by K. C. Crowne
When my vision cleared, I was on Noah’s bed, flat on my back. He’d entwined his fingers with mine and pinned my hands over my head. I felt weak and exhausted, as if I’d just completed a marathon. My body was so sensitive to his every move that if he hadn’t been holding me down, I thought I might not have been able to stay still.
And his control had finally fractured. He thrust into me erratically, his breath coming in frantic gasps, his hands flexing and clenching in mine. It was amazing to watch him come apart like this. I wanted it to last forever, and I wanted to feel him cum right away.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, finding a new angle that made me gasp in pleasure.
“Oh, God,” he moaned quietly in my ear. I knew he was trying to keep the movement we made to a minimum so Tess wouldn’t pick up on any vibrations, and I could feel how much effort it took. I could feel every strain of every muscle in his perfectly sculpted body. “Jenna, what are you doing to me?”
“I want you to come,” I whispered in his ear, feeling hot and desperate and animal.
And he did, his hips pistoning forward with such beautiful pressure that it drove me over the edge for a second time, and I felt the mattress fall away underneath me as I wrapped myself around him and lifted my body up to his.
Chapter 27
Noah
Waking up next to Jenna would never not feel miraculous.
Today, though, nobody’s house had been broken into, and that made it far and away better than the last time.
I rolled over and kissed her cheek softly until she opened her eyes. She tipped her head toward me on the pillow and smiled. It was somewhat rueful, that smile. But it was a smile nonetheless, and I’d take that.
“I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to Sara,” she said.
“Do you wish you hadn’t stayed?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “You know that, though. You know I can’t unwish any of what happened, even if I really should.”
“Should you?”
“How are you going to explain it to Tess?”
“I mean, I’m not going to tell her.”
“Very funny. I meant, how are you going to explain the fact that I’m still here?”
“I’ll tell her you and I watched a movie last night and you decided to sleep over. We’ll say you slept in the guest room. That’s not a big deal.”
“And you don’t think that will upset her?” Jenna asked.
“Why would it?”
“I don’t know. It’s complicated.” She gave me a little smirk.
“Come on, let’s just sneak you into the guest room before she wakes up.”
Jenna nodded, tugged on her jeans, and pulled her sweater over her head. I tied my bathrobe around my waist and peered out into the hall. “Coast is clear,” I said, waving her past me.
Jenna stepped out of my room and into the hall—and stopped.
She turned around, confusion and worry etched on her face. “Noah? Tess’s not in her room.”
“What?” I looked at the clock. It was seven in the morning on a Sunday. “There’s no way she’s already up. That girl loves to sleep in.”
“Well, her bedroom door is open, and she’s not in there.”
I came out into the hall to see for myself, and when I saw the empty room, I felt an immediate stab of worry. “I guess she probably got up to make breakfast,” I hoped aloud, trying to wave my concern away.
But Tess wasn’t in the kitchen, either, and when I called her cell phone she didn’t answer. Jenna and I walked through every room, looking for her with no luck.
I had never once wished that my daughter wasn’t deaf. It was a part of her identity, and it had given her access to a language and culture she never would have experienced otherwise. But today, as I raced around the house frantically, I wished for the first time ever that I could scream her name and she could hear me.
I checked rooms over and over. I was coming to an unavoidable conclusion, but I had to be wrong. I had to be.
Finally, I could deny it no longer.
Tess wasn’t in the house.
“Is there anyone we can call?” Jenna asked, looking very pale. “Is there a friend whose house she might have gone to?”
“She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me first. No, this isn’t like her at all.”
“I’ll call the police,” Jenna announced. “Get a glass of water. Sit down. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I can’t sit down. I have to—” to what? I’d have done anything, gone to the ends of the Earth, to make sure Tess was safe. But there was nothing I could do. I didn’t know where she was.
Time seemed to move in fits and starts. I sat on a barstool at my kitchen counter, a glass of cold water sweating on my hand, Jenna talking to the police on the phone. Then she was standing in front of me, a hand on my arm. “They think she’s probably run away.”
“Tess wouldn’t run away.” I felt like my head was full of cotton.
“She’s a twelve-year-old girl.”
“She’s deaf and we only have each other. She wouldn’t run away from me.” I couldn’t think clearly. All I knew was that Tess wasn’t there, and that that meant something was wrong. “She wouldn’t just leave.”
“She did run off that morning when I found her in the store,” she commented.
My head jerked up, and I glared at her. “She didn’t run off, she skipped school. On the anniversary of her mother’s death.”
Jenna’s eyes were wide, and she stammered. “I—I know, but I’m just saying…”
“You don’t need to say anything,” I grouched, jumping up. “She’d never leave her phone here.”
“It’s here?”
“On the coffee table,” I said, pointing.
She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah…she wouldn’t have left without it. No teenager would.”
