Separated twin sisters are reunited at Christmas in these two connected novellas

One Silent Night

Framed for murder and on the run from her kidnappers, Vanessa Jackson secretly hides her infant son in a safe place and flees for a wooded cabin. There she finds her childhood friend Eric Tomlin—a man she must trust with her life...and her family’s future.

The Danger in the Manger

Alyssa Jackson is shocked to find a baby in her Christmas manger. But the message on the infant’s T-shirt tells Alyssa the child must be her nephew. Alyssa believes her twin sister, presumed dead for years, is still alive. With the help of handsome police officer Chris Jensen, Alyssa goes on a dangerous search for the truth to reunite her family for Christmas.

Sammy was asleep when Vanessa placed his car seat in the concrete manger of the life-size nativity scene in front of her sister’s house.

She felt a pang of doubt. Was she right to leave the baby with her sister? It was going to be difficult enough to run with the girls. Sammy needed frequent feedings and diaper changes. The girls, at least, could stay quiet when they needed to.

He’d be safer with Alyssa. Wouldn’t he? Vanessa looked at the concrete sculptures of Mary and Joseph, poised protectively over the manger. Mary’s expression of love and concern seemed to say she’d look over the child.

Vanessa knew she didn’t dare linger, no matter how much she wished she could see her sister. She hadn’t laid eyes on her since she was kidnapped eight years ago. If Alyssa saw her, she’d have to take the time to explain, and that would endanger them all.

Twin Threat Christmas: Two novellas of twin sisters separated by danger who reunite and find their matches during a dangerous holiday season.

RACHELLE McCALLA

writes books with kissing, praying and dead bodies. She is a pastor’s wife, mother of four and holds a Master of Divinity degree. When she is not writing, she can be found sneaking vegetables into her kids’ food. Sometimes she even sneaks vegetables into her books. That may explain why her readers have such a healthy glow.

Twin Threat Christmas

One Silent Night

Danger in the Manger

Rachelle McCalla

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

One Silent Night

Dedication

Bible Verse

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

Danger in the Manger

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Extract

Copyright

One Silent Night

Rachelle McCalla

To all who have ever been lost.

May you find your way home again.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

—Matthew 10:29–31

ONE

She couldn’t breathe. Vanessa had feared this moment for years, envisioned it repeatedly over the past few months, watched it play out time after time in her nightmares. And yet, for all its familiarity, nothing could match the terror she felt now that it was actually happening.

It was worse than she’d imagined it.

The black Land Rover pulled into the middle of the driveway.

The middle! Why block the entire double-lane driveway? Why today?

Because they didn’t want anyone to get out alive, that was why.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Emma tugged at Vanessa’s shirt. “My apple juice!”

Vanessa sucked in enough air to speak. “Yes, Emma. I have your apple juice right here. You can drink it in the car. We’re going to do the quiet drill again. Remember the quiet drill?”

To Vanessa’s relief, her four-year-old’s eyes lit up. “The quiet drill. Yes! But Sammy is napping.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Vanessa handed her daughter the sippy cup of juice. “It will be okay. Can you get your jacket on? And tell Abby. Remember to whisper. Everything will be okay.” Vanessa spoke the last words as much for her own reassurance as for Emma’s. She gave her daughter an encouraging smile, then glanced back out the basement-level window in time to see an all-too-familiar pair of black shoes looking not too out of place in the quiet suburban cul-de-sac.

And boots. Two pairs. No, three.

Virgil had extra guns with him today.

Of course he did. He’d told Jeff on his last visit there wouldn’t be another warning. His money or his life...and the lives of Vanessa and the children.

As always, Jeff had made the deal without consulting her. Vanessa had no intention of letting him bargain with their lives. She’d been preparing ever since, hiding emergency supplies in the garage, ready to go. Drilling the children on a swift and silent evacuation. She was ready—as prepared as anyone ever could be.

But why did Virgil have to park in the middle of the driveway?

The doorbell echoed through the house, and Vanessa flew into action. She might not have much time. Sure, Virgil liked to talk. She hoped he’d try to threaten Jeff a little longer in hopes of squeezing the money out of him, but there was every chance the mobster—gangster, whatever he was, Vanessa had never really wanted to know—might drag the kids out first in an effort to make his argument more compelling.

Sammy was still asleep, just as Emma said. Vanessa scooped up the ten-month-old and set him as gently as possible into his waiting car seat.

This was the part of her escape plan that troubled her most, one of the biggest reasons she’d never been brave enough—or desperate enough—to attempt to escape with the kids before. Abby and Emma could be depended upon to flee in silence. But if Sam cried, he would give away their position, and she couldn’t stop him.

His rosebud lips opened in protest as Vanessa tucked one arm through the five-point harness. Prepared, Vanessa slipped a pacifier into his open mouth and prayed.

Please, Lord. If ever I needed Your help, it’s today.

Sammy made a grumpy face, but his eyes stayed closed and he started sucking.

Gently, Vanessa pulled his other arm through its strap, buckled him in and hoisted up the car seat, all but running to the stairs that led to the garage.

As she rose toward the second floor, she could hear Virgil arguing with Jeff in the living room upstairs, their voices muffled but angry. They were in the house.

She had to hurry, and reached for the forbidden keys. Jeff almost never allowed her to drive, not unless he was with her, his gun at his side to make sure she didn’t try to get away from him. That the keys were on a peg by the garage at all was a recent concession, made only after Virgil’s latest threat.

That Jeff had agreed meant he, too, understood Virgil wasn’t messing around. Jeff had kept her tied up for the first year after he’d kidnapped her, only allowing her a tiny bit of freedom in the locked basement after Abby was born. Even now, he’d strictly told her she wasn’t to try to leave the basement without him.

But still the keys were there. The door that led to the garage was unlocked. On some level, whether consciously or not, Jeff had allowed her a means of running for her life—even if it meant escaping from him, something he’d long told her she could never do.

Vanessa grabbed the fat ring of keys as she slipped through the door to the garage.

Abby and Emma looked at her from inside the Sequoia with anxious eyes as Vanessa carried Sammy into the garage. “Did you get the bags?” she asked her seven-year-old as she settled the infant car seat into place.

“Yes,” Abby whispered, true to the plan.

A quick glance in the third-row seat confirmed everything was in place.

Everything but the enormous vehicle blocking the driveway.

Vanessa climbed into the driver’s seat. “Everybody buckled?” she asked, latching her own seat belt.

“Yes, Mommy.”

Now what? The next step of the drill was to back out of the driveway as quickly as possible, to get away before Virgil or his men could get off a shot. But with the house on one side of the driveway and the steep, terraced side of the landscaped hill on the immediate other side, there was no way out of the garage except the driveway, and Virgil had blocked it. The Land Rover was worse than a solid wall behind them.

A solid wall.

Vanessa looked at the wall in front of her. Plywood sheathing, two-by-fours spaced widely apart. And on the other side, vinyl siding.

How hard could it be?

She didn’t have time to find out. She didn’t have options. There was certain death in every other direction. Jeff had forced her to witness enough of Virgil’s “disciplinary measures” to know his warnings weren’t empty threats.

Maybe she should have tried to get away before, even years before, but Jeff had always made certain that wasn’t possible. Even once Abby was born and Vanessa wasn’t bound with ropes or chains, it became too difficult to escape with a baby in tow. Jeff kept them locked in the basement whenever he wasn’t home to guard over her. For the past seven years, her priority had been giving her children a normal childhood—or as close to normal as she could provide under Jeff’s armed supervision.

Jeff’s threats echoed through her thoughts even now. Jeff knew too much about her family. He’d threatened to torture and kill her grandfather and sister, to take her children from her, malign her as a bad mother, claiming she’d lied to him about her real age and identity

No, Vanessa hadn’t dared try to escape, not as long as Jeff was alive to come after her or give information for Virgil to track down everyone she held dear.

But this time, Virgil’s threat was bigger than Jeff’s. Virgil had promised the last time that if he had to come back, he wouldn’t let any of them live, not even Jeff—which meant Jeff couldn’t come after her or tell Virgil anything that might help him find her.

In some ways the criminal was freeing her.

If only his vehicle wasn’t barring the way. It was far, far too late to call the police, even if Vanessa had any hope they’d let her keep her children. No, Jeff had made clear what she’d lose if she tried to get the law on her side. Her word against his, and that of his associates.

There was only one way out of the garage

Dear Lord, please let this work.

“Okay, girls, tuck your heads like I told you.” Vanessa had originally planned for the girls to lay their heads on their laps, covered by their arms, to protect them from possible gunfire as she backed down the driveway past the living-room picture window. But a tucked-head position might be just as protective going the other direction.

She had a good ten feet of empty storage space in front of her, maybe more. Normally she would never start a vehicle inside a closed garage, but they wouldn’t be in there for more than a few seconds.

