Desperate (31 page)

“Go,” Brad said, pushing us away. “Hurry. I’ll knock down the board from the alley to let the smoke out. Someone will call the fire department, and then they’ll find these clowns.”

I gripped Anna’s hand. Together we raced down the carpeted hallway, speeding through the doorway to the back building. Remembering the building plans Brad had shown me, I was able to lead Anna into a massive open warehouse space filled with pallets and boxes. We exited through a back door, stepping into the loading zone, not once letting go of each other’s hands.

Soon I was in my car, with Anna seated beside me. We looked at each other as my hand caressed her face. I fired up the engine and got the car turned around, sneaking a glance at the dashboard clock. The entire assault had lasted less than thirty minutes.

We drove past Station Street, where Brad’s van was already gone. A thick trail of smoke billowed from the alley entrance. I accelerated to avoid a red light, and soon we were driving west, away from Brookline and Boston.

Destination?

Unknown.

B
attling the glare of the setting sun, we continued west. My body—muscles, heart, bones—were all buzzing from a deluge of adrenaline in a way that put every Adderall rush to shame. Stealing glances at Anna, I felt grateful they hadn’t beaten her (the only marks she had were from the nylon rope used to bound her wrists), but I wondered how much damage had been done to her on the inside. Her body trembled while her vacant stare, beyond a thousand yards, canvassed the blur of scenery rolling past her car window. Was she in shock? Did I need to get her to a hospital? I prayed not, because of the risk.

I wondered what was going to happen to Roy, Lily, and the Moreno brothers once the police arrived. Certainly they weren’t going to confess to holding a woman hostage. But was there any truth to Roy’s threat? Would the people who hired him to get the design plans come looking for me? Would they come after Anna? Forget going to the police; would we be safe going to a hospital? The answers would come, I was sure of it, but not until I put some miles behind us, got us someplace where I could clear my head and think.

Anna turned to look at me, her eyes pale and glassy. “What happened? What’s going on? Talk to me, Gage.”

Traffic grew heavy as the rush of evening commuters surged home. I didn’t know how to begin explaining everything to her, but I thought of something I had stashed inside the glove compartment. I reached across Anna’s lap, flipped the latch, and let the door fall open. I took out the circular container of pills and set it on her lap. To properly tell this story, I had to start at the beginning. I had to start with Lily. Anna returned a nervous glance as she turned the pill holder over in her hands.

“These are birth control pills,” she said.

“Brad found them in Lily’s apartment,” I said. “They belong to her, I’m sure of it. She wasn’t pregnant. She was playing us, Anna. She and Roy, they’re both con artists, part of some crew hired by a Chinese company to go after the Olympian product plans. Somebody was willing to buy those plans for a lot of money—I’m talking millions and millions of dollars—and they needed an inside person to provide them with the goods.”

Anna’s mouth hung agape. “What? Why?”

“It would have been impossible for anyone to hack through the security layers at Lithio Systems. There were only three people in the entire company who had the ability to get them what they wanted, and they picked the weakest link to go after. They picked me.”

“But why you?”

“They researched me. They researched everyone on the Security Breach Team looking for the best mark, someone they could manipulate and control. Blackmail is too messy for these guys, I’m guessing. They wanted to give someone a good reason to steal the plans and never talk about what they’d done. They knew about the car accident, and they must have found our adoption profile. It was all online. It was public record—there for them to see and to find. To manipulate me, they had to infiltrate our lives. Nothing was happenstance. Lily made sure we found her on the curbside crying. And she didn’t accidently stumble on our adoption profile, either.”

Anna examined the pills, turning them over again and again in her hands. The revelation seemed to overcome her. No longer terrified or confused, Anna’s expression turned angry.

“She lied to us,” Anna whispered. “She lied.”

I grabbed Anna’s hand, squeezing it tight, feeling swept over with love and aglow with gratitude that we were safe and together.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “There’s more to tell. There’s much more to tell you.”

Anna didn’t seem to hear me.

“I was there,” she said, speaking softly to herself. “I was with Lily when she got her ultrasound. I was right there in the waiting room. I watched her go inside to have the imaging done.” Anna looked at me through eyes lined with tears.

Something she said tugged at my curiosity. “I thought you told me because she was superstitious she made you wait in the parking lot,” I responded.

Anna nodded, remembering. “Yeah, that’s right,” she said. “I was waiting outside. So much has happened since then.”

I had a tingle, a thought, just the germ of an idea. Somewhere in the back of the car, in one of my bags, was an ultrasound taken at Tiny Body Imaging. I would show it to Anna.

After.

“Where are we going, Gage?”

