by Elle Gray
Hayleigh glanced back at her parents for a split second before nodding. “I want to help,” she said firmly. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
Sophia arrived a minute later. Elijah was escorting her, looking his usual nervous self. He glanced at Olivia, unable to meet her eye fully.
“Alice isn’t coming,” he explained quietly. “She hasn’t slept in days. I thought it was best that she stayed at home and rested.”
“That’s okay. We really only need the girls,” Brock told him kindly. “How about you two come with us and we can get started? The sooner we talk this over, the sooner we can get out there and find who did this to you.”
Both Hayleigh and Sophia nodded. They silently grabbed on to one another’s hands, and Olivia was strangely touched by the sight of it. They’d bonded for life over something that they’d never forget. They might not share good memories, but they understood one another in a way no one would ever understand them in return. In some strange way, Olivia envied them. She’d never known someone who’d been through the same things as her family. She wondered how things would be if she had someone to talk to about those things.
But she knew she couldn’t be thinking about herself right then. She had a job to do. She felt like they were on the very edge of something, and it could go either way. She had to make sure the day went well. She had to make sure the day ended with her capturing the kidnapper.
Brock sat the two girls down in the interrogation room and offered them both some juice, which they took. Olivia sat down opposite them and took out her notebook.
“How are you both holding up?”
Hayleigh and Sophia exchanged a look like they were speaking telepathically. Then they both looked at Olivia.
“We’re glad to be home,” Hayleigh said. Sophia nodded to affirm and Olivia smiled at them both sympathetically.
“Well, we’re glad to have you both back. Now we need to find who did this to you. Is there anything you can tell us that might be useful? Would you be able to describe the kidnapper?”
Sophia shook her head. “She wore a mask the whole time. Like, one of those ski mask things.”
“She?” Brock asked, raising his eyebrow. Sophia nodded.
“She didn’t speak much, but when she did, it was clear she was a woman.”
“Can you describe her body type?” Olivia asked eagerly. Finally, they were getting somewhere.
“She was thin,” Hayleigh said, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. “We never saw her eat, and she didn’t feed us much. I think she forgot to.”
“I’m sorry about that, girls,” Brock said gently. “I think it would really help if we could hear both of your stories from the start. Can you tell us anything about how it happened? Starting with Sophia, since you disappeared first.”
The girl nodded with a little uncertainty. She was nothing like the strong-willed girl that Alice had described. At least, not anymore. Something had changed in her since she was taken away. She cleared her throat quietly.
“Well... I was heading out to meet my boyfriend. We usually go to the woods together at night to get away from the house. I always felt... suffocated. So I headed out on my own. Craig was going to meet me in our usual spot, to avoid my mom seeing him. I’ve walked that way a million times before, even before me and Craig started hanging out. Kids in this town always go out at night. If they want to have a life, that is. But as I was walking, I got this strange feeling. A feeling like I was being followed.”
Olivia felt a chill down her spine. “And did you manage to get a look at the person who was following you?”
“That’s the thing. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anyone, or hear anyone. The road is pretty open, I thought I’d be able to see if someone was behind me. But it’s dark there. There aren’t any lights. And that’s probably how she managed to sneak up at me. I didn’t see her as she attacked me. Just felt a hand clamp over my mouth and then she dragged me away. I was fighting against her. I was sure that I’d be able to fight her off. She didn’t feel strong. But she was determined. She kept shushing me. Almost like how a mother shushes a baby.”
Olivia and Brock exchanged a look. Maybe Olivia’s theory about the kidnapper being a parent didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Olivia turned back to Sophia.
“Are you okay to keep going?”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Well... she managed to get me into the back of her car. She had child lock on and I wasted a few seconds trying to get out of the back door. Then I tried to attack her when she got in the front of the car, but she pointed a gun at me, and I was so scared that I just... I just curled up on the backseat like a little kid. She told me to close my eyes so I did. I thought she’d kill me if I didn’t. But I don’t think that was ever her intention.”
“What makes you say that?” Brock asked curiously. Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, slumping in her seat.
“Because she kept referring to herself as ‘Mom’.”
Olivia felt a flutter of nerves and excitement in her stomach. This was the sign they’d been looking for. Proof that they were on the right track. Proof that they were looking for someone specific. She began to scribble notes in her notebook.
“Where did she take you?”
“Deep into the woods,” Sophia whispered. “She seemed to know where she was going. As soon as we got out of the car, she gagged me so I couldn’t scream and grabbed my arm and dragged me through the wilderness. It was so dark that I couldn’t see anything, but she seemed to be familiar with the path she was walking, even though the trees were scratching me the whole way. I begged her to let me go. I just wanted to go home, but she just kept shushing me. I kept thinking about the gun.”
“Could you describe the weapon?”
“I don’t know, some kind of pistol? I don’t know much about that kind of thing.”
“Okay. So she took you somewhere. Did you get a look at the place?”
