I’d lost my shoes at some earlier point of the night, so my bare toes dug into the mud as I forced my body forward. It protested in pain as I did, but I had to get away. I ran in between massive trees, pushing off of them with my hands to give me more momentum. As long as I was moving forward, I had a chance.
Sticks and rough grass sent shooting pains through my feet, tree bark bit into my palms, and low-hanging branches scratched my face, but I didn’t stop.
Helena didn’t have a lot of chances. I didn’t want to let her down.
I skirted around a fallen log that I almost hadn’t seen, and reached out to push off of another tree. My hand never made it, though. A wall of muscle wrapped around me and lifted me off the ground. I screamed and lashed out.
“No! Put me down!” I screamed louder. “Help!”
“No one can hear you, Clara. It’s just us out here.” Cash’s voice came from directly beside my ear. “And you’re as quiet as a big truck trying to escape. You’re not getting away. You might as well talk to me about Helena.”
I fought harder. “You don’t get it!”
He adjusted his arms so they were wrapped around my shoulders and stomach, holding my arms down. “What don’t I get?”
Completely pinned to his big body, I angled my mouth and found I could reach his forearm with my teeth. Sinking my teeth in, I felt no satisfaction when he roared in my ear and shook me so hard my teeth rattled in my head.
“Why are you doing this? Just fucking tell me where my daughter is! Wasn’t it enough that you took her from me before? What did I do to deserve that shit, Clara?”
I went limp in his arms but turned my face to his in the dark. “I didn’t take her. And I don’t know where she is. You’re barking up the wrong tree. And you could be getting our daughter killed by not letting me go back to Carver. You have to let me go back, Cash, please.”
Even in the dark, I could see the confusion on his face. “What do you mean, you don’t know where she is?”
“Just that. I don’t know where she is, Cash. Take me back. I’ll try to figure it out, but I can’t do anything from here. Take me back to him and let me save our daughter. I’m begging you.”
“Shut up.” Cash held me tighter and then hastily lifted me and started moving back to where we’d come from. “I don’t believe a single thing you’re saying. You think I’m going to believe the woman who looked at me with her big eyes full of tears and told me my daughter had died in a car crash?”
It was going to be too late. He would never believe me or let me go. Antonio was probably already on his way to Florida. Helena was going to be killed to prevent me from finding her. It was just the kind of move he would make to be sure he won the game that was my life.
Tears started falling and I had no choice but to let them. Once again, my daughter’s fate was my fault.
Our life could’ve gone a thousand different ways. If I’d called Cash as soon as I found that Helena had been kidnapped, if I’d called the police. Maybe if I’d told Cash the truth when he came looking for her a year later… There were so many paths I could’ve chosen that would have ended better, instead of the ones that I did. Probably. Most likely.
“She’s going to die.” My voice didn’t even sound like my own as sorrow flooded me. “He’s going to kill her, Cash.”
I dropped my head back on his shoulder, the horror of it all hitting me at once. I hadn’t been able to get away. I wouldn’t be able to save her. I had to tell Cash everything and hope for the best, hope that he would take me back to Antonio and I could somehow explain that I hadn’t run away.
Cash shifted and tossed me over his shoulder. “You’re going to tell me everything, Clara.”
My tears ran into my hair and my nose clogged up immediately, but still I sobbed. Even as Cash carted me back into the room and flipped a switch that brought a lamp on. He put me down in a different chair and brought out a pair of handcuffs.
“I love the thrill of the chase, but you’re staying this time.” He locked me into the chair and then stood over me, shaking his head. “Why are you crying? Feeling shitty about being forced to face the man you stole a child from?”
“I didn’t steal her from you. She was stolen from me, too, Cash. I…I didn’t know.” I swallowed back another sob and tried to sit up straight. I needed to tell him everything, but I felt helpless to fight the tears.
“You’re telling me that you didn’t lie to me and tell me she’d died in a car crash? Someone outed you, princess. I know you lied.”
I hesitated. I still felt the urge to flee back to Antonio to try to salvage the long game I’d been playing to save Helena, but I knew the window of opportunity was closing and I had to figure out something else. I had one last chance to convince Cash to let me go or I had to make up a plan B.
“I lied about how I thought she died. I couldn’t tell you the truth. I thought she was dead, though, Cash. I mourned her for over ten years. I lost her, too. I know she’s alive now, though, and we have to figure out a way to save her. I’ve been trying, but you’re not helping. Take me back to Antonio. It’s not ideal, but if I do what he wants, he won’t hurt her.”
Cash’s face went darker than ever before. He leaned down until he was level with me and the faint scent of whiskey was there again. “Listen to yourself. You’re not making any sense. Start from the beginning and tell me everything or you’re going to rot in this chair.”
Urgency made me loose-lipped. “Her birthday was a week away when someone took her. She was there and then she wasn’t. They left a note. They said if I called anyone, they’d kill her. They said they’d contact me about money. I’d become friends with our new neighbor, Antonio. He seemed nice. He came over and found me crying and he found the letter.”
