Innocent Lies

by Robin Patchen

  Probably now, he wished he'd let her go.

  She took her backpack with her to the bathroom to clean up.

  Showered and dressed, she went downstairs. Garrison was in the living room, working on his laptop. The TV was on, and a weatherman was pointing at a multi-colored map. The sound was muted. Garrison looked up when she came in. "Good morning."

  "Hi."

  Sam came around from the kitchen, crossed the room, and pulled Kelsey into a hug. Silly to hug somebody good morning, but Kelsey wasn't complaining.

  "Come get some coffee." Sam took Kelsey's hand, settled her at the kitchen table, and reached for the pot. "Wait. Eric said you prefer tea. All I have is black. Is that okay?"

  "Coffee's fine. I just need a lot of sugar."

  While she sipped from her steaming mug, Sam made her two pieces of toast, set them in front of her with the butter and a jar of apple jelly, and prattled about the weather. Apparently, a storm was coming, and it could be a big one.

  "Could be," Sam said. "But you know how weathermen are. Every storm is the storm of the decade."

  Kelsey swallowed a bite. "The last one was pretty bad." She could still feel the chill.

  "On Monday?" Sam said. "I think we got three inches, maybe four. They're talking about more than that this time. Assuming it even comes."

  Garrison called from the other room. "It's coming. You don't have to be a meteorologist to see that."

  "The question is, how much." Sam walked around the wall and peered at the TV. She whistled, lifted her eyebrows. "Estimates have gone up."

  "To?" Kelsey asked.

  "Nine to twelve."

  "Inches?" Kelsey said. "Holy smoke."

  Sam laughed. "Don't worry. We can handle it. And it's not coming until tomorrow."

  Too bad. A snowstorm might keep Carlos from getting there. She'd have to get Daniel and get out of town, fast. Today, before the storm trapped her.

  Where would they go? How would they get there? She had no idea and couldn't think, still fuzzy-headed after the pill she'd taken the night before.

  She hadn't eaten since the few bites of sandwich at lunch yesterday. Maybe food would help. She forced another bite of the toast.

  Sam returned to the table. "You want some juice or something?"

  "A glass of water. I can get it if you'll just..."

  Sam was already up. She grabbed a glass. "Ice?"

  "No, thanks."

  A moment later, Sam rested the glass in front of her.

  "Thank you. I'm sorry to be such a bother. I really appreciate you guys letting me stay here."

  "Just me, actually," Sam said. "Garrison doesn't live here."

  "Oh?" She'd just assumed.

  Sam stood, pointed out the slider. "See that building there?"

  Kelsey looked out the back, past a playground and basketball court and covered pool to another condominium about a hundred yards away.

  "The corner unit on this side...Garrison lives there."

  "Is that how you two met?"

  Sam returned to the table and sat. "Actually, we met through friends, Nate and Marisa. They... Oh."

  Kelsey's face must have registered her surprise at the names. Nate and Marisa. They were the people who had Daniel.

  Daniel.

  Was he safe? Surely Carlos didn't know where he was. Carlos couldn't have put together that the boy who'd been abandoned nearly a week earlier was her son. Except... Eric had been with Daniel. What if someone saw them together? What if...?

  "Your son is safe," Sam said. "Eric told Nate what's going on, and Nate took his whole family away for the weekend."

  "Away?" How could she grab him and leave, if he was gone? "Where are they?"

  Sam shrugged. "He wouldn't say. He figured your son would be safer if nobody knew where he was."

  Tears filled her eyes. Of course Eric had thought of protecting Daniel. And these foster parents, Nate and Marisa... What a sacrifice they were making for Daniel.

  So many people were involved now. People trying to help. People she'd put in danger.

  Why, why, why had she come back here?

  But she knew why. Because she couldn't live like this anymore. She'd thought, even if she died, she could give Daniel a future. Even that was at risk now. And with Daniel out of town, she couldn't grab him and leave. She'd set this in motion, and she couldn't back out now. Tears burned Kelsey's eyes.

