Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(12)

Or maybe a parent simply always knew. Felt it, like a light suddenly winking out.

Hector’s knees buckled. He went down, D.D.’s hand upon his shoulder. She kept it there while he hung his head and wept.





Chapter 4


AFTER MY MORNING RUN, I showered—forever—then threw on a pair of old gray sweatpants and a rumpled white T-shirt from my favorite kickboxing gym. I padded into my tiny kitchen, stood, stared, tried to identify anything I could eat. My mother was a compulsive baker under stress. To this day, our time together remained awkward. Her anxiously seeking my face for signs of fresh bruises, abrasions. Me trying to pretend that no, I hadn’t wandered the streets of Boston at three A.M., trying to blow off steam by baiting predators and picking fights. But at least when my mom came down from her farm in Maine, she brought me food and baked even more while she was here.

According to my refrigerator, she hadn’t visited in a bit. I should do something about that. Pick up the phone. Make the effort. Be the daughter she deserved.

What my mother and I had in common was guilt. Guilt on her part that I’d been abducted, though it was hardly her fault. Guilt on my part that my kidnapping had put her through four hundred and seventy-two days of hell, though that was hardly my fault. Jacob Ness. He did it. Hurt us both. And we hated him, vehemently. Which was the real problem. We both needed to let him go. Samuel told me that all the time. I would truly be over my trauma when I could go an hour, a day, a week without even thinking of Jacob’s name.

I wasn’t there yet.

I gave up on food, poured a giant mug of coffee instead. Then I crossed the three feet from my kitchen to my family room, where I set myself up on the sofa, laptop balanced on my knees, coffee mug at the ready. Light streamed in from the bank of windows on my second-story apartment. I kept the windows covered in a light gauzy material, enough to grant some kind of privacy in the midst of an urban area while allowing sunlight to filter across the room. Needless to say, I still didn’t do well in small dark spaces.

Such a bright, sunny Saturday morning. So many things normal people must do on a day like today. As for me . . .

I booted up my laptop. I got to work. Because while I’d never sold my story to any of the producers or agents banging at my door, lately I had started sharing it. In little bits and pieces. To a select group of kindred spirits, other survivors like me, also trying to find their way.

A year ago, I’d established a private chat room where we could meet. Sometimes just to vent or support one another through a particularly bad day. But also where, from time to time, we shared more detailed posts from our own experiences.

I hadn’t known what I’d think of it. One, this attempt at mentoring others. Two, finally putting even small pieces of my story into words. And yet . . .

These women I could talk to. These survivors got me.

And it did help make a difference.

I took a deep breath, then began:

My victim advocate, Samuel, says the key to this survivor business isn’t to tell yourself the world is safe. Or to try to convince yourself you have nothing to fear. The world is plenty dangerous and we all should be a little scared. The antidote to anxiety is strength. To remind yourself that you did survive the first time. You made the right decisions, you took the right actions—even if that really meant taking no action at all. You survived. And no one, not even dead and yet still somehow present Jacob Ness, can take that away from me.

If only I could truly believe.

Returning home after my abduction, I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night remembering that I was tough, or dreaming about the second, third, or hundredth time I convinced Jacob not to kill me. I suffered terrible nightmares involving coffin-sized boxes, giant alligators, and Jacob’s hands closing around my throat.

I had to turn on every light in my childhood bedroom. I had to study the pattern on my bedspread. I had to work on deep breaths in, slow breaths out.

I enrolled in the first self-defense class following a particularly bad night. A night when every time I closed my eyes, I spun away from the safety of my mother’s house and ended up trapped in Jacob’s big rig all over again. If the antidote to terror is strength, then I had to find some muscle, because I couldn’t take many more nights like that one.

I wouldn’t say I was a natural at hand-to-hand combat. I was underweight, sleep deprived, a bundle of strung-out nerves. But the instructor gave me focus. “Hit the dummy!” That simple, that complicated.

First time stepping up to the plate, I really wanted to beat the shit out of that oversized Ken doll. Knock the smug smile right off his mannequin face.

The more I tried, however, the more I failed, which simply made me want to try harder. If I could get my hand properly fisted, if I could get that fist to connect with dummy Ken’s head, then maybe I wouldn’t be so scared anymore. Maybe I would finally sleep at night.

It took me four classes. While I started eating more of my mom’s carefully prepared meals and took to running up and down the stairs in the house because I still couldn’t go outside or jog along rural roads—and not just because of my own terror but because of my mother’s fears.

Then: the moment I finally managed to slug Ken. Solid connection. Felt it radiate all the way up my arm from knuckles to wrist to shoulder.

I cried.

I hit some practice dummy and I broke down. I bawled and wept all over the blue exercise mat. Sniffling, wiping my eyes, smearing snot across the back of my hand. The instructor didn’t say anything. Just stood Ken back up and ordered me to go again.