Keep Her Safe(57)

I look to Noah, only to see his subtle head shake. Don’t mention the gun holster, he’s saying.

Anger begins to burn in my mother’s eyes. “Why was Jackie talking about Betsy that night?”

“I don’t know. I swear, Dina. I don’t.” Noah’s head is in his hands, as if the weight of listening to this is too much. Or maybe he’s as overwhelmed by all the new questions swirling as I am. Then he looks back up. “What about this video you mentioned earlier? You said someone was looking for it? Who?”

“Yes.” Mom turns to me, her gaze full of both fear and resignation. “The man who held a knife to my throat and threatened to take Grace if I didn’t give it to him.”





CHAPTER 23


Noah

By the time Dina has finished describing the night she woke up to find a masked man standing over her bed, holding a knife to her neck while her six-year-old daughter slept peacefully one room away, Gracie’s face has taken on a sickly pale color.

“So you didn’t have the video that he was looking for?”

She shakes her head. “But I’m pretty sure I know what it was about. A few nights before Abe died, I came into the office and he was watching something on the computer. It was a video taken in a parking lot, and there were police surrounding a guy.”

“APD?” I ask.

“I’m not sure. They were shouting at him and their guns were pointed. That’s all I saw. Abe shut it off when he realized I was there. He said it was some YouTube video, but I could tell he was lying. His face . . .” She frowns. “It was this weird mix. As if he was angry, but also ecstatic. I didn’t think any more of it, until that morning after he died and I found that newspaper clipping in the office. The one with the notes Abe made.”

“This is Abe’s handwriting?” I study the scrawl—all caps, with slanted ligature strokes, the tops of the letter T’s exaggerated.

Dina nods. “I thought it was strange, that it had happened at the same motel Abe died in, The Lucky Nine. But I still hadn’t connected it with the video. Not until the day I drove over there. I needed to see if I could, I don’t know, feel him there . . .” Her voice cracks. “I saw the flashing green neon sign. That’s when I remembered.”

“Did you check his computer for this video?”

“The police had already taken the computer when they searched the house, but I mentioned it to them. I gave them the original newspaper clipping, too. They said they’d look into it. And then that very same night, the guy showed up. He kept insisting that I give him the video, all while holding that knife to my neck.” Her fingertip skates over a tiny scar.

“He was trying to scare you to see if you had it,” I say.

“He did that, alright. I didn’t know what to tell him. I couldn’t even think up a lie. He kept threatening me, first with the knife, and then with Grace. He said he’d take her away and let”—Dina’s voice wobbles, cracks—“men do horrible things to her. I could barely get out a word, I was shaking so bad. I was scared that Grace would wake up and come in. I don’t know how long he was there. It felt like hours. He told me that the police report would say Abe was guilty of dealing drugs and nothing I told anyone would change that, but that if I said a word to anyone about his visit or about the video, he’d come back to take Grace away from me. He promised that I’d never see her alive again. That’s when I knew it all had to be connected—the video of that bust at the motel. And Abe dying.

“So, I packed through the night, stuffed everything I could fit into our car, filled the garage with trash bags of personal things we couldn’t take. Then I got Grace and drove away. Left the house for the bank to repossess it. The way I saw it, our lives in Texas were already over. The man holding a knife to my neck and threatening my daughter was making sure I knew it.”

“And this video?”

“I waited, hoping the police might uncover something on Abe’s computer.” Dina gives a weak head shake, her energy visibly draining, her eyes darting to the bottle of medication on the table. “And then, just like he promised, they released the official findings, and Abe was labeled a corrupt cop who got himself killed in a drug deal gone wrong.”

Turns out Dina knew far more than she’d ever let on to her daughter. “Any guesses about who the guy was?”

Another head shake. “But, I got the feeling he was a cop and that he knew Abe. The way he used his name . . . you know, in that familiar way. It was odd. He seemed so confident about how the investigation was going to go. As if he had some say in it.”

The fact that the guy showed up the night after Dina went to the police with talk of this video makes me think she could be right.

“And you think the guy in your hospital room today is connected to him?”

She gulps back water, a light sheen forming over her forehead, her skin tone sickly. I don’t know how much longer we can press her for information. “I haven’t seen or heard from anyone since we left Austin. And then, all of a sudden, I open my eyes today and a man is standing over my bed. He flashed a badge. At first, I thought I was being arrested.”

“What did he look like?”

“Blond hair. No . . . brown hair? Tall?” She frowns. “I think he was tall.”