She nearly smiled, but it faded fast. "Survival skills."
"Right."
"I planned to just drive up like a John, get Danielle in the car with me, and drive away. But when I got to the corner, Danielle wasn't there. The other girls were, and one of them approached the car. Misty. She said Carlos had picked up Danielle a few minutes before."
"Carlos picked her up himself?"
"Yeah. Which meant something was very wrong."
That moment, her plan had crumbled to dust. She'd looked in the rearview mirror, seen one of Carlos's goons approaching the car. That's when she knew, Carlos had never really trusted her. His man must have been watching the whole time—when she'd gone in the McDonald's to change, when she'd hot-wired the car. He'd called Carlos, and Carlos had taken Danielle.
"I should have gone back right then." Kelsey met Eric's eyes through a haze of tears. "But Misty knew what I'd been up to and begged me, begged me to save her. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't very well leave the girl, not now that everybody knew what I'd been planning. They'd have punished her just for talking to me." She reached toward Eric, desperate for someone to tell her she'd made the right choice. "You understand, right, that I couldn't leave her? She wasn't my sister, but she was somebody's sister, somebody's daughter. She mattered, too."
Eric sat beside her on the couch. "Of course. You couldn't leave her, not when you had the chance to save her."
"I thought I'd take Misty, we'd go to the police, and they'd find Danielle. They'd raid the place. They'd save her." She swiped the tears, angry they could still fall after all that time. "I floored it. Started beeping my horn. I had Misty call the police on the phone Carlos had given me. The goons got in their car and followed, but then, the police were there, and they took off."
She continued the story, recalling the details as she glossed over them for Eric. They'd been taken to the police, treated like criminals, prostitutes. Kelsey had begged them to listen, and finally, Detective Bowman did. Kelsey gave her directions to the house where Danielle had been staying. Kelsey even rode with Detective Bowman when the police raided it.
The house had been empty.
The following day, Kelsey received a text message on the cell she'd gotten from Carlos. It was a video, full living color. Her sister cowering on the floor. The only other thing in the screen was a hand and a gun. Two gunshots, and Danielle was dead.
The message that accompanied it read, you're next.
Eric wrapped her in his arms. "I can't imagine."
"I tried." She thought of all the things she'd done to try to save her sister, all the horrible, unspeakable things she'd done. "It was my fault. She'd still be alive if not for me."
"You did all you could," Eric said. "You didn't kill her. That monster killed her."
She might as well have. Her plan had seemed flawless. Instead of saving Danielle, she'd made her a target. And she'd infuriated Carlos, who would never have killed her if he'd thought it through. Danielle was valuable only as income, but valuable nonetheless. They'd invested a lot to get Danielle.
But she knew how Carlos's mind worked. Carlos had believed Kelsey was starting to care for him. Embarrassment and shame had led to that impulsive decision—kill Danielle to hurt Kelsey.
It had worked.
Kelsey backed out of Eric's arms.
"I showed the video to Bowman, and she vowed to put them all in prison." She explained that weeks had passed while Bowman and her team put together a case. Misty and Kelsey were protected, hidden in a safe house until after the trial. Eventually almost all the men involved were arrested and charged. With the evidence Kelsey provided, most were convicted.
But not Carlos.
Eric's voice interrupted her story. "Why not?"
"There was no evidence pointing to him. He'd been careful to make sure others were always in front. They hoped that one of his men would turn on him for a reduced sentence, but none of them did."
"But you knew," Eric said. "Why didn't they trust your word?"
"What did I know? That Carlos was in charge, because the men were deferential toward him. But I never saw Carlos do anything illegal. I never saw him with the girls. I never heard him giving orders, nothing that was obviously illegal. All I knew Carlos had done was hold me against my will."
Eric's eyebrows lifted. "And that wasn't enough?"
"The D.A. thought a jury might think I was just a jilted lover trying to get revenge."
Eric pulled Kelsey close again and rubbed her back.
She pressed into his soft sweatshirt and allowed him to comfort her. Was she really here, with her husband, telling this story? How many times had she dreamed of this, just this? It felt right, and it felt wrong. Because she wasn't the woman he'd married. She could never be that woman again.
And when he found out about Daniel, he'd never forgive her.
She had to keep reminding herself of that. She pressed her hand against his chest, and he let her go.
"When the trial was over, we were free to go. Misty hadn't testified, because her testimony hadn't been necessary. And she was just a child."
"How old?"
"Fourteen."
Eric swore under his breath. Paused to collect himself. "You testified?"
"I did. It was all hush-hush. Closed courtroom. They tried to protect us."
"And they never found your sister's killer." He said the words as if he knew.
"We never found out who pulled the trigger. The body and the gun had been dumped in the bay."
"That I knew." Eric squeezed her hand. "Then what happened?"
"The case wasn't big enough for federal witness protection. Florida's witness protection wasn't the same. It wasn't nearly as good."
Kelsey'd had to disappear. She couldn't risk getting any of her family involved. She faked her death. She knew Carlos wouldn't believe she'd died, especially when she tried to make it look like Carlos had murdered her. Misty had been happy to make the anonymous call. Kelsey's parents had believed, had grieved and moved on with their lives.