  Sam handed her a napkin. "Nate and Marisa are friends of ours. Very nice people. Good people."

  Kelsey swallowed, nodded, couldn't think of a thing to say. She wiped her eyes with the napkin and pushed her plate away. Maybe she'd eat tomorrow. "Garrison sure spends a lot of time here, if he doesn't live here."

  Sam shifted subjects with her. "He's here a lot. But right now, he's here because of you. Eric didn't want you left alone. And apparently nobody's impressed with my superior fighting skills."

  Kelsey attempted a smile at the joke. "I'm sure you're deadly."

  Garrison piped up from the other room. "You haven't tried her spaghetti. Terrifying."

  "Watch it!" But Sam smiled.

  Garrison stepped into the doorway. "Sam makes the best caramel brownies you've ever had. But her pasta?" He shook his head, and Sam rolled her eyes.

  "Apparently, Garrison is too good for jarred sauce."

  Kelsey tried to laugh, but she couldn't force the sound out. "Y'all didn't have to skip work to babysit me."

  "It's Sunday," Garrison said.

  "Oh," Kelsey said. "Right."

  "We usually go to church," Sam said, "but we didn't mind missing today."

  "Thank you." She sipped her coffee, thought about church. "Do you go to the same church as Eric?"

  "We do. He's there now."

  Of course he was. Probably praying she'd disappear.

  "He'll be over when it's done."

  He would?

  Sam smiled. "He came by on his way, brought your backpack and reiterated the importance of you remaining here."

  Garrison said, "Not sure what he thinks I should do if you decide to leave. I never perfected my hog-tying skills."

  "I'm surprised he doesn't want me gone."

  Sam reached across the table and laid her hand over Kelsey's. She'd called herself touchy-feely, and the label fit. "He cares for you. Very much."

  Kelsey pulled her hand away. She couldn't talk about this anymore. Not with these two.

  She needed to talk to Eric.

  Or maybe, she just needed to leave.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sunday

  I don't know what's going on, but I don't like it.

  Mr. Nate and Miss Marisa woke me up in the middle of the night and told me we were going on a trip to the mountains. They won't say where, just that we're going "up north." Mr. Nate carried Ana, who didn't wake up at all. I walked, but they didn't even make me take off my pajamas. We drove for a couple of hours, and then we got to this cabin. Not like a remote cabin, like one all by itself. There's a little line of cabins, like at a hotel. It has two bedrooms, so I have to share with Ana. When we got here, they told us to go back to sleep. I just woke up. Miss Marisa had packed my journal and left it in my bag, which makes me happy, 'cause I'm trying to write it in every day. That way, when Mama gets back, I'll be able to remember everything I want to tell her.

  The cabin is nice, I guess. It's all brown and really old, but there's a TV. It's snowing outside, and Mr. Nate said he'd take us all sledding later.

  When I asked him when we were going back to his house, he said he didn't know. And the way he looked at Miss Marisa, I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't ask, because I knew they wouldn't tell me. Grown-ups never tell kids anything. Mama never did, either. And then she had to go away. Maybe if she'd told me, I wouldn't have been as surprised.

  What if we never go back? What if Miss Marisa and Mr. Nate decide to stay in the mountains forever, and Mama comes back, but she can't find me? What if Eric goes to their house to look for me, and I'm n
ot there?

  The snow is falling. We're gonna get stuck here. We're gonna get stuck, and I don't care if we do go sledding.

  I'm not a baby, and I'm not gonna cry. I'm just saying, I want my mama.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sunday morning, Vanessa sat in the backseat of the rented sedan and glared at the back of Mateo's head. The two men had been up late, up long after Carlos had suggested she retire to their shared bedroom in the hotel suite in Manchester. Suggested, as if she'd had a choice.

  What had they talked about after she'd gone into the bedroom? She'd tried to listen at the doorway, but their voices were too soft to hear. How could she prove her worth to Carlos if he wouldn't even let her into the conversation? This always happened when Mateo was around. At first, Carlos would ignore the older man's gentle suggestions that such conversations were no place for a woman, and didn't she have better ways to spend her time? Over time, Carlos would either agree with Mateo or simply quit arguing the point, and Vanessa would be banished.

