Innocent Lies

by Robin Patchen

  "Right. Her and her great plan."

  Brady stepped back, blew out a puff of vapor in the cold air. "Here's what we know. From what you've told me, Daniel's smart, well-educated, and very advanced for his age. He's also healthy, and he's been well cared for. He's polite, and he adores his mother. Is all that true?"

  Eric shrugged.

  "She loves her son. She's taken good care of him."

  "She abandoned him."

  "To protect him. Don't you think that was the hardest thing she's ever done?"

  He tried to imagine what that would have been like, but he couldn't think beyond his anger. "Who does that? I mean, if she loved him, how could she leave him?" How could she leave Eric, if she loved him?

  "You know Rae's story, right?"

  Eric thought of it, saw the point. "Yeah."

  "And Marisa's? She was willing to die for Ana."

  "I know."

  "And what about Garrison and Aiden? And let's not forget Sam, who might've walked into certain death if not for a lot of good luck."

  Not luck, Eric thought. God's intervention.

  Where was God's now?

  Brady continued. "And Sam did that to save someone else's kid."

  "This is different."

  "That your wife was willing to sacrifice her own life and abandon her son with the man she loved in order to save them both? Not that different, my friend."

  Brady made sense. Which just irritated Eric more.

  Eric's cell phone beeped, and he looked at the screen. He read the message a second time, just to be sure he understood.

  "Anything important," Brady said.

  "It's Garrison." Eric looked up to meet his friend's eyes. "Looks like he has a lead. He wants us to come over ASAP."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Vanessa had seen the blue Jeep first.

  They'd been watching the front of the condo for a half hour, and Carlos had started to get antsy. He didn't sit still well, and he hated to be confined. She could feel his anxiety rising as they'd stared at the front door.

  "You sure everything's in place?" Carlos asked for the third time in ten minutes.

  Mateo, the picture of patience, smiled at him. "I set it up myself."

  "And we have time to get there?"

  "It would be foolish, my friend. If the police aren't already watching Durant, they will surely swarm the area as soon as it's finished. We don't want to be anywhere near there."

  It irritated Vanessa to no end that she didn't know what they were talking about. She'd asked the first time they'd had this conversation, but before Carlos could answer, Mateo had suggested the matter too delicate for her ears.

  Bah. What did Mateo know of what her ears could handle? She'd been a play toy for men for a decade. Her ears were no more innocent than the rest of her. But reminding Carlos of that was not such a good idea.

  That anybody thought her delicate almost made her smile.

  Carlos resumed his tapping. "We know where she is," Carlos finally said. "I need to rent another car. One of you guys can watch her. I can't sit here any longer."

  It was just as he'd shifted into drive that she'd seen the Jeep turn toward them. It was still a few buildings down, but she knew where it was going. The PI had told them what kind of car Eric drove.

  "Wait," Vanessa said.

  Carlos glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. "For what?"

  She'd smiled and nodded in the direction of Eric Nolan's car. "He's here."

  Sure enough, the Jeep parked in front of Samantha Messenger's condo. A silver pickup parked beside it. A man got out of each car. The one in the pickup was very tall and had dark hair. The other man was about six feet, light hair. He looked just like the pictures she'd seen of Eric Nolan.

  Carlos looked at her again. "How did you know?"

  "The PI told us he what he drives."

  A slow smile spread over Carlos's face. He looked at Mateo. "I told you she could help."

  "I never doubted it." Mateo shifted, looked toward her. "Well done, Vanessa."

  The man made her skin crawl. Ulizica. She couldn't think of the English word for what her Tata had always called his manager—a man who was always agreeing with and trying to impress the boss.

  Oh, yes, the term came back to her now. Bottom-kisser? Something like that. The term described Mateo perfectly.

  She nodded at the ulizica with a smile. "Hvala. Thank you," she amended quickly. Carlos didn't like it when she spoke Serbian.

  "You're welcome." Mateo turned to face forward again. "We should wait, see what happens next."

  Carlos sighed, tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. Turned on the radio, scanned through the stations for a few minutes, then flipped it off. The men talked about the friends Eric Nolan had involved and wondered what those friends were discussing now.

  The friends, though... They made Vanessa think. A cop and a former FBI agent. But what did the woman do?

  "Carlos, do you mind if I use your laptop?"

  "Help yourself," he said.

  Mateo added, "There's no internet service, but you can probably find a game on there."

  A game. She paused, smiled at the back of Mateo's head. One of these days, she'd prove to Carlos that he didn't need the butt-kisser at all. She couldn't wait.

  She slid Carlos's laptop out of the bag resting on the seat beside her. She used her phone as a hotspot—apparently the ulizica hadn't thought of that—and navigated to the internet.

  First, she found a local car rental company and reserved two cars. She'd tell Carlos about that when she'd finished with his laptop, lest Mateo realize she was connected and take the laptop away from her. Not that he'd need it—he had no ideas. He'd take it out of spite.

  Vanessa searched Samantha Messenger's name. There were too many. She added Nutfield, New Hampshire, and searched again.

