The Waiting Room

by Emily Bleeker

  “Why did you tell me you worked at MDB Bank?” The question was enough to make him stop bumbling through his explanation. She used his muted shock to her advantage, following the momentum like a car on a roller coaster. “I went there today. Talked to the manager. They don’t know who the hell you are. Which makes me wonder why you’ve been lying and what else you know about my baby.”

  “I don’t know anything about your baby,” he said, slapping his hand against the hood of his car, regaining the power of speech more rapidly than Veronica had expected.

  “Lies. Lies. You know something. I know you do.”

  Mark rubbed a hand over his face, lingering on his chin and neck, sighing deeply. “Did you give the police my name?”

  Veronica was getting over her initial nerves and morphing into all-out anger. She didn’t have one satisfactory answer, and now he was worrying about covering his own ass?

  “No, asshole, the police think I hurt my baby, so we aren’t exactly buddy-buddy. I went to find you at the bank so you could help me. Only to find out that this stranger who has taken a recent interest in me is not who he said he was.”

  “So you decided to meet a man you thought could be your child’s abductor at a secluded location alone? Oh, Veronica.” He shook his head and almost laughed.

  “I’m not alone, so don’t get any ideas,” she added, realizing that he was right. This was a very dangerous position she’d put herself and Gillian in. At first she’d thought it was worth it if there was a small chance she could find out more information about her child’s whereabouts even if it was a long shot or he was an out-of-work bank manager who used old cards to hit on girls or if he was dangerous, but now she realized it was a really great way to get herself killed.

  “I’m not here to hurt you, Veronica.” He patted at his pockets and pulled a thick wallet out of a pocket inside his suitcoat and flipped it open. “I’m not a bank VP. I’m sorry I misled you.” He retrieved a small blue card about the size of a credit card and held it out. “I rarely have to show this to anyone, but I don’t want you thinking I’m some criminal.”

  Skeptical and less than convinced by Mark’s words, Veronica took the laminated paper and glanced at it without taking her eyes off him for too long. The blue square had a lot of information on it in small black lettering, and in the left-hand corner was Mark’s picture with his name beside it.

  “What the hell?” she gasped and pulled the ID closer, reading through all the fine print. He was Mark DeVenuto all right, but he wasn’t a bank VP or anyone else who would wear a fancy suit and drive an even fancier car. He was a PI.

  “I’m sorry; it’s nothing personal. It’s just my job.” He took the card back and returned it to his wallet. “You were my assignment. At first it was following you to that therapist, going to that group.” He kind of shrugged. “And then I followed you to the supermarket. Yesterday was a little different. I hadn’t planned on buying you a drink and chatting about life, but I made a split-second decision to engage when I saw you driving around that restaurant parking lot when I was doing surveillance”—he hesitated before completing his sentence—“on you.”

  Veronica felt naked, like in a dream where she suddenly realized everyone else had their clothes on. She folded her arms across her chest and hugged her midsection; the phone in her hand was hot against her rib cage.

  “You were following me?” Somehow the idea that someone had hired him was more devastating than the thought that he was working on his own. More people meant more power and more levels that she’d need to go through to find Sophie.

  When she was a child, her mother had watched a Lifetime movie about a black-market adoption ring that stole babies from women they thought weren’t fit mothers and sold them to wealthy couples who wanted a child. It had been a frightening concept to ten-year-old Veronica, but it was also a story that came from a made-for-TV movie, so she’d given it little weight once her mother had told her it was fiction. But now—who the hell knew?

  “Who do you work for, and who hired you?” she demanded.

  “I work for Rabbit Hole Investigations, but the other information is confidential.” He put his wallet back in his suitcoat and gave a semi-shrug. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” her voice pitched up, echoing in the silent cemetery. “My kid is missing and you are going to stand here and just say sorry? Were you watching me last night? Were you watching my house, or do you have a camera there or something?”

