Pretty Girls Dancing(109)

Claire looked at her through a film of tears. They shared a horrifying experience, with very different outcomes. One girl rescued. The other gone forever. Claire knew that every time she saw Shannon, she’d be flooded anew with the agony of loss. But they were intricately linked by a terrible bond no one else could truly understand. “Yes. I’d like that.”

The woman’s hug threatened to shatter the fragile shell around Claire’s emotions. She watched Shannon walk away, thinking about what she’d revealed.

That Kelsey had somehow found strength despite the darkness of her circumstances was a bittersweet revelation. But Shannon was wrong thinking that Claire shared that quality. Somehow her daughter had survived for some time at the mercy of a madman. In the entire time Kelsey had been missing, Claire hadn’t taken one action that displayed a modicum of her daughter’s courage. Perhaps, even in death, Kelsey had one last lesson to teach her.





David Willard

November 21

12:14 p.m.

David sat on the muted-plaid couch in his finished basement, his cell clasped in one hand as he mentally replayed his recent conversation with Kurt Schriever. It had taken two days for the man to return his calls. And though his boss had offered up excuses about respecting his privacy, David could read between the lines. In marketing, branding was everything, and he was damaged goods. Schriever had probably been waiting until he could separate gossip from fact about David’s false arrest. And then worked overtime reaching out to pacify David’s clients, jittery at their brush with notoriety.

Son of a bitching Foster. The simmering fury at the BCI agent was always there, ready to ignite. David had asked Strickland about suing for false arrest. The attorney had cautioned against it. The evidence found with Kelsey’s body had been damning. The cops had had probable cause for arrest. But the hell with that. What about his reputation?

Kurt’s suggestion to take a few weeks at home could be interpreted as compassion. David was cynical enough to believe the man wanted to keep him as far away from his business as possible for a while. And who knew what would await him upon his return? Clients jumping ship. Accounts reassigned. David’s career torpedoed.

The cell rang in his hand. He checked the number. Not linked to a contact. He was too cautious for that. But familiar. David let it go to voice mail, just as he had the last several times Tiffany had called. Once she’d represented a haven to escape from stresses at home and at work. Now she was yet another complication in a life fraught with too many of them.

He stared dully at the opposite wall with its array of old family photos. Many of them were of Kelsey, taken at the pageants Claire had loved so much. Two-dimensional depictions of his daughter were all he had left. That, and the growing realization that he’d been lying to himself for seven years.

He hadn’t reached any magical pinnacle in the grief process after his daughter had been kidnapped. He’d simply done a stellar job of outpacing the swamp of guilt and sorrow that had threatened to suck him in. Devour him whole. But he was mired in it now. Trapped. He wasn’t sure he’d ever truly get free.

Maybe it was because they hadn’t lost Kelsey all at once. They’d lost pieces of her over time. The kidnapping. The first weeks and months when every new lead seemed to stall. Then the anniversaries that had brought knifelike sadness. The first Christmas without her. Kelsey’s birthday. The initial family vacation with just the three of them.

Was it easier to get over it all at once, he wondered. That single shock, a swift blade ripping your child away with a brutal finality? Or was the death by a thousand cuts harder? The constant pendulum swings between hope and despair; the endless grind of an investigation that went on for years, with he and Claire scrabbling for pieces of information the way a starving person gathered up crumbs. David had long left such deliberations behind him, setting aside the memories that threatened to snag him with skeletal fingers.

His cell rang again. This time he didn’t even look at it. A therapist at a long-ago support group had said that guilt magnified grief. That had resonated with him, because he lived with both. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Kelsey, her face stamped with disbelief. Rage. Hurt.

Stop denying it! I followed your car. I went inside and saw the two of you. Does Mom know you’re cheating? She will now. Because I’m not going to be part of your lie. I’m going to make sure you pay!

And he had, David thought dully. He’d paid and paid. He knew now that there could be no restitution.

He didn’t know how long he sat there before rousing himself to go upstairs. Check on the others. Reach out to Foster, that bastard, and see what the timeline was for Kelsey’s body to be released. The tedium of planning a funeral would lend focus to his days. Force him to move forward. If he moved fast enough, long enough, maybe he could escape the desolation.

He poked his head into the family room, then walked through it to the kitchen. Didn’t find Janie. Opening the door that led to the garage, he saw her car was gone. That was unusual enough to have him frowning. There was no way she’d be working. Maybe Claire knew where she’d gone.

He closed the door and headed to the stairway, meeting Marta halfway as she made her way down. The woman had been hovering around Claire since the news broke. Averting her eyes, she brushed by him. As he finished his ascent, he heard the sound of the coat closet opening. Moments later, the front door closed.