“Antonio? You mean Carver?”
“Yes. Antonio. He helped me. He said he’d been in the Navy and he had some contacts. He tried to find her. We spent days and then weeks together, searching. He dragged me from town to town, always with new leads and sightings of her. When weeks turned into months, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t call you after all that time and tell you she’d been kidnapped months before.
“I don’t even know how it happened. Antonio kept me going. I never slowed down in all that time. I searched for her. I fought to go to the police after the first week, when they hadn’t called about ransom, but Antonio said he knew the kind of guys who’d taken her. They’d kill her. And then, he said they did. He brought me to warehouse and he told me the guys who he’d hired had found two local cops from our town who had taken her. He said they’d done terrible things to her and then killed her.”
“What?”
“He brought in the two guys and he had a gun. He told me they deserved to die for what they’d done to her. Their mouths were taped, but I could hear them trying to scream things at me.” A sob wracked my body and I squeezed my fingers around the arms of the chair. “I thought they were taunting me about her. He’d gotten into my head. I thought they’d hurt her. He asked me if I thought they should get to live when Helena was dead and I said no.”
“He killed them?”
I looked up and met Cash’s eyes. “No.”
Cash took a step back and narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re lying.”
It was one of my darkest secrets and I wished I was lying. “No. He put the gun in my hand and he aimed it at their heads. Then, he whispered in my ear the things they’d done to her before killing her. I shot them. I killed two innocent police officers that night. I didn’t know, though. I didn’t know any of it. I just suddenly had this dark secret and no daughter. You were coming home on leave in another few weeks and I was going to be sitting in our house, waiting with no daughter. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back.
“I think Antonio knew if I killed them, I would never be able to ever go back to that place I was at before. When he suggested I send divorce papers to you and just make out like I’d left with Helena, I went along with it because I couldn’t think. Someone else had to do it for me, and unfortunately, Antonio was there.”
“Liar.” Cash’s voice was so low that I almost missed the one word.
“I just found out a little over a year ago that she wasn’t dead. I was looking for something in his office and there was a picture of her. It wasn’t the Helena I remembered, though. She was older. I confronted him and he gave me an ultimatum. If I was good, he’d be good. She’s out there, somewhere. He said she’s happy, but I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find her, but he’s got all the cards, Cash. I have to play his game. That’s why you have to take me back. If he thinks I ran away, he’ll kill her. He’ll think I found out something about where she is and he’ll assume I’m going to get her. He won’t let me have her. He won’t.”
Cash shook his head and stepped backwards. “And I’m just supposed to believe this elaborate story? And what? Set you free so you can run back to your fucking sick boyfriend? Did you send her away? She got in the way of the life you’d always wanted, so you sent her away, right?”
I jerked against the handcuffs and glared at him. “I told you everything, Cash! Let me go!”
He kept shaking his head. “I’ve got a lead to follow up on. You’ll stay in that chair until I’m ready to see your face again.”
I watched him turn and walk away, anxiety squeezing my chest. “Cash!”
He stopped by the light switch and killed the lamp. A few seconds later, the door opened and then slammed shut behind him.
“Cash! No!” I screamed as loud as I could, for as long as I could. I called his name over and over, begging him to come back. When the desperation turned to anger, I let that out, too. Sitting in that hard chair in the dark, I went through the first four stages of grief, landing hard in depression and never quite making it to acceptance.
I had no way of knowing how much time passed, but eventually I turned to counting the seconds to get away from my thoughts. When the minutes turned to an hour, I gave up, feeling insanity creeping in.
I tried to listen for Cash but my racing thoughts drowned out all other sounds, them and my racing heart. I couldn’t tell the difference between my eyes being open and closed, so eventually, I just tipped my head back and forced my eyes closed. I tried to imagine somewhere nicer, somewhere with Helena.
My mind took me back to afternoons spent in a cheap, plastic pool in the dead back yard of our house, when she was three. The house was too hot and our fan didn’t work. We filled the pool with water from the hose and she splashed around in it while I sat in that broken chair beside her. Watching her. Always watching her. I felt like I’d never taken my eyes off of her.
I must’ve blinked, though. I must’ve blinked and Antonio snatched her away in that split second. In my mind, the events twisted, and he’d taken her from that pool. That wasn’t how it’d happened, though. He’d taken her in the spring, when it was still cool at night. He’d taken her while I had the windows and back door open because the breeze felt so nice in that stuffy little house. And she’d gone with him because she already knew the man from down the street, Mr. Antonio who sometimes sat with us in the back yard because Daddy was never home.
It had always been my fault. Even before I knew how much it’d been my fault, it’d been my fault.
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I tried to picture her as she was somewhere, that very night, alive and breathing, but couldn’t. I knew, just as well as I knew the first time was on me, that if anything happened to her that night, her death would be on my hands. I’d tried to point Cash in the right direction, but I’d just ended up making it all worse. We would all pay for my mistakes in the end.