I wanted to remind her Tess wasn’t a teenager yet, but that seemed petty. I cleared my throat and rose, pacing through the living room. I could feel her eyes on me as I walked around the room. My mind was moving as fast as my feet. Where could she have gone? I jerked to a stop. LM. LM might be behind this. I looked at Jenna, wondering if I could get her to leave without being a total ass. I had to check my email.
Jenna watched me with big eyes, fear in them. “Do you think she knew I stayed over?”
An opportunity. “What are you talking about?”
“She could have been trying to...I don’t know, tell us something.”
“Like what?” I asked, my face scrunched up as if I thought she was asking dumb questions.
“Like she isn’t okay with what’s going on between us.”
“That’s crazy.” I couldn’t let her feel blame for Tess’s disappearance. “She wanted to invite you over.”
“Maybe she didn’t realize how uncomfortable it would make her to have me here until I was here.” Jenna took a deep breath, and I could tell she was steadying herself to say something difficult. “Well, maybe she thinks I’m moving in on her mother’s place.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was a ludicrous idea—no one could ever replace Tess’s mother. But at the same time, it made some sense. Maybe she found another woman’s presence in our lives threatening. No, Tess was too happy when Jenna was here. I felt like something more sinister may have happened, and I had to do something.
Jenna seemed to take my silence for agreement. “I should go,” she announced. “I should let you deal with this. Give you space. I’m so sorry, Noah. I’m sorry I let things go as far as they did. If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to call.”
I didn’t want her to leave. Physically, emotionally, I ached for the comfort I got when she was near. But I couldn’t seem to find the words, and she let herself out of the house without looking back.
Tess…
I walked to the coffee table and picked up her phone. The only missed calls were from me in the last
few minutes, and she had no texts that weren’t from friends or from me. The weirdest part, no scariest part, was that she was gone but the phone was here.
She would never run away and leave her phone behind.
If she’d left voluntarily, she would have taken her phone with her, no question in my mind.
My blood was freezing in my veins as terrible thoughts tried to push into my mind. I grabbed my laptop and opened my email, but there were no new messages.
I had to search her room. Maybe I would find something up there. Some clue.
I checked her closet first, looking for missing clothes or maybe a piece of luggage that was gone. Something that would indicate she’d packed a bag and planned not to be back for a while. It looked like all her clothes were still there, although I couldn’t be positive. Her Wonder Woman roller suitcase still sat in the closet, as did her purple and white backpack. Her favorite sneakers were on the mat by her bedroom door.
Her bed was unmade.
Tess.
I was so dazed, so utterly unglued, that it took me several minutes in my daughter’s room to notice the thing that didn’t belong—a yellow piece of legal paper, folded in half, on her otherwise clear desk.
A note.
I reached out and picked it up, flicked it open.
The handwriting wasn’t my daughter’s.
You should have complied. Think carefully before you go to the cops. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your pretty little girl.
It wasn’t signed.
But I knew who it was from. Kepler. LM. Their organization. They had my daughter.
I felt like I might explode. I crumpled the note in my fist, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing it was evidence and that I needed to show it to the police. I’ll go to the precinct right now, I thought, getting to my feet. Having a goal, a destination, a next step, cleared my head a little. I would show them this note, and they would see that she hadn’t run away from home. She’d been taken.
If they hurt her, if they harm one hair on her head…
I couldn’t even think about it. I refocused on the task at hand. Go to the precinct. Talk to the police. I would tell them everything I knew. I would turn over my emails. LM, whoever he really was, couldn’t possibly have believed I’d continue to stay quiet about everything I knew if my daughter was in danger.
Unless…would they hurt her if I told the truth?
Maybe she was only safe as long as I kept my silence.
I felt as if I was about to fall off a cliff. What the hell was I going to do?
I decided to go down and talk to the cops. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit around here waiting for further instructions. I could decide how much to tell them when I got there. But they needed to know that she hadn’t run away. As things stood, they weren’t even going to look for her. They were planned to wait and see if she came home. Who knew what might happen to her before the Mob, or whoever they were, decided to show their cards?
But the moment I stepped outside my front door, everything changed again.
Eric was standing on the sidewalk right outside my house.
Eric.
Fucking Eric.
My vision went red around the edges, and suddenly I had his lapels in my hands, pulling him to me, shaking him hard. “Where is she!” I yelled. “Where the fuck is she?”
“Where—where’s who, man?”
“Where’s my daughter, you jittery fuck? Don’t tell me you came around here at seven in the morning on a Sunday because you were looking for money again. I know you had something to do with this!”
“Noah, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s going on with Tess?”
I felt my hands tighten. How dare he say her name to me? How dare he loiter out here like he didn’t know what was going on. “Tell me where she is, or I swear to God I’ll break your face.”
“Mr. Clark!”