She turned the key, threw the SUV into gear and stomped on the gas, throwing one arm up over her face and pinching her eyes shut, holding tight to the steering wheel with her other hand. The vehicle leaped forward, slamming into the wall, pushing through it with the sound of splintering wood and cracking boards.

“Mommy! You drove through the wall!”

“I know, Emma. It’s okay.” Vanessa steered around the girls’ playhouse. The Sequoia lurched across the sandbox, flattening the tall privacy fence that had long held them prisoner, clipping the neighbor’s back bushes en route to the street.

The big tires lumbered down the curb. Vanessa cruised down the familiar boulevard, four blocks, five, and came to a stop at the traffic light. She checked for oncoming traffic. Finding the way clear, she turned right onto the busy street, checked her rearview mirror for any sign of the Land Rover and breathed the tiniest sigh of relief.

No sign of them. Yet.

But Virgil and his men could come after them any moment.

The front of the vehicle was probably scratched and dented, but the windshield hadn’t even cracked. The girls were wide-eyed but silent. Sammy was whimpering. Still, most important, they were alive.

* * *

Alert!

Abducted children in danger!

Eric stopped flipping through the channels on the cabin’s relic of a television as the screen flashed pictures of two little girls and a baby. A boy. Samuel.

The reporter rattled off the details in a matter-of-fact voice. “The Nelson children are believed to be with their mother. Their father’s body was found this evening. Authorities at this time are assuming he was shot by his wife, who took the children following a domestic dispute.”

“So what’s the forecast?” Debbi, Eric’s younger sister, bounded into the room behind him, then stopped short. “Oh, no.”

“They are believed to be traveling in a brown Toyota Sequoia, which may have front-end damage. Authorities believe the woman drove through the back wall of the garage as she left.”

The scene on the screen switched from the children’s faces to a picture of an SUV superimposed over footage of splintered two-by-fours and the busted-out back wall of a garage.

The reporter turned to a man standing in front of a black Land Rover. “This is Chicago businessman Virgil Greenwood, who discovered the body of Jeffrey Nelson at Mr. Nelson’s Barrington home this evening. Mr. Greenwood, can you tell us what happened?”

Virgil Greenwood, a middle-aged man in a business suit, nodded soberly. “Mr. Nelson and I were supposed to have a business dinner together today. I had made arrangements to pick him up, but when I arrived, no one answered the door. I could see the living room through the window and thought I saw Mr. Nelson there, but when I looked closer, I could see he’d been shot. The front door was unlocked. I let myself in. Of course, my first thought was for his family. I knew he had a wife and kids. So I called out, ‘Hello, is anyone home?’ something like that—and then I heard the crash.”

“That’s when Mrs. Nelson drove through the garage?” the reporter confirmed.

“Yes, yes, the sound came from that direction. I ran to see, but the vehicle was already gone. But you can see the ruts.”

“Let’s get another look at those ruts,” the reporter requested, and the screen image shifted again.

“Eric?” Debbi touched his arm. “You don’t have to watch this.”

“I know.” Eric’s fingers twitched over the buttons on the remote, but he couldn’t bring himself to switch the channel. “They said the kids might be in danger. I have to hear what they think happened.”

“It’s okay. The forecast can wait. I can look outside. It was warm today, but the evening will be cooler. Typical October in Illinois.” Debbi spoke softly, almost as though she was afraid to disturb him.

She’d been that way eight years ago, too, when Vanessa first disappeared, and every time an unexpected memory or a missing-child report would trigger flashbacks. Being here at the cabin where he and Vanessa had spent so much time together both as kids and teens, the memories were closer to the surface, more real and harder to suppress.

Virgil’s voice continued as the camera panned in for a close-up of the tire tracks that cut jagged lines through an otherwise picturesque backyard. “What kind of crazy person would drive through the garage wall? And with the kids in the car? At least, I hope she had her kids with her. Who knows what she might have done with them if she did this to Jeff?”

The reporter, instead of shushing the man’s musings, encouraged them. “You mentioned you might know what could have prompted her to act, isn’t that right, Mr. Greenwood?”

“Oh, Jeff said he thought his wife was having an affair. I suppose she decided to leave him. Maybe they fought about it, I don’t know. It’s just crazy, isn’t it? They need to find those kids before she does anything to them. It’s getting dark out.”

“And here is a picture of the mother, Madison Nelson, who is believed to have abducted her own children after shooting their father dead.” A woman’s face appeared on the screen—blond curly hair, tired eyes, a wan smile.

“What kind of crazy woman does a thing like that?” Debbi muttered behind him.

But Eric was too distracted by the image to attempt to answer her question. “She almost looks like Vanessa.”

“Vanessa had brown hair, not blond,” Debbi corrected quickly. “And she’s too young to have a seven-year-old.”

“She was seventeen when she disappeared eight years ago.”

“She was declared legally dead.”

“Doesn’t mean she is dead.”

“Vanessa wouldn’t shoot her husband and leave him for another guy.”

“That is true. What kind of woman would do a thing like that?” Eric gripped the remote, finally winning the battle to change channels as the reporter intoned about the importance of viewers reporting any sign of the vehicle, the children or their mother—and speculations about the man she may have run away to join. “And what kind of guy would get involved with such a crazy person?”

* * *

Sammy was asleep when Vanessa placed his car seat in the concrete manger of the life-size nativity scene in front of her sister’s house. She felt a pang of doubt. Was she right to leave the baby with her sister? It was going to be difficult enough to run with the girls. Sammy needed frequent feedings and diaper changes. The girls, at least, could stay quiet when they needed to.

He’d be safer with Alyssa. Wouldn’t he? Vanessa looked at the concrete sculptures of Mary and Joseph, poised protectively over the manger. Mary’s expression of love and concern seemed to say she’d look over the child.

Vanessa knew she didn’t dare linger, no matter how much she wished she could see her sister. If Alyssa saw her, she’d have to take the time to explain, and that would endanger them all. Virgil’s men might catch up to her at any time, and Sammy would only be safe if the men who were after her didn’t know where she’d left him.

Swallowing back the emotion that tightened her throat and blurred her vision, she ran to the Sequoia, parked almost out of sight down the street. She’d spotted Alyssa going into the house as she pulled up, and suspected, based on the open door to the workshop, her sister would be coming out again soon.

Sure enough, once she was inside the vehicle, she and the girls watched through the windows as Alyssa stepped outside the front door, headed toward the baby.

Sammy would be safe. Safer, at least, than he would be on the run with her, and that was all that mattered.

Vanessa put the car in gear and drove off into the setting sun. It was dark, and the girls were asleep by the time she turned off the highway to the gravel road that led to the cabin.

She hadn’t been there in over eight years, but she’d reviewed the route in her head a hundred thousand times, promising herself that if she ever got a chance to escape, she’d flee to the cabin, the one place she’d never told Jeff about.

Forgotten landmarks leaped into sight like old friends eager to welcome her home as the headlights pierced the night in front of her.

A lump welled up in her throat, but Vanessa swallowed it down. No, she couldn’t get emotional, not yet, no matter how many times she’d comforted herself with the hope she might someday see this place again. There was still far too much she had to do.

The Sequoia rolled to a stop in the parking spot in front of the garage. The fishing cabin was just as she remembered it, if a little spooky in the darkness. It was her cabin, or would be someday if her grandfather was still alive. Grandpa had always promised he’d will it to her and her sister.

With a backward glance to be certain the girls were still sleeping peacefully, Vanessa quietly opened the door and hurried to the rock border of the flower bed near the porch. Would the key still be there? Anything could have happened to it in the years since she’d last tucked it away in its hiding spot.

The dim light from the key-chain flashlight barely illuminated the stones, so Vanessa dropped to her knees, feeling each rock in turn, counting them off until she found the correct one. It didn’t want to budge, the soil having settled thick around it over the years.

Fighting back panic, Vanessa tugged hard on the rock with both hands, the flashlight beam playing crazily across the cabin until she had the stone rolled onto its side. She regained control of the keychain, aiming the meager light into the dirt.

She saw only bare ground.

“No. It has to be here.” She glanced back down the row of rocks, wondering if perhaps she’d chosen the wrong one, but this stone, with its knobby, handgrip-shaped protrusion, was the one. The only one.

She swept her fingers across the dirt, digging lightly, gently.

Something scraped her hand and she stopped, running her index finger along the stiff, buried something, flicking it upward with her fingernail.

The key!

She wiped it clean on her jeans as she rose and bounded up the shallow porch steps to the door. Thankfully, the knob looked familiar, not some new, shiny thing to replace the one that matched the key in her hand. Shaking slightly, it took her a moment to align it with the lock, to slide it inside, wrestle with the knob, hear the click and, finally, with a practiced shove of her hip, pop the door open wide.