  It was Kelsey's fault. Neither of the men trusted Vanessa not because of anything she'd done, but because of what Kelsey had done.

  Last night, shortly before Vanessa had been sent to bed, Mateo's phone had rung. The private detective she had hired was now giving updates to him. One more blow to her plan.

  The PI had given them an address, a condo where he believed Kelsey was staying for the night.

  "She's not with Nolan?" Carlos had asked.

  "Doesn't look like it," the PI said over the speakerphone. "He's back at his place, alone."

  Carlos had smiled at that. "Trouble in paradise, I suppose. No sign of my boy?"

  "Boy? I thought—"

  "Right. Yes, you're right," Carlos said quickly, flicking the remark away with his wrist, as if the PI could see him. "Perhaps it is a girl."

  "No sign of a kid. I'll let you know."

  "Stay there and watch tonight."

  A short pause answered that. Then, "I'm expected at home."

  Carlos named a price, and the man agreed to stay.

  Apparently, women weren't the only ones who could be bought.

  Now, Carlos, Mateo, and Vanessa were driving from Manchester to Nutfield, a ridiculous name for a town. Mateo had gently suggested—all his suggestions were polite, all made with that irritating head-bob that was nearly a bow—that Vanessa should stay at the hotel, but she'd flat-out refused. And Carlos had been inclined to agree with her. Perhaps it was the eager way in which she'd woken him up that morning. She'd learned early on that generosity in the bedroom was often repaid.

  Often, but not always.

  The image of Abbas came to mind. She pushed it away and focused on the towering trees surrounding the car. It reminded her of Serbia. Before her life had fallen apart, before the lost jobs and sanctions, her family had occasionally left the city to spend the day on the lake, where they would picnic and relax. Her mother and the other adults didn't swim, but her father always went in with the children. Tata taught them to swim and dive off the dock. They used to play games and have races. Back then, Vanessa had always believed she was her father's favorite.

  The thought didn't bring the tears it used to. She'd cried all the tears she had many years before.

  Finally, Carlos turned the sedan into the entrance of a condominium complex in Nutfield, a collection of identical buildings, each of which had four doors in front, four separate entrances for four separate homes. Carlos snaked through the twisting streets. She read road signs and studied the area.

  One of the road signs caught her eye. Mountain View Drive. It wasn't the obvious lack of a mountain view that had her staring at it. It was the name itself.

  It was familiar.

  She pulled her notebook from the seat beside her and started flipping until... Yes, right there. The man, Garrison Kopp, lived on Mountain View.

  But the address they were going to now... She flipped to the next page back. This home belonged to Samantha Messenger. They hadn't heard her name until the night before when the PI called. Now, Vanessa wondered if she was connected to Garrison Kopp.

  She let the information simmer for now. Eventually, she'd tell Carlos.

  They stopped down the street from the address the PI had given them and stared at the door.

  Vanessa was silent, wondering how she could use her new information to her advantage.

  Mateo was silent, probably remembering how Kelsey had put him in prison.

  Carlos was silent, too, and it was his silence that frightened her most.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  "I can't even look at her." Eric stomped back and forth across the floor of the dusty barn, ignoring the puffs of breath that came with every word in the chilly space. He'd attempted to sit through the service at church, but he hadn't made it through fifteen minutes before he'd slipped out and come here. They had too much to do. Figure out who in town was helping Otero, figure out what their plans were, and figure out how to thwart them, all while keeping both Kelsey and Daniel safe.

  No way could he sit through a church service while all that, and all he'd learned, bounced around in his brain.

  "She had a kid," Eric said. "With another man."

  Brady perched on the old metal desk that looked like it had been in that spot for a century. Brady and Rae had been cleaning out the barn on Rae's property ever since they'd married more than a year before. Eric had seen it at its worst, stacked nearly floor to ceiling with junk accumulated over generations. Most of the junk was gone now, but there was still a lot of furniture they hadn't figured out what to do with.

