Читать книгу Twin Threat Christmas: One Silent Night / Danger in the Manger - Rachelle McCalla - Страница 11

TWO

Eric blinked at the sudden light and tried to get a decent look at the intruder. He wasn’t about to hurt anyone—he was pretty sure the old hunting shotgun wasn’t even loaded—but Debbi had told him to take it downstairs with him when she’d run to his room in fear after seeing headlights outside. Their cabin was deep on private property. No one else ought to be there, certainly not in the middle of the night.

Still half-asleep, his mind muddled by dreams tainted with the memories unearthed by that evening’s news story, he couldn’t help wondering if he was actually awake.

The face staring back at him from the doorway was the same one from his dreams, the same one from the newscast, familiar but completely impossible.

“Eric?”

He nodded, swallowed, couldn’t say the name that rose to his lips.

Vanessa was dead. Legally dead.

“Can you put the gun down?” The woman spoke with Vanessa’s voice, which for all the years that had passed was still the same, maybe a little tired, even frantic.

He lowered the hunting shotgun but didn’t let go. More awake now—quite shocked awake—he realized a number of things all at once.

This was the woman from the picture on the news, the woman who’d killed her husband just before dinnertime in a quiet Chicago suburb. She was dangerous. Her children were in danger. The reporter had called her Madison Nelson.

Should he let on that he knew who she was?

And why did she remind him so much of Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead? What was she doing here, in the cabin where he and Vanessa had spent so many happy times as children and teens?

Before he could sort it out, a voice echoed from outside the house.

“Mommy?”

The woman darted back out of the cabin.

Still unsure what was going on, Eric nonetheless realized the voice he’d heard probably belonged to one of Madison Nelson’s daughters—what were their names?

“It’s okay, Abby.”

Eric remembered the moment he overheard the woman soothing her daughter. Abby and Emma. And Sammy.

Abby had clambered half out of the Toyota Sequoia—the same vehicle featured in the news broadcast. Eric couldn’t see in the darkness, but he felt certain the front of the vehicle was probably banged up, at least a bit.

Abby clung to her mother, and the woman stroked her hair and held her close. “I’m right here. Mommy’s right here, honey. We’re at the place I told you about—the cabin.”

“The most wonderful place in the world?”

“That’s the one. It will look more welcoming once the sun rises. Let’s get you into bed.”

“With the kitten quilt? Did you find the kitten quilt?”

“I didn’t have time to look. We’ll see. Can you walk? I need to carry your sister.”

Eric listened, still unsure whether he was dreaming or what exactly was going on. The woman sounded like a loving parent, but weren’t most psychotic killers supposed to seem normal on the outside? More disturbing still, Eric felt sure that somehow, though this woman matched the description of Madison Nelson, she was Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead.

After all, she had a key to the cabin, and she knew about the kitten quilt.

Abby slid down from the high SUV and blinked up at him warily. “Who’s that?”

Eric looked at the woman—Vanessa? Could it be Vanessa? Or was she Madison now?

She cast him a brief, uncertain glance. “That’s my friend Eric. He’s okay.”

Something welled up inside him at the words and the reassurance that filled the little girl’s face. Even the girl looked a lot like Vanessa had looked when they were kids together, playing in the yard here at the cabin, chasing fireflies after dark.

What had happened? Eight years ago, one of his best friends had disappeared, and now this woman was here, knowing things Vanessa would know—acting and talking like Vanessa, even looking like her, aside from the blond hair and eight years of passing time.

When the little girl stumbled uncertainly after her mother, Eric held out his hand.

Abby looked up at him with eyes so much like Vanessa’s had been at that age, he couldn’t speak. But the little girl trustingly placed her hand in his, and he steadied her as they walked into the cabin.

“Debbi and I have the upstairs bedrooms,” Eric explained as they entered, as though this was a regular, planned visit, and he hadn’t just been pointing a gun at the woman.

“The downstairs bedroom just has one bed—”

“It’s a bunk bed now, the kind with a single on top and double below. Some buddies of mine sold it after college. I thought the cabin could use it.”

“Perfect. This way, girls.”

Eric let go of Abby’s hand as her mother led her toward the bedroom. Still not quite certain he wasn’t dreaming, he tried to assure himself he wasn’t doing anything illegal by offering hospitality to a murderer—after all, he didn’t know for a fact she’d murdered anyone, did he? Maybe it was self-defense? Maybe a lot of things had happened in the past eight years. All he knew was that he’d prayed for years that his friend would be safe, and now all of a sudden, here she was with little girls who needed a helping hand.

He wasn’t about to turn them away. Besides, even if she was a psychotic murderer, he ought to make sure her kids were safe. Shouldn’t he?

Eric bounded up the stairs to fetch the kitten quilt, which was usually kept folded at the foot of the bed in Debbi’s room. The beloved blanket from their childhood had come with the cabin, and even though it was a little juvenile for his twenty-five-year-old sister, it was too soft and delightful to get put away in a closet, unused.

His sister peeked at him from the doorway as he approached her room.