  She scrolled through the choices. The woman's FaceBook profile wasn't helpful. She started to click on something called LinkedIn, but then she scrolled further down, saw a newspaper article dated the October before.

  Samantha Messenger, Entrepreneur Extraordinaire.

  She clicked the link. Apparently, the woman owned rental properties on the lake nearby.

  Interesting.

  Carlos and Mateo kept repeating all the information they already had, looking at it from every angle, wondering if they'd missed something. Vanessa could ask for their help, but if she wanted to prove her own worth, then she'd better do this on her own.

  She searched Google, discovered a website, and searched for deeds with Messenger's name on them.

  The results made Vanessa think she'd done something wrong.

  She clicked on each one, and each one listed Samantha Messenger Properties as the owner. Vanessa counted... Seventeen. The woman owned seventeen properties.

  Just to be sure, Vanessa scrolled through the list. Sure enough, the condo they were watching right now was one of the properties listed.

  Wow.

  Could Vanessa ever do something like own her own home? Maybe own more than just her own? She'd known that women worked in America, all over the world. Hadn't Mama had a job? But in America, women often had the same kinds of jobs as men.

  Maybe that had been true in Serbia, too. Vanessa had been a child. What did she know?

  The world in which Vanessa had spent half her life had kept her from believing women could own anything, do anything, be anything. Women weren't buyers and sellers. Women were the property.

  But this Messenger woman... she had done this. Had she done it alone? It appeared so—no man's name was listed with hers.

  Women really could stand alone.

  Vanessa could too. If she wanted to badly enough.

  If she could get away.

  She rubbed her still-flat belly. Would you like that, little one? Would you like a mama who isn't your tata's property?

  If it killed her, Vanessa would raise her child in Samantha Messenger's world, not in the one she belonged to.r />
  Slowly, painstakingly, Vanessa searched all the property addresses and starred them in her map program. Then, she studied the map.

  Every property except this condo was located on Clearwater Lake.

  Vanessa didn't know what to do with the information. She copied the list, sent the information to her phone, and then cleared her search history.

  Maybe it would come in handy. She was not going to share it with Mateo or Carlos, not yet. No, this she'd keep to herself until she knew how she could use it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Jeep was still warm when Kelsey climbed in. She pet Magic, who started to jump into the front seat to greet her. Only Eric's quiet "stay" kept her from hurtling into Kelsey's lap.

  Eric maneuvered out of the condo complex.

  She clicked on her seatbelt as Eric yanked the car into drive.

  "Do you think Daniel's safe?" she asked.

  "He's perfectly safe, I promise."

  "Okay." Her voice cracked on the word, and she told herself not cry even as she imagined her little boy, missing her the way she was missing him. If anything happened to Daniel, she'd never survive it. "But I mean... These people who have him—"

  "You couldn't choose a nicer family." Eric's voice was as confident as it was gentle. "And they're already falling in love with him."

  "Okay." She could trust Eric with this. She knew that. She also knew she was putting him and all his friends in danger. Carlos was ruthless when he wanted something. "I should take Daniel and go. If Carlos doesn't find me when he gets here, he'll think I slipped through his fingers again."

  The very thought of leaving Eric had tears filling her eyes. How could she still have tears left?

  "That's what you do, huh?" Eric's voice was harsh. "You run away. Is that why you left me ten years ago? Second thoughts?"

  "Don't be a jackass." The quick flash of anger surprised her. She thought of the cowardly woman she'd been at the hospital the day before. No, she wouldn't be that person, not with her husband, a man who should respect her. She was sick of his judgment, his accusations.

  He glanced at her quickly. His voice was gentler when he said, "I'm just trying to understand."

  "If you don't by now, Eric, you never will."

  He turned the Jeep toward town, the only sound in the car the huffing of the dog in the backseat and the rumble of the wheels on the asphalt. Snow fell outside, soothing and steady.

  Like her husband.

  For years, all she'd longed for was to be with Eric again. Her love for him hadn't faded, but perhaps while she'd been gone, she'd romanticized him, romanticized their relationship. She didn't remember these long brooding silences, and she couldn't recall a time when he'd been anything but polite to her. Had she blocked out the unpleasant things, or was Eric different now?

  Of course he was different. The years had changed him. His job had changed him.

  Missing her, not knowing where she was... Yes, that had changed him, too.

  "You could have called me." Eric's tone was measured. No accusation, no sadness. "I would have come, wherever you were. I would have been with you. I would have protected you."

  "I know."

  He kept his focus forward. She'd never seen this much traffic on the little two-lane road that went through Nutfield. "Where did all these people come from?"

  "Storm's coming. People are shopping, getting prepared."

  "We need anything?"

  "I took care of it. We should be fine for a few days."

  They were inching slowly through town with nothing else to distract them from the pachyderm between them that felt more corporeal than the dog in the back seat. How could she make Eric understand? "I know you would have come," she finally said. "You would have quit school, abandoned your dream, to be with me. But I didn't want that for you."