Vanessa swiped her hand along the inside of the door frame, found the light switch and flipped it on. Even before her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, she saw the man standing across the room at the base of the stairs, facing her from behind the barrel of a gun.

TWO

Eric blinked at the sudden light and tried to get a decent look at the intruder. He wasn’t about to hurt anyone—he was pretty sure the old hunting shotgun wasn’t even loaded—but Debbi had told him to take it downstairs with him when she’d run to his room in fear after seeing headlights outside. Their cabin was deep on private property. No one else ought to be there, certainly not in the middle of the night.

Still half-asleep, his mind muddled by dreams tainted with the memories unearthed by that evening’s news story, he couldn’t help wondering if he was actually awake.

The face staring back at him from the doorway was the same one from his dreams, the same one from the newscast, familiar but completely impossible.

“Eric?”

He nodded, swallowed, couldn’t say the name that rose to his lips.

Vanessa was dead. Legally dead.

“Can you put the gun down?” The woman spoke with Vanessa’s voice, which for all the years that had passed was still the same, maybe a little tired, even frantic.

He lowered the hunting shotgun but didn’t let go. More awake now—quite shocked awake—he realized a number of things all at once.

This was the woman from the picture on the news, the woman who’d killed her husband just before dinnertime in a quiet Chicago suburb. She was dangerous. Her children were in danger. The reporter had called her Madison Nelson.

Should he let on that he knew who she was?

And why did she remind him so much of Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead? What was she doing here, in the cabin where he and Vanessa had spent so many happy times as children and teens?

Before he could sort it out, a voice echoed from outside the house.

“Mommy?”

The woman darted back out of the cabin.

Still unsure what was going on, Eric nonetheless realized the voice he’d heard probably belonged to one of Madison Nelson’s daughters—what were their names?

“It’s okay, Abby.”

Eric remembered the moment he overheard the woman soothing her daughter. Abby and Emma. And Sammy.

Abby had clambered half out of the Toyota Sequoia—the same vehicle featured in the news broadcast. Eric couldn’t see in the darkness, but he felt certain the front of the vehicle was probably banged up, at least a bit.

Abby clung to her mother, and the woman stroked her hair and held her close. “I’m right here. Mommy’s right here, honey. We’re at the place I told you about—the cabin.”

“The most wonderful place in the world?”

“That’s the one. It will look more welcoming once the sun rises. Let’s get you into bed.”

“With the kitten quilt? Did you find the kitten quilt?”

“I didn’t have time to look. We’ll see. Can you walk? I need to carry your sister.”

Eric listened, still unsure whether he was dreaming or what exactly was going on. The woman sounded like a loving parent, but weren’t most psychotic killers supposed to seem normal on the outside? More disturbing still, Eric felt sure that somehow, though this woman matched the description of Madison Nelson, she was Vanessa, who was supposed to be dead.

After all, she had a key to the cabin, and she knew about the kitten quilt.

Abby slid down from the high SUV and blinked up at him warily. “Who’s that?”

Eric looked at the woman—Vanessa? Could it be Vanessa? Or was she Madison now?

She cast him a brief, uncertain glance. “That’s my friend Eric. He’s okay.”

Something welled up inside him at the words and the reassurance that filled the little girl’s face. Even the girl looked a lot like Vanessa had looked when they were kids together, playing in the yard here at the cabin, chasing fireflies after dark.

What had happened? Eight years ago, one of his best friends had disappeared, and now this woman was here, knowing things Vanessa would know—acting and talking like Vanessa, even looking like her, aside from the blond hair and eight years of passing time.

When the little girl stumbled uncertainly after her mother, Eric held out his hand.

Abby looked up at him with eyes so much like Vanessa’s had been at that age, he couldn’t speak. But the little girl trustingly placed her hand in his, and he steadied her as they walked into the cabin.

“Debbi and I have the upstairs bedrooms,” Eric explained as they entered, as though this was a regular, planned visit, and he hadn’t just been pointing a gun at the woman.

“The downstairs bedroom just has one bed—”

“It’s a bunk bed now, the kind with a single on top and double below. Some buddies of mine sold it after college. I thought the cabin could use it.”

“Perfect. This way, girls.”

Eric let go of Abby’s hand as her mother led her toward the bedroom. Still not quite certain he wasn’t dreaming, he tried to assure himself he wasn’t doing anything illegal by offering hospitality to a murderer—after all, he didn’t know for a fact she’d murdered anyone, did he? Maybe it was self-defense? Maybe a lot of things had happened in the past eight years. All he knew was that he’d prayed for years that his friend would be safe, and now all of a sudden, here she was with little girls who needed a helping hand.

He wasn’t about to turn them away. Besides, even if she was a psychotic murderer, he ought to make sure her kids were safe. Shouldn’t he?

Eric bounded up the stairs to fetch the kitten quilt, which was usually kept folded at the foot of the bed in Debbi’s room. The beloved blanket from their childhood had come with the cabin, and even though it was a little juvenile for his twenty-five-year-old sister, it was too soft and delightful to get put away in a closet, unused.

His sister peeked at him from the doorway as he approached her room.

“It’s the Toyota Sequoia—I shined my high-beam flashlight out the window. The license plate matches the one on the news.” She followed him into her room, where her laptop sat on the end of the bed, open to a news page about the missing children and their murdering mother. “That’s Madison Nelson, isn’t it?”

“Shh. If it is, do you want her to know you know who she is?”

Debbi’s eyes widened, and she clamped her mouth shut.

“Something’s going on.” Eric lifted the laptop, pulled the kitten quilt out from underneath it and explained briefly, “I’m nearly positive that’s Vanessa Jackson downstairs.”

“Eric, no.” Debbi’s voice fell into the chiding tone she’d used long before when he’d vowed to go out searching one more time. “She’s been declared—”

“I know.” Eric didn’t want to hear the words again. “But nobody ever found out what happened to her. All I know is, Vanessa was my friend. I’ve got to help my friend.”

Debbi grabbed his arm as he stepped toward the bedroom door. “Even if it means aiding a known criminal?” She showed him the cell phone she held in her hand. “I was about to call the police.”

Eric sucked in a breath, his conscience in sudden conflict. Any other time, he’d say it was the right thing to do. “If Vanessa wanted to go to the police, she’d have done it already.”

“So we let her kill us in our sleep?”

“She’s not going to hurt us. Not in front of her kids.” He’d seen enough of the way the woman interacted with the girls to know she was purposely protecting them. That she was used to protecting them. But how far had she gone to protect them?

Debbi cut off his thoughts. “That didn’t stop her from killing her husband.”

“We don’t know what happened.” Eric wasn’t sure he wanted to know, exactly. He could guess at a few things, but all of them involved the kind of ugliness and hurt he wouldn’t wish on anyone, certainly not on the girl he’d cared for so strongly. “We should at least wait and hear her story. Can you wait that long?”

“How long will that be?”

“Give me an hour, maybe two. If she won’t tell us what’s going on, then you can call the police.”

“Fine.” Debbi flashed him the look she always gave him when he outfished or outmaneuvered her. Her final words floated after him on a sigh as he headed back down the stairs. “Although I don’t see why she’d let us live once we know what she’s up to.”

* * *

“Mommy, the kitten quilt.”

“I’m going to look for it.”

“No, it’s there.” Abby pointed.

Vanessa turned to see Eric standing in the doorway, an uncertain look on his face, kitten quilt in hand. “Ah. Thank you.” She accepted the quilt, which solved one tiny problem while introducing various others.

Her first priority from the moment the shadow of Virgil’s Land Rover had darkened the basement walls had been to get her girls tucked safely into bed at this cabin. But she hadn’t expected anyone to be there, certainly not Eric, the friend she’d long ago wished would be more than a friend, whose presence complicated everything. She felt a stab of guilt as she avoided looking him in the eye, instead focusing her attention on tucking the quilt securely around her daughters on the double-size lower bunk.

“Good night, Mommy.” Abby and Emma effectively dismissed her, snuggling in under the blanket as though they were on one of the countless innocent visits she and her sister had made to the cabin a generation before. She’d prayed for something like this for them—but not this way, not going through what they’d been through, or what yet lay ahead.

“Good night.” There was nothing more to do or say. She couldn’t put off facing Eric any longer.

She closed the door behind her and stepped toward the living room, deciding as she did so to ask questions first, to play offense instead of defense and maybe put off answering too many questions until she knew a bit more about what was going on.

Eric stood in the middle of the cabin’s great room, near the table that separated the open kitchen from the sofa and television on the other side.

