When She Returned

by Berry, Lucinda

  He pulled away. “She’s still not back from her CAT scan.” His eyes filled with tears. “How did I not see this?”

  He’d be asking himself that question for a long time. We didn’t have time for his guilt now. “How badly is she hurt?” I asked.

  “Pretty banged up. It looks like she put up a fight. Just like they taught her.” His voice caught. Dean had insisted Abbi take a self-defense class when she was thirteen. She’d loved it.

  “And Kate?”

  His entire body stiffened. “She’s fine. In a holding cell at the moment. They didn’t touch her.”

  “I don’t understand any of this. How did they know where they were? Who was involved?”

  Just then the double doors opened, and Dean burst through them. Scott and I rushed to him, trying not to talk on top of each other with our questions. He held his hand up and motioned to the chairs lining the hallway. “Why don’t you take a seat so we can talk?”

  Scott shook his head, so I stayed standing next to him. “Just tell me what happened,” he said. “Everything.”

  “Sure. Absolutely.” Dean nodded a few times in rapid succession. “We left the wiretap on your phone lines after we removed the surveillance equipment, just in case someone from Love International contacted Kate. We never expected her to be the one to contact them,” he said. “We were in complete shock the first time she reached out.”

  I stopped him. “I thought they were these remote outcasts. How’d they have phones, let alone service?”

  “We don’t know about any of the others, but Ray has been in San Francisco, and he’s the one she’s been talking to.” Dean paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. The bags underneath his eyes suggested he’d been up for days. “There’s a few things you need to know about Ray. First, he’s also who Kate refers to as Abner. We’ve always operated under the theory that Abner was some kind of divine being they believed in as part of their whacked-out theology. Early on we considered the possibility that he might be a person, but we ruled it out fairly quickly, because of the way she spoke about him. Basically, we thought he was their god.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Turns out, he is, in a way, just not how we imagined. Kate says he’s Shiloh’s father. We put a rush on the DNA, but she has no reason to lie about that, so it’s a pretty safe bet to assume that he is. Also, you should know she’s been referring to herself as his wife since they brought her in.”

  I felt Scott’s sharp intake of breath beside me. I’d always suspected Ray was Shiloh’s father. Hadn’t he? I’d always assumed it was why we hadn’t talked about it. Everything was awkward enough without addressing that part of the equation.

  “Is that why she came home?” The color drained from his face. “To bring Abbi back to him?”

  I placed my hand on his arm. “Let’s try and sit, okay?” I led him to the chairs Dean had motioned to earlier, and he reluctantly took a seat in the one next to me. I tucked my purse underneath my feet.

  Dean leaned against the hallway wall and crossed his arms on his chest. “Something legitimately spooked Kate enough to leave Love International. Her terror in the beginning was real, so it had to be pretty bad. But that’s the thing with domestic violence victims—the fear never keeps them away. They go back. She was the one who made initial contact, and her voice changed as soon as she heard his. She was under his spell almost immediately, talking in this weird submissive tone I’d never heard her use. By the end of their first phone call, she was begging him to come back. In the beginning, he refused to take her back. He—”

  Scott interrupted. “Why did she contact him the first time? Did she ever say?”

  “She did, but I don’t want either of you to ever tell Abbi what I’m about to tell you.” His eyes were serious.

  Scott and I exchanged a glance before nodding our agreement. What could he possibly have to tell us that we couldn’t share with Abbi?

  “Abbi and Kate looked at Ray’s pictures on social media together at night. Seeing his picture set her off, and it was enough of a pull for her to reach out to him. Then, once she heard his voice, it was over.”

  We’d told Abbi so many times to stay away from social media on the case, but how could I be mad at her about it when I’d done the same thing? There was no way she’d considered how it might trigger Kate. I hoped she would never make the connection, for her sake.

  “Because she saw a picture? That’s all it took?” Scott asked.

  I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or hurt. Maybe a combination of both.

  “It’s not that simple. You have to think of her as a domestic violence victim. Most women never leave their abusers, or if they do, it takes them an average of seven times before they’re successful,” Dean explained.

  Scott didn’t look convinced. I shared his skepticism. She couldn’t leave her abuser, but she could plan her daughter’s kidnapping?

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “She wanted to come back, but he refused to take her. She’d betrayed him by leaving, but Kate kept begging for his forgiveness and saying she was willing to do anything. That’s when everything turned. He started toying with her, asking her to do little things to prove herself to him, and she did.”

  Scott interrupted again. “Like what kinds of things?”

  For a brief second, embarrassment flashed across his expression before he quickly erased it.

  “Things of a sexual nature and others of a punishing nature. She’s covered in self-inflicted wounds running down her legs that she’s been carving into herself as a form of penance. She’ll show them to you if you ask her. She’s quite proud of them.”

  Scott gripped both sides of his chair. I was grateful we’d sat down. He looked almost as wrecked as he’d been the day we found out she had returned.

  “Kate kept coming up with ways to prove her loyalty, and eventually they agreed she could come back, on the condition that she brought Abbi with her. We—”

  “Why did you let them kidnap her?” Scott interrupted him. “If you knew that was what they were going to do, why’d you let them go through with it?”