  “My advice is to go back home and talk to the police. And no, I didn’t follow you home last night. You were with Gillian, and she already seemed to be suspicious of me.”

  “You know her name too,” she said under her breath, getting more frantic with every moment that passed. “I can’t go to the police, or did you not hear that part? They think I’m crazy. They think I hurt my baby, and my mom is missing, so they think she’s involved too. They’ve probably stopped looking for Sophie altogether at this point and are just looking for me, but I don’t have her, Mark,” she spat out his name, “and you might have information that could help and you won’t tell me anything. Maybe I should call the police and tell them about how you’re stalking me and how you took pictures inside of my house. Yeah, I know about that.”

  “I’ve never been in your house,” Mark said with determination, his forehead wrinkling as he searched her face and then took in her shifty body movements. “This is why the police are suspicious of you, Veronica. You sound crazy right now. Between that and your issues with Sophie and your frequent visits to your therapist, I’m sure they have you right at the top of their list. You do know how rare it is for a stranger to abduct a baby, especially taking a baby from inside her home, don’t you?” He regarded her with the same suspicious look the officers had given her, and a thousand defenses gathered at the back of her throat. It wasn’t fair; they didn’t know what it was like, this depression, this mourning. She was just a human, damn it, a human being who was trying to get help. “You said your mom is missing too; why aren’t you worried about her at all? I was a police officer for ten years, and your story smells bad, really bad.”

  Veronica, who had glanced back to check on the car and get a moment to breathe without staring oh-so-superior Mark in the face, turned back with her finger pointed and a red heat scorching her cheeks.

  “I am not crazy and I didn’t hurt my baby. I’m trying to save her. And my mom? I’m scared to death about where she is. I’m so scared. They are all I have. Why would I hurt them? Why?” The memory of the crack and thud and the pool of blood on the carpet reminded her that she had hurt her mother, but she hadn’t meant to. She would never hurt her on purpose.

  The devastation that she’d pushed down after the bank threatened to breach her fortifications. Angry that she couldn’t stop herself, Veronica covered her face and turned her body away from Mark and tried to hold back the sobs that built inside her and escaped like wind through an open door. “Why doesn’t anyone want to help me?” she wailed, more defeated than ever before. Was she invisible? It was as if she were screaming at the top of her lungs and no one could hear her. She wanted to shake . . . everyone. Giving up wasn’t an option, but she was so tired of convincing people to do the right thing.

  Mark sighed, and a few seconds later his hands were on her shoulders. “I do want to help. I just don’t know how I can help you. There are rules in my job. I’m not supposed to reveal anything except, maybe, to the police.”

  “Come on, Mark.” She couldn’t hold back the frustration in her voice. “This isn’t some process service case, and I’m not someone skipping bail or whatever you do.” She let his hands remain on her shoulders even after returning to her original position in front of him. He looked down on her, and there was some trace of protectiveness in his eyes, like he wanted to show her he was a good man, to convince her of it. She forced herself to soften and tried to match his tone. “This is about a missing child. Why were you following me, Mark? Tell me that. Who is so
interested in me?”

  He pressed his lips together. “I could get fired.”

  “I could lose my child,” she rebutted.

  Veronica wiped at her face and looked up into Mark’s eyes, silent for a moment, hoping the sincerity there would move him. He stared at her deeply, blinking rapidly and then squeezing her shoulders like he wanted to pull her in for an all-encompassing hug.

  “Damn it,” he said under his breath. “Fine. Fine, I’ll help you. I don’t have a lot of info, and I’ll have to keep it as general as possible. Like I said, I was supposed to follow you to therapy and then initiate contact. I recorded our conversations and turned them in to my boss. I know there was at least one other guy on the case, but you were mine. He was supposed to follow your mom. My boss said it had something to do with insurance but wouldn’t share more.”

