Don't Look for Me(86)

“Why did he do all of this—kidnap Molly Clarke, then lure her daughter here?” Booth asked.

“Well, I’d tell you to ask him yourself but that ship just sailed.” Then, “It’s like I said—because I left him for good. I’ve left him before, plenty of times, when I needed a break from him, from this.” She looked quickly at her daughter. “But this time I didn’t come back. I couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. He made my skin crawl. Every night, breaking into my room, getting into my bed. I even tried sleeping with Alice, right? Alice—you remember that, don’t you? How he came into bed with us?”

The little girl nodded, her entire face now red, trembling.

“That was the last straw. It was like living with a puppy dog who follows you everywhere you go. It had been ten years. I did my part, and still—no fortune. No better life, still in this place where my father beat me and my mother starved me! I wasn’t going to stay for one more second.”

Booth took a step closer.

“So why did you come back now?”

Daisy took a step closer as well, Reyes’s gun pointed at Booth.

“Because he got himself into all this.” She waved the gun quickly at Nic, then back again, aimed at Booth. “We have cameras in the house to keep an eye on the girl. I still see everything going on—do you know what’s been happening? That woman got into your daughter’s head. I’ve been watching it for days. They tried to kill him today. And then what? I’ve started a nice life, now that I’m free of him and everyone thinks I’m somewhere else. I don’t need this—I don’t need people looking for me again.”

Nic listened carefully to every word, thinking through what they meant. Her mother tried to kill Reyes—today! She was alive.

“So what now, Daisy?” Booth asked. He seemed to be calming, the clarity settling his nerves. He wanted to keep her talking. She had his daughter. And she held a gun.

Daisy studied the situation. Reyes, dead on the ground. Nic behind the tree. Booth with his gun aimed at her head.

“Well, let’s see. How does this sound to you? Reyes held me captive for ten years until I could escape. Then he kidnapped Molly Clarke. Then he lured her daughter here so he could kidnap her as well. Chief Watkins came to investigate and he shot him dead. They poisoned him with apple seeds just as I came back to save my daughter, and I chased him through the woods, got his gun away and shot him. Unfortunately, not before he killed the other captives.”

Booth looked scared but determined. Nic realized it was now all about the little girl. Booth’s little girl. He had something to fight for.

He called to Nic. “Run!”

Nic hesitated, but then bolted into the woods. Daisy took a shot, but there were too many trees to get off a clean one.

Nic heard Daisy scream as she ran through the trees.

“I will kill you!”





55


Day seventeen





“I will kill you!” Daisy screams. The man with the shotgun is not more than five yards away now.

I watch my child escape. I watch her until she disappears and I want to laugh out loud with relief and joy.

I hear the sirens. They’ve found us.

Daisy’s face changes. “Okay, see—now I have to leave. Do this shit all over again. Do you know how hard it is to disappear?”

The man shakes his head. “Like hell you are. Don’t move,” he says.

Daisy looks surprised.

But there’s little time now.

She pulls Alice in front of her. A human shield. Her own daughter.

She turns the gun to point at her daughter’s head. She presses it hard into the soft flesh of her temple.

Alice whimpers. “Mommy?”

The man is in awe as he watches the mother of this child, his child, move toward him.

“Drop the gun and take us through the woods the way you came. Back to the inn. Then give us a car. Or I swear to you, I will put a bullet in her head.”

The man is wide-eyed as he lets these words reach into his soul, the way they do mine. They do not have anyplace else to go.

His hands tremble but he holds the gun steady. I watch Daisy’s finger pull back the safety lever. I hear the click. She knows—I can feel it—she knows he won’t fire that shotgun. He will stand there in a perpetual state of human conflict, wanting her dead, but afraid of hitting his daughter. Afraid she will pull the trigger first. He will do exactly what she tells him now. And then she will be free.

I am there again, five years ago, turning the corner on my street. The corner just before our driveway. I am worried that something is wrong. I can feel the anger that will come when I find out nothing is—that it was just Nicole being a teenager. Both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road. Thoughts on what I might find inside my house.

I feel my feet move. I feel a heavy rock in my hands. I feel eyes turn.

But I am there five years ago. Turning the corner, seeing the flash of something. What is it? What could have suddenly come into the road, into the path of my car?

I hear a crack. And a scream. My hands ache.

I am back there. My foot on the brakes, my hands turning the wheel. Hard enough. All of it is hard enough. I turn to see Annie safe on the other side.

I feel arms grabbing my legs. Little arms squeezing tight.