CHAPTER 28
Anderson
After bringing Joanna home from the emergency room after the Zander scare, the passing weeks had calmed down considerably. She returned to work, and each evening, the two of us went home together. She had moved out of Tobias’s mansion to stay with me at my apartment, and I didn’t want to jinx myself, but it practically felt like living the happily ever after that I never even realized I wanted.
Nevertheless, Zander never strayed too far from my thoughts. I always knew that if he had managed to find Joanna at Libby’s house, there was always a chance he could find her at my place too.
Tobias and I had managed to find some top-notch private investigators to figure out how Zander had managed to find Joanna in the first place. She remained adamant that when she left him, she had snuck out and hadn’t told him anything whatsoever about where she was going or who she would be staying with.
As it turned out though, Zander was a man who had some deep connections of his own.
The investigators we’d hired came to the conclusion that Zander had dug into Joanna’s past, figuring out where she grew up, what schools she had attended, and subsequently, places she was likely to have history with.
Places she might run away to…
“He may have gotten in contact with some old school friends of hers that had been keeping track of her from afar. Former friends who knew about the successful businessman her brother had become,” one of the investigators, Mike, told me one night over the phone as I checked to see how things were going.
“Hmm. That makes sense,” I said. “Any updates on where he is now?”
“Why? Are you planning to personally intervene?”
“No,” I said, even though it felt like an uncomfortable lie coming out of my mouth. My hands still itched to ring themselves around Zander’s throat. Every time I thought of that man, I wanted to hit something. It sometimes made me queasy to think that he could have seriously hurt Joanna and my unborn child…
“Anderson,” the investigator said, uttering my name like a warning.
“I’m not going to intervene,” I insisted. “I’m paying you top dollar, so I just want to make sure you’re doing your job, if you don’t mind.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get snarky with you.”
“Apology accepted. Now tell me, any recent sightings of that bastard or not?”
“We have reason to think he’s still somewhere in Chicago, or at least in a nearby suburb. He’s likely biding his time. I don’t know much about his intelligence level yet, but often criminals of his caliber don’t give up on their victims so easily. He’s clearly obsessed with Ms. Gentry and he will stop at nothing to get her back under his control. So I’m pretty sure he’s waiting for the opportunity to strike again.”
“So what do we do until then?”
“Be careful. Be watchful. I know it’s hard since she’s not a child, but if she can help it, make sure she’s not alone too often, because that’s obviously when he’s more likely to strike. If we don’t find him quickly though, we may have to use her as bait to draw him out. Under controlled circumstances, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, although I thoroughly hated the sound of using Joanna as bait. She was carrying precious cargo. “I’ve actually got another question though.”
“Go for it.”
“When we find Zander, what next? What charges can we put against him? I mean, we can get him put away for life, right? Breaking and entering? Battery. Causing mortal danger to a pregnant woman—”
“Anderson, come on. You know the law, and you know you’re not being reasonable.”
I sighed in frustration. “So what are you trying to tell me? All we’re going to be able to do is give him a slap on the wrist? A restraining order that he’ll undoubtedly break? That’s not going to work for me.”
“Well, let’s just look at what you want to accuse him of. First of all, breaking and entering isn’t exactly accurate, is it? Based on the statement Joanna already gave the cops, she opened the door for him.”
“She thought he was a Chinese food delivery guy!”
“Okay fine, let’s say we go with that. Then what?”
“Domestic abuse for one. He’s been beating her for how long? And we all know that just because there’s no paper trail doesn’t mean she doesn’t have witness testimonies, or maybe took days off from old jobs because of incidents. Listen I get it. She acted stupidly because she was afraid. And okay—so we can’t call it breaking and entering. But it was forcible entry. She didn’t want to let him in. He pushed passed her.”
“Valid point. So we get him on the abuse charge, and she’s pregnant right? If she said that at anytime to him, a jury would lose their minds.”
“Well this is going a bit better.”
“Yeah if we can find the bastard and get a conviction. Those are big IFs Anderson.”
“Yeah well, I’ll talk to you later, Mike,” I said, having grown tired of the conversation, especially since he wasn’t telling me what I wanted to hear anymore. We’d have to do this the long way.
But I was prepared to play that game.
Anything for Joanna, and our child