  The tears in her eyes evaporated, and she stood a little taller, raising Mark’s hands along with her improved posture. “Insurance? What insurance? There was a payout after the crash, but I’m not sure why they’d be watching me. What was the company name?” She tried to recall the name of the insurance company on the payout checks that came every few months, hoping it would sound familiar.

  “I don’t know for sure, and it is really unethical for me to tell you anyway. I can tell you this—the point of contact on the brief was for a private home. Sometimes the client wants to be more anonymous, so we use codenames and info is given on a need-to-know basis. I just do what they tell me and don’t ask questions.” He let his hands fall from her shoulders, but slowly, like he wished they could stay there. “Listen, I can’t give you any more information, but I could tell the police. I have the PDF of my orders on my phone, and maybe my boss would be able to give more details to law enforcement.”

  He retrieved a large smartphone from his pants pocket, and Veronica noticed a bead of sweat trickle down his neck and onto the collar of his shirt. He must be burning up in that dark suit, she thought, wishing she didn’t feel empathy for him in that moment.

  “I’ve already told you, Mark, I can’t go to the police. If they knew I was involved in getting this info, I doubt they’d even take a second glance. I’ve tried to give them information and leads, but they don’t care about a word that comes out of my mouth. They are wasting time, and my girl is getting farther and farther away. If you’ve been watching me, then you know, you know I couldn’t hurt my baby. I’m not asking you to do anything other than put your phone on the hood of the car and let me look at it for five seconds. You can count. Maybe I’ll recognize something?”

  Mark switched the phone from one hand to the other and then stared at the screen for a moment. He took several deep breaths like he was trying to force himself to say something unpleasant and his voice box didn’t want to let him. He looked at the device one more time and then put it on the hood of the car and turned his back to her.

  “One . . . two . . . ,” he started counting. Five seconds was almost nothing, and by the time she picked up the phone, he was already on his way to number three. She scanned the document. There was a code name and an address from Durham at the top, probably close to Duke. As Mark got to four, Veronica hit the “Share” button and typed in her phone number and hit “Send.” The whoosh was louder than she’d hoped, but Mark didn’t seem to flinch. At five, she clicked out of the screen and put the phone down on the hood of his car, her mind racing.

  Durham. What would someone from Durham want with information about her and her baby? As he turned around, she started to type the address into Google Maps when Mark interrupted.

  “I looked up the address, when I . . . uh . . . got to know you a little better and was getting curious about the reason behind the surveillance.” He peeked at her with expert eyes, searching her reaction, and then grabbed the phone off his car and put it in his pocket. “It was a dead end, though. It’s a rental. A nice rental, but still. Number listed online just goes to the old couple that rents it out, and they wouldn’t give me any info on the current tenants.”

  “Well, I don’t recognize the address, so no need to worry.” No way she was going to tell Mark her thoughts—he might try to stop her—but a plan was starting to form, and it was a good one.

  Mark stood up to his full height. “I’m going to be brutally honest right now. I feel like this is too much for you to do by yourself.”

  “Thanks for your concern.” Her phone dinged and buzzed in her hand. She confirmed it was the information she needed. “But I have help.”

  “Who, Gillian? No, you need real help. Police help. Let me talk to them. I can help get them on the right track.”

  “Mark, you can’t talk to the police without permission from your boss, and if your boss knew about this”—she pointed back and forth between them—“you’d probably get fired, so . . . if you don’t want to help me, that’s fine, but then you have to let me do it my way.”

  She started to walk away, up the slight hill toward the rows of headstones. The detectives said that the first twenty-four hours were the most important, so Veronica knew she had to hurry. Halfway up the berm, a hot hand wrapped around her wrist.

  “Hold on for a sec,” Mark said, rushing to catch up. “Listen, I know I said I can’t go with you, but if you run into problems—you can call me. And.” He paused and tugged on her fingers, bringing her forward momentum to a stop. “I’ll look into this more. I’ll talk to my boss, and maybe I can get more information about your case.”