“It’s the Toyota Sequoia—I shined my high-beam flashlight out the window. The license plate matches the one on the news.” She followed him into her room, where her laptop sat on the end of the bed, open to a news page about the missing children and their murdering mother. “That’s Madison Nelson, isn’t it?”

“Shh. If it is, do you want her to know you know who she is?”

Debbi’s eyes widened, and she clamped her mouth shut.

“Something’s going on.” Eric lifted the laptop, pulled the kitten quilt out from underneath it and explained briefly, “I’m nearly positive that’s Vanessa Jackson downstairs.”

“Eric, no.” Debbi’s voice fell into the chiding tone she’d used long before when he’d vowed to go out searching one more time. “She’s been declared—”

“I know.” Eric didn’t want to hear the words again. “But nobody ever found out what happened to her. All I know is, Vanessa was my friend. I’ve got to help my friend.”

Debbi grabbed his arm as he stepped toward the bedroom door. “Even if it means aiding a known criminal?” She showed him the cell phone she held in her hand. “I was about to call the police.”

Eric sucked in a breath, his conscience in sudden conflict. Any other time, he’d say it was the right thing to do. “If Vanessa wanted to go to the police, she’d have done it already.”

“So we let her kill us in our sleep?”

“She’s not going to hurt us. Not in front of her kids.” He’d seen enough of the way the woman interacted with the girls to know she was purposely protecting them. That she was used to protecting them. But how far had she gone to protect them?

Debbi cut off his thoughts. “That didn’t stop her from killing her husband.”

“We don’t know what happened.” Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to know, exactly. He could guess at a few things, but all of them involved the kind of ugliness and hurt he wouldn’t wish on anyone, certainly not on the girl he’d cared for so strongly. “We should at least wait and hear her story. Can you wait that long?”

“How long will that be?”

“Give me an hour, maybe two. If she won’t tell us what’s going on, then you can call the police.”

“Fine.” Debbi flashed him the look she always gave him when he outfished or outmaneuvered her. Her final words floated after him on a sigh as he headed back down the stairs. “Although I don’t see why she’d let us live once we know what she’s up to.”

* * *

“Mommy, the kitten quilt.”

“I’m going to look for it.”

“No, it’s there.” Abby pointed.

Vanessa turned to see Eric standing in the doorway, an uncertain look on his face, kitten quilt in hand. “Ah. Thank you.” She accepted the quilt, which solved one tiny problem while introducing various others.

Her first priority from the moment the shadow of Virgil’s Land Rover had darkened the basement walls had been to get her girls tucked safely into bed at this cabin. But she hadn’t expected anyone to be there, certainly not Eric, the friend she’d long ago wished would be more than a friend, whose presence complicated everything. She felt a stab of guilt as she avoided looking him in the eye, instead focusing her attention on tucking the quilt securely around her daughters on the double-size lower bunk.

“Good night, Mommy.” Abby and Emma effectively dismissed her, snuggling in under the blanket as though they were on one of the countless innocent visits she and her sister had made to the cabin a generation before. She’d prayed for something like this for them—but not this way, not going through what they’d been through, or what yet lay ahead.

“Good night.” There was nothing more to do or say. She couldn’t put off facing Eric any longer.

She closed the door behind her and stepped toward the living room, deciding as she did so to ask questions first, to play offense instead of defense and maybe put off answering too many questions until she knew a bit more about what was going on.

Eric stood in the middle of the cabin’s great room, near the table that separated the open kitchen from the sofa and television on the other side.

She glanced at him only briefly, saw confusion and maybe even anger on his face, and quickly looked away, taking in all that had changed and all that had stayed the same in the cabin. Her grandmother’s knitted afghan still topped the sofa, but it was a newer sofa. Some of the pictures on the walls were the same. Some had changed. The familiarity of it all made her want to sob with relief, but she held herself together. She had to. For the kids.

“So, you—” Eric started.

Vanessa remembered her plan and cut off his question quickly. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my place.”

“No, it’s not. It’s mine.”

“Alyssa sold it to me.”

“So my grandfather—”

“He died. Six years ago.”

She’d told herself that much was likely. Her grandfather was old, and his health had been declining rapidly, but the words still hit her like one of Jeff’s controlling blows.

And just like in the early days when Jeff hit her, Vanessa fought back. “So Alyssa sold you her half? Half the cabin was supposed to go to me.”

“Your sister sold me both halves.”

“She can’t sell my half—”

“She can. You were declared legally dead.” Eric took a step toward her. “What’s going on, Vanessa? Or should I call you Madison?”

Vanessa pinched her eyes shut at the words, which struck her like another blow. “How do you know—”

“It was on the news.”

“What was?”

Eric opened his mouth, looked toward the ceiling and made a resigned noise in his throat. “Maybe you should just watch it yourself. I can find it online. But first—what happened to the baby? Sammy? He wasn’t in the vehicle.”

Vanessa heard real concern, maybe even fear in Eric’s voice, almost enough to drown out her own terror over what the news might have to say. “I left him with my sister.”

“Alyssa knows you’re alive, then?”

Much as she’d have liked to confirm his words, she knew it wouldn’t be entirely honest to do so. “She’ll figure it out. I need to see that newscast.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Eric climbed the steps and returned with a laptop, which he set on the table. The website was already up on the screen.

