I’d made up my mind and I was going to do it.
It…
There were several ‘its’ in my plan.
The plan to leave this godforsaken college which I knew was classed as highly esteemed. Just not for me. The plan to go to New York with Lana, and…the other plan I had that topped all of that.
I glanced at Lana in my room. She was packing her things for our trip to Charlotte. She got here last night and we had the most amazing time. Today we were going to the little hotel we’d christened our hideaway.
It overlooked the woods and felt like the place I wanted us to settle down in eventually.
God, had I changed and I’d be damned if I’d ever believe anyone who told me I’d be like this. I’d be this guy who was planning on asking his girl to marry him.
I’d completely changed around, even stopped smoking too. That was something I’d never planned to give up, but did it because while Lana thought it made me look cool, she worried about what it was doing to my health.
Anything for my girl, so I stopped.
“Ryan why do have so much chocolate?” She giggled, rushing over to grab a handful of chocolate eggs.
I smiled at her.
How was it possible that she looked more beautiful than just this morning.
“The guy down the hall is a chocoholic. He insisted I have these,” I answered, moving over to her to pull her into my arms.
She slipped her arms around me and smiled at first, then gave me that worried look she’d given me since I’d told her my plans for New York.
“You have that face again princess.” I pressed my forehead to hers.
“I’m worried Ryan. I just want you to be sure you’re doing the right thing. Leaving college is a big thing. It just feels like I’m going to Parsons to get qualified in what I want to do and you’re leaving here. It’s Georgetown.”
She lifted her head slightly so she could look at me.
“Lana, I don’t want to be here. I came for the year like I promised myself I would and I hate it just as much as I did when it was just an idea. Law isn’t me.”
I was going to take the year out and see what I could do in the art world. Then I thought of applying to art school in New York. I had it all covered.
“Your family are gonna lose it when they find out. Your mom especially.”
“Don’t worry about her. Time to truly start living, princess.” I smirked and gave her a wicked smile. “I want to talk to your mom about us.”
“Really? Ryan I’m just scared and worried over how we’ll pull this off.”
“Princess, me talking to your mom is more important than anything. I hope she’ll be happy for us. It would make things easier since I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t. Me telling her mother I was seeing her daughter was a matter of formality. Respect.
We’d been seeing each other for over two years. Sneaking around and seeing each other in secret.
Look at this beautiful girl in my arms.
Why the hell would I want to keep her secret?
No one would.
“I like that since you’re kind of stuck with me”
“How stuck? Are we talking for the weekend or longer?” I teased.
She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed me. “I love you Ryan O’Shea. You’re stuck with me for life. Where you go I follow.”
“I love you Lana Connell. Where you go I follow too.”
And that meant New York.
We were young and people might call us dumb and fools to love, but we knew what we were.
I knew what we were and it was true that where she went I followed.
That was how I wanted us to be for the rest of our lives.
* * *
Where was she…
There was no way she’d be late.
Something must have happened to her.
I imagined her crying somewhere grief-stricken for Amelia.
I imagined the worst.
It was natural given what had happened.
I’d never had anyone die on me before.
And… Amelia… I still couldn’t accept it. Still couldn’t believe it.
God…
It still didn’t feel real to me. Amelia dead.
It didn’t feel real to think it.
Two months ago Lana and I were in my room back at Georgetown. Life looked so promising then. We were going to leave for New York that same week. It was the end of semester and the start of the summer vacation break. Perfect.
Except it wasn’t.
Lana got a call the following morning from Dad telling her what happened to Amelia. I still remember her screams of pain and loss.
Her mother killed herself. There were so many questions, so much of everything.
Now I couldn’t find Lana. We were supposed to meet an hour ago and I couldn’t find her.
We were going to New York tonight.
Our stuff had already gone ahead to the apartment I’d gotten for us and our flight was in a few hours so there was time. I just wished I knew where she was.
I’d looked everywhere for her. Everywhere I thought she could be.
Now I was wondering if I’d pushed this too much.
Two months of being back at my parents, crying and going through the hell of being somewhere her mother should be but wasn’t any more. I’d thought it was a good idea to go ahead with our plans.
Plus I felt that us having our privacy as a couple gave me more room to take care of her the way I wanted.
The funeral was what got to me the most and pushed me to do this.
Bad enough that her aunt didn’t show, but I saw that look in her eyes of deep remorse. It was the look of someone who’d lost everything.
I wanted to take care of her and make sure she still got her dream.
I felt that was what Amelia would have wanted. She would have wanted to know that her girl got her dreams.
That was where I came in.
I’d tell my parents about us and me moving up there once we got settled in.
Right now I just needed to find Lana.
I went back to the last place I thought she’d be, which was the first place I’d looked.
Home.