Hands were on my shoulders, pushing at me, corralling me. Tearing me away from Eric. He looked at me with fear in his eyes. My doorman wrapped his arm around my chest and held me still as I fought to throw him off, to get back to Eric, to shake the truth from him.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Eric said, and I noticed that there was a crowd beginning to form around us. “He’s insane. Lost it.” He pushed his way between two women and disappeared.
I fought to go after him, but my doorman was still holding me back. He was a big guy, hired for his ability to physically restrain people from entering the building when they shouldn’t.
But someone had been in my home last night.
Someone had left that note and taken my little girl.
The burst of rage I felt at that thought gave me the strength to shake my way loose. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, knowing that I needed a lifeline. I needed something.
But Jenna had called the police, and they’d told her they couldn’t file a missing person’s report for twenty-four hours. Because she’d skipped school, they would assume she’d run off, as they’d told her, though they wouldn’t have that information unless I told them.
Telling them about LM at this point also seemed like a bad idea. They’d contact me, tell me what I needed to do to get her back, and I’d do it. End of story.
I returned to the living room, opened my laptop and the email, then sat and waited. My night would be a sleepless one.
Chapter 28
Noah
The following morning, when I’d heard nothing from LM, I wrestled with the idea of giving the threatening note left in my house to the police. If this could be used as a clue, if it could help them find her…
But what if I was being watched? What if the mob was waiting to see what I would do next? They wanted me to prove I was on their side. I couldn’t put that out of my mind. Nothing would establish me as more clearly not on their side than reporting them to the police.
I felt like I was losing my mind. I hadn’t slept a wink. It killed me that Tess was in the hands of those people, that they might be hurting her.
I had to do something.
I picked up my phone and dialed the private investigator, Paul.
“Still working on Robertson and Butler,” Paul said as a greeting. He was all business as always. “I haven’t found any conclusive patterns from either of them.”
“Set that aside for a while,” I said. “I have something else I need you to work on.”
“Alright, ”
“My daughter. She’s been kidnapped.”
A long pause. “Tell me everything,” he said. I heard a drawer open and the rattling of paper.
I wished I felt free to confide in him about LM and Kepler and the threats that had been made against me. But how was he going to gather information if I didn’t give him something?
What I really needed was a way to get in touch with them so I didn’t make a mistake, like telling the cops or Paul about LM.
I told Paul everything I could. I told him how I’d woken up to find her missing. I told him about Eric’s weird behavior, and about Jenna’s apartment being broken into. I told him that Jenna suspected the son of one of her clients of the crime, but that I thought it was more likely that whoever had taken Tess was behind it. “This has all been about me,” I said. “Whoever is doing these things is trying to get to me.”
“How can you be sure?” Paul’s question was all business. There was no challenge in it.
“Because there’s no other reason to involve Tess,” I said. “She’s a child. If you’re not trying to provoke me, there’s no reason to go after her.”
“Sometimes people target random children for kidnapping,” Paul pointed out. His voice was gentle.
“That’s not what this is,” I said. “I’m sure of it. Just do a little digging, okay? I’m sure you’ll find something.”
“All right,” Paul agreed. “I’ll see what I can turn up.”
I hung up and went to my computer to see if there was a message from LM. Some kind of
ransom, maybe. But there was nothing. Just the usual assortment of junk mail.
I opened a new message and put LM’s address in the send-to field so I could send yet another email.
Tell me what you want.
I hit send and listened to the satisfying whoosh as the ocean of the internet swept my message away and toward its intended recipient. But I didn’t feel any better. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to prove my loyalty by ruining someone’s life.
Could I do that?
To save Tess’s life? You’re damn right I could. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do.
I sat at the computer for twenty minutes, waiting for a reply, but none came.
My head fogged and cleared. I imagined I could hear my daughter crying. It was the worst, most painful stretch of time I’d ever experienced, including the hours after I’d learned of my wife’s death.
I took my phone into bed with me and opened my email inbox, refreshing over and over, waiting for a message from LM. Nothing came.
The following morning, I was coming out of my skin. My computer dinged a message and I scrambled to open it.
Raising red flags would be bad for you right now. Go to work, act normal, do what you’re told or your kid suffers.
Moving around the city after having missed two nights of sleep was like being in a fugue state. I hailed a cab and managed to give the address of my office building, but I promptly lost track of time. The next thing I knew, we were pulling up in front of the tall black building where I worked. I got out of the car, tipped the driver, and made my way inside.
It felt like people were staring at me as I made my way to my office. I hardly cared. It felt like ages since I’d last checked my email. There had to be a reply from LM now. In fact, when I sat down at my desk, I was certain I’d see a message.
But there was nothing. My inbox was completely empty. There wasn’t even any junk mail, since I’d emptied it just before leaving my house.
Why didn’t he get back to me? He must want something from me.