Gun Shy(56)

Seems Jennifer was not so zealous. Jennifer got pregnant.

“Jennifer wanted an abortion,” he says. “She wanted to kill our baby. I promised her I would take care of things. Of everything. She didn’t even have to stick around once it was born.” He takes a deep breath. “I would have done anything.”

I’m unimpressed. “And so you took her, and you tied her up and you locked her in a box in the goddamned attic.”

He slams his fist on the table.

Now Jennifer is dead, their baby, too, and the whole town is still searching for her. There’s still the stains of blood on the attic floor to scrub out, and I still need to find a way to figure out who the hell that missing boy on all those milk cartons was. Neither Damon nor Ray has asked me about whether I saw them, too fixated on Jennifer. Their ignorance is my ammunition.

One week later, when my smashed phone is finally replaced, I lock myself in the staff bathroom at work and Google Daniel Collins.

No wonder I didn’t recognize him from the milk carton. The photo was so grainy, it was barely distinguishable. The color version is much easier to decipher.

The eyes. Lazulite blue, the color of the ocean in places you’d rather be. Daniel Collins, missing age ten, presumed dead, but a body was never found. Daniel Collins, found in my house, in my bed, in my nightmares. Daniel Collins — he goes by Damon King, now.

The most heartbreaking part of all? His mother never stopped searching for him. She lived three hours away from us, across the border in a little town in California. She had the same blue eyes as her missing son. She’s dead now. The obituary, dated two months ago, says she died of a broken heart.

I go back to work the following day as if nothing has happened. As if there isn’t a teenage girl buried next to my house, the freshly dug soil of her final resting place visible from my bedroom, her voice crying out to me when I try to fall asleep.

Ray returns to Reno, after promising he will come back and kill me if I tell anybody about Jennifer and the attic.

Damon goes back to work and pretends to search for the girl he had stashed away the entire time.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE





CASSIE





There is an empty grave in Lone Pine, California, for Daniel Collins.

I would know; I’ve spent every waking moment searching for anything and everything related to the boy on the milk carton. I know the time he was born, his mother’s maiden name, the first place he went to school.

I know where his mother placed a headstone, ten years after he disappeared. Right beside his father, her late husband, who died of a heart attack less than twelve months after Daniel was taken from the front of his house. His mother rests there now, in the family plot that bears Daniel’s name but is missing his remains.

I have no money, no car, no freedom — and yet, I have this burning desire to go to Lone Pine, California and see the place where Daniel Collins grew up. It’s only three hours away. I could be there and back before Damon even notices I’m gone.

I think of the handful of people I know. Damon’s out, obviously. I doubt Deputy Chris would do something for me without telling Damon all about it. I don’t even know if Pike’s still in town, but either way, when he did see me he wasn’t exactly enthused. And Amanda; well, she’s far too busy, running a diner and working weekends at the hospital. She would ask too many questions. And I need her to cover my shift at the diner anyway.

This is the thing about living with a madman, being kept away from the world you were once a part of.

The people you love become strangers, ghosts of a time long gone, and though you might still pass each other on the street, there’s nothing really there anymore.

There is one person, though, who said he’d do anything in the world to make up to me what he did. I’m betting he’s the same person who wouldn’t tell a soul.

Damon makes things infinitely more difficult for me with his paranoia that I’m suddenly going to disappear into thin air. A legitimate worry, I suppose, when you kidnap your stepdaughter’s co-worker after knocking her up and said co-worker ends up dead and buried in your yard. His solution? He visits the diner every chance he gets, right on cue. He’s never absent for more than three hours, and my drive will take at least six. Somehow or another, he’s going to find out that I’m gone. I just need to get where I’m going before he catches me.

He comes into the diner at ten a.m., stands at the back of the restaurant with Amanda and chats, casting glances my way every so often. He makes her laugh and I almost puke. He’s way too good at this charade.

After he finally leaves, back to his office just feet away, I go back to work. Fifteen minutes later, on my break, instead of sitting in the staff room or making myself vomit in the bathroom, I beg off the rest of my shift and tell Amanda I’m getting a ride home to sleep. Then, before she can try to mother me, I take two Styrofoam cups of coffee, slip out of the diner’s rear fire escape, and trudge through dirty snow to the old garage where Leo works.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





LEO





Every time someone approaches the garage, I’m convinced it’s the cops, here to haul my ass off for killing Hal Carter. There’s nothing quite like having your entire body slid under a car, waiting for some bastard to grab your ankles and yank you out so he can cuff you.