Run From Fear (43 page)

She followed Danny to Stanford’s emergency room, polishing up her race car skills as she struggled to keep up. Caroline was already there, her skin alarmingly pale against her dark hair.

Anna, usually a ball of nonstop energy, stood quietly at her mother’s side, sucking her thumb and clutching her mother’s hand.

Talia watched as Danny squatted down to his daughter’s level and had a quiet conversation. Fortunately there were only minimal tears as Jack handed her off to Talia. He gave her his house key and told her to make herself at home. “You’re a champ,” he said, and gave her a quick, fierce hug.

“It’s no problem,” Talia assured him. “And after today, I could use the distraction.”

She took Anna back to Danny and Caroline’s house, and after about a hundred assurances from Talia that her mommy and the baby brother in her tummy were going to be just fine, Anna settled in with a pile of dolls and demanded Talia play family. For the next several hours, Talia was too busy racing around after an almost-three-year-old to dwell too much on Jack’s unpleasant accommodations for the weekend.

Finally, around 8:00 p.m. they were both starting to yawn, so she dug out a pair of jammies for Anna and settled into the rocker for stories. Her phone buzzed just as she was starting to read a story about a Siamese cat who thought he was a Chihuahua.

It was a text from Rosie.
Pigging out on weenies and s’mores by the fire. I’ll call when I get back tmrw.

“Athat?” Anna asked.

“That’s a note from my sister. Her name is Rosie.”

“She your big sister?”

“No, she’s my little sister. I’m the big sister.”

Anna sat up straight and put her thumb to her chest. “I going be a big sister!”

“You sure are!”

The little girl looked around the room as though searching for something. “Why your wosie not here?”

Talia sighed. “Rosie is on a camping trip with her friends.” At Anna’s befuddled look, Talia clarified, “You know, like when you sleep in a tent?” At the little girl’s nod, she continued. “She’s in a place with big beautiful mountains and tall trees. I bet she’s having a really good time right now.”

R
osie had no idea how much time had passed from the time Eugene had shot her up with something and shoved her into the trunk. That had been Friday morning. When she’d come to, she’d found herself in a room so dark she thought she’d been blindfolded. Her hands were bound behind her back and all of her clothes except her underpants and what felt like an oversized T-shirt had been removed and she shivered in the relentlessly cold, damp air.

How long had it been? It was impossible to tell for certain, but she thought it had to be at least a day. Talia thought she was in Yosemite. Did she start to worry when Rosie didn’t touch base? Maybe she was already looking, with Jack’s help.

The thought was a bright spot of hope in the otherwise dark, terrifying reality. She prayed, another in an endless string of pleas to the heavens, that her sister would find her before…

She shuddered as visions of what she feared Eugene’s plans were crept through her consciousness. Though he hadn’t admitted as much, Rosie had read enough about the serial rapist who terrorized the area for the last several weeks to know that this was part of his MO.

He drugged me, and when I woke up, I was in a cold room with concrete walls and floor.

It was cold comfort that he still hadn’t raped her. So far the only contact was some groping of her breasts and crotch, on top of her clothes, no skin-to-skin contact. She knew he kept his victims for days, sometimes up to a week, before he cut them, raped them, and left them drugged and unconscious.

But from the moment she’d come to and suspected who Eugene was, she felt an all-consuming dread that she most likely wasn’t going to be allowed to live.

He kept me so tightly blindfolded, I never saw his face.
All of the victims said the same thing.

Rosie couldn’t make the same claim. Eugene had done nothing to hide his identity from her, not when he took her from the parking lot and not in the few times he’d come to visit her.

Though she prayed Talia, Jack, and the rest of the world were looking for her, she knew it would be impossible for them to find this level of hell. She had to find a way out.

Her head throbbed with dehydration and hunger. Eugene had given her only small sips of water and no food for as long as she’d been here.

She heard the door scraping open and instinctively shrank back, crying out as the movement sent a shock of pain through her shoulders. The sudden illumination of the overhead light switching on sent a stab of pain through her head and she blinked back tears as her eyes started to adjust.

“Miss me?” Eugene said. The sound of his voice made her skin prickle with revulsion. As her vision cleared, she
stared up at him, at the bland features and dark eyes she’d once thought of as kind. How could she not have seen what was really underneath? Even Talia, so quick to see the devil in anyone, had bought his harmless, nice-guy facade.

Her gaze snagged on the water bottle in his hand. Dripping with condensation. Her dust-dry tongue crept out to lick her cracked lips.

“Thirsty?”

She nodded, wishing she had it in her to play it tough, play it cool, but she was cold, tired, thirsty, and scared, and it was everything she could do not to crumble into a ball and sob for her sister.

“You can have it, the whole thing.” He came closer, waving the bottle tauntingly. “But I need you to do something first.”

A horrified shudder racked her body and she prepared herself for the worst.
Just close your eyes and take yourself to another place.

But he didn’t shove her back and rip off her underwear, didn’t grab her hair and drag her face to his crotch.

“I know what you’re thinking and it’s not time for that yet.” Instead he took out a phone—her phone, she realized quickly, and held it up. “I just want to take your picture. Will you smile for the camera?”

Rosie did as he told her.