  "You were my dream." His jaw was clenched like he was fighting the urge to say more. "It would have been fine. I could have gone to school—"

  "No, you couldn't. You wouldn't have been able to go to school somewhere else. Don't you see? You would have had to give up your identity. Your family. Your future. Fake IDs don't come with transcripts. This wasn't the federal witness protection program. When I changed my identity, I paid a guy five hundred bucks for a counterfeit driver's license, birth certificate, and social security card. Every job, every brush with the police, every time I've been asked to show ID, I've cringed, knowing eventually, somebody would discover my secret. I couldn't go back to college, even if I hadn't had Daniel. Under my new name—"

  "Carrie Anderson."

  The name caught her up short. But of course, Daniel had told him. "Right." She'd intended to buy new papers in Manchester after she'd left her son, after she'd made that critical call. The one she could never make now. "Under that name, I had no high school records, no job history, nothing. I couldn't ask that of you."

  "I would have—"

  "I know that." There was more to it. Maybe she didn't want to explain the rest of it. But he deserved to know. To know who she was, what she'd become. "You don't understand what it was like. I wasn't the same person. I went from being this...this successful pre-law student to being property. I went from feeling loved and cherished to feeling like a whore."

  "Don't say that." His words were quick and harsh. "Don't ever say that."

  "See?" He couldn't even stand to hear the word, but if he understood all she'd been through, all she'd done... "You don't... I couldn't..." It was impossible to explain. Impossible because she didn't want Eric to know. What would he think if he knew everything? "How could I come home to you as if I were the same person? You always made me feel valued, treasured." Her voice cracked. She swallowed the emotions. "Thanks to Carlos, I was worth less than the dirt you'd scrape off your boots."

  "You weren't, though." He hit the brake in the stop-and-go traffic and turned to her.

  She met his eyes for a moment, then ducked away. She couldn't look at him and talk about this. She'd never be able to overcome the shame. And if that were the case, what was she doing with this man, this good man?

  "I would never have seen you that way." His confidence, his vehemence, had her shaking her head.

  "Such big words. But do you know how the police treated us when Misty and I escaped? Like prostitutes, that's how. Worthless garbage. I'm convinced if they'd acted faster, they might have rescued my sister. But we were whores. We didn't matter."

  He inched ahead in traffic. "So you expected me to treat you the same way."

  "Maybe you wouldn't have, but—"

  "Maybe?"

  Her voice rose, cracked. "I didn't know. How could I know?"

  "You could have expected the best of me. You could have tried."

  Expected the best of him. That's what she'd done, all those years ago when she'd agreed to marry him. Because she'd known Eric was one of the best men she could ever know. Over the years, she'd wondered...how many times had she wondered what he would have said to her, how he would have treated her if she'd simply gone home? On good days, she imagined him folding her into his arms and declaring his eternal, unconditional love.

  But on bad days, the scenario she imagined was very different. Scorn in his face. Hatred.

  She'd never had the nerve to risk the second reaction, no matter how badly she'd hoped for the first. "Knowing you were here. Knowing you'd loved me... What if I called you, what if you came to me, and what if when you learned the truth, you looked at me like those cops did? How would I have survived that?"

  His frown, the quick shake of his head, told her he didn't understand. He probably never would. He reached across the car, took her hand. "I had a good idea of what you'd been through. I did enough searching. I figured you'd been taken by the people who took your sister, and I knew what kind of people they were. I searched for you—until you faked your death. Over the years, I never stopped believing. I never stopped loving you."

  Tears filled her eyes, and she sniffed.

  He glanced
at her. "There are some napkins in the glove box, if you need one."

  She managed to open it and pull out a napkin and wipe her tears without letting go of his hand.

  Maybe if they could just keep holding on to each other, they could survive this.

  She composed herself, studied his face as he inched along in traffic. His eyes were red as if he were fighting tears as much as she was giving in to them.

  "Years passed, though," he said. "Years and years, and still..."

  "I never thought it would be a decade. I thought that with the information I'd stolen from Carlos, I could bring him down. I thought it would be six months, maybe a year, maybe two. And then Carlos would go to prison, and I'd come back. I thought, if I brought him down, then maybe you'd believe... you'd understand. You'd forgive all I did. I thought, by then, you'd have gotten your degree, and we could be a family. But then two years turned into three, then four... I figured too much time had passed. You'd have met someone else. Gotten married. Forgotten all about me."

  His face showed no reaction. "So you moved on."

  She scoffed. "I raised my son. I had no choice but to figure out how to live, how to support us. And I kept trying to find a way to bring Carlos down."

  He glanced at her then. "But there's a man, right?"

  She met his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

  He stopped the car, though the one in front kept moving in the traffic crawling along Crystal Ave. He stared at her, and the moment stretched before he said, "I saw that...that expression on your face when you described your home. You're in love with somebody."

  "I'm in love with Daniel. I was thinking about my son."

  "Oh." He blinked twice. "That makes sense." He focused ahead and let up on the brake enough to catch up with the car in front of them. At this rate they'd never get through downtown Nutfield. "You're saying there's nobody else?"

  "Never."

  He turned to face her again, held her gaze, and then nearly smiled.

  After everything, her optimistic heart fluttered with joy.

  But of course, just because she hadn't moved on didn't mean he hadn't. "How about you?"