  It was Dean’s turn to look uncomfortable. He shifted in his position. “We knew this case would be huge as soon as we found out she’d been with Love International. One of the first things we did was investigate any former complaints or charges against them, and we didn’t have to look far. Cases popped up everywhere, especially the one of a twenty-four-year-old girl named Willow. Her parents always suspected Love International had something to do with her disappearance, and they’d never given up looking for her. They were extremely helpful with our investigation.” He cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “The good thing about guys like Ray is that they think they’re smarter than everybody else and above the law, so their conversations were gold mines of information, because they never expected anyone to be listening. It wasn’t long before we were connecting dots everywhere. Unfortunately, the dots led to three bodies in Oregon that our teams found in unmarked graves.”

  Scott narrowed his eyes to slits. “You’re still not answering my question. Why let them kidnap Abbi?”

  “We needed to get them on kidnapping charges so that we had something that would stick. We hope one of them flips on the other, but we needed to hold them long enough to build our case against them. And this case is going to be huge. Believe me, Scott, so many families are going to get answers once this is all said and done.”

  Scott leaped up from his chair and shook his finger at Dean. “You used her as bait! That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? How could you?”

  Dean lifted his hands in surrender. “Please, Scott. I’m sorry, but just listen to me. Each step of the way was carefully monitored, and, believe me, Scott, I wouldn’t have done it if there was any other way.”

  “Carefully monitored?” Scott shrieked. “I just heard on the news before Meredith got here that someone died at the scene.”

  I jumped up next to him. “What?” I wanted to hit
Dean too.

  “Calm down, please. Calm down. We do things like this all the time. It’s what we’re trained to do.”

  I didn’t care how many times he’d done it. This was Abbi we were talking about.

  “Ray’s partner, Will, fired at the police officers, and they had no choice but to use deadly force to protect themselves,” Dean said, like that excused his behavior.

  “And if he would’ve chosen to shoot Abbi instead?” Scott asked what I was thinking.

  Dean didn’t have a response. I’d never seen him speechless before. I couldn’t help but wonder what Abbi knew about all of this. “Can we see Abbi now?” I asked.

  “Abbi says Kate is the one who locked her inside the van. She heard them talking while she was inside about how much they’d missed each other and how proud the Lord must be of them. It makes me sick,” Scott said.

  I reached out and took his hand. “She’s delusional, Scott. That’s what you’ve never understood. I’m sure she used to be a rational and logical human being, but she’s been warped. But right now, we can’t focus on that. We need to go to Abbi. She needs us.”

  FORTY-THREE

  ABBI

  NOW

  The police station resembled my doctor’s office. It even had stands filled with old magazines. The only telltale sign was the receptionist’s desk shrouded in Plexiglas. The room was practically empty except for a woman in the corner frantically tapping away on her phone. Dad gripped my arm while the receptionist pressed the button requesting an officer to take us back to Mom. They’d kept me in the hospital overnight for observation, and I’d begged Dad to take me to the police station before he brought me home. He didn’t like the idea, but Meredith encouraged him to take me, and he’d finally relented. Meredith had opted out of the meeting, saying she was exhausted and needed to lie down, but she didn’t want to see Mom any more than he did.

  The doors buzzed, and an officer walked through, scanning us up and down on the spot. I’d expected him to be in his uniform, but he was wearing a collared shirt tucked into formal pants. “Scott Bennett?” he asked. A clear formality since there wasn’t another man in the room.

  Dad stepped forward, and I fell in line next to him.

  “This way,” the officer said.

  Dad and I didn’t speak as we followed him down the corridor. A series of identical metal doors lined each side. My head throbbed with a headache that hadn’t left since they’d thrown me in the van. I didn’t like how the pain medication made me feel, so I hadn’t taken any this morning, but I was starting to regret it. Dad kept turning around to make sure I was okay. He wasn’t going to let me out of his sight for a long time, but I was okay with that. All I wanted to do was curl up in a blanket on the couch at home and watch movies once this was over with.

  The officer stopped at one of the doors and scanned his keycard to open it. He held the door for us, and we hurried inside. The room was square with almost perfect lines. A table stood in the center with two chairs on either side. An old-fashioned water dispenser, the kind we used in elementary school with coned cups, stood in the corner. Dad and I took a seat next to each other on the chairs. The door clicked shut behind the officer.

  “How are you doing?” Dad asked.

  “I’m okay,” I lied. What did people do after their mother kidnapped them? Her arraignment was tomorrow, and they were charging her with kidnapping and obstructing justice, both felonies. They’d offered her a plea bargain for any information she gave them on Ray, but she had refused. No surprise.

  “You should be at home resting,” he said.

  “Dad, I’m fine.” He acted like I had some terminal illness. “Are you okay?”

  He hadn’t seen Mom since it had happened, and he had sworn the only time he ever wanted to see her again was in court. But then I had asked to visit, and he hadn’t had a choice, since there was no way he’d let me go by myself.

  “I just want to get this over as quickly as possible,” he said. The red light from the camera blinked above his head. The room was probably wired for sound too. But this wasn’t about getting information.