But Eric had never believed. Which meant he'd been waiting for her for a decade.
More tears fell, but she wasn't crying for herself. She was crying for her husband, crying because she knew as much as she'd already hurt him, she was going to have to hurt him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She'd left out a lot of details.
Eric knew better than to press her. But he was still unclear about one thing.
"Tell me about the connection to Nutfield."
"Right." She stood, snatched a fresh tissue, and walked to the window. "Sunny day."
"Warm, too," he said. "Relatively speaking."
"I wish we could go for a walk."
"Your ankle—"
"It's much better today. And I need to get outside. I've been cooped up for days."
He wanted her to talk and was in no mood for a walk, but she'd been stuck in that cabin, then in the jail cell. He felt a little guilty about that.
Okay, a lot guilty.
"Why can't we?"
She turned to face him. "What if they're watching your house?"
He tried to hide his smirk. "I live in the middle of nowhere. How would they watch my house?"
"All those woods," she said. "Who knows who's out there?"
A fair point. "We could go for a drive."
"Yeah. We could." But she didn't move.
He got her coat and boots out of the front closet.
Magic jumped up and bolted to the back door. Then she turned and ran to the front. Back and forth, so excited her back legs moved faster than her front, making every few steps like a kangaroo hop. He couldn't help but smile.
Kelsey laughed out loud, and the sound, musical and familiar, brought back a thousand memories.
"My dog's an idiot. She thinks we're going for a walk."
She laughed harder. "She's hilarious. I wish we could."
"A drive, though?" He held up her boots like an offering.
>
She looked around, shook her head. "No. I like it here. And I don't want to be out more than I have to." She turned around, gazed out the window. "It's beautiful here."
"You should see it in the summer." A vision filled his mind. Kelsey pushing a toddler on a swing set, in his backyard. Him grilling steaks. Magic wrestling with a little boy in the yard.
Funny how much that boy looked like Daniel.
He'd promised to go see the kid this weekend. And even though Kelsey was here, Eric wasn't sorry he'd made that promise. He liked Daniel. Felt connected to him. And felt sorry for him. He knew what it was like to have the most important person in your world disappear. Must have been much worse to lose a mother, and the way the woman had left him? If Eric ever got his hands on her, he'd wring her neck. The heartless monster.
Kelsey turned, looked around at his living area, and crossed to the back door.
The dog decided that was a good sign and bolted beside her, tail thumping on the carpet.
"I can see why you bought this place," she said. "It's amazing."
He crossed the room and stood beside her to look out back. "I've got three acres, mostly forest."
"Wow." The word was filled with awe, as if he'd accomplished something grand. Not that hard to save money and buy a house when you had a good job and only yourself to feed. And he'd been planning for something all that time. For her.
"I thought you'd like it."
She turned to face him. The smile that had been there faded. "I'm sorry, Eric."
"I know you didn't want to leave me."
Magic stopped her frantic running and panted beside him. He reached across Kelsey and slid the door open. The dog bolted out and straight into the woods.
"You need to go out there with her?"
Eric watched his dog disappear in the brush. "She'll be fine."
She turned away, took a little of her heart with him. She'd take the rest of it when she left again.
He forced a deep breath. "You were telling me about a connection to Nutfield."
"Right." She pulled out a chair at his small kitchen table and sat. "I've been gathering evidence against Carlos all this time."
He sat across from her. "How?"
"Before I faked my death..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked out the slider again. "You're going to be mad. Just remember, I was desperate. My sister was dead, and it was my fault. Maybe I had a death wish or something, I don't know. It was stupid."
"What did you do?"
When she didn't answer, he started counting. If he reached twenty, he'd press her further.
He was at seventeen when she said, "I broke into his house."
That got his attention. "You did what?"
"I knew he wasn't there. I watched until he left. He didn't usually leave a guard there."
"Not 'usually,'" he said. "But sometimes?"
"Not that day. No cars out front. There was an alarm, and I knew it was silent, and I knew it would alert him, not the police. I also knew which windows were wired and which weren't."
"You knew a lot."
"I'd...I'd lived there a couple of months." She gave him a minute to absorb that morsel before she continued. "I thought I could get in without him knowing. There was a small window in the half bath downstairs that he sometimes left cracked. He didn't think anybody could get through it. But I could. I'd gotten through it once before, almost escaped."
"Why didn't you?"
"Danielle. He'd have taken out his anger on her. I was trying..." Her voice trailed, then continued stronger. "Anyway, I barely fit when I climbed in through that window."
"Barely? Why?"
"Oh. Well, I'd gained some weight."
He opened his mouth to question that statement. Kelsey'd always been thin as a willow branch. Not only that, but she was one of those people who didn't eat when she was worried. She used to lose weight in the weeks leading up to exams. He'd gotten to where he forced her to eat. As if any of that mattered now.
She continued. "I got in and downloaded the files from his computer onto a flash drive."
He remembered a flash drive in her backpack. His heartbeat was racing as if she were in Otero's house right now.
"I also downloaded his search history. I was going through his paper files when I heard a car door."
He clamped his mouth shut, mostly to keep from yelling at her.