“It was some kind of run-down cabin. She had a key for the door. There was no electricity inside, and it was really cold. She tied me up with rope. It hurt, but she said she didn’t want her baby to run away. She left me there for days and days. I didn’t see her for a long while. I couldn’t understand why I was there. When she came back, she fed me a little, but I was starving. Those days I was on my own, I didn’t see anyone else, drink anything, or eat anything. It was awful. I thought... I thought I was going to die.”
Olivia winced. It was a hard conversation to hear. But Sophia was giving them useful information. Now that they knew the kidnapper had held the girls in a cabin in the woods, they could narrow down the search.
“Just to backtrack a little, how long do you think you were in the car for?” Olivia asked. “Just so that we can have an idea of how far into the woods she took you.”
“I’m not sure. It felt like forever. But I think maybe it was only about twenty minutes.”
“Did she drive fast? Like she was in a hurry?”
“No, she was pretty calm. Weirdly calm, actually. Like she’d... like she’d done it before.”
Olivia nodded. They’d have to try and use that information to pinpoint a location.
“Okay, Hayleigh,” Brock said, moving the investigation forward. “You were taken in the middle of the night too. But from what we know, your situation was a little different. You were at a sleepover?”
“Yes,” Hayleigh said quietly. “It sounds terrible, but I remember thinking that night that I was glad I had all my friends around me. I felt safer after Sophia went missing. I thought that being surrounded by people would make me safer. But—but I was wrong.”
She sniffed and Sophia reached for her hand to give it a squeeze. Hayleigh took a deep breath, her face creased in fear as she recalled the night.
“I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I didn’t see the person sitting at the kitchen table until I heard the scrape of a chair. By then, it was too late. I felt someone grab me and they stuf
fed something in my mouth to stop me from screaming. Then they dragged me out of the back door. But there was something strange about it.”
“What was it?”
“Well, they got out a key and locked it. And that’s when I realized that whoever it was had let themselves in with a key.”
Olivia felt her chest tighten. She hadn’t been expecting that. So that was how the kidnapper was getting in and out of houses unnoticed. Did she have a key to Amelia’s house too, all the way up in Seattle? She shook her head in disbelief. That seemed far too strange. How would the kidnapper have keys to two houses thousands of miles apart?
“Are you sure? Your memory can play tricks on you when things get a bit crazy,” Olivia asked Hayleigh carefully. She nodded.
“I’m sure. I know it sounds weird, but that’s why I remember it so well. It was like time slowed for a minute as I watched her do it. I thought, how is that possible? But after that, I don’t remember a lot. She was holding me too tight. I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe. She dragged me away to a car parked outside my neighbor’s house. And then it was like Sophia said. She took me away in the car. She made me walk through the woods. But when I got there, the first thing I saw was Sophia. And I remember being glad I wasn’t alone.”
Olivia felt a pang of sadness for the pair of them. They were only teenagers. Still children. They didn’t deserve the horrors they’d had to endure.
“Can you tell us anything else about your time there?” Brock asked the girls. They exchanged another silent glance with one another.
“We tried our hardest to get away,” Sophia said. “We tried to help each other out of our rope ties, but it was no use. We tried screaming, but it was no use. We used all our energy on trying, and then we were just so hungry, so exhausted, so we just laid there on the cold floor, waiting for... Mom,” she says it with a bitter shudder. “She’d come every few days and she’d feed us, and then sometimes, she’d just stare at us. It was like she was examining us for something. Sometimes she’d click her tongue like she was disappointed in us.”
“Or she’d tell us we were wrong,” Hayleigh added. Brock frowned.
“Wrong about what?”
“Not wrong about something. More like there was something wrong with us. Like she was looking at us and finding all our flaws.”
Olivia made a note of that. If her theory was correct, maybe the kidnapper was discovering that no matter who she tried to replace her child with, no one was good enough. No one was similar enough. It would make all of the narrative she was building make sense.
“Okay, now one thing we really need to know. How did you get away?” Brock asked. Sophia sucked in a deep breath, glancing at Hayleigh.
“She let us go.”
Brock tapped his pen against the table. Olivia knew it wasn’t a complete shock to either of them. They’d known from the start that Amelia had been let go, but that was different. She wasn’t able to tell anyone about what had happened to her. Sophia and Hayleigh were able to tell them more than they’d even been able to figure out before. So why, was the question. Olivia couldn’t understand it.
“Do you know why she let you go?”
Sophia shook her head. “She changed. She was becoming more and more impatient with us. She shouted at us and told us we were wrong, over and over again. And then she lunged at us and we thought that was it. We thought she was going to hurt us. But she never tried to hit us or anything like that. And then, she started untying us. I kept thinking something terrible was going to happen, but she just turned away from us and told us to go. She seemed... upset?”
“She was crying,” Hayleigh whispered. “I almost—well, I felt a little sorry for her for a second. But that’s crazy, right? I just grabbed Sophia’s hand and we ran out together. It was still light when we left, but we were really weak and we got pretty lost, especially after sunset. But we just kept moving, wanting to get away from the cabin, and then eventually, we found you.”
