As she stares at the girls’ faces, Lydia McGovern gasps in shock.
The bone-china teacup slips from her trembling hand, splashing tea on her ankles as it shatters on the parquet floor.
Michelle gradually becomes aware of the faint, fuzzy sound of voices.
Hushed voices, floating someplace above her head, she thinks vaguely as she fights her way from under the thick, gauzy shroud that doesn’t seem to want to release her.
“No, she doesn’t know yet, but I’m going to have to tell her as soon as she wakes up.”
That was Lou’s voice, she realizes groggily.
What is he talking about?
Who doesn’t know what?
Confused, she tries to get her bearings. She feels battered, raw . . . her stomach is sore, so very sore.
What happened?
The baby!
Reality comes rushing back to her, and she fights to open her eyes.
“Lou!” she calls, letting her lids flutter closed again against the bright light in the room. She must be in the hospital.
Lou’s still talking in that whisper, ignoring her.
She realizes her attempt to get his attention must not have been audible. She’s so tired . . . so tired.
“Lou!” she calls again, and this time she hears herself, her voice a rasping croak.
“Michelle?”
She opens her eyes and sees him standing above her, his face drawn, deep trenches under his red-rimmed eyes.
Has Lou been crying?
“Lou . . . the baby . . .”
“It’s okay, Michelle, take it easy. The baby’s in the ICU nursery—”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Her, Michelle. It was a girl.”
“A girl?” Dazed, she tries to grasp that astonishing news. “But . . .”
“I know. The ultrasound was wrong. Doctor Kabir said that happens sometimes. He said the technicians shouldn’t venture a guess about the baby’s sex unless they’re pretty positive.”
“A daughter,” Michelle says, stunned.
“And she’s going to be okay. They’re keeping a close eye on her, but she’s already doing much better than she was last night.”
“Last night? It’s morning?”
Lou nods.
“The baby’s okay?” she says again, just to be sure.
“The baby’s going to be fine.”
She gropes her clouded mind, aware that there’s still something . . .
No, she doesn’t know yet, but I’m going to have to tell her as soon as she wakes up.
What had Lou been talking about?
Another face appears beside her husband’s. An unfamiliar one, belonging to a nurse.
“Hello, Mrs. Randall, I’m Patty, and I just came on the morning shift. I’ll be taking care of you. How are you feeling?”
“Hurts,” she manages, trying to shift her weight in the bed.
“I’ll get you some more pain medicine. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. We’ve had you pretty doped up. You’re going to feel kind of out of it for a while.”
“Lou,” Michelle says, uneasy, ignoring the nurse, “where’s Ozzie?”
And then she knows, from the look in her husband’s eyes, that something is wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Rory offers her mother a steaming mug of tea. “Here, Mom, try to drink some of this.”
There’s no reply. Maura just sits there at the kitchen table, staring off into space, as she has been since last night, when Rory told her the crushing news.
Rory sets the mug in front of her, slides the sugar bowl toward it, and walks back to the sink. She busies herself putting away the dishes in the draining rack, dishes that have been sitting here all night. The bowl she’d mixed the brownies in, the beaters she’d licked, the spatula . . .
It seems like so long ago that she was standing at the counter, baking brownies, thinking of bringing some next door to Molly.
Why had she waited so long?
Why had she bothered to stop and wash all the dishes before putting the brownies on the plate?
Why hadn’t she just let the phone ring when Kevin called?
He would have called back. For all she knows, those few minutes she’d spent talking to her brother could have been the crucial moments when Molly and Ozzie were being kidnapped right out from under her nose.
Why, though, hadn’t she seen or heard anything?
The windows were open.
People were around, too, on the street.
The police told her that there had been two newspaper reporters sitting in a car right out at the curb between the Randalls’ house and the Wasners’ house until about nine o’clock, staking it out in case one of Rebecca’s parents emerged and would agree to talk to them. They’d been avoiding the press.
Even after the reporters gave up for the night and drove away, several neighbors had told the police that they were walking their dogs, or roller-blading by, and no one had seen anything suspicious.
Of course, the intruder could have come through the backyard—could have been hiding in the woods along the back of the property, could have stolen in one of the back windows after dark, just yards away from this very kitchen window where Rory was washing her supper dishes and baking utensils.
She glances out the window now. Rain is streaming down the pane, pattering against the wooden steps outside. The storm had blown in around midnight, right around the time that Detective Mullen had reluctantly left for the hospital, to find Lou Randall in the ICU nursery and tell him that his little boy was missing.
Rory doesn’t want to think about what that must have been like.
She had talked to Lou later, when he called sometime around three in the morning. His voice had sounded flat but controlled, and he had told her tersely that the baby was all right, but Michelle was still unconscious, and he was going to stay there with her, at the hospital, until she woke up.
“I’ve already had reporters trying to get up here to talk to me,” he said, sounding disgusted. “The hospital has tightened security. But I don’t want somebody else getting through, telling Michelle what happened before I get a chance to. She needs to hear it from me.”