She glanced at him only briefly, saw confusion and maybe even anger on his face, and quickly looked away, taking in all that had changed and all that had stayed the same in the cabin. Her grandmother’s knitted afghan still topped the sofa, but it was a newer sofa. Some of the pictures on the walls were the same. Some had changed. The familiarity of it all made her want to sob with relief, but she held herself together. She had to. For the kids.

“So, you—” Eric started.

Vanessa remembered her plan and cut off his question quickly. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my place.”

“No, it’s not. It’s mine.”

“Alyssa sold it to me.”

“So my grandfather—”

“He died. Six years ago.”

She’d told herself that much was likely. Her grandfather was old, and his health had been declining rapidly, but the words still hit her like one of Jeff’s controlling blows.

And just like in the early days when Jeff hit her, Vanessa fought back. “So Alyssa sold you her half? Half the cabin was supposed to go to me.”

“Your sister sold me both halves.”

“She can’t sell my half—”

“She can. You were declared legally dead.” Eric took a step toward her. “What’s going on, Vanessa? Or should I call you Madison?”

Vanessa pinched her eyes shut at the words, which struck her like another blow. “How do you know—”

“It was on the news.”

“What was?”

Eric opened his mouth, looked toward the ceiling and made a resigned noise in his throat. “Maybe you should just watch it yourself. I can find it online. But first—what happened to the baby? Sammy? He wasn’t in the vehicle.”

Vanessa heard real concern, maybe even fear in Eric’s voice, almost enough to drown out her own terror over what the news might have to say. “I left him with my sister.”

“Alyssa knows you’re alive, then?”

Much as she’d have liked to confirm his words, she knew it wouldn’t be entirely honest to do so. “She’ll figure it out. I need to see that newscast.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Eric climbed the steps and returned with a laptop, which he set on the table. The website was already up on the screen.

“Debbi had it open,” he explained quietly as the broadcast began to play.

Vanessa reached past him to adjust the volume, just loud enough for her to hear without risking the girls overhearing anything from the other side of the bedroom door. She’d made too many sacrifices to preserve their innocence, to let it be destroyed now.

“Authorities are asking everyone in the Chicago region to be on the lookout for this vehicle, driven by Madison Nelson of Barrington, who is believed to have shot her husband dead before driving through the back wall of their garage with their three children in the vehicle.”

“Dead,” Vanessa repeated softly. She’d expected it from the moment the Land Rover pulled into the driveway. Still, hearing the words, seeing the images of the house where she’d been held captive for so long, made her tremble.

Pictures flashed across the screen—her home, the prison where she’d been held, surrounded by yellow police tape. The broken-out back wall of her garage. The vehicle, which was now parked outside. Pictures of her children and a particularly unflattering photograph of her, which had been taken mere minutes after she’d given birth to Sammy after a grueling labor.

But the most horrifying thing wasn’t the pictures. It wasn’t even the fact that Jeff was dead.

“They think I killed him? Why would they think that?”

No sooner had she voiced the question than Virgil appeared on the screen, saying horrible things about her, voicing ugly motives made all the more terrifying because, to anyone who didn’t know her, they would sound plausible. And no one really knew her, not anymore. So everyone would think Virgil’s lies were true.

“You didn’t kill him?” Eric’s voice behind her was soft, even cautious.

She turned and met his eyes for the first time. “No, I most certainly did not.”

Eric looked visibly relieved.

Vanessa might have felt offended that he’d doubted her, except that, given what she’d seen on the news broadcast, he had every right to believe the worst. Gratitude welled up inside her that he was willing to trust her word over that of everyone else. She pulled out a chair and sat down, the weight of the news broadcast too much to bear standing up.

She needed to explain a few things quickly. “He kidnapped me. He hid me and gave me that name, made me dye my hair, broke my nose once and it healed with a bump.”

Eric nodded patiently. “So, who killed him?”

“He did—” she pointed at Virgil, who was still on the screen “—or one of the guys who works for him.”

For a long, silent moment, Vanessa looked at Eric, waiting for some sign that would indicate whether he believed her or not. She wasn’t sure what she would do if he didn’t. All she knew was that she had to keep her children safe. The news report was a terrifying development. Where could she go without being recognized? Where could she hide?

Finally, Eric spoke. “Can you prove these guys killed him?”

Vanessa blinked, her shock at being free, her uncertainty about what to do next, clouding her thoughts, muddling her judgment.

“Look, Vanessa, I want to help you, but this does not look good. Debbi wants to call the police.”

“No! Don’t do that. Please.” Vanessa wrapped her arms around her shoulders, wishing for the millionth time that none of this had ever happened. She’d gotten away, but only briefly. Her face was all over the news. She’d have to stay in hiding, keep her daughters in hiding, or she’d go to jail and lose her kids. “If you call the police, they’ll take the kids. I’ll go to jail, their word against mine.” She repeated the threat Jeff had ingrained in her, the fear that had kept her frozen in the basement, even when she thought about breaking out a window and running for help.

“What happened, Vanessa? You disappeared eight years ago, and everybody thought you were dead. What’s been going on?”

“It’s a trafficking ring. They’re criminals.”

“Who are? This Virgil guy?”

“And Jeff—they came to the house and killed Jeff this evening. I ran with the kids or they would have killed us, too.” She swallowed, hating the words, hating the memories. “Jeff kidnapped me eight years ago as part of this human-trafficking scheme. They take girls and traffic them, but Jeff kept me to himself. He left me tied up when he wasn’t around until Abby was born.

“Once Abby was born, he allowed me just enough freedom to take care of her, never enough to get away from him. He was always there, for every minute of every medical appointment, every second I was ever around other people, watching me, making sure I didn’t reach out for help. Not like I would try anything—I knew he’d go after my family if I did or take Abby from me. It’s a big ugly crime ring. They run drugs, too. They use the drugs to control people. Virgil’s just one piece of it.”

Eric swallowed slowly, as if forcing himself to digest her words. “Can you prove it?”

“I know a few things, but no, I don’t have any evidence against them. Any time I saw a piece of paper I wasn’t supposed to see, Jeff warned me what would happen if I ever so much as touched anything that could be used as evidence against them. I purposely closed my eyes. I had no choice.”

“The only way to prove your innocence is to prove these guys are guilty.”

“I agree.” Vanessa nodded. But at the same time, Eric’s words scared her. “But Virgil’s not the ringleader. He was Jeff’s contact, some kind of bully employed to keep guys like Jeff in line, but he wasn’t in charge. If we turn in Virgil, that’s just cutting off an arm.”

“And the real monster would turn on you,” Eric muttered, understanding. “So, who’s the ringleader? We find him, find evidence against him, and we can prove your innocence.”

Vanessa liked the idea. If they could shut down the trafficking ring, all the other innocent girls who’d been taken just like her could go free.

There was just one problem.

“I don’t know who’s in charge.”

THREE

Eric was wide-awake now, but he almost wished he could roll over and forget this nightmare had ever happened. Except that Vanessa was back. He’d prayed for her safe return, even imagined himself holding her tight if he ever had the chance again. But the fact that she was a wanted fugitive gave him pause. He wanted to believe she was innocent, but there were too many things he didn’t understand.

“Want to tell me what happened? Maybe we can sort out how to catch this guy, or what to do, or something.” Eric was also hoping that he’d learn enough to tell him whether he was crazy for trusting Vanessa. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to embrace her as he’d always pictured himself embracing her if she was ever found. But if she’d been held captive by a man for eight years, maybe she wouldn’t welcome his touch. He held back, waiting for some sign from her that would tell him if it would be okay for him to reach out to her.

“Oh, wow, where do I start?”

“How about the night you went missing?”

Vanessa closed her eyes, gulped a breath and then shook her head. “I need to start before that. You know I was working as a waitress at the Flaming Pheasant down by the interstate.”

“That’s where you were last seen, getting off work at the end of your shift. You walked out the back door, but you never came home. Your car was still in the spot where you parked it when you arrived at work.” Eric filled in what he knew.

Vanessa nodded, confirming his words. “There was a guy, the same man who was murdered this evening. Back then he was young and handsome and charming. He was a regular at the restaurant. He’d say the kindest things to me. ‘You have pretty eyes’ or ‘I like your smile’—not creepy things or even really hitting on me. I just thought he was nice, you know. Unlike a lot of other customers, he never complained, never got impatient when the kitchen was slow. The restaurant often wasn’t busy, so we’d chat. It got to where I looked forward to seeing him. My day was better if he showed up.”

Eric felt a bead of cold sweat creeping down his arm as Vanessa spoke. If he hadn’t known where her story was going, it would have sounded so innocent. He might have felt jealous of the guy, but he wouldn’t have been suspicious.

“Slowly, he started to learn things about me. Asked where I was from, about my family. I told him that I lived with my grandfather, about how my parents died in a car crash when Alyssa and I were little—told him I had a twin sister. Maybe I should have been suspicious that he was interested to hear about me, but he was always so friendly and positive about everything, I couldn’t resist talking to him.”