I went straight there and my heart sank when she was nowhere to be found.
Jesus Christ, where was she?
I ended up in the library. Distressed, hopeless, powerless.
Out of options.
I pulled out my phone and called her again. It was perhaps the two hundredth call I’d made. Just like before the phone rang out to her voicemail.
I didn’t leave a message this time.
My heart ached, wanting an answer. Anything to give me an explanation of where she was.
What was she doing?
I just wanted to take care of her and help her get through this horrendous time. I hoped she knew that.
Maybe she’d lost her phone.
Maybe that was it.
That had to be why she wasn’t answering. Lana always answered on the first ring.
When footsteps echoed behind me I whirled around hoping it was her.
It wasn’t though. It was Mom.
“Mom, have you seen Lana?” I asked.
She came up to me and looked me over with concern. “Not in the last hour son. Is everything okay? Stupid question given what we’ve been through. You just look flustered.”
“You saw her in the last hour?” I ignored the rest of her observation. I wasn’t okay and I didn’t have time to explain why. I just wanted to find Lana.
“Yes, she said something about seeing a friend in Charlotte. I offered to give her a ride to the station but she wanted to be alone. I’m worried Ryan. She took a bag. It looked like she may stay overnight.”
All I could do was stare at her.
What was she saying to me?
Lana went to Charlotte to see a friend and she left an hour ago with a bag?
What the fuck?
“Mom, are you sure she s
aid Charlotte?”
We were supposed to be meeting at the coffeehouse in town. She’d wanted to get a few things and I had stuff of my own to do. We’d left each other this morning with the plan to meet at three. It was seven now. Our flight was at nine thirty.
“I’m positive. What’s going on Ryan?” Her eyes searched mine. “Is she okay?” She brought a hand to her heart and winced.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh heavens. I’m going to contact your father. We have to find her. The poor girl. She mustn’t be alone at this time. It’s important that we’re there for her as much as we can be. She needs to know we’re here for her.”
Numbness filled me as I nodded.
Charlotte… why would she go there?
This was my fault. I’d pressured her too much. I should have backed off.
“I’m going to see if I can catch up with her at the station.” I’d go there first then head to Charlotte.
There could only be one place she’d go to. There was a little hotel we liked to stay at when we went there. She had to have been heading there.
Lana didn’t tend to go anywhere else there, and she’d never been there without me.
I rushed away, my legs taking me as fast as possible. Then I drove away equally fast after I jumped in my car.
Lana where are you?
Princess, where are you?
Chapter 20
Lana
Present day …
I’d gathered more strength.
It came with the fire that burned within me for justice.
My body was still quite weak from the crying and the shock of the news but in my head I’d mustered up the courage to be brave.
That zeal for justice carried me to Detective Gracen’s office.
I sat before him now, still fragile, but trying to focus.
He straightened up in his chair and continued to stare at me. It seemed like he was contemplating the best way to talk to me.
We’d practically sat in silence for the last few minutes. I appreciated his patience with me, and compassion.
“How are you feeling today?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure.” I met his concern-filled gaze with the pain in my eyes and his brows lowered.
“I am truly sorry Lana.” He nodded. “When we first met I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
I pressed my hands into my thighs. It was a nervous habit I used to have. That and sweaty palms. So when I did both there would be two wet patches on my thighs that would always look odd.
I raised my shoulders and mirrored the way he sat, straightening up too.
“You knew… Didn’t you?” I had to ask because looking back to that meeting we’d had a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think he suspected this.
It was his body language and the things he’d said. What he’d said about me not getting to know him on a personal level. And that last thing about questioning. It all lended to some deeper level of suspicion and prep for something that might happen.
The prelude.
It was what you called a prelude. All of it. From the time I left Wilmington until now - that was a prelude and this was the main event.
Detective Gracen nodded slowly, confirming my thoughts.
“It’s hard when you’re dealing with nice people. Normal people who clearly loved their lost ones. I first started working this unit twenty years ago.” He pressed his fists together and his eyes clouded. “A little girl went missing. We looked for her for a year. The parents were beside themselves with worry. They were a mess. A complete mess. Who was a mess too was the girl’s uncle. Almost more than the parents.”
He stopped for a moment like it was difficult to continue. “Lana, I confess that I go with my gut. I go with my gut and my heart next. It sounds like crazy talk to a lot of cops because how can you? Anyway, my gut told me something was off. This guy being more devastated than the parents showed deeper remorse. To me it did. A year of looking and I went on my own rogue mission following my gut instinct that told me this guy knew more than what we had on record. I followed him and noticed he kept going to a particular spot by the lake. He’d start crying. He’d go there, stand there for a few minutes and start crying.” He rested his arms on the table and his shoulders tensed. “To the casual bystander he looked like the grieving uncle who might have been reminiscing about his days spent with his little niece by the lake. But fuck, to me I saw something else. Instinct make me call a team to the site and we found the bones of the girl’s body. It turned out he’d killed her. He wanted his brother’s wife and she refused him so he kidnapped the little girl to hold her as ransom. She tried to escape and he caught up with her and took out his frustration on her, hitting her with a rock. To this day he’ll say he didn’t know what came over him, or why he did it. The moral of the story is; things are not always what they seem. You have to push deeper to get to the crux of the matter. No matter the cost.”