And Rory had said, her heart wrenching for those poor people, “If there’s anything I can do—”
“No,” he’d cut her off, not unkindly, “there’s nothing. I just thought I should call you, because . . . I don’t know why I called.”
“I’m glad you did,” Rory had told him quickly, feeling some kind of tragic bond with the neighbor she’d never even met.
Reporters had been sniffing around here, too—even daring to ring the doorbell in the middle of the night. Detective Mullen, who had returned by then, had answered it, and sent them packing. But earlier, Rory saw camera crews out on the street, gathered along the sidewalk in front of all three houses—the Connollys’, the Randalls’, and the Wasners’. The police had made them leave, though—had blocked off both ends of Hayes Street so that only residents could come and go.
Rory turns away from the sink, knowing she should face the phone calls she has to make. She needs to try to find Kevin in Paris, though she has no idea where to start. And she should really call Sister Theodosia, too.
The house has quieted now, everyone but Detective Mullen having left when a call came in that there’d been a bad accident on the Northway just outside of town—a tractor-trailer and several cars.
Earlier, it had seemed like cops were everywhere, even in Molly’s room, going through her things, ostensibly looking for some clue that might identify the person who had abducted her and Ozzie.
Detective Mullen had asked Rory repeatedly whether there’s anyone, anyone at all, who would be a likely suspect.
Barrett Maitland.
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She hadn’t said it at first. No, because when it came right down to it, she couldn’t believe that he could be guilty of anything more than snooping into the painful past, and only because of the book he was researching.
But finally, grimly, she had spoken his name to the detective, who scribbled it down, and immediately made some phone calls, launching an investigation into Barrett Maitland.
If he isn’t behind this, then who can it be?
It has to be a stranger—some psycho stranger who preys on young girls. And Ozzie—well, he had simply been taken because he was there, with Molly.
Poor Lou and Michelle Randall.
Poor Mom, Rory adds, turning to look at her mother, still sitting, vacant-eyed, at the table. She doesn’t even look up when the phone rings.
Rory lets Detective Mullen answer it, as he’s been doing all morning. He’s wearing his coat, apparently getting ready to head out to the accident scene, as he’d mentioned. The tiny Lake Charlotte police force is apparently feeling the strain today, the few officers doing their best to be everywhere at once.
A moment later, the detective is handing her the phone, saying, “Rory, it’s for you. Somebody named Lydia McGovern. She said she needs to talk to you right away.”
Molly blinks into the complete darkness, hearing Ozzie crying someplace nearby, calling his mommy in a plaintive tone.
“Shh, Ozzie, it’s okay,” she calls softly to him.
He continues to cry, his sobs desolate.
Molly wants to cry, too. But she doesn’t dare. If she does, she’ll just lose it. And she has to stay in control. Something tells her that her only chance of making it out of here alive is to keep her wits about her.
She doesn’t even know where here is.
All she knows is that she blacked out in Ozzie’s bedroom, and when she came to, she was in this pitch-black, musty-smelling place, her arms stretched up over her head, with hard metal bands around her wrists that are attached to a cold, clammy wall behind her. There are bands around her ankles, too, and heavy chains clink every time she tries to move her legs.
It’s some kind of dank, damp cell or dungeon, and she and Ozzie are trapped here. She can’t see him, but she knows he’s nearby, someplace on the floor. His sobs are pitiful; it was better before, when she’d first awakened and he was silent, apparently asleep, and she thought she was alone here in the dark.
Now, in addition to Ozzie’s cries, her ears pick up another sound. Not far from her head.
A clanking sound, like a chain scraping against rock, and then a low moan.
Somebody else is here with them.
“Who’s there?” Molly asks, trembling.
“Molly?” The voice is barely more than a hoarse whisper, yet it’s chillingly familiar.
“Oh, my God,” Molly breathes, incredulous, relieved. “Rebecca?”
“Barrett?”
“Jack! Thank God. I thought you’d never get here.” Barrett stands and moves quickly across the tiny cell, clutching the iron bars, grateful at the sight of his father’s old friend and their family attorney, looking crisp and official in his black Armani suit. “They wouldn’t let me call you until last night, and I was praying you’d get the message.”
“I didn’t get home until after midnight. I flew out first thing this morning. I almost didn’t make it out of JFK—there were all kinds of delays because of the storm up there. Barrett, what the hell is going on?”
“Jack, I swear I’m innocent.”
“You’re being held on suspicion of murder, Barrett.”
“I swear I didn’t do it.”
“What are you doing down here in the first place? And who is this guy, Russell Anghardt?”
“I’m researching a book. I got tangled up in this murder case somehow. I came down here looking for the Anghardt guy to interview him as part of my research. I had no idea he was dead. And apparently, the body had been there for a while—it happened at least a week ago. I wasn’t even here then, and I can prove it. I was in Lake Charlotte—”
“Lake Charlotte, New York?” the lawyer echoes thoughtfully. “Listen, Barrett, let me have them get you out of here and into a meeting room where we can sit down and talk about this from the beginning.”