“I need to get us someplace safe. I need to make sure Roy or the people who were paying him won’t come after us. Then we’ll go to the police. We’ll figure everything out together.”

“What about my mother?” Anna asked, her breathing suddenly rushed. “Is she in any danger?”

Our eyes locked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe she is.”

My heart slammed inside my chest like a bird fluttering against its cage. Still, I managed to keep calm, my focus shifting between the road in front and what I saw in the rearview mirror. Were we being followed? I didn’t think so. For many reasons, I didn’t think so. I pulled into a gas station about a mile from the on-ramp to I-95 north.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “You need to come inside the mini-mart with me. Look at a magazine. Stay near people.”

Anna gripped my hand. “I don’t want to be left alone.”

I thought about giving Anna my gun but decided against it. Anna wasn’t in any shape to use it, so for now it would stay in the glove compartment where I had stashed it.

“You’ll be all right,” I said, touching her face with my hand.

My Anna . . .

The mini-mart was crowded with shoppers, and Anna went to the magazine rack as we had planned. I got the key from the counter clerk and used it to unlock the men’s room door. As soon as I got the door closed, I took out my cell phone and was pleased to see I had a great 4G connection.

I opened my LinkedIn app and searched for the name Edward Daggett. Anna had changed her name back to Miller after the divorce, but I knew Edward’s last name from many conversations. I sifted through more than a dozen hits, before finding the one I was looking for. I could tell by the profile picture. I had cast his face into my memory while I was cutting his picture out of Anna’s one and only family portrait.

My breathing turned shallow. Out of respect for Anna’s wishes, I’d never dug into Edward’s life, even though curiosity had more than once made me reconsider that promise. Turned out he was a vice president at Brockhouse Financial Management in Southern California. It was late afternoon California time when I dialed his office number. My fingers turned numb as I worked my phone, and my head pulsed like a drum circle. A hot and damp sweat began to tickle the nape of my neck and soon soaked a small triangle in the front of my shirt.

The phone rang in my ear while I spoke softly to myself. “Please no . . . please no . . . please no.”

A receptionist answered in a voice cheery as California sunshine.

“Could I please speak with Edward Daggett?” I asked, trying to contain the quaver in my voice. “It’s urgent.”

Please no . . . please no . . . please no.

I was put on hold, told to wait a moment please.

Please no . . .

A moment later a voice spoke in a deep and rich baritone.

“This is Edward, how may I help you?”

“You don’t know me,” I said, talking too quickly. “You don’t know me, but I know you.”

I know you as a rapist . . . as a careless inhumane pig who deserves no mercy.

“What’s this about?” Edward sounded nervous.

“I know Anna. I know your ex-wife.”

“Anna?” His voice ascended with surprise. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

The pressure building inside me began a quick and sudden retreat. The relief felt intoxicating as I breathed out in a heavy sigh.

Thank God.

“She’s safe. She’s with me,” I said.

I heard Edward let out a sigh of his own.

“Thank goodness.”

The relief I felt continued, waves and waves of it washing through me.

“I just wanted you to know that she’s okay.”

I also wanted to know that you were real,
I thought.

It was that one little slip—the waiting room instead of the parking lot. With everything that had happened, all the lies and deceit, Anna forgetting that she had waited outside in her car (at Lily’s request) while Lily pretended to get an ultrasound and not in the waiting room as she told me in the car was a small inaccuracy. But Anna was always so sharp when it came to Lily. She’d shared so many vivid details of their exploits together as their relationship blossomed. She remembered the name of the woman from the paint-your-own-pottery store, even the towns she’d been considering for expansion. She recalled not only the magazine—
Cosmo
—but also the article she was reading when she dropped the whole kit and kaboodle in the water at the nail salon. When she told me she felt foolish about the forgetting her folder I knew it was true, because she never forgot anything.

Except . . . except she had forgotten where she waited for Lily during the ultrasound. It was a small slip, but admittedly big enough to make me momentarily suspicious. With all the deception, it was no wonder. Now, thank God, I could relax, but not too much. There was still the issue of the Chinese buyer to worry about. Would they come after us?

“Can I speak with her?” Edward asked, his voice pleading, wanting. “I’ve been looking for her. I’ve been searching.”

“No,” I said. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Who are you? Why are you with her? Where are you calling me from?”

Edward sounded on the verge of tears, and if his emotions weren’t authentic, then he was a fraud who could put Roy and Lily to shame.

“I can’t tell you anything about me. I’m sorry.”

“Please,” Edward said. “I must speak with Anna. Let me do that one thing.”

“No,” I said. “Not after what happened.”