Much as Eric wished Vanessa would hurry with her story, or even skip over the parts that made his skin crawl, nonetheless, he sensed it was important for him to hear it. Not just in case there were details that might help them track down the leader of the trafficking ring, but because, after all, Vanessa had been through a terrible trauma. She needed to tell someone what had happened.

He also felt strongly the need to hear her out. Eight years ago, he’d failed her. He hadn’t been there for her. But he was here now. He had a second chance—the kind of second chance he’d prayed for, but never really dared to dream he might get. He could be here for her now. It wouldn’t change the past, but it was the best he could do.

Vanessa looked down at her hands as she spoke, as though eye contact would be too difficult, given the content of her story. “Then one weekend, I was really bummed that I had to work, because I wanted to come out here to the cabin. Jeff said he wanted to make me feel better, that he wanted to do something special. He offered to take me out after I got off work. By then I felt like I knew him, even though I didn’t, really.”

Eric didn’t want to interrupt, but he had to. “You didn’t tell him about the cabin, did you?” If Jeff knew about the cabin, then he might have told Virgil or any of their associates. They could track them down. No doubt they wouldn’t want someone at large who knew so much about them. They were probably looking for Vanessa right now, not content to let the police and television viewers do their searching for them.

“No. I never told him about this place. It’s too special to me. It didn’t feel right to share it with him, even before...” Her voice trailed off.

“So you went out with him after work?” Eric prompted, dreading to hear what came next.

“Yes. I got in his car, and at first he was just as charming as ever. But we didn’t stop. He kept driving toward Chicago, and I realized I didn’t know where I was and didn’t know where he was taking me or how to get home again. It was dark out, almost winter, and very cold. I started to ask questions, and he just kept assuring me that he had a special place in mind, and I was going to love it.” Her voice broke.

“I didn’t love it. I hated it,” she whispered, shaking her head, her unspoken words telling him vastly more of the horrors she’d suffered than anything she might have said. “He tied me up, did whatever he wanted to me.” She wiped away a tear, gulped a breath and kept talking.

“He kept me tied up for nearly a year. When I got pregnant with Abby, for a long time he threatened me that I wouldn’t be able to keep her, but eventually he came around and took me to the doctor for medical care, but only once I promised not to let on about who I really was. He had these fake IDs. I was Madison Nelson, supposedly four years older than I really am, with blond hair. After that, he didn’t keep me tied up, just locked in the basement with my baby.

“For a long time, I tried to think of a way to escape, to get away when he wasn’t looking, but I couldn’t leave Abby behind, and I couldn’t run with a baby. Once I got pregnant with Emma, I knew there was no way. I hadn’t been able to escape with one child—how could I run away with two? So I turned my attention from thinking about how to escape, to thinking about how to give my girls something resembling a normal life. Jeff recognized the change and let us out more, even took us to the park, but he was always there with his gun on him when I wasn’t locked away.”

Eric wasn’t sure what to do or say. Part of him wanted to pull her into his arms, to hold her tight enough to squeeze the brokenness inside her back together. But he didn’t dare do that. The fact that she couldn’t even look at him told him she wasn’t ready to welcome his embrace.

Back when they were high-school friends, he’d more than once worked up the courage to place his hand on her back or his arm across her shoulder, innocent ways of testing whether she felt anything for him like what he felt for her. But he’d never gotten a clear indication from her either way, and after all she’d been through, he wasn’t sure how she’d respond to the old gestures of their friendship. As a high-school science teacher, he didn’t play a huge role in helping those who’d been abused, but he’d had some training on how to spot signs of abuse and what to do about it. So he kept his hands to himself and listened as she continued her story.

“Jeff used the kids for leverage. And I think maybe that’s why he got sucked into work so much—his boss used the kids for leverage, too. That’s how I knew I needed to be ready to leave. I overheard Virgil’s threats the last time. He wanted money—I don’t know how much, but I know it was a lot, more than we had, which supposedly Jeff had kept back from some of the deals he’d run, or that he’d missed out on by not running some deals, I don’t know. They wanted the money, or they were going to kill us. All five of us.”

At her words, Eric remembered. “Your son, Sammy. You said you left him with your sister, but she doesn’t even know you’re alive?”

“I wrote a note on the shirt he was wearing. It said ‘A DNA test will prove this is Alyssa Jackson’s son.’ It wasn’t a lie,” she clarified. “Sammy isn’t Alyssa’s son, obviously, but since we’re identical twins, a DNA test would still conclude she’s his mother.”

“So, you handed him to her?”

“No. I couldn’t risk that—I couldn’t let her see me or she’d come looking for me, and that might lead Virgil to her. That’s the same reason I didn’t use Sammy’s name. No, I left him in her manger.”

“In her manger? The nativity scene? Her concrete sculptures?”

“Yes. The nativity scene is up next to the house. I watched her working in the yard, saw her go inside the house, and I left him in his car seat in the manger with his diaper bag. Then I drove away a couple of blocks and watched until she went outside and saw him.”

For all of Eric’s fears that Vanessa might be crazy, leaving her son in a manger was nearly enough to convince him. Granted, the weather that day was warm for October. The baby would be fine outside, even if he wasn’t noticed for a couple hours or more. And she had stood by to make sure her sister found him.

“But why did you leave him with her?”

Vanessa looked him full in the face, her warm brown eyes boring into his. “To keep him safe. I don’t believe, even for a second, that Virgil or the people he works for are going to let me get away easily. They’ll look for me. They’re probably trying to track me down right now. They know I know what happened. If the cops find me first, I’ll go to jail and lose my girls. If the traffickers find me...” She shook her head. “I thought about leaving the girls with Alyssa, too. I debated where they’d be safest. But if three kids go missing and then three suddenly appear somewhere else, that might lead Virgil to them. And he knows the girls are old enough to identify him. No, this way, we’re split up. If something happens to me, at least Sammy has a chance.”

Her voice broke again, and Eric realized how difficult the decision must have been—to choose to leave her son with her sister, as a gamble that one way or another, at least part of her family might escape the criminals who had terrorized them for the past eight years.

But even more than the pain of her story, Eric felt chilled by the threat that had led her to abandon her infant son. “Do you really think they’re trying to track you down right now?”

“I’m sure of it.” Vanessa shuddered. “They’ve always made it a point to make an example of those who disobey them. In fact, that’s where they got my identity. The real Madison tried to run. They tracked her down, left her body in a shallow grave and made me look like the picture on her driver’s license. Jeff forced me to marry him, and that got me a new ID with his last name. Nobody ever questioned, because she hadn’t been reported missing yet. She wasn’t a minor.”

“You’re sure they don’t know about the cabin?” Eric clarified.

“I wouldn’t have come here if they did.” Vanessa sucked in a breath and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no!”

* * *

“What is it?” Eric leaned over the chair where she sat.

Vanessa fought to keep calm, but the events of the day were catching up to her, and the latest realization was too much to bear. She’d been so focused on getting the girls to the cabin without being recognized, on making sure they got to sleep peacefully and then explaining her story to Eric, she hadn’t thought about the fact that now seemed so painfully obvious.

“I have to leave.”

“Leave here? Now?”

“As soon as possible. I can’t stay here. I’m sorry—I didn’t think. I mean, I thought this was my place—mine and Alyssa’s, anyway. It didn’t occur to me she might have sold it.”

“She needed the money to keep her concrete-sculpture business going. I was helping her out, in a way. And of course, I always loved it when your grandfather invited my grandpa and me here for fishing trips.” Eric looked a bit confused at Vanessa’s alarm.

She hurried to explain. “But they’re looking for me. If they track me here—that drags you into this. I can’t let them know about you. It puts you in danger. I have to go.” She stood.

“You’re not going anywhere right now.” Eric placed a hand on her shoulder, not pushing down, really, but enough to guide her back into the chair. “Your girls are asleep—are you thinking of leaving without them?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t you need your sleep?”

“I can’t sleep, not with all that’s happened and everything I have to think about.”

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture Vanessa hadn’t witnessed in years, which she nonetheless immediately recognized as his thinking face. She watched him, waiting for him to announce whatever it was he was thinking about, grateful for the light touch of his hand on her shoulder.

Even as she waited, she couldn’t help noticing how much he’d changed in the years they’d been apart. She’d recognized him immediately, but only because he was a familiar part of her memories of the cabin—her grandfather and his grandfather had been inseparable fishing buddies and equally devoted to their grandchildren. So in many ways, though she hadn’t at all expected to see him there, he still fit, in spite of the gun he’d been holding.

