sorry?' Denise put her hands on her hips. 'Sorry? You caused this, Marcus. You let it happen. You and your little psycho bedmate, Regan Conrad. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry Valerie ever laid eyes on you. Sorry you're such an arrogant bastard. Maybe instead of feeling pity for yourself you could thank God for the people who brought this little girl back home safely. And maybe you could shed a tear and pretend to show an ounce of concern as we try to find your wife.'
She stalked from the room with heavy footsteps. The noise made Callie stir, and her eyes blinked open before shutting again. Marcus scowled as his eyes followed Denise, but then he scrubbed the anger from his face and nodded at Serena.
'I am grateful for everything you did,' he told her. 'Don't misunderstand. I'm just furious at how I've been treated.'
'I do know how you feel,' Serena replied. 'Innocent people often wind up destroyed by these crimes. I won't pretend it's fair.' She added, 'Do you have Valerie's note? May I see it?'
He gestured at a three-by-five card on the kitchen counter. 'It was taped to the mirror in our bathroom. I saw it when I got up overnight.'
Serena read the note, which said: Now we're both free. She tried to reconstruct Valerie's fragile state of mind, and the implications scared her.
'Did anything happen between the two of you this evening?' she asked. 'A fight.'
'About Callie?'
'Yes.'
'Do you think she would harm herself?'
'I don't know,' Marcus said. 'She was poisoned by all the rumors against me. She was in despair of ever seeing Callie again. I think she was capable of anything.'
'If she turns on her phone, or turns on the radio, she'll know Callie is safe.'
'Yes, if it's not too late,' he said. He glanced down at the sleeping child and added, 'I should put Callie to bed now.'
'Did Denise tell you about the woman who took her?' Serena asked. 'Kasey Kennedy?'
'I hear she's still at large.'
'That's right, and we don't know what she's going to do. With your permission, we'll keep police officers around the house. I'd also like to have a policewoman stay inside in the nursery with Callie.'
'Fine, but you don't really think this woman is foolish enough to try this again, do you?'
'She's desperate and unstable. Until we
find her, I think we need to take every precaution. It might be better for you to take Callie somewhere else for a few days, with police protection. Your house is an obvious target.'
He shook his head. 'I won't be driven out of my home.'
'I understand.'
They both looked up as Denise Sheridan reappeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Her face was stricken, and her voice caught in her throat.
'Someone spotted Valerie's car by the river near the radio station,' she said. 'It's empty.'
Valerie sat on the wet ground with her arms wrapped around her knees. In front of her, the dark water of the Mississippi was crusted with ice. It was the kind of brittle sheen that would crack like glass and open up a hole for her as she walked from the shore. She wondered if that was the easier way to do what she had to do. Walk on the ice. Let herself be swallowed up by the grip of the frigid water.
She was numb with cold. Tears had frozen into pearls on her face. She couldn't feel her fingers, and her feet tingled as if they had been stung by bees. She had been sitting here, alone with the chill and the water, for an hour, and still she couldn't bring herself to do it. She had taken the bottle of aspirin from her pocket a dozen times, and each time, she had put it back without opening it. She hoped if she simply sat here a little while longer, the cold would do its work for her, taking away her sensations until she felt nothing at all.
Nearby, she heard voices floating in the wind like the whispers of ghosts. People were above her, on the crest of the river bank at Canal Street. Shouting. Insistent. On the bridge of Highway 169 upriver, she saw the speeding lights of cars. She ignored them all.
She withdrew the bottle again. Her raw fingers felt clumsy as she handled it. She stared at the tablets and imagined washing them down her throat with melted snow. Last time, she had used a bottle that wasn't full. That had been her mistake. That was why she had awakened in the hospital. This time, the bottle brimmed with hundreds of pills. She could swallow them all before they dulled her system and lulled her to sleep.
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