  “Okay,” Veronica said, scanning the building beads of perspiration on the sides of his face and forehead. His desire to help her was more dangerous than helpful. If he cared too much, he’d cause problems for sure. If the police knew they’d been in contact or the address she’d gotten from his phone, then they might stop her before she got the chance to find out who hired PIs to watch her every move. “Just be discreet, okay?”

  “I can do discreet. It’s kinda my job.” He gave his sideways smile, like he couldn’t stop himself from flirting.

  It irritated Veronica that the gravity of the situation didn’t seem to have settled on the private investigator. “Do you even have a child, or was that part of your cover too?”

  Mark’s smirk left, and he dropped her wrist. “Yeah, Kayla is real.”

  “I never would’ve guessed,” she spat, but then rethought her aggressive response. She needed to keep Mark on her side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .” Veronica strained to keep her emotions under control. She could be hard and strong when someone was being suspicious or mysterious, but when they showed empathy and concern, it took her legs out from under her.

  “No need to explain,” Mark said, putting his hand on her shoulder and then tracing along the back of her neck around to the other shoulder like a side hug. It was also a stance where he could best support her if her knees did go out, and surprisingly, she allowed it. Only for a moment and a half, but it was enough to make her feel like Mark, who she’d thought was enemy number one moments ago, was now added to her very short list of allies.

  Since Nick’s accident, she hadn’t found one man she wanted to let in. It had been hard enough to let Nick in, after growing up with such an unreliable father figure and the string of men in her mother’s life. To think that there might be another man out there that she could trust—it was a groundbreaking new idea.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, taking a step back and breaking away from the half minute of comfort. “I’d better get back to Gillian.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll make some calls. Be safe, okay?”

  She nodded, filled with that same taken-care-of feeling again, like his concern had arms that stayed with her when his were gone.

  “I’ll try, but I’m going to do whatever it takes,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “I know,” he replied with a half-hearted laugh, trying to act casual again but failing. “That’s what makes me nervous.”

  Without responding, she ran up the hill, not looking back. Her flip-flops strained with eac
h dusty step, and sweat built up on her shins under the dark pants Gillian had picked out for her.

  The car was running, and the frozen air that had gathered inside gave her instant relief, like she’d jumped into a cool pool of water. The chill in the air seemed to bring back some of the sanity that the sun and Mark’s infuriatingly calm demeanor had pounded out of her.

  “Well, that was interesting.” Gillian sat in the car, still holding the phone in her hand.

  “Did you hear the part about him being a PI?” Veronica asked, putting on her seat belt, ready to get on the road.

  “I heard all of it. I’m guessing you want to go to that place he was talking about. How far away? Please don’t say Canada.”

  “No, Durham. And I have to go. What other choice do I have at this point?”

  Gillian nodded like she’d already guessed that was their next stop. “Do you want to say hi to Nick?”

  Veronica looked down the rows of headstones. Nick’s was up four rows and over seven, or was it up seven and over four? It had been a while since she’d visited. She used to come more often and walk the rows, feeling more comfortable with the dead than the living. She’d read the names and dates and wondered how many of those souls buried under the ground had someone who got choked up when they heard a certain song or saw a family playing at the park, remembering that those options were cruelly removed in one flash of a moment. Usually knowing others out there shared her pain made her feel like she belonged somewhere. But not today. Today she wanted action, not sorrow. She wanted change, not stasis.

  “No.” She shook her head. “He’ll be here tomorrow. Right now, I need to find our girl.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Do you think it’s safe to stop by my house?” Gillian asked as they drove away from the cemetery. Mark had left just a few moments earlier, waiting longer than Veronica would’ve liked before exiting the gravel parking lot. He was taking this role of protector a little too seriously for her comfort. He might call the police, it was a real possibility, but dealing with law enforcement and their outrageous suspicions was something she had to put on the back burner for now. There was an overwhelming urgency that pushed her toward the house in Durham, and she wanted to get there as fast as possible.