“Debbi had it open,” he explained quietly as the broadcast began to play.

Vanessa reached past him to adjust the volume, just loud enough for her to hear without risking the girls overhearing anything from the other side of the bedroom door. She’d made too many sacrifices to preserve their innocence, to let it be destroyed now.

“Authorities are asking everyone in the Chicago region to be on the lookout for this vehicle, driven by Madison Nelson of Barrington, who is believed to have shot her husband dead before driving through the back wall of their garage with their three children in the vehicle.”

“Dead,” Vanessa repeated softly. She’d expected it from the moment the Land Rover pulled into the driveway. Still, hearing the words, seeing the images of the house where she’d been held captive for so long, made her tremble.

Pictures flashed across the screen—her home, the prison where she’d been held, surrounded by yellow police tape. The broken-out back wall of her garage. The vehicle, which was now parked outside. Pictures of her children and a particularly unflattering photograph of her, which had been taken mere minutes after she’d given birth to Sammy after a grueling labor.

But the most horrifying thing wasn’t the pictures. It wasn’t even the fact that Jeff was dead.

“They think I killed him? Why would they think that?”

No sooner had she voiced the question than Virgil appeared on the screen, saying horrible things about her, voicing ugly motives made all the more terrifying because, to anyone who didn’t know her, they would sound plausible. And no one really knew her, not anymore. So everyone would think Virgil’s lies were true.

“You didn’t kill him?” Eric’s voice behind her was soft, even cautious.

She turned and met his eyes for the first time. “No, I most certainly did not.”

Eric looked visibly relieved.

Vanessa might have felt offended that he’d doubted her, except that, given what she’d seen on the news broadcast, he had every right to believe the worst. Gratitude welled up inside her that he was willing to trust her word over that of everyone else. She pulled out a chair and sat down, the weight of the news broadcast too much to bear standing up.

She needed to explain a few things quickly. “He kidnapped me. He hid me and gave me that name, made me dye my hair, broke my nose once and it healed with a bump.”

Eric nodded patiently. “So, who killed him?”

“He did—” she pointed at Virgil, who was still on the screen “—or one of the guys who works for him.”

For a long, silent moment, Vanessa looked at Eric, waiting for some sign that would indicate whether he believed her or not. She wasn’t sure what she would do if he didn’t. All she knew was that she had to keep her children safe. The news report was a terrifying development. Where could she go without being recognized? Where could she hide?

Finally, Eric spoke. “Can you prove these guys killed him?”

Vanessa blinked, her shock at being free, her uncertainty about what to do next, clouding her thoughts, muddling her judgment.

“Look, Vanessa, I want to help you, but this does not look good. Debbi wants to call the police.”

“No! Don’t do that. Please.” Vanessa wrapped her arms around her shoulders, wishing for the millionth time that none of this had ever happened. She’d gotten away, but only briefly. Her face was all over the news. She’d have to stay in hiding, keep her daughters in hiding, or she’d go to jail and lose her kids. “If you call the police, they’ll take the kids. I’ll go to jail, their word against mine.” She repeated the threat Jeff had ingrained in her, the fear that had kept her frozen in the basement, even when she thought about breaking out a window and running for help.

“What happened, Vanessa? You disappeared eight years ago, and everybody thought you were dead. What’s been going on?”

“It’s a trafficking ring. They’re criminals.”

“Who are? This Virgil guy?”

“And Jeff—they came to the house and killed Jeff this evening. I ran with the kids or they would have killed us, too.” She swallowed, hating the words, hating the memories. “Jeff kidnapped me eight years ago as part of this human-trafficking scheme. They take girls and traffic them, but Jeff kept me to himself. He left me tied up when he wasn’t around until Abby was born.

“Once Abby was born, he allowed me just enough freedom to take care of her, never enough to get away from him. He was always there, for every minute of every medical appointment, every second I was ever around other people, watching me, making sure I didn’t reach out for help. Not like I would try anything—I knew he’d go after my family if I did or take Abby from me. It’s a big ugly crime ring. They run drugs, too. They use the drugs to control people. Virgil’s just one piece of it.”

Eric swallowed slowly, as if forcing himself to digest her words. “Can you prove it?”

“I know a few things, but no, I don’t have any evidence against them. Any time I saw a piece of paper I wasn’t supposed to see, Jeff warned me what would happen if I ever so much as touched anything that could be used as evidence against them. I purposely closed my eyes. I had no choice.”

“The only way to prove your innocence is to prove these guys are guilty.”

“I agree.” Vanessa nodded. But at the same time, Eric’s words scared her. “But Virgil’s not the ringleader. He was Jeff’s contact, some kind of bully employed to keep guys like Jeff in line, but he wasn’t in charge. If we turn in Virgil, that’s just cutting off an arm.”

“And the real monster would turn on you,” Eric muttered, understanding. “So, who’s the ringleader? We find him, find evidence against him, and we can prove your innocence.”

Vanessa liked the idea. If they could shut down the trafficking ring, all the other innocent girls who’d been taken just like her could go free.

There was just one problem.

“I don’t know who’s in charge.”