  Mom shuffled into the room with her hands in front of her in cuffs. The legs of her pale-blue jumpsuit were too long and dragged on the floor as she walked. Her hair was matted in a big ball behind her, like she hadn’t brushed it for weeks, even though she’d only been here overnight. She rushed forward like she was going to hug me.

  “No touching.” The officer jerked her back and nudged her to the other side of the table. “Sit,” he ordered.

  Mom sat on command, stretching her hands in front of her. The officer unlatched Mom’s cuffs. She twirled her wrists in circles, like they needed to stretch, then clasped them in her lap.

  “Oh Abbi, thank God you’re here. Are you okay?” she asked. New wrinkles lined her face. Dark bags circled her eyes.

  Was her concern real? Did she care? “I’m fine,” I said, setting my jaw. It hurt, but I wouldn’t cry. I would do what I’d come here to do. I needed her to look me in the eye and tell me what she’d done—what would’ve happened if Dean and his men hadn’t jumped out to stop them.

  “The police took Shiloh. Just ripped her away from me like savage beasts. Can you believe that? She’s breastfeeding.” She jiggled her legs while she spoke. “How’s she going to eat, Abbi? She doesn’t have teeth. She’s never eaten any food. What if they give her that poison?” Her words dripped with hysteria. “Will you help me? Please? There has to be a law against this. Mothers can’t be separated from their babies. Please help.”

  “I don’t know anything about the law and babies,” I said. How could she have a baby with that monster? What did that make her? At least Shiloh was going to be with a family that would keep her away from them. Dean said there was a list a mile long of people who wanted to adopt babies.

  Dad stiffened next to me, staring at her with anger radiating off him. She’d never felt permanent to me, and I’d been collecting memories of my own as we went along, because I wasn’t getting stuck without any this time. I’d kept pieces of her—the towel she’d used on her hair, a corner of the ratty shirt she’d slept in every night, and the toothbrush she’d used at the hospital. Were they all tainted with her lies now? Part of me wanted to gather them all together and burn them in a big pile in the front yard.

  “Can you imagine?” She broke down in tears in the same way she had during her first few days with us. Wrecked. Pitiful. So much that you felt sorry for her and wanted to help her. Even now her tears pulled at me. “Poor Shiloh.”

  Had she never thought about getting caught? Or was she that sure of their plan?

  “You said once that you wanted us to have an honest relationship. Did you mean that?” I asked.

  She nodded through her tears. “I meant everything, Abbi. Everything.” Snot dripped onto her upper lip, unapologetically.

  “Where were we going that night?” I asked like I didn’t already know. I’d spent the last twenty-four hours being questioned by police and investigators and was well versed in their plan. Ray had wanted Mom to bring me to him as some bizarre loyalty test to show her repentance for leaving. I refused to listen to the FBI recordings of her phone conversations with him. I wanted her to say it to me. It didn’t matter how many times Dad walked me through it. None of it would feel real unless it came from her.

  Her eyes darted around the room, and she lowered her voice. “We can talk about that later. It was all part of the Lord’s plan. His plans are not always easy. Sometimes they are very difficult.” She choked on a sob.

  Which part was difficult? I wanted to ask. Giving me up to your psycho leader? Was that hard? Or had that been easy? Was she talking about how hard it had been for her to be away from them all this time?

  “I thought about backing out, Abbi. I did.”

  Except she didn’t. As if thinking about it meant anything. It wasn’t even a cheap consolation prize. “Please, Mom, just tell me where we were going?”

  “It do
esn’t matter.” She straightened in her seat, twisting her hands in her lap.

  She had no grasp on reality if she thought it didn’t matter. It meant everything. “Why were you going back to them?” I asked, trying not to cry.

  She stood, then quickly sat again. “None of this is important. Where’s Abner?”

  And then it hit me—she wasn’t going back to them; she was going back to him. Had it always been about him? Was Love International just the excuse to make it okay to leave us? I leaned into Dad. He put a supportive arm around me. Maybe he was right. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked.

  I saw his beady eyes every time I closed my eyes to sleep. I hadn’t slept since the attack. Dean told me it was normal and would pass over time. He said he’d get me help if it didn’t.

  I shook my head.

  Mom laid her hands on her chest and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, followed by another. Some of the tension left her face. “Oh thank God, he’s here. I can feel him. As long as we’re still together, we can get through anything.” She took another deep breath, as if she tasted him in the air. She let him fill her before blowing him back out.

  “Actually, you’re wrong,” I blurted out. “He’s not here.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “Where is he?” She leaned across the table. “I thought you didn’t know where he was.”

  “I don’t know where he is, but I do know who he’s with,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying anything about Ray—or whatever his name was—but it hurt that all she cared about was him.

  She practically leaped across the table, every muscle in her neck strained forward. “Where is he?” she asked again, scanning the room like I might be hiding him.

  “His mom bailed him out last night,” I said.

  Mom’s face contorted into the same shocked expression as Dad’s face had last night when they’d told him the news. She jerked her head back and forth. “What? No. That’s not possible. His mom died when he was sixteen.”