Known (35 page)

Is she hurt? Is she scared? If he touches her
. . .

She stomped on the brakes for that direction of thought.

Her father’s notes offered a partial distraction. She refused for the hundredth time to look at the clock, and she felt the waves of impatience rolling off Chris as he flipped pages next to her.

How much longer?

Her phone buzzed. Saul. She gathered the energy to speak with her uncle. They’d parted on uncertain terms. She hadn’t known whether to be furious with him or feel sorry about the burden he’d carried for decades. She still didn’t know.

“Saul?”

“Gianna.” His regularly booming voice was weak. “Any word?”

“Not really. They found Jamie’s car not far from the location. It looks like they switched vehicles and they believe he’s driving a black Escalade. There’s an image of a man who might be the driver, but they’re not one hundred percent certain. It’s a start.”

“Damn it. What can I do?”

She had no answer for him. “Keep praying.”

“I need to
do
something. I can make some calls, get some private agencies searching.”

Gianna understood his impatience. That same need to take action burned in her chest. Instead she scanned handwritten pages, searching for a needle in a haystack, fighting every second to keep from climbing the walls or dissolving into a puddle of tears.

Violet.

“Do what you need to do. No one will stop you.” She glanced through the room’s window at Hawes and Becker as she said the words. The detectives were deep in a discussion in an adjoining room. Maps had appeared on a wall there. Pins with flags marking the morning’s incidents. A huge whiteboard was already covered with time stamps, and Gianna read Violet’s name at the top. The investigation was taking shape, but it felt like a slow crawl along a dry riverbed.

I feel like I’m in a movie and Violet might stroll in at any moment.

“What are you doing?” Saul asked.

“We’re at the police station. We found a ton of notebooks in my father’s apartment. They needed every pair of eyes to help read through them. We’re hoping he made a notation about who he thought was following him recently. He wrote down
everything
else,” she added bitterly.

“Ahhh,” Saul said in a knowing tone. “The notebooks. Yes, a few years after the accident he started making daily entries. I think one of his therapists told him to do it, to help him feel more in control. We talked about it a few times. He said that the world kept moving forward and that memories weren’t being noted and they were dissolving into the air. He felt he needed to make records so that everything would be acknowledged.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think he felt that if it wasn’t written down, then it didn’t happen.”

“He’d appointed himself some sort of universal record keeper?”

“Only the record keeper of what he could see.”

Gianna was silent. How had her father stayed sane? “Is that why he lived removed from everyone most of the time? Less to take in?”

“I believe so. I have some of his notebooks in storage and a few at the house. He’d always give me some for safekeeping when we met. He’d beg me to keep them in a safe place. I have letters from him for you and Violet, too.”

“What?” Her voice cracked. “He wrote to us?”

“Oh, yes. There were times when his brain knew exactly what had happened.”

“Why didn’t you give them to me?” she whispered. “I have to see them.”

“We both agreed it was best you didn’t know he was alive. It was hard at first. Later it was simply the easiest thing to do. Every time I saw him, I walked away thankful you didn’t know what kind of person he’d turned into. Your father died that day, Gianna. In every sense of the word. There was a different person walking around in his body after that.”

“I had the right to choose. The two of you took that away from me.”

“We chose while you were still a child, and I have no doubt in my mind we did the right thing. Someone tried to kill you and your family. They succeeded on one count.”

“Two counts,” she said, thinking of her father. “You should have told me as I got older. I would have understood.”

“I thought about it a million times. I’m not proud that I chose to perpetuate the lie. You have every right to be angry with me. But honestly”—he paused—“I’d do the exact same thing again. Especially because of what’s happened in the last few days. Something isn’t right.”

“Maybe if I’d known my father was alive, he wouldn’t be dead now. Maybe knowing me would have put him on a different path.”

“Maybe you’d all be gone,” he said sharply.

Violet is gone. No! I will get her back!
She forced her brain to focus. “Leo Berg didn’t know my father survived, right?”

“No, he didn’t. Your father didn’t want any word getting back to the South African company. He was afraid they’d come after him and you again. That meant Leo had to stay out of the loop, too.”

“If the same man who killed my father now has Violet, then he could be linked to that company, right?”

“It’s been years, Gianna. Surely too much time has gone by.”

“But you said earlier that Dad was paranoid about Leo recently. That he’d implied that the investment company could have hired someone to kill me so Leo no longer had to share the company’s profits, right?”

“I also told you that Richard had a
brain injury
. He didn’t think straight, Gianna. He often talked about things that didn’t make sense. You ever listen to conspiracy theorists? It was like talking with the crazy ones.”

“I think we need to tell the detectives to talk to Leo.”

“Let me reach out to Leo first.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll answer the phone if I call. Anyone else is going to be put through three layers of secretaries or sent to voice mail even if they say they’re from the police department. A call from me will get through immediately.”

“I’ll give you five minutes.”

She hung up the phone as Hawes opened the door, her face flushed. Gianna leaped to her feet, her heart beating in double time.

“We’ve got a sighting of the vehicle. It was seen less than two blocks away from your home.”

“Did they see Violet?” asked Gianna.

“Only the vehicle. Once the new report went out, a local patrol officer immediately let us know he’d seen that type of vehicle. He didn’t have more information.”

“Was it parked? Or moving?” Chris asked. He’d risen out of his chair in unison with Gianna, his body tense, ready to respond.