“What do you mean what happened? She walked out on me!” Edward said. “No explanation. No word of good-bye. Imagine if it had been your wife who left you that way. You’d have been devastated, just like me.”

For all the lies I’d been told these past few weeks, I believed Edward. He couldn’t be faking the emotion I was hearing. Even so, if Anna wished to speak with him, it would be her decision, not mine.

I thought of where Anna and I might run to and hide out for a while. For some reason, the Caribbean came to mind. I had a vision of swimming in those aqua blue waters with Anna by my side. What would we do about Bessie? She couldn’t travel with us. How would Anna leave her mother alone? We’d work something out. We’d work everything out now. Together.

“I don’t know who you are, or why you’re calling, but I believe you’re with my Anna. Will you at least give her a message for me?” Edward asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “What’s the message?”

“Will you tell her I still love her? Could you do that one thing for me? I still don’t know why she did it. Why she left me. Why she begged me to sign the divorce papers. She threatened to kill herself if I didn’t. Did you know that? If I didn’t sign the papers, she told me she would slice open her wrists.”

Edward’s words came out strangled, his voice choked with emotion. This was shocking news to me, but given Anna’s emotional state at the time, I could certainly see how it had come to such a threat.

“I will,” I said, lying. “I’ll tell her.”

I wanted to say, “She left you because it’s a crime to rape your wife,” but I refrained. He’d already given me all I needed to know.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

Here I hesitated, thinking I might tell him something. “Just someone who knows Anna and knows all about you,” I said. “I can’t say any more.”

I heard breathing only. “Okay,” Edward said. It sounded to me like he was fighting back tears. I felt a pang of sympathy burst inside me, like a dam giving way. Compassion overcame my anger. He needed to know something, too. He might have been a rapist, but he was still a father and he needed some closure. Now that I knew the truth—the stress of the ordeal had fogged up Anna’s memory of the ultrasound—my heart was free to be with Anna and ready to let go of any anger I held toward Edward. He should know what I knew.

“There’s something else I want to tell you before I go, and you might not believe me,” I said. “This may sound crazy to you, but I have a friend who can commune with the dead. On a number of occasions he’s connected me with my dead son. He’s the real deal. No gimmicks. No lies. His special ability has brought me a profound sense of peace.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Edward said. “But why are you telling me this?”

“I just wanted you to know that your son isn’t suffering or lost. He’s somewhere else. His spirit lives on somewhere else, and he’s happy. I just thought you’d find comfort in that.”

Edward made confused noises, struggling to find some words.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t have any children. Anna and I were married all right, but we never had any kids.”

H
ow quickly can a person fall out of love? A second? A few minutes? My emotions were a speeding train, zooming through different stages of grief in a matter of moments not years. I went from shock, to bewilderment, to recognition, and finally to rage all in the time it took to walk from the bathroom in a gas station mini-mart to the magazine rack.

Anna saw none of this—she wasn’t in tune with my aura. Her eyes lit up when she saw me approach. I was still her knight in shining armor, the man who had rescued her from grave peril.

Anna and I were married, but we never had any kids.

We never had any kids . . .

Edward was the only person I believed. His emotion was real. It made sense to me, too. Anna left, demanded the divorce, threatened him even. She needed to be free of one marriage so she could enter another. But I still had so many questions to be answered, so much I still didn’t know. Anna came toward me and grabbed my arm.

“Baby, are you all right?” she asked. “You look pale.”

Our eyes locked. For a second I heard the faint echo of the love we once shared. For a moment, lasting no longer than the flutter of a butterfly wing, I forgot about my call with Edward and saw only Anna. I saw the woman I met at my grief group, the person who brought me out of my abyss, the lover who shared my bed, the friend I thought I had. But before I could even begin to embrace the past, it was gone. Our life together was a woven tapestry of lies. How could I have been betrayed like this? Played like this? Who was this person who shared my bed and my life?

“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s drive.”

At some point on the trip west Anna broke the lengthy and painful silence.

“You haven’t spoken since we left, Gage. Are you sure you’re all right?”

The radio was turned off, so all we had for a soundtrack was the rumble of my car wheels rolling along the Mass Pike.

“I’m just thinking,” I said.

And I was. I was thinking about what I was going to do. However, my feelings were numb. I was driving through a mist; nothing looked clear. My world was tilted and entirely out of focus. I waited, and drove, my knuckles white against the wheel.

It wasn’t until I got off at exit 42 on the Merritt Parkway that I knew what I was going to do. We’d been driving for hours in silence, growing increasingly uncomfortable. Anna must have known something was seriously wrong. If not, her suspicions grew when I pulled into a rest area that was just a parking lot and nothing more—no gas, no restaurant, and no mini-mart with a magazine rack.