On closer inspection now, she saw the differences. He was taller, broader through the shoulders, the stubble on his chin deeply shadowed by this hour. He’d be twenty-five, as well, the same age she really was, though her Madison Nelson ID had her at twenty-nine. His dark hair hadn’t thinned, and his dark brown eyes still sparkled like obsidian beneath brows that had thickened with age.

He looked good, as familiar as home and yet fascinatingly different from the boy she’d known. She’d thought about him often during the long, lonely hours of her captivity, but her memories couldn’t compete with being in his presence. She wanted to turn into the arm that was draped so lightly across her shoulder, to bury her face against his chest and sob for all she’d lost and all she might still lose, but she felt afraid to. Probably post-traumatic inhibition, but it stayed her hand.

“Can we,” Eric spoke slowly, releasing his nose and meeting her eyes, “try to find out who’s behind this trafficking ring? If we can’t go to the police and we can’t stay here for long, really, the only way I can see out of this is to slay the dragon, to cut off its head.”

Vanessa recognized the phrase from the game they’d played countless times in the woods around the cabin. A gnarled stump of a tree had been their dragon, its branches hooked like claws, dark and menacing. As kids, they’d hacked at it with their “swords” made of sticks.

“They left it dead, and with its head they went galumphing back.” Vanessa paraphrased the line from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” the poetry bringing back a flood of forgotten dreams. They’d both been going to be high-school teachers, he in science, she in English. Their dreams had been so bright before Jeff had extinguished them.

“Can we?” Eric asked again after a long pause.

Reluctantly, Vanessa stopped remembering those old dreams and instead focused on the nightmare she was living. How could they possibly track down the criminals when she didn’t know who was really behind everything? Jeff would have known, though he’d never said a word in eight long years. But Jeff was dead now. She didn’t have any way of accessing—

She stood abruptly.

“What?” Eric looked startled but hopeful.

Vanessa ran back outside and pulled the keys from where she’d left them in the Sequoia’s ignition. Besides the chip that started the SUV, there were half a dozen other traditional keys, plus a couple of smaller ones that looked as if they might go to a file cabinet or desk drawer.

Eric waited on the porch, watching her as she ran back, examining the keys.

“I took Jeff’s keys.”

“What do the keys go to?”

“Lots of things. His office building, his office—these look like they might open some files. I know he had files, incriminating files. He was extremely protective of them whenever he had to bring some home. He never wanted me to touch them.” She paused on the porch, holding the keys between them, and looked into his face, awaiting his verdict, wondering what he would think of her idea. Jeff always hated her ideas, hated that she ever thought for herself, but Eric wasn’t Jeff. “Those files would expose Jeff. We might even learn who the real head of the monster is.”

“Do you know where Jeff’s office is?”

“Yes. I’ve been inside the building several times when he needed to run in for something. Assuming he still works in the same place, I can find it again. I made it a point to remember, if only because I knew he didn’t want me to.”

“Good for you.” Eric gave her half a smile.

“So, you think it’s a good idea?”

“To let you walk into the dragon’s lair?”

“How else am I going to cut off its head?” She met his eyes, challenging him, hopeful for the very first time. Could she really find and destroy the head of the crime ring that had ruined her life? If it was possible, she’d do whatever she had to do. It was either that or spend the rest of her life hiding in fear.

“You’re not going.” Eric shook his head, everything on his face saying he thought she was crazy. Then he finished, “Not alone, not without someone to stand guard, to watch out for you. And you’re definitely not taking your kids. They can stay here with Debbi. We can’t take your Sequoia—it’s all over the news. We’ll hide it in the garage and take my car, but we need to do it tonight, while it’s still dark, before they have a chance to realize we might come looking and destroy the evidence before we get there. I’ll drive.”

Hope surged inside her, and Vanessa’s arms flew up, ready to hug Eric for agreeing with her plan—for wanting to be a part of it, even. But she caught herself just in time, and instead she gripped the keys harder and turned, following him back into the cabin.

“Stop right there,” Debbi ordered as they entered.

Vanessa looked up to see Eric’s sister, now in her early twenties, dropping a pair of buckshot shells into the hunting shotgun Eric had been holding earlier.

Debbi clicked the barrel into place and stared them down. “Neither of you is going anywhere. I’m calling the police.”

FOUR

“Debbi, no.” Eric addressed his sister in a calming tone. She wouldn’t shoot. She didn’t even like hunting. The gun shook in her trembling hands. He’d known she was terrified about having Vanessa at the cabin, but he’d hoped she’d give him a little more time before her fears caught up to her.

“Harboring a criminal is illegal.” Debbi’s voice wavered unsteadily. “We could go to prison because of her.”

“She didn’t kill her husband,” Eric explained.

“I didn’t,” Vanessa echoed.

Eric continued, moving slowly closer to his sister. “He wasn’t even her husband—legally, maybe, but not in the traditional sense of the word. He kidnapped her. She’s the victim of a human-trafficking ring. We have to help her.”

Debbi gripped the gun with both hands. “The police can help her.”

“No,” Vanessa pleaded with the same note of panic Eric had heard in her voice when he’d mentioned the police before. “The guys who killed Jeff are professionals. While I’m trying to convince the police to believe me, these guys will cover their tracks so thick the police will never find them. But they’ll find me and get their revenge.”

“Debbi, please.” Eric piggybacked on Vanessa’s words. “Vanessa has keys to her kidnapper’s office. We can go tonight and get evidence to put these guys away for good. But we have to go now, before they catch up to her.”

Debbi narrowed her eyes warily but lowered the gun a few inches. “Once you get the evidence, we can call the police?”

Eric looked to Vanessa for the answer.

“Yes. Once we have evidence against these guys, we’ll call the police. We can go and be back in a matter of hours if we leave now.”

“Please, Debbi?” Eric reasoned with his sister, praying she’d understand, or at least give them a chance to prove Vanessa’s innocence. His sister was scared, that was all. Normally, she was a very kind person.

Debbi shifted her weight, planting the gun against the floor like a walking stick, leaning against it as she eyed them conspiratorially. “Fine.” She blew out a breath that said she might still regret caving. “What’s our plan?”

Together, they quickly assembled everything they’d need. Eric wasn’t surprised, given Vanessa’s story, to hear she didn’t have a cell phone. Eight years before, she’d been too poor to afford a phone of her own.

“I’ll stand guard outside while you go in the building,” Eric decided. “But I’ll need some way to contact you if someone’s coming.”

Debbi pulled her phone from her purse. “She can take mine. Nobody ever calls or texts me in the middle of the night.”

“But what if we need to reach you? The cabin’s never had a landline. We don’t have any other phones.”

“You’re going to stand watch while she goes inside, right?” Debbi clarified. “You’re going to need a phone to call her while she’s inside, or there’s no point in you standing watch. Who do you think needs it more?”

Vanessa blew out a thoughtful breath, then spoke slowly. “I brought the girls here to keep them safe. I don’t have a phone. I didn’t figure we’d have a phone. So leaving them here with Debbi isn’t really any different than being here myself, without a phone.”

“It might be risky going inside the office. Riskier than staying here.” Eric accepted the device from his sister and passed it to Vanessa. “I’ll text you if someone’s coming. Do you know how to answer a text on this phone?” He sent a text between the phones so she could see how it worked.

“Got it.”

“If this thing goes off, you’ll need to get out of sight.” His fingers brushed hers as he spoke, imparting an acute sense of awareness.

Vanessa’s glance fluttered from his fingers to his eyes and back again. Her cheeks colored slightly as she thanked him and agreed to his plan.

So she’d felt it, too, then. The old chemistry, the teenager-like nervousness he’d thought he’d lost the night she never came home. He’d been crazy for her for years, but equally terrified she’d find out how he felt. He’d never told her, never let on to his feelings...and regretted it ever since. He’d prayed for a second chance....

A surge of emotion welled inside him, but he swallowed quickly, pushing it back before it could creep into his voice. “Okay, then, I think we’re ready. You’ve got your key-chain flashlight. Debbi will stay here with the girls—”

“They should sleep until after I get back,” Vanessa predicted. “They won’t ever know I was gone.”

Eric nodded, not trusting his voice anymore, the reference to her absence too much, the reality of her presence slowly eclipsing his surprise. She was alive, she was here. She looked great, but she’d been through so many awful experiences, scars buried deeper than he could see. He wanted to throw his arms open wide and embrace her, but he was terrified of how she might respond.

Debbi insisted he take the hunting shotgun and a box of buckshot. While Vanessa hastily left instructions for what Debbi should do if the girls awoke before they returned, Eric carried the gun outside and put it in his car. He hoped he wouldn’t need it, but these men had killed a man today already. He had to be prepared for the worst. They couldn’t hurt Vanessa, not again, not if he had any say in the matter.

He couldn’t think of anything else to bring, but moved the Sequoia out of the way, backed his Mustang out of the garage and then parked the wanted SUV out of sight inside.