“Moving. More patrol cars are flooding the area. They’ll find it.”

“How long ago?” Gianna asked, her heart sinking.

“He estimated he saw it about an hour ago.”

“Shit.” Chris vocalized Gianna’s thoughts.

“Becker and I are heading over to that area. Find anything in the notebooks yet?”

Gianna glanced at Chris, who shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll keep looking.” The last thing she wanted to do was sit and stare at pages. Her energy had returned in a burst at Hawes’s announcement. She wanted to go with them.

“They’re sending us some more bodies to assist wherever we need them. You’ll have some more help to look through the notebooks soon.” She left.

The energy drained out of the room, and Gianna sank back into her chair. “I hate this.” She pushed away the notebook she’d been scanning. “Every word tells me how dysfunctional he was, and I can’t stop thinking about Violet.”

“Me too,” said Chris.

Gianna turned toward him, studying his face. “What else is going through your mind?”

“I swear my brain is about as scattered as these notebooks indicate your father’s brain was. It’s taking every ounce of control for me to stay focused on the present.” His hazel eyes clouded. “Trust me. The past keeps popping up and threatening to take over.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

His face lost all emotion.

Wrong thing to say.
“I mean—”

“I know what you meant. You think you’re trying to make this easier for me. But that won’t do it. I won’t go sit at home and wonder what’s happening to your daughter. And I’d like to think that you need me here,” he ended softly. His gaze held hers.

Again he’d laid himself bare in front of her, opening himself up for rejection.

“I need you,” she whispered. “I’d be in pieces on the floor if you hadn’t been here to hold me together.”

He shook his head. “You’re way too strong for that. You always land on your feet, don’t you?”

“This time would have been different. I don’t want to go forward without you beside me.”

He reached out and gripped both her hands. “Not going anywhere.”

“When does your son get back?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

“Maybe this will all be over by then.”
Over.
It could mean two different things, but she refused to acknowledge one of them. A commotion in the adjoining room caught her attention. Through the window she saw two patrol officers and a plainclothes detective having a discussion and pointing at a spot on the map.

“Something’s up.” Gianna dashed out of their room and into the next. The officers looked up in surprise as she burst through the door. “What happened?”

“Another sighting of an Escalade,” one of the patrol officers said as Chris stepped into the room behind her.

“Where?” asked Chris.

The plainclothes detective tapped the map. “Here. In a totally different area than the first sighting. It could be another vehicle or else it’s simply traveled that far. I’ll put my money on it being a similar vehicle. It’s too far away from our prime location. That first sighting was near your home, right?”

Gianna nodded silently, her gaze locked where he’d just touched the map.

She turned to look at Chris. He nodded at her, his lips pressed together in a white line.

The second sighting had been on the highway a few miles from the burned-out cabin where her father’s body had been found.

The detective had it wrong: her home wasn’t the prime location—the cabin was.

Chris was silent as they sped out of town toward the Cascades and the cabin. Next to him in the cab of his truck, Gianna fidgeted.

“I’m glad Hawes and Becker had already left,” said Gianna. “Hawes would have known exactly where we were going.”

He didn’t mention that Gianna had repeated the observation three times. He understood. She was stressed.

After seeing the location of the second Escalade spotting, Chris had explained to the detective that the vehicle was within miles of where Francisco Green had been murdered. He’d suggested the county police check the burned cabin and the cabin where Rafael’s body had been found. The detective was aware of the case, but hadn’t realized the Escalade was so close to those locations, and immediately called Becker and Hawes.

Feeling they’d done their duty to highlight the obvious, they’d immediately left the police station, claiming they needed something to eat, knowing Hawes would ask the county sheriff to send units to the two cabins.

Deep in his gut, Chris knew the killer was returning to the original scene of the crime. And hopefully he had Violet with him. The notebooks had suddenly become less important. One look at Gianna’s expression in the police station, and he’d known she suspected the same.

“We need to tell them what we’re doing,” Gianna muttered. “We should tell Hawes that we’re going up there. Although I know the county sheriff will get there first and won’t let us get near the cabins until they decide it’s safe.”

Her phone vibrated. “It’s Leo,” she said with surprise. “Saul must have asked him to call me.”

She answered and was quiet for ten seconds. “Hang on, Leo. I’m going to put you on speaker, and I want Chris to hear all of this.” She tapped her screen and held the phone out so Chris could hear.

“I can’t believe this is going on,” continued Leo. “When Saul called me and told me about Violet, I thought I was going to lose it. I told him I had no idea this could go so far.”

Chris looked at Gianna. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line, her gaze on the phone.

“What could go so far?” she asked.

“Richard showed up at my house a while back.”

“
What?
You knew he was still alive?” asked Chris.
Did everyone know but Gianna?

“No! It shocked the hell out of me. I thought it was some sort of prank at first.”

“Why didn’t you contact me?” begged Gianna.

A deep sigh sounded through the phone. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Your father convinced me that you shouldn’t know about him yet, but he had plans to come forward once the danger was gone. Your father believed that if you knew he was alive, it’d lead your mother’s killers to you.”

“I think that happened anyway,” stated Chris.

“Richard had a lot of questions about what had happened decades ago. He was clearly confused, Gianna. I didn’t see the harm in respecting the time Richard wanted before he let you know he was still alive. I knew something was wrong with him, and your uncle Saul just explained his old head injury to me.”

“My father was going to contact me?” whispered Gianna.