“And I’m so glad that you did,” Olivia told them gently. “Everything you’ve told us has been really useful. Is there anything else you think might be helpful to us? It might seem small, but any details we can get might really help us find the person.”
Hayleigh took a deep breath. “There was something weird. She never asked what our names were, but she kept calling us both the same name. Sometimes she’d call us her little lollipops. But most of the time, she referred to us both as Lauren.”
Olivia’s heart skipped a beat. Was that important? Were they looking for someone who’d lost a child named Lauren? It might be the key link to the theory they’d constructed. Olivia noted down the name and underlined it, certain that it was going to be important.
“That’s amazing. Thank you, girls.”
“Are you going to go find her?” Hayleigh asked, chewing on her nail. Olivia nodded.
“Yes. We’re going to make sure she’ll never be able to do this to anyone again.”
“You should be careful,” Sophia said darkly. “Toward the end... she was getting more and more paranoid. I think she knew she was being chased by the police. She kept saying she was being watched.”
Olivia nodded. “Okay. We’ll keep that in mind.”
“I don’t think you should go out there,” Hayleigh said, her eyes wide. “She’s got a gun. She might hurt you.”
“Don’t you worry about all that,” Brock said firmly. “We know how to handle this. It’s our job. And we want to keep you and your families safe. We can handle it.”
Hayleigh didn’t look so sure, but she nodded anyway. Brock took a deep breath and smiled at the girls. “I think we’ve got everything we need for today. If we don’t manage to find anything today from the information you gave us, we might need to interview you again,” he told them. He slid them a fifty across the table. “Go and get yourselves some milkshakes at the diner. Our treat. Take your parents. I think you could all use it.”
For a split second, the girls giggled with glee, returning to their normal selves for just a moment as they forgot all about the horrible things they’d endured. It tugged at Olivia’s heartstrings. She was so happy to see them home that it still felt hard to believe it was actually happening. As she stood and collected her notes, the girls joined hands once again and rushed out to join their parents. Brock held back with Olivia, his face grave.
“We’re going in?” he asked.
Olivia nodded, the fire of determination burning through her veins. “We’re going in.”
Twenty-Five
The rest of the morning passed in a blur for Olivia. She and Brock had to prepare themselves to go after the kidnapper. If she’d had any sense, she would’ve fled the forest long ago, but Olivia knew well enough that paranoid people don’t often act rationally. She hoped that they’d find the mysterious kidnapper waiting for them in the cabin. But first, they had to find it.
Based on the information the girls had given her, Olivia narrowed down the area for the search a little, and then she used an online map to quickly scan the possible sections of the forest that matched the descriptions of clearings in the direction they had come from. It took her an hour of clicking and scanning the area, trying to make sense of the landscape before her. Then, eventually, she found something of interest. Deep in the heart of the woods, tucked nearly two dozen miles away from civilization, was a cabin in a small clearing. It was so small and obscure, she wouldn’t have even noticed it had she not known it was there. It barely showed up as a tiny brown smudge on the map. The area was overgrown, just like the girls had said. The cabin itself had clearly seen better days too.
“Well, I can certainly believe that’s the place they were held,” Brock murmured. “It doesn’t exactly look like a luxury cabin, does it? I’ll bet it doesn’t get electricity all the way out there. It’s off the grid.”
“Agreed. I think that’s the place,” Olivia said. “We should send it to the girls and get them to confirm.”
Olivia texted the girls,
who had given their numbers to her before they left the station. Hayleigh immediately texted back to confirm it was the right place. Olivia’s chest was tight with anxiety. They were so close to the end that her heart was racing in anticipation. She was ready for it all to be over. Of course, the hardest part was yet to come. Trying to catch someone as elusive as their kidnapper wasn’t going to be easy. She suspected the kidnapper would already be one step ahead. But so was she. She’d already donned her bulletproof vest. She was ready to go as soon as she needed to. And she wouldn’t leave those woods until she had something to show for her time there.
“So we’ve got our cabin,” Brock said. “Are we calling for backup?”
“No,” Olivia replied right away. “It’s one woman we’re dealing with. We don’t want to give her any reason to panic and start shooting. No, a one-on-one would be better, I think. I can go in on my own, with you as my backup.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? She seems really dangerous. Remember, this woman is capable of crossing the country without a single trace of evidence.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do, Olivia. I trust your judgment one hundred percent. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Olivia looked up at Brock. His eyes were filled with what seemed to be genuine concern. She smiled at him.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll be in and out of there, hopefully. From what I can tell, she’s very emotional. She lost something close to her and she’s been searching for a reprieve from her pain. I don’t think it comes from a place of destructive malice or of sheer criminality. Push comes to shove, she won’t die or try to kill me for this.”
“Underestimating her could get you hurt.”
Olivia nodded. “I know. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“You’d better be. I don’t want to lose the best partner I’ve ever had.”
Olivia felt her cheeks heating up. She knew they didn’t have time for such tender moments, but she wondered if maybe once it was over, they could spend a little more time together. Hadn’t he promised drinks all around once they caught the kidnapper? She could definitely get behind that idea.