By the time he pulled the garage door closed, Vanessa stood by his car, ready to go.

How many times had he wished for such a simple thing, to see her standing by his car, leaving with him? They’d never gone out on a proper date. He’d been too nervous to ask, and then it was too late.

At least tonight, he was able to open the door for her. Their eyes met briefly as she stepped past him and took a seat inside the vehicle.

In spite of the darkness of the northern Illinois woods at night, he could see the fear clearly on her face. Unsure what he could possibly say to reassure her, he closed her door, then climbed in behind the wheel.

“You’ll have to tell me how to find this place,” he reminded her as he navigated the twisting gravel driveway.

“Just get on highway fourteen and follow it toward Chicago for a while.” She fell silent then.

Eric had hoped to chat, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t commiserate with her because he didn’t know all about what she’d been through, nor did he feel comfortable asking, certainly not now. Perhaps they ought to discuss what lay ahead, but everything depended upon what she would find in Jeff’s office.

After a long silence, Vanessa spoke in a quiet voice. “Thank you.” Her voice hitched, as though she was about to say more, but had to fight back a sob.

Eric hesitated to respond, listening for whatever she’d been about to say, reluctant to speak for fear he might cut her off. They drove in silence awhile longer. Finally, he offered, “It’s no problem.”

She made a sound that was half laughter, half miserable sigh. “Yes, it is. You could get in big trouble for helping me. Debbi probably had the right idea. You might regret that you didn’t listen to her.”

“Never,” he vowed quickly.

Vanessa glanced at him, and he took his eyes off the road just long enough to meet her eyes.

“My only regret is that I didn’t do something eight years ago.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Something, so that you wouldn’t ever have disappeared.”

“There’s nothing you could have done. You didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“But you were vulnerable. I mean, that Jeff guy, he preyed on you. It shouldn’t have happened. How could something like that happen? To you, of all people? I mean, I know you’re beautiful—”

“I don’t think so.” Vanessa cut him off, her tone outwardly joking, sarcastic with an undertone of longing so buried, he might have thought he’d imagined it.

But he couldn’t let her believe otherwise. “Vanessa, you are. You’re beautiful, and that’s why he targeted you.”

“You don’t know why he picked me. How could you know? You never met him.”

“I know you. And I know—” He squeezed the steering wheel, wishing he’d spoken these words long before. Would it have made any difference? He was speaking them now. “I know he saw what I saw, which was a girl whose smile could make everything else bad that had happened that day disappear. A girl whose smile you want to see every day of your life. But instead of treasuring you, he took you.”

“Watch the road,” Vanessa cautioned.

Eric realized he’d gotten so caught up in his words, he’d veered onto the shoulder of the dark highway. He realigned the vehicle with the path. “Sorry. I just— I’ve regretted it all these years, and now you’re here, but these guys might show up again or the police could take you away anytime. But you have to know.” He realized his words were rambling. Words had always been Vanessa’s area of expertise, never his. “I should have said it long ago, but I was so awed by you. I wanted to ask you out, but I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”

“I would never laugh at you.”

“Oh, yeah, never?” He quoted, “‘He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin—’”

“I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing with you.”

“I wasn’t laughing.” Eric remembered vividly his attempt to play out Alfred Noyes’s infamous poem, “The Highwayman,” for the girl who’d loved it so. Admittedly, he’d looked ridiculous, his French cocked-hat, a pirate tricorn, the bunch of lace at his chin a borrowed blouse of Debbi’s. But he’d wanted so much to impress Vanessa.

“The turn is coming up, just past the railroad tracks.”

Eric turned his attention to the road and tried to forget his disastrous attempt at demonstrating his affection without actually saying how he’d felt.

Now he thought Vanessa was going to forget, as well, but she offered softly, “I didn’t know how to respond. I was so flattered that you dressed up in costume and everything. It was either giggle like an idiot or admit that I was blown away.”

“Blown away?”

“This next corner, at the stoplight. Turn right, then right again on the access road.”

Eric followed her instructions, wishing he’d chosen to hold the conversation at a time when they could actually talk. But they’d held off in silence for too much of the ride, and now it was too late. Again.

“Here it is, this office building.”

“This is it? Is this the crime-ring headquarters, or did Jeff do honest work, too?”

“Jeff never did any honest work. Hmm, you’ll want to park somewhere you can’t be seen.”

Eric pulled past the building, all the parking places out in the open. “Here, behind this Dumpster?” He turned past a few thick cedar trees that divided the lots, then came to a stop.

Vanessa glanced around. “This looks like as good a spot as any.” She opened the car door, then glanced back.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in instead? It’s so risky. If there’s anybody in there—”

“There aren’t any cars around, so I doubt anyone is inside. Besides, you don’t know your way around like I do. I’ll find it faster. That makes it less risky if I go in.”

Eric hung his head. Vanessa was right—he just felt terrible that he couldn’t do more for her. “Got everything you need?” he asked, not ready for her to walk away, not yet, when so much between them was still unsaid.

She looked down at the bundle of keys in her hand and patted the pocket that held Debbi’s phone, set to vibrate. “The sun will be up in a matter of hours. People could start arriving anytime. With Jeff dead—well, they might have the same thought I had, that his office could hold evidence. I should hurry.”

Eric reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze, but she was already climbing out of the car. Did he imagine that she squeezed his hand in return, or was that just wishful thinking?

Vanessa darted toward the building without looking back.

* * *

In spite of the number of keys on the ring, Vanessa was able to find the correct one quickly. She entered the building, glanced around the large open foyer and ascended the staircase. Jeff had always left her downstairs, under the watchful eyes of his associates, when he’d gone upstairs to his office.

Once upstairs, she came to a long hallway with unmarked doors on either side. She’d never seen which door he went in. Would it be too much to ask for a name placard? Apparently. Only two doors were labeled—Men and Women—at the far end of the hall. Vanessa started with the door farthest from the restrooms and tried the keys each in turn.

None fit.

She made her way methodically down the hallway, trying all the keys in every door, hoping, praying, wondering if perhaps she’d already tried Jeff’s door and failed to open it in her haste.

Finally, at the last door before the men’s room, she slid a key into the lock and turned the knob. Immediately, she knew she’d come to the right place. There was Jeff’s mug sitting next to a coaster. She’d thought his coaster aversion was something he did only at home, just to irritate her, but apparently his disdain for them ran deeper than that. She even caught a whiff of his familiar cologne.

Oh, dear Lord, help me now. If there’s evidence here, help me find it.

She turned on the computer and, while it was powering up, fit the small keys into the filing cabinet and desk drawers.

The papers in the filing cabinet were arranged in neat files. She found page after page of numbers on grids, years, incoming, expenses—but no words pointing to the true sources of the funds. While most of the crime ring’s income came from human trafficking and drugs, nonetheless, Vanessa was aware of at least one of their cover operations—selling luxury goods for vastly inflated prices. Few people actually bought their ten-thousand-dollar handbags or five-hundred-dollar key chains, but all the documents in the filing cabinet seemed to indicate their money came from those sources.

Disgusted, Vanessa slid the last drawer closed and turned her attention to the computer. She’d always enjoyed using computers before Jeff took her. He, of course, wouldn’t let her online at all, not until after Abby was born. Then, out of his reluctance to let her take the baby to any more medical appointments than was absolutely necessary, he’d let her research any of Abby’s sniffles and rashes online—as long as he was in the same room to be sure she didn’t visit any social networks or do anything to reach out for help.

After every time Jeff let her use the internet, he always checked her browser history afterward, so Vanessa knew well how to check the sites he’d visited recently. Reading through his browser history, she skimmed past the familiar website names, instead checking those that sounded suspicious.

On the third try, she got a sign-in page.

Members Only.

The login name was already entered. The password box held ten black dots.

Enter.

The page that appeared made her stomach turn. Human trafficking, in all its sordid wretchedness.

So visceral was her response, it took her a moment to realize the vibration she felt was coming from her pocket and not her racing heart.

Debbi’s phone. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Two men.

That was all. Obviously Eric had been in too much of a hurry to type any more information. She must not have much time.

She glanced around the room. There was nowhere to hide. The computer—she didn’t dare leave it turned on. What if whoever had arrived came into this room? It seemed likely enough they would—anyone visiting the office at this hour might well be there because of Jeff’s death.

Vanessa shut down the computer, then opened the door just a crack. She peeked into the hallway but saw no one, heard no signs of life. Quickly, she darted out, hoping to reach the stairs, but at that moment, a dull boom sounded, and voices fluttered up from the foyer.

The boom was the main door opening. They were coming in the front door. She couldn’t go down the stairs, not with them coming in that way. She glanced behind her, hoping to see an exit sign, but there was nothing but the row of locked doors behind her.