“Good girl,” he said, and she felt bile rise in her throat as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek. He cracked the bottle and held it to her lips. She gulped it down, shivering as some spilled down her chin to soak the front of the T-shirt.

As he withdrew the bottle, she looked behind his shoulder and saw that the door was cracked open, no more than a few inches. But if she could somehow get to it…

“You’re such a good girl,” he said, sliding his hands up her legs. “Not like those other bitches, not like your sister.”

“If I’m so good, why are you doing this to me?” she asked shakily, waiting for him to get closer, closer…

“Because it will make her pain even worse.”

“Who, Talia?” Rosie asked, momentarily distracted.

“She’s always been the one.”

The sick flare in his eyes at the mention of her sister spurred Rosie into action. As Eugene leaned forward, Rosie shot her head forward, catching Eugene square across the bridge of his nose with her forehead.

He fell back on his ass and she surged up, her head swimming with vertigo as she made a desperate lunge for the door.

She knew she was doomed before she took two steps. Eugene caught her by the hair and shoved her face-first onto the concrete floor. Pain exploded behind her eye as her cheekbone met the concrete at full speed. He drew back his foot and slammed it into her stomach. She gasped and curled into a ball, sobbing.

“You really think you can get away from me, you stupid bitch?” Another kick bruised her ribs. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to leave,” he said with a laugh that was like spiders crawling on her skin, “when I need you to keep our guest of honor company.”

Talia spent Saturday night at Danny and Caroline’s so Danny could stay at the hospital. She called Danny to check in after Anna went to sleep. Caroline and the baby
were stable, but they wanted to keep her in the hospital a few more days, and then she’d be on full bed rest until the baby arrived.

“Anna and I had a blast,” Talia reported. “If you need help with her, let me know. I’m happy to take her off your hands.”

Danny rang off with a heartfelt thanks and a warning they’d most likely be taking her up on her offer. Oddly, Talia found herself hoping so. She had fun with Anna playing chase and princess and reading fairy tales.

Which got her thinking about her own Prince Charming and what it might be like to have a little princess of her own.

If only life was as uncomplicated as a fairy tale. But with everything between them in such a tangle, Talia didn’t have much hope of her and Jack finding their own happily-ever-after.

On that glum thought, she retired to the guest room and spent a restless night missing Jack, envisioning him in his jail cell. The next morning she handed Anna off to her aunt Alyssa and uncle Derek and headed home. On the way, she called Charlie Ferguson, the lawyer Danny had hired to help Jack.

He didn’t have much to report but Talia took some small comfort at his assertion that Jack’s bail prospects looked good.

A little after two, Susie called and strong-armed her into coming by the restaurant the following morning to talk about her future employment. Talia spent the rest of the day catching up on laundry, paying bills, and grocery shopping. Rosie was supposed to be coming home today, so she called and left a message inviting her over for dinner.

She got a text back from Rosie around six, asking Talia to come pick her up. When she arrived at the dorm, she called Rosie’s cell but got no answer. She went to the door, and one of Rosie’s dormmates recognized her and let her in. She went up to Rosie’s room and knocked. Dana answered in a bathrobe, her hair wrapped up in a towel.

“Hey, I’m here to pick up Rosie.”

Dana’s brows pinched over the bridge of her nose. “I thought she was staying with you again tonight.”

“No,” Talia said, slowly shaking her head. “She was in Yosemite with you. She just texted me to come pick her up for dinner.”

Dana shook her head, making the towel wobble. “She didn’t go to Yosemite. Friday right before we were supposed to leave, she texted me and told me she had to cancel because she didn’t want you to be alone.”

“She didn’t—” Before she could complete the thought, her phone buzzed. “It’s from Rosie. ‘On my way from library meet me in back lot.’ ”

What the hell was going on? After everything they’d been through, would Rosie really screw around like this? What reason would she have to lie about where she was spending the weekend?

None of it made sense, and Talia couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. She said good-bye to Dana and went outside to the back lot. No sign of Rosie. She called her sister and thought she heard the phone ringing some distance away. But for whatever reason, Rosie wasn’t answering.

The call went to voice mail and she immediately redialed. She heard the phone again, but she didn’t see anyone around except for a nondescript guy in a black hoodie
getting out of his car a few yards away. This time she left a message. “Rosie, I don’t know where the hell you are or what’s going on, but you need to get over here right now.”

The text came almost as soon as she hung up.
Can’t. I’m a little tied up right now.

The picture that came with it turned her knees to jelly. Rosie, her face tearstained and bruised, eyes wide with fear. Her arms bound behind her back, wearing nothing but a ratty T-shirt that barely came to the tops of her thighs.

OhGodOhGodOhGod
. He had her. He had Rosie. It was happening again, only this time someone had Rosie.

“Hello, Talia.” She turned with a gasp and felt the sting of something stabbing into her neck. In a split second, she recognized the guy in the hoodie as Rosie’s physics tutor, Eugene. She told herself to scream but she couldn’t make her chest suck in a breath to do it.

“I’ve been waiting for this for such a long time.”

As her vision started to tunnel, she saw the sick light in his eyes as he held up Rosie’s phone for her to see.

Talia woke up with a pounding head and a foul, metallic taste in her mouth. Where was she? Fear sent her heart galloping and she tried to put the foggy events back together.