The tears that I’d been holding back spilled down my cheek and I pulled in a breath, loosening the constriction in my lungs. I didn’t realize I hadn’t been breathing the whole time he spoke.
What a heart-rending story. It tugged on my heart in so many ways.
I nodded, showing my understanding.
“My gut told me she never killed herself. My mom never killed herself. I was stuck between sticking to my guns about what I personally believed and what I saw or was told to believe. It didn’t make sense.”
“It never usually does at first. When the pieces of the puzzle start coming together it all fits and you wonder how you never saw it before, or how you missed something so obvious,” he surmised. “Lana, I will tell you this too, that when I decided to reopen the investigation I probably didn’t have as much evidence or support as you normally need to do that. I’m trusted here and if I say something looks off people jump to attention and look into it.”
“How did you come by the case?” I was pretty certain he’d given a roundabout answer to that when we first met but what I was asking was a very different question.
He smiled a little smile that didn’t exactly show humor. It was more for effect. As if he liked to show how right he could be. “I like snooping around. Comes with the title - Detective. From time to time I go over stuff. Old cases. I retire next year and maybe I just want to make sure I’m covering all bases before I go. So I was looking through some seriously old files in the archives. When I say old I mean old. Like from the last fifty years. I was the one who found the missing document from your mother’s autopsy. It was just in the files randomly. Definitely didn’t belong there. It looked like someone had misplaced it. Now this has come about I truly believe it got in the files by accident. I ran a search on it based on the reference number on the print out and that was when I found the details linking to your mother’s case. Except the data on her files listed everything as inconclusive. Suspicion jumped out at me because I had a report that said otherwise. Couldn’t read much into it because I’m not scientific but you get my drift.”
“I do.” I sighed.
“That was how this whole thing took off. Now Lana, it looks to me like someone went through a lot of trouble to A- kill your mother and make it look like a suicide and B- infiltrate the coroner’s office and work things to their advantage from this side. Do you know anyone like that?”
I was waiting for that question. It was one I’d asked myself hundreds of times.
“No.” I shook my head. That was the answer I’d come up with over and over again.
He held my gaze and inclined his head to the side. “When we met first, you said you saw your mother crying and she mentioned your aunt. Have you thought there might be a connection there?”
“I have. Detective Gracen, since I got this news I’ve been thinking of everything, and everyone. Everyone who could fit. I can’t think of anybody. I can’t.” I brushed away a tear and dabbed at my eyes. “I feel like a failure right now, because I’m supposed to be able to he
lp. I spent so much time with her. You’d think I’d know if a person evil enough to kill her existed.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Think back to my story about the little girl. No one suspected the uncle. Why would they? His grief surpassed the girl’s parents. In your case I suspect someone walking around wearing a mask. People do that. They cover up who they really are. If we’d simply found that she’d been murdered I would be looking out on a wider spectrum, but the document … the document and the way it was discovered, the way it was omitted and the way it was all set up to show something tells me more. I don’t think we’re looking at someone she didn’t know, it was someone she knew.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Someone she knew?”
He leaned forward and tapped the desk. “Let’s leave it here, girl. I will do the rest. That was just to prepare you and maybe jog your memory.”
I looked at him, noted the firmness in his eyes and realized just like I did at that first meeting that he suspected more than he was saying.
He looked like he had a suspect in mind.
God in heaven… he actually had a suspect in mind.
“Who do you think it is?” I asked outrightly.
He shook his head at me. “Let’s leave it here Lana. I’ve probably said more than I should.”
I bit the inside of my lip and nodded, accepting. Knowing I’d have to wait to find out.
* * *
I headed back to Ryan’s house.
We’d planned to meet up there.
While I’d gone to see Detective Gracen, Ryan went to meet with a private investigator in town.
I couldn’t wait to see him to find out if there was anything he’d thought about.
What would he think though, when I told him all the ideas that Detective Gracen believed.
Detective Gracen had a suspect in mind and wouldn’t say who it was. That could mean so many things.
It could be that he didn’t want to say anything because there wasn’t enough evidence as yet to incriminate the person. It could also mean there was and he was holding off telling me because of procedure.
Also, I got the impression that he was a compassionate person. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me just yet because it would hurt me.
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