She was trapped, with no escape.

“His office is upstairs.” Virgil’s voice echoed through the open stairway from below. The man who’d killed Jeff was on his way, and he wasn’t alone.

FIVE

Eric sent the text the instant the headlights swept across the parking lot.

He recognized the vehicle. It was the same Land Rover from the news broadcast, the same SUV Virgil had stood in front of in Jeff Nelson’s driveway as he’d thrown all of the greater Chicago area into a manhunt for an innocent woman.

Silently, Eric crept from his car, crouching behind the Dumpster, phone in hand. The men who exited the vehicle were arguing in what he supposed were intended to be hushed tones—he couldn’t make out any clear phrases—but their anger caused their voices to carry in heated bursts.

Somebody was furious, and they were headed inside.

Oh, dear Lord, keep Vanessa safe. He almost wished he’d gone in with her—except that then she’d have no warning that the men were on their way inside. No, it was better this way. And maybe he could even get a picture of them. The more evidence they had, the better.

As the men passed under the bright beam of the security light, Eric pointed his phone’s camera in their direction. The phone’s description had touted its picture-taking capabilities—Eric had bought it to catch action shots of the high-school basketball team he coached. He’d never tested its prowess in taking pictures in low light.

He pressed the button and prayed—not just for a clear picture, but for Vanessa, who was still in the building.

The men went inside, and the door slammed closed behind them with a boom.

* * *

Vanessa darted into the ladies’ room, settling the door closed silently as angry voices echoed up the stairs. She glanced around the room, grateful to see two stall partitions instead of an open room. Deftly, she stepped into a stall, pulled the door closed behind her and stood on the seat so her feet wouldn’t be seen. It didn’t seem likely the men in the hall would enter the women’s restroom, but she was going to take every precaution she could. If they even so much as realized Jeff’s computer was still warm or suspected something might be out of place—she’d resisted the temptation to place his mug on the coaster—it wouldn’t take them long to look in the ladies’ room, not with all the other doors locked.

The voices echoed louder as the men proceeded down the hall in her direction. She tensed, waiting, while keys jingled in the hallway, and then the echoes shifted. The voices continued, the words no longer muted by the heavy bathroom door, but tinny, crisp, almost amplified.

She jolted and nearly slipped from her perch on the commode before she realized the men were not in the room with her. Their words were funneled through the ductwork to the ventilation opening above her head, Virgil’s voice sounding just as it did when it resonated through the vents in her Barrington basement.

“—ran outside the second we heard the crash. She never drove past the house—just out the backyard and straight for the highway. There’s no way she’s hiding in the neighborhood.”

“What about her sister?”

“We’ve kept surveillance on her since sundown. Dick’s guys are going to run a job. No sign of any unusual activity.”

Vanessa felt her heart freeze, then slowly start beating again. So, they knew about Alyssa. Jeff had known about Alyssa, so she wasn’t too surprised the others knew about her. Fortunately, from the sound of it, they didn’t know about Sammy. Alyssa must be keeping him out of sight, just as she’d figured she would. That much was a relief. But how long would Alyssa be able to keep him hidden, now that these men were watching her?

The conversation continued. “What about her other friends from high school? Other family connections? She had to go somewhere.” The firm voice sounded like a drill sergeant delivering a lecture.

Virgil’s voice had never sounded so wheedling, so pleading. “Maybe she’s still driving. If she left the state, kept going out of the range of the television broadcasts—”

“With two little kids and a baby? All by herself? She’d have to stop for gas. Jeff’s credit cards haven’t been used, have they?”

There was a pause, clicking of keys. Vanessa could picture them using Jeff’s automatic log-in to check his accounts. Knowing the guys he worked for, every credit card was accounted for, probably procured through them.

“Nope.” Virgil grunted. “She could use cash.”

“Maybe.” The other man’s voice sounded distantly familiar. Vanessa tried to recall where she’d heard it before. It wasn’t one of Virgil’s usual guns—no, those goons didn’t talk back or ask questions. This guy sounded as if he was bossing Virgil around. Could he be the ringleader? With a breach like this one, it made sense the head honcho would swoop in to make sure all the holes were properly plugged. “No. No, she’ll be in hiding. She’s scared, doesn’t know where to go. She’ll panic, go somewhere familiar.”

“There was that cabin.”

“Cabin?”

Vanessa felt her heart nearly stop at the word. They knew about the cabin? Surely it wasn’t the same place....

“Her grandpa’s cabin. Yeah, we found out about that when her grandpa died. She and her sister were supposed to inherit half each. The sister had her declared legally dead and sold the cabin.”

“So the sister sold the cabin—” the bossy voice protested.

“But Madison doesn’t know they sold the cabin.”

“She doesn’t?”

“How would she? Jeff didn’t let her know anything.”

Slowly, Vanessa’s heart started beating again, but with dread-filled thumping. They knew about the cabin. They knew more than she did. It was worse than she’d thought.

“Have you checked the cabin?”

“I don’t—” Virgil’s wheedling rose to a new, wordless level.

“You don’t what?” The bossy voice grew angrier.

“I don’t know where it is. But I can find it. I can. No problem. I’m on it.”

“You bet you’re on it. Do we have everything we need here?”

“Everything.” The keys rattled and jingled, and the voices shifted to muffled sounds as the men entered the hallway and headed toward the stairs.

Vanessa held her breath, listening carefully. Were they gone? She didn’t dare leave the restroom until the men had left the building, but how could she know when they were gone? There wasn’t a window in the bathroom.

And she didn’t have time to wait. Virgil was going to check the cabin. She had to get her girls out of there, get them long gone before Virgil and his men arrived.

Her enemies were already two steps ahead of her.

* * *

Eric climbed back into the car but kept his eyes on the office building. He could see only the main set of doors from where he sat, but that was really all he needed to see. The Land Rover hadn’t moved, and Vanessa hadn’t appeared. All he could do was pray that Vanessa had received his text in time, that she’d get low and stay low until after the men were gone.

Finally, just as he was beginning to worry that they’d been inside too long and were going to stay until everyone else arrived for the day, the doors opened and the men exited, climbed into the Land Rover and backed out of their parking spot.

Trading quick glances between the door and the SUV, Eric watched the vehicle roll out of the parking spot onto the access road. They’d made it to the stoplight but were still within his line of sight when the doors of the office building opened again and Vanessa peeked out.

She glanced around, then darted for his car, a bulky box that looked like a slimline desktop CPU tucked under her arm.

The stoplight turned green. The Land Rover moved forward, veered wildly wide, then swung around in an abrupt U-turn.

Vanessa was wide out in the open. Either the criminals had spotted her and turned around to come after her, or they’d forgotten something and turned back to get it. Either way, they’d see her soon enough.

He had to get her out of there.

Starting the car, he put it in Reverse and backed up wide, clear of the trees, then pointed the car toward Vanessa, aiming the passenger side at her path, opening the door just as he reached her.

“Get in!”

She dived inside, and he kept moving even as she pulled her legs in. He’d kept his distance from her thus far out of respect for what she’d been through, but safety was more important than feelings. He grabbed her arm, tugging her into the vehicle as she pulled the door shut after her. She dumped the CPU on the floor mat and buckled her seat belt. “Are they gone?”

“Not quite.” He’d let go of her arm to steer with both hands as he stomped the gas to stay ahead of the vehicle that pursued them.

Squealing tires added emphasis to his words as the Land Rover took a sharp corner into the parking lot.

Eric’s Mustang slid down a grassy median into the next lot. He accelerated toward the access road and the stoplight, which was turning yellow.

Gunning the engine, he made it through just as it turned red above him.

Vanessa looked behind them. “They ran the red light. They’re catching up. Do you know where you’re going?”

“I have a few ideas, but I’m guessing those guys know the neighborhood better than I do.” He got back on the highway and headed out of the city. It was probably a good idea to stay near traffic, thin as it was, for now—with more witnesses around, the criminals might be less likely to try anything.

But Vanessa had more bad news. “They know about the cabin, too.”

“Our cabin?”

“Yes. I overheard them talking while I was hiding inside. They’ve been watching my sister—they said something about guys running a job? I don’t know what that means. I hope they leave her and Sammy alone.”

“They’re too busy chasing us—” Eric’s words were cut off by a sharp sound behind them, and he ducked instinctively. “They’re shooting at us?”

As if to answer his question, another shot sounded.

Vanessa ducked low.

Eric slid down as far as he could in his seat. He needed to be able to see to drive and didn’t dare let the shots scare him into slowing down. Surely that was what the men behind them wanted—they weren’t likely to hit much, especially not given his car’s low profile. But their boxy Land Rover was another story. It sat high above its own tires, exposing them to a direct hit. Vanessa had been quite the shot back in the days when her grandfather taught her marksmanship.

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