  "It's not like she had a choice," Brady said.

  "I know that! Don't you think I know that? I don't blame her."

  "Don't you?"

  Eric stopped, glared at him. Right now, Brady wasn't the chief. He was Eric's mentor and closest friend. He didn't like the challenge in Brady's short question.

  "I know she was held against her will. But... This is different. She wasn't just... It wasn't..." He raked his hands through his hair. "She lived with him. In his house, like...like a lover."

  "She told you that?"

  "She could have escaped. She chose not to." He stomped all the way to the barn window, looked outside at the gray skies. Snow wasn't supposed to start until late that night, but the air already felt heavy with it. A storm was brewing.

  Brady's voice was annoyingly calm behind him. "She was trying to rescue her sister."

  "Why not make a phone call? Why not—?"

  "You assume she didn't do all she could to get away? You think, what? She loved that man?"

  When Eric didn't respond, Brady said, "I think that concussion did more damage than we thought."

  Eric rested his forehead against the frigid glass. His head was pounding, but that pain was nothing compared to the rest. "She didn't love him. I know that."

  Brady said nothing while Eric let the chill of the window, the cold air in the barn, seep all the way through him. If nothing else, it lessened the ache in his skull leftover from the knock on the head he'd gotten the day before. "She lived with another man. She had a kid with another man." He looked out the window at the driveway, at the bare trees that circled the house. "Daniel is only eight. And it doesn't make sense. Because..." He'd been obsessing over the timeline since he'd walked out on Kelsey the day before. Daniel was eight, which meant Kelsey was with Otero a lot longer than she'd let on. Which meant...what?

  "She was trying to save her sister," Brady said.

  Eric spun to face him. "What about me? She risked everything—"

  "Her sister was a child, Eric. You were an adult."

  "I know that. I know all of that. I could forget... I'd planned to let it all go, to forgive her for everything."

  Brady's eyebrows shot up. "Forgive her?"

  "Not like... Forgive her for not calling me. For not coming back, even when she was free. You don't understand. I was married, Brady. I was married, and I thought... I loved her with every cell in m
y body. I'd never been happier. I was on my honeymoon, dreaming about our future, and I rolled over one morning, and she was gone. Gone. And I never saw her again, not until three days ago. And, what happened? She left me, left me to rescue her sister. She shacked up with another guy, she had a kid, then she came back and kept all of that a secret. Like...like she felt guilty. And why feel guilty, if she didn't do anything wrong? And now I'm just supposed to, what? Just take that kid like he's mine? Assuming we don't all die in the next twenty-four hours. Assuming Kelsey hasn't lured all of us to our deaths."

  "You're not being fair. She's—"

  "Fair? You want to talk about fair?" His voice roared in the cavernous space. "My wife had a baby with another man." He took a breath, tried to quell his temper. "While I waited here and fought crime and protected other people and had no"—he swallowed the curse word dying to escape—"no idea where she was. She stayed gone for ten years, when all she had to do was pick up the phone. I would have been by her side for all of it, if she'd only asked."

  "Of course—"

  "And I'm supposed to just forget it. Just...what? Love her kid and raise her kid like he isn't the spawn of a monster?"

  Brady pushed off the desk and crossed the room. "That's what I'm doing."

  Eric opened his mouth, snapped it shut. Closed his eyes and took a breath. He was an idiot. Brady had adopted Rae's son, and that boy's biological father had been no saint. "I'm sorry. You're right."

  "How do you feel about the kid?"

  "That's irrelevant."

  "Is it? Is the boy really irrelevant?"

  Eric shook his head to clear it, thought of Daniel. "He's a great kid. A great kid she abandoned in the woods."

  "No." Brady squeezed Eric's shoulder. "She left her son with a man she trusted, a man she knew would take care of him."

  "It's not like I could keep him. It's not like...I mean, I had no choice but to put him in the system. And now it's out of my hands. We're just lucky Nate and Marisa got him."

  "True." Brady dropped his hand. "But she never intended to be gone forever, right? She thought she could bring Otero down."