She swallowed. "He almost caught me. I managed to get out the bathroom window and slide it down it to where it had been, thank God. Because I figured if he knew what I'd taken, he'd have changed his tactics."
"He could have killed you. He would have killed you."
"I know. I know. I thought I didn't care. I thought...I couldn't live with what had happened to Danielle. But then... Before that, I'd been determined to bring him down. But that day, I realized I didn't want to die. I sure as heck wasn't going to die at his hands. That's when I decided to fake my death and run."
Eric couldn't stand the thought of it, of any of it. Of what that man had done to her, of all the fear she'd faced, of how alone she must have felt. He reached across the table, and she slid her hand in his. "I wish I'd been there to protect you. I would have, if you'd only called."
"I know. I didn't want to ruin your life, too. I'd already ruined my own."
He pulled his hand back. "You think...?" He looked away, looked outside at his dog rifling through the brush while he tried to rein in that flash of irritation.
"You have a good life, Eric."
Right. Perfect. As long as a man liked being alone, liked not knowing what had happened to his bride, to the woman he thought he'd spend his life with.
He took her hand again. He needed to get past his anger.
After a few moments, she continued. "I've been watching him. Tracking him. He conducts his business on the dark web. It's very difficult to keep track of everything. He communicates in code. A few years back, he started corresponding with a man who goes by TakeTwo. It's taken me years to piece together the clues about where they meet. Those clues led me to Nutfield."
"That's a heckuva coincidence."
She shook her head. "I don't think it is. Carlos had Danielle. I don't know how much time passed before he...before he made that video. And Danielle knew about you and me. She knew we'd eloped. I think maybe Carlos got the information out of her."
He squeezed her hand. "It wasn't your fault."
She shrugged. "She didn't know where we got married, but if he was keeping an eye out for me, then when you moved here... I think maybe he has a connection here keeping an eye on you. It's why I tried to stay off the radar when I was in town. If I'm going to catch him, he can't know I'm on to him. I thought I'd try to get pictures of him with the person he's working with, maybe work backwards from there."
A ridiculous idea. No way could Kelsey bring these people down on her own. All she'd do was get herself killed. But he wasn't going to say any of that, not yet. "What kind of business do they do?"
She slipped her hand from his and crossed her arms. "From what I can piece together, it looks like he supplies someone in Nutfield with girls."
Eric sat back. "Supplies him...for what?"
She shrugged. "I'd guess videos."
"Why videos?"
"The name, TakeTwo."
"Oh." He imagined that, some man in his town, getting girls...buying girls, filming videos. He swallowed his nausea, remembered his conversation with Brady just a few days before. Maybe someone in Nutfield was involved in human trafficking. And maybe it had been going on under Eric's nose all this time.
"How did you figure out it was Nutfield?"
"It took me years. A word here, a number there."
"What words? What numbers?"
She ticked off phrases on her fingers. "Nutty. Clearwater. Ninety-three. One-oh-one. Crystal. There were more, too, but those are the most telling."
Nutty for Nutfield. Made sense. Clearwater—their lake. The interstate, the state highway, and the name of the main
street running through town.
"Wow," he said.
"Where else could it be?"
He couldn't think of another possibility. If nothing else, the word nutty seemed a dead giveaway. "I think I need to see those messages."
"Maybe," she said.
"Maybe?"
"I trusted the police once before. My sister is dead."
"You don't trust me?"
"Of course I trust you. But I don't know your chief. And I don't know your police force. For all I know, the guy here has an in with the cops. Carlos is good at that, bribing police officers. Making sure he always knows everything. This is the best lead I've gotten in years, and I'm not going to blow it. And neither are you."
Eric glared across the table at her. She glared right back.
"You can't seriously think you can bring him down all by yourself."
She broke eye contact, looked beyond him. "I'll figure something out."
The instinct to argue was hard to stifle, but he managed it. He wouldn't bother until he had all the information. "Is there a meeting set up?"
"When I left"—her sentence hitched a fraction—"Kansas City, I had nowhere to go, and I thought, why not get close?"
What had caused that hitch? Could she not remember where she'd been living? Or had she checked herself.
Kansas City was a lie.
Or Eric was being supremely paranoid. Equally likely. He tucked away that thought for later. "But you didn't settle for close. You were in Nutfield."
"I just wanted to see it. I never planned to stay."
"No car. No wallet. No cell phone."
She sighed. Paused. He could practically see her spinning a story. "I hitchhiked. The guy got fresh with me, and when I told him to lay off, he dumped me out of the car."
Eric could picture that. Maybe it was true, but he didn't think so. Because Nutfield was too far off the highway. It'd be a stroke of luck to find someone headed this way. And when she'd gotten here, when she'd seen what she came to see, what would she have done? Walked back to Manchester? The weather had been frigid that day, a blizzard forecast. And Kelsey was no fool. All that, and she'd been trying to stay off the radar. Hitchhiking in a little town like this?
No way.
He wanted to call her on all her lies. Instead, he filed them away, puzzle pieces he'd try to fit into the larger picture when he was alone, which he figured he would be soon enough. "That doesn't explain your lack of personal items."
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