“Ms. McGovern?” Rory asks, after taking the receiver from Detective Mullen, who mouths I’ll be back and waves at her before striding purposefully out the back door.
“Hello, Rory. I’ve been watching television. That girl who vanished up there in Lake Charlotte—is she . . . ?”
“My sister. Molly.”
“Oh, Rory, I’m so sorry . . . how dreadful. Are you all right?”
“I’m hanging in there,” Rory says, feeling vaguely impatient. It’s nice of the woman to call, yet there’s nothing anyone can do or say to make things easier right now.
She glances at her mother, who has risen from the table and is walking, zombie-like, into the front hall.
“I’m so sorry to bother you at a time like this,” Lydia McGovern goes on, as though she’s read Rory’s mind.
And Rory realizes the woman isn’t just calling to offer her sympathy or prayers because Molly is missing.
“What is it, Ms. McGovern?”
Maura’s footsteps creak slowly up the front stairs to the second floor.
“I just . . . I thought I should tell someone. But maybe I shouldn’t be bothering you with this right now. It just seemed so strange—”
“What, Ms. McGovern? What do you have to tell me?” Rory asks, clutching the phone, sensing that the woman is distressed.
“I was watching television—the Today Show. And they showed photographs of the girls who disappeared from Lake Charlotte ten years ago. There was one picture—”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know which girl it was. I couldn’t read the names beneath them without my glasses. But the face—even though it was blurry, I recognized that face. Rory, I’m absolutely certain it was Sister Mary Frances, that nun who has been visiting David Anghardt.”
The bookcase swings closed again with a quiet click, shutting out the gray light spilling through the rain-splattered windows of the baby’s room.
It was dangerous to sneak down to the kitchen for something to eat. But when a person is getting weak from hunger, what choice is there?
Besides, the house is obviously empty. The police left hours ago. And it had only taken seconds to dash down the back stairs, grab some bananas from the basket on the counter, and back up again. Which was supposed to be the whole point of the mission last night, before everything fell apart.
The voices are back, arguing with each other, deafening.
It was a mistake to think you could sneak out of here with her right down there in the living room. What’s wrong with you?
I was starving. And I was planning to be so quiet, and I was going to go down the back stairs. How was I supposed to think of everything? I forgot that damned baby monitor would be broadcasting every move I made.
Well, you’ve really done it now. The only smart thing you did was grab that doorstop and slam it over her head when she turned around and saw you. Did you see the look in her eyes? She knew it was you. She was horrified.
And so were you, when you saw who she was.
So now there’s two of them, shackled in that horrible little room, almost like before. And that little kid whining nonstop for his mother. If he doesn’t shut up, you know what you’re going to have to do.
This is all Rory’s fault. That much is obvious. If she had been there for me when she should have, none of this would have happened. I tried to tell her. I didn’t come right out and say it, of course, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. You’d think she would have been smart enough to realize, though.
But no. Miss Selfish thinks only of one person. Hers
elf.
Never mind that now. What you need to do is get the hell out of here; leave this house and get out of town before somebody sees you.
But how?
It won’t be safe to sneak out of here until late. After dark. And even then, how do you know Rory won’t come prowling around here again?
Maybe the best thing to do will be to get rid of Rory, once and for all. That’s what she deserves, after the way she failed you.
To die a slow, horrible death.
“Russell Anghardt was brutally beaten with a blunt instrument,” Jack Berkman tells Barrett. “So brutally that his body was unrecognizable.”
“Are they even sure it’s him?”
“Pretty sure. The tests aren’t completed yet for a positive ID, but no one else lived in that house, and he hasn’t been heard from since he stopped at the local market to buy milk and some lottery tickets about ten days ago.”
“Jack, like I’ve been telling you, ten days ago, I was in Lake Charlotte—”
“And the Grayson Cove police are checking out your alibi as we speak, Barrett. But I’ve got to warn you, this could get complicated anyway.”
“I know. Now that two girls have disappeared there again, and I just happened to be in town this summer—”
“Again.”
“Again,” Barrett echoes, looking his lawyer in the eye. “But I swear, Jack, it was just like I said. A coincidence. Last time, and this time.”
The lawyer eyes him intently. “And you’re sure nobody knows about you and Carleen Connolly?”
“I’m positive. She told me she hadn’t told anyone about us.”
“You’re sure? You don’t think a seventeen-year-old girl would go bragging to her friends about sleeping with a rich guy, a college graduate spending the summer at his parents’ estate?”
“I’m positive she wouldn’t have done that. For one thing, she didn’t have girlfriends—not the way most teenagers seem to. She was more of a loner. And she went out with a lot of older guys. Maybe not rich, but the money didn’t mean much to her. It was more a power trip thing with her. She liked the excitement. And she was a classic rebel. Snuck around behind her parents’ backs. Her father, mostly—she was always talking about how strict he was, how he would kill me if he ever found us together.”
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