At this late hour it was completely deserted. A couple of wall-mounted pole lights illuminated much of the area with a diffused white glow. I climbed out, my joints stiff and muscles aching. Above me a summer sky drenched in stars shimmered and glowed, stretching out to the infinite.

For a moment, I gazed up to the heavens and tried to picture where Max and Karen could be. Were they down here with me in spirit or somewhere else beyond the stars? Would they guide me through what I needed to do next? I reached my arms above my head, imagining I could take hold of their hands and we’d be joined together once more as a family of three.

Anna climbed out and came to stand beside me.

“Were your legs getting tired?” she asked, wrapping her arms around my shoulders in a hug. “Do you want me to drive?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“What’s wrong, Gage? Are you worried about Roy? Is there still a way he or someone else could hurt us?”

“Not anymore,” I said. “That’s not what it is.”

“Tell me.”

“I called Edward from the bathroom at the gas station,” I said.

Anna broke off her embrace. She took several steps back.

“Why?” Her voice was shaky. “Why would you do that?”

I spun around to face her. Anna’s eyes were wide as the full moon above. “Something you said in the car,” I went on, “about being in the waiting room while Lily got her ultrasound. With all that happened, I just needed to be sure.”

My voice was calm and even; I felt an unwavering determination. Calm as I seemed on the outside, I could feel the veins on my neck pulse with a steady rush of blood.

“Sure of what?” Anna’s voice sounded fraught.

“Of you,” I said. “I needed to be sure of you.”

“Oh, Gage, no . . .” In a snap, her face turned taut and strained. “Tell me nothing has changed,” she said. “Tell me you still love me.”

That was when I looked down and saw the gun in Anna’s hand. She must have taken it from the glove compartment.

“You lied to me,” I said. “You lied about everything.”

Anna raised the gun higher as she continued her cautious retreat. A shot could pierce my heart, but that organ was already broken and bleeding. All around us the sound of crickets and other night creatures saturated the air with their music while the steady thrum of traffic zooming down the Merritt beat a rhythm all its own.

“Please, Gage, don’t do this.”

“Are you going to kill me, Anna?” I took a step toward her, my feet scraping on the parking lot pavement. “Are you a liar
and
a killer?”

“Gage . . .”

Her hand shook like the petal of a flower in the wind. I dared another step.

“Do you have it in you to kill? Pull the trigger if you do.”

Another step.

I felt impenetrable, and incapable of being hurt any more than I already had been. “Do it if you dare.”

I took another step.

“Pull the trigger and become a killer,” I said. “Prove to me you never loved me. Prove it by pulling the trigger. All it takes is five-point-five pounds of pressure, so do it if you don’t care about me. Do it.”

One more step closer, still.

Anna’s hand was rigid, steady as steel. I braced myself because I thought I saw murder dancing in her moonlit eyes.

“Gage, I’m so sorry,” Anna said. Her words were a whisper strangled by the memories of us. “I’m so sorry.” She lowered the gun just a little.

I charged. Using my shoulder as a battering ram, I slammed into Anna’s midsection, catching her completely by surprise. She grunted and cried out as the force of the impact threw her back against the side of the car. She tried to take aim with the gun again, but I reached up in time to grab her wrist. I used my strength to jerk her hand over her head. With my other hand, I seized her throat and began to squeeze. I could feel the veins pulse within my grasp.

Anna kicked and thrashed, but my grip was strong and I wasn’t about to let go. Her skin color changed like a chameleon in a panic, going from pale to red to purple as I constricted her breathing even more. Her mouth opened. She wanted to scream but couldn’t get enough air in her lungs to make any sound louder than a wheeze. She weakened, her legs giving way, her kicks becoming less frantic.

Taking advantage, I wrenched her arm down and twisted her wrist. The gun easily transferred from Anna’s hand into mine, and I let go of her throat. She slumped to the pavement, body resting up against the car, shaking as she rubbed at the injury I’d inflicted to her neck. I saw marks where my fingers had been.

My face was flush with anger. I got down on my knees and pressed the gun underneath Anna’s chin.

“Have you done this before, or was I your first?”

No response.

“Who is Lily?” I shouted. “Who is she?”

Anna tried to speak, but no words came out. My teeth stayed tightly clenched. I dug the barrel of the pistol harder into flesh underneath her chin and twisted it like a bore drilling into a tree.

“Answer me,” I demanded. “Who is Lily?”

“She’s . . . she’s my half sister,” Anna said.